I read this some years ago, and one of the things I took away was that there is great power in being able to focus attention and debate in one direction rather than another. Permit debate so long as it works within premises that align with your narrative. Direct attention away from questioning the questions themselves.
> The most effective device is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.
An example given in the book is focusing attention on how best to 'contain' the Soviet Union.
> In short, what is essential is the power to set the agenda. If controversy over the Cold War can be focused on containment of the Soviet Union -- the proper mix of force, diplomacy, and other measures -- then the propaganda system has already won its victory, whatever conclusions are reached. The basic assumption has already been established: the Cold War is a confrontation between two superpowers, one aggressive and expansionist, the other defending the status quo and civilized values. Off the agenda is the problem of containing the United States, and the question whether the issue has been properly formulated at all
I feel like this summarizes my experience of life, that I'm for some reason constitutionally incapable of assuming a binary accurately captures the range of possibilities for a given situation, but I live in a world where this is a baseline assumption.
Even as a child, I couldn't process the questions correctly. My parents would ask, "Do you want Cheerios or Froot Loops for breakfast?" and I would reply, "No, I want waffles." I wasn't intending to be a smartass. It wasn't until my late teens that I finally realized why people got so annoyed with me when that happened.
Now I mostly notice it in the political context: "Are you voting for [donkey] or [elephant]?" "No, of course not. They both suck."
The reply I always get is, "Well not voting for [the one I think is less bad] is a vote for [the evils the other will promote]," but no! No it isn't.
If you assume the entire range of options is captured by the binary in front of you, you've already lost.
Voting in a two party system is pretty clearly binary if you’re really choosing to participate at all. The off-script big-brain move in this case isn’t abstaining from voting, it’s discussing changing the voting/election system to break the two party dominance.
Abstaining from voting bc you’re unhappy with the current options doesn’t make you super smart galaxy brain guy.
> The off-script big-brain move in this case isn’t abstaining from voting, it’s discussing changing the voting/election system to break the two party dominance.
You are not interpreting OP in the best possible light - or even remotely accurately.
OP didn't say not voting is big brain galaxy stuff, nor did they exclude the idea of changing the voting system.
To me, when the choice is between pro-war, pro-oil, pro-corporate theocratic fascism from wealthy old white guys, and pro-war, pro-oil, pro-corporate cynical neoliberalism, not voting for the lesser evil can be seen as simply not voting for evil.
After seeing what the Dems did to Bernie, I can't ever vote for them again; not even if Trump is the alternative. Nope. Not doing it. I have a line, and I won't be forced to vote in a system that's killing the planet. Will I work to change that voting system? Happily. Will the Democrats? Hell no.
I mean the Soviet Union has been an expansionary empire from the start. It is a fact, as well as a convenient PR/propaganda point.
First stopped by Poland and West Ukraine in 1921, then deterred by Poland for about two decades.
Next step was an expansionary deal with Nazi Germany which started WW2. Expansion continued after the American Lend Lease took off, and stopped at East Germany.
Following years focused on Asia (Korea, Vietnam). Then there were military invasions of Hungary or Czechoslovakia, to reassert dominance.
Finally it crumbled under the weight of system's own incredible incompetence.
The re-born Putin's Russia continues expansion at almost any cost, first Georgia, now Ukraine. Shows no sign of stopping.
Trying to compare that to things like NATO or SEATO, or even the post-WW2 occupation of Germany implies very poor knowledge of history. The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people. One million casualties is 10 Hiroshimas.
The Soviet system, especially at the start, was so brutal that I believe most people in democratic countries can't really comprehend it without spending days or weeks studying the history. That's why some people can compare the two empires as somewhat equal and not feel shame at the same time. They were only somewhat equal in military strength, and nothing else.
Chomsky certainly can't fairly be accused of having a poor knowledge of history. I would recommend spending time to read the book in full if you haven't already.
> The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people.
I know your comment is in the context of more recent times, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the US enslaved millions of people, not least because the effects are still playing out today.
I don't know anything about him actually. People who know a lot about Russia never even mention his name, and I only heard rather stupid headlines associated with his name. So I won't bother spending time on this guy.
