Western propaganda

Reagan called the USSR the evil empire but the US is really the evil empire.

Nonsense about high speed rail. Note how the brazen 3rd world corruption of the California project is ignored and instead
every high speed rail project is smeared as unrealistic.

The way their career is whitewashed in Wikipedia for alleged involvement in plots against Hitler is face melting. At that time they had already millions of deaths on their account, but they were good people because they are supposed to have disliked Hitler, when he was already losing.

kvs wrote:

franco wrote:Canada wins Top Quality of Life Nation for 4th year in a row

So what's up with that guys

And yes, it's a friendly taunt

These awards are nothing but propaganda.   Food inflation in Canada is easily 10% per year.   But officially it is nothing.

People with functional brains and good educations can evaluate the reality for themselves.  

One metric that should tell you what you need to know is the existence of food banks.   Canadian cities need them
as do US cities.   I have not heard of food banks in Russia.   And food banks are not some luxury feature of the
super rich west.   The key difference is that housing costs are so onerous in Canada and the US in major cities
that it is very easy to have a monthly income deficit even if one or even two earners exist in a household.  
The working poor is something that is rare in Russia because the big bad USSR left people with their own housing
for which they do not have to pay rents or mortgages.   Of course, they have utilities and the post-Soviet
advent of municipal taxes, but they can still afford to feed themselves.

kvs wrote:I have seen some of the methodology of those rankings.   It includes all sorts of BS like non-academic "night life" and other
fluff that make for "quality of experience".    So the number of pubs on campus is ranking category.   Total unmitigated BS
since not every country has to have the same culture that exists in the west.  

All of these rankings and awards are inane.   They do not advertise the details of their ranking.   As if these are mere technicalities.
I am also sure that LGBTXYZ campus propaganda and representation in key jobs is a must to be ranked high.   Because education
requires daily affirmation of sexual orientation and skin colour.   I bet Russia does not get ranked high enough because it does not
have enough blacks and Latinos.   Yes, really...

Then we have the maintenance of propaganda narratives.   Since Russians cannot into tech and science (LOL), their
universities must be trash.   After seeing the events of the last few days in the USA, I am feeling sorry for the victims
of such totalitarian manipulation.

kvs wrote:Orwell was right on target in this regard in 1984.   Totalitarian coercion is about breaking down the resistance.   There are
two types of totalitarianism that really are one and will appear in the same country depending on the needs of the deciders.
The 1984 brutal one and the Brave New World "soft" one.   People in the west have been already living in the latter and are
now going to be living in the former.