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The New Russophobia 2

NDPP
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continued from The New Russophobia here:

http://rabble.ca/babble/media/new-russophobia?page=14

 

Canada 'The Most Anti-Russian State in the Western Alliance and G7'- Aleksey Pushkov

http://rt.com/politics/270652-russia-canada-sanctions-pushkov/

 

"We should not pretend that nothing is happening and we should develop a complex of reciprocal measures aimed at Canada,' MP Aleksey Pushkov stated at Tuesday's parliamentary session.

He added that today Canada was 'the most anti-Russian state in the Western alliance as a whole and definitely also in the G-7 group of nations.'

He went on to blast the Canadian government of Prime Minister Harper for deliberately aggravating the relations with Russia in order to artificially boost its image in the international arena.

'The government of this country attempts to attach some importance to [its] very tiny role in international politics. They compensate [for] the obvious lack of weight and authority with increased activity in the sphere of sanctions policy,' Pushkin said.

He reminded that previously Harper had ruled out the possibility of Russia's membership in G7 and by this promoted the thesis that the confrontation between Russia and the West was necessary. 'In my view, we must respond to this, Pushkov told fellow lawmakers.

'Harper was yearning for Ukrainian-Canadian votes so much he sacrificed the future of their own aircraft industry that had dreamt of a deal with Russia,' Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin said.."

 

Comments

NDPP
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Russian Diplomats Blast Latest Canadian Sanctions as 'Sad Deja-Vu'

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/russian-diplomats-blast-latest-canadian-...

"Russian diplomats are less than impressed by Canada's new round of economic sanctions against Russian organizations and individuals, calling it a 'sad deja vu of a purely domestic nature.

In a statement, Russian Embassy spokesman Kirill Kalinin calls the sanctions a counterproductive step 'motivated by vote-fishing' that 'destroys the fabric of Russian-Canadian relations.'

'It's high time for Canada to reverse this confrontational course that leads nowhere and bring back common sense, pragmatism and diplomacy,' reads the statement..."

So we love the defaulting Ukronazi oligarchy, and that genocidal 'lawn-mower' Israel, but the Ottawa know-nothings all agree that  Russia is beyond our pale...got it.


ikosmos
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There is really an embarrassment of riches when it comes to reporting on Russophobia. Whether it's claims of Ukrainian soldiers "killed by Russian artillery" (US Senator John McCain, a possible victim of glue-sniffing), or incendiary claims of "Russian expansion" by US Defence Secretaries and Generals left and right [while NATO marches continuously to the Russian border], or the new mental illness of Russophrenia, in which Russia is about to collapse AND take over the world at the same time ..., the choice of lurid tales of monsters under the bed probably far exceeds any of the childish tales from Cold War I.

Meanwhile, the Russian President vaults up to stratospheric levels of support at 89%. Well, if you were trying to help a Russian conservative, I guess all these lurid tales would make sense, huh?

Doesn't really make sense for "progressives" to be re-gurgitating and/or lapping up these fabrications though, does it? Isn't solidarity about helping like-minded friends elsewhere?


ikosmos
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From the "You Can't Make This Shit Up" department...

The Daily Mail (England) wrote:
Russian Gays Now Fleeing to ISIS!

The Daily Mail: all the fiction that's fit to print. No need to read beyond the headline. It might hurt your brain.


ikosmos
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RT says, "Question more." The Guardian says, "Questioning more is proof of Russian brainwashing."

Yes, it really is that bad.

Quote:
There are two sorts of propaganda at work here - peddling ‘false facts’ and selling false narratives, and they present different challenges. We might think that our opponents’ ‘facts’ are so riddled with inconsistencies and lies that defeating them with the truth should be easy. The example of the ongoing ‘debate’ over global warming tells us otherwise – no amount of facts will persuade people who have an agenda which depends on denial of those facts. What is actually happening here in both cases is that a false narrative is being sold on the basis of false claims of ‘fact’, because the false narrative would be more easily defeated. Exposing that false narrative and presenting the real one could bypass the ‘I say – you claim’ roundabout of this ‘information war’.


and some examples ...

Quote:
Taking an example which draws a parallel between three major ‘West-East’ conflicts in which it is specially significant, is the question of ‘legitimate self-defence’. Whether in the case of Palestinians defending themselves from Israeli attack, the Syrian Arab Army defending its citizens against a foreign backed insurgency, or the civil defence forces of Donbass protecting themselves from Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist operation’, the case is the same. The aggressors in each case have used the false claim of self-defence from an attack which they have contrived to provoke, pursuing an illegitimate agenda, whether ‘regime change’ or ethnic cleansing.


And an excellent final point ...

