Now that President Trump is bashing Russia, not resetting relations, the mainstream U.S. media has gone from pushing “Russia-gate” conspiracies to decrying doubts about U.S. government anti-Russia claims, notes Nat Parry.
By Nat Parry
After several months of pushing the “Russia-gate” conspiracy theory – a wild-eyed, all-encompassing but somewhat nebulous narrative involving U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks, the Russian mob, assassinations and certain indiscretions with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel – the U.S. mainstream media is now reverting to its traditional role of downplaying conspiracy theories, particularly those raising questions about the intelligence surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria last week.
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
On Monday, the New York Times published an article titled “Syria Conspiracy Theories Flourish, at Both Ends of the Spectrum,” which lamented the fact that websites on the left and the right have raised doubts about the casus belli for U.S. military action against Syria.
Noting that some alternative news sites have called the chemical attack a “false flag” operation and others have raised the question of whether Trump’s military action was a “wag the dog” diversion tactic, the Times pointedly attempts to “debunk” the internet memes that have been raising doubts about the chemical attack or calling into question the justification for the U.S. military action.
With an aggressiveness not seen at all when it comes to the unsubstantiated “Russian election-hacking” allegations, the Times fires back forcefully on matters such as whether President Bashar al-Assad had reason to use chemical weapons in the first place or whether anti-Assad forces may have had advance knowledge of the sarin attack. The Times article uses curt, all-caps responses to rebut these claims, such as flatly stating, “FALSE,” “NO EVIDENCE,” or “MISLEADING.”
The Times, for example, points out that Information Clearing House has argued that Assad lacked an obvious tactical or strategic reason to use chemical weapons, and therefore the attack may have actually been carried out by one of the terrorist groups operating in Syria such as Al-Nusra Front. As the Times responds, however, “THIS IS MISLEADING.”
Floating a few reasons that Assad’s forces might have conceivably been motivated to conduct a chemical attack, the Times argues that the attack was “consistent with Mr. Assad’s calculated strategy of attempting to drive out the civilian population in rebel strongholds through bombing neighborhoods and civilian targets.” The Syrian leader may have also “felt emboldened” by perceived shifts in U.S. foreign policies and priorities under Trump, the Times speculates.
Of course, this is simply guesswork on the part of the Times, which is not presenting any facts to counter doubts over the official story, but just responding to the doubts with more conjecture. The Times also seems to be cherry-picking some of the more easily “debunked” stories surrounding the Syria case, failing to address legitimate concerns over the lack of proof of Assad’s culpability. These include doubts raised by the former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, who told BBC Radio last week that there is “no proof that the cause of the explosion was what they said it was.”
It would not make sense for Assad to launch such an attack, Ford said, claiming that it would be “totally self-defeating.” He also objected to the veracity of claims made by eyewitnesses who claimed that they saw chemical bombs dropping from the air. “Well, you cannot see chemical weapons dropping from the air,” he said. “Such testimony is worthless.”
Question of Possession
There are also serious doubts as to whether Syria even possesses the chemical weapons in question, with the United Nations’ Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons noting that since 2013, “all of the chemical weapons declared by Syria were removed and destroyed outside of Syrian territory.”
A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.
While some governments have claimed that Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons program may have been incomplete, the OPCW stresses that it has adapted itself “in unprecedented ways” in efforts “to remove, transport and destroy Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile in the midst of an active conflict zone.”
With this in mind, Sacha Llorenti, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, last Friday blasted the United States for unilaterally attacking Syria, saying that it recalls the decision 14 years earlier to attack Iraq based on equally questionable intelligence.
It is “vital to remember what history teaches us,” Llorenti said, citing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and holding up a photo of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell delivering false testimony to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
“Whereas an investigation would have allowed us to establish in an objective manner who is responsible for the [chemical] attacks [in Syria], this is an extreme, extreme violation of international law,” he said.
In addition to the doubts that have been raised at the United Nations, a number of the U.S.’s closest G7 allies have refused to implement additional sanctions against Syria without proof of Assad’s guilt.
