Russian Naval Attack (j/k)
Published by marco on
CNN is fake news. CNN is pure government propaganda. They may not be stumping for the current administration, but they’re definitely pushing somebody’s war-hawk agenda. Remember, CNN was born in the cauldron of the first U.S. Gulf War: it knows where the money is. It would be only too happy to make a ton of money reporting a juicy war with Russia. Don’t believe for a minute that CNN has any scruples.
I will prove this with a single article I found as the top search result for “Russian boat Connecticut”. I searched it because I’d just heard that this was, apparently, a thing and I wanted to find out more. I was suspicious that it was a mostly fictitious tempest in a teapot that the media uses to keep the plebes stirred up about WAR with RUSSIA, but I was going to reserve judgment until I’d read the article.
First impressions
The article I found was Russian spy ship lurks off Connecticut coast by Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr (CNN). Not one, but two authors were required to write this 460-word article.
If I were to skim the article rather than read it—as almost everyone does these days—I would get the impression that Russia has fired cruise missiles either at American ships or Connecticut and/or flown air raids over same and that Michael Flynn helped them do it. That sounds pretty bad. Immago to my bomb shelter now kthxbye.
Slideshow of Doom!
It leads off with a 1:04-minute video slideshow that throws the following images at you. The only thing that these images have in common is (A) they are mostly stock photos and (B) they are vaguely associated with Russia.
It’s not clear that this boat is the one they’re reporting on. I bet it’s not, but I’m not sure. What I am damned sure of is that this boat is not in international waters and this boat is definitely not “30 miles off the coast of Connecticut”, as the first damned sentence of the article claims. It’s also not really news when this same boat “conducted similar patrols in 2014 and 2015” and the “US Navy is keeping a close eye on it.”
I don’t know where the boat in the picture is (Cuba?) but it’s definitely doesn’t look like Connecticut. Thank goodness; I thought the Rooskies had already invaded.
The next panel is a map highlighting Delaware with a big scary red box with the words “RUSSIAN SPY SHIP” (all-caps in original). The article clearly discusses that Connecticut is a new places for the boat to have gone; what the hell is this map supposed to show? That the boat passed Delaware on the way from Cuba to Connecticut? That’s basic geometry. This isn’t a picture of anything to do with the article or the report. It’s just there to be vaguely scary.
Next, we move on to a picture of what might be a rocket taking off from somewhere. This is not a picture of a Russian cruise missile nor does the article claim that the cruise missile was launched from the spy boat that that article is supposedly about. The cruise missile is a completely different story and is mentioned again only in the final paragraph. Again, CNN is doing its damnedest to scare the shit out of people without actually lying about anything. This is propaganda on a level that would make even Alex Jones blush.
The two authors unleash both barrels against Russia, showing a picture of Michael Flynn, who has absolutely nothing to do with the article otherwise. It’s just a suggestion—you fill in the blanks. Is the Trump administration taking it easy on Russian spy ships that are cruising right up to Connecticut and firing cruise missiles? Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. But we can’t put anything past those Rooskies.
Hey, guess what? We found another stock photo of a boat! This is a different boat, but the article says that the ship in international waters off the coast of Connecticut and the other in Russian waters in the Black Sea are the same. It’s right there in the following extremely poorly written sentence that segues jarringly from the report about the first ship and onto the second ship. I had to read it three time to realize that they’d moved halfway around the world in the middle of the sentence.
“The Leonov is a Vishnya-class spy ship, as is a Russian vessel that trailed the US ship that encountered close-flying Russian aircraft in the Black Sea on Friday.”
Is the picture above the American boat in the Black Sea? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I would bet money that CNN and its awesome foreign-policy writers couldn’t care less. The point is not to inform but to make you feel like Russia is provoking war by daring to fly its planes close to American boats parked on Russia’s doorstep.
I can see on the tail that this is actually a Russian jet. It’s just there to show you how dangerous jets are, especially ones that buzz over the heads of those hapless American seamen who are just trying to bring good to the world by cruising near Russian waters in the Black Sea.
Conclusion: CNN is war propaganda
The CNN report just throws everything into a single garbage article full of innuendo and allegations without barely any actual information or reporting. The pictures are mostly stock photos and are worth about as much as the backdrops behind “on-the-scene” reporters who are really reporting from the safety of their home studio. It’s bullshit. It’s propaganda.
It takes a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the reader to extract what might actually be facts from this kind of news. The intent is to get you ready for war with Russia, not to tell you about actually bad things that are happening.
The implication is that the US is the only country on the planet allowed to have a military. Just that Russia has its own military is bad enough, but actually using it for patrols is a provocation tantamount to a declaration of war. It’s only thanks to the extreme restraint and easygoing, pacific nature of the US that we haven’t responded yet. But, when we do, it will be well-deserved, ammirite?