Mockingbird Nick Cohen...

[Danny Jarman]

Putin is Evil. People who watch RT are dumb. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Anglo-American narrative on geopolitical affairs is working for the Kremlin...

How on earth did this garbage pass through quality control at the Guardian? Maybe the editor had a day off...

Russia Today: why western cynics lap up Putin's TV poison

It's no surprise that the Kremlin delights in piping TV propaganda to the world it is guaranteed a receptive audience


Vladimir Putin is the world's corrupt policeman. He finds the seediness in every country and nurtures it. On some occasions, he exploits cynicism and paranoia at once; on others, he banks it for later use. Often he appears to fan corruption for the hell of it because that is all he knows how to do.
The posters appearing on British advertising hoardings promoting his propaganda channel give a notion of the scale of his effort. His underlings have rebranded his Russia Today station "RT" in the hope that its dumb viewers will not realise that they are watching a channel whose political line follows the Kremlin line with puppyish eagerness.


While reputable news organisations from the BBC to the New York Times fire news reporters who try, however inadequately, to tell the truth, Russia Today has extended its reach. Putin is about to increase its $300m budget by . Its resources will soon compare with Fox News. But while Fox serves the peculiar tastes of the American right, Russia Today has global ambitions. The channel broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish and can reach 600 million people. It claims to have surpassed a billion hits on YouTube, and will add German- and French-language channels. For the supposedly pariah leader of a country whose population is collapsing and mafia economy stagnating, Putin has the best publicity money can buy.


Anyone who writes critically about him soon learns the price of lese majeste. BuzzFeed revealed that state-sponsored Russian trolls maintain a Stakhanovite regime of tweeting and commenting on hostile news pieces as they spread the [url=http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america]Kremlin's message across the web. (Hello down there in the comments, by the way. Hope the sanctions aren't hurting the pay cheques.)


The reaction of the naive observer to Russia's prostitution of journalism is to think its elite has found a new way to steal from the Russian masses. The obvious question is the best one: what's the point? However many the communists killed, Marxist-Leninists still persuaded people to follow them in large numbers until the 1970s. No one tries to persuade you today that Britain or any other country would be happier if the prime minister had Putin's dictatorial powers and the state became a collection of thieves without an independent judiciary, opposition parties or free press to constrain it.


But the reality of modern Russia is not the impediment it seems. Suppose instead of trying to sell you Putin, Russia Today were to sell you the idea that Britain is as bad as a dictatorship. You might agree, however foolish the sentiment. If you are campaigning for change in a manifestly imperfect but still free and prosperous society, you exaggerate in the hope of attracting attention. (If the government passes this restriction on freedom of speech, we'll be no better than Iran. If the Tories stay in control of the NHS, we'll have third-world hospitals and so on.) A lie is still a lie, even if it is made in a good cause. But I can see why people do it.


The disbelief that oozes through much of public debate in our time is rarely in the service of any cause, however. It is radical indifference; a furious determination to condemn accompanied by an equally determined refusal to commit. Like Russell Brand, millions of people don't want to say what change they want to see, because a commitment would force them to take a position and lay them open to attack.


They aren't cynics but pseudo-sophisticated innocents. They shout "liar" automatically at everyone who tries to rule over them and doubtless they are right more often than not. But to dispense with the search for proof the need to demonstrate that the politician or banker is lying leaves the supposedly wised-up open to capture by cults, conspiracy theorists and Russia.


The Institute of Modern Russia releases a report this week that shows how the collapse of communism liberated Moscow. Communists had to pretend to support leftwing movements Putin can support anyone. Where the old communists claimed the Soviet Union was freer and more democratic than the west, Putinists claim "all liberalism is cant and anyone can be bought".
Russia Today feeds the huge western audience that wants to believe that human rights are a sham and democracy a fix. Believe that and you will ask: what right have we to criticise Putin? At least he is honest in his way.


David Remnick of the New Yorker described Russia Today's "nastily brilliant" ability to feed "resentment of western superiority and resentment of western moralism". He forgot to add that nowhere is that resentment stronger than in the west.


Russia Today's second mission is to spread conspiracy theories that help Russian power and provide sensational audience-grabbing stories in every sense of the word. If you have heard that the Ukrainians who oppose Putin are fascists, that there is a land called "Novorossiya" in south-east Ukraine that historically belonged to Moscow, or that Assad did not gas Syrians, the odds are the story will have started on Russia Today.


Occasionally, its journalists have crises of conscience Sara Firth, a London-based correspondent for Russia Today, resigned because of its lies about flight MH17. But replacements can always be found among the ranks of the desperate and unscrupulous.


I said that no one believed Putin offered a future for humanity. But his post-communist, postmodern flexibility means that many are prepared cut a deal when the bent copper makes an offer. Alex Salmond admires him because the break-up of Britain is in Russia's interests. Nigel Farage, Marine le Pen and all the other leaders of Europe's far right run to him because he shares their hatred of the EU. Despite his alliance with what we once called neofascism, the old communist left in Germany, George Galloway and Julian Assange support him because opposition to the west trumps anti-fascism in their book.


Russia Today provides a platform for anti-fracking greens because Putin wants us to remain dependent on Russian oil and gas. Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdogan see how Putin has accumulated dictatorial power in Russia and wish to imitate him in Hungary and Turkey. London's banks and law and PR firms work for him because the oligarchy pumps money their way. In Europe and at the United Nations, bigots of all descriptions welcome Putin's leadership in fighting calls for gay equality and religious freedom.


However battered he looks, Putin knows how to manipulate all he comes across. It is about time the rest of the world knew it too.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...-tv-poison

[Paul Rigby]

Putin is Evil. People who watch RT are dumb. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Anglo-American narrative on geopolitical affairs is working for the Kremlin...

How on earth did this garbage pass through quality control at the Guardian? Maybe the editor had a day off..
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...-tv-poison

The Guardian was taken over, post-Boer War, by the Rhodes-Milner group: it's always been a zealous servant of Anglo-American power, most obviously in the form of SIS and, post-WWII, the CIA. Nothing has changed at the paper, in other words, it's just that many more see both it and its ghastly Observer appendage for what they are - the most cynical MSM voices of them all.

[Danny Jarman]

More on The Guardian...

Swept Aside: The Guardian on Libya in 2011 Vs Amnesty on Libya in 2014

In October 2011, The Guardian published an article by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt two of their most senior political reporters entitled How David Cameron Swept Aside Sceptics Over Libya Campaign'.


Laughably described as an investigation' that revealed how the prime minister overrode scepticism from his cabinet and MI6 to press for military action' in the first paragraph, the article instead presents the reader with a series of unchallenged quotes and assertions from Tory ministers and anonymous spooks, all designed to lionise Cameron.


We learn, for example, how Liam Fox, the then Secretary of Defence, had warned that there would have been grave consequences if Britain and France had not succeeded in persuading the UN to sanction military action' in Libya, and that it would have been a huge setback for the Arab spring in countries like Egypt and Tunisia'.


You might think that the Cameron regime selling arms to some of the most repressive governments in the middle east would also constitute a huge setback for the Arab spring', but they went ahead and did it anyway (and they're still doing it now). Watt and Wintour apparently didn't feel this obvious contradiction was worth pointing out to their readers.


We learn that William Hague, the then Foreign Secretary, had been stunned by the success of the high-precision GPS-guided Brimstone missiles after Fox ruled that the collateral damage target the risks to civilians should be set at zero'.


Yet at this point, it was already known that NATO airstrikes had killed numerous civilians, including whole families in their homes. It was also known that British fighter jets had deliberately targeted Libyan state media outlets, reportedly killing and injuring journalists in the process, in an action condemned as criminal by Reporters Without Borders and UNESCO condemnation that, incidentally, never made it into a single British mainstream' newspaper. Once again, Watt and Wintour apparently didn't feel this obvious contradiction was worth pointing out to their readers.


The article concludes by outlining how Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary at the time, had formulated a cunning five-point plan on how to avoid mistakes from Iraq', which formed the basis of the National Transitional Council's plans'.


