Het Care2 petitie team kwam gisteren met een petitie voor de grote mediaorganen MSNBC, CNN en Fox News, waarin men eist dat deze media het hele verhaal vertellen over racistische misdaden tegen burgers van Zuidoost- Aziatische en Oceanische komaf. Als men er al aandacht aan besteedt is dat terloops en verdwijnt het onderwerp snel in de bups van (vaak onzin) berichtgeving, terwijl Fox News ronduit racistisch bericht, dus niet over misdaden tegen burgers van Oost- Aziatische en Oceanische komaf komaf, maar alleen als deze mensen of andere gekleurde burgers zelf een misdaad begaan…… Eén en ander was zelfs het geval toen een psychopathische imbeciel een aantal vrouwen van Aziatische komaf doodschoot in een massagesalon Georgia…….
Overigens moet ik zeggen dat ook onze reguliere media amper of niet berichten over racisme tegen burgers van Oost-Aziatische komaf, terwijl het ook in ons kleinburgerlijke Nederland aan de orde van de dag is dat deze mensen beledigd worden, wat zelfs regelmatig schijnt uit te lopen op handtastelijkheden en een por in de rug geven….. Uiteraard heeft dit alles te maken met de aanname dat het Coronavirus uit China komt, wat ik overigens zwaar betwijfel……
Was men maar zo agressief tegen de figuren uit de intensieve veehouderij die zich boer durven te noemen en die honderden tot duizenden dieren mishandelen in veel te kleine stallen, niet alleen vanwege de grove dierenmishandeling in die doodsindustrie, maar juist daar de intensieve veehouderij één van de grootste bronnen is van besmettelijke ziekten en antibioticaresistentie…… Echter dat zal het psychopathisch racistische tuig niet durven te doen, daar ze dan het e.e.a. terug kunnen verwachten, tja dat tuig bestaat dan ook uit ‘echte helden…..’ (maar niet heus!)
Vorig jaar werden er in de VS 4.000 racistische misdaden begaan tegen mensen van Oost-Aziatische en Oceanische komaf en dat zijn de gemelde misdaden, ofwel je kan er donder op zeggen dat het werkelijke aantal racistische misdaden veel groter is (uiteraard tegen de oorspronkelijke bevolkingen uit de genoemde gebieden)…….
Wij kunnen de petitie jammer genoeg niet tekenen.
Tell MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News to tell the whole truth about anti-Asian hate crimes
Demand the news cover hate crimes against Asian Americans in a more comprehensive way
And yet, you wouldn’t really
know it if you only watch one of the Big 3 cable network news stations in the U.S.
These outlets may cover particularly egregious cases for a day or two,
like the tragic mass shooting of Asian women who worked at massage
parlors in Georgia. But this heinous cruelty has been happening at an
alarming rate for months, and that encompasses many more incidents — it deserves far more attention and more public denouncement!
These stations in large part control the public narrative around these
crimes, and when they pick and choose what to cover just so it will fit
their own narrative (like far right-wing outlet Fox news only
showing incidents in which a member of another racial minority is the
one commiting the hate crime), they themselves are contributing to this problem of discrimination and violence.
That’s why we are asking that MSNBC, CNN and Fox News more
comprehensively and responsibly cover this massive uptick in hate crimes
against Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders. Sign the petition to add your voice to this urgent call!
‘BBC bedient VS met het demoniseren van China‘
(ook in Groot-Brittannië racistische haat tegen Chinezen en mensen die
daar volgens het racistische tuig op lijken en dat wordt door de BBC met
dergelijke berichtgeving opgeklopt…..)
En zie verder wat betreft discriminatie en vervolging van minderheden of het aanzetten daartoe: ‘Coronavirus: medisch racisme in VS oorzaak van onevenredig groot aantal overleden gekleurde VS burgers……‘ (weinig geld betekent in landen als de VS veelal ook een slechte gezondheidszorg [voor zover die nog te betalen is], daarnaast is armoede een oorzaak voor overlijden aan het virus, logisch daar een slechte conditie veroorzaakt door foute goedkope voeding, het lichaam extra bevattelijk maakt voor besmettelijke ziekten…..)
Het
label ‘BLM’ staat voor Black Lives Matter en geeft toegang tot meer
berichten over de verontwaardiging en protesten van de gekleurde
bevolking over het feit dat het overgrote deel van de politieagenten in de VS racistisch (ofwel: fascistisch) is en gekleurden per definitie als ‘misdadig ziet’, waarbij ‘het leven van een
gekleurde verwaarloosbaar is……’
Alsof
je een slecht sciencefiction stripboek leest: de angstzaaierij in de
VS dat China bezig is om supersoldaten te ontwikkelen….. Ken
Dilanian, een reporter van MSNBC, stelde dat ‘wat we nu weten is dat
de topambtenaren van geheime diensten bewijzen hebben dat China, de
‘nieuwe’ officiële slechte macht voor het westen, bezig is met
biologische experimenten op haar militairen om hun
gevechtscapaciteiten te vergroten’.
CIA
handlanger Dilanian vervolgde met te zeggen dat hij eerst wel
sceptisch stond toen opzichte van deze claim, maar nadat hij zocht in
de denktank wereld van militaire experts*, hij erachter kwam dat deze
experts e.e.a. hebben bestudeerd en erover hebben geschreven en
voldoende bewijs hebben dat Chinese wetenschappers bezig zijn om met
biotechnologie toe te passen op het slagveld……. Daarna geeft deze
‘reporter voorbeelden van soldaten die voldoende hebben aan 3 uur
slaap’, en sluipschutters die een keer zover kunnen kijken dan de
gemiddelde mens…… (de zogenaamde bewijzen zijn natuurlijk niet voor de openbaarheid geschikt….) Waarna hij nog op moest merken dat wij het in
het westen onethisch vinden om met de genen van gezonde mensen te
experimenteren…… ha! ha! ha! ha!
Zo
de waard is vertrouwt deze de gasten: alles ‘wat god verboden heeft’
doet men in de VS, zoals het zoeken naar een besmettelijke ziekte die
ingezet kan worden op het slagveld, dan wel tegen de bevolking van
een ‘vijandig land…’ Geheel toevallig werd het grote VS militaire
laboratorium van Fort Detrick vorig jaar juli gesloten, daar er een gevaarlijk gemanipuleerd virus was
ontsnapt…..** Een aantal maanden voor de uitbraak van het
Coronavirus…… Intussen draait dit laboratorium weer volop en
zoekt men o.a. naar dat soort virussen om als wapen in te zetten…… (hoe gewetenloos en krankzinnig kunnen wetenschappers zijn??!!!) Bovendien als er één
land is dat onethisch onderzoek doet naar genetische manipulatie van
levende wezens is het de VS wel!!
Terug
naar Dilanian: hij refereerde naar een artikel van John Ratcliffe,
hoofd ‘National
Intelligence’ (ofwel deze figuur gaat over alle geheime diensten die de VS
‘rijk’ is), gepubliceerd
in de Wall Street Journal, waarin hij in koude oorlogstaal
waarschuwde voor China…. Deze Ratcliffe heeft een boek geschreven
met de titel: ‘China is National Security Threat No 1’, een boek met
een prent waarop een vervaarlijke rode slang is te zien in de vorm van de Chinese
muur die de wereld in een wurggreep houdt……. (vergeet niet dat figuren
als Ratcliffe vijanden nodig hebben, immers als die er niet meer zijn,
zal een fiks deel van de geheime diensten worden uitgekleed en je
weet het: oorlog is voor de VS een vorm van industrie, waarmee vooral voor de grote bedrijven enorme kapitalen
zijn te verdienen)
In
het artikel van Caitlin Johnstone, waarvan het voorgaande het begin
is, stelt ze dat de VS China afschildert als een macht die de wereld
wil overheersen….. ha! ha! ha! ha! Nee ik lach niet om Caitlin,
maar om dergelijke nonsens die men in de VS werkelijk gelooft,
terwijl er niet een flinter aan bewijs wordt meegeleverd en de claims
worden gedaan door geheime diensten die vooral bekend staan om hun
enorme leugens die alleen deze eeuw al aan meer dan 2,5 miljoen
mensen het leven hebben gekost….. En dat van een land dat meer dan
800 militaire bases heeft over de wereld en haar hand niet omdraait
om een illegale oorlog te beginnen dan wel een coup te organiseren in
landen die niet naar haar pijpen dansen…… De leugen dat
het bij de oorlogen die VS begint gaat om het brengen van democratie of vrijheid, is van een
dergelijk smerig niveau dat je ervan staat te kijken dat men deze nog
langer gelooft, immers de VS is er goed in om democratisch gekozen
premiers of presidenten af te zetten met een staatsgreep en daarna
een dictator te installeren, bewijzen en voorbeelden te over……. (om maar te zwijgen over de goede banden die de VS zelfs met de meest gewelddadige dictators onderhield en onderhoudt…..)
“What
we know is that the nation’s top intelligence official says that
the US has evidence that China is conducting biological experiments
on its soldiers to enhance their capabilities,” said CIA
asset
and reporter Ken Dilanian on a
recent MSNBC segment
designed to keep you nice and terrified of the west’s current
Official Bad Guy.
