mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (11/28/83)
======
I have no argument with the remainder of your points, but you certainly
neglected an important reason for increased concern; namely Soviet
support for Western peace movements. The KGB has spent $600 million
to date to sway western opinion against the Euromissile deployment,
and is willing to spend whatever it takes. Compared to the stakes
involved, $600m is dirt cheap. The Soviet yearly budget for
disinformation is several billion dollars.
..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney
==============
This raises a pervasive point. I have no doubt that the KGB uses
disinformation to a great extent. But then so does the CIA, and
for the same reasons -- get the uncommitted to believe our side.
But since this is so, what items of information CAN we believe?
Billions of dollars sounds like a gross overestimate, so I don't
believe it, even though it MIGHT be true. To illustrate, here is
an article from "The Guardian" October 8, 1983:
-----
[CND = Committee for Nuclear Disarmament]
Is CND finished? Is that the intended implication of Mr Heseltine's
closure of DS 19, the government propaganda unit specifically set up
to counter the peace movement? Implication, like innuendo, is the
stock in trade of the propagandist and rarely based on anything more
substantial than optimism. It would be wrong to draw the inference.
....
The demise of Defence Secretariat 19 does not mean that the government
has lost interest in the CND, nor that it is complacent, only that the
main attack has gone underground. Doubtless we shall continue to hear
about Kremlin funding for CND, to read shock-horror stories about the
Greenham Common women [picketing the base where Cruise missiles will
be stored. MMT], startling revelations about the youthful indiscretion
of peace people, even outright attacks on the morality of CND's leaders,
for these are the easy smears. But by and large the weapons men will
be concentrating on the thinking man and woman. And for that they
employ subtler means.
When Mr Heseltine talks of his anti-CND innovations achieving their own
momentum in the public sector, he means the private sector: the very
private sector, where they can be quietly helped along by big business
assets and aided, abetted and funded by President Reagan's men.
For, since March 1982, when the Coalition for Peace through Security
(CPS) staged its Anglo-American conference .... things have taken a
new and unpleasant turn in this country. .... [The conference] brought
a remarkably high-powered group of manipulators to Britain. "Key figures,
whose new methods ... turned the tide of practical American politics ...
and brought other vital issues to the attention of the nation."
....
[Material on the propagandists and organizers of CPS and related groups]
....
The CPS contented themselves with corrupting the CND banner to
Communists, Neutralists, Defeatists; to overprinting the CND symbol
with the hammer and sickle; and claiming that Bruce Kent, CND's
secretary-general supports IRA terrorism. That last, says Kent,
was perhaps the nastiest smear of all.
He is accustomed to the constant claims that the whole peace
movement is in the pay of Moscow. No one, he says, has ever produced
a shred of evidence that the KGB somehow made millions of dollars
available to the Western peace movements in 1979, but it still
crops up all over the place and mostly unchallenged. He has offered
a 100 pound prize to anyone who can prove it but there are no takers.
...
Inevitably, accusations make headlines -- denials only small print.
Both Ruddock and Kent emerged unscathed, but mud has a habit of sticking
and he [Kent] gets long and agonised letters from believers trying
to reconcile God, Caesar and Fleet Street.
"According to the press reports", wrote one such, "among the
supporters of CND are Marxists, Lesbians, and Abortionists -- how
can you link hands with such people?"
....
The Spring our American cousins staged a series of seminars for churchmen
in West Germany, Holland the UK and the United States. They spent
nearly $200,000 helping "highly placed and influential leaders in
Western Europe to gain a solid understanding of US defence and arms
control policies, with special reference to their religious and moral
implications."
One of the speakers at thie UK seminar was Ernest Lefever, joint author
with Roy Godson of The CIA and the American Ethic. This little book
is a defence of covert action, justifying the use of priests,
nurses and lawyers as CIA agents.
....
But what of the opinion polls, the last element in the Americans' strategy?
There is more to them, it seems, than confusing electors. The US
Information Agency ... is currently polling those NATO countries
due to host American missiles. ... Contrary to usual practice, the
questions were devised in Washington. Some are very contentious.
CND, which has always been dedicated to peaceful protest, has been
angered by the loading of a question which asks whether the interviewee
agrees that: "demonstrations against nuclear missiles will
continue ... become larger ... more violent" thus implying that
they already are.
... The poll seems to have a double purpose, to test opinion and to
form it.
....
If [CND] is to withstand the sophisticated, covert opinion-forming
techniques of the New Right, it needs more than goodwill. It needs
modern technology, more staff, more money. Above all, it needs to
win the press. The one thing it still has in abundance, thank God,
is faith in itself.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt