Russia: Other Points of View

Sharon covered in Huffington Post for first time -- you can help!

Friends,  the link here will probably have to be put in your browser.  I would appreciate you reading it -- it's the first time I've been carried in Huffington Post -- which is probably one of the best mainstream blogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-k-comstock/on-the-ground-in-russia_b_7875948.html

Secondly, I would greatly appreciate it if you would write Huffington and say that you agree with or thank them for printing this, anything that is positive.

Why?  Craig Comstock the writer said that they pay attention to the comments -- and will post more if they get a good selection of people to sign on and read.  

Craig and I have hopes to write monthly or more often and try to get different and more truthful points of view out on Russia and the US-Russia relationship. 

This is one way of doing People's Diplomacy! Tell the truth! And see if it resonates!

If you are going to read and write in, please do quickly while the article is still fairly warm!

Many thanks!  Sharon

Is MH-17 Downing -- a New Tonkin Gulf Case?

Friends,  

Robert Parry, top US investigative journalist who helped break the IranContra Scandal under Ronald Reagan and many other irregularities in top political reporting continues to demonstrate that the Malaysian Airlines was a "false flag" operation.  It makes perfect sense that neither Ukraine or Washington have been willing to give crucial evidence of 1) air control reports on that fateful day nor US satellite information over the area which was definitely tracking the area. On day one, an air control report surfaced and was immediately evaporated as was the controller who gave it.  Later Washington half admitted that it wasn't Russia that shot down the plane, yet still the sum total of accusations is that Russia was somehow involved in killing the 298 passengers.  All Western onlookers still blame Russia, and this is the hook on which the "damn Russia" policy has since hung––the literal event that turned Europe against Russia.

In the following report, Parry takes us into another such false flag which took America into the scourge of Vietnam where we lost 50,000 young men––and the Vietnamese lost over a million men,women and children.  A series of other false flags have existed which took America into incursions in addition to the disastrous supposed WMDs that took us into Iraq.  What must we do to hold short-term policy makers (and their media outlets) responsible for what we Americans end up causing and paying for????  If you have solutions, please send them to me. 

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/17/mh-17-mystery-a-new-tonkin-gulf-case/

Exclusive: In 1964, the Tonkin Gulf incident was used to justify the Vietnam War although U.S. intelligence quickly knew the facts were not what the U.S. government claimed. Now, the MH-17 case is being exploited to justify a new Cold War as U.S. intelligence again is silent about what it knows, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

One year ago, the world experienced what could become the Tonkin Gulf incident of World War III, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal – and used it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.

Shocked at the thought of 298 innocent people plunging to their deaths from 33,000 feet last July 17, the world recoiled in horror, a fury that was then focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. With Putin’s face emblazoned on magazine covers, the European Union got in line behind the U.S.-backed coup regime in Ukraine and endorsed economic sanctions to punish Russia. 

Russian-made Buk anti-missile battery.

In the year that has followed, the U.S. government has continued to escalate tensions with Russia, supporting the Ukrainian regime in its brutal “anti-terrorism operation” that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev have even dispatched neo-Nazi and ultranationalist militias, supported by jihadists called “brothers” of the Islamic State, to act as the tip of the spear. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]

Raising world tensions even further, the Russians have made clear that they will not allow the ethnic Russian resistance to be annihilated, setting the stage for a potential escalation of hostilities and even a possible nuclear showdown between the United States and Russia.

U.S., RUSSIA AND UKRAINE – “TIT FOR TAT” – DUELING “EXPERTS” AND DUELING NARRATIVES – THE DANGER ESCALATES

Dear Friends,

The article below was written by John E. Pepper, Jr., who for 40 years was in management at Procter & Gamble, and in year 2000 was made CEO and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board at P&G.  He also has served as Vice President of Finance and Administration at Yale University and has been a director of The Walt Disney Company since 2006. He was responsible for P&G's successful move to Russia.

During the 2000s, John also Chaired the Board for the St. Petersburg State University's new Graduate School of Management which partnered with Berkeley University.  I sat on that Board, and CCI oversaw the funds contributed to and paid out for the renovation of two palaces for the new School of Management. John has a deep appreciation for Russia's history, culture and literature, and he has had long experience dealing with numerous Russians in high places over the years.  He, like many of us, has deep concerns about today's relationship between the two countries.