“I
was somewhat skeptical about this claim, but when I started poking
around I found that private American military experts in the think
tank world have actually studied this issue and written about it and
they have found that there is ample evidence that Chinese scientists
are very interested in applying bio-technology to the battlefield,”
Dilanian continued. “Picture super strong commandos who can
operate on three hours’ sleep, or a sniper who can see twice as far
as a normal person. This is the kind of thing that the Chinese aspire
to doing, and you know, it’s problematic because in the west we
consider that to be unethical, to tamper with the genes of healthy
people.”
Dilanian
was referring to a claim made in a freakish screed of cold war smut
recently published in the Wall
Street Journal
by US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe titled “China
Is National Security Threat No. 1“.
The piece includes an
illustration
of a red serpent shaped like the Great Wall squeezing the world in
its coils, much like the globe-strangling tentacled beasts
traditionally used in propaganda to drum up fears of communists
and Jews
taking over the world.
Ratcliffe
claims that “China poses the greatest threat to America
today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide
since World War II,” asserting that there are “no ethical
boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power” and its “efforts
to drag the world back into the dark”.
Completely
unburdened by any need to provide evidence or even anything
resembling subtlety, Ratcliffe lists as reasons we should all be
afraid of China’s sinister desire to “subordinate the rights of
the individual to the will of the Communist Party” such things as
intellectual property theft and the fact that China (like all major
nations) often seeks to influence US politics. Slipped in among these
mundane and unimpressive claims, Ratcliffe writes that “China
has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s
Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically
enhanced capabilities.”
A
claim without evidence made by a spy chief about the world being
threatened by Chinese supervillains with extraordinary powers given
to them by unethical Chinese mad scientists should of course be
dismissed with a scoff and a vulgar gesture. Instead, CIA assets like
Dilanian are leading the charge to throw the entire might of the
plutocratic media into driving this nonsense as far into western
consciousness as possible. This ridiculous story has been picked up
not just by Murdoch outlets like The
New York Post,
but by outlets like The
Guardian
and NBC as
well.
Every
day there’s more dehumanisation of Chinese people in the MSM. Today, @adamgabbatt
presents Trump appointee John Ratcliffe’s racist ranting undigested.
“China conducting biological tests to create super soldiers,
US spy chief says” https://t.co/F8KUnCJc9R
Truth,
as they say, is the first casualty in war. With its emphasis
on global narrative control
in lieu of conventional military tactics, this is doubly true of cold
war.
Painting
the Chinese government as a cartoon villain willing to perpetrate any
evil to conquer the world and drag it into the darkness, opposed only
by the plucky forces of light in our own government, is as
transparent a propaganda construct as it gets. If we had an actual
news media this idiocy would be called out, questioned and and
scrutinized for all the world to see, and the public reminded of the
US intelligence community’s extensive
history of lying
to promote pre-planned agendas against targeted governments.
What
we will get instead is a steady stream of increasingly incendiary
claims about China being parroted without evidence by the mass media
who serve as mouthpieces for the most sociopathic government agencies
on this planet. This is because China, like Russia, Iran, Venezuela
and the other nations which have resisted absorption into the
US-centralized empire, insists on its own self-sovereignty and has
therefore found
itself in the imperial crosshairs.
There
is no evidence that China wants to take over the world. There is only
evidence that it wishes to create a multipolar
world, which has been the norm throughout the entirety of human
history minus the last three decades. People have been told that
China is trying to replace America as the global hegemon so many
times that they simply accept it as a basic fact, but there is no
actual evidence anywhere that the Chinese government has any interest
in ruling over a bunch of random foreigners with whom it has little
in common.
“One
myth I think really that needs to be dispelled is that somehow China
is aiming to replace America and going to run the world, and it’s
not,” said Chinese venture capitalist and social scientist Eric Li
in the John Pilger documentary The
Coming War on China.
“First
of all, the Chinese are not that stupid. The west, with its
Christian roots, are about converting other people into their
beliefs. The Chinese are not about that. It’s just that–again,
I’m not degrading the western culture, I’m just pointing out the
inherent nature, the DNA of two different cultures–the Chinese two
thousand years ago built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians out,
not to invade them.”
Ratcliffe’s
screed of sinophobic cold warrior porn includes an illustration of a
red Chinese dragon shaped like the Great Wall squeezing the world in
its coils, much like the globe-strangling tentacled beasts
historically depicted in anti-communist and anti-semitic propaganda. pic.twitter.com/VthDgOXnG4
(voor de jonkies een verduidelijking: het eerste affiche is van 2020 en de tweede stelt Sovjet dictator Stalin voor, een affiche uit 1938)
Whenever
I criticize the US empire’s aggressions toward and propaganda about
China my social media notifications are quickly flooded with
blithering imbeciles who claim I love the CCP and think it’s awesome
and wonderful. I don’t know what species of brain worm makes
people think if you oppose western imperialism it means you love the
governments who are being targeted by western imperialism, but it
would be good if it went extinct. I simply wish to live in a world
where armageddon weapons aren’t being brandished about in steadily
escalating acts of insane brinkmanship.
There
is no sane reason we should have to live on a planet where
governments are waving nuclear weapons at each other in increasingly
aggressive battles for global domination. There is no reason the
western empire and China cannot pursue detente and work to peacefully
coexist on this planet. Most of the rank-and-file public you see
babbling hysterically about China online are completely unaware of
the existence of the word “detente” and don’t even know
it’s an option; they’re so saturated in brain-melting propaganda that
they think these standoffs which are seeing more
and more military buildup
near China’s borders are the only possibly course that can be taken.
Well
it’s not the only possible course. We humans, as a species, can use
the power of our numbers to force an end to the collision course with
disaster we’ve been set on by a changing world order meeting with the
perverse neoconservative ideology that US hegemony must be preserved
at all cost. It absolutely is possible for humanity to live in a
state of healthy collaboration with itself and with its ecosystem, if
only we can pry loose the fingers of the ruling sociopaths from the
steering wheel and turn our world toward peace and harmony.
With
the incoming Biden administration being packed
to the gills
with ravenous China hawks, it is clear that this multi-front cold war
and its accompanying propaganda campaign is only going to get crazier
and crazier. Be a voice beckoning the world to sanity.
_________________________________________
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Hare
kwaadaardigheid Hillary Clinton heeft weer eens geput uit haar enorme kluis met leugens, dit keer is Tulsi Gabbard ‘de klos…..’ Als zaken
niet serieus genomen zouden worden, zou je je werkelijk doodlachen:
volgens Clinton zit één van de vrouwelijke democratische
presidentskandidaten in de zak van de Russen en daarmee zou Rusland
de verkiezingen van 2020 alweer hebben gemanipuleerd…. ha! ha! ha!
(ja, mijn excuus…).
Misdadiger
Clinton, heeft in 2016 de kandidaatstelling van de Democratische
Partij gestolen van Bernie Sanders, toen dat uitkwam, heeft ze de
Russen en Trump de schuld gegeven van het lekken van informatie over deze schunnige misdaad…… Ja zo zot is het mensen en zonder dat iemand nog over
die misdaad sprak, werden Trump en Putin beschuldigt van de
manipulatie van de VS presidentsverkiezingen (met een aantal door de Russen betaalde advertenties die
niet eens een tiende van een procent uitmaakten van het belachelijk hoge bedrag dat in totaal werd uitgegeven aan die presidentsverkiezingen, ofwel een totaal
belachelijke claim, zoals later ook uit onderzoek naar voren kwam….)
Nu is
Tulsi Gabbard aan de beurt, daar zij een meer linkse politiek
voorstaat en de grote bedrijven en banken wel aan wil pakken (dat
wilde Clinton ook zogenaamd in 2016, terwijl Wall Street haar
kandidaatstelling met een fiks kapitaal steunde….). Clinton is zo
smerig en doortrapt bezig dat ze de naam Gabbard niet heeft genoemd bij haar beschuldiging, alleen een
vrouwelijke democratische kandidaat voor het presidentschap en
uiteraard weet heel de VS dat hier Tulsi Gabbard mee wordt bedoeld…. (door die naam niet te noemen krijgt de argeloze lezer of kijker de idee dat hij/zij zelf de conclusie heeft getrokken dat het Gabbard moet zijn, psychische manipulatie van de meest gore plank….. Te vergelijken met het ophitsen van zijn volgelingen door fascist Wilders, toen hij hen vroeg of ze minder Marokkanen wilden in ‘ons’ land…..)
Zo ook
bij MSNBC, Caitlin Johnstone zag daar een programma waar men Gabbard nog eens fiks door de
virtuele stront haalde en zoals gewoonlijk als het om dit soort commentaar gaat, op een manier die te belachelijk is voor
woorden, zo werd er gesteld dat Gabbard niet heeft ontkend in de
zak van de Russen te zitten, terwijl ze wel degelijk over een smerige
campagne tegen haar persoon sprak, alsof dat een bevestiging is van de smerige leugen die Clinton op straat gooide…..
Overigens gebeurt in Nederland hetzelfde, neem Pauw of Jinek met de
lulligste argumentatie worden zaken gepresenteerd als zou het de
waarheid en niets dan de waarheid zijn, neem de illegale oorlog die de VS in Syrië heeft ontketend en de valse beschuldigingen in de reguliere westerse pers, als zou Assad zijn volk hebben vergast, zelfs deels door de VN naar de prullenbak verwezen, of wat te denken van de berichtgeving in de maanden voorafgaand en die tijdens de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Irak (met hulp van andere NAVO-lidstaten als Nederland), of wat te denken van de leugens (aantoonbaar) als zou Maduro het Venezolaanse volk laten verhongeren….
