Thursday 21 February 2019

How the Russiagate investigation is Sovietizing American politics (by Stephen Cohen)

Published time: 21 Feb, 2019 10:21

“Collusion,” “contacts,” selective prosecutions, coup plotting, and media taboos recall repressive Soviet practices.

Having studied Soviet political history for decades and having lived off and on in that repressive political system before Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms - in Russia under Leonid Brezhnev in the late 1970s and early 1980s -I may be unduly concerned about similar repressive trends I see unfolding in democratic America during three years of mounting Russiagate allegations. Or I may exaggerate them. Even if I am right about Soviet-like practices in the United States, they are as yet only adumbrations, and certainly nothing as repressive as they once were in Russia.

New Cold War is more dangerous than the one the world survived – Stephen Cohen

And yet, ominous trends are not to be discounted and still less ignored. I have commented on them previously, on the official use of “informants” to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, for example, and such practices have now multiplied. Consider the following:

Soviet authorities, through the KGB, regularly charged and punished dissidents and other unacceptably independent citizens with linguistic versions of “collusion” and “contacts” with foreigners, particularly Americans. (Having inadvertently been the American in several cases, I can testify that the “contacts” were entirely casual, professional, or otherwise innocent.) Is something similar under way here? As the former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy has pointed out, to make allegations of Trump associates’ “collusion” is to question “everyone who had interacted with Russia in the last quarter-century.” In my case and those of not a few scholarly colleagues, it would mean in the last half-century, or nearly. Nor is this practice merely hypothetical or abstract.

The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence recently sent a letter to an American professor and public intellectual demanding that this person turn over “all communications [since January 2015] with Russian media organizations, their employees, representatives, or associates,” with “Russian persons or business interests,” “with or about US political campaigns or entities relating to Russia,” and “related to travel to Russia, and/or meetings, or discussions, or interactions that occurred during such travel.” We do not know how many such letters the Committee has sent, but this is not the only one. If this is not an un-American political inquisition, it is hard to say what would be. (It was also a common Soviet practice, though such “documents” were usually obtained by sudden police raids, of which there have recently been at least two in our own country, both related to Russiagate.)

‘Silicon Valley bureaucrats deciding who gets freedom of speech’: Jimmy Dore on Facebook censorship

In this connection, Soviet authorities also regularly practiced selective prosecution, which is persecution intended to send a chilling signal to other would-be offenders. For example, in 1965, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel were arrested for publishing their literary writings abroad under pseudonyms, an emerging practice the Kremlin wanted to stop. And in 1972, an important dissident figure, Pytor Yakir, was held in solitary confinement until he “broke” and signed a “confession,” even naming some of his associates, which greatly demoralized the dissident movement. Paul Manafort is no American dissident, literary or otherwise, and he well may be guilty of the financial misdeeds and tax evasion as charged. But he is facing, at nearly age 70, in effect a life sentence in prison and, through fines imposed, the bankruptcy of his family. We may reasonably ask: Is this selective prosecution/persecution? How many other hired US political operatives in foreign countries in recent years have been so audited and onerously prosecuted? Or has Manafort been singled out because he was once Trump’s campaign manager?

We may also ask why a young Russian woman living in Washington, Maria Butina, was arrested and kept in solitary confinement until she confessed - that is, pleaded guilty. (She is still in prison.) Her offense? Publicly extolling the virtues of her native Russian government and advocating détente-like relations between Washington and Moscow without having registered as a foreign agent. Americans living in Russia frequently do the same on behalf of their country. Certainly, I have often done so. Are patriotism and promoting détente as an alternative to the new and more dangerous Cold War now a crime in the United States, or is the selective prosecution of Butina a response to Trump’s call for “cooperation with Russia”?

Now we have an even more alarming Soviet-like practice. Former acting head of the FBI Andrew McCabe tells us that in 2017, he and other high officials discussed a way to remove President Trump from office. As Alan Dershowitz, a professor of constitutional law, remarked, they had in mind an “attempted coup d’état.” Which may remind students of Soviet history that two of its leaders were targets of a bureaucratic or administrative “coup”- Nikita Khrushchev twice, in 1957 and 1964, the latter being successful; and Gorbachev in August 1991, though perhaps several other plots against him may still be unknown. Khrushchev and Gorbachev were disruptors of the bureaucratic status quo and its entrenched interests - very much unlike President Trump, but disruptors nonetheless.

‘A disgrace to US, big part of Russia hoax’: Trump unloads on ex-acting FBI chief McCabe

Finally, at least for now, there is the role media censorship played in Soviet repression. To a knowing reader who could read “between the lines,” the Soviet press actually provided a lot of usable information. Equally important, though, was what it excluded as taboo—particularly news and other information that undermined the official narrative of current and historical events. (All this ended with Gorbachev’s introduction of glasnost in the late 1980s.) In the era of Russiagate, American mainstream media are practicing at least partial censorship by systematically excluding voices and other sources that directly challenge their orthodox narrative. There are many such malpractices in leading newspapers and on influential television programs, but they are the subject of another commentary.

These examples remind us that we are also living in an age of blame -particularly blaming Russia for mishaps of our own making, for electoral outcomes and other unwelcome developments elsewhere in the world. Drawing attention to Soviet precedents is not to blame that long-gone nation state. Instead, we again need Walt Kelly’s cartoon philosopher Pogo, who told us decades ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

By Stephen F. Cohen

This article was originally published by The Nation.

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nationcontributing editor, he is the author, most recently, of War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Israel, Venezuela and Nationalism In The Neoliberal Era

by NICK PEMBERTON

Photograph source U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv

What is a nation in the era of neoliberalism? Is community, under any umbrella, possible? Margaret Thatcher was perhaps more influential l in shaping the modern times than anyone outside of Ronald Reagan. Thatcher famously asserted that there was no such thing as society—there were only individuals. This logic is still being carried out, as evidenced by the United States’ response to situations in Israel and Venezuela.

Ilhan Omar pointed out a simple and undeniable truth. The politicians in the United States supports Israel’s apartheid state because they are getting payed to do so by lobbying interests, such as AIPAC. This was soon seen as anti-Semitic because of stereotypes of Jewish people being rich and running the world in a secret way.

Omar though actually created a possibility for a shift away from anti-Semitism. What she said actually created a way out for the Jewish people of Israel. To less educated people, particularly less educated Muslims, one could look at the state of Israel—which massacres people simply for being brown and Muslim—as a state that operates on the logic of Jewish supremacy. Omar paints a more complicated picture: Western money, with the interests of imperialism, capitalist exploitation and white Christian supremacy, also play a role.

The United States establishment demonstrated its unwillingness to take anti-Semitism seriously when it sidestepped Omar’s critique of their own corrupt politicians. It instead, once again, chose to blame Israel’s apartheid state on Jewish people. Anyone with any knowledge of Israel’s human rights abuses will blame it on something. Either you choose to blame it on capitalism or on Jewish people. Unable to confront capitalism, the Jewish people become the scapegoat.

Jewish people play the function of white women in our Christian white supremacist patriarchal society. Donald Trump justifies his turn to a whites-only state based on the assumption that he is protecting white women by splitting up brown families. His announcement speech for President came with the warning that immigrants are raping “our” women—with the implication that there is no such thing as white rape simply because white men own everything.

Likewise, the elites in Israel are given the green light to slaughter brown Muslims as long as they claim it is in the interest of Judaism. Judaism can only be seen by our Christian nation as our wife. To a conservative Christian, Jewish people can be tolerated because they are also generally white Europeans. Just as women must to some degree be tolerated in these conservative societies because they grew up in the same neighborhood and know the same rules as the men. However, with Jewish people there is always a lacking, and they will never be accepted as full Christians. What they lack is the belief in Christ. Similarly, women will never be accepted by MAGA American men, even if they are given a roof over their heads. What they lack is not Christ, but a penis. The phallic image of the cross is significant in this parallel, but for the sake of all of us, let’s look no closer.

What is clear for Jewish people is this: you will be accepted at the dinner table as long as you play by the Christian’s rules. In a religious sense, this means that Jews are going to hell. But in a geopolitical sense, it means that every conversation surrounding Jewish people must begin and end with the Jewish only state of Israel. To keep with the parallel, Israel for the Jew acts as the white woman’s “home”. Unwilling to accept Jewish refugees as our equals when they were being systematically massacred by the Nazis, a new and separate space was formed. As long as Muslims were killed and the Middle East could be controlled, we told the Jewish people that this was their own state. But just as it is impossible that women’s idea of freedom is taking care of men’s children and homes, it is impossible to believe that Jewish’s people idea of freedom is taking out the United States’ trash (Muslims) in the Middle East.

