The Manipulation of U.S. General Colin Powell and Pakistani Cricket Star Imran Khan

Mass media and popular culture are powerful tools of manipulation when wielded by those skilled at waging way by way of deception. When shaping the opinion of an unsuspecting public, the star power of military leaders and sports heroes is routinely appropriated.

That duplicity was on display in February 2003 when Colin Powell gave false testimony to the U.N. Security Council that helped launch the U.S.-led invasion of a Muslim nation. Similar duplicity was deployed in May 2005 when Pakistani cricket icon Imran Khan launched from Islamabad a false story that provoked outrage at the U.S. in Muslim nations.

Since the “bread and circus” era of the Roman Empire, pop culture has proven a potent means to distract and misdirect. With the modern reach of mass media, pop culture can be deployed not just to manipulate the public’s mental state but also to promote for political office high-profile personalities such as astronauts, newscasters, war heroes and even well known comedians.

Those who induced the U.S. to wage war in Iraq on false pretenses used Secretary of State Colin Powell for that purpose when he was dispatched to the U.N. to vouch for phony intelligence. The Powell “brand” as a credible four-star general was appropriated by pro-Israeli war-planners to market the false impression that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories.

By deploying a public official’s known integrity to obscure their duplicity, those complicit in this deceit discredited both Powell and the U.S. while also undermining the credibility of the U.N. The phony intelligence on which Powell relied was provided by George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, and vouched for by Paul Joyal, reportedly Tenet’s Ashkenazi Chief of Staff.

A similar power-of-association ploy emerged two years later when the pop culture celebrity of Imran Khan was appropriated to provoke violence worldwide that damaged the image of the U.S. A global crisis commenced soon after those handling public relations for this legend of the cricket world summoned reporters to a May 6, 2005 press conference in Islamabad.

As an international sports figure, Khan’s star power and his position as a Pakistani politician directed media attention to an April 30^th issue of Newsweek where Ashkenazi journalist Michael Isikoff reported that U.S. interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet in an attempt to exert pressure on Muslim combatants in custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Not until May 16^th did Newsweek editors publish a partial retraction along with an apology in The New York Times conceding that the widely reported story was inadequately supported by the facts. By then Isikoff’s tale of Koran desecration had gone viral.

Game Theory Warfare

The story provoked massive anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Indonesia, Palestine, Jordan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Malaysia. Though the Guantanamo inmate retracted his statement, by then the story had done lasting damage to U.S. interests throughout the Islamic world while adding plausibility to the thematic Clash of Civilizations.

In game theory terms, the results were foreseeable because the reaction was mathematically predictable; the response could be projected—within an acceptable range of probabilities.

See: How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare

As an Ashkenazim-dominated global media spread this provocation worldwide, the “probabilistic” outcome induced protests in Central Asia, unrest in Uzbekistan and calls for an “Islamic revolution” in Pakistan where violent protests left 16 dead.

Why would a world-renowned Pakistani cricket star be used to publicize in Islamabad an unsubstantiated story from a U.S. magazine? Answer: Khan’s pop culture status ensured that an identifiable demographic group (cricket fans) would quickly learn about—and react to—a provocation featured in a leading U.S. news weekly.

That media-induced provocation proved its potency as the story stoked extremism. For Tel Aviv’s game theory war-planners, the anticipated response became a potent weapon in the arsenal of the agent provocateur.

Mass Media as a Geopolitical Force-Multiplier

Cricket has long been a mainstay in nations historically under British colonial rule. When the desecration story was promoted in Islamabad, the editors of Newsweek, a Washington Post publication, successfully discredited not only the U.S. but also the U.K. by provoking outrage among Muslims worldwide. A bombing in London two months later was motivated by this “desecration” according to a cousin of one of the attackers on July 7, 2005.

By associating the story with a sports icon, Newsweek breached the literacy barrier common to less developed nations (54% in Pakistan). As the story spread by word-of-mouth, this provocation reached tens of millions among the illiterate as well as sports fans of younger age for whom extreme reactions come more readily.

