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The UN was envisaged as a war-fighting machine
A deeper look at the origins of the UN reveals some surprising facts about the military purpose of the fledgling organisation
American critics of the United Nations often zero in on its lack of serious military capacity, citing peacekeeping failures in Bosnia and more recently in central and west Africa as examples of ineffective do-goodery gone wrong. Imagine their surprise, then, to learn that the UN was born amid nude scenes in a White House bathroom and that its primary purpose was as a war-fighting machine.
Conventional historical timelines date the UN's foundation from the San Francisco conference of April to October 1945, when the victors of the second world war effectively institutionalised a new global order. But as Daisy Suckley, the close confidant of Franklin Roosevelt, noted in her private diary, the idea first took definitive shape when the US president went to bed on 28 December, 1941.
The date is significant. Three weeks before, on 7 December, the Japanese had launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On 11 December, Germany and Italy declared war on the US. After nearly two years of awkward ambivalence as the world burned, America was, at last, unequivocally "in". A delighted Winston Churchill rushed to Washington and, taking up residence in the White House, spent days debating with Roosevelt how the new anti-Axis alliance would work and, crucially, what to call it.
The first United Nations Declaration, drawn up by Roosevelt and Churchill and building on Roosevelt's famous Four Freedoms speech and the 1941 Atlantic Charter, was promulgated on 1 January, 1942. It was signed by Joseph Stalin's USSR, Chiang Kai-shek's China, various British Empire dominions and Nazi-occupied European countries, and a clutch of pro-Washington central American states.
Each government dedicated itself, first and foremost, to employ its "full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact [the Axis] and its adherents with which such government is at war". They were engaged, they said, "in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world".
But foreshadowing the UN's more ambitious, postwar mandates, signatories also declared themselves "convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands." In this sentence was encompassed the history of the next 50 years.
One notable signatory was India, then still under British rule, but allowed at Roosevelt's insistence to act as an independent country. One notable absentee was France. Roosevelt could not abide Charles de Gaulle, the Free French leader, and continued to recognise the Vichy regime as the government of France until the liberation in 1944. In all, 26 countries signed the original declaration. The modern-day UN numbers 192 sovereign states.
Despite the earlier failure of the League of Nations (caused in large part by Washington's hostility), the idea of united nations joined in common cause against fascism proved immediately popular with an American public fearful of Japanese attacks on the US mainland, and with Europeans who for too long had faced the Nazis alone. The term "UN forces" was soon routinely substituted for "US", "British" or "Russian" forces in reports of allied military actions.
American newspapers of the period took up the theme, carrying headlines such as "United Nations Powers Reveal Plan for Smashing Blows at Hitler" (Olean Times-Herald, New York); and "United Nations Pledge International Body to Keep Peace after the War" (Brownsville Herald, Texas). The first United Nations day was widely celebrated in June, 1942, including a record-breaking parade in New York. It was publicly supported in London, at Churchill's behest, by the young Princess Elizabeth and the British royal family.
As Plesch relates, even Stalin was enthusiastic, optimistically instructing his generals to prepare for a 1942 UN march on Berlin. Typically, he tried to induce British foreign secretary Anthony Eden to agree postwar European spheres of influence a full three years before the war actually ended. Eden declined the offer.
As the war intensified, and then slowly began to turn in the allies' favour, the UN in all its aspects proved both a practical force and a rallying totem across what was termed the "free world". Commenting on the 1944 Normandy landings, a Times editorial declared portentously that, four years after Dunkirk, "the United Nations returned yesterday to the soil of France".
Only after 1945, when the "free world" fractured into eastern and western camps, symbolised by Churchill's image of an Iron Curtain dividing Europe, did the UN's promise collide with the new postwar realities.
With the US, Britain and the Soviet Union entrenched and already at odds in the new UN security council (it held its first meeting in London in January, 1946), it became clear that in overthrowing the old world order, a new order had been created that posed a whole new set of challenges – and some very old ones, too. Foremost among the latter was the question of when and whether to use military force.
Conventional historical timelines date the UN's foundation from the San Francisco conference of April to October 1945, when the victors of the second world war effectively institutionalised a new global order. But as Daisy Suckley, the close confidant of Franklin Roosevelt, noted in her private diary, the idea first took definitive shape when the US president went to bed on 28 December, 1941.
The date is significant. Three weeks before, on 7 December, the Japanese had launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On 11 December, Germany and Italy declared war on the US. After nearly two years of awkward ambivalence as the world burned, America was, at last, unequivocally "in". A delighted Winston Churchill rushed to Washington and, taking up residence in the White House, spent days debating with Roosevelt how the new anti-Axis alliance would work and, crucially, what to call it.
"FDR got into his bed, his mind working and working," Suckley recorded. "Suddenly he got it – United Nations! The next morning, the minute he had finished his breakfast, he got onto his chair and was wheeled up the hall to WSC's [Churchill's] room. He knocked on the door, no answer, so he opened the door and went in ... He called to WSC and in the door leading to the bathroom appeared WSC, 'a pink cherub' (FDR said), drying himself with a towel and without a stitch on! FDR pointed at him and exploded: 'The United Nations!' 'Good!' said WSC."Having decided on a name and dressed, the two leaders set about creating a robust international organisation that would not only win the war but sustain the peace and prevent the rise of future tyrannies through multilateral institutions, conventions and treaties. As Dan Plesch relates in his fascinating new book, America, Hitler and the UN: How the Allies won World War II and Forged a Peace, published this month by IB Tauris, Roosevelt's idea was also to persuade the hitherto inward-looking American people of their country's manifest destiny as a paramount international power with global duties and interests.
The first United Nations Declaration, drawn up by Roosevelt and Churchill and building on Roosevelt's famous Four Freedoms speech and the 1941 Atlantic Charter, was promulgated on 1 January, 1942. It was signed by Joseph Stalin's USSR, Chiang Kai-shek's China, various British Empire dominions and Nazi-occupied European countries, and a clutch of pro-Washington central American states.
Each government dedicated itself, first and foremost, to employ its "full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact [the Axis] and its adherents with which such government is at war". They were engaged, they said, "in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world".
But foreshadowing the UN's more ambitious, postwar mandates, signatories also declared themselves "convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands." In this sentence was encompassed the history of the next 50 years.
One notable signatory was India, then still under British rule, but allowed at Roosevelt's insistence to act as an independent country. One notable absentee was France. Roosevelt could not abide Charles de Gaulle, the Free French leader, and continued to recognise the Vichy regime as the government of France until the liberation in 1944. In all, 26 countries signed the original declaration. The modern-day UN numbers 192 sovereign states.
Despite the earlier failure of the League of Nations (caused in large part by Washington's hostility), the idea of united nations joined in common cause against fascism proved immediately popular with an American public fearful of Japanese attacks on the US mainland, and with Europeans who for too long had faced the Nazis alone. The term "UN forces" was soon routinely substituted for "US", "British" or "Russian" forces in reports of allied military actions.
American newspapers of the period took up the theme, carrying headlines such as "United Nations Powers Reveal Plan for Smashing Blows at Hitler" (Olean Times-Herald, New York); and "United Nations Pledge International Body to Keep Peace after the War" (Brownsville Herald, Texas). The first United Nations day was widely celebrated in June, 1942, including a record-breaking parade in New York. It was publicly supported in London, at Churchill's behest, by the young Princess Elizabeth and the British royal family.
As Plesch relates, even Stalin was enthusiastic, optimistically instructing his generals to prepare for a 1942 UN march on Berlin. Typically, he tried to induce British foreign secretary Anthony Eden to agree postwar European spheres of influence a full three years before the war actually ended. Eden declined the offer.
As the war intensified, and then slowly began to turn in the allies' favour, the UN in all its aspects proved both a practical force and a rallying totem across what was termed the "free world". Commenting on the 1944 Normandy landings, a Times editorial declared portentously that, four years after Dunkirk, "the United Nations returned yesterday to the soil of France".
Only after 1945, when the "free world" fractured into eastern and western camps, symbolised by Churchill's image of an Iron Curtain dividing Europe, did the UN's promise collide with the new postwar realities.
With the US, Britain and the Soviet Union entrenched and already at odds in the new UN security council (it held its first meeting in London in January, 1946), it became clear that in overthrowing the old world order, a new order had been created that posed a whole new set of challenges – and some very old ones, too. Foremost among the latter was the question of when and whether to use military force.
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WWII: Axis Caused the Deaths of Over 15 Million Soviet Civilians and Disarmed Soldiers
Of some 25.3 million Soviet citizens who perished in WWII some 15.7 million were civilians or POWs who died due to policies of the Axis nations. This goes to show that any notion of moral Soviet and Nazi equivalence in the context of WWII is wide off the mark.
It also goes a long way to explaining why WWII remains central to Russian collective consciousness and how petty and undignified the western boycott of the Russian commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII over daily political matters is.
It also goes a long way to explaining why WWII remains central to Russian collective consciousness and how petty and undignified the western boycott of the Russian commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII over daily political matters is.
Marko Marjanović
Number would have been far greater had Nazis won
Note: With the upcoming 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War just around the corner we are publishing more material related to that epic conflict that is so important to Russian collective memory.
Comprehending the massive human and material losses suffered by Russians and other peoples of the Soviet Union is crucial to understanding why this is so.
This is the concluding chapter of a research paper from the pen of RI deputy editor and contributor Marko Marjanović. Links to preceding chapters:
Comprehending the massive human and material losses suffered by Russians and other peoples of the Soviet Union is crucial to understanding why this is so.
This is the concluding chapter of a research paper from the pen of RI deputy editor and contributor Marko Marjanović. Links to preceding chapters:
- Total WWII Soviet War Dead Stands at Some 25.3 Million
- 1.5 Million Soviet War Dead Was due to Soviet State Repression
- Soviet Forces Lost Estimated 7.5 Million Combatants
- WWII: 3.3 Million Soviet POWs and Forced Laborers Perished in German Hands
- WWII: Holocaust, Anti-Partisan Reprisals and the Siege of Leningrad Alone Killed over 4 Million Soviet Civilians
- WWII: Up to 8 Million Soviet Civilians Died of Malnutrition Due to Occupation and War
Total demographic loss of the Soviet Union in the Soviet-German War was 28 million people. This includes 26.6 million estimated loss in excess of expected deaths calculated by ADK, the 1.1 million deaths due to war-related causes of people expected to die in the timeframe in accidents and of natural causes and 0.3 million expected deaths due to Soviet repression. Of the 28 million lives lost 2.7 million were migration loss and 25.3 million were actual war dead. Of the second figure 1.5 million deaths were due to Soviet state repression and 23.8 million were due to war and policies of the occupier.
Military Deaths
Of the 25.3 million deaths due to war 11.05 million were what are usually deemed “military deaths”. These, however, include 3.1 million deaths of Soviet POWs in German custody, not all of whom were actually military personnel, 20,000 POW deaths in Finnish custody and 135,000 Red Army men executed by Soviet military tribunals, as well as 7.25 million deaths of Red Army men due to combat, accidents and disease, 250,000 deaths of Soviet partisans and militiamen and 290,000 deaths of Soviet citizens who fought as part of non-Soviet forces, mainly in German service.
Not counting prisoners of war and soldiers condemned in courts martial who were the victims of enemy states and of their own state, and fighters who died as part of non-Soviet forces, the proper Soviet military dead adds up to 7.5 million regulars and irregulars, of whom more than 300,000 were due to frostbite and disease and 150,000 in accidents.[50]
Civilian Deaths
Of the upwards of 14.25 million civilian deaths 7.6-8 million occurred due to general privation associated with the German invasion and occupation. Just over half of such deaths occurred in the western USSR mainly due to ruthless economic exploitation of the occupation. The remainder occurred in the interior USSR mainly due to the fact the German advance eastwards had cut off the Soviet Union from the majority of its food surplus areas. A further 0.9 million civilian deaths occurred in blockaded Leningrad, and 200,000 among Soviet forced laborers in German-run Europe and the children born to them. 1 million perished in the course of the war in the prisons, camps and colonies of the Soviet penal system, and 300,000 during deportations or internal exile, again mostly due to malnutrition, exhaustion and disease.
2.55 million Jews, citizens of the Soviet Union, were murdered in the course of the Jewish Holocaust, mainly by application of direct violence. The Germans further shot or otherwise directly caused the deaths of some 850,000-1,050,000 non-Jews. Mainly in anti-partisan reprisals in the countryside, but also as part of killing policies or repression against Communists, the Roma, the intelligentsia, the urban underground, mental patients and in forced evacuations accompanying their retreat. 50,000 civilians perished in the German strategic bombing of Soviet cities and towns, and some 200,000-400,000 were killed in the course of, and in the aftermath of battles between armies by German and Soviet battle munitions — shells, rockets, bombs, land mines and the like. The Soviet state executed 65,000 Soviet civilians for political, or ostensibly criminal offenses, and the Soviet partisans killed probably about 60,000 in reprisals against perceived collaborators. A further 90,000 civilians were murdered in the course of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in western Ukraine.
Roughly speaking there were over 4 million civilian deaths due to hard violence by all sides, as well over 10 million such deaths due to privation and associated deterioration in health.
POW and Civilian Deaths Inflicted by the Germans
3.1 million Soviet prisoners of war, who were neither exclusively soldiers, nor were they actually afforded the privileges of POW status perished in German custody. Majority of them in 1941 and 1942 when the Wehrmacht carried out a conscious policy of eliminating its Soviet POWs by deliberately arranging for them to starve to death. 0.9 million Soviet civilians perished in besieged Leningrad. These died as a result of a starvation blockade of the city that occurred in the course of a battle, but which the Germans intended to put up even had they broken the resistance of the Soviet defenders of the city. 200,000 Soviet forced laborers and their newborn children died having been deported to Germany, or German-occupied Europe. 7.6-8 million civilians died during the war due to general privation and shortage of food, mainly caused by the German invasion and exploitation under the occupation. Of these just over one half among the 60 million under German occupation, and just under one half among the 130 million (including the 16 million refugees from the west) in the interior Soviet Union which had been cut off from its agriculturally most productive regions by the German advance.
2.55 million Soviet Jews were murdered in the Nazi program to exterminate Jews across their empire in Europe. The German security apparatus shot or killed using other violent means an estimated 650,000 people in anti-partisan reprisals in the countryside. Some 200,000-400,000 Soviet civilians were murdered in all other German policies of mass killing and political and social repression. 50,000 people died in the German stratgic bombing of Soviet cities. 200,000-400,000 civilians may have perished due to military battles, probably one half due to German munitions. In total the Germans inflicted some 15.7 million deaths among Soviet civilians and soldiers they had already captured and disarmed. Of this figure one quarter were killed due to hard violence such as being shot. Three quarters died due to privation, mainly of hunger and disease.
Deaths of Soviet Citizens Inflicted by the Soviet Side
215,000 Soviet citizens died fighting against Soviet forces in the German-organized auxiliary police (Schuma), the SS and the Wehrmacht. Of the 75,000 guerillas of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Polish Home Army (AK) and the various Lithuanian nationalist fighting organizations nearly 60,000 might have been inflicted by the Soviet army, the NKVD, police forces, militia and partisans.
One million Soviet citizens, victims of Soviet repression, perished in prisons and as forced laborers in camps and colonies of the gulag, mainly due to malnutrition, exhaustion and disease. 300,000 Soviet citizens, also victims of Soviet repression, perished of much the same causes in internal exile after being deported, mainly in nationality-based deportations. 65,000 Soviet citizens were executed by the Soviet civil authorities and some 135,000 citizens serving in the Red Army by the Soviet military authorities. Most likely some 60,000 people were killed in reprisals carried out by the Soviet partisans. If military battles killed 200,000-400,000 people Soviet munitions may have accounted for one half of this number.
Losses by Gender
Research conducted by Russian demographers Andreev, Darskii and Kharkova suggests the Soviet population from 1941 through 1945 lost 13.5 million more males than females.[51]
In the Soviet-German War the USSR suffered 11.05 million military deaths which would have been overwhelmingly of males. 1941-1945 65,000 Soviet citizens were executed by civil authorities and a further 1,020,000 people died in prisons, camps and colonies of the gulag. These deaths too would have been overwhelmingly of males. Also about 500,000 Soviet prisoners or war, or Soviet citizens in German service successfully avoided repatriation to the USSR at the end of World War II. Thus 12.6 million, or the great majority of the male to female deficit in Soviet population, is accounted for by military deaths, judicial executions, deaths in the gulag and emigration of collaborators and prisoners of war. This may attest to at least a rough validity of estimates presented in this paper.
The unaccounted difference between 12.6 and 13.5 million may mean that males were, somewhat counter-intuitively, slightly overrepresented among civilian deaths as well. Possibly particularly due to being overrepresented among victims of German anti-partisan reprisals and other killing policies. It may also mean the number of 500,000 is an under-estimation of how many more males than females managed to emigrate. It may also mean that 11 million is an underestimation of Soviet military deaths in the Soviet-German War. Krivosheev himself estimates 500,000 Red Army deaths due to combat in excess of reported fatalities, but it could be the Soviet reporting system was off by more than that number. Indeed a noted Russian scholar, S.N. Mihkhalev, estimates the USSR lost 10.9 million Red Amy and NKVD regulars on the front, to military tribunals or in captivity. This would push the combined military casualties from the Soviet population to 11.4 million. Naturally, it might be that the 0.9 million difference was due to some combination of any of the three factors mentioned.
Migration Deficit
The scale of migration deficit is possibly the most uncertain of all causes of Soviet population losses in the Soviet-German War. The 2.7 million estimate from Ellman and Maksudov used here is 20 years old and is based on only a very rough and preliminary calculation.[52] Even as such, however, it remains seemingly the most-well supported of all such estimates (most of which are not nearly as high). This article then uses the seemingly best available, but still rather uncertain figure.
Hopefully scholars will return to this question and eventually produce a more certain estimate, so that the question of how much of the Soviet population deficit in the war may be attributed to emigration might be answered more reliably.
Population of Newly Annexed Territories
Since the Soviet Union conducted a population census in 1937 and then again in 1939 we have a fairly good idea how large the population of the USSR was in its 1939 borders. The far bigger unknown is how many new citizens were added through Soviet territorial expansion in 1939-40.
