U.S.-Propaganda in World War I Whereas the British propaganda institution, called the Wellington House (situated in the USA) was working secretly, the U.S.- version, the CPI ( Propaganda tends to be as effective as bombs in wartime. With words alone there is no way of winning a war but loosing by words or loosing because of a lack of propaganda-words is easy. See the German example in World War I. Defamation is an important tool of disinformation, which is especially chosen for destroying the good reputation of a competitor or enemy. In this respect information can turn into a more destructive tool than ordinary weapons. War needs propaganda for moral reasons (justification), too, for the soldiers in the battlefields (they need to feel that their nation is appreciating their sacrifice) and for nationalism. |
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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, And this is true for both sides: the baby milk plant: Western bombs had destroyed a chemical weapon factory - that's what they claimed. ( 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 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: |
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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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Boris Yeltsin Boris Yeltsin was Russian President until the end of 1999. After many years of work for the Communist Party, he joined the Politburo in 1986. His sharp critique on Mikhail Gorbachev forced that one to resign. Yeltsin won the 1990 election into Russian presidency and quit the Communist Party. Quarrels with the Parliament could not destroy his popularity until the secession war with Chechnya. When the Russian economy collapsed in 1998, he dismissed his entire government. In the end the sick old man of Russian politics had lost all his popularity as a president and resigned for the benefit of his political son Vladimir Putin. |
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Slobodan Milosevic Slobodan Milosevic (* 1941) is a Serbian political leader. As a young man S. Milosevic joined the Communist Party, in 1984 the banker became head of the local Communist Party of Belgrade, in 1987 head of the Serb CP. Since 1989 he has been president of Serbia (since 1997 president of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). During his reign the Yugoslav Republic broke up, bringing about the independence of Slovenia and Croatia and the war in Bosnia. In 1998 the Kosovo Crisis started. |
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Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan has a long history of violence. It emerged out of the resentment and hatred many white Southerners. Black Americans are not considered human beings. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished. |
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