Quote:
The tragedy here is that the victims of these aggressive attacks with its supportive propaganda rarely argue their strongest case – that of legitimate self-defence. Instead of arguing against the aggressors and calling for ‘peace’ we would be better to argue for the victims’ rights to armed self-defence in our own ‘propaganda offensive’. And we can use the elastic standards of the ‘international community’ as to what may count as ‘legitimate self-defence’.

The Palestinians, Syrians, and Novorossiyans have the right to defend themselves. And that should be obvious to anyone who genuinely supports those struggles.


ikosmos
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Actual headline in "major" UK paper: Russian President Vladimir Putin 'to blame' for Giant Hogweed invading UK

The photos of injured children, cowering from the dastardly and villainous efforts of the Roosky President, is touching.

another Western MSM yarn about Russia and/or its President wrote:
Despite decades of research biologists are yet to find an effective weapon agains the invasive species, whose poisonous sap recently hospitalised a dog walker and a ten-year-old girl.

But they believe a rust fungus found in Georgia, where the weed originally comes from, may hold the answer to stopping the plant which can cause severe burns, blisters and even blindness.

In the early 2000s scientists went to Georgia but their efforts were hampered by conflict with Russia, where Putin had just become president for the first time...

You can't make this shit up. I mean, they DO but, for prima facie evidence of the bat-shit crazy Russophobia in Western MSM, these yarns just get juicier and juicier. What next? Aliens with the face of Putin, amed with anal probes, skulking around schoolyards? Sapping our vital bodily fluids by promoting the floridation of water? It's straight out of Jack D. Ripper.


swallow
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Joined: May 16 2002

Still curious: how does this"new Russophobia" differ from the old Russophobia?


Mr. Magoo
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Joined: Dec 13 2002

In response to consumer demand, New Russophobia is now gluten free.


NDPP
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Joined: Dec 27 2008

more dangerous because the west has become bolder and more reckless in its belligerence and power-plays. Whereas in the earlier 'Cold War', there was an awareness or respect for 'red lines' that has now largely disappeared. As Chomsky recently observed, 'We're at 3 minutes to midnight. After 12 we're finished.' It's too bad that so many appear to have sucked it up without recognizing that it is a cultivated 'manufacture of consent' propaganda campaign to buttress a final desperate attempt by a declining US hegemon to achieve full spectrum dominance and vanquish any and all resistance to its will.


Mr. Magoo
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Quote:
more dangerous because the west has become bolder and more reckless in its belligerence and power-plays.

But less dangerous because New Russophobia has 12% more antioxidants.


ikosmos
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Joined: May 8 2001

Despite the embarrassment of riches here, those of us who contribute to a thread about the ocean of Russophobia are treated as victims of some sort of mental illness. Yeah, there's mental illness alright. But it ain't me babe, no it ain't me...


ikosmos
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Dear Guardian editors: this is why no one believes you anymore

A remarkable article showing the endless delicious scoops of neo-Stalinist alternative realities, compliments of ... the Western "liberal" MSM. Mmm mmm good!

Quote:
While this is just the latest on the conveyor-belt of state-promoted Stalinist ‘alternative realities’, which now constitutes the vast majority of your (ahem) political analysis, I feel the need to make a few observations, more out of pity than anger.

You must be wondering why, after over a year of a continued propaganda campaign that has seen you defending neo-nazis, racist massacres, and the wholesale terrorising of innocent civilians, you are still largely failing to get the message across, even to your core traditional readership. I can sense a rising panic, bafflement and bewilderment in you. And it makes me want to reach out. To bridge the gulf and explain why you are so totally failing to convince anybody of anything.

It’s not just because you cosy up with nazis (sorry, ‘nationalists’), while queasily obscuring their crimes and ideologies. It’s not just because you fail to see that your go-to Russia correspondents such as Shaun Walker and Luke Harding come over either as racist Russophobes or idiot-shills, on a par with, if rather more intelligent than your other poorly chosen protegé, the tragi-comic Eliot Higgins.

Delicious.

Quote:
Let’s recap. The US neocon plan of financially annexing Ukraine and drawing Russia into a proxy war with NATO seems to be dead. And let’s hope it stays that way, because while it lived it was so hardline even Kissinger repudiated it. So insane it almost sparked a nuclear war. So incompetent it dragged Europe to the point of financial ruin, the fallout of which we are still experiencing and will continue to experience for the foreseeable future.

Don’t forget, dear Graun, we have spent the last 18 months watching our political leaders in Europe and the US demonstrate they are equally divided between lunatics, morons and moronic lunatics. We’ve seen the likes of Cameron, Merkel and Hollande trundle their people to the edge of Armageddon, just because Nuland et al told them to, blinking in the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut, passive, helpless and completely idiotic.

