Friendly reminder that VOA, aka Voice of America, is a subsidiary of the US Agency for Global Media. It was established to convince people in the Soviet sphere that the US was better in every way. It continues that mission with America’s allies and enemies today.

The process of opening up a country’s media space is integral to getting those State department messages in there.

BRICS is taking great strides forward. The rapprochement between China and India is necessary for that.

They have a new designation, partner country, allowing countries to take part without full agreement on all BRICS policies. Turkiye is joining as a partner despite its membership in NATO.

A grain exchange is being created, with other commodities exchanges to follow. Discussions on resisting sanctions, guaranteeing food security and energy security.

We are seeing the emergence of the new global organization.

Propaganda is usually truthful or exaggerated truth. It’s the framing that is important. Some facts are focused on. Some facts are omitted.

I acknowledge that Russia, China and the DPRK have made mistakes and even done things that are deeply questionable. But I’m interested in comparing their mistakes or misguided actions to those of the most powerful military empire on earth. The one involved in hundreds of military actions and dozens of coups since its inception. The one with the largest per capita prison population on earth. The one which controls many of the world’s financial levers.

There is a difference in the scale of their mistakes or bad actions. Propaganda distorts that difference of scale. It focuses on the crimes of the “enemies” / “axis of evil” / “rogue states” but doesn’t examine context or culpability of the empire. They’ll choose one conflict, downplay 9 others, and give a one-sided view of that one conflict.

That’s how propaganda works. Every state produces propaganda. One state produces billions of dollars of propaganda each year.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is straight up State department propaganda.

Calculator?! Those thieving, energy-sucking piles of garbage! Abacus till I die!

But seriously, AI is insidious in how it data mines us to give us answers, and data mines our questions to build profiles of users. I distrust assurances of anonymity by big data corpos.

The article states that there is no evidence that this is caused by Russia. But then goes on to speculate that it’s caused by Russia. Journalistic standards have fallen.

And to celebrate that fact, Europe is joining the US in imposing massive tariffs on China’s electric vehicles and solar cells. Yay.

Would be funny if Boeing started cutting corners with their hitmen, too.

You aren’t. There’s more backstory.

deleted by creator

Then it’s not getting the freshest photons.

What if we didn’t even have ads on the internet?

That’s because you haven’t tried cool ranch yet

Purchased upvotes and downvotes that make criticism invisible

I will gather all the time crystals and become quantumly immortal! No one can stop me!

When you heat up your spam casserole the lights of Chicago dim.

As long as you get that feeling, then no need to evaluate the content of things. We have teams of people to do that. Then they tell you what context cues to look for instead of evaluating it yourself.

Since Reuters is writing this up like it’s just the norm for Pakistani PMs to be charged with crimes, rather than giving context, here’s an article explaining that the US pushed Pakistani lawmakers to remove Khan. He was friendly to Russia and visited Putin just at the moment that the Special Military Operation began (aka invasion of Ukraine). He was also on a serious anti corruption campaign which would have threatened the very strings the US pulled to unseat him. He is hugely popular in Pakistan, and when there was an attempted assassination the crowd rallied around him to protect him.

https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/

Flowing green faux Japanese characters do not provide a soil rich in what onions crave. Brawndo might. But Matrix code is right out.

EU to Hungary: get on board with the payouts or we break your knees.