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Related: About this forumHere's why Neocon Putin apologists are attacking CNN's Amanpour
CNN's Amanpour takes on Wolf Blitzer and Stephen Cohen over spreading Russia lies.
Check out the smirk at 3:31 of Stephen Cohen, professional defender of the Russian dictatorship.
It explains this DU thread--the RT apologists definitely have their talking points organized http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017228619
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iandhr
(6,852 posts)
Depaysement
(1,835 posts)I have never, ever seen or heard anyone call him a neo-con.
He's Katrina Vanden Heuvel's husband, not exactly a neo-con family.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)investigative journalism.
You know we are living in interesting times when the mainstream media, who are mostly tabloid, opinion, or people who repeat the work of others; are so bold as to call out real investigative journalists and at times even attempt to tar them.
Depaysement
(1,835 posts)And to say more would be foolish. I get your drift.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)Neocons are hostile to Putin.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)You been suppin' too much Freedom Vodka?
LiberalLovinLug
(14,164 posts)He's a master at insinuating right wing talking points in his statements. Nothing blatant, but insidious in nature over time. He also is a master at playing the ignorant deer-in-headlights interviewer where instead of having the facts in front of him that would usually back up the Democratic rep, he throws his hands up and concludes with lines such as he did here: interesting debate that I'm sure we will hear more of...blah blah blah. Never does he confront a right wing guest or call him or her out on fabricated statements.
IkeRepublican
(406 posts)I agree. Wolf is a RW enabling dick head.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)---
Stephen F. Cohen's grandfather, while speaking only Lithuanian, Russian and Yiddish, emigrated from Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) to the United States.[2] Stephen Cohen was born in 1938 in Owensboro, Kentucky where his father owned a golf course,[3] and attended Indiana University, where he earned a B.S. degree and an M.A. degree in Russian Studies. While studying in England, he went on a four-week trip to the Soviet Union, where he became interested in its history and politics. Cohen, who received his Ph.D. in government and Russian studies at Columbia University, became a professor of politics and Russian studies at Princeton University in 1968, where he taught until 1998, and has been teaching at New York University since.
---
During the 2014 unrest in Ukraine, Cohen drew criticism for his "pro-Russian" views[4] with sources describing him as an apologist for Putin[5][6] and the Russian government.[4] Cohen personally describes himself as an American "dissenter"[7] and argues that the media stifles anyone who even tries to understand the situation from the Kremlin's perspective while stigmatizing them as Putin apologists for doing so.[7]
In an article in The Nation, Cohen alleged that the US political-media establishment was silent about Kiev's atrocities; the article was in turn criticized by Cathy Young
uhnope
(6,419 posts)and
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/16/meet-stephen-f-cohen-vladimir-putin-s-best-friend-in-the-american-media.html
and
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/pathetic-lives-of-putins-american-dupes.html
Some of Cohen’s critics have assumed that he is a lifelong leftist hack who simply transferred his allegiance from the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia. The truth is more complex.
...
The Soviet collapse is generally seen as the result of the system’s internal rot; Cohen, however, has blamed it on Boris Yeltsin’s power-grabbing, aided by the pro-Western “radical intelligentsia” that “hijacked Gorbachev’s gradualist reformation.” His antipathy to Yeltsin led him to sympathize with the views of those Russians who saw their country during the 1990s as “semi-occupied by foreigners—from shock-therapy economists to human-rights advocates,” and who credited Putin with taking it back. In Newsweek’s February 2008 roundup of expert opinions on Putin and his legacy, Cohen’s contribution—entitled “The Savior”—asserted Putin was the man who “ended Russia's collapse at home and re-asserted its independence abroad.” As U.S.-Russian relations worsened, Cohen grew increasingly strident in his denunciations of the “demonization” of Putin by the American media.
Cohen’s new article in The Nation hits a new low. The charge Cohen makes is a serious one: that the pro-Western Ukrainian government, aided and abetted by the Obama administration, the “new Cold War hawks” in Congress, and the craven American media, is committing “deeds that are rising to the level of war crimes, if they have not done so already.” He is referring to the Ukrainian military assaults on cities and towns held by pro-Russian insurgents, including artillery shelling and air attacks.
...
