NBC: A Mouthpiece of Establishment Propaganda

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/what-s-behind-russian-support-world-s-separatist-movements-n614196

This article provides absolutely zero context for what is happening geopolitically. It is patently a hack piece driven by an agenda and doesn't even attempt to cover the story objectively. NBC gets a journalistic 'F'.

It also ignores the tricky definition of 'Separatism'. The United States itself is confused on this point. 1776 was deemed a legitimate episode of separatism, but in 1861 it was called Civil War. This is not to say that I support the South, but I also don't embrace the propaganda that has come down to us since the conclusion of that war.

Sometimes separatism is deemed moral and noble and at other times it's viewed as treacherous and destabilising. There's not a lot of honesty when it comes to these issues. It's really about politics, as is this NBC piece.

NBC chooses to ignore American support for Ultra-Nationalists and Fascists in Ukraine who sought to overthrow the Russian backed government. Well, that's a coup, not separatism. Well then, is it okay for the United States to support scenarios that could lead to civil war? Is that permissible? Coups are good, separatism is bad, is that the equation?

It must be as the United States did all it could to foment the situation in Syria. It has backed and armed various rebel groups including the 'separatist' Kurds in the Northeast.

What about Chechnya? Though it's unofficial, it is well known the US has backed the Chechen rebels (separatists) who want to break away from Russia. The US has backed them through Turkish, Azeri and Georgian connections. Many Chechen rebels have been given protection within US-allied nations like Turkey and Jordan.

What about the separatist Uighurs? The US employing the same Pan-Turkic networks (associated with Gülen and the Grey Wolves) have supported the Uighur movement for independence from Beijing.

And at this point we could delve into the larger question of US-backed activities in Central Asia meant to destabilise governments, pull them out of Moscow's orbit and then of course we might recall the largely forgotten tale of US support for Turkic Islamists in the region... even while it was still part of the USSR.

A large portion of the Mujahideen were little more than Pashtun nationalists and thus separatists. They were eagerly supported in the 1980s and beyond. Even the Taliban which essentially is a Pashtun nationalist (and of course Deobandi) organisation was for a time accepted by the United States. The rebel/separatist labels grow awfully blurry when one considers the nature of Afghanistan itself and the way in which Tajik and Pashtun ethnic groups overlap with separatist movements in neighbouring countries.

The US long supported and is once more supporting Tibetan nationalism which is essentially a separatist movement. Up until Nixon's rapprochement with China, the US was supported Tibetan guerillas, training them in the United States and airdropping them into Tibet from bases south of the Himalayas.

More than a century ago the US backed a separatist movement to create the state of Panama, a nation created for the canal and a place to base US operations in Latin America. It also became a financial haven, a place for US dirty deeds to be hidden away and protected.

At the very least elements within the US power establishment and certainly the CIA at times backed the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles. This of course was a separatist movement bent on driving the UK out of Ireland. It is but one of many episodes in which the US worked to subvert and betray its own allies.

The US backed the Kosovar Albanians which were a separatist movement directed against Serbia. And in fact they are still supporting some of the same characters as their conflict and concerns carry over into neighbouring Macedonia.

Though the US has betrayed the Kurds on several occasions, all throughout the 1990s they supported Kurdish separatism in Northern Iraq in order to create trouble for Saddam Hussein.

The US long supported the Hmong particularly in Laos as they were the backbone of the US 'Secret War'. Interesting many of these separatist movements are often funded by drug production and trafficking, all facilitated and supported by the United States.

The US funded and backed the separatists in South Sudan and more or less led the diplomatic charge to create the country. And now as the plan has gone awry and the leader they backed has made moves toward China, the US has supported another paramilitary movement within the country effectively creating the conditions leading to civil war.

But of course once we get into Africa we must talk about US support for Rwandans, Uganda, UNITA, rebel groups in the Congo, and the list can go on almost ad infinitum.

Putin and Beijing certainly do their share to make trouble and/or counter US moves on the geopolitical chessboard.

But this piece produced by NBC is absurd. The journalist and the editor should be fired or at the very least exposed for what they are.

But then again NBC like its other mainstream affiliates has long been in the back pocket of the US Establishment and have been happy to produce materials in accord with official policy and propaganda aims.

News, it is not. To call it journalism is a crime.