Thursday, November 16, 2017

The Cult of Russophobia

At the rate the American Inquisition is going, before long they'll require us to take a loyalty oath swearing that we're not Russian agents.

An op-ed published in Wednesday's New York Times comes mighty close, what with the accusatory headline "Why Don't Sanders Supporters Care About the Russian Investigation?" It is accompanied by a garish graphic of an American flag emblazoned with the visage of Vladimir Putin.

Since the whole piece, written by one David Klion, is built on a fact-free foundation of quicksand, his whole premise quickly sinks into the ridiculous. The lede paragraph is a masterpiece of the standard Russophobic form:
Nearly every day, new details emerge about the relationship between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. The extent of the alleged collusion, which may ultimately endanger Mr. Trump’s presidency, has yet to be determined, but the scandal has dominated news coverage and enthralled Washington.
Certainly, new stories emerge every day, but the details are seriously lacking, unless one counts the details of the speculations and the suppositions which substitute for clear, hard evidence. Even the so-called "smoking gun"  of Donald Trump Jr.'s email correspondence with WikiLeaks has already been exposed as a phony starter pistol. The original story in The Atlantic was misleading to the point of journalistic malpractice, since writer Julia Ioffe appears to have deliberately doctored one email with the result of altering its entire meaning. Of course, it's already way too late. It's enthralled Washington so much that it's already accepted as dogmatic fact by virtually the entire establishment pundit class.

And so naturally it behooves the Times to constantly remind readers that because RussiaGate has "enthralled Washington"  it behooves those doubters out there to jump on the enthrallment bandwagon. But in a good way, of course, not as a slave is in thrall to his master. They will gladly rent us the requisite ladders of opportunity to enthrallment Nirvana.

To try to prove his thesis, Klion names several prominent left-leaning writers, not all of whom are even Bernie Sanders supporters, who have cast doubt on the "narrative" and smeared it as variously a distraction, a conspiracy theory, a minor issue. And then he proceeds to one of the establishment's favorite methods: gaslighting.

If leftists refuse to believe that Russia has infiltrated our democracy, then they are also in cahoots with polluting capitalists. Klion writes,
American corporations have lobbied against recognizing Mr. Putin’s human rights abuses and have sought to exploit Russia’s natural resources. Energy companies like Exxon Mobil, whose former chief executive, Rex Tillerson, now serves as secretary of state, have partnered with Russia and have sought waivers from international sanctions to drill for oil in Russia. A new Cold War would be dangerous, but so would a warmer United States-Russia relationship that enriches oil company executives in both countries.
In other words, if you don't cheer for the new Cold War devised by liberal Democrats as a substitute for an actual New Deal platform to make your life better, then you will be partly to blame for a new Hot War funded by the climate change-denying oil companies. These are disturbing echoes of the neocon George W. Bush's Manichean admonition to patriotically support his illegal invasion of Iraq. You're either for us, or you're against us.

My published response:
 The headline implies that Bernie supporters are heretics for not "believing" in RussiaGate.

Despite what the pundits say, his supporters are no more a cult or a monolithic entity than are the supporters of other politicians.

Plus, not all leftists in this country are even Sanders supporters. There are plenty of people who think his ultimate function as a candidate was to herd disaffected people into the Democratic Party and into the voting booth for Hillary.

So please, credit the so-called heretics with a little nuance and ability to think critically. Speaking only for myself, and based on the evidence so far, I do think that Trump and his kin and associates had some pretty seamy dealings with Russian oligarchs, not least because the high-end Manhattan real estate empire at the center of their world is a prime place for foreign tycoons to park and/or launder their money. I hope the Mueller investigation, like the Paradise Papers, opens many cans of many worms.

Do I think that Putin literally "hacked" the presidential election, or swayed undecided voters through the placement of some truly cheesy Facebook and Twitter ads? No. And frankly, the Democrats' complaints that "Russia" is sowing social divisions in the US is laughable on its face. This red-baiting trope has been going on for about a century now. How about they take a good long look at the manufactured wealth inequality in this country, and admit that the big money which controls them is the real Enemy Within?
***

In other news-suppressing news, the Democratic Party-aligned Huffington Post scrubbed, with no explanation, an article on the origins of RussiaGate written by award-winning journalist Joe Lauria, author of "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton" with a foreward by Julian (gasp!) Assange. You can, however, still read the forbidden material here.

