Exclusive: The scapegoating of Russia has taken on an air of bigotry and ugliness, based largely on Cold War-era stereotypes. In this article, Natylie Baldwin counters this intolerance with some of her positive impressions having traveled the country extensively.
By Natylie Baldwin
Over the last year and a half, Americans have been bombarded with the Gish Gallop claims of Russiagate. In that time, the most reckless comments have been made against the Russians in service of using that country as a scapegoat for problems in the United States that were coming to a head, which were the real reasons for Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016. It has even gotten to the point where irrational hatred against Russia is becoming normalized, with the usual organizations that like to warn of the pernicious consequences of bigotry silent.
The first time I realized how low things would likely get was when Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post, sent out the following tweet in March of 2017, squealing with delight at the thought of a new Cold War with the world’s other nuclear superpower: “So excited to be watching The Americans, throwback to a simpler time when everyone considered Russia the enemy. Even the president.”
Not only did Marcus’s comment imply that it was great for the U.S. to have an enemy, but it specifically implied that there was something particularly great about that enemy being Russia.
Since then, the public discourse has only gotten nastier. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – who notoriously perjured himself before Congress about warrantless spying on Americans – stated on Meet the Press last May that Russians were uniquely and “genetically” predisposed toward manipulative political activities. If Clapper or anyone else in the public eye had made such a statement about Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, Jews, Israelis, Chinese or just about any other group, there would have been some push-back about the prejudice that it reflected and how it didn’t correspond with enlightened liberal values. But Clapper’s comment passed with hardly a peep of protest.
More recently, John Sipher, a retired CIA station chief who reportedly spent years in Russia – although at what point in time is unclear – was interviewed in Jane Mayer’s recent New Yorker piece trying to spin the Steele Dossier as somehow legitimate. On March 6, Sipher took to Twitter with the following comment: “How can one not be a Russophobe? Russia soft power is political warfare. Hard power is invading neighbors, hiding the death of civilians with chemical weapons and threatening with doomsday nuclear weapons. And they kill the opposition at home. Name something positive.”
In fairness to Sipher, he did backpedal somewhat after being challenged; however, the fact that his unfiltered blabbering reveals such a deep antipathy toward Russians (“How can one not be a Russophobe?”) and an initial assumption that he could get away with saying it publicly is troubling.
Glenn Greenwald re-tweeted with a comment asking if Russians would soon acceptably be referred to as “rats and roaches.” Another person replied with: “Because they are rats and roaches. What’s the problem?”
This is just a small sampling of the anti-Russian comments and attitudes that pass, largely unremarked upon, in our media landscape.
There are, of course, the larger institutional influencers of culture doing their part to push anti-Russian bigotry in this already contentious atmosphere. Red Sparrow, both the book and the movie, detail the escapades of a female Russian spy. The story propagates the continued fetishization of Russian women based on the stereotype that they’re all hot and frisky. Furthermore, all those who work in Russian intelligence are evil and backwards rather than possibly being motivated by some kind of patriotism, while all the American intel agents are paragons of virtue and seem like they just stepped out of an ad for Nick at Nite’s How to be Swell.
The recent Academy Awards continued their politically motivated trend of awarding Oscars for best documentary to films on topics that just happen to coalesce nicely with Washington’s latest adversarial policy. Last year it was the White Helmets film to support the regime change meme in Syria. This year it’s Icarus about the doping scandal in Russia.
Similarly, Loveless, the new film by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (director of Leviathan) is being reviewed – as Catherine Brown points out – by writers from the mainstream American media in a predictably biased fashion. The film focuses on the disintegration of a married Moscow couple’s relationship and the complicated web of factors involved which have tragic ramifications for the couple’s 12-year old son.
American reviewers manage to paint the factors detailed in the film that are prevalent in most modern capitalist cities (e.g. being self-centered, materialistic and preoccupied with technological gadgets) as somehow uniquely Russian sins. They also ignore a prominent character in the film that defies their negativity about modern Russia – a character that represents altruism and the growth of civil society in the country.
A common theme in all this is that Russia is a bad country and Russians can’t help but be a bunch of good-for-nothings at best and dangerous deviants at worst. Indeed, according to media depictions, sometimes they manage to be both at the same time. But what they don’t manage to be is positive, constructive or even complicated. Sipher knows that the average American has been deluged with this anti-Russian prejudice, as reflected in his challenge at the end of his initial tweet about the largest country, geographically at least, in the world: Name something positive.
Countering the Negative
Most people know, at least in the abstract, that few individuals or groups are purely good or bad. Most are a complex combination of both. But many – including those who normally consider themselves to be open-minded liberals – have allowed their lizard brains to be triggered by the constant demonization of Russia in the hopes of taking down Trump whom they deem to be a disproportionate threat to everything they hold dear. So as a counterweight to all the negative constantly pumped out about Russia and to take Sipher up on his challenge, I will list some positive things about Russia and the contribution of the country and its people to the world.
Contemporary Russia’s Domestic Policy
Russia has one of the most educated populations in the world, universal health care for its people, a home ownership rate of 84%, strong gun control laws, no death penalty, 140 days of guaranteed maternity leave for women at 100% salary, and Moscow was just voted the 4th safest megacity in the world for women.
(Old) Arbat Street, Moscow; photo by Natylie Baldwin
And, despite claims that are often repeated in corporate media and even by many in the alternative press, Russia has independent and critical voices in the print media. Even on television, which is heavily influenced by the Kremlin, the Western position is often given airtime by either pro-Western Russian critics or Westerners themselves. During both of my visits to Russia (in 2015 and 2017) I interviewed a cross-section of Russians who all confirmed that they had access to Western media through both satellite and the internet. Furthermore, while violence against journalists is a concern, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, journalist murders have decreased significantly under Putin compared to the era of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
Am I saying that Russia is a utopia without any problems? No. Like most countries, it has plenty. Most Russians, including Putin, admit this. These problems include still significant poverty rates, comparatively low productivity and life expectancy, and corruption. But it is important to note the direction of trends, which are mostly positive since Putin took over. Under his leadership, poverty rates have been cut in half, life expectancy has increased by several years – especially among men who had suffered the worst mortality crisis since WWII, crime has dropped, pensions have increased and are paid regularly, the unemployment rate has been around 5% for years, great investments in infrastructure and agriculture have been seen along with development throughout the country.
And that development has not just been seen in Moscow and St. Petersburg – the latter city which, by the way, culturally and architecturally rivals those in France and Italy.
Church on Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg; photo by Natylie Baldwin
There are plenty of medium-sized cities throughout Russia that are becoming well-developed and culturally engaging. As one example, during my 2015 trip, I visited Krasnodar, located in the Black Sea region. The rate of civic construction in the city during 2014 surpassed even Moscow. As a consequence of the challenges of this rapid development, the public felt that decisions were not being made with sufficient feedback from residents, several of whom got together and created a group called the Public Council which eventually found ways to get city authorities to listen to their concerns.
The group had received significant media attention, networked with youth groups and infrastructure specialists, and received foreign experts in urban planning, public arts, transportation and city marketing. They have also organized periodic clean-up and renovation days, which are sponsored by local businesses that donate use of equipment. Currently, they are working on the creation of protected green zones, including one that connects all of the city’s hiking paths and another to connect its 16 lakes. They have received no opposition from the Russian government and have elicited the interest of other cities who want to model their approach to local issues.
While in Krasnodar I met a dozen or more professionals, from lawyers to engineers and doctors, who lived in the city and were part of another civic group engaged in charitable, conservation and youth programs. At one point, I took a walking tour of the city. In terms of architecture, I saw the old and the new side by side, including a large shopping center that was built around a large tower that had been there for generations that local residents saved from destruction by the mall planners, a square with controversial fountains, and a main thoroughfare that was closed to auto traffic, allowing pedestrians free reign. Couples – including some of mixed race, parents pushing baby strollers, and bicyclists – all wound their way through the streets as both Russian and American music was piped in and building walls on one side of the street for a stretch displayed delicate illustrations of Russian history.
Pedestrian Thoroughfare, Downtown Krasnodar; photo by Natylie Baldwin
Fifteen hundred miles away in the Ural mountain region, the city of Yekaterinburg – named after Catherine I – has the infamous distinction of being the place where Czar Nicholas II and his family were massacred by the Bolsheviks in 1918. On the site where the family’s bodies were exhumed, a magnificent Russian Orthodox Church has been erected and dedicated to the last royal family. Nearby is the Yeltsin Library, denoting the Russian Federation’s first President, although his legacy is not popular in Russia today.
The city is also home to a wide variety of precious metals and gems, along with a thriving economy. According to Sharon Tennison, an independent program coordinator who has traveled there numerous times over the past 15 years, hundreds of new apartment blocks can be seen on the outskirts of the city to accommodate the recent economic and population growth.
Yekaterinburg has a bustling cultural life that includes an opera house, a ballet, numerous theaters and museums, as well as dozens of libraries. In this respect, the city has continued its preoccupation with the classical arts as in Catherine’s period. At the same time, many modern Russian rock bands with a distinctive sound have formed there (known as Ural rock).
The city also has a low rate of violence and crime.
Yekaterinburg
As the New York Times and NPR like to point out and generalize out from, there are some rural and industrial areas in Russia that still need attention and investment. However, there are other towns in the countryside that are doing well.
Russia’s Contributions to the World
Russia has made many cultural and humanitarian contributions to the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, imperial Russia produced some of the most renowned figures in the world of arts. These include writers, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, whose works are often cited by American readers as among the greatest of all time; great composers include Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff.
The country also has a rich history of pre-Soviet philosophers who debated questions of politics, history, spirituality and meaning. One of the most famous is Vladimir Solovyev, classified as belonging to the Slavophile school but distinguished from his fellow Slavophiles by his openness to and integration of several lines of thought.
He acknowledged the intuitive as well as the rational. He was friends with Dostoyevsky but had disagreements over Orthodoxy since Solovyev was an advocate of ecumenism and healing the schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Furthermore, he is credited with influencing Nicolai Berdyaev, Rudolf Steiner and the Russian Symbolists, among others. He admired the Greek goddess Sophia who he characterized as the “merciful unifying feminine wisdom of God.” Solovyev was adept at integrating several spiritual strands, such as Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and Christian Gnosticism.
Solovyev was famous for his debates with Slavophile contemporary, Nicolai Fedorov. In these and other writings, questions about morality and technological progress, how much humans should control nature, and prioritizing which problems to invest man’s resources in solving were all given great consideration by Solovyev and are still relevant today, in both Russian society and the larger world.
It is interesting to note that, of all the early Slavophile philosophers, Putin chose Solovyev, the one who was the least strident and most open to the synthesis of differing values and viewpoints, as part of his assignment of books for Russia’s regional governors to read a few years back. Of course, that didn’t stop several western pundits – who showed they knew virtually nothing of Solovyev but perhaps some cherry-picked and out-of-context tidbits they’d found online – from distorting his writings, which naturally had to be horrible because Putin recommended them.
Moving on to the 20th century, it should not be forgotten that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of defeating the Nazis during WWII, losing 27 million people, and saw a third of their country destroyed in the process.
Front left of Monument to Siege of Leningrad, St. Petersburg; photo by Natylie Baldwin
In the 21st century, Russia provided significant aid to Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. They also provided safe transport to Yemeni-Americans out of that devastated country after the U.S. State Department effectively abandoned them in 2015. Russia provided medical aid to 60,000 people affected by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. Last September, Russia provided 35 tons of aid to earthquake victims in Mexico.
For someone who spent years in Russia as a professional expert working for the U.S. intelligence community, John Sipher is either not well-informed on his subject or is intentionally being disingenuous when it comes to the suggestion that Russia has done nothing positive, whether under Putin’s governance or before.
The Purpose of Scapegoating Russia
In early 2017, journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes published a book called Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. Largely based on interviews with insiders from Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, the book was an attempt to analyze why she lost. The insiders agreed that Clinton had trouble providing a plausible explanation to voters as to why she was running other than that she simply wanted to be president. They also noted her trouble connecting with average Americans and her failure to campaign in certain rust belt areas that Trump ultimately got support in. The book also states that within 24 hours of Clinton’s loss, members of her campaign had decided to home in on the excuse of “Russian interference” to explain away her humiliating defeat.
In addition to a bloc of Clinton’s supporters continuing to push this excuse for her loss and the ratings motive that channels like CNN and MSNBC have in continuing to milk the scandal, there is also Robert Mueller’s investigation which has dragged on for over a year.
The most notable thing about the Mueller investigation to anyone who takes a sober look at it is its constantly evolving purpose. First, the purpose of the investigation was to find any evidence to support the allegation that Russia had hacked into the DNC’s emails. When no substantial evidence could be found to support that allegation, the purpose evolved into collusion between Trump and Russia to steal the election on behalf of Trump.
When no substantial evidence could be found to support that allegation, the purpose evolved yet again into Russia influencing the election on behalf of Trump, possibly without his knowledge or participation. When no substantial evidence could be found to support that allegation and all that could be found was a paltry number of social media ad buys – many of which were purchased after the election or advocated conflicting positions or didn’t even have anything to do with the election, the purpose became “sowing discord.”
After all of this, we have an indictment against 13 private individuals who worked for a “troll farm” that had been exposed several years ago and is run by a caterer with no proven orchestration by Putin or the Kremlin. Mueller also knows that this indictment will never be legally tested because the 13 individuals will never be extradited and stand trial.
After all the shrieking and howling 24/7 for close to a year and a half that Trump was an illegitimate president installed by the Kremlin, this is the best Mueller and the mainstream Democrats can come up with. It’s pretty obvious by now that this investigation has simply been feeding into the media and Democratic Party circus mentioned above rather than uncovering anything substantive with which to impeach Trump.
The 2016 election showed that the Democrats faced a sleeping giant that had been awakened – one that the Democratic Party had helped to create for decades by enabling lower living standards, outsourcing of good-paying jobs, the proliferation of low-wage jobs, unaffordable education, lack of health care coverage, public health problems, and decrepit infrastructure.
Consequently, there was a demand for meaningful policies that would help average Americans, policies that polls show they want. But mainstream Democrats will not deliver on such policies, like $15/hour minimum wage, Medicare for All, and pulling out of our wars and investing the money saved in jobs and infrastructure. They won’t deliver on these things for the same reason that Republicans won’t deliver on them: because their donors don’t want them to. But they are not going to admit that to the American people who were going to keep demanding, so they needed a scapegoat and a diversion.
It’s a cheap trick that the political elite is using to appeal to the basest instincts of their fellow Americans while shoring up support for their most reckless tendencies in the area of foreign policy.
Natylie Baldwin is co-author of Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated, available from Tayen Lane Publishing. Since October of 2015, she has traveled to six cities in the Russian Federation and has written several articles based on her conversations and interviews with a cross-section of Russians. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various publications including Consortium News, The New York Journal of Books, The Common Line, and the Lakeshore. She is currently submitting her first novel to agents and finishing a second. She blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com.
Mike Enzi Joe Manchin III Tammy Baldwin Ron Johnson Orrin Hatch Ted Cruz John Cornyn Mike Rounds Sheldon Whitehouse Jack Reed Pat Toomey Jeff Merkley James Lankford Jim Inhofe Jeanne Shaheen Ben Sasse Deb Fischer Heidi Heitkamp John Hoeven Steve Daines Roger Wicker Amy Klobuchar Chris Van Hollen, Jr. Bill Cassidy Dick Durbin James Risch Joni Ernst Chuck Grassley David Perdue Johnny Isakson Marco Rubio Richard Blumenthal Cory Gardner John McCain III Tom Cotton John Boozman Dan Sullivan Lisa Murkowski John Barrasso – all want Trump to stop Nord 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe
Actually Gish had more credibility and made better arguments than the purveyors of the Russiagate hysteria fantasy. Russiagate is a new low which nadir is unlikely to be surpassed, unless nukes fly as a result of it.
The Gish Gallop (also known as proof by verbosity) is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it’s unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop.
The Gish Gallop is the fundamental methodology employed by fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses and Bellingcat disinformation sites. Higgins, lead propagandist for the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank, has delivered numerous Gish Gallop “investigation reports” on MH-17 and Syrian chemical incidents.
Higgins’ unsubstantiated claims and weak arguments are instantly broadcast by mainstream media collaborators: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC, et cetera ad propagandum.
For example, the Guardian’s ferociously Gish Galloping pretend “journalist” Luke Harding has flogged every available scrap of anti-Russian propaganda, from Higgins’ MH-17 work frauduct to Russia-gate hysteria to the Skripal incident.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/what-happens-when-a-russiagate-skeptic-debates-a-professional-russiagater-1e796f620a4a
The Gish Gallop (also known as proof by verbosity) is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it’s unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop.
The Gish Gallop is the fundamental methodology employed by fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses and Bellingcat disinformation sites. Higgins, lead propagandist for the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank, has delivered numerous Gish Gallop “investigation reports” on MH-17 and Syrian chemical incidents.
Higgins’ unsubstantiated claims and weak arguments are immediately and repetitively broadcast by all the usual mainstream media collaborators: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC, et cetera ad propagandum.
For example, the Guardian’s ferociously Gish Galloping pretend “journalist” Luke Harding has flogged every available scrap of anti-Russian propaganda, from Higgins’ MH-17 work frauduct to Russia-gate hysteria to the Skripal incident.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/what-happens-when-a-russiagate-skeptic-debates-a-professional-russiagater-1e796f620a4a
Scapegoating Russia is the terminal end of the United States as a beacon of hope and freedom in the world. Americans have dived into the pit and now feel comfortable as the devil has turned down the heat temporarily to lure more suckers in. And they are biting these fish with a hatred that is mind boggling. This leaves them no hope for the future. As for weapons of mass destruction the US remains #1 and Russia #2 but the US is still the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb on a civilian population even wiping out huge numbers of its own soldiers in Nagasaki. It is my contention that Whipping up this hatred and ramping up xenophobia is part and parcel of the increasing violence by police against minorities to a point that it it is close to an internal war even while making war all over the globe trying to preserve a semblance of what it has lost. Those efforts will come to naught and the US already dammed and cozying up to Satan is having disastrous effects as the moral compass is way off course and public officials push the hate line. They never learn and it would seem the American people have a great deal to learn as well. Where are the diplomats, clergy and sane people who are needed to fight against this pernicious venom that has been injected into our veins and is worse than the most powerful narcotic? The problem isn’t Russia it is us and we will have to solve this problem by ourselves. One thing for sure is that if thisproblem is not acknowledged and solved there is no hope in the future for America
Very good article on the slithering Mueller investigation.
Some “small” points:
1. Strong gun control laws in Russia aren’t a positive. Read up on the advantages of having an armed citizenry. The Russian mafia and Muslim terrorists in Russia no doubt has an unlimited supply of guns notwithstanding those strong gun controls anyway. Give it a rest.
2. Gun control laws aren’t a federal responsibility. In fact here’s a list of things that are none of the business of the U.S. federal government:
a. gun control,
b. education,
c. infrastructure,
d. minimum wage,
e health care, and
f. public health problems.
These are all left to the states to act on or not as they see fit. For gosh sakes, can’t you read the Constitution?
The Colonel’s so-called “list of things that are none of the business of the U.S. federal government” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution.
In fact, nothing in the Constitution prohibits appropriate Federal regulation of these areas.
The limited government ideology of the Tea Party is opposed what it considers government “micromanaging” and “intervention” into the private sector.
Most strict construction and limited federal government arguments focus on the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Although Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power “to regulate commerce…among the several states”, it does not contain a clause expressly authorizing Congress to prescribe a federal minimum wage, for example. Thus, opponents argue that because the Constitution does not expressly give Congress the power to set a minimum wage, that power is reserved to the States.
Over 75 years ago, the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected this same Tenth Amendment argument and upheld the constitutionality of the federal minimum wage. In United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1940), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/312/100 the Supreme Court found that, although the Constitution does not expressly give Congress authority to mandate a federal minimum wage, the Tenth Amendment does not deprive Congress of “authority to resort to all means for the exercise of a granted power which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the permitted end.” Id. at 124.
The Supreme Court found that based on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress could enact reasonable legislation in furtherance of its policy of excluding from interstate commerce any goods produced under substandard labor conditions. Thus, the Court held that the federal minimum wage is not unconstitutional.
