Glenn Greenwald finds a tree missing, declares no forest exists!

Glenn Greenwald made it quite clear in The Intercept, Sunday, 8 July 2018, that he is very upset that Malcolm Nance told MSNBC viewers: “Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today.” If Nance had told viewers it seemed like Jill Stein had a show on Russia Today during the 2016 campaign season, Greenwald would have had nothing to complain about. Greenwald's complaint was:

On August 20, 2016, weekend host Joy Reid asked Nance about the supposed “affinity” for Russia harbored by Jill Stein supporters. In response, Nance told MSNBC viewers: “Jill Stein has a show on Russia Today.” You can still watch the video of this claim here on MSNBC’s own website or see it here.

Greenwald went on to say:

Whatever your views might be about Stein and her third-party candidacy, there is no disputing the fact that Nance’s statement was a falsehood, a fabrication, a lie. Stein did not have a show on RT, nor did she ever host a show on RT. What Nance said was made up out of whole cloth — fabricated —

He appears to have caught Nance in a technical detail that depends on how "show" and "host" is defined, all while Greenwald ignores the organizational differences between Russia Today and RT. If Nance had instead put it the way the Moscow Project described the relationship, Greenwald's complaint would have been muted. It said [my bold]:

Stein regularly appeared on Russia's state-run television network RT, including as counterprogramming to mainstream network coverage of important events such as the general-election debates and election night itself.

Greenward is silent about the very real support and exposure this US presidential campaign did receive from RT, even though the candidate herself has said:

"We look to RT for access to the American public."

While Jill Stein, as a US presidential candidate, technically may not have had her own show on RT, she was a frequent guest on so many RT shows, and Jill Stein campaign events covered so regularly, that a casual observer might think that it was as if she had her own show.

For example, by early August 2016, about the same time as Greenwald's original complaint, US Green Party supporter Louis Proyect claimed RT.com "has published 105 articles in praise of Jill Stein." In June 2017, I wrote:

A search on YouTube for "rt america jill stein" turns up "About 5,570 results," 2,750 in the past year, and RT/America averages more than 5,700,000 views a month on YouTube alone! RT/America is just 1 of the 88 members of RussiaToday [note the parent YouTube organization has not changed its name], which in total get an average of more than 133 million monthly views on YouTube. RT is another member of this family with mostly English content, and favorable to Jill Stein, that has an average monthly viewership of more than 28 million, Ruptly TV is a third Jill Stein fan brand with more than 14 million monthly viewers.

These are all professionally produced videos, and they aren't cheap to produce, so even though YouTube pays Russia Today as much as $274,000 a year for those views on RT/America alone, sustaining the channel has to be costing the Kremlin millions, but since RT has an annual budget of over $300 million, it is still small potatoes to them.

There have been over 190,000 views in the top 10 of those 2,750 RT/America videos supporting Jill Stein's candidacy. The view totals for all those videos is likely to range into the tens of millions. Taking just this one example of RT videos for Jill Stein and extrapolating that across all RT platforms, which in the US include cable, satellite, and broadcast TV, radio and all social media, not just YouTube, but facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well, it's easy to conclude that since the Jill Stein campaign only raised $3,713,170, Putin probably spent more on the Jill Stein campaign than the campaign spent on itself. If this is true, it means that votes for a US presidential candidate supported largely by Russian resources put Donald Trump in the White House.

So while Jill Stein may not have had a regularly scheduled "show" on RT, clearly the network was spending a lot of money and "airtime" on regularly giving her a platform. Casey Michel, Daily Beast, had this to say about the cozy relationship between RT and Jill Stein:

In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. {The Steele Dossier says the Kremlin did.~Clay}  Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.” Afterward, straddling Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agree[d]” with her “on many issues.”

And Michel added,

For her efforts in burnishing Kremlin conspiracy theories for American audiences, Stein was awarded not simply with an invitation to the 2015 RT gala, but RT even hosted her party’s 2016 presidential debate {so they hosted her show even if she never hosted a show for them.~Clay}—a move Stein hailed as a “step towards real democracy.” RT also covered “live updates” from Stein’s reactions to the debates between Clinton and Trump, a decision Stein further praised. This mutual affection is, naturally, of a piece with RT’s broader modus operandi in the U.S.

This broader modus operandi involved getting Donald Trump elected president of the United States. Those on the US white-Left who belittled Trump's racism to declare him the lesser of two evils, and this includes Glenn Greenwald, were the witting, or unwitting, tools of this successful Putin operation. Their promotion of Jill Stein to progressives, and others likely to otherwise vote for Hillary Clinton, was an indispensable part of Putin's overall strategy to get Trump elected. To accomplish that, Russia Today gave Jill Stein much more that a weekly "show" of support; it gave her more-or-less continuous coverage across all media platforms.

In return, she pushed the Putin line in her US presidential campaign. She had no chance of winning, but she could certainly do that for him. As Casey Michel pointed out in a piece for the Intersection Project:

Not only has Stein, on multiple instances, pushed links to - and her own appearances on - RT, but she has further taken the platform to espousing some of the most blinkered views on Washington-Moscow relations. To wit, in April, Stein asked: “Who exactly is NATO fighting? ...Other than enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff.” A few weeks prior, she derisively referred to Ukraine’s EuroMaidan revolution as “regime change.” Then, for good measure, she took to Twitter in July to note that “if Bill Clinton hadn't had Larry Summers destroy Russia's economy & turn democracy to oligarchy, US-Russia relations would be better.”

