PoliticalWarfare.org

VOA to kill broadcasts into rural China, Tibet

As the Chinese regime steps up the sophistication and tempo of its international propaganda operations, the United States government is curtailing a mainstay of providing unfiltered news and information to the most restive large areas under one-party control.

The Voice of America (VOA) has announced plans to terminate its shortwave broadcasts into rural China and Tibet, citing cost-cutting measures and its move toward more digital programming. 

Rural China and Tibet have been major sore points for the communist regime.

Farmers have led grassroots revolts against official corruption and taxation without representation. Because they do not have access to digital media, they depend on VOA shortwave broadcasts to stay informed.

“China has appropriated $7 billion on international propaganda in the past two years,” an Obama administration official close to VOA tells Bill Gertz at the Washington Times. “In 2011, CCTV [PRC state television] North America in Washington, D.C., plans to increase its reporters from 12 to 20 people. Meanwhile, VOA Chinese staff will be cut over 50 percent.”

Meanwhile, promised reforms at VOA's scandal-plagued Persian broadcasting unit are slow in coming, as this blogger has heard firsthand from dozens of Iranian democracy activists.

What is wrong at VOA? Iranian Revolutionary Guard defends VOA against critic

For those who continue to doubt that a long-overdue personnel shakeup is due at the Voice of America's Persian News Network (PNN), here's a new development from inside Iran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has come out and defended VOA/PNN against criticism from one of the regime's leading opponents, student opposition leader Amir Abbas Fakhravar.

Fakhravar escaped from Iran and has been the leading figure in Washington behind the need to bring new management to PNN and to get rid of personnel who have shown a consistent bias toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as an antipathy toward the secular opposition. He is one of my colleagues as a visiting lecturer at the Institute of World Politics.

Several days ago, Fakhravar gave a presentation at the Heritage Foundation, in which he poured more criticism upon VOA/PNN.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard commented on Fakhravar's Heritage talk in articles posted in Farsi the Revolutionary Guard's "Young Journalists Club" website; and reprinted on Ammariyon, a website belonging to Ansar-e-Hezbollah, the special forces of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guard comment also appeared on the US-based Sar-e-khat website.

The translation into English is awkward and downright weird, but, I am told, is faithful to the Revolutionary Guard's original. The translators use the odd word "devilry" as a literal translation of fetne, a term that Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard figures have used to label the student protesters.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard comments certainly do more to validate the extensive credentials of Fakhravar as a true enemy of the regime (some wags in Washington are spreading nasty untruths about him). They should also energize the actions afoot at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to clean out PNN immediately and thoroughly.

Here's the translated article:

The Voice of Devilry in Voice of America

In a commentary during a recent interview with the Heritage Foundation, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, one of the leaders of "the devilry" in the United States, who fled the country after the defeat of his student devilry, has called for an increase in Voice of America and BBC's interference and swaying power for creating disorder and chaos in Iran's affairs.

Citing the Heritage Foundation website, the Journalists' Club reports that Fakhravar, who has friendly relations with George Bush and American senators and who has met with Vaclav Havel, the architect of colored coup d'etats, several times, has named imposing sanctions on Iran and an increase in VOA/PNN's swaying power in Iran as the two most effective ways to create and lead civil disorder.  In his opinion, VOA is the only media that can, alongside BBC Farsi, become a liaison between the protesters in Iran and the leaders of the devilry inside and outside Iran. 

After VOA's failure to guide the leaders of the devilry during the post presidential elections protests, some experts including a few senators have proposed reforming this media in order to increase its influence and Fakhravar agrees with them.

It is noteworthy to mention that Amir Abbas Fakhravar also known as Siavash was one of the founders of the Independent Student Movement in Iran and his anti-regime activities peaked in 1994 and in 2006 he fled to the United States. During his stay in the U.S., he has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. He has also spoken against the regime in the U.S. Senate and in the course of the post-election devilry, he has made tireless efforts to lead the protesters."

Videos about Iran's rock underground

From Persian Cats to Yellow Dogs from Jehangir Irani on Vimeo.

Yesterday's post led me to look around for some good videos about Iran's rock underground, and some research about the Yellow Dogs led to these excellent segments. The first one, above, is a look at Iran's young people and how they express themselves through music - with help from supportive parents and corrupt police - focusing on the Yellow Dogs band.

Below is a CNN report on rock in the Middle East. About 1:42 into the video is the section on the Iranian rock underground, with an inside look at Yellow Dogs and the rock scene in Tehran. Following the CNN report is a music video of the Iranian band Hypernova, that just released its debut album, in English, this spring. Hypernova began as an underground band in Iran but is now based in the West and has a more polished look and sound.

