boneyard bill
Veteran Member
Thomas Friedman is an opinion columnist for the NY Times. So one might ask how a guy can be accused of spreading propaganda when he's only giving his own opinion? Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave the answer a long time ago. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion," Moynihan noted, "but everyone is not entitled to his own facts."
Disinformation is propaganda whether it appears in an opinion piece or a more straight-forward news piece, and Friedman is engaged in a good deal of disinformation in his recent opinion piece in which he asserts that "Putin blinked."
Say what? Those "people of influence" included many armed street thugs with ties to the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and others were ultra-Ukrainian nationalists who want to make Ukrainians the ruling class despite the fact that they are a minority of the population. Meanwhile, the government that was overthrown had been democratically elected in a fair election supervised by international monitors. This may have been a "bottom up" revolution, but it was a revolution by the bottom feeders not the ordinary people of Ukraine.
Friedman refers to the unarmed protestors in eastern Ukraine as "pro-Putin thugs" while ignoring their heavily armed opponents who gunned them down in the streets and, in Odessa, even set fire to the building where they had fled for protection. This is like referring to all those civil rights protestors in Mississippi back in the sixties as "thugs" while ignoring all the attack dogs that the police unloaded on them.
Friedman also notes that the majority of Ukrainians do not want to join Russia, but that is nation-wide poll, not one limited to eastern Ukraine and, in any case, attitudes can change quickly when you're being gunned down by western Ukrainians. But what is really laughable is his reference to the "pro-European" candidate who won the election. The only people allowed on the ballot were pro-European candidates. The election was a farce whereas Friedman would have you believe that it has some significance. Of course, the whole point of the election was propaganda intended to legitimize an illegitimate government, but that is no excuse for Friedman to ignore the underlying reality which he can't, or at least shouldn't, be unaware of if he claims to speak with any kind of authority.
Meanwhile, those armed street thugs are still occupying the Maidan! The barricades have not been removed, and the government buildings are still surrounded. So the government is still, quite literally, "under the gun."
Wow. The whole of the western media has been criticizing Putin for not pulling his troops away from the Ukrainian border and now that he does it, Friedman is insisting that Putin blinked. Apparently Friedman thinks that Putin shouldn't have withdrawn the troops. And he further "blinked" because he proposed to negotiate a solution to the Ukrainian problem. But Putin has been proposing negotiations all along. It is the US that has been intransigent on that point.
The propaganda never ends. Again, we get the claim of Russian "aggression" in Crimea, but there was no aggression. Crimea was an autonomous republic with its own Parliament and its own President. They had voted to affiliate with Ukraine in 1992 after the break-up of the Soviet Union. It is hardly a surprise that Russian majority would vote to secede after a coup d'état in Kiev that put in power a bunch of extremist thugs who hate Russians. All Putin did was make the Russian forces, already there by treaty, available for the defense of the newly independent republic. Nor should it be a surprise that they would vote to join Russia to assure further protection.
There is no indication that Europe has lifted a finger to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. Meanwhile, the deal with China is a $400 billion deal! Of course, they're going to give China a discount for that kind of cash. But the deal had been years in the making. It was hardly a last-minute "desperate" move on Putin's part.
Nor does Friedman mention that Putin announced that he would now sell oil for rubles, thus putting a HUGE dent in the petro-dollar's status. Since other countries no longer need dollars to buy oil, the dollar has no where to go but down.
Talk about getting things upside down. The "bargain gas deal" with China moves the two countries closer together. Now China has agreed to build a bridge connecting Crimea to Russia thus moving the two countries even closer together. They have already long ago resolved their border dispute problem. They have already formed an economic alliance through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Meanwhile, Chinese fear of western expansion has led them to support Russia in the Ukrainian crisis and India has also backed Russia. So much for "isolating" Putin.
Evidence that Europe is doing anything at all to reduce its dependence on Russian gas in entirely lacking. That is nothing but a wet dream in Washington centered around a non-existent US surplus of gas due to fracking.
Meanwhile, this entire crisis has driven Russia and China closer together. We've essentially created a new Cold War. That's a great thing if you happen to be the US military industrial complex because you can now insist on the need for more defense spending to counter this new "threat" that we have created. But it is destined to fail because we simply don't have the money to maintain the complex that we have much less make it larger.
Good luck getting the Ukrainian people to hold their oligarchs to account. They haven't done it so far, but the fact is that they are the only ones who can do it. We have nothing to offer in that regard so including that is the "solution" to Ukraine's problems is just a way of justifying more US interference.
The last thing Ukraine needs is to come under the grip of the I.M.F. They will almost certainly include a demand for a devaluation of the hryvnia while will lead to a drastic decline in Ukrainian living standards. What Ukraine needs is to forget the I.M.F. and simply default on their debts and live within their means. That will means austerity, which will mean less government benefits, but that would be far less damaging than an across-the-board decline in living standards.
Oh please, that gas bill isn't so much a squeeze on Ukraine as it is a squeeze on the US and Europe through the I.M.F. "You broke it, you bought it, so now pay up." And it is the west that is going to be in a constant squeeze precisely because Ukraine needs Russian gas and will for as long as we can imagine. Meanwhile, Putin has been pushing for negotiations for a long time with not much of a response from the west.
