Jackie
Walker, een Joods journalist, wordt al een paar jaar in de pers
neergezet als antisemiet…… Het feit dat je er al vanaf
het begin bij moet vertellen dat ze Joods is, is een teken aan de
wand…. Walker was eerder lid van Labour, maar heeft haar
lidmaatschap opgezegd, ze ziet de partij als zionistisch en stelt dat het neoliberalisme van Blair de boel nog steeds verziekt in de partij…. (moet je
nagaan, de reguliere pers, ook in Nederland, heeft Labour een paar jaar lang voor antisemitisch uitgemaakt….)
Zelf is
Walker zoals gezegd meermaals beschuldigd antisemitisch te zijn, het
voorbeeld dat de campagne tegen Corbyn een zeer valse campagne was en
is, deze politicus is alles behalve een antisemiet en toch kan de
reguliere pers in GB en de rest van het westen er maar geen genoeg
van krijgen hem dit etiket op te drukken….. ‘
Ach ja, men is als de
dood dat Corbyn de verkiezingen wint, waarna mensen voldoende geld
krijgen om zelf eten voor de kinderen te kopen, zodat niet dagelijks meer dan 4 miljoen kinderen hongerig naar school moeten (dat was ook al het geval onder Labour schoften Blair en Brown)
Zoals gewoonlijk spelen de reguliere media weer een heel smerig spel in deze, hetzij door zonder bewijzen politici te beschuldigen van antisemitisme, dan wel door zaken te verzwijgen die duidelijk het tegenovergestelde laten zien…. Ook smerige verbale aanvallen op de groep Jewish Voice for Labour, die zich verzet tegen het met antisemitisme etiketten beplakken van politici, worden gewoon niet genoemd in diezelfde media…..
De
heksenjacht met beschuldigingen van antisemitisme doet vreemd genoeg denken aan de
campagnes van de nazi’s in Duitsland voor de machtsovername door
opper-psychopaat Hitler en zijn smerige misdadigersbende….. Alleen
werden de mensen er toen van beschuldigd Joods, Roma, Sinti, homo of links te zijn en als je als niet
Jood commentaar had op dat beleid, was je een Jodenvriend die het licht in de ogen
niet verdiende….. Lullig genoeg worden nu dus ook Joden als Walker en de hiervoor genoemde Jewish Voice for Labour aangevallen….. Aangevallen daar deze (Joodse) mensen het zat zijn dat men Labour wegzet als antisemitisch en dat je geen commentaar mag leveren op bijvoorbeeld de massamoorden die Israël onder de Palestijnen aanricht……
Ongelofelijk!!
Het volgende artikel werd geschreven door Slava Silber en werd eerder geplaatst op TheCanary:
Jewish
anti-racist Jackie Walker speaks about resisting ‘a major witch
hunt’
Jackie
Walker is
a Jewish supporter of Palestinian rights who has faced off
allegations of antisemitism in recent years. And she recently spoke
to me about her ordeal.
A
‘professional anti-racist’
She
began by explaining her background, saying:
I’m
not just an activist… I was also professionally an anti-racist. So
I was an adviser/teacher on anti-racism as well as going on
demonstrations etc about anti-racist practice, because the reason my
parents were together was because of the civil rights movement. And
in the 1950s, if you even think about America, which is where I was
born at that point, which was at the height of McCarthyism, and you
had a white man and a black woman having a long-term relationship
which produced two children – they were obviously very conscious of
the barriers they were crossing. And the reason my mother was
deported from America was because of her political activities…
So
I’ve got these two identities, both Ashkenazi Jewish and Black,
from the African diaspora, from Jamaica. And the coincidence of those
two things means that… I feel I have to speak up.
“A
major witch hunt”
She
continued by highlighting what she considers a “major” attack on
left-wingers who support Palestinian rights:
We’re
in the stranglehold of a major witch hunt in British politics. We’ve
never seen anything like it. If you want to talk about existential
threats, we are having the most dangerous existential threat to the
left that there’s been in modern history, and I’m not
exaggerating that.
[At]
the Labour Party conference, there was a
bomb threat where
he said – whoever the person was said – that they were going to
kill a lot of people. Now, of course, nobody in the media reported
that. Extraordinary. I mean I just want you to consider what would
have happened if this show was being put on by a Zionist group, a
Jewish Zionist group. It would have been all over the papers.
This
show was being put on by a non-Zionist Jewish group, and it wasn’t
mentioned, at all. At the same time, a member of a group that I’m…
partly in…, Jewish Voice for Labour, was actually attacked on the
streets. There, we have had threats of rape and murder. And again,
the extraordinary thing is the fact that this has not been reported,
at all, … in any media.
Media
bias
Speaking
about how media outlets have treated the allegations against her, she
said:
They
have no interest in balance. They have a total agenda. So for
example, you take the Guardian, that
used to be a liberal newspaper. We can see what their agenda is and
has been right from the start. And they will write article after
article after article, and certainly Jessica Elgot, who is the person
– she was originally a reporter for the Jewish
Chronicle,
then was employed by the Guardian –
and she has written, I don’t even know how many. Maybe 20 articles
have referred to me, maybe more…
Not once, not once has she come to
me to check her story. Not once. And I wrote her a very, very polite
invitation, maybe about six months ago, saying ‘perhaps it would be
a good idea, as you seem to have focused so much of your work on me,
for us to meet’. I didn’t even get a response. So… a decision
has been made, somewhere, that normal practice does not apply against
Jackie Walker.
Another
example – Panorama. …
I was sitting there, watching it… and up I came again. And all the
kind of tricks of the documentary trade were used. So there was
spooky music when I came on, there was a kind of sickle moon, and
there was trembling of the beats, of the rhythm, that happened as
well. So I find it quite extraordinary.
Blair’s
legacy remains in the Labour Party…
Asked
if she regrets no longer being in the Labour Party, Walker stressed:
I
feel that actually I’m really freed up. I mean, I can say things
about what’s happening in the party that I couldn’t possibly say
as a Labour Party member. And that is difficult for a lot of members.
I mean, I think the structures of the Labour Party are the leftovers
of the… Blair structures that were put into place to silence
members, and to keep them kind of on a particular track which
included being Zionist, which included being neoconservative, you
know, that whole sort of economic agenda. And I think a lot of us
during those years sort of held our nose and voted Labour.
Speaking
about the situation today, she said:
So
what you’ve got is, you’ve got a left which has been under huge
amounts of pressure, and not unified on this subject. There
have been some groups and some individuals who decided that the witch
hunt had a basis to it. Not in terms of any evidence, not in terms of
any data. But they felt they had to respond to it in a very
particular way. And that has meant that the response from the left
has not been unified.…
You
have the bulk of the members on one side, bulk of the activists on
one side, and on the other side you have the parliamentary Labour
Party. You have the leadership, who was so busy trying to keep the
media and the parliamentary Labour Party happy – an impossible
task, of course – … that they are not really taking account of
what’s happening to the membership.
(Op deze plek staat een video, die ik helaas niet kan overnemen, zie daarvoor het origineel. Hieronder 2 video’s [overgenomen van YouTube] over de heksenjacht in GB tegen zogenaamd antisemitisme…. Commentaar leveren op het bloedige handelen van de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël, wordt als antisemitisme weggezet, zelfs als je niet één keer het woord ‘Jood’ hebt gebruikt….)
Het is
het beest Trump nu geheel en al in de bolle kop geslagen, de hufter
durfde 13 maart jl. in een interview voor Breitbart te zeggen dat hij het leger, de politie en motorbendes aan zijn kant staan, maar dat ze gelukkig (nog) geen geweld plegen…..* (motorbendes: je weet, wel van die
gewelddadig misdadige ‘volwassen’ jongens met veel te grote brommers en oude
stinkauto’s) Met andere woorden: als Trump z’n zin niet krijg, of men probeert hem af te zetten, is dat nog lang
geen gelopen race, sterker nog die race zal niet eens van start
gaan……
In feite
dreigt Trump met een burgeroorlog mocht men hem proberen af te zetten, met de lullige toevoeging dat hij
aan de sterke kant zal staan met paramilitaire troepen om zijn
tegenstanders op te pakken, dan wel te vermoorden…..
Ben het
overigens niet eens met wat Sasha Abramsky, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, zegt over Putin: Rusland zit
toch echt nog voor het stadium van een totale dictatuur. Bovendien
hebben we aan Putin te danken dat het in Syrië niet volledig uit de
hand is gelopen, wat betreft de andere wereldmacht, of beter gezegd
terreurentiteit VS. Eén ding is zeker als Trump, of noem nog maar wat
VS presidenten, op de plek van Putin hadden gezeten met hun
administratie, waren we waarschijnlijk al in een wereldoorlog
verwikkeld geweest >> WOIII…..
Steve
King, een (fascistisch) ideologische partner van Trump en witte nationalistische
ploert, hield vorige maand zijn volgers een cartoon voor en gaf ze de
boodschap mee dat een burgeroorlog mogelijk is en dat dit een feest
zou zijn voor conservatieven wapenfanaten, ‘een feest’ om slappe
liberalen, ‘die niet weten welk toilet ze moeten gebruiken’, neer te
schieten…..
