Information and Disinformation
If the two-minute interview I had with Iran’s Press TV at noon Central European Time today is re-posted on the internet then, you will be able to hear my hearty approval of Scott Ritter’s one-paragraph comments on the latest developments in the United States’ war on RT which he has just disseminated.
Washington’s efforts to destroy RT’s ability to distribute its programs in the United States have been of long duration. What is changing now that makes this newsworthy is the decision by Mark Zuckerberg, the substantial owner and director of Meta, CEO of its Facebook and other platforms counting many millions of subscribers, to ban RT and several other Russian news purveyors from Meta’s global network.
Scott Ritter rightly denounced this U.S. government-inspired attack on RT as a war not on the Russian broadcaster but on the American people, whom it seeks to deprive of the right to decide for itself whom it watches, whom it listens to without U.S. government interference. The intent of the latest decision by Meta, which bends to the policy dictated to it by Capitol Hill, is to cancel our freedoms. I said and repeat here: bravo to Scott Ritter for an eloquent and pithy statement.
So much for the ‘information’ aspect of this brief note. Now let us move to ‘disinformation’ by the very same Scott Ritter within the past 24 hours: namely what he is saying on ‘Judging Freedom’ and other authoritative internet channels about how we all narrowly escaped death this past weekend, because “back channel” communications from top Russian intelligence officials to their counterparts in Washington delivered a threatening and substantive message that scared the receiving party down its socks and led them to impose on Biden and Blinken to end all talk of allowing Kiev to send US and NATO long range missiles into the heartland of Russia.
I call this ‘disinformation’ because apart from Ritter, I have not seen or heard any credible accounts in major media, Russian as well as Western, even hinting that such a backchannel exists and was used. The last time we heard about a stern message being delivered by the Kremlin to Washington was several months ago when Russian Defense Minister Belousov picked up a telephone and called his American counterpart Secretary of Defense Austin to persuade the Americans to back down on the latest threat they were then making to Russian security. Note that the intelligence services were never mentioned in that connection. Nor does it make much sense now, given that the subject at hand – use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles – would fall within the competence of the Pentagon, not the CIA, whose specialty is political assassinations and regime change.
However, the issue of who made and who received the phone call this time is not the main point in my objection. Rather, what I find incredible is the very notion that Putin, through his subordinates, would, as Scott Ritter is saying, read off a list of targets for immediate destruction by Russian hypersonic missiles like the Mach-20 Avangard and that this demonstration of advanced preparation for the Doomsday scenario and readiness to execute it would shake the Americans down to their socks.
Vladimir Putin is not given to drastic shifts in tone and intent such as Ritter is describing. And there is absolutely no reason for him to risk everything on one throw of the dice, to risk a U.S. preemptive strike at once now that the scenario against them had been so neatly laid out.
First of all, even if permission were given by Washington for the British to send their Storm Shadows on their way to the Russian heartland under the flimsy cover of Ukrainian fingers on the button, where are the jets to carry those missiles aloft and fire them towards Russia from somewhere very close to the line of confrontation? And if jets were taking off from Moldova or Romania for this purpose, the Russians could with full legal justification attack those same jets on the ground at the airports that harbor them whether in NATO or not – doing all of this without triggering any WWIII.
Of course, this problem of a launch vehicle does not relate to ATACMS, which is a ground-to-ground missile. But the talks of British PM Starmer with Biden were said to be limited only to the British missiles, since Biden & Co. had in advance emphatically ruled out use of American missiles so as not to come between the Russian cross-hairs.
Still more, knowing Putin’s behavior in the past at moments of crisis in the relationship with the United States, I believe his first instinct would be to address the American people directly about his intentions and the reasons for them, rather than to confine the discussion to ‘back channels’ with the likes of Burns or Sullivan.
Ritter speaks about the decision in Washington to suspend any decision on long-range missiles as a big humiliation for Joe Biden and says this explains the President’s outburst in answer to a reporter’s question, saying that he does not think at all about Vladimir Putin. I have not seen any word in mainstream U.S. media suggesting that there was a humiliating climbdown. When Biden’s mental state is widely considered in the U.S. as a national humiliation, there is not much to say about any given decision by this senile creature.
I have in the past several days freely admitted that my ‘end is nigh’ remarks with respect to the risks of giving unrestricted rights to Kiev on the missiles, were exaggerated. But then I was measuring the countdown to Doomsday in weeks, in the worst scenario, not in hours or minutes as Scott Ritter has done.
We are not out of the woods yet, to be sure. And the task before all ‘warriors for peace’ is not to celebrate our surviving this past weekend but to continue to spread the word in the broadest possible public arenas that our governments are pursuing utterly ignorant and reckless policies. We need more street demonstrations and fewer popping of corks.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024