Category Archives: Russia

Don’t Believe State-Department & Media Brief On Ukraine

The division of Ukraine is impending if a political solution is not negotiated, with one part cleaving to Europe; the other to Russia. Also upon us is the second Cold War between the US and Russia, says Russian historian Stephen Cohen of The Nation.

Cohen is the only learned voice among the media monolith currently expatiating on the Kiev riots.

“Preposterous” is how Cohen has characterized Vice President Joe Biden’s demand that the democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych withdraw forces from Maidan Square. Equally outrageous is the Obama Administration’s demand that the democratically elected president step down before elections are held next year, a demand with which the Stupid Party agrees.

Listen to the Cohen interview on the John Batchelor Show.

UPDATE II: Russia And The Pussy Riot Press (Pussy Rioting Again)

America, Feminism, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Russia

“Very little of the US media’s reflexive demonization of Russia and the Sochi games should be trusted,” we cautioned, on Feb. 8. “The trashing began well before the games and came from the usual menagerie of media morons, who, from studios in the US, were able to attest to everything from the availability of toilet paper to the overlapping dangers of terrorism and toothpaste.”

Now the left wing of the “Legacy Media” has awoken to the fact of systematic bias against Russia in US media. The blanks are filled in most ably by Stephen F. Cohen, writing in the February 11, online edition of The Nation:

… a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War. …

… Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Russia today has serious problems and many repugnant Kremlin policies. But anyone relying on mainstream American media will not find there any of their origins or influences in Yeltsin’s Russia or in provocative US policies since the 1990s—only in the “autocrat” Putin who, however authoritarian, in reality lacks such power. Nor is he credited with stabilizing a disintegrating nuclear-armed country, assisting US security pursuits from Afghanistan and Syria to Iran or even with granting amnesty, in December, to more than 1,000 jailed prisoners, including mothers of young children. …

… Not long ago, committed readers could count on The New York Review of Books for factually trustworthy alternative perspectives on important historical and contemporary subjects. But when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the NYRB has succumbed to the general media mania. In a January 21 blog post, Amy Knight, a regular contributor and inveterate Putin-basher, warned the US government against cooperating with the Kremlin on Sochi security, even suggesting that Putin’s secret services “might have had an interest in allowing or even facilitating such attacks” as killed or wounded dozens of Russians in Volgograd in December.

Knight’s innuendo prefigured a purported report on Ukraine by Yale professor Timothy Snyder in the February 20 issue. Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both, which are widespread in the popular media, but these are in the esteemed NYRB and by an acclaimed academic. Consider a few of Snyder’s assertions: …

MORE.

UPDATE I: In “About Russia With Hate,” Eugene Girin exposes a cast of particularly slimy US media characters prating on about Putin.

UPDATE II (2/17): PUSSY RIOTING AGAIN.The Pussy Pukes are at it again, showing the foolish fluff women are made of.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, along with seven others, were held by police near Sochi’s ferry terminal, a popular area for fans celebrating the Olympics. Police said they were questioned in connection with a theft at the hotel where they were staying. No charges were filed. …

MORE.

READ “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”

Are America’s Democracy Alinskyites In Russia’s Backyard?

Economy, John McCain, Military, Neoconservatism, Russia

In absolute numbers, Russia’s military spending is dwarfed by that of the United States. This spending, moreover, is a smidgen of what it was during its “tortured past.” As a percentage of GDP, however, Wikipedia shows the latter parameter to be 4.4 percent in both countries. Thus in need of checking is Forbes’ Mark Adomanis’ assertion that Russia’s military spending as a percentage of GDP is more modest than ours.

Ironclad, however, is the fact that America’s Democracy Alinskyites—blessed and backed by baby Bush and his non-identical, evil ideological twin, Barack Obama—are behind many of the “color-coded,” plant-based revolutions across the world.

Witness Sam LaHood, son of Ray LaHood, in his attempts to shape the Lotus Revolution in Egypt.

And to get his jollies, John McCain has to be talking US intervention around the world. Ukraine has been his target of late—and, seemingly, a State-Department floozy is already talking dirty on that front.

So, the Russians probably have reason to fear the US. Hence the military expenditure.

Adomanis departs from the menagerie of media morons when it comes to prognosticating about Russia, reporting that, “Life expectancy is going up, wages are going up, the birth rate is going up, and the death rate, the suicide rate, the murder rate, and the poverty rate are all going down”:

1) “While Russia is hardly an economic hegemon, its overall economic performance over the past decade has actually been pretty decent, especially when you compare its performance to the horrible post-crisis performances of many formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe.”

2) “Russia’s population was declining rapidly during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but this decline has leveled off and the population has stabilized.”

Worse Than The 2012 T & A Lineup In Bump-N’-Grind Britannia? Never!

America, Art, Russia, Sport, The West

Very little of the US media’s reflexive demonization of Russia and the Sochi games should be trusted. The trashing began well before the games and came from the usual menagerie of media morons, who, from studios in the US, were able to attest to everything from the availability of toilet paper to the overlapping dangers of terrorism and toothpaste.

Not even in my current misery would I watch the opening ceremony. However, CNN mentions—horrors!—the playing of “classical music” at the opening ceremony. What the Russians played CNN did not say. Would that the Russians played Pathétique, or even better, Violin Concerto in D by The Big T. I might have watched.

I suppose Anglo-American aging hipsters think of Tchaikovsky as a poor substitute for Jay Z.

In any event, for an assault on the ear and the eye nothing can beat the horror show put on by Bump-N’-Grind Britannia in 2012.

Among that talentless lineup of T & A (as awful as anything you’d find in our country) was one Jessie J, aka The Crotch, who did a poor man’s version of Beyonce’s God-awful bump and grind. This British primal screamer destroyed “We Will Rock You” (admittedly one of Queen’s worst numbers) and drowned out Brian May with ease. Another sequence in the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics (The Idiocracy at home was charmed) saw a chorus-line of prancing nuns and “men” stomping about with garbage cans.

Then there were the fucking kids. They mimed and gesticulated to the hackneyed sounds of “Imagine.” Their affectatious performance was reminiscent of the performance “art” of the 1960s and 1970s. Passe.

More about that puke fest in Britain here.