By launching the provocation from Pakistan, the response also weakened President Pervez Musharaff, a key U.S. ally with the Taliban active in Pakistan’s western provinces and Al Qaeda suspected of seeking refuge there. Isikoff’s tale also served as a potent recruiting tool for Islamic fundamentalists. At a critical juncture, the (foreseeable) result further endangered coalition troops and also pre-staged today’s plausibility of Pakistan as a source of jihadists.

Formerly a Musharaff supporter and anti-corruption crusader, Khan had become an outspoken critic of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. By appropriating the Khan “brand,” Newsweek assured the global reach of this provocation as a pop culture star’s celebrity gained traction for a story guaranteed to prove troublesome for the U.S.-Pakistan alliance.

The timing of this provocation also addressed a key strategic need for Israel. Initial response to the April 30^th article was muted. The May 6^th press conference overlapped a critical May 4^th news cycle when U.S. Defense Department analyst Lawrence Franklin appeared in a U.S. District Court outside Washington where he was charged with leaking to the Israel lobby classified Pentagon materials on Iran.

The pop culture-catalyzed protests and riots diverted the public’s attention away from wartime espionage by a purported ally. Instead mainstream media marketed a tale certain to outrage Muslims abroad while downplaying facts certain to anger Americans at home. The Washington Post media group has been under Ashkenazim control since June 1933 when patriarch Eugene Meyer acquired the flagship newspaper at auction.

The Newsweek provocation also diverted attention from the fact that Franklin worked for senior pro-Israeli war-planners: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary Douglas Feith who oversaw the Office of Special Plans, a key source of the “fixed” intelligence that induced the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Brand Appropriation

Whether appropriating Colin Powell’s integrity or Imran Khan’s celebrity, such “associative” weaponry works the same: the power of association is deployed by those adept at manipulating thought and emotion in order to influence behavior and shape policy in plain sight. Such operations are commonplace for those skilled at waging war by way of deception—the motto of the Israeli Mossad, the intelligence and foreign operations arm of the Jewish state.

From a geopolitical perspective, the appropriation of these “brands” mimics how Israel appropriated and systematically discredited Brand America. Over the six-decade history of this entangled alliance, our association with this enclave of nuclear-armed religious extremists cost us the global goodwill that an earlier generation earned at untold cost in blood and treasure.

The U.S. continues this perilous relationship only at great risk. Any nation that views this enclave as a legitimate sovereign state only further enables this trans-generational treachery.

Below is the fourth installment in a 5-part series regarding Pakistan

In April 2009, Tel Aviv signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide New Delhi an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor. That agreement confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….”

In May 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region by giving India air dominance over Pakistan.

Israel has overtaken Russia as India’s chief arms supplier as New Delhi announced $50 billion in defense modernization outlays from 2007 to 2012. The fast emerging fact patterns suggest there is far more implied for Pakistan in this “special defense relationship” than meets the eye.

In August 2008, Ashkenazim General David Kezerashvili returned to his native Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Tel Aviv-provided arms and military training provided by Israel Defense Forces. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the six-decade Israel-Palestine conflict.

Little was reported in mainstream media about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on to Eurasia with Tel Aviv a profit-extracting intermediary undercutting Russia’s oil industry. Nor did mainstream media report on the self-reinforcing nature of serial well-timed crises that emerged in a compressed time frame.

For example, on August 7, 2008, the ruling coalition led by Asif Ali Zarderi called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament on president Pervez Musharraf just as he was scheduled to depart for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia while the heads of state of both Russia and the U.S. were in Beijing.

What other crises were then unfolding? But for pro-Israeli influence inside the U.S. government, would our State Department have backed the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production involving Karzai’s brother? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel’s fabled game theory war-planners who are infamous for disabling their targets from the inside out?

Three months after the crisis in Georgia, a terrorist attack in Mumbai renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the Mumbai attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.”

