Paul J. Balles
Redress Information & Analysis
March 17, 2011
One big story of the last few weeks has the US military playing “mind games” with civilian leaders in order to get greater support for the war in Afghanistan.
Sometimes these mind games have been called brainwashing. Another name for them is psyops or psychological operations.
According to the US Department of Defence Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, “Psychological operations are planned propaganda operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behaviour of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals.”
Psyops targeting foreigners
Until now, there’s been very little public complaint about the use of psyops to influence foreigners. Not many — outside of intelligence services, those involved and their critics — have even been aware that such operations have been going on.
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!