Neo-McCarthyism and the US Media
The crusade to ban Russia policy criticsAs a result of the civil war that has raged in Ukraine since April 2014, at least 7,000 people have been killed and more than 15,400 wounded, many of them grievously. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 1.2 million eastern Ukrainians have been internally displaced, while the number of those who have fled abroad, mainly to Russia and Belarus, has reached 674,300. Further, the United Nations has reported that millions of people, particularly the elderly and the very young, are facing life-threatening conditions as a result of the conflict. Large parts of eastern Ukraine lie in ruins, and relations between the United States and Russia have perhaps reached their most dangerous point since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
And yet a special report published last fall by the online magazine the Interpreter would have us believe that Russian disinformation ranks among the gravest threats to the West. The report, titled The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money, is a joint project of the Interpreter and the Institute for Modern Russia (IMR), a Manhattan-based think tank funded by the exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Cowritten by the journalists Michael Weiss and Peter Pomerantsev, this highly polemical manifesto makes the case for why the United States, and the West generally, must combat what the authors allege to be the Kremlins extravagantly designed propaganda campaign. If implemented, the measures they propose would stifle democratic debate in the Western media.
The report seeks to awaken a purportedly somnolent American public to the danger posed by the Kremlins media apparatus. According to Weiss and Pomerantsev, the Russian governmentvia RT, the Kremlin-funded international television outlet, as well as a network of expatriate NGOs and far-left and far-right movementsis creating an anti-Western, authoritarian Internationale that is becoming ever more popular throughout the world.
http://www.thenation.com/article/207689/neo-mccarthyism-and-us-media
bemildred
(90,061 posts)A couple of weeks ago, this column guardedly suggested that John Kerrys day-long talks in Sochi with Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, looked like a break in the clouds on numerous questions, primarily the Ukraine crisis. I saw no evidence that President Obamas secretary of state had suddenly developed a sensible, post-imperium foreign strategy consonant with a new era. It was force of circumstance. It was the 21st century doing its work.
This work will get done, cleanly and peaceably or otherwise.
Sochi, an unexpected development, suggested the prospect of cleanliness and peace. But events since suggest that otherwise is more likely to prove the case. It is hard to say because it is hard to see, but our policy cliques may be gradually wading into very deep water in Ukraine.
Ever since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, reality itself has come to seem up for grabs. Karl Rove, a diabolically competent political infighter but of no discernible intellectual weight, may have been prescient when he told us to forget our pedestrian notions of realityreal live reality. Empires create their own, he said, and were an empire now.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/we_are_the_propagandists_the_real_story_about_how_the_new_york_times_and_the_white_house_has_turned_truth_in_the_ukraine_on_its_head/
bemildred
(90,061 posts)A couple of weeks ago, this column guardedly suggested that John Kerrys day-long talks in Sochi with Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, looked like a break in the clouds on numerous questions, primarily the Ukraine crisis. I saw no evidence that President Obamas secretary of state had suddenly developed a sensible, post-imperium foreign strategy consonant with a new era. It was force of circumstance. It was the 21st century doing its work.
This work will get done, cleanly and peaceably or otherwise.
Sochi, an unexpected development, suggested the prospect of cleanliness and peace. But events since suggest that otherwise is more likely to prove the case. It is hard to say because it is hard to see, but our policy cliques may be gradually wading into very deep water in Ukraine.
Ever since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, reality itself has come to seem up for grabs. Karl Rove, a diabolically competent political infighter but of no discernible intellectual weight, may have been prescient when he told us to forget our pedestrian notions of realityreal live reality. Empires create their own, he said, and were an empire now.
http://agonist.org/we-are-the-propagandists-the-real-story-about-how-the-new-york-times-and-the-white-house-has-turned-truth-in-the-ukraine-on-its-head/
bemildred
(90,061 posts)wo weeks ago, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was widely mocked for this breathless, fearmongering tweet:
We have never seen more threats against our nation and its citizens than we do today.
Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) May 22, 2015
This morning, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, demanding passage of the USA Freedom Act, said something quite similar: I have never seen a time of greater potential danger than right now. After issuing her scary warning, Feinstein claimed: Ive never said that before. Thats very strange, in light of this 2013 headline following a joint appearance she made with GOP Rep. Mike Rogers on CNN:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30526-for-terrorist-fearmongers-its-always-the-scariest-time-ever
malthaussen
(17,202 posts)Did you see that bit on Jon Stewart? It gets worse every year.
Given that history is whatever happened before we were born, statements like this will always find currency.
-- Mal
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I take the level of fearmongering as a good indicator of our leaders' insecurity and lack of mental resources. The current crop of top-down herd-thinkers do not impress. Anybody that comes along and cleans their clock for them suddenly becomes Hitler, because obviously nobody less than Hitler could have made them look foolish. Doesn't matter who it is, a smart autocrat like Putin, a flamboyant but not so sharp populist like Chavez, or a shy really-smart nerd like Snowden, they are all Hitler. It's like the name was a magic wand in their minds.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)the Cold War--emigres were involved in winding it up (though Stalin's "beat everyone to death" policies were the other side of the coin), emigres were the ones saying that every land reform in Guatemala or Thailand was a sign of COMMIES, emigres were the ones saying that every change was the USSR building its empire at the expense of ours, emigres swung our Israeli policy far to the right, and Daniel Pipes' crew corrupted even Carter's foreign policy ("somocismo without Somoza," anyone?)