Sharon

 

June 24, 2015

U.S., RUSSIA AND UKRAINE – “TIT FOR TAT” – 

DUELING “EXPERTS” AND DUELING NARRATIVES – THE DANGER ESCALATES

As we all know, it is hard for an individual or nation to view the world or a particular situation through the eyes of another person or nation.

I have never seen this more true than what is transpiring now over the Ukrainian crisis as it is viewed by the United States and Russia.

This is a subject of deep concern because the security of our world is threatened and we risk losing the need for collaboration on such transcendent issues as nuclear proliferation and terrorism in Iran and Syria.

I could only look with irony at the statement of Defense Secretary Ash Carter as reported in the Wall Street Journal last week that the Pentagon is committing military gear to a NATO task force designed to deter Russian aggression because Moscow is, in Carter’s words, trying to “reestablish a Soviet-era sphere of influence.” 

How precisely that echoes Russia’s concerns—that the West, and particularly the United States, has, over the past 20 years, extended its “sphere of influence” by extending NATO well beyond what was expected in the early 1990s, even to the point of considering expansion to Ukraine and Georgia.  

There is a great danger in the affairs of humans and also of nations in self-fulfilling expectations.  These self-fulfilling expectations can be for the better and they can be for the worse.  The expectations held by Russia toward the United States and the United States toward Russia today are all “for the worse.”

We hear veiled and sometimes bald assertions that Russia intends to enter countries previously part of the Soviet empire--the Baltics, Poland and all of Ukraine.  Putin described such a nation as “insane.”   He is right.  Can you imagine the sheer idiocy of Russia undertaking to move into those countries?  Why would they do this?  There is no driving ideology as there might have been in the case of Soviet Communism.  Surely, Russia has no need for more land.  

Russia, quite understandably, looks for long-term economic and social ties with Ukraine.  But to try to take over a country where the majority of people would be repelled by being part of Russia makes no sense.  It would make Russia the pariah of the world and give them nothing in return but trouble. 

We are failing to seriously examine what is the true strategic intent of Russia.  I am not suggesting that they haven’t supported the Separatists in Eastern Ukraine; I feel quite sure they have, probably to help ensure that a constitutional settlement is finally reached that gives appropriate rights to the ethnic Russians living there. 

The interests of the United States and Russia should be very simple and the same.  We should support what has been so long coming--the creation of a unified Ukraine, with federalization much as it exists in other countries.  Pulling Ukraine together is a huge challenge.  The fissure between Eastern Ukraine and the rest of the country is large, ethnically based and now deepened by a civil war. 

Russia, the United States, all of us, should do everything we can to support this constitutional settlement.  We should not allow anything in our control to get in the way of that settlement, for nothing other than that will bring peace to the Ukrainian people.  And that’s what they want.  That’s what the people in every country want.

I fear that most people are so far removed from the horror of war today that we have forgotten what it’s like.  It might serve everyone to go back and look at the movie “Platoon” or “Saving Private Ryan” again to be reminded what the cost of war is to human life.  

I believe we are at a historical precipice.  I am extremely worried by the unfettered “propaganda,” and that’s what it is, on both sides of the issue.  This has had the insidious effect of bringing the people of Russia and of the United States to view the “other” as “evil.”  And in fact they are not.  They are committed to their own national interests. 

Cold War II to McCarthyism II

Robert Parry, the American journalist for Associated Press and Newsweek who exposed the Iran Contra Scandal during the Reagan administration continues to be a voice in the wilderness in the Washington, Russia, Ukraine, Crimea debacle.  

Cold War II to McCarthyism II

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

09 June 15

 With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn’t get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.

erhaps it’s no surprise that the U.S. government’s plunge into Cold War II would bring back the one-sided propaganda themes that dominated Cold War I, but it’s still unsettling to see how quickly the major U.S. news media has returned to the old ways, especially the New York Times, which has emerged as Official Washington’s propaganda vehicle of choice.

