Spain Debunks Russiagate like New York Times Letter Bomb Story
Just three days ago I mocked a New York Times story that used 'Russiagate' like claims by 'U.S. officials' to tie a number of letter bomb incidents in Spain to some 'Russian terrorist organization'.
U.S. Officials Claim More 'Russiagate' Like Nonsense
According to what U.S. officials claim some anti-Kremlin fringe group in Russia was used by a Russian intelligence service to somehow send letter bombs from Valladolid, Spain, to some offices in Madrid.
But why would Russian intelligence run such a nonsense campaign? Why would it use a problematic fringe group of Russian crazies to do so. Why in Spain? Why not in Poland, Germany or France? What is the evidence?
None of those questions get answered. Instead rumors and hot air assumptions are put together to make the claims somewhat less outrageous. This is on the same level as the lies about 'weapons of mass destruction in Iraq' the Times printed 20 years ago.
...
We know that 'U.S. intelligence' is bullshit and that U.S. official are liars, especially with regards to anything around Ukraine.We know that because 'U.S. officials' said so:
That makes the publishing of the above story by the Times even more egregious.
Three days on the Spanish police arrested the guy most likely responsible for making and sending out those letter bombs:
The man was detained in the northern town of Miranda de Ebro, and police searched his home.The suspect is a retired Spanish citizen with the initials P.G.P. who is tech-savvy and very active on social networks, the ministry said.
Armed officers kept people away the low-rise cinder-block building housing the man's third-floor apartment in a blue-collar neighbourhood.A video provided by the Interior Ministry showed officers and a sniffer dog searching a silver Peugeot car parked outside as forensic specialists took photographs. Police also appeared to gain access to a lock-up garage.
Witnesses said the suspect remained inside the house as the searches were conducted.
The man used to work for the town hall of the Basque capital Vitoria-Gasteiz before retiring in 2013, a city spokesperson said. Miranda de Ebro is 35 km (22 miles) southeast of Vitoria.
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Investigators have concluded that all six parcels were sent from the city of Burgos, the ministry said.A source close to the inquiry had told Reuters in early December that all the parcels had been mailed from Valladolid, a two-hour drive from Miranda del Ebro.
All the named cities and towns are in norther Spain and near to each other.
So it now seems that some lonely tech savvy pensioner, for whatever reason, has made and sent those bombs. Someone who had worked in a local city administration. There is no reporting from Spain of any relation of the case with Russia or some Russian fringe group.
The Times today reports of the arrest but uses it to regurgitate all the 'Russiagate' like nonsense claims its previous story provided. This again without any evidence and solely based on what 'U.S. officials say ...'.
But the Spanish authorities did not even consider that obvious nonsense. As Reuters provides:
The New York Times reported on Sunday that investigators had focused on the Russian Imperial Movement, a group with ties to Spanish far-right organisations that was believed to be linked to Russian intelligence.Spanish officials have declined to comment on the report, while a senior judicial source denied having knowledge of such a line of investigation.
In other words - the whole story was made up by 'U.S. officials' to further the creation of the Russian bogeyman:
Lawmakers stirred up anti-Russian sentiment long before the invasion of Ukraine. It can be argued that the Russian “malign influence” story helped to get the public’s buy-in for a new Cold War with Russia by normalizing the idea that Russians not only helped to elect Donald Trump, but were actively trying “to destroy U.S. democracy” and are still doing so. “It became conventional wisdom that Russia wants not just to compete with the United States, but to destroy us—to divide our society from within, to cripple our democracy,” said George Beebe, a former chief of the CIA’s Russia analysis and author of The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (2019).
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“Russiagate transformed Russia from a foreign policy issue into a matter of domestic politics at a time when the United States was becoming increasingly divided,” points out Beebe, who is now director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute (and so is my colleague). As a result, adds Arta Moeini, research director for the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, “demonization of Russia [prior to its invasion of Ukraine] permitted a new Manichean dynamic, an inflated threat that would be used to rationalize increased securitization domestically, and a fresh push for containment of Moscow internationally.”
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“The constraints this scandal imposed on U.S. policy toward Russia have been immense,” Beebe said. “It prevented Trump from advancing any kind of a détente with Russia. Its lingering effects made it all but impossible for Biden to seek a compromise over Ukrainian membership in NATO—the one thing that might have prevented the war—even if he had wanted to.”Today, we can only pray that the anti-Russian narrative enabled by the manipulation of social media does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy ending in a direct fighting war with the nuclear power.
The New York Times, as well as British media with their equally stupid Skripal affair claims, can be credited with giving cover for the anti-Russian propaganda campaign. It was unleashed after, in 2014, Russia reintegrated Crimea and foiled British and U.S. plans for stationing their naval forces in the Azov and Black Sea.
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The Times and other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused.
Posted by b on January 26, 2023 at 8:16 UTC | Permalink
@ b.
...other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused.
Thanks for these thoughts.
Not just the Times, but it applies to all the media in possibly every Western country. Those are supplied on a daily basis by US embassies' so called "intel".
Also MI6 has been infiltrated there, in Guardian especially ever since Snowden affair.
There are terrible people writing dangerous things.
Guardian's Simon Tissdal comes to a top of writing utter lies, nonsense and obvious psy-op conditioning his readers.
Times or Independent are alike.
The general Western disinfo is so well executed that even Le Monde, Neu Zuricher Zeitung and TAZ and all those, once reasonable papers to read, became lying trash. Those became no different from the second tier and well known yellow trash as Dutch Telegraph, UK's Mirror, terrible Sun etc.
West definitely lost its media transparency and freedom. Everything is made up by some CIA or MoD or whatever current interest is. What is dangerous is that editorial tasks are simplified to a reception of an info, make it into the press, do not ask questions.
The general narrative going on since 2007 (after Putin's NATO speech) is Russia should never be presented as successful in anything.
Yes, they fly to space but must be presented as clumsy and careless.
They poison people with the strangest of the poisons.
They are crude, rude and do not care about human values. RT is bad, let us censor RF media, they cannot be permitted to be heard, let alone allowed to argue.
Western media had so far succeeded in making the RF an enemy, but only among badly educated and naive segments of its population.
Just the genotype very ripe for a future cannon fodder.
Consequences will be terrible, as a confused population is really becoming dangerous to its tamer, so they might be redirected to a future Eastern European front lines.
However, one must admire the imagination and idiotic creativity of such propaganda and hilarious stories they come up with.
Goebbels was an amateur in comparison to how far, low and dirty West can go.
Posted by: whirlX | Jan 26 2023 9:29 utc | 2
I think you can take that further. Whenever anything anywhere in the world looks off-kilter and even worse condemned by the US, then we can safely assume (statistically) the US or one of its proxies acting under orders, did it. It is a safe bet.