The same Federal regulative authority applies to the rest of the Colonel’s list of “‘small’ points”.
The Colonel’s so-called “list of things that are none of the business of the U.S. federal government” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution.
In fact, nothing in the Constitution prohibits appropriate Federal regulation of these areas.
The limited government ideology of the Tea Party is opposed what it considers government “micromanaging” and “intervention” into the private sector.
Most strict construction and limited federal government arguments focus on the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Although Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power “to regulate commerce…among the several states”, it does not contain a clause expressly authorizing Congress to prescribe a federal minimum wage, for example. Thus, opponents argue that because the Constitution does not expressly give Congress the power to set a minimum wage, that power is reserved to the States.
Over 75 years ago, the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected this same Tenth Amendment argument and upheld the constitutionality of the federal minimum wage. In United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1940), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/312/100 the Supreme Court found that, although the Constitution does not expressly give Congress authority to mandate a federal minimum wage, the Tenth Amendment does not deprive Congress of “authority to resort to all means for the exercise of a granted power which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the permitted end.” Id. at 124.
The Supreme Court found that based on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress could enact reasonable legislation in furtherance of its policy of excluding from interstate commerce any goods produced under substandard labor conditions. Thus, the Court held that the federal minimum wage is not unconstitutional.
Federal regulative authority equally applies to the rest of the Colonel’s li’l list of “‘small’ points”, for gosh sakes.
The Colonel is wise to observe that the “U.S. dog is now obviously wagged by the Israeli tail” and it’s lying weasels everywhere.
http://igst.blogspot.com/2018/02/confused-and-dangerous-times.html
That was quite a post by the Colonel over there. He has obviously fingered quite the enemy to get himself up in the morning.
Back in 2009, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the hysteria that was on display with the ‘tea partiers’, and our airwaves.
And, their largest chapter in the U.S. at the time, it just happened to be about 5 miles from my house. So, I regularly attended their meetings to get an inside look. I also researched the Chair of the group, and he was a Minister from about 50 miles away. He would then make the commute every Tuesday night to our much more densely populated community. He was obviously Centrally picked and highly centrally trained in their rhetoric and propaganda of the day. And, in the way that he would deliver the message, it was extremely frightening. It was identical in culture to going to church on Sunday morning, but the scripture, and the homily, they were very powerfully targeted with the selected issues, and the enemies of the rich.
But maybe, the Colonel missed the fact that his employer(?) is the greatest example of a socialized killing machine, that exists on the planet today.
And maybe, the Colonel also missed the fact, that it took thousands of years of misery and human suffering, for the empire’s to even acknowledge that a Constitution was even necessary.
As always Abe, TY so much for your rational, reasoned, and as always, very well supported wisdom.
Read what – some NRA BS? Not knowing anything about Russian Gun Laws, and figuring Wiki would at least have an outline, I took a look.
Maybe a bit more generous than something I’d design, but then I’m not a Russian. I recently saw a blurb saying Putin claimed to have slept with his pump-action shotgun handy during the hard times of the Nineties. So firearms are controlled, not banned.
This can be boiled down to one thing: The accountants for the military-industrial complex have concluded that the cold war was much more profitable than the war on terror.
Bingo, now pick your prize. If the U.S. was really intent on spreading freedom and democracy then the U.S. would not use all of those expensive bombs to create the collateral damage that comes with these wars of choice. In fact the U.S. for the money it has spent over all of these years at war, could have fed, housed, and killed the world with kindness dozens of times over. All these wars accomplish is they enrich the MIC, and serve the agendas of the few who have corrupted our government with their quest for world hegemony. Oh, and we American taxpayers paid for all this all the while our own standard of living has deteriorated steadily. Joe
More info below.
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“Putin Tells Everyone Exactly Who Created ISIS”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQuceU3x2Ww
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“Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaeda, ISIS or other terrorist groups. If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or ISIS, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaeda, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government.[i]… Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, December 8, 2016,Press Release.
Tulsi Gabbard is the most reasonable and balanced voice in the Democrat party. She left Clinton to support Sanders and the woman with the long, vengeful claws won’t let her name appear on any list of Democrat potentials. Those of you who think Hillar does not retain FULL control of the party, Sanders included, simply do not understand her establishment power base.
Is this next accusation? https://www.rt.com/news/421589-us-preparing-syria-provocations-airstrikes/
“Blame It” On Putin
There is endless wars and devastation around the world
Western war criminals have their war banners unfurled
Millions dead and many millions uprooted
And the financial system is corrupted and looted
“Blame it” on Putin
The war criminals are free and spreading bloody terror
And their dirty propaganda says Putin is an “aggressor”
These evil plotters of death and destruction
Should be in jail for their abominable actions
But, “Blame it” on Putin.
The American election is won by Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton loses and gets politically dumped
The media is frenzied and foaming at their mouths
They are crying and lying, these corporate louts
They “Blame it” on Putin
Hollywood, too, is getting in on the act
The B.S. merchants are able to twist facts
In their fantasy world of channel changers
They do not approve of a political stranger
They “Blame it” on Putin
The spymasters and their grovelling politicians
All agree that “their democracy” is “lost in transmission”
Their comfortable and controlled system is now in danger
And these powerful parasites are filled with anger
They “Blame it” on Putin
One loose canon talks and babbles of “an act of war”
Could nuclear hell be started by a warmongering whore?
If the madmen of the establishment get their way
Could we all be liquidated in the nuclear fray?
“Blame it” on Putin
There is no doubt that the ruling class
Are all worried about saving their ass
Could there be huge changes and still more coming?
Is the sick and depraved society finally crumbling?
Hey, “Blame it” on Putin…
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/01/blame-it-on-putin.html
And today’s MSM headlines: Russia Can ‘Shut the Power Off’ on America – A US security alert contained a jarring warning: Russia has infiltrated the US energy grid and could wreak havoc if it chose to do so. – everyone in my family will actually believe this propaganda without batting an eye. So will millions of other brainwashed Americans unfortunately. They’ll never be able to think critically about this. They actually believe The Russian’s are coming! My sister sent me the entire print out of the 13 Russian indictment charges to prove Trump/Russian collusion. What a joke. If this wasn’t so funny, I’d cry.
“It is interesting to note that, of all the early Slavophile philosophers, Putin chose Solovyev, the one who was the least strident and most open to the synthesis of differing values and viewpoints, as part of his assignment of books for Russia’s regional governors to read a few years back.” Acknowledged. Is it true, as some assert (for example: https://youtu.be/WbblnbttVZY), that Alexander Dugin has Putin’s ear?
Hi Arby,
I don’t think Dugin has Putin’s ear He was fired from a teaching position in Moscow a couple of years ago, which I doubt would happen if he had Putin’s ear. I have heard this assertion before but I’ve seen no real evidence for it.
Great. Thanks. Dugin seems dangerous.
Are others being moderated here, as in ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’?
Yes. Somebody installed a politically correct “censor” program, and among other things it checks for anything containing or involving s e x. Another word which will cause “moderation” is n e g r o. Yesterday I had a post held up which I looked at multiple times, but never could find anything suspect. They really ought to take a second look at that word list. Even better would let us “self moderate”.
An attempted post with “problems” would pop up with what the censor program considers ‘issues’ highlighted. This would allow us to alter it.
EDIT: I recall that on the dreadful IndyStar forum their nanny program looked for “bad” words. Once I was dinged for posting on the raw deal the Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita got from MacArthur. (execution as a war criminal for thwarting our blow-hard in the Philippines) Turns out that the software saw THIS: Yamashita
To this day I refuse to purchase one of their newspapers.
Thanks for that. It’s too bad. It’s nasty and a real conversation killer and not friendly. Censorship is a big deal these days, so you’d think progressive sites would make every effort to be friendly and welcoming. At least now I feel less personally attacked.
Fantastic article Natylie. And it’s important to list the positives about Russia.
Interestingly, I visited The Saker Of The Vineyard site the other day, because I recalled a progressive (now I wonder) recommending it and I realized that I didn’t have it bookmarked. I took a few minutes to read his rules for commenting in ‘his living room on the internet’. On and on he goes (which in itself is offputting). But he’s got a real hate-on for homosexuals, to the point where he has no problem (in his words) discriminating against them. Fair enough. I’ll leave him to his own devices, but no one can tell me he’s a progressive, unless we have re-defined ‘progressive’ to exclude ‘pro human rights’. I’m not gay and I have my view of homosexuality, which I expect would not please anyone, but I absolutely would not discriminate against them. I am pro human rights and cannot do so.
True, people, including the Saker, are imperfect and complex. Even so, there are lines. As with Glenn Greenwald and all writers for Naz–enabler Pierre Omidyar’s First Look/ The Intercept. I have zero use for anyone who chooses to stay with that guy. But, To each his (or…) own. That’s ‘not’ easy for me. I think Glenn’s writing is stellar. I’ve read his book “No Place To Hide” and it’s great. Although I have to say that I do take Sibel Edmond’s point about Glenn allowing Omidyar to curate the Snowden files. Does Glenn rationalize his acquiescence in that by telling himself that he agrees with Omidyar about things like the files Snowden passed on?
In regard to the Saker, I meant to add that he refers to a Moscow anti-homosexual law. The buck stops with Putin, if that law exists. Whether or not he established it, it’s up to him to find it unacceptable and end it.
This Russiagate nonsense & it’s pathetic, neverending campaign of gaslighting, & brainwashing of the American people & citizenry of the World is a utter disgrace? Hillary Clinton & the Democratic Party are a despicable bunch of COWARDS who refuse to take the blame for their dismal Campaign & their terrible choice for a Presidential Candidate in crooked Hillary? You LOST BIGTIME & fairly & squarely to Candidate Trump! Russia is not to blame for your shocking defeat, YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR IT? End of story? Move on or move out of Politics!
Yes, the Democrats have turned traitor on their base. Everyday people suffer as the country slides slowly toward being the only advanced economy Third World nation. Look at how we attack this ongoing fraud: The Contract For American Renewal puts in writing what 62%-80% of the American public wants. If a candidate won’t sign it, he or she doesn’t deserve our vote. It takes the guesswork out of voting, setting a new high standard of electoral integrity, honesty, transparency … http://cfar2018.com/the-cfar/.
More info at link below.
——————————————————————-
Russian diplomat insists Moscow has never possessed novichok nerve agent
A Russian ambassador tells Sky News the first time he heard of the nerve agent was when Theresa May mentioned it in Parliament.
By Mark Stone, Europe Correspondent in The Hague
22:23, UK,Friday 16 March 2018
https://news.sky.com/story/russian-diplomat-insists-moscow-has-never-possessed-novichok-nerve-agent-11292792
Watch this at link below.
——————————————————
#ICYMI: Whatever goes wrong, you can ALWAYS blame a Russian! (VIDEO)
Published time: 16 Mar, 2018 17:15Edited time: 16 Mar, 2018 17:31
https://www.rt.com/shows/icymi-with-polly-boiko/421536-russian-election-vote-military/
I am telling you, Vladimir Putin learned his lesson in the GDR 1987-1989, that is the former East Germany Russia will not be humiliated again. I do not understand you here on CN, I get it, we do not like our own government, in fact we hate our government. But , please, all you CN excusers, Vladimir Putin is not to be taken lightly. I am not concerned about world dominance, that is silly, but I an concerned about this country. We totally destroyed Iran in 1953, why should not someone else do the same to us?
Tina, the country that poses the greatest threat to America is America itself. No one else has the potential to destroy us without being destroyed in turn themselves. No other country, except maybe some fanatical religious types, want to do that, but they don’t have the means. Moreover, we’ve been gratuitously beating them bloody and calling it defending ourselves. No, not even Iran or North Korea want to harm the USA. They simply want to be left alone, as does Russia, which is one of the few places in the world that can actually pose a deterrent to America’s belligerence.
One way to say it tina, is ‘2 wrongs dont make it right’, as this cliche would seem to fit. You could ask who committed the first wrong, and that question is always hard to answer. I also see the U.S. & U.K. playing the part of the bully, as Russia is the 90 lb weakling who through their working out a lot grew up to stare the bully down. This Russian starring contest is driving the Bully’s crazy.
It maybe hard for you tina to accept this defending Russia, since you were young and may not have great memories of the Russian who prevailed over E Germany at that time, but this time it’s different. This time the Russians aren’t the aggressors. I know the U.S. establishment is claiming that, but Crimeans voted in a large bloc to join the Russian Federation, and Syria invited the Russians in to their country to chase out the American armed jihadist.
It breaks my heart as well tina, that my country the U.S. has been beating up on small nations, and poking the bear with a big poker, but none the less that’s the way it is. In fact my criticism is based on my love of my country the United States of America. Joe
Here is an article tina written by a conservative American one time assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, a Russian scholar, a person who once was the editor of the Wall Street Journal, and on and on this man’s credentials speak of his many accomplishments. Read here how Paul Craig Roberts defines this madness.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/03/15/lies-can-lead-war/
You might also put the name Stephen F Cohen in a search engine, as Professor Cohen gives sound advice.
Hope this helps to explain our very critical opinions of how the U.S. & U.K. are handling such affairs as what you are seeing with how they are ganging up on Russia, and blaming Putin from everything to his interfering in our elections to his ordering the killing of former Russian double agents…. this is beyond poking the Bear, this is like slapping the Bear upside the head with a metal 2×4. I hope this helps you tina. Joe
Tina,
Live and let live. Never do onto others …
It is a question of trust and respect, of trusting your sane gut feeling of empathy. Trusting that others wish you well, that they too are humans.
Travelling in Western Russia, Poland (and Germany), you are reminded of what the second war brought. Almost everything built before that was levelled with the ground. The USSR lost twenty million people. The fear of war and instinct to be able to defend their country are easy to understand.
With perestroika and the fall of the USSR, there was tremendous hope in a peaceful and flourishing future together with western Europe and the US. It was naive, as the present encirclement and aggression prove, and this certainly explains a lot of the resentment and turn inwards of today. Broken trust is not easily regained.
Living in peace with others I think always has the aspect of vulnerability. Yes, the other (person or nation) can harm you. We need to care for one another to see that it happens as little as possible. If we are not vulnerable, the other is enslaved or dead. We don’t want that, for many reasons: they have a lot to contribute, and we might be in their shoes. So, being vulnerable is a good sign. I am not saying we should not be able to defend ourselves. But we should look for peace.
About Russian alleged aggression towards America, and vice versa, I would say the picture is made quite clear on CN. There exist problems with Russia and Putin, of course, but my belief is a cooperative approach would help much better than the present aggression. Russian behaviour has been mostly a reaction to aggression, as I can see it, at least.
Also, probably, Putin was promoted by the power structures of Russia to succeed president Yeltsin and put things in the order they saw lacking. If he goes, they probably can put forward other candidates.
I think there must be some drug that someone or some entity is administering to most of the world’s population through the water supply, through the food chain or through the atmosphere itself (or maybe through subliminal messaging via the mass media) that profoundly affects the cognitive and analytical abilities of human beings. They have not only lost most of their abilities to perceive reality, analyse facts, reason clearly and communicate effectively amongst themselves, but they have even come to reject in entirety a whole set of values, beliefs, customs and laws they embraced less than a generation ago in favor of a dysfunctional, aggressive and clearly dangerous constellation of lock-step group think. This pathology has infected most everyone from the top to the bottom of the socio-economic pecking order and very few have been left immune to the effect, most notably President Putin, Jeremy Corbyn and a meagre cadre of courageous journalists, scholars and consumers of the so-called alternative news who are perhaps too few and too thoroughly disenfranchised to form any critical mass of resistance to this take-over. For an illustrative example of this effect, see how (in the attached clip) the still rational and cautious Jeremy Corbyn is pilloried in the House of Commons by the mass of his colleagues who used to stand for reason, logic, common sense, caution, fair play and the rule of law but have now cast that all aside to better facilitate mob rule, a lynching of the Russian leadership and a dismissal of any rights of the Russian nation under international law. Just WHAT has gotten into all these people? Their thinking is clearly aberrant and massively dysfunctional, downright threatening to all life on the planet, and yet they fail to see this, rather self-righteously defending what is wrong and aggressively attacking what is right and proper… or what used to be so considered until this disease had spread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDZG1oqO_rM
(Actually rather amazed that You Tube has not yet deleted this footage under the rubric of “fake news.”)
Fooey! I see they have “moderated” this since I posted it. It’s basically just a tape of Corbyn’s speech before the House and the jeering response he got from fellow members just for wanting to take the careful logical approach of actually collecting evidence before condemning Russia and precipitating a crisis, perhaps causing a war.
Article of interest at link below.
—————————————————–
EDITORIAL | 16.03.2018 | Editorial
Britain’s Insane Cold War Dramatics
Britain has now been joined by the United States, France and Germany in blaming Russia for an alleged murder plot on British soil. No verifiable evidence has been provided by the British authorities to support their shrill claim of Russian violation.
It is as insane as it is pathetic, as it is perfidious. A modern-day parody of William Shakespeare’s admonition “thou protest too much”.
In the unprecedented joint statement issued Thursday by the four NATO powers, it was stated, “The United Kingdom thoroughly briefed [sic] its allies that it was highly likely Russia was responsible for the attack”.
The “attack” refers to an apparent poisoning assault on a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal (66), and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, in the English town of Salisbury on March 4. How fitting a medieval town should feature in a medieval-like inquisition….
[read more at link below]
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/03/16/britain-insane-cold-war-dramatics.html
“Britain’s Insane Cold War Dramatics”
I suspect “insane” is the key word in all of this. The only way the British behavior makes a speck of sense is if it is part of a larger plan – such as creating a general war – where this imbecility will be such a small part it is quickly forgotten.
So what might “they” plan as the next step? A general NATO attack on Syria to follow the pattern of Libya? Giving Ukraine the “go” signal to try to retake the eastern provinces? With NATO assistance? Staging some kind of horror in the US and blaming Putin for it?
Things are getting a bit scary.
I would be more open minded. During the advocacy of Iraq War II, assorted reasons for the war were proposed, like planting democracy that would awe the region leading to the collapse of our opponents (why KSA would be spared was not explained), unleashing huge oil production thus securing cheap oil and prosperity, eliminating the last reason for hostility to Israel among the Arabs etc. etc. None of that came to pass, and what the warmonger truly believed is hard to tell. The frontline flacks like Crystol are probably stupid enough to actually believe what they say, but they are only ornaments and tools of the ruling class.
What they surely believed, and what actually came to pass if to smaller extend than projected is the electoral success of GOP.
The prospects of the Tories are rather tepid of late, and it seems impossible for them to deliver Brexit living up to their promises, and quite possible that they will suffer a split as a result. Corbyn’s Labour looms like “current and present danger”, the guy who detest everything that is good and pure, like Trident system, weapon sales to the Gulfies (and Israel?) not to mention a haircut that he may arrange for the most productive members of UK society. The attempted murder of Skripals seems like a gift from Heavens to the Tories, and a truly pius person does not overtask the Almighty — if we wish a miracle we need hard work.
Thanks for this article, Natylie, would love to go to Russia but money and language are stumbling blocks. Sad how ignorant so many Americans are.
I actually don’t think as many Americans are interested in, or are believing this propaganda effort by the deep state via their “presstitutes” (Paul Craig Roberts’ term for MSM) but the people have no control over the gangsters ruling. The overlords and their lackeys continue ginning up the “enemy” nonetheless. They do want war. The “Lords of Capital” (term from Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report) know the US Is on shaky ground with the massive debt and deficit, hence the gin-up for war to fool the Western people. The collapse may occur before their propaganda preparations can be brought to fruition. Perhaps Nature will send a blow, i’d like to think.
The era of the American Empire is ending, and the overlords won’t give up easily. These are not pleasant times for those of us who see through this b.s. (I listen to Rachmaninoff’s music to calm me in these troubled times, grateful to Youtube for that.)