This means that the size of the Soviet population on the eve of the war is not fully certain, which makes estimating its losses all the more difficult. Andreev, et al, estimate that through annexations the Soviet population increased by 20.3 million. On the one hand Ellman and Maksudov reckon this is more likely to be an underestimate than an overestimate. Indeed there are other estimates that go up to 23 million. On the other hand there are rival lower estimates as well. S.N. Mihkhalev reckons newly annexed territories were populated by between 17 and 20 million inhabitants.[53]
The interplay between the uncertainty connected to the size of net emigration balance and the size of population added through annexations on the eve of the war makes estimating the likeliest number of Soviet war dead all the more difficult. For example if 2.7 million is actually an overestimate of how many people the USSR lost through migration and 20.3 million is an underestimation of how many lived in the newly added territories then 25.3 million would be considerably less than the actual war dead. On the other hand if 2.7 million is an overestimate of emigration balance and 20.3 million an overestimate of the number of people in the annexed territories then 25.3 million could well be a basically right estimate even though these two inputs were off.
Meaning
The significance of the breakdown of Soviet WWII losses presented here is in relative rather than absolute terms. It is not anything approaching a definite breakdown, but it does represent an improvement over anything else produced so far. There is a definite limit on how clearly anyone will ever be able to estimate and break down the losses from a war that is now 70 years old, but more than that much more research still needs to be done. A considerably more reliable breakdown is possible, but only after historians have done more work on topics such as the partisan war in the USSR, the life under the German occupation, the food supply in wartime USSR and so on. Counter-intuitively, despite being so vast, the human cost of the Soviet-German War 1941-45 can be said to remain a woefully understudied subject.
Deaths of Soviet civilians and disarmed soldiers attributable to Axis:
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| Soviet POW deaths in German hands | 3,100,000 |
|---|---|
| Soviet POW deaths in Finnish hands | 20,000 |
| Deaths of Soviet forced laborers in German-run Europe and children born to them | 200,000 |
| Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union murdered in the Holocaust | 2,550,000 |
| Civilian deaths in the Siege of Leningrad | 900,000 |
| Non-Jewish Civilians killed in German anti-partisan reprisals in the countryside | 650,000 |
| Civilian deaths in the German strategic bombing of Soviet cities | 50,000 |
| Civilians killed in all other German killing policies and repression | 200,000-400,000 |
| Civilian deaths due to battle munitions of the Axis | 100,000-200,000 |
| Civilian deaths due to general privation due to invasion and occupation | 7,600,000-8,000,000 |
| Total attributable to Axis (rounded) | 15,700,000 |
Deaths of Soviet civilians and disarmed soldiers attributable to USSR:
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| Deaths in prisons and camps and colonies of the gulag | 1,020,000 |
|---|---|
| Deaths in deportations, internal exile and the labor army | 300,000 |
| Executions by civil authorities | 65,000 |
| Executions by military tribunals | 135,000 |
| Killed in reprisals of the Soviet partisans | 60,000 |
| Civilian deaths due to battle munitions of the Soviets | 100,000-200,000 |
| Total attributable to Soviets (rounded) | 1,700,000 |
50. 270,000 Soviet regulars died due to disease, but there would have been tens of thousands of more such deaths among Soviet partisans.
51. E.M. Andreev, L.E. Darskii and T.L. Kharkova, Naselenie Sovetskogo Sojuza 1922-1991, table 35, p. 78.
52. Ellman and Maksudov, “Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War”, 678- 679.
53. Mentioned in L.L. Rybakovskij, “Lyudskie poteri SSSR v Velikoj Otechestvennoj vojne”, Sotsiologicheskie issiedovaniya, no. 6 (2000): 108-118, citing SN Mikhalev, Ljudskie poteri SSSR v Velikoj Otechestvennoj vojne (St. Petersburg: 1995).
http://russia-insider.com/en/wwii-axis-responsible-deaths-over-15-million-soviet-civilians-and-disarmed-soldiers/6003
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China Lost 14 Million People in World War II. Why Is This Forgotten?
Historian
Rana Mitter believes a better understanding of China's future actions
can follow a truer understanding of its World War II past.
When looking back at World War II, the victors
see their own military contributions the clearest. Hence the United
Kingdom spotlights the Battle of Britain and El Alamein, the Russians
Stalingrad and Kursk, and the Americans D-Day and Midway. The
contribution of China, whose war was the longest and among the
bloodiest, tends to be forgotten in the West, and for years was little
commemorated even in China.
A new book, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, by Oxford historian Rana Mitter,
aims to sharpen this fuzzy picture by presenting the Middle Kingdom’s
eight-year war against an invading Japan—a war that had been under way
more than two years before the Nazis invaded Poland, which is the usual
starting point for histories of World War II. “Essentially,” Mitter
explained in an interview with Pacific Standard, “the politics
of the Cold War covered over that what is coming to be realized, I
think, as one of the great missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of World
War II.” Now, however, a combination of archives in China opening up and
a new political attitude by its leaders has cracked the historical
window.
For an American audience whose knowledge of
China in the war might start with the 1937 Rape of Nanking and end with
the volunteer American fighter pilots known as the Flying Tigers, the
book offers a number of eye-openers:
- The contribution of the Soviet Union to the Chinese Nationalists, who were actively battling the Chinese Communists, was large and sustained. While it might have been ideologically unexpected, it fit in with Josef Stalin’s desire to most effectively check Japanese designs on the USSR. The two countries actually fought a sustained series of battles in Mongolia in 1939 which left thousands dead on both sides.
- While the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Communist Mao Zedong are usually depicted as the titans of China’s resistance and its on-again, off-again civil war, Mitter details the rise and eclipse of a third figure, Wang Jingwei, whose stature and influence long equaled Chiang and Mao’s—until he made accommodation with the Japanese.
- The scale of China’s involvement in the war was massive. Chiang, for example, fielded four million troops at the Nationalist’s height, while China as a whole lost an estimated 14 million in the war. Had China folded, Japan’s capacity to fight the U.S. or even the Soviets would have been vastly amplified.
Why does any of this matter now? Mitter says the experience of World
War II shapes Chinese attitudes today, especially between China and the
United States and China and Japan, “two of the legs of a very important
set of relationships in the Asiatic region. ... I would argue very
strongly that by looking at what happened in terms of a history in those
years, you get a great deal of insight into what is important in that
region now to people there and what will be important for the next
decade to come.”
This has been edited for length and clarity.
The British title of the book is China’s War With Japan. In the U.S. it’s Forgotten Ally. Can you tell me what was the decision-making process in choosing titles?To some extent it has to do with the way in which some things are marketed. China’s War With Japan
is not just the U.K. edition; it’s also the edition that’s being sold
in East Asia, India, Australia, and a whole variety of places. And I
think it’s fair to say, for instance, that if you were to buy the book
in Hong Kong or Singapore, it’s probably not fair to say that China is
the forgotten ally, because there, of course, the memory of the Asian
war is still strong. So in that sense, it’s more of a descriptive title
of what the book is about. The North American market, and the United
States in particular, the title Forgotten Ally was chosen in
quite an intentional way because obviously you know it’s a history of
China and why it matters today in terms of that period.
But it’s also a reminder to the American public that there was this very important historical
moment
that has been forgotten and which is important for two reasons, one of
which has to do with the very contemporary significance of understanding
why Sino-American relations and Sino-Japanese relations, which are
crucial to the shaping of the world, let alone the region, remain very
volatile.
But the second reason actually has to
do something with historical justice. Regardless of the many flaws of
the Chinese government at the time, Chiang Kai-shek’s government, I
think it’s fair to say that they never, neither then nor now, have been
given sufficient credit for what has often been regarded as a purely
American victory in Asia, and particularly the Pacific.
But the Chinese contribution up to now has generally been mostly
dismissed or regarded as very minor, secondary, and not really worth
bothering with. I think as we move decades and decades away from the
events themselves, it’s no longer tenable to retain that position.
In an image suddenly salient with the civil war in Syria, Japanese
artillerymen fire chemical weapons into Chinese positions in 1941.
(PHOTO: PUBLIC DOMAIN)
So why did this get lost? China was
one of the Big Four at the end of the conflict, and the China lobby was
very strong in the U.S. And then 14 million people who died make another
fairly compelling argument. What happened?It’s
a good reason to remember that on its own. I would say that one of the
single facts, which is worth remembering if you want to annoy an
official in the Chinese Communist Party, is to remind them that the
reason, the primary reason, that China today has a seat in the permanent
five on the United Nations Security Council, the top table of global
diplomacy, is not because of anything that Chairman Mao did. It was
because of the wartime efforts of Chiang Kai-shek, and essentially as a
direct result of China’s involvement on the Allied side in World War II.
China now finds itself—more than 65, 70 years nearly after the end of
World War II—as the only non-European, non-white power to sit at that
top table. So these things do have a great deal of significance today.
When were they forgotten? Put very simply, China’s wartime experience,
suffering, and contribution to the Allied cause fell into a hole created
by the Cold War. Neither side had an interest in recalling what China
did.
On the Chinese side, after 1949 when the
civil war was over, the Nationalists had been exiled to Taiwan, and Mao
was victorious on the mainland, you had essentially a virgin history in
the mainland of China—that the only people who had made a contribution
to fighting and defeating the Japanese were the Chinese communists.
The contribution that had actually been made by the much larger
Nationalist army was essentially either dismissed or wiped out of the
official history that was taught in China itself. So there’s sort of an
historical black hole there.
But we can’t put
any of the responsibility by any means on the Chinese communists on the
mainland. You have to remember that in the West, we very quickly forgot
about that wartime contribution as well. The reason is that Chiang
Kai-shek, the Chinese wartime leader, was essentially seen as a sort of
embarrassment—this Cold War relic remaining on Taiwan, looking more and
more irrelevant year by year, associated with incompetence and
corruption, with a whole variety of qualities that the West didn’t find
very attractive.
But what was forgotten was the
leader, through a whole swath of decisions, many of them very
problematic and difficult, had nonetheless kept China in the war against
Japan. First of all, on his own for about four and half years, and then
of course as part of the very difficult alliance with the West for
another four years after that.
One thing
that came out in your book that was surprising to me is the idea that
China as a geographical construct, at least modern China as a
geographical construct, seems to have arisen out of the war. Their west
was not considered part of the main area. Is that a correct reading?I
think it’s actually one of the most important elements of the question:
Why on Earth does World War II matter for China? And the answer, well
one of the answers, is geography.
It happens for
a variety of reasons. But at its most basic, there’s a sort of irony
that China’s moment of greatest crisis in the 20th century in terms of
foreign invasion, the Japanese invasion, actually forces the government,
particularly the Nationalist government at the time, to centralize the
authority. It has to finally eliminate one of the big problems of the
era, which was the warlordism—the different military leaders who control
different parts of China at that stage. Some of them have been done
away with in a pretty brutal manner.
And as a
result, at the end of the war, even though China was smashed beyond
recognition in many ways and of course was about to launch into a civil
war, the problem that existed between the late 19th century and the
outbreak of World War II, which was the splitting up into different
warlord regions, was mostly resolved by the fact that the government had
had to retreat into the interior and consolidate its rule during that
period. So yet again, one of the legacies of Chiang’s period that Mao
probably ought to have been grateful for but is unlikely to have
mentioned at any encomium.
The West had a
blind spot that’s been addressed fairly elaborately in recent years
concerning the Soviet contribution to defeating Nazi Germany. Do you see
the same dynamic happening here?Yes, and partly for the same reasons. And I’ll say one word that summarizes what that reason is, and that is archives.
After 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, at least for a while,
it became easier for Russian and Western researchers to look for the
first time at the massive amounts of documentation that were kept in the
old Soviet Union in Russia about Russia’s wartime contribution.
Now we haven’t had the kind of fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall,
fall-of-Gorbachev-type moment in China. But what is undeniable is that
for the last 20 years or so, is that China’s archives have been opened
up more and more. And the big difference is that for the first time,
people are allowed to look at the Nationalist, the Guomindang [or Kuomintang]
side of the experience. One of the things I’ve always said about that
research topic—and this often surprises people—is that it is not a case
of brave Western researchers knocking on the door and demanding access
to the hidden files. This is a trend that has emerged within China
itself.
China’s own researchers in the mainland
are rediscovering the hidden parts of their own history, including the
actually very creditable, very important wartime contribution of the old
ideological ally, the Nationalist party, which is one of the reasons
even Chiang Kai-shek has been partly rehabilitated in the mainland in a
way that was unimaginable 25 or 30 years ago.
In
the Eastern bloc, the Great Patriotic War is always an important
cultural touchstone. You’re suggesting to me that in China itself in
World War II, their version of the "great patriotic war" was not as much
a cultural touchstone.Exactly. And
that’s a big difference from the Soviet Union; you’re exactly right
there. Basically, although it was distortive propaganda reasons in many
ways, Stalin, Khrushchev, and his successors did use the patriotic war
where the Soviets fight back against the Nazis as a key patriotic
narrative. And the narrative of World War II didn’t disappear exactly in
China. It was a relatively minor part of the way in which patriotism
was constructed. You’ve got occasional signs of it—for example, the
Japanese who turn up as sort of stage villains in some of the model
operas in the cultural revolution period in the 1960s. But it’s clear
that during most of Mao’s period, the real enemies were these Goumindang
nationalists and not really the Japanese.
Why
was that? Well, there are a variety reasons, but the Cold War is really
the major one. During the Cold War period, Taiwan and Chiang kai-Shek
was a clear and present danger to the Communist regime. They had to keep
the population whipped up in a fever of fear against the possibility
that the invaders might come back from Taiwan and essentially start
World War III.
In contrast, Japan was not a near defeated enemy, but one with which
the Chinese Communists actually wanted to try and get closer. They
realized that for a very poor, agrarian society like post-1947 China, it
was important to try and gain technological know-how. With an American
boycott, the chances of that coming from the U.S. were not that great
[while] the Soviet Union was a rather different sort of partner. And so
their answer sort of became Japan. There was a certain amount of
non-official contact between China and Japan. This meant that there was a
great interest in Chinese official circles in not stressing too much
Japanese war crimes, in not making Tokyo feel that there was this great
atmosphere of hostility.
So again, rather
bizarrely, the atrocities, which have since become better known at the
Raid of Nanking and the wartime bombing at the temporary capital in
Chongqing is another one.... Things simply weren’t publicized. You had
to look very long and hard between the 1950s and the 1980s to find major
mentions of anywhere in China of something like the Nanking Massacre of
1937. And this is essentially done to detach the Japanese from the
wartime Cold War embrace of the United States in the Asia Pacific by
backpedaling a bit on reminding them of what happened in the wartime
years itself.
This began to change in the 1980s,
but during the Cold War there was a vested interest in Beijing in not
stressing Japanese war crimes too much.
Mongolian soldiers, allied with the Soviets, fight against the Japanese
during the Nomonhan battles in 1939. (PHOTO: PUBLIC DOMAIN)
Something that isn’t unknown, but was
relatively new to me was the Soviet contribution to the Nationalists,
particularly the air power. In the U.S., we grow up thinking the Flying
Tigers won the war, as opposed to having almost no effect. But it would
appear to me that the Russian air power was significantly greater until
the 14th U.S. Air Force arrived.I
would say actually that the Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group,
weren’t irrelevant at all. The contributions in terms of flying over
the skies of Chongqing were not that many, but I mean in terms of
psychology and in terms of morale boosting, they were important. And
Claire Chennault, the leader of the AVG, actually played an important
part in advising Chiang Kai-shek. So I wouldn’t underplay their role.
But the fact is, as you said, that rather oddly in ideological terms,
the major contribution at the beginning of the war in terms of
unofficial, but real, military assistance came from the Soviet Union.
And this was essentially one of those strange pieces of ideological
cross-dressings that you get during that period. Not only do you get a
Nazi-Soviet pact, which is the most astounding ideological reverse of
the century. But on a fuller level, the strongly anti-Communist Chiang
Kai-shek finds himself essentially taking aid from the Soviet Union, the
reason being that Stalin obviously was supportive of the Chinese
Communists, but he was much more terrified about losing Chiang Kai-shek
as China’s leader.
Had Chiang fallen and had
China become pro-Japanese, then Japan would have had a perfect launch
pad to attack the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, early 1940s. And he
was much more worried about that. So it was a very practical,
non-altruistic reason for Stalin to essentially give assistance to the
Chinese nationalists during that period.
But the
fact is that it was very helpful during the early campaign from battles
including central China, in the Yangtze delta around Shanghai, and so
forth. Although it was not able to prevent the Nationalists from having
to withdraw to the interior of China, Soviet air force support and
military assistance and material was important in making sure that the
Nationalists at least managed to stand up against the Japanese.
One
thing you mention in the book that is almost never written about were
the clashes between the Japanese and the Soviets. That doesn’t ever get
mentioned, and yet those were not mere border clashes.Oh no, they were very real and very major. And they happened over many weeks and months.
This is one of the lesser known elements of the wider World War II
experience, and I think the fact that we’re paying attention to it [as in Anthony Beevor’s new history of World War II]
does suggest that we’re beginning to realize that the whole Asian front
is a lot more important than we’ve realized. Because in a sense what
we’re talking about here is the event that doesn’t happen, the fact that
the Soviet Union and Japan are not in conflict with each other, are not at war, for most of the period that we think of as World War. The reason being that at Nomonhan
essentially you had this confrontation between the Russians and the
Japanese. The Japanese think that the Russians are weak because, of
course, the purges of the Red Army are things that are going to
completely eviscerate this particular army, only to find, in fact, that
they are pushed back pretty steadily by the Soviets and hastily have to
reach a compromise.
And this was, of course,
very bad news for the Chinese who have been fighting for the better part
of a year before that. Chiang Kai-shek’s desperate hope was indeed that
that the Soviets and the Japanese would go to war with each other and
that he would get full-blooded, full-throated Soviet assistance for the
Chinese cause.
When Chiang blew up the
Yellow River dikes to slow down the advancing Japanese army—that ranks
among the great atrocities of the war, yet I have never heard of it.No,
that’s absolutely fair enough. And I mean this is one of the astounding
things because, of course, it is also a sign of the moral ambiguities
that went on in this war. At one level, as with all of the Allied and
the Axis elements of World War II, we know exactly who to root for.
We’re on the side of the Allies; we’re against the Axis. That’s very
obvious.
But what we’ve often had to cover over
is that the Allies in some cases, whether through force or choice, made
some choices that were absolutely devastating and meant death for their
own people. And in this case, we’re talking about Chiang Kai-shek making
this particular choice for his own two tragic and appalling decisions:
either to let the Japanese invade and occupy central China in the summer
of 1938, or take what he regarded as the ultimate last move and breach
this massive hole in the dikes, which had held back this huge force of
nature, the Yellow River, for decades and decades before at that point,
and in doing so, stop the Japanese from advancing.
