Deconstructing Elliott Abrams on Venezuela — Peter Bolton

On June 26, the Trump administration’s so-called “Special Representative for Venezuela,” Elliott Abrams gave a five-minute update to reporters about the development of the coup attempt against the government of Nicolas Maduro, followed by a brief Q&A session. The event, held at the US State Department in Washington, was textbook Abrams: full of lies, loaded language, double standards and breathtaking hypocrisy. Below, I deconstruct each of his points by providing rebuttals, context and regional comparison.

Elliott Abrams as hit man.

Counterpunch

Deconstructing Elliott Abrams on Venezuela

Peter Bolton

Are Warnings About Chemical Warfare in Syria Another ‘Weapon of Mass Distraction’? Sharmini Peries interviews Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Video and transcript.

LARRY WILKERSON: I think what we’re seeing here is a resurrection, if you will, of the neoconservative agenda. Syria was to be next. Iran after that, following Iraq of course, the invasion in 2003 which went so haywire that they were unable to follow up quickly with Syria. Well, now we’re back to Syria, but we were back to it with a president who was very reluctant to use major U.S. forces, Barack Obama of course. So, we are looking- we the neoconservatives, John Bolton amongst them- we’re looking for an opportunity to reengage with Syria, particularly now that Russia and Iran, our principles target here, have gotten so entrenched with Assad’s forces.

So, this is it. Looking for every excuse, any excuse, all excuses to reopen U.S. operations, major U.S. operations against Assad in Syria, always realizing that the ultimate target is Iran.…

The ultimate question here is what is the president of the United States thinking and doing? What is he asking for in terms of information and the kind of intelligence that would give him some insight as to whether or not what he’s being told, first of all, is accurate, and second, whether it makes any sense. He was opposed to this. President Obama became opposed to it, whether it makes any sense to put major U.S. operations in in place with regard to Syria. Do we jump back in now and try to regain lost territory? And for what reason, for what purpose?

Ultimately, I know what the insidious purpose is, it’s to unseat Assad and then take on Iran. But I don’t see, I don’t see the president buying that unless he’s even more an idiot than perhaps people think he is.

Or do they have something on him?

I think that’s a recipe for our getting back into the region in such a significant way that we are there for the next generation. And I don’t mean that we’re there at Al Udeid in Qatar and the big field in Saudi Arabia or Emirates or wherever. I mean we’re there with significant force, and we’re being attrited day after day after day, both in terms of dollars and in terms of lives. I mean, it looks as if we’re where there’s a possibility for us digging in deeply in Southwest Asia, something that I spent my entire professional career arguing against. And thank God, so did most of the generals and admirals around me. We now seem to think that Iraq was not good enough, we need to jump right back in and get mired even deeper in this morass....

TRNN
Are Warnings About Chemical Warfare in Syria Another ‘Weapon of Mass Distraction’?

Sharmini Peries interviews Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Eric Zuesse — Stephen Cohen’s Misrepresentations About the 2014 Coup in Ukraine

If Dr. Cohen has any objections to the factuality of any of the allegations that I have made here, or to any of the documentation that I have linked to as the sources for these allegations, then I publicly welcome him to state what those objections are. Otherwise, I shall continue to take strong exception to Dr. Cohen’s account of these matters.

Fair enough.

Washington's Blog
Stephen Cohen’s Misrepresentations About the 2014 Coup in Ukraine

Eric Zuesse

Alexander Mercouris — Democrat Senators publish a deeply disturbing and profoundly racist report about Russia

More fake news from the Democrats.

At its most basic, the report must be seen as a shot in the bitter partisan conflict which is currently raging in the US between President Trump and his Democratic Party opponents.

That the primary target of the report is actually President Trump – who continues to say that he wants better relations with Russia – is confirmed by these words in the report....

While this may be political on the part of Democrat and Never Trumpers, it also reflects the view of the US establishment and deep state, as well as of corporate media.

How long will the European allies of the US go along with this paranoia when it is hurting Europeans in the pocketbook? Pushback against sanctions hurting Europe more than Russia and not affecting the US substantially is already occurring. At a minimum, this crazy is a recipe for losing Europe.

Russia Feed
Democrat Senators publish a deeply disturbing and profoundly racist report about Russia
Alexander Mercouris

Scott Ritter — Propaganda Exercise Aiming to Prove Iran Supplied Missiles Backfires

Did Nikki Haley lie to the world about Iranian missiles being used against Saudi Arabia by Houthis of Yemen? Or was Haley played like Colin Powell was? Scott Ritter argues in the affirmative.

