9/7/2022 The New Yorker and The “New” Cold War Propaganda (Part 5). By: Thomas Riggins [5/5]Read NowTrump, Putin, and the New Cold War - The New Yorker (Part 5)This is the fifth part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on a recent article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and various journalists and others who are hostile to the current Russian government. I hold that no self respecting journalist would write an article such as this New Yorker piece and palm it off on the public. My commentary is also an object lesson on how to distinguish between reportage that at least attempts to be unbiased and obvious nonobjective propaganda. You will know more about Trump, Putin and the New Cold War from the commentary than you will ever know from the original article. Active measures were used by both sides throughout the Cold War. In the nineteen-sixties, ... Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, ... newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the- Section Five “Turbulence Theory” This last section contains 16 paragraphs. 1. The Russians were “gleeful” over Clinton’s loss as they saw theTrump victory as upsetting the established political consensus in Washington. [Putin may have felt his ambitions to have normal relations with Washington and the EU and lower the hostile actions of NATO would be possible to achieve. If so, it appears he was mistaken] . 2. The “News of the Week '' anchor Dmitry Kiselyov, revealed how benighted the social consciousness of many in the Russian elite has become since the demise of the Soviet state. Their ambassador to the US has either failed to enlightened them about Trump’s base or he has been ignored, as Kiselyov informed his audience that Trump’s views revealed neither any racism nor sexism, only “a real man” who believed in the family (with three wives to show it), as proved by the fact he doesn’t approve “of protecting the rights of gays and lesbians.” I’m surprised this reactionary commentator even thinks gays and lesbians have rights to protect. 3. The article now does an about face. Having spent four sections insinuating that Putin and the Russians were a major cause of Trump’s victory it declares it’s not so after all. They were factors (even this is unproved) but not “the dominant force.” The most important factor is ‘’resentment.” This sentiment has resulted from “the effects of globalization and deindustrialization.” Resentment has caused the rise of the right in Europe and the US. So, let’s forget about the DNC and the election. The real problem is a paranoid fear that Putin is out to take over the world and Trump lacks the cojones to stop him. We shall see this is not a real fear but is totally concocted as an excuse to try and hold together militarily a teetering world order constructed by the ‘West” after WWII in order to ensure American and European control of the world economy: an order that is unraveling because capitalism cannot regulate itself and is resulting in war, famine, pestilence, and environmental destruction on an apocalyptic scale. The authors assert “many fear that Trump cannot be counted on” to defend the West: he says (or said) nice things about Putin, also about Brexit, and has “doubts” about NATO — oh my, what is the world coming to? If Trump backs away from the usual US stance re NATO and the Russian “Threat” [Russia has been a threat, it seems, since Peter the Great, whatever system it has: feudal, communist, or capitalist] then, we are told by a British ex deputy commander of NATO “it gives Putin all kinds of opportunities.” For example, he might not have to invade the Baltic states to dominate them. [No evidence is presented that Putin has any plans, or even desires, “to invade” the Baltic states but that’s the excuse for NATO’s build up. Would it signal the imminent fall of the West if Trump and Putin agreed to de-escalate the tensions along the Russia border?] The general also says there may be a “re-nationalization “ of Europe if Trump doesn’t stand up for keeping the EU together. 4. An “advisor” to Reagan and Clinton is quoted. The author has a habit of selectively quoting journalists, “advisors,” generals, etc., with whom he happens to agree. He evidently believes it makes his article more credible. He simply ignores equally qualified, or more qualified sources, whose opinions would under cut his viewpoint. He shares this methodology on “fair and balanced” reporting with Fox News. Anyway, the advisor ponders how long Angela Merkel can “hold out against” Trump. She is alone in Europe and Putin will soon be seen as “the preeminent power in Europe.” Germany versus Russia; we’ve been here before. A conservative German news weekly is quoted (“Der Spiegel”) to the effect that Germany must stand up to Trump who is turning into “a danger to the world.” Well that lets Putin off the hook (Russia is a “regional power” remember.) 5. Next up on the New Yorker’s Fantasy Island is the Clinton advisor “Strobe Talbott who really does have an almost apocalyptic vision of what the future portends ( we could have been saved this by HRC!). Talbott thinks that Trump (who had one casual encounter some years ago with Putin) is a “pal” of Putin’s [they have a “perverse pal-ship”] and that Trump has an “almost unfathomable respect” for Putin. Because of this we may have a “second Cold War” [why if they are pals?] and we may lose it! Trump is also putting “the world in danger” because he doesn’t respect [i.e., has called into question NATO and the world wide net of American military bases] the world order established by the “political West “(the US) over the last 70 years. It doesn’t occur to Talbott (or the author) that it is precisely that political world order, sustained by American hegemony, which is beginning to unravel of its own accord by its failure prevent worsening climate change and to provide economic security for hundreds of millions of people because of growing inequality, that is putting “the world in danger.” Trump is a symptom not a cause. Talbott doesn’t see this. He sees that we may lose our position in the world and it will take years, and years to regain it: “we the United States and we the champions of the liberal world order.” We, the liberal order that put Pinochet in power in Chile, killed 5 million Vietnamese peasants in a colonial war, lied and invaded Iraq and virtually destroyed the Middle East in a trumpeted up war, who can’t even properly feed, clothe, house and medically care for our own people properly: we are doomed because Donald Trump suggested he could sit down with Putin and make a “deal.” 6. If Talbott is not enough we are treated to the totally ridiculous musings of one of the corrupt oligarchical Yeltsin regime’s former ministers who has resettled in Washington and who tells us the “same people'' [he means kind of people] are in the Kremlin as in the White House. Trump’s people and Putin’s “like each other and feel that they are alike”. I can just imagine Putin watching Trump and reading his tweets, rubbing his hands together in glee and thinking, “That Trump, he’s just like me!’’ The two groups “ care less for democracy and values, and more for personal success . however that is defined.” That also pretty much describes Yeltsin, Clinton and most politicians; but it’s how “success” is defined that is really important and whether or not your personal success coincides with that of your country and its people or not. 7. The author now decides, towards the end of an article that pounded away on the trope of Russian interference, that maybe it’s not the “master narrative” of Trump’s victory after all. While, he says Russia’s tampering with our election “appears convincing” [to those at any rate who are convinced by hearsay, speculation, bare assertions and the lack of any definite proof] it is nevertheless the case that Trump “is a phenomenon of America’s own making.” In fact, he could have junked all of the previous paragraphs and said all he had to say in these last 10 paragraphs which conclude the article. 8. A long paragraph using McCarthyite guilt by association techniques to suggest that maybe the “phenomenon” is not so American after all. Examples: Putin likes Tillerson types (Trump’s first Secretary of State) as they “don’t talk about human rights.” Trump didn’t make any negative , comments about Russian court cases i.e., Russia’s internal affairs (Putin “controls” the courts) involving charges against an opposition figure charged with fraud (he was convicted after the charge had been overturned by another court — Putin’s “control” of the courts must have slipped up the first time). “The Russians see friendly faces in the Administration.’’ [Why no Gerasamov type frowns? ] Tillerson , when he was CEO of Exxon, had a “close relationship” with the head of the state oil company who is both rich and close to Putin. Michael Flynn was paid a $40,000 fee by “the Russian propaganda station RT” to attend an anniversary celebration dinner (he sat next to Putin). [RT is partially funded by the government as is PBS, is the latter “the American propaganda network”? Is the BBC “the UK propaganda network”? It seems any news outlet subsidized by a “hostile” government is automatically a “propaganda” outlet. Radio Havana: propaganda. Radio Free Cuba: news and entertainment.] 9. Obama, near the very end of his term, expelled 35 Russian officials and closed a couple of Russian diplomatic compounds as a result of the allegations of Russian election hacking. Initially Russia said it would retaliate but later Putin reversed this. During this period Michael Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had contact with Russia’s ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Michael Flynn lied to Vice-President Pence about his meeting and had to resign as a result. Obama had placed sanctions against Russia and Flynn is suspected to have had inappropriate conversations with Kisyak. But the reason he was fired was for lying to the Vice-President. 