Het
volgende uiterst humoristische en sarcastische artikel, geschreven
door Caitlin Johnstone en afgelopen donderdag gepubliceerd, moet je lezen, maar
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Whales,
Crickets, And Other Fearsome Russian Doomsday Weapons
Caitlin Johnstone
Headlines
were blaring the word "Russian" again the other day because
the mass media narrative managers found yet another reason for
westerners to feel terrified of the icy potato patch that we'd barely
ever thought about prior to 2016. I'd like to talk about the
Kremlin's latest horrifying horrific addition to its fearsome
doomsday artillery, and recap a few of the other incredibly
frightening and terrifying tactics that those strange
Cyrillic-scribbling demons of the East are employing to undermine
truth, justice, and the American way. Just to make sure we're
all good and scared like we're supposed to be.
Gather
the kids, clutch your pearls and sign off on hundreds of billions of
dollars of extra military spending, my patriotic brethren! Here are
five super scary ways the Red Menace is trying to destroy you and
everything you hold dear:
1. Whales
Is this beluga whale actually a Russian spy? usatoday.com/story/news/nat…
Headlines
and TV news segments from virtually all mainstream outlets were
falling all over themselves the other day to report the fact that
some Norwegians found a tame beluga whale with a harness on it, and
"experts" attest that the animal may have been part of a
covert espionage program for the Russian navy.
While
there is no indication that this spying cetacean has been trained in
the arts of sonar election meddling or shooting novichok from its
blowhole, the Guardian helpfully
informs us that
the harness was labeled "Equipment of St. Petersburg", and
was equipped to hold "a camera or weapon".
"Marine
experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white
whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to
use underwater mammals as a special ops force,"
the Guardian reports.
The
Norwegian tabloid Verdens
Gang,
which picked up on the discovery well before the breathless English
headlines began gracing us with their presence, is a teensy bit less
Ian Flemingesque in its reporting on the matter: the harness is
equipped for a GoPro camera.
The words "Equipment of St. Petersburg" are
written in English.
Why
is the Russian military writing "Equipment of St. Petersburg"
in English on the garments of its aquatic special ops forces, you may
ask? If there were indeed a secret beluga espionage squad assembled
by Russian intelligence services, would they not perhaps avoid
writing the home address of the whales on their harnesses altogether,
and maybe, you know, not let
them run free in the wild?
And
to that I would say, stop asking so many questions. That's just what
Putin wants.
2. Crickets
NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S. “Diplomats” in Cuba. The Culprits Were Likely Crickets. theintercept.com/2019/01/07/nbc…
NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S....
A report seeded
throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials
last September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had
suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in
homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated
microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia.
A recording of one such highly sophisticated attack was analyzed by
scientists and turned
out to be the mating call of the male indies short-tailed cricket.
Neurologists and other brain specialists have
challenged the claim that
any US government workers suffered any neurological damage of any
kind, saying test results on the alleged victims were
misinterpreted.
The
actual story, when stripped of hyperventilating Russia panic, is that
some government workers once heard some horny crickets in Cuba.
*cough*
3. Puppies
Robert Parry explores the strange mystery of the Russia-gate puppies, consortiumnews.com/2017/10/04/the…
Ye
gads, is is nothing sacred? Is there any weapon these monsters won't
use to transform the west into a giant, globe-spanning Mordor?
That's
right, in 2017 puppies became one of the many, many things we've been
instructed to fear in the hands of our vodka-swilling enemy to the
east, with mass media outlets reporting that a Facebook group for
animal lovers was one of the sinister, diabolical tactics employed by
St. Petersburg's notorious Internet Research Agency. As the Moon
of Alabama blog has
explained,
the only evidence we've seen so far actually indicates that the
Internet Research Agency's operations in America served no purpose
other than to attract eyeballs for money. As journalist
Aaron Maté wrote of
the highly publicized Russian Facebook meddling, "Far from being
a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and
mostly unrelated to the 2016 election."
The
late, great Robert Parry, one of the earliest and most outspoken
critics of the Russiagate narrative, covered this one for Consortium
News in
an article he
authored a few months before his untimely passing:
"As Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in Tuesday’s editions, “The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. … There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.”
Now, there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don’t think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although precisely how these divergent groups were “linked” to Russia or the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer details.)
At this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy land.
Yet, instead of starting to question the overall premise of this “scandal,” journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to propaganda.
“The goal of the dog lovers’ page was more obscure,” Isaac and Shane acknowledged. “But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to build a large following before gradually introducing political content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried such tactics.”
4. Pokémon
This
Russia hysteria has been a long, wild ride, and sometimes it's
honestly felt like they’re just experimenting on us. Like they’ve
been testing the limits of how ridiculous they can make this thing
and still get mainstream Americans to swallow it. Like the
establishment propagandists are all sitting around in a room smoking
blunts and making bets with each other all,
“I’m
telling you, we can sell a Pokémon Go Kremlin conspiracy.”
“Do
it!”
“No
way. There’s no way they’ll go for it.”
“Yeah
well you said that about the puppy dogs!”
And
then they release their latest experiment in social manipulation and
place bets on how many disgruntled Hillary voters they can get
retweeting it saying “God dammit, I knew that
jigglypuff looked suspicious!”
The
October 2017 CNN
report which
sparked off a full day of shrieking "OMG THEY'RE EVEN USING
PIKACHU TO ATTACK OUR DEMOCRACY" headlines was titled
"Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked
meddling effort", and it reported that Russia had extended its
"tentacles" into the popular video game for the
purpose of election meddling. Apparently the Internet Research Agency
attempted to hold a contest using the game to highlight police
brutality against unarmed Black men, which of course is something
that only an evil autocracy would ever do.
Not
until the
fifteenth paragraph of
the article did we see the information which undercut all the frantic
arm flailing about Russians destroying democracy and warping our
children's fragile little minds:
"CNN has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to enter the contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were promised were ever awarded -- or, indeed, whether the people who designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the prizes."
Mmm
hmm.
5. Laughter
Turns out jokes are a Russian disinformation conspiracy.
Is nothing safe? What will those barbarian Others think of next? Weaponizing our tears? bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
Is nothing safe? What will those barbarian Others think of next? Weaponizing our tears? bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
How Putin's Russia turned humour into a weapon
Late
last year the BBC published
an article titled
“How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon” about yet
another addition to the Kremlin’s horrifying deadly hybrid
warfare arsenal: comedy. The article's author,
ironically titled “Senior
Journalist (Disinformation)” by the BBC, argues that Russia has
suddenly discovered laughter as a way to “deliberately lower
the level of discussion”.
“Russia’s
move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively
recent phenomenon,” the article explained, without speculating as
to why Russians might have suddenly begun laughing at their western
accusers.
Is
it perhaps possible that Russian media have begun mocking the west a
lot more because westerners have made themselves much easier to make
fun of? Could it perhaps be the fact that western mass media have
been doing absolutely insane things like constantly selling us the
idea that the Kremlin could be lurking behind anything in our world,
even really innocuous-looking things like puppy dogs, Pokémon
and whales? Could we perhaps be finding ourselves at the butt end of
jokes now because in 2016 our society went bat shit, pants-on-head,
screaming-at-passing-motor-vehicles insane?
Nahhh.
Couldn't be. It's the Russians who've gone mad.
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Caitlin
Johnstone |
May 2, 2019 at 12:54 pm |
Tags: hysteria, media, Politics, Putin, Russia, whale |
Categories: Article |
URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-1FG
