‘Bloody Saturday’ at Voice of America and other U.S.-funded networks
npr.org
npr.org
The BBC is also cutting jobs in the BBC World Service, which seems similarly short sighted. But I don't think the cuts are as far reaching as the US ones:
So I was asking someone who is supporting it what hen thought about the recent broadcast.
Surely, if you support something, you have some familiarity with it?
You'd really hope that's the same logic used when someone doesn't support something too.
Rarely are people's opinions that well informed unfortunately.
My supposition is that the person I was responding to has not heard of voice of America broadcast recently--in spite of supporting it-- but I was hoping to be proven wrong.
It sounds like you yourself are not someone who values voice of America enough to tune in.
I'm not either. I have no idea what sort of "soft power" a radio broadcast yields these days and for whom it yields it.
It seems like it is more the cavalry ca. 1950
Is it just good in a Niestczhean kind of way in that serves American interests?
If you genuinely don't understand soft power, Google is your friend.
So no I don’t think I’m asking a leading question and no it’s not obvious. That’s a reply that’s used when you don’t want to test your answer.
And why would we be so naive to think that Google would discern the intent of American political propaganda for us?
It might be an unpopular viewpoint....but neocolonialism is necessary.
Perhaps not the right choice of word but I mean the term 'neocolonialism' here in the sense of introducing peoples to our ways of life: democracy, capitalism, human rights.
The long and short of it is that, you can only get with the web of conflicting interests, pure monetary dealings, etc so far. You don't make any lasting alliance with a peoples and a system fundamentally opposed to you. If you isolate away, they will continue falling into the trap of systems like China and Russia who are quite happy to take your place and have completely opposite ideals to you. Eventually you will be left more and more alone on the world stage with no true allies if you let them keep doing it, and one day you will be finished off by soft or hard means when those entities, who kept expanding their outreach, became powerful enough.
Tldr; Defensive fire. Its not that you want to engage in neocolonialism, but you will have to do so as long as your enemies engage in neocolonialism. The logic is no different than that behind maintaining a traditional military power really.
I get no satisfaction knowing an African is listening to American radio or Chinese radio.
If we want to win some kind of ideological battle let’s start by actually having a better place to live that others want to emulate.
We have no moral authority to influence others and preach a better way of living if we can’t solve our own problems at home.
That's not to say it will be the US doing the shooting. The natural state of the world is not one of peaceful co-existence.
Unfortunately I think it backfires when US power of all sorts (both hard and soft) is viewed as meddling.
At that point is the altruism worth the negative optics? I wonder.
If "The US" drops a bomb on civilians, by accident or not, does that make all Americans bad, when it was really just a few military people that ultimately pulled that trigger?
With regards to optics, if the picture is blurry, then maybe put on your glasses. "The US" isn't only one thing or one entity.
If the optics are not crystal clear your soft power is not power at all. You don’t get to tell the world to “put on your glasses”. So if your altruism is not automatically perceived that way are you actually helping…or are you meddling?
Not exactly USAID, but similar topic. In my country US ambassador openly pushed for law that more than half of population is against for cultural reasons. That feels more like attempt of soft colonialism than soft power tbh.
Another example I recently noticed. When looking for kids cartoons online, I realized I try to stay away from recent US content. Why? Too much of a chance of blatant cultural propaganda. Meanwhile asian, even Chinese, stuff feels fine in the back of my mind. I guess PLC is pushing its own propaganda too, but I don’t even notice among the dragons and all that jazz.
IMO US soft power went south a good decade ago.
When ambassador is trying to openly meddle with democratic processes in hosting country... It's a wee more than soft power and influence. Especially when both pro- and against- sides read it as „pass those laws contraversial even in US itself or else we won't defend you from muscovites“.
Regarding different perspectives existing, anybody consuming at least a tiny bit of media (western or not), knows that different perspectives exist. No need for ambassador to say anything. Showing off your lifestyle in media in a positive light is the best way to promote it, not push it down the people throat. It worked well for decades and the trend is clear. But for some reason in the past decade or so some people decided to ditch worked well.