What has been most striking in the behavior of the Times and most other U.S. mainstream media outlets is their utter lack of self-awareness, for instance, accusing Russia of engaging in propaganda and alliance-building that are a pale shadow of what the U.S. government routinely does. Yet, the Times and the rest of the MSM act as if these actions are unique to Moscow.

A case in point is Monday’s front-page story in the Times entitled “Russia Wields Aid and Ideology Against West to Fight Sanctions,” which warns: “Moscow has brought to bear different kinds of weapons, according to American and European officials: money, ideology and disinformation.”

RUSSIA INSIDER site

Dear Friends, 

An amazing new site,  Russia Insider, has appeared over the past six months.

It's the brainchild of one Charles Bausman, whom I met in Russia in September of last year.

I was impressed with this American's questions and professionalism as he made the rounds at a conference.

He appeared to be trying to understand how best to start a news voice in Russia for Americans like himself. 

I didn't bother to ask his background at the time and only later learned his history. It's the following: Charles' father was the AP Bureau Chief in Moscow.  His parents, three siblings and he lived in Moscow for four years from 1968 to 1972.  After graduating Exter, Wesleyan U, and Columbia Business school he worked with NBC News and other positions in Russia. He married a Russian woman, has two children and converted to Russian Orthodoxy.  Charles has become so deeply perplexed at US media on all issues re Russia that he put up a small site to better inform English-speaking people about what is going on in Russia.  The site has grown quickly and now he needs to hire staff and create a daily truth-telling operation.  Charles has already sunk $50K of his own money into this project and in order to continue and be much more effective, he has to have donors.

Charles has chosen "crowdfunding," an innovative way of building his new news service.  With Crowdfunding, many people donate small amounts.   It works this way––the number of people funding the project, the better, because it attracts attention of larger funders.  Google "Russia Insider" right now!  The site will pop up and you can make a small donation to help create the base for this new news site.

Many of the articles I've been sending you are from Russia Insider.  So you have already benefited from their startup phase.

You know how much I care about "getting Russia right."  I want to see Russia Insider and Charles succeed in putting out accurate information from Russia.  There is so much misinformation and outright lies regarding Russia and Russia's leaders today.  We must have credible, accurate information to reduce the possibility of an all out catastrophes on the planet. 

Please make a small one-time pledge to Russia Insider  to assist Charles with his intention to provide us all with straight news.  I can't think of a better cause to get behind right now.  I've contributed and hope you will too! 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/russia-insider/russia-insider-challenge-the-media-lets-push-back

All the best to you,  Sharon 

NYT Foreign Correspondent speaks up on US mainstream media

Chris Hedges, veteran NYT foreign correspondent for 20 years, was also our finest Middle East correspondent. Unlike most others, he spoke fluent Arabic.  But when he came out against the lead up to the Iraq war in 2002 because he knew this war would end in disaster, this was the end of his career as a top national journalist.  Since leaving the NYT he hasn't had a dependable salary on which to raise his family. Chris is also a Presbyterian minister and a great humanitarian. 

In his Youtube, he points out that only when the American public collectively goes up against a war, will the Washington war lords stop their heinous drive to build, order, buy and sell military implements with which to forge ever new wars based on falsified information which the American public believes to be true.  How many times do we need to be fooled before we collectively go up against this travesty?

Put this URL below in your browser and watch for 9 minutes of riveting truth.

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/chris-hedges-weve-decapitated-more-civilians-than-isis-ever-has/ 

Warm Holidays to you, 

Sharon

German Editor's Confession

Friends, more formerly hidden information is being disclosed daily. This respected German editor, with not much longer to live, confesses his years of skewing news in a top-notch German newspaper for our CIA and German intelligence operators.  How much of this has to come out before we realize that mainstream medias are intertwined with today's politics. This confession is particularly touching and relevant.   Sharon

Our Exclusive Interview with German Editor Turned CIA Whistleblower

Scandal - Exclusive Fri, Oct 17 Eric van de Beek 

These revelations, together with the Snowden uproar, will further decouple the US from Germany

Exclusively for RI, Dutch journalist Eric van de Beek interviews the senior German editor who is causing a sensation with his allegations that the CIA pays German media professionals to spin stories to follow US government goals.