One of the better Russian language study books I’ve found is “Russian: A Self-Teaching Guide”
by Kathryn Szczepanska. It covers almost all the basics clearly and leaves out the extraneous
info which can make studying a foreign language (especially an inflected one like Russian) so
confusing. The one thing it doesn’t do is teach you how to write the language, it only introduces
the print alphabet. That is a good start and it’s well done in this book, but most Russians write
in cursive, which is much easier and actually fun. So you would need a supplementary workbook
for that. I would encourage you to at least learn the Cyrillic alphabet, it’s not hard and then you
can decipher words, even if you don’t know what they mean. (You’ll be surprised that there are
quite a few very similar words which just look different when written in Cyrillic).
Have you discovered Rachmaninoff’s vocal works ? His famous Vocalize, and the All Night Vespers ?
My introduction to Russian sacred music was by singing his version of Bogoroditse Devo (Rejoice
O Virgin), which is somewhat equivalent to our Ave Maria. But different music and sung in Old Church
Slavonic. It’s really lovely, there is something so compelling about Russian acapella 4-part harmony.
(There are other compositions which use the same words but different music, like different Ave Marias).
You can find a good recording of Rachmaninoff’s version by googling Bogoroditse Devo Australian Singers.
Probably my favorite Russian choral piece is Salvation is Created, there is a good youtube recording
performed by the Yale Chorus, they do a really excellent job. The text means, in translation : “Salvation is
Created in the Midst of the Earth, O God. Alleluia.” I love the concept that salvation is an ongoing activity,
co-created between God and Man.
do a re
Not sure how ‘do a re’ snuck in at the end ! But it is musical.
Here is a link to “Spaceniye Sodelal” (Salvation is Created)
by Pavel Tchesnikov :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqQc8YHB2og
Such glorious singing ! I wish every Russia-basher could hear this.
I’ll concede that was perfectly beautiful. But since you had already said it was Russian, I knew the composition was either a very old or a very new one. Turns out 1912 was the date. Did you by any chance listen to the piece youtube followed it with?
Music doesn’t necessarily have to be old to be good. Another such instance:
“Star Trek: The inner Light Suite
This one is all of six minutes long. (Knowing the backstory of the tv episode made this one even more touching for me.)
h**ps://duckduckgo.com/?q=star+trek+inner+light+suite&t=hf&atb=v77-6_b&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=bGXnkFrhpR8
Quoting from the old Tom T. Hall song, I love music when it’s good. I’m no longer too surprised when I find excellence in unexpected places.
Zachary-
Thanks for this link. Great piece! I’m a big TNG fan too.
Unfortunately our “free press” has seen fit to shift some of their energy away from Islamophobia to Russia-gate and the concomitant racism that is rearing its ugly head. It used to be the jews who were supposedly genetically predisposed to all those bad things. I think they shifted to Russia from the Arabs not long after Putin came back to restore order after the disintegration of the Soviet state and the looting of state assets by foreigners who aligned with some Russian citizens with knowledge and access to Soviet secrets. That shopping spree led to the “Oligarchs”, the Russians who ended up owning Russia after Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Here’s a little information that hasn’t been discussed a lot but that I believe has as much power as any variable in this calculus.
A number of American businessmen, one name Browder that stands out, saw an opportunity when the Soviet Union decided to leave the tanks in the barn and let go of Eastern Europe. The Soviet State owned everything. Steel mills, oil wells and refineries, railroads, you name it, the government owned it in their system. When that system failed, who would ownership devolve to? The highest bidder is the answer they came up with. And where your money came from didn’t matter, as long as it was distributed to the correct bureaucrat that was necessary because of their native knowledge. That group was mostly the best educated and highly placed state employees in Russia, the intelligentsia, as it were, who became known as the Oligarchs because of their small numbers and ownership of a former super-power. Pretty heady stuff if you think about it. A going out of business sale by the largest state on Earth.
The result was an economic collapse and massive poverty not seen since the days of the Czars. Living standards were reduced to almost subsistence for the majority. Real hunger, no health care, a real societal disintegration not usually seen outside of war. Putin saw that and came back to restore living standards among other things, and part of the solution was to take back the assets that had been more or less stolen because of the absurdly low prices paid for these enormous state assets. Which he did more or less successfully while restoring living standards back to close to what they had been before the rigged auction. He did not make friends with the Oligarchs who he took back the state assets from. Nor their American sponsors who were looking to make a quick buck at the expense of the Russian citizens who all owned a part in their system. And there is the little item of information that isn’t discussed a lot because true blue America can’t be seen favoring any slimy business man or woman who got caught in the act. Browder and his fellow travelers would be in that group.
Because Putin did it, he’s public enemy number one to these vulture capitalists. So what do they do to recover their investments and ownership of Russia? Why turn to Congress, of course. And to get this done they needed an enemy. Putin filled the bill. And I believe trump was somehow aware of or even involved in all of this high finance transfer of wealth. He knew where the bodies were buried. And then he won an election he wasn’t supposed to. And then Russia-gate was born. Maybe even before the ballots were all counted.
And here we are today. Drawing swords with a foreign country who can initiate nuclear winter. And it all started with Bill Browder and his contemporaries who couldn’t resist a good deal, even if it involved theft and destroying the lives of millions of innocent Russians. And guess who is paying the bill for all of this? Why the American tax payer of course. So that the small number of American vulture capitalists who helped buy a super-power for pennies on the dollar can recover the enormous profits they anticipated making before Putin put the kabosh to it. The Oligarchs should go down in history as the cause of the worst international climate since the end of WWII. Because their greed started all of this Russia is a bad guy stuff. Just to make a lousy buck. There’s something we can be proud to send our sons and daughters off to fight for.
“[according to Clapper, former director of National Intelligence] Russians were uniquely and “genetically” predisposed toward manipulative political activities.
This makes me doubt if Mr. Clapper has ANY background in genetics and evolution. Genetic traits either appear at random, and then they have a scant chance to affect a large population like Russians, or give some benefit over a number of generations.* What was special about conditions in Russia, as opposed to Scandinavia, British Islands etc. that would make talent for manipulative political activities more beneficial?
*Two examples: sedentary people are genetically predisposed to digest large amounts of starchy foods, while arctic nomads lack that predisposition and but are much better at digesting animal fat. A gene that gives predisposition of sickle cell anemia allows to survive malaria infection.
Natylie is right. #1 The DNC stole the primary from Sanders and Clinton illegally funneled $ to the DNC (see Clinton emails) #2 The RNC used voter suppression to rig key areas such as Michigan (see Greg Palast). Not sure the RNC thought it would help t-rump or not. #3 There was NO hack ( see Bill Binney and he explains why no hack and in fact it could have only been a download on the east coast (Most likely Rich in MY opinion) #4 The Clinton Foundation supplied the dossier and paid for it; it is then leaked to the FBI/CIA who leak it to the press after political pressure. This enables the FBI to get a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign which may have fell for the trap to find “dirt” in Clinton (seems that it would not be necessary but…) #5 The Russians must be the dumbest assassins to ever live: they only use poisons which can be traced back to them (lol) They were the first to space but just stupid…
I find it beyond comprehension that the Russians would be so stupid as to attempt killing Sergey Skripal and his daughter with such a rare poison. This oversight by the Russians would be like a burglar robbing your home, and then on the way out the burglar leaves you thrir calling card. This kind of lapse of judgement would put Russia on the highly suspect list, as Novichok was only known to be a Russian product of death. Why for crying out loud a bullet would have done the job, and if the assassin used an unregistered gun, then who would know any better? Joe
Could you explain to me the exact meaning of the title. I’m French and translating this article.
Thank you for your help.
It’s about how the U.S. & the U.K. are singling out Russians and blaming everything that’s bad on them. Joe
thank you
danielle
More info at link below.
————————————————————
March 16, 2018
Do “Our Leaders” Kill and Attack People “Nicely”?
…
People and governments are rightly upset at the recent horrific attack in Salisbury, England by a “nerve agent.” The use of a chemical weapon on Russian “Double Agent” Sergei Skripal and his daughter has caused outrage around the world, as should any “attempted murder.” Meanwhile a number of western countries are blaming Russia….
[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2018/03/do-our-leaders-kill-and-attack-people.html
Worth the viewing. I suspect that doing it one at a time is harder for the public to swallow than the abstraction of hundreds at a time. The psychological impact of a man & his daughter seems more real, more within our grasp than what we wreak by killing masses and destroying whole cities. So the media sits back and declares this a personal disgrace – anyway, what’s left of the “media” does.
Anonymot — “Since her handlers have thought of no better excuse for their failure to deliver, they are happy to follow the militaristic anti-Russia line while they try to gain control over Trump.”
I’m in agreement with all you’ve said except the above line; to wit: it was Hillary and Victoria Nuland with the NED, IRI (John McCain) and George Soros assembledge working as one to overthrow the Pro-Russian Ukrainian government. The Crimean fight for independence was NOT Putin inspired but based on the fundamental solidarity of Ethnic Russians who’d lived and worked in Ukraine for decades. —
Their allegiance, since WW2 was to Russia! – Not to an American Funded Political Parasite/Sycophant who’d initiate civil war inside of a historical homage to Russia.
Whom do you imagine supplied weapons to the Newly Installed Ukrainian “government”???
(same as) Who supplied the weapons for the overthrow of Libya’s Qadhafi? – Syria’s Assad or the Human Beings suffering/Dying in Yemen??? — Who supplied weapons to our “enemy” Al Qaeda, or to the “Sunni Awakening” which morphed into ISIS???
The US thrives on a WAR ECONOMY. IT IS THE LIFE BLOOD OF OUR WORLD DOMINANCE.
Hillary walked in line with The New American Century Doctrine as structured by PNAC and initiated by the George W. Bush administration (which was) originally established by George HW Bush’s 1990/91 Declaration of A New World Order.
Look at the Picture/Timeline :
1989 Berlin Wall Falls ( Don’t forget Gorbishov )
1991 Saddam “Invades” Kuwait (w/GHW’s approval)
1996Clinton Balkanizes Yugoslavia
1998 UN Weapons Inspectors destroy Iraq Munitions
2000 – Bush the 2nd steals presidential election
2001 – 9/11 ( Arabs ‘theoretically’ collapse WTT )
2003 – Bush 2 initiates Operation Iraq Liberation (OIL)
2006/7 U.S. creates “Sunni Uprising”
2008-10 U.S see’s birth of ISIS / UPROAR in the Middle East
A WELL PLANNED DECEPTION IS SUCCESSFULLY ACHIEVED
A disruption Made/Funded by
The USA in the entire Middle East
Creating millions upon millions
of refugees w/ thousands drowning,
thousands displaced and/or raped
by militant squads engulfed by chaos
into Free Fall from the normalcy
of the life(living) they’ve known
for Thousands of years, as a people.
Thank You, American Military Industrial Complex and Presidents
for all the horror and death and destruction you’ve given us as proof
of your power as the world’s Last Empire, The False Prophet /The Beast.
(there could not be an anymore false profit/schemer (devil) than the scheming liar, Donald Trump)
In your 2nd § i would suggest that it was Nuland who ran Clinton not vice versa. Otherwise, yes.
Initially, I thought the whole hate bare-chested Putin, therefore all of Russia was Hillary’s aversion to men. Slowly, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think that she really knows or believes what she spouts. She’s not dumb, she has enough other defects to not need that label. Brief her and she can surely preach a sermon on any subject.
Hillary only has 2 areas of expertise and they come from her background and her person: women’s rights and the LGBT community. I know of nothing that really gives her deep knowledge on any other subject, with the possibility of how to accumulate wealth.
So what’s the source for her endless and ongoing hate Russia campaign? A theory:
In 2006 that mindset, call it Deep State or whatever, chose two fully controlable minority Democrats, a black and a woman. They would inspire the Democrats with their new liberal candidate, whichever won. The promise to both was that the loser at the DNC Convention would be the follow-on candidate after the sure winner had his or her run.
Loser Hillary, was put into a role, Secretary of State, where she would maintain her exposure and seemingly gain international experience for when it was her turn to be “President”. She neither knew anything about nor cared about the hate Russia campaign she launched for her handlers. She was busy raking in money for her Foundation and traveling the much vaunted million miles, but not for diplomacy, for her future campaign warm up. There were probably more photos than miles. She had no idea why she lit the fires of the Middle East. It was not her doing. It was her handlers passing on the thoughts and conclusion of the mindset.
She scuttled Sanders, but whoa! What’s this Trump? He’s more male pig than Putin and stupid to boot. So when those who put her into this embarrassing position of losing to Trump, what better than to repeat the excuse that Putin did it? She and her followers were and still are, hysterical, simply psychotic with mindless anger and frustration at the failure of her handlers to deliver the presidency. Since her handlers have thought of no better excuse for their failure to deliver, they are happy to follow the militaristic anti-Russia line while they try to gain control over Trump.
I am well aware that this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but America’s greatest experts in conspiracies are the handlers of the Clintons: the CIA/FBI/NSA and the various intelligence cum military plotters. They invariably lose, but they are constantly conspiring and a new war, cold or hot, is right up their alley.
Anonymote don’t feel to self conscious about you having a conspiracy theory, because in this day and age of fake news everything is a conspiracy theory.
Apparently Bill and Hillary’s hate for Russia wasn’t always as deep as it appears today. There was a time when the Clinton’s did pretty well by the Russians, as this was a time before the Russians were treated like dirt by the Clinton’s. I’m referring to the Uranium One scandal, and how the Clintons reportedly raked in a half million dollars for a 45 minute speech from Bill, and their Global Initiative pulled in another 145 million on top of Bill’s expensive speech.
Now as I’m watching Theresa May, and Trump, point fingers in the direction of Russia, more so Putin, I get the feeling that this hate Russia campaign is coming from orders above these politicos station in the hierarchy of the order they serve, or they bow too.
Of course my opinion is like your opinion, as both opinions are our very own, so who’s going to take us serious, if we at least don’t pay respect to what each other think, then who will? Like I said we news junkies are traveling on autopilot with the bulk of our news being manufactured for our naive consumption.
Keep thinking Anonymot, because even if one day you find it necessary to stay quiet you will at least have your brain, and your thoughts are yours forever. Thanks for sharing what’s on your mind. Joe
Although I can hardly be considered well informed, I found myself wondering why so many I hear of various public radio stations continue to speak with great authority about the evils of Russia, while not a word for years about any of the evils of the US. It will be very sad if all of this brings about a weaponized confrontation between our countries. I can only hope that sanity will prevail. Where the source of sanity might be is the problem!
Public radio isn’t so public anymore. They do commercials now and I guess the concomitant corruption that comes with that money has reared its head. So they are now in on the “Russians are coming” campaign as opposed to being a voice of reason like they used to be. A dissenting voice is sometimes needed for us to realize what we don’t know and that we never know everything. Losing PBS and PBR takes away that dissenting voice which allows us to at least consider our limitations. There is no one talking about alternatives out there in the broadcasting world except fox. And that isn’t a dissenting voice as much as a propaganda arm for corporate America. But at least you know what to expect from them and to adjust accordingly. Public broadcasting has joined corporate broadcasting now as a red headed step-child. And that single voice is not serving our national interest at all.
Mr. Rohde, Public tv and radio succumbed to the corporations some time ago. A Koch brother gave PBS 40 million dollars. When PBS was ready to air a documentary on the Koch brothers, the Koch brothers didn’t tell PBS outright to not air it, they simply let it be known through other people that it would not be looked kindly upon. The documentary did not air. I gave up trusting the News Hour a long time ago. A shame. When it was McNeill-Lehrah (sp?), it was darned good.
For all those whose opinions of Russia have so far been shaped primarily by Western mainstream media, this is essential reading.
Our dogged determination for self-annihilation-https://canadianviews-ymo.ca/reckless-nato-stoking-war-with-russia/
I used to have a saying that bigotry is the last bastion of the small and weak minded failures and haters. These days it’s just the small and weak minded.
I think the rich and powerful are just as capable of bigotry as the small and weak minded, whatever weak minded is. Slavery was maintained by less than 2000 very rich, powerful planter families in the U.S. towards the end of the institution. No failures or weak minds in that group by your definition. But they prevailed just the same and I don’t think there was greater bigotry at work on planet earth at the time. Weak minded doesn’t really mean anything.
I was once told by a park ranger in Arizona that the profile of a typical rattlesnake bite victim is: white, male, with tattoos and the famous last words “hold my beer and watch this!“.
Why am I telling you all this?
This is an old propaganda trick. When you can’t refute your opponent’s argument, attribute to him an argument he didn’t make but that you can refute, refute that argument and claim that you’ve refuted your opponent. Thus, objections to Putin’s actions, notably in Ukraine, are transformed into a supposed hatred of “Russians” in general. Then argue that Russians are “nice people” and conclude (illogically) that everything Putin does must therefore be good. By Ms Baldwin’s “logic”, the fact that Gremans are nice people and have contributed a great deal to European civilization justifies Hitler! A lot of the problem is actually generated by Putin’s American supporters, who keep assimilating the Russian Federation to the Soviet Union by calling them both “Russia”. The article itself provides no justification whatsoever for any of Putin’s actions, least of all in Ukraine. All that the author actually says is that Russians are typical modern Europeans, which is perfectly obvious to anybody who actually knows Russians. The problem is Putin and his elderly Soviet-era supporters who are seeking to undo the post-cold war settlement in Europe. Thus, there’s no need to scapegoat “Russia”. All that needs to be done is to get rid of Putin and Russia will be just fine.
Referring to the second last paragraph, where it is stated that the donors determine the political agenda of the parties in the US, here is a podcast from the New Yorker where a political scientist confirms this. Apparently, the best way to determine how much to the right or left a US politician is, is to look at who his donors are. As a Swede, I was very surprised, horrified and a little amused, but in the podcast it seems the most natural thing. Maybe it isn’t, after all, judging from this article?
https://www.wnyc.org/story/taking-politics-extremes-pm
Sorry, forgot the link! Here it is.
Yes, Martin, and thanks for the point that you make. It’s true, the Citizens United case in the U.S. allowed the political system to be overrun with billions and billions of dollars, including what they call dark money that goes into campaigns so billionaires can fund the candidates of their choice who, once elected, serve the interests of those billionaires, tilting legislation that succeeds in transferring wealth from working people to the top. It’s done in a variety of ways – waging wars that are profitable for certain industries; loosening protections against fraud and abuse in the financial system and so on. This has been going on slowly since maybe the 1970’s, culminating in the Supreme Court decision that “political spending is a form of free speech”:
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission/
As you may know, following the Great Depression in 1929 laws were enacted that protected the financial system from the excesses that underlay the financial collapse. The SEC ACTS of 1933-34 regulated the financial markets to try to prevent another collapse. As part of these regs, “Glass Steagall” enacted at the same time, determined that the newly created system of federally insured bank deposits was in place ONLY at Commercial Banks that had strict lending rules for those insured deposits. Other financial institutions could accept deposits that were not insured by the taxpayer and either make loans or investments, even risky highly leveraged ones and answered to their shareholders for any losses.
Over a period of time, slowly these protections were eliminated – under Reagan the Savings and Loans (a kind of bank where people borrowed money to buy their homes) were deregulated in a lopsided fashion – the taxpayer insurance on deposits were kept in place but the lending side was loosened. – a half $trillion loss to the taxpayer was not far off. Then under Bill Clinton Glass Steagall was shredded for the banks – the commercial banks and financial banks and insurance companies became indistinguishable from the point of view that they could access insured deposits and make wild bets with derivatives – leading to the collapse culminating in a taxpayer bailout of several $trillion by 2009.
A key Bernie Sanders initiative is to overturn Citizens United and have Glass Steagall restored.
You can get a good read on this at wallstreetonparade.com
Thank you, evelync, for giving the succinct and thorough background on this.
Let’s wish Sanders good luck with that, although I can’t help thinking it may be part of why he lost.
yes, surely, lol, that can be seen as one key reason he lost – Hillary Clinton was “owned” by the Big Banks (which had helped fund her campaign and paid her hundreds of thousands each time she gave one of her secret speeches to them); key positions under Bill Clinton were filled by Wall Street bankers; under his administration Glass Steagall was shredded.
Clinton, herself, was very passive about doing anything to stop this dynamic, favoring her benefactors the banks.
So you could say that when the DNC – on behalf of Clinton, tilted the playing field against Bernie that act represented the Banks’ interests to keep the system going that allowed them to buy the candidate of their choice….
Sad, but true :)
:)
Thank you very much for this article.