And one has to say that in the short term it was successful in doing
that. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it worked in strategic terms.
The results: drowning or allowing to starve to death, and/or die of
disease, some hundreds of thousands of Chinese farmers, who were given
absolutely no warning of what was going to happen.
The person who did notice and this at the time and was one of the things that set him on the path of opposition, was Time
magazine’s correspondent, Theodore White. And by the end of the war, he
was one of the strongest critics and opponents of Chiang Kai-shek. And
the breaching of the dams, if you read back into some of his sort of
disillusionment with China was in retrospect I think the first moment
where he began to think that Chiang Kai-shek was not a leader who he or
his reports could support.
Chiang Kai-shek. (PHOTO: PUBLIC DOMAIN)
You seem to paint an almost likeable portrait of Chiang.It’s
interesting you say that. People will read it and make up their own
minds. But it is nonetheless important to understand him not as either a
monster or a failure, but as a flawed human being like many of the
other flawed human beings of the time.
I think
one of the important ways to understand is as a wartime leader who was
forced to make a series of choices between one bad and another appalling
choice over and over again. I tend to think that the whole China war
story and Chiang’s part in it is written as a sort of melodrama or a
sort of black versus white. I think it’s more like a Greek tragedy.
There’s a sort of inexorability but with awful choices being made along
the way. So it’s interesting you found him likeable, but I think more
what I want to say is that he needs to be understood and come over as a
human and flawed leader, but one who makes decisions that were rational
and were able to be justified at the time.
In terms of his own primary goal, which was at all costs—it was a huge
and massive cost as you see in the book—to keep China fighting in the
war. Winston Churchill is praised for his speech about “never surrender”
in terms of Britain—regardless of whatever else might happen, it was
important to keep fighting the Nazis the whole time. It’s often that
[same] sort of determination against any logic that kept Chiang going.
But Chiang has never really been given any credit for that all, whereas
Churchill of course lives on in legend in terms of his resistance.
One of the ironies is not only have the up-to-now unsympathetic
American portraits of Chiang been revised significantly, the more
heinous picture of him that you got in Mao’s China is now being reversed
in his own homeland such that, as I have done, if you go to his
birthplace, which is in a place called Xikou, in Zhejiang province, it’s
like a shrine to the man. Even though it’s on the mainland, you would
never know that he’d actually lost the civil war because as a hometown
boy, he’s able to be celebrated by the locals in a way that would’ve
gotten them all carted off to prison just 20 or 30 years ago.
You
talk about Theodore White’s disenchantment, which brings up the larger
question: Could there have been a re-enchantment between the United
States and Mao at some point, even in 1949?That’s
actually called the “last chance” in China. And there are still people
who speak strongly in favor of it. My inclination is to say that I don’t
think so—not in the terms of actually having a genuinely friendly and
cordial engagement between the two sides.
Mao
and his followers did claim that they wanted this, but we also know a
lot more from archives and other sources about Mao’s own motivations.
And it’s very clear that his ideology was such that he had to be
oriented toward Chinese indigenous revolution and toward Moscow. He did
not have a genuine affinity toward the United States. So I think in
terms of a genuine alliance, there is actually very little chance that
actually could have happened. What I would say, and should have happened
and didn’t though, was something rather different, which was a way for
China and the United States to at least engage with each other
diplomatically, rather unlike the way the Americans and the Soviets did.
The Cold War became very, very cold during much of that period. But
there was never a period when Moscow and Washington weren’t talking to
each other.
But I think the fact that for the
better part of a quarter century or more, down until Nixon and Kissinger
come along, the Chinese and the Americans do not have a regular,
proper, and open channel of discussion, was one of the great diplomatic
missed opportunities of that period—one of many messy pieces of
inheritance from that whole wartime alliance.
Speaking
of alliances, it seems like China/Burma/India was where the "special
relationship" between the U.S. and Great Britain showed its seams most
clearly.[Laughing] Yes, if you mean a
special relationship of mistrust and lack of understanding. Winston
Churchill was probably one of the people who felt most strongly during
that period that the war in Asia showed that the British and the
Americans essentially had rather different aims in terms of what they
wanted from World War II.
What the Americans
wanted was a re-worked world order in which imperialism in the British
and French sense would be ended and some of the non-European powers
would be raised to a rather higher level. What the British wanted was
the restoration of the empire. And these proved to be fundamentally
incompatible goals.
And that’s why to me that
was one of the most interesting things in terms of writing the
book—looking at the war through Chiang Kai-shek’s eyes, through his
diaries, was to see quite how strongly British imperialism, in
particular, became a target for his anger. And his conversations with
Nehru and to some extent with Mahatma Gandhi were an important element
of that sort of anti-imperialism. But it’s one of those things that sort
of meant that while he had a huge number of problems with the
Americans, ultimately his orientation was toward the United States as
being a dominant power in the region, rather than allowing the British
any chance to come back.
And I think actually
that the British realized this very well. They realized that the British
and American aims in China were related but not identical. It helped
create even more confusion and, I think, lack of trust between the
various sides, leading to things like the tragedy in Burma, which is an
example of all sides essentially doing very badly. By the time you get
to 1944, although ultimately the Japanese are defeated, in some ways the
fighting was even more vicious and brutal than it might have been
because all of the major Allies—the Chinese, the British, and the
Americans—still didn’t really trust each other.
Shanghai
is such an interesting story with its international community and the
international communities that were in the other coastal Chinese cities.
And this was the death knell of that imperial system, clearly.Very
much so. Shanghai then was one of the most cosmopolitan cities anywhere
in the world. And even though Shanghai is a great city today, and you
know, lively in a whole variety of ways, it still hasn’t captured that
absolute cosmopolitanism it had during imperialism back in the 1930s and
’40s. Again, of course, the war was the death knell, as you say, of
that particular system, for reasons both good and bad.
The good is that, indirectly but genuinely, the war forced the end of
the old imperial Shanghai—the Shanghai where the white British customers
could beat Chinese rickshaw drivers around the ears if they didn’t like
the fare they were being charged, the kind of brutal, everyday racism
of imperialism that you certainly saw frequently in the city. That had
come to an end with China’s ultimate victory in 1945. But the downside
was that it led to a much narrower, much grayer vision of Shanghai for
the next 40 or 50 years.
The idea that this was
one of the few cities in the world where people could come, whether they
were artists or refugees, or Nationalists or Communists, people from
all sorts of backgrounds, and create this immense melting pot in which
literature, culture, food, all these things, were coming together in a
way that astounded the Chinese who lived there in the country as much as
it did foreigners. All that was lost for a very long time.
The Japanese seem to have been particularly egregious violators of human rights. Is that generally accurate?I
mean, the ideas and concept and understanding of human rights we have
now have been very much shaped by the experience of that war and that
period around the world. But I don’t think it’s necessarily true that
there is something immensely distinctive about the Japanese. What made
the Japanese war effort against China so brutal were things that we saw
elsewhere. For instance a very strong sense of racial superiority, which
we also saw, of course, among fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and so
forth.
At the same time, there is one very
important, and I think it a very significant difference between the
Japanese atrocities in China and the Nazi experience in Europe: The
Japanese never had any program of organized genocide. That is a very
significant difference than in the European case. The Japanese were
brutal; they carried out all sorts of horrific acts, you know the Rape
of Nanking, the bombing of Chongqing, and others, but to some extent,
you can see similarities with other brutal campaigns, which took place
elsewhere. And the Japanese themselves often said in terms of their
tactics as imperialists and invaders that they had learned a very great
deal of what they knew from Western mentors. So we have to look at what
the competition was as well.
Japanese troops
prepare to behead a Chinese POW during the orgy of violence that
followed taking the city of Nanking. (PHOTO: PUBLIC DOMAIN)
I realize you’re a historian of China
and not of Japan, but every once in a while, I read pieces about
textbooks in Japan that gloss over certain inconvenient facts. Is that
widespread?Some of them possibly
written by me, in fact. I think the important thing to understand about
Japanese public attitudes in textbooks, television, and so forth toward
the wartime period is that is very ambivalent. There is a significant
and very loud-mouthed right wing that essentially denies or downplays
the wartime atrocities. But although this voice is loud, it is by no
means the only one or the most important one in Japan.
It’s important to note that, for instance, the very first group of
people who brought the Rape of Nanking to the world’s attention in the
postwar period were not the Americans and not the Chinese themselves,
but in fact the Japanese left wing.
Japanese
school teaching unions are often pretty left wing and certainly they
have agitated pretty strongly in terms of not using textbooks that deny
or downplay the wartime period. You’ll find that although these
textbooks are published, and many of them are very offensive in terms of
trying to downplay the China war, the mainstream ones that are used in
most Japanese schools in fact have a great deal more about the war than
the popular newspapers sometimes let on.
So I think it’s important to remember that Japan is a pluralist
democracy. There are plenty of people, not the least of which are
professional historians, who spend a great deal of time working in great
detail on Japan’s wartime atrocities and their significance in history.
And in that sense, there is no great conspiracy of silence.
Was
there ever a formal intent in Japan to attempt to take over China? It
seems like in Manchuria, yes there was absolute intent. [Japan invaded
Manchuria in 1931 and by 1933 had consolidated its hold via the puppet
state of Manchukuo.] But was the whole Chinese misadventure beyond that
something that was stumbled upon or pushed upon by militarists?That’s
a pretty sharp assessment; I think you put your finger on it. I would
say this: Manchuria was planned. But oddly enough, some of the top
Chinese officers who planned the Manchuria coup were furious at the
thought that is was going to expand further into the mainland of China.
They thought that was a very bad idea; they thought the Japanese should
actually stick to Manchuria.
The actual outbreak
of war, and again I hope I brought this out in the book, was not so
much in 1939, Hitler invades Poland, but more 1914 Archduke Franz
Ferdinand gets shot in Sarajevo. In other words, a small set of events
in the Chinese case, the shootings outside in the little village of
Wanping in Beijing at the Marco Polo bridge [on July 7, 1937], would
trigger off in the next few days and weeks, the sequence of events that
eventually bring the two countries to war with each other.
And the Japanese were not expecting the Marco Polo bridge incident
would in fact trigger an all out continental war. Once it had then, they
did certainly make the decision that they were going to teach China a
lesson that they were really going to actually push their troops in and
take over the whole thing. But the expectation in the summer of 1937 in
July was not on Tokyo’s part that they were going to invade there and
now.
On the other hand, I think that there is a
significant amount of evidence, and this is one of the things that
Chiang Kai-shek weighed when he was making the decision whether or not
to expand the campaign, was that Japan would be trying, slice by slice,
to get more and more of China. So first Manchuria, then the sort of part
just below the Great Wall, then much of North China; then within five,
10, 15 years after that point, it would have seemed very plausible
scenario by which they were lapping at the gates of central China, and
then finally the south. So in terms of intent or method, you’re probably
not talking about a kind of intentional all-out invasion in 1937. In
terms of the end goal of domination of China, I think there was very
little doubt that that was the intent of Tokyo.
It’s
almost a Napoleonic mistake or as Hitlerian mistake, the idea of trying
to invade this geographically gigantic place and having space destroy
you.I think that’s true. But again one
of the things that must be considered is ideological conviction. The
Japanese army—bizarrely, delusionally—were rational in their own minds.
They genuinely thought first of all that they had this leadership role,
that they were going to be able to act as the brother that was going to
lead the fellow Asian countries including China to some sort of
anti-Western, post-imperialist future.
And they
also believed very strongly that it was their destiny to expand onto the
mainland. This was, of course, a period when empires were competing
against each other. They saw the British empire; they saw the French
empire; they saw this sort of American domination in parts of the
Pacific as well. It was supposed to be this sort of social Darwinist
world, where you couldn’t stand still. Either you had to expand, or you
would be conquered.
This seems like a pretty
irrational way of thinking from the point of view of our own minds in
the early 21st century, but in the 1930s the world the Japanese saw
around them was one in which this seemed to make perfect sense to them.
If
I could ask you to speculate: Did Japan have the wherewithal to defeat
China? Or was it a doomed experiment from the beginning, independent of
any U.S. or Soviet intervention?I
think the Japanese knew from a very early phase that this was a very,
very big proposition they were taking on, and their chances of success
were a very long way from being guaranteed.
Speculation: I think the answer is, had the Japanese managed to
essentially conquer and tame China very early in the war, let’s say
within the first year or year and a half, and bring it to surrender,
then they would’ve had a chance of getting some sort of settlement that
would’ve lasted for a while.
That was one of the
reasons why even when they continued to push into China over and over
again in the 1937-38 period, they were also sending out feelers to
Chiang Kai-shek, desperately trying to get him to negotiate.
So if I flipped the question: Could China at any point have defeated imperial Japan?I
think that would have been tough because Japan was the most
technologically able society in Asia. It had hugely superior
industrialization. You know by the eve of war, something like 70 percent
of Japan’s GDP was going toward the military state in one sense or
another.
Japan was much richer than China, and
it had this extremely well-trained, conscripted, and, frankly,
brutalized conscript army, which was of extremely high quality. Compared
to that, China had more people, but was an internally split, very poor
agrarian society, with only a very partially trained army. And it had
huge amounts of territory, a quagmire that’s very hard for the Japanese
to conquer and hard for the Chinese government to control. The size issue went both ways.
If you ask the same question, of course, and compare it to that of the
British Empire, I think it’s fair to say that Winston Churchill and the
British could not have defeated Hitler without American assistance,
either. But people do not, on those grounds, give Britain a hard time
for continuing to resist the Germans.
So an
all-out defeat of the Japanese by the Chinese would have been near
impossible to manage. It’s the feat of resistance that really needs to
be looked at.
- Tags
- ChinaWorld War IIJapanMao ZedongChiang Kai-shekNankingShanghai
- http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/china-lost-14-million-people-world-war-ii-forgotten-66482
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This Chart Shows The Astounding Devastation Of World War II
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4/22/2011 @ 12:01AM
Why Is The U.N. In The War-Making Business?
The strangest aspect of the United Nations’ “no-fly zone” war over Libya is the involvement of the United Nations itself. While Congress’ approval was all but an afterthought, the Obama administration devoted intense diplomatic energy to winning the approval of the United Nation’s Security Council. No one asked: Why the U.N. is in the business of approving military actions at all?
The United Nations, created to end wars, now prolongs and enlarges them. It is time to take a hard look at the U.N.’s war-ending, peace-making record. After all, the promotion of peace is supposed to be its main duty.
In the wake of World War II, political leaders looked out on a devastated world. They saw in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas new graveyards spring up filled with millions of young men. In the richest parts of Europe and Asia there were bombed and burnt cities. Fearing that another global war would spell the end of civilization, they built a global institution that was supposed to stop small wars from getting big and end big wars altogether.
The U.N. bureaucracy lost its way. The U.N. has sanctioned two wars against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and now has approved the aerial bombardment of Libya.
Whatever the merits of these wars, they are wars. And the U.N. approved them, as opposed to stopping them. It has morphed from a war-ending mission to a war-sanctioning vote. Of course there already are legislative bodies to declare wars: the U.S. Congress and the parliaments of various nations.
Duplication aside, there are good reasons that the U.N. should not be in the war-approving business.
Declaring war is an intimate act between a people and government, a solemn decision that weighs the lives and fortunes of its citizens against the state’s interest in securing the safety and trade of its citizens. In any democracy, this balancing act produces a lively debate. Most U.N. representatives represent nothing more than the ruling cliques, which are unelected or elected dishonestly. The people who are going to pay for or fight in these U.N. approved wars have no way to hold U.N. representatives accountable and too many of the war-making discussions at the U.N. are held in secret.
More insidiously, the U.N. fuels and funds the small conflicts it is supposed to end. Its scandalous administration of the “oil for food” program extended a lifeline to Saddam Hussein, perpetuating his power and the dangerous instability he represented, while corrupting scores of officials at the U.N. and in governments around the world.
Or consider the case of the world’s longest-running and most pointless war between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, a ragtag group of rebels residing in an Algerian slice of the Sahara. The war has raged, on and off, since 1975–with the U.N.’s acquiescence.
The U.N. created a body called MINURSO that has utterly failed to end conflict or resettle the some 200,000 refugees now eking out a spare existence in a scattering of mud-brick hovels without running water or continuous electricity. I visited the rebels’ refugee camps in 2010 near Tindouf, Algeria. The people call themselves the Sahrawi and they yearn to return to their homeland in southern Morocco.
While tens of thousands of them disappear into the desert every year and often reappear in the newly prosperous southern reaches of Morocco–where the king and his government have spent more than $15 billion since 1975 to build roads, hospitals, airports and apartment buildings–many more are trapped in the Polisario refugee camps either afraid to make the dangerous trek or afraid of retribution from the Polisario if they try. Those that don’t run to Morocco, run into the arms of al Qaeda’s North African offshoot.
Some attend al Qaeda’s paramilitary training camps and serve in the growing army of al Qaeda in the Magreb (AQIM). The group specializes in taking European tourists hostage and carrying out attacks on army and police forces across North Africa. Other Sahrawis act as desert guides for AQIM or operate supply depots for it. As AQIM becomes bigger and stronger, it could pose a real threat to American interests in the region.
The Sahrawi’s have good reason to run. There are no jobs in the camp and food is scarce. Young men cannot marry because they cannot afford to pay a traditional dowry. And the camps are essentially a one-party dictatorship. The Polisario claims to represent the Sahrawi people, but its elections are East German-style single-candidate rubber stamps. Thousands have fled the rebel refugee camps for a better life in Morocco.
In short, the Polisario is holding the Sahrawi hostage in the hopes of bargaining themselves into running a country they can rule while the camps become havens for al Qaeda affiliated terrorists and drug smugglers. As the situation worsens, the U.N. holds more meetings.
Yet the U.N. has leverage. The rebels survive on aid from the United Nations, grants from local European governments (mostly Spanish regional bodies run by leftists who feel guilty about Spain’s colonial post in Southern Morocco) and by facilitating illegal trade in guns, drugs and women. In the past, the Polisario’s leaders have been covertly aiding Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate and depositing their loot in European banks. If the U.N. leaned on European governments to close the Polisario’s bank accounts and cut its aid, the Polisario would be more likely to accept the King of Morocco’s offer of amnesty and re-settlement of the refugees in their now prosperous homelands.
While the rebels are unable to win on the battlefield–Morocco built a 2,000-km wall of sand sensors and military bases to block cross-border raids–the Polisario fights on with endless motions before various U.N. bodies.