10. Over the years Trump has made contradictory statements regarding Russia and Putin. He has said he has and hasn’t met Putin. Basically it seems this confusion has developed as a result of the 2013 Miss Universe contest which was held in Moscow. Investigations are in progress to sort all this out. 11. By early 2017 US officials had collected multiple examples of contacts between “Russians” and Trump “associates.” What remains to be seen, as a result of the called for investigations, [there is apparently not enough evidence at present to draw any conclusions even though “conclusions” have been drawn all over the place] is if there is any proof “for potential illegal or unethical entanglement with Russian government or business representatives.” [Well, the use of the word “potential” muddies the water as there is always the “potential” for people to collude in improper behavior; the investigations need a stronger resolution such as finding they actually colluded in such behavior. Mixing up governmental activities with private business dealings is also problematic. There is a big difference in working against your own government and engaging in corrupt business practices. Finally, “illegal’’ practices and “unethical” practices should not be lumped together. So far, nothing has been proven!] 12. A question is posed by one of Obama’s top advisors: Celeste Wallander. The question assumes that there will be some proof of Putin’s election hacking. Putin recently stated there can be no proof since he ordered no hacking. The question: “Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?” [It would have to be inadvertent since it’s difficult to see the strength of a “democracy” in which the person with the lesser number of votes wins and the one with the most votes loses.] 13. It seems the Russians were “stunned” by Trump’s victory. [Who wasn’t?] The authors tell us the “working theory” of the agents involved in the Russian election interference case is that it wasn’t a well thought out plan but it was improvised. [ When all is said and done, I think we will find out it was the US government’s charges of Russian hacking and election tampering that were improvised and not well thought out.] 14. Mr. Trump (and Mr. Putin) learns a lesson. Being a candidate and being a President are qualitatively different. Candidate Trump made comments making it seem as if he really wanted to reset the US relations with Russia and move from an offensive hostile approach towards lessening tensions and more respect and cooperation. In other words he would not act as if the US was the world’s policeman and other countries could like it or lump it. But this would violate the 70 year old “world order” set up by a bipartisan Republican/Democratic foreign policy elite and constructed by the US based on its becoming the only world superpower and whose interests were paramount. The Russians, thinking this was his intention, initially praised his victory over HRC. But the US intelligence community and national security apparatus went to work blowing up a Trump/Russian electoral conspiracy theory that makes it impossible for Trump to fundamentally change the direction of US foreign policy with regard to Russia. The Russians have realized this and “the Kremlin ordered television outlets to be more reserved in their coverage of the new President.” 15. Next we get some totally unreliable hearsay via Konstantin von Eggert who hosts a television show in Russia. He says a friend told him that he saw an “edict” sent to state owned media. The friend told him the edict amounted to “no more Trump.” Von Eggert then explains what the “implicit” meaning of the edict (which he never saw) means; in fact he tells us what “the Kremlin has apparently decided.” [It’s fairly obvious that the author is not too scrupulous with regard to the sources of credible “evidence” of what the “Kremlin” is thinking. So, let’s forget von Eggert’s speculations and simply report that Russian state media has toned down its uncritical coverage of Trump.] 16. The last paragraph ends the article, not with a bang but a whimper. The editor of the anti-Putin “Echo of Moscow”, Alexey Vendiktov, with “deep contacts” in the elite, makes some “suggestions” which the author evidently thinks we should take seriously. Vendiktov suggests that Putin supported Trump because he upset the traditional [cold war] elite in the US with his unconventional foreign policy views. It’s also unclear how important a world power Russia really is — “So, well then we have to create turbulence inside America itself .” [So it all boils down to Putin’s inferiority complex.] The final suggestion is once America “is beset by turbulence” it will close “up on itself — and Russia’s hands are freed.” Freed for what? Our whole problem with Russia is that the US wanted a free hand in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine (it already has one in the Baltic states and East Europe) and our “free hand” resulted in negative discriminatory behavior against the Russian speaking minorities in Georgia and Ukraine who fought back and elicited counter meddling by Russia to our meddling and the same in Syria where Russia intervened to help an ally and to protect its naval base on the Syrian coast. The US wants a free hand to continue its encirclement of Russia with military bases (we are already moving into former Soviet republics in Central Asia) and the sponsorship of anti-Russian governments along Russia’s borders. The New Yorker may support these foreign policy objectives of the US and the New Cold War we are launching but they are naive in the extreme to think publishing disinformation articles such as this will dissuade the Russians from defending their legitimate state interests from the machinations of US superpower hegemony. This is the end of part five and the last part of this article. From reading part five of The New Yorker Article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the "hacking" of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. In fact, there is nothing in the whole article regarding Putin and the alleged hacking of our election process except innuendo and unproven assertions. And this is The New Yorker! Once upon a time, not that long ago, it was a better and more reliable source of information. Seymour Hersh, where are you? AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism.
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8/31/2022 The New Yorker and The “New” Cold War Propaganda (Part 4). By: Thomas Riggins [4/5]Read NowHybrid War: Reactive Mismeasures: The New Yorker and the "New" Cold War Propaganda (Part 4) This is the fourth part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on a recent article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and various journalists and others who are hostile to the current Russian government. I hold that no self respecting journalist would write an article such as this New Yorker piece and palm it off on the public. My commentary is also an object lesson on how to distinguish between reportage that at least attempts to be unbiased and obvious nonobjective propaganda. You will know more about Trump, Putin and the New Cold War from the commentary than you will ever know from the original article. Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War - The New Yorker Active measures were used by both sides throughout the Cold War. In the nineteen-sixties, ... Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, ... newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the- Section Four: “Hybrid War” 37 Paragraphs 1. Russia wasn’t very advanced in computer technology. It didn’t get on the world wide web until 1990. However, it caught up and by 1996 it had expert hackers and now “cyber tactics have become an essential component of Russia’s efforts to exert influence over its neighbors.” [The US of course does exactly the same: no great revelation here]. 2. Spring 2007, somebody cyber attacks Estonia: news, banks and government sites go down. 3. Russia and Estonia were at odds over Estonia’s decision to move a Soviet WWII war memorial (a statue of a soldier) out of the capital’s (Tallinn) center. 4. April 27, 2007 the statue was removed. Soon Estonia’s sites were flooded with DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) disabling them for two weeks. [Who did it? Angry Russians living in Estonia? The Russian government? Private Russian computer trolls? Political enemies of the current Estonian president?] “Investigators never pinpointed” who did it. In other words, nobody knows who did it so let’s blame the Russian government. [This is very analogous to the current blame laid at the feet of Putin for the “hacking” of the DNC and the US elections. The Russians could have done it therefore the Russians did it.] The then Estonian President Toomas Ilves, who left office in 2016, was not content to just blame the Russians but believed it was the Russian government + “mafiosos”: and why not? Without evidence you can cast blame wherever you feel like. 5. What did the author of the New Yorker article conclude? Well, he didn’t know exactly what happened but he did know what the ex-president thought happened, or rather believed happened, therefore “it was a landmark event: a state-backed cyber-attack for political purposes.” And to reinforce this conclusion he quoted a Pentagon official who didn’t know anymore about who did it than he did. A shining example of first rate investigative journalism. 6. 2008 Russian tanks crossed over into South Ossetia in the former Soviet Georgia [he doesn’t mention until later that the Georgians opened fire first ] and at the same time hackers disabled the Georgian internet. In “defense” circles the Russians were becoming well known for their “ambition, technical acumen, and speed.’’ 