But it’s not simply Stein’s Twitter feed that’s allowed her to hew closely to the Kremlin’s talking points. In myriad interviews, Stein has pushed views that could have been lifted from Russian state media - and often are. For instance, in an interview with OnTheIssues, Stein claimed that the US “foment[ed] a coup” in Ukraine, allowing “ultra-nationalists and ex-Nazis [to come] to power.” Stein further insisted that the US “should encourage Ukraine to be neutral,” and that “NATO has pursued a policy of basically encircling Russia,” as if Russia remains the lone post-Soviet state with any agency. She has additionally described Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s “saber-rattling against Russia” as an “existential threat to human survival,” and that Clinton will - not may, but will - “take [the US] into an air war with Russia[.]”

Now instead we have Donald Trump demanding that NATO countries more than double their military spending. He has already started a trade war and is aching to start a nuclear war somewhere. So much for the white-Left's "Peace Candidate."

The website RT.com also played a big role in promoting the Jill Stein campaign. The eight images below represent just a tiny sample of the "About 416 results" Google finds for a search for "Jill Stein" on RT.com:

8/11/2016	8/11/2016
2/11/2016	26/10/2016
20/10/2016	4/10/2016
27/9/2016	3/9/2016

Glenn Greenwald is so full of righteous indignation because he accepts RT's contractual definition of what it means to have a "show" on RT, and he thinks that because of that he can call out Malcolm Nance and Joy Reid as lairs and MSNBC as "fake news." At the same time, anyone reading one of his diatribes on this gripe in The Intercept would have no clue just how regularly Jill Stein appeared on, or was promoted by, RT. It is entirely possible, indeed preferable, to defend a technical fact while perpetrating a gross falsification. That is what Glenn Greenwald is doing in this case.

👇🏽 READ: Glen Greenwald shows his true colors as an agent of Trump & Moscow. now we know why he helped Snowden defect, covers for Wikileaks attack on Democracy & shills for Fox News. He’s deep in the Kremlin pocket. https://t.co/GXW07PmXFo

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) July 7, 2018

my other posts correcting Glenn Greenwald:
07/17/17 Attorney Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald joins Trump defense team
01/06/17 Glenn Greenwald runs off at the mouth about Breitbart without ever mentioning racism
02/16/15 Libya: Hailed as a Model Journalist Glenn Greenwald Proves to be the Exact Opposite
10/03/14 Why did Glenn Greenwald moderated this comment off The Intercept?

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for our posts on the 2016 US Election Click here for a list of our other blogs on Syria Click here for a list of our other blogs on Libya

I apologize as Ukraine takes "Left" over the edge

first the Apology
The dominate trend in the US "Left" seems to see US manipulation behind every popular mass uprising that is directed against a government favored by Moscow. If you are familiar with my blog, you know that I have strongly criticized this "thief of agency" when it has been used to rob the Libyan and Syrian peoples of the primary role in making revolutionary "regime change" against their beloved dictators. Now, seeing so much of this "Left" coming to the same conclusions with regards to the popular revolution in Ukraine, I realize that I credited more of their attitude to white chauvinism than I should have. For this I apologize. I can see now that they are equal opportunity deniers when it comes to either the power or the concerns of the working class in these movements.

and now Ukraine

Russia bandits wearing masks

Everyone knows that the thousands of well armed and well supplied troops in the same Russian army uniforms minus insignia, but delivered by army trucks with Russian markings, are not some cobbled together Crimea self-defense force as Putin claims they are, but are, in fact, Russian troops. By posting them outside their bases without consultation, they are in violation of their basing agreement with Ukraine. By crossing the border into Crimea, setting up check points, barricading Ukrainian bases, violating Ukrainian air space, and firing "warning shots" on Ukrainian soil, Russia has already committed numerous acts of war against Ukraine.

Russia's stated reason for this invasion, to protect Russian bases and Russian nationals, is clearly bogus because neither have been harmed or threatened. These acts of war have taken place without even the threat of an attack by Ukraine on Russia and without even asking the UN for a mandate, so they are clearly illegal under international law.

Russian forces in Crimea have taken over all independent TV stations and other media in Crimea and replaced them with their own signals. They plan to annex this part of Ukraine via a hastily called and rigged referendum and they have made it clear that they reserve the right invade anywhere else in Ukraine if they hear the calling.

This Russian military invasion and annexation also violates the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and that could have very damaging and lasting effects on the prospects for world peace in the future. That is because the Budapest Memorandum is the agreement by the US, UK, France and Russia to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity in return for them giving up nuclear weapons. If this violation is allowed to stand, many more nations will see a need to keep or get their own nukes.

So, how does the non-interventionist "Left" respond to these gross violations of world peace?

The United National Antiwar* Coalition (UNAC) says in a statement, 6 March 2014:

It is clear that Russia will not passively sit by while the Western-backed coup, led by violent fascist forces and local billionaires, overthrows a democratically elected government and installs a puppet regime on its border.

Strange words from a voice that use to oppose foreign military intervention. Not only does UNAC not demand the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, they try to justify the invasion by repeating Russian propaganda about what has been happening in Ukraine. This is a narrative that leaves the millions of Ukrainians, that took to the streets to demand change, out of it, or sees them as dupes of "Western-backed" "violent fascist forces and local billionaires." This narrative robs them of their proper role in making this history. This narrative robs them of their agency.

The recent revelations about Qaddafi's funding of Sarkozy's presidential campaign in France shows how widespread foreign attempts to affect various countries' internal politics are, but nobody claimed the French government was a Qaddafi puppet regime. There probably isn't a country on the globe that the US doesn't attempt to exercise it's influence on, but that doesn't put them in the driver's seat as these western chauvinists would have you believe.