We’ve discovered (if we didn’t already know) the US State Department is run by a hard core of dangerously insane halfwits who have zero understanding of realpolitik or anything else. We’ve been forced to realise these people don’t grasp their own (profound) limitations, can’t comprehend that Ukraine is not Tunisia, not Egypt, not even Georgia. We’ve had to face the incredible fact that these guys actually believed they could have another of their ridiculous ‘color revolutions’ in Russia’s strategic, political and emotional heartland, use the usual rent-a-mob to throw Russia’s Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea, and not ignite a thermonuclear war.

We have seen Ukraine torn apart and die economically, spiritually, politically and militarily, all in pursuit of serving this fatuous, self-defeating, sub-intelligent agenda.

There is some good stuff about how the Guardian has been trying to "change the narrative" (as all liars do) once their repulsive and despicable lies are exposed to the light of day.

Quote:
For example, here’s some extracts from the Guardian’s archive concerning the start of that “conflict in Donbass” you now want us to believe was kicked off by Putin riding in to Donetsk on the back of a tank…

The Guardian from 2014 April: “…After pro-Russian protesters demanding referenda on greater autonomy from Kiev stormed government buildings in the eastern regional capitals of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk over the weekend, rumours of a military response by the Ukrainian authorities have run rampant…"

Quote:
You see how sleazy and manipulative your agenda immediately appears when you pretend these things didn’t happen, while at the same time your archive proves you know full well they did? You see how morally and intellectually bankrupt you seem when you opt for simplistic summations that are basically lies? You see how scummily cavalier you seem to be about truth, reality and human lives?

This is why people don’t believe you any more.

Fuck you and die, Guardian.  Stinking liberals.

 


NDPP
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Joined: Dec 27 2008

Good one! Unfortunately, here in babble-land the Guardian is still very much 'top of the pops'. Here's hoping this excellent expose has a salutary effect.


lagatta
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Joined: Apr 17 2002

I'm not a liberal. Nor am I a neo-Stalinist.


swallow
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Joined: May 16 2002

But I'm sure, lagatta, that like many of us you have been accused by rigtwingers of being

Quote:
dangerously insane halfwits who have zero understanding of realpolitik

Interesting to see that's now an insult hurled by the pro-Putin movement too! 

Realopolitik is and alweays has been a lie designed to crack down on social movements. The correct response to it is "Be realistic, demand the impossible." 

 


ikosmos
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Joined: May 8 2001

The Guardian has completely disgraced itself. Anti Guardian media have sprouted, exposing the stream of vomit that is supposed to pass for "objective" news from that outlet. They don't bother to fact check, any claim will do, as long as it's luridly Russophobic enough, and they truly are an object of mockery and ridicule.

Remember how Western MSM used to gloat over the Stupidity of Soviet media gaffes and self contradictory claims? Now it is the turn of Russian, and independent, media to mock Western idiocy. And believe me ... the Russians can remember the other stuff too. Alas, the Guardian and MSM generally, cannot. They are a caricature of themselves.

Scott Taylor has a piece in the Winnipeg Free Press recently. Even MSM reporters are getting sick of the bullshit. But pathological Russophobia has no cure. However, it's still worth exposing it to the light of day, and reason, because, like the exposure of a fictional vampire or troll to daylight, others not hopelessly infected still have a chance to free themselves from this romance with hate and death.


lagatta
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Joined: Apr 17 2002

swallow, yes of course they (the capitalist rightwing) have often accused me of that.

Imagine "anti-Guardian" media sprouting up when there are so many western media that are 100 times worse...

I don't trust ANY media uncritically.

The hate and death stuff is so over the top. Of course, hate and death are regulars in civil wars, whether in Syria or Ukraine.

But I really see no wave of hatred for Russians within the Canadian state... Hey, most of them are white, they play hockey, they shovel snow during long winters. Normal people, eh? (Sarcasm alert: I hate winter, and don't give a flying frick what skin colour people are).

The Russians here are perfectly integrated and invisible. I really think this is mostly an imaginary problem.


swallow
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Yes, it's probably worthwhile to point that out every few pages. Not that it will stop the barrage. 

I love that the attacks on the Guardian use near-identical language to the right-wing attacks on the Guardian of so many years' standing, complete with Grauniad references. Putin fanboys, in their rhetorical devices, sound more and more like Thatcher fanboys. 


NDPP
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Joined: Dec 27 2008

swallow wrote:

 ...sound more and more like Thatcher fanboys. 

Oh look there's one now...

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/08/18/thomas-mulcair-margaret-thatcher...

