Peace Piper
02-02-2015, 06:08 AM
http://s29.postimg.org/b1l2pycef/us_war_russia6.jpg
Robert Parry| Consortium News.com |January 30, 2015
If you wonder how the lethal “group think” on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what’s happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who “matters” and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.
Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.
This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of today’s leading neocons – such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan) (Husband of Victoria "F*" the EU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o)" Nuland and Co-Founder, PNAC)– were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing “designer glasses.” Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.
Instead of Americans coming to grips with the painful history of Central America, where the U.S. government has caused much of the violence and dysfunction, or in Iraq, where Western nations don’t have clean hands either, the story was made personal – about the demonized leader – and anyone who provided a fuller context was denounced as an “Ortega apologist” or a “Noriega apologist” or a “Saddam apologist.”
--snip--
A New Cold War
From the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq. Objectivity and other principles of journalism have been thrown out the window. The larger context of both Ukrainian politics and Russia’s role has been ignored.
Again, it’s all been about demonized “bad guys” – in this case, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s elected President Vladimir Putin – versus the “pro-Western good guys” who are deemed model democrats even as they collaborated with neo-Nazis to overthrow a constitutional order....snip
Botching Russia
Professor Cohen has been one of the few scholars who was right in criticizing Official Washington’s earlier “group think” about post-Soviet Russia, a reckless and mindless approach that laid the groundwork for today’s confrontation.
To understand why Russians are so alarmed by U.S. and NATO meddling in Ukraine, you have to go back to those days after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of working with the Russians to transition carefully from a communist system to a pluralistic, capitalist one, the U.S. prescription was “shock therapy.”
As American “free market” experts descended on Moscow during the pliant regime of Boris Yeltsin, well-connected Russian thieves and their U.S. compatriots plundered the country’s wealth, creating a handful of billionaire “oligarchs” and leaving millions upon millions of Russians in a state of near starvation, with a collapse in life expectancy rarely seen in a country not at war...>
SNIP MORE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new-war/
**************
Russia and the Neocon March to World War 3 with Paul Craig Roberts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-Bbw6XJVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-Bbw6XJVc
Published on Jan 30, 2015
The Neocon march to World War III with Russia is explored with retired Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. How George W. Bush and Dick Cheney managed to embolden the far right towards reckless endangerment of global peace, and how Russia has become the focus of the static is discussed. The possibility of global economic collapse, plus the Reagan administration figure talks about how the political landscape has changed for the worse in this uncensored political discussion on Buzzsaw, hosted by Sean Stone.
*****************
http://www.thedailybell.com/images/library/PaulCraigRoberts150.jpg
Delusional America — Paul Craig Roberts
January 31, 2015
...As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology.
The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is.
In America’s make-believe world, neoconservative toadies such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, set the Group-Think tone, while knowledgeable experts such as Stephen Cohen are tuned out.
In effect, America is both blind and deaf. It lives in delusions. Consequently, it will destroy itself and perhaps the world.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/31/delusional-america-paul-craig-roberts/
********************
US Trainers To Deploy To Ukraine
By Paul McLeary Defense News.com January 22, 2015
WASHINGTON — American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.
The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L'viv — which is about 40 miles from the Polish border — is still being determined, however.
The American training effort comes as part of a US State Department initiative "to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law" Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News...
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/land/army/2015/01/21/ukraine-us-army-russia/22119315/
**************
http://s8.postimg.org/6ndkgci5h/russia_wants_war_look_how.jpg
Robert Parry| Consortium News.com |January 30, 2015
If you wonder how the lethal “group think” on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what’s happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who “matters” and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.
Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.
This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of today’s leading neocons – such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan) (Husband of Victoria "F*" the EU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o)" Nuland and Co-Founder, PNAC)– were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing “designer glasses.” Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.
Instead of Americans coming to grips with the painful history of Central America, where the U.S. government has caused much of the violence and dysfunction, or in Iraq, where Western nations don’t have clean hands either, the story was made personal – about the demonized leader – and anyone who provided a fuller context was denounced as an “Ortega apologist” or a “Noriega apologist” or a “Saddam apologist.”
--snip--
A New Cold War
From the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq. Objectivity and other principles of journalism have been thrown out the window. The larger context of both Ukrainian politics and Russia’s role has been ignored.
Again, it’s all been about demonized “bad guys” – in this case, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s elected President Vladimir Putin – versus the “pro-Western good guys” who are deemed model democrats even as they collaborated with neo-Nazis to overthrow a constitutional order....snip
Botching Russia
Professor Cohen has been one of the few scholars who was right in criticizing Official Washington’s earlier “group think” about post-Soviet Russia, a reckless and mindless approach that laid the groundwork for today’s confrontation.
To understand why Russians are so alarmed by U.S. and NATO meddling in Ukraine, you have to go back to those days after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead of working with the Russians to transition carefully from a communist system to a pluralistic, capitalist one, the U.S. prescription was “shock therapy.”
As American “free market” experts descended on Moscow during the pliant regime of Boris Yeltsin, well-connected Russian thieves and their U.S. compatriots plundered the country’s wealth, creating a handful of billionaire “oligarchs” and leaving millions upon millions of Russians in a state of near starvation, with a collapse in life expectancy rarely seen in a country not at war...>
SNIP MORE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new-war/
**************
Russia and the Neocon March to World War 3 with Paul Craig Roberts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-Bbw6XJVc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-Bbw6XJVc
Published on Jan 30, 2015
The Neocon march to World War III with Russia is explored with retired Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. How George W. Bush and Dick Cheney managed to embolden the far right towards reckless endangerment of global peace, and how Russia has become the focus of the static is discussed. The possibility of global economic collapse, plus the Reagan administration figure talks about how the political landscape has changed for the worse in this uncensored political discussion on Buzzsaw, hosted by Sean Stone.
*****************
http://www.thedailybell.com/images/library/PaulCraigRoberts150.jpg
Delusional America — Paul Craig Roberts
January 31, 2015
...As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology.
The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is.
In America’s make-believe world, neoconservative toadies such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, set the Group-Think tone, while knowledgeable experts such as Stephen Cohen are tuned out.
In effect, America is both blind and deaf. It lives in delusions. Consequently, it will destroy itself and perhaps the world.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/31/delusional-america-paul-craig-roberts/
********************
US Trainers To Deploy To Ukraine
By Paul McLeary Defense News.com January 22, 2015
WASHINGTON — American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.
The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L'viv — which is about 40 miles from the Polish border — is still being determined, however.
The American training effort comes as part of a US State Department initiative "to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law" Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News...
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/land/army/2015/01/21/ukraine-us-army-russia/22119315/
**************
http://s8.postimg.org/6ndkgci5h/russia_wants_war_look_how.jpg