The TASS on the other hand is walking on eggshells with respect to Trump.
So I guess your message is intended as a caricature of the usual USAID/NAFO interference whenever someone posts something critical of a current Western government?
"Now we're talking ubiquity. When President Biden isn't wearing one of his many steel (or two-tone) sport watches, you'll likely find him with an Apple Watch. It's unclear why, or for which occasions he chooses the smartwatch out of his watch box, but he's worn it in the Oval, and at the Resolute, just as he has with any of his other watches. "
So when Biden wears it, it's OK. No 'former CIA' writes any open letters, no HN Commies "following orders". When the Vice-President wears it - they are stupid and they are threatening national security.
What a hypocrisy is the whole democratic party. Disgusting propaganda methods akin to Soviets.
Neither of them should have had access to the smart devices… when Obama had gotten a smartphone, it was a locked down BlackBerry. Trump came into office and did not seem too concerned about the IT security risk his unvetted personal phone posed.
Don’t what-a-bout it… they can both do wrong.
There are things to complain about with the Democratic Party, this isn’t it though.
How is that not totalitarian propaganda? What is the difference between USSR official propaganda and Democrat "aid for other countries"? I am interested in HN Leftist crowd opinion. Or maybe they will downvote this to oblivion, because it's easier. But easier doesn't mean 'right'.
In my understanding, most Soviet citizens were acutely aware that Pravda was official party propaganda. The western system is different in that there are two opposing poles of information. To be concise, some who study the dissemination of propaganda in the US regard each respective pole as a false alternative. This is referred to as, "positioning the goal posts". You can go quite deep into this rabbit hole. There's a fair amount of nonsense, but also some choice kernels that may help you better understand the media landscape.
Well for starters, until these claims are established by a more credible source who doesn’t come from part of a team with a recent history of lying about the work that usaid does.
Your concern about propaganda rings hollow given that you are trusting a government source talking about a government source.
Just as a matter of language: I have only ever seen the word "Leftist" in contexts meant to connote "traitor" or "moron" or something similar. I'm reluctant to explain anything in such a context.
The recommended left-wing, progressive approach to such things is to be kind, patient, informative, and reasonable. Personally, I believe this is the reason we regularly get destroyed in elections, and if there's ever a way to get back, it's to respond to hatred with hatred. Reasonableness bores people; hate is exciting.
My guess is that they've taken the 0.1% silliest sounding things out of some endowment for the arts program with many thousands of recipients. It would only actually be propaganda if such a program specifically excluded political opinions you disagree with and groups you dislike, such as trans people. For all you know, there could have been many right-wing recipients for this program that they decided not to tell you about. You can only determine the nature of such a program when you look at how it actually operates, not by looking at a random small selection of the things funded.
Bill Kristol, a right wing neo-conservative and ideological heir to Buckley, also had his funds publicly cut. Similarly, there are allegations against Liz Cheney. These are two examples that immediately spring to mind.
Attributing it to a purely right-left battle misses the larger picture. There are entrenched bureaucrats which have successfully moderated and turned away reforms. Some of these creatures of "the swamp" receive self-perpetuating funds from USAID.
The culture war stuff is largely a distraction. When USAID funds a trans musical, it isn't about the musical. There may be elements promoting the trans ideology, but this is tertiary. The real meat is building influence coalitions, protest groups and outright payment of graft. These favors can be called in later to advance the policy of the "swamp creatures". This could be trade deals or any agreement in which this opaque coalition has an interest.
Wait, are you asking why what USSR did to its own citizens is different than what USA is doing to other countries? Of course we want our views and values to be propagandized to other countries, why is that bad? We want other countries to become more like USA.
> How is that not totalitarian propaganda? [...] I am interested in HN Leftist crowd opinion.
So, speaking from the HN leftist crowd: yeah, I'd say this video qualifies as totalitarian propaganda. It's kinda weaksauce, but that's the direction it's pushing, at any rate.
2/50,000th of their budget. Its straight up right wing propaganda. If you use wayback machine you can see what they funded like a huge oxygen tank in Vietnam for a hospital.
Its like spending 10 bucks on a camgirl site and your wife divorcing you after 10 years.
Do you mean neoliberals? I mean, leftists have been skeptics of USAID as soft power arm of the CIA for ages. Also, you would be crazy to believe this is "Democrat" as this has been a bipartisan effort since it was funded.
Anyway, I'm reminded of this joke:
---
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
-----
I guess to some, since Musk and Trump dismantled USAID, there's no more propaganda in America.