 

PS: Guardian on Russia: None of the News That's Fit To Print

http://off-guardian.org/2015/08/18/guardian-on-russia-none-of-the-news-t...


swallow
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NDPP wrote:

swallow wrote:

 ...sound more and more like Thatcher fanboys. 

Oh look there's one now...

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/08/18/thomas-mulcair-margaret-thatcher...

Not his finest moment, eh? 


lagatta
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Joined: Apr 17 2002

The Off-Guardian looks like particularly poor propaganda... If there were somewhat fewer closeups of his Putinship, it might have been a tad more credible.


Mr. Magoo
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Joined: Dec 13 2002

It's good to see others finally taking Russophobia seriously.

For those not in the know, Russophobia is like Homophobia, but against the government of Vladimir Putin.


lagatta
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Joined: Apr 17 2002

Yes, certainly not against the Russian people. Most people I know have a neutral or favourable view of  Russians.


Slumberjack
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Joined: Aug 8 2005

Yawners.  Some of the responses here are about as typically boring, uninspired and myopic as one might encounter just about anywhere else.  Over the decades western corporate media have never ceased their continuous propaganda campaign against all things Russian.  When it wasn't the 'commies' they were making movies about, it was about Russian gangsters, who were always depicted as being particularly dangerous and inhuman, right up there with Chinese 'triad' gangs.  It's similar to when the propagandists in Hollywood always depicted Arabs as terrorists in the movies, and South and Central Americas as drug barons and mules.  Obviously the technique works quite well.  Putin serves as the ogre for people's well trained thoughts.  Every nation not in lockstep needs to be represented by one for this shit to keep working like it does.


6079_Smith_W
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Joined: Jun 10 2010

Right. Never-ending propaganda about their nice gangsters (except for Kolomoyski; he's the devil).

You forgot to mention how we persecute them for their protection of traditional family and religious values

...and making sure people with sex disorders don't get driver's licenses and terrorize the roads.


Slumberjack
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But that isn't all that lives there, except that you'd never know it.  If you don't see the thread that connects the demonizing of leaders, and by extension, whole societies that present western style gangster corporatism with geopolitical rivalry, and, in the case of Libya and Syria, the bodies of refugees washing up on shore from attempting to flee the ensuing violence, that's nobody's fault but your own.  Russia is now a temporary home to what, upwards of a million refugees from Eastern Ukraine?  Thankfully the rivers aren't that wide in places.  I would say Putin's regime is no less despicable than what we have in Ottawa, but the way the propaganda works, a leaders is merely the proxy for whatever violence and desperation that the general population of a region under threat get subjected to.  The demonization of leaders and thus the societies they represent makes way for the levels of unmitigated suffering we see being meted out to innocent people.  What we're witnessing among some social democratic leaning supporters is the descent of political consciousness to the status of a coma.  It's no wonder about the state of politics in this country as a result.


6079_Smith_W
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Not trying to get into the question of how much of this is a smokescreen to cover legitimate criticism.

I was just curious that your main example is something that hasn't been a significant part of your MSM propaganda war at all (and hasn't even been mentioned much in these threads), and that you conveniently neglect to mention one of the major issues on which we have criticized Putin's government, and clearly don't understand his values.


Slumberjack
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I contend that what you're engaging in is part of, or at least an effect of, illegitimate western propaganda that always asks us to look over there, instead of at our own false representatives and their so called 'values.'


6079_Smith_W
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I thought I was pointing out something which has been pretty front and centre in the western propaganda war, unlike gangsters.

Do you think western criticism of Russia over their anti-gay laws is legitimate or over the top, and evidence of our lack of understanding and hypocrisy? Seems like a pretty obvious example to me. I was just curious as to why you instead mentioned something that really hasn't been mentioned much at all (not even here in a thread dedicated to weeding out our western brainwashing).

...since you mention asking us to look over there.

 

 


NDPP
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It is true that homophobia and an anti LGBT environment are a fact in Russia and that people inside and outside are working hard to change that. It is also true unfortunately, that LGBT rights have become a propaganda weapon in the West's imperial great-game geopolitics to advance an agenda that is about anything but the advancement of LGBT rights in Russia.

And as we must always remind ourselves, Russia is not the only place where homophobia and discrimination is a continuing problem:

Dashed Hopes in Gay Ukraine

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/19/dashed-hopes-in-gay-ukraine-maidan-r...


NDPP
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Old Russophobia Lies At the Root of Modern Cold War Against Russia

http://sptnkne.ws/FVF

"Canadian scholar Michael Jabara Carley notes the roots of the Cold War and Russophobia phenomena run deep in history..."


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