Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Propaganda

The Polish Police doing their thing
In doing the BEING HAD Times the other day, I was rather shocked when I went over to have a look at the Ukrainian news and saw exactly how many articles there were that took the trouble to mention Belarus in conjunction with the election results. All of them had exactly the same thing to say: The Ukrainian elections were totally free and fair UNLIKE THEIR NORTHERN NEIGHBOR Belarus. It was not as if it was only a few articles, Belarus was probably mentioned in 50-60% of them. Why was this necessary? What did the Ukrainian elections have to do with Belarus

First of all let us be straight with each other one more time and tell the truth that the entirety of both the Ukrainian elections and the Belarusian elections were about whether or not these two countries want to do business with the EU and the USA or whether they wanted to close the curtain again and mind their own business. I am sorry folks, there were no other issues whatsoever involved here; not the president, not any real issues about parties, nothing but whether or not to allow the west in.

Knowing that this was so, and knowing the date of the Ukrainian elections, it is easy to understand why Belarus had moved its elections up from the originally intended June date to March 19th. They did this so that the Ukrainians could see the results of the local election and to allow these results to act as an indicator or a show a show of support about exactly how their “neighbors to the north actually feel.

The French police doing their thing
But why were the Belarusian elections so important to Ukraine? The answer to this is simply: They were both members of the USSR. They were not satellite border countries, they were in the show, they lived the life and they were right there in the middle of everything during Soviet Times. And, that this so called orange revolution happened has been an issue for the last year and a half. Does Ukraine really want to go with the EU or do they really believe that the old way was better?

Making inroads to an EU financed (mortgaged) market economy does not necessarily mean an evolution on the part of the Ukrainians at all. It just means that they are allowing themselves to be indebted to foreigners who have no vested interest in the lives of the people they are enslaving. In fact, I would really like to know who started this whole thing that says the west in inherently right in their thinking and any who oppose them is wrong. Was it the English who came up with the propaganda? Or was it the Nordics or the Romans who conquered them?

The Wikipedia says this about the word:

Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation directly aimed at influencing the opinions of people, rather than impartially providing information. In some cultures the term is neutral or even positive, while in others the term has acquired a strong negative connotation. Its connotations can also vary over time. For instance, in English, "propaganda" was originally a neutral term used to describe the dissemination of information in favor of a certain cause. Over time, however, the term acquired the negative connotation of disseminating false or misleading information in favor of a certain cause. Strictly speaking, a message does not have to be untrue to qualify as propaganda, but it may omit so many pertinent truths that it becomes highly misleading.

Cross Carrier Chuck doing his thing
They also, for what it is worth, give the origions of the word as stemming from the root : "things to be propagated" and that the term was coined by Roman Catholic Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando or, briefly, propaganda fide), the department of the pontifical administration charged with the spread of Catholicism and with the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs in non-Catholic countries (mission territory). And they add that propaganda has been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The writings of Romans like Livy are considered masterpieces of pro-Roman statist propaganda.

So that assumption of mine is looking pretty good.

The American police doing Rodney King
But in any case, moving the one-sided elections up to the 19th of March was a statement to Ukraine that it would be possible to throw out the carpetbaggers, the bankers and the underwear salesmen from the west, and that they could and should think about joining back up with a Russian Union. Their presence in said Union would make that entity stronger and would make possible some eventual reincarnation of the Soviet Union and that such an entity would be strong enough to disallow the evils of capitalism to exist there and yet be strong enough to support itself. And this is exactly what happened. Sure enough these post-Russian oil crisis parliamentary elections did all but wipeout president Yushchenko’s western friendly coalition and the guys who did win were the Kremlin friendly group fronted by Victor Yanukovich.

This is the real revolution folks. Reality is not this nonsense, sound-byte; sell them anything with a sauce, media hype, circus orange-aid BS. There was no revolution in Ukraine a year and a half ago, there was just a majority of people willing to give the west their shot. But guess what happened when they did: They got screwed, blued and tatoo’d just like they knew they would. And because of that, because the west was a rip-off and everyone here could see it, Belarus told Milinkevich to stick it and now Ukraine said the same to Yushchenko.

How about the Dutch Police?
BUT THIS NEWS WAS NOT HIGH ON THE LIST OF PRIORITIES OF THE NEWSPAPERS I READ! This sort of obvious rational was completely overlooked by the entirety of the western press, who instead chose to fill our ears with this phony-baloney, “I-am-so-altruistic” and “All of this showed clearly how free the elections were”. This is a complete crock.

