Neocons Crow Over Ukraine Coup d'Etat

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)

U.S. Scores Gold Medal in Sochi Olympic Propaganda

American exceptionalism oozes from the pores of recycled political hacks turned paid pundits, elected war freaks and the state-corporate media parrots as the anti-Russian propaganda spews from every orifice of our corrupt establishment. With the months constant smearing, disinformation campaigns and fear-mongering over imminent terror attacks in Sochi reaching a crescendo by the opening ceremonies the onslaught is vile and ongoing. The Cold War never ended in the minds of a good amount of our sordid political class and their interlocking networks of warmongering think tanks and media outlets whose festering hatred for all that is Russian burst forth anew last year when the reviled Vladimir Putin punked Barry and the boys with his granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, swept in to pounce on a John Kerry gaffe to prevent another Middle Eastern war in Syria and topped it off with a New York Times editorial published on that holy day of September 11^th calling out our very exceptionalism. The Sochi Olympics were naturally going to be payback time for an establishment scorned.

In his Monday column “Diagnosing Sochi Media Coverage: Virulent Russophobia” libertarian Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com excoriates the corrupt careerists, lackeys, presstitutes and stenographers of the putrid U.S. media for their complicity in trashing the Olympics. I excerpt some pieces below:

Any illusions some naïve soul may have had about the objectivity of the US media has been dispelled by their embarrassing performance at the Sochi Olympics: the chorus of whining complaints might as well have been written for them by the US State Department – which, come to think of it, is entirely within the realm of the possible given the imperious tone. The water, the toilets, the hotels – nothing pleases our pampered media divas, whose hatred of all things Russian oozes from between the lines of their "reporting" like pus from an old wound.

All the antipathy we saw aimed at Russia during the cold war years is now being revomited up by the political class, albeit in a new flavor: instead of genuine martyrs like Andrei Sakharov and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn being lionized, we see the professional provocateurs of "Pussy Riot" elevated by Western media to the status of "dissident" stars. Why do these heavily made-up show biz types merit our attention? Well, didn’t they desecrate a Russian Orthodox cathedral by stripping off their clothes, screaming obscenities, and insulting parishioners? Clearly this is the type of "dissident" the American media can get behind. (Try that in New York City, ladies, and see what happens.)

Our shameless media is always eager to place itself at the disposal of the State. If it isn’t David Gregory calling for the arrest of Glenn Greenwald, it’s the ubiquitous Richard Engel of NBC "News" – tireless cheerleader of US-sponsored "revolutions" abroad – deliberately downloading a virus onto his computer and then pontificating about how the minute you enter Russia you are bound to be "hacked."

And

Confirming George Orwell’s theory that sport, international games, and militant nationalism are all inextricably intertwined, Sochi is the stage on which the new cold war is being fought. The battlefield is in the column inches given over in the Western media to the alleged shortcomings of Putin’s "Potemkin Village," as the critics are calling it. However, the nature of their complaints – the lack of luxuries to which they feel entitled, and which much of the rest of the world goes largely without – just underscores the utter cluelessness of Western propagandists posing as "reporters." They fail to understand why this makes them look bad to everyone outside of Brooklyn’s hipster precincts and Washington’s tonier neighborhoods.

Raimondo as usual is spot on and his personal bullshit detector always set on high and his willingness to call out American establishment hypocrisy whenever it occurs:  a tireless job in these grim days of the mew American century. That the Olympics are supposed to be a sporting event and entertainment for millions who turn to such distractions to escape the daily drudgery that they are subjected to in a post capitalist corporate state that in many areas has all of the indignities and cruelty of the old Soviet system that our elite punditry so denounce. It is sad that the agents of The Homeland have to once again exploit the games for cheap political gain to bolster their mania for more wars, an uncontrollable urge that borders on that of a pack of pederasts.

While Putin is certainly no saint his counterparts in The Homeland are every bit his equal in terms of repression albeit in a less ostentatious form. Our very own American Stasi, the NSA conducts illegal (at least when it comes to that antiquated and pesky U.S. Constitution) surveillance and data-mining of the domestic population and stores the data for some vague future purpose which will undoubtedly include persecution, interrogations, show trials and according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia even the future rounding up and internment of American citizens. This sort of stuff isn’t on the level of Putin but rather of Stalin and who needs the NKVD when you have the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security. The greatest achievement of the rotten domestic lickspittle media during their run towards the Olympic gold for their propaganda is that they are able to foist off Putin as the devil himself while never bothering to mention that we are the ones living in Hell and have been ever since September 11, 2001 the ‘day that changed everything’.

So the state media smear campaign rolls on as lunatics, degenerates and reprobates are trotted out on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit where the trifecta of the deranged anti-Muslim fanatic Peter King continues to insinuate that there will be a terrorist attack, Representative Michael McCaul vows that something will “detonate” and the ubiquitous Mike Rogers blasts the Russians for not sharing intelligence (translation: where is Edward Snowden hiding?) with the U.S. of A. The parallel track is of course the ongoing blasting of Putin for his dismal record on gay rights but what is left out is that there are a number of U.S. states that have laws against homosexuality that are every bit the equal of the Russian boss.  There is however the lack of context, use of false equivalence and just plain lying that is the hallmark of all great propagandists be it Edward Bernays, Joseph Goebbels or Roger Ailes and his competitors the ability to successfully rise to the pinnacle of historical bullshit artists is both an art and a science.  One needs to look no further than the ongoing coverage of the Winter Olympics which will endure long after the closing ceremonies as a case study in how it’s done.

