Holbroke's message to Pakistan.....
$50 million slush fund for Pakistani Television stations
In the Cold War the CIA and Britain's MI6 secretly funded writers, journalists and artists as a war of ideas, images and propaganda secretly unfolded across Europe.
The Obama Administration wants to emulate that policy in Pakistan and the region, where America is getting pasted in the media.
A 15-page spending plan reveals that it has asked Congress for $50 million which it wants to get into the hands of Pakistan's media barons - in the name of buying a better press.
The State Department ambitious plan is to transform a growing hostility towards America into admiration. We can assume that the CIA is already doing something similar with its own secret slush funds.
A drumbeat of drone attacks over the past two years have whipped up intense anger among Pakistanis towards the US. At its core is the concern that the country's sovereignty is being trampled by the US.
Now the US hopes to tamp down those concerns by sending in what it calls "rapid response team" to monitor Pakistani and regional media and "swiftly correct inaccurate reporting."
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The new aid is aimed at broadening ties beyond military
spending, which has already amounted to over than $10 billion over the past nine
years.
"It represents a rebalancing of the military and civilian
assistance," Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew told Reuters of the
package, part of a $7.5 billion, five-year aid plan passed by Congress
for Pakistan last year.
Pakistan is increasingly viewed as the lynch pin in America's struggle with the Taliban next door in Afghanistan. The propaganda slush fund is seen as a way to fight extremist views which every misdirected drone or US bomb seems to exacerbate.
Richard Holbrooke, the blowhard special ambassador to the region is pushing particularly hard to get the money into the hands of the owners of Pakistan's private TV channels.
Perhaps he's been listening to his wife Kati Marton, a Hungarian refugee, journalist and noted author whose parents fled Hungary at the height of the Cold war, at a time when the CIA had committed vast resources for a secret program of cultural propaganda in Europe described in Who Paid The Piper?, The CIA and the Cutural Cold War by Francis Stoner Saunders.
At its peak the Congress for Cultural Freedoms had secret offices in thirty five countries, with agents sweet talking journalists, artists, writers and trade unionists.
The Obama administration has asked for $1.45 billion in aid for Pakistan this year, funding water, energy and other projects as well as a media campaign to counter extremist views, according to Reuters.
At the heart of the Holbrooke agenda is a new "Communications Strategy"
"Over time, this assistance will strengthen ties between the American and Pakistani people by showing the U.S. commitment to helping Pakistan address its water and energy crises, which are some of the most pressing needs of the Pakistani people," according to the 2010 spending plan for Pakistan which has been sent to Congress.
While anti-American sentiment is at an all time high in Pakistan and only 13% have faith in Obama, the Administration hopes that this new assistance will help ease that tension.
About $50 million was set aside for a "comprehensive communications strategy" to counter extremist views and strengthen Pakistani institutions and moderate voices, the report to Congress said, according to Reuters "
"This effort will reduce the ability of al Qaeda and other extremists to influence public perceptions and attitudes and support Pakistan's people and government as they establish a more secure, prosperous and lasting state," the report said.
This is where the rapid response team comes in to try and correct inaccurate reporting of which the United States complains it is often a target.
" One of its most important operations, which proved to be one of the last independent actions of global significance by British intelligence, was its assistance in the overthrow in 1965 of President Sukarno of Indonesia, whose troops had been seeking to destabilise Malaysia. The operation, one could argue, had its justification. But did the IRD know that his successor, General Suharto, was to preside over the immediate massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians? It probably did. After all, the US, our Nato ally and junior partner in the campaign against Sukarno, passed on to Soeharto's army the names of thousands of left-wingers."
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