{"id":354450,"date":"2018-03-29T23:52:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T22:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=354450"},"modified":"2018-03-29T23:52:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T22:52:11","slug":"shameful-u-s-media-boycott-stephen-f-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/shameful-u-s-media-boycott-stephen-f-cohen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shameful U.S. Media Boycott Against Stephen F. Cohen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s leading scholar of Russia, Stephen F. Cohen, now retired from both Princeton and NYU, used to be, during the Cold War, regularly invited onto U.S. newsmedia, to discuss U.S.-Soviet and then U.S.-Russian relations. But now, he is boycotted by all of the national U.S. \u2019news\u2019media, because he talks about the very real and now rapidly increasing likelihood of World War III developing from U.S. policies \u2014 not from Russian policies, but from the U.S. Government, under both Obama and now Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

I used to be<\/span><\/a> critical of Dr. Cohen, for his refusal to use the word \u201ccoup\u201d to refer to what in the U.S. \u2019news\u2019media are euphemistically referred to as \u201cUkraine\u2019s revolution\u201d<\/span><\/a>. That’s done even by the BBC, which actually knows better, as is shown here<\/span><\/a> \u2014 their own producers and editors know<\/i> that they are deceiving their viewers by thus playing along with the U.S.-Government\u2019s (and its allied UK Government\u2019s) lies on this most crucial of all international-relations matters. Indeed, how could anyone NOT know about it, who has seen and carefully thought about this<\/span><\/a> \u2014 an actual \u201csmoking gun\u201d proof of America\u2019s 2014 coup, which took control of Ukraine, which nation has Europe\u2019s longest border with Russia. And now the U.S. regime thus places U.S. military and weapons onto and near Russia\u2019s border. Did John F. Kennedy allow the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev to do that (actually far less than that) to America during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? Of course not! But the U.S. Government, and its \u2018news\u2019media, demand that Russia accept it \u2014 accept the intolerable.<\/span><\/p>\n

The youtube just linked-to at that \u201cthis<\/span><\/a>,\u201d which was uploaded on 4 February 2014, a full 22 days before the coup was completed, presents Obama\u2019s agent, Victoria Nuland, telling the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine to appoint (the rabidly anti-Russian<\/span><\/a>) \u201cYats\u201d Yatsenyuk to run the post-coup Ukraine. \u201cYats” became installed as Prime Minister on 26 February, though the EU had wanted the far more moderate Wladimir Klitschko to be installed once the then-existing democratically elected Government would be overthrown. (So, Nuland just said there to the U.S. Ambassador \u201cF\u2014k the EU!\u201d to express her rejection of the EU\u2019s position. Some \u2018ally\u2019 of Europe the U.S. is!) And, then, also on 26 February, was the phone-conversation between the EU\u2019s Catherine Ashton and her investigator in Ukraine who told her (and it\u2019s described and linked-to here<\/span><\/a>) that this had been a coup and not really a revolution, and she was shocked just as he was. The EU had thought that the U.S. simply encouraged a revolution, not imposed a coup that was hidden behind the \u2018revolution\u2019. (But the EU never protested against its U.S.-nazi ally, Washington, neither under Obama<\/span><\/a> nor under Trump<\/span><\/a>.) All of this was known to the BBC \u2014 and to CNN, and the New York Times<\/i>, and Washington Post<\/i>, etc. \u2014 before the end of February 2014 (see this<\/span><\/a> for documentation of that knowledge of the reality and subsequent hiding of it). All of them still hide from the public its having been a coup and no authentic \u2018revolution\u2019 at all. And, then, recently, two of the snipers that this U.S.-run operation had hired to carry out the coup (these two snipers having been brought in from the nation of Georgia by its ousted President Mikheil Saakashvilli to participate in the U.S.-run anti-Russia operation) went public about their having done so, because they concluded that (as one of them actually said) \u201cthere is no reason to prosecute me\u201d<\/span><\/a> because The West backs the coup-regime, which certainly won\u2019t prosecute the gunmen who had brought it to power. How brazen is that!<\/span><\/p>\n

But then I discovered that on 20 February 2014 \u2014 the very day of the coup \u2014 Dr. Cohen had actually been the very first person in The West to call it a \u201ccoup,\u201d but the interviewers didn\u2019t ask him to elaborate at all on that and instead quickly diverted to insignificant matters<\/span><\/a>, and he didn\u2019t call them on it; he simply accepted their management of the conversation. He\u2019s a quick learner. So, he didn\u2019t ever again say any such thing as that, on 20 February 2014, when he described that phone-conversation on 4 February 2014 between Obama\u2019s agent and the Ambassador in Ukraine, by saying:<\/span><\/p>\n

“the significance is what you just played. What are they doing? The highest-ranking State Department official, who presumably represents the Obama administration, and the American ambassador in Kiev are, to put it in blunt terms, plotting a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat against the elected president of Ukraine. \u2026 in Washington and in Brussels, they lie: … They\u2019re not talking about democracy now; they\u2019re talking about a coup now.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