7. The Georgia operation showed that the Russians knew how to coordinate cyber activity and ground operations [could walk and chew gum at the same time]. 8. The Russians were, however, upset over the propaganda side of the Georgia operation. Although they released the films proving the Georgians attacked first when these films were presented in the Western media they were made to look as if the Russians attacked the Georgians. The author remarks that “Russian generals took this lesson to heart.” As a result they made a study of “information war” and how to use the media more effectively, putting what they learned to use in Ukraine and Syria. I wonder if the author is aware of the meaning of his own paragraph? The Russians give the proof of who started the fighting in Georgia to the Western “free press” and media and the information is altered to conform to a US disinformation campaign at the time which alleged that the Russians started the fighting. One of the points the author is trying to make in his article is that the Russian press is obedient to Putin while the Western press tells the truth. It reminds me of the German newsreels in 1939 that showed Poland invading Germany and starting the war. The author’s own words imply the Russians just recently learned “disinformation” from the Western press. [What? All those years under Communism “Pravda” was telling the truth!] 9. The author reports that the US was also successful in waging a cyber attack around this time. In 2008 the US and Israel teamed up and placed a “worm” into an Iranian network to make their “centrifuges to spin out of control” to slow Iran's “nuclear development.” [The US is proud of this achievement yet voices in Congress say it’s a casus belli if the Russians spied on the DNC and told WikiLeaks what they found out.] 10. A meaningless paragraph about our so-called “reset policy” with Russia and a quote from the hawkish Evelyn Farkas about “big Russian spies” [they do eat a lot of carbohydrates] and our attempts to work out an “arms control for” cyber activities with the Russians. 11. This paragraph gives the gist of the US’s counter cyber policies which basically target Russia, China and Iran. Robert Kanke, NSA director of cyber security policy, summed it up in this quote: “As long as we think we’re getting more value from this set of rules than we’re losing, then this is the set of rules we want to promote.”[So the answer to any question about our counter security policies must be, “Because we think this works better value wise.”] 12. A confusing paragraph in which we are told that Russia was developing a “new” doctrine which consisted of “an amalgam that states have used for generations.” This calls for a strategy that says an enemy should be destabilized “at minimum cost” by a combination of tactics: “military, technological, political, and intelligence.” [This seems like common sense rather than some cunning new doctrine.] This has become known as “hybrid war” and because these rather common place observations were written about in an article by the Russian army’s chief of staff (Valery Gerasimov) they have become known as “the Gerasimov doctrine” and although the article was only written four years ago, we are told this generations old amalgam has become “a legend.” 13. We are told Gerasimov is 61, looks stiff in photos and frowns a lot. He thinks future wars will have a four to one ratio of non military (“subversion, espionage, propaganda, and cyberattacks”) to military actions. He writes that the cases of Libya and Syria point out that a basically stable and functioning state can be reduced to “a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war” in just a few days by a well planned intervention by a hostile state using the tactics listed above. [Although the US has been successful using these tactics in Syria and Libya, it has basically been practicing the Gerasimov Doctrine avant la lettre against Cuba for over 50 years without success so there must be some sort or hamartia ( χαμαρτια ) within the targeted state for this Doctrine to actually work.) 14. Gerasimov maintains that in the 21st Century the nonmilitary means can often be more effective than the military. 15. By studying primarily the US the Russians concluded that it is very effective to manipulate information technology. Cyber techniques are superior to handing out leaflets or trying to manipulate radio and television. 16. The authors maintain the Russians used these methods in annexing the Crimea and in “pulling off” a “stage managed referendum.” [Other reportage indicates the referendum fairly reflected the views of the vast majority of people living in the Crimea but this article only presents one side of the story]. 17. In this paragraph the author does recognize you can’t use these hybrid war techniques unless there is some basic underlying social contradiction at work. “They are less a way to conjure up something out of nothing than to stir a pot that is already bubbling.” Knowing that, he could have been more objective with regard to who put the pot on the fire in the first place. A weakened regional power such as Russia, in a qualitatively inferior economic and military position vís a vís the US since the Soviet Union, a super power, collapsed, is more likely to be trying to turn down the heat to keep the pot from boiling over, a pot others have overheated. If you went to England to stir up mass dislike of the Queen you wouldn’t get very far as the precondition for such discontent doesn’t exist. This according to Alexander Sharavin, a member of the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow. But the preconditions to stir up trouble against the political order in the US do pre-exist. [As, perhaps, they also do in Russia]. 18. Tensions were rising between the US and Russia over Ukraine and Syria .[it is taken for granted that the US has the sole right to decide the future of both.] The Russians “stung” the US with a “common Moscow tactic” called “weaponized leak” [apparently revealing the truth of an action to the press which the actor would rather not have known.] What dastardly deed did the Russians do? It seems the US was planning to replace the pro-Russian president of Ukraine with their own puppet behind the backs of the EU and everyone else and the Russians were listening in to a phone conversation between American officials about this plan [the NSA isn’t the only one tapping private phone conversations]. During the conversation it was pointed out the EU wouldn’t like the US forcing its choice for the next leader into office and the response, from Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, was a very diplomatic “Fuck the EU.” The author tells us the Russians knew releasing the conversation would cause trouble between the US and EU but did it anyway and, horrors!, no “form of penalty was extracted from Russia” for revealing the truth. [Of course the real issue wasn’t the release of the profanity. It was catching the US plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and putting in a new leader of its choice. That’s what Putin does, not us!] The “special military operation” (AKA “invasion” depending on whose propaganda you prefer) in Ukraine has its root in this US intervention. 19. It was the kicking out of the elected President of Ukraine that commenced for real the new Cold War but a much more serious kind of Cold War than before. [The US and EU had plans for Ukraine which included eventual membership in the EU and NATO, the removal of the Russian naval bases in Crimea and the downplaying of Russian influence in Ukraine in general. The Russians responded by asserting their rights and interests and supporting the rights of Russian speaking Ukrainians whose status was being threatened by ultra right Ukrainian nationalists in the replacement government.] How did the US respond to Russia’s not accepting the US plans for the future? Here are the quotes from Benjamin Rhodes, one of Obama’s top advisors who saw the push back as “Russia’s aggressiveness,” according to the author, and said. “Putin’s unwillingness to abide by any norms [i.e., US norms] began at that point [the forcing out of the elected President]. It went from provocative to disrespectful of any international boundary.” [This respect is not required from American allies such as Israel or from the US itself in its invasions of other countries and bombings across international boundaries. The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming.] 20. This paragraph reveals two things. First there is a group of hackers called “The Dukes” also known as “Cozy Bear.” Nobody seems to know exactly who Cozy Bear is but “In security circles” it is a belief [but not a known fact] that Cozy Bear is “directed by the Russian government." Second, the Russian government is building up its cyber defense forces. But, “Very little is known about the size and composition of Russia’s team of state cyberwarriors.” There is then a lot of filler about Russia’s cyber program. 21. Interesting information about how many may be working in Russia’s cyber program. [It seems that many countries are building up their cyber abilities, Russia included.] 22. Cozy Bear [suspected of connections with the Russian government] has tapped into unclassified State Departments computers, unclassified computers in the office of the President and by 2015 “Russian intrusions” into political targets has roused national intelligence director Clapper to tell the Senate the “Russian cyberthreat is more severe than we have previously assessed.” [This is all based on actions by Cozy Bear and neither Clapper nor anyone else seems to know who Cozy Bear really is but the language has shifted from a “belief” to sound like it’s a “fact” that the “Russians” i.e., the government] is doing this spying. This now becomes the main theme in the same mass media that faked the war films from Georgia —that the “belief’ has become a “fact” — it actually hasn’t but it will be drummed into us day and night by the NSA, our politicians, and the mass media that it is a fact, fact, fact, that the Russians are, were and maybe are still inside our internet and websites and our computer systems, etc., that they hacked the DNC and tampered with our elections. Once conjured up this genie of hysteria will be impossible to put back in its bottle or lamp. It will do its job: give us an external enemy upon whom to blame all our woes and to justify even more military spending.] 