The last words are given over to Mitchell, who says that All the soi-disant experts said, you can't do it from the air, the Americans said it was naive', but that Cameron had been brave' and stuck to his guns'.


The unmistakable message that one is supposed to take away from the article is that of a principled David Cameron, who cares deeply about democracy and human rights in the Arab world, proving his critics from both within the government and the security services conclusively wrong over Libya.


But i'd just like to take a quick look at what a number of experts from outside the government and the security services were saying at the time about the potential ramifications of a violent, externally imposed regime change in Libya.


Louise Arbour, a former U.N. Human Rights Chief and International Jurist, had written in March 2011 that any military intervention in Libya could:


. . . precipitate a political vacuum in . . . which various forces engage in a potentially prolonged and violent struggle for supremacy before anything resembling a state and stable government are reestablished.


http://www.undispatch.com/beyond-the-poi...-for-libya


Hugh Roberts, a former researcher at the International Crisis Group, had written in August 2011 of how:


Western governments have been very reckless in engaging themselves to the hilt as they have, politically speaking, with this outfit (the National Transitional Council). And going so far as to recognize it as the only legitimate body, when clearly that is not the view of many Libyans. The idea that this rebellion could just secrete a new functional regime has clearly been wishful thinking.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04...18250.html


And some Western diplomats had themselves said in August 2011 that the fall of the Gadaffi regime was likely to be a catastrophic success' and a chaotic success', because alternate governing structures weren't yet in place (so much for learning the lessons from Iraq').


Presumably, these people were also among the sceptics' who had been swept aside' by Cameron's stunning success in Libya.


But what if Wintour and Watt were being a little premature having their Mission Accomplished' moment, you might say in deciding to uncritically amplify Cameron regime propaganda about the success in Libya? What if, in October 2011, it was far too early to be making any kind of judgement along those lines? And indeed, what does Libya look like now, three years later?


Well, according to a new report from Amnesty International, entitled Libya: Rule of the Gun', it looks like this:


In today's Libya the rule of the gun has taken hold. Armed groups and militias are running amok, launching indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas and committing widespread abuses, including war crimes, with complete impunity.


The report provides evidence that:


armed groups have possibly summarily killed, tortured or ill-treated detainees in their custody and are targeting civilians based on their origins or perceived political allegiances.


And we learn that:


all sides in the conflict have displayed an utter disregard for civilian lives, with indiscriminate rocket and artillery fire into crowded civilian neighbourhoods damaging homes, civilian infrastructure and medical facilities.


http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/libya-rul...2014-10-30


At least 93 journalists have also been targeted for attack since the start of 2014, and the persecuted and displaced Tawergha people continue to be exactly that: persecuted and displaced (their home town was destroyed in August 2011, in attack on it by Misrata based rebels backed by NATO airstrikes, described by the U.N. Commission as a Crime Against Humanity p.13).


As the report makes clear then, the country is in a state of near collapse, and riven by violent conflicts over power and resources. Civilians are bearing a heavy burden amidst the fighting. And strangely, those people who were so concerned about Libyan civilians in March 2011 that they thought NATO had no choice but to starting bombing don't seem to have much to say about the catastrophe unfolding this time around.


But in light of this new report, perhaps The Guardian will now commission one or two of their senior political stenographers journalists to write an article entitled How Sceptics And Reality Swept Aside David Cameron Over Libya Campaign'.


I won't hold my breath.

http://interventionswatch.wordpress.com/...a-in-2014/

[David Guyatt]

Putin is Evil. People who watch RT are dumb. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to the Anglo-American narrative on geopolitical affairs is working for the Kremlin...

How on earth did this garbage pass through quality control at the Guardian? Maybe the editor had a day off...

Seems to me that this reflects a concern by the Guardian - and probably others - that Putin is beginning to counter the propaganda war of the west, hence this attack on RT.

It is puke-able stuff for certain.

[Malcolm John]

Kind of ironic he doesn't seem to realise what he said about the Kremlin and RT is equally true of Downing Street and the BBC.