Don't Limit This To CNN Only-I

As you may know, CNN is done as "news" organization. This is not news, really. US media in general are some iterations of present day CNN--they are propaganda machine. But this could last only so long before CNN finally overdosed on the massive amount of BS, lies and fake news before it understood that it is in the sewer. 

                    CNN imposing new rules on Russia stories

CNN, known for its support for Islamic terrorists and for promoting suicidal social and cultural views, got burned on Russia. How symbolic. 

The new restrictions come after CNN on Friday retracted a story that connected Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent ally of President Trump, to a Russian investment fund managed by a Kremlin-controlled bank.

“On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” the news organization said in a statement.

“That story did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”

The retracted story had claimed that Senate investigators were looking at the activities of the $10 billion Russian investment fund in connection to Scaramucci, who served on the executive committee of Trump's transition team. 

A source close to CNN told BuzzFeed the incident was a "massive, massive f--k up and people will be disciplined."

But enough with Clinton News Network,  they are not alone in smearing people and whole countries (such as Russia) with lies--this is Modus Operandi of most of US main stream media. CNN simply got caught (again), while it has to be very clear that another "Russia" story actually far from not "meeting" CNN "editorial standards" is the standard and this standard is a lie. So the story meets CNN standard just fine. CNN, however, is not alone in its Russophobic hysteria, nor is it the first. Here we come to a wonderfully interesting question which Arctic Fox asked me in Open Thread:

Smoothie... You often mention the abysmal state of US higher levels of ex-Soviet/current Russ studies. As one who has read many of your posts over a couple of years, I can see your points... Obviously, US analysis, even at the "bleeding edge" level, gets many things wrong, if not very wrong. Thus, I'd be grateful if you could recommend a rough outline for a true "Russia" syllabus of university and/or self-study. I'm not asking for an encyclopedic review... But what would you say -- your "elevator pitch" -- to a smart high school student about what to follow in college/grad school; or what to say to an intelligent adult who wants to become better-able to address issues. Or, put another way, if you could talk to the curriculum committee at US West Point or Annapolis, or at various war colleges, etc... what would you say??

I would start with several points which are absolutely crucial for people who want to understand what Russia was and is: 

1. Russia studies in the West must be (this is not even a preference, this is imperative) de-ideologicized completely. Considering Russia's complexity, size and weight both geographically and historically it must be understood that drawing direct comparisons to popular "western" dogmas (most of them being false anyway) doesn't work and will not work. I am tempted, yet again, to repeat Sir  Bernard Pares' recipe for those who want to become knowledgeable on a subject:

"Irresponsible criticism is generally-self confident; but no one cares to be told:" I am holier than thou", especially by anyone who doesn't know his facts... And knowledge alone is not enough without understanding, which is much more hardly won. To no country does this apply more than to Russia....This gap has to be filled, or will it cost us dear."

Modern West doesn't understand modern Russia, not in a sense of Russia's very often justified grievances, but in a more fundamental sense--it doesn't understand what Russian people are. Even when a vast collection of facts on Russia and Russians is available, combined West fails time after time to come up with a whole picture. De Custinization of Russian history will help greatly those who are not overcome with acute symptoms of self-righteousness and exceptionalism, which, considering the modern state of West's academe suffering greatly from such affliction, is not easy to do. But simple things has to be understood: all this "democracy" (and its derivative ideological memes) propaganda is just that, especially against the facts of catastrophic European wars of 19th Century or US having official slave ownership mid-19th Century. These are hardly strong positions for pontification but that is precisely the way most of Western "Russia Studies" field operates. Against the background of today's "West's" rule of oligarchy, political corruption reaching the very top, not to speak about bloodshed exported all over the world--understanding of own, often critical, faults, is a good substitution for self-righteousness.  

2. That brings us to a second and, actually, legitimate West's discussion on Russia's civilizational orientation. It is known fact that Roger Scruton, whose definition of the West I use very often is a Russophobe, yet, his definition is correct and is worth repeating:

"The roots of Western civilization lie in the religion of Israel, the culture of Greece, and the law of Rome, and the resulting synthesis has flourished and decayed in a thousand ways during the two millennia which followed the death of Christ"

Culturally, Russia and Russians are Western people. Even the brief review of Russian contribution to Western culture--from magnificent literature, to science, to music, to technology--is distinctly Western. And even Russian communism, or what went under its name, is a distinctly western philosophy which inevitably was modified and Russified. Today's Russia's lack of desire to "integrate" with the West is not only understandable--it is completely justified and one of the major reasons for that is the fact of Russia being today more "western" than European West itself. A beaten to death "civilizational" cliche of Russia somehow missing on all those wonderful fruits of Enlightenment (which is false, btw) which somehow made Western societies so liberal and "western" is a complete baloney. It is especially true when one sees this very "liberal democracy" bringing Hitler to power, or seeing modern European societies being manipulated into the status of mindless imbeciles, especially when one sees French "elections"--I believe community of apes is more aware of its needs  and threats it faces than, supposedly, Enlightenment-struck population of the West, which already lives under totalitarian rule (US still tries to resist)--so much for some special effects of Enlightenment. Yet, non-Western Russia still remains one of the most educated nations in the world, not to speak of Russia's STEM elite which is one of the best, if not the best, in the world. How many people in the West really (I underscore it)  read (with full immersion) Tolstoy's War And Peace. But that brings us to the third point.