(Why it would make a difference if true eludes me when almost all the weapons being used against Yemen are of US origin.)

The American Conservative
Propaganda Exercise Aiming to Prove Iran Supplied Missiles Backfires
Scott Ritter

Chris Floyd — Don Draper Rules: Russian Ads and American Madness

Not even Glenn Beck would draw so many far-fetched connections.

This is my impression, too.

Conventional economic studies are rigorous formally but based on questionable assumptions about the real world and little if any hard evidence.

The sociology of Russiagate is similar in a different way since there is zero rigor. However, it is based on hugely ideological tacit assumptions and the conclusions are more allegation based on inference than chargeable offenses based on evidence.

Both are just different forms of BS.

"American madness," indeed.

However, this is not just another rant. Floyd is no Trump or Putin fan and he makes a lot of good points about why this madness is bad for America and should end immediately.

If there is evidence of chargeable offenses, let the authorities bring charges and those accuse have their day in court. Otherwise, STFU!

Second, it is driving us toward more and more constrictions on free speech, while also putting tech companies in charge of deciding on the political "trustworthiness" of websites, news organizations and individuals. Is this what we want? I'm not talking about open hate sites or calls for violence; I'm talking about the parameters we're seeing used by the many groups suddenly springing up to determine “Russian influence.” Some of these guidelines include “material critical of US policy in Syria” or of US policy in general, or even stories about BLM or the pipeline protests. These groups — some of them anonymous, some of them made up of neocons and warhawks — are supplying the “information” being used in most news stories and Congressional hearings on the subject. Is this what we want? Google and a gaggle of anonymous militarists to determine whether we are following the correct political line or not? To be able to accuse anyone who questions US policy of being a Russian dupe or even a Russian agent? Is this really where we want to go? Because that’s where many Democrats are taking us.

Empire Burlesque
Don Draper Rules: Russian Ads and American Madness

Chris Floyd

Gordon M. Hahn — Who’s Been Interfering in Whose Politics?

Setting the record straight.

We are hearing much about Russian efforts to interfere in American politics. This is justifiable if overstated. Less justified is the deadly silence in the Western media regarding persistent post-cold war American meddling in Russian domestic politics, including the same interference by Americans and the American government in Russian elections that Russians and the Russian government are accused of regarding the recent U.S. elections. A key instrument is America’s and the West’s elaborate and robust ‘strategic communications’ or propaganda network, spearheaded by Radio Free Liberty/Free Europe (RFERL). Aside from propaganda efforts, direct involvement has occurred in Russian and other countries’ internal politics.

Indeed, U.S. government entities acknowledge this openly in their internal discussions. For example, a Marine Corps University Journal article explicitly stated that democracy-promotion and stratcomm support prodemocratic parties “to bring about a crisis” in regimes deemed authoritarian in order “to encourage a democratic transition.” In examining democracy-promotion’s “international dimension,” the article discusses “coercive” and “intrusive” measures in support of creating democratic regimes in authoritarian states as well as more benign methods of “prodemocratic public diplomacy.”

Its author defined democracy promotion as “combined action of government agencies and private partners” that seeks to “influence opinion and mobilize the public in ways that support interests and policies of foreign states” within the target state. Its “essence” is “strategic communication,” which is modern-speak for propaganda and “aims to capture the hearts and minds of the general public in recipient countries” (my emphasis from Alessandra Pinna, “The International Dimension of Democratization: Actors, Motivations, and Strategies,” Marine Corps University Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 27-57, at pp. 49-50 and 55). More importantly, the US has a long history of actually destabilizing regimes to the benefit of its own interests, not just democracy....

Russian and Eurasian Politics
Who’s Been Interfering in Whose Politics?
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Demonizing Venezuela’s Revolution — Dennis Bernstein interviews Daniel Kovali

Exposing faked news about Venezuela, although it is also about Latin America as a whole and the US attempt to control the region to advance the interests of the US.

Dennis Bernstein: You just got back from Venezuela. Why were you there?

Daniel Kovalik: I was invited as an election observer for the regional elections that took place on October 15.

Dennis Bernstein: Jimmy Carter has said that these elections in Venezuela were some of the fairest in the world.