Ilhan Omar wanted to break up these dynamics. She told the children: do not be so hard on your mother. Look at your father. He controls her, he tells her how to treat you, and if she disobeyed, she would suffer a fate akin to yours, if not worse. But Daddy Yankee failed to listen. Instead Israel’s apartheid was once again framed as the natural condition for a weak and persecuted people. No other factors could be involved. It is what she wants. And if you dare to question the Christian conception of Jewish freedom you are now an anti-Semite.

This is all to say that a social conception of the nation is still accessible in today’s day and age.Israel is primarily a nation in a social sense. The perception of Israel, like the perception of the family, relies on a certain set of social principles that must be accepted in order for any sense of national identity for the individual to be performed. The meaning of the state and of the family is formed through each individual finding their function within it and their relationship to the other people within it.

This can of course be a progressive state of relations—some states and some families are. The progressiveness of the relations naturally relies on an equality between the actors involved. While clearly the idea of the nation in Israel is supported, the idea of equal relations are not. To the contrary, there is a fear that if the hierarchy is upended, the relationships will split. Feminism, gay rights and children rights are seen as a threat to family—when it may be the only thing that will save it as a legitimate institution. Likewise, a stance against the Israel lobby and the apartheid state is seen as anti-Jewish—when in reality this is the only politics that encourages peace for both Jews and Muslims.

Thatcher’s right of the individual then is naturally crippling not only to the community, but to the individual. What the doctrine of neoliberalism encourages is an extreme freedom of the individual to reach their highest capitalist heights. Whether this means poisoning the water of entire communities, raising health care costs so high that people die, or shorting workers money they are owed, neoliberal doctrine asserts that this is simply an individual acting out their freedom and that the beauty of such a system that in theory anyone can make this much money if they put their mind to it.

What this does to the whole of the community is ignored—it is replaced by a largely theoretical right to gain the highest freedom of controlling and exploiting others.

This mentality was created by the elites and as it is exercised it can only compound. Now we are in a situation where maybe a couple thousand, a couple hundred, maybe as few as 6 people are really running the show and winning really big from it. What is encouraged though is the idea of the nation as a social relation. Loyalty to family, to the nation, soon becomes loyalty to the boss, loyalty to the job, loyalty to the status quo, loyalty to mass inequality. As long as this relationship remains hierarchal, and therefore divisive, there is no threat in having it.

Israel, despite its backwards notions of human rights and democracy that are seen as essential to the nation state, remains a good steward precisely because it has a national identity that is primarily social (Jewish). To the contrary, Venezuela became a dictatorship seemingly overnight in the eyes of the United States precisely because its national identity was economic. America, despite its jingoism, has never had a clear economic national identity precisely because competition always has been our main objective. Competition, while naturally creating bonds between communities against each other, does little for economic unity within a nation as a whole. Instead, private companies rule from the outside in.

The crime of the Venezuelan government under United States rule seems to be that they wanted to move away the dollar and nationalize industries. Such economic unity under the nation was seen as not nearly as important as the right of the individual capitalist to exploit working class Venezuelans and the resources their country has. The United States demonstrated that it still holds a lot of power, as it sanctioned Venezuela to the point of mass starvation, and convinced much of the international community that despite decades of disaster regime change, that now the United States is a reasonable actor.

If the United States became just as upset about Israel’s form of ethnic nationalism, perhaps we could have a similar effect on their political landscape. But Israel presents no threat to the freedom of the 1%. Hierarchal divisions within the working class, while often being openly condemned, are in the interests of the 1%. To the contrary, when Nicholas Maduro wished to form a national identity that relied on economic unity that strived for equality, literacy, health care, and even racial and gender justice, this was seen as a tremendous threat to the freedom of capital.

In the United States there is so little difference between our definitions of freedom of capital and freedom of humanity that we cannot believe that they ever could be separate, let alone contradictory goals. It is then rather ironic that the United States will only allow social nationalism, and never economic nationalism. Social nationalism for the masses, economic nationalism for the few.

The danger of economic nationalism is that some force other than the 1% now would control the economy. The government would now control the economy with the expectation of providing for the people it is elected by. If it did not, it could be voted out of office. The government would have the goal of providing an economy that works for the people who give it power, while economy controlled by the 1% has the only goal of profit. Therefore, the more unequal the 1% makes the economy, the less power the people have to question their rule. The more equal a government makes the economy, the more likely they will be elected. The 1% has no such incentive because they were never elected, and no one likes them.

Economic nationalism is on the steep decline as power consolidates in the hands of the global 1%. This gives to a rise of social nationalism, not only for nostalgic reasons, but for altruistic ones. Communities in decline form groups and scapegoats. This social nationalism is rising globally, and the movements appear to be largely independent of each other. Each is homegrown from the misery of communities in decline and the prejudices and insecurities of all the individual communities. The rise of such social nationalist communities are only used to demonize the last stand of economic nationalism, such as the effort in Venezuela.

We are told that the only safe space for the victims of social nationalism is economic Darwinism which naturally targets the communities with the least social standing as its only calculation is victory. These dynamics, along with the capitalist induced crisis of global warming, leads to masses of stateless refugees who do not fit within social nationalism’s definition of human beings. These people are left for dead.

What the world is facing is really an organizational crisis as much as a social one. Redistribution of wealth, education to the masses, housing for the masses, and real programs for refugees organized by the state would lead to a unified identity under the flag.

A simple act like kneeling for the national anthem is so divisive precisely because the state is designed to divide. The United States’ nationalism can only define itself by its Empire—which itself relies on ethnic nationalism that divides and lacks economic nationalism that unifies. Venezuela is assumed to rely solely on dictatorship because we can only imagine people supporting a government by force. Indeed, the only thing our government provides for us is what it takes by force from other countries through economic and military imperialism.

There is a truth that lies in Venezuela that scares America. The fact that the government and the revolutionary people who put it in power radically changed society for the better is still scary. As this crumbles for mostly exterior reasons, we hope desperately that the people have forgotten how they got there. We hope that they too abandon the idea of unity and instead make a deal with predatory capitalists for their own survival.

Nationalism will persist, one way or the other. As Marxist theory goes, the elites have a choice between socialism and barbarism. If there is no economic unity and community for the masses, other groups will form—and give the social communities they can provide. Donald Trump’s America is literally hollow. It is only defined by the wall we can build around it—not by what goes on inside. Any sense of economic nationalism is replaced by a social idea of the nation which mirrors the home. Right now the only merit in the home is that it has walls—and we can feel safe from the outside world. But within these walls there is no unity besides the monsters we imagine outside. The children are hungry, the rent is high, and there isn’t even a roof to stop the capitalists reaching down from their thrones to take all we have left.

Trump Likes 'Beautiful' Border Walls - Venezuela Should Build Him One

moon of alabama

Aaron Mate, who is currently on the ground in Venezuela (vid), notes how Trump early on targeted Venezuela:

Aaron Maté @aaronjmate - 20:59 utc - 18 Feb 2019
Page 136 of McCabe's new book, recounting a 2017 Oval Office meeting: "Then the president talked about Venezuela. That’s the country we should be going to war with, he said. They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door."

bigger

It is not only Trump's idea to 'regime change' Venezuela. Ever since 1998, when Hugo Chavez was elected, the U.S. plotted to 'regime change' Venezuela. It was Obama who put sanctions on the country. Right wing economists have for years thought up detailed plans on how to rob Venezuela of its national assets.

Plan A for the recent coup attempt failed when the Venezuelan military did not accept Random Guyido's brazen claim to the presidency. There was no plan B. The U.S. is now improvising. The delivery of "humanitarian aid" is a pretext to break the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

U.S. government "aid" is always political. U.S. aid workers are suspects. Consider these USAID RED teams which a 2018 study, commissioned by the U.S. foreign aid agency, recommended:

RED Team officers, the report explains, would carry out development activities, but they would also have training and expertise that are not typically included in USAID job requirements.