Het
lulligste van dit alles is dat daarmee het volk wordt bespeeld en men
alle leugens gelooft die worden verteld, neem (nogmaals) de illegale oorlogen
van de VS van alleen deze eeuw al, of wat dacht je van rampvlucht
MH17, op basis van een belachelijk rapport krijgt Rusland de schuld
in de schoenen geschoven, waarna het volk overspoeld wordt met kul en na een uur vol propagandaleugens gelooft men de onzin….. Nadat de Maleisische premier nog eens in het openbaar stelde dat het Nederlandse onderzoek een waardeloos onderzoek is en hij en zijn regering niet meegaan in het beschuldigen van de Russen, gingen zowel de media als de politiek uit hun bol over deze uitlating, zonder ook maar te luisteren wat men in Maleisië heeft te zeggen over rampvlucht MH17….. Nee, de veel te kleine rol die Maleise mocht spelen in het onderzoek wordt als teken gezien dat Maleisië wel akkoord is met wat het JIT te vertellen had en heeft…… (voor berichten over MH17, klik op dat label, direct onder dit bericht)
This
MSNBC Clip Is Everything Ugly About Russia Smears
There’s a
video clip circulating
on Twitter right now that simply has to be seen to be believed, in
which a gaggle of MSNBC pundits are seen furiously agreeing with each
other that Tulsi Gabbard has incriminated herself by pushing
back against
Hillary Clinton’s obnoxious
claim that
she is a Russian asset.
I
refuse to spend any portion of my life researching the name of
whatever MSNBC show this was or the panelists it features, but here’s
a quick breakdown for posterity:
“One
thing that was interesting about Tulsi Gabbard’s response, I mean she
went after Hillary Clinton, she was strong, she said she wasn’t gonna
run as a third party candidate–she never denied being a Russian
asset,” said a panelist MSNBC identifies as Kimberly Atkins.
“That was the one aspect that was missing from her response,
which, you know, you would think that would be within the first line
or two. It was not there.”
“When
Hillary Clinton says there’s a Russian asset and doesn’t say
anybody’s name and Tulsi Gabbard goes ‘How dare you call me a Russian
asset?’,” added some talking beanbag chair identified by MSNBC
as Jonathan Allen.
“Wait,
so Kimberly’s right, she didn’t say she was a Russian asset,”
interjected another super excited panelist, possibly the show’s host
but who cares. “To your point, Hillary Clinton didn’t name
names, but there’s Congresswoman Gabbard going ‘Me! Me, me! Me!'”
Now,
to be clear, all of these panelists are knowingly lying when they
suggest that Clinton may not have been talking about Gabbard.
Literally everyone knew that Hillary Clinton was talking about
Gabbard from
the moment news broke about
her libelous comments, which, as Gabbard pointed out in a recent
interview, was evidenced by the fact that all the news headlines
about those comments featured Gabbard’s name. Clinton referred, using
female pronouns, to a Democratic primary candidate who is a “favorite
of the Russians”; nobody in the world thought she was talking
about Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar, because those
candidates have never been smeared as Russian assets, only Gabbard
has. The self-evident fact that Clinton was referring to Gabbard was
then quickly
confirmed by a Clinton aide.
“Hillary
Clinton did not mention Tulsi Gabbard by name, but an aide confirms
that’s that who she was talking about when she made this stunning
claim that the Russians had already hit on a way to meddle in the
2020
election…,” @nancycordes reports https://t.co/debniGhJPQpic.twitter.com/2HHsJwhZsT
The
panelists are also lying when they claim that Gabbard has not denied
being a Russian asset; obviously if you call something a “smear”
as Gabbard has consistently
been doing you
are saying that it is false. But that should not matter. Claiming
that an evidence-free conspiratorial McCarthyite smear is true
because the target of that smear did not prostrate themselves
sufficiently to deny it is disgusting and shameful in and of itself.
The burden of proof is always on the party making the claim, and
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If an
extraordinary claim is made with no evidence at all, the party making
that claim should be promptly shamed and dismissed.
One
of the most infuriating things about the Russia hysteria which has
polluted western political discourse is the way people keep getting
away with side-mouthed insinuations and innuendo, saying things
without directly saying them so that when someone responds to what
they’re saying they can go
“What!
Why I never said that, but my my, it’s very interesting that you
think I did?” Hillary Clinton knew very well that everyone would
understand who she was talking about, but the fact that the target of
her smear responded directly is being spun by her flying monkeys as
something weird and suspicious instead of something perfectly normal
and appropriate.
As
much as I speak out against violence and aggression, on a personal
level I find passive aggressiveness to be far more obnoxious than
just confronting someone head-on. The appropriate response to someone
making cowardly indirect accusations is to directly confront them and
call out what they’re really saying and describe what they’re really
doing, as Tulsi Gabbard did.
So
let’s say directly what the MSNBC panelists above tried to get away
with saying indirectly: MSNBC aired a segment in which panelists
falsely claimed that Tulsi Gabbard incriminated herself as a Russian
asset by responding to Hillary Clinton’s smear job. They lied, and
they will get away with lying, because billionaire-controlled media
like MSNBC is designed to manufacture consent for the status quo upon
which the empires of billionaires like Brian L Roberts (whose
parent company Comcast controls NBC) are
built. Call the propagandists what they are, and shame these passive
aggressive Red Scare tactics for the brain poison that it is.
Je zou
wellicht denken dat onze reguliere media bij tijd en wijle knettergek
zijn met het herhalen van bijvoorbeeld aantoonbare VS leugens, maar zelfs dat kan men bij de makers van die leugens, dus de VS, altijd nog veel beter.
Het
volgende uiterst humoristische en sarcastische artikel, geschreven
door Caitlin Johnstone en afgelopen donderdag gepubliceerd, moet je lezen, maar
let op: het gevaar bestaat dat je in een lachstuip blijft!
Whales,
Crickets, And Other Fearsome Russian Doomsday Weapons
Caitlin
Johnstone
Headlines
were blaring the word “Russian” again the other day because
the mass media narrative managers found yet another reason for
westerners to feel terrified of the icy potato patch that we’d barely
ever thought about prior to 2016. I’d like to talk about the
Kremlin’s latest horrifying horrific addition to its fearsome
doomsday artillery, and recap a few of the other incredibly
frightening and terrifying tactics that those strange
Cyrillic-scribbling demons of the East are employing to undermine
truth, justice, and the American way. Just to make sure we’re
all good and scared like we’re supposed to be.
Gather
the kids, clutch your pearls and sign off on hundreds of billions of
dollars of extra military spending, my patriotic brethren! Here are
five super scary ways the Red Menace is trying to destroy you and
everything you hold dear:
Headlines
and TV news segments from virtually all mainstream outlets were
falling all over themselves the other day to report the fact that
some Norwegians found a tame beluga whale with a harness on it, and
“experts” attest that the animal may have been part of a
covert espionage program for the Russian navy.
While
there is no indication that this spying cetacean has been trained in
the arts of sonar election meddling or shooting novichok from its
blowhole, the Guardian helpfully
informs us that
the harness was labeled “Equipment of St. Petersburg”, and
was equipped to hold “a camera or weapon”.
“Marine
experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white
whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to
use underwater mammals as a special ops force,”
the Guardian reports.
The
Norwegian tabloid Verdens
Gang,
which picked up on the discovery well before the breathless English
headlines began gracing us with their presence, is a teensy bit less
Ian Flemingesque in its reporting on the matter: the harness is
equipped for a GoPro camera.
The words “Equipment of St. Petersburg” are
written in English.
Why
is the Russian military writing “Equipment of St. Petersburg”
in English on the garments of its aquatic special ops forces, you may
ask? If there were indeed a secret beluga espionage squad assembled
by Russian intelligence services, would they not perhaps avoid
writing the home address of the whales on their harnesses altogether,
and maybe, you know, not let
them run free in the wild?
And
to that I would say, stop asking so many questions. That’s just what
Putin wants.
NBC and MSNBC Blamed Russia for Using “Sophisticated Microwaves” to Cause “Brain Injuries” in U.S….
We now have what might be the most vivid, reckless and dangerous illustration yet of how NBC functions.
theintercept.com
A report seeded
throughout the mainstream media by anonymous intelligence officials
last September claimed that US government workers in Cuba had
suffered concussion-like brain damage after hearing strange noises in
homes and hotels with the most likely culprit being “sophisticated
microwaves or another type of electromagnetic weapon” from Russia.
A recording of one such highly sophisticated attack was analyzed by
scientists and turned
out to be the mating call of the male indies short-tailed cricket.
Neurologists and other brain specialists have
challenged the claim that
any US government workers suffered any neurological damage of any
kind, saying test results on the alleged victims were
misinterpreted.
The
actual story, when stripped of hyperventilating Russia panic, is that
some government workers once heard some horny crickets in Cuba.
Ye
gads, is is nothing sacred? Is there any weapon these monsters won’t
use to transform the west into a giant, globe-spanning Mordor?