As the BBC reported on Tuesday, “Sanctions against Russian and Syria will not be put in place until after an investigation into last week’s apparent chemical attack, British government sources said. Members of the G7 group of leading industrialized nations agreed to delay implementing sanctions until there was ‘hard and irrefutable evidence’ over the alleged chemical attack.”
Yet the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. outlets continue to report as undisputed fact that Assad’s government intentionally carried out this attack, and furthermore, that Moscow knew about it in advance.
The sorts of unequivocal retorts that the Times uses against journalists and bloggers for raising doubts about the official stories could, of course, just as easily be applied to the official stories themselves. When the Associated Press, for example, reported on Tuesday that “The United States has made a preliminary conclusion that Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week,” the Times could have responded with an emphatic all-caps retort such as “NO EVIDENCE.”
These retorts could also be used against the accusations of the Russian government engaging in a convoluted conspiracy to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances by hacking John Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails in order to expose the Democratic establishment’s undermining of Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign while simultaneously “elevating” Trump’s candidacy in the media through the so-called “pied piper” strategy, with the evil geniuses of the Kremlin somehow knowing beyond a doubt that this information would sway voters in favor of voting for the least popular major-party nominee in a generation.
Just as the New York Times has denounced theories surrounding the Syria chemical attack as lacking evidence, so too could the entire Russia-gate narrative be picked apart as lacking any foundation in fact. All that one needs to do is actually read the U.S. intelligence assessment that dubiously concluded that Russia “interfered” in the election without offering anything approaching hard proof of this claim – spending seven full pages instead bashing the Russian network RT for its perceived biases.
Going through the Director of National Intelligence report from last January, the reader is left with few details as to how the extraordinary conclusion was reached that Russia “hacked” the election, which Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and others have called an “act of war.”
The closest thing to evidence that could be found in the DNI report was regarding so-called Russian fingerprints on the hacking attacks of Podesta’s and the DNC’s emails, including malware associated with Russian hackers, as well as some Cyrillic letters and the phrase “Felix Edmundovich,” a reference to the founder of the Soviet Union’s secret police.
However, as revealed in subsequent WikiLeaks’ disclosures of the so-called Vault 7 documents, the CIA has developed numerous tools, including a library of foreign malware, that can be used to falsely implicate a foreign intelligence service in a cyber-attack.
These revelations called into question the entire basis for Washington’s case against Moscow for allegedly interfering in the U.S. election, but besides a few articles in the alternative press, including at Consortiumnews, the revelations received scant attention.
Apparently, the disclosures of CIA hacking activities – including new revelations of the CIA deploying malware in Samsung televisions as covert listening devices to spy on unwitting Americans – were not the sort of conspiracy theory considered worthy of sustained media coverage in the United States. In contrast to the months of wall-to-wall coverage of Russia-gate, the Vault 7 leaks were largely treated as a one-day story by the mainstream press.
The disparity in coverage speaks to a longstanding aversion of the mainstream media to what it considers illegitimate “new media” encroaching on its territory and peddling conspiracy theories and what is today called “fake news.” This hostility can be traced to the earliest days of the internet.
‘Conspiracy Freaks’
Twenty years ago, responding to a proliferation of alternative news sites on the World Wide Web – or what was called back then the “information superhighway” – Newsweek magazine ran a 1,800-word article entitled “Conspiracy Mania Feeds Our Growing National Paranoia.” In the piece, Newsweek denounced what it called “conspiracy freaks.”
Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.
Explaining a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories as evidence of “mass psychosis,” the article warned that the “ranks of the darkly deluded may be growing” as “conspiracism has become a kind of para-religion.”
It took particular aim at the African-American community, which it described as “a hotbed of this kind of suspicion and mistrust,” for believing that “the CIA had spread the crack epidemic by backing Nicaraguan drug dealers whose profits went to the contras.”
