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Values and Culture

Thank you for participating in the Dialogue on Foreign Policy. The interactive web site is now closed. The Minister's report will appear on this web site once it is released.

This Forum is bilingual, and participants post messages in their language of choice.

The Propaganda machines / La propagande...

Contributor: codc01

Date: 2003-03-24 14:01:27


I can't believe how much propaganda there is ... I actually never thought it possible. Here i will enumerate some facts of propaganda (on the Iraq conflict):

1. The US media and the US government said a few days ago that Bassorah was now secured, same thing, with Oum Qasr, which is actually far from the truth.
2. Al-Jazira television shows mainly gruesome stuff with dead children and women.
3. Int'l Television shows an interview with an Iraqi soldier prisonner (this interview was done a by a Kuweiti journalist) - where he is happy to have been captured. Isn't this contrary to the Geneva Convention?
4. Iraqi television interviews prisoners of war, which is contrary to international law, and also shows pictures of dead American soldiers, while on the US side, all American media will not show this footage.

The Iraq conflict is a war of propaganda...

On other notes, which is also related to propaganda, there was an election in France last year, and one of the platform campaign main points was to reduce the number of car crashes (there are 8000 deaths/year related to this) - strangely enough, only 8 months after the new government has been formed, there has been a 40% decrease in car crashes according to official statistics - I simply can't believe that the numbers were not changed...

This leads to my main point, I think we are very lucky to have canadian statistics, which even though, they may not be exact, seem to reflect the real numbers ... We are also very lucky to have unbiased journalists (such as the reporting on the Iraqi war)...I think CBC/Radio-Canada is doing a great job....

I guess we always need to cross-check everywhere before making a fact a 'real fact'...

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The Propaganda machines / La propagande...

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-03-25 04:23:56


You are very correct about the propaganda. It insults our intelligence. I noticed even in Afghanistan war: the enemy reports downing aircraft/helicopters....US claims no missing aircraft/helicopters....US confirms aircraft/helicopter crash but always accidental. smells fishy or they better train their pilots better.
G Bush gets upset about American prisoners of war being shown on Iraq TV; states it is against the Geneva convention. Yet hours earlier, I had wonder why Cnn was now showing closeups of Iraqi POWs; and has G Bush forgot the POWs the US is holding in Guantanamo Bay without any such protection simply by calling them by names other than POW. According to the
Red Cross; they are prisoners.
CNN has suddenly developed a saintly conscience. I realize that propaganda is another tool of war and to keep up moral but this stuff is so transparent and insulting to any intelligence level.

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The Propaganda machines / La propagande...

Contributor: codc01

Date: 2003-04-11 04:32:10


This article is interesting (Taken from the Independent , which is anti-war):

http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/adrian_hamilton/story.jsp?story=396017

The paragraph which is interesting is this one:

"One day the press devotes whole pages to the discovery of hundreds of bodies in an Iraqi barracks, allegedly the victims of Saddam's secret police. The next day the story disappears when the bodies are found to be soldiers from the Iran-Iraq war,..."

Does someone have an article in a news outlet which cotradicts this fact? If, so can you please give it to me... Otherwise, I'll have to say this is the truth, and news outlets are jumping to conclusions too rapidly.

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The Propaganda machines / La propagande...

Contributor: fatmomma

Date: 2003-04-11 22:15:48


Well the bodies were 15 years old or so;So yes the Iraq explaination must have been correct. The Vancouver Province published this story after this was revealed to be old prisoner repatriated bodies. You never see the correction admitting that Iraq was telling the truth. I did write a letter to the editor but no response.
When they don't print a retraction they are leaving a false impression. The story of it being a torture chamber and these people executed by Saddam was questionable from day one. The reports claimed the rooms were lined with plastic so the evidence could be quickly removed; then they leave bodies lying around as evidence for 15 years.
Even from the start they said the bodies appear to be dead for around 15 years.

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