Putin, recently the Green candidate for Twillop-on-Twine was defeated. What do you think Biden thinks about it?

Russia controls BLM and the idiocy of US media

Jun 18, 2021

I have been waiting for my preferred geopolitical commentators to comment on the US/Russia summit. Alexander Mercouris is one of them, and will come forth soon enough. Instead he discussed (see Sources) a recent "fake news" story in the US about Russia selling an advanced surveillance satellite to Iran. To debunk this, he referred to an interview Russian President Putin gave with NBC before the summit. That interview is the topic of this post.

Before we get to that I was glad to see a response from Pepe Escobar whose analysis and writing I enjoy. He presents his own analysis with his own focus and I recommend it.

My examination of the NBC interview was an extension of my media analysis of Putin's post summit press conference; watching how stupid "Western" media can make themselves look. To do this I downloaded the full transcript of the interview from NBC and very much enjoyed reading its 12 154 words. Russia has its own official transcript, in Russian, which I did not use.

In the end, this really is just a re-hash of what I identified in the last article, but it is a little softer and is a new, extended, singular source. It shows the sorts of "talking point" directed questioning and disrespect which Putin must suffer to give these interviews, but also shows his temperament and professionalism. I ask you to consider how Biden or Johnson would react to an equivalent style of questioning from a Russian interviewer on a Russian television program. Of course, this would never happen because neither would give those interviews and I expect that the Russian journalists would not be so disrespectful.

Recall that Vladimir Putin is a former Russian Intelligence Operative. He understands both the mechanics of intelligence gathering and the potentially dire consequences of its mishandling. He is also a trained military officer, by which I mean he understands discipline and restraint and that actions have consequences.

I have composed a primer which could and will never be spoken by Putin at the beginning of any interview on US television:

It is a pleasure to speak with you today. Before we begin let us understand our context. You are a journalist wishing to speak with someone who knows more about things than you do or by which your audience can better understand some topics. I also understand that you have narratives which you would like to advance and will ask me pointed questions which assume the validity of a narrative when, in fact, it may be false or misinformed. I will, however, answer these questions and when I do so I will be placing them in a wider context so that your audience can come to a better understanding as you wish for them. So, upon those narrative questions expect longer answers in which I shall provide relevant context.

Interview

It begins with the mis-translation by the Russian interpreters of the question by Simmons which Mercouris covers in details in his video piece.

Q2: blah blah G7 blah blah, Biden thinks X. Is that true?

This just shows the level of infancy of the interviewer. He is asking the President of the Russian Federation if he thinks what the US President thinks is true.

Response: "Well, I don't know". He continues with comments about perspectives being offered to benefit "ruling circles" and then to describing the G7 meeting before the summit as "normal" (allies exchanging understanding on various topics) and "good". This is, of course, a guide to the interviewer of which we’ll see more later.

Q3: Were you surprised of a "no preconditions" offer from Biden to meet?

Response: "No." He then continues with repairing damaged relationships is always good and its great that Biden agreed to extend New START.

We're about to get to the loaded questions, but these ones have been just inane. Putin is giving one to four word answers and then providing a commentary background. Why? He is not doing these interviews out of the goodness of his heart. He wants to reach the audience of this interview and help them understand Russia's perspectives on these matters (within the limits of diplomatic protocol). He is also hinting to the interviewer to get to more interesting topics. Keep this in mind as things progress.

Q4: Biden wants "predictability and stability", what about you?

Response: "Well, these are the most important things. This is the most important thing. This is the most important value, if you will, in international affairs."

At which point Simmons interrupts and puts words in Biden's mouth accusing Russia of causing "instability and unpredictability".

Putin deflects the interruption and gets back to his point "Yes" this is important. He then starts the agreed strategy, that is when reporters start being disrespectful and claiming poorly understood positions we shall "broad context" the response and point the finger back towards the source of the narrative. He brings up Libya, Afghanistan and Syria and comes back to diplomacy encompassing all positions to find compromises as how stability is achieved.

Simmons says "Let's get to some other issues" and Putin responds "Yes, please". But, any expectation of an adult question is quickly dashed.

