Russia In The Cross Hairs. Washington’s Threats have moved Into the Realm of Insanity

Andrew Lack (Reuters / Phil McCarten)

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Crosspost with PaulCraigRoberts.org and Veterans Today

[dropcap]Washington’s[/dropcap] attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.

Today RT International interviewed me about these insane developments.

In prior days when America was still a sane country, Lack’s charge would have led to him being laughed out of office. He would have had to resign and disappear from public life. Today in the make-believe world that Western propaganda has created, Lack’s statement is taken seriously. Yet another terrorist threat has been identified–RT. (Although both Boko Haram and the Islamic State employ terror, strictly speaking they are political organizations seeking to rule, not terror organizations, but this distinction would be over Lack’s head. Yes, I know. There is a good joke that could be made here about what Lack lacks. Appropriately named and all that.)

Nevertheless, whatever Lack might lack, I doubt he believes his nonsensical statement that RT is a terrorist organization. So what is his game?

The answer is that the Western presstitute media by becoming Ministries of Propaganda for Washington, have created large markets for RT, Press TV, and Al Jazeera. As more and more of the peoples of the world turn to these more honest news sources, Washington’s ability to fabricate self-serving explanations has declined.

RT in particular has a large Western audience. The contrast between RT’s truthful reporting and the lies spewed by US media is undermining Washington’s control of the explanation. This is no longer acceptable.

Lack has sent a message to RT. The message is: pull in your horns; stop reporting differently from our line; stop contesting the facts as Washington states them and the presstitutes report them; get on board or else.

In other words, the “free speech” that Washington and its EU, Canadian, and Australian puppet states tout means: free speech for Washington’s propaganda and lies, but not for any truth. Truth is terrorism, because truth is the major threat to Washington.

Russia is in grave danger. Russians are relying on facts, and Washington is relying on propaganda. For Washington, facts are not relevant. Russian voices are small compared to Western voices.

Washington would prefer to avoid the embarrassment of actually shutting down RT as its UK vassal did to Press TV. Washington simply wants to shut up RT. Lack’s message to RT is: self-censure.

In my opinion, RT already understates in its coverage and reporting as does Al Jazeera. Both news organizations understand that they cannot be too forthright, at least not too often or on too many occasions.

I have often wondered why the Russian government allows 20 percent of the Russian media to function as Washington’s fifth column inside Russia. I suspect the reason is that by tolerating Washington’s blatant propaganda inside Russia, the Russian government hopes that some factual news can be reported in the US via RT and other Russian news organizations.

These hopes, like other Russian hopes about the West, are likely to be disappointed in the end. If RT is closed down or assimilated into the Western presstitute media, nothing will be said about it, but if the Russian government closes down Washington’s agents, blatant liars all, in the Russian media, we will hear forever about the evil Russians suppressing “free speech.” Remember, the only allowable “free speech” is Washington’s propaganda.

Only time will tell whether RT decides to be closed down for telling the truth or whether it adds its voice to Washington’s propaganda.

The other item in the interview was the downgrading of Russian credit to junk status.

Standard and Poor’s downgrade is, without any doubt, a political act. It proves what we already know, and that is that the American rating firms are corrupt political operations. Remember the Investment Grade rating the American rating agencies gave to obvious subprime junk? These rating agencies are paid by Wall Street, and like Wall Street they serve the US government.

A look at the facts serves to establish the political nature of the ruling. Don’t expect the corrupt US financial press to look at the facts. But right now, we will look at the facts.

Indeed, we will put the facts in context with the US debt situation.

According to the debt clocks available online, the Russian national debt as a percentage of Russian GDP is 11 percent. The American national debt as a percentage of US GDP is 105 percent, about ten times higher. My coauthors, Dave Kranzler, John Williams, and I have shown that when measured correctly, the US debt as a percent of GDP is much higher than the official figure.

The Russian national debt per capita is $1,645. The US national debt per capita is
$56,952.

The size of Russia’s national debt is $235 billion, less than one quarter of a trillion. The size of the US national debt is $18 trillion, 76.6 times larger than the Russian debt.

Putting this in perspective: according to the debt clocks, US GDP is $17.3 trillion and Russian GDP is $2.1 trillion. So, US GDP is 8 times greater than Russian GDP, but US national debt is 76.6 times greater than Russia’s debt.

Clearly, it is the US credit rating that should have been downgraded to junk status. But this cannot happen. Any US credit rating agency that told the truth would be closed and prosecuted. It wouldn’t matter what the absurd charges are. The rating agencies would be guilty of being anti-american, terrorist organizations like RT, etc. and so on, and they know it. Never expect any truth from any Wall Street denizen. They lie for a living.

According to this site: [1] the US owes Russia as of January 2013 $162.9 billion. As the Russian national debt is $235 billion, 69 percent of the Russian national debt is covered by US debt obligations to Russia.

If this is a Russian Crisis, I am Alexander the Great.