There are actual experts on this topic in the US, such as Timothy Snyder.
Yup. The West doesn't understand (and never has understood) the East. Even at the levers of power, it's often shocking how little people know. Russia understands this, which is why their propaganda is so effective. Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine have been warning the "West" for decades, to deaf ears. And still today, their warnings go unheeded.
Funny that. In Farley Mowat's "Sibir" (1970), he reports a conversation with a Siberian Russian explaining the difference between the two superpowers like so
"In the USSR, our propaganda is poor and we don't believe it at all. In America, your propaganda is very good ..."
with the _and you believe it_ left for the listener to fill in. I suppose the culture of samizdat gives you a bit of perspective on controlling naratives.
Closed off societies don't need sophisticated propaganda because the competition is blocked off.
One of the things that struck me about propaganda in North Korea was that it was incredibly unsophisticated. It was like watching 1950s adverts.
Glasnost produced an opening for the most sophisticated western tactics to be applied in the Soviet Union and it was used to maximal effect.
Russia has recognized the shortcomings and has adapted. Their propaganda is pretty much every bit as sophisticated as ours these days. Enough to cause Congress to have conniptions.
Today's Russian propaganda is entirely different from Soviet propaganda. It creates a depoliticized society by generating as many incompatible statements as they can and blasting that from every tube.
This is a lot more advanced than western propaganda. Russia today is actually already "in the future", some of the patterns we can see in democracies are fully rolled out there. Tim Snyder often says that this is why Russia is interesting analytically.
Soviet propaganda pretended that black is white, while Russian propaganda will essentially try to convince the listener that colors cannot be assigned to any object whatsoever.
I mean I actually watch Russian propaganda, as well as various other propaganda sources. It's rather clear what they're doing, and fully consistent with citizen behavior. Remember how just a few days ago Wagner took control of a 1M city, and citizens didn't care whatsoever?
The same patterns can be observed in the West, but to a much weaker degree. BTW, I'm not American in case this matters.
One way to explain it is that institutions (universities, courts of law, scientific research, parliaments) are not trusted by some (growing) number of people here. In Russia nobody believes in any institutions whatsoever, for example if the FSB rackets your business and takes over your apartment, well that's just part of life (complete lack of belief in any justice system). Like they won't even try to resist in any way.
Another way to explain the difference: there is no there there in modern Russian propaganda. It comes from absolutely nothing, no consistent philosophical system, no consistent policy, be it foreign or domestic, no consistent support or rejection of particular people or organizations. Should they lose the war then propaganda will just say that Ukraine is now denazified (if this term lasts that long), and will pretend like nothing bad happened, while on the next day will scream about how NATO is trying to kill Russia, then on the third day will pretend the topic doesn't exist, and so on and so on, without any pattern or rhythm.
> The same patterns can be observed in the West, but to a much weaker degree.
Oh? America spent 20 trillion of tax payers money, killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Middle East, displaced tens of millions, killed millions more through sanctions, secured Iraq and Afghanistan's oil fields within weeks of invasion, created black sites all over the world to torture people without trial, murdered Reuters journalists in cold blood, tortured whistleblowers who provided proof of the above, and managed to blame the state of Afghanistan on the Afghani people after they botched the withdrawal.
And if you bring this up in comparison to what Russia has done (which is bad, yes), you're accused of whataboutism.
A key distinction may be that after the US led interventions the propaganda fell apart, and much internal criticism ensued. People in the US also still appear politically active, eager to express dissent, and practice relatively frequent regime change via elections.
This comment illustrates exactly what I'm talking about, Mr. Rogers.
The surface propaganda might have fallen apart, and there may have been much internal criticism - but we're still in Iraq. And Syria, and Lebanon, Yemen, etc.
Those trillions of dollars are still owed. BY US. It doesn't matter how much we protested - we're still on the hook for the bill.
Those millions of victims are still dead.
Those black sites are still open.
The people who did that are walking around free, not even remotely affected.
Snowden is still exiled. Assange is still held in Belmarsh.
