A Republican Example In 1994 the U.S.-Republicans demonstrated how parties tend to manipulate people instead of standing for certain political thoughts: The Republican party contracted a consultant to find out the most-wanted topics of the U.S.-population, and afterwards the same consultant wrote a paper, called the Contract with America. Out of this, Republican Politicians all received a positive list of words they were told to use in speeches about themselves and a list of negative words for political competitors. This kind of thought control plays with the issue that words with negative/positive connotations go deeper than neutral words. They get integrated into the listening person's way of thinking. Even if someone understands the strategy, it will still be difficult to forget the black-and-white-images, as soon as they have been listened to. |
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World War I ... With World War I an entire system of ideas how wars work collapsed. Suddenly it was no longer mostly soldiers who had to fight. War became an engagement of every day's life. Everybody got involved. Propaganda therefore changed as well. The campaigns were no longer temporarily and recent but had to be planned for years. Who failed in organizing it or used the wrong keywords failed. Masters of modern propaganda became the British, whereas the Germans failed completely in the beginning. |
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Another voluntary Disinformation A very different form of voluntary disinformation are the calls for donations. Donations offer the possibility to do something good, to help the poor. Afterwards one does no longer have to feel guilty for being luckier than those "others". The same pictures of starving and desperate children for decades, of starving babies with big sad eyes. The pictures show a terrible life. But the idea that contributing money would change the destiny of those children and other people is a lie. States use their population for paying money to make the states' policy less unjust. In fact the money of the Western donators perpetuates the dependence and because of this prolongs the misery into a vicious circle of disinformation on both sides, but it is clever to have one's people believing that they can change the world. |
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Exchange of the Text One of the easiest tools for disinformation is to exchange the words written below a photograph. The entire meaning of the picture can be varied like this: - The visit of a school-group at a former international camp can change into a camp, where children are imprisoned (which happened in the Russian city of Petroskoy in 1944). - Victims of war can change nationality. The picture of the brutal German soldier in World War II that was shown in many newspapers to demonstrate the so-called typical face of a murderer, turned out to be French and a victim in other newspapers. - In 1976 a picture of children in a day-nursery in the GDR is taken: The children, coming out of the shower, were dressed up in terry cloth suits with stripes. The same year the photograph with the happily laughing boys and girls wins the contest "a beautiful picture". Two years later a small part of the photograph can be seen in a Christian magazine in West-Germany, supposedly showing children from a concentration camp in the USSR. The smiling faces now seem to scream. (source: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.): Bilder, die lügen. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bonn 1998, p. 79) |
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The Right to get Disinformed Disinformation might also be welcome: While the ones criticize disinformation and try to fight against it, others do nothing against it. And others again seem to enjoy getting disinformed. How this works? It is the result of a society that does no longer want to live under the pressure of doing and hearing everything at the same time. Acceleration of life seems too fast. The only way to get out is to refuse certain things/messages/truths. Receiving disinformation can be more comfortable than getting so-called correct information. This is especially true for the readers of the yellow press. The yellow press lives on that perspective, the commodity of getting light news, mostly wrong news and lies - but those being wrapped up in nice pictures and stories about those who seem to reign the world. The aim is the escape out of reality. A surplus of information, information terror, can produce disinformation. The profusion can get exploited for disinformation. This works in that way that in the mass of information the individual has no possibility to get an overview of the different ways of thinking and to reach a stage of objective knowledge. |
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The Role of the Media "Although this is a free society, the U.S. mainstream media often serve as virtual propaganda agents of the state, peddling viewpoints the state wishes to inculcate and marginalizing any alternative perspectives. This is especially true in times of war, when the wave of patriotic frenzy encouraged by the war-makers quickly engulfs the media. Under these conditions the media's capacity for dispassionate reporting and critical analysis is suspended, and they quickly become cheer-leaders and apologists for war." (words as propaganda, by The mass-media would have a possibility to get out of this circle of being disinformed and making others disinformed. To admit that oneself is not always informed correctly, and also mention that the pictures shown are not in any case suitable to the text, as some of them are older, or even from another battle. For the media it would be easy to talk about the own disinformation in public. Doing this would provoke the government or in the case of the |
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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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Infowar Through the internet a new form of vulnerability of governments is emerging. Hackers drive national and international governmental organizations crazy by changing their websites and offering disinfor-mation. Attacks of this kind happen several times a day and the technicians say there is nothing to stop them. The The issue runs as a new form of terrorism. Laws are very strict and punishment high, a fact showing the fear of the authorities, as it is more than the disinformation campaigns that frightens them: Internationals Relations could be influenced. See more about this on: |
