[Peace-discuss] Russiagate revived by the New York Times and a bipartisan consensus of neocons

[J.B. Nicholson]

I wrote:
> Ray McGovern's latest for consortiumnews.com at 
> https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/01/ray-mcgovern-new-york-times-deploys-heavy-gun-to-back-intel-on-russian-bounties/ 

and Caitlin Johnstone's latest at 
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/01/why-us-empire-works-so-hard-to-control-the-international-narrative-about-russia/ 
includes:

> “International law,” in reality, only meaningfully exists to the extent that the 
> international community is collectively willing to enforce it. In practice what 
> this means is that only nations that have no influence over the dominant 
> narratives in the international community are subject to “international law.”
> 
> This is why you will see leaders in African nations sentenced to prison[1] by the 
> International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, but the USA can get away with 
> actually sanctioning ICC personnel[2] if they so much as talk about investigating 
> American war crimes and suffer no consequences for it whatsoever. It is also why 
> Noam Chomsky famously said[3] that if the Nuremberg laws had continued to be applied 
> with fairness and consistency, then every post-war U.S. president would have been 
> hanged.
> 
> And this is also why so much effort gets poured into controlling the dominant 
> international narrative about nations like Russia which have resisted being 
> absorbed into the U.S. power alliance. If you have the influence and leverage to 
> control what narratives the international community accepts as true about the 
> behavior of a given targeted nation, then you can do things like manufacture 
> international collaboration with aggressive economic sanctions of the sort Senate 
> Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is currently calling for[4] in response to the 
> completely unsubstantiated narrative[5] that Russia paid Taliban fighters bounties
> to kill occupying forces in Afghanistan.
> 
> Sen. Schumer: "We need in this coming defense bill… tough sanctions against > Russia." pic.twitter.com/L3M9hZg0Xm[6]
> — The Hill (@thehill) June 28, 2020[7]


[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50329503
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-order/index.html
[3] https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/
[4] https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1277304506670125056
[5] 
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/this-russia-afghanistan-story-is-western-propaganda-at-its-most-vile-abe6084845f2
[6] https://t.co/L3M9hZg0Xm
[7] https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1277304506670125056

Which, I point out, highlights how echoing/backing Russiagate is taking a pro-war 
stance -- Russiagate lies are used to back taking "tough sanctions against Russia". 
Sanctions are war on a country's poor and highly lethal.

-J