Tag: propaganda

Iran War Supporters Invent a New and Absurd Justification: It Is All About China

Before Operation Epic Fury began, the Trump administration spent very little energy trying to justify the looming war with Iran. The few defenses they did offer were banal platitudes, just echoes of the case for the Iraq War from more than twenty years ago: that Iran was weeks away from obtaining a nuclear device, that their ballistic missile program posed a significant threat to American assets and allies in the region, and that the Iranian people deserved liberation via regime change.

But not long after the bombing began, a new (admittedly more creative) justification emerged online and in the pro-Israel media that war supporters assume will be more persuasive to those doubting the wisdom of yet another Middle East conflict. The war with Iran, we are now told by many, is not really about Iran at all. It is, instead, all about China.

“Some argue Israel dragged the U.S. into war,” a post from The Free Press reads, “But this conflict is bigger than Israel and Iran — it’s about China.” Another article from The Spectator, a British conservative outlet, sang the same tune: “Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China.” Glenn Beck, on March 2, unveiled C.R.I.N.K., or “the new Axis Powers of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” as a way to “understand why Trump attacked Iran.” Fox News’ Jesse Watters told his audience last week that “we are killing two birds with one stone: we stop the number-one sponsor of terror, and we checkmate the Chinese.”

At the very least, if China were really the motive, one would have expected the Trump administration to offer this theory — “this is the chance to counter America’s greatest geopolitical rival” — as a major justification to the American people. One would think they would be particularly motivated to do so, given the consensus of polling data showing that public support for this war is far weaker than for any American war in decades.

But Trump officials never mentioned China as a core motive. In fact, even now, the administration and its backers have hardly mentioned China. This is a theory invented out of whole cloth by Iran-war supporters and/or Trump supporters, grasping for some cogent reason why this new war is in Americans’ interests.

Late last week, Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that this conflict is “a religious war” waged by “radical Islamic terrorists.” On March 2, House Speaker Mike Johnson explained to a group of reporters that the United States “determined, because of the exquisite intelligence that [it] had, that if Israel fired on Iran,” then “[Iran] would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets.” Therefore, the House Speaker insisted, because the U.S. would be attacked either way, it had to hit Iran with Israel. President Trump announced on Friday that the U.S. intends to select “GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s)” for the Iranian people, in order to make their country “economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.”

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Epic Fury, Epic Incoherence, Epic Propaganda

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did not confess to accidentally bombing a girls school in the Iranian city of Minab last weekend, killing 165 students. Israeli warplanes weren’t involved, either, and U.S. military investigators have tentatively concluded that U.S. forces were responsible.

Here’s a huge and amazing story from Fox News on Wednesday: Thousands of Iraqi Kurds launch ground offensive in Iran. Absolutely nothing of the kind occurred, not even close, as Fox itself was later obliged to admit in a sideways kind of way.

A major US radar installation at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base was not destroyed by an Iranian drone strike in the early hours of the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln was not hit by four Iranian ballistic missiles last Sunday. And no, 650 U.S. troops were not killed in the first two days of fighting. The number of U.S. servicemen who lost their lives: six.

Elon Musk’s X has been an absolute swamp of “fake news” and video-game imagery and burning buildings in Dubai that actually burned in Tel Aviv last summer. I can’t even be bothered to debunk a fraction of it. More pressing business is at hand.

Let’s get something important out of the way, up front.

Its about what we mean when we talk about “the war.”

The wildly ambitious American-Israeli operation that began last weekend as a now-or-never confrontation with the hydra-headed Khomeinist military-industrial theocracy in Tehran had become, by the third day, another war altogether.

By Wednesday the war was primarily an all-out Khomeinist war against a dozen countries in the Greater Middle East, a war of survival that was itself merely an immediate extension of the war the regime had been waging against the Iranian people since last December.

The European Union’s foreign affairs and security chief Kaja Kallas described the state of play succinctly on Wednesday: “Tehran’s strategy is to sow chaos and set the region on fire. By indiscriminately attacking its neighbours, the regime is making a strong case for its own demise.”

The war Kaja Kallas described is merely the most urgently prosecuted campaign in the same war the Iranian regime has been waging in various forms and phases, both subterranean and out in the open, by regional proxy and by state satrapy, ever since 1979.

The many Khomeinist wars against Israel and by necessary extension against the United States and the rest of “the west” have been waged most consistently and brutally against the democratic rights of the Iranian people themselves, especially Iran’s women and Iran’s minorities.

Those are the “forever wars” you haven’t been hearing much about over the past week in all the complaints, from the “left” as well as from the “right,” from certain Liberal Party pseuds and Code Pink noisemakers and batshit MAGA influencers Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly about what the White House has gotten itself into.

