at RT
Psaki wiggles out of RT's Ukraine ceasefire question, bluntly blames Russia (VIDEO)
January 23, 2015
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
(Still from RT video)
RT could not get a straight response from US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki [These elite hierarchies always have the cunning to condemn the elitism of enemy hierarchies, in this case Russians, while "practicing an even more vicious version of their own under a masque of benevolence and brotherly love", like in the case of Jen Psaki in this clip. As if anyone in the U.S. State Department are actually concerned about the estimated 5,000 Ukrainians who have been killed so far.] on Kiev's role in a breach of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. Psaki chose to loudly blame Russia while keeping quiet about the actions of the Ukrainian government.
READ MORE: At least 9 killed in eastern Ukraine rush hour shelling amid conflicting arrest reports (VIDEO)
Psaki got grilled during Friday's daily briefing about whether the Ukrainian government's actions comply with the Minsk agreements that have been backed by the UN and other international players as the only viable solution to the conflict.
But, after multiple attempts to get a straight answer, Psaki kept repeating accusations against Russia.
"It was clear to me that the spokesperson was trying to avoid giving a direct answer to the question, so I pressed on, but received more of the same," RT's Gayane Chichakyan said. "What I gathered from this briefing is that the US always has something to say about Russia, but never about what the Ukrainian government is doing."
Psaki grilled over Ukraine's noncompliance
with Minsk peace agreements
Chichakyan pointed out that at times Psaki was not even willing to admit the fact that Ukrainian government has been using heavy artillery.
"This tactic of avoiding questions about what the Ukrainian government is doing by pointing to Russia is becoming increasingly obvious," the journalist said.
Here is an excerpt from the briefing:
Gayane Chichakyan: Do the actions of the Ukrainian government comply with the Minsk agreement?
Jen Psaki: In general Russia has illegally – and Russian-backed separatists have illegally – come into Ukraine, including Donetsk. Ukraine has a responsibility and an absolute right to defend itself. We certainly expect both sides to abide by the Minsk agreements. We have not seen that happen, we’ve seen a lot of talk, not a lot of backup from the Russian side.
GC: I am specifically asking about the actions of the Ukrainian government. Can you give a more definitive answer, whether or not they comply with the Minsk agreements?
JP: You are not talking about a specific incident, I think I’ll leave it at what I said.
GC: With the Minsk agreement, do they comply? You pass a judgment that Russia is not complying with the agreement, can you assess whether Ukraine is complying?
JP: I listed a range of specific ways Russia is not complying.
GC: Under the agreement sides must avoid deploying and using heavy artillery. Isn’t it what the Ukrainian government is doing right now?
JP: First of all, let's start again with the fact that Russia has illegally intervened in Ukraine and come into a country that was a sovereign country. So I am not sure that you are proposing that a sovereign country doesn’t have the right to defend themselves.
GC: I am asking specifically about the actions of the Ukrainian government, you are veering off.
JP: I think we are going to leave it at that.
A bus shelled at a public-transit stop in Leninsky District, Donetsk
(a screenshot from a Ruptly video).
After numerous failed attempts to get Psaki to answer a simple question, AP's Matt Lee tried his chances.
Matt Lee: It just seems to be that when the government of Ukraine is accused of shelling civilian targets, you say: 'Let's have an investigation.' And when there are incidents that you ascribe to the separatists, there is an immediate condemnation, so I think that is where these questions are coming from.
JP: I wouldn't say that is exactly what's happened. [This is precisely what happened and the evidence is available by doing a simple search on YouTube of the clips that are being uploaded of the terrorist teams that have been apprehended caught shelling civilians, so Jen Psaki is either lying or she doesn't have a clue about what is going on in Ukraine.] There are times when it is clear who is responsible. This is a case where there is going to be an investigation.
READ MORE: State Dept Sideshow: Jen Psaki's most embarrassing fails, most entertaining grillings (VIDEO)
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This article appeared
at RT
Head of US state media put RT on same challenge list as ISIS, Boko Haram
January 23, 2015
(Video)
Newly-appointed chief of US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andrew Lack, [it should be pointed out that Andrew Lack is an Ashkenazi Jew which will have a serious impact on his decisions as the new CEO of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which currently has a whopping federal budget of US$700 million per year. It should also be pointed out that Russia's Vladimir Putin either kicked Jewish oligarchs out of Russia, severely restricted them, and put a few in prison.] has named RT one of the agency's main challenges alongside extremist groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram.
Lack, the first chief executive of the BBG, mentioned RT in an interview with The New York Times.
"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," [he is attempting to smear RT with guilt by association] he said. "But I firmly believe that this agency has a role to play in facing those challenges."
RT never expected to find itself on a list with the two most dangerous terrorist groups of the day and is seeking clarification on the comment.
"We are extremely outraged that the new head [the Ashkenazi Jew Andrew Lack] of the BBG mentions RT in the same breath as world's number one terrorist army," said Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. "We see this as an international scandal and demand an explanation."
