The American Media Might Be Lying and Propagandizing Against Russia and Putin? How Can It Be???

This is the infamous Naked Protester in Kiev, undergoing mistreatment by Ukrainian police in bitterly cold weather. There are a number of stories circulating about this guy; I don't know if any of them are true. One of them says he used some kind of chemical agent against police during a protest action, another says he doused his clothes in gasoline and was about to set himself on fire when he was apprehended -- which was given as the reason for taking his clothes before transport to detention. All I can say with any certainty is that  it appears he has been badly beaten about the head and body as there are many obvious bruises, he appears to be disoriented and terrified, and there is a hole in his neck that looks like something was jabbed into him. How or why he came across these wounds is unknown and apparently unrecorded. I have seen some reports saying he is a well-known skinhead/white-supremacist who has engaged in some of the most provocative actions during the protests in Kiev, and that we should be leery of any propaganda suggesting he's a "good guy" being abused by the police. Just goes to show...
 -------------------------------------------

By this point, of course, the Anti-Russia/Anti-Putin propaganda is somewhat muted, as the Games in Sochi have turned out to be pretty much OK. The American Team, though robbed of so many medals that were rightfully theirs, have so far managed to barely outpace the Russian Team's medal score, so there is that, and that's what's important.

But an article in the Nation has apparently re-opened old wounds, partly by pointing out the relentlessness of anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda leading up to the Games, and the ridiculousness of the American media propaganda on behalf of the Ukrainian rebels and protesters, many of whom are nothing but street thugs, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

I haven't followed the Olympics much since the opening spectacle, as there are other things with which to occupy one's time. My own enthusiasm for the Olympic Games has long been curbed by my understanding of the deep corruption, corporatism, and neo-Fascism that has been at its root and core for many a long year.

But the anti-Russia/anti-Putin propaganda in the American media leading up to the Games was simply rank, obvious, and thoroughly disgusting. I have never seen Putin as either hero or saint, far from it, and post-Soviet Russia has been looted, dismembered, rode hard and put away wet, to coin a phrase. Putin, whatever his manifest faults, braked the decline. And that, apparently more than anything else, is what triggered mainstream (corporate) media's united crusade against him and the modestly resurgent Russian Federation. Very modestly resurgent. For some Russians, not all.

Despite his KGB roots, Putin is no Commie. Ha! But anyway...

The issue that gets to me, however, is the Ukrainian Thing, because it is self-evidently a rightist populist movement modeled after the Color Revolutions of the past and the far more recent Occupy Movement, with the clear intent of overthrowing the elected government of (the -- we're no longer supposed to say "the" when referring to the) Ukraine and installing a rightist dictatorship subservient to the IMF and EU Central Bank. And of course, much of the American media -- including a significant portion of the so-called "progressive" media -- has been relentlessly fluffing and propagandizing on behalf of the rebels and against the elected government. "Stalin-Hitler" and all that.

What's going on in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, what little can be sussed out from the barrage of propaganda from all sides, is disturbing, particularly if it represents a populist trend toward adherence to ever greater levels of rightist ideology and grossly neo-Fascist, neo-Nazi beliefs and practices.

When American media fluffs for rightist populist protesters -- which we're seeing more and more widely around the world -- and routinely denounces or ignores any other kind of protest, we should have a pretty good idea where this is headed: right back to the Good Ol' USofA, where a New Model Occupy may well crop up, funded by the Kochs and other billionaires, to "re-establish American Values" or what have you, leading directly to the imposition of the kind of rightist dictatorship of the corporatariat that we thought we ought to try to avoid, and thought, perhaps, we were avoiding or at least delaying what with all the hoo-hah of anti-Wall Street protest over the last few years...

I digress...

The immediate issue is the heavy-handed and very obvious propaganda by almost all the mainstream popular media, propaganda denouncing Russia and Putin, and propaganda favoring the rebels in (the) Ukraine.

The article in the Nation referenced above is one of the only ones I've seen in more or less well regarded "leftist" publications, or "new" and "alternative" media, to point to the obvious, and to make the case that this is dangerous stuff, and we, the People, should beware.

It's a good reminder.

And Another Thing

I watched the opening pageant of the Sochi Winter Games -- and I was mesmerized. Of course it was all propaganda on an enormous scale, but wow, what a show. Breathtaking.