The problems in the mass media's might Wurlitzer ramps it up all the way and often it then becomes a perceived fact that cannot then be refuted. Take Adien Zenz's not-peer reviewed "scientific" articles that are used to push all the Uighur genocide claims. Zenz has an online doctorate (this makes him a credible scientist?) and his papers are based on interviews with Uighur wives and families of ISIS terrorists who, of course, claim they were persecuted by China. Duh! ISIS terrorists and their families not welcome back home to China (same for any countries in the EU as well but they apparently aren't genocidal). This is the entire basis for the claims. Yet, this is now a "fact" in the US and the basis of massive sanctions.
What it looks like to me is the US has some specific goal in mind (it is not limited to foreign policy but also they do this inside the US against American citizens which by the way, is illegal), then they set about constructing a narrative. They find some paid shills (Zenz, Steele, whomever) and then push it to the media who broadcast it. There are some good YouTube videos showing the exact same language coming from every broadcast in every TV show in America. Goebbels would be ecstatic if he could have done this.
Sometimes they try and get creative and attempt to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The Skripals I believe were ordered killed by the US as he was trying to return to Russia. Steele, coincidentally, was his contact in the UK). So, they made up this fancy story about Novichuk and it just happened the first person on the scene was the Chief Nurse for the UK Army. Wow! What a believable coincidence. It also just happens to be just down the road from Porton Down where the UK Military Chem/Bio facilities are at. Novichuk, by the way, was invented in Ukraine. It also apparently isn't a very good nerve agent as so far it hasn't been very reliable. I am 100% certain the Skripals are in a deep grave somewhere in the UK.
I can list tons of these things.
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:34 utc | 3
I would add this only works because the educational systems have dumbed down the population to levels at or near Cretins. That is a feature, not a bug. I saw a statistic the 54% of Americans can't read at a 6th-grade level. So, wildly unbelievable stories are pushed that are literally incredible (no credibility i.e., not believable, for those under the 6th-grade level like most trolls coming here) and are believed without question.
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:40 utc | 4
whirlX | Jan 26 2023 9:29 utc | 2 "other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused."
Pulling that quote out hits the nail on the head. The western scribblers are no less war criminals than Göring and in the end should be treated the same. They are responsible for many millions of deaths.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jan 26 2023 9:42 utc | 5
Best thing to do with this nonsense is just ignore it. Who the hell believes it anyway? The level of hysteria alone tells you they've completely lost control of the narrative.
Plan A: stir up trouble, grab Crimea for NATO. Like that was every gonna happen. Plan B: put pressure on the Donbass to draw Russia into a quagmire a la Afghanistan, like Russians wouldn't see that coming. Didn't anticipate that they would wait, build up strength, then draw YOU into a quagmire, did you? So what's Plan C? Ramp up the pressure to force Russia to act ahead of schedule? Wait. Wasn't that plan B?
If I had to guess how this ends, it's with the entire Ukraine coming under Russian control with the help of the majority of Ukrainians who've suffered this tyranny for a decade now and will jump at the chance when offered. Poland gets nothing, except a bunch of butt-hurt Nazis and their pals, while Ukraine rebuilds with Russian and Chinese investment and emerges as a major economic player in about ten years - not as a neutral nation, but as a Russian ally.
After that, the EU can deal or fuck off. Their choice.
Posted by: ebear | Jan 26 2023 10:11 utc | 6
and other media should be held responsible
Posted by b on January 26, 2023 at 8:16 UTC
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Yes. Convene a Judiciary Tribunal. Have trials.
Posted by: too scents | Jan 26 2023 10:22 utc | 7
A nice piece on how they do this (there are many examples):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9KAFn1hy8
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 10:37 utc | 8
On that item for renovation of the school in Crimea, I found this a few years ago:
I'm surprised these links are still out there.
Posted by: Bart Hansen | Jan 26 2023 11:15 utc | 9
The odd thing about the New York Times and its ilk in promoting the Spanish letter bomb story as part of Russiagate is the sheer level of hysterical urgency that always seems to accompany such reporting, followed by indifference once the story is revealed to be something completely different. It's as if the editors and journalists simply don't care about the effect their reporting has on the public or its consequences. How low and stupid can they be?
Posted by: Jen | Jan 26 2023 11:25 utc | 10
Posted by b on January 26, 2023 at 8:16 UTC |
There is the concept of false memories. When the media creates a first page story, even if it's later retracted, it creates a false memory that it actually happened. During the Iraq war media repeatedly reported that WMDs have been found and subsequentially retracted the stories. Yet polls after the US invasion consistently showed that 20%-40% in the US believed that Iraq had WMDs.
Posted by: Vikichka | Jan 26 2023 11:27 utc | 11
A word of caution: the police in spain can NOT be trusted to tell the truth about anything that happens in the Basque Country.
I’d say chances are good that they just grabbed some oldtimer usual suspect to appear to be making progress.
Which certainly doesn’t mean Russia did it, of course.
Posted by: Jörgen Hassler | Jan 26 2023 11:41 utc | 12
Strategy of tension does Spain.
Just send the damned Leopards already. And buy Abrams for the replacement.
Rinse. Repeat.
Posted by: Lurk | Jan 26 2023 11:45 utc | 13
@ Bart Hansen | Jan 26 2023 11:15
Crimea is the key and the main prize in Ukraine. It was almost a done deal to kick out RF Navy and go for the big NATO base. There were about 10 NATO offerings for the properties around Sevastopol to be bought and adopted in a period between 2010 and 2014. This is just one of the documents. More of those are probably in NATO procurement department.
Other fascinating issues discussed, Victor Bout and Scott Ritter interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLOzzuByYzc
Posted by: whirlX | Jan 26 2023 11:48 utc | 14
Has anyone here watched the interview with Jordan Trishton Walker? I wonder if those here would even pollute their minds listening to Walker. He is one of the responsible persons in a wide variety of crimes. Utterly amoral, basically a juvenile delinquent in an adult body. He specifies on record he commits crimes against humanity and laughs about it.
Most here are so well trained they will not acknowledge reality when it slaps them in the face with a 4x4. The perpetrators are lowlifes like Walker. The accomplices are most of us.
Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 26 2023 12:53 utc | 15
It's ironic because I remember during the terrible Madrid train bombings that clearly weren't either the ETA MO nor taking place at a time of them having a reason to engage in violence being immediately blamed on ETA by the right wing Spanish government at the time. However Spain's high profile role in the Iraq invasion which said right wing government giddily signed up for did provide a clear contextual motive for Islamist terrorists from ethnic Moroccan background who would tend to be extremely violent and indiscriminate and not giving any warning for their bombs.
Here we an example of a Basque man engaging in low intensity terrorism inspired by ETA (Who tended to be similar to the IRA giving warnings for bombs) being blamed on Russians despite it hardly being Russian MO to use letter bombs or to have any particular reason to target the Spanish government over any other in Europe.
Posted by: Altai | Jan 26 2023 12:54 utc | 16
@WhirlX #2
Yes, Udo Ulfkotte described how the German press was completely bought by Western "security" services.
