JimW
支那暗杀团
It's hardly weird to take a violent dislike to Trump and all he stands for, especially for the more embedded elites. Doesn't need any geopolitical angle.
War propaganda, 'Realists' and neocons, and the denigration of the war sceptics
- Thread starter RD2003
- Start date
The US press used to make a big thing about objectivity, they'd at least try to appear balanced. All that went totally out of the window with Trump. Afacis they were clearly following orders.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
I know that is what those people go around saying (and make a living of saying), but as I said I think its extremely questionable how true it is.
If it was, surely we'd expect that lot to oppose "populism" of the Trumpian kind - yet everywhere its supported by them, even today Braverman was giving a speech that could have been given by any other candidate who'd just been wined and dined at the AEI in any country. Their money is being spent on that supporting that sort of candidate, is going on establishing and sustaining media networks that push that narrative, and is being used to attack everyone in opposition to them (including the more traditional sort of conservative).
Judging them on their actions alone it seems to me to be fairly clear whose side they are on.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
If someone tells a lie, it is objective reporting to say that it is a lie. You're sliding down a rabbit hole here.
JimW
支那暗杀团
I think it just escalated after he kept going for them. They didn't want to even-handedly report on his latest rant calling them all liars. certainly a bit of a loss of confidence on their part, but them's the times.
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Why do people humour this red-brown fascist garbage?
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
They went after (or for) Trump because of the ratings impact it had on them. Doing the smart thing (and denying him the oxygen of publicity) would have been what they'd done if they'd followed orders.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
If this bloody flux was coming out of dwyer's arse instead of his mouth we'd advise him to see a doctor pronto
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
If only his political views were subtle enough for the label 'red-brown' - all I'm seeing is common or garden trump-flavoured conspiranoise. The 'red' (if red there is) is GOP red, not internationale red.
The brown is still shit though.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
The stupid thing about the 2014 protests was that with elections not far off there was a chance to soon vote Yanukovich out, which would have made it less easy for Russia to present the process as anti-Russian. As it was, the protests were overtly anti-Russian, not only alienating much of the eastern population of Ukraine but giving the Russian government an excuse to intervene. It would be naive to think that the protests, whatever the degree of spontaneity, were not western-fuelled and funded. John McCain openly demonstrated this in going to address the Maidan crowds-something akin to a leading Russian politician going to, say, Mexico and encouraging an anti-US uprising, which as we know, would not be tolerated. And its western sponsors knew very well the nature of the Russian government and how it would view matters. With the protests succeeding, the course was set for the war we are seeing now-which guarantees that Ukraine will never be a 'normal' country (whatever that is supposed to mean.)
Yanukovich might have been a vile, corrupt piece of shit, but he was hardly on his own in that. There is little evidence that the protests were primarily against kleptocracy, and much of the political class and wider population like it that way, as we keep seeing with the various anti-corruption drives that now must take place in order to demonstrate to Ukraine's EU sponsors that something is being done. Corruption is deeply embedded in those societies, as it is in possibly a majority of countries across the globe, and, as in all those, won't be easily overcome. And we must not forget that there were vile pieces of shit on the protestors' side. Without Azov and other fascists and anti-semitic burners of trade union buildings and so on, it probably wouldn't have succeeded.
It was a coup instigated by the USA. It had considerable popular support, but not the support of the majority. If they'd had a majority, they'd have had an election. They knew they couldn't win an election, so they seized power by force. The USA is constantly telling us that this war is about democracy, which is absurdly hypocritical in the circs.
By "those people" I assume you mean the three I mention in my post: Taibbi, Ritter and MacGregor. None of them support populism of any kind, and certainly none of them support Trump. None of them support any political candidate at all afaik. Taibbi's a leftist, the others are on the right, but they all agree that the war in Ukraine is deeply stupid, profoundly corrupt and completely unwinnable.
Or were you referring to another group of people?
All American politicians lie all the time. None of them have any respect for the truth. But to read the mainstream media you'd think Trump had invented lying. You'd think the other politicians were paragons of truth, veritable George Washingtons, instead of the venal mendacious self-serving scumbags they are.
That's he bias I'm talking about.
They expected Trump to do what all the other politicians do--cower before the mainstream media, tailor their every statement to sit their whims, socialize with them nightly to receive instructions, and generally take order from them (which means taking orders from the spooks who apparently have inflitrated the MSM very successfully in recent years).
But Trump didn't do any of that. He retaliated against them, throwing their lies back in their faces. As you say, that escalated it alright. That sent them totally spare and their coverage of Trump became completely unhinged.
For instance, remember the Steele dossier? It reckoned that Trump got Russian prostitutes to pee on him when he was sleeping in Obama's bed or somesuch madness. And this was seriously reported as fact by the entire US MSM, even though they knew it wasn't true. And that's just the earliest example, it got worse from there--a full-on campaign of absolute hatred (there's no other word) for a democratically-elected head of state before he even took office. I've never seen anything like it.
