TURKISH AGENTS AND MAINSTREAMING PROPAGANDA

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
~ Edward Bernays.

Here's why no one should ever get worked up about what Michael Rubin says or writes:

As a neocon (neoconservative) and member of its think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, Rubin is a paid consultant of Turkey, paid in part to make Turkey’s propaganda case against the KRG. Although there is nothing illegal about this, it should be recognized for what it is. Therefore, Rubin’s article should be approached with extreme caution for it is certainly not an objective scholarly analysis as it claims to be.

[ . . . ]

Furthermore, it should be noted that neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith are the very ones who made most of the mistakes the US blundered into when it overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Richard Perle faction of the neocons to which Rubin belongs has had lucrative consulting deals with Turkey. Rubin also served in the office of neocon Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans that played a role in generating the 935 misstatements on the basis of which the US went to war in 2003. Indeed, US General Tommy Franks (who led the US invasion forces in 2003) famously called Rubin’s neocon colleague Douglas Feith “the dumbest bastard, dumbest [expletive deleted] on the face of the earth."

Actually, Tommy Franks called Doug Feith "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

But the pointing out of Rubin's work as a paid agent of Turkey is just one of the arguments in Professor Michael Gunter's rebuttal to Rubin's January article for the AEI titled, "Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?" Many thanks to the friend who pointed out Gunter's reply, and make sure to read the whole thing as the professor makes a lot of other good points.

Whoever checks AEI for Rubin's recent propaganda will notice that it has been translated into Turkish as well as Kurdish--but not in the Kurdish Latin alphabet. It makes one wonder which little cehş is working for the Turks. Kamal Said Qadir is the one who immediately comes to mind, especially since he wrote for the Middle East Forum (MEF) as recently as last summer and the editor of the MEF is Michael Rubin. Scroll down this alphabetical list of the "experts" at the MEF, paid for by interests hostile to Kurdistan.

Coincidentally, Rubin has defended Qadir in two separate posts this week on the National Review Online blog, once on 2 March and once on 4 March.

We can take all of this to be paid-for Turkish propaganda. Whenever you see Michael Rubin's work, think "on the payroll as a Turkish agent".

Speaking of good points, those who follow the Sibel Edmonds case will remember that Philip Giraldi has named lots of Rubin's colleagues from the AEI as either registered foreign agents for Turkey or as otherwise on the take from Turkey:

In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit.

Remember, too, that Wolfowitz beat a hasty retreat to the AEI after he was caught icing his cupcake at the World Bank.

Don't expect the status of the Deep State in the US to change after the American elections because it was under the Democrats and Clinton that the Turkish Deep State gained a foothold in the American government. It will be the same no matter which Democrat goes to the White House in January.

PAYING FOR POLICY

"The media I've had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day."
~ Michael Deaver.

Well, well, well . . . it looks like Hevallo wrote something he shouldn't have written--something like the truth.

Earlier today, Hevallo wrote a post in which he put forth the proposition that ExxonMobil may be paying the AEI to change foreign policy vis-a-vis Iraq. Naturally, such a foreign policy change would also be directed against South Kurdistan. To support his proposition, he includes a link to a new screed from the virulent anti-Kurdish AEI resident scholar, Michael Rubin. By the way, this new screed was presented as testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Don't remember Rubin? Rubin's the guy who pretends to have no clue as to the bloody repression the Ankara regime has inflicted on Kurds since 1923.

Hevallo points out that it was just at the beginning of this year that ExxonMobil was found to have paid a number of ideology factories to lie to the public about the state of global warming. Prominent among those ideology factories was Michael Rubin's AEI. See Hevallo's post for the link.

It's not out of the ordinary for big corporations to pay to have propaganda deposited in the American mainstream media. Philip Morris, the huge tobacco corporation, gave $100,000 to the AEI in 1997 and it was in the same year that the Washington Post published a report on how Philip Morris had tried to "systematically woo[ed] scientists who might help the company counter the growing consensus on the health risks of secondhand tobacco smoke and 'keep the controversy alive.'" According to the WaPo, Philip Morris was up to this particular propaganda trick way back in 1988.

Basically, ExxonMobil attempted the same thing with AEI over climate change. Since AEI accepted the bribe, we might as well conclude that it's been in the business of propagandizing for the corporate world for some time.

Is this a case of mere coincidence, synchronicity, or of the best laid plans?

