Robert Parry: Rev. Moon's Anti-Obama Agit-Prop

[seafan]

Rev. Moon's Anti-Obama Agit-Prop

By Robert Parry
January 23, 2007

If you’ve ever wondered how agit-propaganda works, you might take a look at the latest case study from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s media empire – a bogus story about Barack Obama attending a Muslim “madrassah” when he was six years old, a smear that was then attributed to operatives of Hillary Clinton.
The shrewdness of Moon’s Insight magazine story is that it hit two enemies with one anonymously sourced stone, a strategy of slime and divide straight from the textbooks of a spy agency like the CIA.
Only in this case, it is not the CIA planting black propaganda in a foreign publication to undermine some U.S. enemy. It is Moon using his media outlets subsidized by his mysterious foreign money to manipulate and distort the U.S. political process, again.

The Insight “madrassah” story also turned out to be false. .....


Moon’s media empire has planted similar stories in other U.S. presidential campaigns, publishing false or exaggerated stories that disparaged Democratic candidates and helped Moon’s political favorites – particularly in the Bush family.
In Election 1988, Moon’s Washington Times floated a story that Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis had psychiatric treatment, harming George H.W. Bush’s Democratic opponent; in Election 1992, it bannered an accusation that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton had worked for the KGB, again aiding the senior George Bush; in Election 2000, when George W. Bush was seeking the White House, the Times pushed allegations that Vice President Al Gore was “delusional”; in Election 2004, to boost the younger George Bush again, it trumpeted attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s patriotism.

.....

Once Moon’s media empire surfaced these accusations, they would reverberate through the right-wing echo chamber and often into the mainstream press. .....
Moon’s long record of engaging in this agit-propaganda helps explain his value to the Right and particularly to the Bush family. In turn, the Republicans have protected Moon from government investigations into his questionable sources of money, which finance both his media empire and his allied right-wing political organizations.
The Korean cult leader spends more than $100 million a year just to subsidize his flagship newspaper, the Washington Times, according to former Moon insiders. Longtime Washington Times reporter George Archibald recently put Moon’s total investment in the newspaper at over $3 billion since its founding in 1982.
Though Moon’s finances remain murky, the evidence is overwhelming that he engages in international money-laundering and has been closely tied to major crime syndicates in Asia and South America.

.....

But the troubling back story to this latest smear is the long history of Moon’s publications injecting damaging propaganda against Democratic politicians in ways meant to confuse American voters.
Viewed over the past quarter century, Moon’s media empire has the distinct appearance of a well-designed covert operation that uses foreign money, possibly from illicit sources, to influence the U.S. political process in ways beneficial to Moon’s political and financial goals.

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[bonito]

1. This man is evil

Must remember even the moon has a dark side.

[struggle4progress]

2. If its losing $100 million a year, it's not a business: it's political advertising

[Hoping4Change]

3. A must read. Thanks for posting. K&R