Posted by: Observer | Jan 26 2023 12:57 utc | 17
Each time any discussion mentioning »propaganda work« brings up the name of Goebbels as the inventor and master of this sort of profession. I found, hoewever, that it was an American invention! Check out the »Committee on Public Information« (1917–1919), also known as the CPI or the Creel Committee, set up by U.S. President Wilson and directed by the JOURNALIST George Creel. This committee made the American public ready for war, for anti-German hysteria and was so successful that the National Socialists such as Hitler and Goebbels took the U.S. to be their example for … propaganda (not only that, but many other things too, including the »master race« which was by no means the Germans for them, but the Anglo-Saxon. Check out Brandon Simms, »Hitler: A Global Biography«.
Posted by: Jörg-M. Rudolph | Jan 26 2023 13:25 utc | 18
The Times and other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused.Posted by b on January 26, 2023 at 8:16 UTC
They are accountable, usually in the form of large government advertising contracts (subsidies). Not sure why this is b's primary focus these days, it is a feature not a bug.
Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jan 26 2023 13:35 utc | 19
"The Times and other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused."
Julius Streicher was convicted and hanged at Nuremburg for his propagandist activities.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judstrei.asp
He was convicted on Count Four, Crimes Against Humanity, while being acquitted of Count One, Crimes Against Peace but only because "he was [n]ever within Hitler's inner circle advisers; nor during his career was he closely connected with the formulation of the policies which led to war."
Goebbels would have been convicted of Count One as well. Today's imperial media, which receives its party line directly from the government agencies which formulate policy, can't be absolved of connection with these polices, so its cadres are guilty of Count One as well.
Posted by: Flying Dutchman | Jan 26 2023 13:46 utc | 20
@ Colin
A reasonable suspicion. Operation Gladio continues.
Posted by: malenkov | Jan 26 2023 14:04 utc | 21
There is no "west". There is an empire run by the US ruling class, the mobilised wealth of the system. And it is fighting for its life. In this fight anything goes: there is no concern over the rapidly decreasing credibility of either the media, the Academy or the 'democracy.' It is all being exposed for the sordid reality that it is nothing more than the crude superstructure of a system founded on the need to accumulate more and more capital all the time.
Those running the empire know that, if they lose this stupid conflict, into which they entered with lots of preparation but not a moment of thought, there is no tomorrow for them.
What will come, nobody knows but it won't be more of the same- a six hundred year empire that has become, within itself, permanent, eternal, inevitable, impossible to conceive of coming to an end.
And it is this mindset, rooted within the capitalist class, that makes the current moment so extraordinarily dangerous: those who cannot conceive of the empire coming to an end, the capitalist system at its centre being replaced, are already halfway to accepting the justifiability of nuclear war to preserve what, in their warped and shrunken minds is 'crucial" to the continuity of life.
Thinking as they do that there is no alternative to their system, their domination, their empire's hegemony they have no difficulty in putting the lives of all on the line to preserve the privileges that they hold dear and regard as natural and proper.
They have already proclaimed 'The End of History.' Does anyone imagine that they will hesitate to bring it about?
Posted by: bevin | Jan 26 2023 14:13 utc | 22
I stopped reading NYT and newspapers in general because of things like that, so I do not know what changed during the war. This article is unbelievably blatant, "officials believe" in almost EVERY PARAGRAPH.
My favorite story for those cases is a very strange wave of events in all 5 Eyes Countries: creepy clowns were appearing terrorizing people. In some places like Australia, the sales of clown costumes and make-ups were suspended. This mystery problem was basically solved after some culprits were caught, and eventually it was clear that it was a temporary fashion among high school boys to bully middle school girls. At no point Russian influence was suggested! Totally unique.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 26 2023 14:44 utc | 23
Posted by: ebear | Jan 26 2023 10:11 utc | 6
Plan A: stir up trouble, grab Crimea for NATO. Like that was every gonna happen. Plan B: put pressure on the Donbass to draw Russia into a quagmire a la Afghanistan, like Russians wouldn't see that coming. Didn't anticipate that they would wait, build up strength, then draw YOU into a quagmire, did you? So what's Plan C? Ramp up the pressure to force Russia to act ahead of schedule? Wait. Wasn't that plan B?
A mostly correct summary, except that what you call plans B and C are actually C and D
Plan B was ukronazis overruning Donbass while the RF was "distracted" by operations and blockading carried out from Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Posted by: Arganthonios | Jan 26 2023 15:04 utc | 24
I would add this only works because the educational systems have dumbed down the population to levels at or near Cretins.Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:40 utc | 4
I would agree if "only" were changed to "especially." I've known people with advanced degrees in science who in their work are intellectually curious and even brilliant, yet accept whatever the corporate media spew. I'm not sure it's possible to be totally immune to brainwashing.
Posted by: David Levin | Jan 26 2023 15:24 utc | 25
I'm not sure it's possible to be totally immune to brainwashing.
Posted by: David Levin | Jan 26 2023 15:24 utc | 25
Unfortunately, the impulse to follow group believes may stem from evolutionary selection, more cohesive hunter-gatherer bands having an edge over competition. But if it goes too far, if the exceptions are too rare, a group looses the ability to adapt to changing conditions. Hence there is a balance, a minority that retains the critical thinking. Of course, "evolutionary psychology" is a pseudo-science, mostly, but I think there is a kernel of truth here.
From the synopsis of SF novel "Prisoners of Power":
... broadcasting a mind control signal, employed by the [anonymous rulers, known to the population as] Fathers to control the population.The constant low-intensity broadcast suppresses the ability of most people to evaluate information critically, making the omnipresent regime propaganda much more effective. In addition, twice a day an intense signal relieves mental stresses caused by the disconnect between the propaganda and the observed reality by inducing euphoria in the susceptible majority, and intense headaches in others who are immune to the signal's coercive power. Those are the only sober-thinking people in the country, including both the underground degens ("degenerates" hunted by the government) and the Fathers themselves.
The scenes in the novel would be similar to citizens gathering at lunch time shouting with fervor "We stand with Ukraine", "Death to Russian trolls" or whatever government deems important for the citizens to believe. BTW, this is a Russian novel from ca. 1970.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 26 2023 15:54 utc | 26
Basque separatist mailing letter bombs does seem very in-character for an attack in Spain, no offense to the Basques.
Posted by: brobin | Jan 26 2023 16:05 utc | 27
I'm quite encouraged by this story. While the 'West' is busy making stuff up about Russia, and believing it themselves, they seem to have lost focus on the true situation in Ukraine. For example, why is Russia making such slow progress with its SMO?
Is it because they're not very competent?
Or are they busy getting ready to strike ZATO Countries/military assets when (not if) the conflict spreads beyond Ukraine's borders?
Imo, if AmeriKKKa had competent military planners, it wouldn't have started most of its post-WWII miltary debacles. And ZATO has NEVER attacked an entity which could shoot back in any meaningful way.
It seems to me that the Yankees think they can talk Russia to death...