Zoals gezegd: Abramsky is de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat o.a. verscheen op Information Clearing House (ICH). Hij haalt het
verleden erbij, o.a. de SA van Hitler, paramilitairen die
tekeergingen tegen Joden, homo’s, of beter gezegd wat we
tegenwoordig Lgbt mensen noemen, maar ook tegen Roma, Sinti en linkse
tegenstanders…….
Het feit
dat Trump met paramilitaire acties dreigt is uiteraard te zot voor
woorden, hiervoor zou hij afgezet moeten worden, niet voor het
sprookje dat men Russiagate is gaan noemen, maar waarvoor niet één
nanometer bewijs is gevonden, zelfs niet na 2 jaar diepgravend
onderzoek…….. (nieuws van deze dag: aanklager Mueller adviseert de zaak verder te laten rusten, ofwel hij heeft nul komma nada bewijzen voor Russiagate gevonden!)
Beste
bezoeker, nog even dit: lullig misschien, maar wat mij betreft mag de
pleuris uitbreken in de VS en wel zo erg dat het leger uit andere
landen moet worden teruggetrokken, kan de wereld eindelijk een
ademhalen, zonder de hete ‘bloedige adem’ van de grootste terreurentiteit op
aarde in de nek te voelen…….
Het artikel verscheen op Information Clearing House (ICH) en werd eerder gepubliceerd op truthout (nam het artikel over van ICH, de foto komt van truth):
Trump
Threatens to Unleash Paramilitary Violence in the US
By
Sasha Abramsky
March
21, 2019 “Information
Clearing House” – This has been one of those whiplash
weeks where so many particularly monstrous words have emanated from
Donald Trump’s mouth and Twitter-fingers that it becomes almost
dizzying.
Where
to focus my outrage? Should I be most concerned about the fact that
the supposed “leader of the free world” stumbled through a series
of non-answers when asked about the growing threat of white
nationalism in the wake of the grotesque
massacre of
scores of Muslims in New Zealand? Or the fact that last weekend,
instead of tweeting sympathy to the victims of that massacre, Trump
chose instead to tweet out insults and lies about
a dead senator?
Or the fact that he threatened to
sic the Federal Communications Commission onto a comedy show he
didn’t like, while at the same time stepping
into the editorial fray to
urge Fox
News to
stand behind two particularly noxious commentators whom he does like?
All
these are bad, but none is as bloody awful as his musings
on unleashing paramilitary violence if
things go too wrong for him in the political arena. In his trademark
“I didn’t say it” way, Trump talked in a March
13 Breitbart interview
about how he had the
police, the military and the biker gangs in his corner —
and how wonderful it was that they weren’t violent … for now; the
clear nudge, nudge, wink, wink, subtext being that all he would have
to do is give a signal, and his armed proxies would go after his
enemies. A few days later, white nationalist Rep. Steve King, one of
Trump’s closest ideological soulmates on Capitol Hill, forwarded
to his followers a
cartoon about the possibility of a modern-day U.S. civil war, and how
gun-toting conservatives would have a field day shooting down
wishy-washy liberals who couldn’t even work out what public
bathrooms they wanted to use.
None
of this stuff is remotely funny, and it has no place in a functioning
democracy. Of course, many U.S. politicians in the past have called
out the hard-hat brigade when it suited them; segregationist Southern
governors during the civil rights struggle routinely stoked white mob
violence in an effort to block reforms. In 1968, Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley unleashed
the police against anti-war protesters with
the intent of busting open as many heads as possible. In the Tammany
Hall days, machine politicians weren’t averse to making unholy
alliances with street gangs. More recently, demagogues from Louisiana
politician Huey Long to Red Scare architect Joe McCarthy have
all-too-well understood the power of the crowd and the potency of the
threat of political violence in an already combustible situation.
But
for the most part, presidents have tended to stay away from such a
dark and dangerous path. They have done so not necessarily because of
moral scruples, but out of an awareness of the ferocious (and
ultimately uncontainable) forces that can be unleashed when a person
with the power and reach of the president of the United States
abandons all pretext of democratic governance; of respect for the
rule of law; and of an understanding that the game of politics has to
be bound by a set of rules or else it will degenerate into strong-man
rule, and, eventually, the unfathomable horror of civil conflict.
Trump
has, since he first announced his candidacy back in 2015, shown
little patience for the limits, the nuance and the necessity of
compromise that constitutional governance necessitates. He has, from
the get-go, shown himself temperamentally to be an autocrat, a man
with dictatorial ambitions who is far more comfortable in the
presence of rulers such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saudi
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro,
than democratic leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel or
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Over the last two years, the
Trump regime — and it is far
more a regime than an administration — has bent the GOP firmly to
his will on this.
Were
Trump’s outrageous comments about biker gangs and military
intervention in domestic politics just the random utterances of an
egocentric authoritarian, things would be grim enough. But over the
last two years, various GOP organizations around the country
have invited
white supremacist groups including
the Three
Percenters,
the Oath
Keepersand
the Proud
Boys to
either provide “security” at their rallies or to “spice up”
their events with speakers who advocate violence. All of these groups
are paramilitaries-in-the-making; all are — or at least were before
being brought into the mainstream by Trumpite Republicans — on the
far margins of the political process, their worldview more closely
aligned with fascist visions of society than with what passed as GOP
mainstream beliefs in the pre-Trump era.
Over
these last few years, the GOP has increasingly come to resemble a
political party whose raison
d’étre is
simply to nurture the cult of the personality around Trump rather
than to contribute anything genuinely resembling ideas into the
political discourse; a political party willing to embrace the most
violent and thuggish elements for partisan advantage. The scale of
this degeneration was on display last month, when Florida Rep. Matt
Gaetz publicly threatened congressional witness and former Trump
attorney Michael Cohen, and then blithely
claimed he
was just contributing to “the marketplace of ideas.”
Let’s
be real. Publicly blackmailing a witness is no more about “the
marketplace of ideas” than a mobster’s threat to make someone
“sleep with the fishes” if they cooperate with the police. Using
the presidential bully pulpit to goad an already angry and wrathful
“base” to consider violence against political opponents is,
again, no more simply part of the democratic rough and tumble, the
contest for hearts and minds, than would be the burning of a cross on
the lawn of a perceived enemy.
Unfortunately,
history is littered with examples of power-hungry rulers turning to
paramilitary violence when it was politically expedient. The
Sturmabteilung (SA) were the backbone of early Nazi power in Germany.
Their sadistic foot soldiers were unleashed against Jews, trade
unionists, communists, LGBTQ folks, independent journalists, artists,
academics and so on. In Latin America, paramilitaries were
instrumental in the dirty wars that decimated a generation of
progressives. Elsewhere, paramilitaries have been turned to in recent
times by leaders such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as
well as by genocidal leaders such as those in Rwanda and in the
Balkan states in the early 1990s.
In
his powerful essay, “In Defense of the Word,” written during a
decade when most of Latin America had fallen to dictators backed up
by paramilitary forces, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote
that the combination of authoritarian leaders and armed militias had
paved the way for “the development of methods of torture,
techniques for assassinating people and ideas, for the cultivation of
silence, the extension of impotence, and the sowing of fear.”
We
think we are different; we are, after all, Americans, and in the
U.S., we say to ourselves with a healthy dose of hubris, that we
don’t do things that way. But how different are we really? How thin
is our veneer? How vulnerable are we to the siren calls of political
violence issued from the biggest dais on Earth and amplified by the
instruments of social media?
Trump
and his acolytes are now truly playing with fire. The more Trump’s
legal woes mount up, the more he seems willing to embrace his
own Götterdämmerung vision,
a willingness to create maximum chaos simply to insulate himself from
justice.
In
an essay titled “Fascism in Latin America,” Galeano observed
that, “In the slaughterhouses of human flesh, the hangmen hummed
patriotic songs.” Trump, with his musings about the army, the
police, the biker gangs, his literal hugging of the flag at the
Conservative Political Action Conference, and his repeated conflation
of dissent with treason, is humming loud and clear these days.
Sasha
Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the
University of California at Davis. His work has appeared in The
Nation, The
Atlantic Monthly, New
York Magazine, The
Village Voice and Rolling
Stone.
Originally from England, he now lives in Sacramento, California, with
his wife, daughter and son. He has a masters degree from Columbia
University School of Journalism, and is currently a senior fellow at
the New York City-based Demos think tank.
This
article was originally published by “truthout”
–
==========================================
* Gezien het enorme en onevenredige geweld van de politie tegen gekleurde VS burgers en andere ambtenaren tegen vluchtelingen, is die uitspraak een gotspe!