Then they repeat Putin's justification for the invasion:

To protect its military base there and to protect the people in the Eastern and Southern parts of the country, where the coup is not supported, Russia has moved some troops to the Ukrainian border and into the Crimean peninsula.

Nevermind how easily these words could be adapted to justify the initially peaceful landing of US Marines in Vietnam to protect Da Nang Air Force Base, do they mean to imply that what they are calling a 'coup' 'led by violent fascist forces and local billionaires' was supported in the rest of the country? And BTW "into the Crimean peninsula" is already past "the Ukrainian border" unless you have already "gifted" Crimea to Russia.

You can describe a murder without ever calling it murder. You can describe a rape without ever naming it. This how a "peace" group describes the military invasion of a sovereign state without calling it an act of war. The only aggression they see is US aggression:

As long as the United States is committed to aggression, the whole world is endangered, just as Ukraine and Venezuela are. Libya fell, Syria is under attack, there is a "pivot to Asia", and Africom controls the military in almost every African nation.

Africom doesn't control the military in Libya, as UNAC predicted it would at the beginning of their revolution, which raises the question of exactly who Libya "fell" to. The answer is that it was lost by the Russian-backed Qaddafi dictatorship and it fell to the Libyan people, the people who made the revolution. It certainly didn't fall to the US; there can be no doubt about that after the Benghazi attack. Libya may be a mess now, but it is their mess. And who is Syria, by which UNAC means, the Assad regime, under attack by? It is being sustained big time by Russia and Iran, but those attacking it are overwhelmingly Syrian even if they are invisible to UNAC.

On Democracy Now*, Amy Goodman gives us Ray McGovern of Veterans for Peace, 3 March 2014, who sees a NATO plot against the Soviet Union that he thinks will fail:

The Soviet Union has all the cards. And so, somebody [inaudible] should say to the president, "Look, Mr. President, you know, however much we would like to have regime change according to our own wishes, there are strategic realities that we have to remind you of, Mr. President. And one of them is that Putin and no Soviet leader is going to abide NATO infringing on the Ukraine."

Clearly he is living in an alternate universe, one in which the USSR hasn't broken up yet, and he supports the Russian [in his universe, Soviet] invasion. He also denies any agency on the part of the Ukrainian masses:

If you look at Bahrain, you know, if you look at Syria—even Egypt, to an extent—these were initially popular uprisings. The question is: Who took them over? Who spurred them? Who provoked them even more for their own particular strategic interests? And it’s very clear what’s happened to the Ukraine. It used to be the CIA doing these things. I know that for a fact. OK, now it’s the National Endowment for Democracy, a hundred million bucks, 62 projects in the Ukraine

He thinks that is how millions were 'tricked' into protesting their corrupt government, and he replaces "America first" with "Russia first":

And people should realize that it is murky, but Russian interests are paramount here

On 7 March 2014, Amy gave us Jonathan Steele, formerly of the Guardian. I could call him a Putin apologist, instead I'll let his words speak for me:

I see no sense that this crisis has been created by Putin. He’s reacting to events, and one has to look at those events and not assume he’s on some forward march.

Bruce Gagnon, who I respect for his work with Space for Peace, also thinks:

The Russians are not going to idly sit by and watch US-NATO set up a right-wing fascist state right on their border.

He even goes so far as to repeat Russian chauvinist Pepe Escobar's racist attack on Crimea Tatars, in his piece on the San Diego Veterans for Peace website, 5 March 2014:

"[Russian intelligence] had already identified the wider mechanics of the CIA-style coup – including Turkish intelligence financing Tatars in Crimea… And what will the Tatars in Crimea do? Stage a jihad? Wait: the ‘West’ will surely try to FINANCE THIS JIHAD.”

The Crimea Tatars were once a majority on the peninsula. They were ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1944 when Stalin killed a hundred thousand Tatars in their forced deportation to Siberia. Only since Ukraine became independent have they been free to return. They are understandably very concerned about Russia's annexation of Crimea and will not find jokes about jihad helpful.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation* also thinks what Putin is doing is right, 4 March 2014:

It is completely understandable that Russia would project a show of force in Crimea

And they want you to believe his lies:

Russia denies that the forces deployed in the Crimea are Russian special forces, suggesting that they are Russian-trained local defense forces.

The PSL also thinks the people in the streets have been duped by imperialist powers into carrying out their plan:

The U.S. government has engineered, financed and fully supported a classic coup d'état that overthrew a corrupt but democratically elected government in Ukraine. Joining in the destabilization of the Ukrainian government were Germany, France, Britain and other NATO powers.

Everybody, it would seem, but the Ukrainian people.

It just tickles me to hear so-called Marxists complain that it is wrong to overthrow "a corrupt but democratically elected government." This is exactly how the bourgeoisie thinks. They expect that all governments are corrupt and they expect that once they have talked, bribed or bullied their way into office through whatever passes for an "election" in their country, they are free to go back on all their promises, and do whatever they want, even establish a dictatorship, without the people "interfering" until and if there are new "elections." They call themselves "Marxists" but they show by talk like this that they don't really believe in revolution, which often necessitates the overthrowing of corrupt governments whether they have been "democratically elected" or not. Yes, he was democratically elected but he was sacked by popular demand.

This is just a small sampling of the blatantly pro-Russian, pro-war trash that is coming out of certain sections of the US "Left" that use to identify itself as "anti-imperilialist" and "non-interventionist", but not any more, their misguided support for the former Soviet Union has taken them over the edge. As I said before, when it comes to their opposition to war, * Some Exceptions Apply.