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 26 2023 16:42 utc | 28
Since MoA was birthed this place has offered the best commentary on key issues in international politics. The commentariat here is similarly first-rate as today's comments indicate So let me put things as clearly as possible: The Washington Empire has grown organically since WWII in highly fertile soil both domestically and in Europe. USA-ans love simple answers to complex problems featuring the use of force against whatever is designated by the state propaganda organs as "bad guys." Europeans love the Empire because they trust authority (Americans not so much) and tend to conform and seek security thus it has become very easy for the Empire to (through threats and and endless treasure reserved for bribery) to control European media. Fortunately the USA has a thriving and diverse dissident media that offers hope for change--Europe does not seem to have that.
"Yes. Convene a Judiciary Tribunal. Have trials." as someone above mentioned--this is completely impossible. The entire professional class of the West has abandoned the concept of international law and replaced it with "rules-based order" which consists of diktats coming from Washington aka Imperial decrees. There can be no trials under international law because there is no international law--that bird has flown.
The Empire will spin any Orwellian tale it wants and the majority of people in the Empire will accept it as things stand today.
Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Jan 26 2023 16:58 utc | 30
thanks b!
@ paveway left an article in the last thread which i think is very relevant to this discussion.. i encourage others to read it..
Leak: German Government's Ukraine war propaganda campaign
Posted by: james | Jan 26 2023 17:02 utc | 31
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 26 2023 16:42 utc | 28
Maybe Russia is preparing for the war to spill over, but it would be beyond stupid if they struck NATO first. Until I see more videos of piles of dead Russians I assume the RF is going this slow for the same reason it has been moving slow since the summer: they are prioritizing force preservation over speed because they don't want massive pockets of enemy troops in their rear echelons who are dug into heavily fortified areas. They prefer methodical obliteration over blitzkrieg and I can't blame them, much less see an alternative. If they can sit at max range lobbing shells and missiles forever they'll probably do it.
Ukrainian forces adapted to their inferior artillery capabilities by digging in and going on infantry heavy assaults, which probably is far from identical to how the Vietnamese fought, but definitely reminds me of Vietnamese tunnel fighting and "grab them by the belt" infantry tactics that focused on denying an enemy force their ability to use indirect fire support.
Posted by: brobin | Jan 26 2023 17:13 utc | 32
They need to check his ties to the CIA. What did they have to blackmail him to do this?
Posted by: goldhoarder | Jan 26 2023 17:23 utc | 33
I’m basquing in delight that the msm has given us so much information. Reuters states “The suspect is a retired Spanish citizen with the initials P.G.P. who is tech-savvy and very active on social networks, the ministry said.” So a retired tech-savvy Spaniard from the north of Spain whose initials align with “pretty good privacy” is the number one suspect. What are the odds?
Posted by: Butte Bill | Jan 26 2023 17:25 utc | 34
This story about the bomb mailings in NW Spain/Madrid har also infected local Scandinavian mainstrea media. Citedas foreign news without referring to the Spiel/sook origins of stry as a NYT report.
On anther side: Was there not in the story baked in a tale of one device sent to the Ukraïna representation in Madrid and reportedly maiming a guard there when opening the mailed-in package? Was that news and reporting part of the same news barrage, really?
Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Jan 26 2023 17:25 utc | 35
Second reference to the Strugatsky brothers in 2 days for me, over on Slavyangrad the novel was called the Island. Looks like I should read another of their novels, Roadside Picnic was a delight.
And when continuing with books, Stephen F. Cohens book about the development of the the New cold war "War with Russia?" was $1.99 when I bought it via Kobo.
Posted by: paxmark1 | Jan 26 2023 17:31 utc | 36
Thank you, b, for yet another powerful expose of Western propaganda. It is repugnant and disgusting.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 18:12 utc | 37
@Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:40 utc | 4
Re Media
To me, the saddest part is that people with high IQs and an extensive education are at least as susceptible to the barrage of lies as the dolts and idiots of the world, but are more likely to reject the possibility that they could be wrong. This is not a new phenomena (think of the role of the Hearst papers in the American Spanish war, hatred of Jews and Russians, and hysteria against alcohol and cannabis, for example), but I think the sophistication, reach and effectiveness of large-scale manipulation has greatly increased since the elimination of the limits on cross-ownership and the requirements for "balance" were eliminated in the 1990s. This used to be a larger problem in countries like the USA where the oligarchs controlled both government and media, but they have used the vast sums the US system provided them to buy control of the media globally except where this has been legally blocked. The result has been to turn the world into a vitriolic echo chamber where anyone exposed to its incessant themes is at risk of cognitive capture and instillation of vehement outgroup hostility.
Re Alleged link between Novichok and Skripals
What seemed obvious to me was the coordination between the British, American, Swiss and Dutch intelligence, the involvement of Portland Down and the American capture of the OPCW. What appeared obvious to me was that whatever the Skripals were exposed to was not Novichok, if only because they lived. Which may be why my eye was caught by the acknowledgement, in a private report never expected to be seen by the public, but released by Lavrov, produced by the Spiez Laboratory (controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection) that they found BZ aka QNB (Quinuclidinyl benzilate), a NATO developed muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist developed as an incapacitating agent for use in chemical warfare, in the samples sent to them for analysis by the OPCW which, in breach of its own protocols, excluded Tissia from the investigation. In my opinion, BZ would far better account for the described symptoms and the survival of some of those allegedly exposed to "Novichok".
@b
@whirlX | Jan 26 2023 9:29 utc | 2
@Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:34 utc | 3 et ff.
@Flying Dutchman | Jan 26 2023 13:46 utc | 20
@Peter AU1 | Jan 26 2023 9:42 utc | 5
@
@Jörg-M. Rudolph | Jan 26 2023 13:25 utc | 18
So many great, on point posts. One of the very beat recent threads :-)
Posted by: Hermit | Jan 26 2023 18:17 utc | 38
As concerns this conflict, there are many dishonest claims made in the media, which seem to produce nothing but lies piped in directly from the Ukrainian government. Even so, I'm wondering about the truth of the claim that Russian soldiers looted art in Kherson and Mariupol. Apparently, there's a major art museum in Kherson, the Shovkunenko Kherson Regional Art Museum. So is it true that Russian soldiers looted it? If so, what evidence is there of this claim? I thought I had tracked the story to its original source--the Ukrainian government--but it turns out the story is older than what I found. Can anyone shed any light on this for me? Thank you.
Posted by: Archie | Jan 26 2023 18:29 utc | 39
Posted by: Archie | Jan 26 2023 18:29 utc | 39
Before the Russians retreated from Kerson, they removed various artworks (statues, pictures, etc.) so the Ukrainians could not destroy them, as had been done elsewhere. That is what Ze us talking about.
Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 26 2023 18:33 utc | 40
Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:34 utc | 3
_____
Your post underscores how Major-Media propaganda is not a result of incompetence, but a rather deliberate diabolical campaign of lies, big lies. Brings to mind a verse in Don McLean's American Pie
"Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan's spell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 18:49 utc | 41
Will those news outlets be held accountable for reporting such lies? Not really. If the American dunce citizen pull themselves away from the new entertainments of pot, porn and sports, and put the spotlight on government and the media, only then will we have somewhat of a chance. But I doubt it very much.
Posted by: Jose Garcia | Jan 26 2023 19:13 utc | 42
Posted by: james | Jan 26 2023 17:02 utc | 31
thank you so much for that link. Just when you think you're starting to lose your mind, something solid appears. And you think yes, goddammit, it WAS three controlled demolitions and a pile of lies that only complete idiots could believe and I am not crazy to think this nazi nightmare has been slowly and silently infiltrating everything since probably operation paperclip. Canada is now completely managed by this unelected unadvertised borg. It's in the churches. It's in the service clubs. It's in the schools. Anyone remember when Canada had great trade relationships with China and Russia? Anyone remember when Canada could process its own oil and gas? Now we are sending tanks to fight Russia? I don't remember the referendum on starting WW3. At least everyone around here knows we're being fed nothing but pure bullshit by our media. The ongoing torture of Julian Assange proves who is lying. As does this linked document.
Posted by: Umpire of Lies | Jan 26 2023 19:44 utc | 43
"Has anyone here watched the interview with Jordan Trishton Walker?"
Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 26 2023 12:53 utc | 15
Did you notice that this starts like
Project Veritas released a new video..
Be careful with this. I think Project Veritas is the immoral. And this will fall down like a cheap skum and pfizer will be happy .
I don't think Pfizer or the MSN has anything to do with morality .
In the name of Big Media
Big Pharma
Big brother and father morality is out of conversation, have you see anyone in the big companies speaking about their personal goals?
Posted by: Gorgys | Jan 26 2023 19:45 utc | 44
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 9:40 utc | 4:
I would add this only works because the educational systems have dumbed down the population to levels at or near Cretins. That is a feature, not a bug. I saw a statistic the 54% of Americans can't read at a 6th-grade level.
You're absolutely right about the education system dumbing down the population. It is estimated that nearly 40% of adult US generation hold at least a BA or BS degree, yet 54% of Americans read below the 6th-grade level. In my daily life of interaction with people in general, I'd give credence to that 54% below 6th-grade level literary proficiency estimate. Boy, have we sunk deep into that intelligence abyss!
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 26 2023 19:52 utc | 45
Despite initial claims that a Chinese lab leaked the Koch virus, the available evidence clearly suggests that the West produced the virus, just as HIV was the result of U.S. testing of the chimpanzee immunodeficiency virus on humans. HIV has since been weaponized like the war on drugs to fight hippies, gays, blacks and the third-world countries.
Just as the Iraq war illustrated the U.S. fervor for developing biological and chemical weapons twenty years ago, when the U.S. blames others, that is exactly what they themselves have done.
For example, the accusation of Russian false flag operations means that the U.S. created false flag operations at nuclear power plants in Ukraine, and the accusation of Russian imperialist aggression & the "Bucha!!1!1" clearly corresponds to U.S. actions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Posted by: Colin | Jan 26 2023 19:53 utc | 46
There is no "west". There is an empire run by the US ruling class, the mobilised wealth of the system. And it is fighting for its life. In this fight anything goes: there is no concern over the rapidly decreasing credibility of either the media, the Academy or the 'democracy.' It is all being exposed for the sordid reality that it is nothing more than the crude superstructure of a system founded on the need to accumulate more and more capital all the time.
Those running the empire know that, if they lose this stupid conflict, into which they entered with lots of preparation but not a moment of thought, there is no tomorrow for them.
What will come, nobody knows but it won't be more of the same- a six hundred year empire that has become, within itself, permanent, eternal, inevitable, impossible to conceive of coming to an end.
And it is this mindset, rooted within the capitalist class, that makes the current moment so extraordinarily dangerous: those who cannot conceive of the empire coming to an end, the capitalist system at its centre being replaced, are already halfway to accepting the justifiability of nuclear war to preserve what, in their warped and shrunken minds is 'crucial" to the continuity of life.
Thinking as they do that there is no alternative to their system, their domination, their empire's hegemony they have no difficulty in putting the lives of all on the line to preserve the privileges that they hold dear and regard as natural and proper.
They have already proclaimed 'The End of History.' Does anyone imagine that they will hesitate to bring it about?
Posted by: bevin | Jan 26 2023 14:13 utc | 22
Your post brings to mind the sci-fi flick Tenet where a Russian oligarch with a terminal illness is prepared to destroy the world (what's the point of the world going on if he will no longer be around). A case of classic projection as it's far more likely that Western oligarchs would do this as you point out.
Posted by: Chris N | Jan 26 2023 20:08 utc | 47
"Utterly amoral, basically a juvenile delinquent in an adult body. He specifies on record he commits crimes against humanity and laughs about it."
https://www.projectveritas.com/
oldhippie | Jan 26 2023 12:53 utc | 15
_______
Is the Project Veritas video authentic, staged, or satire? A Pfizer Executive admits to ‘mutating’ COVID via ‘directed evolution’ (not gain-of-function; can't say that) by experimenting on live monkeys in order to continue profiting off of vaccines. Seems farfetched; staged?
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 20:13 utc | 48
"They have already proclaimed 'The End of History.' Does anyone imagine that they will hesitate to bring it about?"
bevin | Jan 26 2023 14:13 utc | 22
_____
"Extraordinarily dangerous" indeed.
As relayed at the tail end of yesterday's thread: when I picked up another tube of Silver Eagles, the dealer said I should also be stocking up on ammo. I chuckled... then realized he was quite serious. Things can get ugly quite quickly, noting the growing RV/tent cities in most American cities, now impossible to hide. But so far, within such visible destitution, there's thankfully little evidence of starvation. (Clearly, most homeless people's dogs eat as well as mine; quite clever, for them I'm a helpless donor). But what happens if/when people start going seriously hungry, days or weeks without food?
Imagine what may happen when the world stops buying America's monopoly-money debt (treasuries, bonds, mortgages) -- when the stock market collapses; when pension/retirement accounts go poof; when hyperinfation arrives. What happens when a single.egg costs one dollar, vs. 50 cents today, vs. 20 cents last year? This is why the West's war on Russia is truly existential for the US-Anglo-Zionist "elite". The Criminal Reserve Bank, owned by Wall $treet/London Racketeers, is impaled on the horns of its own existential dilemma. They will not relinquish power easily, so the "Samson Option", if unlikely, can't be ruled out. Russia is keenly aware of this, which is why Russia is managing the West's relentless escalations in Ukraine so carefully ... and maddeningly slowly for critics.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 20:35 utc | 49
Posted by: whirlX | Jan 26 2023 9:29 utc | 2 and others regarding the absolutely captured media in the West...