Michael
Chertoff was de topgraaier van Homeland Security (DHS) toen een
‘terrorist’, Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, werd aangehouden vanwege een niet werkende
onderbroekbom. Deze Nigeriaan was in Amsterdam opgestapt
en werd zonder een boardingpass (‘instapkaart’) na interventie van
een VS beambte toegelaten tot het vliegtuig……
E.e.a. gebeurde op 25 december 2009 en Brasscheck TV herhaalde een eerder bericht met video’s, waar ik al eens een bericht over schreef, echter het kan bepaald geen kwaad deze zaak nog eens op te halen en te laten zien hoe Rusland wordt gedemoniseerd en het publiek bang wordt gemaakt voor dat land en voor terreuraanslagen, maar bovendien waar zaken als de onderbroekbom toe kunnen leiden, zeker na alle hysterie over ‘Russiagate’, de grote leugen over Russische bemoeienis met een groot aantal politieke zaken in het westen……
Ondanks de vele uren die al over ‘Russiagate’ zijn volgeluld, aangevuld met de vele meters aan geschreven dossiers door de VS en andere overheden, plus het enorme aantal artikelen die hierover verschenen in de reguliere westerse media, is voor Russiagate geen millimeter aan bewijs geleverd……. Hetzelfde geldt eigenlijk ook voor de onderbroekbom, terwijl er van meet af aan grote twijfels waren over dit verhaal, zelfs onder de getuigen in het vliegtuig, daarover zo meer.
Om zaken als de onderbroekbom tegen te gaan werden op vliegvelden tegen een enorm kapitaal ‘full body scanners’ geplaatst…… Volgens deskundigen zijn deze scanners gevaarlijk voor de gezondheid……
Chertoff
vertegenwoordigde toevallig ook het bedrijf die de gevaarlijke
bodyscanners levert, scanners die te vinden op veel vliegvelden….. Ofwel Chertoff profiteert van die scanners…… Schiphol schafte na het incident met de onderbroekbom 60 ProVision bodyscanners van de Amerikaanse fabrikant L-3 Communications aan, i.p.v. eerst eens de regels te verstevigen, regels waarmee iemand zonder instapkaart, echt nooit weer in een vliegtuig kan plaatsnemen……. (Nederland had al lang een strafrechtelijk onderzoek naar deze zaak in moeten stellen…..)
Het is
dan ook niet moeilijk te bedenken dat de VS deze ‘aanslag’ zelf heeft
georganiseerd, met het doel deze ‘full body scanners’ op de
vliegvelden te krijgen……
Twee advocaten die aan boord waren van
de bewuste vlucht met de onderbroekbom zijn ervan overtuigd dat de VS zelf de hand had in
deze ‘aanslag…’
Volgens
de tweede video van Brasscheck TV, hieronder opgenomen, is e.e.a.
mede het gevolg van het opnemen van nazi’s door de VS na WOII, waar
deze nazi’s al in 1943 werden gepolst door Allen Dulles, die in
Zwitserland overleg voerde met nazi-kopstukken. Dulles was destijds het hoofd van wat nu de CIA is (deze
terreurorganisatie werd in 1947 opgericht)…..
De
nazi’s werden met grote graagte opgenomen in de geheime diensten van
de VS en bepaalden mede het beleid dat tot zoveel ellende heeft
geleid…… Neem alleen al de communistenjacht van McCarthey die in 1950 begon en de bescherming van fascistische dictaturen in
Latijns-Amerika door de VS, sterker nog: de VS heeft na WOII diverse
staatsgrepen tegen democratisch gekozen regeringen georganiseerd in
dat deel van de wereld, waarna een door de VS uitgekozen fascist werd
geparachuteerd als leider van zo’n land….*
Terug
naar de ‘onderbroekbom’: vreemd genoeg zijn veel getuigenverklaringen
verdwenen en Chertoff wordt nog steeds niet vervolgd voor zijn
overduidelijke smerige klus….. Verwonder je nogmaals hoe het mogelijk is dat met een dergelijk smerig spel, in feite een ‘false flag operatie’, de VS een bedrijf stinkend rijk maakte door de productie van gevaarlijke scanners en de hysterie over terroristen verder voedde, niet alleen ten behoeve van bedrijven, maar ook voor de geheime diensten die steeds meer macht en geld weten te verzamelen, door de angst erin te houden bij de bevolking…….. Vergeet niet dat de kans dat je omkomt bij een verkeersongeluk ongeveer een miljoen keer groter is dan dat je omkomt bij een terreuraanslag………
REMEMBER
THE UNDERWEAR BOMBER?
A
TOTAL FRAUD
WHEN
WILL MICHAEL CHERTOFF BE INVESTIGATED?
It’s
December 22, the anniversary of the “underwear bomber”
He
– and Michael Chertoff – are the reason why air travelers are now
forced to go through medically untested body scanners.
In
case you forgot, the “need” for this “security” equipment was
based on a total fraud.
Good
insight into how the criminals in the FBI make eye witnesses accounts
disappear.
Michael
Chertoff is involved with the company that makes this equipment and
shilled aggressively both before and after this bogus event.
Politico
heeft een rapport uitgebracht, waarin de lezer wordt
gewaarschuwd niets te verwachten van het onderzoek dat Mueller doet
naar Russiagate, precies zoals al een paar jaar te voorzien was,
behalve dan door de hijgerige reguliere media met hun ‘fake news’ en
het grootste deel van de liegende westerse politici.
Een
hysterisch complotdenken, gelanceerd door een in de voorverkiezingen
van de VS presidentsverkiezingen frauderende Democratische partij
onder hare kwaadaardigheid Hillary Clinton, die van Bernie Sanders de
kandidatuur voor die presidentsverkiezingen heeft gestolen….. Met de gegenereerde hysterie wist de Democratische partij de aandacht van het frauderen door Clinton en haar partij in de voorverkiezingen deels in de doofpot te stoppen……
Intussen
is op grond van deze enorme berg aan leugens censuur ingesteld op
het internet door Facebook en Twitter…..* Het internet waarover de eerder genoemde media en een groot deel van de westerse politici eisen de groeiende alternatieve nieuws
media de verdere toegang te ontzeggen, dit daar het publiek langzaam maar zeker begint door
te krijgen dat ze bij die reguliere media keer op keer worden belazerd met ‘fake news’ en foute opiniemakers, waardoor die media dan ook te maken hebben met een dalend aantal gebruikers en derhalve met een dalend aantal reclames, die tezamen deze media op de been moeten houden……..
Politico
Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass
Win McNamee/Getty Images
In
a new article titled “Mueller
report PSA: Prepare for disappointment”, Politico cites
information provided by defense attorneys and “more than 15 former
government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate
to the 2016 election case” to warn everyone who’s been lighting
candles at their Saint Mueller altars that their hopes of Trump being
removed from office are about to be dashed to the floor.
“While
[Mueller is] under no deadline to complete his work, several sources
tracking the investigation say the special counsel and his team
appear eager to wrap up,” Politico reports.
“The
public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and
presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged
obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation
of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and
amateur Mueller sleuths,” the report also says, adding that details
of the investigation may never even see the light of day.
So
that’s it then. An obscene amount of noise and focus, a few
indictments and process crime convictions which have nothing to do
with Russian collusion, and this three-ring circus of propaganda and
delusion is ready to call it a day.
This
is by far the clearest indication yet that the Mueller investigation
will end with Trump still in office and zero proof of collusion with
the Russian government, which has been obvious since the beginning to
everyone who isn’t a complete fucking moron. For two
years the idiotic, fact-free, xenophobic Russiagate conspiracy theory
has been ripping through mainstream American consciousness with
shrieking manic hysteria, sucking all oxygen out of the room for
legitimate criticisms of the actual awful things that the US
president is doing in real life. Those of us who have been courageous
and clear-headed enough to stand against the groupthink have been
shouted down, censored, slandered and smeared as assets of the
Kremlin on a daily basis by unthinking consumers of mass media
propaganda, despite our holding the philosophically unassailable
position of demanding the normal amount of proof that would be
required in a post-Iraq invasion world.
As
I predicted
long ago,
“Mueller isn’t going to find anything in 2017 that these vast,
sprawling networks wouldn’t have found in 2016. He’s not going to
find anything by ‘following the money’ that couldn’t be found
infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The factions
within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the
incoming administration last year would have leaked proof of
collusion if they’d had it. They did not have it then, and they do
not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption
throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as
water is to fish, but he will not find evidence of collusion to win
the 2016 election that will lead to Trump’s impeachment. It will
not happen.” This has remained as true in 2018 as it did in 2017,
and it will remain true forever.
None
of the investigations arising from the Russiagate conspiracy theory
have turned up a single shred of evidence that Donald Trump colluded
with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election, or to do
anything else for that matter. All that the shrill, demented
screeching about Russia has accomplished is manufacturing support
for steadily
escalating internet censorship,
a massively
bloated military budget,
a hysterical McCarthyite atmosphere wherein anyone who expresses
political dissent is painted as an agent of the Kremlin and any
dissenting opinions labeled
“Russian talking points”,
a complete lack of accountability for the Democratic Party’s brazen
election rigging, a total marginalization of real problems and
progressive agendas, and an overall diminishment in the intelligence
of political discourse. The Russiagaters were wrong, and they have
done tremendous damage already.
