CCTV FOLLIES 2.24 NO DAYLIGHT IN SIGHT!
Two years since Russia invaded Ukraine -Xi still backs Putin's war -No sign of daylight between Beijing and Moscow on "special operation" -CCTV airs Kremlin-curated misinformation -Year of the loong!
The Russian Ministry of Defense stated on the 23rd that in the past week, the Russian military used precision-guided weapons to attack Ukrainian military industrial facilities and military airports as well as 267 helicopters, more than 15,000 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, etc.
Russia used precision guided munitions to strike Ukraine military infrastructure. etc, etc. etc.
CCTV: “As for Ukraine, on the 23rd, it was claimed that the Ukrainian army shot down a Russian A50 airborne early warning aircraft.”
In other developments, the European Union passed the thirteenth round of sanctions against Russia on the 23rd.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that day that the EU's attempts to put pressure on Russia were in vain. In response, Russia expanded the list of representatives of European institutions and EU member states that are prohibited from entering Russia.
The next segment focuses on China and the UN, casting China as the grown-up at the table, perhaps the only sane and humanitarian nation on earth. It’s a plea to the world community to see things in a way that puts China’s hypocritical and Machiavellian foreign policy in the best possible light.
According to the oracular narration at CCTV, viewers are given to believe that China is clear and fair-minded where others are muddle-headed and blinded by prejudice.
China is sooooo neutral, sooooo responsible, sooooo fair, and sooooo high-minded.
In its pursuit of world harmony under the rubric of Xi-diplomacy there is a path.
Voice-over: “Chinese representatives called on relevant parties to adopt a responsible attitude and use a constructive approach. Diplomatic efforts have promoted de-escalation and relaxation of the situation and created favorable conditions for the resumption of negotiations.”
“Do not set up artificial obstacles to add resistance, let alone transport weapons, engage in firefights, go on outings, and take advantage of things.”
“Europeans say that the United States and Europe are trying to isolate and suppress Russia. Europeans say that the United States and Europe already tried to isolate and suppress Russia, but Europe suffered blowback. NATO's attempt to suppress Russia by arming Ukraine is foolish and will not succeed. All European sanctions and severance measures against Russia will backfire on Europe.”
The New York Times published an article on February 22 saying that ever since the conflict* between Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. government has tried to isolate Russia politically and economically through sanctions and other measures. However, this goal has not been achieved in the past two years.
editor’s note: “Conflict” is CCTV’s preferred euphemism to use when avoiding the quasi-taboo word “war.” The word war is clearly used in the article in question.
Even the NYT headline as aired by CCTV contains it:
But elsewhere, the “war” is made to go away, in keeping with Putin’s preferred usage. Russians can face jail for calling the war a war, let alone criticizing it.
While the NYT headline by a stretch of the imagination might possibly be considered a small breakthrough for an editor who subversively sought to get the word “war” back in a conversation about a bloody, large-scale, sustained war of invasion, it’s in English and unlikely to be noticed by most viewers.
And though the term “war” does appear in the headline in question, nowhere does it point to Russia as the instigator of the war.
What’s more, the taboo term is summarily excised from the Chinese-language voiceover, the erasure of Russia’s war being in keeping with CCTV’s pro-Putin censorship standards.
A Swedish seer referred to simply as “Aobeili” (in phonetic terms) is said to represent a foundation dedicated to peace and futurology. Aobeili says “NATO was stupid to think they could repress Russia by force of arms in Ukraine. European measures to sanction Russia and cut contact with Russia have resulted in a backlash.”
Kudos to CCTV’s crew on the ground in DC for cleverly framing the symbol of American democracy behind the forbidding bars of a fence.
US policy is obviously a failure says CCTV. “Russia has maintained financial and political stability, and its diplomatic and economic relations with other countries have continued to develop, including those with close ties to the United States.
The report from Gaza is relatively brief. CCTV rubble shots bring the news to a close.
Domestic News on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion day of infamy.
The words of Xi Jinping continue to boom far and wide in the way of Confucius and militant tradition of Marx, but the enigmatic man himself is not in view.
Indisposed? Keeping low profile? Battling a stealthy coup? Bad hair day?
Whatever the case, Xi continues to project his power while in hiding, not unlike the Wizard of Oz in Emerald City.
Is Xi really the terrifyingly powerful, omnipotent all-seeing dictator his own media makes him out to be? Or is he just a flawed man fumbling behind a curtain to hide his humble, bumbling self as he pulls political levers and manipulates the media?
Is he on the way up or out? If CCTV knows, it’s not saying.
Meanwhile the magic act of Xi the illusionist continues to play out on TV, on a TV screen near you. The trumped-up wizardry behind his trumped-up image has not yet been exposed to the public but is still awaiting a brave Toto on the CCTV premises to pull the curtain.
Today’s piece of Xi adulation is disguised as a mundane letter from the master celebrating the boring, banal and self-referential, but otherwise inconsequential, visit of 20 American students from Muscatine, Iowa to China. Why is this news?
Because Xi happened to have visited their hometown and it’s all about him.
“With Xi's support, more than 20 Muscatine High School students paid an exchange visit to Beijing, Shanghai and Hebei Province, among other places in China from Jan. 24 to 30, becoming the first group of American students to visit China under the program.