“RED Team personnel would be able to live and work in austere environments for extended periods of time and actively contribute to their own security and welfare. They would be deployed farther forward than USAID personnel traditionally deploy and would routinely operate under the authority of the host agency with whom they deploy, acting in accordance with their security posture,” the report reads.

“RED team members would be trained and authorized to conduct themselves as a force-multiplier able to contribute a full suite of security skills as needed,” it says.

USAID officers will also be special forces? Special forces will also be USAID workers? Which is it? How many of these 'Red Teams' are now in Colombia waiting to cross into Venezuela?

On Saturday February 23 a breach of the Venezuelan border will be attempted with the intent to provoke an escalation. That escalation will then be used to justify further action up to military strikes or even an invasion.

How exactly the game will be played out is still not clear:

Despite the tough language, it remained unclear how the Venezuelan opposition would break Mr. Maduro’s blockade of the border with a delivery of food and medication on Saturday. Mr. Trump’s own national security adviser said the American military — which has airlifted tons of supplies to Venezuela’s doorstep on the Colombia border — will not cross into the country.

The so called "aid" is also supposed to come via sea and through the border with Brazil. To prevent that Venezuela closed down the maritime border with the Dutch Caribbean Islands:

The closure blocks movement of boats and aircraft between the western Venezuelan coastal state of Falcon and the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, said Vice Admiral Vladimir Quintero, who heads a military unit in Falcon. He did not provide a reason.

The Brazil route is for now too remote for the desired media attention.

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Everything will concentrate on the border crossing with Colombia near the Colombian city of Cúcuta:

Leaders of several Latin American nations plan to travel to Colombia’s border with Venezuela on Friday ahead of the delivery of aid, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Tuesday, adding that he had accepted an invitation from Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque.It was not immediately clear which leaders would attend. Most Latin American countries now recognize Guaido as president, though Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua still support Maduro.
Billionaire businessman Richard Branson is backing a “Live Aid”-style concert on Friday in the Colombian border city of Cucuta with a fundraising target of $100 million to provide food and medicine for Venezuela. Maduro’s government has announced two rival concerts just across the border.

Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters spoke out (video) against the Richard Branson's Not-really-for-AID concert and the U.S. 'regime change' attempt in Venezuela:

Roger Waters @rogerwaters - 22:57 utc - 18 Feb 2019
The Red Cross and the UN, unequivocally agree, don’t politicize aid. Leave the Venezuelan people alone to exercise their legal right to self determination.

On Saturday, when the U.S. proxy crowd will try to cross the border with unneeded "aid" some sniper shooting is likely to happen while dozens of cameras roll. Any casualties will be blamed on the Venezuelan military. The incident will be the propaganda pretext for further U.S. action. Already days ago Russia's Foreign Ministry warned of such 'false flag' attacks:

A provocation, involving victims, is being put together under the guise of a humanitarian convoy," Zakharova stressed. "They need it just as a pretext to use outside force, and everyone should understand that."

Trumps National Security Advisor is preparing the field:

John Bolton @AmbJohnBolton - 1:41 utc - 20 Feb 2019
The Venezuelan military must uphold its duty to protect civilians at the Colombian and Brazilian borders, and allow them to peacefully bring in humanitarian aid without violence or fear of persecution.

John Bolton @AmbJohnBolton - 2:14 utc - 20 Feb 2019
Any actions by the Venezuelan military to condone or instigate violence against peaceful civilians at the Colombian and Brazilian borders will not be forgotten. Leaders still have time to make the right choice.

Venezuela is not in need of U.S. aid. It is need of an end to the economic sanctions that put it under a medieval siege. There is no current lack of food or medicine like in Yemen though some products may run short.

The UN, the Red Cross and Caritas already have aid distribution projects within Venezuela.

They reject the U.S. aid delivery as a political stunt. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently doubled its budget for Venezuela to $18 million and is ready to provide more. Last week 933 tonnes of medicines from Cuba and China arrived. Another 300 tons from Russia is supposed to arrive today.

The Venezuelan government has had enough time to game out how best to respond to the breach attempt of the border. It needs to block the roads AND it needs to prevent provocations. Trump likes walls on the border. Venezuela should give them to him.

"I don't mind having a big beautiful door in that wall so that people can come into this country legally. But we need, Jeb, to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out." - Donald Trump - Aug 6 2015 GOP debate

My advise to Venezuela is to use high concrete barricades with barbed wire and mines in front of them across all vehicle border crossings points. The purpose of the mines is to prevent attempts to remove the wire and the barricades. Large posters should warn of the deadly danger of the mines. If someone gets hurt by them, it will clearly be their own fault.

Passage on foot must be allowed as usual. Armed soldiers should be kept out of sight.

Trump said a lot about the national security need for "beautiful walls." A large banner with a relevant Trump quote should top each of the barricaded crossings.

Posted by b on February 20, 2019 at 10:12 AM | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/trump-likes-beautiful-border-walls-venezuela-should-build-him-one.html

Venezuela Under Washington’s Gun

By Paul Craig Roberts

February 20, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -

A full court press is taking place in Florida today (Presidents Day) with Republicans, Democrats, expatriates from Cuba and Venezuela and the fascist warmonger ministry of propaganda that constitutes the US media all denouncing Maduro and blaming him for the hardships imposed on Venezuelans by Washington’s sanctions and attacks on Venezuela’s currency . Even “liberal” NPR is reading off the same fascist warmonger script. NPR managed to report on Venezuela without mentioning the sanctions, without mentioning the theft of Venezuela’s gold foolishly entrusted to the US and British central banks, or the orchestrated protests funded by US-financed NGOs that are small in comparison with the crowds that support Maduro that are never mentioned in the US media. In other words, NPR is just another part of the whorehouse brigade.

What Americans forget, or never knew, is that the Cuban expatriates are the descendents of the corrupt Batista crowd that had looted Cuba for years and were thrown out of Cuba by Castro. The Venezuelan expatriates are from the rich elite that couldn’t adjust to Chavez running the country for the people instead of for them, and some of these expatriates were involved in the failed CIA coup against Chavez. All of these expatriates are nothing but shills for Washington’s takeover so that they can get back in on the take.

It is discouraging to see Trump, who the Democrats, the media, and the military/security complex are attempting to chase out of office participate in the attempt to chase Maduro out of office.

It is discouraging to see Washington’s vassals in Europe and in the Organization of American States throw all truth to the wind and line up with Washington’s lies.

It is discouraging that within Western civilization lies dominate all aspects of domestic and international policy. Truth has been stamped out.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51139.htm

Venezuela – US Attack Imminent?

Author: Peter Koenig

Column: Politics

Region: USA in the World

Imagine, the President of the self-declared, exceptional and unique Superpower, Donald Trump of the United States of America, has the audacity to threaten the Venezuelan military with their lives, if they keep standing behind the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, and defending his Government. An open threat – yesterday, 18 February, at a Miami University, in a speech of ‘fire and fury’; this time against socialist Venezuela with which he wants to finish, like with all other socialist nations – especially those in his ‘backyard’. So, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia are next in Trump’s crosshairs – and / or the crosshairs of his handlers. Don’t forget, he is a staged and convenient fool for the “Deep State” or the “Profound Government” – whatever you want to call this secret clan of the Chosen People that intends to rule the world.

I cannot help being amazed at what level of inhumanity we have arrived. Trump calls openly out to assassinate those who stand behind the legitimate President of Venezuela – and the rest of the world just looks on, watches and says NOTHING – zilch, zero – tolerates such atrocity coming from the mouth of a buffoon, aka the strongman of the self-proclaimed one and only superpower of the globe.

– No, much worse – the so-called civilized west, the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan – and some second- and third class puppet developing countries from South America, whose people are being starved while the elite admires and dances to the tune of the USA; united in what they call the “Group of Lima” (created in Lima in August 2017, to “safe” Venezuela). Members include, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru.

In the meantime, Mexico, under her new leftwing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or simply, AMLO, abstains from any decision against Venezuela. To the contrary, Mexico is part of the “Montevideo Mechanism” that comprises Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia and the member countries of CARICOM and seeks conflict resolution through dialogue with the opposition, for which the Maduro Government has been ready from the beginning of the conflict, but which has been boycotted by the opposition, as were the 20 May 2018 elections which the non-participating opposition now calls a fraud.