In his Change.Org petition demanding restoration of his piece, Lauria writes,
Like the word fascism, censorship is over-used and mis-used, and I avoid using it. But I can come to no other conclusion than that this is an act of political censorship. I am non-partisan as I oppose both major parties. I am a reporter who follows the facts where they lead. And they lead to an understanding that the Jan. 6 intelligence “assessment” on alleged Russian interference in the election was based on opposition research, not serious intelligence work.
In the same week that the Huffington Post axed Lauria's article, the Russian Government-owned TV network RT America was pressured by the US Justice Department to register as a foreign agent. This draconian assault on the First Amendment follows on the heels of a hysterical hit job on RT funded by the Czech Republic-based "European Values" think tank - which just happens to be bankrolled by both the US Government and major Democratic Party donor George Soros. The report, written by Monika Richter, implicitly warns all prominent guests to stop appearing on the network, or else risk being branded a "useful idiot," or worse. Richter is "credentialed" by the Reuters Journalism Institute, which also happens to receive a lot of money from the ubiquitous George Soros.
 
  She names more than  2,000 names of the useful idiots who've appeared on RT, including such well-known US  figures as Robert Kennedy Jr., Ralph Nader, Robert Reich, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, Rep. Keith Ellison, Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen. John McCain, and even former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Richter's shtick in her paranoid report is spreading conspiracy theories about facts that she doesn't like. She thinks, for example, that the idea that the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses is a conspiracy theory. She also thinks that the riots in Ferguson, Missouri were the result of a Kremlin conspiracy rather than the historical racial oppression and ongoing police brutality in this country.

And even when she grudgingly admits that RT performs laudable journalism,  "the critical point here is that RT’s treatment of these events is not motivated by a genuine commitment to principled, balanced journalism, but rather by opportunism to demonise the US government for its apparent contradictions and democratic shortcomings."

So add mind-reading to her many magical skills.

The truth can be so horrific sometimes that one simply has no other choice but to shoot its messengers - if one wants to continue collecting a paycheck, that is.

11 comments:

Erik Roth said...


Lily Tomlin said: "No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up."

All that's confronting and confounding us certainly causes "a damp, drizzly November in my soul" as Melville noted, but the insight and integrity to behold in Sardonicky sure does help.
Here, in no particular order, are links to a few other articles of clarity and character I hope will be of use. Information is ammunition.

http://fair.org/home/the-pathological-refusal-to-report-the-simple-truth-about-presidential-lying/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-fact-check-false-claims-a-day-number-total-count-latest-president-a8055306.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/frank-rich-trumpism-after-trump.html

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42533-whether-or-not-trump-remains-in-office-we-must-contend-with-the-forces-that-enabled-his-rise

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42458-there-is-a-new-urgency-to-the-threat-of-nuclear-annihilation

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42592-massive-overkill-brought-to-you-by-the-nuclear-industrial-complex

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20477:House-Democrats-Help-Republicans-Pass-$700B-in-Military-Spending

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20339:Worldwide-Warfare-Will-End-When-We-Divest-From-the-Arms-Industry

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42569-nation-that-says-it-can-t-afford-medicare-for-all-has-spent-5-6-trillion-on-war-since-9-11

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42572-three-richest-americans-now-own-more-wealth-than-bottom-half-of-us-combined

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-richest-wealth-credit-suisse

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42542-the-us-southern-command-s-silent-occupation-of-the-amazon

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cost-of-resistance

May we all have what the Finns hold steadfast: SISU !


Jamie said...

Frank Giustra, who headed Uranium One, and funneled 145 million in Rosatom Russian bribes to the Clinton foundation is now on the board of --- the Clinton Foundation!

https://www.clintonfoundation.org/about/board-directors

No wonder they have so much to hide.

Anne said...

The government is suffering from Russiaphobia, but I doubt the public is. After all, the relentless pack-of-hyenas attack on Trump last year didn't work. If anything, it had the opposite effect from what was intended.