So this all having been said, let me move on to my second point today; this business of the police clashing with the protesters in Minsk. Let me explain something to you: These tent protestors sat out there blocking traffic without anybody touching them (or joining them) for a week. However, THEY SAID that the revolution was coming within a week. THEY SAID that there would be a demonstration and possibly some violence on March 25th. THEY SAID THIS; The protestors not Lukashenka and they said that there would be some blood, there would be violence and possibly a war. This was called for by Milinkevich himself and seconded by Kozulin.

Folks, this is called a provocation. Can you really sit there and think to yourselves “Oh my G-d would you just look at Belarus and how violent their police force is.” Did this really prove what a violent country Lukashenka has? No, no, no, no, no! This was a provocation from the beginning.

And let me remind you all that this writer knows perfectly well about Polish/EU provocations. In the year 2001 on May 15th while riding my bicycle, one member of the Warsaw police department decided, without showing his badge (or for that matter having any real reason to do what he did), to slam his car into me, slide to a stop in front of me trapping me between his car and a bus and then tried to get me to pay him for all of the damage that he had been doing to his car over the previous six months of drunken driving, or whatever his problem was. I was the crazy person, don’t you see. I was the one who acted alone in an unreasonable fashion and I was the one who needed to pay him. He made a provocation and then claimed that I was to blame for having reacted. Can you see a similarity?

Even the Canadien Police, bless their hearts, know how to get into it when they have to
This is called slander. It is called libel. It's called spreading lies and defaming character. And most of all when speaking of countries, it is called propaganda. And, it is against the rules folks.

That stupid and unnecessary protest which was O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y paid for by the west was a provocation made in order to create some nasty images which could be used against the government of the Republic of Belarus. The protesters provoked the police into simply doing their job.

The truth of the matter is that the police came on the day of the supposed revolution. They asked the protestors to disperse and go home. They acted in exactly the same manner as POLICE HAVE ACTED ALL OVER THE WORLD WHEN FACED WITH A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS OR EXTREMLY ANTAGONISTIC DEMONSTRATION. Tell me how they are different from the police in France. I was at New Years at Times Square in 2002, just after the September 11th catastrophe. The Belarusian police used the identical tactics that were used against the crowds that came out to cheer in the New Years that year including disallowing ins and outs and banning the use of toilets so as to prevent potential bombings. The Belarusian police asked the protesters to go home on the 25th rather than make their proposed and potentially dangerous action and when the protestors turned and advanced on them rather than dispersing, they acted with force to simply control the situation.

So really, you make the call as to who really got the ball roling in Minsk
People please, tell me you can understand what I am saying. I am not kowtowing to the regime, but I’m sorry, all of this was not a mark against Belarus and the tyrannical reign of Alexander Lukashenka, this was a black mark against the west for insisting on making a scene where one was not needed or wanted. This is a black mark against them because trying to use this sham to control people rather than simply trying to make fair and rational business deals here even after F-I-F-T-E-E-N Y-E-A-R-S O-F E-N-D-L-E-S-S P-O-V-R-T-Y, is a massive insult to the intelligence of the Belarusian community. And that the west really cannot seem to have the capacity to understand that all that was wanted was the chance to do business without creating a slave/owner situation is exactly why they have been thrown out.

So this is what it is all about today: It’s about propaganda. This is not about Belarus playing games with the press and scaring its own people, this is about the west’s spreading propaganda and trying to reach their fingers into places they don’t belong, where they are not wanted, where they are not doing anything to help, or in fact do anything for the citizens of Ukraine or Belarus. It’s about carpet bagging. It’s about creating profit-siphoning, unidirectional businesses which only take money out of a place and leave a trail of disillusioned and disenfranchised slaves in their wakes. And this is not only true for today or for the last fifteen years, this has been the truth of the thinking around here since 1917.

The more I read the western papers these days, the less I am feeling the urge to stay neutral and to hold my tongue. Yes, it is an authoritarian regime. Yes, it is a unidirectional dictate which must be followed without question and about which people have no control. But in this case, I am not speaking about Lukashenka and the republic of Belarus; I am speaking about the west and their damned propagandist newspapers. Really, both countries have now voted to get the west the hell out and mind their own business; why can’t they understand that the people here have spoken.

More soon...

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