I continue to be astounded.
Lately, this has, of course, and unfortunately, included the Ukraine situation.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany Minister of Propaganda
The idea of The Big Lie is, unfortunately, tragically, alive and well.
On Sunday, August 3, I tuned in to CNN and was astounded, in just short bits of viewing, two different times, both in the same general subject, although, actually, they were two different subjects. The trick is that they were both obviously presented as being of the same cloth.
In one case, I turned to CNN and found a CNN talking head in conversation (by remote link) with retired ARMY general and former NATO commander Wesley Clark. I wish I had a transcript of the segment… then again, maybe I don’t. It was a waste of time, but it might be good to quote everything exactly, just to lay it out there clearly. In basic form, Clark proceeded to generate more of the nonsense that has been bombarding people about what’s happening in Ukraine, and more to the point, about the surrounding geopolitical madness, saying, among other things, that it was absolutely vital to American interests, because if Putin was allowed to conquer Ukraine, then he would be on to the next victims, Clark then naming a list of eastern European nations. Clark was specific about saying that Putin would next be attacking those countries while saying it would be attacking “NATO allies”, which is interesting in itself because Clark was naming countries that were former USSR member states that had been added to NATO since the dissolution of the USSR.
(That’s interesting given that it has been reported by many different people that as the USSR was on the verge of dissolving, former US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Russians that if the USSR member states disbanded into separate nations, NATO would not expand and absorb the former Soviet republics into NATO. For that matter, once the USSR ceased to be, including abandoning communist government and the idea of some sort of worldwide communist conquest, there was not longer any reason for NATO to exist.)
In a word- bullshit.
At the bottom of the screen during this, in big block letters, was a banner reading “RUSSIA INVADED AND TOOK OVER CRIMEA“.
How’s that for a subtle reiteration of hammering a narrative into viewer’s minds?
The problem with that, of course, as I’ve been reminding anyone paying attention as the fictional narratives keep being repeated in what passes for news, is that Russia didn’t invade Crimea (the Russian military had been there all along). The parliament of Crimea (a part of Russia until 1954, and a semi-autonomous state within Ukraine, even though one of the first moves of the coup government that overthrew the elected President in Kiev was to declare Crimea not autonomous anymore) rejected the new coup government in Kiev, and the vote of a massive majority of the people in Crimea was to declare themselves separate from Ukraine, and formally ask Russia to annex Crimea into Russia again.
Another part of the CNN “news coverage” was a story claiming that new “BREAKING NEWS” was that Russia was just about to attack Ukraine, any time now. This follows fairly regular repetition of “reports” by Secretary of State John Kerry that Russia already has been attacking Ukraine by artillery, from positions inside Russia, with claims of “evidence”, while, as far as I can tell, nobody anywhere has seen any credible evidence produced to verify this, or any other claim made by Kerry or anybody else in the US government about what they say has happened, or is supposedly happening.
At another point, all of this in the same day, another glance at CNN turned up a commentary by CNN infotainer Fareed Zakaria, some ridiculous segment about what he called “Putinism“, that was not only such an obvious and blatant propaganda piece, but so extraordinarily stupid, that it was almost funny. Almost. I mean, it was such a farce of obvious manipulation, with so little actual fact and reasoning, simply designed to paint a simplistic image of Vladimir Putin- BAD GUY VILLAIN!
What, exactly, was the point of that?
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Posted by John Eagan 
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