23. The head of the French spy agency is “reportedly worried’’ that Russian agents are working to help Marine Le Pen. [Well he either is or isn’t worried.] Russian state media [?] have attacked one of Le Pen’s opponents [there are four main people, including Le Pen, running for French president]. A Russian Bank [the author doesn’t say it’s a private bank] has loaned Le Pen money. Le Pen also supports the return of Crimea to Russia. [Russia actually has a fairly good case for taking back the Crimea but the New Yorker article isn’t really interested in presenting the Russian side in an objective manner. This info on France is somehow supposed to make Clapper’s beliefs more like facts but they have nothing to do with Cozy Bear.] 24. Bruno Kahl, the head of German foreign intelligence is concerned “that Russian hackers are also trying” to interfere in German politics. He uses as evidence “Russian interference in the American elections.” [ This is assuming what is to be proved. The belief that Cozy Bear is directed by Russia and hacked the Americans is used as a fact to provide evidence that the Russians want to hack the Germans. The head of German domestic intelligence says hackers are at work in their elections. [Who is behind it all. He doesn’t say]. 25. A familiar story. September 2015 FBI warns the DNC that Cozy Bear is cozying up to their computer system. The DNC fails “to mount a full-scale defense.” 26. 2016 a “second group of Russian hackers” [remember it has not been factually established that Cozy Bear is a Russian government operation] called Fancy Bear is messing around in DNC leadership’s emails — esp. those of John Podesta. Both Bears have left their cyber footprints around the globe. These footprints are unusual as most change their M.O.s once they are spotted so they are harder to recognize. 27. It is revealed that getting into the email at the DNC and stealing it “didn’t require an enormous amount of expertise”. The “hacking” [it wasn’t really hard core hacking which is entering a system to muck it up not just to swipe info] of the DNC was “mediocre”; it wasn’t done by sophisticated cyber experts. [This would seem to upset the theory that the well trained cyber warriors of the Russian government were behind the DNC email theft. It is perhaps more likely, as some independent experts have suggested, that it was done by a lone wolf (or bear), unaffiliated with any government, who wanted to expose how the supposedly “neutral” DNC was really working for HRC and trying to see that Sanders didn’t get the nomination. But the Democratic Leadership and the Obama Administration has decided to pin it on Putin and on Putin it will remain pinned in popular culture and the mass media; at least for now.] 28. WikiLeaks gets copies of the emails and releases them three days before the Democratic Convention. The fix for Clinton is exposed and the DNC chair, one of the masterminds of this anti-democratic authoritarian maneuver [the type of thing Putin is accused of with regard to Russian elections] Debbie Wasserman Schultz is forced to resign. [The FBI is blamed, even though it warned the DNC in advance, by the Democrats for not doing more to prevent the American people from finding out how dishonest the HRC supporters on the DNC were, by investigating and preventing the theft. The revelations soured millions and may have prepared the way for Trump’s surprise victory. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Now it’s Trump’s turn.] 29. Donna Brazile becomes interim chair of the DNC but still engages in pro-Clinton activity instead of neutrality. She is fired from her CNN position for giving copies of the questions CNN might be asking at an upcoming debate to the HRC campaign. She doesn’t understand why all the underhanded activity has caused so much resentment against the DNC. 30. A “torrent of fake news’’ about HRC begins to appear on social media. It’s being generated in several different countries (the article implies it’s all from Russia). It seems to be originating from individuals trying to make money from ads on their Facebook and web sites by generating large numbers of “hits” so their revenue will increase. Despite the evidence pointing to this explanation, no one knows exactly who is doing what except for a few culprits who gave interviews to the press, Obama Administration officials who blame all the fake news reports as due to “the Russians” [there is no proof of this] are quoted in the article in a one-sided way. [This in itself is a characteristic of “fake news.”] 31. Some one, or some group, put fake pro-Sanders pages on social media with made up stories about HRC and her campaign. [These were fake news sites created to garner ad revenue due to the many hits they would receive from web surfing] The Sanders campaign said it was being “played” and had nothing to do with the phony sites. 32. More information on the “fake” news phenomena. Automated twitter accounts, known as “bots” and fake news in general ended up producing four times as many pro-Trump as pro-Clinton stories. [This was market driven as Trump generated more hits and ad revenue.] The author concludes with: “Internet researchers and political operatives believe that a substantial number of these bots were aligned with individuals and organizations supported, and sometimes funded, by the Kremlin.” [Such generalized speculation based on what some people believe is worthless as far as any real knowledge of what happened is concerned. It is just a standard propaganda ploy to plant in reader’s minds that they learned something, when they learned nothing, about the Kremlin. It all boils down to “some people believe the Kremlin did X and some people believe the Kremlin didn’t do X. Readers learned something about some people’s beliefs but learned nothing about what the Kremlin did or didn’t do.] 33. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has released 50,000 emails from Podesta’s account and has exposed many underhanded and embarrassing activities of the US government. He once hosted a show on Russian TV. [Fat chance that he will get a show on American TV.] He said about HRC she “will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism.”[ Bush, Obama, and HRC as Secretary of State seem to have already done that. And Trump is on his way.] Assange is in prison today in England (ever obedient to US orders )awaiting extradition to the US as a spy(!) for letting the American people know what their lying government didn’t want them to know. Neither the left nor the MSM seem much concerned over this US threat to the free press. 34. As more and more HRC campaign emails were released by WikiLeaks, the “Clinton campaign tried to shift focus from the details in the e-mails to the fact that they had been hacked.” [Again, they were not “hacked” in the hard sense; they were not properly secured and were swiped and revealed.] That ploy failed, as people were more interested in what the emails revealed about HRC and her people than in how the information fell into the hands of WikiLeaks. 35. Roger Stone, an erstwhile supporter of Trump, is suspected by some Clinton aides of advising WikiLeaks on the timing of the disclosures. [More speculation, the entire article is basically one big speculation and one wonders what was the point in writing it.] There were contacts between Stone and Wikileaks but Assange denied he was the source of the Podesta emails. Stone also denies he has had anything to do with any Russians contrary to any news reports. The FBI never contacted him and he said “If they have evidence of a crime, indict somebody.” [No one will be indicted as a result of this article. Stone’s statement is reminiscent of Putin’s statement that the US, instead of making all these accusations about Russia, should put up the proof for the world to see or shut up. The US has done neither.] UPDATE: “On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements.In November 2019, a jury convicted him on all seven felony counts.He was sentenced to 40 months in prison. On July 10, 2020, days before Stone was scheduled to report to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. On August 17, 2020, he dropped the appeal of his convictions. Trump pardoned Stone on December 23, 2020.”--Wikipedia. No charges of spying were involved. 36. The author points out that the HRC campaign was committing a lot of “tactical errors without foreign assistance.” They also note that Trump was getting more support “than the media recognized” especially from the white-working class [HRC was taking them for granted — her undoing]. Podesta thinks the emails did a lot of damage. [Actually it was the information in the emails that did the damage. An honest and honorable campaign would have had nothing to worry about]. 37. More opining by Podesta who thinks in the end, re the election result, “it’s hard to say if any one thing made the difference.” [That includes the last minute FBI announcement about new Clinton emails turning up, the WikiLeaks revelations, the unsubstantiated charges of Russian hacking, the tactical errors of the Clinton campaign, the unpopularity of the candidate, and Trump’s surprise appeal in the swing states virtually ignored by HRC. It was HRC’s election to lose.] This is the end of part four. From reading part four of The New Yorker Article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the "hacking" of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. Maybe we will learn something in part five. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism. 8/24/2022 The New Yorker and The “New” Cold War Propaganda (Part 3). By: Thomas Riggins [3/5]Read NowPutin's World: Reactive Mismeasures: The New Yorker and the "New" Cold War Propaganda (Part 3) This is the third part (of 5) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on an article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and various journalists and others who are hostile to the current Russian government. There are a few paragraphs exempt from this characterization and they are duly noted. I hold that no self respecting journalist would write an article such as this New Yorker piece and palm it off on the public. My commentary is also an object lesson on how to distinguish between reportage that at least attempts to be unbiased and obvious nonobjective propaganda. You will know more about Clinton, Obama, Bush, Trump, Biden, and Putin and the New Cold War from the commentary than you will ever know from the original article. Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War - The New Yorker Active measures were used by both sides throughout the Cold War. Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, ... www.newyorker.com.iconewyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the- Section 3 “Putin’s World” — This section has thirty-one paragraphs: ‘Preface’ I am basically going to list the known facts in each paragraph and mostly ignore blatant speculation, value judgments , and ridiculous reportage (such as Putin’s inner mental states) except to point them out. 1. Putin was born in Leningrad in 1952. In WWII the Nazis besieged the city for 900 days and mass starvation occurred. His father was wounded during the war. He joined the KGB when he was 23 in 1975 and ended up in the German Democratic Republic. 2. When the Wall came down in 1989 Putin was in Dresden burning documents in a Soviet compound. Russia did not intervene to save the Wall. 3. Putin went back to Russia and the Soviet Union dissolved and the eastern European socialist countries “went their own way.” 4. In August 1991 Communists loyal to the USSR attempted a coup to preserve the Soviet Union — it failed. 5. The fall of the USSR brought new rights to masses of people, but also tens of millions of Russian Soviet citizens now found themselves outside of Russia in newly independent former Soviet republics — many were anxious about the future. 6. Putin’s speeches, etc., recall the 1990s as a period of social anarchy in which the Western powers tried to take advantage of Russia. The author states that Putin overlooks some “stubborn facts” but only provides one, if any, and that is that Russia was allowed into the G7 which became the G8. What he doesn’t mention is that the US had promised not to expand NATO or try to include former Soviet allies in a new bigger NATO pressed up on the borders of Russia. The US then did just the opposite. The US and the West also connived to break up Yugoslavia and militarily attack Serbia, a friend of Russia. Having incited violence in the Balkans the US then used the violence to justify Western intervention. The author states that the expansion of NATO to the countries the US had promised not to was due to the fact that they “wanted protection.” But no one was threatening them! 7. Strobe Talbott, President Clinton’s top advisor on Russia, justified not keeping the promise to Russia re NATO expansion on the grounds that it felt “unfair” to him not to let the former Soviet allies into NATO. Not to do so because Russia might be “frightened” by having the US push NATO right up to its borders “didn’t hold water.” 8. In 1996 while visiting Russia Clinton told Talbott that he doesn’t regret expanding NATO and intervening in the Balkans even though it was putting Yeltsin on the spot. 9. Frank talk from Clinton to Talbot (a direct quote): “We keep telling ol’ Boris [Yeltsin] ‘O.K. now here’s what you’ve got to do next — here’s some more shit for your face.” It appears that the problems we have with Putin is that he won’t take our shit in his face. 10. Earlier Yeltsin had complained to Talbott about the US’s superior attitude towards Russia. The counter-revolutionary transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy had disrupted Russian society but Yeltsin told Talbott “Russia will rise again” and he wanted “equal treatment” from the US. [Russia has nuclear weapons but as an economic power it just isn’t equal to the US. The US has caused a lot of unnecessary problems for all concerned by rubbing Russia’s nose in this fact.] 11. The 1996 presidential election in Russia. The US imposed “shock therapy” caused millions of people economic hardships. It looked like the Communist Party would win the election. The author writes that with the help of the newly created oligarchs [Kremlin insiders who hijacked state property during the transition and became millionaires and billionaires almost overnight] and the IMF (International Money Fund i.e., the US) Yeltsin was able “to eke out a victory.” [The author does not mention that during the vote count the trend was indicating the Communists were winning and the count was stopped for 24 hours due to a computer “malfunction.” When the count resumed Yeltsin was ahead. This was the Russian introduction to “democracy American style.”] I wonder if Trump thought if we did it for Yeltsin, why not for him? 12. New Years 1996. Yeltsin resigns and apologizes for the mess the transition to capitalism has caused. 13. Yeltsin then appointed Vladimir Putin “his successor.” The people running the Russian government had decided Putin was the most capable person to handle the problems they were encountering or, in the neutral terminology of objective New Yorker journalism, he had proved himself “loyal to his bosses.” 14. Putin, as did Ford with Nixon, arranged that Yeltsin would not be prosecuted in the future for any crimes committed while he was in office. Off to good start. Andrei Kozyrev, a representative of the kleptocracy and oligarchic takeover of the Soviet economy under Yeltsin, he was foreign minister 1990-96, says Putin finalized a reconsolidation of the “old order.” This is nonsense as that would entail the resocialization of the economy and the Communist Party’s return to power, which was prevented by the rigging of the 1996 election. Kozyrev said “the inability to complete the economic and political reforms” caused Russia to slip back “into confrontation with the West and NATO.” In other words, the breaking of the promise not to expand NATO to the Russian border wasn’t the cause of the confrontation but Putin’s stopping the virtual giveaway of the the economy to the oligarchs and his making economic reforms that benefited the majority of the Russian people instead of the Yeltsin clique that allied itself with the West and US “shock therapy” was the cause. It’s all Putin’s fault. 15. When Putin took over he found a “barely functional state.” He replaced Yeltsin loyalists with his own people and brought “every aspect of the country’s political life, including the media” under “the ‘Vertical of power’ that he constructed.” This is a ridiculous overstatement as there is a large and active Communist Party in Russia with its own press and there are still independent papers and journalists at work in the Russian Federation even if television has been brought under state supervision. Putin has many authoritarian tendencies but they pale in comparison with those of some US NATO allies such as Turkey. 16. When first in office, Putin tried to be friendly with the West. 17. Bush then invaded Iraq [on trumped up charges revealing an aggressive warlike US]. In 2007 Putin stated the US has “overstepped its national borders in every area.” He also claimed the expansion of NATO was directed at Russia. Robert Gates reported, re Putin’s claim, “people were inclined to pass it off as a one-off.” [Ignoring Russia’s concerns and not taking them seriously was bound to have negative reactions; it was the typical behavior of big power arrogance.] 18. Many speculations on Putin’s inner mental states, intentions, etc. but the facts are: In 2012 he became president for the third time. Marxism-Leninism was no longer the state doctrine. Putin began appealing to Russian nationalism, traditional patriotism, and long standing Russian moral and ethical customs some of which predated the Communists. [The author fails to mention his promotion of the reactionary Russian Orthodox church, the seat of some horrible, backward disgusting “values” such as misogyny, intolerance, and sexual phobias]. His restrictions on gay rights was a ploy for popular support from the unenlightened masses [sadly, it was supported by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation which displayed inexcusable backwardness on this issue.] 19. Putin has rejected as official policy the atheism of the Soviet State. He supports what he calls “Christian” values which form the basis of Western Civilization. [Whether supporting “Christian” values, Christians can’t seem to agree on what they are, is the same as being a “Christian” is questionable.] 