The musical threat to Iran's regime

How can we take down Iran's soon-to-be-nuclear-armed regime without firing a shot? There are a number of ways, but the Islamic Republic has been openly betraying its greatest fears: music.

Not just the rock, punk, rap and hip-hop cultures that the regime is trying to repress, but all music. 

Eric Felten writes about it in the Wall Street Journal. In an August 18 piece titled "Why Dictators Hate to See Us Moved by Music," he begins with a recent quote from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared that music is "not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

The problem with music is that "it affects people profoundly and can't be controlled," Felten observes.

And lack of control is what the regime fears - a legitimate response from the hated tyrants who rule a country in which 70 percent of the population is under age 35.

Felten continues in his column with recent psychological studies about the effects of music on individuals' moods, emotions, and overall states of mind. 

Some of Iran's best rock groups are making it to the West and performing abroad, even in the United States. The group Yellow Dogs (pictured) is one of them.

There's an amazing popular cultural revolution going on in Iran today - a youthful, widespread, pro-western rebellion against the sharia regime of the Islamic Republic. Time for the rest of the world to get on board.

(Hat tip to SD)

More controversy over VOA's Iran service

A veteran Iran-watcher has highlighted continuing problems with the Voice of America's Persian-language broadcasting to Iran. Expanded US government programming into Iran has been diluted by personnel compromised by the Iranian regime and by clueless management, according to my friend Ken Timmerman.

The problem is so bad that when a prominent Iranian ayatollah died last year, providing an opportunity for extensive coverage to highlight opposition to the regime, VOA's Iran service broadcast a documentary about global warming.

Ken Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, writes in Newsmax,

"An internal struggle within the Voice of America (VOA) over its news coverage of Iran is spewing outside the agency as veteran staffers claim the channel tilts coverage in favor of the Tehran regime.

"The divisions erupted in late January when VOA chiefs removed a popular TV anchorman from the flagship U.S. broadcast into Iran, after he and about 30 Persian-speaking broadcasters had a confrontational meeting with VOA Director Danforth Austin, Newsmax has learned.

"The broadcasters, who work for VOA’s Persian service in Washington, D.C., challenged the editorial judgment of two senior managers because they banned stories about the violent crackdown on protesters in Tehran in recent months."

Timmerman has extraordinary Iranian contacts and has reported exclusives from within Iran for years. His most recent report details how VOA management sacked personnel who argued for open, aggressive coverage of anti-regime protests and how some members of the Persian-speaking team are compromised because of family still living in Iran and subject to persecution.

Last week, Scott Carpenter, a former senior State Department official, ripped the VOA management in testimony before Congress. Timmerman cites some of Carpenter's words:

“Poorly managed by people who do not know Iran or its politics, PNN's journalistic professionalism currently meets only minimal standards. Most of VOA's 200 employees lack any television experience beyond what they have gained at VOA, for example,” he told the Middle East Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

VOA managers trim coverage to eliminate anything that the regime might view as threatening, he said.

“To cite just one example, on the day after the death of Ayatollah Montazeri, when the BBC Persian Service was blanketing Iranian airwaves with coverage similar to that given in the United States to pop star Michael Jackson's passing last summer, PNN was airing documentaries on global warming. Indicative of its lack of impact is the fact that [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei rails against the BBC Persian Service but rarely mentions VOA.”

PoliticalWarfare.org commented on this problem back in 2007.

Getting serious about strategic influence

The US isn't declining as a world power because of the war on terrorism. It's declining because it has ceased to be serious about using strategic influence. The United States has become a military Achilles but a political Lilliputian.

"More troops" seems to be the universal answer to the world's security problems. Plus weak, plaintive cries for "more public diplomacy." Whatever that is. And then there's the newest fad: "strategic communication."

Yeah, that's the ticket: more strategic communication. Really! But wait - Does the government have an active, functioning machine that's doing the huge job of strategic communication? Can anybody name the government official currently responsible for the job? Is that person being effective? Does he or she have the right tools, resources, personnel and procedures? Is there anybody on the National Security Council with the stature and authority to coordinate the "strategic communication" of the world's sole superpower?

Of course not. That's part of the problem. I take a look at the issue in the current issue of the Journal of International Security Affairs - a journal, by the way, that's crammed with thought-provoking material on the subject of influence during war and peace. (My only quibble with the journal is that my friends, the editors and publisher, are capitalistic types who actually want readers to buy their publication, so the articles aren't available yet online.)

