Wednesday, January 25th, 2017
Back in the USSR
Author: Stephan A. Schwartz
Source: The Schwartzreport
Publication Date: 25 January 2017
Link: Back in the USSR
Source: The Schwartzreport
Publication Date: 25 January 2017
Link: Back in the USSR
Stephan: Sometime in the Spring of 1989 I was at the Writer's Club in Moscow having lunch with a group of Russian journalists and I asked them. "How the hell do you work out what is real, and what is fake news, just propaganda? How do you know what you can publish, and what will get you in trouble?"
Their answers were a tale of learning self-censorship if you wanted to keep your job and, often, your apartment, and learning how to read between the lines. Often what was missing was as important as what was said, and you had to learn how to read that."
I came away from that lunch thinking, "how would I react if that were to happen in America?" It seemed so improbable it was no more than an evil fantasy. Well, welcome to the USSA. Less than a week into the Trump administration what once seemed unbelievable is now reality, The next three stories give you some sense of the dimension of what is happening
The Republicans in Congress can't get up off their knees long to stop this. For Congressional Republicans having power is more important than the well being of the country, citizens, who cares about them, and nothing is going to stop this but vigorous citizen activism. If you are not involved with something in your community you have become part of the problem. Sorry to be it that baldly, but that's the truth.
Several days ago at the supermarket, I ran into an old friend, and the conversation turned to politics. When mulling over our conversation later in the day, I was horrified to realize that not only did we speak in whispers, but I was constantly on guard to make sure no one was listening! It felt like I was living in North Korea.
I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. I was always, for some unknown reason, interested in news from the world at large as some are by sports. As a teenager I subscribed to “Soviet Life” for a while until my father found out and demanded that I stop as he was afraid people would think we were communists. I listened to Radio Moscow among many others on shortwave. And I read about how soviet citizens had to interpret the “news” and use other methods of spreading news. Apparently no intelligent person really took any of it at face value.
Since the election I have been telling friends the very thing you just said. The only saving grace is that it could encourage us to become more awake/aware of the reality behind the superficial display. After all we have been lied to frequently by the powers that be just not so outrageously as now.
One of the principal techniques of propaganda is to packages a little bit of truth with a bunch of lies. The little bit of truth makes the lies seem more credible.
For one recent example, any assertion (a logical fallacy) that the Russians hacked the election is pure propaganda because no hard evidence has been presented to support it. Even if they hacked the DNC, which has not been proven, that does not constitute proof that they hacked the election as a whole. Hacking leaves a trail.
I think that at this point a lot of us assume that the government lies about anything when it suits them. In other words, the system is in the hands of the psychopaths.
You make this assertion constantly in comments, Hovland, and it is not only a demonstration of the very thing you rail against, you demonstrate a (willful?) ignorance of the Intelligence community apparatus.
The thing is, this has been pointed out numerous times (in the very articles posted), but maybe this time it will sink through: hard evidence has not been released to the public because that compromises our ability to prevent further hacks, i.e. if you publicly present all your cards as to how you discovered something (experts, informants from inside Russia, decryption software, new technologies, etc. etc. etc.) then that would make you utterly incompetent and incapable of doing your job. They don’t know exactly how we busted them, and that is the point. It throws their previous line of attack into disarray.
Imagine such a scenario throughout our history where ‘no hard evidence’ was presented on the public stage until much much later. There is a reason for this and your repetitive obsession on this point is perplexing and shortsighted. There have been VERY few instances in this country’s history where all branches of the intelligence services have came together and agreed (publicly, no less) on a conclusion of foreign interference in our politics.
This is unprecedented; and yet for you, it’s not enough–or too much? I really can’t make sense out of it. So why you are so fixated on the intelligence community not releasing everything to the public right now (which goes against everything they do, and is a key to their success)? There is some other dynamic going on here and I find it…odd.