In
a just world, everyone who helped promote this toxic narrative would
apologize profusely and spend the rest of their lives being mocked
and marginalized. In a world wherein pundits and politicians can sell
the public a war which results in the slaughter of a million Iraqis
and suffer no consequences of any kind, however, we all know that
that isn’t going to happen. Russiagate will end not with a bang,
but with a series of carefully crafted diversions. The goalposts will
be moved, the news churn will shuffle on, the herd will be guided
into supporting the next depraved oligarchic agenda, and almost
nobody will have the intellectual honesty and courage to say “Hey!
Weren’t these assholes promising us we’ll see Trump dragged off
in chains a while back? Whatever happened to that? And why are we all
talking about China now?”
But
whether they grasp it or not, mainstream liberals have been
completely discredited. The mass media outlets which inflicted this
obscene psyop upon their audiences deserve to be driven out of
business. The establishment which would inflict such intrusive
psychological brutalization upon its populace just to advance a few
preexisting agendas has proven that it deserves to be opposed on
every front and rejected at every turn.
And
those of us who have been standing firm and saying this all along
deserve to be listened to. We were right. You were wrong. Time to sit
down, shut up, stop babbling about Russian bots for ten seconds, and
let those who see clearly get a word in edgewise.
________________________
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Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone,
or my previous book Woke:
A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
Professor
Stephen Cohen prikt in een interview dat Aaron Mate afnam, fijntjes door de
Putin – Trump hysterie heen, de hysterie die in de VS ontstond na het gesprek dat
Putin en Trump voerden in de Finse hoofdstad Helsinki. Men raakt er
in de VS weer niet over uitgesproken, al heeft dat alles met de reguliere, over het algemeen rechtse neoliberale pers in de VS te maken,
uiteraard aangevuld met de democratische en republikeinse politici
die openlijk lobbyen voor het militair-industrieel complex……….
Vanaf
het eind van de Sovjet-Unie tot de ontmoeting van Trump en Putin, zet
Cohen duidelijk uiteen hoe we zijn voorgelogen, bijvoorbeeld over ‘de
oorlog van Rusland tegen Georgië’, via Oekraïne, De Krim tot
Syrië…..
Voorts
moet ik Cohen gelijk geven als hij stelt dat we nu blij mogen zijn met
Trump als president, daar hij niet meegaat in de oorlogshitserij die
zoveel VS politici in hun greep houdt. Zoals op deze plek al eerder gesteld,
wat is erop tegen dat men met elkaar spreekt en probeert oorlog te
voorkomen??? Oké Trump is een beest, maar liever een beest dat niet aanvalt dan bijvoorbeeld Obama die 2 volledige termijnen in illegale oorlogsvoering was verwikkeld, zelfs 2 illegale oorlogen extra begon en veel meer bommen liet afwerpen dan Bush in 2 termijnen…….
Cohen stelt voorts terecht dat het onder eerdere
presidenten de normaalste zaak van de wereld was om te spreken met
de Russische collega’s, terwijl dat nu als verraad wordt
neergezet, alleen om Trump af te kunnen zetten en ongebreideld oorlog te kunnen voeren, zoals de VS gewend is te doen…….
Cohen gaat ook in op de beschuldiging dat Putin journalisten laat vermoorden, terwijl daar geen bewijs voor wordt geleverd, sterker nog: Cohen stelt dat deze moorden alles te maken hebben met de georganiseerde misdaad in Rusland……
Lezen mensen en geeft het door, de hoogste tijd dat we met z’n allen weer ons gezonde verstand gebruiken en ons niet langer laten voorliegen en gek laten maken door de reguliere media en het grootste deel van de politici in ons land!
Video:
Debunking the Putin Panic With Professor Stephen Cohen
(RN) — President
Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin and his failure to endorse
U.S. intelligence community claims about alleged Russian meddling
have been called “treasonous” and the cause of a “national
security crisis.” There
is a crisis, says Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, but one of our own making…
Part
1:
AARON
MATE: It’s
The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate.
The
White House is walking back another statement from President Trump
about Russia and U.S. intelligence. It began in Helsinki on Monday,
when at his press conference with Vladimir Putin, Trump did not
endorse the claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. After an
outcry that played out mostly on cable news, Trump appeared to
retract that view one day later. But then on Wednesday, Trump was
asked if he believes Russia is now targeting the U.S. ahead of the
midterms.
DONALD
TRUMP: [Thank]
you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
REPORTER: Is
Russia still targeting the U.S. [inaudible]. No, you don’t believe
that to be the case?
DONALD
TRUMP: Thank
you very much, everyone. We’re doing very well. We are doing very
well, and we’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has
ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough
as I have been on Russia. All you have to do is look at the numbers,
look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors.
Not there. Look, unfortunately, at what happened in Syria recently. I
think President Putin knows that better than anybody. Certainly a lot
better than the media.
AARON
MATE: The
White House later claimed that when Trump said ‘no,’ he meant no
to answering questions. But Trump’s contradiction of U.S.
intelligence claims has brought the Russiagate story, one that has
engulfed his presidency, to a fever pitch. Prominent U.S. figures
have called Trump’s comments in Helsinki treasonous, and compared
alleged Russian e-mail hacking and social media activity to 9/11 and
Pearl Harbor. Those who also question intelligence claims or
warmongering with Russia have been dubbed traitors, or Kremlin
agents.
Speaking
to MSNBC, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul
declared that with Trump’s comments, the U.S. is in the midst of a
national security crisis.
MICHAEL
MCFAUL: Republicans
need to step up. They need to speak out, not just the familiar
voices, because this is a national security crisis, and the president
of the United States flew all the way to Finland, met with Vladimir
Putin, and basically capitulated. It felt like appeasement.
AARON
MATE: Well,
joining me to address this so-called national security crisis is
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and
Princeton University. His books include “Failed Crusade: America
and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and
Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor
Cohen, welcome. I imagine that you might agree with the view that we
are in the midst of a national security crisis when it comes to
Russia, but for far different reasons than those expounded on by
Ambassador McFaul.
STEPHEN
COHEN: There is a national security crisis, and there is a
Russian threat. And we, we ourselves here in the United States, have
created both of them. This has been true for years, and now it’s
reached crisis proportion. Notice what’s going on. A mainstream TV
reporter shouts to President Trump, “Are the Russians still
targeting our elections?” This is in the category “Are you still
beating your wife?” There is no proof that the Russians have
targeted or attacked our elections. But it’s become axiomatic. What
kind of media is that, are the Russians still, still attacking our
elections.
And
what Michael McFaul, whom I’ve known for years, formerly Ambassador
McFaul, purportedly a scholar and sometimes a scholar said, it is
simply the kind of thing, to be as kind as I can, that I heard from
the John Birch Society about President Eisenhower when he went to
meet Khrushchev when I was a kid growing up in Kentucky. This is
fringe discourse that never came anywhere near the mainstream before,
at least after Joseph McCarthy, that the president went, committed
treason, and betrayed the country. Trump
may have not done the right thing at the summit, because agreements
were reached. Nobody discusses the agreements. But to stage a
kangaroo trial of the president of the United States in the
mainstream media, and have plenty of once-dignified people come on
and deliver the indictment, is without precedent in this country.
And it has created a national crisis in our relations with Russia. So
yes, there’s a national crisis.
AARON
MATE: Let
me play for you a clip from Trump’s news conference with Putin that
also drew outrage back in the U.S. When he was asked about the state
of U.S.-Russia relations, he said both sides had responsibility.
DONALD
TRUMP: Yes,
I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United
States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. We should
have had this dialogue a long time ago. A long time, frankly, before
I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame. I think that the
United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re
getting together, and we have a chance to do some great things.
Whether it’s nuclear proliferation, in terms of stopping, because
we have to do it. Ultimately that’s probably the most important
thing that we can be working on.
AARON
MATE: That’s
President Trump in Helsinki. Professor Cohen, I imagine that this
comment probably was part of the reason why there was so much
outrage, not Just of what Trump said about the claims of Russian
meddling in the election. Can you talk about the significance of what
he said here, and how it contradicts the, the entire consensus of the
bipartisan foreign policy establishment?
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
did not vote for President Trump. But for that I salute him, what he
just said. So far as I can remember, no wiser words or more important
words have been spoken by the American president about Russia and the
Soviet Union since Ronald Reagan did his great detente with Mikhail
Gorbachev in the late 1980s. What
Trump just did, and I don’t- we never know, Aaron, how aware he is
of the ramifications of what he says. But in this case, whether he
fully understood it or not, he just broke with, and the first time
any major political figure in the United States has broken with the
orthodoxy, ever since at least 2000. And
even going back to the ’90s. That all the conflicts we’ve had
with post-Soviet Russia, after communism went away in Russia, all
those conflicts, which I call a new and more dangerous Cold War, are
solely, completely, the fault of Putin or Putin’s Russia.That
nothing in American policy since Bill Clinton in the 1990s did
anything to contribute seriously to the very dangerous conflict,
confrontation we have with Russia today. It was all Russia’s fault.