Newsweek also criticized Oliver Stone, director of “Platoon” and “JFK,” and Chris Carter, the creator of the popular “X-Files” television series, for promoting dangerous ideas that had the effect of eroding trust in the government. “On ‘The X-Files,’ everything from who killed JFK to why the Buffalo Bills lose so many Super Bowls is traceable to a single master plan,” Newsweek sneered.
Of course, Newsweek wasn’t alone in scoffing at popular conspiracy theories in the 1990s. In fact, it was conventional wisdom among “respectable” media that government leaders simply do not cross certain lines, and that certain stories, for example, regarding CIA involvement in the cocaine trade – no matter how much evidence backed them up – were off-limits. Those who failed to get on board with this groupthink, for example Gary Webb who wrote a widely disseminated series for the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA-crack cocaine connection, had their careers destroyed.
This trend continued into the 2000s, with millions of angry Americans still seething over the stolen election in 2000 told to “get over it,” and then called crazy for doubting the basis for George W. Bush’s case for invading Iraq in 2003.
A couple years later, those who raised questions about the government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina were accused by the Washington Post of “racial paranoia” and hawking “conspiracy theories,” such as the widespread belief that New Orleans’ levees may have been intentionally blown up to protect rich neighborhoods at the expense of poorer ones, or to drive low-income African Americans out of town.
But skip ahead a decade, and oddly, this same media that historically has been so hostile to conspiracy theories was seen eagerly pushing conspiracy theories surrounding Clinton’s loss to Trump. Headlines of “Russian election hacking” were freely used by the Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times, despite the fact that there is zero evidence that Russia manipulated any voting machines in any state to alter the outcome of the election, or even any substantial proof offered to support the claims that the Kremlin attempted to influence voters’ decisions by exposing private emails between DNC officials.
Russia, Russia, Russia!
Nevertheless, the Democrats and the media have coalesced around the conventional wisdom that the election was lost due to a Russian plot, which conveniently absolves the national Democratic Party of any responsibility for losing the election – for example by writing off the white working-class vote or nominating a deeply flawed establishment candidate during a decidedly anti-establishment year – while simultaneously calling into question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency.
A wintery scene in Moscow, near Red Square. (Photo by Robert Parry)
It also feeds into the rallying cry that the Democrats have embraced since losing the election, which has been variations of the theme “This is not normal,” expressed by the hashtag #NotNormal on social media. This theme laments the loss of a more “normal” time, presumably personified by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Typically, the slogan refers to Trump’s controversial dealings with Russia, his unconventional communication style and his extensively documented conflicts of interests, as well as perceived misogyny, nepotism, racism and incompetence in his administration.
Clearly, there is very little that can be considered “normal” about this administration, including the strange role of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who has moved into the White House while the First Lady, Melania Trump, lives in New York. The First Daughter reportedly was instrumental in convincing the President to carry out the unilateral attack on Syria.
“Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I’m sure she said: ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff,’” Ivanka’s brother Eric Trump told the Telegraph.
While that is certainly not normal, what the Democrats and the media are revealing through their #NotNormal campaign and the official conspiracy theories that they are promoting – while downplaying other theories or doubts about government claims – is how much they actually consider “normal.”
In today’s America, what is normal, according to the bipartisan consensus, are unilateral strikes against countries without evidence and in violation of international law. It is also apparently normal for televisions to spy on law-abiding citizens, and with drone strikes shooting up 432 percent under the Trump presidency so far, it is apparently quite normal to use flying robots to bomb suspected terrorists (and their eight-year old daughters) half-way around the world. Indefinite detention at the legal black hole of Guantanamo is also rather normal.
After all, these are all policies that have been in place for a decade and a half under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and hope seems to be dwindling for returning to a period of actual normalcy.
Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush. [This article first appeared at https://essentialopinion.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/notnormal-democrats-and-mass-medias-double-standards-on-conspiracy-theories/ ]
The New York Times is doing something else too. It is publishing editorials by the likes of Thomas Friedman
Step Number 1: create Hillary’s No-Fly zone in Syria.
Step Number 2: actively assist ISIS with modern anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles.