All three organizations also extensively document abuses and bona fide atrocities by the insurgents whom Cohen calls “resisters,” from kidnappings to savage beatings, torture, rape, and murder. Cohen entirely omits these inconvenient facts, conceding only that the rebels are “aggressive, organized and well armed—no doubt with some Russian assistance.” And he concludes that “calling them ‘self-defense’ fighters is not wrong,” since “their land is being invaded and assaulted by a government whose political legitimacy is arguably no greater than their own, two of their large regions having voted overwhelmingly for autonomy referendums.”
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)I don't agree with everything Cohen says but he provides one side of the story.
I find this desire to push everyone into lockstep with the MSM view to be very strange.
I noticed this tendency recurring again about a year ago, just like it was in the Bush era.
The same thing happened before the Iraq War. The MSM moved in lockstep to demonize Saddam and push a neocon line. People who disagreed were called "Saddam-lovers" and worse.
One can disagree with a policy (or at least require a more nuanced view) without being a "commie", "neocon", "Putinista", "Saddam-lover" etc.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)More comparable is Alex Jones or Glenn Beck-- are they providing a side of the story? I think you would agree that they are not and in fact their POVs have no credibility or place on a progressive website.
Unlike the horrible days of the Bush era, we are not bombing the hell out of little country so the military corporations can cash in and the warmongers can have their way and the forces for control can increase their grip on society. No, this case is very different--we offered the reset button to Putin, but he's the one bombing and taking over little countries, and he doesn't plan to give them back, either.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)You could have fooled me...thousands of drone strikes every year and not in just one country, all over the middle east...you know that place we get our oil from?
But it is not your fathers bombing so you got me there, it is precision bombing...targeted assignations of who we think are the bad guys most of the times...but it is not bombing.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)If you want some good old fashioned mass bombing, look at what Russia is overseeing in Ukraine or what Russia's ally Syria is doing to its own people.
But that would be criticizing Dear Leader
zeemike
(18,998 posts)You are just as dead if it is a sword, a bullet, a bomb or a hellfire missal.
But you don't get to say that just because it was not a 250 bomb dropped from a B52 it does not matter.
Perhaps Russia should do drone strikes on Ukrainians that they think might be terrorists...would you be OK with that then because they did not use carpet bombs?
Your logic fails all over the place.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)speechless.
You probably can't/won't understand it, but yes, if Putin were legitimately fighting a terrorist insurgency and using drone strikes to do so, then yes the rest of the civilized world would tacitly (or overtly) support that. But instead Putin is a seen as a rogue autocrat by the civilized world because what he's doing in Crimea and Ukraine is far from legitimate. There's a reason people are reminded of Hitler's land grabs.
By the way, do you think that if Putin is ever not president, he will be arrested and put in prison?
zeemike
(18,998 posts)You would think that on a Democratic site you would not see that kind of thing because it is stock and trade of the right...you are ether with us or you are with the evil Putin...and even throw in the comrade thing sometimes.
And now you are speaking for the civilized world...when that is not the case at all.
The civilized world does not support America right or wrong like you claim, and many are shocked and angry at the torture and killings of our empire on the rest of the world.
Hitlers land grab was the Ukraine and the Crimea which has been a part of Russia for a long time, and makes your statement ironic...so that is a big fat fail too.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And the complicity of the Media in delivering it...there is nothing personal here...no need to be a white night to protect her...if she can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.
And if you can't stand to hear it turn it off...but I think it needs to be seen.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)That no-name PutinTV shill is attacking one of the most respected names in western TV journalism.
Apparently irony in Russia died in a gulag.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)As if to invite me to call some names myself...
I don't think that approach will work to well here.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)What am I to think...that you just lack rhetorical skills and just repeat easy phrases?
uhnope
(6,419 posts)complaining that your favorite RT news model is being insulted.
Maybe if you actually addressed the Siberian winter of irony that is RT accusing Amanpour of being biased.
Maybe if you addressed the challenges to your own words in describing RT as mastering the art of journalism which you say has disappeared in the west.
Your technique reminds me of the cult of Scientology's tactic "Never defend, always attack."
zeemike
(18,998 posts)But no one on RT was insulted by this...or did you mean that you insulted them...well that is true...every mention of them contains a pejorative tag...and with the hyperbole too.
It is boilerplate language that I thought went out of style in the 50s
And the projection of saying I attack, when this thread is you attacking RT and that guy.
.
