The New York Times has a long history of cooperating with three-letter agencies as a state mouthpiece. The irony of their publishing this article is delicious.
Even if you believe that the NY Times is nothing more than an appendage of the US security establishment, then it's completely straightforward that the establishment would be trying to counteract the propaganda. It's certainly not ironic for the CIA to try to identify and stop foreign spies even as it itself uses spies, or that the military builds armor even as it also uses guns, is it?
If you believe that the NY Times has an institutional position that propaganda is always and forever a legitimate tool of the government, then there's no contradiction if they also call out propaganda for the purpose of neutralizing it.
If you believe that the NY Times is more or less a legitimate news organization that maybe has made mistakes in the past, then I think the article is newsworthy and relevant.
I keep seeing discussion of Russian involvement in other countries' politics dismissed as ironic, which seems to just be a rhetorical trick to make it sound like there's a more sophisticated argument than just "I don't believe that source".
Generally, I expect that those alleging wrong doing are not engaging in the same; and so it appears ironic when an exposed agent of state propaganda alleges that a state is engaging in propaganda. It's a, "well yes, and you would know" sort of humour.
Let those without sin cast the first stones, and all that.
2. It is not just the media of US and Sweden -- most of the democratic world say the same thing. For most subjects, the democratic countries disagree.
In that manner of thinking, I think it's fair to question the messenger who brings accusations of wrongdoing during a politically sensitive time. That is to say, this reporting came at a serendipitously good time for certain politicians.
That everyone does it doesn't mean that everyone does it to the same extent, or with the same impact, or that doing it is at all justifiable.
As it said in what you comment on: Not only "American" -- most every Western democracy.
I think you are very much aware of that you didn't touch my second point above.
It seems to me it doesn't matter who agrees with the Americans regarding the Russians; hell, I agree with the Americans regarding Russian propaganda.
You argue also in the other comments that there are small differences between USA and Russia -- my repeated point is that the whole Western democratic world don't agree with your assessments here.
(In Sweden, a good part of the ex communists do agree with you -- at most 5-10% of the population-- but those guys have never supported a democracy in military conflict with a non democracy...)
0: http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...
it is not NY Times/CIA claims vs Putin's propaganda. It is claims by the democratic world vs Putin's paid propaganda.
"Russia makes Propaganda."
"That's ironic for them to say, as you're complicit in making American Propaganda."
"These countries agree that Russia makes propaganda."
"Russia makes propaganda. So does America."
And so on.
Hell, America makes propaganda wholesale with its military advisors program and huge logistic and financial support of Hollywood.
Without doing any real discussion of all the liberty indexes and freedom of press etc...
OK, enough. Bye.
Is Russia or America worse? I don't care which is worse, that doesn't matter. They both do wrong things.
> so it appears ironic when an exposed agent of state propaganda alleges that a state is engaging in propaganda. It's a, "well yes, and you would know" sort of humour.
I'd say it's more of a "rain on your wedding day" sort of irony.
If the article were planted by the CIA, that would be ironic. If the article were planted by the FSB, that would be even more ironic. But "NY Times reports on foreign propaganda" is not ironic.
Isn't Donald Trump making waves right now for having improbably high support despite thinking Putin is not so bad after all? Dumb though Trump may be he is without a doubt a key part of the "democratic world" right now.
2. My sources are e.g. what is said by common EU institutions and by state chiefs in the EU. Like here http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-31932005 BBC is just part of the anti Russian global conspiracy..?
(And you contradict that "the whole democratic world" is saying the same thing -- with what one of the newer populists (that isn't even elected yet) said about something else... Is that REALLY the only argument you have...?!)
Edit: reformatted to make it clearer.
Russia annexing Crimea was one such action. The entire American operation in Iraq is another.
Russia and the USA are more alike then their populations are comfortable admitting. Oligarchies cynically masquerading as democracies.
You have answered two comments of mine without touching that.
(Also -- check the democratic peace theory. USA don't start wars against democracies. Putin just don't want to have prosperous democracies as neighbours.)
And so on.
I do not take issue with the notion that Russia engages in propaganda, because they obviously do. I believe I've said as much in this thread.
Whether or not I agree with your statement of the existence of a plurality of agreement among the "Western Democratic World" (why not all Democratic nations?), it is no matter. I would expect cooperation among the Five Eyes, for instance.
0: http://www.alternet.org/story/39416/america%27s_100_years_of...
You are not going to touch that the international community, not only US and Sweden, agree that Putin's Russia is much worse.
(As you are certainly well aware of: The democratic peace theory discuss wars, not involvements in coups during the second "great game", that of the Cold War.)