Step Number 3: actually make an alliance is ISIS!
This is what the Israel-First New York Times wants.
No link – the swine don’t get any “hits” on account of me. People who want to read the neocon rag can find their way to the NYT website themselves.
I wonder if Friedman played with toy soldiers when he was a kid? The little jerk still thinks he can play war games with the big boys.
mike k – good observation. I picture a warmonger like that playing toy soldiers indoors, all by himself, while all the other kids were out riding their bikes. Because had he played enough with the neighborhood kids, out in the bush, he would have learned all about wars, how they’re started, what happens when you lie about others, or bully them, and how they end. He seems to have missed that part.
I am reminded of years taking commuter trains and all those professional men reading the Times, Post, WSJ, looking oh so professional! Who does read that rag now? I guess professional journalists do have to in order to argue against their propaganda. The NYT reported 2 weeks ago that the great opera singer Renee Fleming was retiring in May, and when she was contacted, she said “That’s hogwash! The New York Times misleads people. I’m only 57.”
This article points out exactly how selective NYT reporters are in which “conspiracy” theory they do support, namely the Russian hacking fable. Do the American people have an ounce of brains to blindly believe this BS without any question? We did not hear when the “Assad attack” occurred that Khan Shaykuhn is a jihadist-held area. Moon of Alabama reports today that “In less than 48 hours we are to believe the DOD’s use of social media (that is what they’re still citing, Al-Qaeda social media users, in their substantiating dossier!) and videos (White Helmets “saving” the victims) proving that Assad chemed his own people in a town known as ground zero for jihadists, filmed by a jihadist doctor, Dr Shajul Islam, who was brought to trial on terror charges”. From my understanding, Dr. Shajul Islam had the charges dropped, he went on to take hostages, several of whom were beheaded including James Foley on video.
And then today, on RT a report that Trump told China’s president Xi Jinping about the Tomahawk missile attack, over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake”, he told Maria Bartiromeo of CNBC. Apparently President Xi had to ask for a second translation to understand the message.
And the photo of Gary Webb accompanying this article, many believe he was murdered for his reporting on CIA drug trafficking. A tragic case, there is a lot online about him.
Someone wrote online that US propaganda would make Joseph Goebbels proud.
Putin himself has called the DOD claims a kind of false flag – https://www.rt.com/news/384333-putin-idlib-attack-provocation/ – I liked this article a lot. Someone should take up the task of penning a letter to the CIA/DOD explaining why it is harmful and a betrayal of fundamental Consitutional principles to use deception to promote wars. It’s not self evident to them.
Withe the NYT asking for evidence SHOCK, and other articles I have read regarding members of Congress questioning the legality of Trumps strike in Syria, (It is completely ILLEGAL under international and US law), I am beginning to wonder if this will not be used in and attempt to impeach him!
The NYT, like CNN has destroyed what little credibility they ever had. Money controls everything they put out.
The New York Times is using all-caps? Surely the end is near.
It is always the same brazen lies and terrorism. In the 90s the same PsyOp was successfully conducted by NATO-backed terrorists in the war against Yugoslavia. Even though the UN debunked it, Clinton did not care and supported with weapons and airstrikes the “moderate” terrorists that were committing genocide against Christians. (Today the Balkans are a base for IS terrorists because of this.) The French PM Balladur even openly defended the false flag massacres: “Yes, but at least they have forced NATO to intervene”.
https://archive.is/x2i4i
Canadian (UN) soldier testimonies from the book “The Sharp End” by James D. Davis:
“Bosnians murdered their own people in well-staged attacks for PR reasons”
https://archive.is/KZr4B
Must-see report with former Clinton officials on US support for terrorists:
“Exclusive: U.S. Policy on Bosnia Arms Trafficking”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DcivO-xO1g
Most Americans have no idea that Bosnia was not a double-good Americans as Savior City on the Hill moment … a true American high point of the 20th Century … like “winning WWII” and saving Europe …. they do not have a clue and trying to interest people in that “ancient history” which has been the model for American interventionism for (let’s see 1992, 2017 =) 25 years … another part of the “Clinton Legacy” people really seriously need to reevaluate.