The Lima Group was initiated, as such unofficial clubs always are, to out-rule the official routes, by Washington. Similarly, Washington created “The Friends of Syria” – all with the objective to bring about “Regime Change”. In the case of Venezuela, to circumvent the official representation of the Americas – the OAS – Organization of American States. – Why? – Because the empire was unable to get the legitimate majority of the OAS members to side with them against Venezuela. So, they organized the Lima Group, a club of the willing, of the utmost corrupted vassals, who believe at the end of the days to receive some crumbs of ‘gracias’ from their northern master and tyrant – or the vassals’ leaders (sic) hope perhaps for a safe haven, a castle in Miami?

I often wonder whether such a dream of eventually, at the end of the day – the end of all days perhaps? – being saved by the surviving elite of the US of A in an untouched paradise, is also the dream of the European puppets, for example those that pull the EU’s strings – the Macrons, Merkels and Mays – and, of course, the rest of the EU, the puppets of the puppets? – What else could make them so miserably betray their people, hundreds of millions of people? – Do they have not an iota of morals left?
—
Coming back to Venezuela – the Buffoon calls for outright war against the Maduro regime – and to salvage the Venezuelan people, he sent US$ 20 million worth of “humanitarian aid” to Cucutá, border town in Colombia, which, of course, the Bolivarian army does not let enter Venezuela. There is no need for humanitarian aid, let alone for US$ 20 million worth, peanuts, as compared to what Venezuela buys on a daily basis in food and medical supplies.

Undeniably, the US warmongers – specially Bolton, Pompeo and Pence – are preparing for a hot war. Whether they will execute it, remains to be seen. But the Bolivarian military does not idly watch what may happen. They are ready to face any Yankee aggression. The US southern military command, SOUTHCOM, stationed in Florida, is preparing an impressive military build-up. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with 3,200 military personnel, 90 fighter planes and helicopters is positioned off the Florida coast, accompanied by the cruise missile carrier, USS Leyte Gulf, and the destroyers, USS Bainbridge, USS Gonzalez, USS Mason, and USS Nite. Joining the fleet is also the Spanish marine ship ESPS Mendez Nuñez.

The Spanish participation in this war game of criminal aggression is outrageous. The Spanish socialist leader, Pedro Sanchez (who certainly does not deserve the attribute of ‘socialist’), has also had the audacity requesting Nicolas Maduro to resign and call elections. Who is the (faltering) head of the fallen Spanish empire to meddle in another country’s internal affairs? – Maybe because the Spaniards can still not stomach having been defeated by Simón Bolívar, still feel superior and behave racist over the ‘brown’ Latinos, or maybe because he wants to please the masters in Washington – or simply because he needs popular support in his own country, as he is leading a minority, currently non-government and had to call snap elections for 28 April 2019?

There are, however, also Russia and China, solid, but rather quiet partners of Venezuela’s. Russia has made it clear, though, “Don’t mess with Venezuela”. Russia has two nuclear capable bombers, TU-160, deployed to the Venezuelan Caribbean island of la Orchila, where Moscow will establish, with the agreement of Venezuela, a permanent military base.

Both Russia and China have tens of billions worth of investments in Venezuela’s hydrocarbon industry. But besides the commercial interests, Russia and China vie for a multipolar world and want to guarantee the independence of Latin America, the sovereignty of the peoples of the Americas.

On 26 January 2019, the US dragged the “Case Venezuela” to the UN Security Council, in an attempt to condemn Venezuela and to trailblaze the path for a military invasion. However, while nine of the 15 UNSC members voted for a special meeting on Venezuela (Belgium, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Kuwait, Peru, Poland, United Kingdom, United States), four voted against (China, Equatorial Guinea, Russian Federation, South Africa), with two abstentions (Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia). The Russian Federation’s delegate countered that the Council has no role to play in a domestic matter that poses no threat to international peace and security. And right he is!

This UNSC event prompted a solidarity movement of more than 50 states, including China, Russia, Cuba, DPRK, Syria, Iran, Palestine, Nicaragua, and many more, supporting Venezuelan’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza’s statement before the Security Council, declaring the illegality of unilateral coercive economic sanctions, and territorial invasions by the United States. As Carla Stea reports, this new alliance “constitutes a formidable force which Western capitalism will antagonize at its own peril. This is a long overdue counterforce to Western domination of the United Nations, a domination based on money, on the large payments enabling the US and other capitalist powers to bribe, threaten and otherwise control the direction of the UN, and distort and destroy the independence, impartiality and integrity which the UN requires in order to maintain its legitimacy, and implement the sustained global peace and justice for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt created it.”

This new alignment of more than 50 states comprise more than half of the world’s population, to a large extent people who have been exploited, slaughtered and their countries raped and ravaged for hundreds of years by wester capitalist and colonialist powers. This alliance promises to become a solid new face in the otherwise western dominated and bought United Nations.

As to Venezuela’s fate, Trump has made vague indications of 23 February being the deadline for an assault on Venezuela. We will see whether this remains nothing but an intimidating insinuation, or whether it will be real. The latter case would be a disaster not only for Venezuela, and Latin America, but for the entire world. Will Trump’s handlers allow such blunder? – In any case, Venezuela’s armed forces are disposed to confront the empire’s nuclear aircraft carrier, missile launchers, countless fighter planes and the up to 5,000 US troops and mercenaries newly stationed in Colombia and ready to cross the border into Venezuela. – And, not to forget, there are also Russia and China.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. After working for over 30 years with the World Bank he penned Implosion, an economic thriller, based on his first-hand experience. Exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/21/venezuela-us-attack-imminent/

https://journal-neo.org/2019/02/21/venezuela-us-attack-imminent/

Withdrawal Pains and Syrian Civil War: An Analysis of U.S. Media Discourse

by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO

Photograph by Mahmoud Bali (VOA) – US-backed Forces Press Deeper Into Southern Raqqa City

President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. combat troops from Syria is being met with strong criticism from the U.S. military establishment. [1] The attacks on withdrawal are reiterated in U.S. mass media outlets as well. Nowhere is this clearer than in the editorials of the paper of national record – the New York Times. The paper devoted serious attention to the Syrian civil war in 2018, echoing the sustained attention U.S. leaders have devoted toward the conflict. To better understand how this conflict has played out in elite American media discourse, I undertook a systematic analysis of all the New York Times’ editorials that emphasized the Syria question in 2018. [2]

Few political communication scholars are interested in the issue of media propaganda and how it is disseminated in “free” and “democratic” western societies – those that do not rely on official government censorship of the press. [3] The notion that journalists are complicit in reinforcing official narratives and agendas is too radical for most scholars; most prefer limited definitions of propaganda as something that othernations, presses, and leaders do. But my review of the Times’ coverage of Syria suggests that a different type of propaganda is at work compared to the clumsier versions embraced by dictatorial governments and handed down to consumers via state-run media. With U.S. media propaganda, official motives are assumed to be pure and altruistic, but their embrace flows from journalists who legally operate independently from government censorship and control. Furthermore, substantive criticisms of U.S. policy do appear, but are so infrequent that they may as well be omitted from commentary altogether. Incorporating a sliver of dissent allows for more effective propaganda, since journalists can claim that alternative views are aired, even if they are essentially invisible, practically speaking.

The essence of U.S. media propaganda is evident not only in the frameworks that dominate the Times’ editorials, but in the unstated assumptions that are left out of popular discourse. By tailoring media debates to a narrow range of views expressed by the major political parties, journalists implicitly reinforce those views, setting the parameters for what perspectives are acceptable and ignored in foreign policy debates. As media critic Noam Chomsky notes, “presupposition” of a debate between limited alternatives is the essence of a media propaganda system that operates outside the formal bounds of government control. [4]

In the Times’ editorials on Syria, I track the emergence of six separate conceptual frames that guide media commentary. By omitting from these editorials points that challenge the foundation of U.S. foreign policy, the Times prohibits its readers from considering competing points of view, thereby making it difficult to form opinions differing from those embraced by American political leadership. I include a detailed run-down of these frames below.

