A Historical Look at CIA Assets: Similarities in Media Fallacies Between Noriega and Bin Laden

[SnozzleBerry]

The Spoils of War.mp3 (Running Time: 01:51)
Makes you think, don't it?


A brief recap...

Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset eventually outlived his usefulness. When he was arrested for "drug smuggling" (a rather hypocritical charge in and of itself, seeing as this was when the CIA was involved in the whole guns for drugs fiasco...) the news media reported he "wore red drawers, used cocaine, and frequented prostitutes" in addition to claiming that he "worshiped Voodoo". The cherry on top? They claimed to have seized a large quantity of cocaine from his compound.

The "cocaine" turned out to be tamale flour...Spanish speakers generally practice Santeria, not Voodoo...and wtf do red undergarments have to do with anything, other than being something "weird" for the media to harp on and use to demonize an individual. The only thing not actively reported was Noriega's "long and fruitful" relationship with the CIA...

Now let's look at Osama...Osama was an incredibly valued asset for the CIA when the U.S. was funding the Mujahadeen against the Russians in Afghanistan, yet we don't hear this in the media. Instead we hear how he was shot because he was armed, then we hear he was unarmed; we hear he used his wife as a human shield, then he didn't; now we hear that his computer was filled with porn...are you starting to see the way the media is attempting to demonize this figure through every possible outlet, regardless of the "truth"?
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I'm not defending the man's actions as a terrorist...merely commenting that the news media is absurd and that the 24-hour news cycle is a media circus...a sideshow meant to distract you from the important matters of the present and the history behind them. I beg you, I urge you to use the incredibly powerful hardware within your cranium to see through the deception. The media downplays historical facts for a reason, yet these facts are still out there and available to us. Learn them, use them; they are some of the best tools against the ignorant masses who merely parrot the talking heads on cable TV whie having no clue what is and has been going on to create and maintain America's hegemony.

 

[ewok]

Things like that do make you wonder who is running the media, I was watching the news the other night and they spoke of state owned television networks in Libya I think it was and how the government were televising propaganda videos as there news and how they are trying to show a different picture of the truth. Then one presenter said how lucky we are to have open free media. But yeah right the media is tainted in all parts of the world with propaganda for its respective government. Its not isolated to just some countries.

 

[polytrip]

I don't think it would matter to most new yorkers, nairobians, londoners or madrilenos whether he had or didn't have porn on his computer.

This guy doesn't need to be demonized, he wás evil. That many people hate the parts of the world where they don't stone women to death who don't like to be forced to have sex with someone their father has picked for them or where they don't burn childeren alive in the conviction that they are bewitched, that some people hate these parts of the world só much that they think anybody who randomly kills a few thousand people there is a hero, doesn't change that.

Objectioning his assasination is pure hypocrisy. That there are people who of all deaths in the world, pick this son of a bitch to mourn about is something that would amaze me if i would be so naive to think most people want peace on earth rather than war.

But these are dark days filled with dark minds. If i would have been in obama's shoes, i would have prefered to get him alive rather than dead. But i would not have let him walk either.

Some say that an 'eye for an eye' makes the world blind. I say that the other cheak is an open invitation to any psycho to commit as many atrocities as he'd like.

Today i read in the paper that a mexican drug cartel has beheaded 27 randomly picked landworkers in guatemala, just to make a point in some old conflict between criminals.

Now i can see that people who live in parts of the world where this is the way to do business envy us, and i can understand that they would be rather fucked-up as well.

But in these parts of the world where we at least have outgrown the laws of the jungle a tiny bit, i don't see how it would be progress in any way to allow a bunch of savages to do with us whatever pleases them. And i don't see why the unjustice commited by our leaders would oblige us to do so either.

I'm not afraid of the savages. It's just that they're not exactly the fine-fleur of humanity.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

This guy doesn't need to be demonized, he wás evil.

This is my point...he doesn't need to be demonized, his actions stand as the horrors they were, and yet we are spending countless dollars and hours running stories on irrelevant banalities. The point of this thread is the fact that not only do we not acknowledge the actual truths behind Osama (that he was a US puppet) but we actively waste countless resources trumpeting non-sequiturial absurdities throughout the news-media.

Please don't turn this into a why we should or shouldn't have killed Osama thread...I'm going for something significantly more nuanced here...his death is actually irrelevant to the discussion at hand...he could have been dealt with in the same way as Noriega and it wouldn't change the point I'm trying to make.