Indeed, the U.N. (and the media) are its primary battlefields. And without the U.N., there would be no war.
Meanwhile, the U.N. maintains a special envoy who is conducting yet another summit conference in New York.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon came in pledging to reform the institution. He could begin by closing down MINURSO and the Special Envoy’s office. Without the U.N., the parties would have every incentive to settle their differences. Without the U.N., there would be peace.
That is quite an indictment of the world’s biggest peace-making body.
Richard Miniter is an investigative journalist and bestselling author whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, New Republic and National Review. His latest book is Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
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The United Nations, created to end wars, now prolongs and enlarges them. It is time to take a hard look at the U.N.’s war-ending, peace-making record. After all, the promotion of peace is supposed to be its main duty.
In the wake of World War II, political leaders looked out on a devastated world. They saw in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas new graveyards spring up filled with millions of young men. In the richest parts of Europe and Asia there were bombed and burnt cities. Fearing that another global war would spell the end of civilization, they built a global institution that was supposed to stop small wars from getting big and end big wars altogether.
The U.N. bureaucracy lost its way. The U.N. has sanctioned two wars against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and now has approved the aerial bombardment of Libya.
Whatever the merits of these wars, they are wars. And the U.N. approved them, as opposed to stopping them. It has morphed from a war-ending mission to a war-sanctioning vote. Of course there already are legislative bodies to declare wars: the U.S. Congress and the parliaments of various nations.
Duplication aside, there are good reasons that the U.N. should not be in the war-approving business.
Declaring war is an intimate act between a people and government, a solemn decision that weighs the lives and fortunes of its citizens against the state’s interest in securing the safety and trade of its citizens. In any democracy, this balancing act produces a lively debate. Most U.N. representatives represent nothing more than the ruling cliques, which are unelected or elected dishonestly. The people who are going to pay for or fight in these U.N. approved wars have no way to hold U.N. representatives accountable and too many of the war-making discussions at the U.N. are held in secret.
More insidiously, the U.N. fuels and funds the small conflicts it is supposed to end. Its scandalous administration of the “oil for food” program extended a lifeline to Saddam Hussein, perpetuating his power and the dangerous instability he represented, while corrupting scores of officials at the U.N. and in governments around the world.
Or consider the case of the world’s longest-running and most pointless war between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, a ragtag group of rebels residing in an Algerian slice of the Sahara. The war has raged, on and off, since 1975–with the U.N.’s acquiescence.
The U.N. created a body called MINURSO that has utterly failed to end conflict or resettle the some 200,000 refugees now eking out a spare existence in a scattering of mud-brick hovels without running water or continuous electricity. I visited the rebels’ refugee camps in 2010 near Tindouf, Algeria. The people call themselves the Sahrawi and they yearn to return to their homeland in southern Morocco.
While tens of thousands of them disappear into the desert every year and often reappear in the newly prosperous southern reaches of Morocco–where the king and his government have spent more than $15 billion since 1975 to build roads, hospitals, airports and apartment buildings–many more are trapped in the Polisario refugee camps either afraid to make the dangerous trek or afraid of retribution from the Polisario if they try. Those that don’t run to Morocco, run into the arms of al Qaeda’s North African offshoot.
Some attend al Qaeda’s paramilitary training camps and serve in the growing army of al Qaeda in the Magreb (AQIM). The group specializes in taking European tourists hostage and carrying out attacks on army and police forces across North Africa. Other Sahrawis act as desert guides for AQIM or operate supply depots for it. As AQIM becomes bigger and stronger, it could pose a real threat to American interests in the region.
The Sahrawi’s have good reason to run. There are no jobs in the camp and food is scarce. Young men cannot marry because they cannot afford to pay a traditional dowry. And the camps are essentially a one-party dictatorship. The Polisario claims to represent the Sahrawi people, but its elections are East German-style single-candidate rubber stamps. Thousands have fled the rebel refugee camps for a better life in Morocco.
In short, the Polisario is holding the Sahrawi hostage in the hopes of bargaining themselves into running a country they can rule while the camps become havens for al Qaeda affiliated terrorists and drug smugglers. As the situation worsens, the U.N. holds more meetings.
Yet the U.N. has leverage. The rebels survive on aid from the United Nations, grants from local European governments (mostly Spanish regional bodies run by leftists who feel guilty about Spain’s colonial post in Southern Morocco) and by facilitating illegal trade in guns, drugs and women. In the past, the Polisario’s leaders have been covertly aiding Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate and depositing their loot in European banks. If the U.N. leaned on European governments to close the Polisario’s bank accounts and cut its aid, the Polisario would be more likely to accept the King of Morocco’s offer of amnesty and re-settlement of the refugees in their now prosperous homelands.
While the rebels are unable to win on the battlefield–Morocco built a 2,000-km wall of sand sensors and military bases to block cross-border raids–the Polisario fights on with endless motions before various U.N. bodies.
Indeed, the U.N. (and the media) are its primary battlefields. And without the U.N., there would be no war.
Meanwhile, the U.N. maintains a special envoy who is conducting yet another summit conference in New York.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon came in pledging to reform the institution. He could begin by closing down MINURSO and the Special Envoy’s office. Without the U.N., the parties would have every incentive to settle their differences. Without the U.N., there would be peace.
That is quite an indictment of the world’s biggest peace-making body.
Richard Miniter is an investigative journalist and bestselling author whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, New Republic and National Review. His latest book is Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
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RWANDA
http://www.globalissues.org/article/405/media-propaganda-and-rwanda
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War, Propaganda and the Media
Author and Page information
- This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media.
- To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
— Walter Lippmann
This web page has the following sub-sections:
Elements of Propaganda
Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support.While the issue of propaganda often is discussed in the context of militarism, war and war-mongering, it is around us in all aspects of life.
As the various examples below will show, common tactics in propaganda often used by either side include:
- Using selective stories that come over as wide-covering and objective.
- Partial facts, or historical context
- Reinforcing reasons and motivations to act due to threats on the security of the individual.
- Narrow sources of “experts” to provide insights in to the situation. (For example, the mainstream media typically interview retired military personnel for many conflict-related issues, or treat official government sources as fact, rather than just one perspective that needs to be verified and researched).
- Demonizing the “enemy” who does not fit the picture of what is “right”.
- Using a narrow range of discourse, whereby judgments are often made while the boundary of discourse itself, or the framework within which the opinions are formed, are often not discussed. The narrow focus then helps to serve the interests of the propagandists.
Propaganda and War
At times of war, or build up for war, messages of extremities and hate, combined with emotions of honor and righteousness interplay to provide powerful propaganda for a cause.The first casualty when war comes is Truth
— U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
— Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9
[Professor] Galtung laid out 12 points of concern where journalism often goes wrong when dealing with violence. Each implicitly suggests more explicit remedies.
- Decontextualizing violence: focusing on the irrational without looking at the reasons for unresolved conflicts and polarization.
- Dualism: reducing the number of parties in a conflict to two, when often more are involved. Stories that just focus on internal developments often ignore such outside or “external” forces as foreign governments and transnational companies.
- Manicheanism: portraying one side as good and demonizing the other as “evil.”
- Armageddon: presenting violence as inevitable, omitting alternatives.
- Focusing on individual acts of violence while avoiding structural causes, like poverty, government neglect and military or police repression.
- Confusion: focusing only on the conflict arena (i.e., the battlefield or location of violent incidents) but not on the forces and factors that influence the violence.
- Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are acts of revenge and spirals of violence.
- Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage itself.
- Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists, especially big powers.
- Failure to explore peace proposals and offer images of peaceful outcomes.
- Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace.
- Omitting reconciliation: conflicts tend to reemerge if attention is not paid to efforts to heal fractured societies. When news about attempts to resolve conflicts are absent, fatalism is reinforced. That can help engender even more violence, when people have no images or information about possible peaceful outcomes and the promise of healing.
— Danny Schechter, Covering Violence: How Should Media Handle Conflict?, July 18, 2001 (Emphasis Added)
No matter how it is spread, propaganda comes in four basic varieties, said Arthur Siegel, social science professor at York University in Toronto, whose 1996 book Radio Canada International examines World War II and Cold War propaganda.
“The first level is the Big Lie, adapted by Hitler and Stalin. The state-controlled Egyptian press has been spreading a Big Lie, saying the World Trade Center was attacked by Israel to embarrass Arabs,” said Siegel.
“The second layer says, ‘It doesn’t have to be the truth, so long as it’s plausible.’
“The third strategy is to tell the truth but withhold the other side’s point of view.
“The fourth and most productive is to tell the truth, the good and the bad, the losses and the gains.
“Governments in Western society take the last three steps. They avoid the Big Lie, which nobody here will swallow,” Siegel said.
— Beth Gillin, U.S. intensifies the war of words, The Philadelphia Inequirer, October 21, 2001
Propaganda when Preparing or Justifying War
In preparing for or justifying war, additional techniques are often employed, knowingly or unknowingly:Ottosen identifies several key stages of a military campaign to “soften up” public opinion through the media in preparation for an armed intervention. These are:
The Preliminary Stage—during which the country concerned comes to the news, portrayed as a cause for “mounting concern” because of poverty/dictatorship/anarchy;
The Justification Stage—during which big news is produced to lend urgency to the case for armed intervention to bring about a rapid restitution of “normality”;
The Implementation Stage—when pooling and censorship provide control of coverage;
The Aftermath—during which normality is portrayed as returning to the region, before it once again drops down the news agenda.
O’Kane notes “there is always a dead baby story” and it comes at the key point of the Justification Stage—in the form of a story whose apparent urgency brooks no delay—specifically, no time for cool deliberation or negotiating on peace proposals. Human interest stories … are ideal for engendering this atmosphere.
— The Peace Journalist Option, Poiesis.org, August 1997
Award-winning investigative journalist, Phillip Knightley, in an article for the British paper, The Guardian also points out four stages in preparing a nation for war:
- 1. The crisis
- The reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as “We’re on the brink of war”, or “War is inevitable”, etc.
- 2. The demonisation of the enemy’s leader
- Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler’s name provokes.
- 3. The demonisation of the enemy as individuals
- For example, to suggest the enemy is insane.
- 4. Atrocities
- Even making up stories to whip up and strengthen emotional reactions.
One difficulty is that the media have little or no memory. War correspondents have short working lives and there is no tradition or means for passing on their knowledge and experience. The military, on the other hand, is an institution and goes on forever. The military learned a lot from Vietnam and these days plans its media strategy with as much attention as its military strategy.
— Phillip Knightley, Fighting dirty, The Guardian, March 20, 2000
- Incompleteness
- Inaccuracy
- Driving the agenda
- Milking the story (maximizing media coverage of a particular issue by the careful use of briefings, leaking pieces of a jigsaw to different outlets, allowing journalists to piece the story together and drive the story up the news agenda, etc.)
- Exploiting that we want to believe the best of ourselves
- Perception Management (in particular by using PR firms)
- Reinforcing existing attitudes
- Simple, repetitious and emotional phrases (e.g. war on terror, axis of evil, weapons of mass destruction, shock and awe, war of liberation, etc)
Military Control of Information
Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well.Information Operations
The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media. This can involve all manner of activities, from organizing media sessions and daily press briefings, or through providing managed access to war zones, to even planting stories. This has happened throughout the 20th century. Over time then, the way that the media covers conflicts degrades in quality, critique and objectiveness.“Information is the currency of victory” an August 1996 U.S. Army field manual. From a military’s perspective, information warfare is another front on which a battle must be fought. However, as well as needing to deceive adversaries, in order to maintain public support, information to their own public must no doubt be managed as well. That makes sense from a military perspective. Sometimes the public can be willing to sacrifice detailed knowledge. But that can also lead to unaccountability and when information that is presented has been managed such, propaganda is often the result. Beelman also describes how this Information Operations is used to manage information:
For reporters covering this war [on terrorism], the challenge is not just in getting unfettered and uncensored access to U.S. troops and the battlefield—a long and mostly losing struggle in the past—but in discerning between information and disinformation. That is made all the more difficult by a 24-hour news cycle, advanced technology, and the military’s growing fondness for a discipline it calls “Information Operations.” IO, as it is known, groups together information functions ranging from public affairs (PA, the military spokespersons corps) to military deception and psychological operations, or PSYOP. What this means is that people whose job traditionally has been to talk to the media and divulge truthfully what they are able to tell now work hand-in-glove with those whose job it is to support battlefield operations with information, not all of which may be truthful.
— Maud S. Beelman, The Dangers of Disinformation in the War on Terrorism, Coverage of Terrorism Women and Journalism: International Perspectives, from Nieman Reports Magazine, Winter 2001, Vol. 55, No.4, p.16. (from The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University)
Overloading the Media
- This can be done by providing too much information!
- Schechter gives an example of the Kosovo War, where “briefers at NATO’s headquarters in Belgium boasted that this was the key to information control. ‘They would gorge the media with information,’ Beelman writes, quoting one as saying, ‘When you make the media happy, the media will not look for the rest of the story.’”
Ideological Appeals
- A common way to do this is to appeal to patriotism and safeguarding the often unarticulated “national interest”
- Schechter describes, how Condaleezza Rice and other Bush administration officials persuaded the networks to kill bin Laden videos and other Al-Jazeera work during the initial months after the September 11 2001 tragedy. This is nothing new, however, as he points out; “All administrations try to seduce and co-opt the media.” (and of course, this happens all around the world.)
- Schechter describes the ramifications: “It is this ideological conformity and world view that makes it relatively easy for a well-oiled and sophisticated IO propaganda machine to keep the U.S. media in line, with the avid cooperation of the corporate sector, which owns and controls most media outlets. Some of those companies, such as NBC parent General Electric, have long been a core component of that nexus of shared interests that President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. As Noam Chomsky and others have argued, that complex has expanded into a military, industrial and MEDIA complex, in which IO is but one refinement.”
Spinning Information
- Press briefings by military institutions such as NATO, Pentagon etc, where journalist’s questions are answered and information is presented is of course a form of spin. It is the spin that the military will put on it.
- Journalists no doubt expect this, but true to many media propaganda models, seldom are such “official” statements verified and followed up on, especially if from one’s own nation, with whom there is often a lot of trust. A result of this is propaganda and spin becoming the official version.
Withholding Information
- Of course, the military can often hide behind this one!
- Sometimes from a military operational perspective it can be understood why they don’t want to give much (or any) real details. Looked in isolation from other issues, this seems like an understandable and acceptable military strategy.
- Yet, when combined with the other propaganda strategies, it is another way to withhold information.
Co-Option And Collusion
- As Danny Schechter asks on this issue, “why do we in the media go along with this approach time and again? We are not stupid. We are not robots. Too many of us have DIED trying to get this story (and other stories). Ask any journalists and they will tell you that no one tells them what to write or what to do. Yet there is a homogenized flavor and Pentagon echo to much coverage of this war that shames our profession. Why? Is it because reporters buy into the ideology of the mission? Because there are few visible war critics to provide dissenting takes? Or is it because information management has been so effective as to disallow any other legitimate approach? An uncritical stance is part of the problem. Disseminating misinformation often adds up to an inaccurate picture of where we are in this war.”
- Stratfor, a global intelligence consultant comments on the war on terrorism saying that the media have become cheerleaders as “Coverage of the ‘war on terrorism’ has reversed the traditional role between the press and the military.” The problem with this, as they continue, is that “The reversal of roles between media and military creates public expectations that can affect the prosecution of the war.” Or, more bluntly put, the media becomes an effective mouthpiece for propaganda.
Embedded Journalists: An Advantage for the Military
During the short invasion of Iraq in 2003, journalists were “embedded” with various Coalition forces. This was an idea born from the public relations industry, and provided media outlets a detailed and fascinating view for their audiences.For the military, however, it provided a means to control what large audiences would see, to some extent. Independent journalists would be looked upon more suspiciously. In a way, embedded journalists were unwittingly (sometimes knowingly) making a decision to be biased in their reporting, in favor of the Coalition troops. If an embedded journalist was to report unfavorably on coalition forces they were accompanying they would not get any cooperation.
So, in a sense allowing journalists to get closer meant the military had more chance to try and manage the message.In U.K., the History Channel broadcasted a documentary on August 21, 2004, titled War Spin: Correspondent. This documentary looked at Coalition media management for the Iraq war and noted numerous things including the following:
- Embedded journalists allowed the military to maximize imagery while providing minimal insight into the real issues;
- Central Command (where all those military press briefings were held) was the main center from which to:
- Filter, manage and drip-feed journalists with what they wanted to provide;
- Gloss over set-backs, while dwelling on successes;
- Limit the facts and context;
- Even feed lies to journalists;
- Use spin in various ways, such as making it seems as though reports are coming from troops on the ground, which Central Command can then confirm, so as to appear real;
- Carefully plan the range of topics that could be discussed with reporters, and what to avoid.
Dilemma of Journalists and Wartime Coverage
With military conflicts then, reporting raises an interesting dilemma for some; one the one hand, the military wish to present various aspects that would support a campaign, while on the other hand, a journalist is supposed to be critical and not necessarily fall in line. The is captured well by Jane Kirtley, a professor of Media Ethics and Law:Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, journalist F. Colburn Adams wrote, “The future historian of the late war will have [a] very difficult task to perform … sifting the truth from falsehood as it appears in official records.”
Similar to the oft-repeated axiom that truth is the first casualty of war, Adams’ observation succinctly summarizes the nub of the conflict between the military and the news media. The military’s mission is to fight, and to win, whatever conflict may present itself-preferably on the battlefield but certainly in public opinion and the history books. The journalist, on the other hand, is a skeptic if not a cynic and aims to seek, find and report the truth — a mission both parties often view as incompatible with successful warfare, which depends on secrecy and deception as much as superior strategy, tactics, weaponry and manpower.
— Jane Kirtley, Enough is Enough, Media Studies Journal, October 15, 2001
We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know about and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.
— Katharine Graham, Washington Post owner speaking at CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters in 1988, Reported in Regardie’s Magazine, January, 1990, Quoted from David McGowan, Derailing Democracy, (Common Courage Press, 2000), p.109.
In [many cases], the U.S. and other western news media depend on the military for information…. And when the information that military officers provide to the public is part of a process that generates propaganda and places a high value on deceit, deception and denial, then truth is indeed likely to be high on the casualty list.