In that specific case, ~ 1/4 supported the law, over 1/2 were against, remaining didn't care. Ultimately the law did not pass in parliament. The smaller party that pushed the law the most is no longer in parliament. A major party that co-pushed the law lost later election, with some members of the party attributing that to overall cultural wars narrative, the party leader resigned and the new leader of that party is much more conservative.
These countries were simply fighting a war of economic or other interests. I hate Taliban at a very core level itself and want their complete annihilation. A war conducted by those with a strong intrinsic motivation like this would be much different from those previous engagements.
Take a look at Nazis approach in eastern europe in 1941. USSR was not exactly beloved in western territories. Be it Baltic states, modern western Belarus or modern western Ukraine. Even deeper in pre-1939-USSR many people weren't exactly happy with the leadership. Nazis had a perfect situation to make use of this sentiment to push forwards towards main goal of annihilating Stalin regime. Yet they decided that'd be too soft and light handed on the locals. That was not exactly great to turn locals against you.
And the local sentiments was in big part due to Soviet not-light-handed approach in 1939-41. When even many proponents changed their minds after seeing too many trains leaving for Siberia. All they had left were full-on collaborators who managed top switch back-and-forth between Soviets and Nazis several times :) I doubt such sleazy partners is what you want to build the new better superafghan...
The Taliban have nothing of civilization in them. They actively resist and hate civilization. There is no reforming them.
You also underestimate the amount of hatred a local person of sane mind would have against the Taliban. The most rabid haters of any shitty system are often those who escaped it personally. If you can supply and support such people they would be much more violent and extreme in suppressing the Taliban than any external Western person could be. If we are taking the example of Nazis, just look at the attitude of Jews who survived and began assassinating Nazis after the war vs American etc liberators who just chose to "forget" everything after the war.
Perhaps not the right choice of word but I mean the term 'neocolonialism' here in the sense of introducing peoples to our ways of life: democracy, capitalism, human rights.
The long and short of it is that, you can only get with the web of conflicting interests, pure monetary dealings, etc so far. You don't make any lasting alliance with a peoples and a system fundamentally opposed to you. If you isolate away, they will continue falling into the trap of systems like China and Russia who are quite happy to take your place and have completely opposite ideals to you. Eventually you will be left more and more alone on the world stage with no true allies if you let them keep doing it, and one day you will be finished off by soft or hard means when those entities, who kept expanding their outreach, became powerful enough.
Tldr; Defensive fire. Its not that you want to engage in neocolonialism, but you will have to do so as long as your enemies engage in neocolonialism. The logic is no different than that behind maintaining a traditional military power really.
I'm not surprised that China is doing so well in „global south“. US/west needs not only to return to colonialism game, but update their offer as well.
And Afghanistan is prime pickings right now because they have little allies currently. A motivated and well planned operation can eliminate them right now. I see the Taliban as an issue much longer term than merely using them as temporary pawns. I believe in the complete elimination of Taliban, the Iranian regime and similar groups.
Good luck trying to civilize Afghanistan again. Chinese would looooove West trying again. Nothing better than yet another proxy war.
Obviously, it's against the most basic principles that the humanist worldview of human rights is based on. I mean, you clearly don't believe in them sincerely, maybe you lie to yourself but you don't. You are the type of self-righteous goon that would happily disappear people in the Stasi or Pinochet's DINA.
> Afghanistan is prime pickings.
That's delusional. You cannot forcibly "reform" a culture in the short term (i.e., decades) that is not simply just near-total genocide. The Taliban cannot be weakened by overwhelming force. When invaders with absurd justifications (first Soviet, later American) commit "collateral damage," they create a sprawling network of causality that strengthens them. Kill the mother, justify the Taliban in the eyes of the son, and so on until the 7th generation.
The US never understood Afghanistan; they didn't want to either. You cannot outplan something that you don't inherently wish to understand, and Bin Laden knew that. Unlike the US, he comprehended both Afghanistan and America. It would have been so simple to send some spooks to snatch him after a couple of months, but that was never going to happen. Osama Bin Laden baited the United States of America, and it fell for it line, hook, and sinker. You lost trillions, thousands of lives, and more importantly, the last sliver of soul your country had.
The terrorists won on October 7, 2001.
And regarding "genocide" argument. To take a really extreme example. Look at how many nazis we killed in WW2 to civilize them. If needed I feel even a 95% figure is probably worth it if we can make men out of Afghanistan.