They can't ignore him if he's the Republican nominee. They wanted to obliterate him, to crush him, to annihilate him. That was the tone of their coverage, I can post clips if you haven't seen it. They also wanted to set an example, in case anyone else from outside the Beltway fancied their chances.
I agree with all of that. However I don't think Yanukovich would have lost a free and fair election. If the USA thought he was going to lose, they'd have allowed the election to take place. They'd doubtless have tried to steal it after the fact if it didn't go their way, but that's not as easy as a pre-emptive coup.
Uuuh
2014 Ukrainian presidential election - Wikipedia
An election did take place immediately after Yanukovych's removal and the Party of Regions stood. They got 3% of the vote. Perhaps it would have been slightly higher if it wasn't for threats of violence by Russian forces (likely with Russian state support) in Donbas which prevented 80% of polling booths from opening there, but it doesn't look like Party of Regions were popular.
Yanukovych's removal was voted in favour of by 328 of the 447 deputies in Ukrainian Parliament, not by force.
I suppose they were all paid by the CIA and not one of them blew the whistle or refused?
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RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
That was after the event, however, when the deputies could see the way things were moving, and held in an atmosphere of intimidation. Nothing new in Ukraine whichever side was in the ascendency in the given moment, and in erratic politics of most of the post-Soviet Union the majority of political representatives, as well as the electorate, tends to pick or switch sides on that basis. By that time the conditions for an inevitable war were in place, but it was thought, or at least hoped, that enough had been done to seal adequate western protection. A wrong gamble as it turned out. New opportunities for self-enrichment and self-advancement were in the offing. And of course the CIA and other western intelligence agencies had involvement in the process, as they had from the start. None of this was spontaneous. The west was confident that they could get their people in place in Ukraine, and so further marginalise a semi-resurgent (or so it apppeared) Russia. And the Russian oligarchy/kleptocracy watched carefully. There is no conspiracy-this is is what international politics looks like with the socialist threat removed. The world we see today was predictable more than 30 years ago.Uuuh
2014 Ukrainian presidential election - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
An election did take place immediately after Yanukovych's removal and the Party of Regions stood. They got 3% of the vote. Perhaps it would have been slightly higher if it wasn't for threats of violence by Russian forces (likely with Russian state support) in Donbas which prevented 80% of polling booths from opening there, but it doesn't look like Party of Regions were popular.
Yanukovych's removal was voted in favour of by 328 of the 447 deputies in Ukrainian Parliament, not by force.
I suppose they were all paid by the CIA and not one of them blew the whistle or refused?
The true picture in Ukraine was reflected by the events of the preceding decade. The Orange so-called revolution, also not spontaneous, was deeply unpopular across vast swathes of the population. Some of its leaders, such as the arch Thatcher-admiring Tymoshenko, feted as the saviour in the west for a time, were revealed to be as corrupt as those who came before. The Orange revolution soon unravelled as a result of the ongoing corruption and self-enrichment of the Oligarchs and the political and business elites generally, and then the other, equally corrupt side got another bite of the cherry. 'The west' continued to work with its favoured oligarchs, and the politicians it had pinpointed as favourable to the weaken-Russia project, however, and if there had to be war, so be it. After all, there have been wars before, and its victims are forgotten even while they go on.
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RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
For example
newrepublic.com
Ukraine’s Corrupt Oligarchs Are Looking Toward the West to Rehab Their Reputations
Some of the grifters who paved the way for the Russian invasion of Ukraine want to be seen as being on the right side of the war.
newrepublic.com
Uuuh
2014 Ukrainian presidential election - Wikipedia
An election did take place immediately after Yanukovych's removal and the Party of Regions stood. They got 3% of the vote. Perhaps it would have been slightly higher if it wasn't for threats of violence by Russian forces (likely with Russian state support) in Donbas which prevented 80% of polling booths from opening there, but it doesn't look like Party of Regions were popular.
Yanukovych's removal was voted in favour of by 328 of the 447 deputies in Ukrainian Parliament, not by force.
I suppose they were all paid by the CIA and not one of them blew the whistle or refused?
I don't think I'm allowed to reply here. I've already been banned from the other thread about the Ukraine war. People have accepted the Guardian/BBC version of events as Gospel, and challenging it is regarded as blasphemy. I suppose similar always happens in wartime. The propaganda war is at least as vital as the literal war, and the government makes damn sure the populace follows their line--the stakes are too high to do otherwise.
In any case, RD2003 has just said pretty much what I'd say. If you sincerely want any more info you can PM me.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
That's because that thread is about the Ukraine war and not ludicrous nonsense such as the US president having "passed away" and a handful of neo-cons taking control of the government because they want a nuclear war with Russia.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
Yes this is the crayoning thread and please phil your boots phil.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
On the contrary-this is one of the threads where more considered views than the absurd, politically naive, 'Ukraine rah, rah, rah,' can be discussed.