I can’t believe whats going on in Europe.
Even the new German ministre for foreign affairs Heiko Maas is jumping on the Anti-Russia Train.
What a perfect timing, the poissened spy and his daughter.
No one talks about the child abuse incidents in Telford anymore, where also people died, even kids.
Everybody talks about the danger from the Brexit because of Russia, everybody talks about the danger of war with Russia, everybody talks about a new European Army because of the danherous Russia.
What a big fluke.
Do they really think we are so fool, to believe that Putin would be so stupid to order an action like that so short before the soccer world cup?
OBE, this was not very intelligent and i hope the truth comes out to light, the sooner the better.
Infamy, infamy, -they’ve all got it in-fa- me runs the late Kenneth Williams quip in the 1964 “Carry on up the Senate”. I live in the UK and have noticed no mass outbreak of “Russophobia” amongst the British public at large. As far as I am concerned, the term “Russophobia” has the same semantic overtones as “anti-Americanism” “anti-Semitism/Self hating Jew” or Islamophobia- a boo word used to silence criticism of US/Russian/ Israeli/ Saudi governments – that’s all!
You’re obviously so disconnected, you’re opinion is worth jack. Go back to your ‘Carry On’ films
Article by Craig Murray former ambassador to Uzbekistan
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/of-a-type-developed-by-liars/
“…I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation.
Fixing the facts around the propaganda again, are they? How convenient, and awful for Porton Down scientists to have to comply with PM May’s ilk.
“The first time I realized how low things would likely get was when Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post, sent out the following tweet in March of 2017, squealing with delight at the thought of a new Cold War with the world’s other nuclear superpower: “So excited to be watching The Americans, throwback to a simpler time when everyone considered Russia the enemy. Even the president.” ”
In my opinion, one of the great things about The Americans is that it manages to put the (american) audience into the shoes of the “enemy”, opening a window into the life of Russian spies in the US. It turns the usual point of view upside down. In so doing it manages to humanize the enemy, portraying the Jennings as human beings rather than soulless spies. The audience is shown the consequences of the terrible decisions they have to make and how degrading and painful of an impact they end up having on the protagonists.
It looks like all of this is completely wasted on Ruth Marcus, whose only takeaway from the series appears to be the “Russians as enemies” awarness. Appalling.
On a different topic, I would like to point out that Russians have also made a lot of contributions to Sciences.
For example, there are a lot of renowned Russian mathematicians, like Kolmogorov, Smirnov, Chebychev, Markov and Euler (he was born in Switzerland, but he went to St.Petersburg when he was 20 and worked there for more than 50 years, untill his death, at the age of 76), among many others.
In Physics we have nobel laureates like Cherenkov, Tamm, Frank, Basov, Prokhorov or Landau (apologies ot the ones I eventually forgot). The 10-volume Landau-Lifshitz “Course of Theoretical Physics”, written in the 50’s, forms to this very day an integral part of the education of most physicisists all around the world.
Thank you, Leonardo, for raising this point. I considered mentioning that the Russians were the first in space and a couple of other contributions, but the article was already pretty long so I left those out.
In Chemistry we have Mendeleev who developed the Periodic Table of the Elements. In Immunology we have Metchnikoff who discovered phagocytes (defensive white blood cells). In Microbiology we have Winogradsky who discovered chemolithotrophy (organisms that oxidize inorganic substrates to extract the energy required for life). These just pop to mind because every undergraduate in the sciences is taught about them. For a “backward” country, Russia has always hit above its weight in the sciences.
Tsiolkovsky was the father of Russian rocketry, the peer of Goddard and Von Braun. Russia developed its own space program, in fact preceding American efforts, without the luxury of kidnapping all of the Germans involved in the V2 program at Peenemunde. The country also developed the atomic bomb (if that should be considered an “accomplishment”) without the huge infusion of European Jewish talent that gave success to the Manhattan Project.
No government can force its people to become smart and make critical breakthroughs for the glory of the state. For these things to happen, there must be an appreciation of learning and accomplishment inhering in the culture that starts in the earliest formative years. Obviously, that’s why we have so many ignoramuses in America.
Spacibo Natylie – nothing better than an article about Russia and/or Crimea from someone who has recently been here. I quit trying to convince anyone back in the states the Pravda about Russia and that it has only been 20 years or so since they got back on their feet after the collapse of the CCCP. When the US falls someday – I wonder who will come along and help it get back on its feet again – and how long will it take? Will the Russians demonize the Americans while they are down and out ? Maybe for a week , but then they will remember how they had to go through that trauma – and they will have compassion – because Russians always remember their past – and live with it .
I hope you are right, because the world could use a lot more compassion and forgiveness. Joe
there it is. you haven’t written anything about russia-gate in…6 hours. i was worried the donations stopped coming.
Natylie, I enjoyed reading about your visit to the cities of Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg. Your positive perspective is definitely a welcome change to the constant negativism toward Russia in the media. It’s very disheartening that so many people have an unfounded hatred towards Russia when they know very little about the country and its citizens, nor have they met a Russian.
It’s red-baiting, clear and simple. Hard to believe it still works.
I loved that reference to the Gish Gallop. It’s an example of how low the typical “educated” Creationist or GW Denier will reach, and the technique clearly works well for the RussiaGaters too.
Russia is on the very short list of the nations I’d love to visit. I think I’d include Australia/New Zealand, Ireland, and a number of countries in South America. It’s sort of a miracle Russia recovered from the plunder of the Ninties, and it’s also good news things are picking up over there. There are surely a lot of scenic places which survived both that chaos and the Communists, and it would be great to see them. My appetite for this was whetted by discovering the Prokudin-Gorskii photographs online. It’s a strange coincidence that these picture had a sanctuary in the US for the past century.
Good article.
The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated: The Empire That Was Russia
Hey Zachery,
Spasibo Bolshoy! I really enjoyed the Prokukin-Gorskii collection.
One of my passions is antiques. But not just any antiques. They must be antiques that are of utilitarian value and symbolism. I have been collecting these for many years. And my house is wall to wall with things were made either by say, the unions here, or they would come from the leftist countries abroad. (just one example is that I eat my meals on plates from the public catering restaurants of the 1930’s Moscow. ..and I also have dozens of kvass, granenniy stakan, lafitnik glasses, and the samagonka jugs (home made folk teas & brews); as well.)
And for many years, with the tragedy’s of E. Ukraine, etc,, when my cookie jar allows, I have almost exclusively bought from the antique “junkies” that are on the ground in these countries. It has been my tiny way to try and inject some dollars directly into their pockets, while we also share our common bonds/passions. (..smile..)
I ‘am not sure if you like architecture, but I really enjoy all of William Craft Brumfield’s books. I would highly recommend them. If you are interested, just search his name and click on either the web search, or maybe better yet, the image search. (.. wait ’til you see the old wooden churches of Northern Russia (..smile..))
And environmentally speaking, my dream is to bike the Baikal Railway, or the Volga. ..and breathe it in..
Thank you, Ms Baldwin, for your article. Very Informative and enlightening. The Russian phobia needs to stop. Unfortunately, is not just in the US but all through the Western world.
I join in thanking Ms Baldwin.
Clear, informative, down to earth important facts.
Yes, the Russophobia most definitely has to stop!
There is the psychological phenomenon that when you endlessly are fed a certain view on a matter, despite initial opposition and doubts, with time you tend to assimilate the view as a standard neutral guideline, however strange it may be. This may have been a mechanism behind catastrophes in the past, and we should take great care that it not happen again. There is a risk in the case of Western leaders’ attitude to Russia.
With the propaganda, our leaders take on a huge responsibility and risk, also morally. With the collapse of the USSR, there we’re great hopes for more freedom, development and cooperation, and what did the West do? Not only to the former USSR, but also to ourselves, loosing these opportunities, and the trust of people.
Additionally, with the constant propaganda in MSM and by our leaders, what happens to our democratic standards and our belief in our societies?
While I focus on these worrying issues here, there are of course many very good aspects – we have a lot to loose.
Russia is the last wall of resistance that is recognized by the massive socialist movement as a threat to their agenda. This will not end well. Hope you are prepared/preparing for the show down.
good a blog!
Another article of interest at link below.
———————————————————————-
The Novichok Nerve Agent Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam
By Craig Murray
Global Research, March 15, 2018
Craig Murray 14 March 2018
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-novichok-nerve-agent-story-is-indeed-another-iraqi-wmd-scam/5632217
Thanks Stephen J.. A little Craig Murray in the morning, or in the evening, always hits the spot!
And, a most interesting clue here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Back:_Retribution
Scroll down to the abstract for Episode 6 (UK air date: 31 January 2018 ; US air date: 9 March 2018) where it says: “The Novichok is fake however…”.
Just sayin’.
p.s.
I should have credited Nina Kouprianova for that find.
https://twitter.com/NinaByzantina/status/974375664621993984
The clear and present danger has little to do with long standing religious, political persuasion(s) or emotional sentiments that persist in various cultures. Those “simpler times” that had, more overall clarity; devils verses angels, cold warriors and Check Point Charlie, have now evolved into a complex mix of mergers and strange bedfellows (Mc Donalds restaurants are indeed in Moscow!). This poetic mix of white, shades of gray and flat black, business enterprise(s) can easily be applied to the present moment. The East-West economic and military antagonisms, “hot spots” could not spill over into so much as a street fight, if only Western Occident banksters would bother to renegotiate the status of USD’s as the exclusive global reserve currency.
BRICS, Iran and smaller economic players want to trade in alternate methods of commerce; such as gold and or silver backed currencies. For example; Bit-coin exchanges using a block-chain technology and or the basket of fiat currencies concept. In the big picture, Russia does not experience daily (or otherwise) bank closures, has not gone down the path of speculative investment packaged with commercial banking. The West clearly, “blew it” (except Canada) when the Glass-Steagall Act or similar local regulation(s) were suspended and replaced with inscrutable and the inestimable instruments that assumed the shape of a Derivatives Market. The Occident fiat currencies are now backed, not by gold or a petrodollar but raw violence, intimidation of one sort or another and militarism in lieu of a GNP based on finished product commerce and sovereign commodity reserves, not fudged numbers! Let’s have no more MSM nonsense about Russian bogey men, or other scapegoats It’s time for the CFR and federal reserve board members to have a good old fashioned powwow and re-engage, in the time tested art of diplomacy, passing peace pipe with BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization members, before we all BLOW OURSELVES UP INTO RADIOACTIVE BITS!
elmerfudzie: agree on much except…” GNP based on finished product commerce and sovereign commodity reserves” doesn’t really measure national assets in a multinational world where profits are squirreled oversea.
elmerfudzie: agree on much except: “GNP based on finished product commerce and sovereign commodity reserves” doesn’t really measure national assets in a multinational world.
elmerfudzie: agree on much, but “GNP based on finished product commerce and sovereign commodity reserves” doesn’t mean much in a multinational world of commerce.
Elmer where Reagan at one time cranked up the military spending, as to intimate the USSR to try and catch up, this cranking up of military spending budgets helped to bring down the USSR. So here we are some 30 years later, and here comes Putin with his new weapons inventory that was built on a unheard of low budget. Only one thing Elmer, and you know this better then I, is that our U.S. rivaling of this Russia weapons program will be anything but cheap. Putin just may have played the right hand.
The current economic system in America has done everything based on a quick return. Our investments are done in real time with little respect for our nation’s future. We are a country who is use to instant gratification, and this trait is soon coming around to bite us where it hurts the most, in our wallets. The Fed print money by the bushel, as it’s no wonder why the Stock Market pricing is so high. We have off shored so much, I shutter to think what vital products we would all lose if we did enforce an embargo on imported goods. With America’s off shoring of jobs, added in with wildly inflated assets, all I can see is an awfully painful correction coming to America. Joe
Reply to Joe Tedesky:
Quick returns, exactly! the quick return of a hypersonic missile(s) response to Western aggression. The size of the button will mean absolutely nothing, Mr President! Missiles headed our way, may traverse the south pole not over the north pole. I can only hope that the beltway and Pentagon Neo-Cons have finally connected the dots here…there will be no such thing as an impenetrable ABM dome, protecting the very cornerstone of our republic, Washington, DC, -not at Mach ten, sub orbital speeds. Early on, during this escalation of tensions, the Neo’s- overlooked the USS Donald Cook incident, during maneuvers in the Baltic sea. Needless to say, the ship suffered a complete electronic shut down, due to that Russian fighter jet fly-by and it’s Khibiny Electronic Jamming devise based on modifications to Magrav technology by inventor, Mehran Keshe. The Pentagon Neo’s- ignored the fact that more than a few sailors aboard the Donald Cook, asked for immediate release from the service, following that event ! Now, these same military advisers are attempting to refute Putin’s announcement that his new high tech gadgetry is ready to go!
The top brass and their financial backers, the Western banker syndicates, have got to come to the negotiation table-there’s no third way, a few senators are already in the throws of getting the talks going, and I wish them every success!
Agreed. Joe
Elmer here is what we are talking about. Joe
https://www.rt.com/business/421498-russia-dumping-us-treasuries/
Joe Tedesky, this is a re-post because the first one failed to go through: Yup! and currency dumps are just the tip of the iceberg…The ilk that belongs to the Rothschild’s banking cartels have finally put together a string of influential psycho’s willing to exterminate five billion people. I suppose they’re gradually arrived at the conclusion that a blanket of radiation on the earths crust is better than the ever increasing pollution(s) generated by humanity. It’s all a question of mathematics, don’t you see? ..Malthusian mathematics!
I’m going to install a ‘magrav’ system in my home, I’ll be okay. Joe
“Russia has one of the most educated populations in the world, universal health care for its people, a home ownership rate of 84%…140 days of guaranteed maternity leave for women at 100% salary” AND “significant poverty rates, comparatively low productivity and life expectancy, and corruption.”
Yeah, ok.
Bob, the poverty in Russia is qualitatively different than it is here. While there are still many “poor” people in Russia, they do not have as much of a problem with homelessness because in the 1990’s people were given ownership of their Soviet-era apartments. They could choose to live in them or sell them. Most Russians are housed and are either employed or receiving a pension. However, some may not have much disposable income. During the recession the price of food went up and I also heard complaints about the need for better regulation of utility prices.
Good comeback Natylie. Nobody is saying that Russia is a Utopia, including Putin. They appear to be moving forward however, as opposed to the U.S. The majority here are actually losing ground.
Bolstering the Russian economy and raising the standard of living were Putin’s primary goals, were they not? He never hid his motives for wanting to increase the sale of Russian gas and oil to Europe and anyone else who would buy these products and much more of what Russia has to offer. In Washington’s eyes, everything is a zero sum game: trying to better your own situation is interpreted as an assault against America (more like against America’s plutocratic elites). But then, Putin has explained all this to a fare thee well and the accompanying need for his country to defend itself against an America with such clearly stated highly aggressive motives. Washington knows the score, and it certainly knows that it is the “bad guy” in all this, but it cares not a whit for ethics, only short term economics.
Rape, pillage, and plunder a la John Perkins’ “Confessions”. If our plutocracy is not in command, out come the “Jackals”. Yeltsin took the carrot (vodka soaked), but Putin requires the stick.
Thank you Natylie. BobS is one of our resident trolls. The main thing that I see comparing the USA to Russia is the direction of trends like longevity and quality of life issues. For the USA all these are negative. Progress may be slow in Russia, but they are progressing. We are being slowly devoured by our 1%.
“Most Russians are housed and are either employed or receiving a pension.”
And most countries wouldn’t consider this something that needs to be trumpeted.
“universal health care for its people…strong gun control laws…140 days of guaranteed maternity leave for women at 100% salary”
And still Russia can’t produce better results than our own sub-standard health care delivery system (although they would be the envy of sub-Saharan Africa, albeit just barely with respect to life expectancy).
Through my work I have somewhat regular contact with Russian immigrants (probably more so than most Americans) who I ask about life in Russia, recognizing that simply by virtue of them having chosen to immigrate they may be more critical than those who didn’t. While they certainly miss their culture (as most people would), they don’t seem to experience any nostalgia for the economic conditions they left behind.
If most of these immigrants from Russia that you’re referring to came here in the 1990’s or early 2000’s, then I’m sure they are not nostalgic for the economic conditions they left behind, which were pretty abysmal. As I said before, Russians want even more progress, but that doesn’t mean they don’t recognize that they’ve come a long way in the past 10-15 years and that things are generally on the upswing.
And the US has one of the most educated populations in the world, no public health care, a similar home ownership rate, no maternity leave, AND
significant poverty rates,
Rather high productivity, falling life expectantly, and corruption, and some of the highest rates of homocide, crime, jailed, obesity and drug abuse.
Well, ok.
The US population is thought to be “well-educated,” but, having spent an entire career in higher education, I’ve got to say, you could have fooled me. Actually, for the lower classes, American public education is documentably abysmal. They escape into adult life with the barest rudiments of literacy or numeracy. Those who can afford a private prep school and upper echelon university education *should* be much better informed than they seem to be. The best term to describe the condition is “willful ignorance,” of which many are very proud. But what can you expect from an “exceptional” people. No one can tell them what to do, and had better not try. The rest of what you say is spot on.
The EU can certainly use some re-thinking as well. Rather than existing primarily to enhance the financial assets of the German investing class, the welfare of all its citizens in all of its member nations should become the primary focus–Greeks and Spaniards as well as Germans and Dutch should share in the bounty of this economic creation. What’s the motive for keeping it together if some countries are clearly being exploited by others. The laissez faire approach is what makes America such a jungle. Revisit the list of indicators you provided, all that is coming to you soon if Europeans persist in their approach. Considering the assets and requirements of the diverse countries in Europe, there is no reason why Russia should not be in economic union with the rest of Europe as well. But that would never be accepted by Washington, which must remain top dog dictating approved policy to every corner of the globe. Otherwise we will destroy you, one way or another.
Realist,
Well said. Your comment summaries are to the point and very enlightening as always.
Thanks!
Yes, the directions the EU are taking are worrying indeed. It would have been very natural, as Gorbachev most likely wished with his talk of the “European house”, to integrate Russia also in the EU. The suspicion that the US would not allow that, that you mention, seems plausible. Isn’t the tending to anti-Russian sentiment in Poland and the Baltics also intended to divide and rule? EU leaders appear afraid to divert from what the US wants.
And, one cannot escape the feeling that major countries on the continent want a more independent policy vis-à-vis the US, a stronger union and more cooperation with Russia, but are forced to parrot US policy and play very diligently.
Superb, Martin. Thank you.
Just to follow up on the freedom of speech: on all main Russian TV channels (1st, Russia 1, NTV, etc.) there are daily political debates (Evening with Solov’ev, The meeting point, Time will show, etc.) which _always_ include opposition figures from Russia and abroad (US, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, etc.) Some of them are extreme russophobes, some others are more reasonable. The views they express are diametrically opposite to those of the Russian establishment on all counts. Would you imagine something like that in the US, UK and other ‘strongholds of democracy’?
Abusive relationship. That is what the US is suffering from. It is a phenomenon associated with abused partners who leave relationships only to end up in another abusive relationship.
We just love to be in an abusive relationship with Russia. Anything else just doesn’t feel “normal” after 73 years in an abusive relationship.
This is sick stuff and I wonder who the shrink might be to put the matter to rest. Perhaps AI?
Just heard that Amazon plans to create a virtual reality based on Alexa which will become an all knowing and all seeing and all powerful deity which will rule us all like a jealous god and come home drunk at night and beat the shit out of us for not loving Amazon enough and for not allowing their drones to come in the front door and assault us while it throws all the stuff we bought at other stores in the trash can claiming we are not loyalists as it purges or chops up or zaps with a laser anything it finds that does not have a verifiable RFID or has been reported by your Roomba to be a “Hand Purchased Item” as it spied the front door with its forward looking camera from its charging station. Your refrigerator has reported that on March 15th you made a hand addition to the contents outside of the licensing agreement you made with LG and Microsoft and Amazon to release and hold harmless any delivery by Amazon or any of its affiliated drone operators (contractors) and you also agree that any manual restocking of your refrigerator (Manually by yourself with your teeth or your monkey paws) be grounds that you have violated the terms of the refrigerator agreement and terms of service and will have your head separated from your upper neck region shortly.