So, this brings us to 28 March 2018, and The Nation<\/i> magazine (owned by Dr. Cohen\u2019s wife Katrina vanden Heuvel) headlining from Dr. Cohen, “Unproven Allegations Against Trump and Putin Are Risking Nuclear War\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and reporting on his having been interviewed on The John Batchelor Show at WABC radio in NYC, a progressive news-and-interview program that used to be, but no longer is, nationally syndicated. Can one wonder why? Might Batchelor\u2019s having the courage still to interview Cohen be part of the explanation why only “from early 2001 to September 2006, the show was syndicated nationally on the ABC radio network\u201d<\/span><\/a>? Obviously, corporate America don\u2019t like an honest press.<\/span><\/p>\n

In that The Nation<\/i> article, 5 points are stated:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. \u201cRussiagate\u201d and the attempted killing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK have two aspects in common. Both blame Putin personally. And no actual facts have yet been made public.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

2. This episode increases the risk of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

3. Many Americans, including political and media elites who shape public opinion, have been deluded into thinking, especially since the pseudo\u2013\u201cAmerican-Russian friendship\u201d of the Clinton 1990s, that nuclear war now really is \u201cunthinkable.\u201d That the mass expulsion of diplomats was merely \u201csymbolic\u201d and of no real lasting consequence. In reality, it has become more thinkable.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

4. The causes of the new risks of nuclear war are not \u201csymbolic\u201d but real and primarily political. As diplomacy is diminished, the militarization of US-Russian relations increases.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

5. Thus, … the individuals and larger forces that promote the unproven allegations emanating from \u201cRussiagate\u201d and the Skripal incident are, in effect, nuclear-war mongers.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

None of those allegations is at all so forward as are, for example, the articles that I have written<\/span><\/a> on Obama\u2019s coup in Ukraine and Trump\u2019s continuation of that U.S. thrust for World War III<\/span><\/a>, and which are thus virtually entirely banned. But, despite Cohen\u2019s veiled statement of the matter, it\u2019s too much for U.S.-and-allied \u2018news\u2019media to allow to be published and broadcast.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only reason why a full 33% of Americans still trust \u2018our\u2019 Government<\/span><\/a> is that the \u2018news\u2019media hide the truth from us. If the \u2018news\u2019media were honest, that figure would be much lower even than it is. The July 2017 Marist poll<\/span><\/a> found that 37% of Americans \u201ctrust the media\u201d \u201cnot at all\u201d; 31% trust it \u201cnot very much\u201d; 22% said \u201ca good amount\u201d; only 8% trusted it \u201ca great deal\u201d; and, so, how could the U.S. electorate then believe that even one\u2019s own vote reflects a sufficiently accurately informed choice for a functioning democracy to result? Many Americans know they\u2019re voting based on contending lies. <\/span><\/p>\n

A prominent American jurist has pointed out that America\u2019s courts are open only to the rich, basically not available to the general public<\/span><\/a>, and that the U.S. Constitution is routinely violated by the Government; judges simply look the other way and refuse to get involved<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

If such a nation isn\u2019t a dictatorship<\/span><\/a>, then what nation is? The lying U.S. regime could call this \u2018anti-American propaganda\u2019, but it\u2019s unfortunately merely the truth, and it is being reported here by an American, who writes only on behalf of himself, and of any of the few authentic newsmedia \u2014 the media that publish and broadcast the truth, even though others don\u2019t<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because WW III isn\u2019t just war-games now. It\u2019s war-provocations, too. And they\u2019re all being led by Washington and its UK slave. It\u2019s time for Europeans to abandon any alliance at all with such a regime. That would stop this psychopathically-led insanity. Nothing else could. FDR is dead and gone, and the ideological Cold War ended in 1991, but has secretly been continuing all along on the American side<\/span><\/a>. NATO must end immediately. (Its Soviet equivalent, the Warsaw Pact, ended in 1991, when the Cold War did on the Russian side.) And any further association between the EU and U.S. should be grounds for any European nation to at least consider to leave the EU, too. This is no longer just war-games; it is clearly for real. And if a European government doesn\u2019t seriously consider to do this, then there should be massive public demonstrations against that government. Washington and its allies are looking for, and will quite possibly concoct, an excuse for war against Russia. And Russia isn\u2019t just another Iraq. Nor Libya. Nor Syria. Nor Ukraine. The U.S. Government, and any of its allies, is truly toxic to people everywhere. I, an American, say this, with profound regret that (and only because) it\u2019s the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse America\u2019s leading scholar of Russia, Stephen F. Cohen, now retired from both Princeton and NYU, used to be, during the Cold War, regularly invited onto U.S. newsmedia, to discuss U.S.-Soviet and then U.S.-Russian relations. But now, he is boycotted by all of the national U.S. \u2019news\u2019media, because he talks about the very real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":354451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[30,32,96,535,524,754,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-354450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-syria","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-usa-news","17":"tag-warfare","18":"tag-white-house","19":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}