War / Peace

J.Walter Thompson Recruits Hill & Knowlton For Marine Corps Contract

Submitted by Laura Miller on

"After more than five decades of relying on advertising for its recruitment efforts, the Marine Corps has decided to let PR pros take a shot at finding them a few good men," PR Week reports in a front page story. Longtime Marine advertising agency J. Walter Thompson recruited sister company Hill & Knowlton to join in on a bid for the five-year, $200 million contract. Having won the account in July, the campaign details are still being worked out.

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Main Source: 
PR Week, August 12, 2002
Topics: 
Public Relations
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Don't Scrutinize the Pentagon

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress. Some proposals are more provocative. They include allowing the Pentagon to send its initiatives directly to Capitol Hill before other agencies could review them.

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Main Source: 
Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2002
Topics: 
Democracy
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Ad Council, Born in War Propaganda, Flacks For Freedom

Submitted by John Stauber on

The target="_blank">Ad Council, a non-profit advertising company funded by corporations, is launching an advertising "campaign for freedom" in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. The New York Times notes that the Ad Council was launched in 1942 to propagandize for the US war effort. A Stay Free magazine interview with professor Inger Stole notes that the Ad Council bragged then it would

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Main Source: 
New York Times, July 1, 2002
Topics: 
Advertising
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Fourth Generation Warfare

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

"War," observed German general Karl von Clausewitz, "is the continuation of politics by other means." In today's world, however, military theorists use the term "fourth generation warfare" to describe the growing tendency for war itself to be waged "by other means." Terrorism is one example of 4GW, in which "war and peace blur and intermingle, decisive wars are fought with little or no armed conflict, and operations on the moral and mental battlegrounds determine victor and vanquished." Defense and the National Interest

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Main Source: 
http://www.d-n-i.net/second_level/fourth_generation_warfare.htm
Topics: 
War / Peace

War Propaganda as a Video Game

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

"Hollywood is churning out one war flic after another," notes Bill Berkovitz. "VH-1 recently premiered 'Military Diaries,' a first person POV series on life in the military; Country-Western stars are popularizing 'kick ass' patriotic songs; Iran/Contragate figure, Oliver North, is hosting 'War Stories' on the Fox News Channel. Welcome to America's escalating militarization -- designed by the Bush administration, in cahoots with defense contractors, and aided and abetted by America's culture mavens." Now the U.S.

No
Main Source: 
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5900
Topics: 
Arts / Culture
Propaganda
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Hitting the Trifecta

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Shortly after George W. Bush was selected president, the Onion joked that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over." Now Bush is making the same joke himself and using it as an excuse for breaking his campaign pledge to avoid defecit spending. "You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending?" Bush says. "I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency.

No
Main Source: 
MSNBC, June 27, 2002
Topics: 
Rhetoric
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Why the Secrecy Shield?

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

"The Pentagon has made a decision that threatens to keep the American public and Congress in the dark about how things are going with the Bush administration's high-priority missile defense program," says Philip E. Coyle III, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense. "Equally disturbing," he adds, is the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency "new policy of withholding information from the Pentagon's own independent review offices, such as the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation.

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Main Source: 
Washington Post, June 10, 2002
Topics: 
Secrecy
U.S. Government
War / Peace

Podhoretz's False Choice: Dissent or War

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Ben Fritz of Spinsanity.org analyzes the rhetoric in a recent New York Post column by John Podhoretz, who "frames the entire debate ... as a crude either-or proposition: we're either fighting ourselves or we're fighting the terrorists. ... Podhoretz would do well to remember, however, that questioning the performance of our government is not an act of treason. It's part of the process of open debate that is central to American democracy."

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Main Source: 
Spinsanity.org, June 6, 2002
Topics: 
Democracy
Rhetoric
War / Peace

Politically Incorrect No More

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

It's official: Bill Maher's TV show has been cancelled. Maher's program, Politically Incorrect, came under attack when Maher made allegedly "unpatriotic" remarks in the aftermath of September 11. But Matthew Nisbit points out that there's more to the story: Maher has been replaced by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, whose show appeals to young males with what it calls "a half-hour of joyous chauvinism ... each variety-style episode contains a whole truckload of man-fun. ... It's all the stuff you see on beer commercials. And every show ends with girls on trampolines."

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Main Source: 
American Prospect, June 3, 2002
Topics: 
Media
War / Peace

Bad News Is Good News

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

Former reporters for the Taliban news service describe how they were ordered to inflate figures of civilian casualties from the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Casualty estimates today still range from a low of 1,000 to a high of around 3,000. Some of the former Taliban reporters are still at work, now for the new government. Mohammed Ismail Qanay "keeps a photo of himself from his days as a reluctant co-conspirator in the Taliban's propaganda factory, when he was required to wear the tunic and pantaloons, a turban and a flowing beard.

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Main Source: 
Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2002
Topics: 
Journalism
International
War / Peace

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