I mean c’mon, which one will work better, a radio station proclaiming the virtues of American democracy or an Army guy showing up to your door with a sack full of cash?

“There is disinformation we know is disinformation, and disinformation we don’t know is disinformation, and disinformation that might be disinformation under certain circumstances we know about but not others, and where’d I put that damn jelly doughnut?”

I am convinced it was one of the best propaganda tool available to the US throughout the twentieth century.While growing up overseas, I can testify to the efficacy of Hollywood movies (my father owned a cinema) in disseminating American propaganda on foreign audiences.

Now the focus of their scorn is Vladimir Putin and the constant demonizing of a so-called, all pervasive Russian Mafia. Just like Colombia was inextricably linked to drug cartels, Russia and its intelligence services are being inextricably linked to that nebulous entity. And now Putin is never mentioned without being tagged as a former spy, a reminder that he served in the KGB. Yet former president George H W Bush The First, was never referred to as a former spy despite the fact that he was the actual director of the American KGB aka CIA. Such vulgar double standard is barely noticed.

A great confrontation is in the making. American hegemony is being challenged by Putin like never before in the last 2 decades. Russia has drawn a red line in Kosovo that up to now the US and its yes-men in NATO, along with the French neocon Sarkozy, seem intent on crossing. The showdown will come when the Kosovar Albanians illegally and unilaterally declare independence. In the last decade, the US has squandered its propaganda monopoly and the emperor has no clothes. If Russia exhibits the political will to remain steadfast in defending its national interests, I think the US and NATO and EU will back down and the propaganda machine will shamelessly back pedal.