America: Schizophrenic Clusterfuck

| #america | #clusterfuck | #Editorial | #empires | #propaganda | #snowden | #Social Studies |


The total lack of self awareness continues over in the USA. Frankly it seems as if the descent from empire to schizophrenic clusterfuck happens much faster than I thought.

From Techdirt:

The White House criticized Russia on Friday for allowing National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to meet with human rights activists, calling it a “propaganda platform”

Think about that for a second. This is the US government, directly trying to shut up a US citizen, who has blown the whistle on various illegal secret surveillance programs.

If freedom of speech only applies when convenient, it’s not a freedom at all.

At the same time this is happening America repeals it’s own anti-propaganda laws. Criticizing Russia for allowing propaganda while at the same time creating a system to produce your own seems, and I struggle to put this in polite terms, batshit insane.

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government’s mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January.

It’s a frickin’ comedy show over there.

--NFG
[ Jul 16 2013 ]
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Comments

Kendrick

Jul 19 2013

The propaganda story appears to be overblown. Rosa Brooks of Foreign Policy magazine carefully points out that the repealed act applies specifically to one branch of the US State Department, and does not change the restrictions on the investigative bodies. Link:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/07/17/the_case_for_american_propaganda

Interestingly, the BBG group that’s now allowed to broadcast without restrictions is frequently the subject of complaints by the very organization it works for. Like any good journalistic entity, it skews towards sharing information and away from reinforcing the talking points of its government.

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