20. A very long paragraph full of all kinds of absurd postulations, mostly about what was going on in Putin’s mind in relation to Obama’s “embrace” of the “uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.” In fact the US was a long time supporter of both dictators and was lukewarm at best when confronted with their overthrow. Putin condemned the failure of “his protégé” President Medvedev (Putin was PM at the time after two terms, as president, sitting out a term so he would be eligible to run for a third term) for not vetoing a US UN resolution authorizing military intervention in Libya. [It does not appear that Putin was the all powerful authoritarian this article tries to portray: he can’t even get his “protégé” to follow his script!] The author then quotes an independent Russian journalist, Mikhail Zygar who amazingly knows what Putin “absorbed” regarding the violent end of Qaddafi. The lesson he learned was that when Qaddafi was a “pariah” (i.e., seen as anti Western) he was “safe”, but when he tried to be more accommodating to the US and its allies he was killed like a dog by a mob. We have gone from bad journalism to low fiction. Putin is not a middle eastern dictator nor is the Russian Federation Libya. Putin is not standing up to the US and NATO because he fears a howling mob of Muscovites will drag him out of the Kremlin and summarily dispatch him. Neither Zygar nor the author have any idea what Putin “absorbed” beyond a possible contempt for Western diplomatic hypocrisy which he probably had learned anyway many years ago. 21. Another long paragraph about Putin’s reservations concerning US policies( labeled by the author as “grievances against the West” — he often uses the term “West” when he refers to US government policies. As usual the assessments of Putin’s inner mental states are provided by either anti-Putin Russians or US government officials. In this paragraph we get the opinions of Obama’s former national security advisor, Tom Donilon. He tells us Putin thought the anti-government demonstrations of 2011 were a prelude supported by foreigners to weaken or get rid of him. In Donilon’s opinion Putin became more actively hostile against the US and the West. This is illustrated by the fact that Obama cancelled a summit meeting with Putin because Russia, which has no mutual extradition treaty with the US, refused to hand over Edward Snowden to the tender mercies of the US “justice” system. In other words, if you don’t follow American demands you are “hostile.” Donilon also remarks that Putin “works with” a small group of advisors who are former intelligence officials. So what? 22. We are told that in Russia dissent is “marginalized,” opposition candidates are not treated fairly, and so called human-rights groups funded “from abroad” have to be registered as “foreign agents.” Russian television media [like our own] tends to reflect official government views. 23. In Putin’s Russia we find out prison camps are not filled with his enemies, but he has made a few “chilling” examples [as has the US]. Russian TV, as described in the article, looks a lot like American TV. Comparing the description of the Russian mass media to that given by Bernie Sanders in his book “Our Revolution” one doesn’t see much difference. The ruling elites in both countries pretty much dominate what the masses watch but there are outlets for critical views on Facebook and Web sites, and oppositional magazines and books are available. The author points out that “even” in the internet age more that 80% of Russians get their news from TV [the corresponding number of Americans is 90% according to Sanders]. The authors also assert that Putin’s popularity ratings are the result of “manipulation” of TV coverage (it’s a “crucial factor”). [Didn’t American TV go out of the way to give coverage to Trump to boost their ratings and profits while basically ignoring Bernie Sanders — no manipulation of coverage there!] I’m beginning to think Rupert Murdoch is a secret partner of The New Yorker’s parent company (Condé Nast a subsidiary of Advance Publications). 24. On Putin’s 60th birthday (2012) Russian TV ran a flattering documentary about him and a TV commentator favorably compared him to Stalin. [For reasons non-Russians in the West don’t understand, Stalin is still fairly popular with many Russians and others in the former Soviet Union and many millions of peasants and working people in the Third World]. The author also repeats, without any evidence, the allegations made by some “well-informed critics” that Putin is worth “tens of billions of dollars.” It seems that any comment by Putin’s critics, as long as it is negative, has its place in this article. 25. Masha Lipman, editor of Counterpoint criticizes Russian TV’s coverage of Putin as, in her bitter opinion,“not just the ultimate boss but the embodiment of Russian statehood.” 26. We get a few sentences from a 2015 Russian documentary about Putin where he opines sentiments similar to Mao’s political power grows from the barrel of a gun or TR’s walk softly but carry a big stick. The host of the documentary then says Putin is the leader of “the conservative part of both European and American society.” [This really is Russian over reach as Putin represents conservative Russian nationalism; the Europeans have their own nationalisms and he certainly isn’t a leader of any group of American conservatives as both Liberals and Conservatives in the US are anti-Russian and pro Western and don’t see Russia as basically “Western.”] 27. Putin says the elites of foreign countries only like Russia when it is weak and don’t like it when “we start talking about our interests.” They don’t like feeling there is competition. 28. In February 2014 a Western supported coup drove the elected president of the Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, from office. The author follows the CIA line in explaining what happened next (he quotes the former deputy director Michael Morell.) The CIA is famous for wiretapping, but Morell can do better. He can tap Putin’s brain and tell us what he was thinking when Yanukovych was driven from office. Putin was thinking “Yikes, this could happen to me! I have to crush these upstart Ukrainians.” 29. The road to Kiev lies through Damascus. This is an unimaginable paragraph once it is deconstructed. It maintains that Russia intervened in Syria not because it intended to defend its national interests (its alliance with Syria and its Mediterranean naval bases, but because Putin wanted to prevent the overthrow of “dictators.” The Russians wanted “to halt a trend which started with the invasion of Iraq and continued through the downfall of dictators in Egypt and Libya.” This is a completely imaginary trend. Iraq wasn’t invaded to get rid of a dictator but to try and get control of its oil and to assert American imperial interests in the region and lies about its WMDs and nuclear intentions were offered as the excuse. The country was virtually destroyed and has been in a state of war and turmoil ever since due to the incompetence of the US military’s handling of the situation created by the Bush and Obama administrations. The same goes for Libya and Afghanistan. The trend is one of the US overthrowing governments and leaving anarchy and mayhem behind (the excuse in Libya was a fictional plot to massacre civilians). Egypt was an entirely different situation. A non violent uprising by the Egyptians themselves, without outside intervention, to get rid of an American supported dictator. The US did not approve and only grudgingly supported the movement after the fact. Egypt is now run by a fully supported dictator who has reimposed the previous military regime. In another case of mind reading an anonymous US official reveals that Putin thought the US was behind all the governmental changes “right through Libya” and was determined to stop this trend in Syria. Sergey Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister is quoted as saying the Russian intervention put an end to the US backing of “color revolutions.” There is no room here to go over the history of “color revolutions” but suffice it to say unlike genuine popular “revolutions” such as in Tunisia and Egypt, or wars of aggression as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, “color revolutions” are uprisings whose success depends on outside funding and support by US imperialist interests. The paragraph ends with some hypocritical musings about the battle to rid Aleppo of jihadists, a battle supported by the Russians, with no mention of the similar abuses of the US sponsored attempt to rid Mosul of its jihadists. One thing both battles have in common is that they are the result, in the last analysis, of US policies and interventions in the Middle East. 30. This paragraph deals with “contentions” between the Pentagon and the White House over “what to do about Russia.” Since we are not supposed to be a military dictatorship and the President is the commander in chief, there shouldn’t be any “contentions” over in the Pentagon about how the “White House” decides to deal with Russia. The generals wanted to send “advanced weaponry” to Ukraine and the President didn’t. Somewhere in this discussion the issue may have been what were the risks of turning the Ukraine into another Syria since Russia would certainly see to it that the Russian speaking population in the Ukraine, fighting for autonomy and the preservations of its rights that the new nationalist government in Kiev threatened, would not be out weaponed by US intervention. The issue, however, was not the well-being of Ukraine but the maintenance of US control of the “international order” and the unwritten principle that only the US and its surrogates had the right to militarily interfere in other countries. Here is a the quote from Evelyn Farkas, the Pentagon’s “most senior policy officer for Russia,” to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: she wanted more American force in Ukraine because Russia’s behavior was “an affront to the international order that we and our allies have worked to build since the end of the Cold War.” The fact that this order is an American creation that does not benefit the vast majority of humanity [endless wars, destruction of the climate and environment, increases in military expenditures, relief and preventions of famines and plagues as well as the aftermaths of natural disasters not adequately planned for and funded] is beside the point. Any country that resists this American order must be militarily confronted if diplomacy fails to ensure compliance. The “White House” was not necessarily questioning this doctrine, only that the timeline had not reached this point yet and that sanctions might still induce the Russians to cooperate. 