NYT Selectively Quotes To Denigrate Russian Olympics
Even after the Sochi games have begun the New York Times and continue their ridiculous anti-Russian campaign reaching as a last straws to this or that official uttering while conveniently leaving out those quotes that give real meaning of what was said and which condemn the NYT for exactly what it does.
Headlining The Darkness Behind Sochi’s Sparkle the front page piece looks for lost doorknobs and missing pillows, how terribly inconvenient and impossible to happen in the "west", and talks about "Russia’s oppressive antigay law and its suffocating restrictions on freedom of speech". This even after the opening show in Sochi included the Russian band t.A.T.u, famous for their lesbian kisses (vid), and lots of music by Tchaikovsky, the great gay composer.
It calls as witness the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, misrepresenting him as if he somehow did what the Times is doing:
At the opening ceremony, during which he sat next to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, Bach gave a strong speech to kick off the Olympics. He made points that sounded like sharp digs at Putin and the law he signed that banned the distribution of so-called gay propaganda to children in Russia.In the most refreshing speech by an I.O.C. president in decades, Bach did not kowtow to the host country. He said the Olympics should set an example for “human diversity and great unity.”
“To the athletes, you have come here with your Olympic dream,” he said. “You are welcome, no matter where you come from or your background. Yes, it’s possible even as competitors to live together and to live in harmony with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason.”
He did not have to come out and say it, but many people who heard him knew exactly what he meant.
Bach said what is said at any Olympic Games. Leave out the politics. Be peaceful and tolerant. But the author obviously completely missed what Bach was really saying. The very next sentence in Bach's short speech, not quoted by the New York Times, was this:
“Have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful, direct political dialogue and not on the backs of these athletes,” he said.
But that is of course not what the Times wants to do. It wants to mix the issues, sports and politics, and demean the apolitical games only to insert its political pet peeve.
Posted by b on February 8, 2014 at 11:11 UTC | Permalink
Here in the States NBC's commentary is also nauseating. I was thinking during the opening ceremony that every country that the U.S. has bombed,invaded,fomented riots in or committed coups against should have been pointed out.
Posted by: par4 | Feb 8 2014 13:54 utc | 2
the gay law:
Michael Riseup Stowell The recent legislation that is referred to came from a committee in the lower Duma, a committee that is charged with finding solutions to Russia's demographic problems. Russia's population is aging quickly and they are trying to remedy the situation by encouraging stable families. Most of the committee's focus has been on revising laws concerning drug and alcohol addiction, they are developing restorative justice linked to recovery programs. The recent clarification came up through the lower Duma and was unanimously passed by the upper Duma to Putin for his signature, it is supported by more than 80% of the Russian people. The revision makes it a misdemeanor to distribute homosexual literature to minors, no one has been charged thus far. Homosexuality was a crime in the entire former Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. It was decriminalized in Russia in 1993.
Posted by: brian | Feb 8 2014 13:56 utc | 3
freedom of speech!? the american fetish
the regime that berates others for lack of freedom of information.... #hypocrisyisallamerican
MEDIA BLACKS OUT NEW SNOWDEN INTERVIEW THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE
This past Sunday evening former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with German television network ARD. The interview has been intentionally blocked from the US public, with virtually no major broadcast news outlets covering this story. In addition, the video has been taken down almost immediately every time it’s posted on YouTube.
http://benswann.com/media-blacks-out-new-snowden-interview-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
Posted by: brian | Feb 8 2014 14:02 utc | 4
Putin has already met w/ Ukraine Yankovich @ Sochi and that is pissing the Americans off, and did you see Karzai sitting in the audience? Nuland was forced to apologize for the FU to the EU and now another vid has surfaced where she says the u.s. has spent $5 Billion in Ukraine regime change. @ 7:25 mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=861DJLR4Cek
Posted by: TikTok | Feb 8 2014 14:23 utc | 5
The anti-Sochi Anglosphere probaganda is even alienating Russians who oppose Putin:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116507/russians-hit-back-west-cool-it-olympic-schadenfreude
Money quote:
"Within hours of arriving in Moscow yesterday, Russian friends, even the Westernized ones, those who are openly, viciously critical of the Kremlin, have expressed their hurt at the Western blooper coverage of Sochi. A whole lot of their tax money has been spent on something they may not have wanted and in ways they find criminally wasteful, and, yes, their government has not done much to endear itself to the West of late, but they're puzzled by why the Americans and the British are so very happy that the details are a little screwy, the way they generally are in Russia.
