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(ZIMPAPERS) Propaganda, media, regime change, SA and the myth of a South African powerhouse — a reality check

Propaganda, media, regime change, SA and the myth of a South African powerhouse — a reality check
Saturday, 13 August 2011 22:39 Opinion

Bankrupt propaganda mechanism protecting same old status quo
Saving Democracy in South and Southern Africa
By Udo W. Froese

ADOLF Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels declared: “If you have to use a lie to propagate your cause, you would have to repeat it more often than possible and use the established mainstream media to turn it into a publicly acceptable truth.”

A key CIA informer, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, admitted he lied about his allegations that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction”. He proudly announced that he would lie again to “bring democracy to the people of Iraq”.

When the international West unleashed its war against the people of Iraq, this deliberately unscrupulous and intentional lie for “democracy” cost over a million innocent human lives.

“Weapons of mass destruction (WMD)” was the popular media propaganda to motivate that Holocaust. The international West’s “war correspondents” became “embedded to be able to report from the front”, meaning openly travelling in and reporting from US/UK tanks, armoured vehicles and military bases.

In Shakespeare’s English, it is said, “all is fair in love and war”. You could add: the first victim in every war is the truth. Today’s global media often refers to “sweet, sweet lies and the ugly truth”.

Life’s experience taught this columnist that the victim of the propagated lie, cunningly packaged as truth, becomes its most ferocious defender and would die defending it.

A Savage War For “Peace” assisted by a Global Propaganda War

The destabilisation of North African countries and the Mideast, including Libya, was clearly explained in the international Western media networks.

CNN, BBCW, Sky News, Europe News, Al Jazeera, South Africa’s electronic media with the support of the print media, sang in unison from “the same hymn book and from the same page”, as guided by former US president George W. Bush Jnr and France’s head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy, at a Bretton Woods summit in 2008.

The global mainstream media describe the uprisings in North Africa and the Mideast as the “Arab Spring”, lauding the “people’s peaceful drive for democracy”, throwing their weight behind rebels that were described as “pro-democracy change agents” and condemning the heads of state and their governments as “corrupt dictators” at the same time.

Today, these countries and their people suffer the consequences. They find themselves in a daily struggle for survival, not being able to eat “democracy”, or to feed themselves.

Yet, the same media refuses to report on the nationwide unrests in Israel, where over 350 000 Israelis protest against Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government.

Israel rebels against huge price hikes and an exorbitantly high cost of living. The courageous former South African journalist, Paula Slier, reports on those uprisings daily for over three weeks. Slier is now based in Israel.

The international West’s media analysts and geo-political commentators openly admitted that their intelligence forces had prepared those “regime changes”, in some cases for over a period of 20 years, immediately after the “Cold War”.

The foreign intelligence services issued the “peace-loving, pro-democracy protestors” with arms and ammunition, uniforms, ration packs and military hardware and guidance. In the case of Libya, they created a new, national bank overnight. Libya’s oil is a major motivator.

The organisation of the “pro-democracy change agents” was made possible through the media and modern-day high technology telecoms, which include social networking sites such as “Twitter”, “Facebook” and “MySpace”. The “Blackberry’s” sophisticated technology, BBM, is of assistance too. So is money, lots of it.

Above-mentioned are the same technological mechanisms and tactics used to enforce US/UK/EU/ Israel/Canadian/Australian/New Zealand-led “globalisation”.

A seriously-funded “civil society” uses the above-mentioned for their agenda of “regime change” and creating parallel government structures to governments in Third World and African countries.

The UN Security Council, which includes South Africa, gave Nato the green light to invade Libya’s airspace. They bombed Libya to pieces. It seems South Africa’s decision to go with the international West’s decision against Libya — a fellow African country and member of the AU — will haunt President Zuma and the ANC-led government for time to come.

Is it not the case that an irrevocably bankrupt international West without any vision has declared a covert war against China, Russia and Iran? It is this reason for hitting on those small countries to clear North Africa and the Middle East in order to keep the feared forces out of the Mediterranean area. At the same time, countries that have economic and business relations with China, Russia and Iran are destabilised whilst their political leadership would be taken to the neo-colonial International Crimes Court (ICC) in The Hague, the Netherlands, Europe.

Syria, for example, is said to suffer at the hands of foreign interests because of its relationship with Iran. Powerful international Western countries mentioned to undermine Syria are the USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia and possibly also late-comer, Turkey.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton called for economic and financial sanctions against Syria. She urged China and India, at the same time, to immediately stop trading with Syrian oil, as they are major investors in Syria’s oil industry. Clinton is perceived to command the real power in Washington DC.

South Africa’s media shows its undemocratic, neo-liberal one-sidedness too.

Two seasoned columnists expressed their opinions in one of South Africa’s newspapers.

They were published and fired. One humorously described the behaviour of the people of mixed race (called Coloureds in SA). The other writer criticised an editor of a Sunday newspaper, at the same time defending the leader of the African National Congress’s Youth League (ANCYL), Julius Malema. Both writers are black-African South Africans.

On the one hand, the ruling ANC’s tripartite partner, Cosatu, and South Africa’s “civil society” viciously attack the governments of neighbouring Swaziland and Zimbabwe, more particularly King Mswati III and President Robert G. Mugabe.

Zealously committed opposition political parties, the international West and their media support are tirelessly at work reporting negatively on Swaziland and Zimbabwe, pushing for “regime change” in both countries.

On the other hand, when the ANCYL and Malema vocalise their support of a “regime change” in neighbouring Botswana, the same ANC, “civil society” and certain minority groups expect the ANC leadership to fire the Youth League leader. One would expect, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

Following could be contributing reasons for ANCYL call for a “regime change” in Botswana.

Some nine years ago, media and political analysts described Botswana as the “Trojan Horse” in the Sadc region because of its US American airbase, US satellite command and monitoring station and regular joint military manoeuvres with the US army in Botswana.

Even Israeli forces were mentioned to be present in Botswana, a country ruled by President Lt-Gen Seretse Khama Ian Khama, Commanding Officer of the Botswana Armed Forces and Minister of Defence, all in one.

In those years, Botswana’s presidential spokesman was also identified as a US citizen, who advised Botswana’s head of state then to withdraw from the unanimous Sadc decision to bring Zimbabwe back into the ranks of the British Commonwealth at its summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in December 2003.

Khama hosted Zimbabwe’s MDC-T leader, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleague, Tendai Biti, today Minister of Finance in Harare.

They claimed that they were fearing for their lives. Then Khama publicly criticised neighbouring Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zanu-PF.

The above-mentioned developments and the setting up of the US’ Africa Command (Africom) in Botswana and Namibia do not seem to have created a sense of security among Sadc members.

Labels: BOTSWANA, HILLARY CLINTON, LIBYA, NEOCOLONIALISM, PROPAGANDA, SANCTIONS, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 1:25 PM