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On 8/9/14 12:34 AM, Shane Mage via Marxism wrote:
Exclusive: Official Washington’s conventional wisdom on the Malaysia
Airlines shoot-down blames Russian President Putin, but some U.S.
intelligence analysts think Putin, whose plane was flying nearby, may
have been the target of Ukrainian hardliners who hit the wrong plane,
writes Robert Parry.
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/08/was-putin-targeted-for-mid-air-assassination/
Shane, let me try to explain something to you. I know that it is very
difficult to convince a conspiracy-monger of anything since your
methodology almost precludes a serious discussion of the facts but let
me try anyway.
Robert Parry's reportage relies heavily on assertions such as these:
Contrary to the Obama administration’s public claims blaming eastern
Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the
rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian
government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these
findings.
What is a intelligence analyst? Is Parry referring to an employee of
the CIA? How does someone running a radical (to use the term liberally)
website get a CIA agent to differ from the stated policy of his agency,
namely to oppose Putin? Perhaps an intelligence analyst instead means
someone who analyzes the behavior of the spooks--like Glenn Greenwald.
Or perhaps it is a retired CIA agent like Ray McGovern. Who in the hell
knows? That's the problem with Parry (and Seymour Hersh to a lesser
degree). They ask you to accept the word of an unnamed source, unlike
Brown Moses who asks you to look at physical evidence--the kind you
would see in a courtroom.
In cases such as this, Occam's Razor would seem to apply, which
Wikipedia describes: It states that among competing hypotheses, the one
with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated
solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of
certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.
Nobody would blame pro-Russian separatists for shooting down a civilian
jet on purpose. In wartime, accidents like this happen all the time
unless you are the IDF and fire missiles at hospitals and then say
whoops.
The real question *Marxists* have to deal with is the relationship
between Russia and Ukraine in class terms, which Lenin analogized with
Britain and Ireland. From the very beginning, the Ukrainian nation has
been poorly served by bourgeois leaders including Symon Petliura who
hated the Bolsheviks both for offenses intended and unintended.
Notwithstanding his misrule, Lenin understood that Soviet Russia was in
the wrong and reversed the course of Soviet policy to favor Ukrainian
self-determination. These are his words:
He who undermines the unity and closest alliance between the
Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants is helping the
Kolchaks, the Denikins, the capitalist bandits of all countries.
Consequently, we Great-Russian Communists must repress with the utmost
severity the slightest manifestation in our midst of Great-Russian
nationalism, for such manifestations, which are a betrayal of communism
in general, cause the gravest harm by dividing us from our Ukrainian
comrades and thus playing into the hands of Denikin and his regime.
Consequently, we Great-Russian Communists *must make concessions*
[emphasis added] when there are differences with the Ukrainian Bolshevik
Communists and Borotbists and these differences concern the state
independence of the Ukraine, the forms of her alliance with Russia, and
the national question in general.
Unfortunately, Joseph Stalin's rise began to threaten Lenin's attempts
to improve the relationship between Soviet Russia and oppressed
nationalities. On his deathbed, Lenin struggled against Great Russian
chauvinism of the type you and Robert Parry and Michel Chossudovsky are
promoting under the rubric of a radicalism that has much more in common
with Mulder's The truth is out there than with Karl Marx.
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