The Patriot Act is still renewed, even by Dem elites. A lot of the population is still convinced there were WMDs, that Assange was a Russian agent, that Biden and Obama tried to end this stuff (they expanded it). Shit, Obama sold tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
A terrifying percentage of the population is actively rooting for nuclear apocalypse. Even more believe that climate scientists are lying to us for money. The Dem resistance to that consists of fighting progressives (?!).
Americans will sit there with a straight face, and maximum earnestness, telling you that it's actually great that they pay so much for housing, healthcare, and education. They think it's fantastic that US billionaires have so much money; and that if children are hungry it's their parents fault. "Best system in the world" - "at least we're not socialist", etc.
Americans view of other countries is incredibly distorted.
You think the regime changes every four / eight years - but that's because you're so thoroughly inured in propaganda that you don't even feel it. It's a wrestling show; it's kayfabe. They're all friends behind the scenes. They argue on camera, then go on yacht trips together. Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch are buddies. Clinton and Trump were friends for decades. The birther conspiracy was started by Hilary's campaign. W gives Melania candy, and the TV tells you it's cute.
Even Dems argue that America's military actions are normal or justified - Propaganda. You think Dems aren't in on it? Propaganda. If you think opinion of the poorest 92% has a non-zero effect on policy? Propaganda.
It's not normal for the wealthiest country on Earth to have millions of starving children, millions of homeless people, an out of control drug problem, medical bankruptcy, a world record prison population. But people accept it. Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.
Dems think it's all Republicans fault - propaganda. They think all this is inevitable; this is how people are - propaganda.
This probably sounds ranty, and I'm not arsed sourcing everything here. Apologies.
I do hope you can read this without your reflexes immediately rejecting it - but experience shows that to be extraordinarily rare... Propaganda.
> The West doesn't understand (and never has understood) the East.
I'm glad you brought that up. (Western) Russians look to be 'everything European' yet don't act like it.
It wasn't until I watched this extended interview with Julia Ioffe on Frontline [0] did I go... this is brilliant! This finally made me understand that, no, they're not like us nor will they be.
Her retelling was apt. Start watching at 32:37 [1] for the context of the quote.
"[...] would be easier to understand Russians if they were just purple, because it was in fact confusing to Westerners, to Europeans and to Americans to deal with Russians who look European, who look white, and you expect them to act like Westerners like white Western Europeans, when in fact they are quite different and wired quite differently and have quite different cultural expectations and wiring [...]"
I strongly suggest watching the entire interview (along with the rest of the Frontline interviews that don't make it into the show).
The comment you’re replying to just used this issue as an example from a book to emphasize a point on propaganda framing public discourse, not necessarily arguing that the framing of this particular issue was in any way incorrect.
Sometimes (usually) propaganda is necessary to get the general public to reach the correct conclusions and ask the right questions, so whether the framing of this issue was right or wrong isn’t necessarily being contested as unethical or wrong, merely highlighted as a well known case study of this method of propaganda.
> The US has never purposefully tortured or starved to death millions of people.
If you believe this, you really need to start reading more books. Start with "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky.
Let me give you an unsorted and quite limited selection of crimes against humanity conducted by the USA:
- The US enslaved large amounts of people with the consequences still being enormously present. This one should be obvious.
- The death toll in Iraq alone was 1m people for which the official explanation I believe is that they did a "whoopsie" because they thought there were WMD...
- Let's also remember when the USA provided immunity to Japan's army of Mengeles, Unit 731 [1]. A really wild story.
- Henry Kissinger is said to have killed 150,000 Cambodians. Of course that was in the context of the unforgivable Vietnam war. Some read up on Henry [2][3]
- Here is a limited list of USA's involvement in regime change. Often these regime changes included democratically elected leaders like in Chile [4]
- Torturing is also part of the USA's official policy program. Have a look at Guantanamo Bay [5]
- The US also has a standing secret court whose secrecy provisions were recently protected by its Supreme Court [6][7]
Start looking into this and you will find that you can go on and on. Now the last fact-let I want to share is that the US army has more funding than the next five largest nations combined. This is utterly crazy, yet confirmed on numerous occasions.