This is the third part of a trilogy on Ukraine. The other parts are:
The truth about the leaked Maidan sniper story
What is Russian Crimea's stand on the Right of Return?

Also an example for "Leftists" like these: Meltdown at RT over Ukraine/Russia coverage?

What is Russian Crimea's stand on the Right of Return?

“Ukrainians are also vulnerable, but at least they have Ukraine to go to. Where will we go? Crimea is our only home.”
                    - Eskandar Baiibov, a deputy in the Crimean Tatar Mejlis

Since Putin has seized Crimea from Ukraine with naked military aggression, now plans to use the device of a referendum on self-determination to complete its annexation to Russia, and it appears nobody is going to stop him, it is fair to ask: What does all this mean for Crimean Tatars and how does this Russian "right of self-determination" square with their rights?

The Palestinians weren't the only people forced off of their land in the last century. Crimea was once very different, for hundred of years the majority of the population was Crimea Tatar, in fact the word "Crimea" is the Crimean Tatar name for the capital of the peninsular during the time of the Golden Horde [1240-1502].

When Crimea was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, Joseph Stalin accused all Crimea Tatars of collaborating with the Nazis and ordered them removed. 200,000 Tatars were given 30 minutes to collect their belongings before they were put in cattle cars for the long trip to Siberia. Half of them never got there; they died along the way. They were not free to return to Crimea until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

After this indigenous Muslim population was subjected to mass deportation, Russians from other parts of the USSR were brought to Crimea to be settled in the newly emptied Tatar homes. That's how Crimea got its clear Russian majority. Stalin's policy of moving the Tatars out and Russians into Crimea wasn't an invention of communism; it had been Russian policy ever since it conquered Crimea in 1783.

Before Gorbachev's "perestroika", Crimean Tatars were banned from even crossing the border into Crimea. As soon as they could, many Tatar started repatriating back to Crimea. The Ukraine census of 2001 had them at 12% of the population, now they are estimated to be about 14% of the population of Crimea and the trend of Crimea Tatars returning to the only homeland they have ever had is continuing.

Needless to say, there are those among the now dominate Russian population that are not entirely happy with these changing demographics, especially when they come with disputes over property rights. Now, taking advantage of the turmoil created by the Ukrainian revolution, Russia has sent in its army to the cheers of this Russian population. Like the bandits they are, they don't identify themselves, but they are carrying out an armed occupation of the peninsular. And under these conditions they propose to hold a vote as to whether Crimea will stay in the Ukraine or become part of Russia. Its interesting to note that a third choice, complete independence, isn't even on the ballot.

Rim Gilfanov of Radio Free Europe's Tatar-Bashkir Service writes in Al Jazeera:

Moscow has long been working with local Russian organisations to ensure they remain pro-Moscow. It came as no big surprise that local authorities started to play the secession game immediately after the central government in Kiev was destabilised. There is a strong sense that the aspiration came from Moscow itself.

Needless to say, most Crimean Tatars are not happy with these recent developments. The head of the Ankara-based Crimean Turks Culture and Solidarity Association, Tuncer Kalkay told Today's Zaman, that annexation by Russia would be “the end of Crimean Tatars.” He continued:

“If the violence in Ukraine were to spread to Crimea, 300,000 Crimean Tatars would come face to face with approximately 2 million Russians living there. Soldiers in Russia's Black Sea Fleet in the port of Sevastopol are ready to invade Crimea. The parliament of the Autonomous Region of Crimea is under the control of Russia, is predominantly of Russian ethnicity and is against the Crimean Tatar National Assembly and Crimean Tatars,”

In May of 1944, when Joseph Stalin began his ethnic cleansing of the Crimea Tatars, he ordered the police to first tag each Tatar house with an "X", lately those marks have started showing up on Tatar houses in Crimea again.

There are many reasons why Russia's military occupation of Ukrainian territory is a violation of international law, and this planned referendum on the status of Crimea is both illegal and wrong.

Beyond that fact that even the reported choices are bogus. Katya Gorchinskaya, who has gotten a look at the ballots to be used in the Crimean referendum writes:

Voters in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea who vote in the March 16 referendum have two choices – join Russia immediately or declare independence and then join Russia.

So the choices are “yes, now” or “yes, later.”

Voting “no” is not an option.

It violates the Ukraine constitution to leave the rest of the nation out of the process. There is the fact that this "referendum" is to take place under conditions of military occupation. With Russia in control of all TV and media. With Ukrainian authorities and international observer denied entry.

Add this to all these other reasons: I believe all people who love justice must oppose this bogus referendum or any attempt by Russia to annex Crimea based on its current Russian majority because it will boost the interests of Russian chauvinism and harm those that have suffered far too long because of it.

END THE OCCUPATION - NO REFERENDUM - RETURN CRIMEA TO UKRAINE NOW!

This is also overlooked and very important:
The Russian occupation also violates the 1994 Budapest Memorandum agreement by US, UK, France & Russia to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine in return for giving up the bomb. This may yet yield the darkest result of the world allowing Crimea to be taken from Ukraine by Russia without a fight. If all the countries of the world draw the appropriate conclusions about the value of international guarantees of territorial integrity, and decide, they too need a bomb to defend themselves, then there will be hell to pay for our tolerance now.