The word they use is zloradstvo, literally: evil-reveling. "
Posted by: rkka | Feb 8 2014 14:40 utc | 6
rkka
Russians ought to understand by now-(where were they during the Cold War when the US, simultaneously, cried crocodile tears over the dearth of consumer goods and ratcheted up the pressure to wreck the soviet economy?)- that it isn't Putin the Imperialists hate, just as it wasn't Krushchev, Stalin or Brezhnev, it is the Russian people.
This media campaign is sheer slavophobia; it has a long history in Britain (Urquart) and it goes back to trade rivalry over the Pacific in the States, for whom Russia has always been the long term rival, and it is laced with the hatred european fascists still have for the Red Army which ruined everything for them.
That is why, in places like Latvia, little pockets of fascists gather together with surviving veterans of the war against the USSR to honour the scum who crucified Leningrad and eagerly liquidated Russians, Jews and others for Nazi wages. Among those fascists were not a few Zionists, half of them wearing the Brownshirts of the Jabotinsky revisionists from whose loins, literally, sprang Netanyahu and his Likudnik friends who are so cherished by the US media.
Posted by: bevin | Feb 8 2014 15:37 utc | 7
The underlying factor behind all the anti-Sochi games is anti-Russian hatred..It's a veiled form of Racism against Russians/Slavic speaking people...It's a centuries old thing among the Western/Non-Slavic European types...
I don't think it'll yield much result. People are really getting tired of this pro-gay anti-Putin/Sochi nonesense!!!!
Posted by: Zico | Feb 8 2014 15:45 utc | 8
Disseminating anti-Olympic agitprop to a nation of grossly obese couch potatoes lends a certain irony to US envy and self-justification. If Putin didn't have them snookered, they'd think twice about wearing their hearts and their Full Spectrum Dumb-inence on their sleeves...
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 8 2014 15:53 utc | 9
Yes, denigrating anything Russian seems to be the propaganda slant here in the US nowadays.
But, it's interesting, just how eager people are to believe the BS fed to them by the MSM.
Creepy.
Posted by: ben | Feb 8 2014 15:58 utc | 10
P.S...... Preparing the US public for a confrontation with Russia Maybe?
Posted by: ben | Feb 8 2014 16:00 utc | 11
@2
Yes, the madness just never ends here in Spectacle America. Even though the entire leadership of the US is a collection of murderous war criminals we are all supposed to just forget all that and listen to them lecture us about right and wrong. Yet hardly anyone bats and eye or betrays any sense of cognitive dissonance for the most part. Only the people who point out the obvious - hypocrisy is too soft a word - distortion of reality that is occurring before our very eyes - i.e., the US is a bastion of freedom blah blah - feel any qualms and that is because the brainwashed masses castigate them for marching out of step/not reading their lines.
I've tried to impress upon people that the world is truly in fact witnessing the first - albeit inverted - totalitarian society of the 21st century and what that really means when such power is combined with a near media monopoly but unfortunately it seems to be a very, very potent weapon and even those people who one might think are critical thinkers fall into the well-grooved ruts of "acceptable" discourse - e.g., the anti-Sochi brigade of the Western fake left.
One of the most important traits of the American war criminal propagandists is their relentlessness in the face of facts, logic or shame. They truly are the "Squalking Dead".
Posted by: JSorrentine | Feb 8 2014 16:01 utc | 12
Just because the USA is far from perfect, it does not make the ex-Soviet Union aka Russia a haven of human rights. Historically, just remember the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Remember Hitler's military that was trained in the USSR, when such training was not allowed for a defeated Germany after WWOne. Read Solzenytsin's gulag books. For today, look at the incidence of racist attacks especially against people's from the Caucasus. Remember that Sochi is built upon the mass graves of the Circassians, just one of the many peoples that theRussians did their best to annihilate. I could go on.
And now the Russian taxpayer has been hit up for 51 billion dollars. Enjoy.