One aspect of this issue that is scarcely mentioned around here, at least not directly, is that of corporate media consolidation and the demise of independent local newspapers (to include newspapers that were once part of somewhat large, but not monopolistic holding companies, ala Scripps Howard). After the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (whether it would be effective in today's environment can be debated) and following the Powell Memo of the late 60s which was basically a corporate/chamber of commerce declaration of war on taxation and regulation, the newsroom was first turned into a corporate profit center (where it had not really been before), the aforementioned newspapers or their holding companies were gobbled up by even larger corporations and holding companies (or billionaires, ahem) and local TV stations were bought by conglomerates like the Sinclair Group who standardized messaging across all of their outlets regardless of city or network affiliation.
This meant much easier and more efficient infiltration/capture by the metastasizing security/surveillance state where before it has been said that the CIA had thousands of individual reporters and editors on their payroll, now the same could be accomplished with far fewer payouts to much higher ranking individuals within those media corporations. Furthermore, after the Cold War ended and a new global enemy emerged on 9/11/2001, media outlets scrambled to get "scoops" from "experts" in terrorism, security and military matters, meaning a big hiring spree of former generals, spooks, heads of the CIA, FBI, etc. as "analysts" and the not-so-gradual purge of any dissenting wisdom, ala the firing of Phil Donahue at the previously anti-Bush MSNBC and the refusal to put any critics of war on the air. Instead what happened is that we got an endless stream of representatives of The Blob clogging up all the major networks and Deep State "access journalist" stenographers promoted to the highest positions of "journalism" at the NYT, WaPo and other major dailies.
Someone recently posted a link to the Swiss Propaganda Research's guide to the US empire's propaganda apparatus and one thing that jumps out when you dig in is that on top of everything I've already mentioned, the people who sit on the boards of these major media near-monopolies also happen to be invested in (including boardroom seats) publicly traded military industrial contractors like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Similarly, long time members or organizations like the CRF and Trilateral Commission occupy influential roles at the same media outlets - and - MIC war profiteers.
Additionally, above it was mentioned that places like the Grauniad were fully captured/brought to heel in the wake of the Manning/Wikileaks revelations and Snowden's CIA leaks. By that point they gave up without a fight and totally abandoned the sources that had brought them huge scoops, but also turned into attack dogs against the same people and organizations (one simply has to read Guardian coverage of Julian Assange or note the complete lack of coverage in American papers like the NYT or on MSDNC or Faux Snooze).
Anyway just trying to add to the discussion.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 21:32 utc | 51
Sorry about the slight dyslexia in my previous post #51.
This was meant to read thusly:
Similarly, long time members or of organizations like the CRF CFR (Council of Foreign Relations) and the Trilateral Commission occupy influential roles at the same media outlets - and - MIC war profiteers.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 21:36 utc | 52
Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Jan 26 2023 10:37 utc | 8
Ah, yes, good one. I mentioned the Sinclair Group in my comment too.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 21:47 utc | 53
These inveterate liars (the collective Western Establishment and its propaganda bullhorns) might actually be laying the ground for a future actions. Such as when they finally decide to let Zelensky go the way his minister of internal affairs went, they can blame it on Russia or at least the Wagner Group. Zelensky and his cohorts are soon to realize the value of the West's friendship and support.
Posted by: Steve | Jan 26 2023 21:48 utc | 54
@ Umpire of Lies | Jan 26 2023 19:44 utc | 43
thanks... its a very good article, isn't it? cheers..
Posted by: james | Jan 26 2023 21:51 utc | 55
Posted by:WhirlX @ 14
Here's a search of the new US government procurement system for the term "Crimea" A very long link The graphic b posted in the story was from FBO (federal business opportunities) which was subsumed by SAM.gov a few years ago. www.sam.gov - feel free to do some more searching for other terms.
There are numerous special entity designations and individuals from Crimea in the search results above. It appears that most of them are "exclusion" designations stemming from the 2014 Crimean referendum to rejoin Russia.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 22:00 utc | 56
Posted by: Steve | Jan 26 2023 21:48 utc | 54
Zelensky should have spoken to the Iraqi Kurds, the South Vietnamese, the Afghan people and too many more to count before getting into bed with non-agreement-capable greedy bastards like Uncle Scam.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 22:02 utc | 57
The Times and other media should be held responsible for the deadly consequences its misreporting and lies have caused.
Damn right they should!
Posted by: HERMIUS | Jan 26 2023 22:05 utc | 58
I don't think that Zelensky getting into bed with Uncle Sam was a consensual decision.
More like a shotgun wedding.
Posted by: wagelaborer | Jan 26 2023 22:07 utc | 59
Posted by: wagelaborer | Jan 26 2023 22:07 utc | 59
Shotgun wedding or date rape?
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 22:09 utc | 60
A"Russiagate like"....as in made from whole cloth. Invented.
Posted by: CD Waller | Jan 26 2023 22:41 utc | 62
"...I'm not sure it's possible to be totally immune to brainwashing." David Levin@25
We all tend, out of politeness probably, to over think this matter. I'm beginning to suspect that the sad and sordid reality is that people know on which side their bread is buttered- they got the memos. And they understand that dissent is no longer tolerated. The days when it was considered healthy to question authority are passed (temporarily I hope). Nowadays it is clear that the Assanges of this world go to prison. If they are lucky they survive but not always. And nobody cares.
As Helmer remarked recently most of the alternative media in the UK is too scared to tell the truth about Ukraine and the empire's unrelenting aggression. And that is true of Canada and the States and elsewhere.
Those who step out of line suffer for it. And people like Patrick Armstrong understand- have been given to understand- what the score is. That won't silence them but it will give them pause, make them choose the terrain they fight on. Keep their own counsel.
As I mentioned earlier the Empire is at a crisis point. The mask has been thrown away. This is a war to the knife. The media knows this- it is engaged in bootlicking and flattery to an extent unprecedented in the brief history of its existence.
There was a time when intellectuals in the empire could take a genuine pride in the cultural heritage but now that heritage has become corrupted, it achievements dwarfed by the sheer tendentiousness, the sleaziness, the self congratulatory bullying of a culture that has given up bothering to prove the 'truths' that it knows it can much more easily impose: hence the tampons available in boys washrooms, the heresy of the man or woman sex theory and the insouciance with which the scandal of Minsk is unaddressed.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 26 2023 22:58 utc | 63
1. The more time Russia takes to finish the task, the more dangerous this escalation with NATO gets. Russia needs to do a blitz and partition the country, if nothing else to end the war and save lives.
2. Russia (and indeed rest of the world) does not seem to have realized how megalomaniacal the west political class has become with its exceptionalism - this is actually a major intelligence failure.. US is now run by the globalists, which are run by the neocons, which are basically ZioProtocolists. Anyone who does not tow the line is without a job, no questions. These people will not wait to launch a first strike if they are about to lose their exceptionalism. The signs of their madness were all there all along ever since the Wolfowitz memo in 1990. Still Russia went in with kid gloves and tried to get it done with a light touch. The non west does not seem to understand, these people are basically the East India company, which was a bloodthirsty and greedy force from the beginning to the end.