We wrote about this two weeks ago, and the article shot up in views, becoming one of the most read articles on our site.Udo Ulfkotte reveals in his bestseller Bought Journalists, how he was "taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public."

The former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is one of Germany’s largest newspapers, was secretly on the payroll of the CIA and German secret service, spinning the news in a way that was positive for the United States and bad for its opponents.

In his latest interview, Ulfkotte alleges that some media are nothing more than propaganda outlets of political parties, secret services, international think tanks and high finance entities.

Ukraine, Corrupted Journalism and the Atlanticist Faith: Wolferen from the Netherlands

Friends,

I am including a series of voices and analysts from beyond our U.S. mainstream media––they may be hard to consider since we hear only one point of view from our media––which in itself is a dangerous situation.  Below is a piece from a seasoned Dutch thinker. He is a significant historian, a respected journalist and analyst, and a deeply concerned European who has a grasp not only about today's situation in Ukraine but about Europe and America's history over the span of decades.  

It was in 1983 when I began to study the dynamics of the Cold War and the fire power of both superpowers, that I realized how easy it would be for the world to go up in flames within an hour or two …. that's when I became absolutely possessed to work toward that eventuality never happening. What we know as CCI came into existence at that time.

Today I feel the same urgency. I don't want to be an alarmist but I do want to sound the alarm––this situation between elements in Washington and Russia is no ordinary spat between nations. It has the potential to blow wide open unless something is done soon to turn it around.

DEADLY QUOTATIONS PART 2

By Patrick Armstrong

A number of people have challenged my (and the official Kremlin translators’) choice of “a major” for “krupneyshey” in Putin’s famous sentence “Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” I stand by what I said: he did not say that there was no worse geopolitical disaster in the century. Neither did he mean that he wanted the empire back. 

1. Meaning of the word “krupneyshey”. I take my authority from Pekhlivanova and Lebedeva: “Russian Grammar in Illustrations”; Moscow 1994; p 161. Here it is stated “To say that an object possesses some quality in extraordinary degree, without comparing it to other objects, the Russian uses a special adjectival form ending in -eyshiy (or -ayshiy, after zh, ch, sh, shch). A footnote tells us “These forms are used more frequently in bookish speech”.

To express the meaning “the object possesses the quality in the highest degree as compared to other objects” the modifier samyy is used.

A photograph of that page of the book is visible at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/patrick.armstrong.1048?fref=nf

English does not have such an adjectival form: it has the quality (big) the comparative (bigger) the superlative (biggest). I would therefore suggest that the really correct translation would have been "one of the bigger" or even “one of the biggest”. But, according to my source, it would be absolutely wrong to call it the “biggest/largest/maximal” (which means number one, none bigger). 

DEADLY QUOTATIONS

by Patrick Armstrong

The idea for what follows came from a Facebook discussion. One individual, certain that Russia was to blame for the situation in Ukraine, said, among other things, that Putin claimed the biggest mistake was the collapse of the USSR and that he wanted to restore it. I said Putin did not say anything like that and challenged him to find the original. I was hoping to make a point and lead him to understanding something for himself. He dug up a number of statements from the Western media saying the Putin had called the end of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century”. Not so hard to find examples: Google returns 15 pages of hits for that exact search, starting with the BBC and ending with it used as a put-down by a commentator on a mildly approving Polish newspaper piece about Putin. The phrase has now become something like what Pravda used to say when it wanted to spread a lie, but had no real evidence, как известно: as is well-known.  Over and over we see it used as the triumphant final proof of the argument. “Putin wants a new Russian empire”; “Ukraine PM: Putin wants to rebuild Soviet Union”; “Putin longs to be back in the USSR”; “Putin’s obsession is the restoration of Russia’s pride through the restoration of its imperium.”

Perhaps the most interesting reference my correspondent pulled up, however, was this from an essay by Anders Åslund: 

In his annual address in April 2005, Putin went all out: ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century.... Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory...old ideals [were] destroyed.’ He presented himself as a neoimperialist. 

What is interesting about it is that he actually footnotes the original source. I assume Åslund expected that no one would bother to look it up or be unable to find it. But it’s out there on the Internet.