Posted by: kassandra | Feb 8 2014 16:42 utc | 13
Playing tatu at the opening ceremony... this is so funny. Beyond the realm of realpolitiks, I have to admit, being a media consumer, the back-and-forth of "western" allegations and smart russian responses is quite amusing if one has an open eye and ear for it. The Judoka style of Putin seems to have an effect on russian overall diplomacy ;-).
Posted by: peter radiator | Feb 8 2014 16:57 utc | 14
P.S...... Preparing the US public for a confrontation with Russia Maybe?
Posted by: ben | Feb 8, 2014 11:00:45 AM | 11
Nope.
Russia would be compelled to go Nuclear before the Yankees if large scale confrontation looms - for a lot of good strategic reasons.
First strike > all of America's missile sites & submarines, and their 15 or so 'navies' (carrier and battle groups). And that's just the first hour.
And then there's China.
If Russia waits too long then the ties between America's 1% and China's 1% will be stronger than Russia's ties with China.
One way or another, the lunatic cess-pit known as America is going to be Nuked.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 8 2014 17:30 utc | 15
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Feb 8 2014 18:41 utc | 16
@13
Blah blah blah blah....Today's Russian leaders are NOT murderous war criminals directly responsible for the death/maiming/displacement/rape/theft of millions and millions of innocent people over the last 10+ years. THAT is the issue. Not what different people in the past did or did not do. This same horsesh!te argument is trotted out by the worst of the fake left - i.e., "liberal Zionists" - to defend the apartheid genocidal state of Israel over and over again - e.g., but what about the Native Americans, they whine.
Certainly trying to get into a "who's worse on human rights" contest is absurd and only worthy of intelligence-fronts like Amnesty and HRW but to try and say that "the USA is far from perfect" when in fact that are led by murderous war criminals guilty of the most blatant and incessant violations of international law the world has seen in nearly 50 years is - too put it mildly - a bit much (read: vastly too little).
As concerns who wins the "human rights" beauty pageant, who cares as it's only a rhetorical veneer used by the West to try and hide its own crimes and nothing more no matter how hard the whiny fake left tries to get us to care.
"Far from perfect" is the kind of sh!te that comes out of Obama and every other Western leaders lying mouths to make the masses swallow crime after crime after despicable crime - from the worsening and miserable living conditions of the majority of people within the Western countries to the outright murder and rape of those innocent people living outside the Western countries.
We're "far from perfect" like Jeffrey Dahmer was maybe a wee bit on touched the side.
It also makes it sound like our leaders are really trying, like the give a flying f*ck about anything even tangential to humanistic affairs when this has been shown time and time and time again to be the farthest things from their psychotic neoliberal minds.
But of course I'm just a radical nut who thinks the murderers and plunderers of innocent people should be called out. I'll try and tone it down next time.
Posted by: JSorrentine | Feb 8 2014 19:07 utc | 17
"Leave out the politics?" Come on, the Olympics have always had a political aspect. If you want to leave it out, then do it yourself. Stop participating in such a boring, petty pissing match.
Posted by: Pine | Feb 8 2014 19:17 utc | 18
Adding:
The entire point/thrust of Western and Zionist propaganda is to make it all - i.e., the criminality of the Western/Zionist elite - seem "normal", that what we are in fact witnessing is NOT wholesale death and destruction and the commission of innumerable war crimes but rather just your run-of-the-mill - don't forget debatable, everyone feels included in a debate! - outcomes of policy differences that - oops - sometimes don't work to some people's advantage - nudge, wink (read: they're dead/maimed/displaced/raped/stolen from, etc.).
When observers - i.e., peons/commoners - start to use the very same ameliorating and mitigating words and phrases that these elite criminals use to describe/hide their crimes then we are in fact aiding and abetting them in the whitewashing of their deeds by falling into the very linguistic traps they have set for us.
Posted by: JSorrentine | Feb 8 2014 19:32 utc | 19
@4 - thanks. so true.
@5 - thanks for that.. the 5 bil clip is closer to 7:45. the comments to this tell it like it is.. she wants to see the will of the people prevail, but is okay with a foreign gov't throwing a little chump change around to help get a particular result.. who does she think she is fooling?