3. The white woke west will not stop till it gets WW3. This is basically a war between the white people (ie the Anglos, who are still in the exceptional rapine tradition of the East India company).
4. Anyone who hopes for peace and negotiation should consider carefully how the idea of peace has been banished from the western mind. The longer NATO is allowed to rearm, the worse the consequences will be for the rest.
5. The rest of humanity needs to form a nonNATO military alliance to protect itself from "humanitarian" interventions by NATO etc.
6. Just today, we had NATO stoltenberg and Israeli defence minister (who has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians for almost 80 years), lecturing the world on democracy and protection of human rights.
Posted by: cafe con leche | Jan 26 2023 23:06 utc | 65
Seems farfetched; staged?
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 20:13 utc | 48
That Pfizer guy has been identified and his position in the company verified, so that part is legit.
Whether he's talking in hypotheticals or they have actual biolabs where monkeys are being infected with viruses in gain-of-function research by any other name is up in the air. I've been doing a lot of digging on biolabs, including those in Ukraine, and nothing like that has come up in my research, but I'm not saying it's not happening. But it looks like that Pfizer dude was on a Grindr date (the gay dating app) and trying to make conversation in response to questions from his "date" - IOW entrapment and then selectively spinning what he said in order to align with a pre-ordained narrative.
Who knows, maybe proof will come out. But on the basis of just a Project Veritas video and James O'Queef presentation, I can't say I believe it yet.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 23:21 utc | 66
Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 26 2023 12:53 utc | 15
It's b's policy, and he is the patron of this bar. But yeah - I've seen it. John Mark Dougan has it uploaded on his YT-channel as of now.
Dougan have also made a video about bio-labs and what they were up to in the Donbass.
Posted by: Anne B | Jan 26 2023 23:53 utc | 67
For those interested, here's a comparison between the German Leopard2 and the Russian Armata tank:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_YTUaEBY8&ab_channel=Grid88
Posted by: HERMIUS | Jan 26 2023 23:53 utc | 68
Posted by: brobin | Jan 26 2023 16:05 utc | 27
I guess it's been so long, the Spanish have let their guard down.
I was reminded of something a friend told me about her work as a night-watch, in a home for demented. There was a man who used to be a union-activist, and he often required her to stand guard. She tried to accommodate him as best as she could, and to defuse the situation.
He might've been in the seventies in his mind.
Posted by: Anne B | Jan 27 2023 0:04 utc | 69
And when will we here CNN apologize for reporting this anti-slavic hate?
Answer, never. CNN will just go onto the next lie.
Posted by: Christian Chuba | Jan 27 2023 0:28 utc | 70
As someone who has a master's degree from a highly selective university, I am very skeptical of the role of education in helping people recognize the truth.
My critical thinking comes from the research I did on my own, and teachers only discourage my critical thinking.
This time in particular, the imperialist frenzy came more from more highly educated liberal centrists.
Posted by: Colin | Jan 27 2023 1:10 utc | 71
Posted by: bevin | Jan 26 2023 14:13 utc | 22
indeed and well said.
Posted by: polarbear4 | Jan 27 2023 3:33 utc | 72
I would agree if "only" were changed to "especially." I've known people with advanced degrees in science who in their work are intellectually curious and even brilliant, yet accept whatever the corporate media spew. I'm not sure it's possible to be totally immune to brainwashing.
Posted by: David Levin | Jan 26 2023 15:24 utc | 25
agree. so frustrating to see brilliant minds and loving hearts captured and twisted without recognition. it truly is becoming dystopian.
Posted by: polarbear4 | Jan 27 2023 3:36 utc | 73
Hi, B.
I've been reading MoA for a while and I have the highest regard for your analyses. I've never posted because I'm not the posting type. I'm not sure I've ever posted anywhere. But this is important.
If you want to use the word "like" as an appositive, such that it turns the previous word into an adjective by way of comparison, you must use a hyphen. There's no other way. So, (case in point) the title of this article should be: Spain Debunks Russiagate-Like New York Times Letter Bomb Story.
If you don't do this, you will be misread. I, for example, a natural-born Americanishaner, on first glance, sincerely believed that, in your title, you meant to say "Spain has debunked Russiagate in the same way that it previously debunked a story in the NYT about letter bombs."
Other than that, keep up the good work.
magine what may happen when the world stops buying America's monopoly-money debt (treasuries, bonds, mortgages) -- when the stock market collapses; when pension/retirement accounts go poof; when hyperinfation arrives. What happens when a single.egg costs one dollar, vs. 50 cents today, vs. 20 cents last year? This is why the West's war on Russia is truly existential for the US-Anglo-Zionist "elite". The Criminal Reserve Bank, owned by Wall $treet/London Racketeers, is impaled on the horns of its own existential dilemma. They will not relinquish power easily, so the "Samson Option", if unlikely, can't be ruled out. Russia is keenly aware of this, which is why Russia is managing the West's relentless escalations in Ukraine so carefully ... and maddeningly slowly for critics.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 26 2023 20:35 utc | 49
also well said. i can't remember who it was from here said that may be the threat that keeps the u.s. somewhat in line. the row may be quietly letting them know that if they dare to start anything to do with nukes, they will drop their money even faster than they are now.
Posted by: polarbear4 | Jan 27 2023 4:26 utc | 75
1. The more time Russia takes to finish the task, the more dangerous this escalation with NATO gets. Russia needs to do a blitz and partition the country, if nothing else to end the war and save lives.
2. Russia (and indeed rest of the world) does not seem to have realized how megalomaniacal the west political class has become with its exceptionalism...
-Posted by: cafe con leche | Jan 26 2023 23:06 utc | 65
I agree on the first point, but I see some plausible explanations. First, Russia was not ready for the war, and neither was Ukraine, and the question was how the time changes the balance of possibilities. For example, development of military grade drones was clearly lagging in Russia, hence the mutually advantageous deal with Iran that Russia tried to avoid (I guess).
Second explanation is that Putin, largely for valid reasons, is a maniac on budgetary sustainability. And faster escalation on Russia side would prompt faster escalation on the Western side, so huge increase of expenditures would not necessarily decrease the total cost of war. This is VERY complicated and it is highly plausible that there was a systemic miscalculation.
Third explanation is that besides war results, Russia needs trade and other forms of support to avoid shortages and dire consequences on industry and standard of living and the prospect of having OK international relations in the war aftermath. Here the biggest variable was India, but collectively, "global South" too. Perhaps letting the West to be more aggressive helped here. Whatever carnage was caused by war, it is not as large as in Yemen, Iraq etc., and audiences outside the "collective West" like the entire Muslim world and India are aware of that (almost strange to see them together). A bloody blitz krieg has risks here. For that matter, China, while not as "variable" as India, has a larger weight in this context, and it could have some friendly advises too.
