<strong>Written By:</strong> 4Canada
<strong>Date:</strong> 2008-02-21 11:53:21
<a href="/article/35814460-when-think-tanks-produce-propaganda">Article Link</a>

Attendees at CDA's annual conference, which begins today, will hear speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and MP Laurie Hawn, a retired lieutenant-colonel. Curiously for an organization that calls itself "non-partisan," no opposition politicians will speak. Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier will lecture, as will NATO's military head, General Ray Henault. The agenda includes a session titled "Contemporary Security Concerns" -- a discussion on Russia and Iran.

Now consider: If the Prime Minister staged a government event and declared Russia and Iran "contemporary security concerns," some Canadians would be made uneasy by the signal that sends. But if the government finances CDA, which stages an "independent" event where the Prime Minister rubs shoulders with military officers, weapons company executives and intellectuals addressing those same security concerns, it might just pass without Canadians noticing. CDA gets away with shilling because it is so discreet. Nowhere on its website does CDA disclose its half-million dollars of DND sponsorship.

The Harper government knows what the money is for, because cabinet reviewed the funding agreement between DND and CDA, and it has been secret ever since. Nonetheless, Maclean's got CDA's executive director, Colonel Alain Pellerin, to admit that the contract obliges it "to write a number of op-eds to the press" -- propaganda paid for by you and me.

<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080221.wcomili21/BNStory/Front">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080221.wcomili21/BNStory/Front</a>

   

Really this is nothing more than state sponsored propaganda.

I think Harper/DND could of hired the former Iraqi information minister for a lot less and he would of been more entertaining as well.

   

If someone did some further digging they might find that defence contractors are providing funding for the same programs. Private corporations fund think tanks like the Fraser Institute and the C.D. Howe to create studies that will support the self-interest of the funding bodies. The researchers and propagandists are then used by the media as "independent" commentators. You can no longer trust that any individual that becomes a "expert" on any matter not to be the paid employee of some group that wants their propaganda disturbed to the public.

Anyone interested in public affairs would have noticed the new industry that has emerged in military propaganda through so-called independent think tanks. You may be too old to remember the term "pressure groups." This term began to have such a negative connotation in the 1970s that they simply transformed themselves into so-called think tanks.

One of the central policies of the Conservative Party is the development of an industrial defence industry. That gives the government a vested interest in maintaining the combat mission in Afghanistan. The Liberals have played totally into the hands of the industrial defence industry and the new Conservative concept of developing and using "hard" power as a means of social control.