The media says the Russian economy is collapsing. I just spent two weeks in Russia and there was absolutely no sign of that. Stores were bustling. Unemployment was low. I came home and told the truth but nobody cares.
Who Are You Going to Believe, the Media or Someone Who Actually Knows?
3 Comments. Leave new
US Media (including Hollywood) is largely an echo chamber. What it releases to the public is a virtually endless and continuous supply of bite-sized & dumbed-down pro-capitalist/pro-West propaganda originated by a myriad of various think tanks, scholarly journals, popular publications, NGO’s,*** councils, institutions, foundations, forums, networks, centers, societies, organizations, PR firms, associations, leaks (purposeful and otherwise) from the 13 (or is it 16?) different components of the government “intelligence community,” congressional bills, resolutions &committee proceeedings and, of course, even more internet-based versions.
The Washington Post is a media outlet most directly connected to the actual creators of propaganda. Its owner, shortly after buying the paper, announced (apparently ruffling not a single the liberty-loving feather of other media outlets) that he had secured contracts from the CIA, with his high tech company (worth 2x the amount^^^ the WaPo had cost) for “internet services.”
The wikipedia article on “List of think tanks in the United States” can be found at tinyurl.com/yvyzsr3z
Don’t believe all that you see/read but do wonder which of the worst “tanks” are not listed.
—————————-
*** the acronym means “NON Governmental Organization,” a name that constitutes fully integrated propaganda
^^^ the time length of the contracts is not clear so they may be renewable every three (5?) years for even a higher multiple than the cost of the WaPo.
Ted, I’m not very good at pep talks, mainly because everyone is horrid, but we’re at the end of the game now. Remember your Hemingway?
” ‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked.
‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’ ”
The gradual ways are almost too long to list: the long slow corruptions of climate change, supply chain degradation, the infrastructure, end-stage capitalism, collapsing public education, the drift-to-the-right of the democratic party, the 50-year victory that was the Republicans stacking the court (thanks, Hillary for losing to an orange sideshow barker) and overturning the dems’ biggest moneymaker: Roe v. Wade, etc.
And whatever will be the sudden part will be sudden indeed. We may all get whiplash.
And leading the parade, out in front with a baton, was the regular media and social media (SocMed in Orwellian).
And you’re right, no one is listening to you. Well, except for the small group of malcontents of which I am one.
No one wants to be the guy who lives through being burned alive, no one wants to be the one the shark pulls under the waves, no one wants to be the patient sitting across from a distracted doctor checking his smartphone as he mutters “End-stage cancer, inoperable, palliative care, thoughts and prayers, pay the receptionist on the way out.” But that’s the role time or fate or random chance or whatever it is that drives the universe has emptied out over your head.
Being right is a poor breakfast, and a poor dinner. But what are the other choices? If you started toeing the company line, you’d be dead from self-loathing in a year.
Ted, I could show you reams of anti-Russian tweets over the war from people who probably could not find Ukraine on a map two years ago. Especially with the recent car-bomb death of Darya Dugina, Aleksandr Dugin’s daughter, a car bomb that was definitely meant for the father and not the child. I also see a lot of this American anti-Russianism as the last gasp of “Russiagate.” The war could be stopped in a week if Washington was willing to talk to Moscow.