Starting from inferior position, Russia must do better in "what-about-ery" than the West. And judging on Indian media, it does.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 27 2023 4:44 utc | 77
2. Russia (and indeed rest of the world) does not seem to have realized how megalomaniacal the west political class has become with its exceptionalism...
-Posted by: cafe con leche | Jan 26 2023 23:06 utc | 65
I continue. Unlike you and me, Lavrov and Putin know all too well how megalomaniac and hypocritical Western political class is. There are some surprises on that count, the degree of "single narrative dominance" in the West that was achieved, and the irrationality of this all. In the framework of "Prisoners of Powers" that I cited above (Wikipedia synopsis), degens, folk who react to propaganda with nausea rather than acceptance, died out in the Western power structures, although still survive as this forum can attest. Educated and informed people like Blinken are aware of what is going on, but they are so immersed in the "narrative" that they cannot process the facts. They REALLY THINK that they are the largest blessing Earthlings ever received, and if there appreciation of that may be low in "some countries", patient efforts will change it, after all, truth and self-interest of Brazilians, Colombians, Pakistanis, Indians etc. will prevail. They have truth, morality and elixir of power (ring of power?) on their side.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jan 27 2023 4:55 utc | 78
@ Piotr Berman | Jan 27 2023 4:55 utc | 78
Indeed an interesting analogy. Recall the novel from my sci-fi enamored youth. Cheers.
I don't think that Zelensky getting into bed with Uncle Sam was a consensual decision.
More like a shotgun wedding.
wagelaborer | Jan 26 2023 22:07 utc | 59
Shotgun wedding or date rape?
Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 26 2023 22:09 utc | 60
_______
A twofer. In the book, Sicario, enforcers for a Mexican cartel said police and government officials were often offered a simple choice in their relationship with the cartel: "prefieras plata o plomo?" Do you prefer silver or lead? The US ZOG (Zionist-Occupied Government) makes Mexican cartels look like family charities.
Posted by: Doug Hillman | Jan 27 2023 5:30 utc | 80
@David Levin | 25
I've known people with advanced degrees in science who in their work are intellectually curious and even brilliant, yet accept whatever the corporate media spew...
For one thing, there is a term for it: "idiot savant"... "a mentally defective person with an exceptional skill or talent in a special field, as a highly developed ability to play music or to solve complex mathematical problems at great speed."
For another... There is a book “Propaganda: The Formation of Attitudes” by Jacques Ellul.
Central to Ellul's thesis is that propaganda cannot function without education; it always needs some of it. This view is the flip side of the widely held belief that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. Quite the opposite, education is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. Education, he argues, is what we may refer to as pre-propaganda – the flooding of minds with a massive amount of incoherent information, already prefigured in parts for achieving certain objectives when their time comes.
In this light, intellectuals are by far the most vulnerable to propaganda. As it goes aссording to this model: 1) They consume the bulk of second-hand, unverifiable information. 2) They are desperate to have the right opinion on every important issue of the day and therefore easily suссumb to the views offered by "experts" who digest all that chaotic mass of data for them – in compliance with an official policy. 3) They seriously consider themselves capable of "judging for themselves".
The smart ones cannot live without it: “Propaganda hands them what they need and in veritable abundance: a raison d’être, personal involvement, and participation in important events, an outlet and excuse for some of their more doubtful impulses, righteousness – all factitious, to be sure, all more or less spurious; but they drink it all in and asks for more. Without this intense collaboration propaganda would be helpless…”
Posted by: Nomad | Jan 27 2023 6:32 utc | 81
Central to Ellul's thesis is that propaganda cannot function without education; it always needs some of it.Posted by: Nomad | Jan 27 2023 6:32 utc | 81
That premise doesn't seem to account for why preschoolers believe what their parents tell them: the parent represents authority. I believe that in most people, trust in authority tends to persist unless the person were to witness the direct refutation of enough alleged facts or to be encouraged to think independently.
Posted by: David Levin | Jan 27 2023 14:24 utc | 82
David Levin @ #82.
I wouldn't dismiss Hermit's 'education' hypothesis out of hand but, in Oz, the anti-Russia theme is sustained and reinforced via shameless, angry and indignant, fact-frèe bullying by mendacious, well-cònnected authority figures.
One imagines that this rigid bullshit-maintenance program is costing the Yankees, and their bosses in Tel Aviv, tens of millions of dollars.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 27 2023 17:36 utc | 83
@ Nomad | Jan 27 2023 6:32 utc | 81
thanks nomad.. great comment...
@ David Levin | Jan 27 2023 14:24 utc | 82
david - thanks for initiating this exchange on this important topic.. my impression is most people follow authority and authority type figures - including their parents.. i am not sure how some get off this beaten path, but i know i did somewhere along the line... i think you are correct and i am not sure how a change in respect for those in authority triggers this change.. i can't explain it in myself, but someone along the line a deep mistrust of authority figures in general - seeped in... cheers..
Posted by: james | Jan 27 2023 17:41 utc | 84
Gorgys @ 44
It is a hall of mirrors. Presume it is all fake, an elaborate hoax. Think a minute of how many moving pieces there are here and who would have the capacity to move all the levers. Then think what sort of media world we are in if it is hoax. I am happier if PV hit it out of the park, if it is all a zero what have we got? The man in question does seem to be a licensed MD, the Yale years seem real, the Boston Consulting Group work seems real. The trips to Wuhan? l have no idea what to make of that. The Pfizer title looks like inflation of honors. But did he even work for Pfizer? Says he did. It is hall of mirrors. Which way should we look in the hall?
Posted by: oldhippie | Jan 27 2023 19:10 utc | 86
Most likely a Basque separatist... as to even hypothetical Russian involvement, assuming it was even plausible, it would more likely be those exiled oligarchs and gangsters living in Costa del Sol.
Posted by: Alta4710 | Jan 28 2023 0:40 utc | 87
Piotr Berman | Jan 27 2023 4:55 utc | 78
In my experience, rather that imagining it just needs time for everyone to love them as much as they love themselves, these narcissists tend to imagine it just takes better communication and more effective marketing. They are certain that the people rejecting them cannot possibly be rejecting the great and good things they stand for, or their wonderful and amazing selves, but have simply misunderstood quite how great and good these things are, and how amazing those fighting for the great and good, like themselves, must be. This goes double for politicians.
Posted by: Hermit | Jan 28 2023 8:03 utc | 88
The discussion above about the US population's IQ reminds me of a George Carlin line - "If you think the average person is stupid then 50% of the population are worse."
Posted by: HOBO 3 | Jan 28 2023 11:25 utc | 89
The discussion above about the US population's IQ reminds me of a George Carlin line - "If you think the average person is stupid then 50% of the population are worse."
Posted by: HOBO 3 | Jan 28 2023 11:25 utc | 90
The comments to this entry are closed.
Based on Russiagate's experience (that it was primarily the US, not Russia, that rigged the voter vote in key states), it is very likely that the truth is that the US rigged this guy to send the bomb.
Posted by: Colin | Jan 26 2023 8:56 utc | 1