The Catholic Church

In the beginnings of Christianity most people were illiterate. Therefore the Bible had to be transformed into pictures and symbols; and not only the stories but also the moral duties of everybody. Images and legends of the Saints turned out as useful models for human behavior - easy to tell and easy to understand.
Later, when the crusades began, the Christian Church used propaganda against Muslims, creating pictures of evil, pagan and bloodcurdling people. While the knights and others were fighting abroad, people in Europe were told to pray for them. Daily life was connected to the crusades, also through money-collections - more for the cause of propaganda than for the need of money.
During the period of the Counter-Reformation Catholic propaganda no longer was against foreigners but turned against people at home - the Protestants; and against their publications/books, which got prohibited by starting the so-called index. By then both sides were using disinformation for black propaganda about the other side.

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Conclusion

As we have seen in the latest wars and in art, propaganda and disinformation are taking place on all sides. No contemporary political system is immune against those two. All of them utilize them if it seems to be useful and appropriate. Democracy, always pretending to be the most liberal and most human system is no exception in that - especially not a good one.
Democracy might give us more chances to escape censorship - but only as long as the national will is not disturbed. Then disinformation and propaganda come in ...
NATO-members gave us a very sad example for this during the Kosovo crisis.

It is our hunger for sensations and glory, for rumors and shows which makes disinformation so powerful. Many books and WebPages give informations about how to overcome disinformation and propaganda - but in vain. We somehow seem to like it - or at least we need it for getting through our interests.

There is a lot what we could try to do, but very little that will succeed as people prefer to believe that disinformation is an issue of the past.

At this moment the only appropriate measure to get rid of disinformation's influence seems to be the putting side by side of different aspects and ideas, especially of opinions telling the contrary, or are at least not the same. In any other case the model will probably commit the crime it is fighting against. Because how would we be able to know?

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The Egyptians ...

Besides ordinary religious manipulation-tools the Egyptians were masters of using architecture for propaganda. In Egypt, most of all, architecture was used as a media to demonstrated power, whereas the Greek and Romans used other types of art, like statues, for political propaganda.
The pyramids, palaces, tombs became tools for power demonstrations. Paintings and carvings (like on obelisks) proved the might of the rulers.
All those signs of power were done to make people compare their ruling dynasty to gods and keep them politically silent, because religion was used for justifying mortal power. Marble, gold, jewelry and artists were the tools for those maneuvers. Whereas questions for the truth were not even asked or listened to.
Finally it was the masses who were used for propaganda, when they were not only forced to work as slaves on those signs of power but also were abused for those power demonstrations, when they had to accompany the dead king into his tomb - dying of hunger, thirst, lack of oxygen and in darkness. The more religious disinformation the more luxury. The more luxury the better. The more luxury the more power.

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The Gulf War

By the end of our century a new method of disinformation is gaining importance: disinformation by an overflow of information.

In the Gulf War, similar to the Vietnam War, journalists had little chance to report neutrally and correctly from the battlefields. Many times they staid in places far from the actual fightings - due to censorship.
In many ways the so-called video-war reminded of a series of commercials. No wonder, the Gulf War was the first war to have a commercial advertisement agency to do the war-propaganda for the USA. They worked hard in preventing the government from a destiny like the one of the Vietnam War, when the war most of all was lost in the American homes because of anti-war propaganda.
In an interview, General Schwarzkopf admitted - still during the war - that a lot of information had been well-prepared disinformation.
And this is true for both sides:

the baby milk plant:
Western bombs had destroyed a chemical weapon factory - that's what they claimed. Saddam Hussein allowed reporters from CNN to visit the factory, hoping they would spread his propaganda. What they supposedly did, was spreading his disinformation, as long as they did not wonder that in the middle of nowhere the sign for the factory was written in English.
(Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 292)

the life guard:
In December 1990, the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur published the story of Karim Abdallah al-Jabouri, Saddam Hussein's Life Guard who had fled from Iraq right after Iraq's invasion in Kuwait. Soon afterwards he was in a French TV-show, where he told atrocity stories about Saddam Hussein. The problem that emerged afterwards was that many people recognized him as a former student and employee of that TV-channel.

the baby-incubator-story of Najirah
On the 10th of October 1991 a young refugee, called Najirah, from Kuwait spoke in front of the U.S.-congress. With a lot of tears she told that she had been working in a Kuwaiti hospital, when Iraqi soldiers came in, tore the babies out of the incubators and let them die on the floor. The pictures of this declaration went around the world and were one of the reasons why the U.S.-population wanted an intervention. In 1992 the journalist R. MacArthur was able to proof that the presented witness had been the daughter of the Kuwait-ambassador in the USA and that she had not been in that hospital or in Kuwait at the mentioned time.
By then the war was over and the manipulation of the population had taken place long ago.

For reading about the U.S.-propaganda tools during that war, like surrender passes, balloons, fake banknotes, threats and many more visit:
http://www.btinternet.com/~rrnotes/psywarsoc/fleaf/gulfapp.htm (84)

http://www.fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/gulf-war-not-true.html (85)

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GCHQ

GCHQ is the British Government Communication Headquarters, which is in fact an electronic monitoring centre which intercepts communications using spy satellites, listening devices and code-cracking equipment. The 1994 Intelligence Services Act defines GCHQ's role in the post Cold War world. National security, economic well-being and the prevention and detection of serious crime are its headline interests. It routinely gathers information on drug-dealing, terrorism, and the movement of arms and key resources such as oil, but is also said to be heavily involved in ECHELON. GCHG praises itself to use and design high end technology such as Cray systems, Tandem based storage and high-end workstations, as well as software for Signals Analysis, Complex Data Manipulation, Translation and Transcription.

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/
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Internet Software Consortium

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the production of high-quality reference implementations of Internet standards that meet production standards. Its goal is to ensure that those reference implementations are properly supported and made freely available to the Internet community.

http://www.isc.org

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SIGINT

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is a category of intelligence comprising, either individually or in combination, all communications intelligence, electronics intelligence, and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence, however transmitted. The intelligence derived from communications, electronics, and foreign instrumentation signals.

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CANYON

A US military signals intelligence satellite of the second generation from the 1970s.

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Leitrim Station

Latitude: 45.33, Longitude: -75.6

At Canadian Forces Station Leitrim collection of foreign signals intelligence is collected. Foreign radio, radar and other electronic emissions are intercepted and analyzed to provide foreign intelligence to the Canadian government. Leitrim contains a wide variety of antennae, including a Pusher HF-DF circularly-disposed antenna array (CDAA), three other large circular arrays, four satellite dishes, and a number of other, small antennae. The targets of Leitrim's dishes are probably Mexican and/or Brazilian communications satellites. Both countries' satellite constellations were established in 1985, at about the same time as Leitrim's new dishes started to be installed. A focus on these satellites would also explain CSE's rumoured increase in Spanish language activities.

Source: http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~brobinso/cse.html

http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~brobinso/cse.ht...
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