[ Editor’s Note: Most VT readers know my bi-line phrase is “You just can’t make this stuff up.” But apparently you can at the Washington Post, where I had to start the day reading something that a journalist actually got paid to do. I decided to use it to lead off the day, as it is a classic example of spin-meistering.

We live in a sea of spin, so we can spot all the usual ploys with a blindfold on. We have a good batch of experienced Cold War psyops people at VT who know this game intimately. First task is to create a false reality by presenting it as an agreed-upon framework, and then add in some light to medium critical stuff as smokescreen so that your main psyops points are not glaringly such.

Ms. Sly, (how I loved the irony there) in the first line comes out swinging with “strategic nightmare”, “enemies encroach on its borders” and “allies snub its demands.” Notice how she dispenses with how Kurds who live in northern Syria have any right to move around in their own area where they have lived for a long time, even with permission from their own government, and to push back terrorists supported by Turkey.

She transforms this into “enemies encroach”, words rarely used, but chosen carefully because the Kurds have not threatened to cross Turkey’s border. She is spinning a threat that does not exist. And mind you, an editor signed off on this copy, which is no surprise at the NeoCon Washington Post.

Next we have Turkey being spun as Russia’s oldest and nearest “rival”, when Russia has years of major investment in building long term business bonds as a main theme of its foreign policy, particularly the gas pipelines. Earlier in the blowup of relations with Turkey after the plane shoot down, Putin even mentioned the huge investment Russia had made in Turkey, and mentioned his personal investment with Erdogan.

So the WP article is spin-meistering on steroids. Tied into this morning internet jaunt was seeing InfoWars step into this Turkey-Syria furball, when Alex Jones, who has no expertise in the area, has another shillster Wayne Madsen on the show to hype the “Turkish Threat”. It is the kind of thing one would see when a handler is activating an asset to seed the media. There is more by clicking on the WP link, but VT readers can spot a lot of it… Jim W. Dean ]

____________

… by  Liz Sly,  February 20, at 7:09 PM

Blowback from the Syrian war in the form of a string of suicide bombings in Istanbul and Ankara, most recently on Wednesday, has brought fear to Turkish streets and dampened the vital tourist industry.

Read more here.

____________