You can download a pdf of my essay, "Getting Serious About Strategic Influence," here: Download Waller JINSA Fall09. Meanwhile, here are some of the highlights:

• The mission of strategic communication "must be similar to the mission of the armed forces: to project American power and influence and provide a permanent system through which to ensure the national interest globally."
• The mission must not be "simply to make the United States a player in the 'global marketplace of ideas.' The mission must be to dominate the market."
• The effort "must be to fight to win. It must be run strategically, like a permanent political campaign."
• Therefore, current State Department diplomats are not qualified for the job. The job is for "real strategists and practitioners in the art of political action."
• The State Department's wartime public diplomacy record is so free of successes, so hideously failed, that the public diplomacy mission should be removed from Foggy Bottom: "Nobody has been held accountable for the public diplomacy mess. Yet everybody seems to want the State Department to continue its role as the leader in wartime strategic communication."
• "American message-makers have failed to develop a coherent strategy to wage an ideological counterattack against political Islamism. They can't seem to grasp that there is a significant difference between Islam the religion and the politicized, power-seeking ideologies of radical Islamism. Our national obsession with not wanting to offend has trumped our obligation to defend our national interests. And so our young soldiers continue to die."
• "Imagine . . . if the James Carvilles, Dick Morrises and Karl Roves of the world put their visionary, calculating, often deviously cynical genius to work to promote the national interest globally."
• "Reforms will take years. What the US leadership can do now is to define the purpose and nature of American strategic communication. That is why the nation needs diplomats and communicators who are political warriors, and not simply ex-politicians who checked their political instincts at the door when they entered the State Department."
• "Strategic communication must be strategic. . . . It must be designed to achieve national objectives through other than lethal combat, and to enhance the capabilities of the warfighters who must go into battle."

Leadership starts, of course, with our president, who is a gifted politician and communicator in his own right, but who seems to need help in developing a strategy. Our vice president was for years the ranking member and then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yet he did nothing significant in those capacities on the public diplomacy/strategic communication front. Maybe he can do something about it now. Our secretary of state is a masterful, school-of-hard-knocks political warrior who can win a partisan fight but doesn't seem to be getting traction at the State Department. Like the president, she is a trained disciple of the late Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky. I'd like to see her put those skills to work against the Islamist extremists of Al Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood and elsewhere. I'd gladly help out.

A swell way to declare an Afghan victor

Here's a terrific way for the United States to settle the Afghan presidential election controversy: Have the Voice of America broadcast an "exclusive interview" with the CIA director who says the US-favored candidate will win and that a vote recount won't matter.

Not!

Yet that's just what the VOA and CIA Director Leon Panetta have done. Here's what the VOA reported on September 18:

Official preliminary final totals in Afghanistan's recent presidential election have incumbent president Hamid Karzai the winner, but the election was marred by allegations of massive vote fraud. A U.N. electoral oversight group has ordered a partial recount. But the head of the Central Intelligence Agency believes that will not make much of a difference.

In an exclusive VOA interview, CIA director Leon Panetta says that even if suspect ballots are discounted, President Hamid Karzai will in all likelihood win re-election.

"It's clear that there was some degree of corruption and fraud involved in the election," Panetta said. "It's being viewed now by the commissions involved in counting those votes. I think what appears to be the case is that even after they eliminate some of the votes that resulted because of fraud, that Karzai will still - still looks like the individual who's going to be able to win that election."

The preliminary final results have Mr. Karzai with enough votes to avoid a runoff with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Mr. Karzai has angrily denied major fraud and denounced the media for what he says are exaggerated reports of electoral corruption.

A few problems show themselves here. First, the CIA director should never try to declare the winner of a US-backed election in another country. Even if the CIA wasn't involved in trying to manage the outcome of the Afghan election (and shame on the US for not using the CIA for that purpose, given that the Saudis, Pakistanis, Iranians and others are meddling plenty in Afghan political affairs), an official CIA comment simply looks bad and taints the favored candidate.

Second, why in the world is the Voice of America, as a major public diplomacy instrument of the United States government, eliciting and promoting such statements from the CIA Director?

The CIA-VOA electoral pronunciation has other negative effects, too, but I'll end with just the above pair of thoughts and the following question: Who is in charge of US strategic messaging on Afghanistan?

Israel Defense Forces make good use of YouTube

Taking its case to the world through an accelerated use of intelligence for persuading the world about its cause, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) now has its own information-packed video channel on YouTube.

Since December 2008, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has run IDFNADESK, a YouTube channel, showing IDF videos of Hamas operations, IDF counterterrorism operations, interviews with IDF officials, and other multimedia. The channel contains dozens of videos and other IDF links.

