Media Is independent in words but all the mainstream media outlets are controlled by handful of corporates (during 1990s, most of these outlets bought by few corporate houses). These houses have interests related to military-industrial complex. Victory of policies layed out since over 5 decades [0] for dividing and conquering middle east for greater profits can't be let to fail just because Russia decided to save Syria and Germany/France started pondering supporting Russia [1] upon confronting the enormous wave of refugees.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580490 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10718312

So we now have links between Syria, refugees, the MIC, Russia, Germany, France and somehow in the middle of that poor VW the victim of being used as the stick to push Germany back into compliance?

What do you think they would have used if VW had not conveniently committed fraud?

I just saw a comment by Noam Chompsky, "Americans don't know what's going on. But they don't even know that they don't know."

I think "Americans" can be replaced with "people in general" (including Europeans and Asians as well)

It's 'Chomsky' and I can't find a reference for that quote, where did you find that comment?

It's on here http://zcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/zbooks/www/chomsky/rab/r...

Simple searching on google showed me on the first page (third result).

The amount of truth we see is relative to the intension we're having. The rest just seems invisible to us.

Few more thoughts from Chomsky related to the theme of our discussion regarding truth:

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.” (Exactly fit for responses I got re my geo-political remark)

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.” (Yay, so true. But we're more concerned about how perfect and moral our regulation structure is, that it punishes the right people with right evidence... but evidence can be shown when it's the most convenient time to show them)

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” (Who likes truth anyway?)

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”

("Hey, Germany ministers are towing the line and aren't repeating our propaganda, how can we show them their place?" "Well, let's call our regulatory depts., we must be having some violation reports waiting to be show light of the day at this opportune moment. Find the one with biggest potential impact, and, and we'll have the compliance of Germany without shotting a single bullet." "Yeah, this will also set example for other European vassals, who lately tries to have independent voice. They must be shown their right place before it's too late.")

That's only half an assertion. Can you say with certainty that the US government is not controlled by the media corporations either? Judging by the political "activism" regularly displayed by Fox and CNN, I think it's fair to say that the media exerts a lot of control over the executive and legislative branches.

For two entities to be independent, there needs to be little control in both directions.

>Can you say with certainty that the US government is not controlled by the media corporations either?

With certainty? No.

US Government is a collection of individuals theoretically bound by a (very-large) shared text, or program, if you will. Do media corporations have some measure of influence on some of those individuals? Undoubtedly.

I am fairly certain that the individuals who make up the US Government are not all on media corporation payrolls.

>Judging by the political "activism" regularly displayed by Fox and CNN, I think it's fair to say that the media exerts a lot of control over the executive and legislative branches.

This makes sense. US Government is structured such that it arises from the people it is governing. If that structure is to be used, it requires public communication (ie. media).

Undoubtedly there are ties. But you'd have to extrapolate to all media in all countries being in on this for this purpose. The VW scandal has been published widely outside the US. Even if the US government had simply fined VW and left it at that the thing would have been newsworthy.

You don't need to bribe all the media, just blow the whistle in one major outlet and rest will follow the shues for maximum coverage.