That’s
right, in 2017 puppies became one of the many, many things we’ve been
instructed to fear in the hands of our vodka-swilling enemy to the
east, with mass media outlets reporting that a Facebook group for
animal lovers was one of the sinister, diabolical tactics employed by
St. Petersburg’s notorious Internet Research Agency. As the Moon
of Alabama blog has
explained,
the only evidence we’ve seen so far actually indicates that the
Internet Research Agency’s operations in America served no purpose
other than to attract eyeballs for money. As journalist
Aaron Maté wrote of
the highly publicized Russian Facebook meddling, “Far from being
a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and
mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.”
The
late, great Robert Parry, one of the earliest and most outspoken
critics of the Russiagate narrative, covered this one for Consortium
Newsin
an article he
authored a few months before his untimely passing:
“As
Mike Isaac and Scott Shane of The New York Times reported in
Tuesday’s editions, “The Russians who posed as Americans on
Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. … There
was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable
puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.”
Now,
there are a lot of controversial issues in America, but I don’t
think any of us would put puppies near the top of the list. Isaac and
Shane reported that there were also supposedly Russia-linked groups
advocating gay rights, gun rights and black civil rights, although
precisely how these divergent groups were “linked” to Russia or
the Kremlin was never fully explained. (Facebook declined to offer
details.)
At
this point, a professional journalist might begin to pose some very
hard questions to the sources, who presumably include many partisan
Democrats and their political allies hyping the evil-Russia
narrative. It would be time for some lectures to the sources about
the consequences for taking reporters on a wild ride in conspiracy
land.
Yet,
instead of starting to question the overall premise of this
“scandal,” journalists at The New York Times, The Washington
Post, CNN, etc. keep making excuses for the nuttiness. The
explanation for the puppy ads was that the nefarious Russians might
be probing to discover Americans who might later be susceptible to
propaganda.
“The
goal of the dog lovers’ page was more obscure,” Isaac and Shane
acknowledged. “But some analysts suggested a possible motive: to
build a large following before gradually introducing political
content. Without viewing the entire feed from the page, now closed by
Facebook, it is impossible to say whether the Russian operators tried
such tactics.”
This
Russia hysteria has been a long, wild ride, and sometimes it’s
honestly felt like they’re just experimenting on us. Like they’ve
been testing the limits of how ridiculous they can make this thing
and still get mainstream Americans to swallow it. Like the
establishment propagandists are all sitting around in a room smoking
blunts and making bets with each other all,
“I’m
telling you, we can sell a Pokémon Go Kremlin conspiracy.”
“Do
it!”
“No
way. There’s no way they’ll go for it.”
“Yeah
well you said that about the puppy dogs!”
And
then they release their latest experiment in social manipulation and
place bets on how many disgruntled Hillary voters they can get
retweeting it saying “God dammit, I knew that
jigglypuff looked suspicious!”
The
October 2017 CNN
report which
sparked off a full day of shrieking “OMG THEY’RE EVEN USING
PIKACHU TO ATTACK OUR DEMOCRACY” headlines was titled
“Exclusive: Even Pokémon Go used by extensive Russian-linked
meddling effort”, and it reported that Russia had extended its
“tentacles” into the popular video game for the
purpose of election meddling. Apparently the Internet Research Agency
attempted to hold a contest using the game to highlight police
brutality against unarmed Black men, which of course is something
that only an evil autocracy would ever do.
Not
until the
fifteenth paragraph of
the article did we see the information which undercut all the frantic
arm flailing about Russians destroying democracy and warping our
children’s fragile little minds:
“CNN
has not found any evidence that any Pokémon Go users attempted to
enter the contest, or whether any of the Amazon Gift Cards that were
promised were ever awarded — or, indeed, whether the people who
designed the contest ever had any intention of awarding the prizes.”
Russia’s government wants people to have a laugh – as long as it’s at its opponents’ expense, and not Mr Putin’s.
bbc.co.uk
Late
last year the BBC published
an article titled
“How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon” about yet
another addition to the Kremlin’s horrifying deadly hybrid
warfare arsenal: comedy. The article’s author,
ironically titled “Senior
Journalist (Disinformation)” by the BBC, argues that Russia has
suddenly discovered laughter as a way to “deliberately lower
the level of discussion”.
“Russia’s
move towards using humour to influence its campaigns is a relatively
recent phenomenon,” the article explained, without speculating as
to why Russians might have suddenly begun laughing at their western
accusers.
Is
it perhaps possible that Russian media have begun mocking the west a
lot more because westerners have made themselves much easier to make
fun of? Could it perhaps be the fact that western mass media have
been doing absolutely insane things like constantly selling us the
idea that the Kremlin could be lurking behind anything in our world,
even really innocuous-looking things like puppy dogs, Pokémon
and whales? Could we perhaps be finding ourselves at the butt end of
jokes now because in 2016 our society went bat shit, pants-on-head,
screaming-at-passing-motor-vehicles insane?
Nahhh.
Couldn’t be. It’s the Russians who’ve gone mad.
Everyone
has my unconditional
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William
M. Arkin, een bekroond journalist van NBC, verlaat deze zender uit
frustratie over het redactionele beleid, waarmee oorlogsvoering uit en te na wordt
verdedigd en waar kritiek op dit oorlogvoeren op z’n zachtst gezegd,
niet wordt geaccepteerd.
Caitlin
Johnstone schreef een artikel over het vertrek van Arkin en de
redenen die hij daarvoor heeft gegeven, zij stelt volkomen terecht
dat deze houding van NBC overal te vinden is in de reguliere
massamedia van de VS. Waar ik aan toe zou willen voegen dat dit voor
de hele westerse reguliere media geldt, waar men middels ‘fake news’ en andere desinformatie de westerse illegale oorlogsvoering in het Midden-Oosten en (Noord-) Afrika verdedigt. Deze houding heeft desastreuze gevolgen…….
Neem
alleen al het zogenaamde vluchtelingenprobleem, een probleem dat door
de VS en haar NAVO partners is veroorzaakt middels het voeren van die illegale
oorlogen, waar dezelfde reguliere massamedia deze illegale oorlogen verdedigen en het
argument dat het westen zelf verantwoordelijk is voor dit ‘vluchtelingenprobleem’, afdoen als kul en
desinformatie, terwijl de bewijzen toch echt overweldigend zijn…… Kortom: deze media gebruiken precies datgene waar ze degenen van beschuldigen die stellen dat deze illegale oorlogen vluchtelingenstromen opgang brengen: het gebruik van nepnieuws en andere desinformatie….
Men
slaat niet voor niets op de vlucht als je ziet dat in de illegale
oorlogen die de VS met hulp van andere NAVO partners (waaronder Nederland) is begonnen, alleen deze eeuw al 2,5 miljoen mensen zijn vermoord en landen als Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië in puin zijn gebombardeerd….. Waarbij de eerste 3 landen in grote chaos verkeren…… Echter het Nederlandse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken ziet het anders en middels haar falende en valse ambtsberichten stelt dit ministerie dat deze landen veilig zijn voor de vluchtelingen, waar Libië voor BuZa nog een uitzondering is, zelfs het ministerie kan niet met droge ogen beweren dat daar alles pais en vree is……* Wat betreft vluchtelingen ui Libie, die zijn er niet veel ondanks dat dit land onevenredig hard is getroffen door westerse terreur….
In totaal zouden sinds 2011 een aantal van 5.400 Libiërs het land zijn ontvlucht (waaronder een groot aantal Toearegs, die onder Khadaffi deel uitmaakten van het leger en die na hun vlucht in Mali de boel op de kop hebben gezet), voorts zouden er meer dan 300.000 mensen ontheemd zijn in eigen land (lijkt me een veel te laag aantal)……. Te vrezen valt dan ook dat de oorlogsheren in Libië het achtergebleven volk dermate goed weten te controleren, dat vluchten een hachelijke zaak is……. Het voorgaande zegt dan ook voldoende over de vluchtelingen die uit de rest van Afrika komen en die vanaf Libië de oversteek naar Europa wagen, ofwel diezelfde oorlogsheren beheersen zelfs deze vluchtelingstromen……
Lees
het artikel over Arkin, prima uitgelegd door Johnstone (en geeft het
door!):
Reporter
Quits NBC Citing Network’s Support for Endless War
(CJ Opinion) — A
journalist with NBC has resigned from the network with a statement
which highlights the immense resistance that ostensibly liberal mass
media outlets have to antiwar narratives, skepticism of US military
agendas, and any movement in the opposite direction of endless
military expansionism.
“January
4 is my last day at NBC News and I’d like to say goodbye to my
friends, hopefully not for good,” begins an email titled ‘My
goodbye letter to NBC’ sent to various contacts by William M Arkin,
an award-winning
journalist who
has been associated with the network for 30 years.
“This
isn’t the first time I’ve left NBC, but this time the parting is
more bittersweet, the world and the state of journalism in tandem
crisis,” the email continues. “My expertise, though seeming to be
all the more central to the challenges and dangers we face, also
seems to be less valued at the moment. And I find myself completely
out of synch with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter
nor interested in the Trump circus.”
The lengthy
email covers
details about Arkin’s relationship with NBC and its staff, his
opinions about the mainstream media’s refusal to adequately
scrutinize and criticize the US war machine’s spectacular failures
in the Middle East, how he “argued endlessly with MSNBC about all
things national security for years”, the fact that his position as
a civilian military analyst was unusual and “peculiar” in a media
environment where that role is normally dominated by “THE GENERALS
and former government officials,” and how he was “one of the few
to report that there weren’t any WMD in Iraq” and remembers
“fondly presenting that conclusion to an incredulous NBC editorial
board.”
