Jason Ditz joins us to discuss the Israeli bombings of Syria, the chemical weapons hype/re-hype, the US’s capricious nature on their foreign policy regarding Syria and the latest attempted peace negotiations for Syria held jointly between the US and Russia. On a grander scale, is the UN Security Council just a dysfunctional bully’s pulpit? Who can hold powerful governments accountable if not their own public? And how can that happen without independent media?

Listen to the podcast show here (Subscribers Only):

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVDs.

Since the Boston bombings, society was promised more “security”… do you feel more secure? Since austerity and ‘structural reforms,’ people were promised economic growth and prosperity. Do you feel that you are in an economic ‘recovery’? Political language holds important meaning and purpose, in that it allows elite groups to communicate with each other openly and publicly, while appearing to be little more than abstract, seemingly meaningless terminology and undefined concepts to most people. There are ways to understand – and translate – political language, and there are solutions to its deception. Learn the language of deception, so that we can re-imagine the language of honesty.

Listen to the podcast show here (Subscribers only):

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVDs.

Hollywood’s complicity with Washington is longstanding. Movie moguls are duplicitous. The only thing they like better than good films are good deals.

Washington’s requests are prioritized. Scripts feature pro-Western propaganda. “Operation Hollywood” explains.

Daily Variety/Hollywood Reporter David Robb’s book discussed Hollywood’s longstanding relationship with the Pentagon.

It began post-WW 1. The 1927 silent film “Wings” starred Clara Bow. It launched Gary Cooper’s career. It was about two WW I fighter pilot friends. It won Hollywood’s first best picture award.

“Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies” tells more. Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black explained. It discusses Franklin Roosevelt’s Office of War Information. It had enormous influence on Hollywood. Read more È

What is the relationship between an advertisement for a toaster and the viral Kony 2012 video? The answer is simple: propaganda. The institutions which emerged in the United States over the 20th century sought to create a “uniquely democratic propaganda,” not directed and managed exclusively by the state, but from within the so-called “free enterprise” system of corporations: PR agencies, advertising agencies, marketing firms, and news agencies. The state had a role to play, of course, in setting the general direction of policy and discourse, but the task of propaganda itself was largely left to the institutions of private power, jealously protecting their ill-gotten gains

Listen to the podcast show here (Subscribers only):

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVD .

“Rejecting Compromise, Committing to Action� Presenting David Swanson

This week Eric has the pleasure of having an in-depth conversation with blogger, author, and activist David Swanson. David and Eric discuss the mythology of the fiscal cliff and the propaganda and lies of both major parties. Additionally, they examine the delusions and self-deception of many Americans who, consciously or unconsciously, legitimize and perpetuate the status quo. Eric and David also critique American militarism and imperialism, particularly those who remain willfully ignorant as to what our “elected” leaders are doing in our name. One of the major themes of the conversation is how to organize resistance to all these forces; how to become leaders of a real movement for change that can exist outside the dominant two-party paradigm.

Listen to the preview Here
 

Listen to the Podcast here:

The Reality Principle - Episode 9 [ 56:15 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Wachovia (acquired by Wells Fargo in 2009), HSBC Holdings, ING Bank, Standard Chartered, American Express Bank International, and not a few others, have a common bond beyond ranking among the largest banks in the world.

All have been accused within the past five years (and several this year) of failing to comply with US anti-money laundering laws — thereby enabling, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of suspicious transactions to move through the banking system absent adequate monitoring or oversight.

Yet not one these banks, nor any of their top executives, has been hit with criminal sanctions. Read more È

Griselda Blanco, 69, was cut down in front of a butcher shop in Medellin, Colombia, in early September by a middle-aged man who was delivered to the murder scene on the back of a motorcycle — and who calmly, methodically, jumped off the back of that bike, held a gun to Blanco’s head, and pumped two bullets into her brain.

Blanco, well prior to her death, had been pumped up as a rock star of the drug war by the US mainstream media and various Hollywood-inspired films, such as the Cocaine Cowboys documentary. In fact, at the time of her death, several feature films about her life as a big-time cocaine dealer and killer in Miami in the 1970s and early 1980s were reportedly in the works — including one in which movie star Jennifer Lopez is seeking to play the leading role as the “Narco Queenâ€� in hopes of winning an Oscar, according to Fox News Latino. Read more È

The modern industrial democracy requires modern techniques of propaganda in order to function. This was the belief – both articulated and implemented – by the elite in the early 20th century. Out of this belief grew the functions of modern state-capitalist democracies, the public relations industry, and consumer society, all designed to “engineer the consent” of the masses to the system of control and domination. While coercion and state terror are useful in establishing control and maintaining order, “engineering consent” to the system establishes a much more lasting and stable control. This is the fundamental reason why the most advanced propaganda systems in the world exist in the most advanced nations of the world.

The changing tide of “political awakening” spreading the globe, including the advanced nations, has caught the attention of the public relations industry. The CEO of one of the top PR firms spelled out in a recent article the two main challenges for both governments and public relations in a time of political awakening: that people are no longer depending upon them for information, and that a “new type of democracy” is emerging, where young people are demanding a say in the way their society functions, based upon “dialogue” and “community.” Welcome to the public relations of political awakening.

Listen to the podcast show here (Subscribers only):

SUBSCRIBE

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVD .

The downing of a Turkish jet by the Syrian military last week was not merely a military incident making the possibility of an intervention and regional war much more likely. This episode was the most recent in a long and storied history of “international incidents� or provocations used by imperial powers as pretexts for military aggression. Without such incidents, the forces of imperialism are seen as nothing more than aggressors, out to destroy weaker nations in their own interests. However, with the necessary justifications that such episodes provide, those same powers can portray their wars as justified, necessary, and wholly righteous.

This event last week was only the latest in a series of provocations specifically designed to justify a military intervention. However, as the façade of the Houla “massacre�, the use of children as human shields, and the countless other lies propagated by the Western media have been debunked or otherwise exposed, the Western imperialist ruling class looks for a new incident to legitimize their plan for total war on Syria.

Just the Facts

On June 21^st, a Turkish jet was shot down by Syrian military forces. Initially, the Western media rushed to portray this incident as a blatantly aggressive action by Assad and his military, hoping to play off their many months of propagandizing the public into believing Assad to be the devil incarnate. Vigorous condemnations were heard from all corners of the Western ruling establishment, as the world seemed to move closer to another so-called intervention. However, as the episode unfolded, the media had to backtrack and, as usual, reversed their initial story without a fraction of the fanfare that the initial lie had. They had to admit publicly that, in fact, the Turkish jet had violated Syrian airspace and so, according to international law, Syria was well within their rights to shoot it down. This fact gets lost in the narrative however, as the world looks to NATO, the military arm of US power projection around the world, to “act decisivelyâ€�. Read more È

William Engdahl returns to our show to discuss the continuing tension with Iran driven by Israel and US propaganda, the effect of the war rhetoric in creating the ideal backdrop for a massive speculative spike in oil, and the role of key banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan along with oil majors such as BP in manipulating this new oil price bubble since last Autumn. He talks about MEK and its high-level guardian angels in Washington, the recent Kony 2012 hysteria as a major AFRICOM & US State Department manipulative propaganda campaign to undermine Chinese influence in Central Africa, and more!

F. William Engdahl is an American-German freelance journalist, historian, and economic researcher. He has a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, and has been working as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and in Europe. Mr. Engdahl is the author of several books including A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order, and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

Listen to the preview Here
 

Here is our guest William Engdahl unplugged!

Interview with William Engdahl [ 57:16 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by SUBSCRIBING, and by ordering our EXCLUSIVE BFP DVD .