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• 2003.10.24 | peter byrne

  fuckface socor

  Vladimir Socor: Hound for Hire
  By Philby Burgess
  
  Vladimir Socor - ever hear of him? I doubt it. Socor is one of the semi-anonymous propagandists whose job it is to keep feeding ignorant Western consumers lies about Russia, cooked to the taste of their rightwing American sponsors. His name has been creeping up more and more lately, as if someone is trying to raise the bar on official American Russophobia another level, using Socor as the eager ladder-boy. It's not easy to learn anything about people like Socor. But then, the obscurity and minginess of the breed is an essential part of its usefulness. Does a hound in a pack of hunters have a biography, a personal history, a psychology?
  
  It's simply a dog, bred to hunt the game its masters choose. Socor is a hound of this sort - what might be called a Russian-hunting dog. He is connected to at least two far-right “think tanks” of the sort which specialise in funding ideologically-driven journalists. One of these, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, is - despite its grandiose title - little more than a slush fund which shovels flipping great wodges of cash toward any journalists sleazy enough to take money from the Mellon-family heir who bankrolls it and other far-right organs. This institute is based in Israel but has offices in Washington when the address serves the writer well. The IASPS is widely despised among Israeli journalists for its habit of hiring the sleaziest, least principled reporters in town to put a pro-free-market spin on any story. Radical Chicago-style free market ideology never found the same sort of fanatical following in Israel as it did in America, making the institute rather a queer phenomenon.
  
  The other teat at which Socor is known to suck is the Jamestown Foundation, another extreme-right slush fund run out of Washington and widely considered to be a fully-funded subsidiary of the good old CIA. The Jamestown Foundation was founded in 1983 to bankroll anti-Soviet defectors in their new capacity as counter-propagandists, and its board of directors today includes Tom Clancy, fetus-fetishist Henry Hyde, and Polish nationalist Zbigniew Brzezinski - three utterly potty Russophobes who rue the end of the Cold War no less than Kipling mourned the loss of empire. In case you find this description overbearing and opinionated, I'll quote from the Foundation's home page on the web: “It is now widely acknowledged that the insights of those assisted by Jamestown were a priceless contribution to American policies that led eventually to the downfall of the dictatorships of the Soviet Bloc.” (I must add, however, that as a professional I do feel a certain respect for the Jamestown Foundation, which was one of the few institutes to provide any critique of the Clinton administration's Russian policies during those oppressively giddy years, whatever its motivation.)
  
  The Jamestown Foundation's pet scheme at the moment is the “Chechnya Project”, which enables groups like this to pretend, by focusing on the one military adventure remaining in the supine Russian state, that Russia is as big, bad and slavering a threat as ever. So naturally, good employees of the Foundation such as Socor are at their most enthusiastic when playing up Russia's demonic intentions in Chechnya.
  
  The Foundation's profile of Socor says only that he's a native of Rumania. Most of the bitterly anti-Russian journalists who publish with these rightwing lobbies are from the small countries surrounding Russia, and they are animated by a deep hatred of their former conqueror. Imagine that a victorious Russia hired hundreds of stringers from Cuba, Nicaragua, or El Salvador to contribute reports on the USA, or that Russian papers went, for their UK news, to a staff composed entirely of Catholics from Northern Ireland.
  
  It isn't surprising that reporters like Socor, who spent their youth cursing the Russians, jump enthusiastically at the chance to have their views disseminated all over the West - particularly when they are paid to do so at a level they could never have imagined. Men like Socor have fallen into what must be, for their sort, a kind of vindictive bliss: paid huge sums (by their standards) to broadcast the old village hatreds - as long as those hatreds continue to serve American interests.
  
  I've downed many a beer with men like Socor at grubby hotels all over Eastern Europe. They aren't what one would call “evil” men; they're rather on the pitiful side. They have the knack of scenting out and besieging any Western reporter in the vicinity and forcing beer after beer upon him. At a certain level of inebriation, their Russophobia (which they expect all Westerners to share), can become rather frightening. I remember one such marathon session with a Rumanian stringer very much of Socor's type, who felt so close to me after his sixth Guinness (it shocked him that I settled for the local brew) that he ventured to inform me that his grandfather had been in the Iron Guard. I was stumbling through a slurred, drunken dismissal (“Oh, could've happened to anyone”) when I realized that it had been a boast, not a confession. I promptly shut up, and he went on, telling me that those men, men like his grandfather, were the true spirit of Rumania. It was the West's great mistake, he explained, to have sided with the Russians against the Germans, who after all were only trying to defend Europe against Bolshevism.
  
  When you've followed the Socors of the world for a few years, you begin to wonder why no one ever calls them on their innumerable mistakes, lies and absurdities. As I finally realised, it's simply a matter of ignorance. Most Western readers couldn't find Georgia, much less the Pankisi Gorge, on a world map.
  
  All that most American readers really want to know from the “International News” pages is what they want to know from the Sports Pages: “Are we winning or not?”And native auxiliaries like Socor are there to tell the homeland readers that indeed, we are winning this Superbowl by three touchdowns.
  
