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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

I'm not doubting your point that the U.S. has both the incentive and track record to interfere with El Salvador.

How do you back up your suggestion that the media is being controlled by U.S. interests, that there is collusion on the part of the media and U.S. government?

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There are clear conflicts of interests between an independent press and the press being owned by large corporate entities.

Aside from that, note the revolving door and cozy relationship between the intelligence arm of the government and media:

William Brennan - CIA to MSNBC

James Clapper - NSA to CNN

Michael Hayden - NSA to CNN

Asha Rangappa - FBI to CNN

Chuck Rosenberg - DEA to MSNBC

The above are just a few, and clearly a new flavor of the military/intelligence industrial complex.

Then consider that the Washington Post is owned by an individual that has also competed for billions of CIA and NSO business (going back many years before 2020): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multib...

Or consider the overt yellow journalism that was used to justify invasion of Iraq in 2003 - the New York Times was one of the most culpable outlets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War...

You’re right about all of that, and most people really don’t know the extent of corporate and security state capture in US “free press”… but it’s pretty useless as a defense of BTC policy in El Salvador, or as a critique of this article.

There is no defense of BTC inherent to my point, quite the contrary. BTC is largely irrelevant. What's relevant is that this leader in a South American country has thumbed his nose at the empire and the empire will seek to undermine him through all means at its disposal, media hit pieces included.

How is being a BTC bro thumbing one's nose at empire? The winners from any kind of successful BTC movement will overwhelmingly be just a slightly different set of private, unaccountable, economically (and hence politically) powerful people, who are even more ideologically predisposed to libertarian fairy tales.

BTC success in El Salvador would be a defeat for the vast majority of the populace, and a non-event for empire, except maybe to be used as a model to repeat elsewhere.

You're missing pieces of the puzzle.

See: Leader of Libya, after discussing moving to a gold standard.

I'm not familiar, but can see how different things like that might be thumbing one's nose. There have been coups started over such things in Latin America in just the last couple of years. I'm totally unconvinced that El Salvador is a similar situation.

I hope with all my heart you are correct.

That’s a few ex-spies that get to spend retirement in relative luxury in return for occasionally and sternly looking into a camera and making some completely obvious point, but with a lot of authority.

There are more military veterans at McDonald’s, maybe even in relative terms. That doesn’t mean the Marines are infiltrating the McNugget supply.

But, yea, top politicians and “the mainstream media” sometimes have similar world views. That’s as non-scandalous as it is obvious and unavoidable.

We're well beyond your cognitive capabilities in this discussion if you're suggesting that a comparison between powerful ex-directors of the US intelligence apparatus landing post-gig jobs as political commentators at media organizations and "Marines" at McDonalds is apt (or even relevant).

Now you’re textbook begging-the-question: you were trying to proof that “the media” is somehow corrupt. Your argument was their hiring of some former national security politicos. Now you’re arguing that practice is so obviously evil because of its association with the known-to-be-evil media?

I’ve heard better definitions of porn from the Supreme Court.

If the topic is geopolitics with national security implications, I’d think the opinions and insights of former national security and intelligence officials would be valuable. There doesn’t need to be a conspiracy when Occam’s razor works fine here. They are getting paid to provide commentary people want to hear because of their unique background and perspective.

Have to agree.

Desperation to avoid "running in conspiracy (theory!) circles" has some forgoing critical thinking.

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