3. There is NO understanding of Russia without her 20th Century history and her communist period. None, period. Combined West has no idea of that history. Fact is, it would have been better if it would have been completely ignorant than have the caricature it has in a front of its eyes when speaking of Soviet/Russian period.  At this stage West is incapable of looking beyond the rigid ideological and propaganda limits it imposed on itself when viewing Russia's 20th Century history. E.g. even today West's WW II history is largely shaped by Wehrmacht generals--the fact underscored by well--known Glantz and House in their seminal works on Eastern Front. Nor were there "tens of millions" of victims of GULAG, "promoted" by Solzhenitsyn, as well as explanations for collectivization (and sometimes tragic price USSR paid for it) must be looked at not in Soviet, but Czarist history. The list of falsifications and of acts of demonization (dehumanization) is colossal and many of those were and are of West's own making, done with intent and out of (geo)political and ideological expediency, truth be damned. But that is the whole issue here--the point I am trying to discuss constantly: truth is knowable and it is absolute and it must be pursued, even when it is inconvenient and it hurts, otherwise--this world is hopeless, but I don't share this point view. So, what this curriculum for Russia can start with? I think with one of the greatest books ever written in Russia on Civil War "Road To Calvary" by Alexey Tosltoy (and the 1977 TV series with superb actors' cast and two stunning women as protagonists) and movie adaptation of Bulgakov's seminal play Beg (Flight)--a movie which since early 1970 literally entered Russian language with a collection of the greatest one-liners. That could be a good start....

To Be Continued.......

    

Don't Waste Your Time, Harlan Ullman

No, really, this would have been really funny if not for it being utterly pathetic. Now, after US mainstream media and pundits' utter crushing defeat, Harlan Ullman tries to weigh in on what he pretends to understand--Russia.    

         Needed urgently: some first-rate Kremlinologists

The guy, who, evidently, is very big on doctrine-mongering, frames this "urgent" need in this way:

"As a consequence, it is only relatively recently that greater analysis of Russian intentions has reawakened following the intervention in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, last year's sortie into Syria and Moscow's increasingly harsh rhetoric of intimidation. At the NATO summits in Wales in 2014 and in Warsaw this year, the alliance took military steps to respond to Russian aggressive actions through enhancing deterrence and reassuring allies particularly on both flanks and on the eastern borders. The reality is, however, that these decisions were made less on a thorough analysis of Russian strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities and more on Cold War concepts of responding in kind with military solutions."  

There is a Russian proverb which states that if the person is dead--this is for a long time, but if a person is an idiot--it is eternal. In one sense Ullman is right though. US doesn't have and, arguably, never had any serious Russian study field. Bar some few exceptions, what went under American "Russian Studies" was reduced to pushing some expedient ideas (US "elites" seem to be, unlike Russians, utterly obsessed with GULAG, as an example) and, indeed, was reduced to Kremlinology, not the study of real Russian culture and history. Fact is, Russian history, especially that of the XX century, has been reduced to caricature and memes in which the "culture" and "history" of narrow strata of Soviet/Russian pro-Western dissidents, their "vision" of Russia, very often completely detached from the reality, has been substituted for the real thing. It couldn't have been otherwise, especially in the XX century, where realities of the two European Wars and of the Soviet period of Russian history completely escaped those in grossly overrated American Russia's "academe" and analytic organizations ranging from intelligence to think-tanks. US has plenty of Kremlinologists, what it doesn't have is the knowledge of Russia and, judging by this Ullman's piece, probably will not have it in the nearest future--there is a reason for that of which I will tell later. This little blog of mine for the last two years was documenting an utter failure of all those proverbial US and "Western" Kremlinologists to find their own ass in brightly lit room, let alone forecast or correctly assess the events in and around Russia. Nowhere this utter failure manifested itself more profoundly than in their tedious, unimaginative, incompetent and hubris, or, otherwise, barely hidden complex of inferiority, stricken "analysis" of Russian military. This whole American Russia "establishment" should be fired the same way as everyone in US mainstream media should--these guys helped to bring the United States to the verge of war with Russia. This whole establishment is struck with a disease which prevented and will continue to prevent them from seeing the world for what it is. This disease is American exceptionalism. 

Let's hope that with the new day dawning in the United States after Trump's victory, we all may finally get to the facts, not bullshit of "making own reality", of how world operates and maybe, just maybe, the necessary arrangements for more secure and prosperous world could be made. There is no rational reason for American and Russian peoples (US "state" is a separate matter) to be enemies and if Mr. Ullman thinks that he has what it takes to consult on Russia, he may start by learning real Russian history, culture and attitudes to warfare and maybe he will admit to himself that most of what he knows about Russia is crap. I doubt he will, though. In the end, the guy still thinks that:

"The results of these analyses should be made available in a Wikipedia-type online service in order to inform and expand public debate on Russia. What has singularly plagued the United States in the past has been the failure to understand and gain the knowledge necessary to prevail over an adversary. Vietnam and the second Iraq War underscore the tragic consequences of, as the great Chinese Gen. Sun Tzu warned, "not knowing the enemy."

If he thinks that he is going to fight Russia and win just by learning about her I may only recall Sir Bernard Pares' prescient quote: 

"And knowledge alone is not enough without understanding, which is much more hardly won. To no country does this apply more than to Russia....This gap has to be filled, or will it cost us dear."(c) It almost did.   

Disclaimer: If anyone will misconstrue this post of mine as some kind of "offering an alternative" on an official level to whatever organization or person--wrong. Not interested, even for a good money. I love my job and down to earth lifestyle and prefer to remain independent in my assessments of the outside world. At least I am not wrong all the time;-)