Daniel Kovalik: Yes, he said they have the best election process in the world. I agree with him. They have an incredible uniform process throughout the country. As you know, the US does not. Every state chooses its own way to vote. In Venezuela, they have the same machines throughout the country. They are pretty much foolproof. You have to use a fingerprint to even activate the machine. You get a paper receipt, which you put into a box after you have cast an electronic vote. And if people are unhappy afterward, they can ask for an audit.

Dennis Bernstein: How does that compare to the situation in other countries?

Daniel Kovalik: I would say it is better than in the United States. We know from people like Greg Palast that something like a million people might have been wrongfully thrown off the voter rolls through a process called “cross check.” You see gerrymandering, which even the courts have found to be racist. Venezuela is not affected by that sort of thing.

One thing the Bolivarian Revolution has done under Chavez was to create this very tight, open democratic process. The people are very proud of their system. It pains me to read the mainstream press, which is very critical of Venezuela....

Consortium News
Demonizing Venezuela’s Revolution
Dennis Bernstein interviews Daniel Kovalik, Adjunct Professor teaching International Human Rights Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Robert Parry — Russia-gate Jumps the Shark

A key distinction between propaganda and journalism is that manipulative propaganda relies on exaggeration and deceit while honest journalism provides context and perspective. But what happens when the major news outlets of the world’s superpower become simply conveyor belts for warmongering propaganda?

That is a question that the American people now face as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and virtually the entire mainstream media hype ridiculously minor allegations about Russia’s “meddling” in American politics into front-page hysteria.

For instance, on Tuesday, the major news outlets were filled with the latest lurid chapter of Russia-gate, how Google, the Internet’s dominant search engine, had detected suspected “Russia-linked” accounts that bought several thousand dollars worth of ads.

The Washington Post ran this item as front-page news entitled “Google finds links to Russian disinformation in its services,” with the excited lede paragraph declaring: “Russian operatives bought ads across several of Google’s services without the company’s knowledge, the latest evidence that their campaign to influence U.S. voters was as sprawling as it was sophisticated in deploying the technology industry’s most powerful tools.”

Wow! That sounds serious. However, if you read deeply enough into the story, you discover that the facts are a wee bit less dramatic.…

See definition of "yellow press."

The alternative explanation, of course, is unthinkable at least within the confines of “acceptable thought”; the alternative being that there might be no sinister Kremlin campaign to poison American politics or to install Trump in the White House, that what we are witnessing is a mainstream stampede similar to what preceded the Iraq War in 2003.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” G. W. Bush altered it to, "

...fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” I guess this is a test to see which is true.

The problem with the proof in evidence is that Russia is not Iraq and actually does have WMD and parity with the US.

Of course, the big difference between Iraq in 2003 and Russia in 2017 is that as catastrophic as the Iraq invasion was, it pales against the potential for thermo-nuclear war that could lie at the end of this latest hysteria.

This is way beyond irresponsible.

Consortium News
Russia-gate Jumps the Shark

Robert Parry

See also

Citadels of Paranoia: An Occupation by Phantoms

Phil Rockstroh

Moon of Alabama
"Russia Interfered!" - By Purchasing Anti-Trump Ads?

Pam Martens and Russ Martens — Blaming Russia for Major U.S. Problems Raises Risk of Not Seeing Enemy Within

There are a lot of tainted executives on Wall Street, still ensconced in their corner offices, who would like to redirect the public’s attention away from their serial crime spree and sacking of the U.S. economy by finding a new target at which Americans can focus their anger. While Russia may have attempted to illegally interfere in U.S. elections, it did not put a gun to Wall Street’s head and order it to transform America into a plutocracy for the one percent. Angry Americans are right to continue to demand serious and lasting reforms that will deliver a more just and equitable America for all of its citizens.

There's whole a lot of blame deflection and scapegoating going on. The Clinton campaign started it and now the entire establishment has piled on.

If the American public is stupid enough to fall for this, it deserves what it gets. But the American public has pretty consistently fallen for a lot of stupid stuff. What will it take to jump the shark? The pundits and presstitutes that are the voices of the establishment are determined to push out of the envelope to the edge to find where the limit lies and then backtrack a bit to consolidate for another push.

Wall Street On Parade

Blaming Russia for Major U.S. Problems Raises Risk of Not Seeing Enemy Within

Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Phil Butler — “Meathead” is Running the Committee to Investigate Russia

The composition of the Committee to Investigate Russia disqualifies it from the job, not to mention the funding. It has propaganda machine written all over it. The name should be Committee to Demonize Russia.