Defeating ISIS and the Global “War on Terror”

Throughout 2018, the Times continually emphasized the dire importance of keeping U.S. troops in Syria to defeat ISIS, depicting them as vital to dismantling the global terror threat. The focus was on U.S. military efforts at “degrading” and “finishing off” the Islamic State. [5] The Times wrote approvingly of this effort, as initiated under the Obama administration in 2014, after ISIS “overran huge areas of Syria and Iraq…Military operations under President Barack Obama and the Trump administration liberated more than 98 percent of the territory previously controlled by the Islamic State and freed over 7.5 million people from brutal rule.” [6] The paper rejected as “absurd” Trump’s claim that ISIS had been military defeated by late 2018, a point the president used to justify his call for withdrawal. Trump’s plan for “a precipitous withdrawal” would carry dramatic “consequences,” the Times warned, “including allowing ISIS forces to regroup and create another crisis that would draw the United States back into the region.”[7]

The “ISIS-War on Terror” frame was the most dominant frame I examined, appearing in every one of the Times’ editorials on Syria. [8]But what is perhaps most notable about the frame is what it excludes from discussion – the negative fallout that is accompanied longstanding U.S. promises of defeating global terrorism. Available evidence suggests that grandiose claims about terrorism’s demise are contradicted by the reality of proliferating terror in the decade and a half since September 11, 2001. According to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, terror attacks worldwide increased dramatically since 2001, when there were less than 2,000 such incidents. [9] Terrorism experts wrote of an “Iraq Effect” by the mid-2000s, with the U.S. occupation of Iraq having “generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost,” and with an increase in terror attacks outside of Iraq and Afghanistan by a third in the five years following 9/11. [10] The threat continued to grow in later years, as terror attacks reached their height in 2014 with the rise of ISIS, to about 17,000 a year. [11]

By 2018, the number of terror attacks fell to 10,900, which was taken as evidence by the U.S. government of the increasing efficacy of the “war on terror.”[12] While a 36 percent decline in terror incidents in three years is significant, it is hardly cause for celebration considering the stated intentions of former U.S. presidents of eradicating terrorism from the face of the planet. [13] To the contrary, terrorist attacks were nearly five times more common in 2018 than they were in 2001. Of course, Americans may primarily be concerned with terrorism as a threat to American lives, more so than as a global danger. But even on the domestic front, there is no indication that the “War on Terror” has succeeded in eradicating terrorism committed by Islamist groups and radicals. According to New America’s report on domestic terror, a total of just four people were killed by Islamist radicals in the seven-year period following 9/11, from 2002 to 2008. But the number grew significantly in subsequent years by 100, from 2009 to 2018, in large part due to a few major incidents, including the shootings in Fort Hood, Texas (2009), San Bernardino, California (2015), and Orlando, Florida (2016). [14]

There are at least two ways to critically interpret the above statistics. The first is to conclude that the “War on Terror” has not made Americans safer, if the goal after 9/11 was to reduce the number of people murdered by Islamist fundamentalist groups. The domestic risk from terrorism has become greater from the first to the second decade of the twenty-first century. A second conclusion is that the justification for continuing the “War on Terror” rests on shaky, even fraudulent foundations, considering the relatively tiny number of Americans who have been killed by Islamist fundamentalists since 9/11. Compare the 104 deaths from Islamist threats over the last decade and a half – an average of six per year – to the number of Americans who die each year from other causes. In 2016, 10,497 Americans died in alcohol-related driving accidents, which accounted for a quarter of all American traffic deaths.[15] A total of 37,133 people died in all traffic accidents in 2017.[16] Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths a year in the U.S., with more than 41,000 deaths from second hand smoke, equivalent to one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 per day.[17] Heart disease claims 610,000 victims a year, although no one is depicting fast food suppliers or junk food manufacturers as threats to national security.[18] Most ominously in terms of threats that exist independently from one’s personal consumer choices are the nearly 40,000 Americans killed by gun violence in 2017. [19] The risk from gun shootings far outweighs any threat from Islamist groups, although there is little impetus in Washington to regulate gun ownership.

It is the sensational spectacle of terrorism that draws so many Americans to focus on this relatively minor threat to American lives. The fear invoked by terror attacks is impossible to ignore, but it also leads to Americans vastly exaggerating the extent of that threat. One recent study concludes that Americans have a one in 3.6 million chance of being killed in a terrorist attack, and there is a better chance of strangling from one’s clothing or from a toddler shooting you than from being killed by a terrorist.[20]

Furthermore, to associate terrorism primarily with Muslims reveals the Orientalist, prejudiced nature of U.S. political discourse. New America found that 97 Americans were killed from 2002 to 2018 by far-right domestic terrorists of various kinds – including white supremacists and “incels” – compared to the 104 Americans killed by Islamist attacks.[21] Other research suggests the right-wing threat is far greater, with two-thirds – or 37 of the 65 domestic terror incidents in 2017 committed by right-wing extremists who hold “racist, anti-Muslim, homophobic, anti-Semitic, fascist, anti-government, or xenophobic motivations.” [22]

The Times’ primary defense of the war in Syria is combating terrorism. But the fixation on the terror threat is radically overblown compared to other safety risks Americans face on a daily basis. To the extent that Islamist terror groups are a threat to Americans, the global “War on Terror” has not curbed that threat. The campaign to destroy al Qaeda in the 2000s was accompanied by the proliferation of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even as al Qaeda deteriorated as an international threat, the danger of Islamism morphed via the emergence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Rather than dismantling Islamism, the U.S. escalation of military activities in the Middle East has produced destruction, polarization, radicalization, and heightened fundamentalism. There is little reason to think this threat will not continue so long as the U.S. remains committed to dismantling state after state – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria, being the most extreme cases – via its military adventurism in the “War on Terror.”

Assad’s Brutality, his Enablers, and Syrian “Stability”

Propaganda campaigns usually contain elements of truth, and in the case of Syria, media propaganda is aided by the brutal and heinous nature of the Assad regime. This president – with the aid of Russian air power – has indiscriminately bombed and flattened Syrian cities such as Homs and Aleppo – leading to countless deaths. Assad has used barrel bombs against his own people, which are notorious for maximum destruction, targeting militant and civilian alike when used in urban settings. [23] He has used chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta (2013), Douma (2018), and elsewhere. [24] He has earned a reputation as a mass torturer and murderer for the systematic violence government forces have perpetrated against detainees in Syrian prisons. [25] And Assad’s attacks against civilians and non-violent government critics precede the rise of Syria’s violent rebellion.[26] All told, 400,000 Syrians have been killed as a result of this deadly civil war, with another 2.2 million becoming refugees and 6.5 million internally displaced. [27]

The New York Times, however, is careful to place virtually all the blame on Assad and his allies – Russia and Iran – while exempting the U.S. for destabilizing Syria via its own bombing campaign. As the Times’ editors warned in September 2018, Assad was “on the cusp of crushing the rebellion, at the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe” in the rebel-dominated northwestern city of Idlib, where Assad and Russian forces were preparing for a major assault.[28] “An estimated three million people, including about one million children, live in Idlib…There is little doubt an all-out assault will cause death, destruction, and displacement rivaling the brutality seen before.”[29]Just over half of the Times’ 2018 editorials emphasized the brutal nature of Assad’s regime. Three-quarters of them condemned Iran and Russia – Syrian allies – for supporting Assad’s regime, and for giving comfort to counter-insurgency efforts. Stories regularly referred to Iran and Russia as Assad’s “enablers,” and wrote off their support as motivated by brazen power politics and geopolitical interests.[30]

The Times’ laments against Assad’s and Russia’s “scorched earth” attacks on rebel-held cities would carry more credibility had it spent more energy also condemning the United States for its role in destabilizing Syria. But this has not been the case. Only one editorial from the Times admitted to the fact that “American airstrikes on Islamic State targets have killed many civilians.” [31] This sliver of dissent, however, was not taken as evidence of the United States’ role in destabilizing Syria. Instead, the Times presents the U.S. as having “liberated” ISIS held areas, while two-thirds of the paper’s editorials depict the American military as providing for a “stabilizing” role. Nowhere in these editorials is it suggested that the U.S. and Russian military presences in Syria are increasing the risk of a direct conflict between two aggressive nuclear powers. Nor is there any discussion of the U.S role in arming Syrian rebels as itself fueling instability. Reasonable minds can debate the merits of arming rebel groups that fight against mass murdering dictators. But to assume that this action is inherently compatible with the U.S. providing for Syrian “stability” is propagandistic at best.