See: “Israel and 9-11”

By early December, Jewish journalists were arguing that Israel must “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.” In the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security continued its policy of dispersing U.S. taxpayer funds to protect synagogues and Jewish community centers.

Pre-Staged Plausibility

Soon after “India’s 9-11” was found to include personnel recruited from Pakistan’s western tribal region, President Zardari announced an agreement with Taliban tribal chiefs to allow Sharia law to govern a swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda members reportedly reside.

The perception of Pakistani cooperation with “Islamic extremists” created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. That perceived threat was widely reported by mainstream media as proof of the imminent perils of “militant Islam.”

With religious extremists portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear-Islamic Tehran posed an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel’s election of an ultra-nationalist governing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay ensured more extremism and gained more media traction for those marketing a perpetual “global war on terrorism” and its thematic counterpart, The Clash of Civilizations. After the assault in Mumbai, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.” By its exclusion, Pakistan was implicated as harboring terrorists.

Few Americans understand that Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran’s Shi’a, abhors theocratic rule and the religious extremism common to Al Qaeda as well as the assorted strains of fundamentalism found among the Taliban. Game theory war planning suggests that Pakistan, not India, was the target of India’s 9-11. As with our 9-11, the strategic objective was not the event itself but the anticipated reaction—and the reactions to that reaction.

Advised by legions of Ashkenazim, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s October 2009 mission to Pakistan was a diplomatic disaster. Right on cue, a terrorist attack in Peshwar killed dozens just as she arrived in Islamabad. Abrasive, arrogant and aloof, our top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that their nation is surrounded by hostile forces.

Clinton’s behavior fueled fears that the government of Pakistan is being set up for portrayal as a “failed state” by ultra-nationalist Jewish advisers to a nation—the U.S.—it has long considered a friend. When Barack Obama hosted the prime minister of India for his first state dinner, the anxiety level in Pakistan was heightened—particularly among those familiar with the dominance of Ashkenazi advisers in the Obama White House.

Societal Conflict—By Consensus

Meanwhile, India’s oligarchs continued to amass wealth and influence at a record pace as the caste system maintained its stranglehold on Hindu society. By 2007, India’s 40 billionaires had amassed a combined wealth of $351 billion, up from a combined wealth of $170 billion just since 2006. Though New Delhi cites the success of its high-tech sector and its “Bollywood” film industry as signs of a burgeoning middle class, the reality is far from reassuring.

As in Russia where the wealth from privatization migrated to a small cadre of dominantly Ashkenazi oligarchs, a similar oligarch-ization is ongoing in India. While maintaining a vast underclass of “untouchables” mired in grinding poverty, India’s policy making elite gravitated to an economic model that traces its U.S. roots to the University of Chicago where Barack Obama taught for 11 years while he was being groomed for political office.

The “Chicago Model” advances in plain sight behind an implied assumption that financial freedom is an appropriate proxy for personal freedom. Despite facts confirming that wealth and income are concentrating at record rates worldwide, this “consensus” model insists that nations vest their faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets.

As that finance-fixated mindset morphed into the “Washington” consensus, the U.S.-dominated international financial institutions imbedded this narrow worldview in law worldwide. As with ordinary Russians, ordinary Indians see their rising prosperity dominated by an caste oligarchy that steadily amasses outsized wealth along with disproportionate political influence.

As wealth concentrates, democracies become unworkable; as income concentrates, markets become unsustainable. Those profiled in Guilt By Association and the forthcoming Criminal State series are skilled in displacing facts with what targeted populations can be deceived to believe. Today’s money-myopic “consensus” traces its roots to a subculture within a subculture within a subculture whose belief in the unbridled pursuit of money preempts all other values.

The India-Israel alliance has inflicted on the economy of India the same paradigm that is systematically disabling the U.S. economy—from the inside out—while creating record gaps in wealth and income. Pakistan has an opportunity to resist the embrace of this flawed model and, by so doing, inspire other nations—including the U.S.—to devise a sensible path forward.

Next in the series: When Will Israel Assassinate Barack Obama?