This Russia thing is being played in a similar way by the same people - overkill and fear mongering. Not only that, but they're insulting voters by claiming a Russian disinformation campaign swayed votes, as if we lacked agency. Actually, if the Russians really wanted to have an impact, they should have run a GOTV - Get Out The Vote - campaign. The few who already vote are generally too savvy to fall for puppy ads and such (except maybe some NYT subscribers), so they should have motivated new voters to actually get to the polls - unlike the Dems.

Little do TPTB realize that even IF the public were still paying attention to the news media, which I doubt, they're probably keeping their mouths shut and opinions to themselves while rolling their eyes, just like they did last year and fooled the pollsters and pundits. More likely though is that they've tuned out. One can only take so much of this overhyped garbage.

The fact is, the public (minus maybe some NYT subscribers) trusts the media about as much as they trust Congress, which is about half as much as they trust Trump, as shocking as that is. That fact is one of the many truths they prefer to keep in the dark, the dark where democracy goes to die (per WaPoo).

Fortunately, news media propaganda campaigns can't work with such lack of trust, but unfortunately, the TPTB seem to be realizing that, although that too must be attributed to Russian influence. But TPTB are revealing their failures and desperation by changing tactics and upping their censorship game to compensate for a getting such little traction from their propaganda offensive to engineer and support Trump's ouster. That's what this is all about after all. Trump won't oppose Russia sufficient to advance plans to cripple and dominate that rival world power.

So they're cracking down on RT and putting enormous pressure on social media companies to censor content. Net neutrality will probably end next month and that will result in control of the entire internet by billionaire gatekeepers to counter Russia's 'weaponization of social media' by $100K worth of ads to hurt Hillary; no wait, to help Trump win; no wait, to disrupt the election; no wait, to divide the country; no wait, to create utter chaos; no wait, to achieve total domination of the earth, seas, sky, and space which, by the way, is OUR stated mission. How dare they.

Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian journalist blogger, recently nailed it when she stated "In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship." That indeed is they system we're stuck with.

Johnstone was recently banned from posting on Facebook for 3 days as punishment/warning for presumably - they never actually tell you why - sharing an article a couple of months ago titled "For Those Who Don’t ‘Believe’ In ‘Conspiracies’ Here Are 58 Admitted False Flag Attacks".

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/ive-been-banned-from-facebook-for-sharing-an-article-about-false-flags-678c24358fde

Even more disturbing and to give a sense of the basis for all this, consider part of the testimony from former FBI agent Clint Watts to the Senate Intelligence Committee:

“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/10-31-17%20Watts%20Testimony.pdf

voice-in-wilderness said...

Whatever Russia did or didn't do to hack and influence our election, all the circumstantial evidence suggests that Trump's financial empire is dependent on Russian loans, making him act as Putin's Poodle. I hope we some day get to see facts about this, though with the growth and duration of classification in this country I'm not optimistic.

Anne said...

Update - After Johnstone made a major *stink about her Facebook ban, Facebook admitted (but not until after her 3 day suspension) that "A member of our team removed something you posted on Facebook. This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize for this error. We've since restored the content, and you should now be able to see it."

Johnstone praises the *'Streisand Effect' which Wikipedia describes: "The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware something is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread the information is increased."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Anne said...

@voice-in-wilderness

Ok, let's say that President Trump is Putin's Poodle.

Would that mean that Putin would keep Trump from bombing Iran and North Korea? Leave Crimea alone? Pull NATO troops away from Russia? Pull out of Afghanistan? Stop our military colonization of Africa? Stop worldwide surveillance? Stop selling arms to terrorists? Stop supporting Saudi genocide in Yemen?

What does Putin want? How would he/Russia benefit? What actions might we expect from Trump on behalf of Putin, and what impact would that have on us?

I'm not imagining anything that Putin would make his Poodle do that that would result in more harm to us than what our current neoliberal-corporatist-militaristic-surveillance-policestate-empire of a government is already doing.

Am I being naive? Should I be afraid?

Anne said...

Instead of using the word 'donor' as in the donor class or a Democratic donor, maybe we should just start using the term 'Ruling' or 'Ruler', as in Ruling Class and Democratic Party Ruler George Soros, and capitalize those terms to reflect their status and power. Perhaps all forms of corporate media should be referred to collectively as the Thought Rulers.