The routine discounting of the destruction the U.S. imposes on other countries via its military campaigns is hardly unique to Syria. This practice is longstanding, applying to conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.[32] But the view of the U.S. as a “stabilizing” force is hardly shared by the people of Syria, less than half of which articulated support for “international coalition airstrikes.” [33] And the Times does not help improve the U.S. image abroad when it callously writes that “The United States has no obligation to rebuild Syria” after the role the Obama and Trump administrations played in destroying this beleaguered nation. [34]

Multilateralism, International Law, and World Order

American leaders have long claimed a commitment to valiant principles such as the rule of law and global peacekeeping. Consistent with these themes, the Times routinely cited the importance of United Nations involvement in stabilizing Syria. Such references appeared alongside discussions of Assad’s violations of international law via his targeting of civilians with chemical weapons in Douma (2018) – which the paper deemed an “outrage” – and regarding the need for the Security Council to act to protect Syrian civilians.[35] In an April editorial, the paper wrote: “The United Nations Security Council needs to recommit to the Chemical Weapons Convention’s ban on such weapons, authorize experts to verify who was responsible in Douma and create an independent investigation that could lead to prosecution in a tribunal like the International Criminal Court.” [36] The “use of poison gas” was “a war crime under international law,” despite being “integral to Mr. Assad’s scorched-earth drive to regain control of the last-rebel held areas.” [37]

In total, two-thirds of the Times’ editorials invoked international law and the United Nations in seeking to sell the U.S. intervention as reinforcing the rule of law and global order. As with other propaganda themes, it is worth pointing out what does not appear in this commentary. Almost entirely ignored by the Times–with the exception of a brief reference in one April editorial – is the admission that the U.S. military presence itself is illegal under international law, since it was not authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and was not undertaken in self-defense against an ongoing attack.[38] These are the only two conditions under which the U.N. Charter allows for the legal use of force. By including a fleeting discussion of U.S. actions under international law, the Times allows for a sliver of dissent in its coverage of Syria amidst a sea of self-congratulatory rhetoric. Also omitted from the Times’ coverage is the fact that the United States’ own bombings of civilians are criminal under international law. Nowhere in any of the paper’s editorials were the words “war crimes” used in reference to U.S. actions in Syria, although those words appeared in reference to Assad’s attacks on civilians.

Trump, Rogue Doofus

The Times spent most of 2018 lashing out at Trump for his supposed lack of vision in articulating support for a liberal interventionist position on Syria. There was no shortage of name-calling, which depicted the president as an unreliable and erratic clown, with little knowledge of how to formulate a competent foreign policy. Times editorials derided Trump as “impulsive” and lacking “sure footing” in his dealings with Syria, while lamenting a foreign policy run on the “whims” and “rants” of a madman in chief.[39] In early 2018, the paper dismissed Trump’s “tough talk” on Assad’s use of chemical weapons, pursued “without a coherent strategy or follow-through.”[40] It claimed that Trump lacked “a coherent diplomatic strategy for stabilizing Syria and putting a political settlement [presumably between rebel groups, the Kurds, and Assad] in place.”[41] Trump’s “one-off military operation” in response to the use of chemical weapons in Douma suggested he was “lacking [in] a plan to keep up the pressure” on Assad and to deter him from using such weapons in the future.[42]

The paper of record depicted former Secretary of Defense James Mattis as the only senior-level official with the “willingness and ability to stand up to” Trump, at least prior to the president’s announced troop withdrawal, which was “the final straw” for Mattis in enduring Trump’s nonsensical foreign policy agenda.[43] Trump’s troop withdrawal was greeted as “abrupt” and “dangerous” – “detached from any broader strategic context or any public rationale” and as sowing “new uncertainty about America’s commitment to the Middle East, its willingness to be a global leader, and Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief.”[44] All told, criticisms of Trump as lacking vision and as supporting a dangerous troop withdrawal appeared in three-quarters of all the Time’s editorials.

These attacks, however, reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of Trump’s political beliefs when it comes to foreign policy making. It is hardly the case that Trump lacks a political ideology, so much as his ideology conflicts with that of the liberal internationalists at the Times. Trump may have claimed concern for the victims of the chemical attacks in Douma, but his focus was largely symbolic, considering the limited nature of the bombing campaign against Syrian government targets.[45] Trump subscribes to a rabidly xenophobic, reactionary foreign policy agenda, with little concern for the victims of U.S. wars in the Middle East, or for people of color more generally. If he was concerned with the victims of war, he would not have instituted multiple blanket bans against those – including refugees – immigrating to the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries, which were rationalized by his claim that Muslims are extremists who are predisposed to supporting terrorism. Trump’s withdrawal from Syria overlaps with his “America first” agenda, which elevates the interests of white affluent males in the first world over refugees, victims of war, and people of color. His announced withdrawal from Syria, regardless of the potential negative effect on Syria’s Kurds (who face escalating attacks from Turkey), are of little consequence to the commander in chief.

Had the Times’ editors provided a more coherent portrait of the president, they would have stressed Trump’s reactionary ideology as motivating his politics. The Trump administration embraces a militant foreign policy that includes a creeping fascist element, on display in the government shutdown and beyond. Fascist politics are embraced via his efforts to militarize the border, ban immigrants from the Middle East, his threats to impose emergency rule and ignore immigration law by reversing birthright citizenship and diverting tax dollars to the border wall without congressional authorization, and in relation to his demonization of people of color, which he and his family compare to animals.[46] But this creeping fascism is scarcely acknowledged in the news media, presumably for fear of what it suggests about the deterioration of American democracy. As recent research demonstrates, the term “fascism” is rarely applied to the Trump administration, compared to less incendiary, more popular terms such as “populist” and “authoritarian.” [47]

Congress as a Check on the Doofus in Chief

Following from the ‘Doofus in Chief’ frame is the claim that Congress must intervene to provide firm guidance in articulating a coherent vision for U.S. foreign policy. This frame includes: attacks on Trump for lacking Congressional authorization for his April 2018 bombing of Syrian government targets following the Douma chemical attack; support for Congressional hearings on Trump’s Syria withdrawal plan; and the claim that Congress must be more active in general in determining how Trump uses military force.[48] Appeals for Congress to take an active role in reeling in Trump’s foreign policy appeared in two-thirds of the Times’ editorials on Syria.

As the Times opined in an April editorial, “a new [Congressional] authorization to deal with military operations against non-state actors like ISIS” was needed to mitigate the decisions of “the volatile and thoughtless Mr. Trump.”[49] Legislation, they wrote, “should also set limits on a president’s ability to wage war…Without that, Congress would be once again abdicating its responsibility and ceding broad powers to an impulsive president with dubious judgment.”[50] Of particular note here is the reason given for Congressional action – a “volatile and thoughtless” Trump regime. At issue is not the illegal U.S. use of force throughout the world, which has consistently been a problem with presidents prior to Trump, but with this president’s brash demeanor and lack of a liberal multilateralist vision for Syria. This very pragmatic attack on the president reveals the artificially constrictive nature of foreign policy commentary in the paper of record. One may embrace Trump’s reactionary and abrasive foreign policy agenda, or the liberal militarist and interventionist stance of the Times. But the discussion that is not allowed is one that stresses the choice of principled anti-imperialism, and that frames U.S. wars – unilateral or multilateral – as morally questionable.

U.S. “Humanitarianism” and the Kurdish Question

Central to the Times’ defense of war is the claim that U.S. withdrawal will enable Turkey to invade the autonomous Kurdish region in northeastern Syria. Turkey has long been set on suppressing Kurdish independence movements in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey itself, as it designates these separatists to be “terrorists.” The Turkish government developed a notoriously draconian record of “mystery killings” against thousands of Kurdish civilians in Turkey via government-sponsored death squads.[51] The government has napalmed Kurdish towns, wiping off the map thousands of villages, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.[52] It has attacked Kurdish communities in Iraq and Syria, most recently in the Syrian town of Afrin (January 2018), and threatening further action in Manbij, where U.S. special forces are based.[53] Following Trump’s announced withdrawal, Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan, again threatened to invade Manbij, intended to throw Syria’s Kurds out of the region and resettle Syrian refugees who migrated to Turkey.[54]Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reinforced his country’s commitment to assaulting Kurdish Syria when he announced (January 2019) that Turkey would intervene militarily in Northeastern Syria regardless of whether the U.S. stays in the country or not.[55]

The Times devoted sustained attention to the Kurdish question in the last year. It pointed to the centrality of the “30,000 member border force” of Kurdish fighters in Northeastern Syria who are “tasked with protecting the emerging semiautonomous Kurdish enclave.”[56]Trump’s withdrawal, the Times warned, “undermines” a “crucial American partner in fighting ISIS,” thereby endangering “American success against the Islamic State.”[57] In all, references to the struggles of Syria’s Kurds appeared in a third of the Times’ editorials.

