su-etc
Is this stupid propaganda?
My opinion is that it may not be stupid.  See the end for
further comments.

a093  0919  31 Oct 86
PM-Soviet-AIDS Cartoon,0379
U.S. Ambassador Condemns AIDS Cartoon
    MOSCOW (AP) - A cartoon published today in the Communist Party daily
Pravda revived Kremlin allegations that AIDS viruses were created in
Pentagon laboratories. U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman said the
cartoon was dreadful and dismissed the claim as nonsense.
    The cartoon, printed on page five, showed a scientist giving a giant
test tube marked ''AIDS virus'' to a military figure who is paying
for it with dollars.
    Bare feet surrounding the two men suggest that corpses lie either
side of them, and Nazi swastikas are drawn inside the test tube.
    Above the caption, Pravda printed what it said was a quote from
unidentified newspapers: ''The virus of AIDS, a serious disease for
which no cure has yet been found, was created in the laboratories of
the Pentagon, according to some Western scientists.''
    Hartman wrote to two Soviet newspapers last June to protest their
publication of allegations that AIDS was created in Pentagon chemical
warfare experiments.
    He told U.S. reporters at a news briefing today, ''I particularly
disliked this morning to see (the fifth page of Pravda) which has a
perfectly dreadful cartoon.''
    The Soviet allegations about the Pentagon manufacturing the AIDS
virus are ''absolute nonsense,'' he said.
    AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, attacks the body's
immune system, leaving the victim open to infection. There is no
known cure. It generally is transmitted through sexual contacts or
use of contaminated needles by drug abusers.
    Hartman's letters to the literary weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta and
the daily newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya were not printed, prompting
him to release their texts in July.
    He said today he wrote the letters in part because he believed
allegations about AIDS printed in the papers were the beginning of a
Kremlin disinformation campaign he wanted to halt.
    He said the allegation that AIDS resulted from Pentagon experiments
''undermines the credibility of this (Communist) party with its own
scientists.''
    ''We know that Soviet scientists themselves take the risk of AIDS
very seriously indeed,'' he said.
    In published articles, Soviet scientists have acknowledged only a
very few cases of AIDS in the Soviet Union. The scientists have been
quoted as saying that the disease's origin is unknown.
    
AP-NY-10-31-86 1217EST
***************

According to the circulation desk at Hoover Library, Pravda arrives
a week late.  When it does, I'll get a copy of the cartoon and post
it with a translation of the caption.

Here's the argument that printing the cartoon may not be stupid.
While AIDS is a serious problem in the U.S. and was identified first
here, it is a far worse problem in Africa and Haiti.  The African
press and political figures are quick to blame the U.S. and the West
generally for any problem they face if there is the slightest plausible
reason.  The cartoon will start a rumor, and the rumor will spread.
The fact that the source of the rumor is a cartoon will be irrelevant
and forgotten.  The U.S. Information Agency and the Voice of America
will have to devote broadcasts to denying the rumor.

Of course, the cartoon will have a negative effect in the U.S.
The Ambassador was alert enough to protest, although I suppose some
people will say that he shouldn't have protested - that the protest
is a provocation intended to worsen relations.  However, perhaps
not many papers will consider the A.P. story sufficiently newsworthy,
and anyway it will soon be forgotten.  One of the major discoveries
of political propaganda, used by politicians in the U.S. also, is that
it is often effective to say contradictory things to different audiences.
The people offended by the discrepancy were probably against you anyway.

It's conceivable but I regarded it as unlikely that some U.S. leftists
will take up the story as they did the Soviet planted rumor that KAL007 was
ordered by the U.S. to fly over Soviet territory.  They can proceed
by speculating that while Nixon officially closed down the U.S.
bacteriological warfare laboratory at Camp Detrick, Maryland around
1970, actually the work continued in secret.  An artificial bacterial virus
being secretly tested in Nairobi escaped, etc.