No person, group, idea, or institution is above criticism. There is nothing beyond critical analysis and the free expression of it’s results. Question EVERYTHING. This is the prime law of truth discovery. truth has nothing to hide and welcomes questioning.
The master thieves at the top have only one language: money. Everything they do is to acquire more $. (Why is there a $key$ on every typewriter?) Follow the money if you wish to understand what and how the big movers of armies and societies are operating. Money is power to control others, resources, institutions, belief systems, news, history, science….the list goes on. One is tempted to say money controls everything. But there are exceptions – truth, love, physical laws, the free heart and mind. Hard as the wealthy try they cannot truly control these things – but try they will by every kind of distraction, spin, lying, bribing, coercing. These deeper realities are the frustrating enemies of those obsessed with money and the power it gives them, and thus has the potential to overturn their dreams of total domination. How to do this is the yet to be perfected aikido of the relatively powerless, the sea of the disenfranchised many against the Goliath of the few.
The entire “Russia-gate” propaganda war is a coverup for “Israel-gate” which is the real story.
The real traitors are Hillary’s major campaign sponsors: the top 10 were all Jewish:
1. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna: $35 million
2. Donald Sussman, Paloma Partners: $21,100,000
3. Jay Robert Pritzker (Mary), Pritzker Group and Foundation: $12,600,000
4. Haim Saban and Cheryl Saban, Saban Capital Group: $10,000,000
5. George Soros (Schwartz): $9,525,000 (changed name from Schwartz)
6. S. Daniel Abraham, SDA Enterprises: $9,000,000
7. Fred Eychaner (Eichner), Newsweb Corporation: $8,005,400
8. James Simons (Shimon), Euclidean Capital: $7,000,000
9. Henry Laufer and Marsha Laufer, Renaissance Technologies: $5,500,000
10. Laure Woods (Wald), Laurel Foundation: $5 million
This is found at http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/033116/top-10-corporate-contributors-clinton-campaign.asp.
Apparently a large fraction of her other sponsors were Saudi Arabian. So Clinton is in FACT a foreign agent, and the Dems are covering up the story with garbage propaganda about Russia.
They can do this because nearly all mass media in the US are controlled directly and/or indirectly by Jews. This I researched in the 1980s for all major newspapers and some magazines, and can be confirmed by others.
One of the deep tragedies of our post-WWII world was to move from a vaguely anti-Jewish bias in mainstream culture to a radically pro-Jewish bias due to the Holocaust. Now, it is impossible in mainstream American life to criticize Israel or Jews in any way. Even if you are a Jew and you critique your own culture you suffer all kinds of consequences as Norm Finkelstein can attest. U.S. foreign policy, often to the chagrin of FP professionals is dominated by the interests of oligarchs many of whom are Jews. Why this is so is a fascinating discussion we can never have because anyone who talks about it is labelled as “anti-Semitic” (misnomer since Jews are not the only Semitic people) just as anyone talking about African-Americans in any kind of way that reflects negatively on AAs is a “racist.”
Yes, this is the tragedy of the response to fascism, which brings to power the fascist element among the victims, in this case the zionists among the Jews. I have never met an anti-Jewish person, but there are many opposed to the zionist fascism of Israel.
The only tenet of US zionism is obviously false, that somehow special privileges are owed to Jews due to their long-deceased co-ethnic survivors among the vast victim counts of WWII, a vacuous claim to special privileges. Do we give special privileges to Chinese and Russian Americans, on the grounds that they had twice and three times as many dead co-ethnics in WWII as did the Jews? Even unrelated people, long after all survivors have passed away? No, no one even talks of such a thing.
All of us have ancestors who once had empires in the Mideast, as all races migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe a million or so years and countless empires ago. A past empire is no excuse for imperialism in the present anyway, and the zionists have no special case there.