4 comments (in 2 places) without touching my point... :-( You are not serious, bye.
"Foo did something wrong."
"Bar did the wrong thing as well."
"So what, Quz, Qid and Qaz agree that Foo did something wrong."
It doesn't matter what Quz, Qid and Qaz think. Plurality does not justify propaganda.
And so on.
But I wonder, why do you reject non-Western Democracies?
You claim -- just like Putin's employees -- that there are no real differences between dictatorships and democracies anyway.
And you won't touch if human rights, freedom, media freedom and so on are irrelevant... (The academic measurements of them are part of the conspiracy against Russia?)
Edit: Enough. I'm not going to get my account banned over a 350 karma troll. Bait away, making more weird claims. :-)
Every country do something wrong.
To go from "no country is perfect" to "all countries are equally bad" is Putin's propaganda position -- and the whole democratic world disagrees with your and Putin on this.
What we can do is call a spade a spade whenever we see one.
That can't be intellectually honest.
There are lots of metrics. E.g. human rights compliance, press freedom, number of murdered journalists in the country/year, freedom indexes and so on.
Bye.
There are many metrics, but very few of them are objective; that doesn't mean that those which are not objective are not meaningful, but it means that finding agreement is likely impossible.
To be clear: I do not believe that Russia is in the right, in terms of their concealed use of propaganda. That does not mean I must hold my nose and accept that the Americans engage in clandestine propaganda in collusion with private media.
So the yardsticks measuring differences between dictatorships and dictators are relative..?
THAT is an uncommon claim these days -- it was common before 1989, from communists supporting Soviet.
And then you ignored my examples:
- Human rights
- State control of media
- Personal freedom indexes
- Risks for critical journalists to be murdered
Cuz if you are talking about Crimea then no. "Annexation" doesn't tend to have support of the people and the referendum and repeated opinion polls by western research groups afterwards show very clearly that the Crimeans wanted to join Russia (and believe the referendum was fair).
If your entire logic boils down to "you either agree with X or you work for the Russians" where X is a highly subjective and debatable thing, then you're always going to see shadowy operatives everywhere. That's just a ridiculous way to debate things.
2. The BBC is not a part of any "anti-Russian conspiracy" (there is no conspiracy). That story is just reporting the views of EU officials.
Guess what - I don't trust EU officials. Quite a few of them also believe the entire British population was brainwashed by tabloid propaganda and that's why they rejected the EU in their own vote: the idea that maybe people can genuinely understand the EU and dislike it is unprocessable to them.
Elections with more than 95% for any side are obviously fake. It smells of Soviet and North Korea. I've only seen people obviously working in St Petersburg argue that could possibly be true. And you...
And my argument is that on one side there is Putin's paid propaganda -- and on the other side there is more or less the collected western democracies of the world. Those countries usually don't agree on much, but this united us.
You think that position of all the democracies is "highly subjective and debatable" -- after believing that any election result over 95% is real!!
That stretched my ability to give the benefit of a doubt far beyond breaking.
(I missed your post, it came a day after.)
"How long does it take a soviet to earn enough to buy a car?" "Well, you lynch black people."
This is not that situation; it is one's state propaganda and another's state propaganda.
In 1976 George HW Bush declared that the CIA wouldn't manipulate the media anymore but this NYT article from a couple months later shows the feds backpedaling on that promise, along with some specific examples of media manipulation from the time: http://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/27/archives/cia-will-keep-mor...
I haven't found any evidence of post-Cold War media manipulation of this sort, but I don't think American trust in the media has ever fully recovered since those days.
It's likely that the state agencies have learned to better avoid the exposure of these sorts of programs.
Regardless, The Intercept has more than a few stories[0], and Chomsky has shared his opinion[1]. Then there's the small matter of this[2]. And on and on; much of it is hard to verify, like Eglin Air Force base and its Reddit links.
0: https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Atheintercept.com+new+y...
1: http://www.salon.com/2015/05/25/noam_chomsky_the_new_york_ti...
2: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-...
Seriously, if you're so keen to criticize the western media you might as well do it right. Chomsky wrote several books (E.g. Understanding Power) documenting and detailing how it works.
Now, back to where we started. Where is your evidence specifically for "The New York Times has a long history of cooperating with three-letter agencies"?
Moreover, did you not see the links previously posted in this thread?
Really? This counts as "a long history of cooperating with three-letter agencies" in your book?
Russia engages in propaganda, and this is abundantly obvious; it would be nice if those claiming such were forward and honest about their own ethical deviancies and the actions of their own state. It is tiresome to hear but one side of the concern from the media.