Anti-Russia tirade deflects scrutiny of US misdeeds
Graeme Maxton mulls the hypocrisy and danger of American propaganda
The mind-modifying machine is being cranked up and the sound of nasty news is getting louder. Russia is being demonised again and for reasons that are less than just.
In the past two weeks, there has been a steady flow of news reports, especially in the English-speaking media, attacking Russia and President Vladimir Putin.
It is troubling for China, which risks being dragged into the bad-news swamp as well
Britain's Channel 4 News programme ran a story about how relations between America and Russia have become "frosty". As well as photos mocking Putin for keeping in shape, the story was illustrated with graphics showing ice forming and then cracking over an old photo of a pensive-looking US President Barack Obama sitting beside a glum Putin. The two articles that followed attacked Russia for its new "anti-gay laws" and examined calls for the country to be stripped of its right to stage the 2014 winter Olympics.
In the US, the chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, has accused Russia of being hostile to the West. Firebrand senator John McCain called for Russia to be punished for its human rights abuses.
CBS, the Huffington Post, Sky News, the BBC, as well as many others, ran stories about Russia's persecution of gays and lesbians, which The Daily Beast says evokes "the waning days of the Weimar Republic - and the coming of the Third Reich".
The reasons for this anti-Russian rhetoric are, of course, pretty obvious. Russia, never having extradited anyone before, refused to bow to US pressure to ship whistle-blower Edward Snowden to Washington so that he could face waterboarding and 100 years in jail alongside Bradley Manning. This led Obama to cancel a meeting with Putin.