There is much that is wrong with the Times’ ‘save the Kurds’ narrative. Most importantly, it contradicts the history of U.S.-Kurdish relations, which is marked by numerous betrayals. These include: sustained U.S. military and economic support for Turkey in the 1990s and onward despite its ethnic cleansing of Turkish Kurds; support for Saddam Hussein during his atrocities against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988, when the Butcher of Baghdad used chemical weapons against thousands of civilians; and George H. W. Bush’s refusal to support rebelling Kurdish forces in northern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, in favor of re-establishing Hussein’s iron fist over a nation facing rising domestic unrest.

Foreign policy aside, American journalists have a poor record of valuing Kurdish lives. Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds received little to no attention in the two-and-a-half years following Hussein’s 1988 attack on Halabja. It was not until President Bush invoked Hussein’s atrocities against the Kurds, following Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, that the U.S. media took serious notice of this atrocity – years too late to matter for Hussein’s victims.[58] Subdued human rights considerations continued in 2007, when Turkey bombed areas in northern Iraq that were controlled by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkish leaders deem a “terrorist” force. Despite reports of civilian deaths accompanying the bombing campaign, U.S. media depicted the country’s “anger” with the PKK as “understandable,” and called on the Kurds of northern Iraq to somehow find a way to live in “peace” with a military power that was bombing them out of existence.[59]

As with other propaganda frames, there were elements of truth to the Times’ invocation of Kurdish human rights concerns. Turkey is an existential threat to Kurdish civilians throughout the region. And the United States’ withdrawal is likely to further empower Turkey to assault the Kurds in northeastern Syria. This assault represents a serious threat to the leftist civil society that has developed in the region, via the “Rojava revolution,” which represents a significant front in the battle against ISIS. The Rojava revolution has been heralded by members of the American and international left for its embrace of women’s rights, communalism, anti-capitalism, and self-determination.[60] But there is little indication that this leftist uprising is valued by U.S. political leadership or the U.S. media. There were no references to the Kurdish civil society movement in the Times’ editorials, and to the extent that the Kurds were referenced at all, it was mainly in relation to their short-term strategic value to fighting ISIS. Trump’s own lack of concern for Syria’s Kurds, via his support for withdrawal, is further evidence that humanitarian concerns are not driving U.S. foreign policy.

Rather than being based on a sincere interest in protecting Kurdish lives, the Times’ references to the Kurds are a deeply cynical propaganda effort to put a human face on an increasingly devastating war. They correspond with the longstanding governmental and journalistic practice of politicizing Kurdish lives in pursuit of U.S. geopolitical objectives in the Middle East, independent of human rights concerns. If the concern in the region is human rights, then U.S. media should be devoting at least as much attention to the human rights crisis and famine in Yemen, in which 85,000 children have died of starvation and 13 million more are at risk of starving.[61]But Yemen’s troubles stem in large part from the actions of a U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, which has militarily intervened in Yemen’s civil war between the Houthi rebels and the government of Mansur Hadi, and blockaded rebel-controlled ports, thereby intensifying the humanitarian crisis. Revealingly, the human suffering imposed by a major U.S. ally are of significantly less interest to U.S. media than the strategic interests and faux human rights concerns that are invoked by officialdom in U.S. war zones. According to my analysis of the Nexis Uni news archive, references to Syria in the New York Times appeared in 3,159 articles in 2018, while Yemen references appeared in just 1,204 articles, translating into 162 percent greater coverage for the former over the latter. Human rights coverage has also been significantly politicized based on Saudi Arabia’s strategic value to the U.S. My review of Nexis Uni finds that throughout 2018, references to “war crimes” were twice as likely to appear in articles in the New York Times in relation to Assad’s actions in Syria, compared to Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen.[62] These results speak poorly to the claim that the U.S. has a genuine humanitarian interest in Syria.

Broader Lessons from the Syrian Civil War

Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s seminal work on media propaganda, argued that American journalists serve as willing tools of political officialdom.[63] There is little in the Syrian case study to contradict this conclusion, considering the New York Times’ role in politicizing human rights concerns, privileging official war narratives, and ignoring competing and critical viewpoints. One might argue that it is not the job of “objective” news reporters to offer militant challenges to the narratives offered by U.S. officialdom. But even if one accepts that point, there is little justification for defending a media system that systematically ignores non-establishment viewpoints, thereby preventing American news readers from engaging in a critical assessment of U.S. foreign policy. By echoing the interests of those holding political power, the editors at the Times reveal their propaganda role in seeking to indoctrinate Americans in favor of a pro-war agenda. There is little for journalists to be proud of concerning the infantilizing nature of such content. Without access to rigorous criticisms of U.S. wars, it is difficult to imagine news audiences forming political views that are independent of official agendas and propaganda.

Notes

[1] Barbara Starr, “U.S. General Disagrees with Trump over Syria Troop Pullout,” CNN.com, February 17, 2019,

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/15/politics/joseph-votel-troops-syria-intl/index.html

[2]In analyzing all of the New York Times’ editorials from 2018 that featured Syria, I relied on the Nexis Uninews archive. The criteria for search was straightforward. I looked at all editorials that mentioned the word “Syria” in 2018. Within that population of stories, an editorial had to reference Syria at least two times, and one of the references had to be within the first two paragraphs, to be included in my analysis. I found and analyzed 11 editorials in total.

[3]Exceptions to the rule when it comes to studying politics, media, and propaganda include: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the News Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988); Anthony R. DiMaggio, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror”(Lanham, MD: Lexington Publishers, 2008); and Scott Bonn, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the U.S. War in Iraq (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010). For documentation of the marginalization of propaganda studies in political communication, see: Eric Herring and Piers Robinson, “Too Polemical or Too Critical? Chomsky on the Study of the News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Review of International Studies29, no. 4 (2003): 553-568.

[4]Anthony R. DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).

[5]Editorial, “No Way to Run a War Policy,” April 6, 2018, New York Times, 22A; Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming. Just Ask His Advisers,” New York Times, December 21, 2018, 26A.

[6]Editorial, “Syria is Now Mr. Trump’s War,” New York Times, January 20, 2018, 22A.

[7]Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018.

[8]An editorial was included in the “ISIS-War on Terror” frame if it referenced ISIS, al Qaeda, or the Islamic State.

[9]Haley Britzky and Zachary Basu, “Global Terror Attacks Have Skyrocketed Since 9/11,” Axios.com, September 16, 2018,https://www.axios.com/global-terror-attacks-have-skyrocketed-since-911-34eec00f-ac8a-496f-8a30-3f3f6d054110.html

[10]Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Iraq Effect: War has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide,” Mother Jones, March 1, 2007, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/03/iraq-effect-war-iraq-and-its-impact-war-terrorism-pg-2/

[11]Jessica Stark Rivinius, “Terrorist Violence Decreases Worldwide in 2017, But Remains Historically High,” Start/National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, August 1, 2018,

https://www.start.umd.edu/news/terrorist-violence-decreases-worldwide-2017-remains-historically-high

[12]Deirdre Shesgreen, “State Department Says Global Terror Attacks Declined Last Year, but Threats Deemed More Complex,” USA Today, September 19, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/09/19/terror-attacks-worldwide-declined-2017-says-state-department/1355823002/u7

[13]The foundation for the global “war on terror” as an attempt to eradicate terror was established by President George W. Bush, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, in his September 20, 2001 address to the nation. Bush promised that: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” President Barack Obama reiterated this point, promising to “focus relentlessly on dismantling terrorist networks like al Qaeda and ISIL.”