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X CRACKS DOWN on AI-Generated War Propaganda: NO MORE Cashing In on Fake Footage Without Labels

In an effort to protect truthful information during global conflicts, X has rolled out strict new rules targeting creators who peddle AI-generated videos of war without clear disclosures. This comes as pro-Iran propagandists flooded the platform with fabricated clips designed to sow chaos.

The policy shift, effective immediately focuses on X’s Creator Revenue Sharing program. Creators posting AI-made content showing armed conflicts must include a clear label, or face penalties that hit where it hurts: their wallets.

According to details from X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, the platform is clamping down hard. “During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technologies, it is trivial to create content that can mislead people,” Bier stated.

Bier elaborated that X will use its Community Notes system—crowdsourced fact-checking that empowers users over elite moderators—along with post metadata to detect undeclared AI content. The rules don’t ban AI videos outright; they just demand transparency via X’s built-in “Made with AI” label option.

Violators get a 90-day suspension from earning ad revenue on their posts. A second offense leads to a permanent ban from the program. This targets those exploiting wars for profit, without stifling creative expression.

The update follows a surge in deceptive content amid the Iran-Israel clash. Pro-Iran accounts have pushed AI fakes, like one claiming Iranian missiles sank the USS Abraham Lincoln. “Iran’s IRGC claims to have struck USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles. LIE,” CENTCOM posted. “The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close.”

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Going to War, Again, for Israel

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

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Trump Claims Iran Developing Missiles To Hit US, Contradicting Intel Reports

With nuclear talks hanging in the balance, and the potential for yet another US war of choice in the Middle East, President Donald Trump escalated the rhetoric Tuesday night, warning that Iran is moving beyond just regional missile capabilities and setting its sights farther west by developing missiles capable of hitting the United States.

During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump claimed, “They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”

It seemed a transparent attempt to make the American people believe they are under direct threat from Tehran, in order to justify potential near-future strikes, however flimsy the case might be. So far Washington’s main talking point has been that Iran simply can never have a nuclear weapon and so something has to be done – and this actually does resonate with some sectors of the American public.

But Tehran setting its sites on directly attacking the US homeland is a huge stretch, with no serious analyst so much as suggesting the Islamic Republic has the capability or is even close.

US intelligence assessments have been very conservative on this. For example, in 2025, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated that Iran could potentially field a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”

Given US intelligence also has not concluded that such a decision had been made, this means Iran is likely at least a decade away from even being close to possessing such an ultra long range missile.

The US mainland is some 6000 miles away from western Iran, and currently Iran’s longest range missile is said to reach just under 1900 miles – a huge gap.

Iran’s ballistic missile focus has always been developing with an eye on the country’s number one nemesis in the region: Israel. 

There’s a broad understanding even among the Western public that in reality Washington’s anti-Iran stance has much more to do with defending Israel than the US homeland, which is clearly not under immediate threat from Tehran. There’s not so much as been a terror attack carried out by a single Iranian Shia operative on American soil in all of history.

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War Propaganda and Iran: The Exact Script Used for Every Failed US War Is Hauled Out Again

When President Lyndon B. Johnson decided in 1965 to significantly increase the number of American troops to fight the growing war in Vietnam, he felt obligated to justify this major escalation to the American people (this was from a quaint, obsolete era when Washington believed public support was mildly important for starting or escalating American wars). On April 7 of that year, Johnson went to Johns Hopkins University to present his definitive case for why the U.S. must fight a war on the other side of the world, against a country that had not attacked and could not meaningfully threaten the U.S.

Johnson presented the American war as one of benevolence, selflessness, and a noble desire to liberate the world’s oppressed peoples from a uniquely murderous, tyrannical regime. “Tonight Americans and Asians are dying for a world where each people may choose its own path to change,” Johnson proclaimed. He compared American motives in Vietnam to those of the freedom-craving American Founders who waged the Revolutionary War to liberate themselves from the British Crown: ”This is the principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania. It is the principle for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of Viet-Nam.”

While Johnson invoked some geo-political justifications, he emphasized that the U.S. was deploying and putting at risk tens of thousands of young American soldiers in Vietnam simply because we wanted to help the Vietnamese people be free. “We want nothing for ourselves — only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way,” Johnson said.

Central to this propagandistic narrative was the repeated parading around by the American media of a handful of South Vietnamese activists with deep connections to the West. These camera-ready “natives” assured Americans that the Vietnamese people — on whose behalf they claimed to speak — desperately craved American invasion and bombing of their country in order to liberate them. Individuals like Phan Quang Da, a Harvard-educated physician, and CIA-fronted groups, like The American Friends of Vietnam, were used as battering rams against American opponents of the war to accuse them of being indifferent, even contemptuous, of the desire of the Vietnamese people to have the U.S. military free the population. “The Vietnamese people are asking for this, but you do not care about them,” was the refrain war opponents invariably confronted.

