I suppose that what you should be concerned about is a political system that
doesn't impeach Trump for crimes that he has clearly committed, (and I've seen
at least 10 of them clearly listed), and instead, chooses to mislead the public
with innuendos about Russian interference with his election.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 12:42 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: More Misleading Russia-gate Propaganda
Let me see, should I be more concerned with the great influence of Putin in
America's politics? or should I be more concerned with Donald Trump and his
billionaire Cabinet? Hmm...
Carl Jarvis
On 8/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
More Misleading Russia-gate Propaganda
August 29, 2017
Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media is touting a big break in
Russia-gate, emails showing an effort by Donald Trump's associates to
construct a building in Moscow. But the evidence actually undercuts the
"scandal,"
reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
There is an inherent danger of news organizations getting infected by
"confirmation bias" when they want something to be true so badly that
even if the evidence goes in the opposite direction they twist the
revelation to fit their narrative. Such is how The Washington Post,
The New York Times and their followers in the mainstream media are
reacting to newly released emails that actually show Donald Trump's
team having little or no influence in Moscow.
President Trump discusses his meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin at G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. (Screenshot
from
Whitehouse.gov)
On Tuesday, for instance, the Times published a front-page article
designed to advance the Russia-gate narrative, stating: "A business
associate of President Trump promised in 2015 to engineer a real
estate deal with the aid of the president of Russia, Vladimir V.
Putin, that he said would help Mr.
Trump win the presidency."
Wow, that sounds pretty devastating! The Times is finally tying
together the loose and scattered threads of the
Russia-influencing-the-U.S.-election
story. Here you have a supposed business deal in which Putin was to
help Trump both make money and get elected. That is surely how a
casual reader or a Russia-gate true believer would read it - and was
meant to read it. But the lede is misleading.
The reality, as you would find out if you read further into the story,
is that the boast from Felix Sater that somehow the construction of a
Trump Tower in Moscow would demonstrate Trump's international business
prowess and thus help his election was meaningless. What the incident
really shows is that the Trump organization had little or no pull in
Russia as Putin's government apparently didn't lift a finger to
salvage this stillborn building project.
But highlighting that reality would not serve the Times' endless
promotion of Russia-gate. So, this counter-evidence gets buried deep
in the story, after a reprise of the "scandal" and the Times hyping
the significance of Sater's emails from 2015 and early 2016. For good
measure, the Times includes a brief and dishonest summary of the Ukraine
crisis.
The Times reported: "Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, said he had lined
up financing for the Trump Tower deal with VTB Bank, a Russian bank
that was under American sanctions for involvement in Moscow's efforts
to undermine democracy in Ukraine. In another email, Mr. Sater
envisioned a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow. 'I will get Putin on
this program and we will get Donald elected,' Mr. Sater wrote."
But the idea that Russia acted "to undermine democracy in Ukraine" is
another example of the Times' descent into outright propaganda. The
reality is that the U.S. government supported - and indeed encouraged
- a coup on Feb. 22, 2014, that overthrew the democratically elected
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych even after he offered to move up
scheduled elections so he could be voted out of office through a
democratic process.
After Yanukovych's violent ouster and after the coup regime dispatched
military forces to crush resistance among anti-coup, mostly ethnic
Russian Ukrainians in the east, Russia provided help to prevent their
destruction from an assault spearheaded by neo-Nazis and other extreme
Ukrainian nationalists. But that reality would not fit the Times'
preferred Ukraine narrative, so it gets summarized as Moscow trying
"to undermine democracy in Ukraine."
Empty Boasts
However, leaving aside the Times' propagandistic approach to Ukraine,
there is this more immediate point about Russia-gate: none of Sater's
boastful claims proved true and this incident really underscored the
lack of useful connections between Trump's people and the Kremlin. One
of Trump's lawyers, Michael Cohen, even used a general press email
address in a plea for assistance from Putin's personal spokesman.
The New York Times' connect-the-dots graphic showing the Kremlin
sitting atop the White House.
Deeper in the story, the Times admits these inconvenient facts: "There
is no evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises,
and one email suggests that Mr. Sater overstated his Russian ties. In
January 2016, Mr. Cohen wrote to Mr. Putin's spokesman, Dmitri S.
Peskov, asking for help restarting the Trump Tower project, which had
stalled. But Mr. Sater did not appear to have Mr. Peskov's direct
email, and instead wrote to a general inbox for press inquiries."
The Times added: "The project never got government permits or
financing, and died weeks later. . The emails obtained by The Times
make no mention of Russian efforts to damage Hillary Clinton's
campaign or the hacking of Democrats' emails."
In other words, the Russia-gate narrative - that somehow Putin foresaw
Trump's election (although almost no one else did) and sought to curry
favor with the future U.S. president by lining Trump's pockets with
lucrative real estate deals while doing whatever he could to help
Trump win - is knocked down by these new disclosures, not supported by
them.
Instead of clearing the way for Trump to construct the building and
thus - in Sater's view - boost Trump's election chances, Putin and his
government wouldn't even approve permits or assist in the financing.
And, this failed building project was not the first Trump proposal in
Russia to fall apart. A couple of years earlier, a Moscow hotel plan
died apparently because Trump would not - or could not - put up
adequate financing for his share, overvaluing the magic of the Trump
brand. But one would think that if the Kremlin were grooming Trump to
be its Manchurian candidate and take over the U.S. government, money
would have been no obstacle.
Along the same lines, there's the relative pittance that RT paid Gen.
Michael Flynn to speak at the TV network's tenth anniversary in Moscow
in December 2015. The amount totaled $45,386 with Flynn netting
$33,750 after his speakers' bureau took its cut. Democrats and the
U.S. mainstream media treated this fact as important evidence of
Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign and White House, since
Flynn was both a campaign adviser and briefly national security adviser.
Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn
attending a dinner marking the RT network's 10-year anniversary in
Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
But the actual evidence suggests something quite different. Besides
Flynn's relatively modest speaking fee, it turned out that RT
negotiated Flynn's rate downward, a fact that The Washington Post
buried deep inside an article on Flynn's Russia-connected payments.
The Post wrote, "RT balked at paying Flynn's original asking price.
'Sorry it took us longer to get back to you but the problem is that
the speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our budget at the
moment,' Alina Mikhaleva, RT's head of marketing, wrote a Flynn
associate about a month before the event."
Yet, if Putin were splurging to induce Americans near Trump to betray
their country, it makes no sense that Putin's supposed flunkies at RT
would be quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest speaking fee;
they'd be falling over themselves to pay him more.
So, what the evidence really indicates is that Putin, like almost
everybody else in the world, didn't anticipate Trump's ascendance to
the White House, at least not in the time frame of these events - and
thus was doing nothing to buy influence with his entourage or boost
his election chances by helping him construct a glittering Trump Tower
in Moscow.
But that recognition of reality would undermine the much beloved story
of Putin-Trump collusion, so the key facts and the clear logic are
downplayed or ignored - all the better to deceive Americans who are
dependent on the Times, the Post and the mainstream media.