What
that has meant, and you know this, Aaron, because you live in this
world as well,it
has meant no media or public dialogue about the merits of American
policy toward post-Soviet Russia from Clinton, certainly through
Obama. It
may be changing now under President Trump. Not sure. It means if we
don’t have a debate, we’re not permitted to ask, did we do
something wrong, or so unwise that it led to this even more dangerous
Cold War? And
if the debate leads to a conclusion that we did do something unwise,
and that we’re still doing it, then arises the pressure and the
imperative for any new policy toward Russia. None of that has been
permitted, because the orthodoxy, the dogma, the axiom, is Putin
alone has solely been responsible.
So
you know, you know as well as I do what is excluded. It doesn’t
matter that we moved NATO to Russia’s borders, that’s not
significant. Or that we bombed Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally.
Or that George Bush left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which was
the bedrock of Russian nuclear security and, I would argue, our own.
Or that we did regime change by military might in Iraq and Libya, and
many other things. Or that we provoked the Ukrainian crisis in 2004,
and supported the coup that overthrew a legitimate, elected,
constitutional president there. None of that matters. Oh, it was kind
of footnotes to the real narrative. And the narrative is, is that a
Russian leader Vladimir Putin in power was a horrible aggressor.
Killed everybody, somehow, with secret poisons or thieves in the
night who opposed him. And began this new cold or even worse war with
the United States.
No
historian of any merit will ever write the story that way. It’s
factually, analytically, simply untrue. Now Trump has said something
radically different. We got here in these dire circumstances because
both sides acted unwisely, and we should have had this discussion a
long time ago.
So for that, two cheers for President Trump. But whether he can
inspire the discussion that he may wish to, considering the fact that
he’s now being indicted as a criminal for having met Putin, is a
big question.
AARON
MATE: So
a few questions. You mentioned that some agreements were made, but
details on that have been vague. So do you have any sense of what
concretely came out of this summit? There was talk about cooperation
on nuclear weapons, possibly renewing the New START Treaty. We know
that Putin offered that to Trump when he first came into office, but
Trump rejected it. There was talk about cooperating in Syria. And,
well, yeah, if I can put that question to you first, and then I have
a follow-up about what might be motivating Trump here. But first,
what do you think concretely came out of this?
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well,
look, I know a lot, both as a historian, and I’ve actually
participated in some about the history of American-Russian,
previously Soviet, summits. Which, by the way, this is the 75th
anniversary of the very first one, when Franklin Roosevelt traveled
to Tehran to meet Stalin. And
every president, and this is important to emphasize, every president
since
Roosevelt
has met with the Kremlin leader. Some many times, or several times.
So there’s a long tradition. And therefore there are customs. And
one custom, this goes to your question, is that never, except maybe
very rarely, but almost never do we learn the full extent and nature
of what agreements were made. That
usually comes in a week or two or three later, because there’s
still the teams of both are hammering out the details.
So
that’s exactly what happened at this summit. There was no
conspiracy. No, you know, appeasement behind closed doors. The two
leaders announced in general terms what they agreed upon. Now,
the most important, and this is traditional, too, by meeting they
intended to revive the diplomatic process between the United States
and Russia which has been badly tattered by events including the
exclusion of diplomats, and sanctions, and the rest. So to get
active, vigorous diplomacy about many issues going. They
may not achieve that goal, because the American media and the
political mainstream is trying to stop that. Remember that anything
approaching diplomatic negotiations with Russia still less detente,
is now being criminalized in the United States. Criminalized. What
was once an honorable tradition, the pursuit of detente, is now a
capital crime, if we believe these charges against Trump.
So
they tried to revive that process, and we’ll see if it’s going to
be possible. I think at least behind the scenes it will be. Obviously
what you mentioned, both sides now have new, more elusive, more
lethal, faster, more precise nuclear weapons. We’ve been developing
them for a long time in conjunction with missile defense. We’ve
essentially been saying to Russia, you may have equality in nuclear
weapons with us, but we have missile defense. Therefore, we could use
missile defense to take out your retaliatory capacity. That is, we
could stage the first strike on you and you would not be able to
retaliate.
Now,
everybody who’s lived through the nuclear era knows that’s an
invitation to disaster. Because like it or not, we’ve lived with a
doctrine called MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, that one side dare
not attack the other with a nuclear weapon because it would be
destroyed as well. We were saying we now have this primacy. Putin,
then, on March 1 of this year, announced that they have developed
weapons that can elude missile defense. And it seems to be true. In
the air and at sea, their dodgy, darty, quick thing- but they could
avoid our missile defense. So where we are at now is on the cusp of a
new nuclear arms race involving more dangerous nuclear weapons. And
the current START, New START Treaty will expire, I think, in three or
four years. But its expiration date is less important that the
process of talking and negotiating and worrying officially about
these new weapons had ended.
So
essentially what Trump and Putin agreed is that process of concern
about new and more dangerous nuclear weapons must now resume
immediately. And if there’s anybody living in the United States who
think that that is a bad idea they need to reconsider their life,
because they may be looking into the darkness of death. So
that was excellent. Briefly.
What
I hope they did- they didn’t announce it, but I’m pretty sure
they did- that there had been very close calls between American and
Russian combat forces and their proxies in Syria. We’re doing a
proxy war, but there are plenty of native Russians and Americans in
Syria in a relatively small combat cell. And there have been
casualties. The Russians have said at the highest level the next time
a Russian is killed in Syria by an American-based weapon, we will
strike the American launcher. If Russia strikes our launching pads or
areas, whether on land or sea, which means Americans will be there
and are killed, call it war. Call it war.
So
we need to agree in Syria to do more than, what do they call it,
deconfliction, where we have all these warnings. It’s
still too much space for mishap. And what I hope it think Trump and
Putin did was to try to get a grip on this.
AARON
MATE: Stephen
F. Cohen, professor emeritus at at Princeton University and New York
University, thank you. And stay tuned for part two. I’m Aaron Mate
for The Real News.
*
* *
There
is much to criticize the Russian president for, says Professor
Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton and NYU, but
many US political and media claims about Putin are false – and
reckless…
Part
2:
AARON
MATE: It’s
The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate. This is part two with Stephen Cohen,
professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and
Princeton. In part one we talked about the uproar over the
Trump-Putin summit, and Trump’s comments about the U.S.
intelligence community and about cooperation with Russia. Now
in part two we’re going to get to some of the main talking points
that have been pervasive throughout corporate media, talking about
the stated reasons for why pundits and politicians say they are
opposed to Trump sitting down with Putin.
So
let me start with Jon Meacham. He is a historian. And speaking to
CNN, he worried that Trump, with his comments about NATO calling on
the alliance to pay more, and calling into question, he worried about
the possibility that Trump won’t come to the aid of Baltic states
in the event that Russia invades.
JON
MEACHAM: And
what worries me most is the known unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld might
put it, of what happens next. Let’s say Putin- just look at this
whole week of the last five, six days in total. What happens if Putin
launches military action against, say, the Baltics? What, what is it
that President Trump, what about his comments that NATO suggest thar
he would follow an invocation of Article 5 and actually project
American force in defense of the values that not only do we have an
intellectual and moral assent to, but a contractual one, a treaty
one. I think that’s the great question going forward.
AARON
MATE: OK.
So that’s Jon Meacham speaking to CNN. So, Professor Cohen, putting
aside what he said there about our intellectual values and strong
tradition, just on the issue of Trump, of Putin posing a potential
threat and possibly invading the Baltics, is that a realistic
possibility?
STEPHEN
COHEN: So,
I’m not sure what you’re asking me about. The folly of NATO
expansion? The fact that every president in my memory has asked the
Europeans to pay more? But can we be real? Can we be real? The only
country that’s attacked that region of Europe militarily since the
end of the Soviet Union was the United States of America. As I
recall, we bombed Serbia, a, I say this so people understand, a
traditional Christian country, under Bill Clinton, bombed Serbia for
about 80 days. There is no evidence that Russia has ever bombed a
European country.
You
tell me, Aaron. You must be a smart guy, because you got your own
television show. Why
would Putin want to launch a military attack and occupy the Baltics?
So he has to pay the pensions there? Which he’s having a hard time
already paying in Russia, and therefore has had to raise the pension
age, and thereby lost 10 percentage points of popularity in two
weeks? Why
in the world can we, can we simply become rational people. Why in the
world would Russia want to attack and occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia? The only reason I can think of is that many, many of my
friends love to take their summer vacations there. And maybe some
crazy person thinks that if we occupy it, vacations will be cheaper.
It’s crazy. It’s beyond crazy. It’s a kind-.
AARON
MATE: Professor
Cohen, if you were on CNN right now I imagine that the anchor would
say to you, well, okay, but one could say the same thing about
Georgia in 2008. Why did Russia attack Georgia then?
STEPHEN
COHEN: I’m not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The
European Commission, if you’re talking about the 2008 war, the
European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia,
which was backed by the United States, fighting with an
American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly
unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that
he began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin,
which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and
Obama’s best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry
Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country
would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border
through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what
essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.
So
that- Russia didn’t begin that war. And
it didn’t begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by
[continents], the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in [20]14
after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to
happen. And I think it happened within 36 hours. The
Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and
betrayed. They use this word, predatl’stvo, betrayal, about
American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when
it wasn’t just President George Bush, all the documents have been
published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the
leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union that
under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be
NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two inches to
the east.
