Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scare Yourself to Death, 2 Aug 2004
By A Customer
I had no idea that the US government was still engaged in cold-war style propaganda and I was frankly staggered at the scale of the effort, detailed by the author, a former insider, in her frank and matter-of-fact style.I just found it so hard to believe what this book told me, though I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the work. Assuming what the author says is true (impressive and authoritative references are cited throughout), then we all have cause to be deeply disquieted. The cultural colonisation activities of the US Information Agency, in the immortal words of Peter Cook, must not only be done, but must be seen to be believed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One dollar, one vote., 20 Oct 2005
This small book tells the story of the USIA (the US Information Agency), a government unit.
This institution was created with very good intentions (increase mutual understanding between people), but was diverted from its original goal and streamlined as a propaganda machine to promote the US economic system and business interests.The author rightly stigmatizes harshly the democratic deficit in the US: a media monopoly, a political duopoly ruled by big business and big money, and a plutocracy which dominates without control public welfare, public lands, public airwaves and the pension trusts.
Prof. Snow proposes a seven point plan to restore true democracy, but the implementation will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. This book should be read as a classic example of how particular interest groups take control of a public institution and turn it into a pro-private interests mouthpiece. Not to be missed.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AMERICA'S HISTORY OF DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL BRAIN WASHING, 14 Jan 2005
Within a lean 80 pages, Nancy Snow provides for us a scholarly history of Ameria's propaganda institutions that were originally founded for preparing Americans to kill Germans in World War I. Later, America's brain washing machines became the envy of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Meanwhile, the propaganda industry evolved in the commercial sector into the multi-billion dollar enterprise it is today. At least as an American taxpayer you will want to know what the United States Information Agency is doing with your one billion dollars per year that you've provided to its budget.In his "Manufacturing Consent," Noam Chomsky describes how in a democracy propaganda is more important than it is in a dictatorship. Now Snow explains exactly who operates it, how splendidly well it works, what its present agendas are, and who is cashing in on them. All of that is worth knowing for those who value a Jeffersonian democracy supposedly governed by ordinary citizens. Because it works so well and it is so lucrative, there is no incentive for those operating Propaganda, Inc. to cease in their efforts any time soon. Snow lets us in on how the propaganda machine is now being used during the Clinto Administration to impose NAFTA and WTO on the world. For under $5 you may as well become informed on what "they" are up to and why by simply reading Nancy Snow's eminently readable pamphlet.
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by Greg Palast
by Noam Chomsky