Good one. How long before Bezos has the Amazon logo emblazoned on the moon and or satellites orbiting the Earth? That guy is a dangerous megalomaniac.
The article by Nafeez Ahmed investigative cited by one of the commenters is pretty damning, not that it is impossible to blame the Russians, but the plausibility of pointing fingers at others. His commentary on OPCW, that it certified that Russian had rid itself of chemical weapons while America, Great Britain and Israel have not been. His commentary about motivation is also powerful since others had greater motivation to pin the blame on Russia than Russia had to commit the deed.
What is notable is the rush to judgement on who tried to murder the guy, if that is what happened. As suspicious is the ganging up on Corbyn who suggested a more thorough and objective investigation.
“US Commander: ‘US Troops Prepared to Die for Israel’ in War Against Syria, Hezbollah:” https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-commander-us-troops-prepared-to-die-for-israel-in-war-against-syria-hezbollah/5631949
What exactly is “defensive” about the US wars in the Middle East?
First man in space = working class background.
First woman in space…
“…one of the most educated populations in the world, universal health care for its people, a home ownership rate of 84%, strong gun control laws, no death penalty, 140 days of guaranteed maternity leave for women at 100% salary, and Moscow was just voted the 4th safest megacity in the world for women.”
This makes me think of the comparisons that people like to make to prove a point about where the US needs improvement. This begs the question why the example is usually Scandinavian or other European countries, when Russia is actually far more comparable in population and size.
For my Russian Geography class, we are using as a textbook a book called
“A Geography of Russia and its Neighbors” by Mikhail S. Blinnikov. It’s a very
accessible and readable book, written sympathetically but not sentimentally.
In need of an updated version (published in 2011) but affordable and provides
lots of good background material. The author was raised in the former S.U.
Great article, but…
It’s world where we live in with no change anytime soon. The sad part in it is that the Russiaphobia had spread to everywhere. For example, take a mainly techie site reporting on Novichok in England:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/nato-leaders-unite-in-blaming-russia-for-nerve-agent-attack-on-ex-spy/
It’s not the content that is the most interesting, rather the comment section that shows Russiaphobia propagation almost unanimously in the postings. In my view, comments are pretty good indication of just how wide this phobia had spread.
But then again… When to UN Ambassador for the US is openly offering bribe to convince countries to vote with the US, is Russiaphobia is really that much of an issue?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/15/haley-vote-with-u-s-at-u-n-or-well-cut-your-aid/
Tremendous piece! Thank you, Natylie
The Anglo-Saxon Establishment (UK,US, Canada,Australia Alliance may just be the World’s Last Empire.
Their Self-Image of the benevolent, “christian”, freedom loving/peace promoting Commonwealth of Nations is blasphemy.
The true reality of The British/American chapter of world history isn’t really the beacon on the hill story-tale but rather 400 + years of brutal exploitation, subjugation and slaughter.
Putin and Russia are the Biggest Prize now gleaming in their Greedy, Ruthless Eyes.
US/UK as benevolent forces for good in the world???? or barbaric, ruthless tyrants?
The World’s Darkest Hour: The British Empire As Criminal Enterprise in India —
by Romi Mahajan —
March 14, 2018
The day before the 90th Academy Awards, a friend from the academia called me with a suggestion. He was adamant. “You know that the Churchill Movie will win some awards and you should have an article ready to publish before the announcement,” he admonished. I agreed but failed to produce it in time. Strangely enough, I wrote a lot in the 24 hours between his call and seeing Gary Oldman accept an Oscar for portraying Winston Churchill but I could not get myself to comply with his request. A cop out no doubt, but I was frankly too exhausted to once again make the case that far-greater thinkers and writers (notably, Madhusree Mukerjee, Shashi Tharoor, and Mike Davis) have been making for years- that Churchill was a mass-murderer. I’ll add to this that the death toll of Churchillian racism and imperialism exceeds that of Hitlerism and Stalinism and that the British Empire is, second only to Mother Nature, certainly history’s greatest criminal. Nowhere was that crime more extreme in its death toll than India.
No matter the facts, “Churchillian” is a metonym for Statesmanship, Churchill the cynosure of all eyes seeking freedom’s light. Bookstores have entire sections devoted to him while the colonies that suffered under the enormous weight of his hatred might merit a book or two. Quotes from him adorn presentation materials from NGOs and Governments, even Fortune 500 power-points.
>> A curious transposition indeed for a man whose own close associates were shocked at his hatred, racism, blood-lust.<<
As Oldman babbled on thanking Churchill, I shrank in my seat. Luckily, my sloth made little difference thanks to the indefatigable Shashi Tharoor, who wrote a brilliant piece– far better than anything I could produce—in the Washington Post. Madhusree Mukerjee added another poignant salvo in Outlook India, in which she discusses, inter alia, the Bengal Famine, and the millions dead at the hands of British/Churchillian connivance. Mukerjee has also authored one of the most powerful indictments of the “Last Lion” Churchill- Churchill’s Secret War, from which one passage is particularly haunting: Referring to the rations in Bengal in 1943,
“…. the gruel offered at the relief kitchens got thinner, so that a pound of rice a day was feeding three people. Something after that the portion was further reduced, to four ounces per person per day. That came to 400 calories, at the low end of the scale on which, at much the same time, the inmates of Buchenwald were being fed.”
One needn’t have too vivid an imagination to understand what that parallel implies.
The Churchill industry continues unabated, producing hagiographies, busts, and fodder for brochures. That Hollywood jumped into the fray is hardly surprising. As with Mukerjee, I cannot get myself to see The Darkest Hour. Perhaps it’s a way of paying respect to the dead.
Romi Mahajan is a writer from USA
https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/14/the-worlds-darkest-hour-the-british-empire-as-criminal-enterprise/
Good article with observations that can be easily corroborated, including recent interviews and speeches by Russian President Putin. The now incredible charges regarding the Skripol poisoning in the UK are so incendiary, with the usual “Democracies” of the West standing shoulder to shoulder to trumpet Russia’s guilt. As with Alice in Wonderland’s Queen these governments and their media propagandists all shout out against all reasoned questioning or speculation based on lack of facts with, ‘No, no!’ [said the Queen.] ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’
We are entering into a very dangerous time, unlike anything I’ve lived through before. The maniacs who worship at the temple of greed have take control of what were once the perceived most democratic nations in the so called West. Profit is the salvation of this religion, those who are crushed in the pursuit of profit are expendable. This is a visible reality around the world and evermore so here in the US with the expanding homeless and quasi homeless society which is expanding.
As like India in ways, Western democracies are embracing a caste system where money is the only vehicle by which you may transcend the misery of free market capitalism. The failure of this system (Free Market Capitalism) to deliver any tangible positive to the “average” American (or any other human other than the few exploiters) is becoming more and more palpable. However the propaganda system is still functioning at full power and the majority of Americans are duped to believe that the problems they have, debt, unemployment, low wages, etc.. are due to external forces.
All the while the policies of the US have been hand in glove with global corporations which were once US brand names are seeking and actually finding ways to profit off delusion and poverty. War is now the major export of the US and war is the only “industry” which causes domestic production to increase or stay stable in the US. War provide huge profits to the corporations who have achieved almost permanent status as suppliers to the US gov’t. Very same corporations who seek a global identity and in the end have no allegiance to the US other than as a vehicle by which they may profit and pay no taxes or consequences for the horror their weapons do around the world, often employed in the name of “Supporting Democracy”.
Now the mixing of profit seeking from war and the preparations for such along with those seeking political cover for ineptitude the government of the US, along with the UK (the UK another disintegrating democracy ruled similarly as the US by Oligarchs and corruption) and others, are resulting in the very real prospect for war to break out. The tension is high, by the hand of the corrupt politicians who claim to seek National Security all while they are purchased to, and preform dutifully, deliver profits to their benefactors. Today’s corruption is leading potentially to a war which will result in our annihilation.
I can agree with this assessment. We seem to be on the whole brainwashed into a mindset that views Russia as the greatest threat to the West and Putin as the Russian God of War who will do everything he can to undermine the West and sow the seeds of war.
But that only looks at one viewpoint. The viewpoint and the stance of the western nations has it that Russia staged a public assassination attempt using easily traceable nerve gas agents that only Russia could have developed to send a message to any spy who would reveal Russia’s guilt in influencing the last American Presidential election that they can be killed with Russian nerve gas even in foreign countries where they have been granted asylum.
The sanctions enforced by Trump which were coerced by the Theresa May British government against Russia have not been proved and there are likely alternative explanations for the attack which are ignored.
It could be that the nerve agent supposedly developed by the Russians which has a unique signature and chemical structure would also be easily synthesized in any laboratory with the means to do so. This possible avenue has not been explored. In a rush to judgement the Western media has concluded that only Russia could have carried out the crime without examining possible alternative means that some other party could be responsible.
The entire affair and supposed murder attempt needs to be viewed against the background of the Russia Gate investigation where Mueller was not able to find credible evidence that the Trump administration colluded with the Russian Devil Government headed by the alleged Satan figure Vladimir Putin.
This may have caused the intelligence agencies to hatch a new credible threat from Russia. This might be a false flag which is always used as a pretext for war.
The fact that we may be witnessing another false flag operation supported by our media in the same vein that our media supported all of the false allegations that Iraq had WMDs which were never found should give us ample reasons to question the veracity of the claims that Russia is responsible for the attack.
The false flag of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles as a cause for war which resulted in an actual war and invasion of Iraq should create the atmosphere of caution that the same thing might be what we are facing now.
The questionable motive that Putin carried out the attack to intimidate any Russian who would give evidence of Russia’s guilt in attempting to influence the last national election could just as easily be interpreted as an act of attempted murder by US operatives disguising their tracks by using a nerve agent that is easily copied because the USA was trying to kill off a potential witness who directly reported to Steele that the whole Steele report was phony while setting Russia and Putin as the fall guy for the assassination attempt in order to further the cause of isolating Putin and demonizing him in an effort to prop up our Military Industrial Complex and justify massive new arms spending.
These possible motives for the assassination attempt are competing with each other in a logical sense but in the public commercial media sphere there is only the conclusion that Russia was responsible.
Putin is willing to cooperate in any investigation but in the USA and Britain there is already a foregone conclusion that Putin was behind the assassination attempt.
It is the same kind of foregone conclusion sold to us here at home and to the British that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was an imminent threat to the West. It does not seem to matter that any weapons were ever found nor do we reflect the possibility that the United Nations security forces got it right in their formal conclusion by the UN reports that Iraq had fully complied with the terms of the UN agreement and that UN inspectors had validated that Iraq had completely disarmed their weapons stockpiles per the agreement.
Here in the US in the run up to the Iraq war we faced many nations who were not willing to join a coalition of the willing but one nation stood firm in solidarity with the USA. Britain under Tony Blair led his armed forces to war with the USA.
The Chilcot Report or the Iraq Inquiry headed by Sir John Chilcot published a damning account of the Tony Blair government stating there was no justification for the war and that the reasons justifying war with Iraq presented by the Blair government were false.
This is a fundamentally important report for it reveals that Britain and the USA conspired to support false intelligence information and used the false flag information to lead the two governments into a war.
With this backdrop of collusion between the US and British governments to lie their way to war in Iraq we should now be questioning the veracity of claims by the British and supported by the US that the recent attempted assassination of a former spy by Putin is equally unjustified.
There have been similar investigations of Russian interference in Germany where the Angela Merkel government questioned the possibility that the Russians attempted to influence or hack the German elections. The German intelligence agencies performed an investigation and concluded that there was no credible evidence that Russia or Putin tried to hack the election in Germany.
No doubt there are those who view the outcome of the German investigation as evidence that Germany is hiding something in order to preserve the peace and not get involved with an argument with the nefarious Russian leader who is controlling the planet via Facebook.
Such speculations would mean that Germany was cowering in front of Russia. That is a highly unlikely scenario.
The Germans have even more reason to be wary of Russia and would surely invoke the assistance of NATO to counter any attempt by the Russians or Putin to interfere in western politics. The fact that they found no evidence or Russian interference should give us pause in our rush to judgement that Russia is the big bad boogeyman that hacked the last election and installed Donald Trump as president despite the will of the people.
It is time for our government to publish a new Chilcot Report stating how the Bush administration lied to all of us and used those lies to go to war with Iraq while performing another investigation (Oh yeah that is ongoing) which fails to reveal any connection between the current administration and the Russians in interfering with the election just as the Germans have done.
Unfortunately in the highly politicized environment in Washington with the official media outlets all barking in lock step with false intelligence reports just as they did in the run up to war with Iraq we all seem to be fooled again.
Just as there was never any questioning by the NY Times and the Washington Post as to the veracity of the claims of the Bush administration or others (Chalabi) justifying falsely the reasons for war there is now no questioning that Russia hacked the last election, installed our president, Attacked Ukraine for no reason etc.
Now Trump pulling out of the Iran Nuclear deal. What message does this send to North Korea on top of the other message we sent to the World when we attacked a fully De-weaponized Iraq? The message is simple to understand. If you comply with US and UN demands to demilitarize you will either be attacked or have the US reverse course and revoke any agreements and be faced with more sanctions or perhaps a war.
The USA has negotiated in bad faith for centuries. Our treaties with the American Indians were routinely broken and eventually the Native Americans were relegated to subsisting on Indian Reservations in remote and inhospitable regions which we deemed had no commercial value. We killed them and outmaneuvered them with our Silver forked tongues.
Now we are negotiating in bad faith again but on a World stage filled with actors that have the capability of fighting back. Russia and North Korea have many nuclear bombs and they are unlikely to give them up if they perceive the attempts by the USA to disarm them eventually resulted in our reversal on the peace process and the USA’s complete abandonment of peace treaties only to launch wars against a foe that was weakened by the negotiation process which we failed to accept and abide by.
Saudi Arabia has already stated they will pursue a nuclear weapons buildup if the Iran peace treaty is revoked by the US under Trump. They know that if the US pulls out of the Iranian Nuclear Deal it will be a reason for Iran to restart its nuclear program. The deliberate destabilization of the region can be viewed by every nation in the World as ample warning that save a nuclear defensive capability they will face a United States which shifts in the wind and alternately demands disarmament and then turns against those nations who comply with US demands.
We cannot allow the US to unilaterally pull out of the peace deals with Russia and Iran. If we want to have any ability to convince the North Koreans that they should stop pursuing a nuclear program we need to preserve the deals we have made in other parts of the World.
If NK sees a US that constantly goes back on their word like the US has done many times before all the way back to the Indian Wars then they will have no option other to pursue their nuclear ambitions.
North Korea has other reasons to not deescalate their plans. They can see how other nuclear equipped nations like Pakistan have been given a pass by the US and have been classified as “friendly” nations simply because they possess nuclear capability.
Putin just announced recently in a Russian Sate of the Union address that Russia has developed new nuclear capabilities which cannot be defeated by the US or other nations. No doubt it is because they feel threatened by the West due to recent involvement in Syria and Ukraine not to mention the supposedly defensive weapons along their border. These weapons represent to Russia the same kind of existential threat we faced during the Cuban Missile Crisis. These missiles represent an abandonment of the former agreements between Russia and the West along with other offensive measures disguised as defensive measures.
Trump is calling on a new Space Superiority campaign.
The global hawks have managed to push Trump into a corner where he has little choice but to comply with the demands of the deep state and engage in every way from the appointment of hawks in his cabinet firing all who oppose him.
All this for war. War is the essential goal for those corporations which comprise the armaments industry. It has been so since we eliminated the Indians and expanded our Nation in the late 1800s. War brings profits and war brings the hope that we will gain new territories. It is an old playbook with a new twist. The twist is that the other nations we foment war against have the means to destroy us too. This isn’t Vietnam or the Korean war. It isn’t the Cold War anymore. This time it it just might be what Einstein predicted. We will fight WWIII with sticks and stones.
Very nice article and it could only be on Consortium.
I’m taking a fairly good course in Russian Geography (undergrad level,
including economic and political geography). So this morning I needed
a study map of the Russian Federation for an upcoming test. I went to
Barnes & Noble. They had a very nice, extensive selection of maps of
various parts of the world. A good selection. Unless you happened to be
looking for Eastern Europe / Northern Eurasia. There was NOTHING !
It was like that part of the planet doesn’t exist, or at least isn’t map-worthy.
(I seriously doubt if they were sold out, there was plenty of everything else).
I still remember the basic Soviet geography I had to learn in high-school Russian class way back when. Still stands me in good stead – actually it gets more relevant year by year.
America is now taking its nutty Russiagate ambitions to outer space? The “Dotard in Chief”, Supreme Leader Snoke, sorry I stand corrected, Supreme Leader Trump, has announced that he’s now militarising outer space & setting up a space force like the first order in Star Wars? It’s not enough that America is waging war around the globe in just about every Country, creating chaos & Terrorists wherever they go, but now they are taking the fight to outer space? Who the hell are they going to fight up there? Aliens from Mars? How can this morally bankrupt Country continue to finance this enormous war mongering expense on waging endless wars on earth & now in space? Logic suggests that it must hit some sort of financial, gravitational reality & collapse in, on itself, like a Black Hole?
I suspect that collapse into the black hole is closer on the horizon than the hoi polloi would care to believe.
He’s nuts, that was something that came up last year. “The House of Representatives passed legislation that would direct the Defense Department to create a “space corps” as a new military service which would be housed within the Air Force.” The Pentagon opposed it. So much for his memory.
Annie, I think Trump was just throwing “the Space Force” out there again. He’s a negotiator and doesn’t take no for an answer. It has nothing to do with his memory.
Given the number of times I’ve noted pathological projection on the part of Americans, mostly (but not exclusively) those Americans we call Official Washington, I, myself, am beginning to think I have only one string on my fiddle. But here is yet another writer who cites several examples of the way in which America convinces itself of its essential innocence: simply list the chronic sins and crimes of America as Russia’s sins and crimes—and then pile on with extra nasty conclusions: ‘ “Because they are rats and roaches. What’s the problem?” ’
For me, noticing this particular American habit should have started in the era of HUAC, but I was far too young and intellectually undeveloped to make the connections. I didn’t become fully conscious of the American habit of projecting America’s ills and sins onto Russia—back then, the USSR—until the day I heard Reagan call it the Evil Empire. Back then I was following Reagan’s wanton destruction of Latin America—think Chile, think Central America, think the Iran-Contra scandal—and it seemed to me that America was itself far too “evil” to be accusing others of it.
From that moment on I was observing—and continue to observe—an avalanche of examples of pathological projection. It’s how official America keeps itself clean in its own eyes, which then justifies in its own eyes the damage and bloodshed it carries out around the globe.
We need a new kind of geopolitics, a new system that will require the American STATE to step down from its image of itself as the one, the only, the divinely destined single superpower and global policeman. That will give the American NATION, which has been paying the full price in the maintenance of this illusion, to heal. It’s the burgeoning number of damaged war veterans, the dispossessed working classes labouring under crushing poverty, and those families still facing bankruptcy due to expensive illness despite Obamacare who are canaries in the coalmine of American hegemony.
China and Russia are the two states that sincerely desire a new kind of geopolitics, and while I’m not entirely comfortable with what their form of domestic politics says about them, I am in complete sympathy with their desire for an alternative to the crumbling ideology of the West. At any rate, it is time for a Eurasian century, and China and Russia appear to be the states already at work on it. Maybe it’s finally their turn.
Great post. Thanks.
I agree with Lois, great post. Delia I tend to be pessimistic about things in general, so I think we have gone too far to ever come clean, and as you phrased it, step down from our image. It would have been easier not all that long ago, but with our many recent wars, our hegemonic agenda, the great disparity of wealth, and our grandiosity I can only see a cataclysmic ending for us. I would be more optimistic if the American people were to become more attuned to who we are as a nation, but I see little hope of that.
As if his recent picks weren’t bad enough Trump is considering another horror, a real neocon SOB.
“John Bolton, a Fox News contributor, is reportedly under consideration to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, likely because President Donald Trump enjoys his television commentary. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations whose tenure was marred by “his inability to make friends and build alliances,” is a Trump sycophant with a history of warmongering and conspiracy theorizing. He also chairs a think tank that’s been called “anti-Muslim,” and he has connections to anti-Muslim bigots.”