Oh, I'm sure "the rest of the world" is cheering on the US to invade Panama, Greenland, Mexico, and Canada, which are all things that are actually on the table with the fascist right-wing agenda that currently control all branches of US government. "The rest of the world" is right now wishing Harris had won the election, not to mention half the US.
As for US internal matters... I don't give a damn. You guys do you. But some long-running stuff in US looks horrible. E.g. if my country had elections-without-mandatory-voter-ID, I would not trust those elections at all. Your supreme court and surrounding drama looks like a shitshow for decades. And allowing big business money in politics smells like legalized corruption. All in all, your issues does not seem to be related to Trump or Haris or any other specific person.
Then you really aren't paying attention. The next 4 years will prove to you how bad things can get with right-wing fascists in control of the largest military in the world, hell-bent on making "America First". This is far, far away from the left-wing Democrats agenda. You're going to feel the difference, I have no doubt.
All "both sides are the same" arguments are completely invalid, you simply are not paying attention to US politics if you think that, or you have a crooked agenda to push.
>Obama being friendly to Putin after Georgia war
lol, no, Obama was never "friendly" to Putin. As much as you'd like to shit on all of the US, we're not all bad and your attempt to drag down Obama in the same sentence as trump proves you have no clue about the character of these two people.
>All in all, your issues does not seem to be related to Trump or Haris or any other specific person.
All the corruption and cruelty you imagine in your head as being "The US", are coming from one side - the right-wing fascist side. You don't have to believe me, you can look to other countries where similar fascists inhabit top office, like Russia, Hungary, and many more. There are many examples worldwide, it isn't limited to the US. Problems happen when cruel people are elected. It doesn't matter where. And no, Obama is not cruel, but trump is proving every day how cruel a human can be. Maybe if you pay attention you'll be able to spot the difference.
Yes, I don’t care that much about US internal politics. But looks like you have a blind spot for foreign politics.
I’m pretty sure a lot of BS I don’t like about US is specifically coming from the left wing. But if you don’t want to hear outside perspective, feel free to live in your bubble.
Have have no doubt your sources are going to be vastly different than mine.
>Also the legendary withdrawal of defense installations from Poland.
The issue was more complex than you seem to think it is, that much is clear.
> Mister fucking Nobel peace prize winner.
You act like Obama asked for the Nobel Prize - he did not. He had nothing to do with who decided or why they decided to give out the award.
I never said Obama was perfect, but he's far better than the current cruel right-wing fascist asshole.
>I’m pretty sure a lot of BS I don’t like about US is specifically coming from the left wing.
Then you're on the side of the right-wing fascists, it's just that simple.
>But if you don’t want to hear outside perspective, feel free to live in your bubble.
I get to hear plenty of other perspectives, most of them are just "both sides are the same" bogus uninformed and pointless arguments.
Also what on earth does Nietzsche have to do with anything?
Whether you build the soft power ethically or unethically (and false propaganda could be one of the many unethical ways to build soft power) is upto the country in question.
And whether that soft power is deployed for “good” or “bad” purposes is also dependent on the actions and goals of the nation.
So it’s kind of as meaningless to ask whether soft power is “good” or “bad” as it is to ask whether a hammer is good or bad, except generally “soft” power tends to be a better way to achieve the goals of a country than the alternative (which involves the threat and/or actual dropping of bombs) and the methods of developing soft power tend to generally be better than the alternative (distributing medicines for Thberculosis, cultural exchanges, etc instead of building a bigger and more dangerous military).
Powerful countries don't use soft power to bring good, they use it to serve their interests - when the target country's interests and its people's inclinations are not favorable to them.
For a long time, the US announced that it wanted a world order based on democracy, capitalism, and the rule of law. Countries that chose to support the same values often benefited greatly. And when other countries saw the outcome, they sometimes changed their priorities and chose to support the American world order.
Yeah, that was still bogus. It collaborated with dictators (they are good, as long as they serve it's interests, they're a "regime" when they dont), brought down democratically elected governments, funded orange "revolutions" and opposition parties, and of course bombed, invaded, etc sovereign nations.