Q5: Simmons references Trump and Putin describing him as "bright, talented" and asks what he thinks of Biden.

You are talking to the Russian President and you are asking him his personal opinion of Biden? How will this elicit any useful information? I think that this, more than any other question demonstrates the idiocy of US media.

Putin delivers a diplomatic response. Was there any other outcome?

Q6: Simmons refers to the "no soul” comment.

At this point Putin must be practicing his Judo Black Belt control. "I cannot affect the idiocy of the speaker, I must work it to my advantage ..." His final sentence is great:

And— as far as soul goes, that's something for the church.

Q7: Simmons cannot give up and continues

Putin denies a memory of the event (which is the nicest diplomatic response).

Simmons just continues, like an idiot.

Putin takes control and steers the conversation to other topics (see above, Judo). The way he does it is quite simple "we've been accused of X/Y/Z but there's no evidence". He finishes with "I'm surprised that we have not yet been accused of— provoking the Black Lives Matter movement. That would have been a good line of attack." He's planting X, Y or Z as the next question. Come on Simmons, how smart are you?

Q8: Simmons "What do you think of the Black Lives Matter movement?"

This is the bit where I should have watched the video to see a tiny smirk by Putin as Simmons takes the bait. I dont blame Simmons here; a good interviewer will move with the interviewee. What he is not aware of is that he's been embarrassing himself with the repeated stupid questions and Putin is not offering him bait, but a lifeline.

The vast majority of the US audience I assume do not see this, but be sure that Russia and much of the rest of the world do.

Conclusions

I'll stop here on the commentary of the interview. I’ve stopped at about 20% of the interview text.

I recommend reading it. Copy the text to a Text Editor for a more pleasant reading experience. I do commend NBC for publishing their version of the transcript. I found it useful. They do acknowledge when there is "overtalk" between the participants and do their best to translate what was said during these difficult to parse moments. The Russian version may differ here and there.

They key point here is the idiocy, belligerence and lack of respect by the "Western" media. Later, there are both interesting questions and much more belligerence.

I struggle here with a chicken and egg problem. Is NBC behaving so poorly to pander to their audience or the political establishment? If it's their audience is that because the US education system is so poor or because of the media or both, and what role has the political establishment had in creating this? Whatever the case, you have an interview in a major US media platform providing very little useful information via way of intelligent questions and ridiculing a foreign leader and getting so hardly outplayed by that leader that the rest of the world is laughing at the interviewer and NBC. And that’s only 20% in.

Oh, what I would give to have a week to prepare for a 1 hour 20 minute interview with Putin. The topics available!!! Russian/China and BRI, the state of the Caususes and Nagarno/Karabash and Turkey, what's happening in Syria, what is your participation in the JCPOA negotiations, what do you think about the control of the south china sea, what are the focii of your internal developments, how dangerous is the thawing of the artic towards climate change, to what level have your new mach-10 missiles been integrated to your armed forces, what is the state of battlefield testing of the S-500 and development of the S-600, how do you see the changes in the political economy of south america, how do you see the US realignment around the "Quad" in the Indo-Pacific, how does Russia respond to the advised development of cryptocurrencies by the Bank of International Settlements and national central banks, how does Russia view the relationship between international aid and reinforcing trade alliances, ... ... ...

On reflection, were I to receive that honour I would immediately ask for the forming of a collection of geopolitical analysts and ask them to form the questions and choose the interviewer. Of course, I would reserve a question for myself and soon discover that it had been asked more succinctly by another.

Oi! Escobar, Mercouris, Hedges, (people from Quincey), Corbett, Martyanov, Prasad, McGovern, Binney, (Cohen, from the grave), Doctorow, can we do this?!

The interview may begin:

Russian Federation President Putin, we shall follow the list of questions submitted ahead of this discussion, as agreed, in order. I may ask the odd additional question within the topic under discussion where that seems of interest. Thank you for your time.
The development of transport infrastructure within Eurasia, and the associated trade or political alliances that accompany it, are realigning international trade blocks. Why is Russia participating, from where do you see resistance to these changes, and in which forms?

Putin: Thanks for not being a complete twat and asking an interesting question. The world's geopolotical balances are shifting and ...

(Ooops, edit)