'Donor' really is a misnomer for anyone in the Ruling Class cabal. They aren't donating anything. They're investing in and purchasing power in order to impose their will on the inferior, ignorant peasant class - us. They aren't stealing power, as in a Kleptocracy, they're buying it fair and square according to the rules they paid to be written, and by decisions passed by a long line of Supreme Court justices whose careers they paid to advance ever since the inception of this country.

It was a long haul, but when the Supreme Court finally guaranteed corporations the same 'God-given' rights as the rest of us mere mortals (largely based on precedent), the Ruling Class finally paid off their 200-year mortgage and gained clear title to the Homeland. They also gained the power have the Constitution retooled as they saw fit in order to protect their rights rather than ours. The tables turned.

Our 'God-given rights' are now owned by the Gods of Capital, the very powerful Ruling Class that the Founders had the wisdom to try to guard against when they wrote protections into the Constitution/Bill of Rights. But hey, the Ruling Class bought their power fair and square, just like Hillary Clinton locked in her super-delegates before the primary had even started. It's the system the Ruling Class paid to create, now grown into a full-blown Plutocracy.

In this grand experiment of democracy, the demos have lost. We can reverse this, but only if citizens speak openly and in plain language about what the greedy Ruling Class has done to us and our country, turning our democracy into a ravenous global empire.

Yes, the Ruling Class has bought all 3 branches of Government, but they can't buy us unless we are part of the Party machinery, then indeed we become their 'subjects'. Please, forget about what Party Rulers say they stand for. They're all corrupt. Put aside political differences and try to identify with other Americans as fellow citizens who are also treated as subjects whose individual and community needs are mostly ignored.

We must find common ground for the common good and not adopt the fear and paranoia of the Ruling Class as our own. That's why I question how we'd be impacted if Russia was in fact trying to influence our politics. What the Ruling Class fears might be blessings for the rest of us. God knows what they want and have been getting for decades has been mostly a curse for everyone else, here and around the world.

The more the Ruling Class tries to control and censor us, the more we should speak out - while we still can. That said, here's the latest development in the battle against free speech:

'Twitter says you can lose verified status for bad behavior — even if it’s off Twitter - Twitter wants to police its users both on and off the service.'

https://www.recode.net/2017/11/18/16671990/twitter-verification-policy-guidelines-police-offline-behavior

Erik Roth said...


Anne@voice-in-wilderness shrewdly cuts to the quick in asking, about whatever is being done and by whom for what: cui bono?
To determine that, follow the money.
What then becomes plain to see is that nations have become tools of the oligarchy, driving for hegemony to secure selfish economic gain. Putin, Trump, and virtually every major head of state aims only to gain a bigger piece of the pie. That is their world view, and the essence of their consciousness.

Now a radical view of the world wide game of thrones putting us all at risk just to increase the wealth and power of the oligarchs has been articulated by the Native American seer and progressive warrior, Winona LaDuke. She says:

“The question of socialism or communism or capitalism or between the left and right — I think the important question is between the industrial society and the earth-based society. And I say that because I believe that capitalism and communism are really much more about how the wealth is distributed, if it trickles down or is appropriated at the beginning to those who have worked for it.

“But, you know, someone has to question where the wealth came from. What right does society have to the wealth? What is the relationship between that society and the land from which it got its wealth? Those are the questions that should be asked.

“The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on.

“We don’t want a bigger piece of the pie. We want a different pie.”

Trump blatantly, brazenly boasts about being rich and getting richer as the epitome of what makes America great.
Putin likewise worships wealth.
So it's not a matter of favoring one or the other, or as they're working toward the same end exposing who has the upper hand.

What matters is how that same zero-sum game can be changed so that everyone, not just the 1%, can benefit.

But for the commonwealth to overcome the elite, the arrogance and ignorance of the people must be overcome, and that appears depressingly insurmountable.

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”

~ Bertolt Brecht

Against that, all I can urge is for Ms. Garcia, and her readers like Anne, to keep crying in the vanishing wilderness, and not go gentle into that good night.

Trump, and Putin, and all their ilk, despite their greedy efforts to control and consume the world, even to the end of Nature, as Bill McKibben warns, cannot destroy it or us, if we hold steadfast.
Remember the words of the poet (not written on the subway walls, but on paper in books, available in the public library), Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"... And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."


Herr Fischer said...