Further more, it's no place of any single country to try to build "a world order based on democracy, capitalism, and the rule of law". Even if that wasn't transparently and extremely self-serving hypocritical, not every people share its ideas about democracy, or about capitalism, or what are good laws.
>And when other countries saw the outcome, they sometimes changed their priorities and chose to support the American world order.
Oh, sweet summer child.
People often change their minds. Sometimes when the situation changes, sometimes as a response to incentives, and sometimes because they have thought about the matter and learned something new. And when enough people change their minds, entire countries change their minds.
The world order the US marketed during the Cold War was very attractive, and many countries tried to join it voluntarily. Some of them succeeded and some didn't. The US used various means to advance its interests, but that doesn't mean every other country was just a bunch of mindless zombies with no agency and no ability to make choices.
Sometimes people just make a choice, because it's objectively better than the alternatives that are available.
So no country should do anything to interact with its neighbors and all diplomacy is a waste of time? I should never try to convince you that my opinion is right because what if you disagree? What a strange, insular way to approach international relations.
Hard power and violence “imposes”. Sending you TB vaccines and helping you build roads, well, “builds”.
Soft power doesn't exclude hard power — though it is less painful to be on the receiving end of.
For example, Voice of America publishes "Learning English" radio/tv broadcasts, podcasts, and news articles. They are produced with a limited vocabulary (I think a few thousand words), shorter sentences, and are spoken slower. They often match up with native language reporting of current events so you can listen to both for context clues.
Having people all over the world able to speak a basic level of English helps further the dominant role of the US in international trade, allows our military to use friendly locals as translators anywhere they go, and gives people around the world some level of "connection" with us - shared common ground to work from.
VoA does not broadcast propaganda, they hold themselves to a very high standard of reporting only the truth. Which is why repressive governments hate it, as do people who want to create them.
Seriously?
FWIW I am not American.
Also you seem to think propaganda means “not true” when it more often is true things that promote your interests. What matters is someone is paying to highlight information over other perspectives.
A report from the American Enterprise Institute:
> To improve the US government’s response to the exploitation of youth by terrorist groups, the report recommends (1) adopting clear criteria to be used in weighing young peoples’ vulnerability to radicalization and recruitment and in creating and targeting terrorism prevention programs, (2) fostering both attitudinal and behavioral change to build youth resilience to recruitment, (3) moving beyond a traditional focus on young men to confront the radicalization and recruitment of girls and young women, and (4) engaging the family as a potential site of radicalization and recruitment.
* https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploa...
For example:
> Cuts to health and food programs that wind up costing lives will embitter affected populations and be exploited in propaganda by anti-American groups. This will have at least a moderate effect in boosting recruitment by terrorist organizations.
* https://www.newsweek.com/islamic-state-will-capitalize-after...
There’s a world of difference between “against my interest” and “worth my effort”. Soft power could help in that gap.
I’m not actually sure we disagree - this is more of an elaboration.
You have a deeply antagonistic view of all of this. Is there a reason? Do you think that the EU doesn’t employ soft power? That China doesn’t? Do you seriously see no difference between, for instance, seeing value in large numbers of people speaking some English and having a positive view of your country, and whatever “bombing for democracy” is supposed to represent?
True. But, most of the places VOA projects into are in the "old world". How many people in North Korea do you think login to Facebook? For that matter, how many people in the new world still login to twitter?
And while I'm firmly in the new world, I still listen to the radio most days. I suspect the "afternoon drive slot" will belong to radio for a long while yet.
I get the sense that I’ve just remained consistent in my views, but it still does not expiration things like how the same “liberals” who decried the invasion and corruption of Iraq, cheer on and demand limitless warfare and corrupted spending today on the likes of the Ukraine, while the “conservatives” want to stop wars and limit profligate spending and corruption.
It’s upside down world, and terrifying to witness how quickly people can be manipulated to take directly contradictory positions.
And the conservatives don't want to stop wars, they're literally the pro-war, pro military industrial complex party, and nothing they're doing is actually limiting profligate spending or corruption.
Nice bit of propaganda and misidrection though. I can tell you worked hard on it.
(E.g., VOA, diplomatic service, DOJ)
Edit:
Some pre-2025 links:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other...
https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AA2RFE4CPSKBZ78P
https://mronline.org/2008/09/23/usaid-key-weapon-in-dirty-wa... (from a socialist magazine, so take w/ a grain of salt)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection...