UPDATE 10 March 2014: a case in point -

Ukraine may have to go nuclear, says Kiev lawmaker http://t.co/cNEgxF5yHG via @usatoday
— Clay Claiborne (@clayclai) March 11, 2014

UPDATE 11 March 2014: Reuters is reporting:

Russia 'will fix' Crimea referendum, says Tatar leader
10 Mar 2014
By Yvonne Bell
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine (Reuters) - The Crimean Tatar leader promoting a boycott of Sunday's referendum on transferring the Ukrainian region to Russian rule is sure the Kremlin will rig the vote and appealed to the outside world to protect his once persecuted community.

"The result has already been decided by Moscow," Refat Chubarov told Reuters in an interview on Monday in the Crimean capital Simferopol, where he heads the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, a Ukrainian public body that represents some 12 percent of the Black Sea peninsula's two million people.

"There are troops in the streets. There are 30,000 armed men, armored vehicles, planes landing with foreign troops, and the administrative buildings have all been seized," he said of last week's takeover of Crimea by Russian forces following the overthrow of the pro-Moscow Ukrainian president in Kiev.

"It's a fake referendum, an attempt to provide cover for this aggression," Chubarov said, arguing that voting would mean betraying a Ukrainian state whose interim government says local leaders had no right to call the referendum. "The whole of Crimea is being asked to become collective collaborators."
More...

For more reading on the Crimea Tatars I recommend:

7 Mar 2014	Crimea Tatars: 'Homeland' at stake	Rim Gilfanov
6 Mar 2014	Who Will Protect the Crimean Tatars?	Natalia Antelava
7 Mar 2014	Don’t let Russia abuse Crimean history	Victor Ostapchuk
23 Feb 2014	Crimean Tatars deeply concerned over developments in Ukraine	Sinem Cengiz
1 Mar 2014	Who are the Crimean Tatars, and why are they important?	Oxana Shevel

The truth about the leaked Maidan sniper story #Ukraine

Dr. Olga Bogomolets,
source of sniper story

Here is the short story behind headlines like this one from RT:

Kiev snipers hired by Maidan leaders
- leaked EU's Ashton phone tape
They are based 100% on hearsay from the woman pictured on the left, Olga Bogomolets. What gets left out of most reports on this "sensational" story is that in the leaked conversation, Estonia Foreign Minister Urmas Paet is telling European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton what Olga Bogomolets told him. He is not telling Ashton what he knows to be fact; he is telling her a rumor he was told by an activist doctor who treated some of the sniper victims. (Paet: "There is this lady called Olga..." [2:27 on tape]) All those who take this story as truth are taking the word of this one woman and all those who peddle this story without making that clear are engaged in a Putin propaganda effort.

This story started with a tape of a leaked conversation posted to YouTube by Michael Bergman and Expertise Centre of The Russian Federation on 5 March 2014. The claim accompanying the video is:

Mr. Paet reveals astonishing information which confirms the rumours that the snipers were employed by the leaders of Maidan.

Wrong! Logic Fault!! You don't confirm a rumor by repeating it.



Within hours of being posted to YouTube, this story was picked up by RT, who has been heavily promoting it ever since, and from there it quickly moved out to all the usual "anti-imperialist" sources. I picked it up in my email over my morning coffee: Kiev Snipers Were Hired by US Supported Opposition Leaders said the pro-Russian Global Research. And the proof? "Leaked EU’s Ashton Phone Tape." Democracy Now carried the same story, Leaked EU Call: Opposition Behind Sniper Shootings in Kiev, Thursday morning. The biggest problem with this taped conversation is that it doesn't prove what these media outlets are saying it proves. The caller is describing rumors that are circulating, not established facts.

On Democracy Now, Amy called the tape "intercepted conversations," a better name for this and the earlier Ukraine related Russian leaked conversation in which Nuland is heard to say "fuck the EU," would be selectively-leaked-conversations. Just like the NSA, the Russians have been busy recording everybody's business, and lately the Russians have been using the tactic of selectively "leaking" little morsels from its find that it thinks will benefit its propaganda efforts. They don't put out all the information they've captured, WikiLeaks style; they just promote little bits they can spin.

In this leaked conversation Estonia Foreign Minister Urmas Paet tells European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton that a doctor name Olga Bogomolets says that:

"All the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides."

"So that—and then she also showed me some photos. She said that, as medical doctor, she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets. And it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened, so that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition."

Whatever you want to make of this conversation, it is important to remember that it rests entirely on the opinion of a doctor who treated people shot by snipers in Kiev. This is the same doctor, by the way, that treated Viktor Yushchenko for food poisoning in 2004.

Estonian diplomat Utmas Paet isn't telling Catherine Ashton that he knows this, he is telling her what he has been told by an activist doctor about rumors going around.This is hardly definitive proof justifying the RT or Democracy Now headlines. That's not how RT reported the story. They leave the doctor out of it and tell us:

"Urmas Paet said that snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Maidan leaders."

This doctor claims to know that "they were the same snipers killing people from both sides" because they had "the same handwriting, the same type of bullets." I've known doctors who think they know everything, but I'm not sure this doctor can know that much just from treating the wounds. I am reminded of Carla Del Ponte's claim that it was the opposition that used sarin in Syria based on "the way the victims were treated" by doctors in Turkey.

Hours after RT first broke the story, they broke another one which seemed to back up the first story:

Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked call on Kiev snipers (15:02 GMT) 

but he only confirmed that it was an accurate recording of their conversation, not that what was said reflected the facts.

Today CNN is reporting:

Paet's office released a statement Wednesday that confirmed the authenticity of the recording. It said the call took place on February 26.

"Foreign Minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard the previous day in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition's involvement in the violence," the statement read.

"It is extremely regrettable that phone calls are being intercepted," said Paet in the same statement. "The fact that this phone call has been leaked is not a coincidence."