Now
NATO is sitting on Russia’s borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So
Russians aren’t fools, and they’re good-hearted, but they become
resentful. They’re worried about being attacked by the United
States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily, we are
under attack by the United States. And
this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being
put out that Russia somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been
sleeping. I didn’t see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is
reckless, dangerous, warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has
a better case for saying they’ve been attacked by us since 1991. We
put our military alliance on the front door. Maybe it’s not an
attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.
AARON
MATE: OK.
And in a moment I want to speak to you more about Ukraine, because
we’ve heard Crimea invoked a lot in the criticism of Putin of late.
But first I want to actually to ask you about a domestic issue. This
one is it’s widely held that Putin is responsible for the killing
of journalists and opposition activists who oppose him. And on this
front I want to play for you a clip of Joe Cirincione. He is the head
of the Ploughshares Fund. And this is what he said this week in an
appearance on Democracy Now!.
JOE
CIRINCIONE: Both
of these men are dangerous. Both of these men oppress basic human
rights, basic freedoms. Both of them think the press are the enemy of
the people. Putin goes further. He kills journalists. He has them
assassinated on the streets of Moscow.
Donald
Trump does not go that far yet. But I think what Putin is doing is
using the president of the United States to project his rule, to
increase his power, to carry out his agenda in Syria, with Europe, et
cetera, and that Trump is acquiescing to that for reasons that are
not yet clear.
AARON
MATE: That’s
Joe Cirincione.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
know him well. It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that.
AARON
MATE: Well
Yes. There’s two issues here, Professor Cohen. One is the state of
the crackdown on press freedoms in Russia, which I’m sure you would
say is very much alive, and is a strong part of the Russian system.
But let’s first address this widely-held view that Putin is
responsible for killing journalists who are critical of him.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I
know I’m supposed to follow your lead, but I think you’re
skipping over a major point. How
is it that Joe, who was once one of our most eminent and influential,
eloquent opponents of nuclear arms race, who was prepared to have the
president of the United States negotiate with every Soviet communist
leader, including those who had a lot of blood on their hands, now
decide that Putin kills everybody and he’s not a worthy partner?
What happened to Joe?
I’ll
tell you what happened to him. Trump. Trump has driven once-sensible
people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing about
internal Russian politics, and
he ought to follow my rule. When I don’t know something about
something, I say I don’t know. But what he just said is ludicrous.
And the sad part is-.
AARON
MATE: But
it’s widely held. If it’s ludicrous-. But widely held, yeah.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well,
the point is that once
distinguished and important spokespeople for rightful causes, like
ending a nuclear arms race, have been degraded, or degraded
themselves by saying things like he said to the point that they’re
of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms race.
And he’s not alone. Somebody called it Trump derangement
syndrome. I’m
not a psychiatrist, but it’s a widespread mania across our land.
And when good people succumb to it, we are all endangered.
AARON
MATE: But
many people would be surprised to hear that, because again, the
stories that we get, and there are human rights reports, and it’s
just sort of taken as a given fact that Putin is responsible for
killing journalists. So if that’s ludicrous, if you can explain why
you think that is.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well, I
got this big problem which seems to afflict very few people in public
life anymore. I live by facts. I’m
like my doctor, who told me not long ago I had to have minor surgery
for a problem I didn’t even know I had. And I said, I’m not going
to do it. Show me the facts. And he did. I had the minor
surgery. Journalists
no longer seem to care about facts. They repeat tabloid rumors. Putin
kills everybody.
All
I can tell you is this. I
have never seen any evidence whatsoever, and I’ve been- I knew some
of the people who were killed. Anna
Politkovskaya, the famous journalist for Novaya Gazeta was the first,
I think, who was- Putin was accused of killing. I knew her well. She
was right here, in this apartment. Look behind me, right here. She
was here with my wife, Katrina vanden Huevel. I wouldn’t say we
were close friends, but we were associates in Moscow, and we were
social friends. And
I mourn her assassination today. But I will tell you this, that
neither her editors at that newspaper, nor her family, her surviving
sons, think Putin had anything to do with the killing. No
evidence has ever been presented. Only media kangaroo courts that
Putin was involved in these high-profile assassinations, two of the
most famous being this guy Litvinenko by polonium in London, about
the time Anna was killed, and more recently Boris Netsov, whom, it’s
always said, was walking within view of the Kremlin when he was shot.
Well, you could see the Kremlin from miles away. I don’t know what
within the view- unless they think Putin was, you know, watching it
through binoculars. There is no evidence that Putin ever ordered the
killing of anybody outside his capacity as commander in chief. No
evidence.
Now,
did he? But we live, Aaron, and I hope the folks who watch us
remember this. Every professional person, every decent person lives
or malpractices based on verified facts. You go down the wrong way on
a one-way street, you might get killed. You take some medication
that’s not prescribed for you, you might die. You pursue foreign
policies based on fiction, you’re likely to get in war. And
all these journalists, from the New York Times to the Washington
Post, from MSNBC to CNN who churn out daily these allegations that
Putin kills people are disgracing themselves. I
will give you one fact. Wait. One fact, and you could look it up, as
Casey Stengel used to say. He was a baseball manager, in case you
don’t know.
There’s
an organization called the Committee to Protect American Journalists.
It’s kind of iconic. It does good things, it says unwise things. Go
on its website and look at the number of Russian journalists killed
since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union, under two leaders.
Boris Yeltsin, whom we dearly loved and still mourn, and Putin, whom
we hate.Last
time I looked, the numbers may have changed, more were killed under
Yeltsin than under Putin. Did Putin kill those in the 1990s?
So
you should ask me, why did they die, then? And
I can tell you the main reason. Corrupt business. Mafia-like business
in Russia. Just like happened in the United States during our
primitive accumulation days. Profit
seekers killed rivals. Killed them dead in the streets. Killed them
as demonstrations, as demonstrative acts. The only thing you could
say about Putin is that he might have created an atmosphere that
abets that sort of thing. To which I would say, maybe, but originally
it was created with the oligarchical class under Boris Yeltsin, who
remains for us the most beloved Russian leader in history. So that’s
the long and the short of it. Go look at the listing on the Committee
to Protect Journalists.
AARON
MATE: OK.
So, following up on that, to what extent- and this gets a bit into
history, which you’ve covered extensively in your writings. To what
extent are we here in the West responsible for the creation of that
Russian oligarchal class that you mentioned? But also, what is
Putin’s relationship to it now, today? Does he abet it? Is he
entrenched in it? We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the
richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement with the
very corruption of Russia you’re speaking about. So both our role
in creating that problem in Russia, but then also Putin’s role now
in terms of his relationship to it.
STEPHEN
COHEN: I’m
going to give you a quick, truncated, scholarly, historical
perspective on this. But this is what people should begin with when
they think about Vladimir Putin and his 18 years in power. Putin came
to power almost accidentally in 2000. He inherited a country whose
state had collapsed twice in the 20th century. You’ve got to think
about that. How
many states have collapsed that you know of once? But the Russian
state, Russian statehood, had collapsed once in 1917 during the
revolution, and again in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended. The
country was in ruination; 75 percent of the people were in poverty.
Putin
said- and this obsesses him. If you want to know what obsesses Putin,
it’s the word ‘sovereignty.’ Russia lost its sovereignty-
political, foreign policy, security, financial- in the 1990s. Putin
saw his mission, as I read him, and I try to read him as a
biographer. He says a lot, to regain Russia’s sovereignty, which
meant to make the country whole again at home, to rescue its people,
and to protect its defenses. That’s been his mission. Has it been
more than that? Maybe. But everything he’s done, as I see it, has
followed that concept of his role in history. And he’s done pretty
well.
Now,
I can give you all Putin’s minuses very easily. I would not care
for him to be my president. But let me tell you one other thing
that’s important. You evaluate nations within their own history,
not within ours. If
you asked me if Putin is a democrat, and I will answer you two ways.
He thinks he has. And compared to what? Compared to the leader of
Egypt? Yeah, he is a democrat. Compared to the rulers of our pals in
the Gulf states, he is a democrat. Compared to Bill Clinton? No, he’s
not a Democrat. I mean, Russia-. Countries are on their own
historical clock. And you have to judge Putin in terms of his
predecessors. So people think Putin is a horrible leader. Did you
prefer Brezhnev? Did you prefer Stalin? Did you prefer Andropov?
Compared to what? Please tell me, compared to what.
And
by the way, that’s how that’s how Russians-. You want to know why
he’s so popular in Russia? Because Russians judge him in the
context of their own what they call zhivaya istoriya, living history;
what we call autobiography. In
terms of their own lives, he looks pretty darn good. They complain
out him. We sit in the kitchen and they bitch about Putin all the
time. But they don’t want him to go away.
AARON
MATE: All
right. Well, on that front, we’re going to wrap this up there.
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York
University and Princeton. His books include “Failed Crusade:
America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates
and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.”
Professor Cohen, thank you.
STEPHEN
COHEN: You
forgot one book.
