Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Paul Robinson — War propaganda


Did you know that war propaganda is against international law?
Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, obliges states to impose certain restrictions on freedom of speech. The article was the product of a long debate among UN members. Countries from the Soviet bloc and many non-aligned nations, notably Brazil, were keen to include a prohibition on propaganda for war, and also to make it as broadly defined as possible – that is to say to ban not just incitement of war, but propaganda on behalf of war more generally. Western states, by contrast, were rather more reluctant to include the provision, and in so far as they were willing to accept it, wanted to limit it just to incitement. In the end, the West lost the debate. The final wording of Article 20 states clearly: “Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.”
Irrussianality
War propaganda
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

1 comment:

Kaivey said...

The great thing about RT and the other Russian sites is that they don't use propaganda, they just present the facts. Okay, it's probably true that there is no criticism of Russia and Putin, but is any state run media critical of its own country?

Sadly, the corporate Western media does not use facts but propaganda and lies instead to smear Russia and China and any country it does my like.

I recently read some criticism of Max Keiser from RT which said that although RT does present the facts it is always undermining our banking system and the Western political system in general, which the journalist said was propaganda. So, presenting the facts is propaganda if it is anti western, but our press does not present the facts and so is not propaganda. Hmmm!

Anyway, I'm not surprised that the West wanted to water down the UN propaganda bill because it uses propaganda all the time and always has done so.