So now we will await a retraction from Global Research and Amy. Would it be too much to ask that they join Liz Wahl and jump the Putin boat entirely?

UPDATED 8 Mar 2014: The Toronto Star reports that Olga Bogomolets says that the reported conversation with Urmas Paet never happened:

The Olga in question was identified by Russian media as Olga Bogomolets, a Ukrainian doctor who worked throughout the clashes to treat wounded.

Told of the tape, however, Bogomolets denied having any such conversation. She said she has no such evidence as she was never in a position to compare wounds.

“During the entire confrontation in Kyiv, I did not have access to law enforcement officers who died, and therefore I could not give any information on the nature of the injuries,” she told Ukrainska Pravda.

“I’m a doctor, not a forensic medical examiner to give this kind of assessment.”

Which sounds like she agrees with me that a doctor couldn't know that victims were shot by the same sniper just by examining the wounds. And actually, I was wondering if the cops and activists would have been treated by the same doctors. Now that question is answered.

So now the ball is in Paet's court. He now needs to say where the story came from. Ashton may be the headliner, but she was just the patsy, all she did was listen while Paet told the tale that made the tape that then got leaked.

Meltdown at RT over Ukraine/Russia coverage?

There's something going on at the Kremlin financed network formerly known as Russia Today. Yesterday it was RT's Abby Martin who "broke the set" by breaking entirely from the pro-Russian propaganda being spread by RT on the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Abbey Martin, who hosts the show "Breaking the Set" went entirely off script and spoke truth to power yesterday

"Just because I work here, for RT, does not mean that I don't have editorial independence," she began. "And I can't stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation's affairs. What Russia did is wrong."

RT anchor Abby Martin speaks out against Russian invasion of Crimea | 4 March 2014

Today her colleague Liz Wahl went even further, resigning on the air this evening saying:

"Last night, RT made international headlines when one of our anchors went on the record and said Russian intervention in Crimea is wrong," Wahl said in reference to Abby Martin's attention-grabbing comments decrying Russia's recent actions in Ukraine. After describing the "many and ethical moral challengess" she said she faced as an anchor for the Kremlin-funded network, Wahl then got down to business: "That is why personally I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin," she said. “I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth, and that is why, after this newscast, I am resigning."

Liz Wahl Quits RT on air over coverage of Ukraine | 5 March 2014

As these two women have been speaking out against Russian imperialism, others in the American Left have been blindly supporting it, as exampled by Ray McGovern who even went so far as to confuse Russia with the old Soviet Union on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now on Monday:

"You know, it’s not so hazy. It’s a choice between the EC and Western Europe and the Western Ukraine and the Soviet Union. And in this case, the Soviet Union has all the cards. And so, somebody [inaudible] should say to the president, "Look, Mr. President, you know, however much we would like to have regime change according to our own wishes, there are strategic realities that we have to remind you of, Mr. President. And one of them is that Putin and no Soviet leader is going to abide NATO infringing on the Ukraine."

It is hoped that the courageous voice of these two women will cause other on the Left to rethink their support for Russian imperialism both in the Ukraine and in Syria. We must resist both NATO and Russian imperialism. We must resist imperialism no matter what its source.

Other recent blog posts;
Budapest Memorandum and CounterPunch corruption
Why I consider Libya a revolutionary success story
Bringing David Swanson's imagination back to reality

Budapest Memorandum and CounterPunch corruption

I'm afraid my reply has gotten somewhat long winded and is destine to become a blog post, it started out as further explanation as to why I think Counterpunch is a crappy Marxist source, but it became something else as I wrote it.

I guess to me, the most important thing about Marxist is the method. It is the scientific method as it applies to human affairs.

I became a scientist at an early age. My Dad built me a chemistry lab in the water heater closet. I got merit badges in electricity and herpetology. I gave up religion and God as a child.

When you believe in things that you don't understand. Then you suffer

The thing I like about electronics is that you can so easily and thoroughly test its description of the world. Take for example Ohm's Law: Current(A)= [Pressure(V)/Resistance(Ω). Everything in electronics depends on its absolute correctness, from the largest generator to the tiniest transistor. In point of fact, everything in the universe depends on it, and in turn, everything in the universe validates it. In designing an electronic circuit, you can depend on it absolutely and categorically. You give me any two out of the three and I can tell you the third with equal precision and without hesitation. That equation is working flawlessly a billion times on this very computer as I type this. That is the scientific proof that Ohm's Law accurately understands that small view of the cosmos that it addresses. In the world of electronics there are no competing theories on the relationship between A, V and Ω, no sectarian division with some backing a different formulation, or if there are, we don't hear from them because their computers don't work. :-) It is simply the scientific description of that relationship, which is to say it is the dialectical-materialist understanding of that relationship. It is a thoroughly grounded materialism that rejects all mysticism but understands contradiction, the unity of opposites, and the way matter and energy and inextricably tied together. Ohm's Law applies to matter (electrons) in motion.

I think it could even be said that science is a sub-branch of dialectical materialism. It is dialectical-materialism as applied to the natural world broken down into bite sized disciplines. And what science requires is an unflinching regard for the truth. Science can brook no prejudice, it requires that we see the world as it is and act on that knowledge alone. There will always be unsettled areas in science where our understanding is as yet not so complete as Ohm's Law, and this will naturally give rise to different descriptions of a phenomenon, and honest differences among scientists. This is at the heart of the method by which truth is arrived at, but all must be dedicated to tracking down that truth no matter where it leads. This is what science requires and what science requires, dialectical-materialism requires as well.