AARON
MATE: I
did not say I was reading your, your complete bibliography.
STEPHEN
COHEN: It’s
called-. It’s called “Confessions of a Holy Fool.”
AARON
MATE: Is
that true? Or are you making a joke.
STEPHEN
COHEN: Somewhere
in between. [Thank you, Aaron.]
AARON
MATE: Professor
Cohen, thank you. And thank you for joining us on The Real News.
De FBI zal gedacht hebben dat Antifa iets te hard aan de weg timmert, u weet wel, zoals tijdens de rellen in Charlottesville, waar deze groep het opnam voor de gekleurde VS burgers en zich verzette tegen rechtse extremisten of beter gezegd fascisten, waar de laatsten jaarlijks gemiddeld 30 mensen vermoorden…..
Nu heeft de FBI historisch al een hekel aan alles wat naar links ruikt, dus 2 vliegen in 1 klap: Antifa werkt samen met islamitische terroristen…….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Ten eerste moeten deze terroristen niets weten van linkse politiek en ten tweede hebben leden van Antifa niets met deze reli-fascistische figuren…… Ten derde; als er nu één vorm van organisatie samenwerkt met IS en andere terreurgroepen als Al Qaida, zijn het de geheime diensten in de VS wel!!
Bovendien als je ziet hoe de geheime diensten als CIA en NSA in het buitenland opereren, kan je dit niet anders kwalificeren dan terreur!! Trouwens als je hoort waar de FBI zich o.a. schuldig aan maakt in de VS, kan je ook dat veelal niet anders zien dan terreur…….
Nadat de jacht is geopend op moslims in de VS, op een manier die ‘McCarthey waardig’ is, heeft de FBI nu, als ten tijde van McCarthy, de jacht op links voor heropend verklaard met een haat en angst campagne tegen mensen die in de VS als links worden gezien…….
Vergeet bij dit alles niet, dat de VS de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde is, die niet alleen zorgt voor grootschalige terreur in diverse buitenlanden, maar met die terreur, nieuwe terreur creëert, terreur zoals die in EU landen plaatsvond…… (dit daar de meeste EU landen meewerken aan die VS terreur….)
Nadat de Obama regering Rusland heeft beschuldigd van het hacken van de verkiezingen, waar het overigens geen nanometer bewijs voor heeft, is het nu de beurt aan de alternatieve media…… De VS zag met lede ogen de val van Aleppo (wat betreft het verslaan van de door deze terreurentiteit gesteunde ‘gematigde’ terroristen) en geeft daarvoor nu ook de schuld aan de alternatieve media…….
De alternatieve media die niet braaf de door de VS aangeleverde leugenpropaganda herhaalden, maar met feiten aantoonden, dat de VS keer op keer heeft gelogen inzake Syrië!! Sterker nog, dat de VS de aanstichter is van de oorlog in Syrië, die intussen aan meer dan 700.000 mensen het leven heeft gekost…….
Het beschuldigen van de media, is een herhaling van zetten: toen het duidelijk werd, dat de VS de oorlog in Vietnam had verloren, waren het vooral de media ‘die voor het verlies hadden gezorgd……’ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Hier het artikel over de oorlog tegen de alternatieve media, zoals gisteren door Information Clearing House gebracht (u kan onder dit artikel klikken voor een ‘Dutch vertaling’, dit neemt wel enige tijd in beslag):
The
War Against Alternative Information
By
Rick Sterling
The
U.S. government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut
down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda
narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian
“regime change”
January
02, 2017 “Information
Clearing House”
– “Consortium
News”
– The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination
over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as
Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now
have the “Countering
Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama
signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of theNational
Defense Authorization Act for 2017 (NDAA), setting aside $160 million to
combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s
version of reality.
The
new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the
Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other
federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead,
synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to
recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and
non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining
United States national security interests.” The law directs the
Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies
and to “coordinate with allied nations.”
The
legislation was initiated in March 2016, as the demonization of
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia was already underway and
was enacted amid the allegations of “Russian hacking” around the
U.S. presidential election and the mainstream media’s furor over
supposedly “fake news.” Defeated Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for the bill: “It’s
imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public
sector step up to protect our democracy, and innocent lives.”
The
new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because
it merges a
new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian
“propaganda” on the Internet with a
new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth –
or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from
“foreign propaganda and disinformation.”
As
part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives,
the law authorizes the Center to: “Facilitate the use of a wide
range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among
Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external
sources, and implementing best practices.” (This section is an
apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other
technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet
sites as purveyors
of “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.”)
Justifying
this new bureaucracy, the bill’s sponsors argued that the existing
agencies for “strategic
communications” and “public
diplomacy” were not enough, that the information threat
required “a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of
national power.”
The
law also is rife with irony since the U.S. government and related
agencies are among the world’s biggest purveyors of propaganda and
disinformation – or what you might call evidence-free claims, such
as the recent accusations of Russia hacking into Democratic emails to
“influence” the U.S. election.
Despite
these accusations — leaked by the Obama administration and embraced
as true by the mainstream U.S. news media — there is little
or no public evidence to support the charges. There is also
a contradictory analysis by
veteran U.S. intelligence professionals as well as statements
by Wikileaks
founder Julian Assange and an associate, former
British Ambassador Craig Murray, that the Russians were not the
source of the leaks. Yet, the mainstream U.S. media has virtually
ignored this counter-evidence, appearing eager to collaborate with
the new “Global Engagement Center” even before it is
officially formed.
Of
course, there is a long history of U.S. disinformation and
propaganda. Former CIA agents Philip Agee and John Stockwell
documented how it was done decades ago, secretly planting “black
propaganda” and covertly funding media outlets to influence events
around the world, with much of the fake news blowing back into the
American media.
In
more recent decades, the U.S. government has adopted an Internet-era
version of that formula with an emphasis on having the State
Department or the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy
supply, train and pay “activists” and “citizen journalists”
to create and distribute propaganda and false stories via “social
media” and via contacts with the mainstream media. The U.S.
government’s strategy also seeks to undermine and discredit
journalists who challenge this orthodoxy. The new legislation
escalates this information war by tossing another $160 million into
the pot.
Propaganda
and Disinformation on Syria
Syria
is a good case study in the modern application of information
warfare. In her memoir Hard
Choices,
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote that the U.S.
provided “support for (Syrian) civilian opposition groups,
including satellite-linked computers, telephones, cameras, and
training for more than a thousand activists, students and independent
journalists.”
Indeed,
a huge amount of money has gone to “activists” and “civil
society” groups in Syria and other countries that have been
targeted for “regime change.” A lot of the money also goes to
parent organizations that are based in the United States and Europe,
so these efforts do not only support on-the-ground efforts to
undermine the targeted countries, but perhaps even more importantly,
the money influences and manipulates public opinion in the West.
In
North America, representatives from the Syrian “Local
Coordination Committees”(LCC) were frequent guests on popular
media programs such as “DemocracyNow.” The message was clear:
there is a “revolution” in Syria against a “brutal regime”
personified in Bashar al-Assad. It was not mentioned that the “Local
Coordination Committees” have been primarily funded by the West,
specifically the Office for Syrian Opposition Support, which was
founded by the U.S. State Department and the U.K. Foreign and
Commonwealth Office.
More
recently, news and analysis about Syria has been conveyed through the
filter of the White Helmets, also known as Syrian Civil Defense. In
the Western news media, the White Helmets are described as neutral,
non-partisan, civilian volunteers courageously carrying out rescue
work in the war zone. In fact, the group is none
of the above. It was initiated by the U.S. and U.K. using a
British military contractor and Brooklyn-based marketing company.
While
they may have performed some genuine rescue operations, the White
Helmets are primarily a media organization with a political goal: to
promote NATO intervention in Syria. (The manipulation of public
opinion using the White Helmets and promoted by the New York Times
and Avaaz petition for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria is
documentedhere.)
The
White Helmets hoax continues to be widely believed and receives
uncritical promotion though it has increasingly been exposed at
alternative media outlets as the creation of a “shady
PR firm.” During critical times in the conflict in Aleppo,
White Helmet individuals have been used as the source for important
news stories despite a track record of deception.
Recent
Propaganda: Blatant Lies?
As
the armed groups in east Aleppo recently lost ground and then
collapsed, Western governments and allied media went into a frenzy of
accusations against Syria and Russia based on reports from sources
connected with the armed opposition. CNN host Wolf Blitzer described
Aleppo as “falling” in a “slaughter of these women and
children” while CNN host Jake Tapper referred to “genocide by
another name.”
The
Daily Beast published the claims of the Aleppo Siege Media Center
under the title“Doomsday
is held in Aleppo” and amid accusations that the Syrian
army was executing civilians, burning them alive and “20 women
committed suicide in order not to be raped.” These sensational
claims were widely broadcast without verification. However, this
“news” on CNN and throughout Western media came from highly
biased sources and many of the claims – lacking anything
approaching independent corroboration – could be accurately
described as propaganda and disinformation.