— William M. Arkin, Media principles: Killed by friendly fire in US infowar, Index on Censorship, 13 November 2002
The history of warfare suggests this is not a false antithesis. Governments, understandably, put a priority on nurturing the morale of the armed forces and the people, intimidating an enemy with the force of the national will They have few scruples about whether they are being fair and just as their propaganda demonizes an alien leader or even a whole population. The enemy is doing the same to them. That is the emotion wars generate, inviting a competitive ecstasy of hate. There is a duel in vicious stereotypes in propaganda posters, illustrations and headlines; populations would be astounded if they could see how they and their leaders are portrayed by the other side. Authority resents it when a newspaper or broadcast shades the black and white.
… Atrocity stories have been debased currency in the war of words. The other side’s are propaganda and should be ignored or discredited by patriotic correspondents; ours are an integral part of the cause, and should be propagated with conviction, uniting people in vengefulness for a cause higher than pedantry. Only after the conflict, the zealots’ argument runs, is there time enough to sift the ashes for truth. History knows now that the Germans did not, as charged in World War I, toss Belgian babies in the air and catch them on bayonets, nor boil down German corpses for glycerin for munitions—a story invented by a British correspondent being pressed by his office for news of atrocities. The French did not, as the German press reported, routinely gouge out the eyes of captured German soldiers, or chop off their fingers for the rings on them. Iraqi soldiers invading Kuwait did not toss premature babies out of incubators, as The Sunday Telegraph in London, and then the Los Angeles Times, reported, quoting Reuters. The story was an invention of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait lobby in Washington and the teen-age “witness” who testified to Congress was coached by the lobby’s public relations company. It was only two years later that the whole thing was exposed for the fraud it was. But the myth galvanized public opinion at a critical moment on the need to go to war, as it was intended to.
… History is a mausoleum of errant emotions: Who is the more patriotic—the government that conceals the blunders its soldiers endure, the cruelties they may inflict, or the correspondent who exposes them so that they might be rectified?
… [In the dilemmas journalists often have between reporting and intervening], Alan Dower, who reported the Korean War for the Melbourne Herald … reporter Rene Cutforth and cameraman Cyril Page saw a column of women in Seoul being marched off to jail; many were carrying babies. The journalists were told the families were all to be shot because someone in the street had identified them as communists. Dower, who was a commando before he was a reporter, was carrying a carbine. He used it to bully his way into the jail, where the trio of journalists found that the women had been made to kneel with their babies in front of an open pit, two machine guns at their backs. Dower threatened to shoot the guard unless he took the trio to the prison governor’s office. There Dower aimed his carbine at the governor and threatened: “If those machine guns fire, I’ll shoot you between the eyes.” Dower, making another threat, that of publicity, secured a promise from the United Nations command in Seoul that it would stamp out such practices.
Did Dower break the normal limits of journalism? Yes, and he was right to do so. One’s first duty is to humanity, and there are exceptional occasions when that duty overrides the canons of any profession.
— Harold Evans, Propaganda vs. Professionalism, War Stories, Newseum (undated)
The sad truth is that in the new millennium, government propaganda prepares its citizens for war so skillfully that it is quite likely that they do not want the truthful, objective and balanced reporting that good war correspondents once did their best to provide.
— Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty, (Prion Books, 1975, 2000 revised edition) p.525
Wider Propaganda
a principle familiar to propagandists is that the doctrine to be instilled in the target audience should not be articulated: that would only expose them to reflection, inquiry, and, very likely, ridicule. The proper procedure is to drill them home by constantly presupposing them, so that they become the very condition for discourse.
— Noam Chomsky
It is easier to dominate someone if they are unaware of being dominated. Colonised and colonisers both know that domination is not just based on physical supremacy. Control of hearts and minds follows military conquest. Which is why any empire that wants to last must capture the souls of its subjects.
— Ignacio Ramonet, The control of pleasure, Le Monde diplomatique, May 2000
When there is little or no elite dissent from a government policy, there may still be some slippage in the mass media, and the facts can tend to undermine the government line. … We have long argued that the “naturalness” of [the] processes [of indirectly pressing the media to keep even more tenaciously to the propaganda assumptions of state policy], with inconvenient facts allowed sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and fundamental dissent virtually excluded from the mass media (but permitted in a marginalized press), makes for a propaganda system that is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda than one with official censorship.
…
It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attach and expose corporate and government malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality of the command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance. (Emphasis Added)
— Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent; The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1988), pp. xiv, 1—2.
- Word Games
-
- Name-calling
- Labeling people, groups, institutions, etc in a negative manner
- Glittering generality
- Labeling people, groups, institutions, etc in a positive manner
- Euphemisms
- Words that pacify the audience with blander meanings and connotations
- False Connections
-
- Transfer
- Using symbols and imagery of positive institutions etc to strengthen acceptance
- Testimonial
- Citing individuals not qualified to make the claims made
- Special Appeal
-
- Plain Folks
- Leaders appealing to ordinary citizens by doing “ordinary” things
- Band Wagon
- The “everyone else is doing it” argument
- Fear
- Heightening, exploiting or arousing people’s fears to get supportive opinions and actions
Since war is particularly unpleasant, military discourse is full of euphemisms. In the 1940’s, America changed the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense. Under the Reagan Administration, the MX-Missile was renamed “The Peacekeeper.” During war-time, civilian casualties are referred to as “collateral damage,” and the word “liquidation” is used as a synonym for “murder.”
— Dr. Aaron Delwiche, Propaganda Analysis, Propaganda Critic Web site, School of Communications, Washington University, March 12, 1995
Suppression By Omission
- He describes that worse than sensationalistic hype is the “artful avoidance” of stories that might be truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic stories).
- Such stories he says are often “downplayed or avoided outright” and that sometimes, “the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself” even important ones.
Attack and Destroy the Target
- Parenti says, “When omission proves to be an insufficient mode of censorship and a story somehow begins to reach larger publics, the press moves from artful avoidance to frontal assault in order to discredit the story”.
- In this technique, the media will resort to discrediting the journalist, saying things like this is “bad journalism”, etc., thus attempting to silence the story or distract away from the main issue.
Labeling
- Parenti says that the media will seek to prefigure perceptions of a subject using positive or negative labels and that the “label defines the subject without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion”. (Emphasis added)
- Examples of labels (positive and negative) that he points to include things like, “stability”, “strong leadership”, “strong defense”, “healthy economy”, “leftist guerrillas”, “Islamic terrorists”, “conspiracy theories”, “inner-city gangs” and “civil disturbances”. Others with double meanings include “reform” and “hardline”.
- Labels are useful, he suggests, because the “efficacy of a label is that it not have a specific content which can be held up to a test of evidence. Better that it be self-referential, propagating an undefined but evocative image.”
Preemptive Assumption
- As Parenti says of this, “Frequently the media accept as given the very policy position that needs to be critically examined”
- This is that classic narrow “range of discourse” or “parameters of debate” whereby unacknowledged assumptions frame the debate.
- As an example he gives, often when the White House proposes increasing military spending, the debates and analysis will be on how much, or on what the money should be spent etc, not whether such as large budget that it already is, is actually needed or not, or if there are other options etc. (See this site’s section on the geopoltiics for more on this aspect of arms trade, spending, etc.)
Face-Value Transmission
- Here, what officials say is taken as is, without critique or analysis.
- As he charges, “Face-value transmission has characterized the press’s performance in almost every area of domestic and foreign policy”
- Of course, for journalists and news organizations, the claim can be that they are reporting only what is said, or that they must not inject personal views into the report etc. Yet, to analyze and challenge the face-value transmission “is not to [have to] editorialize about the news but to question the assertions made by officialdom, to consider critical data that might give credence to an alternative view.” Doing such things would not, as Parenti further points out, become “an editorial or ideological pursuit but an empirical and investigative one”.
Slighting of Content
- Here, Parenti talks about the lack of context or detail to a story, so readers would find it hard to understand the wider ramifications and/or causes and effects, etc.
- The media can be very good and “can give so much emphasis to surface happenings, to style and process” but “so little to the substantive issues at stake.”
- While the media might claim to give the bigger picture, “they regularly give us the smaller picture, this being a way of slighting content and remaining within politically safe boundaries”. An example of this he gives is how if any protests against the current forms of free trade are at all portrayed, then it is with reference to the confrontation between some protestors and the police, seldom the issues that protestors are making about democratic sovereignty and corporate accountability, third world plunder, social justice, etc. (See this site’s, section on free trade protests around the world for a more detailed discussion of this issue.)
False Balancing
- This is where the notion of objectivity is tested!
- On the one hand, only two sides of the story are shown (because it isn’t just “both sides” that represent the full picture.
- On the other hand, “balance” can be hard to define because it doesn’t automatically mean 50-50. In the sense that, as Parenti gives an example of, “the wars in Guatemala and El Salvador during the 1980s were often treated with that same kind of false balancing. Both those who burned villages and those who were having their villages burned were depicted as equally involved in a contentious bloodletting. While giving the appearance of being objective and neutral, one actually neutralizes the subject matter and thereby drastically warps it.”
- (This aspect of objectivity is seldom discussed in the mainstream. However, for some additional detail on this perspective, see for example, Phillip Knightley in his award-winning book, The First Casualty (Prion Books, 1975, 2000 revised edition).)
Follow-up Avoidance
- Parenti gives some examples of how when “confronted with an unexpectedly dissident response, media hosts quickly change the subject, or break for a commercial, or inject an identifying announcement: ‘We are talking with [whomever].’ The purpose is to avoid going any further into a politically forbidden topic no matter how much the unexpected response might seem to need a follow-up query.”
- This can be knowingly done, or without realizing the significance of a certain aspect of the response.
Framing
- “The most effective propaganda,” Parenti says, “relies on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it, using emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments, communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of objectivity. Framing is achieved in the way the news is packaged, the amount of exposure, the placement (front page or buried within, lead story or last), the tone of presentation (sympathetic or slighting), the headlines and photographs, and, in the case of broadcast media, the accompanying visual and auditory effects.”
- Furthermore, he points out that “Many things are reported in the news but few are explained.” Ideologically and politically the deeper aspects are often not articulated: “Little is said about how the social order is organized and for what purposes. Instead we are left to see the world as do mainstream pundits, as a scatter of events and personalities propelled by happenstance, circumstance, confused intentions, bungled operations, and individual ambition — rarely by powerful class interests.”
Focusing on leaders’ thoughts is often a kind of propaganda. It involves repeating the government line without comment, thereby allowing journalists to claim neutrality as simple conduits supplying information. But it is not neutral to repeat the government line while ignoring critics of that line, as often happens. It is also not neutral to include milder criticism simply because it is voiced by a different section of the establishment, while ignoring more radical, but perhaps equally rational, critiques from beyond the state-corporate pale. A big lesson of history is that it is wrong to assume that power, or “respectability”, confers rationality. Media analyst Sharon Beder describes the reality of much mainstream reporting:
“Balance means ensuring that statements by those challenging the establishment are balanced with statements by those whom they are criticising, though not necessarily the other way round.”
Talk of leaders’ “hopes” teaches us to empathise with their wishes by personalising issues: “Blair desperately hopes to build bridges in the Middle East.” This is also a kind of propaganda based on false assumptions. It assumes that the reality of politicians’ “hopes” — their intentions, motivations and goals — is identical to the appearance. Machiavelli was kind enough to explain what every politician knows, and what almost all corporate media journalists feign not to know:
“It is not essential, then, that a Prince should have all the good qualities which I have enumerated above [mercy, good faith, integrity, humanity, and religion] but it is most essential that he should seem to have them; I will even venture to affirm that if he has and invariably practises them all, they are hurtful.”
— David Edwards, Turning Towards Iraq, Media Lens, November 27, 2001 (Emphasis is original)
One of the secrets of media manipulation is to report the horror and strife of the world as though Western power, interests and machinations did not exist. Vast poverty, injustice and chaos in the Third World are depicted as unconnected to the cool oases of civilisation in Europe and the United States, which look on benignly but helplessly, or pitch in heroically to right wrongs as far as they are able. The idea, for example, that the vast economic and military might of North America might in some way be linked to the vast poverty and suffering of neighbouring Central and South America is unthinkable.
An important feature of the reporting that maintains this audacious deception—not consciously but through an internalised sense of what is “just not done” — is to relay our enemies’ “claims” of benign motives as claims, while reporting our governments’ claims without comment, or as obviously true — the message, tirelessly repeated, gets through to the public and an important propaganda function is thereby fulfilled. This is called “honest, factual reporting”.
— David Edwards, Burying Big Business, Media Lens, May 22, 2002 (Emphasis is original)
Propaganda in Democracies
Propaganda in totalitarian regimes is easy to recognize for its blatant and crude methods. In democratic societies, propaganda exists, as most of the above attests to. But, it is harder to see.As a result, it is important to keep such elements of propaganda in mind when we see coverage of conflicts or even other issues in the media, regardless of the media organization and their apparent reputation.
In many democracies, people hold dear the freedom of speech that they are supposed to have. Yet, “propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism,” notes Noam Chomsky. Public accountability of major institutions and of the government must be constantly maintained to avoid propaganda.
In 1921, the famous American journalist Walter Lippmann said that the art of democracy requires what he called the “manufacture of consent.” This phrase is an Orwellian euphemism for thought control. The idea is that in a state such as the U.S. where the government can’t control the people by force, it had better control what they think. The Soviet Union is at the opposite end of the spectrum from us in its domestic freedoms. It’s essentially a country run by the bludgeon. It’s very easy to determine what propaganda is in the USSR: what the state produces is propaganda.
… Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism.
… For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments.
— Noam Chomsky, Propaganda, American-style, Interview conducted by David Barsamian of KGNU-Radio in Boulder, Colorado (Mid 1986)
What journalism is really about—it’s to monitor power and the centres of power.
— Amira Hass, quoted by Robert Fisk, Amira Hass: Life under Israeli occupation—by an Israeli, The Independent, August 26, 2001
Why Does So Much Propaganda Work?
Propaganda seems to work because of a number of reasons, including:- People wish to believe the best about themselves and their country;
- Fear-mongering, especially about the threat to cherished values such as freedom and justice;
- Presenting fears and claims that appear logical and factual.
- Media management and public relations is very professional
- Managing thoughts by narrowing ranges of debate, thus minimizing widely discussed thoughts that deviate from the main agendas;
Wanting to believe the best of ourselves
In democracies, people like to believe that they and their countries are generally good, for if it was any other way then it brings into moral question all they know and hold dear. The histories of some nations may have involved overcoming adversaries for legitimate reasons (e.g. the American war to gain its independence and freedom from the British Empire was one based on strong moral grounds of freedom from imperial rule). Such important history is often recounted and remembered as part of the collective culture of the country and those same values are projected into modern times. Propaganda sometimes works by creating the fear of losing such cherished values.The following perhaps serve as ominous warnings, given the source:All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it…. Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
— Adolf Hitler
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than to a small lie. For they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.
— Adolf Hitler
Fear-mongering and distorting facts
Guiterrez, mentioned much further above, also interviews Dr. Nancy Snow, (once a “propagandist” for the U.S. Information Agency as she admits in her 1998 book, Propaganda Inc; Selling America’s Culture to the World). Snow suggests that you don’t need facts, just the best facts:[Given all the revelations discrediting Bush’s reasons for war with Iraq,] “You may wonder why it is that a majority of Americans still link Saddam to 9/11,” says Snow. “The reason for such a belief is because the American people were repeatedly told by the President and his inner circle that Saddam’s evil alone was enough to be linked to 9/11 and that given time, he would have used his weapons against us. With propaganda, you don’t need facts per se, just the best facts put forward. If these facts make sense to people, then they don’t need proof like one might need in a courtroom.”
According to Snow, the U.S. government succeeded in “driving the agenda” and “milking the story” (maximising media coverage of a particular issue by the careful use of [media management].)
“That’s also very commonly practice,” she says. “When a country goes off to war, so goes its media with it. The news media were caught up in the rally round the flag syndrome. They were forced to choose a side, and given the choices, whose side did they logically choose but the U.S.?”
— Mirren Guiterrez, The 'Prop-Agenda' at War, Inter Press Service, June 27, 2004
While the U.S. government campaign [for war on Iraq] had an impact on the U.S. public, the “perception management” was a failure at influencing foreign audiences.
According to [Professor Randall Bytwerk, a specialist in propaganda] “it is far easier to make propaganda at home than abroad. One has more credibility at home, and much more in common with the audience. Although Nazi propaganda was not completely believed by Germans, they believed what their government said far more than the British believed German propaganda, for example. All things being equal, most people want to believe they live in a good country.”
— Mirren Guiterrez, The 'Prop-Agenda' at War, Inter Press Service, June 27, 2004
Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
— General Herman Goering, President of German Reichstag and Nazi Party, Commander of Luftwaffe during World War II, April 18, 1946. (This quote is said to have been made during the Nuremburg Trials, but in fact, while during the time of the trials, was made in private to an Allied intelligence officer, later published in the book, Nuremburg Diary.)
Media management and public relations is very professional
The impacts of public relations cannot be underestimated. In the commercial world, marketing and advertising are typically needed to make people aware of products. There are many issues in that area alone (which is looked at in this site’s section on corporate media.) When it comes to propaganda for purposes of war, for example, professional public relations firms can often be involved to help sell a war. In cases where a war is questionable, the PR firms are indirectly contributing to the eventual and therefore unavoidable casualties. Media management may also be used to promote certain political policies and ideologies. Where this is problematic for the citizenry is when media reports on various issues do not attribute their sources properly.Some techniques used by governments and parties/people with hidden agendas include:
- Paying journalists to promote certain issues without the journalist acknowledging this, or without the media mentioning the sources;
- Governments and individuals contracting PR firms to sell a war, or other important issues
- Disinformation or partial information reported as news or fact without attributing sources that might be questionable
- PR firms feeding stories to the press without revealing the nature of the information with the intention of creating a public opinion (for example, to support a war, as the previous link highlights where even human rights groups fell for some of the disinformation, thus creating an even more effective propaganda campaign)
“I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician,” Rendon said. “I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager.” He reminded the Air Force cadets that when victorious troops rolled into Kuwait City at the end of the first war in the Persian Gulf, they were greeted by hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags. The scene, flashed around the world on television screens, sent the message that U.S. Marines were being welcomed in Kuwait as liberating heroes.
“Did you ever stop to wonder,” Rendon asked, “how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American, and for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?” He paused for effect. “Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then.”
… Public relations firms often do their work behind the scenes….But his description of himself as a “perception manager” echoes the language of Pentagon planners, who define “perception management” as “actions to convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning. … In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops [psychological operations].”
— Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, How To Sell a War, In These Times, 4 August, 2003
Disseminating prepackaged, even fake news
In March 2005, the New York Times revealed that there has been a large amount of fake and prepackaged news created by US government departments, such as the Pentagon, the State Department and others, and disseminated through the mainstream media. The New York Times noted a number of important issues including:- The US Bush administration has “aggressively” used public relations to prepackage news. Issues with this have included that:
- A number of these government-made news segments are made to look like local news (either by the government department or by the receiving broadcaster);
- Sometimes these reports have fake reporters such as when a “‘reporter’ covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration”;
- Other times, there is no mention that a video segment is produced by the government;
- Where there is some attribution, news stations simply rebroadcast them but sometimes without attributing the source.
- These segments have reached millions;
- This benefits both the government and the broadcaster;
- This could amount to propaganda within the United States as well as internationally.
This issue is covered in more depth on this site’s media manipulation section.
Smear tactics are increasing in sophistication
Smear tactics are often used to discredit, stain or destroy the reputation of someone. It is unfortunately common-place and is an age-old technique. It can either involve outright lies, or a distortion of the truth.With the increasing popularity of the Internet, and search engines such as Google, smearing is taking on additional forms and techniques. Juan Cole, a professor of history has described what he has coined a “GoogleSmear” as a political tactic to discredit him. His personal experience is quoted here:
It seems to me that David Horowitz and some far rightwing friends of his have hit upon a new way of discrediting a political opponent, which is the GoogleSmear. It is an easy maneuver for someone like Horowitz, who has extremely wealthy backers, to set up a web magazine that has a high profile and is indexed in google news. Then he just commissions persons to write up lies about people like me (leavened with innuendo and out-of-context quotes). Anyone googling me will likely come upon the smear profiles, and they can be passed around to journalists and politicians as though they were actual information.
— Juan Cole, The GoogleSmear as Political Tactic, Informed Comment Blog, March 27, 2005
Narrowing the Range of Debate
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
— Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, Odonian Press, 1998
Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak out [in democratic societies], those in power better control what that voice says — in other words, control what people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins. You have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions — and that those assumptions are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, the debate is permissible.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. propaganda system did its job partially but not entirely. Among educated people it worked very well. Studies show that among the more educated parts of the population, the government’s propaganda about the war is now accepted unquestioningly. One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system — and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they’re part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power.
— Noam Chomsky, Propaganda, American-style, Interview conducted by David Barsamian of KGNU-Radio in Boulder, Colorado (Mid 1986)
In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective [than a propaganda system imposed in a totalitarian regime]. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don’t notice it — or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place—heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice — and think that, because we have “free” media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.
…the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn’t just propaganda any more, it’s “prop-agenda.” It’s not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false “intelligence” and selected “leaks”. (What else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair Campbell be but a prime example of this?)
With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then “use the democratic process” to agree or disagree — for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
— Brian Eno, Lessons in how to lie about Iraq, The Observer/Guardian, August 17, 2003
It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and government malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality of the command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance. (Emphasis Added)
— Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent; The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1988), pp. xiv, 1—2.
Some Detailed Examples
In the following pages, some examples of propaganda and the media are presented. (In some cases the media is a participant in the propaganda, sometimes knowingly and other times unknowingly, and sometimes even both.) However, while some of the specific pages may seem long, these form very few examples and over time more will be added.For now though, the examples chosen reflect some of the more notable issues that did turn up in the mainstream, and so to some extent, a lot of people are familiar with these issues, but maybe not some of the deeper issues that were obscured by propaganda of various sorts.
The impacts of such propaganda contributed to the loss of millions of lives for it helped form a sense of legitimacy to what could otherwise have been regarded as controversial. Propaganda therefore comes with a huge cost.
Where next?
This article has the following parts:
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Alternatively, copy/paste the following MLA citation format for this page:
Shah, Anup. “War, Propaganda and the Media.” Global Issues. 31 Mar. 2005. Web. 29 Aug. 2015. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media>.
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Author and Page Information
- Created: Friday, January 22, 1999
- Last Updated: Thursday, March 31, 2005
Document Revision History
| Date | Reason |
|---|---|
| March 31, 2005 | The Internet is being used to help improve smear tactics |
| March 16, 2005 | Added a bit on the dissemination of prepackaged and sometimes even fake news |
| January 31, 2005 | Added a small section on effects of professional media management and public relations |
| August 21, 2004 | About how embedded journalism and the media briefings at Central Command were carefully and successfully managed by the Coalition forces in the Iraq war |
| July 25, 2004 | Rearranged page into numerous sub-sections. Also added some additional elements of propaganda as well sections on why propaganda works, propaganda and democracy and embedded journalism. |
Alternatives for broken links
Sometimes links to other sites may break beyond my control. Where possible, alternative links are provided to backups or reposted versions here.
Actual Link:
- Miren Guiterrez, 'The 'Prop-Agenda' at War', Inter Press Service, June 27, 2004http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24386
Alternative:
Actual Link:
Alternative:
Actual Link:
Alternative:
Actual Link:
- Jane Mayer, 'The Manipulator', The New Yorker, May 29, 2004http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040607fa_fact1
Alternatives:
- http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/053004B.shtml
- For a summary of Mayer’s detailed account, see this site’s Iraq Handover page’s section on Ahmed Chalabihttp://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/Iraq/Pos...
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Ted Turner’s
United Nations Foundation: Making the UN a Pawn for Tax-Exempt Special
Interests
by Cliff Kincaid
Almost 18 months after Time-Warner vice-chairman Ted Turner announced he would give $1 billion to the United Nations, serious questions remain about the nature and influence of his "gift."
One concern is technical and legal: Turner’s money is being channeled to the UN through a private foundation and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. But the UN is strictly prohibited by its own charter from accepting contributions not from member nations. Questions raised about this practice have not been fully answered by the UN.
Another concern is legislative and constitutional: Turner’s United Nations Foundation has very close ties to the Clinton administration and appears to be furthering the interests of certain State Department officials. Could Turner’s foundation be using private funds to help federal bureaucrats skirt funding roadblocks erected by Congress?
The final concern is political: Turner’s financial support for UN activities threatens to exert undue influence over UN policy and international relations. As is typical for the outspoken billionaire, the activities funded by Turner’s foundation are controversial and even raise serious human rights concerns. Moreover, in some cases, they ignore official U.S. policy to pursue the personal agendas of the foundation’s trustees.
No Surprises
When Turner announced his $1 billion donation last September, the media described the gift in glowing terms. Turner would help the UN with much-needed funds to take care of children, women and the environment.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Turner a "world citizen extra-ordinaire." The New York Times described the proposal as "probably the single largest charitable donation in history." And it earned Turner a cover story in Newsweek, which quoted him as saying he was "putting the rich on notice" to follow his lead. There was even talk that Turner might be awarded the Nobel Prize.
But when Foundation Watch took a closer look at Turner’s plans in December 1997, we characterized Turner’s gift as "an opportunity to pursue his liberal social agenda through a powerful association of national governments." The UN Foundation was never intended to serve the UN members’ interests or needs, but to expand UN programs on population control, environmental regulation and other personal interests of Turner’s.
The media mogul’s leftist political views are well-known. He is one of many who slept in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House because of his strong support for President Bill Clinton. He has associated with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who allowed Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN) to become the first U.S.-based news organization with a Havana bureau since the Communist takeover. Turner’s wife, actress Jane Fonda, achieved notoriety for supporting the Communist side during the Vietnam war.
However, Turner’s personal politics may not be the only driving force behind the UN Foundation. Certainly the timing of his gift fueled the battle in Congress over U.S. payment of its alleged $1.5 billion debt to the UN. Clinton administration officials and others who advocate more UN funding may see the UN Foundation as a way to support activities not currently funded by UN member states, especially the U.S.
Indeed, Turner announced his gift at a dinner sponsored by the United Nations Association of the U.S., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that raises private funds and advocates more federal support for UN activities. In recent years, the UN Association has complained bitterly about the U.S. failure to pay its "debt" to the UN. The Association has even urged consideration of a global tax to alleviate the UN’s financial problems.
Elaborate Structure
The UN Foundation’s first year of operation has provided clues to its structure and relationship with the UN, but many questions remain unanswered.
Turner’s gift, it turns out, is not as generous as described in media reports. An amount of up to $1 billion will be donated in the form of Time-Warner stock in ten annual installments. The cost to Turner could be significantly less than $1 billion if he takes advantage of tax write-offs, tax deductions and ways to avoid estate taxes. Amazingly, USA Today claims "Turner, or at least his heirs, could end up $100 million richer because he’s giving a billion away."
Moreover, the donation will be made not to the UN directly, but to Turner’s private UN Foundation. The foundation is tax-exempt under U.S. law and has no legal affiliation with the UN.
The UN and the UN Foundation have completed a 20-page agreement governing the use of foundation grants. According to the agreement, UN Secretary-General Annan will review grant applications before asking for approval from the UN Foundation board. But foundation grants will be disbursed by UN officials.
Annan has created his own bureaucracy to manage the money. The UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) is led by Miles Stoby of Guyana, the former Deputy Executive Coordinator for UN Reform. To demonstrate the importance of Ted Turner’s funds to the UN, Annan has announced that Stoby will report directly to him, and Stoby’s post will be at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.
The Better World Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the same leadership and trustees as the UN Foundation, will coordinate "public education" on behalf of the UN. It aims to create "a broader constituency of citizens, organizations and businesses with a deeper commitment to international cooperation through the United Nations."
The agreement was signed by Hans Corell, UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, and UN Foundation President Timothy Wirth. Atlanta attorney J. Rutherford Seydel II is listed as a recipient of any notices stemming from "disputes" between the foundation and UNFIP. Seydel is also listed in official papers as the legal representative for Jane Fonda’s new foundation. (See related article on page 1.) Any disputes will be resolved by an international arbitration panel.
The agreement offers no clues about the UN’s justification for accepting private foundation funds, which is a violation of the UN Charter. Article 17, Section 2 of the charter states that UN expenses "shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly." This requirement is supposed to prevent private interests like the UN Foundation from exercising undue influence over the world body.
This author has repeatedly asked UN officials and members of Congress to provide a legal justification for the UN’s acceptance of UN Foundation grants. Concerns about the foundation’s activities were first expressed in an October 1997 letter to Joe Sills, then director of the UN Information Office in Washington, DC:
"The UN Charter says the expenses of the organization shall be borne by the member-states. How, then, can the UN accept any money from a source outside of the member-states, such as a foundation, business or individual?
"What is the tax status of the UN in the U.S.? Can U.S. citizens make tax-deductible contributions to the UN?"
No answers have been provided, although the UN’s legal department is supposedly studying the matter. However, it is known that contributions to the UN are not tax-deductible in the U.S. — thus Turner’s elaborate setup to funnel $1 billion to the UN through a tax-exempt foundation.
Radical Leaders
The UN Foundation’s trustees share a globalist outlook, and most of them have a long association with the UN. The board includes Turner as chairman and Timothy Wirth as president.
Wirth is a former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs (1993-1997) and Colorado Democratic Senator (1987-1993). Before leaving the State Department, Wirth promoted the implementation of the global warming treaty. Even if the global warming theory is wrong, he has said, "we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." A former official of Planned Parenthood in Colorado, Wirth is a crusader for population control and abortion rights.
The involvement of UN Foundation trustee Maurice Strong, long regarded as a possible candidate for UN Secretary-General, is also significant. The Canadian, a longtime friend of Turner and Wirth, has been involved in UN activities for more than 30 years. In 1997, Strong served as Executive Coordinator for UN Reform under Annan, and his deputy was UNFIP director Miles Stoby. He also chaired the 1992 Earth Summit.
During the early 1990s, Strong was a key member of the independent Commission on Global Governance, an international organization funded by the MacArthur Foundation. The Commission published the 1995 report Our Global Neighborhood, calling for a vast expansion of UN resources and activities through the imposition of a global tax. (See Foundation Watch, September 1996.)
A wealthy Canadian who lived in Colorado in the 1980s, Strong came under scrutiny by the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight during its campaign finance investigation in 1997. Strong, who is not a U.S. citizen, made a $20,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee and gave $1,500 to two congressional campaigns in 1988. Strong said he made the contributions "because I wanted influence in the United States." But U.S. law prohibits contributions by foreign nationals unless they have a green card and intend to make the U.S. their permanent residence.
Interestingly, Strong’s activities in Colorado also included formation of a group called the North American Institute to encourage passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). One of those involved in the effort was John Wirth, brother of Timothy.
Other UN Foundation trustees include Brazilian first lady Ruth Cardoso, an international AIDS activist and a participant in the UN’s 1996 Habitat II conference; Graca Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique and a UN-designated children’s rights advocate; Emma Rothschild, a British associate of Strong who champions environment and disarmament causes; Andrew Young, U.S. ambassador to the UN during the Carter administration; and Pakistani Muhammad Yunus, an economist who has accused financial institutions of shortchanging the poor.
Target: Human Race
The first round of 22 UN Foundation grants was announced on May 20, 1998 and totaled almost $22.2 million. Another round of 17 grants was announced last September, totalling more than $32.8 million. The grants confirm the Foundation’s liberal bent and selective grantmaking.
Two UN agencies received more than 50 percent of the first-year grants: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) received almost $12.2 million, and $18.6 million went to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Both agencies are involved in controversial projects to encourage and assist abortions and other population control measures.
Another big recipient of UN Foundation funds is the World Health Organization (WHO), which is linked to UNICEF and UNFPA through a "Coordinating Committee on Health." Last year, WHO received two UN Foundation grants totalling almost $9 million. An additional grant worth $2.8 million was awarded jointly to WHO and UNICEF.
It is no surprise that a sizeable portion of the UN Foundation’s grants support UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO. These agencies have been criticized for their population control activities and complacency regarding human rights abuses, and from the outset Turner announced that his foundation would support population control.
Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon asked in a May 5, 1998 Wall Street Journal column whether the UN was being manipulated by Turner and his associates to maintain an aggressive campaign to reduce the human population "by any means possible."
Examples of UN Foundation grants supporting population control include UNFPA grants for "the delivery of family planning services" to reduce high fertility rates in Bolivia, the Comoros, Lebanon and the Philippines. Other grants encourage journalists to cover population control issues and target adolescent girls for family planning services.
Turner has a long history of support for population control activities. Turner and wife Jane Fonda served as "Goodwill Ambassadors" for UNFPA. Fonda now leads a Georgia campaign against teen pregnancy, partly funded by a private condom maker.
According to Nicholas Eberstadt, a population expert with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., Turner is on record in favor of a radical policy that Eberstadt calls "de-population." As recently as last month, the father of five children called for a worldwide one-child-per-family policy to reduce the world population. "We could do it in a very humane way, if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years," Turner told participants at the annual meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association in Washington, D.C.
Once honored as "Humanist of the Year" by the American Humanist Association, Turner’s stridency on population control has earned him a reputation as an anti-Christian bigot. In remarks last October to the Society of Environmental Journalists, he complained that the Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes "dominion over everything" and "increase and multiply." Turner once told a Dallas Morning News reporter that Christianity is "a religion for losers" and "I don’t want anybody [i.e., Jesus Christ] to die for me."
Wirth also is no stranger to population control efforts. In addition to his Planned Parenthood work in Colorado, Wirth led the State Depart-ment’s defense of a Clinton administration decision to deport several Chinese women who sought asylum in the U.S. to avoid forced abortion and sterilization in their native country.
At the urging of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), chairman of the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, Congress has cut off federal funds for UNFPA because the agency has been accused of compliance with the brutal Chinese population control program of one-child-per-family. Congressional hearings have disclosed that the Chinese government has forced many women to have abortions when they exceeded their one-child limit. Some women have testified that they were physically assaulted and forced to undergo abortions when they tried to carry a second child to term. In some cases, baby girls were allegedly abandoned or starved to death in government-run orphanages because of China’s cultural preference for male children.
Congressman Smith says UNFPA also has supplied abortion devices and drugs to refugees, displaced persons and "other poor and vulnerable women around the world."
UNICEF has been under increasing scrutiny since the Vatican decided two years ago to withdraw its support for the agency because of its involvement in population control programs. The Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a UN-recognized non-governmental organization (NGO), observes, "Particular concern has centered on UNICEF’s involvement in the drafting of a field manual for use by relief workers in refugee camps. The manual specifically called for the provision of vacuum aspirators that are used for abortions." UNICEF is headed by an ardent feminist, Carol Bellamy, a former New York City official and Democratic mayoral candidate.
Lack of Funds?
Many UN Foundation grants to UNFPA and UNICEF do not reflect an aggressive population control agenda. For example, some grants support UNICEF for "the eradication of polio" and for distributing "vitamin supplements to save mothers’ lives." WHO was granted almost $5.2 million as part of the UN Foundation program "Global Health Leadership for the 21st Century." This is described as a partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and the UN Foundation to support WHO director-general Gro Brundtland "in her efforts to revitalize the organization," which has been plagued by scandal and corruption.
But critics complain that such grants, even when they support laudable efforts, still help underwrite population control activities. Indeed, when the Vatican requested that its financial contributions to UNICEF be directed into projects with no relation to abortion, UNICEF officials said they could not comply. The problem is that grants to UN agencies are "fungible," meaning that despite their intended purposes, they free up funds in agency budgets so officials can reallocate revenues to population control efforts.
The likelihood of shifting such funds increases if there are severe budget constraints, as UNICEF and UNFPA leaders claim. Shortly after Turner’s announcement of his $1 billion gift, officials of these two agencies and the UN Development Program (UNDP) issued a statement saluting Turner’s "extremely generous and socially conscious decision." They claimed the funds would arrive at a "crucial moment" for the UN as it grapples with "dwindling resources to meet a growing array of vital needs." The implication was that Turner’s private funds might fill the gap created by a failure or reluctance of UN member governments to fund those agencies.
The alleged funding gap may also explain the U.S. State Department’s close connection to UN Foundation efforts. Because Timothy Wirth leads the foundation, some communication with the Clinton administration is to be expected. But could the State Department be influencing the UN Foundation to provide private funds for programs and policies that are opposed by influential members of Congress whom the Administration does not want to confront?
A recent encounter suggests the relationship is worthy of investigation. At a January 15 press conference on population matters in Washington, D.C., Wirth associate Ellen Marshall appeared with Frank E. Loy, Wirth’s successor as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. Marshall, who is responsible for women’s issues at the UN Foundation, left the Clinton State Department with Wirth.