All of these wars, in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, etc., will be known in history as the Jewish Wars, because the sole motive is zionist greed, and the warmongers and their mass media are all Jewish or their paid opportunists. The false rationales used to fool the US will be exposed: the US did not promote democracy or get free oil by attacking its suppliers, it promoted the worst extremism, it retarded democracy and social justice, it killed millions and spent itself deeply into debt. All of this was done for no one but the Jews. Let us call these the Jewish Wars from now on.
Indeed the accusation of “anti-semitism” is pure propaganda; the zionists have attached their weaponized pseudo-psychology to the term “antisemitic” to make false accusations
I don’t quite agree. The Zionists among the Jews are not the main force of U.S. imperialism. A new Roman Empire has been the dream of Western man since the Empire collapsed in the fifth century. Somehow it is in the cultural DNA. You can see this in the public buildings built in a Roman style in Washington and elsewhere. It is this idea that, I believe, has captured the imagination of both Jewish and non-Jewish neoconservatives as well as “liberal” members of the War Party (most mainstream Democrats). Zionists benefit from the Empire but are not the cause of the Empire. Yes, many Jewish Zionists see a special role for Jews since they believe, they can be either the chief “deciders” of Imperial policy or at least one of the dominant factions. The world political arrangements are very complicated and thus display “emergent” properties. We are at a point when the system itself is “in charge” and that particular factions like the more rabid Zionists are as much swept along as controlling the Imperial system. To put it another way, I believe the real “Emperor” of the Empire is an emergent system of algorithms. I believe we could call this age “The Age of the Tyranny of Algorithm” that serves the interest of reducing everything to technique/algorithm including our bodies and our souls.
And more:
Most of the Candidates running for Senate seats, and congressional seats are selected or have to get approval from AIPAC. Presidential candidate hopefuls have to travel to Jerusalem and pray at the wall and get their blessing.
The Land of the Free has come to a sad state of affairs,
Our very close friends were Jewish, in the Unitarian fellowship we belonged to. At work during 1980’s and early 90’s, many of my friends/aquaintances were Jewish Emigres (Engineers) from Soviet Union/Russia. They were very interesting people, and we talked about Russian Literature, History, Music , and Culture. But I could never talk to them about Israel or Jews as a Group, who really control all levers of Power in U.S. today – especially Finance, Media, and Movie Studios. As a Progressive, I value the contribution of the Jews to World Civilization.
Holocaust was a tragic event. But it is the Germans who did it, not those unfortunate countries in Asia and Africa we are destroying. Using Holocaust for the purposes to destroy the sovereign rights of weak Nations and it’s people is a bad idea.
Freedom and sovereignty of a Person, and Freedom and Sovereignty of a Nation are the two sides of the same coin. One can not exist without the other.
Employing “Full Spectrum Dominance Doctrine” to impose ruthlessly NeoLiberal World Economic Order, under the tutelage of U.S. and Western European Countries over the weak Nations of the Earth is very dangerous. It means death of Cultures, and humane achievements of Human Civilization.
Paul Wolfowitz’s: We will create Reality. With the complete control of the Media, New reality has already been created in terms of perceptions and thinking of the population.
Some how or the other we must appeal to the collective conscience of Jewish Community. May be, the hard hearts of Neocons will melt. May be then we can reverse the downward spiral of Human Civilization. The way the events are heating up, the death of human civilization may not be too far
Good luck appealing to the conscience of a fascist group like the zionists. Other Jews will likely be no more able to persuade them than other Germans were able to persuade the Nazis. Once fascism has power it tolerates no dissent and listens to no one; its only language is superior force. There are fascists in every group, of course, and vigilance against them is the price of freedom of that group, but I know of no historical case where fascists were displaced without war against the group they had exploited to gain power. Eventually the zionists will be displaced, when the balance of power shifts around Israel and the US, and it will probably be wars against the US and Israel that displace them.