The assumption that Russian facebook accounts had no impact on the election is provably false. When, as was a real case, two opposing poltical groups, one "pro-American", the other "pro-Muslim and diversity" can be instigated to protest on the same day in the same location against each other, that is a serious interference in our system. And it happened and was paid for by Russians.

Anne said...

Wow, I just can't shut up lately. Nor can I keep it short.

@Herr Fischer

That there was no impact on the election is provably false?

Were those protesters even registered voters? Where is the evidence? Did they actually vote? Where is the evidence? Did those messages get targeted to Facebook users in only one city where these protests occurred? Where is the evidence? (What city was that anyway?)

Did the Russians set up the time and place for this protest? Where is the evidence? Did they suggest any protest methods or incite violence? Where is the evidence? What was the content of those messages? Where is the evidence?

Forget all that hype. Anyone who recognizes that our Military-Industrial Complex hogs all our resources and knows how self-perpetuating it is, understands our system better than most Americans. All that's necessary is to provoke some suspicions about meddling by the wrong nation or entity (Saudi Arabia, Israel/AIPAC don't count), and the fear and panic that ensue will be self-destructive because there's money in the response.

It's been done successfully before. I call it the Osama bin Laden Effect, because he wrote that all he had to do was something as simple as hang a white sheet with Arabic letters in public and the fear and panic that would ensue would be more destructive than any overt attack. His successful attack against the World Trade Center towers (symbols and center of Capitalism), resulted in the Patriot Act assaults against our Constitution and Bill of Rights; multiple wars in the Middle East and North Africa that are still continuing; beefing up of the NSA's Collect It All violations of our privacy rights; trillions of dollars wasted; and millions of lives destroyed or forced into exile. The Ruling Class prohibited publication of his manifesto here in the Homeland but Al Jazeera carried it back in the day.

So IF an alleged 'Russian influence campaign' was conducted, it was pretty lame unless the intent was an OBL Effect, 2.0, then perhaps it may have been successful, although too damaging to them to make much sense. It did not result in influencing the election, but rather in provoking self-inflicted damage, the OBL Effect, deliberately or not.

What I consider most damaging is that Democrats have now joined with Neocons, becoming the biggest cheerleaders and supporters of the Military-Industrial Complex and advocating curtailment of our 1A rights to 'protect us from Russian propaganda and influence'. (The silver lining is that they're continuing their self-destruction as a Party even as they collect more for their coffers from the MIC. Obama's new propaganda department at the State Dept is getting up and running, and there's increased pressure on all forms of media to propagandize Americans, censor content, and punish anyone who dissents, at least those media Thought Rulers haven't already been blacking-out and black-balling for years.

Protests and dissent are not threatening, although there are a lot of people would like us to believe they are. There's a ton of money to be made for the bipartisan Ruling Class by over-reaction. Hyping fear and panic leads to subjects begging their Rulers to "Protect us! We'll give you anything you want! You can do whatever it takes. We don't mind if you take away our rights, just keep us safe, beloved Big Brother!" The fact that the Democrats are crying the loudest says it all.

Ka-Ching!

Jay–Ottawa said...

Ah, those serious interferences with our system from abroad. And then you negative types, provoking a brave system protector by saying ‘no, no’ it’s the system itself that’s messing up the people, the planet and the future.

Whose side are you on? Are you going to take a knee on this one? Obviously, the system now in place is not perfect, but it's the best ever. At very least, it’s moving in the right direction. Everybody’s so much better since the blessed system began to be unchained, link by link, by one administration after another. If you knew what our Rulers (h/t Anne) know about high-level economics and subterranean wars, you would stop your carping about the system. (Tip: Look at your portfolio. See how the Dow Jones has risen since January 2017. The USA is a boom town writ large!) Even from the worm's eye perspective of a pensioned commoner without portfolio, I can see how much better the earth is and the people thereon.

That low ball quote by Brecht is nothing more than another case of art overpowering logic and practicality. Loyal citizens must cease words and acts that bring the existing system into question.

Defend our lovely system. Serve your country by being another one of the system's boosters; and, since the supranational system has replaced the old national system as our god, let us bow down before it and continue the human sacrifice that is a part of the prevailing system.

Human sacrifice on a minor scale worked pretty well in the past; human sacrifice will work even better today as it is multiplied around the world by a factor of millions.