US President Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally-funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.
A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media railing against the “leftist”, “partisan” VOA.
Leftist and partisan are not how I, an actual leftist, would describe the various propaganda outlets scattered around the world such as VOA.
It’s a cia op. And literally always was. Since 1942 when it was established.
Broken clock strikes again.
Glad to see US propaganda go away, sad it was Trump to do it.
It was mostly a propaganda machine against socialist movements. I’m glad it is gone, but it should have been gone way before Trump. Because he doesn’t deserve credit for shit.
“Socialist” movements like:
checks notes
People’s Republic of China with its draconian:
- One Child Policy that almost got me killed because they were trying for force my mother to have an abortion against her will (since I was the second child)
- Rich people and high-ranking party members get away with crimes (as long as they do not go against the paramount leader)
- If you want treatment, you have to wait a long time, and you have to pre-pay, even if its an Emergency Room life and death situation
- 户口 (Hukou, Household Registration) System that confines you to where you’re born, and you cant even to move to other parts of your own country, and if you tried you are treated as a second-class citizen, essentially Casteism
Such “Socialism” aka: State-Capitalism
As someone who used to listen to a lot of shortwave radio, this just bums me out.
I know foreign people who listened to VoA, and now it won’t be there anymore for them.
Makes me wonder who they’ll listen to, who will fill the void, with the VoA being gone.
I know foreign people who listened to VoA, and now it won’t be there anymore for them.
Stuff like this is a perfect example of how little Trump understands soft power. That was an outlet for American ideals (ok, propaganda) and American culture to diffuse across the world. Seeing how power abhors a vacuum, I won’t be surprised when China increasingly fills this void.
I won’t be surprised when China increasingly fills this void.
The language barrier makes that unlikely. I think this one is going to remain empty for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America#Languages
Though they have less immigration, a bunch of those languages originate closer to China than the USA, I bet they can find staff equally well, if they really aim for a 1-to-1 replacement.
DW still does very limited shortwave in Africa, I guess they’ll be happy to take over time/frequency slots but let’s face it the amount of people that you can only reach via short wave is dwindling, they mostly switched to satellite. They rather feed into the local FM broadcast network, and of course you can stream over the internet.
but let’s face it the amount of people that you can only reach via short wave is dwindling, they mostly switched to satellite. They rather feed into the local FM broadcast network, and of course you can stream over the internet.
You would actually be surprised how many poor regions in Central and South America as well as in Africa and Central Asia actually rely on shortwave still.
A lot of it is Christian and right-wing broadcasts, but still, it’s used more than you would think. Not everyone can afford expensive satellite rigs to receive.
The point is rather if you’re operating an FM transmitter, you not only have the money for a satellite dish and DVB-S decoder you already have one, and FM radios are dirt cheap. The electronics for short wave certainly aren’t more expensive but you’ll need a proper antenna. Meanwhile, much of Africa actually has quite decent mobile phone coverage, there’s some piss-poor countries and large areas of nothing, generally desert, but overall, if there’s people, there’s probably reception. Their whole banking system works via mobile phone.
What will the shills on Lemmy post now?