Apart from BBG itself, RT is also seeking clarification from the US State Department and the US Embassy in Russia.
It's not the first time the BBG, a bipartisan agency that supervises government-sponsored media, targeting international audiences, has referred to RT as a 'challenge.'
"Let's put together a plan of how much that would cost and how to do something that we could compete with Russia Today [RT] and then let's go to the Hill and then let's go to the White House and tell them what it's going to cost to compete, and let's see if we can do it," BBG chairman Jeffrey Shell said in August 2014. [And we're to believe that BBG can't already do that with an annual budget of US$700 million dollars?]
RT is viewed this way "because there's a terror in London and in Washington of new upstarts, of new information coming out and challenging the narratives that they have owned for the last 50 years of so," editor of politics.co.uk Ian Dunt told RT. [The monopoly on journalism and news has just come to an end for the five Jewish dominated news sources in America.]
John Kerry attacks RT during
Ukraine address
READ MORE: American broadcasters see RT as major challenge, want to try to compete
This time the New York Times article mentions RT's "significant American presence" and argues Russia "poured millions" into its US bureau and the Sputnik news agency.
US politicians have lashed out at RT in the past. John Kerry attacked the channel for its coverage of the Ukraine crisis last spring and called RT a "propaganda bullhorn."
Following Kerry's rant, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decried John Kerry's comments about RT as "uncivilized" and "prosecutorial."
"[The West] has been convinced for some time that it has a full monopoly on mass media," said Lavrov [Russia wants a multi-polar world while the US wants a uni-polar arrangement and it is erupting in Ukraine with deadly consequences.] in a statement. "Russia Today has won a large audience in the US and Western Europe, not to mention in Latin America and the Arab world."
READ MORE: 'Propaganda bullhorn': John Kerry attacks RT during Ukraine address
"As a broadcaster, RT does indeed present a challenge to US international broadcasting in terms of competing for viewership," said Director of Advocacy and Communications of the International Press Institute (IPI) Steven M. Ellis. "But RT obviously does not present the type of threat to journalists' physical security that entities such as the Islamic State group or Boko Haram pose. Mr. Lack could have phrased his comments more carefully to make this distinction clear, and we hope he will do so in the future."
US television professionals have, however, been more amenable to RT and have nominated its reporting for media awards. RT received an Emmy nomination for its series of Guantanamo hunger strike reports in 2014, and the channel was earlier nominated for Emmies in 2010 and 2012.
________
This article appeared
at Defense News
Brzezinski: US Should Deploy Troops to Baltics
Agence France-Presse January 21, 2015
WASHINGTON -- The United States and its allies should deploy troops to Baltic states to deter Russia from staging a possible incursion in those countries, former presidential national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, told lawmakers Wednesday.
The foreign policy expert, who served under president Jimmy Carter, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he feared Russian President Vladimir Putin might try to take control over Baltic countries in a lightning move that could take NATO by surprise. [This is more posturing.]
A nightmare scenario could be that "one day -- and I literally mean one day -- he just seizes Riga and Tallinn ... That would literally take him one day. There's no way they could resist," Brzezinski said.
"And then we'll say how horrible, how shocking, how outrageous. But, of course, we can't do anything about it," he said, without risking a potential nuclear conflict.
The United States needed to make clear to Russia that it would US forces if it tried to invade the Baltics, he said.
"I think deterrence has to have meaning. It has to have teeth in it. And it has to create a situation in which someone planning an action like that has no choice but to anticipate what kind of resistance will lie in counter," he said.
"I do recommend pre-positioning of some forces," in those countries, he said, but in a way that was not provocative.
"An American company (of troops) in Estonia is not going to invade Russia," he said.
Putin would understand that, "but he will know that if he invades Estonia, he will encounter some American forces on the ground. And better still, some Germans, some French. And some Brits, of course," he said.
Brzezinski also said that Western governments should provide "defensive" weapons to Ukraine to make Moscow's intervention more costly, while also sending a signal Ukraine would not be given membership in the NATO alliance.
His comments came as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg [We're actually going to accept anything stated by NATO at face value?] said Russia had increased the amount of heavy arms it was sending into Ukraine while Kiev accused Moscow of deploying 9,000 troops inside its country.
The United States has sent troops to the Baltics, Poland and other eastern allies for high-profile exercises to reassure anxious government's over Russia's intervention [This is not the case at all, rather, this is posturing against the Russians who have taken a diplomatic approach to Ukraine and have instead sent aid convoys. Reports from "western" media suggesting Russia was "massing troops on the border with Ukraine" but this proved false.] in Ukraine. But US officials so far have not proposed stationing additional American troops permanently in the Baltics.
Brzezinski served as the national security adviser under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981 and is a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
________
Further reading:
Challenges for America: ISIS, Boko Haram and… Russia Today?!
Alexander Dugin: Eurasia: perspectives
of multipolarity &
Fourth Political Theory
Isinbaeva rocks the
Russia National Anthem
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