What was so interesting to me about it, at least in the abstract, was that it had been preceded by days, perhaps weeks, of negative news coverage of Russia, Sochi, and Putin, just on and on and on about how dismal and threatening and incomplete the situation was, over and over and over and over. Everything negative possible about Russia, Putin, and Sochi was highlighted in the American media on a pretty much continuous loop, in every imaginable outlet.

The underlying theme was "Terra! Terra! Terra!" -- because, after all, Sochi is in that strange borderland on the Black Sea where Russian Terra!™ lives. You know? Like the Boston Marathon Thing? The point of all the propaganda -- apart from ritualistic denunciations of the Enemy (which Russia is, according to many pundits who apparently never heard about the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union) -- was to make Americans disgusted and afraid of the Games' host country, terrified in fact, that something AWFUL would happen to our valiant athletes in such a dismal, horrifying, disgusting place.

And so the Russians put on this opening pageant, and it was stunning, absolutely astonishing -- and it was surprisingly informative and entertaining as well. It's propaganda, of course, as the Olympics are and have been for most of their history. But even propaganda can hold one's attention or be extravagantly artistic, even gorgeous. Much of Soviet propaganda strikes me that way. So it's no surprise that the successors to the Soviets can do it, too.  American propaganda, by contrast, tends to be overtly false, when it is not ugly and pessimistic. The contrast is striking.

Well, now the propaganda narrative about Russia, Putin, and Sochi has apparently changed. The opening pageant was so impressive, it seems, that the current narrative is focused on Russian art and culture, achievement, can-do attitude, etc. Almost like Russia and the US are siblings of different mothers, unified in many more ways than we ever knew, yadda yadda yadda, and Putin ("for all his faults") is the one who made it so. He is being fluffed far more than denounced, for having masterminded such an "incredible show." Indeed. Sochi's incomplete and inefficient aspects haven't been forgotten, to be sure, but they are quickly fading from the narrative, and all the neat things about the venues and the city are being highlighted and promoted.

It's quite a turn about.

But these whip-saw changes in narratives and attitudes are part of the practice of propaganda.

It's something to be aware of, but knowing about it doesn't actually do you any good!

Horrifying

I'm watching the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics.

It's a celebration of Hell.

Goodgodinheaven.

I imagine the audience is appalled.

I am.

Of course dropping the Queen out of the Royal Helicopter was inspired, so there was that.

The Chicago Thing

I didn't really follow it, but apparently His Serenity came up empty in his efforts to land the 2016 Olympics for his adopted home town Chicago the other day, and all of Wingnuttia is in ecstasy at his loss. Rio has also exploded in glee.

Which reminds me of a song, YouTube video of Hugh Jackman rehearsing it appended herewith:



Now there's nothing Wingnut about Rio, and their President Lula da Silva seems to have his head screwed on OK, but the Olympics are something of an odd duck in the corporate firmament, strangely Puritanical and blithely corrupt at the same time. Anachronistic besides.

A major reason for the IOC's rejection of Chicago appears to be the difficulties encountered by travellers at the borders of the USA, something few Americans ever actually have to endure or even witness. The stories are legion of assholitry by various customs and immigration and security officials, attitudinally suspicious and hostile, often arbitrary, and overly officious to no apparent purpose. Whether or not His Serenity addressed that issue, the fact is that for foreigners coming into the USA, the experience can be anything but pleasant.

So the World says why bother? Rio has the samba and the Copacabana -- among so many other inducements -- so why the fuck bother with the constant crabbiness of La Migra?

Of course there are many other problems, too. Apparently Chicago's reputation for corruption shocked (!) even the IOC. Oh. My. God. It must be really bad then. But maybe there is something else...

First, the Olympics have been held in the United States an abundance of times; second, some of the experiences in the USA (like bombings and such) haven't exactly been in the Olympic Spirit; third, South America has never hosted an Olympics, and Rio is one of the most unique locales anywhere, so why not have the Games there?

Besides which, one wonders whether the Olympics would be a net boon or a loss to a city like Chicago. Often the Games cost way more than they return to their host cities and countries. Given the rickety status of the American economy (job loss numbers just out are appalling), and the sheer level of growth potential in places like Brazil as opposed to the predicted continued decline in the USA, the overall cost of presenting the Games in Chicago might have proved ruinous.

All rationalizations of course.

What's striking, though, is that practically the whole right-wingnut-o-world is having a simultaneous orgasm over Obama's Big Loss. This is his Waterloo! His reign is So Over! On and on.

Indeed.