With the cherry on top of cake of the epic spree of Russian bashing that the U.S. establishment spewed forth for months during the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympic games being the weekend coup d'etat that took place in Ukraine the Obama administration and American Neocons engaged in an obscene victory celebration. Returning to his normal Sunday morning bloviation circuit perch Senator John McCain railed against the hated Vladimir Putin from the bully pulpit of CBS's Face the Nation. McCain who has had a burr up his ass since he was shot down over Vietnam and ended up as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton but especially since Putin's September 11, 2013 New York Times Op Ed where he mocked the very concept of American exceptionalism was on the attack this morning as he gleefully contemplated Cold War V.2. Delivering a veiled threat that a cowardly bastard like McCain who can comfortably be assured that he will never have to back it up the venerated Arizona warmonger chortled "If I were Vladimir Putin, I would be little bit nervous" which is probably the case. With the lunatics running the U.S. war machine and their foaming at the mouth NATO toadies itching for the good old days Putin can't be pleased that the west is slowly but methodically encircling Russia, a large country that DOES have nukes.
There was obviously U.S. and European meddling in Ukraine and the timing so that it all fortuitously blew up right before the closing ceremonies of Putin's showcase event calls into question whether it was a coincidence. This is what the CIA and other intelligence agencies do for a living and McCain himself was in Kiev schmoozing with the 'rebels' in December so his glee from pissing in Putin's Olympic party punch bowl comes despite the blood that is on his own hands. Not that such a thing bothers the bloodthirsty old bastard, he has never met a violent situation that he didn't revel in, he may not have been as good when it came to dropping jellied fire from the skies on Vietnamese women and children but he is hell on wheels when it comes to being a professional provocateur. That a prolonged period of civil war and carnage may be coming to Ukraine is all the better for McCain and his connected military industrial complex cronies like Senator Kelly Ayotte who also slithered around on FOX News Sunday to decree that Obama needs to "up his game" in delivering retribution to Putin. What goes unsaid by any of these taxpayer funded psychopaths is that this is all payback first for granting asylum to government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then sinking their grand war on Syria. Once again we have glaring evidence of exactly why this country is rotten to the core and on the verge of the great collapse - the media never calls bullshit on these professional liars.
When it comes to media bullshit I must admit that I am a bit perplexed over what all of the uproar is about over the FCC’s “newsroom study”. The Obama administration and the corrupt state-corporate media propaganda machine already do their bidding. The evidence is overwhelming, especially in light of the shameful anti-Putin jihad that was obviously orchestrated to taint the games and provide ample opportunity to launch a multi-faceted public relations blitz in the domestic media to mount the devil horns on the Russian leader. I excerpt the following from an essay from the liberal weekly The Nation by Stephen F. Cohen entitled "Distorting Russia: How the media represent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine":
The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.
There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.
The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.
Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.
Cohen hits the target on several fronts in that short excerpt primarily that Boris Yeltsin was a filthy, drunken pig who enabled corruption on such a grand scale that he could be a CEO for Goldman Sachs yet the turd of his legacy has regularly been polished by the lickspittle press. He is also on the spot in that Putin has been vilified in a manner not seen since Stalin walked the planet, I am hard pressed to remember another Russian leader being so savagely trashed throughout the Cold War, not even Nikita Kruschev had so much shit thrown at him. Cohen who is a professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University as well as Princeton gives some well needed context on the true nature of the problems in Ukraine in this interview on the liberal Democracy Now Such context is lacking in the establishment media.
Now that the Olympics are finally over at least that particular dead horse can no longer be flogged by mouthpieces for the empire but McCain and Ayotte represent the tip of the spear for the official talking points.
In a fitting epitaph the "Miracle on Ice II" of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team...well it sucks to be them as they were whacked by Finland 5-0 thereby depriving them of even a bronze medal for their troubles. Hell, at this time last week practically the entire media was proclaiming that the shootout win over what was a pretty lousy Russian team was the second coming of fucking Lake Placid. Not that the game would have even made it to the ridiculous bush league shootout had U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings not cheated by kicking the net off of its moorings during a Russian flurry. Fans of the team were understandably pissed and not only accused the U.S. referee of deliberately assisting to rig the game but even after it was over with when some reportedly chanted “make soap out of the ref” at a protest outside of the U.S. embassy.
One could only wish that someone would do such a thing to Senator McCain and rid us all once and forever of that most troublesome man.
(Image: patdollard.com)
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