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Kyoko Data Is it art, is it a commercial or is it disinformation, when web-designers create a virtual model out of the so-called best parts of different top-models? Kyoko data-project: the virtual model and pop-star is not only regarded as a virtual thing but "had" a biography, a family and everything else that a famous star would have. She was not even less reachable as any of them. For example she received tons of love-letters by Japanese teenagers. The question arising is whether she can be regarded as a product for making money or whether the media-enterprise more: and |
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The Theory of the Celestro-Centric World In 1870 the U.S.-American for further details see: Those who believe in it, call it the truth, those who simply like the idea, may call it a parallel science. Others call it disinformation, asking for the reasons to spread it. The turning to the inside, where there is no way out, produces a different reality. It shows that realities are always produced. Political conservatives and racists like |
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Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin (1879-1953): After Lenin's death he took over and became a dictator without any limits of power. Everyone who dared to talk or act against him or was in suspicion of doing so, got killed. Millions were murdered. His empire was one made out of propaganda and fear. As long as he was in power his picture had to be in every flat and bureau. Soon after his death the cult was stopped and in 1956 the De-Stalination was started, though he was partly rehabilitated in 1970. |
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Ottawa Latitude: 45.42, Longitude: -75.7 The headquarters of the Communications Security Establishment CSE are located in Ottawa. Here all processed intercepted data from Canadian monitoring stations come together to be further analyzed by special signals intelligence analysts. For that purpose the dictionary system is used. |
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Fort Meade Headquarters of the US National Security Agency in Maryland. |
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Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), probably was the most influential German dramatist and theoretician of the theater in the 20th century. During the existence of the Third Reich he fled from Germany to Scandinavia and to the USA, where he tried to go on with his work. In the 1950s he became director of the newly founded Berliner Ensemble, in East Berlin. for more information see: |
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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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Louis XIV. Louis XIV. (1643-1715) became King of France when he was still a young boy. He centralized all the state's power to the crown and created a state of absolutism. In this respect Louis' most famous sentence was: L'état c'est moi. (= The state am I). During his reign the most talented and respectable men in art as well as in philosophy and policy worked for the monarchy. His favor for luxury and the steady wars with other European empires ruined the state morally and financially, but for the history he is still called Roi Soleil (King of the Sun). |
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Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath party when he was a university student. In 1958 he had the head of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qassim, killed. Since 1979 he has been President of Iraq. Under his reign Iraq fought a decade-long war with Iran. Because of his steady enmity with extreme Islamic leaders the West supported him first of all, until his army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, an incident that the USA led to the Gulf War. Since then many rumors about a coup d'état have been launched, but Saddam Hussein is still in unrestricted power. |
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Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky (* 1928) works as a U.S.-linguist, writer, political activist and journalist. He is teaching at the MIT (= Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as a professor of linguistics, specializing on structural grammar and the change of language through technology and economy - and the social results of that. When he stood up against the Vietnam War he became famous as a "radical leftist". Since then he has been one of the most famous critics of his country. |
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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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Comsat The Communications Satellite Cooperation provides international communications solutions via the global, 17-satellite INTELSAT system and 4-satellite INMARSAT satellite systems. Calls are beamed up to the satellite and back down to Earth, where special gateway land earth stations re-route them through the appropriate local or international telephone network. COMSAT operates Earth Stations in each part of the world to route calls efficiently within each ocean region. Earth Stations are located in Santa Paula, California; Southbury, Connecticut; Ankara, Turkey; and Kuantan, Malaysia. http://www.comsat.com/default.htm |
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Napoleon Napoleon I. (1769-1821) was French King from 1804-1815. He is regarded as the master of propaganda and disinformation of his time. Not only did he play his game with his own people but also with all European nations. And it worked as long as he managed to keep up his propaganda and the image of the winner. Part of his already nearly commercial ads was that his name's "N" was painted everywhere. Napoleon understood the fact that people believe what they want to believe - and he gave them images and stories to believe. He was extraordinary good in black propaganda. Censorship was an element of his politics, accompanied by a tremendous amount of positive images about himself. But his enemies - like the British - used him as a negative image, the reincarnation of the evil (a strategy still very popular in the Gulf-War and the Kosovo-War) (see |
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