31. Obama thinks, “with considerable justification,” that escalating the military conflict in Ukraine won’t make the Russians back down and will ultimately hurt Ukraine. Farkas doesn’t agree, can’t change Obama’s mind, and resigns and joins the Clinton campaign as “a policy advisor.” Clinton, as clueless as Farkas with regard to the likely hood of a disastrous military confrontation with Russia, “sometimes favored the use of military force when Obama did not.” [Fresh from her success in getting a military intervention in Libya, HRC was now advocating a no-fly zone in Syria and potential conflict with the Russian air force. Happy days are here again]. Farkas liked HRC because “she got it on Russia.” [Whatever domestic disasters we may have to endure, Clinton's defeat in November may well have saved the world a major and unthinkable war: our election was really a choice between a rock and a hard place!] The Clintonites won out, it seems, as under Biden Russia was pushed to the breaking point and lashed back by the invasion of Ukraine, a US cat’s paw. This is the end of part three. From reading part three of The New Yorker Article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the "hacking" of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. Maybe we will learn something in part four. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism. 8/17/2022 The New Yorker and The “New” Cold War Propaganda (Part 2). By: Thomas Riggins [2/5]Read NowThis is the second part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on an article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and various journalists and others who are hostile to the current Russian government. My commentary is also an object lesson on how to distinguish between reportage that at least attempts to be unbiased and obvious nonobjective propaganda. You will know more about Trump, Putin and the New Cold War from the commentary than you will ever know from the original article. Section 2. "Cold War 2.0" — This section has nineteen paragraphs: 1. Obama is said not to have reacted right away after being informed of the Russian “intrusion” as he did not want to seem to be “partisan.” The author now speaks as if the hacking is a “fact” when all that has been established is an unproven assertion.d 2. An unnamed member of Clinton’s inner circle grouses that Obama did not make a big deal over Russia’s “attack” on the United States. If he had then a majority of the people would have “sat up and taken notice.” [This may have helped Clinton.] Unproven assertions have evolved into an “attack.” The unnamed source goes on to say, however, he thinks we can not “lay blame for the results of this election at anybody’s feet” but even so Obama should have treated the intrusion as “a five alarm fire.” [Many Clintonites are still trying, however, to blame their loss on the FBI and Putin rather than HRC’s inept campaign]. 3. Benjamin Rhodes, of Obama’s circle, defends how the so-called hacking was handled — all they could do was expose WikiLeaks and the Russians; they could not stop the publication “of the e-mails or the fake news.” The author fails to remind us that none of the e-mails or information released by WikiLeaks was shown to be inaccurate or untrue. There was no “fake news” coming from WikiLeaks and the link between the Russian government, WikiLeaks, and “fake news” has yet to be established. This New Yorker article apparently has no respect for journalistic standards. 4. At the G-20 Summit meeting in September Obama told Putin to “cut out” the hacking and interference in our elections, otherwise “serious consequences” would result. Putin ignored the threat and the accusations but did remind Obama that the US has a record of meddling in the internal affairs of Russia. 5. In October, we are informed, “evidence of Russian meddling mounted” — but evidently the “evidence” did not mount to the level of proof as the Administration only stated that “it was confident” the DNC had been hacked by the Russians. Can you imagine FDR telling the American people he was “confident” the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? Anyway, downloading information and revealing it, whoever did it, is not “hacking” in the strong sense of breaking into a system to tamper with it and alter it. This word is just tossed about to create a negative opinion (fake news if you like) rather than factually inform anyone. 6. An unnamed “national security official” reports there was no evidence the Russians “crossed the line” from “covert influence” to “adversely affecting the vote count.” This was before the election and Clinton was leading. She actually “won” the election — it was the Electoral College that put Trump in office. [It seems difficult to know what did or did not affect the vote count before the vote count, but it seems it was not the Russians!] 7. Obama nixed Kerry’s idea to start an independent investigation of Russian election tampering, according to “two senior officials.” “This would have gotten the ball rolling,” as one aide said, as Trump would hesitate to shut it down. It would be harder to set up under Trump. 8. We are here told that all sorts of talk was going on during the transition period from Obama to Trump and that there were all sorts of contacts and potential compromising behaviors between Trump’s people and the Russians. To what did this amount? “No conclusive evidence” regarding Trump. Nothing that showed any aiding or abetting the [alleged] “interference” with the election. A senior Obama Administration official (unnamed) said he was unaware of any “clear information of collusion.” Nevertheless, this story is kept alive to this day by the mass media and the Democrats. 9. Here we are told “evidence” of a “wide-scale” Russian “operation” has resulted in multiple investigations. The “evidence” is classified. Three weeks after the election Sen. Wyden (D. Oregon) of the Intelligence Committee asked FBI Director Comey if he would release the classified information with the proof of Russian tampering to the American people. Comey said “I can’t talk about it.” The authors conclude, “Wyden’s questioning had served its purpose.” Well, since Obama could have ordered this “evidence” made public, and didn’t, the purpose must have been just to keep this apparent conspiracy theory alive. It’s been going on for months now and the public knows virtually nothing about what really happened — just speculation and assumptions, and this article doesn’t add anything to this speculation except poor journalism. Although, as pointed out in part one, the FBI knew this was all a fraud. 10. About the classified material, Sen. Wyden remarked that he was worried about using the “classified” designation more for political reasons than for national security. Sen. Warner (D. Virginia) reviewed the classified material and appears to be convinced by it. Unfortunately, the rest of us still have to take it on faith that the government really has proof. My objection to this article, and type of journalism, is that it ignores the real story — the keeping of the proof, or lack thereof, from the American people and instead implies that the government’s position is correct anyway. How does this differ from state controlled propaganda? 11. This is a long paragraph with a lot of speculation and comments about ex-UK intelligence official Christopher Steele’s charges about Trump and the Russians: the author admits it’s a “dossier of unverified allegations.” It has that in common with all the other information presented in the article with reference to Russian meddling. Again, if the Russians are anything like the US, then they probably meddle around when they get the chance, but to write a big long speculative proofless article about “what some officials believe” is just propaganda not journalism. 12. Trump calls the dossier “fake,” the Russians call it “pulp fiction,” McCain gave it to the FBI and some “of his colleagues” want it investigated. All well and good. But we don’t know if it’s pulp fiction or not, yet many of its more salacious allegations have already become part of pop culture re Trump and are a staple of late night TV comedians such as Colbert and others: the “Golden Shower”, etc. 13. A revealing paragraph that may expose the real motives behind this witch hunt. Many in the intelligence community are worried about Putin’s long term game plan, as they see it, to disrupt America’s world domination that “has shaped the postwar [WWII] world.” The alleged hacking is a way to create hostility towards Putin, Russia, and WikiLeaks (which has revealed many of the criminal dirty secrets of the US and its allies). 14. This paragraph summarizes the Obama White House consensus of what Putin is doing. He has started an “offensive” outside of what he considers “his sphere of influence.” By the way, the US sees the entire world as its sphere of influence either actually or potentially so conflict is inevitable. He wants to, according to this view, break up the EU and NATO (both of whom, by the way, expanded into the traditional Russian “sphere of influence”) and he wants to “unnerve” the US. Most importantly he wants to change the world system set up by the US and that we have “benefitted (sic) from for seven decades” (Samantha Powers). Well, we replaced the socialist USSR, which didn’t compete with us for markets, with the capitalist Russian Federation and now there is an equally greedy class of Russian capitalists out to win markets and influence away from our capitalists. What did the US expect? 