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China’s ‘Magic Weapon’ Reaches Deep Into America and the West

In 2023, the FBI arrested two Chinese-Americans, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, for operating a Chinese police station in Manhattan. Chen pleaded guilty and faces up to five years in prison for acting as a Chinese agent, while Lu, who has connections to Chinese authorities, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. He faces 20 years for obstruction of justice.

According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), the police station was established to monitor and intimidate Chinese dissidents in the U.S. What is concerning, however, is that this is not an isolated case of serious infiltration. Nor is such activity limited to the U.S. alone. Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based NGO, has identified 102 Chinese police stations in 53 countries.

The audacity of operating police stations in other countries highlights how far China is willing to go to silence critics as it seeks global dominance in economic, military, and cultural fields. This ability was not built overnight. Its foundation was laid by Mao Zedong himself with the creation of the United Front Work Department (United Front), one of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “three magic weapons,” alongside armed struggle and party building. The front reports directly to the CCP’s central committee.

According to Cheryl Yu, a China expert and fellow of the Jamestown Foundation, Mao described the United Front’s work as “unifying our real friends to attack our real enemies.” Deng Xiaoping expanded that to a more aggressive approach: “unifying those who can be unified, neutralizing those who can be neutralized, and dividing those in the enemy camp who can be divided.” Current CCP supreme leader Xi Jinping has used it for the “Great Rejuvenation” of China.

Yu’s detailed report states that the first mention of the United Front working abroad appears in a 1985 document. Another document lists five overseas tasks: increasing people’s love for the motherland and the party; promoting Chinese culture; encouraging Chinese abroad to support their country’s development; promoting unification with Taiwan; and creating a positive international environment for the CCP.

Over decades of “assiduously cultivating” overseas Chinese groups, the CCP has turned those seemingly harmless goals into a global network of influence—groups and individuals it can mobilize to promote its interests. Yu’s report states there are over 2,000 such groups in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany; the worldwide number could reach “tens of thousands.”

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Reid Hoffman Funds SICK Propaganda Ad Showing Republicans SNATCHING Girlfriends For Deportation

A resurfaced ad funded by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder mired in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, depicts a fictional Republican congressman abducting and threatening a young woman on a date simply because she “looks like” an illegal immigrant—despite her being a U.S. citizen.

The vile spot, part of a series of fear-mongering propaganda from the Progressive Action Fund, aims to terrify voters into opposing America’s long-overdue crackdown on illegal immigration, painting border security as a threat to everyday citizens.

The ad opens with a young couple wrapping up a pleasant date. As the man walks his girlfriend to her car, black-clad agents suddenly appear, grabbing her and declaring, “She’s coming with us.”

Confused and outraged, the boyfriend demands, “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

Enter the bald, suit-wearing “Republican congressman,” who smugly announces, “I’m your Republican congressman. Now that we’re in charge, we’re rounding up illegals.”

When the boyfriend protests that she’s a citizen born in the U.S., the congressman retorts, “I don’t care. She looks like one of them.” He then callously adds that she’ll have “lots of company” in an El Salvador prison.

This disgusting piece of propaganda isn’t new—it’s from June 2024, during the height of the election cycle when Democrats were desperate to block Trump’s return. The Progressive Action Fund, a Democrat-aligned super PAC, produced a whole series featuring this creepy “Republican congressman” character invading private moments to enforce caricatured conservative policies.

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CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual.

The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions.

First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies. The Factbook proved so useful that other federal agencies began using it, and within a decade, an unclassified version was released to the public.

After going online in 1997, the Factbook quickly became a popular reference site for journalists, trivia aficionados and the writers of college essays, racking up millions of visits per year.

The White House has moved to cut staffing at the CIA and the National Security Agency early in Trump’s second term, forcing the agency to do more with less.

The CIA did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday about the decision to cease publication of the Factbook.

Watchdog alleges Netflix coordinated with FBI to promote left-wing narratives

A new report alleges that the streaming giant Netflix has worked closely with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies in ways that amount to government-assisted propaganda.

The report released Tuesday by the Oversight Project, a government watchdog group, contends that the FBI, the CIA, and the Defense Department (now the War Department) exercised influence over film and television productions—particularly those distributed by Netflix.

“Based on all publicly available evidence and analysis, Netflix appears to have an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred left-wing ideological dogma,” the Oversight Project report states.

“Netflix did so with the help of the federal government, especially the FBI, and intelligence community. In fact, the FBI plays an outsized active role in content moderation for projects it is involved in.”

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