Please do not be blinded by your well deserved distaste for trump. People calling for the ending of USAID are not all MAGA.
This is an absurdly dishonest take on Ukraine, and why “liberals” (or whatever you’re trying to say) support it.
There isn’t a single, real, person who supports “war” above and beyond “Russia should stop invading and leave” and it is extremely difficult to believe that stating otherwise was done in good faith.
But to your greater point, there's two things happening here. First, the American liberal was never inherently anti-war, just not as enthusiastic for it when presented with flimsy justification (see post-WW2 history). To the amorphous gas of person who deeply identifies with the Democrat establishment, (i.e dreamed to be Hillary Clinton intern) the "tasteful" use of the intelligence apparatus is Good and Justified, simply stuff you Gotta Do, you know? Advancing freedom and all. The average D voter doesn't actually give a shit about foreign policy, they just are obligated to care when inevitably the weight of reality demonstrates that something impossibly stupid is happening.
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan*. Anyone with two neurons will reactively want to stop it. Avoiding it is another matter, you have stop producing more Kissingers and change the environment and the people that give them power. A competent and independent leftist movement could do this, but any semblance of this was suppressed 'cuz dirty commies. So yeah, some liberals will genuinely shed a tear for the VoA for "freedom".
Second, even if you hate the spooks and state propaganda like me, they are still useful. Not at good things, but it's nonetheless baffling to see someone put themselves at a disadvantage for no reason. The critiques are about strategy, not the morality of the outcome. Don't be fooled, this isn't an anti-intervention move or limiting spending by conservatives (how are those tax cuts going?). It's a rejection of the subtle and move to mafia style negotiation. Panama is not a joke, it's a promise.
The leftists stayed small. The liberals are still apathetic. The conservatives metaphorically got rabies.
[] One of the only times I've been impressed by Trump, he managed stuff the hot potato of the withdrawal in the mouth Biden, winning the good press while avoiding the blowback.
Republicans think this is a good thing because they think the US can rule the world through hard power alone. It's such a depressing monumental mistake.
Given the way they talk about everyone else's media/free speech rules and limitations, I think they're projecting what works for their own domestic support base onto countries that consider the Democrat party to be worryingly right wing.
A separate, connected thought is that I wonder why you would choose being a federal employee then. Here, the government promises job security but it usually means less pay and slower processes compared to industry. If you don't have job security, is then the government forced to be more competitive with industry positions in pay/processes?
As for the rest, they're not 'being fired', they're 'being placed on administrative leave', which is a paper-thin excuse but one that will have to wind its way through the court system like all the other bullshit the administration is pulling.
So what's administrate leave exactly? Just relieved from your responsibilities? I guess you still get paid.
There are, but these actions are intentionally designed to be so rapid and so numerous that the media and the legal system can't keep up.
The White House hasn't even been shy about it. They're calling it "flooding the zone," itself a sports reference.
That said, the current regime has had no problem acting outside of the law and existing federal employee union contracts. Tell people they're dismissed, cut off the email and building access, wait for the lawsuits, and then simply ignore the decisions weeks/months later and/or follow them with as much malicious compliance as they need to achieve their original aims.
tl;dr: No, employment protections fundamentally don't exist in the US, and doubly so for those employed by the federal government within an atmosphere of rampant lawlessness.
It often isn't about ability. Many of these are being challenged and courts are ordering reinstatements.
It's about leveraging sensitive, protected processes to generate so many constitutional crisis and other chaos knowing that Congress won't exercise it's safeguarding duties.
That leaves the public to engage a limited number of courts to issue orders against individual whitehouse actions - and the whitehouse undermining or outright ignoring those orders because the white house controls federal law enforcement.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/
In short: Job protection for executive employees defeats the entire point of an executive that is accountable to the people. Major magistrate positions are subject to Senate approval before being vested authority, but they are appointed and serve at the behest of the president, who literally embodies the executive.
I would have expected this to be codified (What is accountability for a federal employee). I mean regulatory bodies should also be accountable but also shielded from political influence, right?
