The Shameful U.S. Media Boycott Against Stephen F. Cohen

Eric Zuesse
America’s 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. ’news’media, because he talks about the very real and now rapidly increasing likelihood of World War III developing from U.S. policies — not from Russian policies, but from the U.S. Government, under both Obama and now Trump.
used to be critical of Dr. Cohen, for his refusal to use the word “coup” to refer to what in the U.S. ’news’media are euphemistically referred to as “Ukraine’s revolution”. That’s done even by the BBC, which actually knows better, as is shown here — their own producers and editors know that they are deceiving their viewers by thus playing along with the U.S.-Government’s (and its allied UK Government’s) 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 — an actual “smoking gun” proof of America’s 2014 coup, which took control of Ukraine, which nation has Europe’s longest border with Russia. And now the U.S. regime thus places U.S. military and weapons onto and near Russia’s 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 ‘news’media, demand that Russia accept it — accept the intolerable.
The youtube just linked-to at that “this,” which was uploaded on 4 February 2014, a full 22 days before the coup was completed, presents Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland, telling the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine to appoint (the rabidly anti-Russian) “Yats” Yatsenyuk to run the post-coup Ukraine. “Yats” 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 “F—k the EU!” to express her rejection of the EU’s position. Some ‘ally’ of Europe the U.S. is!) And, then, also on 26 February, was the phone-conversation between the EU’s Catherine Ashton and her investigator in Ukraine who told her (and it’s described and linked-to here) 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 ‘revolution’. (But the EU never protested against its U.S.-nazi ally, Washington, neither under Obama nor under Trump.) All of this was known to the BBC — and to CNN, and the New York Times, and Washington Post, etc. — before the end of February 2014 (see this 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 ‘revolution’ 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) “there is no reason to prosecute me” because The West backs the coup-regime, which certainly won’t prosecute the gunmen who had brought it to power. How brazen is that!
But then I discovered that on 20 February 2014 — the very day of the coup — Dr. Cohen had actually been the very first person in The West to call it a “coup,” but the interviewers didn’t ask him to elaborate at all on that and instead quickly diverted to insignificant matters, and he didn’t call them on it; he simply accepted their management of the conversation. He’s a quick learner. So, he didn’t ever again say any such thing as that, on 20 February 2014, when he described that phone-conversation on 4 February 2014 between Obama’s agent and the Ambassador in Ukraine, by saying:
“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’état against the elected president of Ukraine. … in Washington and in Brussels, they lie: … They’re not talking about democracy now; they’re talking about a coup now.”
So, this brings us to 28 March 2018, and The Nation magazine (owned by Dr. Cohen’s wife Katrina vanden Heuvel) headlining from Dr. Cohen, “Unproven Allegations Against Trump and Putin Are Risking Nuclear War”, 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’s 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”? Obviously, corporate America don’t like an honest press.
In that The Nation article, 5 points are stated:
1. “Russiagate” 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.
2. This episode increases the risk of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.
3. Many Americans, including political and media elites who shape public opinion, have been deluded into thinking, especially since the pseudo–“American-Russian friendship” of the Clinton 1990s, that nuclear war now really is “unthinkable.” That the mass expulsion of diplomats was merely “symbolic” and of no real lasting consequence. In reality, it has become more thinkable.
4. The causes of the new risks of nuclear war are not “symbolic” but real and primarily political. As diplomacy is diminished, the militarization of US-Russian relations increases.
5. Thus, … the individuals and larger forces that promote the unproven allegations emanating from “Russiagate” and the Skripal incident are, in effect, nuclear-war mongers.
None of those allegations is at all so forward as are, for example, the articles that I have written on Obama’s coup in Ukraine and Trump’s continuation of that U.S. thrust for World War III, and which are thus virtually entirely banned. But, despite Cohen’s veiled statement of the matter, it’s too much for U.S.-and-allied ‘news’media to allow to be published and broadcast.
The only reason why a full 33% of Americans still trust ‘our’ Government is that the ‘news’media hide the truth from us. If the ‘news’media were honest, that figure would be much lower even than it is. The July 2017 Marist poll found that 37% of Americans “trust the media” “not at all”; 31% trust it “not very much”; 22% said “a good amount”; only 8% trusted it “a great deal”; and, so, how could the U.S. electorate then believe that even one’s own vote reflects a sufficiently accurately informed choice for a functioning democracy to result? Many Americans know they’re voting based on contending lies.
A prominent American jurist has pointed out that America’s courts are open only to the rich, basically not available to the general public, and that the U.S. Constitution is routinely violated by the Government; judges simply look the other way and refuse to get involved.
If such a nation isn’t a dictatorship, then what nation is? The lying U.S. regime could call this ‘anti-American propaganda’, but it’s 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 — the media that publish and broadcast the truth, even though others don’t.
Because WW III isn’t just war-games now. It’s war-provocations, too. And they’re all being led by Washington and its UK slave. It’s 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. 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’t 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’t 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’s the truth.
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