As Russia has enough US dollar holdings to redeem its entire national debt and have a couple hundred billion dollars left, what is Russia’s problem?

One of Russia’s problems is its central bank. For the most part, Russian economists are the same neoliberal incompetents that exist in the Western world. The Russian economists are enamored of their contacts with the “superior” West and with the prestige that they image these contacts give them. As long as the Russian economists agree with the Western ones, they get invited to conferences abroad. These Russian economists are de facto American agents whether they realize it or not.

Currently, the Russian central bank is squandering the large Russian holdings of foreign reserves in support of the Western attack on the ruble. This is a fools’ game that no central bank should play. The Russian central bank should remember, or learn if it does not know, Soros’ attack on the Bank of England.

Russian foreign reserves should be used to retire the outstanding national debt, thus making Russia the only country in the world without a national debt. The remaining dollars should be dumped in coordinated actions with China to destroy the dollar, the power basis of American Imperialism.

Alternatively, the Russian government should announce that its reply to the economic warfare being conducted against Russia by the government in Washington and Wall Street rating agencies is default on its loans to Western creditors. Russia has nothing to lose as Russia is already cut off from Western credit by US sanctions. Russian default would cause consternation and crisis in the European banking system, which is exactly what Russia wants in order to break up Europe’s support of US sanctions.

In my opinion, the neoliberal economists who control Russian economic policy are a much greater threat to the sovereignty of Russia than economic sanctions and US missile bases. To survive Washington, Russia desperately needs people who are not romantic about the West.

To dramatize the situation, if President Putin will grant me Russian citizenship and allow me to appoint Michael Hudson and Nomi Prins as my deputies, I will take over the operation of the Russian central bank and put the West out of operation.

But that would require Russia taking risks associated with victory. The Atlanticist Integrationists inside the Russian government want victory for the West, not for Russia. A country imbued with treason inside the government itself has a reduced chance against Washington, a determined player.

Another fifth column operating against Russia from within are the US and German funded NGOs. These American agents masquerade as “human rights organizations,” as “women’s rights organizations,” as “democracy organizations,” and whatever other cant titles that serve in a politically correct age and are unchallengeable.

Yet another threat to Russia comes from the percentage of the Russian youth who lust for the depraved culture of the West. Sexual license, pornography, drugs, self-absorption. These are the West’s cultural offerings. And, of course, killing Muslims.

If Russians want to kill people for the fun of it and to solidify US hegemony over themselves and the world, they should support “Atlanticist integration” and turn their backs on Russian nationalism. Why be Russian if you can be American serfs?

What better result for the American neoconservatives than to have Russia support Washington’s hegemony over the world? That is what the neoliberal Russian economists and the “European Integrationists” support. These Russians are willing to be American serfs in order to be part of the West and to be paid well for their treason.

As I was interviewed about these developments by RT, the news anchor kept trying to confront Washington’s charges with the facts. It is astonishing that the Russian journalists do not understand that facts have nothing to do with it. The Russian journalists, those independent of American bribes, think that facts matter in the disputes about Russian actions. They think that the assaults on civilians by the American supported Ukrainian Nazis is a fact. But, of course no such fact exists in the Western media. In the Western media the Russians, and only the Russians, are responsible for violence in Ukraine.

Washington’s story line is that it is the evil Putin’s intent on restoring the Soviet Empire that is the cause of the conflict. This media line in the West has no relationship to any facts.

In my opinion, Russia is in grave danger. Russians are relying on facts, and Washington is relying on propaganda. For Washington, facts are not relevant. Russian voices are small compared to Western voices.

The lack of a Russian voice is due to Russia itself. Russia accepted living in a world controlled by US financial, legal, and telecommunication services. Living in this wold means that the only voice is Washington’s.

Why Russia agreed to this strategic disadvantage is a mystery. But as a result of this strategic mistake, Russia is at a disadvantage.

Considering the inroads that Washington has into the Russian government itself, the economically powerful oligarchs and state employees with Western connections, as well as into the Russian media and Russian youth, with the hundreds of American and German financed NGOs that can put Russians into the streets to protest any defense of Russia, Russia’s future as a sovereign country is in doubt.

The American neoconservatives are relentless. Their Russian opponent is weakened by the success inside Russia of Western cold war propaganda that portrays the US as the savior and future of mankind.

The darkness from Sauron America continues to spread over the world.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted – the US establishment’s attack on RT

[dropcap]The new chief [/dropcap]of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors stirred up a storm when he equated RT to two of the world’s most hideous terrorist organizations. While his comments were absolutely without justification, it could be part of a clever funding ploy.

“We are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram” – Andrew Lack, the newly-appointed chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).

I swear this is not a misprint. The head of a notionally independent US federal agency, responsible for the supervision of all US government-funded international media actually said this in a New York Times interview. The BBG supervises US propaganda networks such as RFE/RL and the Voice of America and had a 2014 budget of $733 million. He believes that little RT (2014 budget $291 million) is not only an existential threat to the US media but he equates the danger it poses to that of barbarous terror organizations.

