Ah, Russia. Good old-fashioned honest villainy that doesn't even try and hide its intentions, except in a such a farcically transparent way that they're basically fooling none of the people, none of the time.
A BBC Panorama investigation has revealed how the Russian state uses surveillance and propaganda to discredit critics of President Putin. Opposition activists have long accused the Kremlin of using the security services and state-controlled TV to attack them. When BBC Panorama went to Russia to investigate their claims, the same tactics were used against their reporter John Sweeney.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-43389032/how-russia-uses-propaganda-to-discredit-opponents
Russia was put upon the earth to show mankind what suffering really looks like, so the rest of us won't whinge so much. But they almost deserve it. Poets and mathematicians and chess players, people of intellect, dancers, musicians, aesthetes and scientists -- ruled by brutes.
ReplyDeleteI like the thing they do when they do something really awful and then just deny doing it despite all the available evidence.
ReplyDeleteIt's so much nicer when people are courteous enough to tell outright lies to your face. Much better than hurling misleading BS around that takes ages to clean up. With a lie you get to say, "you're a liar !" and that's it.
ReplyDeleteJust want to say the title "Russia spied on visiting BBC reporter" doesn't make me try to figure out why a BBC reporter was spying on Russia.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor, over the past year and a half, I have come to the conclusion that I really appreciated the misleading BS and half truths. It showed that politicians at least felt that Americans, deep down, cared enough about the truth to think it was important to give excuses for misleading people. It suggested that the solution was to increase accountability and fact checking, so that politicians couldn't get away with it.
ReplyDeleteI liked that, as it allowed for nice technical solutions. People basically wanted the truth, we just needed to make it easier to get and understand it. Alan Kay's vision at it's finest.
Obviously, this assumption has been seriously called into question. Either the politicians have been overestimating Americans desire to understand reality, or it's only ever been about providing ammunition to your side to defend against the other; and now, we've polarized ourselves enough that no one feels the need to argue with the other side, so reality can just fuck off.
Sigh. Back to work.