"An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee's official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State." Buzzwire
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George Orwell would feel justified by this. In "1984" he saw clearly that a situation of foreign and domestic threat could be used as an excuse to cut the guts out of democracy and impose oligarchic rule by those who choose to believe themselves the shepherds and the rest of us the sheep.
This amendment, if passed into law by the Senate of the United States, would enable the "information operations" crowd in the armed forces and CIA to fabricate themes and "facts" for the purpose of controlling the collective "mind" of the citizens if the US. They are now fobidden by law from that effort.
We are now subjected to the "private" delusions and propaganda of the supposedly independent media outlets. How much worse will it be when the government itself regulates what we are told in the interest of consolidating opposition and hatred for the "enemy." pl
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