 

[soulfood]

Can someone give me proof that Osama was an evil man that's bullet proof?

I'm not standing up for him, I've just never seen anything I'd call a fact. Though I don't have my ear to the ground on such matters.

I read he was quite hard on his children, but that's military men for ya

 

[SnozzleBerry]

Can someone give me proof that Osama was an evil man that's bullet proof?

Would lists of all or some of the militant actions he directly funded be proof positive for this? Personally, someone who directly funds the deaths of innocents/civillians qualifies as evil...and to my mind that is the area least embroiled in controversy and the most clear cut to see.

 

[soulfood]

Yeah actually that'd be nice.

You got em?

edit: Ok, did a little reading and I've seen he was strongly linked to some attacks and not so strongly to others. A lot of the evidence seems quite weak though. I guess much of it was never published.

 

[polytrip]

This guy doesn't need to be demonized, he wás evil.

This is my point...he doesn't need to be demonized, his actions stand as the horrors they were, and yet we are spending countless dollars and hours running stories on irrelevant banalities. The point of this thread is the fact that not only do we not acknowledge the actual truths behind Osama (that he was a US puppet) but we actively waste countless resources trumpeting non-sequiturial absurdities throughout the news-media.

Please don't turn this into a why we should or shouldn't have killed Osama thread...I'm going for something significantly more nuanced here...his death is actually irrelevant to the discussion at hand...he could have been dealt with in the same way as Noriega and it wouldn't change the point I'm trying to make.

Yeah, you're right. This was spiralling into the old 'justice has been done' thread.

The irony is that we have a free press. The free press is doing this to itself. There realy is no secret government organisation behind this.

The press more than any other profession, it seems (except bankers maybe)realy behaves like a herd rather than as a group of individual well-educated people who can think for themselves.

A friend of me is a reporter, and normally she is a fairly smart and reasonable person. But when se is working she just lines-up with the rest of the flock to stand for hours in front of tall buildings where important people gather, to say every 30 minutes or so that she still has no news about 'devellopments taking place behind those doors'. She can spend days doing that.

 

[SnozzleBerry]

Soulfood, here are two I grabbed quickly:

In 1992 or 93 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists there and warn them against compromise with the impious government. Making jihad merely "for politics, not for God" would be a sin, they were told, total war was the only solution. Total war did follow involving many massacres of civilians and a declaration of takfir of Algerians by one of the Islamist factions (the GIA). An estimated 150,000-200,000 Algerians were killed by the end of the war, but the government prevailed over the Islamists. Abdullah Anas, an Algerian Islamist witness to the Al-Qaeda advice later lamented, `This simple argument destroyed us.

sources: Kepel, Jihad, (2002), p.272-3 and Wright, Looming Towers, (2006), p.189

Another unsuccessful effort by bin Laden was the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which Swiss federal police are reported to have found was funded by Bin Laden. The attack by six al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya militants dressed as policemen slaughtered 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at Luxor Temple. Its goal was to derail the nonviolence initiative between the Egyptian government and Egyptian-based al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the major Egyptian militant Islamist group, but the attack horified the Egyptian public and turned it completely against Islamist terror.

sources: Jailan Halawi, `bin Laden behind Luxor Massacre?` Al-Ahram Weekly, May 20–26, 1999; Plett, Barbara (1999-05-13). "Bin Laden 'behind Luxor massacre'". BBC online network. "Profile: Ayman al-Zawahiri". BBC online network. 2004-09-27.

EDIT: I see your edit...perhaps the degree of his actions has been over blown, but to my mind, whether he's on the level (bodycount-wise) of Hitler or Stalin (Or the Europeans who settled America ) or Tim McVeigh/Charles Manson is less of an issue than whether he's got a bodycount at all.


Polytrip, thank you ; that's exactly what I'm getting at. To my mind "Network" the Sidney Lumet movie from the 70's explains the degradation of the News to the Corporate News Media to perfection. It is disgusting to see the press essentially acting as a 4th branch of government, rubber stamping imperialist policies, torture, illegal wars and a whole host of other horrific, yet profitable actions. Additionally...I think it is interesting to see the number of military officials that have trickled into the news-media. I understand that you need military experts to weigh in on wars, but it is hard to accept that these high-ranking beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex could in any way, shape or form be either "fair" or "balanced" with respect to reporting military operations and the positives/negatives.

 

[soulfood]

cheers!