Some of the videos are in Arabic and contain English subtitles; others are narrated in American-style English.

The IDF public affairs website is idfspokesperson.com.

Word is traveling around the Internet today that YouTube has told the IDF that it would pull at least one video from the IDFNADESK site, allegedly due to not enough people logging in. This claim is difficult to believe because IDFNADESK is the #2 most subscribed YouTube channel in Israel, with more than 2.3 million channel views since December. The video in question, about an operation against Hamas and narrated by an Arabic-speaking IDF officer, has been viewed more than 354,000 times.

IDFNADESK has spawned some opposition video sites as well, showing how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is well under way online.

Al Jazeera producer purges his blog

David Phinney, the creepy little weasel producer at Al Jazeera's English propaganda channel, has purged his blog of an item referring to American troops as a much maligned bodily orifice.

Phony Phinney cleansed his blog after this blogger exposed his anti-American hate speech last week. Phinney also posted a comment to my criticism of his annoying attempt to interview me (see "Why I told Al Jazeera to stuff it," February 26).

Concerning my February 26 posting, Phinney (pictured) writes innocently, "Wow. This blog item strikes me as a total misrepresentation of the events for reasons I am unaware of. I would be happy to discuss this at your convenience if you would like."

No need to discuss a thing. I have all the emails and phone logs and at least a dozen eyewitnesses. We can make as big an issue of this as you like, Mr. Phony.

Many thanks to the Marine who pointed out how Phony doctored his blog after claiming that I misrepresented events, and to those who captured the screenshots before the Al Jazeera guy tried to destroy the evidence. More proof of the sleaze behind Osama bin Laden's favorite TV station.

This will be a fun item to follow.

Why I told Al Jazeera to stuff it

Normally I give press interviews to just about anybody who asks - even Pravda and MSNBC. But when a pesky little guy from Al Jazeera kept trying to get me to talk to him, I drew the line. This week a producer from Osama bin Laden's favorite propaganda outlet called and emailed me at my office, and again at my magazine. I ignored him. He tracked down some of my friends and associates, some of whom frantically called me: "Al Jazeera wants to talk to you."

Something about Blackwater. Phinney heaped praise on an article I'd written about Blackwater's great work in Afghanistan. Wanted to put me on his terrorist TV show glorious satellite network. I ignored him some more. 

Yesterday he pestered my colleagues, as if they would badger me into talking to him. One of them sent me a note: "This obnoxious guy, David Phinney, called looking for you. Said he's from Al Jazeera English. Wants to interview you today. Asked if he was on a deadline and he said, 'Well, yeah. Right now.' I tried to get him to narrow it down to a specific timeframe, but he kept on telling me 'immediately.' He must have thought I was a secretary because he talked to me like I was an idiot."

Phinney made quite an impression. "Annoying," said one of my colleagues. "Assclown," proclaimed another; "traitorous infidel. You must call him immediately or else the fleas of a thousand camels will lodge in your armpit."

Phinney likes to pride himself as a journalistic professional. But his blog shows him to be a real kook. He appears to allege that a Republican computer technology consultant died mysteriously because he had evidence of GOP voter fraud. And his site is peppered with trashings of American troops. Like this item, from December 29, 2008, titled, "Asshole US Soldiers."

So this afternoon, as I entered my office, a very American-looking young guy was in the doorway, sent to stalk Phinney's elusive prey. He politely introduced himself, said he was so glad to see me, and identified himself as being one of Phinney's assistants. Would I consent to the interview?

No, I said. "Al Jazeera is a terrorist propaganda mill. You work for Osama bin Laden's favorite TV network."

"But we're with Al Jazeera English," Phinney's assistant said with earnest lameness. Oh, that Al Jazeera! "Have you seen us?"

"Al Jazeera is Al Jazeera," I said. "Al Jazeera is an enemy of the United States." I added that I was speaking to him professionally and not personally, and something to the effect that Al Jazeera should be treated as a military target. I don't do interviews with military targets.

I'd never heard of Phinney before, but got curious about how low Al Jazeera had to troll to catch Washington-based talent. Turns out that before whoring for terrorist television producing for Al Jazeera, Phinney worked for mainstream groups like CorpWatch.org, which praised Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and likened the American war effort to a corrupt operation to benefit capitalist corporations.

Which is kind of funny, because Al Jazeera's emails contain this intimidating, very corporate-sounding disclaimer at the bottom: "Notice: This email is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above and may contain information that is confidential and privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of our firm shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it."

Get stuffed, Al Jazeera. Go crawl back into your Wahhabi hole and die an infidel's death.