At the press conference, Marshall described the UN Foundation’s $1.1 million grant for an NGO and Youth forum held the previous month in The Hague, Netherlands to review the platform of the controversial 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo. The grant was meant to enable the NGOs to review the ICPD platform and work on strategies to implement the Cairo platform. It was funneled through UNFPA.
Marshall said she helped draft a controversial presidential decision directive (PDD) on population issues when she was a State Department official. The June 1, 1994 PDD proposed to reduce "the rate of population growth as rapidly as possible to levels consistent with sustainable development" through close cooperation with the UN. The document said the U.S. would continue to support "population assistance programs" primarily through the Agency for International Development, and would provide "adequate resources" to UNFPA, WHO and other UN agencies.
But Marshall said the State Depart-ment’s draft PDD on population issues was abandoned in favor of adopting the official "program of action" of the Cairo conference as official U.S. policy. This platform stopped just short of endorsing abortion as a method of family planning because of the opposition of the Vatican and some Third World countries.
According to Marshall, "There was a great deal of work done trying to reassess what the policy should be. That also happened to coincide with the International Conference on Population and Development. So rather than have a U.S. policy on international [population issues], the United States participated in this international discussion and looked to the ICPD program of action as its official position. So while there is no PDD, there is the United States endorsing the ICPD program of action as its policy statement.... It was a very conscious decision."
It is clear that when the UN Foundation supported the Netherlands follow-up conference, Marshall as a private foundation official was furthering a population policy she developed and the State Department endorsed through the UN conference. But the State Department’s apparent deference to a private grantmaker for help with funding its agenda — which includes activities opposed by influential members of Congress — raises important questions about the relationship of the UN Foundation and the Clinton administration.
Greening the Earth
The UN Foundation is also using its grants to assist UN efforts to secure compliance with the global warming treaty, also known as the Kyoto Protocol.
Last year, the foundation granted $1 million to the UN Industrial Development Organization and more than $1.2 million to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The grants support creation of an emissions-trading system, a concept backed by the White House as part of the global warming treaty. The system would allow U.S. firms to exceed UN treaty limits on fossil fuel emissions by purchasing pollution credits from other countries or transferring technology to the Third World. One element of the project — "assistance to governments in defining adequate domestic regulatory and supervisory frameworks" — suggests the extent to which UN Foundation money will subsidize government regulatory agencies.
The UN Foundation has committed another $900,000 for "Post-Kyoto Climate Change Policies" in China. The grant will support the development of public policies to reduce "greenhouse" gas emissions. The funds will be channeled through the World Resources Institute (WRI) and UNDP, which is headed by Clinton appointee and WRI founder James Gustave Speth. Speth is reportedly leaving his UNDP post in June to help Vice President Gore run for president.
There is a serious political problem with the UN Foundation’s grants: they support the implementation of a treaty that has not been ratified by — or even submitted to — the U.S. Senate. Most observers say that the pact, if submitted, would fail by a wide margin because it could cripple our industrial economy, while major fossil fuel emitters like China flatly refuse to sign or abide by it.
Other UN Foundation grants for environmental projects are less controversial. A $650,000 grant to the UN Environment Program (UNEP) supports efforts to reduce the impact of El Nino-related emergencies, and a $2.4 million grant helps African cities to develop better water management systems. But what can be expected from a $350,000 grant to let young people assess the state of the global environment?
Controversial Grants
Turner has never been afraid to leap into controversy, and the UN Foundation has followed his lead. While many of the 1998 foundation grants support worthy projects — like eradicating Guinea Worm disease in Africa or fighting slave and drug trafficking — some grants deserve closer inspection.
For example, a 1998 grant made jointly to WHO and UNICEF supports their efforts to promote "long-term strategies" to ensure "tobacco-free children and youth." No doubt the U.S. tobacco control movement is going global. Once again, children are the excuse for new taxes and regulation on the tobacco industry. The UN Foundation claims "this project is the single largest grant ever made to prevent and discourage international tobacco use among children and adolescents."
On the other hand, another UN Foundation grant is promising despite some controversy. The grant provides more than $3 million over two years to UNICEF for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia. The disease is a major problem in Third World countries, and the most tragic victims are the young. Babies whose mothers are HIV-positive have about a 28 percent chance of contracting the virus through breast milk.
Since last June, UNICEF has launched pilot projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America which support HIV-positive women who choose not to breast-feed. With UN Foundation funding, UNICEF counsels mothers about the risk of HIV transmission through breast-feeding and provides milk substitutes "for up to six months if necessary."
Thus UNICEF and the UN Foundation seem to be moving in a direction encouraged by groups like the Foundation for Democracy in Africa, which accuses UNICEF of helping to spread AIDS under its former policy of promoting breast-feeding exclusively. In this case, the UN Foundation may be having a positive impact on the policies of a UN agency.
Conclusion
Ted Turner’s dedication to the UN is well-known. He flies the UN flag over CNN Center in Atlanta and bans the use of the word "foreign" on CNN broadcasts.
But while Turner’s money could prove successful in revitalizing controversial UN agencies, it could also lead to increasing private involvement in the affairs of the world organization. Indeed, some have suggested using private funds to alleviate all the UN’s financial problems, including the so-called U.S. "debt."
For political reasons, Secretary-General Annan has ruled that out, saying that UN Foundation grants will not offset America’s $1.5 billion debt because the world body cannot accept contributions from private citizens for that purpose. But if this is true, how can private citizens make contributions to the UN for any purpose at all?
Private funding for the UN makes congressional attempts to de-fund the UN or its agencies almost irrelevant. This might cheer supporters of privatization or implacable opponents of the UN. But is also undercuts those who hope U.S. government financial pressure might force much-needed UN reforms. A few billionaires could further the transformation of the UN from a collection of member-states to the pawn of tax-exempt special interests. That, of course, is a serious threat to American interests and perhaps to the UN itself.
Cliff Kincaid is a freelance journalist and president of America’s Survival, a public policy nonprofit.
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Ted Turner's $1 Billion U.N. Give-Away:
Global Soft Money
Maybe Ted Turner will gain a seat on the U.N. Security Council. After all, in local politics the old saying is "Follow the money." Why should it be any different on a global scale? Ted Turner has publicly stated his global visions of shaping environmental policy and population control according to his agenda. Turner's gift to the U.N. looks like just another example of "Hide in plain sight" -- it looks like philanthropy but is really something else. After years of Turner's so-called philanthropy, this fam iliar spectacle provokes very little attention and even less suspicion. What makes this Turner "charitable gift" different is one, the enormous size, and two, the recipient of the gift. What kind of tax breaks does Turner get? What kind of business advant ages will Turner gain? The worst thing that might happen to Turner is that he will generate enormous good will. He is casting bread upon the waters, and stands to reap a great harvest, or profit. With Turner's money, and U.S. withholding of payments to th e U.N., the United Nations will likely oppose U.S. interests more frequently and more openly and submit to the clamoring world mob. You can bet Turner has strings tied to some, or all of this money. This is global "soft money". Ted Turner's pledge to the United Nations of $1 billion in stocks over ten years appeared in all the news reports listed below.
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/CelebrityFiles/TurnerandFonda/TedTurner/ttunsoft.htm
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R.E. Turner
R.E. Turner is vice chairman of Time Warner Inc. and founder of CNN. He is also a member of Time Warner's board of directors. Time Warner Inc., the world's leading media and entertainment company, consists of four fundamental businesses: entertainment, cable networks , publishing and cable, with interests in filmed entertainment, television production, broadcasting, recorded music, music publishing, cable-television programming, sports franchises, magazines, book publishing, and cable-television systems. Turner oversees the Time Warner cable networks divisions, which consist of the assets of Turner Broadcasting System including Cable News Network (CNN), Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network Latin America, Cartoon Network Japan, CNN Airport Network, CNN en Espanol, CNNfn, CNN International (CNNI), CNN/SI, Headline News, TBS Superstation, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Turner Network Television (TNT), TNT Latin America, TNT & Cartoon Network in Europe, TNT & Cartoon Network in Asia Pacific; as well as Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO), Cinemax, Warner Bros. International Networks and Time Warner's interest in Comedy Central and Court TV. He also oversees New Line Cinema and the company's professional sports teams - Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves, National Basketball Association's Atlanta Hawks and the Thrashers, the National Hockey League's expansion team in Atlanta.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/WorldReport/conference/1998/participants/speakers.html#turner
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Ted Turner Offers $35
Million To Help U.S. Pay U.N. Dues
Turner Offers $35 Million To Help U.S. Pay U.N. Dues
By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, December 22, 2000 ; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 -- CNN founder Ted Turner has offered to make up the $35 million difference between the dues that the United States owes to the United Nations for 2001 and the amount Congress is willing to pay.
Turner's offer is intended to help U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke
clinch a deal for a permanent reduction in the U.S. share of the U.N.
budget and to bring an end to Washington's chronic debts to the world
body, U.S. officials and a Turner representative said.
The prospect of a billionaire media entrepreneur bailing out the United
States is a measure of how complex and troubled the U.S. relationship
with the United Nations has become.
As the Clinton administration draws to a close, it is making a final push
to resolve the funding issue and to reduce simmering resentment over the
U.S. debts, which senior American diplomats contend are not only an
embarrassment but also reduce the nation's clout in the world body.
At the same time, key conservatives in Congress, such as Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-N.C.), remain skeptical about the United Nations and its many offshoots,
which they view as spendthrift, bloated bureaucracies that often take
anti-American stands.
Turner has stepped into the middle of this picture, showing an apparent
taste for the limelight through high-profile philanthropy as well as a
passionate conviction that the United States should be more deeply
involved in the United Nations. He previously pledged to donate $1 billion
to the organization's work, but had said he would not help pay America's
dues.
In sticky negotiations that have come to a head this week, Holbrooke and
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright are trying to persuade other
countries to agree to reduce Washington's share of the annual U.N.
administrative budget from 25 percent to 22 percent.
Congress has passed legislation capping the U.S. contribution at 22 percent
and also has made payment of $926 million in U.S. arrears contingent on the United Nations accepting that reduction permanently.
During a closed-door meeting at U.N. headquarters this week, Holbrooke
promised his counterparts from around the world that if they agreed to
reduce Washington's share of the U.N. budget, the United States would
voluntarily cover the difference -- about $35 million -- for a year.
What he didn't tell them was that Turner would provide those funds, though
only if a firm deal is reached.
Turner made the offer to Holbrooke about five weeks ago at a board meeting of the United Nations Foundation, a private charity Turner established to distribute the $1 billion he pledged to contribute to U.N. causes. Albright, briefed on the offer, "thought it was wonderful," a U.S.
official said.
"Ted's gesture is extraordinary and visionary," Holbrooke said today. "I hope it proves to be the key that unlocks this extraordinarily complex problem."
Turner was unavailable for comment, according to a spokeswoman at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. But Tim Wirth, the former Democratic senator from Colorado who runs Turner's U.N. Foundation, confirmed Turner had made the offer.
According to Wirth and others, Holbrooke told the U.N. Foundation's board of directors last month that most countries had already set their national budgets for 2001. As a result, Holbrooke warned, it would be difficult for those governments to agree to cut the U.S. contribution and increase their own shares of the United Nations' $1.1 billion budget for 2001.
"Holbrooke said how complicated and difficult this [negotiation] was going
to be," Wirth recalled. "So Ted said, 'Well, what if I made available
funding so that you have flexibility? If that would be a useful part to
throw into this negotiation, you know I'll be happy to do that.' "
The potential arrangement was then vetted by State Department lawyers,
according to a senior U.S. official. "It is legal," the official said.
Although the United Nations is prohibited from accepting money from a
private donor to cover a country's dues, "as a matter of principle,
the U.N. can accept contributions from governments, and the U.N. doesn't
care where it comes from," said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
In the budget negotiations, the 15-nation European Union has refused to
increase its portion of U.N. funding, arguing that it already pays more than
the United States although its collective economy is about the same size as
America's. Japan, like the United States, has demanded a reduction in its
dues, noting that its share of the global economy has shrunk in the past
decade. Several emerging economic powers, including Singapore, Brazil and South Korea, are reluctant to pay more.
Under a bipartisan U.S. congressional agreement fashioned by Helms and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), payment of U.S. debts to the United Nations is also contingent on a reduction in Washington's share of peacekeeping costs, to 25 percent from 30 percent. But Biden has indicated that Congress might be willing to compromise on the peacekeeping budget,
now about $3 billion a year.
At a gathering of U.N. ambassadors Dec. 12, Biden said he would seek to
persuade his Republican colleagues in Congress to accept a smaller reduction in the U.S. share of the peacekeeping budget -- if the world body's 189 members first agree to slash the U.S. portion of the regular budget.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said today
that Biden and Helms have been briefed on Turner's offer.
Holbrooke has told several ambassadors here that retired Gen. Colin L.
Powell, President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for secretary of state,
hopes the long-festering dispute will be settled before the change of
administrations.
A senior U.N. official predicted that a deal could be sealed by the end
of the week.
"The member states have moved appreciably towards agreement," the official said. "A number of the hardest issues have been dealt with successfully, and fortunately Christmas is coming, people are leaving for holiday, and they all have non-refundable airline tickets."
Diplomats said key elements of a potential deal have jelled during a week of late-night sessions in a U.N. budget committee. In addition to imposing a
22 percent ceiling on any country's dues for the administrative budget,
the United Nations would establish a new method for determining each
country's capacity to pay.
In the past, dues have been calculated by averaging a country's gross
domestic product over six years. Under the proposed new system, the period would be shortened to about 41/2 years, providing relief to countries, such as Japan, whose economies have been declining. To shield economically vulnerable countries, such as Nigeria and Brazil, the organization would phase in the rate increase over three years.
Diplomats said they were also close to an agreement that would reduce the
U.S. share of the peacekeeping budget to between 26 percent and 28 percent. The balance would be covered by slashing the "discounts" previously given to some developing countries, particularly those with fast-growing economies, such as Singapore, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. "We are centimeters away from an agreement," an Asian diplomat said last night.
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/22/news/mn-3392
======================================================================
Ted Turner donates $1 billion to 'U.N. causes' - September 19, 1997
http://europe.cnn.com/US/9709/18/turner.gift/index.html
By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, December 22, 2000 ; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 -- CNN founder Ted Turner has offered to make up the $35 million difference between the dues that the United States owes to the United Nations for 2001 and the amount Congress is willing to pay.
Turner's offer is intended to help U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke
clinch a deal for a permanent reduction in the U.S. share of the U.N.
budget and to bring an end to Washington's chronic debts to the world
body, U.S. officials and a Turner representative said.
The prospect of a billionaire media entrepreneur bailing out the United
States is a measure of how complex and troubled the U.S. relationship
with the United Nations has become.
As the Clinton administration draws to a close, it is making a final push
to resolve the funding issue and to reduce simmering resentment over the
U.S. debts, which senior American diplomats contend are not only an
embarrassment but also reduce the nation's clout in the world body.
At the same time, key conservatives in Congress, such as Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-N.C.), remain skeptical about the United Nations and its many offshoots,
which they view as spendthrift, bloated bureaucracies that often take
anti-American stands.
Turner has stepped into the middle of this picture, showing an apparent
taste for the limelight through high-profile philanthropy as well as a
passionate conviction that the United States should be more deeply
involved in the United Nations. He previously pledged to donate $1 billion
to the organization's work, but had said he would not help pay America's
dues.
In sticky negotiations that have come to a head this week, Holbrooke and
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright are trying to persuade other
countries to agree to reduce Washington's share of the annual U.N.
administrative budget from 25 percent to 22 percent.
Congress has passed legislation capping the U.S. contribution at 22 percent
and also has made payment of $926 million in U.S. arrears contingent on the United Nations accepting that reduction permanently.
During a closed-door meeting at U.N. headquarters this week, Holbrooke
promised his counterparts from around the world that if they agreed to
reduce Washington's share of the U.N. budget, the United States would
voluntarily cover the difference -- about $35 million -- for a year.
What he didn't tell them was that Turner would provide those funds, though
only if a firm deal is reached.
Turner made the offer to Holbrooke about five weeks ago at a board meeting of the United Nations Foundation, a private charity Turner established to distribute the $1 billion he pledged to contribute to U.N. causes. Albright, briefed on the offer, "thought it was wonderful," a U.S.
official said.
"Ted's gesture is extraordinary and visionary," Holbrooke said today. "I hope it proves to be the key that unlocks this extraordinarily complex problem."
Turner was unavailable for comment, according to a spokeswoman at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. But Tim Wirth, the former Democratic senator from Colorado who runs Turner's U.N. Foundation, confirmed Turner had made the offer.
According to Wirth and others, Holbrooke told the U.N. Foundation's board of directors last month that most countries had already set their national budgets for 2001. As a result, Holbrooke warned, it would be difficult for those governments to agree to cut the U.S. contribution and increase their own shares of the United Nations' $1.1 billion budget for 2001.
"Holbrooke said how complicated and difficult this [negotiation] was going
to be," Wirth recalled. "So Ted said, 'Well, what if I made available
funding so that you have flexibility? If that would be a useful part to
throw into this negotiation, you know I'll be happy to do that.' "
The potential arrangement was then vetted by State Department lawyers,
according to a senior U.S. official. "It is legal," the official said.
Although the United Nations is prohibited from accepting money from a
private donor to cover a country's dues, "as a matter of principle,
the U.N. can accept contributions from governments, and the U.N. doesn't
care where it comes from," said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
In the budget negotiations, the 15-nation European Union has refused to
increase its portion of U.N. funding, arguing that it already pays more than
the United States although its collective economy is about the same size as
America's. Japan, like the United States, has demanded a reduction in its
dues, noting that its share of the global economy has shrunk in the past
decade. Several emerging economic powers, including Singapore, Brazil and South Korea, are reluctant to pay more.
Under a bipartisan U.S. congressional agreement fashioned by Helms and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), payment of U.S. debts to the United Nations is also contingent on a reduction in Washington's share of peacekeeping costs, to 25 percent from 30 percent. But Biden has indicated that Congress might be willing to compromise on the peacekeeping budget,
now about $3 billion a year.
At a gathering of U.N. ambassadors Dec. 12, Biden said he would seek to
persuade his Republican colleagues in Congress to accept a smaller reduction in the U.S. share of the peacekeeping budget -- if the world body's 189 members first agree to slash the U.S. portion of the regular budget.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said today
that Biden and Helms have been briefed on Turner's offer.
Holbrooke has told several ambassadors here that retired Gen. Colin L.