If this were merely a case of Friedman being as clueless as the State Department about running foreign policy we could write this off as yet another attempt to put lipstick on a pig. But as Moynihan noted, we are not entitled to our own facts, and Friedman has to distort the factual situation to make his lipstick cling. That is what makes this not merely a silly analysis but a egregious work of propaganda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/opinion/friedman-putin-blinked.html?_r=1
Disinformation is propaganda whether it appears in an opinion piece or a more straight-forward news piece, and Friedman is engaged in a good deal of disinformation in his recent opinion piece in which he asserts that "Putin blinked."
Say what? Those "people of influence" included many armed street thugs with ties to the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and others were ultra-Ukrainian nationalists who want to make Ukrainians the ruling class despite the fact that they are a minority of the population. Meanwhile, the government that was overthrown had been democratically elected in a fair election supervised by international monitors. This may have been a "bottom up" revolution, but it was a revolution by the bottom feeders not the ordinary people of Ukraine.
Friedman refers to the unarmed protestors in eastern Ukraine as "pro-Putin thugs" while ignoring their heavily armed opponents who gunned them down in the streets and, in Odessa, even set fire to the building where they had fled for protection. This is like referring to all those civil rights protestors in Mississippi back in the sixties as "thugs" while ignoring all the attack dogs that the police unloaded on them.
Friedman also notes that the majority of Ukrainians do not want to join Russia, but that is nation-wide poll, not one limited to eastern Ukraine and, in any case, attitudes can change quickly when you're being gunned down by western Ukrainians. But what is really laughable is his reference to the "pro-European" candidate who won the election. The only people allowed on the ballot were pro-European candidates. The election was a farce whereas Friedman would have you believe that it has some significance. Of course, the whole point of the election was propaganda intended to legitimize an illegitimate government, but that is no excuse for Friedman to ignore the underlying reality which he can't, or at least shouldn't, be unaware of if he claims to speak with any kind of authority.
Meanwhile, those armed street thugs are still occupying the Maidan! The barricades have not been removed, and the government buildings are still surrounded. So the government is still, quite literally, "under the gun."
Wow. The whole of the western media has been criticizing Putin for not pulling his troops away from the Ukrainian border and now that he does it, Friedman is insisting that Putin blinked. Apparently Friedman thinks that Putin shouldn't have withdrawn the troops. And he further "blinked" because he proposed to negotiate a solution to the Ukrainian problem. But Putin has been proposing negotiations all along. It is the US that has been intransigent on that point.
The propaganda never ends. Again, we get the claim of Russian "aggression" in Crimea, but there was no aggression. Crimea was an autonomous republic with its own Parliament and its own President. They had voted to affiliate with Ukraine in 1992 after the break-up of the Soviet Union. It is hardly a surprise that Russian majority would vote to secede after a coup d'état in Kiev that put in power a bunch of extremist thugs who hate Russians. All Putin did was make the Russian forces, already there by treaty, available for the defense of the newly independent republic. Nor should it be a surprise that they would vote to join Russia to assure further protection.
There is no indication that Europe has lifted a finger to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. Meanwhile, the deal with China is a $400 billion deal! Of course, they're going to give China a discount for that kind of cash. But the deal had been years in the making. It was hardly a last-minute "desperate" move on Putin's part.
Nor does Friedman mention that Putin announced that he would now sell oil for rubles, thus putting a HUGE dent in the petro-dollar's status. Since other countries no longer need dollars to buy oil, the dollar has no where to go but down.
Talk about getting things upside down. The "bargain gas deal" with China moves the two countries closer together. Now China has agreed to build a bridge connecting Crimea to Russia thus moving the two countries even closer together. They have already long ago resolved their border dispute problem. They have already formed an economic alliance through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Meanwhile, Chinese fear of western expansion has led them to support Russia in the Ukrainian crisis and India has also backed Russia. So much for "isolating" Putin.
Evidence that Europe is doing anything at all to reduce its dependence on Russian gas in entirely lacking. That is nothing but a wet dream in Washington centered around a non-existent US surplus of gas due to fracking.
Meanwhile, this entire crisis has driven Russia and China closer together. We've essentially created a new Cold War. That's a great thing if you happen to be the US military industrial complex because you can now insist on the need for more defense spending to counter this new "threat" that we have created. But it is destined to fail because we simply don't have the money to maintain the complex that we have much less make it larger.
Good luck getting the Ukrainian people to hold their oligarchs to account. They haven't done it so far, but the fact is that they are the only ones who can do it. We have nothing to offer in that regard so including that is the "solution" to Ukraine's problems is just a way of justifying more US interference.
The last thing Ukraine needs is to come under the grip of the I.M.F. They will almost certainly include a demand for a devaluation of the hryvnia while will lead to a drastic decline in Ukrainian living standards. What Ukraine needs is to forget the I.M.F. and simply default on their debts and live within their means. That will means austerity, which will mean less government benefits, but that would be far less damaging than an across-the-board decline in living standards.
Oh please, that gas bill isn't so much a squeeze on Ukraine as it is a squeeze on the US and Europe through the I.M.F. "You broke it, you bought it, so now pay up." And it is the west that is going to be in a constant squeeze precisely because Ukraine needs Russian gas and will for as long as we can imagine. Meanwhile, Putin has been pushing for negotiations for a long time with not much of a response from the west.
If this were merely a case of Friedman being as clueless as the State Department about running foreign policy we could write this off as yet another attempt to put lipstick on a pig. But as Moynihan noted, we are not entitled to our own facts, and Friedman has to distort the factual situation to make his lipstick cling. That is what makes this not merely a silly analysis but a egregious work of propaganda.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/opinion/friedman-putin-blinked.html?_r=1
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