Last week it was still the job of the previous administration to publish it and it was the last administration which created the problem in the first place. Ideological purification was also what the previous administration has done quite a lot by hiring people based on their sexual preference, skin colour, gender and other irrelevant to the job characteristics.
Or maybe if people stop trying to build socialism they could live much better? I for sure know that all the countries that attempted to "get rid of the billionaires", "stop the corrupt capitalism", "put the power to the people" lived vastly worse than people in the capitalist world and especially USA. Or maybe there is another reason that the emigration is ALWAYS in the direction of the capitalist countries, and the more capitalist the country is and them more billionaires it has, more people try to go there. If that was not the case Trump wouldn't have wanted to deport people, they would have gone themselves.
there is ZERO evidence on that! we have plenty of evidence of the opposite - you can immediately go and live in a country with equality and no billionaires - Cuba, for example, but no - you prefer to stay in the USA and downvote me - who lived through the socialism and saw what absolute HELL is when people like you are in charge.
I'm not sure what the GP's post was, but I'm genuinely curious. I have no experience of socialist countries, but I have several friends and colleagues who have emigrated over the last decade or so.
1. Is income equality the primary driver of a country descending into social turmoil?
2. If not, is the USA so politically and socially similar to those countries in other ways that an income equality system - or a system that moves in that direction - would be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back?
I'm particularly interested in #2 as a non-American.
It is not their wealth and quality of life they were afraid of, I can assure you of that!
Or you believe that KGB didn't interfere in the capitalist countries even more? But hey, I can show you even today, in EU, couple of cases of using chemical weapons against people by the FSB(KGB) and a few blown warehouses with weapons. Can you show me a murder or attempt murder by CIA in Cuba, North Korea, China that happened in the last, let's say not 5 years, but 30?
Or maybe they interfered because socialist countries waged a war against capitalism as they openly admit? Or maybe you are caring their war now.
Funny, whenever any leftists stay in power for a while we see such kind of situation, but somehow it only gets noticed AFTER they are no longer in power.
Do you see it as a bit of a wrinkle in your theory that the author has five citations to his own work about price fixing published during the Biden administration?
Did the printing press eat all creative seed corn and completely ossify business? Because that is what AI is going to. No new creatives other than influencer creators. No new programmers other than hobby programmers who learn from influencers. No teachers just influencers. No people rising up through the different areas of a business with that kind of domain knowledge. Just CEOs, AI, and social media influencers.
I think you are misunderstanding my reasoning then. I'm not saying AI will enlighten the masses or anything.
The current system is based on capitalists employing workers. But with AI there will not be a need to employ workers. Goods and services can be provided without human labor. From the worker's perspective, currently they perform a job and get money they buy the things they need. The question is then, if the job disappears how will they aquire the things they need? Basic income? Charity? We shall see.
From the capitalists perspective if they forgo workers then there is no need for their goods and services.
It's odd to me that the current thought is that this idea is lost on them because they want nothing more than to get rid of workers? They want more productivity from their workers for the same or slightly less cost, which they are hoping AI can squeeze out of them. Eliminate too many workers and you have to pay the ones left more as they are now specialist, and productivity gains from AI only brings production back to when they had more workers without AI and paying less for them bringing it to about even. They gain by keeping around the same amount of workers (maybe a few less--that amount to a rounding error, but not the doom being predicted), at their current job title paying the same scraps and using AI to get more productivity out of them. And in which workers will now turn around and spend their check buying said goods at a higher cost than they were paid to make them.
Unless UBI becomes a thing, capitalists know they need workers who will buy their goods and services.
Without the worker bees being able to participate in the buying of goods there's not enough profit for the shareholders to gain enough to buy the goods. The whole thing collapses. And capitalist know this and is against their best interest.
Capitalism is “capitalists employing workers” only in Marxist doctrine. Capitalism is free market. And that will not disappear because AI displaces workers.
>Though what comes after is still an open question
I'm seeing a lot of people yelling that what's coming after is a technologically advanced form of feudalism. It doesn't seem like that much of a question.
There are very many universities with zero or no tax, most of them in socialist countries. Why don't you go there? Maybe because none of those matter when serious education is considered.
We already tried fixing problems with throwing tax money at them. It didn't work out. You can see the result of socialism in Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and where not. Wars do not start because of scarcities. Wars start because of disbalance of power. And it is very important for the Western world to be ahead in the AI, because otherwise China may cause a real war and then a lot of Western people would die. Do you not care about them?
Socialism is communism in progress. I have actually lived in socialist country, what about you? And lies and propaganda is what Leftists like you do, not me. Funny, you never want to live in the countries where you rule.