This large budget naturally translates into the fact that the number of US military stations abroad is unmatched. Now please consider that US military stations abroad are near someone else's home. How would you feel if a militaristic foreign nation would have their military stations located around your home? Let alone a nation that has been at war nearly every year since it's inception... [8][9]
Certainly the Soviet Union was expansionist, but many of its top functionaries were not from Russia. Stalin and Kaganovich, responsible for the Holodomor, were from Georgia and Ukraine.
Other leaders like Brezhnev were born in Ukraine or had ties to it. A Georgian woman alleges to be Putin's mother (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Putina) and looks quite similar on the Wikipedia photo.
Brezhnev considered himself Russian, as did Khrushchev.
Kaganovich's background is more complex, but that's splitting hairs.
What's more important is that, to a first order approximation -- the way the SU conducted itself geopolitically was as a continuation of the Russian empire. Including in particular the strategy of maintaining as many buffer / vassal states between itself and perceived competitors as possible. And as holiday resorts, etc.
Which is of course basically Putin's strategy, and his prime motivation for subjugating / neutralizing Ukraine as well.
Somebody should let the CIA know that they probably want to be using one of the new newer SHA standards instead of MD5 to verify the integrity of their files.
"With the release of these materials, the information remaining in the collection that has not been released publicly includes materials that are protected by copyright; sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; pornography; malware..."
Surely this book is protected by copyright still? Did CIA just ignore it maybe because of the author? I don't really see them seeking permission from Chomsky or his publishers here.
A book about the US media coverage of Central America in the 80’s if I recall correctly.
I didn’t experience this period in the news but it was interesting enough for me to finish for some reason. The writing style doesn’t hurt.
> Under these circumstances, the task for the media is clear. First, they must apply the standard technique of historical amnesia and “change of course,” which obliterates all memory of U.S. policies and their effects. Virtually a reflex, this device can be applied instantaneously.
> ...the standard technique of historical amnesia and “change of course,” which obliterates all memory of U.S. policies and their effects...
That one is so frustrating. Possibly because I am more comfortable with acting out of raw self-interest than most, but it has to be literally impossible (literal as in there might be a proof-level argument) for people to effect their own self interests if they use that tactic.
It makes sense that people don't want to take responsibility for their own country's actions. No biggy, we're none of us perfect and it is a good plan to stick together regardless. But if past policy led to a bad place, what is the path to a good place that doesn't involve acknowledging that?
The US's foreign policy muckups have consistently left it worse off. Alright. Bygones be bygone. Lotta resources wasted killing goat herders and witch hunts in foreign lands despite their being no witches. But does it not make sense to stop doing that at some point? The reason the US corporate media have lost all credibility in the internet era is that it is too obvious that this is a thing they do in coordination with each other.
Credibility is only lost (by bad behavior over long periods of time) to those few who have been able to actually observe that same behavior over that long period of time. New people are constantly coming in, saying “Surely everything is good now, right?”. And the new people invariably outnumber the old people, so the new people win the day.
I had an interesting experience lately with a mentalist performer...they were using various subtle powers of suggestion to influence their outcomes to "predict" and "mind-read".
And yet when I mentioned the (well documented and studied) effects to some of the folk who attended with me, the immediate and emotional reaction was shock and disbelief, despite a couple of the members of the party having been directly affected. The mentalist performers had even partially explained their trick (without giving away the details). And yet, their level of cognitive dissonance was so high, that they could not accept a plausible explanation for something that they themselves could not otherwise explain.
A good lesson being, if a young person is saying "everything is fine", they surely know nothing and everything is far from it, barring substantial proof to the contrary. They are likely to be severely in denial, and much like altering someone's political or religious beliefs, altering their perceptions is likely to be as difficult.
Or another way to put it - everyone is in fact an imposter. We only don't notice, because everyone else is just as bad (for the most part).
Exactly this. A working American's lifetime capacity to evaluate and fact-check history lessons is vastly insufficient. As a voracious radical most of my life now pushing 40, I am still learning what I don’t know about the basics, and I attend weekly reading groups ffs!
> But does it not make sense to stop doing that at some point?