The US Secretary of State designates Boko Haram as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ and I’m not arguing with that. According to the UN, the Islamic State had murdered 24,000 innocent people by October 2014. What has RT done to deserve mention in the same breath as these groups? The answer to that is somewhere deep in the mind of Andrew Lack and a few, frankly, deranged neo-cons who often masquerade as ‘journalists.’

Russian perspective

RT was conceived as a method to give Russia’s point-of-view in the extremely crowded international media-landscape. Whilst once the US and UK (via the BBC) held a monopoly on English-language news information, this has changed markedly in the last decade. France 24, CCTV (China), Press TV (Iran) and Al Jazeera (Qatar) are just a few state-backed entities in a jam-packed marketplace.

There are manifold reasons for what makes RT a more frequent target of US bile than the others. Notably, the historic competition between Moscow and Washington for global favor and RT’s relative success compared to similar projects. While the other government funded stations have, largely, settled for a mixture of rolling news and advertorials about the host nation, RT has genuinely attempted to throw a few jabs at the media giants in the UK and America. To say they aren’t too fond of this is similar to arguing that dogs don’t like fleas.

The secret of this network’s, relative, success has been its willingness to focus on stories and topics that the mainstream are either disinterested in or ignore for commercial reasons or those of diktat. RT was already barely tolerated by the US elite as it devoted resources to covering ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and Guantanamo Bay and the like, but sections of the public were grateful for its efforts. However, in late 2013, the Ukraine crisis erupted and grudging sufferance swiftly vanished.

The ‘indispensable nation’

The US is not used to being challenged in its foreign policy adventures. From Vietnam right up to Iraq, the White House only had to worry about dissenting voices in its own domestic media. These ‘problems’ were relatively easy to deal with – a word in an ear here, a letter there. In Ukraine, it was a different story. There was a professional Russian-backed network with a team of talented journalists ready to challenge the US narrative.

In Yugoslavia, for example, the State Department was assured that TV viewers would only be told what suited its position. If RT didn’t exist, as many in the US establishment would prefer, the same would be true of Ukraine. However, RT’s presence ensures that coverage cannot be restricted to the DC Comics-style simplification of ‘goodies and baddies.’ Cable viewers now have access to information about atrocities carried out by Washington’s allies as well as their enemies.

Elements in the ‘looney-tunes’ wing of the US media world have accused Russia, through RT and the other foreign-language state news agency Sputnik, of ‘weaponizing information.’ You can understand this as meaning that Moscow (and others) are doing exactly what Washington has been at for over half a century. It reminds me of when England wouldn’t play in the initial soccer World Cups, sore that foreigners were in charge of organizing the game they’d invented.

The fight against RT

Of course, there are ways the US could launch a ‘counter-offensive’ against RT and the myriad other national English language stations that have emerged. A TV version of RFE/RL (in Russian and other languages) is one possibility. Of course, this will cost money, quite a lot of it, and this might be what Lack is playing at. By creating the impression, no matter how disingenuous, that the US is faced with an ‘information war,’ the powers that be can, perhaps, be persuaded to increase funding to the BBG.

Andrew Lack is no fool. A former CEO of Bloomberg and President of CBS, he’s one of the most qualified media operators out there. Responsible for 16 Emmy Awards at CBS, the Boston University alumnus (who also attended Paris’ Sorbonne) knows the workings of the US power structure better than most. By equating RT to terror organizations, he plants seeds of hysteria in minds that matter. This wouldn’t be the first time that a ‘Russian threat’ was used to generate a funding increase by a US entity, in fairness.

Over a decade ago, I occasionally wrote for the late, lamented Dubliner Magazine in Ireland. The periodical published a cover story entitled ‘The New Establishment,’ with a bunch of insufferable non-entities pictured. The editor asked me what I thought. I replied that it was useful as a guide to people to avoid in Dublin, pointing out that the gift of youth was to be able question the establishment and the ideas of the older generation. Any newbies who wanted to immediately join the existing order and replicate it were about as interesting and useful as an ice sculptor in the Sahara.

RT’s role in the media welkin is to be disruptive. Not of the mainstream, nor hoping to be accepted by it. As RT’s budget, while small compared to BBC or CNN, is sufficient to produce professional TV and web output, this scares the establishment media stiff. RT is both everything they hate and everything they’d secretly like to be, but never will. It’s akin to wealthy a schoolboy who enjoys the luxury of tennis and piano lessons, secretly envying the poorer classmate who’s taught himself guitar and still gets the girls.

The BBG, and many of the powers-that-be in US society genuinely consider RT a challenge to the propaganda network that Washington has built up over decades. It’s also a convenient bogey-man to use when looking for more cash. Most of this activity is subtle. Andrew Lack, with his ludicrous comparisons, displayed all the nuance of an angry man with a sledgehammer. He should apologise. Journalism is not terrorism.