Ironically,
some of the supposedly “Russian propaganda” sites, such as RT,
have provided first-hand on-the-ground reporting from the war zones
with verifiable information that contradicts the Western narrative
and thus has received almost no attention in the U.S. news media. For
instance, some of these non-Western outlets have shown videos of
popular celebrations over the “liberation of Aleppo.”
There
has been further corroboration of these realities from peace
activists, such as Jan Oberg of Transnational Foundation for Peace
and Future Research who published aphoto
essay of his eyewitness observations in Aleppo including the
happiness of civilians from east Aleppo reaching the
government-controlled areas of west Aleppo, finally freed from areas
that had been controlled by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and its
jihadist allies in Ahrar al-Sham.
Dr.
Nabil Antaki, a medical doctor from Aleppo, described the liberation
of Aleppo in an interview titled “Aleppo
is Celebrating, Free from Terrorists, the Western Media
Misinformed.” The first Christmas celebrations in Aleppo
in four years are shown here,replete
with marching band members in Santa Claus outfits. Journalist Vanessa
Beeley has published testimonies of
civilians from east Aleppo. The happiness of civilians at their
liberation is clear.
Whether
or not you wish to accept these depictions of the reality in Aleppo,
at a minimum, they reflect another side of the story that you have
been denied while being persistently force-fed the version favored by
the U.S. State Department. The goal of the new Global Engagement
Center to counter “foreign propaganda” is to ensure that you
never get to hear this alternative narrative to the Western
propaganda line.
Even
much earlier, contrary to the Western mythology of rebel “liberated
zones,” there was strong evidence that the armed groups were never
popular in Aleppo. American journalist James Foley described the
situation in 2012 like this:
“Aleppo,
a city of about 3 million people, was once the financial heart of
Syria. As it continues to deteriorate, many civilians here are losing
patience with the increasingly violent and unrecognizable opposition
— one that is hampered by infighting and a lack of structure, and
deeply infiltrated by both foreign fighters and terrorist groups. The
rebels in Aleppo are predominantly from the countryside, further
alienating them from the urban crowd that once lived here peacefully,
in relative economic comfort and with little interference from the
authoritarian government of President Bashar al-Assad.”
On
Nov. 22, 2012, Foley was kidnapped in northwestern Syria and held by
Islamic State terrorists before his beheading in August 2014.
The
Overall Narrative on Syria
Analysis
of the Syrian conflict boils down to two competing narratives. One
narrative is that the conflict is a fight for freedom and democracy
against a brutal regime, a storyline promoted in the West and the
Gulf states, which have been fueling
the conflict from the start. This narrative is also favored by
some self-styled “anti-imperialists” who want a “Syrian
revolution.”
The
other narrative is that the conflict is essentially a war of
aggression against a sovereign state, with the aggressors including
NATO countries, Gulf monarchies, Israel and Jordan. Domination of the
Western media by these powerful interests is so thorough that one
almost never gets access to this second narrative, which is
essentially banned from not only the mainstream but also much of the
liberal and progressive media.
For
example, listeners and viewers of the generally progressive TV and
radio program “DemocracyNow” have rarely if ever heard the second
narrative described in any detail. Instead, the program frequently
broadcasts the statements of Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Samantha Power and others associated with the U.S.
position. Rarely do you hear the viewpoint of the Syrian Ambassador
to the United Nations, the Syrian Foreign Minister or analysts inside
Syria and around the world who have written about and follow events
there closely.
“DemocracyNow”
also has done repeated interviews with proponents of the “Syrian
revolution” while ignoring analysts who call the conflict a war of
aggression sponsored by the West and the Gulf monarchies. This
blackout of the second narrative continues despite the fact that many
prominent international figures see it as such. For example, the
former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua and former President of the UN
General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, has said, “What the
U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of
aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst
possible crime a State can commit against another State.”
In
many areas of politics, “DemocracyNow” is excellent and
challenges mainstream media. However in this area, coverage of the
Syrian conflict, the broadcast is biased, one-sided and echoes the
news and analysis of mainstream Western corporate media, showing the
extent of control over foreign policy news that already exists in the
United States and Europe.
Suppressing
and Censoring Challenges
Despite
the widespread censorship of alternative analyses on Syria and other
foreign hotspots that already exists in the West, the U.S.
government’s new “Global Engagement Center” will seek to ensure
that the censorship is even more complete with its goal to “counter
foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation.” We can
expect even more aggressive and better-financed assaults on the few
voices daring to challenge the West’s “group thinks” – smear
campaigns that are already quite extensive.
In
an article titled “Controlling
the Narrative on Syria”, Louis Allday describes the criticisms
and attacks on journalists Rania Khalek and Max Blumenthal for
straying from the “approved” Western narrative on Syria. Some of
the bullying and abuse has come from precisely those people, such as
Robin Yassin-Kassab, who have been frequent guests in liberal Western
media.
Reporters
who have returned from Syria with accounts that challenge the
propaganda themes that have permeated the Western media also have
come under attack. For instance, Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett
recently returned to North America after being in Syria and Aleppo,
conveying a very different image and critical of the West’s biased
media coverage. Bartlett appeared at a United Nations press
conference and then did numerous interviews across the
country during a speaking tour. During the course of her talks and
presentation, Bartlett criticized the White Helmets and questioned
whether it was true that Al Quds Hospital in opposition-held East
Aleppo was attacked and destroyed as claimed.
Bartlett’s
recounting of this information made her a target of Snopes, which has
been a mostly useful website exposing urban legends and false rumors
but has come under criticism itself for some internal challenges and
has been inconsistent in its investigations. In one report entitled
“White
Helmet Hearsay,” Snopes’ writer Bethania Palmer says
claims the White Helmets are “linked to terrorists” is
“unproven,” but she overlooks numerous videos,
photos, and other reports showing White Helmet members celebrating a
Nusra/Al Qaeda battle victory, picking up the bodies of civilians
executed by a Nusra executioner, and having a member who
alternatively appears as a rebel/terrorist fighter with a weapon and
later wearing a White Helmet uniform. The “fact check” barely
scrapes the surface of public evidence.
The
same writer did another shallow “investigation” titled “victim
blaming” regarding Bartlett’s critique of White Helmet
videos and what happened at the Al Quds Hospital in Aleppo. Bartlett
suggests that some White Helmet videos may be fabricated and may
feature the same child at different times, i.e., photographs that
appear to show the same girl being rescued by White Helmet workers at
different places and times. While it is uncertain whether this
is the same girl, the similarity is clear.
The
Snopes writer goes on to criticize Bartlett for her comments about
the reported bombing of Al Quds Hospital in east Aleppo in April
2016. A statement at the websiteof
Doctors Without Borders says the building was “destroyed and
reduced to rubble,” but this was clearly false since photos show
the building with unclear damage. Five months later, the September
2016 report by
Doctors Without Borders says the top two floors of the building were
destroyed and the ground floor Emergency Room damaged yet they
re-opened in two weeks.
The
many inconsistencies and contradictions in the statements of Doctors
Without Borders resulted in an open
letter to them. In their last report, Doctors Without
Borders (known by its French initials, MSF) acknowledges that “MSF
staff did not directly witness the attack and has not visited Al Quds
Hospital since 2014.”
Bartlett
referenced satellite images taken before and after the reported
attack on the hospital. The images do not show severe damage and it
is unclear whether or not there is any damage to the roof, the basis
for Bartlett’s statement. In the past week, independent journalists
have visited the scene of Al Quds Hospital and report that that the
top floors of the building are still there and damage is unclear.
The
Snopes’ investigation criticizing Bartlett was superficial and
ignored the broader issues of accuracy and integrity in the Western
media’s depiction of the Syrian conflict. Instead the article
appeared to be an effort to discredit the eyewitness observations and
analysis of a journalist who dared challenge the mainstream
narrative.
U.S.
propaganda and disinformation on Syria has been extremely effective
in misleading much of the American population. Thus, most Americans
are unaware how many billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on
yet another “regime change” project. The propaganda campaign –
having learned from the successful demonizations of Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and other targeted leaders – has
been so masterful regarding
Syria
that many liberal and progressive news outlets were pulled in. It has
been left to RT and some Internet outlets to challenge the U.S.
government and the mainstream media.
But
the U.S. government’s near total control of the message doesn’t
appear to be enough. Apparently even a few voices of dissent are a
few voices too many.
The
enactment of HR5181, “Countering Foreign Propaganda and
Disinformation,” suggests that the ruling powers seek to escalate
suppression of news and analyses that run counter to the official
narrative. Backed by a new infusion of $160 million, the plan is to
further squelch skeptical voices with operation for “countering”
and “refuting” what the U.S. government deems to be propaganda
and disinformation.
As
part of the $160 million package, funds can be used to hire or reward
“civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental
organizations, federally funded research and development centers,
private companies, or academic institutions.”
Among
the tasks that these private entities can be hired to perform is to
identify and investigate both print and online sources of news that
are deemed to be distributing “disinformation, misinformation, and
propaganda directed at the United States and its allies and
partners.”
In
other words, we are about to see an escalation of the information
war.
Rick
Sterling is an independent investigative journalist. He lives in the
San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com
Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: Agee, M. Blumenthal en Kassab,
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