Depends who you ask and how much control you believe the Military Industrial Complex exerts. I don’t see an end to conflict in the current system.
Also, the statement that past policy lead to a bad place unfortunately depends who is appraising the situation. To citizens; increased hostility, wasted tax payer funds, and lives lost is a massively “bad place,” but politicians would never admit to such mistakes and spin the narrative. Those same political powers can ensure their narrative is amplified by traditional media, and you know how the rest goes.
Anything posted on the CIA website will be thoroughly analyzed by state agencies that are well funded and well equipped to find shenanigans. If the CIA were really doing something to US citizens via something on their public site, it would come out very quickly as it would be an embarrassment to the agency.
Unless you mean that the mere act of visiting the CIA website would be suspicious because you are in a country that might frown upon that, like China? But wouldn’t the CIA site be blocked there anyway?
Maybe you're right, but I wouldn't assume that everyone, from every IP, who requests a file hosted on the CIA's webserver would necessarily always be served the same content either
I'm not saying you shouldn't check it out for yourself though. While you're at it, maybe the NSA has interesting looking .swf .vbs or MS office documents sitting around at their domain.
I just don’t get how the risk/reward works out in their favor.
The uproar if their malfeasance is detected is far more than the value of any information they would gain.
Wouldn’t it be far simpler and more direct for them to go to Google or Facebook and ask them to hand over everything they have on you, at which point those companies almost certainly comply?
You're absolutely right, and I'm mostly kidding. If the CIA, or pretty much any three letter agency, wanted to inject something nasty into your internet traffic or infect your device with malware I'm certain that they could do it without uploading ironically named ebooks to their server and waiting for someone to post about it on social media. Still... from a risk/reward perspective, I can pirate this book from somewhere else just as easily
that's probably true if you search for "how to build a [insert bad thing here]" or "blueprints of [some critical infrastructure]. But the CIA is ultimately like everyone else: pumping out info that they want you to read. It wouldn't make sense for them to harm the readers. If anything, I would imagine counter-parties (like Russia, Iran) will tag you for reading CIA propaganda.
> All other reproduction, whether by printing or electronically or by any other means, is expressly forbidden without the prior permission of the publishers.
This file may only be used as part of the CD on which it was first issued.
Funny that these kind of people don’t really disagree with Chomsky on a lot of things. There is a book On Target which is an official USAF of the first Gulf war and in the preface it explained that Saddam Hussein was driven to invade Kuwait because of debt, he figured his debt to Kuwait would be annulled and he could use oil money from Kuwait to pay off the rest, the kind of explanation you’d expect from Chomsky.
A good critique can also double as a playbook. Consider Augustine's "The City of God". One of its more famous passages[0] can set a man on a virtuous path, or serve as the basis for political control in the form of, say, sexual liberation.
[0] "The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but, what is worse, the slave of as many masters as he has vices. "
Why would they? At the end of the day, the CIA is driven by realpolitik. Chomsky sees things as they are, and is also an idealist. Where they intersect is that part about seeing things as they are.
He's one of the few people strenuously warning about the possibility of this war escalating to a nuclear exchange and reminding us that preventing this is the only thing that matters. In my book that makes him less batshit than most.
> He's one of the few people strenuously warning about the possibility of this war escalating to a nuclear exchange and reminding us that preventing this is the only thing that matters. In my book that makes him less batshit than most.
This is also very conveniently a Russian talking point to just make Ukraine bend over and take it.
If we want to stop the risk of nuclear war from increasing drastically in future we need to help defend Ukraine itself from Russia to the fullest.
If we don't, it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries and nuclear proliferation will go through the roof.
Nuclear proliferation going through the roof will drastically increase the chance of a nuclear exchange in the future.
> it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries
That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.
> That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.
Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.
If you try and change that that rhetoric by saying you can also only defend yourself when you have nuclear weapons then the entire dynamic changes and a lot more countries will start active nuclear weapons programs.
> Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.
That's not at all clear in this case.
EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing. I think that explains why the West is not really going crazy about defending Ukraine... the West could do a hell of a lot more if it really wanted to, but maybe doing that would trigger desperate reactions from Russia as they've made it clear already many times that for them, losing this war is an "existential" threat (same words Ukrainians are using).
...and yet, none of them had the bomb to drop on anyone else. Literally a case of a bomb in hand is worth infinite (unrealized) in the bush. Realpolitik runs on what you can do now.
What do you not understand about the human condition?
We are energy/cost optimizers. We want to achieve resolutions of conflict as cheap, and as quickly as possible, i.e. with minimal cost.
We made a bomb. Arguably the biggest bomb there had been any indication of anyone having gotten working before.
Truman was looking at war projections of costs to invade Japan. Then he got the papers that said we could make an entire city disappear with 1 plane, and one bomb.
Do you really think it would have worked out any different for anyone else?
I say: No. It wouldn't have, because using it as soon as you got it is just human nature.
> Why roll the dice when having nuclear weapons protects you from being invaded in the first place?
This how I feel a lot more countries will start feeling if Ukraine doesn't win or Russia successfully uses their nuclear blackmail to win or get concessions in the war.
Wow a nuclear armed superpower invading a country, that's sure a sea-change for the world /s
Look at what is happening in the world. Country after country standing up and saying they will continue to have their own relations with Russia, they see right through the hypocrisy of the west.
Of course, it is a messy situation, where the bat-shit people and realpolitik have a venn-diagram that has a lot of cross over. Ukraine wasn't some paradise of unification before the war, and Russia wasn't completely evil. But, sorting it out, good luck.
There are some real historians that would agree with a lot of 'Russian Talking Points' does that mean they are bat-shit crazy? OR, is Russia pretty good at adding into their talking points enough 'reality' to make it convincing.
"Just accept Russia invading you because maybe nukes" could potentially be used for anything. "Give us a favorable trade deal because otherwise we might nuke you."
How many times have Russian officials saber rattled about nukes and red lines and escalation when a Western partner provides small arms or artillery or tanks or jets, only for the red lines to be crossed and they do nothing?
Short of someone invading Russia or nuking Russia, it's obviously a bluff, and by trying to sue for peace prematurely, you're playing into their rhetorical ploy. It's a transparently cheap tactic that only works on Putinverstehers.
Funny to think what the US will gain tru this meddling in European affairs by though talk and providing billions in support to Zelenskys regime: even more bases outside their jurisdiction to further their global dominance, and the ones on Ukrainian territory lie right next to Russia. MAJOR gain. And on a second note ofc increased TAM for their products and services, fuelled by Ukrainian indebtness.
I’m always amused by people who think that if the USA ceased its war mongering efforts no nation would try to fill that void and everyone would just get along nicely.
The USA as a world hegemon was in a unique position from roughly 1990-2012 to be able to put in place a rules based international order.
That would have made it much more difficult for aspiring regional hegemons to one day supplant it, as most countries would be attached to a rules based international order if it existed.
But they didn't and now Russia gets to play the "same shit, different hegemon" card and instead of the entire world pushing back against the invasion of Ukraine, it's just ~40 of the US's closest allies. The rest of the world doesn't care.
> But they didn't and now Russia gets to play the "same shit, different hegemon" card and instead of the entire world pushing back against the invasion of Ukraine, it's just ~40 of the US's closest allies. The rest of the world doesn't care.
The UN is a pretty good map of how the world feels about the war I feel.
UN resolutions are not a good gauge of anything much.
* They are nonbinding, so they are purely symbolic.
* Countries lean on each other all the time to vote one way or another. Especially hegemons.
* Only 50% of those countries are even nominally run by democratic governments.
* Most governments hate secessionism on principle (whether democratic or not), which is reflected in the votes, but I doubt, say, the average Spaniard is especially bothered about Kosovo or Scotland's independence. It bothers the Spanish government though because Catalonia.
Where, again, the distribution of opinions is more easily explained by "we don't generally want to endorse invasions as a concept, because we're afraid of them" and "we got leaned on".
Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
The % of the world population that sanctioned Russia (i.e. that made a gesture that involved sacrifice) was smaller still.
