Responding to a non-response

Revisiting Abby Martin

Seemorerocks

A week ago, frustrated at the lack of understanding on her part I posted my Open Letter to Abby Martin.

I was not able to connect in any way directly with Abby in any way (my previous 'friend request' on Facebook was left unanswered. Having gone to the trouble of writing and making some suggestions I might have hoped for some sort of response.

To date there has been silence.

No doubt she does not want to bother with some unknown blogger from the Antipodes.

A friend commented that I had been much more polite than he would have been. Yes, I responded, that's true, but depending on the response (or no-response) the gloves might come off.

In this case it is a non-response which is the most disrespectful (especially since I went to some length to make sure she saw my epistle).

Given the non- response I will address Abby in the third person.

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Abby Martin has risen from activism and from Occupy Oakland to do her own television show Breaking the Set. By her own admission this is thanks to her employer, Russia Today (RT).

She admitted to have been previously fairly ignorant of the genocide being carried out over 60 years by the state of Israel.

She has done an admirable job of presenting all sides of the 'argument' while making no bones about identifying with the Palestinian victims.

Which makes her position on Ukraine all the more unintelligible.

She might have had the right in the past to remain blissfully unaware of the Palestinian issue. 

She no longer, given the fact that she is employed by a Russian TV network, has the right to remain ignorant of this issue – or to remain 'neutral'. 

Abby Martin shared a link.

21 July near Washington, DC, United States · Edited

I wonder why the media missed my condemnation of Russia supporting rebels during its recent RT is 'dangerous propaganda' blitz about flight MH17? Oh right, because I also condemned the US for doing the same.http://bit.ly/1k90r8G

This is unfortunately a war that is now being waged - and one that one side is more responsible for than the other

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Can you imagine that given the rather unlikely event of Abby being employed by, say, CNN that they would have tolerated her criticising American policy on air and continuing to take potshots at her employer?

Kudos to RT that they have been so tolerant and allow a plurality of views (look at Larry King, for God's sake!) that is no longer possible on corporate media.

Abby Martin is all about double standards and calling out those in the media who apply them,

Well then. Perhaps it is time then, to call out Abby Martin.

She quite correctly takes a moral position on Palestine, but then on the question of Ukraine, insists on an 'even playing field', a 'curse on both side' position and calls out her employer for (absolutely correctly, as it turns out) for pointing the finger at the Ukrainian junta and lambasting Russia for 'arming the rebels'.

To even contemplate this last position implies a 'flip-flop'. This 'arming the rebels' bit is the mantra repeated by the presstitutes of the western corporate media and, despite her privileged position as an employee of RT, Abby Martin chooses to swallow this uncritically.

“The rebels probably did it”

I never did get an opportunity to hear what sort of 'disinformation' RT is guily of.

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There is a disease running through the liberal-progressive media that adopts the likes of Pussy Riot and the fascist – pseudo-feminist Femen in a struggle against the Russian state and Putin – keeping alive a visceral contempt on the part of liberals for Russia.

This is demonstrated by the current Film Festival running in New Zealand at the moment. Missing are the usually-popular Russian films. Instead we have films in praise of the Maidan and of Femen.

The Maidan is popular in the West. Perhaps it was full of young people naively hoping for a golden future with the 'civilised' West – but looks what it became.

It seems that the Maidan – and therefore fascism – might be hip in the West and partly – I wonder- Abby is not immune to these attitudes.

For these useful idiots of the facist Junta I recommend the following:

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Where was Abby Martin when at least (the numbers are certainly greater) 41 people were massacred in the Trade Union HQ in Odessa; when Inna Kukurudza and many other people were killed by cluster bombs? 

 I don't recall her moral outrage when innocent women and children were killed by Ukrainian bombs.

Instead - Russia shouldn't arm the 'rebels'.

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The point of no- return has already passed. There never was a chance for a negotiated settlement thanks to the position of Victoria Nuland, John McCain – and Barack Obama- of pushing war and goading Russia into a military response.

Can Abby Martin not see that Putin has remained unmoved and refused help which he had previously promised in March? 

The Kremlin has been frozen into inaction while the West pushes an armed agenda giving advice from the HQ of the SBU and acting as a silent presence alongside the National Guard that is pushing unwilling recruits from West Ukraine into fighting people who many have come to realise have no argement with their compatriots. These are people who are fighting for their homes, their families and for their freedom.

After all, as Mr. Bogdan Boutkevitch says on Ukrainian television :

“If we take, for example, just the Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of which are superfluous. That's what I mean: we don't need to [try to] "understand" Donbass, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests.

“Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. I don't claim to have a quick solution recipe, but the most important thing that must be done - no matter how cruel it may sound - is that there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated.”

How can Abby Martin adopt a position of relativism in the light of the above.

The only recourse for the people of Donetsk and Lugansk is to do what they have already have done – to take up arms.

The only response of Russia should have been to do what they did in 2008 in the Caucasus – to intervene militarily to push the Ukrainian National Guard and the Junta back to Kiev with a bloody nose and to be told in no uncertain terms to leave Novorossia alone.

The issues of #Occupy and the possibilities that #Occupy are long behind us. The US (along with the craven NATO counries) is a rogue power.

The time for liberal relativism is behind us.

Abby Martin had better make a choice who she stands with.

Here is a compendium of what Abby has been saying in the past few months