You should watch the history series by Oliver Stone. https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995 Stone has a convincing alternate historical perspective that provides a new context to the history of the USA and Russia that is not found in the history textbooks we feed our children and also is not in alignment with the constant barrage or anti-Russian propaganda we witness every day on our fact free fake news outlets which are by now one gargantuan monolithic orchestrated symphony of anti-Russia propaganda to serve the interest of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which needs or rather requires any politician holding public office to prop up the Cold War rhetoric against Russia to justify the enormous amount of money our Federal Government lavishes on the MIC.
Support for mandatory sanctions against Russia have become requirements for elected politicians and we are seeing the current presidential administration caving in to that pressure in order to appease the war hawks and the MIC.
The British ponied up as America’s strongest ally supporting the US in the run up to the Iraq war. There was a day of reckoning in Britain when the “Iraq Inquiry” also known as the “Chilcot Report” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry revealed that Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair falsely led his nation into a war based on a bunch of lies that it knew were false but went along with the propaganda provided by the US Intelligence agencies.
From Wikipedia: On 6 July 2016, Sir John Chilcot announced the report’s publication, more than seven years after the inquiry was announced. Usually referred to as the Chilcot report by the news media, the document stated that at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and the United States had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal basis was “far from satisfactory”, and that a war was unnecessary. The report was made available under an Open Government License.
Political commentators were split as to what extent the report showed that Tony Blair had lied or deliberately misled Parliament and the public. NBC News said that the report “stops short of saying Blair lied”. The chief political commentator for the Financial Times, Philip Stephens, said that Blair’s “sin was one of certitude rather than deceit”, and writing for Bloomberg View, Eli Lake said that the report proved Blair “didn’t lie his way into Iraq”. Speaking in Parliament, Corbyn said that MPs who voted for the war were “misled by a small number of leading figures in the Government” who “were none too scrupulous about how they made their case for war”, and Caroline Lucas, MP for the Green Party, claimed that contradictions between public statements and private memos to Bush proved that Blair was “lying” about whether war could have been averted. Philippe Sands said the report pulled its punches but marshalled the factual evidence in such a way that an inference of lying, deceit or manipulation was possible.
Of course it was possible. It happened. You can read the full report here. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20171123123237/http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/
Fast forward to today as Theresa May and Donald Trump is a macabre dance blamed Russia for poisoning a former Russian double agent.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/12/russia-highly-likely-to-be-behind-poisoning-of-spy-says-theresa-may
The affair has eerie similarities to the run-up to the Iraq war when Britain under Tony Blair went along with the allegations that Iraq was a grave danger to the West and supported the US attack on Iraq. An attack that twelve years later would be examined by the British at the highest levels of government that found there was no real justification for Britain’s involvement in the war.
The Iraq war is both a cautionary tale for students of history but is also a road map for those who would once again engage the US and the UK in a war, this time with Russia, The hysteria over Russian meddling in elections has proven fertile ground for the US and now the UK to place new economic sanctions on Russia as well as justify a new arms buildup. Now a new Russian meddling story has emerged in Britain which is similar to the US story about how Russia decided our national election for us.
Meanwhile we are completely in the dark and do not even question the allegations since the same allegations are repeated endlessly over our commercial media outlets in some kind of Joseph Goebbels inspired propaganda campaign. Goebbels nailed it when he revealed the Nazi methods to propagandize the German people. If you repeat a lie often enough eventually it will be seen as truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
We are living in a propaganda state where the big lie is repeated over and over again in order to convince us that we need to demonize Russia and blame them just like the Nazis blamed the Jews for all of the their own sins that were being committed by the Nazis
Russia is the new scapegoat as the article states in its title. Great article.
Well hey, Russians are mostly white, right? Discrimination against whitey is perfectly acceptable in today’s narrative.
Here in my assisted living community, we have a Russian resident who tells us all the time that the Russian people are wondering when Americans are going to wake up. The never gas narratives – especially the stories of how the White Hats rushed in to help poisoned victims without protective gear was widely laughed at by the Russian public. Pity to think that those who we routinely denigrate are all sitting around hoping that our nation will finally wake up to the manipulations we’re experiencing.
Sadly, it will probably be a very long wait…
“Here in my assisted living community, we have a Russian resident who tells us all the time that the Russian people are wondering when Americans are going to wake up.”
Gee, I guess that would explain why so damn many of them emigrate here given half a chance- simple curiosity.
I watched the show once or twice and while espionage is a fascinating business and can be entertaining when shown well, I assumed it was going to be just a serious I-Spy where they really demonized the enemy. Never watched it again. As far as ole Ruth Marcus goes, now we can talk.
The Post hasn’t made a formal announcement, but they went over to the dark side a long time ago. I mean that they have been “colluding” with the Feds for decades, burying truth at times and certainly printing things they know to be untrue as part of that collusion. I think that just accelerated when Bezos bought them. The Post is probably the worst because they are Washington D.C., not just a branch office of a larger paper. This is where they make their sausage so we should hold them to a higher standard simply because they are there and we aren’t. We rely on their accuracy and good faith because news out of there affects all of our lives on a day to day basis, and we make decisions about our lives and country because of things they print. They matter. And I don’t believe they can be trusted anymore as that sort of information gatherer with no agenda because they clearly favor the government now when it is to their benefit.
“Am I saying that Russia is a utopia without any problems? No. Like most countries, it has plenty. Most Russians, including Putin, admit this.”
I suspect that many, many Americans simply wouldn’t admit that the US has serious, serious problems or if they did, they would blame external actors for the problem, not themselves or their government.
Jeff this aspect of our double standard thinking is helpless to a degree. Now I’m not making excuses, no just an explanation to what I see is going on. If you thought I would first blame the MSM, well you are right. I know it’s getting old always playing the media card, but Jeff for what you brought up I think that the constant noise our MSM can create, and the emotional pull they instill on a person weights heavy to the average person wanting to engage. A lot of people drop out, while the others get bits and pieces of news which has been covered over by the edited omissions, and there we go…. stupid things start occurring.
We as a society could, but probably won’t, but should come to terms with many of our long untold history’s failings. We need to not be exceptional, and not mediocre, but equal to our other mankind who inhabit this earth. I’m a dreamer, but if as a species we were to work towards that goal I spoke of just now, then this could lead to nuclear & conventional weapons being downsized to a bare minimum.
Take our frustrated & greedy souls to invest in our world’s ecology and various environmental states of being in need, and replace all war profiteering with open bid processes with citizen oversight, but there go I. Sorry.
But Jeff your suspect feelings are no doubt right, that we as a society will never come to admit our dark side pass, and even more importantly we will stay in denial of our present day arrogance driven destruction. On the positive side there’s always the odds. Joe
Joe, I think that this represents the nexus of several things. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a bad person. But we have lots of them. Think back to Mai Lai (which is in the news just now). The US military gunned down 500 odd unarmed, unresisting civilians. There’s no way to sugar coat that. That is the very epitome of a war crime. Yet Calley was the only US military person convicted of anything and he ultimately got house arrest. Worse still many, many Americans were outraged that we should try to hold our military to the rules of war. For some reason I doubt that they would have the cognitive dissonance that it was OK to try a 90+ year old guy who had been an accountant at Auschwitz and probably never shot anybody but all our guys who actually gunned innocent people down walked away scott free. And you’re right, the MSM subtly mis-informs you. A discussion on NPR of US and Russian forces in Syria. They talked about how the two sides are jostling against each other. They talked about this and that but by the end, they had never mentioned that the US forces are there illegally and the Russian forces are there legally. The third thread is that people don’t think. In that same piece on Mai Lai, the narrator spoke of Mai Lai causing changes in the US military. The draft was ended and we had a more professional military and things like Mai Lai wouldn’t happen again except he then spoke about Haditha where 24 unarmed civilians were murdered by US Marines. Another war crime for which no one was held accountable. How is this different from Mai Lai? Other than the number of people murdered, it’s not.
Everybody needs to remember that what goes around, comes around.
Jeff, maybe the eventual future foreign policy will be based on ‘not going to war’ rather than have people who would under any other circumstances never ever think to kill anyone but upon the order of the day shout out the call to arms for their soul to metamorphosis into a killer’. Imagine the trauma of it all. Don’t, but do know this is the reality of war. All that peacetime civilian jazz goes out the window when the call to all battle stations becomes ‘this is not a drill’..
I guess we will need to trust the media, you know the one that omits and lies all the time, that their polls are always correct, like the MSM telling us Americans what we Americans think. I think there are plenty Americans hoping not for war. Like military families, and all though I’m trying to keep my comment based on domestic needs and wants I can’t help but include the rest of the world who doesn’t want war, and many of this planet know far better than us on the American continent of who slightly grasp of how horrid war’s reality really is.
Interesting, and no doubt the most important topic of war that always gets left out, good one Jeff. Joe
I attended a Hofstra university lecture last fall given by Masha Gessen who was there to discuss her book: The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which of course Russia it is not. The book later won the National Book award, and her comment upon receiving the award was, “Who would think any book on Russia would win an award, let alone be given the National Book award, but things have changed.” Since then she’s been everywhere pushing her opportunistic, journalistic propaganda. She’s big on LGBT rights, since she’s gay, and that was one of her many attacks on Russia. I reminded her that America had a long history of abuse toward gays in this country and could personally testify to that since I had a brother who was gay and died of AIDS. The treatment of these patients in hospitals was a national disgrace, and not to mention Reagan’s lack of interest in funding early research for the disease, since it was just a gay man’s disease, or a disease that affected a bunch of drug users. I told her that putting things in a black and white perspective served no one’s interest. I couldn’t stand her.
She also wrote a book called The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, “… she gave the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world.”
When 4 billion of the world’s people see’s the US as the greatest threat, I don’t think we have much to say that is worth listening to. I would love to visit Russia,
Masha Gessen’s prior employer was the US propaganda mill, “Radio Liberty” — the former Radio Free Europe.
Thank you for that information. I can only imagine the propaganda they spew, since they do such a great job at home. She hates Putin, and her book stating that Russia is a totalitarian state is a blatant lie. I now wonder about the foundation who hands out those book awards. She is everywhere since she won, pushing her anti-Russia rhetoric, and at colleges, which really doesn’t surprise me since they try to make model citizens of us all.
Yeah, I remember that one. I was working in Moscow at the time she became “famous” by whipping up quite few scandals around herself. Became famous for abusing her female housekeeper, for getting kicked out literally every single publication and web portal she ever worked for, for embellishing (faking) her Resume, for not being able to finish even a high school, etc.. At the time she was a frequent guest on ultra-liberal anti-Putin “Rain” channel, and it would normally take 5-10 minutes to realize she was not all there, something was not quite right in the attic
I read somewhere Masha Gassen has passports of three countries Russia, U.S., and Israel. It tells you something. I myself find no point in reading what she has to say. I have read in the articles here and there when she is quoted. She is part of the West’s Propaganda Machine, which is in high gear these days.
I do not think people who comment on CN have any prejudices against gay people or gay rights. It seems to me that the most important issues of the day are related to War and Peace, Control of Media by few, Neoliberal Economic System and concentration of wealth and power in few hands etc. I wonder if Masha Gassen ever discusses these issues.
agreed – Gessen is part of the propaganda machine… wouldn’t bother reading anything by her.
Masha Geeson strikes me as a current incarnation of that other neurotic anti-Russia émigré, Ayn Rand. We tend to adopt these cranks as “experts” on our chosen Russian villains. I wonder if there is a young Alan Greenspan toe-sucker in Masha’s adoring entourage?
The oligarchs who rule the US are the most evil people on our planet. They think nothing of torturing, killing, or starving millions of their fellow humans. They have a trick of framing all their actions as somehow serving higher worthy purposes. This is simply a black lie. Those who do not realize who our rulers really are, live in a dangerous state of delusion.
So true. I am astonished that anyone living in the US would believe our foreign policy has anything what so ever to do with protecting human rights. Those who do are indeed “living in a dangerous state of delusion.” Try telling them that and watch the fireworks begin. Cognitive dissonance on steroids.
Hi Natylie. Lois from OEN. Thank you for this important essay. I’m going to share it widely so my Russiagate liberal friends and family will hopefully begin to comprehend what I have been trying in vain to get through to them. It’s been so disheartening to watch them fall for this obvious psyop just because Trump is president.
Your reports last year on your visit to Russia were very enlightening to read. It always helps to get a first person impression of a country we are encouraged to demonize. Maybe some of us should organize some group trips to Russia so Americans can see first hand how their perceptions are being manipulated for the benefit of the war mongers and not them. We the people can create peace, despite the cries for war by the greedy and powerful.
Hi Lois. Thank you. I agree that it is important to get more Americans to visit Russia and report back to fellow Americans on their actual experiences of the country. Sharon Tennison at the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI) has been organizing delegations of Americans to travel to different cities in Russia and meet everyday Russians as well as business and community leaders and officials. You can go to the CCI website to find out more about these delegations. Sign up for her email newsletter under the Contact tab and you can be kept informed about future delegations and how to apply to participate in one.
https://ccisf.org/
Awesome! Thanks.
I think it’s wonderful people are doing that, Natylie, but at the same time, that sort of “people-to-people meeting despite our countries being one twitch away from nuking each other” contact is what people tried to keep going during the Soviet/Cold War period. How unbelievably sad that that’s where we are still/again.
I don’t know if it is done, but probably a very useful tool to increase mutual understanding is the type of programs that have existed for a long time where high school students or university students spend a year studying at normal equivalent schools or universities in another country. Go to Russia! (And vice
Versa)
Lois I agree with your comments. Also if your friends and family are still doubtful about all this Russian silliness after you give them Ms Baldwin’s article, remember we here on the comment board at ‘the Consortium’ will still be here…. good luck. Joe
Thanks Joe. There are a few news sites I rely on for enlightened knowledgeable information and conversation. CN is of course at the top of the list along with OpEd News. There are some great people over there. Check it out if you haven’t already. Truth Dig also has some interesting articles and commenters mixed in with some nonsense I don’t bother with and you have to ignore some back and forth insults. The good ones are worth the effort. Plus Chris Hedges is always a must read, though you can read him on OpEd also.
Lois thanks for all those references, because I’m always looking for new sites to check out. You are right I have heard of those sites, and I frequent some them at times. I’ll admit though I don’t frequent OpEd, Truth Dig nor Chris Hedges enough.
Although all of the sites I do visit were at one time a comment section reference find for me. That’s one reason I like reading the comment sections. I actually found Robert Parry from a JFK article he had posted on Huffington Post. Now I just click on HuffPo, as I do Breibart and Drudge, to get a sense of what’s trending in our retail news propaganda mill.
I’m glad you responded, because I’d never want to offend you, or anyone for that matter. Joe
Here is a very frankly written article by Andre Vltchek expressing his perspective of the treatment of Russia by the West that you may find interesting.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-the-west-cannot-stomach-russians/5631953
Skeptical thanks for the link. I enjoy history. Here is what we in the West lost.
https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/
Skeptigal,
Thanks for the link. This great article by Andre Vitchek, in a few pages, very much describes the true history of The West, Colonized Nations, and Russia in this ongoing drama. It is a must read article.
Growing up during the 1950,s in the newly independent country, my all education, and information was still from The West. However, most of our writers, and journalists of those days were progressive left type. And the largest democracy was a friend of Soviet Union as well as with the West. Also, Russian writers like Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turganev of the nineteenth were very popular. People had time, and reading of books was still a pastime among some section of student population, even though many of us were in technical field. We got a balanced view about the World.
Except for a brief period during 1960’s, Americans had been getting only one sided information, in their main Media outlets. Unfortunately, in all the former colonized nations, the Information Space is still dominated by the West as Andre Vitchek correctly points out. But those countries have myriad of problems which needs to be urgently solved. Unfortunately, instead of helping in solving those problems, The West is creating this chaos all over the World. The Western Leadership is living in Imperial delusions, is not very educated about the World beyond The West. And they do not care about the other World. These unfolding events every passing day are getting scarier and scarier.
In my opinion, the best ‘voice’ on TruthDig right now is Maj. Danny Sjursen; for those who haven’t read his work, here’s a recent article of his…
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/gone-george-mcgovern/
Rat and roaches? The rats and roaches are the media(zionist)with our politicians(zionist).
One major area not mentioned by Natylie Baldwin in her survey of Russian/Soviet achievements is the country’s role resisting Western, especially U.S., capitalist depredations on the world stage during the Soviet period. This is more difficult, complex territory than enjoying Tchaikovsky, but developments since 1989 highlight the value of the now-absent counterweight to the hegemon.
David I think a lot of this American Left* hatred for Putin started with RF135FZ Russian law. Here is a link to a white paper written by an American gay activist where he explains what this law is really all about. Here’s a hint; RF135FZ has nothing against homosexuals in it.
* my use of the word ‘Left’ is only being used, because that’s what these boneheads are claiming themselves to be. Plus that’s how we refer to them.
http://static.prisonplanet.com/p/images/february2014/white_paper.pdf
David G –
Yes, Soviet Union was the major impetus for all these Freedom Movements in Asia and Africa. The Independence leaders of Countries like India, Indonesia, Algeria , and many many other countries in Asia and Africa got their inspiration from Soviet Union, and some of those leaders had visited Soviet Union. And after their independence, Soviet Union helped those countries by building dams, steel mills, heavy mechanical and electrical machinery plants and so on.
There was no Industrialization in those countries under the Imperial rule. There was not even one village electrified in India in 1947 when the country got independence., and 85% of the population lived in villages. In cities too, only a few people’s houses were electrified. And there were still wooden plows used to till the land, even in the most prosperous area at the time in the North India (includes Pakistan).
During late 1980’s, to answer some sharp question from a correspondent from the West, Gorbachev said that don’t blame us too much; Soviet Union/Russia have done a lot of good to help the third world countries, and also bring education and modernity to the Central Asian Republics within the Soviet Union.
It is just sad to watch this demonizing of Russia going on for many years now in the West. With a very educated population, Russia is no less than the West. They have everything to be proud of their history.
They have this beautiful vast and wide country, and are trying to build their country, shattered during 1990’s. We should be helping them.
Yes, the soviets just carried on with their half of the JOINT mission FDR intended to carry out for the colonies of European Empires, along with R.O.C., to help develop them and usher them into the U.N. as Sovereign Nations in their own right. BUT…upon FDR’s death, that all changed; WWII failed to put an end to the SMI (Synarchist Internationale Movement; universal fascism and a modern “facelift” for hoary, centuries-old Empire…”Oligarchs of the World unite! You only have your Nationalist Empires to lose…and the whole World to gain”). The crucial time from FDRs death, through “Iron Curtain” jibber-jabber, Red Scares, to Eisenhower’s veiled warning about the MIC (orchestrated by financiers and their Intel Community, filtering throughout MSM, Hollywood, Universities, and Publishing Houses), the turn-about was accomplished. JFK tried to turn back this engineered Turn-About, to FDR’s Post-War vision…he was murdered for it (look up Permindex on EIR search box). Fortunately, China carries on that vision through BRI policies, and the Russian Federation shook off the Neo-lib rape of the Post-Warsaw years, to join China in BRI. Now to turn USA back to that track, before we were hi-jacked from it, by universal corporate fascists in pinstripe suits and briefcases.
thanks for a very fine article. a very uplifting reading intellectual stimulating
Thank you, Hans.
Yes, it is a very good article, very timely. Thanks Natylie.
The left has created a major caveat to their anti-discrimination narrative when it comes to the Russians. It is perfectly acceptable to call the Russian people criminals and barbarians out of pure ignorance. Racism against Russians is based upon the worst kind of discrimination.
Deniz,
I agree with you. But there is no such thing as “Left” exists today, The Left which was in Western Europe three or four decades ago, and to some extent in U.S. too; The Left which fought for economic rights of the workers, and worked for peace, and against imperial Wars. I do not believe that this latte sipping people whom we call Left have any love for the working minorities either or any agenda to raise their wages or provide adequate medical opportutinies to them. Their lives are far removed from these low income minorities. Yes, they do associate with those higher status minorities, the likes of Fareed Zakaria, Don Lemon and others. We might call them Wall Street Left.