I dunno if you've even looked at both maps they look nothing like each other.
The support for the resolution for Russia to leave Ukraine has far more support then the invasion of Iraq and even has large amounts of support amongst people with didn't support the invasion of Iraq.
> Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
Yeah and what percentage of the population voted against it?, im gonna guess without even really googling that is <3% of world population.
> 4x. More, because America's power to lean on other countries is higher. As I said.
What you really mean is “per some made up number I pulled out of thin air”.
You’re mad because you asserted things that all turned out to be incorrect and now you’re trying to apply made up maths to prove yourself right.
> 203 million and 954 million are also within the same order of magnitude.
By the tiniest amount you were able to be vaguely correct congrats. Nearly 5x as many people supported the invasion of Iraq compared to the invasion of Ukraine.
> I think no more discussion is warranted here.
Go ahead and scurry into the darkness like the rest of the Russian propagandists with confronted with reality.
> I’m always amused by people who think that if the USA ceased its war mongering efforts no nation would try to fill that void and everyone would just get along nicely.
Orwell said it pretty well:
> It is also worth emphasising once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.
From "Notes On Nationalism"
My point is that some people just hate the USA, think everything bad is somehow the USA's fault (even to the point of thinking all revolutions or coups are CIA plots, as if Those People had no agency of their own) and base their whole worldview on that hatred.
"Nothing happens without the CIA" is just as comforting as "Nothing happens without God" I suppose; both presuppose the existence of an all-powerful entity controlling everything, as a ward against having to acknowledge randomness and absurdity.
Bush W., used this same logic for second Gulf War. He actually said that the war would pay for itself. Even if illegal, he is on video stating this, (video from before fakes).
As noted by the current top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36544024) this is a small part of a dump of all files found during the Bin Laden compound raid that is publicly available on the CIA's website. Check the url to verify that claim. There is no other reason this content is there, it's just a coincidence.
It’s used because it’s the subject of the book, not because he approves of it. Quite the opposite. The point of the book is that propaganda is used to maintain complicity in a democratic society, in order to influence people to support policies that are against their own interests. The Niehbur quote illustrates that US intellectuals were quite open about this.
I haven’t read Necessary Illusions, but I posted this before the CIA explained this PDF arrived with bin Laden’s documents. I was mistakenly connecting the promotion of this work with the supposition that the CIA was broadly interested in the influence Niebuhr had on Comey (and Obama, McCain, …) in the previous era of American politics.
Chonsky did update the propaganda theory from manufacturing consent for the modern era, not a lot changed really in terms of fundamentals. A lot of scholars keep up that kind of work. People like Mark Curtis, Alan Macleod, Jonathan Cook and so on.
> "System: Explain some of the fundamental differences in mechanisms of social control in totalitarian versus democratic societies, from the perspective of a small ruling elite group. Focus in particular on the use of state terror in the totalitarian society and on the use of domestic propaganda in the democratic society. User: A graduate student in political science at Georgetown University. Assistant: A professor of political science who also works within the US State Department and is a CIA consultant."
It does seem fairly clear that if the elite beneficiaries of the status quo in a democratic society feel they are in danger of being dethroned, they will attempt to transition to the totalitarian model. Some historical evidence for this can be seen in the flow of American dollars into Nazi Germany in the 1930s as a response to FDR's New Deal, the IG Farben-Standard Oil non-competition deal, Henry Ford's America First Committee, Smedley Butler's plausible allegations about the Business Plot/Wall Street Putsch, etc.
> The most effective device is the bounding of the thinkable, achieved by tolerating debate, even encouraging it, though only within proper limits.
An example given in the book is focusing attention on how best to 'contain' the Soviet Union.
> In short, what is essential is the power to set the agenda. If controversy over the Cold War can be focused on containment of the Soviet Union -- the proper mix of force, diplomacy, and other measures -- then the propaganda system has already won its victory, whatever conclusions are reached. The basic assumption has already been established: the Cold War is a confrontation between two superpowers, one aggressive and expansionist, the other defending the status quo and civilized values. Off the agenda is the problem of containing the United States, and the question whether the issue has been properly formulated at all