“A
scholar at heart, I also found myself an often lone voice that was
anti-nuclear and even anti-military, anti-military for me meaning
opinionated but also highly knowledgeable, somewhat akin to a movie
critic, loving my subject but also not shy about making judgements
regarding the flops and the losers,” he writes.
Arkin
makes clear that NBC is in no way the sole mass media offender in its
refusal to question or criticize the normalization of endless
warfare, but that he feels increasingly “out of sync” and “out
of step” with the network’s unhesitating advancement of military
interventionist narratives. He writes about how Robert Windrem, NBC
News’ chief investigative producer, convinced him to join a new
investigative unit in the early days of the 2016 presidential race.
Arkin writes the following about his experience with the unit:
“I
thought that the mission was to break through the machine of
perpetual war acceptance and conventional wisdom to challenge Hillary
Clinton’s hawkishness. It was also an interesting moment at NBC
because everyone was looking over their shoulder at Vice and other
upstarts creeping up on the mainstream. But then Trump got elected
and Investigations got sucked into the tweeting vortex, increasingly
lost in a directionless adrenaline rush, the national security and
political version of leading the broadcast with every snow storm. And
I would assert that in many ways NBC just began emulating the
national security state itself — busy and profitable. No wars
won but the ball is kept in play.
“I’d
argue that under Trump, the national security establishment not only
hasn’t missed a beat but indeed has gained dangerous strength. Now
it is ever more autonomous and practically impervious to criticism.
I’d also argue, ever so gingerly, that NBC has become somewhat lost
in its own verve, proxies of boring moderation and conventional
wisdom, defender of the government against Trump, cheerleader for
open and subtle threat mongering, in love with procedure and protocol
over all else (including results). I accept that there’s a lot to
report here, but I’m more worried about how much we are missing.
Hence my desire to take a step back and think why so little changes
with regard to America’s wars.”
Arkin
is no fan of Trump, calling him “an ignorant and incompetent
impostor,” but describes his shock at NBC’s reflexive opposition
to the president’s “bumbling intuitions” to get along with
Russia, to denuclearize North Korea, to get out of the Middle East,
and his questioning of the US military’s involvement in Africa.
“I’m
alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically argue the contrary, to be
in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war.
Really? We shouldn’t get out Syria? We shouldn’t go for the bold
move of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula? Even on Russia, though
we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it
is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold
War? And don’t even get me started with the FBI: What? We now
lionize this historically destructive institution?”
“There’s
a saying about consultants, that organizations hire them to hear
exactly what they want to hear,” Arkin writes in the conclusion of
his statement. “ I’m proud to say that NBC didn’t do that when
it came to me. Similarly I can say that I’m proud that I’m not
guilty of giving my employers what they wanted. Still, the things
this and most organizations fear most — variability,
disturbance, difference — those things that are also the
primary drivers of creativity — are not really the things that
I see valued in the reporting ranks.”
That’s
about as charitably as it could possibly be said by a skeptical
tongue. Another way to say it would be that plutocrat-controlled and
government-enmeshed media networks hire reporters to protect the
warmongering oligarchic status quo upon which media-controlling
plutocrats have built their respective kingdoms, and foster an
environment which elevates those who promote establishment-friendly
narratives while marginalizing and pressuring anyone who doesn’t.
It’s absolutely bizarre that it should be unusual for there to be a
civilian analyst of the US war machine’s behaviors in the
mainstream media who is skeptical of its failed policies and nonstop
bloodshed, and it’s a crime that such voices are barely holding on
to the fringes of the media stage. Such analysts should be extremely
normal and commonplace, not rare and made to feel as though they
don’t belong.
Click
here to
read William M Arkin’s full email, republished with permission.
* De vluchtelingen uit Syrië kunnen intussen geen kant meer op, Turkije wil ze niet, waar militairen en grenswachten zelfs over de grens heen schieten op vluchtelingen…. De bestaande vluchtelingen uit Syrië zitten voor een groot deel vast in Turkse ‘opvangkampen’, mede als gevolg van de tegen het VN Vluchtelingenverdrag ingaande vluchtelingendeal met de EU (en 6 miljard euro aan EU belastinggelden), kampen die niets anders zijn dan gevangenissen… Voor westerse waarnemers en politici die deze vluchtelingen bezoeken, heeft Turkije een paar modelkampen……
Eén van de verdedigers van het neoliberale establishment, ThinkProgress heeft
vorige maand een artikel van Casey Michel gepubliceerd waarin Caitlin
Johnstone werd uitgemaakt voor Iraanse trol… ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Michel reageerde niet één
keer op aan hem gerichte berichten van Johnstone, waarin ze uitlegt dat
e.e.a. nonsens is.
In
het artikel stelde Michel dat nep-accounts op Facebook niet alleen
uit Ruslandkomen,
maar ook uit Iran……. (valt me nog mee dat hij Noord-Korea niet in één
moeite mee heeft genomen) Voorts loofde Michel de pogingen van Facebook
Iraanse propaganda te weren van haar ‘platform’*, maar heeft eerder Facebook en Twitter meermaals gewaarschuwd actie te ondernemen tegen
dergelijke (Russische) beïnvloeding via accounts op hun sites.
Nu
is ThinkProgress dus zelf aan de beurt en wordt van Facebook geweerd,
dit voor een artikel over Brett Kavanaugh, de ultrarechtse schoft en favoriete kandidaat van Trump voor het hooggerechtshof. De Weekly Standard doet het feiten controleren (fact checking) voor Facebook en vond het bewuste artikel met ‘fake news’ over Kavanaugh.
Volgens Johnstone zal het weren van
ThinkProgress op Facebook niet van lange duur zijn. Jonhstone heeft verder geen leedvermaak over deze zaak en ze stelt dan ook terecht dat Facebook zich niet heeft te bemoeien met
wat er wordt gezegd op dat platform, al is ze uiteraard tegen het
oproepen tot geweld.
Lees
het artikel van Johnstone waarin zij o.a. de vloer aanveegt met The
Atlantic Council, de ‘psyops‘ fabriek van de NAVO, die samen met de Weekly Standard de censuur regelt op Facebook…… Volkomen terecht
pleit Johnstone voor een volledig vrij internet, waar de plutocraten van Silicon Valley, de NAVO en andere (censuur) organen of lijpe psychopaten als Kristol geen
zeggenschap hebben over wat er wel of niet geschreven of getoond mag worden (uiteraard met uitzondering van [kinder] porno en oproepen tot het plegen van geweld**):
ThinkProgress
Censored By Facebook After Cheerleading Facebook Censorship
In an
article last month titled
“Facebook announces that fake accounts are now coming not just from
Russia”, fauxgressive establishment apologia
firm ThinkProgressfalsely
reported that
I have been writing for an outlet that is alleged to be part of an
Iranian propaganda campaign. I repeatedly brought this
false claim to the attention of Casey Michel, the article’s author,
telling him that ten seconds of research or any attempt to contact me
would have shown him that the articles published by the outlet in
question were just reblogs of earlier publications from my platform,
but Michel ignored the many notifications he received from myself and
my Twitter followers and went on merrily interacting with other
posters. As of this writing, the article remains uncorrected.
In
the article, Michel documented Facebook’s heroic efforts to shut
down alleged Iranian propaganda outlets, ominously warning his
readers that “Russia is by no means the only foreign adversary
exploiting social media’s inherent openness.” In other articles
for ThinkProgress,
Michel is repeatedlyseen wagging
his finger at
Facebook and Twitter for not doing more to censor “Russian
propaganda”, and in a
July article titled
“Facebook says both sides share fake news, defends Infowars’
presence on its platform — Mark Zuckerberg has an interesting way
of prioritizing ‘high quality news’” another ThinkProgress author
criticized Facebook for not censoring Alex Jones. Jones was censored
by Facebook the following month.
ThinkProgressreports that
its traffic from Facebook has been slashed by eighty percent due to a
“fact check” by the Weekly
Standard which,
through a series of moronic mental contortions,
found ThinkProgress guilty
of reporting fake news about Brett Kavanaugh of all things. In a
twist of irony which would be delicious if it weren’t so
disgusting, the Weekly
Standard is
one of Facebook’s authorized “fact checkers”, and happens to be
the brainchild of none other than bloodthirsty psychopath and
rehabilitated #Resistance hero Bill Kristol.
ThinkProgress is
part of a very large and diverse branch of progressive punditry whose
ultimate job is to help centrist empire loyalists feel like leftist
revolutionaries, and since 2016 one of the many appalling
consequences of this bizarre environment has been the embracing of
Iraq-raping neoconservatives like Kristol and Max Boot by Democratic
Party loyalists. In a bid to stay relevant despite having been
consistently wrong about literally everything in foreign policy for
the last two decades, these murderous ghouls have repackaged
themselves as
a woke, cuddly alternative to the Trumpian faction of the Republican
Party, and have been rewarded for their efforts with regular
platforms on MSNBC and the Washington
Post (WaPo).