NEO
“Meathead” is Running the Committee to Investigate Russia

Phil Butler

Gordon M. Hahn — Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western Stratcomm

Much is being made about the ostensibly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Russian propaganda machine. In the Western view, it decides Western elections and threatens the ‘global liberal order’. In fact, an anti-Putin media organ has published a comparison of the resources devoted to propaganda or ‘strategic communications (stratcomm) by Russian and just the US (excluding European) governments. It demonstrates that the American propaganda machine alone is approximately 3-4 times more robust than Moscow’s (https://meduza.io/en/short/2017/09/14/comparing-russian-and-american-government-propaganda).

Moreover, the US stratcomm machine is growing in leaps and bounds ever since the Ukraine crisis provoked by endless NATO expansion. Just one example, is a NATO-tied American think tank, the Central European Policy Center, funded by US tax payer dollars, is like many other such institutes springing up in the US and Europe specializing in strategic communications to advance the mission of NATO expansion. For the last quarter of a century that expansion eastward to Russia’s borders has undermined Western-Russian relations and Russia’s early post-Cold War Western trajectory, alienated Russia from democracy and the free market, and ushered in the poorly labeled ‘New Cold War.’ CEPA’s stratcomm is representative of a general deficient US stratcomm deployed by a series of old and new ‘research institutes’ and media spread across the frontier between Russia and Eastern/Central Europe.

A recent CEPA stratcomm piece demonstrates the irony that while Washington and Brusslels decry Moscow’s propaganda on RT, by trolls, and other media, they lag behind in such activity only by the quality of their own strategic communications....

Russian and Eurasian Politics
Russian Propaganda Machine: Much Ado About Little as Compared with Western StratcommGordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Leonid Bershidsky — Wanted: Russia Experts, No Expertise Required; Jingoism has replaced scholarship and a spirit of real inquiry when it comes to Russia. That’s a mistake.

There's a lot to unpack about the newly formed Committee to Investigate Russia, which aims to "help Americans recognize and understand the gravity of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy." Perhaps its most striking feature is that no Russia experts are involved; that's a sign of the times...

No experts needed other than in propaganda.

… as another eminent Russia expert -- Mark Galeotti, who used teach at New York University and now works at the Institute of International Relations in Prague -- tweeted recently, "Clearly any attempt to introduce nuance is tantamount to treason."

Then there is projection.

Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, whose name repeatedly comes up in connection with Russia's embrace of non-military warfare, asserted in a 2013 speech that Russia needed to pay close attention to the way the U.S. combines military action with information campaigns, diplomacy and economic sanctions. Roger McDermott, an expert on Russian military and security issues, debunked talk of a "Gerasimov doctrine" in a comprehensive paper last year. "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the current chasm that divides Russia and NATO is the mythical interpretation that Moscow has devised a lethal and new hybrid warfare doctrine," he wrote.

Bloomberg View

Wanted: Russia Experts, No Expertise Required; Jingoism has replaced scholarship and a spirit of real inquiry when it comes to Russia. That’s a mistake.
Leonid Bershidsky

The Saker — US propaganda on Russian TV

Quite a while ago I wrote an article entitled “Counter-Propaganda, Russian style” in which I tried to show that far from censoring the russophobic propaganda of the AngloZionist Empire, the Russians try hard to give it as much visibility in Russia as possible. The reason for that it very simple: by showing the Empire’s propaganda the Russian media provides incontrovertible evidence of the hatred the Empire has for Russia and for the Russian people. This very slick counter-propaganda technique has very much contributed to the quasi-disappearance of pro-Western feelings in Russia (I estimate the total amount of pro-Western people in Russia at somewhere in the range of 3%-5% max)....

The Vineyard of the Saker

US propaganda on Russian TV

The Saker

Branko Milanovic — How I lost my past

Yet it is very difficult to tell these other stories. History is written, we are told, by the victors and stories that do not fit the pattern narrative are rejected. This is especially the case, I have come to believe, in the United States that has created during the Cold War a formidable machinery of open and concealed propaganda. That machinery cannot be easily turned off. It cannot produce narratives that do not agree with the dominant one because no one would believe them or buy such books. There is an almost daily and active rewriting of history to which many people from Eastern Europe participate: some because they do have such memories, others because they force themselves (often successfully) to believe that they have such memories. Others can remain with their individual memories which, at their passing, will be lost. The victory shall be complete.…

Global Inequality
How I lost my past
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Gregory Clark — False claims and false flag stories