Anon -I understand it what you mean. Probability of its’ working – appeal to their conscience – is less than going to the Outer Galaxies. It seems to me that is what Israel – and their counterparts in U.S. are thinking about – the shift of Power in the future. They are determined to take care of Russia now. China is then isolated, and will be no problem. China is too big, and too strong to be tackled now. It appears that Trump is trying to charm China away. I sometimes wonder if China will fall for that, and agree to rule the World together – for now. But they are very shrewd people; they know their turn will be next.
From what I see the strategy of the Ruling Elite – Finance, Media, and Movie Moguls – is to erode China from inside. Chinese have one weakness, they do not have religion. This ruling elite, they are planning ahead for hundred years – if humanity survives that long.
It is well over $120 million. And we still call it a democracy – a model for the world
Good report.
Here is an article that compares the approval ratings of Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/04/vladimir-putins-unflagging-popularity.html
America’s presidents can only dream of Putin’s approval and trust ratings.
There is little doubt that Putin is popular in Russia and his popularity has been growing in the middle east and Asia as well. It is not hard to see why. Domestically his sound polices have translated to real improvements in quality of life for all socioeconomic groups, with dramatic drops in corruption and despite the international economic war headed by the US, the economy has weathered it well and actually returned to growth and much expanded exports. He had rebuilt the military with high tech defensive systems that has received high marks for the cost effectiveness.
By any measure he has been a good manager and symbol of confidence for the future, far different from the 80s and 90s. The stories in the west about being a thug or murderer just does not hold water with the people who know him best, the Russian people. Claims in the west that he is a dictator just reflect on the story tellers lack of understanding how the government works. IF the west succeeds in overthrowing him as has been a goal for a long time, the next most popular figures to take his place would by much less patient with the west, and much more hard line. The 20 percent who disapprove of Putin’s performance cite his being too easy on the west’s provocations as the main reason. He is very much in touch with the people, has a lot of contact with them so policies reflect popular will to a high degree, very different than the US where almost nothing is done that reflects the will of the people. Voters have almost no impact on policy in the US. In Russia, policies are much more aligned with common people than oligarchs or corporations.
Another factor for which is represented in the poll numbers. They believe him. Every word uttered in public or in non-secret meetings is published both in Russian and English on the government web site.
He is given very high marks for honesty and being straight with the people and other countries. If you want to know what Russia will do or how it wishes the results to turn out, just listen to him….apparently the Russia expert pundits on TV and WaPo never actually heard him or read his actual worlds or they would not be so consistently wrong. I have been observing his comments and actions for 16 years as an American living in Russia and can honestly say I have never heard him say something that turned out to be a lie. Bush, Obama and now Trump seem incapable of speaking without distortion or straight out lies.
Almost everyone feels more secure knowing he is on top of the situation, and will give careful well reasoned and calm reactions to events.
In the US, we have politicians who resort to weasel words or talking in circles to avoid being honest, and have no politicians who are trustworthy to do the right thing or to do the difficult task that might hurt big business and foreign donations to their accounts. After observing both countries up close, US politicians come out as much worse in the traits that make a trusted leader. The system is just more corrupted by big money, domestic or foreign influence with money has rendered the US political process to be useless, dangerous to the people and the world.
40 years ago the US was still mostly middle class and was a pretty darn good place to start a family or build a business, probably the best place in the world. Now it is one of the worst for those common desires. Russia has become a better place to start a business or raise a family. If one is wealthy there are a lot of advantage to the US but the 99% would all have a better quality of life, more security and better odds of economy mobility. A lot of that improvement can be traced back to Putin’s management effectiveness and policies.
True, except they are also strongly pro-war. They are demanding commitment to The Hillary Wars projected by the hawks and neocons who expected power from the election.
They are on both sides. They want war. They want to be in charge of it. They hate Trump, no matter what he does.
Yes, the Nat Parry article is well thought out and well written.
Consortium News is an essential counterpoint to the mass media “newspeak.”
Those who would like to petition the NYT to make CN’s Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
He may prefer to be independent, and there may be better polling websites, but pressure on the NYT to recognize the superior reporting of their opposition is a good thing. It is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition can demonstrate the concerns of a far larger number. I will repeat this post from time to time.