So
with ThinkProgress getting
censored by Facebook, you really couldn’t ask for a more clear-cut
case of reaping what you sow. Nevertheless, it is wrong for anyone to
be deprived of political speech, even if much of their political
speech consists of attempts to silence the political speech of
others. And if there is anything more gross than political speech
being regulated by Silicon Valley plutocrats and a
NATO psyop factory,
it’s political speech being regulated by Silicon Valley
plutocrats, a NATO psyop factory, and Bill
Kristol. ThinkProgress should
not have its audience restricted.
All
the “let me help you cheer for the establishment while pretending
to oppose it” pundits who celebrated Alex Jones’ coordinated
de-platforming last month are falling all over themselves to spin
this new development in a way that allows them to feel as though they
aren’t being proven wrong day after day after day, but of course
they are. Facilitating the censorship of anyone’s speech is
facilitating the censorship of your own speech in the long run, and
we’re not even having to wait long to see it this time around. In a
corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state
censorship; the massive new media corporations being implored to
regulate which political speech gets an audience and which doesn’t
have extensive
ties to secretive government agencies and
a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
I
do not expect ThinkProgress to
remain on Facebook’s restricted list for long; the real targets of
internet censorship are not partisan outlets which prop up
establishment politics and help legitimize America’s two-headed one
party system. But that isn’t the point. The point is that Silicon
Valley plutocrats, the NATO propaganda firm Atlantic Council, and
the Weekly
Standard should
not be determining who gets an audience in the new media environment
and who doesn’t. Nothing that has anything to do with Bill Kristol
should ever have any power over anyone. If our choices are between
letting people think for themselves and letting the guy who’s
always wrong about everything determine what shows up in people’s
news feed, the choice is obviously the one which doesn’t involve
placing faith in the man who helped deceive America into butchering a
million Iraqis***.
_____________________
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=======================================
* Je kan er donder op zeggen dat accounts van bestaande Iraniërs die
hun regering voor bepaalde zaken prijzen, worden gezien als
overheidsaccounts die louter propaganda maken. Anders gezegd als je
niet negatief schrijft over Iran (of Rusland) wordt je versleten als
een Russische of Iraanse trol (deel uitmakend van een
‘trollenfabriek’, die in Mordor staat met CEO Sauron….)……..
** Al moet gezegd worden dat het internet bomvol oproepen tot geweld staat, oproepen die niet worden geweerd van het internet (en Facebook) al komen die oproepen van de reguliere media en westerse politici, die bijvoorbeeld het liefst Noord-Korea met een kernaanval van de kaart zouden willen vegen…… Als je als persoon een dergelijke oproep zou doen als reactie op laat ik zeggen de illegale oorlog tegen Irak, die aan meer dan 1,5 miljoen mensen (!!!) het leven heeft gekost, een oproep tot geweld tegen terreurentiteit VS en haar oorlogshond, terreurorganisatie NAVO, je onmiddellijk zal worden gearresteerd……..
*** Het dodenaantal in Irak sinds de VS een illegale oorlog tegen dat land startte in 2003 (met politieke en militaire steun van o.a. Nederland) ligt al boven de 1,5 miljoen vermoorden…. (!!!)
In
het hieronder opgenomen artikel van Caitlin Johnstone, o.a.
gepubliceerd op Medium(.com) en Anti-Media, stelt zij dat de
reguliere (massa-) media van de VS eindelijk wakker zijn geworden en
aandacht besteden aan de vreselijke oorlog van de Saoedische
coalitie (inclusief de steun en onmisbare hulp van de VS en GB) tegen
de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen….. Een bevolking die ‘godzijdank’ worden gesteund
door de de Houthi’s, een uiterst functionele strijdgroep, die ingreep
nadat IS en Al Qaida de sjiitische bevolking aanvielen, zelfs in
moskeeën……. Deze 2 extreme terreurgroepen kregen in Jemen van de
opgestapte president (onder druk van Saoedi-Arabië weer president)
al-Hadi onderdak aangeboden…….
Jammer
dat Johnstone het woord ‘genocide’ uit de weg gaat, immers daar is op
zeker sprake van, een genocide waar de wereld voor het overgrote deel
alweer geen aandacht aan schenkt, althans totdat de Saoedische
coalitie toegaf een bus met kinderen onder vuur te hebben genomen, om
wraak te nemen voor een Saoedische man die omkwam bij een raketaanval
van de Houthi’s……. Al spreken ook die media niet over een genocide, ondanks alle bombardementen, honger, cholera en difterie (allen oorzaak van de Saoedische terreur), die al aan duizenden het leven heeft gekost……
Nu
is de verontwaardiging groot, zelfs bij MSNBC, die zoals Johnstone in
haar vorig artikel stelde in 1 jaar tijd niet één keer aandacht
schonk aan de smerige, door de VS gesteunde en gefaciliteerde oorlog tegen het Jemenitische volk, maar wel
455 keer aan Stormy Daniels……* Zonder steun van de VS en GB zou
Saoedi-Arabië de oorlog tegen de Houthi’s niet kunnen voeren, zo doet
de VS de coördinatie van de bombardementen, tankt het de straaljagers en bommenwerpers van de Saoedische terreurcoalitie (inclusief Marokko**) in de lucht af, zodat
ze zo ‘efficiënt’ mogelijk kunnen bombarderen…..
Doelen
van deze moorddadige coalitie: huizenblokken, ziekenhuizen, scholen,
energiecentrales, waterbedrijven, huwelijks- en begrafenisceremonies
en de infrastructuur inclusief de riolering….. Door het laatst genoemde is er zelfs de eerdere genoemde grote cholera uitbraak ontstaan in Jemen, die nog maandelijks honderden
doden eist….. Zelfs
een ziekenhuis van Artsen Zonder Grenzen (MSF) speciaal voor cholerapatiënten werd door de Saoedische coalitie plat
gebombardeerd, voordat de eerste patiënten konden worden
behandeld………. (hoeveel bewijs wil je nog hebben dat de Saoedische terreurcoalitie, inclusief de VS en GB, bezig is met een genocide??)
Intussen
is er ook de al eerder genoemde difterie uitbraak in Jemen, dit nog naast de hongersnood die intussen al meer dan 2 jaar aanhoudt en waarvoor vorig jaar nog een actie
werd gevoerd in Nederland……..
Over Nederland gesproken, ik moet zeggen dat de media hier wel behoorlijk lauw hebben gereageerd op de
Saoedische aanval tegen een schoolbus en dat op een drukke
markt……. Als Assad iets dergelijks had gedaan had het land op z’n
kop gestaan en waren er al vragen gesteld in de Kamer……. Terwijl
de keren dat de hysterie toeslaat over het gedrag ‘van Assad’, die opwinding keer op keer onterecht blijkt te zijn, zoals zelfs bevestigd door VN onderzoek, echter dit verandert niets aan de hysterie, men blijft ‘gewoon’ volhouden dat
Assad zijn eigen volk afslacht, zonder ook maar een greintje aan
bewijs te leveren……..
In
de VS begint men wakker te worden nu nog Nederland en de EU!!
Mainstream
Media Finally Concedes Defeat on Yemen, Ends Blackout Of Coverage
(CJ Opinion) — Last
month, an article
by Fair.org went
viral in republications by popular alternative media outlets ranging
from Salon to Zero
Hedge to Alternet to Truthdig,
among many others. The article was initially titled “ACTION ALERT:
It’s Been Over a Year Since MSNBC Has Mentioned US War in Yemen”,
but many subsequent republications went with variations on the more
attention-grabbing headline, “MSNBC has done 455 Stormy Daniels
segments in the last year — but none on U.S. war in Yemen”.
The
centerpiece of the article was the following graphic, which I saw
shared on its own many times in my social media feeds:
That’s
about as in your face as it gets, isn’t it?
This
is of course outrageous, but because of how media coverage works,
mainstream attention was never drawn to the problem. It hasn’t been
a total media
blackout, but because it only turns up in mainstream media reports
every once in a while with little if any emphasis being placed on who
is behind the devastation, it occupies a very peripheral place in
western consciousness. The average American would probably be able to
tell you that some parts of their government appear to be concerned
about Russia, Syria, Iran and North Korea, because those rival
nations have been the subject of intense mass media coverage, but if
you asked them about Yemen you’d likely be told something like “I
think there’s some kind of humanitarian crisis there?”, if
anything.
This
has all changed in the last few days. Suddenly, the atrocities being
inflicted upon the people of Yemen are being pushed into mainstream
attention by the mass media outlets which have been ignoring them for
more than three years. The Washington
Post (WaPo) editorial
board published
an op-ed titled
“End U.S. support for this misbegotten and unwinnable war”. CNN
did some actual, real journalism for a change with a viral
exclusive documenting
which American war profiteers were behind some of the more
devastating Saudi bombings. And yes, MSNBC finally did cover the
violence in Yemen, breaking its year-long silence to report
on a US-supplied bomb which
killed 40 children with such urgent condemnation of those responsible
you’d never know they’d been consistently ignoring such incidents
which have been going on for years.
Now politicians and celebrities everywhere
are shoving the horror of their government facilitating the slaughter
of innocents into mainstream attention.
What’s
interesting here is that nothing at all has changed except for the
coverage. US-supplied bombs have been dropping
on marketplaces, hospitals and funerals and slaughtering
civilians in
far more deadly incidents for years, and the US has also
been providing
extensive assistance to
Saudi airstrikes, as well as attacking Yemeni
targets directly.