@13 - these olympic affairs are always expensive. the benefits never go to the little people either.. one can't pick on russia for this, as every country does it.. perhaps though it is easier to go along with what you are fed in the msm though? by your comments that appears to be the case..
@16 - i agree.. lets look at all actions dispassionately, as opposed to being selective in how we want to single out a certain country, especially when their is a fairly obvious agenda behind the singling out of the same country.
Posted by: james | Feb 8 2014 20:43 utc | 20
Denigrating the Sochi games is ridiculous, as many say.
Plus, all the pro and anti-gay rights public moves (such as Obama sending some gays and explicitly saying he did it for ‘minorities’ or whatever; countries flying rainbow flags at home in support or even dressing their athletes in rainbow colors, like Germany) gets my goat.
Silly, trivia, spectacle. Like teenagers mocking each other for being nerds, gay, snobby -n well dressed, grungy, hot chicks with porno-looking gear, gothic (hey death lovers and neo-nazis?) and smashing back with social media barbs.
The twitter hoopla should not obscure that Russia has effectively designated an enemy within and that the position of LGTB people in Russia is now very unhappy, exposed, precarious, even life-threatening.
The choice of the enemy within (homosexuals) creates an alliance between the State, the Orthodox Church, and social conservative elements (some might call that fascist, as that term is apparently way-broad...but not used in *this* case?) who may want to act with impunity... all can benefit from a clear target.
Russia, - other countries -, cannot chose an enemy within that is religiously, ethnically, racially, nationally, regionally defined. Age, sex, looks (color, size, body, etc.), profession, occupation, no. (Discrimination and hate proceed but public policy can’t admit that.)
One cannot, openly with insistence, attack, as a group, Jews, the inhabitants of Brittany, Catholics, single women aged over 30, plumbers, red-heads, people who are small / black, etc. as a target to hate.
US-isr has long fought for an exception .. Palestinians, Muslims, arabs, sand ni***, re-labelled terrorists, but that hasn’t actually worked too well.
Sexual orientation provides the one last opening (with one exception, not for now.) Gays are everywhere, invisible, ordinary folk from all ethnicities, walks of life. Disapproval / hate rests on age-old social mores. The excuse is concern about behavior which is not linked to any racial, cultural, etc. characteristic. Putin and Co. have taken pains to present the aggression as serving ‘to protect the children.’
Dissing Human Rights Watch (yeah they are the absolute pits) is no reason to silently participate in or agree to oppression of any group.
Posted by: Noirette | Feb 8 2014 20:51 utc | 21
"Historically, just remember the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany."
I'll never forget: A brilliant strategy on the part of the Soviets. They knew better than most what was coming. The sequel proved it.
"Remember Hitler's military that was trained in the USSR, when such training was not allowed for a defeated Germany after WWOne."
First I heard of this. Got a link. Preferably not wikipedia.
Ah, yes Solzenytisen! Praised to the heavens by the western press. Who meticulously research their subjects -- the better to know what to leave out.
Posted by: ruralito | Feb 8 2014 20:58 utc | 22
@Noirette,nobody gives a damn about homosexuals,everybody should be entitled -as adults -to choose its own sexual inclination at home.The problem is when you use this "politically correct"issue as a trojan horse to destroy a civilization from within,because the abc of any civilization is the demographic continuity lest you want the whole world to go on the decline that western civilization is facing.The problem is that when you make of this sexual inclination an issue you erode cultural and societal cohesion destroying millennia long empirical knowledge to achieve what exactly other than the destruction of whole societies from within.
Posted by: Nobody | Feb 8 2014 21:49 utc | 23
"Remember Hitler's military that was trained in the USSR, when such training was not allowed for a defeated Germany after WWOne."
This was before Hitler came to power. And the Soviets never signed the Versailles Treaty, so they had no obligation not to.
Posted by: rkka | Feb 8 2014 23:15 utc | 24
@13 Kassandra, 51 Billion is a mere pittance compared to the Trillion plus on wars without end and result.....
Posted by: georgeg | Feb 8 2014 23:29 utc | 25
Losers! Hideous US MSM attacks the sochi Olympics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPFcdPIgz8k&feature=youtu.be
Posted by: brian | Feb 8 2014 23:55 utc | 26
Posted by: kassandra | Feb 8, 2014 11:42:03 AM | 13
and you wonder why noone listens to you?!
