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As the U.S. government doles out tens of millions of dollars to "combat Russian propaganda," one result is a slew of new "studies" by "scholars" and "researchers" auditioning for the loot, reports Robert Parry.
© UN PhotoRussian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015.
The "Field of Dreams" slogan for America's NGOs should be: "If you pay for it, we will come." And right now, tens of millions of dollars are flowing to non-governmental organizations if they will buttress the thesis of Russian "meddling" in the U.S. democratic process no matter how sloppy the "research" or how absurd the "findings."
And, if you think the pillars of the U.S. mainstream media - The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others - will apply some quality controls, you haven't been paying attention for the past year or so. The MSM is just as unethical as the NGOs are.So, we are now in a phase of Russia-gate in which NGO "scholars" produce deeply biased reports and their nonsense is treated as front-page news and items for serious discussion across the MSM.
Yet, there's even an implicit confession about how pathetic some of this "scholarship" is in the hazy phrasing that gets applied to the "findings," although the weasel words will slip past most unsuspecting Americans and will be dropped for more definitive language when the narrative is summarized in the next day's newspaper or in a cable-news "crawl."
For example, a Times
front-page story on Thursday reported that "a network of Twitter accounts suspected of links to Russia seized on both sides of the [NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem] issue with hashtags, such as #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee."
The story, which fits neatly into the current U.S. propaganda meme that the Russian government somehow is undermining American democracy by stirring up dissent inside the U.S., quickly spread to other news outlets and became the latest "proof" of a Russian "war" against America.
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