It's also a fact that Rubin was one of the neoconservative apparatchiks who worked closely with the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, alongside such luminaries as Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and, of course, Donald Rumsfeld. And as Hevallo correctly points out, the disgraced Wolfowitz is back at the AEI, after being forced to leave the World Bank for having the nerve to ice his cupcake (Shaha Ali Riza)--as I heard Greg Palast once put it--while lecturing the rest of the world about corruption.

Further illuminating information about the nature of Rubin-as-apparatchik can be gleaned from a 2002 report in the UK's Guardian. According to the research, Rubin was a busy little bee in the run-up to the Iraq war:

Michael Rubin, a specialist on Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, who recently arrived from yet another thinktank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, assists Mr Perle and Mr Wurmser at AEI. Mr Rubin also belongs to the Middle East Forum.

[ . . . ]

The Washington Institute, for example, takes the credit for placing up to 90 articles written by its members - mainly "op-ed" pieces - in newspapers during the last year.

Fourteen of those appeared in the Los Angeles Times, nine in New Republic, eight in the Wall Street Journal, eight in the Jerusalem Post, seven in the National Review Online, six in the Daily Telegraph, six in the Washington Post, four in the New York Times and four in the Baltimore Sun. Of the total, 50 were written by Michael Rubin.

Anyone who has tried offering op-ed articles to a major newspaper will appreciate the scale of this achievement.

I can feel the pain, man.

If anyone thinks that this kind of thing is unusual, an aberration, think again. It's not just that big corporations donate to ideology factories; they also hire PR firms, or lobby firms, to plant biased information in the media. This is done in order to gain public support for foreign policy shifts that the corporatocracy is paying organizations like AEI to swing for them in Congress. To get that side of the story, read the teaser from Harper's Ken Silverstein on his undercover investigative work on the subject, or the hypocritical criticism he received from the media lapdogs who so eagerly publish the corporatocracy's propaganda. Alternatively, you can listen to an interview with him in which he describes how the lobby firms he scammed admitted that they had planted stories in the American media many times.

But the point about Hevallo's post is that US foreign policy is being encouraged in the direction of Turkey against the Kurds, and that Rubin has a heavy hand in the business, very possibly all bought and paid for by ExxonMobil. Rubin, the AEI, and ExxonMobil must have been laying these plans for some time because last November a small item was carried in Hürriyet which pretty much outlined Rubin's pimping of the establishment's foreign policy that he's pitching to Congress now. The Hürriyet article was brought to us by the hevals at KurdishInfo:

In his fax to me, Rubin explained that he had given this interview by email. He said: "I never said such things. In fact, I said the complete opposite. Here is precisely what I said concerning Turkey and Iraq's other neighboring countries: Whenever I go to Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds tell me that they are our best allies, and that this friendship needs to be reciprocal. I am sorry, but this is wrong on many levels.

[ . . . ]

The Iraqi Kurds can believe what they want about Turkey, but the fact remains that for as long as Iraqi Kurdistan is a home to terrorists, Washington will always be on the side of Ankara, and not Erbil or Suleymaniye.

The fact remains that the US, and particularly the neoconservative faction, has supported the real terrorists in Turkey for decades and has supplied them with billions of dollars in weapons, which the terrorist regime used on Kurdish civilians, murdering tens of thousands and forcibly displacing millions.

There's more on Rubin, Kurds, and the plague of neoconservatism from March. As Rubin once said in a rebuttal to a Vanity Fair press release on an article about neocon whitewashing of their role in forming the failing policy of the Iraq war:

I absolutely stand by what I said. Too many people in Washington treat foreign policy as a game.

I'm sure he means it too, along with the implication that he, himself, does not treat foreign policy as a game. For Rubin, and those like him, foreign policy is a business for sale to the highest bidder.

Hevallo's been making the point, too, that the US is using TSK as a means of forcing an unjust and rapacious oil law down the throats of Iraqis--Kurds included. Now with Hevallo's post on ExxonMobil's purchase of propaganda from the AEI, and AEI's Rubin providing biased testimony to the US Congress on the situation in Iraq, I think it's very clear that Hevallo is on the right track.

In fact, I think ExxonMobil thinks so, too, and that's why their lawyers are perusing Hevallo's blog, much in the same way that Lockheed Martin had it's propaganda firm, Public Strategies, Inc., peruse Rastî. I'm waiting to hear that the Genelkurmay Başkanlığı has gotten around to take a gander at Hevallo's work. When that happens, it'll be time for a congratulatory drink or two. After all, there are bastards and then there are bastards.

Know what I mean?

In the meantime, Hevallo should be given a round of applause for having garnered the attention of the first category of bastards.

Dest xweş, Heval!