Posted by: brian | Feb 9 2014 0:07 utc | 27
@Noirette - the Russians are no more gay bashing than any "western" country. Just look at what happens in U.S. prisons. More males get raped there than females outside.
The Only People Harassing the Gays of Sochi are the Foreign Journalists
Notice that the writer is usually pretty much in the anti-Putin camp.
Have you read already Obama et Poutine vont-ils se partager le Proche-Orient ? and Obama II – the purge and the pact? or (Video) "Time" weekly news program, Channel One Russia, April 14, 2013
Do you know about the bifurcation in the American power structure?
No? Then please inform yourself before jumping to conclusions.
Posted by: ProPeace | Feb 9 2014 18:46 utc | 30
ProBillshit: Meyssan is to put it politely thoroughly unreliable. To put it less politely, he is a conduit for fifth-rate Russian propaganda. They should shut up and let the facts, which in the long run should work in their favour, speak for themselves. And you should shut up, because this is the second time you have come on here with a load of bullshit.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Feb 11 2014 20:18 utc | 31
Meyssan is to put it politely thoroughly unreliable. To put it less politely, he is a conduit for fifth-rate Russian propaganda.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Feb 11, 2014 3:18:20 PM | 31
I've found Meyssan to be more satisfactorily reliable than certain stooges for (occasional) fifth-rate MI6/GCHQ propaganda; such as consistently dissing Meyssan who has accurately predicted the course and minutiae of the fake Syrian uprising since soon after it began.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 12 2014 3:16 utc | 32
He has not predicted it or even reported it accurately. He has a crank angle of his own. Tke this for instance. It's unmitigated nonsense. According to this the Sauds "committed suicide" six months ago:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article180720.html
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Feb 12 2014 16:36 utc | 34
You're deliberately missing the point, RB.
I like that article. It examines several issues which were pertinent when it was written. The point I was making is that you've been 'wronger' about Russia's role in Syria than Meyssan has. i.e. completely wrong. Just one example being your conviction that Putin's Russia would prove to be a toothless tiger.
Unfortunately for you, I know just how dishonest you can be, when it suits you - the result of being a target of the creative micro-management of the comments at niqnaq - something which NEVER, EVER, happens here.
Don't take this too personally. I could never hate your quirks and I believe that, by and large, your presence in a comment thread (over which you have NO control) almost always improves it.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 13 2014 4:00 utc | 35
The only reason I creatively kick you off niqnaq after a few hours whenever I let you back on it, is that you constantly maintain that on 9/11, the twin towers fell down because planes hit them. This is an outright falsehood. The evidence is overwhelming that the whole thing was rigged, towers included. If you refuse to see that, then there is something wrong with your mental hardware, I mean, your brain itself. The biochemical thresholds between the synapses are blocked with congealed stupidity, or something, ask a biochemist.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Feb 13 2014 6:55 utc | 36
My only problem with the 'explosives' theory is that everyone who embraces it (and I do mean every person) knows less than nothing about engineering, building construction, building design and building materials. The very idea that a building could save itself from collapse after a significant chunk had been set in motion, and thus needed some explosive help - all the way down to the ground - in order to complete the collapse, is beyond ludicrous.
I will admit, however, that the 'explosives' crowd are so edu-phobic and ignorant that they are resolutely education-proof, presumably the up-side of edu-phobia.
The fact that you've never tried to conceal your lack of knowledge in the material sciences doesn't make you a persuasive advocate for the 'explosives' trope/theory.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 13 2014 7:41 utc | 37
@ Nobody, 23. I agree, and that was sorta what I was trying to say from a different perspective. The “enemy within” has a lot of uses.
@ b, 29 - we will have to just disagree on that one (gay bashing)! However I guess sorting it out isn’t worth it, an argument would not be conclusive.
Posted by: Noirette | Feb 15 2014 15:02 utc | 38
The comments to this entry are closed.
whaat?? no stinky brown water flowing from the taps? an' whadda'bout those howling packs of wild dogs?!? two gems from zusa talk radio...pu-leez!
Posted by: bfrakes | Feb 8 2014 13:24 utc | 1