When Sean Hannity uses the word Left during his monologue, it is all for show, to fool the public that we really have a democracy here with this so called Left and Right.
“no such thing as “Left” exists today”….thank you, Dave P…although i realize Deniz meant neoliberals that sometimes co-opt the label “left”, the neocons use it pejoratively against any social movement, I prefer to adhere to its original meaning i.e. anyone who is an anti-establishment progressive. Of course, even the term “progressive” is now used interchangeably with “liberal” and “neoliberal” so that ideological language has become meaningless, one reason why I never label myself. its like putting yourself in an ideological box.
…by the way, I don’t know where “uestion:will anyon” came from…the above entry is from Bob H…CAN SOMEONE AT CN FIX THIS GLITCH?
BobH, Thanks for the correction. Yes, I understand it that Deniz has made a very correct observation about this demonizing of Russians by the so called Left, by the likes of Masha Gessen, as if Russians are inferior and barbarians; and I agree with him on that. I should have explained further the point I wanted to make.
The Left certainly exists today and it is having a direct and significant impact on many people in my community, particularly in regards to transgender issues. The left’s agenda has changed, it no longer worries about economic issues. It appears that its sole mission is LGBT rights and will knock down anyone that stands in its way. I find it no coincidence that Putin, who is not a pro-LGBT biggest critic on the left is Rachel Maddow.
Minority groups who have historically been marginalized are often the biggest tools in the tiny ruling class’s war against the majority. This is also straight out of the playbook, identify and empower a disenfranchised minority group, then use them to implement regime change.
Incidentally, I am pro-gay marriage.
Deniz…both you and Dave seem to have misinterpreted my comment. I was agreeing with his definition of “left’ because it originally implied a worker’s movement i.e. socialist, not the group of single issue advocates that seem to have co-opted the term as Rachael Maddow might employ it.
“ustion: will anyon” is acctually Bob H( there seems to be a software glitch again)
>The left has created a major caveat to their anti-discrimination narrative when it comes to the Russians.
> It is perfectly acceptable to call the Russian people criminals and barbarians out of pure ignorance.
> Racism against Russians is based upon the worst kind of discrimination.
OK, but what leftists do this? None that I know of.
(I hope you are not going to claim that supporters of Killary or BLiar are anywhere on the left.)
I call them pseudo leftists, although a great many of them have no inkling what leftism is about or its history.
Another article of interest below.
—————————————————–
“The past Porton Down can’t hide
As an inquest reopens into the death of a young airman 51 years ago, Rob Evans reveals the secrets of Britain’s nerve gas tests”
Rob Evans
Thu 6 May 2004 18.34 BST First published on Thu 6 May 2004 18.34 BST
…
Tucked away in 7,000 acres of beautiful Wiltshire countryside lies one of Britain’s most infamous scientific establishments. Porton Down, founded in 1916, is the oldest chemical warfare research installation in the world. The tight secrecy which has surrounded the establishment for decades has fed the growth of all sorts of myths and rumours about its experiments. One Whitehall official once remarked that Porton had an image of “a sinister and nefarious establishment”.
The Porton experiments on humans have attracted a good deal of criticism. It is, for example, alleged that the human “guinea pigs’ – drawn from the armed forces and supposedly all volunteers – were duped into taking part in the tests. There are still concerns that the tests have damaged the long-term health of the human subjects.
This week, its work has been thrown into the spotlight once again: an inquest was reopened into the death, in May 1953, of a young airman, Ronald Maddison. He died after liquid nerve gas was dripped on to his arm by Porton scientists in an experiment. The original inquest decided that his death was accidental, but this new inquest will examine fresh evidence and decide if the verdict should stand….
[read more at link below]
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/may/06/science.research
Article of interest at link below.
————————————————————————–
The UK Government is Manufacturing its Nerve Agent Case for ‘Action’ on Russia
Official claim that ‘Novichok’ points solely to Russia discredited
By Nafeez Ahmed
March 14, 2018 “Information Clearing House”…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48952.htm
A combination of dishonesty and incompetence, your name is UK leadership (easily pushed by the incompetent and dishonorable UK security services): https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-14/fatal-quad-who-assassinating-mi6-assets-british-soil
“Last week it was widely reported that a former Soviet and Russian military intelligence officer, Sergey Skripal was found unconscious with his daughter on a public bench near a shopping center in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. In Britain, the media and eccentric foreign minister were swift to blame Russian intelligence services of attempting to assassinate Skripal, who is currently still in coma in Salisbury District Hospital. In the past week the hysteria of the British press has escalated to the point of forcing PM Theresa May to issue an ultimatum to Russian president Putin. … This tragic case is one more episode in a series of suspicious and unsolved deaths in Britain of valuable MI6 assets from Russia: Alexander Litvinenko (2006), Alexander Perep?lichny (2012), and Boris Berezovsky (2013).
The one notable similarity shared by the very different individuals in this foursome of exposed spies is that they all held an irrational belief in the reliability of the British justice and banking systems, other institutions, and intelligence services. None of them seemed to fully appreciate the simple fact that they would only be treated as true gentlemen as long as they served British interests. Once they began to represent even a potential threat to Britain’s ongoing political operations or once their current value dropped below a certain threshold, they were easily sacrificed to fulfill their final, “last, but not least” task – to serve as a log to be added to fuel the flames of Russophobia in their new and very temporary homeland.”
In short, the ongoing bru-ha-ha about Salisbury poisoning is the planned result of a false-flag op conducted by the UK security services to affect the coming elections in Russia. By showing up so much stupidity, dishonesty, opportunism, and servility Mrs. May has won a leadership prize in perfidy. Some job.
Read what objectable comments bring you in the English Parliament….
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/14/jeremy-corbyn-under-fire-over-response-to-pms-russia-statement
I believe our resident war criminals (past and present) are hell bent on war with Russia and Iran too.
Will the War Agenda of the War Criminals Result in Nuclear War?
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/will-war-agenda-of-war-criminals-result.html
Only a dirt bag careerist would follow the trending Russia bashing to be happy that once again Russia is America’s enemy. Now we are doing a Natasha throw back of Russian women, and we Americans call ourselves equal opportunist. Shameful, just unnervingly shameful.
A friend recently informed me that the statute of limitations expired 5 days ago on Clapper’s lying to Congress, wow we average American citizens should be so lucky, as to have Clapper’s clout, or influence.
About that Russian entertainment Viacom enjoys a big part of the Russian film and television market. This is where that American described awful gay bashing law that isn’t aimed at the gays comes to be. Russian Federation 135FZ is strictly a law restricting adult viewing towards children. Viacom and other American media giants don’t like this law, because the law has hefty fines, yet this law has hardly been enforced.
I think the minute Trump said publicly that Putin should release all of Hillary’s emails, that that was the very moment Mook & Company decided, ‘hey if Hillary loses then we will blame it on Putin’. The old kill two birds with one stone.
Once again I must praise Natalie Baldwin I really enjoy reading her essays. Joe
Unfortunately, many Americans are extremely simple-minded and are easy to manipulate with the old “America good/Russia evil” trap. It goes way back and sadly, it still works. I would be willing to bet that a majority of our citizens still believe that Russians are Commies!
Nancy I don’t think that there are many in America who still think Russia is communist, I know there are. If our fellow Americans do recognize Russia as it being free of communism, then these same Americans say Putin is an authoritarian dictator. Sometimes it’s entertaining to watch intellectually capable people do, or say, stupid things, but when it comes to Americans with criticism of all things Russian, and especially Putin, as the Russian country being corrupt and under thuggish control, but in this case entertained turns to embarrassment and disappointment. I’d like to first thank America’s corporate owned MSM for this American stupidity, and thank our media for making us Americans the dumbest population on earth. Joe
Joe, thanks for responding to my post on another article. I don’t hear people talk of Russia as a communist state, but they do call them a bunch of socialists and conflate the two. We have encouraged people to think it’s one and the same, and we certainly used it in our rampage through South America in corporate America’s capitalistic interests.
I can barely recall the context I used the American people think Russia is still communist, and I forgot what article I wrote that comment under.
Although I have run into a couple to a few Americans who have used the political reference when they talk about Russia. I think people use words like communist and fascist often out of context from what these words true definition means. Actually our U.S. democracy fits that scenario of labeling political foundations, where what we call it isn’t so much of how it functions in real everyday life.
The reference you make to S America is so true. In fact Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was the S American poster boy for the Washington elite to demonize, and yet the name of his political party doesn’t have the name communism in it, as it’s real name is ‘United Socialist Party of Venezuela’. Like you said Socialist, but not so much communist. Remember ‘communism’ like ‘fascism’ is a powerfully scary word, and in some parts of the world so is ‘democracy’.
Our labeling system for political ideology is all screwed up, just take for example America’s liberal Left isn’t anything of what their title suggests. The Democratic Party isn’t the party of the working class, and our nation’s Republican Party isn’t so much about country clubs, as it once was.
I’ll bet you being a teacher could tear your hair out hearing all these off the mark poorly labeled descriptions of our world’s political references. With that I will admit I don’t know how teachers do it. Joe
Annie I see where I said what you said I said, that was my opening sentence in reply to Nancy …oh boy am I losing it.
I also replied to you using the wrong comment reply button….. somebody help me please. My reply to you doesn’t even have your name in it.
See the reply that starts out with, ‘I can barely recall’ that’s my reply to you. Joe
I can barely recall the context I used the American people think Russia is still communist, and I forgot what article I wrote that comment under.
Although I have run into a couple to a few Americans who have used the political reference when they talk about Russia. I think people use words like communist and fascist often out of context from what these words true definition means. Actually our U.S. democracy fits that scenario of labeling political foundations, where what we call it doesn’t match so much of how it functions in real everyday life.
The reference you make to S America is so true. In fact Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was the S American poster boy for the Washington elite to demonize, and yet the name of his political party doesn’t have the name communism in it, but still the American press always called Chavez a communist. The political party Chavez did belong to the real name is ‘United Socialist Party of Venezuela’. Like you said Socialist, but not so much communist. Remember ‘communism’ like ‘fascism’ is a powerfully scary word, and in some parts of the world so is ‘democracy’.
Our labeling system for political ideology is all screwed up, just take for example America’s liberal Left isn’t anything of what their title suggests. The Democratic Party isn’t the party of the working class, and our nation’s Republican Party isn’t so much about country clubs, as it once was.
I’ll bet you being a teacher could tear your hair out hearing all these off the mark poorly labeled descriptions of our world’s political references. With that I will admit I don’t know how teachers do it. Joe
joe.A teacher in Munich 1978 taught us that that if one turns the dial left or right, it will be the same thing, Extreme leftists, or extreme rightists, you end up with a strong authoritarian leader. Thank whatever that Trump is too dumb to be an authoritarian leader.
Your comment tina made me think of the song “Stuck in the Middle With You” Stealers Wheel.
Here’s a verse;
“Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
‘Cause I don’t think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you”
Hope you and dad are doing well. Joe
It gets even more personal then that. My mother was a socialist, and during political discussions I would hear them call her a communist, which wasn’t true. Yet people looked down on her for her beliefs. What were they? All people are equal in this world, no one is better then the other, just more fortunate in life. One shouldn’t judge people by what they have, or don’t have, and only people and living things are of true value. Greed, putting money before people, was the greatest sin. If the world could live by those beliefs it would be a much better place. All my life, or her life, I never heard her say a nasty word about people based on their race or religion, and she believed in a more even distribution of wealth. As a child I use to wonder where she got her ideas, since I didn’t see them reflected in the world. She never spoke of her past, all I knew was her parents died young. Only through doing her Ancestry, after her death, did I find out she and her siblings were raised in an orphanage. I’m sure her early life had something to do with the way she came to see the world.
It does bother me that so many jump to conclusions with little, if any proof, especially being a science teacher. However it doesn’t surprise me, and as I mentioned before the system spoon feeds information, and emphasizes memorization much more then analytical thinking. We’re educating people to fit in, and succeed. Being different is a handicap.
P. S. I loved Chavez and mostly because he was willing to stand up to the US. Too bad he died of cancer, and too young. the post I was referring to was: Trump Promotes Longtime Russia Hawk Just as Russia-gate Loses Momentum.
Perhaps someone on this site can explain to me why Russia, which is not communist anymore, is constantly vilified by the west while China which is ruled by the Communist Party is rarely criticized? Xi Jinping is certainly not treated in as condescending a manner as Vladimir Putin by Western leaders.
Skeptigal the inconsistency in all of this craziness with Russia as the villain is off the proverbial charts.
Tonight I noticed besides Theresa May and her accusing Russia of this poisoning of the Skripal‘s now the U.S. is imposing more sanctions onto Russia for Russia hacking our utility grid. Pundits on our American television are proving nothing with any hard actual evidence, but still they talk all night how Russia is doing all these awful acts. Most of their rambling is hearsay, gossipy, and immature to say the least, but one by one these pundits trash Putin and his Russia. Did I say how over the top our media is with this Russia stuff?
I think it safe to say that the U.S. may one day be beating up on China.
Lastly General Mike Flynn did have a plan where the U.S. would hug Putin, and then this alliance would squeeze China. Although with Putin interrupting Obama’s Syrian Redline I won’t rule out Israeli involvement along with American Neocon getting back at Putin with Ukraine, and instead of China first the chairs were rearranged to now Russia first…. just a guess. Joe
Annie your Mother was inspirational, and I can tell she raised you right. Joe
Skeptigal,
Thanks! The short question you put point at a lot of telling conclusions.
Nancy, where have you been since 1987? Here to prove your point about stupid Americans. I lived in the then West Germany, and whenever we were back in the States, American people would ask me what is it like living in a Communist country.. Excuse me, you mean the GDR, East Germany. Another American false belief, every German was/is a national/socialist. Public education is lacking in the usa. But our ignorance does not excuse bad behavior on 2018.
I live in Arizona–enough said?
As Joe said, people all over this bizarre nation are very uneducated about what socialism/communism are all about. It would always crack me up to hear people refer to Obama as a socialist! If only!
Nancy, possibly so – and if so maybe there’s the rub – we’re still steeped in the Cold War fears and anxieties. To say the word “Communist” is to bring the fears into some of us, long buried, of the McCarthy witch hunt years. Somehow that word “communism” seems to have been used to kill millions of people in wars that demonized, for example, Ho Chi Minh, who historians finally proved was a nationalist who cared deeply about his country, not a cog in the wheel to take over the world and subjugate the capitalists over here……
To my mind it’s the oligarch’s who were fearful that average people all over the world would be seduced by a “communist” ideology – whatever that might have been – and that would threaten their endgame of controlling all the wealth themselves.
Somehow that “fear” is still used to whip people into a frenzy to fight a phantom enemy who has been painted and tarred as “the other” the “danger”, “the one to be feared”.
The people in this country who try to drive that narrative always pick on one name – one leader – there is no consideration for the many diverse millions who live in that country. As Natylie Baldwin points out:
“Russia has made many cultural and humanitarian contributions to the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, imperial Russia produced some of the most renowned figures in the world of arts. These include writers, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, whose works are often cited by American readers as among the greatest of all time; great composers include Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff.”
I have spent many many hours listening to these composers and reading these authors. It’s bizarre to demonize a whole people like this.
I wonder whether the real value of the post election demonization was to ‘splain to the billionaire donors to the Clinton Foundation – to the extent that they may have expected a quid pro quo when the Clintons were back in the White House – how this surprise could have happened.
If it was in fact the other possibility – that the Democratic machine had picked a weak candidate – then those donors were snookered…..just saying….
Thank you, Joe.
You know what I apologize for my computers stupid spell check. I specifically wrote Natylie and the dumb spell check changed it, and of course I didn’t take note of it.
But anyway Ms Baldwin you deserve my praise, and you are welcome. Hope to read more of your insightful observations. I have a niece who is a world traveler, and I always reference you to her.
Okay now I’m done. Joe
The article provides very useful counterpoint to anti-Russia propaganda. One could lead more quickly to the “Countering the Negative” information, that leads those deluded by the MSM to see Russia as an ally.
Also, while it may be unpopular in some quarters, it is important to note that there is only one motive and faction promoting the anti-Russia propaganda, and that is zionism, for only they seek to trick the US into scaring Russia out of the Mideast, and seek US wars in the Mideast. They (eg Kagan and Nuland et al) are the ones promoting war in Ukraine to preoccupy Russia outside the Mideast. They are the ones who own, staff, and directly and indirectly control nearly all US mass media, the anti-Russia propagandists..
Russia-gate = Israel-gate both in the zionist control of the DNC, and the anti-Russia campaign that began as soon as they lost in 2016, to cover up the zionist control of the DNC by faking external control of Trump, and to attack Russia on behalf of the zionists. If Sanders had won the primary, the zionists would still have controlled US foreign policy and turned it against Russia. Zionism is nearly the whole problem here.
I agree..your article is a breath of fresh air to me because I argue every day against the demonization of Putin. I heard his entire address and have the transcript. If ever an American president stood up and gave an address to the nation like Putin’s, people would faint en masse to have such a man as a leader. What did our media do? They jumped on the last few minutes of his talk and did not mention the first two thirds at all. When has a president here spoken of medical care for all, and expanding it further to reach those who live in remote areas, of raising teachers’ wages, of increasing pension payments for seniors, of expanding children’s access to arts and culture. He’s a wonderful person, and I think the best leader today. Yet, people remain ignorant and it’s mind-boggling.
As for this poisoning of a former double agent, it’s simply nuts to think Putin did it. Ask yourself, cui bono? Who benefits? Certainly not Putin who if he’s wanted to could have killed the guy when he was in prison in Russia. The accusation of Theresa May and Boris Johnston (two dunces in my opinion) is a false flag. I’d be willing to bet the UK itself poisoned the two; after all, they have a chemical plant a few kilometers down the road from Salsbury. Also, one can’t prove a poison is Novichok, according to the rules of chemists, if you don’t have a “standard” which is the poison itself to match it to what was found in order to compare ingredients. That means the Brits most probably use it on the spy and his daughter to create what they, the USA and France want: an false flag to create a “regime change” in Russia, a most despicable plan if ever there is one. .
Loved your article, with one caveat: “Last year it was the White Helmets film to support the regime change meme in Syria.” You misused the word, “meme.” Richard Dawkins coined the word and I heard him define it. I have yet to hear anyone use it properly.
Cheers, RR
P.S. The false flags are flying to attack Iran, too. I’ve been there recently and the people are wonderful, highly educated as opposed to Americans. Everywhere I went, the men told me “women are here,” holding their hands high, and “men are here,” lowering their hands considerably. Then they and the women would laugh. Couples walk down the streets, holding hands, chatting and laughing. A friends of mine, a professor, asked me how I could like a country that has “that awful Ayatollah.” I said, the mullahs are like a supreme court and the Ayatollah, a chief justice. We have the same thing…with hardliners and softliners, too, and our chief justice is Roberts. The difference between our countries is that Iran has a great president, and we have a sociopath.
Craig Murray has an interesting take on England’s knowledge of Novichok.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/the-novichok-story-is-indeed-another-iraqi-wmd-scam/
Here is the classic, that if you wait long enough the truth shall prevail.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-15/maidan-icon-faces-arrest-admitting-ukraine-official-led-snipers-central-kiev
Vil Mirzayanov a Russian defector wrote a book that can be bought on Amazon for $30 where he gave out the ingredients on how to make the poison Novichok. So putting two and two together, and given the fact that Mirauanov lives in the U.S., then why are we suspicious of Russia?
https://www.sott.net/article/380014-Theresa-May-disgraced-Recipe-for-mysterious-nerve-agent-Novichok-can-be-bought-for-30-on-Amazon
Theresa May’s blaming of Russia doesn’t stand up under scrutiny? Kim Jong Un’s brother was poisoned & murdered last year by a poison created by the British? Does anyone blame Britain for that murder based on the fact that they created this chemical & is Theresa May blamed for the ingredients list of their poison that got out & was used by Nth Korea? NO, they blame the Nth Korean regime? Using the same logic to Russia, Novichek was created in Russia, 30yrs ago, but with the breakup of the old Soviet Union, a lot of this stuff got out & this nerve agent was apparently made in a former Russian territory, but now independent country called Uzbekistan. Theresa May is a complete hypocrite & if she’s going to blame Russia for killing their Russian double agent then they must take the blame for killing Kim Jong Un’s brother using their chemical poison which they made? I believe the English have a saying that states “The pot calling the kettle black”, which means, you should not criticise others, looking at their faults, without acknowledging that you, also have those same faults!