The only thing that has changed is that now it’s being reported
with an urgency and volume that is appropriate for such a horrific
incident instead of an occasional low-profile mention with little or
no mention of responsibility.
Nobody
with their eyes open believes that the mainstream media have just
suddenly developed a conscience and now deeply care about the mass
murder of Middle Eastern civilians. So why the change? If you ask
some of the Trump supporters I’ve seen responding to the shift,
it’s because their president can now be unfairly blamed for a
military campaign which began long before he took office. But that
doesn’t really hold water, does it? I mean, the aforementioned year
in which MSNBC didn’t cover Yemen took place entirely during this
administration, and every American with cable TV knows that MSNBC
markets itself as the anti-Trump network. If they’d wanted to use
Yemen as another angle from which to criticize this administration
they would have done so, instead of not doing so at all. The entirety
of mainstream media have been grossly neglecting this issue up until
the last week despite having every opportunity to condemn Trump for
it.
For
the record, while we’re on the subject, I personally don’t much
care if Trump gets all the blame for the Yemen catastrophe at this
point. I’ve spent 2017 and 2018 fighting the insane corporate
liberal notion that all American depravity began in January of last
year, but at this point I’m happy with literally anything that just
ends the death and devastation. A year into the war, the 30-year CIA
veteran Bruce Riedel said that
“if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight
told King Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow,
because the Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and
British support.” If using this as an opportunity to attack Trump
creates the necessary political pressure to end the bombings,
blockades, starvation and disease that is killing untold thousands of
Yemeni civilians, then fine, whatever, I’m all for it.
But
again, from what I’m seeing right now I don’t believe that this
is about Trump. Not directly anyway. From what I can see right now, I
think what we are witnessing is a clear instance in which alternative
media successfully caused the establishment to lose control of the
narrative on an important issue.
In
the US, criticism of Saudi Arabia is nearly as taboo as criticism of
Israel. As we saw explained in a leaked
State Department memo last
year, it is standard US policy to use human rights abuses as a
bludgeon with which to attack rival governments, while sweeping the
atrocities committed by allies under the rug. Because of
its lucrative
petrodollar deal with
the US, and because its opaque and unaccountable monarchy makes it
capable of nefarious maneuvers to advance geopolitical agendas that
an ostensible democracy would have a hard time getting away with, the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of America’s most important allies.
And the plutocrat-owned media, whose controllers have a vested
interest in protecting the establishment upon which their kingdoms
are built, consistently fall right in line with that same State
Department policy.
This,
and the fact that the control
of a key strategic region is
at stake, is why we’ve been seeing the Saudi war crimes in Yemen
and the US facilitation thereof downplayed for years by the mass
media. And they would surely remain downplayed indefinitely were it
possible.
But
it wasn’t possible. The story kept getting pushed toward mainstream
consciousness year after year, and eventually the fact that an outlet
which upholds itself as the flag bearer of Trump’s opposition has
been completely ignoring this administration’s facilitation of war
crimes was made viral. At a certain point a Dem-voting audience which
is being told day in and day out that Trump presents a unique and
unprecedented level of danger to the world will lose trust in the
outlets which market themselves to that demographic if they refuse to
make a big deal about the fact that this administration is helping
tyrants murder busloads of children.
For
this reason, western mainstream media have been forced to finally
report on the cruelty being inflicted upon the people of Yemen by
Saudi Arabia and its allies in order to avoid losing credibility. The
story got out, and the story about their lack of coverage of that
story got out, and now they’re all reporting on it like they’ve
been doing so this entire time. Which, if it continues, will make it
very difficult for the US/UK/Saudi war machine to retain the consent
of the governed for its mass slaughter.
In
my opinion, we can safely call this a win for alternative media. The
voices who aren’t beholden to the empire and its geopolitical
agendas refused to let this story die, and eventually succeeded in
overtaking the dominant narrative. Not because media-controlling
oligarchs like Brian L Roberts and Jeff Bezos gave them permission
to, but because unauthorized truth was spoken and carried by many
ordinary people into mainstream consciousness via Facebook shares,
Twitter retweets and speaking out loud and proud wherever possible. A
people’s information battle was fought and won by the people.
If
things go as I am hoping they will go, we will see more and more such
populist hijackings of dominant narratives in the future, and
ultimately a failure of the oligarchs to continue manufacturing
consent for their omnicidal, ecocidal, Orwellian agendas. We will
have to be aggressive, we will have to be creative, and we will have
to be interesting enough to catch the eye of the casual citizenry,
but the fact that trust in the mass media is at an all-time low and
our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high
combines with the fact that we have truth on our side to create some
very exciting possibilities. I find this all very encouraging.
** Marokko zou deel uitmaken van de coalitie, ook volgens de alternatieve
media, echter de laatste 6 maanden heb ik die bewering niet één keer teruggezien, tot Johnstone het weer noemde in haar artikel. Enig onderzoek toont aan dat dit inderdaad zo is. Verder bestaat de Saoedische terreurcoalitie uit de Verenigde
Arabische Emiraten, Egypte en uiteraard S-A. ‘Leuk’ voor de Marokkanen die straks weer met dienstplicht te maken krijgen, waarna ze mee mogen doen aan de genocide die in Jemen plaatsvindt……. (deze smerige oorlog zal voorlopig nog doorgaan…..)
De
smerige en uiterst gewelddadige superpsychopaat Eric Prince, oprichter van
privé terreurleger Blackwater, kreeg bij tv zendgemachtigde MSNBC de
kans, zonder enige kritiek, zijn vuige oorlogspraatjes te
spuien……. Prince wil de oorlog in Afghanistan overnemen van het
Pentagon en belooft daarbij succes, een gedachte die goed viel bij
het beest Trump, zeker gezien ‘de resultaten’ van de oorlog die daar de laatste 17 jaar zijn geboekt*.
Volkomen
terecht merkte Stephen Miles van ‘Win Without War’ op, dat Prince in
Den Haag terecht zou moeten staan voor het Internationaal Strafhof
(ICC), al geldt dit ook voor een fiks aantal politici en
hooggeplaatste militairen, de CIA, NSA en ga nog maar even
door…….
Prince is als directeur van Blackwater, na fiks wat smerige oorlogsmisdaden omgedoopt tot Academi (ha! ha! ha! hoe verzint hij het??) en
is als zodanig één op één verantwoordelijk voor de moord en/of
verminking op/van een groot aantal burgers in o.a. Irak en Afghanistan…….. (waar men in de westerse reguliere media liever niet over spreekt….)
Lees
het volgende artikel van Jake Johnson, eerder gepubliceerd op Common
Dreams en door mij overgenomen van Anti-War en zie hoe de
geesten in de VS langzaam maar zeker worden klaargemaakt voor oorlogsvoering door
bedrijven als Academi…… Als dit gebeurt en er worden daarna
bovendien warbots ingezet**,
is het hek helemaal van de VS ‘oorlogsdam…..’ (een dam van ongeveer
5 centimeter hoog…)
Durden wijst op het steeds harder slaan op de ‘oorlogstrommel’ in mediaorganen als MSNBC, waar deze media oorlogshitsers als Prince en anderen hun gif laten spuien, oorlogshitsers die bijvoorbeeld aandringen bij Trump een volledige oorlog tegen Syrië te beginnen…. Terwijl i.p.v. de oorlog tegen de Taliban in Afghanistan te intensiveren met een psychopathisch huurlingenleger, deze oorlog eindelijk te beëindigen, totaal wordt genegeerd door die mediaorganen….. Een pleidooi onder andere gedaan door Stephen Miles van ‘Win Without War’, die kortweg stelde dat i.p.v. de oorlog te privatiseren, het beter is deze te beëindigen’, een waarheid als een koe zoals je begrijpt.
He
Belongs in the Hague’: MSNBC Slammed for Handing Erik Prince
Megaphone to Sell War
(CD) — Amid reports that
President Donald Trump is “showing
renewed interest”
in Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s plan to hand the war in
Afghanistan over to a private army led by an “American
viceroy,” MSNBC on
Friday happily gave the notorious war profiteer a cushy platform to
make his nonsensical
and dangerous pitch
to the president almost entirely unchallenged.
“Shame
on MSNBC for
giving Erik Prince a megaphone,” Stephen Miles, director of Win
Without War, wrote on
Twitter following Prince’s interview with MSNBC‘s
Andrea Mitchell. “He belongs in The Hague, not spewing his
warmongering for profit filth on television.”
Highlighting
the failure of both the deadly “conventional” approach the U.S.
has taken in Afghanistan over the past 16 years and Prince’s plan
to continue the war for profit, Miles went on to suggest an option
that—for obvious reasons—Mitchell and Prince both ignored, one
that is virtually
never aired on corporate media networks like MSNBC.
“What
if—hear me out—instead of privatizing the war in #Afghanistan, we
ended it,” Miles wrote.
“Crazy, I know.”
What if – hear me out – instead of privatizing the war in #Afghanistan, we ended it. Crazy, I know. But, maybe… #EndEndlessWar
MSNBC @MSNBC
NEW: President Trump is showing renewed interest in a proposal by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to privatize the war, officials tell @NBCInvestigates. http://on.msnbc.com/2PfBbiq
Erik Prince joins @mitchellreports now live on @MSNBC to discuss the details.