One of their gifts to Xi upon their arrival in Beijing was a school flag written with Chinese characters "Grandpa Xi, Here We Are."
After the visit, the students wrote a letter to the Chinese president, sharing with him their joy during their China trip and thanking him for the invitation.”
Editor’s note: “Sharing joy with Grandpa Xi” doesn’t sound like American high school students talking to my ear, but it’s been a while since I was in high school.
There is no video to accompany the top story about America’s high school fans of Xi.
The next top story is interesting mainly due to the enigmatic map of China. Naturally it includes the dotted line around remote southern islands and bits of contested territory along the India, Nepal, Bhutan border, but it’s also a riot of color.
Yellow seems to indicate, in a dramatic before-and-after fashion, the western provinces graced by a visit from Xi, though I could be reading it wrong as there’s no chyron to explain it. Pointedly, it is Xinjiang and Ningxia not colored in yellow in the map on left, but both are included into the fold in the map on the right.
Xinhua’s readout of the story:
Xi Jinping on Friday stressed the importance of lowering logistics costs and promoting a new round of large-scale equipment renewals and trade-ins of consumer goods. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at a meeting of the Central Commission for Financial and Economic Affairs (CCFEA), which he heads.
During the meeting, Xi emphasized that the acceleration of product upgrades is an important measure to promote high-quality development, and that the logistics sector serves as arteries and veins of the real economy.
Xi’s stalwart allies were reported to be in attendance:
Li Qiang, the Chinese premier, and Cai Qi, a member of the Standing Committee and Ding Xuexiang, Chinese vice premier, attended the meeting.
This rather dry story about logistics costs is livened up and does double duty as another brick in the wall of the Xi personality cult. It is illustrated with adulatory Xi photos mostly drawn from his best hits collection in 2023 in which the paramount one can be seen proudly and profoundly communing with both man and nature. It closes with images of landscape grandeur befitting a latter-day emperor.
The next shot brings to mind the Great Leap Forward which mobilized millions in the dust and ruined the economy of China when Xi was just a child.
If the CCP can mobilize enough volunteers deeply imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice to labor for the motherland, maybe the desert can one day be rendered green.
Someone high at CCTV seems to be quite certain that a certain personage, a person of rank and stature much higher than he, is a bird-lover. Under this editorial guidance, hardly a day’s news goes by on CCTV without some fluttering of wings and bird shots.
The lantern festival is marked with loong dances and loong displays in this, the year of the loong.
Editor’s note: The loong is a Chinese-trademarked © mythic animal that bears some resemblance to but should not be mistaken with the so-called “dragon” in so-called Western culture.
And that’s a wrap on the two-year anniversary of Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
Xinhua’s February 24 TV report on the two-year anniversary of the "Ukraine crisis," has much the same pro-Russian tone as CCTV coverage.
It makes no mention of Russia's war of invasion.
The state media taboo on using the word "war" in relation to Putin’s belligerent invasion of Ukraine is broken only once in context of a quote by respected American diplomat Chas. Freeman.
But war is not a word used by CCTV in reference to Russia. According to the stylebook of both CCTV and Xinhua, the taboo word “war” is best replaced with relatively “neutral” and anodyne substitutes as follows:
-Special Military Operation
-Ukraine conflict
-the crisis
-the fight
-Ukraine situation
To all my readers, Happy Year of the loong!
An excerpt from “Empire of No Sun”
Five thousand restless men and women are amassed on the embankment of a muddy river under a sodden overcast sky. Dressed in crude gowns and tattered garments, they struggle to keep warm, blowing hot air on cold fingers, stamping numb feet, and rubbing palms under the watchful eye of uniformed police and plainclothes agents.
Squawking gulls dive bomb the turbid waters while storm petrels wheel high over the Bund. The Shanghai sky is overcast and the humidity hard to bear, portending a bone-chilling day, if not rain.
The roped-in crowd is a trembling mass of students, teachers, clerks, workers, and tradesmen who got the same early morning call. Hauled in on the back of open trucks, they were deposited on the esplanade to await word from the authorities. Strictly supervised and organized by work unit, they shiver in the shadow of a towering grand hotel built of stone, waiting for the sun to shine.
Wary of the jaundiced eye of local enforcers, complaints are kept to a whisper, but whispers whip around the crowd.
Stomachs rumble and grumbles follow.
No food? No water?
Taking cover deep within the huddled masses are hoodlums and other discontents who bully, ogle, flirt and exchange cigarettes. Some of them cut deals, others vent conspiratorial thoughts,
When the foreigners and their fancy local hires finally start to arrive, they step out of chauffeured cars by the hotel where they are greeted by party officials. Formalities are brief and they are escorted to a bridge. The foreigners are dressed different from everyone else and a number of them sport beards and hats. The new arrivals and their handlers assume a safe and secure position atop the pedestrian bridge as traffic is brought to a complete halt on the busy waterfront.
Contradictory instructions begin to trickle down from the high command post on top of the span, conveyed by relay to crowd enforcers, translators and facilitators on the ground.
Dispatchers with megaphones snap commands to bring discipline to the thrumming crowd. Agents on the ground herd the flock into shape, getting it ready for the big shoot.
Read it! It’s difficult to assess one’s own work but my small book about a misadventure in movie-making on the streets of Shanghai might well be better than Xi’s latest book about Xi.
Now available on Kindle for $3.99