Union Scribe
(7,099 posts)you red bait and propagandize then you act aggrieved about someone ELSE'S style? You're either a very clever satirist or lack even the tiniest mote of self-awareness.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)Most people like to come to the site to see current issues/news and not view videos that are out of date.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)jamzrockz
(1,333 posts)I thought he was referring to Amapour a woman who has never seen a war she did not support. If we had listen to her like we did with Libya, Syria would have been in a bigger hell hole than Libya.
uhnope
(6,419 posts)And you're actually calling out Amanpour for bias in the context of a discussion involving RT? That really is missing the obvious.
About Cohen:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/07/stephen_cohen_vladimir_putin_s_apologist_the_nation_just_published_the_most.html
and
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/16/meet-stephen-f-cohen-vladimir-putin-s-best-friend-in-the-american-media.html
and
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/pathetic-lives-of-putins-american-dupes.html
Some of Cohen’s critics have assumed that he is a lifelong leftist hack who simply transferred his allegiance from the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia. The truth is more complex.
...
The Soviet collapse is generally seen as the result of the system’s internal rot; Cohen, however, has blamed it on Boris Yeltsin’s power-grabbing, aided by the pro-Western “radical intelligentsia” that “hijacked Gorbachev’s gradualist reformation.” His antipathy to Yeltsin led him to sympathize with the views of those Russians who saw their country during the 1990s as “semi-occupied by foreigners—from shock-therapy economists to human-rights advocates,” and who credited Putin with taking it back. In Newsweek’s February 2008 roundup of expert opinions on Putin and his legacy, Cohen’s contribution—entitled “The Savior”—asserted Putin was the man who “ended Russia's collapse at home and re-asserted its independence abroad.” As U.S.-Russian relations worsened, Cohen grew increasingly strident in his denunciations of the “demonization” of Putin by the American media.
Cohen’s new article in The Nation hits a new low. The charge Cohen makes is a serious one: that the pro-Western Ukrainian government, aided and abetted by the Obama administration, the “new Cold War hawks” in Congress, and the craven American media, is committing “deeds that are rising to the level of war crimes, if they have not done so already.” He is referring to the Ukrainian military assaults on cities and towns held by pro-Russian insurgents, including artillery shelling and air attacks.
...
All three organizations also extensively document abuses and bona fide atrocities by the insurgents whom Cohen calls “resisters,” from kidnappings to savage beatings, torture, rape, and murder. Cohen entirely omits these inconvenient facts, conceding only that the rebels are “aggressive, organized and well armed—no doubt with some Russian assistance.” And he concludes that “calling them ‘self-defense’ fighters is not wrong,” since “their land is being invaded and assaulted by a government whose political legitimacy is arguably no greater than their own, two of their large regions having voted overwhelmingly for autonomy referendums.”
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)of the violent overthrow of the former elected government, you might recall.
Attacking those that disagree with Kiev's obvious aggression into the East with ad hominem deflections and name calling is making your arguments weaker.
Who is attacking who in East Ukraine and who is defending?
newthinking
(3,982 posts)It is amazing to watch all the armchair opinionists in the media attempt to discredit any source of expertise and professionals who still practice investigative journalism.
Elmergantry
(884 posts)I see far, far, rightwingers supporting Putin because they think he is standing up against the gays "banksters" and the atheist EU..
I see far, far, leftwingers supporting Putin simply because they hate America, and love it when anyone, no matter how repulsive that person is, gives the US the finger.
Then you have the average left of center and average right of center who pretty much are against Putin for some common and separate reasons. For evidence you can look at the current Congress and witness that plenty on BOTH sides of the aisle want to arm Ukraine.
Well that's how it appears to me, maybe I'm wrong, who knows...
uhnope
(6,419 posts)
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Sounds like a figment of someone's imagination.
Elmergantry
(884 posts)That you can find several here that always rush to blame the US
at any opportunity.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)We never hear that from Democrats or liberals.
Generally speaking, liberals don't go in for the false patriotism/ultra nationalism we see in righties/Republicans. We might call them the "My Country Right or Wrong" crowd. You know, the kind that were cheerleaders for the Iraq War. Liberals have a more objective view of the nation and the nation's failings.
Liberals think we can hardly improve the nation if we don't first identify the various problems. Republicans/conservatives see the nation as perfect just the way it is.