Sunday Morning McCain: Poke the Bear Edition

It was to be expected that the nation’s preeminent warmonger Senator John McCain would turn up on the Sunday morning propaganda circuit this week. With the ugly outbreak of unrest in Kiev over the Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych’s shunning of the European Union in favor of a rapprochement with Russia it was prime territory for a career vulture like McCain to dip his beak into. During his appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" with the blathering sow Candy Crowley, yet another piss poor excuse for a journalist in the state-corporate media the bloodthirsty, corrupt old bastard used the forum to deliver a provocative shot at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The neocons of which McCain happens to be one have one flaming desire that is more deeply entrenched in their world conquering brains that even trumps turning the Middle East into a blazing inferno on behalf of the right-wing Israeli regime and that is a festering hatred for anything Russian. 

The warmongers have been furious ever since this summer when Putin punked Barry and the boys by providing temporary asylum to former government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden after he absconded with the evidence that the NSA is far worse than either the East German Stasi or Stalin's dreaded NKVD. Not only the neocons but the entire Obama administration has been apoplectic over that one with El Presidente himself embarrassing the nation by acting as a petulant child in boycotting a meeting with the Russian president during the G20 gathering and threatening to boycott the upcoming winter Olympics. But then Putin upped the ante by forcing Obama and his regime, the rancid and traitor infested congress and even John Wayne's blessed America.

In what was the ultimate indignity on the most hallowed of days  that is September 11th, the anniversary of "the day that everything changed"  Putin served up a triple-decker borscht and shit sandwich with a vodka chaser by contributing an op ed piece to the New York Times. It was here where he dared to blaspheme the concept of American Exceptionalism from which I excerpt the part that embedded a bug up the puckering assholes of the neocons and the masses of asses whose reflexive flag-waving provides cover for the endless wars that have us on the brink of collapse:

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

The Putin column also came at the critical time when Obama, Kerry and the rest of those who always are willing to send some poor unfortunate serviceman or servicewoman off to die in idiotic wars of their own creation based on lies (see Seymour Hersh's London Review of Books piece "Whose Sarin") when the pope of hope was making the case for yet another war. The wound was still raw when Putin broke out the rock salt and started rubbing it in by taking advantage of a gaffe of exactly the type that a man with chronic diarrhea of the mouth like Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry is bound to make. When Kerry slipped up and inadvertently offered Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad could avoid the looming U.S. attack by voluntarily giving up his chemical weapons stockpiles Putin brilliantly came to the rescue and prevented what could have been a historical catastrophe that would ignite World War III. That never sat well with the neocons nor their caterwauling benefactors in Riyadh and Tel Aviv, it especially pissed off McCain and his toady Senator Lindsey Graham but it stopped a war.

Now McCain and the war freaks see an opportunity to get another bite at the apple by intervening in the Ukraine in the same meddlesome way that the U.S. war machine always has done since the end of the second world war. It truly speaks volumes (or maybe not) as to the sheer depth of the thorough corruption of the media when someone as unstable as the self-proclaimed "maverick" is allowed to appear on national television and declare that the U.S. could take "concrete action" if the Ukranian regime threw in with Russia rather than the E.U. I mean this guy lost the freaking election when he ran in 2008 but regularly makes deranged and bellicose statements on national policy in matters where he has zero business speaking for anyone let alone a bankrupt country that is so fragile at this time that just about anything of major consequence could trigger the collapse that has been so far been avoided only by smoke and mirrors and the ongoing government support of the rigged six ways from Sunday financial markets.

I have long admired the work of former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts who did the right thing morally and broke with his party during the worst years of the Bush-Cheney regime. A straight shooter who calls it like it is Mr. Roberts latest column entitled "Washington Drives the World Toward War" warns of the dangers of lunatics like McCain and his ilk pushing for a conflict that would eventually draw in Russia and China and I excerpt the following:

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington’s drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

According to this self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country. What this means is that the US has been chosen by history to establish the hegemony of secular “democratic capitalism” over the world. The primacy of this goal places the US government above traditional morality and above all law, both its own and international.

Thus, no one in the US government has been held accountable for unprovoked aggression against other countries and for attacking civilian populations, unambiguous war crimes under international law and the Nuremberg standard. Neither has anyone in the US government been held accountable for torture, a prohibited crime under US law and the Geneva Conventions. Neither has anyone been held accountable for numerous violations of constitutional rights–spying without warrants, warrantless searches, violations of habeas corpus, murder of citizens without due process, denial of legal representation, conviction on secret evidence. The list is long.

A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect. People propagandized into the belief that they are the world’s special people inevitably lose their humanity. Thus, as the US military video released by Bradley Manning reveals, US troops get their jollies by mowing down innocent people as they walk along a city street.

With the exception of the ACLU, constitutional rights groups and independent Internet voices, the American people including the Christian churches have accepted their government’s criminality and immorality with scant protest.

The absence of moral denunciation emboldens Washington which is now pushing hard against Russia and China, the current governments of which stand in the way of Washington’s world hegemony.

The push will continue, the warmongers are relentless, the media is their battlefield and the American mind is one that has been indoctrinated into the glorious national narrative of war. As CNN's hapless Crowley lobbed the obligatory softball to McCain on his tried and true invocation of Der Fuehrer and by proxy the heroic and godlike Sir Winston for comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain when the U.S. leader shook the hand of Cuba's Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela's funeral this week the vile old man only snickered. It is fitting because the joke is on all of us because  the neocons have flogged the Neville Chamberlain horse to death and it should have been sent to the glue factory long ago along with Senator McCain. 

But as long as Americans view the world through their exceptional blinders where the flag waves eternally over The Homeland and every war is a continuation of "the good war" our tickets with historical infamy will very soon be punched.