Marxism is dialectical-materialism

I regard Marxism as dialectical-materialism applied to the human social condition. Like all science ultimately must be, Marxism is an applied science because theory sans activism lacks substance. Its name honors the man who, in the 19th century, first rigorously applied science to the human social condition from a progressive activist perspective.

Of course, given all the complexities of humanity, it isn't as simple as modelling the flow of electrons through a conductor. Added to which, its theories ain't all that easy to test, which brings us to the significant of historical-materialism because we can test our understanding of how things worked in the past and gain some understand of the underlying principles that shape things. Still, it is limited because it is backward looking, whereas all our tasks are before us.

For this reason also, it is incumbent on us not only to assist, but to learn from every new mass revolutionary upsurge, and to do so without fear or favor, because they are reflections of this historical process going forward and they don't care about our theories. Our theories must conform to them and not the other way round. Also since failure means end times for humanity, again, Marxist is an applied science. We should not shrink from calling ourselves social engineers.

Still it absolutely requires the unflinching honesty, and the rejection of all prejudice and mysticism, required of all science. And it requires something else: It requires more than a love of science; It requires a love of humanity, because unlike most scientific specialities under capitalism, the risks are high and the pay is poor. But more than anything, I think it requires a longing for social justice and a gut feeling for right and wrong. You have got to know which side of the barricade to stand on.

With regards to the mass revolutionary upsurge that we loosely refer to as the Arab Spring, and most dramatically with regards to violent revolutions in Libya and Syria, it must be admitted that Marxists in the West, and Leftists generally, have fallen into two broad categories, those that don't know which side of the barricade to stand on and act as if it isn't happening, and those standing on the wrong side of the barricade, this is true. I'm grateful for you and Binh and Andrew, Cort, Brian and more than I can count, but not that many more, but we are a clear minority on the Left. This is a sorry state of affairs. Added to which, many of these people presume to judge the people actually making revolutions by how closely they follow their teachings.

The worst group are those that cloak themselves in Marxism and stand on the wrong side of the barricade. They are corrupt. They do double damage and I am becoming more and more convinced that they stand as a place holder that keeps a real mass-based revolutionary movement from developing. They certainly stand as a barrier to the masses in the US learning from the revolutionary experiences of the masses in Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Syria and now Ukraine. When the folks from Kafranbel came to LA, I publicized it in the usual places but nobody came from the LA Left. Imagine a Left that itself would have taken this up and promoted this event widely.

Not only do all the Counterpunch articles on the revolutions in Libya, Syria and the Ukraine stand on the wrong side of the barricade, they do it with corruption. They say things they must know aren't true or they leave out important facts, they very selectively quote, sometimes mis-quote. They plagiarize. They lie. They aren't engaged in an honest quest for the truth. They don't argue like scientists, they debate like lawyers. Many of their ilk will use moderation of comments on their website to filter out opposing views. Counterpunch solves that problem by allowing no comments.

Since these of is fundamentally a corruption of method, there is no honest search for the truth here, I believe that controls everything at Counterpunch. If that where not the case, we would at least read a range of views on these revolutions, there would be the occasional article representing the revolutionary view on these struggles.

These revolutions-in-progress are not only the leading edge of human social development, they are the most important classroom for Marxism. Added to this, these revolutionary mass struggles badly need the clarity that Marxism can give them and we can begin to plumb the depths of the damage caused by allowing a corrupt organizations like Counterpunch to represent Marxism. 

Example of MSM Corruption on Ukraine

When I speak of corruption, I'm not talking about a few bad actors or actions in an otherwise sound core, I'm talking about a rottenness that goes down to the bone. I believe that this Sunday's round of TV news talk shows gave us another good example of it. Of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine got top bill everywhere, but I couldn't believe I watched George Stephanopoulos interviews John Kerry extensively about the US response to Russia army invading Ukraine and nobody even mentions the Budapest Memorandum.

This 1994 treaty, signed by Bill Clinton promises the Ukraine that the US has its back in case of foreign invasion. Russia and Britain are also parties to this treaty, and it got Ukraine to give up its nukes, which made the world a safer place for everybody. If we can convince Israel to give up her nukes based on US guarantees to defend her under very specific conditions, if the Chinese can get North Korea to give up her nukes in return for certain security guarantees, I say have at it. It will mean less nukes in less hands and we all can sleep better.

Of course, the US ability to negotiate such deals in the future will depend heavily on what they do when that marker is called in and Ukraine is calling in its now. And nobody is talking about the Budapest Memorandum? Ok, I can't say nobody on the Sunday morning TV talks shows mentioned it. I saw the extensive interview with Kerry and the ABCNews This Week discussion, and nobody mentioned it. Then I switched in time to catch the CBS Face the Nation round table discussion and nobody mentioned it there either! But how can that be? It is a very big deal even if it is an embarrassment to a US imperialism that clearly has no interest in a military confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine.

I can't believe they don't know about it, backed as they are by teams of researchers. I think they all know about it and they all have conspired to talk as if it didn't exist. This implies a corruption that is thoroughgoing and indicts the SecState and everybody sitting in on those round-tables.

The Budapest Memorandum

The Budapest Memorandum is most certainly this Sunday's Elephant-in-the-Room and even in the MSM, when it is discussed, we are subjected to such weasel words as:

There will surely be much debate over whether the Budapest Memorandum is a legally binding agreement requiring action.

As if the Ukrainians thought they were signing up for a "We wish you well" when they gave up their nukes!