15. The relations with Russia were not reset properly — with the US dominant and calling the shots — and so many on both sides are talking about “the second Cold War.” [Putin and Russia (being both economically and militarily weaker) have tried to avoid a new Cold War but the US and NATO have ridden roughshod over Russian interests and evidently left Russians thinking they have no choice but to push back.] 16. NATO says Russia is being aggressive because it has called the NATO build up on its borders “provocative” and because it objected to the US installing new ground based missiles in Romania. [Russia also pushed back in Ukraine against the US/NATO backed coup against the pro-Russian president and has supported the Syrian government against US support of attempts to overthrow it. Every “aggressive” Russian action seems to have been in response to a US “poke.”] 17. This paragraph describes the world according to Robert Gates, former secretary of war, I mean ‘defense,’ under Bush 43 and Obama. Relations between Obama and Putin were “poisonous” (partially due to Obama’s needless belittling of Russian self esteem). Trump has to improve relations without giving in to Putin’s aggression (push backs) and “thuggery.” This has to be done without giving Putin a big victory. A tall order as any “victory” for Putin is considered unacceptable. By the way, a compromise where the US has to also give up something as well as the Russians, is considered a Putin victory! All this has led to Putin crossing the Rubicon in 2022. 18. Dmitry Trenin (Carnegie Moscow Center) reports that “the Kremlin” expected that if HRC won the election she would militarily intervene in Syria, perhaps setting up no fly zones. Trump won and the fear of a Russian-US military “collision” has diminished. [Trump was unpredictable. He bombed Syria, perhaps to quell speculation he was too friendly with Putin.] 19. Sergie Rogov (Institute for US and Canadian Studies, Moscow) says US relations with Russia are the worst they have been in a generation: it’s 1983 all over again. This is the end of part two. From reading part two of The New Yorker Article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the "hacking" of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. Maybe we will learn something in part three. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism. 8/10/2022 The New Yorker and The “New” Cold War Propaganda (Part 1). By: Thomas Riggins [1/5]Read NowThis is the first part (of 5 ) of a paragraph by paragraph commentary on an article posing as journalism in the March 6, 2017 issue of The New Yorker. I hope to demonstrate that this article is basically a totally mendacious concoction of cold war US propaganda constructed out of unsubstantiated opinions expressed by US government officials and various journalists and others who are hostile to the current Russian government. There are a few paragraphs exempt from this characterization and they are duly noted. I have put a link to the article itself so that my commentary can be compared, paragraph by paragraph, to the original. However, the commentary can be read on its own. I contend it expresses the real meaning of the original paragraph and my evaluation of that meaning. The original is there for anyone to check to see if I have distorted rather than clarified what the paragraph’s actual meaning is. It is my position that this article is junk journalism which misrepresents the objective reality it purports to describe and that my commentary points out the misrepresentations and attempts to correct them. I hold that no self respecting journalist would write an article such as this New Yorker piece and palm it off on the public. My commentary is also an object lesson on how to distinguish between reportage that at least attempts to be unbiased and obvious nonobjective propaganda. You will know more about Trump, Putin and the New Cold War from the commentary than you will ever know from the original article. We begin with section 1. “Soft Targets” composed of thirteen paragraphs. 1.This paragraph alleges that Yuri Andropov, the KGB leader in 1982, tried to negatively influence the election of Reagan (would that he had succeeded) by having his operatives infiltrate the DNC and RNC. The only “evidence” provided is some notes provided by a KGB defector to Great Britain. The notes were his own, hand written and typed, not original nor photo copies and there is controversy over their authenticity. [It maybe true but unproven.] 2. This paragraph mentions that both the Soviets and the US were engaged in activities against each other including subversive work in other countries: typical cold war activities. After the end of the Soviet Union the CIA requested that Russia quit spreading fake news about the US and the Russians agreed. No mention of a quid pro quo was made. In 2000 another Russian defector told the US the Russians didn’t keep their word — that nothing changed. [Probably goes for both sides but unproven] 3. Here we are told Putin often points out the interference of the US in other countries and accuses it of “hypocrisy.” Putin also believes the US has been behind the overthrow of the governments in some former soviet republics. The US has also funded Russian dissident groups and supported anti government demonstrations in Russia. The article doesn’t provide any proof either way. The article lists “nongovernmental” agencies that Putin says are used on behalf of fomenting “regime change.” The nongovernmental “agencies” mentioned are: The National Endowment for Democracy (funded by the US government), Human Rights Watch (independently funded but with many former US officials working for it), Amnesty International (independently funded but with some former US government officials working for it) and Golos (Russian independent election monitoring organization with some US government funding). [Falsely suggests nongovernmental “agency” is not government sponsored]. 4. This paragraph tells us that some US government officials reject Putin’s criticism and don’t agree with his implication of moral equivalence. It’s true that the US has been so much more interventionist and ruthless in its foreign policy than anything the Russians have done since the collapse of the Soviet Union that it’s an insult to Russia to compare it morally to the US. [Falsely suggests the US is more moral than Russia.] 5. This next paragraph is just empty propaganda having nothing to do with the 2016 election. It uses loaded terms and tells us what Putin’s inner mental states were: he “loathed” Obama, Obama has an “Administration”, Putin has “cronies”, there was an “invasion” of eastern Ukraine rather than an “uprising” in eastern Ukraine (these are all loaded terms to subliminally nudge the reader towards the US point of view — it’s an excellent propaganda technique used throughout the article). The rest of the paragraph tells us Trump said nice things about Putin in 2007 and 2013, and in 2016 he said Putin was a more effective leader (for Russia) than Obama was (for the US) — probably true: he put his man in place and then came back to power and Obama left behind Trump. [Empty propaganda] 6. Neither the RNC nor the DNC had proper security measures on their computers but John Podesta, HRC’s campaign chairman, should have known better. [True] 7. Quotes from Podesta on how his team goofed and outsiders got into his email. [True] 8. This is a description of the current political divisions in the US and how they provide fertile ground for disinformation (they use the Russian word to seed the coming argument.) The “fractured media environment” seemed ripe for conspiracy theories; climate change = Chinese hoax, Obama’s fake birth certificate; they left out the one about Putin hacking the DNC and our elections. The first two are pretty lame but the author’s seem to favor the last one. 9. Some quotes from Oleg Kalugin a retired KGB general living in the US who wrote two books about Soviet spying and with William Colby, former director of the CIA, created a computer game Spycraft. He said Russia tries to take advantage of American weaknesses. No doubt and vice versa. 10. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, released a report in early January claiming Putin ordered an operation to support Trump, undermine HRC, and cast doubt on the US democratic process. The authors admit the report is “more assertion than evidence.” 11. This paragraph informs us that re the Iraq War the US intelligence agencies put forth assertions that were untrue but they argued over the extent of the untruth. This time they all agreed with the same assertion. This is supposed to make it more credible but it’s still, so far, just an assertion. 12. Clapper makes his assertions to Congress about Putin and adds that WikiLeaks was in on it spreading “fake news” [i.e., willfully spreading known falsehoods in order to deceive] and pro Trump “messages.” [ No proof of any of this was given, nor any information on WikiLeaks shown to be false. The authors fail to draw the obvious conclusion that publishing the truth about the DNC and HRC does not amount to being pro Trump!] 13. A long paragraph reveals that Trump first rejected Clappers’ unfounded assertions but later “grudgingly accepted ” them adding that the Russians had no effect on the election’s outcome. Then quotes are offered by an anti-Putin Russian journalist (Yevgenia Albats) about what Putin “probably” does or doesn’t believe, what he’s interested in and what he “wanted.” Such telepathic transmissions are, however, even less evidentiary than Clapper’s assertions. This is the end of part one. From reading part one of The New Yorker Article you will not have learned anything at all about whether or not the Russian government or Putin had anything to do with the “hacking” of the DNC or if they interfered with our elections. Maybe we will learn something in part two. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism. |
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