Watch
Prince’s full appearance on MSNBC,
during which the infamous mercenary was asked for his thoughts
on Omarosa but
wasn’t once seriously challenged on his “prescription
for endless war“:
Prince’s
appearance on MSNBC came
shortly after NBC
News reported
that Trump is growing increasingly impatient with his
own administration’s strategy and
looking toward Prince—the brother of billionaire Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos—for possible alternatives.
“When
Prince’s plan had Trump’s attention in 2017, it had the backing
of his former strategist Steve Bannon and the president’s
son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner,” NBC reported.
In
recent meetings, Trump “has pressed his advisers about Afghanistan
progress” and expressed interest in Prince’s plan to privatize
the war, NBC noted,
citing anonymous administration officials.
As
usually happens when Prince makes his periodic appearances on
corporate news shows to tout his opportunistic, for-profit war plan,
critics were quick to highlight his horrendous
track-record and
argue that his plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan would lead to
even less oversight and more bloodshed.
As head of Blackwater, Erik Prince’s mercenaries committed multiple war crimes in Iraq and were convicted for their involvement in the Nissour Square massacre that killed 17 civilians. He deserves an investigation, not contracts to wage a private war in Afghanistan.
* 17 jaar lang is de oorlog in Afghanistan gaande (…) en als de VS en de rest van de NAVO niet vertrekken uit Afghanistan, kan het nog jaren, of zelfs decennia duren voordat de oorlog is
afgelopen…. Moet je nagaan: Afghanistan is door de Nederlandse
regering (al onder Rutte2, dus onder mede hoofdverantwoordelijkheid
van de PvdA) veilig verklaard voor de terugkeer van
vluchtelingen….. Wat een enorme rotschoft moet je zijn, om alleen
al iets dergelijks te suggereren……….
**
Die warbots worden al ontworpen en klaargemaakt voor productie,
waarbij een drone in feite al een warbot is, de menselijke vinger aan
de knop van drones die worden uitgerust met kunstmatige intelligentie
(AI) zal spoedig verdwijnen, daar te veel dronepiloten geestelijk
doordraaien, nadat ze weer vrouwen en kinderen hebben vermoord, die
niet eens verdacht waren….. Het is dan ook zo dat meer dan 90% van
alle slachtoffers bij VS drone aanvallen niet eens verdacht zijn,
inderdaad meestal vrouwen en kinderen (alleen al het vermoorden
van verdachten is tegen internationale wetten en deze standrechtelijke executies, ofwel moorden, zouden moeten worden
behandeld als ernstige oorlogsmisdaden!)
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.
Fair
bracht vorige week dinsdag een bericht over de ‘aandacht’ van MSNBC (een
mediaorgaan in de VS dat als ‘verzetszender’ wordt gezien tegen
Trump) voor de rol van de VS in de oorlog die de Saoedische coalitie
voert tegen de sjiieten in Jemen…… Een oorlog die voor de
sjiieten is uitgedraaid op een ‘volwaardige’ genocide………
Het
gezeur over de relatie van Trump met ‘pornoster’ Stormy Daniels kwam van 2 juli 2017 tot 2 juli 2018 maar liefst 455 keer terug in de MSNBC berichtgeving, tegen 0 keer de VS steun aan de genocide die de Saoedische coalitie in Jemen uitvoert………
Vreemd
is het wel, immers MSNBC doet niets liever dan Trump demoniseren, wat
wil je nog meer als je ziet dat hij een genocide tegen de sjiitische
bevolking van Jemen steunt, zowel militair als middels leveringen van rollend en vliegend oorlogstuig, plus ‘natuurlijk’ de levering van wapens en
munitie……. Ach zo vreemd is het nu ook weer niet, immers MSNBC is
o.a. grootlobbyist voor het militair-industrieel complex en zoals je
weet dat complex draait op zoveel mogelijk oorlog, om de winsten voor
de aandeelhouders zo hoog mogelijk te houden…….
Lees
het artikel van Adam Johnson, hieronder overgenomen van Anti-Media, echter wel met een kleine aantekening: Johnson
stelt dat onder Trump de bemoeienis met Jemen veel agressiever is
dan onder Obama, echter onder Obama is de steun voor de genocide
begonnen en onder Obama werden de clusterbommen geleverd die
Saoedi-Arabië heeft afgeworpen op
Jemen…… Onder Obama begon de VS met het in de lucht bijtanken van
de bommenwerpers en straaljagers van de Saoedische coalitie, zodat deze zo efficiënt mogelijk de enorme oorlogsmisdaden konden en kunnen uitvoeren…..
Ook
hebben speciale troepen van de VS onder Obama meerdere keren
ingegrepen op Jemenitische bodem en nam de VS de regie over de
bombardementen voor haar rekening (om nog maar te zwijgen over de het grote aantal moorden in Jemen middels drones*, ook dat werd onder Obama geïntensiveerd…)…. Gezien het voorgaande heeft Trump amper
meer gedaan dan op de Jemenitische winkel letten……..
In
One Year, MSNBC Covered Stormy Daniels 455 Times, War in Yemen 0
Why
is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely
ignoring his most devastating war?
(FAIR) As
FAIR has noted before (1/8/18,3/20/18),
to MSNBC, the
carnage and destruction the US and its Gulf Monarchy allies are
leveling against the poorest country in the Arab world is simply a
non-issue.
On
July 2, a year had passed since the cable network’s last segment
mentioning US participation in the war on Yemen, which has killed in
excess of 15,000 people and resulted in over a million
cases of cholera.
The US is backing a Saudi-led
bombing campaign with
intelligence, refueling, political cover, military hardware and, as
of March, ground
troops.
None of this matters at all to what Adweek (4/3/18)
calls “the network of the Resistance,” which has since its last
mention of the US’s role in the destruction of Yemen found time
to run
over a dozen segments highlighting
war crimes committed by the Syrian and Russian governments in Syria.
By
way of contrast, as MSNBC was
marking a year without mentioning the US role in Yemen, the PBS
NewsHour was
running a three-part
series on
the war, with the second part (7/3/18)
headlined, “American-Made Bombs in Yemen Are Killing Civilians,
Destroying Infrastructure and Fueling Anger at the US.”
The NewsHour’s
Jane Ferguson reported:
PBS
NewsHour (7/3/18) examining the remains of US-made cluster bombs in
Yemen.
“The
aerial bombing campaign has not managed to dislodge the rebels, but
has hit weddings, hospitals and homes. The US military supports the
Saudi coalition with logistics and intelligence. The United States it
also sells the Saudis and coalition partners many of the bombs they
drop on Yemen.”
MSNBC chat
show/Starbucks commercial Morning
Joe did
run one segment (4/25/18)
that vaguely mentioned the war on Yemen, but failed to note the US’s
role in it at all, much less that Washington is arming and backing
the conflict’s primary aggressor. Instead, they did the perverse
inversion––previously mastered by Washington
Post’s
Jackson Diehl (FAIR.org, 6/27/17)—of
not only ignoring the US’s major role in killing thousands, but
painting the US as a noble haven for refugees. The schlocky segment,
an interview with writer Mohammed Al Samawi, was a shallow mixture of
“interfaith” pablum, poverty porn and self-congratulations to the
US for taking in refugees (without, of course, acknowledging that
they’re seeking refuge from a crisis the US has created).
For
a bit more context, in the time period of July 3, 2017, to July 3,
2018, MSNBC dedicated
zero segments to the US’s war in Yemen, but 455
segments to Stormy Daniels.
This isn’t to suggest the Stormy Daniels matter isn’t
newsworthy—presidential corruption is per se important. But one has
to wonder if this particular thread of venality is 455 stories more
important than Trump aggressively supporting a war that’s killing
hundreds of people a month, injuring thousands, and subjecting
millions to famine and cholera. Did MSNBC editors,
poring over the latest academic foreign policy literature, really
come to the conclusion Trump’s war in Yemen isn’t important? Or
is MSNBC simply
fueled by partisan Russia dot-connecting and stories that allow them
to say “porn star” as much as possible?
What seems most likely is MSNBC has found that attacking Russia form the right on matters of foreign policy is the most elegant way to preserve its “progressive” image while still serving traditional centers of power—namely, the Democratic Party establishment, corporate sponsors, and their own revolving door of ex-spook and military contractor-funded talking heads (3/26/18). After all, Obama backed the war on Yemen—though not nearly as aggressively as Trump has—and it’s difficult to make a coherent left-wing, anti-war criticism when the current Republican in office is simply carrying out your guy’s policy, but on steroids.
In
any event, it’s not like any Yemenis are going to pull ads, turn
down appearances, or phone Comcast higher-ups
complaining. So, who cares? To be poor and brown—to say nothing of
not serving the immediate partisan interests of the Democratic
party—is evidently to not matter much in the eyes
of MSNBC producers and on-air talent.
* Aanvallen met drones op mensen die worden verdacht van zaken die de VS niet zinnen, het gaat dus niet om ter dood veroordeelden!! Waar meer dan 90% van de dodelijke slachtoffers door deze standrechtelijke executies niet eens werden verdacht! Zoals je begrijpt bestaat het overgrote deel van deze vermoorde en niet verdachte (burger-) slachtoffers uit vrouwen en kinderen, ronduit een misdaad tegen de menselijkheid die strafrechtelijk vervolgd zou moeten worden door het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) in Den Haag………
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