This "ignore the memo" strategy is not going to work, BTW, because Russia has its own "Save Ukraine" memorandum giving it a duty to save Ukraine from a “fascist and Nazi creeping coup” that goes back as far as Feb 12th and it has been calling for three party talks under the Budapest Memorandum for two weeks now, talks which will presumably now be about Russian troops invading Ukraine.

I see the same sort of corruption on the Left and in Counterpunch generally and it has come out most clearly in the debates around Libya and Syria. Do you notice how often we completely devastate a "fact" or "story" only to see it continue to be repeated on infinitum by this opportunist Left. Mint Press, Carla Del Ponte, phony massacres, etc., it doesn't matter how completely we debunk them, they revive them as soon as there is a fresh audience. And they generally don't answer our critiques in the first place, except with insults and diversions like "Oh Yeah, what about Bahrain?" They have no integrity. Counterpunch does this too. There is no use arguing with people like that except to expose them.

It just seems to me that on the really critical stuff they are 100% bad and even if you write good stuff for them in other areas it doesn’t matter because they will always be 100% bad on the critical stuff, That's the way opportunism works. Unfortunately, looking at it that way, you will quickly draw the conclusion that opportunism is the dominate trend on the Left, but if that is where a clear headed examination of the problem leads you, as a scientist, you must seriously consider it. But then, speaking from the heart, what other conclusion can be drawn when you have seen the pictures of dead children, destroyed cities and refugee families and still hear these so-called Leftist mouthing words about CIA schemes, Islamic terrorists and proxy wars?

My friends on SAC try on convince me not to waste my time trying to win people from the Left to their cause. They have had much greater success among just about every other segment of the US population. I understand why they feel this way. This is real. They have to be pragmatic and the Left is just about the only segment of the US population that sides with Assad and actively campaigns against the revolution. This, in turn is getting me to think that what is really going to have to happen is that another New Left is going to have to be built from people that aren't tied to this opportunism and at least know which side of the barricade to stand on even it they don't know the first thing about Marx or socialism. All that can be learned; I'm don't think what should be in the heart can.    

The Tet Offensive: a turning point in the Vietnam War

Today is 46th Anniversary of the start of Tet Offensive, one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. Beginning on 30 January 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched country wide attacks on United States and South Vietnamese forces that completely exposed the lie being told to the American people by President Lyndon Johnson and his military leadership that the Vietnam War was winding down and the US was winning. Instead we awoke to the news that the national liberation forces had people everywhere and were carrying out what they called the  "General Offensive and Uprising" (Cuộc Tổng tiến công và nổi dậy).

The offensive was the largest mobilization carried out by either side in the war to that point, it involved more than 80,000 Vietnamese troops fighting to reunited Vietnam and free it from foreign military domination for the first time since the French began their military conquest in 1859. The offensive took place in more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of the 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital Saigon where they lay siege to the headquarters of the ARVN General Staff at Tan Son Nhut Air Base; the Independence Palace, the Long Binh Naval Headquarters, the National Radio Station and, most dramatically, the huge US embassy in Saigon. The BBC would report, on the second day of the offensive, which would last to 28 March 1968:

The American command in Vietnam has reported over 5,000 people dead after two days intensive fighting.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has been forced to declare martial law as communist forces, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, have kept up sustained assaults on several fronts - from Saigon in the south to Hue in the north.

Authorities in the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi, described it as, "a more powerful and more continuous offensive" than ever before.

White House intelligence in Washington anticipated attacks over the Tet holiday to celebrate the lunar new year, but they were surprised by their intensity.
...
Vietcong forces have also attacked the Vietnam general staff headquarters, Navy headquarters, two police stations and the Philippine Ambassador's residence as well as blowing up the radio station in Saigon.

Communications are in chaos and commercial flights from the airport have been cancelled.

North Vietnamese - Vietminh - troops have reinforced their siege of Khe Sanh, near the demilitarised zone.

Some commentators expect the so-called Tet Offensive will shatter the American resolve and have a similar effect on the US to that on the French after the North Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 - which contributed to the Geneva Agreements later that year.

Note that even as late as '68, the BBC hadn't got the memo from US military PsyOps that the Viet Minh were being rebranded as the "Viet Cong."

General Vo Nguyen Giap who led the Viet Minh forces against the French and then the United States, and was the architect of their victories both at Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive, died in 2013 at the ripe old age of 102.

The reason the Tet Offensive caused such a dramatic shift in American public opinion is that it so completely exposed the lie we had been told about how the war was going. Kevin Murphy, UC Berkley, wrote about the Tet Offensive:

One reason Tet proved such a shock to Americans was that all reports before the offensive seemed to indicate that the US, unlike the French before them, was winning the war in Southeast Asia. “It is significant that the enemy has not won a major battle in more than a year,” General William Westmoreland had told the press in November of 1967. “His guerrilla force is declining at a steady rate...We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.” Vice- President Hubert Humphrey echoed the sentiments on Meet the Press that same month. “We are beginning to win this struggle,” Humphrey declared. “We are on the offensive. Territory is being gained. We are making steady progress.” And President Lyndon Johnson had said much the same about the war earlier that year: “We are very sure that we are on the right track.”

With the success of the Tet Offensive and the consequential exposure of the real weakness of the US position in Vietnam, the end did indeed come into view, serious Peace Talks began in Paris in May of that year. Although this first round of talks were sabotaged through the combined efforts of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and it would take another four years of killing and dying before US ground troops finally left Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, which began 46 years ago today, told everybody just how things were going to turn out.

To learn more about the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam War. See my documentary film Vietnam: American Holocaust. It is available both from VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com and Amazon.