Exactly! Joe
“Even on television, which is heavily influenced by the Kremlin, the Western position is often given airtime by either pro-Western Russian critics or Westerners themselves”.
It has been pointed out (I think by The Saker, among others) that the Russian government finds this cheaper and less trouble than bothering to produce any propaganda of its own.
Why go to a lot of expense trying to explain the defects of the West when you can just let your citizens see for themselves what the Westerners are saying? (Martin Berliner’s tweet “Rats and roaches… name something positive” must remind them of other Berliners 75 years ago who held similar opinions about Slavs).
Reflecting on this curious state of affairs, I am suddenly reminded of a book review I saw many years ago. The subject of the review was a book someone had written about Florida, and the sentence that stays in my mind was along the lines of,
“Reading this book will do more to dissuade you from visiting Florida than anything else – except an actual visit to Florida”.
I recall the previous pieces that Mr. Parry and Sharon Tennison did from their visits to Russia. All have had pleasant experiences. My father had, which fortunately I still do, a copy of “The Ugly American”. Every time I come across a p.o.s. like John Sypher, that is what I think. These morons who trash Russia and President Trump and especially when they like to lump them together need a switch at the rear of the woodshed. Though I am not for violence………
Sypher… appropriate name…
I remember the book.
Yes, the Ugly American is insightful. No, “morons” are the supporters who still believe the lies of Trumpnochio.
https://www.vogue.com/article/donald-trump-lies-200-days
Lumping together ? No, Putin does not call the White house giving orders. However, The Trump “brand” only stayed afloat in the early 2000s thanks to the huge “loans” from Russian and Ukrainian “businessmen”…. and Florida real estates “deals.”
geeeyp, Ann Wright not long ago, on consortiumnews I believe, wrote a very insightful article describing her travels in Russia speaking to young people who live there.
Only morons trash president Trump?
The parties who lump Russia and Trump together – the Russia-gate truthers – are propagandists, not “morons”. Those who buy their propaganda are the morons.
Let’s examine the fine piece of “journalism” referenced above by stu. Vogue contributing editor Michelle Ruiz positions at the top of the list of Trump’s “mind-boggling lies”:
“‘Nobody knows’ if Russia interfered in the 2016 election.Trump has refused to accept that Russian intelligence agents were behind the cyber attacks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and targeted voter registration software during the 2016 election in an attempt to sway the result. The hack ‘could’ve been China’ or ‘a lot of different groups,’ Trump said on CBS’s Face the Nation in April. ‘It’s very hard to say who did the hacking.’ Actually, not really: The U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, FBI, and DNI (director of national intelligence), has all but unanimously found Russia to be responsible.”
What the moronic Ruiz and the rest of mainstream “journalism” gets paid not to notice is that the avalanche of lies and moronic Tweets spewed by Trump belong to a propaganda script designed to usher in the next round of “regime change” war.
Let’s be clear: Trump’s prodigious falsehoods do not establish Russia-gate “truth”. In fact, nothing substantial has been presented by the so-called “intelligence community” or any other party that indicates Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
What is consistently ignored is flagrant Israeli meddling and pro-Israel Lobby interference in American electoral politics.
The entire Russia-gate fiction is designed to maximize distraction from the reality of a foreign power – Israel – that destructively interferes in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
In fact, there can be no distinguishing between the state of Israel and the USA as a state. They are intertwined at the top, financed together, and governed by a single mind, a single purpose, that of marshalling both countries together to misrule and exploit as much of the world as they can. As a Canadian, I am ashamed to watch my own country tag along as a junior partner of this twinned state menace. Our parliament votes unanimously against any effort no matter how symbolic against the depredations of American-Israeli behaviour, oppressing the Palestinians and every other people in that region, as well as elsewhere, after whom they hanker to destroy.
Ha ha ha, so do Russians, but as we say “evil has to be punished”
Advanced Israeli-Saudi-U.S. war preparations are underway. United States Air Force Commander states U.S. prepared for to go to War for Israel:
“At the end of the day it is about the protection of Israel […] We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that”
– Lietenant General Richard M. Clark, Commander USAF 3rd Air
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Juniper-Cobra-begins-with-US-and-IDF-troops-simulating-missile-attacks-544598
Based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Third Air Force plans, deploys, sustains and redeploys Air Force forces that directly support the combatant commanders during contingency and wartime operations. Clark oversees nine USAF wings in Europe and one air expeditionary wing.
Israel’s coming planned military assault on Lebanon and Syria has a lot to do with natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.
Among its numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242, Israel annexed the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981.
Geopolitical researcher F. William Engdahl has discussed the energy resources in the Golan Heights, Israel, and Trump
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO30Mar2017.php
Engdahl notes “we might find ourselves in another war for oil in of all places the Golan Heights, this one a war involving Syria, Russia, Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah on one side and Israel and Rex Tillerson’s 68 nation ‘anti-ISIS coalition’ on the other side, another senseless war over control of oil.”
Aren’t the Rothschild’s involved in the Golan oil business?
Jacob Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, and former US vice president Dick Cheney are on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil and Gas, parent company of Afek Oil and Gas
https://genieoilgas.com/about-us/strategic-advisory-board/
Syria’s Golan Heights region, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel, has been referred to by Genie and Afek as “northern Israel”.
Murdoch’s Fox “news” channel has been instrumental in pushing for more war in the Middle East, and obfuscating the role played by the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis in fomenting the terrorist assault against the Syrian government.
Murdoch, Rothschild, Cheney and their cronies have a long tradition of promoting war in the Middle East and exploiting its oil resources. They hope to reap profits from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract the fossil fuels from the Golan. Of concern is the fact that Israel draws one-third of its entire water supply from the region.
Thanks Abe you are the go to. Joe
Abe have you ever of Operation Beluga.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/03/15/operation-beluga-the-plot-to-demonise-putin/
“the telltale sign of an enormous geopolitical provocation that is wreaking havoc with world stability”
Such provocations are proliferating and they consistently lead back to Israel.
Hi Joe-
Thanks for the link. It ties a lot together.
“What is clear is that the 2015 Russian intervention in Syria along with Iran’s growing influence in the region has rolled back attempts by the US and its partners to reassert control over the Middle East they have sought since the Cold War. With a new multipolar coalition of emerging regional and global powers, US dreams of hegemony will be increasingly more difficult to achieve […]
“Lebanon has been a battlefield in the past the US has used as a vector toward greater regional conflict. Its ability or inability to create conflict there again, directly or through Israel, and that conflict’s ability or inability to drag Iran, Syria and other players in directly, will determine the outlook for America’s wider agenda in the region.”
Lebanon Next in US War on Middle East
By Ulson Gunnar
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2017/10/lebanon-next-in-us-war-on-middle-east.html
“Just as the US and UK did during the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003, an avalanche of propaganda is being produced to stampede the world into backing whatever long-ago elected course of action the West has decided to take against Russia.
“In the hindsight of whatever course of action the UK and its allies decide to take in the coming days, weeks, and months based on the Skripal incident, who will play the role of “Curveball” who supposedly duped Theresa May in making her Powell-style accusations before declaring her Bush-style retaliation?
“And considering the ramifications for the West regarding its lies in the lead up to Iraq and the fallout the West has faced in the aftermath of Iraq’s destruction, what do Western policymakers expect to gain from an incident many times more transparently staged and self-serving against a world increasingly skeptical of their claims and actions?
“Still, the accusations are serious and the prepared responses from the West will assuredly further endanger global peace and stability. That the alleged attack took place on British soil means that – unlike in Syria – there is no UNSC the West must pass through before taking matters into its own hands.
“This fact alone – following years of frustration in the face of Russia’s veto power upon the UNSC in regards to Syria – makes the nature of the Skripal incident even more suspicious. The UK appears to have a pretext and a clear path toward escalation before it – how far it and its allies are prepared to go remains to be seen.”
WMD Lies Strike Again: The Skripal Incident
By Tony Cartalucci
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2018/03/wmd-lies-strike-again-skripal-incident.html
Israel-gate spreads to Europe:
The pro-Israel Lobby uses Hasbara propaganda tactics and political manipulation to influence elections and manipulate legislation in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries.
Israel is influencing student, activist and parliamentary groups in the UK, offering financial and strategic assistance in order to shape UK politics:
http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/.
An Al Jazeera Investigative Unit undercover reporter infiltrated pro-Israeli groups working to influence UK politics.
The investigation uncovered a close link between a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, and a network of politicians, activists and analysts in Britain who are sympathetic to Israel.
For example, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit discovered that the Union of Jewish Students in Britain not only received money from the Israeli embassy, but also attempted to oust the president of the National Union of Students, which represents more than four million British university students.
Pro-Israel Lobby groups make extensive use of the “Anti-Semitic” trope to bully groups and manipulate political leaders.
The Al Jazeera Investigative Unit six-month undercover investigation reveals how Israel penetrates different levels of British democracy.
Russia-gate is a deliberate diversion from the real issue of “influence”, the growing scandal of Israel-gate in the United States, UK, and elsewhere in Europe.
Growing scandal? Give it to Al Jazeera: the ability to uncover something that everybody who had a whit of interest knew for a long time. Actually, compared to USA and Canada, “the lobby” has fewer teeth in Europe, complains that this or that person reveals new Anti-Semitism or an old one rarely make someone shut up. Of course, Israel reliably gets from Europe what she needs, but ah! it could be so much more.
For example, Corbyn was endlessly heckled as condoning anti-Semitism, and sadly, that probably improved his popularity, like his tepid attitude to EU — Labor right wingers think that the only proper way to talk about EU is with utmost reverence, in USA and Canada reserved for Israel (well, they could worship NAFTA, but few do). But the feelings among the unwashed masses are far from that.
I found this article on the Global Research site. Perhaps you’ve read this article by Alison Weir. It is so long I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. But it describes Israel’s meddling in Wikipedia, YouTube and spreading propaganda on the internet.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-israel-and-its-partisans-work-to-censor-the-internet/5631837
a Hasbara troll under every bush then…
A charming li’l check-in from comrade “Will”, the hilarious “never heard the word” Hasbara propaganda troll “dude” who entertained us last December.
See the CN comments at
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/22/the-strangelovian-russia-gate-myth/
Apparently “Will” has since learned how to spell “Hasbara”.
“Israel has extensive stocks of chemical weapons but has always refused to declare any of them to the OPCW. Israel is not a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention nor a member of the OPCW. Israel signed in 1993 but refused to ratify as this would mean inspection and destruction of its chemical weapons. Israel undoubtedly has as much technical capacity as any state to synthesise ‘Novichoks’.
Until this week, the near universal belief among chemical weapons experts, and the official position of the OPCW, was that ‘Novichoks’ were at most a theoretical research programme which the Russians had never succeeded in actually synthesising and manufacturing. That is why they are not on the OPCW list of banned chemical weapons.
“Porton Down is still not certain it is the Russians who have apparently synthesised a ‘Novichok’. Hence ‘Of a type developed by Russia’. Note developed, not made, produced or manufactured.
“It is very carefully worded propaganda. Of a type developed by liars”.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/of-a-type-developed-by-liars/
Israeli Brigadier General Zvika Haimovich, IDF Aerial Defense Division Commander and United States Air Force Lieutenant General Richard Clark, Joint Task Force-Israel Commander, spoke at the opening of Juniper Cobra 2018 exercises
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot7Pphx6FJw
(English portion of video – minutes 3:00-12:44)
Juniper Cobra, the IDF’s largest joint training exercise, includes 2,500 EUCOM (U.S. European Command) troops deployed in Israel. The exercise involves “Patriot” weapon systems, THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and the AEGIS Combat System coordinated with IAF’s “David’s Sling”, “Iron Dome” and “Arrow” weapon systems.
An associated military exercise involves a US amphibious ready group (ARG) consisting of the US Navy’s Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS New York (LPD 21) and the Harpers Ferry-class amphibious dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD 51). US Marines of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) are deployed alongside Israeli soldiers as part of exercise Juniper Cobra.
The Blue Ridge-class command and control ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), carrying 500 servicemen and women from the U.S. 6th fleet, docked at the Haifa Port at the start of the joint Israel-US exercise Juniper Cobra 2018.
The flagship of the Sixth Fleet, USS Mount Whitney is a floating headquarters connected to the global command and control network of the Pentagon through the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) ground station in Niscemi, Italy.
During the Haifa port visit, U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, Commander for U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) and NATO Supreme Allied Command Europe, visited the ship.
Scaparrotti held a meeting with Vice Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet, and Lieutenant General Richard Clark.
Scaparrotti and Clark later met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to tour the headquarters of Juniper Cobra at Hatzor Air Force Base in central Israel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H95BT64rb3I
The Juniper Cobra exercise included computer-assisted simulations. Hatzor has a network of eight simulator pods which use satellite footage of countries including Lebanon and Syria to train pilots for deep strike missions.
In addition to the U.S. 6th Fleet vessels USS Mount Whitney and USS Iwo Jima, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) participated in the Juniper Cobra exercise.
Headquartered in Naples, Italy, the U.S. 6th Fleet conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations. Recent U.S. Navy visits to Israel include Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) in November 2017, America-class amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) in October 2017, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Oscar Austin (DD 79) in August 2017, Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in July 2017, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) in May 2017 and San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19) in March 2017.
While is not an official NATO member, Israel has the status of a “non-NATO ally” and has been gradually integrated into NATO military planning.
In February 2018, Israeli Ambassador to the European Union (EU) and NATO Aharon Leshno-Yaar signed a logistics agreement with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). The agreement enables Israeli companies in the cyber, optics, defense, and software sectors to compete in NATO tenders and be part of NATO’s database of authorized exporters. Israel estimates the value of deals likely to be opened to Israeli companies by the agreement at $4.5 billion.
Relations between Israel and NATO have been cold in recent years, following Israel’s 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla. Turkey, a prominent NATO member, delayed all NATO activity with Israel. A 2016 compromise agreement signed with Turkey paved the road for progress by Israel’s representatives to NATO.
For those unfamiliar with the United States Navy’s warships, Arleigh Burke-class ships larger and more heavily armed than most previous ships classified as guided missile destroyers (NATO standard designation: DDGs).
It is noteworthy that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole was damaged in 2000 while docked in Aden, Yemen. The attack, in which an apparently shaped charge was placed against the hull and detonated, killed 17 crew members.
Built around the Aegis Combat System (ACS), an advanced command-and-decision (C&D) and weapon control system (WCS) that uses powerful computers and radars to track and guide weapons to destroy enemy targets, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are designed for multiple missions.
Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that visited Israel during the past year have been equipped with the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System (ABMD), designed to intercept ballistic missiles post-boost phase and prior to reentry.
In 2011, the United States was announced that Arleigh Burke-class AEGIS warships would be forward-deployed in Europe to support the NATO missile defence system. Considering the AEGIS deployment a threat to its nuclear deterrent, Russia has maintained the system is “fueling a new arms race”, and is constructed “on ridiculous fabricated pretexts” of protection against non-existent threats of so-called rogue states.
Israel is striving to drag the United States into further destructive wars in the Middle East, and potentially a cataclysmic nuclear confrontation with Russia.
US/Saudi/Israel-backed al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria advance key geopolitical goals of Israel, including permanent annexation of Syria’s resource-rich Golan Heights area.
The illusion of a “threat” to Israel guarantees an ever greater cascade of military and economic aid supplied by slavishly pro-Israel politicians in the United States.
HASBARA DECEPTION
The Israeli government, major pro-Israel media organizations, and Hasbara troll army “commenters” online weave a dense fabric of deceit. Israel’s foreign ministry organized volunteers to add pro-Israeli commentary on news websites. In July 2009, it was announced that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would conduct “internet warfare” to spread a pro-Israel message on various websites. The program has expanded to a real Hasbara troll army that promotes pro-Israel policies in the press and online media.
Hasbara propaganda attempts to deceive, distract, divert and disrupt discussion of:
– the workings of the Israel Lobby and Israeli influence on American foreign policy
– Israel’s flagrant violations of basic human rights and its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory
– Israeli collusion with terrorist forces operating in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq
– Israel’s offensive arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
– constant Israeli military threats against Iran
Hasbara propaganda additionally aims at promoting fake news and conspiracy theories to divert attention from an actual and very public conspiracy: the efforts of the Israel lobby to manipulate politics in the United States.
HASBARA PROPAGANDA FUNDAMENTALS
The basics of Hasbara propaganda are easy to identify:
simplistic phrases, repeated over and over, designed to engage emotions rather than produce rational arguments, all shaped to fit into a narrative of good (Western-oriented Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy) versus evil (Arab/Muslim terrorists who seek not only to destroy the Jewish state but kill all Jews).
To persuade Americans to accept this impoverished account of the conflict, Hasbara propaganda rewrites history, rejects international law and ignores the struggle over land and resources that is at the heart of the conflict.
Hasbara propaganda relies on public ignorance of basic facts about international law, the history of Zionist land grab efforts in Palestine, and Israel’s wars of aggression in the Middle East
Conventional Hasbara (pro-Israel) propagandists works in tandem with Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Israel” and fake “anti-Zionist”) propagandists
PRO-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA MANUAL
Back in 2009, a propaganda organization known as “The Israel Project” published a manual titled “Global Language Dictionary”
https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf
Written by Republican pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz, the Hasbara handbook of “The Israel Project” was labeled “Not for distribution or publication”.
The manual published by “The Israel Project” is a treasure trove of scripted propaganda canards. For example, page 96 of the manual recommends: “‘Defensive’ and ‘preventative’ are the words that best describe Israeli military action.”
“The Israel Project” is managed by an American-born Israeli, David Hazony, whose brother is an advisor and speech writer for Benjamin Netanyahu. Registered as an NGO, “The Israel Project” does not report any details of the origins of its funding. Hasbara outlets and pro-Israel think tanks produce scripted articles, write op-eds and make television appearances to disseminate propaganda.
CONVENTIONAL AND INVERTED HASBARA PROPAGANDA
The comment sections of internet sites that post articles critical of Israel and Zionism are frequented by Hasbara propaganda trolls.
Hasbara propaganda manifests in two forms:
– Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Zionist /pro-Israel) propaganda
– Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Zionist” / “anti-Israel” and fake “anti-Jewish or ‘anti-Semitic”) propaganda
In the face of a sustained intellectual critique of conventional Hasbara propaganda claims of a “new anti-Semitism”, the inverted Hasbara propaganda activity was developed. Inverted Hasbara operates based on false arguments advanced by individuals who masquerade as “harsh critics of Zionism and Israel” while spewing abusive “anti-Semitic” epithets and rants about “the Jews”.
The internet is a playground for both conventional Hasbara and inverted Hasbara trolls.
ISRAELI PROPAGANDA AND US POLITICS
In the United States, both the Democrats and Republicans are equally zealous:
– in their loyalty to Israel
– in their demonization of Russia
– in beating the drum for more pro-Israel wars in the Middle East
The pro-Israel Lobby, Israeli influence on both American political parties, and Israel’s constant efforts to direct US foreign policy toward war with Syria and Iran, are manifest realities.
In fact, the longest, most expensive war in US history, the war that has drained out the US budget, the war that continues to shatter American families and lives, was promoted by pro-Israel warmongers.
The Israel Lobby and pro-Israel politicians are working harder than ever now, beating the drum for more war.
“Israel is striving to drag the United States into further destructive wars in the Middle East, and potentially a cataclysmic nuclear confrontation with Russia.” No chance in your book that the United States could do this lots of help with their admittedly t difficult strategic partner Israel?
Hasbara propaganda troll “Will” obviously “can barely spell or punctuate much less operate my computer”
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-partisans-work-censor-internet/
Comrade “Will” obviously still “works for a living”
See the CN comments at
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/22/the-strangelovian-russia-gate-myth/
Hasbara hilarity ensues.
Comrade “Will” still “works for a living” and “bobs back and forth”
See the CN comments at
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/22/the-strangelovian-russia-gate-myth/
Hasbara troll hilarity ensues.