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
OMG, too funny.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
Well, if you're happy to uncritically support the latest neo-liberal hobbyhorse, don't let me try and stop you.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
Contrary to what the writer says civilisation doesn't collapse due to corruption. On the contrary, it's the norm in most of the world, and will continue to be in Ukraine and the rest of the former-USSR whatever happens. What do you do, for example, when, even if you're not corrupt yourself, those in the pool you have to choose those to fight corruption from might be? This is what they face in Ukraine.
'The fight of Ukrainians against corruption has always been and will be one of the obstacles to destruction of our state by Russia. These are not empty words. It is corruption, among other things, that draws us to the “Russian world” of tyranny,” as the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s Vitaly Shabunin put it last month.
Even when corrupt politicians and officials have lost their jobs, they remain rich and thus able to buy the support needed to regain influence. An example is the court case brought by the long-overthrown Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, who was seeking to have his title restored to him. Amazingly, a court in Kyiv was not only prepared to give him a hearing but assigned the case to a judge who previously served as a minister in one of Yanukovich’s governments.
Uprooting the networks of influence embedded within such institutions, and confiscating the wealth of corrupt politicians, requires detailed, committed and complex work, which is unglamorous but vitally important. It’s the political equivalent of being a sewage engineer: it’s never going to be fashionable but, without it, civilization collapses.'
www.codastory.com
'The fight of Ukrainians against corruption has always been and will be one of the obstacles to destruction of our state by Russia. These are not empty words. It is corruption, among other things, that draws us to the “Russian world” of tyranny,” as the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s Vitaly Shabunin put it last month.
Even when corrupt politicians and officials have lost their jobs, they remain rich and thus able to buy the support needed to regain influence. An example is the court case brought by the long-overthrown Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, who was seeking to have his title restored to him. Amazingly, a court in Kyiv was not only prepared to give him a hearing but assigned the case to a judge who previously served as a minister in one of Yanukovich’s governments.
Uprooting the networks of influence embedded within such institutions, and confiscating the wealth of corrupt politicians, requires detailed, committed and complex work, which is unglamorous but vitally important. It’s the political equivalent of being a sewage engineer: it’s never going to be fashionable but, without it, civilization collapses.'
Corruption threatens war gains in Ukraine
Oligarchy is a weekly newsletter written by Oliver Bullough, tracking how the super rich are changing the world for the rest of us.
www.codastory.com
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What we're seeing here is the scary efficiency of C21st propaganda. These people have literally never heard of Victoria Nuland or Antony Blinken. They have no idea that there's a group of people known as the "neocons" who influence Biden's government. They don't understand that Biden is non compos mentis to a degree that proves somebody is pulling his strings. Theirs is the world-view that emerges from an exclusive news diet of BBC and Guardian. It's actually quite impressive in a horrible way.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
I seem to remember a time when these boards and similar used to be full of people who had a critique of neo-conservatism, and had no problem in highlighting its influence on the post-Soviet world. Particularly at the time of the Iraq fiasco. Such people seem to have either disappeared or effectively gone over to the neo-con side, often without even realising it. If the latter, this has historical precedents, and they arise when things get too difficult politically for them and they seek salvation in having to be seen as always 'in the right,' at least as it is presented to them. The urge to be seen as always on the side of good as perceived by the majority is natural, I suppose, but politically useless.
The problem is that it's not even the side of the majority, it's the side of mainstream media. I understand it--people have limited time, and it's natural to just read the Guardian and watch the Bebe and assume you're hearing something like the truth.
The growth of the internet is a real spanner in their works, however, and you can see it in the MSM's panicked reaction. They ban the state channels of nations like Russia and Iran outright. They send armies of spooks into Facebook and Twitter. They deride any alternative outlet as the domain of conspiracy theorists, in an attempt to make it socially unacceptable to access them. Under the guise of forbidding "hate speech" they try to establish institutions that will systematically censor all speech. And so on.
Personally, I don't think it's working. For every person who (as you say) have gone over to the neocons without realizing it, there is another who's discovered other sources of news than the MSM. The split seems to be happening along class lines too, with the proles being more skeptical than the bourg. When an anti-war movement arises in the US or the UK it will be the hardhats for peace and the hippies for war--a neat inversion of the 1960s. Unluckily for us, we live in truly interesting times....
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
The urge to throw scepticism about the latest war, which is not the only current war but only the most celebrated, into the conspiracy bag, and to call every sceptic one of the mythical 'Putinbots,' blurs the line between actual conspiraloonery and everything else. Some of those who do it don't even know they're doing it. They are just convinced about their own righteousness, without recognising that it isn't even theirs.
And it is backfiring. You can see it among your friends and neighbours. Where I live it's a mainly terraced-housing mix of university graduates and people who go back generations in this area. Among those I talk to it's mainly the former who are most outraged about the Putin bogeyman.
I actually hope your second to last last sentence does predict the future, as former radical socialists and anarchists tail-ending relatively comfortable, blinkered liberals (either of the latterday self-righteously intolerant kind or the neo-con variety they unwittingly parrot), is a truly ugly sight.
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