For the second part: no, US government regulatory bodies are expressly political, down to their very existence. You likely intended “partisan”, but, one party is against them existing at all, so…
There is, but Trump is ignoring them, and no one in his administration is enforcing those rules. Additionally, as of today he has started ignoring court orders.
Imagine if the roman empire went "on holiday" sometime around 100AD and just declared "Rome first!" but withdrew from the known world and let the chips fall where they may. "America first" is not some revelatory slogan, america was already first, but if it wants to be alone , that's their prerogative. But then the rest of the world is not ready to deglobalize nor does it want to. The great powers of the 19th century are no longer, so by necessity the world will have to remain globalized with an increasingly closed off america. This would be a loss for the USA - why would a scientist go to work in america if her work might eventually be subject to restrictions of collaboration.
On the other hand, the US launched an attack against the Houthi terrorists, which is a clear sign that the US is interested to maintain the world's essential trade and oil routes. So maybe america is not alone yet.
There is no strategy outside of that. They are a cult and sycophants lashing out at anything they enjoy being belligerent towards. In their minds, the abandonment of soft power is being strong by just throwing away all the mamsy pansy stuff "they" wanted.
Edit: sorry for the tone; I'm a bit perturbed.
Actually, the ongoing collapse of the American governmental systems makes the collapse of various ancient civilizations seem less puzzling to me.
The US is at a point where the president is deliberately destroying his own government bureaucracy, ignoring the courts, and probably bringing about the end of constitutional rule. Meanwhile, Congress is just sitting back and watching it happen. Trump's wealthy backers support all this because they don't want to pay taxes or follow regulations, and Trump's voters are deeply angry and willing to lash out at whoever Trump tells them is to blame. You can't pay your mortgage because: "the EPA exists," "all our money is being given to foreign aid," "immigrants stole your job," etc.
It almost makes me think that maybe the Late Bronze Age Collapse occurred for internal social and political reasons that are impossible to piece together 3000 years later. 3000 years from now, will anyone be able to explain why the US political system imploded in the 2020s?
The U.S. is not unanimous in this dismantling effort, great controversy has been and continues to be brewed, which to any competent leader should signal a slower, more cautious approach. We see no such thing.
Hanlon's razor does not apply in such a circumstance. It only serves to ease the process of bloodletting by acting as a thought terminating cliche.
Trump is just more honest, and this embarrasses the professional-managerial liberals who support US imperialism. He's just saying what's happening as opposed to some nonsense about how he is neutral between Palestinians and Israelis while Biden was helping slaughtering Palestinians, Yemen, Syrians, Lebanese etc. while talking about peace.
No need for propaganda outfits when you're being honest.
The lies of upper middle class white liberal imperialists have been exposed - how the US treats Palestinians hasn't changed at all.
Plus some minor things - Trump is more anti-China, which is why he's winding down the Russia thing. From a geopolitical realist standpoint it makes more sense - maybe not to neocons.
Trump is starting trade wars with close economic allies, threatening to annex territory from other NATO members, and closing down century-old institutions overnight.
There is a difference between seeing Israel killing Palestinians and doing nothing, and actually threatening overt action against what were once allies.
He got the nickname "Genocide Joe" because of how enthusiastic he almost seemed to be about it. Utter disregard and contempt for Palestinian lives is one area where very little daylight exists between Biden and Trump. Even Kamala Harris didn't deviate from that norm.
This is the willful destruction of independent journalistic outlets that are fully funded by the US government and broadcast primarily to countries whose governments the US has expressed an open desire to overthrow.
They don't discontinue everything the other party implemented, even when it's easy to do so, and that's the true indicator that the party is okay with something, regardless of the partisan complaints made when it was initially implemented.
You can not like your neighbors partying and playing music until 3 AM, but also have the moral compass to know that setting fire to their house is not the solution.
But here we are. Trump is bad(and hey, he mostly is), so now we're justified in lying in any way shape or form that it takes to inflict some harm on his ideas, actions or person. The first casualty of someone like trump is our own character. We can't admit anything he does has positive benefits because to do so would be to give an inch to literal hitler.
If you went back 20 years and asked your average liberal activist they'd be all in favor of rolling back American "imperial actions and organizations" like USAID(long suspected to work closely with the CIA since at least the 60s). But here we are, debasing ourselves for politics' sake.