The April 4 incident is just the last in a long list of false flag or false claim incidents used to justify the aggressive use of U.S. power. They began back in 1960 with Operation Mongoose in Cuba, the faked 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident of the coast of Vietnam, claimed WMD in Iraq and now what we see in Syria. We also see the easily refutable campaigns to demonize alleged enemies, Russia especially. For example, over alleged Russian aggression in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine we need only read the text of the 2015 Minsk Agreement seeking to end the dispute to see that continued hostilities are entirely the responsibility of a Ukraine that still refuses the constitutional amendments to give the area promised autonomy. But you will not see anything about this in the biased U.S. media, which loses no opportunity to carry on about “Russian aggression.”

Equally alarming is the way the biased U.S. media now accuse the foreign media seeking to correct these falsehoods as biased and deserving of suppression, the RT (Russia Today) channel especially....

The Japan Times — Opinion
False claims and false flag stories
Western governments and media are free to say whatever they like, no matter how phoney

Gregory Clark | former Australian diplomat long involved in East-West diplomatic relations who now lives in Japan

Robert Parry — How US Flooded the World with Psyops

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States....

Until the 1980s, psyops were normally regarded as a military technique for undermining the will of an enemy force by spreading lies, confusion and terror....

Essentially, the psyops idea was to play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily manipulated and controlled. But the challenges facing the Reagan administration in the 1980s led to its determination that peacetime psyops were also needed and that the target populations had to include the American public.

The Reagan administration was obsessed with the problems left behind by the 1970s’ disclosures of government lying about the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA abuses both in overthrowing democratically elected governments and spying on American dissidents. This so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” produced profound skepticism from regular American citizens as well as journalists and politicians when President Reagan tried to sell his plans for intervention in the civil wars then underway in Central America, Africa and elsewhere.…

The more recently released documents – declassified between 2013 and 2017 – show how these earlier Casey-Raymond efforts merged with the creation of a formal psyop bureaucracy in 1986 also under the control of Raymond’s NSC operation. The combination of the propaganda and psyop programs underscored the powerful capability that the U.S. government developed more than three decades ago for planting slanted, distorted or fake news. (Casey died in 1987; Raymond died in 2003.) 

Over those several decades, even as the White House changed hands from Republicans to Democrats to Republicans to Democrats, the momentum created by William Casey and Walter Raymond continued to push these “perception management/psyops” strategies forward. In more recent years, the wording has changed, giving way to more pleasing euphemisms, like “smart power” and “strategic communications.” But the idea is still the same: how you can use propaganda to sell U.S. government policies abroad and at home.

I've left out the details, which are extremely interesting and involve names that most Americans with memories extending to the Reagan years will recognize. Many of them are still active.

Consortium News
How US Flooded the World with Psyops
Robert Parry

Glenn Greenwald — The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook

I. F. Stone. If you don't know who he was, you should. Before there were blogs, there was I. F. Stone.

The Intercept
The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook

Glenn Greenwald

See also

Russia’s role in Trump’s election has led to a boom in Putinology. But do all these theories say more about us than Putin?

The Guardian
Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin
Keith Gessen

Melvin A. Goodman — Learning from the Cold War to prevent war with Russia today

Backgrounder in conjuring up enemies and manufacturing consent to fight them.

Summary: Clinton has stocked her foreign policy team with advisors belligerent and reckless, eager for conflict with Russia. The military-industrial complex’s propaganda mills work to arouse fear and hatred of Russia, as they did during the Cold War. Let’s learn from that history before we starting risk a terrible war. We were told mostly false stories about the Soviet Union. How accurate are those about Russia? {This updates my post from Oct 2009.}

Fabius Maximus
Learning from the Cold War to prevent war with Russia today

Melvin A. Goodman | senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

See also

LobeLog
The Doctrine of Armed Exceptionalism

William Hurting

RT — RT beats internet to break #Podestaemails6 & everybody loses their minds (conspiracy theory warning)

RT breaking the latest Podesta emails before WikiLeaks sparked accusations of collusion with the whistleblowing organization. Actually, no conspiracies were involved – just good journalism.

The US Establishment is losing its collective mind over the leaks that showing it up for what it is — a conspiracy against the people.

RT
RT beats internet to break #Podestaemails6 & everybody loses their minds (conspiracy theory warning)

See also

#PodestaEmails7: WikiLeaks releases 7th batch of emails from Clinton campaign chair