After World War II the importance of propaganda still increased, on the commercial level as well as on a political level, in the era of the Cold War. The propaganda institutions of the different countries wanted their people to think the right way, which meant, the national way. In the USA the McCarthy-era started, a totalitarian system in struggle against communism.
Cold War brought the era of spies with it, which was the perfect tool of disinformation. But the topic as a movie-genre seems still popular today, as the unchanged success of James Bond-movies show.
A huge net of propaganda was built up for threatening with the nuclear bomb: pretending that the enemy was even more dangerous than the effect of such a bomb.
And later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, disinformation found other fields of work, like the wars of the 1990s showed us.
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"For propaganda is a communicative process of persuasion, and persuasion remains an integral part of human discourse in peace as well as in war. (...) propaganda is a process unique to human communication regardless of time, space and geographic location." (
The word propaganda is coming from the Catholic Church. In the 17th century the word was used in the fights against the Protestant Reformation (see
Propaganda is using words - of course. But it furthermore uses a huge variety of tools for putting through its purpose. Some of them are: hymns, marches, parades, flags, colors, uniforms, all the typical insignias of the military are pieces of propaganda. And it is no coincidence that the standardization of the uniforms for the army were an invention of
Propaganda makes us think and act in a way we probably would not have chosen to without its influence. Still, in most cases the degree of influence is impossible to know. Studies proving the efficiency of propaganda are doing nothing else but guessing in big parts. But it is efficient, that we know for sure. This is true for commercial advertisements as well as for political propaganda. Short messages are the most effective form of propaganda, look at posters for elections or at advertisements for any product.
The best or most effective propaganda is that which is wanted by the people. If propaganda meets the needs of the people then it has good chances to be extremely effective. And of course those needs can be "educated", as Jacques Ellul mentioned already in 1957, in his book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes.
Political will suffers from the urgency of spreading propaganda. The will to change something - even if it was for the better - is hopelessly lost, if their is no prestige or aura around an idea. A certain amount of disinformation and propaganda is the perfect tool to get ideas through.
So, actually, what is the difference between disinformation and propaganda?
One difference is that the first one is directed at reason whereas propaganda also touches emotions, most of the time even prefers to influence emotions.
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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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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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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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Prices of products get changed all the time, also depending on the website where one starts his/her search for a certain product. The difference between the prices even for the same product vary up till 200% and more. Some search machines in the internet do not show certain several enterprises whereas others (mostly national ones) get preference in the lists.
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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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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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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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As soon as governments found out that newspapers were a fantastic and very often unsuspicious medium for supporting propaganda they tried to pull them to their side.
Two ways existed:
a) to have one's own newspaper, which implies that mostly friends of the government read it. Nothing is regarded as something neutral.
b) to keep a good relationship to the most powerful/most frequently read newspapers and then try to make one's opinion theirs.
Today mostly elected is b), trying to set up alliances.
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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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Munitions of the Mind. A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present era. Manchester 1995 (2nd ed.)
This book gives a quite detailed insight on the tools and tasks of propaganda in European and /or Western history. Starting with ancient times the author goes up till the Gulf War and the meaning of propaganda today. In all those different eras propaganda was transporting similar messages, even when technical possibilities had not been fairly as widespread as today. Taylor's book is leading the reader through those different periods, trying to show the typical elements of each one.
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on 4 April 1949, creating NATO (= North Atlantic Treaty Organization). It was an alliance of 12 independent nations, originally committed to each other's defense. Between 1952 and 1982 four more members were welcomed and in 1999, the first ex-members of
Communications satellites are relay stations for radio signals and provide reliable and distance-independent high-speed connections even at remote locations without high-bandwidth infrastructure.
On point-to-point transmission, the transmission method originally employed on, satellites face increasing competition from
In the future, satellites will become stronger, cheaper and their orbits will be lower; their services might become as common as satellite TV is today.
For more information about satellites, see How Satellites Work (
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf (* 1934) followed in his father's footsteps at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
In 1965 he applied to join the troops in Vietnam. For the next 20 years Schwarzkopf worked on his career. As Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, he led U.S. and allied forces in the Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He retired from the Army in 1992 and wrote his autobiography.
For a picture see:
The Council for Mutual Economic Aid (COMECON) was set up in 1949 consisting of six East European countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR, followed later by the German Democratic Republic (1950), Mongolia (1962), Cuba (1972), and Vietnam (1978). Its aim was, to develop the member countries' economies on a complementary basis for the purpose of achieving self-sufficiency. In 1991, Comecon was replaced by the Organization for International Economic Cooperation.
The German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and author believed in the duty to educate people (including children) politically. In the German radio he had a series where he tried to do this. These texts are most important for Radio work - even today. Still he is more famous for his critiques on literature and art. Benjamin immigrated to Paris in 1934 and killed himself in 1940 at the boarder between Spain and France as he was afraid to get caught by German troops.
U.S. intelligence agency within the Department of Defense that is responsible for cryptographic and communications intelligence and security. The NSA grew out of the communications intelligence activities of U.S. military units during World War II. The NSA was established in 1952 by a presidential directive and, not being a creation of the Congress, is relatively immune to Congressional review; it is the most secret of all U.S. intelligence agencies. The agency's mission includes the protection and formulation of codes, ciphers, and other cryptology for the U.S. military and other government agencies, as well as the interception, analysis, and solution of coded transmissions by electronic or other means. The agency conducts research into all forms of electronic transmission. It operates posts for the interception of signals around the world. Being a target of the highest priority for penetration by hostile intelligence services, the NSA maintains no contact with the public or the press.
The Sandinistas overthrew the right wing Somoza regime of corruption that had support from the U.S.-government, in 1979. The followers of Somoza, who was killed in 1980, formed the Contras and began a guerrilla warfare against the government. Many of them were trained in the School of the Americas (=
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.
Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero († 1980) was elected archbishop because he was very conservative. But when he saw how more and more priests and definitely innocent people were murdered, he changed his attitudes and became one of the sharpest critics of the government. He gave shelter to those in danger, never stopped talking against violence and his Sunday sermons on the radio where moments to tell the truth to the Salvadorians, also mentioning the names of the disappeared or killed persons. As Romero got extremely popular and dangerous for the population he was killed by death squads, while reading a sermon.
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:
Analysts at the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham process the mass of intercepted satellite communications produced by their sophisticated interception system, especially from Morwenstow and Menwith Hill. At the headquarters personel use advanced computer hardware and the Dictionary system.
Latitude: 40.771, Longitude: 141.3776
Misawa Air Base is located in Misawa City, on the shores of Lake Ogawara in northeastern Honshu, Japan's main island. The Department of Defense presence at Misawa includes more than 15,000 military and civilian personnel and family members, including 4500 military personnel. The installation has experienced significant growth and development over the past ten years. From Misawa the NSA monitors Russian and other regional communications satellites.
The Misawa Passive Radio Frequency (RF) space surveillance site tracks satellites using RF signal emmisions to compute angle of arrival observations. This site provides coverage of geosynchronous satellites utilizing the Deep Space Tracking System (DSTS).