Disinformation R Us (Part Two)

Men News Daily ^ | September 6, 2004 | Tom Marzullo

[notforhire]

Within the armory of Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), disinformation is an ancient tactic that crosses spans millennia and cultural divides… once described it as mixing honey and dung in the vastly enlightening fictional novel, ‘Shôgun’ that wound political manipulation around the backdrop of cultural and wartime conflict between the Japanese and English protagonists.

Long ago, in classes on American history, we learned to call this ‘yellow journalism,’ as if it had faded from the scene. But it is an open secret that this journalistic practice of the purposeful use of disinformation has not even been minimized, let alone abandoned, though it is correct to say that it has become more sophisticated.

But we need not turn to fictional novels to watch this in action on any given day… just open one the major metropolitan newspapers or simply turn on your TV. So just for the sake of proving the point, we’ll look to this past Sunday’s papers for an immediate example.

Let us take the piece on ‘cancer’ and ‘fallout’ that ran in Sunday’s edition of that self-declared paradigm of journalistic virtue, The New York Times. This story also ran differing version in many other major metropolitan papers at the same time, only catching my eye because it also appeared in the Denver Post on page 5A. Both of the piece’s subjects are highly charged emotionally as is the norm.

This particular piece by one of the little darlings of the Left, Sarah Kershaw is indeed a very fine piece of disinformation PSYOPS as it contains little directly pertinent information while implying a nonexistent connection, obliquely references a ‘government study’ and yet strums the heartstrings of emotion with gusto.

Let us break this one down in order to identify how this fits the parameters of disinformation.

First Kershaw talks about how the Idaho town in question received the “highest levels” (quantity unspecified) of an isotope of Iodine commonly produced by reactors and nuclear detonations. In the NYT piece, the photo of a man (a pre-teen and teen during the A-tests) appearing to be wiping the tears from his eyes is captioned that “…is dying of cancer.” In the version published in the Denver Post (unavailable online) the same photo is captioned “…is dying of colon and liver cancer…” and this difference means everything to the intent of the story.

Unfortunately for the writer (and the trusting NYT readers), radioactive iodine-131 is known NOT to cause these specific kinds of cancers. Also unmentioned was the fact that the radioactive iodine in Idaho had decayed away less than six months after the tests (go look at the link and do the math).

What this story does is leave the reader to imply a link between the I-131 and the crying man’s cancer.

Although the story does mention the outrage of now-Governor, then-Senator Kempthorne of Idaho and his demands for an ‘investigation’ (AKA ‘pork’) and $50K to each county resident (AKA as ‘more pork’) with any of 19 cancers from the US Treasury, this is not the focus… it is instead on the unfeeling government (this story actually kicked up in President Clinton’s day, but went unreported back then) ignoring these poor souls.

Using the ‘reasonable man’ test of what is said above, one need turn only as far as what is known by the medical community about treating thyroid conditions with radioactive I-131… a daily occurrence in every major city’s hospitals across our country, indeed across the planet. By the way, the amounts used to treat/expose these patients with are between 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than any of the unintended I-131 exposures in Idaho that this politico is loudly crying ‘PORK’ for. And these patients even pay to have it done.

Like I said… a pure disinformation exercise.

Another tactical disinformation variant is willful omission, AKA stonewalling. Since an earlier profession of mine was Heath Physics and I cited the story above, lets stick to things nuclear for now… here is a bona-fide subject-expert resource for you to double check with.

In the 1980’s, the anti-nuclear demonstrators were having a wonderful time and so was The New York Times. But what the partially KGB funded anti-nuclear organizations did not want to publicize in any way was that the Soviet Union was building a lower-quality clone of their Chernobyl reactor in Cuba, right next door to the United States. The New York Times went right along with that agenda… but now imagine the fuss if that exact same kind of reactor was proposed to built in Puerto Rico by an American company.

Dumping anything nuclear into our oceans is a major no-no for every environmental group there is… at least if anybody (but the Soviet Union or perhaps China) dared to do it. But that’s exactly what the USSR did… dumping unsealed naval reactors into the Barents Sea. Again, deafening silence from both the ‘Greens’ and the media.

‘Caveat Emptor’ is what the ancient Romans said to their people as a warning to beware when buying things… a concept never more applicable than accepting ‘news’ in this information age.

After all, PSYOPS begins at home.

Still more to come…

De Oppresso Liber

Tom Marzullo