Powell, President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for secretary of state,
hopes the long-festering dispute will be settled before the change of
administrations.
A senior U.N. official predicted that a deal could be sealed by the end
of the week.
"The member states have moved appreciably towards agreement," the official said. "A number of the hardest issues have been dealt with successfully, and fortunately Christmas is coming, people are leaving for holiday, and they all have non-refundable airline tickets."
Diplomats said key elements of a potential deal have jelled during a week of late-night sessions in a U.N. budget committee. In addition to imposing a
22 percent ceiling on any country's dues for the administrative budget,
the United Nations would establish a new method for determining each
country's capacity to pay.
In the past, dues have been calculated by averaging a country's gross
domestic product over six years. Under the proposed new system, the period would be shortened to about 41/2 years, providing relief to countries, such as Japan, whose economies have been declining. To shield economically vulnerable countries, such as Nigeria and Brazil, the organization would phase in the rate increase over three years.
Diplomats said they were also close to an agreement that would reduce the
U.S. share of the peacekeeping budget to between 26 percent and 28 percent. The balance would be covered by slashing the "discounts" previously given to some developing countries, particularly those with fast-growing economies, such as Singapore, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. "We are centimeters away from an agreement," an Asian diplomat said last night.
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/22/news/mn-3392
======================================================================
Ted Turner donates $1 billion to 'U.N. causes' - September 19, 1997
http://europe.cnn.com/US/9709/18/turner.gift/index.html
TURNER FOUNDATION
Objective
Worldwide development of policies and practices which will
reduce population growth by addressing the relationships between
population growth, global resources, the status of women and
girls, and access to family planning and reproductive health
services.
Objective
Worldwide development of policies and practices which will
reduce population growth by addressing the relationships between
population growth, global resources, the status of women and
girls, and access to family planning and reproductive health
services.
Objective
Worldwide development of policies and practices which will reduce population growth by addressing the relationships between population growth, global resources, the status of women and girls, and access to family planning and reproductive health services.
Priorities
To promote worldwide access to safe, affordable family planning and reproductive health services.
To support efforts which advocate increased government support for voluntary, affordable family planning and reproductive health services.
To support activities which address the relationships between population growth, the low status and lack of options for women and girls, consumption of natural resources, and the resulting environmental degradation.
To support activities that focus on women and girls and provide for their improved status in society through increased access to educational, political and economic opportunities.
To support initiatives that address the growing number of teenage pregnancies in the United States, with a particular focus on under-served populations. (Priority consideration given to statewide coalition in New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.)
Geographic Focus
Domestic and International
http://www.turnerfoundation.org/turner/popul.html
Worldwide development of policies and practices which will reduce population growth by addressing the relationships between population growth, global resources, the status of women and girls, and access to family planning and reproductive health services.
Priorities
To promote worldwide access to safe, affordable family planning and reproductive health services.
To support efforts which advocate increased government support for voluntary, affordable family planning and reproductive health services.
To support activities which address the relationships between population growth, the low status and lack of options for women and girls, consumption of natural resources, and the resulting environmental degradation.
To support activities that focus on women and girls and provide for their improved status in society through increased access to educational, political and economic opportunities.
To support initiatives that address the growing number of teenage pregnancies in the United States, with a particular focus on under-served populations. (Priority consideration given to statewide coalition in New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.)
Geographic Focus
Domestic and International
http://www.turnerfoundation.org/turner/popul.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turner and Fonda Split
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/CelebrityFiles/TurnerandFonda/TurnerandFonda.htm
04 January 2000 (CNSNews.com) - Media mogul Ted Turner and his
actress/political activist wife, Jane Fonda, have agreed mutually to
live apart, the couple announced in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. In
a brief, prepared statement released by Turner's office, the couple
said, "While we continue to be committed to the long-term success of our
marriage, we find ourselves at a juncture where we must each take some
personal time for ourselves. Therefore, we have mutually decided to
spend some time apart. We ask that you respect this decision." (By Bob
Melvin, CNS Evening Editor, 04 January, 2000, 09:16 pm) CNN: FULL STORY,
World Net Daily SCOOP | Fonda becomes born-again Christian, Hollywood
Christian leader: Pray for Jane Baehr says 'God trying to get Turner's
attention',
http://www.worldnetdaily.com
Turner and Fonda Split
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/CelebrityFiles/TurnerandFonda/TurnerandFonda.htm
04 January 2000 (CNSNews.com) - Media mogul Ted Turner and his
actress/political activist wife, Jane Fonda, have agreed mutually to
live apart, the couple announced in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. In
a brief, prepared statement released by Turner's office, the couple
said, "While we continue to be committed to the long-term success of our
marriage, we find ourselves at a juncture where we must each take some
personal time for ourselves. Therefore, we have mutually decided to
spend some time apart. We ask that you respect this decision." (By Bob
Melvin, CNS Evening Editor, 04 January, 2000, 09:16 pm) CNN: FULL STORY,
World Net Daily SCOOP | Fonda becomes born-again Christian, Hollywood
Christian leader: Pray for Jane Baehr says 'God trying to get Turner's
attention',
http://www.worldnetdaily.com
Turner Attacks Christianity at U.N. 'Peace Summit'
Austin RuseAny pretense that the "World Peace Summit" is anything other than a cover for a left-leaning agenda was stripped away as American media mogul Ted Turner addressed nearly 1,000 hooting delegates Tuesday in the U.N. General Assembly Hall.
Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2000
New Age billionaire Maurice Strong introduced Turner by saying he had done more for peace, the environment and the United Nations than any other person. Turner bounded toward the podium as the cheering crowd seemed to welcome a conquering hero.
Immediately Turner denounced his own childhood Christian faith. The crowd’s laughter turned to approving whoops as Turner explained he turned away from Christianity when he discovered "it was intolerant because it taught we were the only ones going to heaven. That confused the devil out of me since that would have left heaven a very empty place."
Turner’s meandering, off-the-cuff speech praised "indigenous" religious faiths and then wandered through a paean to the things all humans have in common – "culture, language, love of birds, butterflies, wives and flowers." In his spiritual search Turner realized that there was one God and multiple ways he manifests himself and that it makes little difference which one is chosen. This approach is precisely what evangelical Christians fear about the World Peace Summit.
Among a small group of conservative Christians monitoring the event, Darren Logan, foreign policy analyst for the Washington-based Family Research Council, called Turner’s speech "the most blasphemous thing I have ever heard in my life."
Logan said Turner advanced the notion of "reductionism," which suggests that all religions are essentially the same. "Turner believes true tolerance means doing away with the uniqueness of all faiths and marginalizing all faiths that profess an exclusive component, like Christianity and Islam," said Logan.
Contrasted with the enthusiastic reception for Turner’s left-leaning remarks, the delegates gave an icy reception to the Patriarch of Ethiopia, who urged protection for unborn children. The same reaction greeted the assistant secretary general of the Muslim World Congress when he urged delegates to recognize only marriage between "a man and a woman" and denounced all "abnormal sexual activities."
Minutes later a Buddhist "master" received a standing ovation when he condemned all attempts at religious conversion, something at the heart of Islam and Christianity.
As it is, the summit is taking place under a cloud for excluding the Dalai Lama under pressure from the government of China; and evangelical Christians have pointed out that only one representative from their ranks, the Rev. Billy Graham’s daughter, has appeared at the podium.
The reaction of the delegates fuels the growing suspicion that the permanent advisory to be established here will simply rubberstamp the agenda of Ted Turner, Maurice Strong and other powerful leftists working within the U.N. system.
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/29/192330
Ted Turner Attacks Christianity At U.N. "Peace Summit"
http://associate.com/groups/end-times_news/0::2897read.html
Ted Turner Urges New National Anthem
http://www.freerepublic.com/
Wednesday, March 7, 2001 4:45 p.m. EST
CNN's Ted Turner Slams Catholics as 'Jesus
Freaks'
CNN honcho and leading media maverick Ted Turner
apparently just can't help himself, choosing last week's
Ash Wednesday to deride believing Christians yet again.
"What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks?" Turner asked when
he noticed several CNN employees with ashes on their
forehead, according to Fox News Channel's Brit Hume.
The remark reportedly "stunned" employees at CNN's
Washington bureau, who had gathered for a party to honor
the network's retiring anchorman Bernard Shaw.
No wonder Hume took special notice.
In his next anti-Catholic barb Turner suggested that his
observant Catholic employees "ought to be working at Fox."
Reacting to Turner's bigoted remark, Catholic League
President William Donohue noted:
"Ted Turner is a recidivist. Like all repeat offenders,
Turner evinces an animus against a particular portion of
the population. For him, it is Christians whom he
despises."
http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/3/7/154408
===========================================
CNN's Ted Turner Slams Catholics as 'Jesus
Freaks'
CNN honcho and leading media maverick Ted Turner
apparently just can't help himself, choosing last week's
Ash Wednesday to deride believing Christians yet again.
"What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks?" Turner asked when
he noticed several CNN employees with ashes on their
forehead, according to Fox News Channel's Brit Hume.
The remark reportedly "stunned" employees at CNN's
Washington bureau, who had gathered for a party to honor
the network's retiring anchorman Bernard Shaw.
No wonder Hume took special notice.
In his next anti-Catholic barb Turner suggested that his
observant Catholic employees "ought to be working at Fox."
Reacting to Turner's bigoted remark, Catholic League
President William Donohue noted:
"Ted Turner is a recidivist. Like all repeat offenders,
Turner evinces an animus against a particular portion of
the population. For him, it is Christians whom he
despises."
http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/3/7/154408
===========================================
When Ted Turner announced his $ 1 billion pledge to the United
Nations in 1997, he created the United Nations Foundation simultaneously to deal
with the distribution of the funds. The Secretary General of the United Nations
then created the UNFIP to serve as a liaison between Turner's foundation, which
is considered a private organization and the United Nations. Today, the two
organizations work together to oversee the distribution of Tuner's donation.
Full details: http://www.earthtimes.org/nov/developmentturnernov9_01.htm
American Patriot Friends Network (APFN)
http://www.apfn.org
APFN EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE IN SUBJECT LINE TO: apfn@apfn.org
APFN CONTENTS: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/apfncont.htm
APFN MSG BOARD: http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/149495.html
The Truth About The U.N
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/un.htm
Update on the New World Order
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/updatenwo.htm
American Patriot Friends Network (APFN)
http://www.apfn.org
APFN EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE IN SUBJECT LINE TO: apfn@apfn.org
APFN CONTENTS: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/apfncont.htm
APFN MSG BOARD: http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/149495.html
The Truth About The U.N
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/un.htm
Update on the New World Order
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/updatenwo.htm
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/global_governance.htm
The United Nations plans to CONFISCATE your profit and ---.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/united_nations.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/global_governance.htm
The United Nations plans to CONFISCATE your profit and ---.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/united_nations.htm
==========================
| ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA | ||
Turner, Ted
Turner was the son of the owner of a billboard-advertising company based in Atlanta, Ga. After incomplete schooling at Brown University (Providence, R.I.) and stints as an account executive in his father's firm, he became general manager of one of the latter's branch offices in 1960. After business troubles drove his father to commit suicide in 1963, Turner took over the ailing family business and restored it to profitability. In 1970 Turner purchased a financially troubled UHF television station, Channel 17, in Atlanta, and within three years he had made it one of the few truly profitable independent stations in the United States. In 1975 Turner's company was one of the first to use a new communications satellite to broadcast Channel 17 (later renamed WTBS, or TBS, the Turner Broadcasting System) to a nationwide cable television audience, thereby greatly increasing his station's revenues. Besides TBS, Turner went on to create two other highly successful and innovative cable television networks: CNN (Cable News Network; 1980) and TNT (Turner Network Television; 1988). He also purchased the Atlanta Braves professional baseball team in 1976 and the Atlanta Hawks basketball team in 1977. In 1986 he purchased the MGM/UA Entertainment Company, which included the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion-picture studio and its library of more than 4,000 old films. Many of the black-and-white films he proceeded to have "colorized," setting off a storm of protest from the film community and film critics. The large debt burden sustained from his MGM and other purchases compelled Turner to subsequently sell off not only MGM/UA but also a sizable share of his own company, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., though he retained control of it. He also retained ownership of the MGM film library, which contained many Hollywood classics among its holdings. Turner resumed the expansion of his media empire in the 1990s with the creation of the Cartoon Network (1992) and the purchase (1993) of two motion picture-production companies, New Line Cinema and Castle Rock Entertainment. In 1996 the media giant Time Warner Inc. acquired the Turner Broadcasting System for $7.5 billion. As part of the agreement, Turner became a vice-chairman of Time Warner and headed all the merged company's cable-television networks. Turner was also a noted yachtsman who piloted his yacht Courageous to win the America's Cup in 1977. http://www.britannica.com/seo/t/ted-turner/ | ||
Ted Turner Has Lost $9.3
Billion
July 26, 2002 -- The stock collapse of AOL Time Warner yesterday is
dragging a virtual who's who of media moguls into pikersville.
A growing accounting scandal sent shares of the world's largest media
company to their lowest level since the early 1990s.
To make matters worse, analysts are trashing the historic, $106 billion
merger of old-line media giant Time Warner and Internet high-flyer AOL as a
total disaster.
Investigators are expected to expand their probe of AOL's books beyond
several questionable accounting practices that were first detailed in a
Washington Post report last week about the 2001 merger.
One analyst said the mess won't get better due to AOL's deepening problems
and internal weaknesses, raising more concerns that AOL might be spun off
to save the sinking ship.
"Despite a depressed valuation, we do not believe the Time Warner
businesses will be strong enough to overcome AOL division issues," said
Goldman Sachs' Richard Greenfield, who has kept a "market perform" rating
on the stock.
When AOL shares skidded yesterday to a new intra-day low of $8.50, it wiped
out more than $36 billion of shareholder value.
But worse, it put the shares in the dreaded low-rent district of stocks
valued in the single digits. Big mutual funds usually won't touch shares
below $10.
AOL managed to recover late in the day to $9.64, off $1.76 in a sell-off of
150.4 million shares.
"From a technical standpoint, the stock looks like a falling anvil," said
Uri Landesman, of Arlington Capital.
Several analysts cut their ratings on the company, which last week
completed a management shake-up that returned control back to Time Warner
veterans. Investors are revolting over its 70-percent slide this year.
The darkest day for the merged company's share price came the same day it
reported its first net profit since AOL completed its takeover of Time
Warner in January 2001.
Wall Street ignored that good news, and focused on the Securities and
Exchange Commission's probe of alleged cooked books that AOL brought to the
merger table.
A week before the merger was first announced in January
2000, Time Warner was trading at $92.25, making most of its major
shareholders very rich. A huge stake held by John Malone's Liberty Media
was valued at $10.5 billion, while Vice Chairman Ted Turner's shares were
valued at around $10.5 billion.
But in the year-long effort to close the merger, the shares slid to $50,
and it's been downhill ever since.
Two of the biggest victims from the merger's downside are Turner, who's
lost $9.3 billion and Malone's Liberty, which lost $10 billion.
Turner has managed to unload millions of his shares in the last two months
of the stock-price slide. He sold $365.1 million worth of his shares, less
than 10 percent, before the worst hit. In the old days, his stake was
worth a stunning $1.96 billion.
His ex-wife Jane Fonda was much luckier and escaped major damage from the
wipeout. In her prenuptial pact with Ted, she got a maximum of $10 million
in AOL stock, but in the past year she gave away most of it to
environmental causes and liberal Democrats running for public office.
Gerald Levin has become a tragic figure over the magnitude of his
losses. His 29-years at the company gave him a stock and option nest egg
valued at around $529 million at the time of the merger. Today it's worth
just $24.5 million.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/turner.htm
July 26, 2002 -- The stock collapse of AOL Time Warner yesterday is
dragging a virtual who's who of media moguls into pikersville.
A growing accounting scandal sent shares of the world's largest media
company to their lowest level since the early 1990s.
To make matters worse, analysts are trashing the historic, $106 billion
merger of old-line media giant Time Warner and Internet high-flyer AOL as a
total disaster.
Investigators are expected to expand their probe of AOL's books beyond
several questionable accounting practices that were first detailed in a
Washington Post report last week about the 2001 merger.
One analyst said the mess won't get better due to AOL's deepening problems
and internal weaknesses, raising more concerns that AOL might be spun off
to save the sinking ship.
"Despite a depressed valuation, we do not believe the Time Warner
businesses will be strong enough to overcome AOL division issues," said
Goldman Sachs' Richard Greenfield, who has kept a "market perform" rating
on the stock.
When AOL shares skidded yesterday to a new intra-day low of $8.50, it wiped
out more than $36 billion of shareholder value.
But worse, it put the shares in the dreaded low-rent district of stocks
valued in the single digits. Big mutual funds usually won't touch shares
below $10.
AOL managed to recover late in the day to $9.64, off $1.76 in a sell-off of
150.4 million shares.
"From a technical standpoint, the stock looks like a falling anvil," said
Uri Landesman, of Arlington Capital.
Several analysts cut their ratings on the company, which last week
completed a management shake-up that returned control back to Time Warner
veterans. Investors are revolting over its 70-percent slide this year.
The darkest day for the merged company's share price came the same day it
reported its first net profit since AOL completed its takeover of Time
Warner in January 2001.
Wall Street ignored that good news, and focused on the Securities and
Exchange Commission's probe of alleged cooked books that AOL brought to the
merger table.
A week before the merger was first announced in January
2000, Time Warner was trading at $92.25, making most of its major
shareholders very rich. A huge stake held by John Malone's Liberty Media
was valued at $10.5 billion, while Vice Chairman Ted Turner's shares were
valued at around $10.5 billion.
But in the year-long effort to close the merger, the shares slid to $50,
and it's been downhill ever since.
Two of the biggest victims from the merger's downside are Turner, who's
lost $9.3 billion and Malone's Liberty, which lost $10 billion.
Turner has managed to unload millions of his shares in the last two months
of the stock-price slide. He sold $365.1 million worth of his shares, less
than 10 percent, before the worst hit. In the old days, his stake was
worth a stunning $1.96 billion.
His ex-wife Jane Fonda was much luckier and escaped major damage from the
wipeout. In her prenuptial pact with Ted, she got a maximum of $10 million
in AOL stock, but in the past year she gave away most of it to
environmental causes and liberal Democrats running for public office.
Gerald Levin has become a tragic figure over the magnitude of his
losses. His 29-years at the company gave him a stock and option nest egg
valued at around $529 million at the time of the merger. Today it's worth
just $24.5 million.
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