[14]New America, “Terrorism in America After 9/11,” New America, 2018, https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism-in-america/what-threat-united-states-today/

[15]Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Impaired Driving: Get the Facts,” CDC.com, June 16, 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html

[16]Insurance Institute for Highway Safety/Highway Loss Data Institute, “General Statistics: Yearly Snapshot, 2017,” Iihs.org, 2017, https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/overview-of-fatality-facts

[17]Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Smoking and Tobacco Use: Diseases and Death,” CDC.com, February 20, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm

[18]Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Heart Disease Facts,” CDC.com, November 28, 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm

[19]Ed Pilkington, “Gun Deaths in U.S. Rise to Highest Level in 20 Years, Data Shows,” Guardian, December 13, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/13/us-gun-deaths-levels-cdc-2017

[20]Jennifer Williams, “White American Men are a Bigger Domestic Terrorist Threat than Muslim Foreigners,” Vox.com, October 2, 2017, https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/2/16396612/las-vegas-mass-shooting-terrorism-islam

[21]New America, “Terrorism in America After 9/11,” 2018.

[22]Bill Morlin, “Study Shows Two-Thirds of U.S. Terrorism Tied to Right-Wing Extremists,” Southern Poverty Law Center, September 12, 2018, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-two-thirds-us-terrorism-tied-right-wing-extremists

[23]Amnesty International, “The Circle of Hell: Barrel Bombs in Aleppo, Syria,” Amnesty UK, January 12, 2018, https://www.amnesty.org.uk/circle-hell-barrel-bombs-aleppo-syria

[24]United Nations Human Rights Council, “7^thReport of Commission on Inquiry on Syria,” United Nations, February 12, 2014, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/iicisyria/pages/documentation.aspx; BBC, “Syria War: What We Know About Douma ‘Chemical Attack,’” BBC.com, July 10, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43697084

[25]Human Rights Watch, “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture,” HRW.org, December 16, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities

[26]Lina Sinjab, “Syria Conflict: From Peaceful Protest to Civil War,” BBC.com, March 15, 2013,

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21797661

[27]Khalid Koser, “Seven Facts of Syria’s Displacement Crisis,” Brookings Institution, December 4, 2013,

[28]Editorial, “A Grim Endgame Looms in Syria,” New York Times, September 9, 2018, 8SR.

[29]Editorial, “A Grim Endgame Looms in Syria,” 2018.

[30]Editorial, “A Grim Endgame Looms in Syria,” 2018; Editorial, “Syria is Now Mr. Trump’s War,” 2018; Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” New York Times, April 10, 2018, 26A; Editorial, “U.S. Allies Conflict is ISIS’ Gain,” New York Times, February 1, 2018, 22A; Editorial, “Another Slaughter of Innocents,” New York Times, February 22, 2018, 22A.

[31]Editorial, “A Grim Endgame Looms in Syria,” 2018.

[32]DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War, 2010; Anthony R. DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015).

[33]Anthony DiMaggio, “Politicizing Victimhood: Human Rights as a Propaganda Weapon in Aleppo and Mosul,” Counterpunch, January 6, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/06/politicizing-victimhood-human-rights-as-a-propaganda-weapon-in-aleppo-and-mosul/

[34]Editorial, A Grim Endgame Looms in Syria, 2018.

[35] Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” New York Times, April 14, 2018, 18A.

[36]Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018.

[37]Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018.

[38]Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018.

[39]Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018; Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syrian Red Line Disappears,” New York Times, March 9, 2018, 26A; Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018.

[40]Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018.

[41]Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018.

[42]Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018.

[43]Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018; Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018.

[44]Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018.

[45]Kim Sengupta, “Donald Trump’s Air Strikes on Syria are Largely Symbolic – but Symbolic Actions Have Consequences,”Independent, April 7, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-syria-air-strikes-chemcial-attack-airbase-cruise-missiles-tomohawks-bashar-al-assad-a7671816.html

[46]For the Trump administration’s dehumanizing rhetoric on immigrants, see: Betsky Klein and Kevin Liptak, “Trump Ramps up Rhetoric: Dems Want ‘Illegal Immigrants’ to ‘Infest our Country,’” CNN.com, June 19, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/politics/trump-illegal-immigrants-infest/index.html; Jessica Durando, “Donald Trump Jr. Compares Border Wall to Zoo Fences that Hold Animals in Instagram Post,” USA Today, January 9, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/09/donald-trump-jr-compares-border-wall-zoo-instagram-post/2523385002/; For Trump’s call to divert disaster funds allocated by Congress to the wall, see: Natasha Bach, “Trump Could Divert Billions of Dollars Intended for Disaster Relief to Pay for Border Wall,” Fortune, January 11, 2019, http://fortune.com/2019/01/11/trump-border-wall-funding-disaster-relief-budget/; For Trump’s calls to revoke birthright citizenship, see: Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “President Want to Use Executive Order to End Birthright Citizenship,” New York Times, October 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/us/politics/trump-birthright-citizenship.html

[47]Anthony R. DiMaggio, Rebellion in America: Citizen Uprisings, the News Media, and the Politics of Plutocracy(New York: Routledge, 2019) Anthony DiMaggio, “The Shutdown as Fascist Creep: Profiling Right-Wing Extremism in America,” Counterpunch, January 4, 2019, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/04/the-shutdown-as-fascist-creep-profiling-right-wing-extremism-in-america/

[48]Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018; Editorial, “Syria is Now Mr. Trump’s War,” 2018; Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018; Editorial, “Mr. Trump Faces the Limits of Bluster,” 2018; Editorial, “Doubtful Limits on Presidential Power,” New York Times, April 25, 2018, 24A; Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syrian Red Line Disappears,” 2018; Editorial, “Mr. Trump has a Bad Word for Russia at Last,” New York Times, March 16, 2018, 26A.

[49]Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018.

[50]Editorial, “Mr. Trump’s Syria Strikes,” 2018.

[51]DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War, 2010.

[52]DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War, 2010.

[53]Natasha Turak, “Turkey Will Attack Kurdish Fighters in Syria Regardless of U.S. Withdrawal, Foreign Minister Says,” CNBC.com, January 10, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/01/10/turkey-will-attack-kurd-fighters-in-syria-regardless-of-us-withdrawal.html?fbclid=IwAR3aecXMe_kT7NhNOgCTUheCosdmFWQwptg97oDSgy-tdHCvLvsRkMPl1kk; Editorial, “U.S. Allies’ Conflict is ISIS’ Gain,” New York Times, February 1, 2018, 22A.

[54]Turak, “Turkey Will Attack Kurdish Fighters in Syria Regardless of U.S. Withdrawal,” 2019.

[55]Turak, “Turkey Will Attack Kurdish Fighters in Syria Regardless of U.S. Withdrawal,” 2019.

[56]Editorial, “U.S. Allies’ Conflict is ISIS’ Gain,” 2018.

[57]Editorial, “No Way to Run a War Policy,” 2018; Editorial, “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria is Alarming,” 2018; Editorial, “U.S. Allies’ Conflict is ISIS’ Gain,” 2018.

[58]DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War, 2010: 98.

[59]DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War, 2010: 99-100.

[60]Thomas Schmidinger, Rojava: Revolution, War, and the Future of Syria’s Kurds(London: Pluto Press, 2018); Edward Hunt, “A Revolution at Risk,” Jacobin, October 4, 2018, https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/rojava-isis-syrian-kurds-united-states-military

[61]Hanna Summers, “Yemen on Brink of ‘World’s Worst Famine in 100 Years’ if War Continues,” Guardian, October 15, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/15/yemen-on-brink-worst-famine-100-years-un; Palko Karasz, “85,000 Children in Yemen Have Died of Starvation,” New York Times, November 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/world/middleeast/yemen-famine-children.html

[62]Using Nexis Uni, I searched every section of the New York Times, so as to provide comprehensive measurements for the amount of attention that has been devoted to Yemen and Syria. I first, compiled all stories that referenced “Yemen” and “Saudi Arabia,” then examined within that population of stories the number that referenced “Saudi Arabia” within 20 words of “war crime” or “war crimes.” I then examined the number of stories that referenced “Syria” and “Assad,” and then within that search looked at the number of stories that mentioned “Assad” within 20 words of “war crime” or “war crimes.” In total, 1.5 percent of the articles on Yemen also referenced Saudi Arabia and war crimes. This is in comparison to 3 percent of Syria articles referencing Assad and war crimes.

[63]Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 2008.

Anthony DiMaggio is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. He holds a PhD in political communication, and is the author of the newly released: The Politics of Persuasion: Economic Policy and Media Bias in the Modern Era (Paperback, 2018), and Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11 (Paperback: 2016). He can be reached at: anthonydimaggio612@gmail.com

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/20/withdrawal-pains-and-syrian-civil-war-an-analysis-of-u-s-media-discourse/

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