  In a recent example of trimphalist reporting (Jamestown Monitor, 28 May 2002), Socor gloated that the US had managed to strike out the term “near abroad” when referring to countries which border Russia. What this means, Socor gloats, is that “...for the first time since 1991, Russia is being relegated to second place in a set of major international documents that lay some ground rules of conduct in the ex-Soviet area.” Imagine that Russia were imposing the same rules on the US: the US was “being relegated to second place” in all questions concerning Canada or Mexico, with first place going to Russia. The manifest injustice of the notion would enrage American readers. But it seems that those same readers are meant to take Socor's news as cause for celebration.
  
  In light of the bloody siege by Chechen terrorists in Moscow, the natural justics of conceding that Russia has a bigger stake in the Caucasus than does America seems all the more obvious. Ah, but that would be forgetting that Socor has spent the last few months telling his credulous readers that there is no reason for Russia to get upset about Chechnya, Georgia or militant Islam.
  
  The newspapers which print Socor's pieces seem incapable of noticing the wild inconsistencies with which his stories are filled. Socor's many articles on the Pankisi Gorge are really quite amazing in this regard. The Pankisi is one of those Augean messes the Caucasus nurtures so well. In a multiethnic region where banditry is considered an heroic pursuit, it's a venerable haven for bandits, political or otherwise (and that distinction is by no means clear in Caucasian culture).
  
  When the US said that the Pankisi was full of Al-Qaeda terrorists and sent in the Green Berets to “train” Georgian troops to uproot them, Socor and the hundreds of other lickspittles like him were depicting the Pankisi as Pandora's Box, crammed to the ridgeline with turbaned menaces holding daggers between their teeth, a menace to the West which could only be saved by the surgical efficiency of American force. One had to be very clear about that: only American, not Russian.
  
  The cooperation between Georgian troops and US special forces was entirely predicated on this notion. The Georgians needed the Americans' help, we were told by Mr Socor, to begin cleaning up the dire Pankisi, Gorge of Terror.
  
  But then the Russians got involved. They said that there were Al-Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan holed up in the Pankisi, and that the place was full of Chechens, resting up and rearming for raids into Russia. (If you look at a map of the Caucasus, you will see that this is a pretty reasonable claim, and might lead the truly fair-minded reader to conclude that indeed, Russia's national interest in the region was more urgent than that of the US. Indeed even the Chechens don't deny this.)
  
  That's when Mr Socor and his ilk changed their tune. Suddenly there was nothing very scary in the Pankisi. Indeed, Russia was just being alarmist. If there were any terrorists about, the Georgians were perfectly capable of handling the matter themselves. And of course, “by themselves” means “with American help” but “without Russian interference.”
  
  You can't really grasp the blithering idiocy of these stories unless you see them for yourself, So here is Mr Socor explaining the matter in The Wall Street Journal of 18 October, 2002:
  
  “Georgian authorities have just completed successfully a nonviolent security operation in the Pankisi Gorge, the suspected haven of a handful of Chechen fighters. Lawless and crime-ridden no more (!), the gorge is now controlled by Georgian forces, and open to Russian and international inspection. Moscow had threatened to extend the war from Chechnya into Georgia under anti-terrorism pretenses, the real goal being however to change Georgia's Western orientation. President Vladimir Putin and his closest associates were publicly hinting that a free hand in Georgia was part of Russia's price for standing aside if the United States moves against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
  
  Mr. Socor, lay off the wormwood, please! The list of lies - I can't think of another word because I am sure that Socor is aware of his lies, and perhaps, as a former Socialist bloc citizen, perhaps even enjoys it - in this lead is impressive even by journalistic standards, starting with that amazing first sentence describing the Georgians' successful “nonviolent security operation in the Pankisi Gorge...” To give readers some sense of perspective, this would be roughly like saying that a group of primary-school crossing guards had just successfully and non-violently pacified Bedford-Stuyvesant. And the idea that the Georgians, of all people, would be the ones to manage such an impossibility...well, it's the sort of enormity which can be practised only on readers far, far away.
  
  Any ordinary hack would use his next sentence to qualify this risible claim. Not Socor. Give the man his due: he's got sheer bloody crust, if nothing else. He actually says that the Pankisi is “lawless and crime-ridden no more”! Mr Socor, if you are reading this, let me make a suggestion: take your family on a picnic to the lovely, peaceable Pankisi Gorge, beauty spot of the Caucasus. As you recline on the verdant lawn, your little ones frolic, secure in the knowledge that the Georgian military watches over them with nary a Wahhabite in sight.
  
  Now I don't want to be too hard on the Georgians; I've a soft spot for them. They're a small, proud nation, hospitable and crushingly charming, with fine weather and excellent cuisine. But even a Georgian nationalist would have to admit that it's fairy-tales, this talk of “the Georgian military” driving terrorists from the Pankisi. First of all, the Georgian army is one of the most incompetent and demoralized in the world, having disgraced itself in every post-Soviet Caucasian brawl it's entered, particularly in Abkhazia and in Southern Ossetia. The Georgian troops were particularly outclassed when they went up against Chechens in Abhkazia, who went through the much-better-armed Georgian Army like the proverbial hot scimitar through khachapuri (with, indeed, massive Russian help). Moreover, even Green Beret advisors were shocked by the degree to which the Georgian recruits were demoralized and incapable - and they were given the cream of the crop to train, which numbered so few that they were having difficulties just finding enough bodies to put in the US-trained “special battalion”. So to suggest that the Georgians cleared the Pankisi of Chechen guerrillas and their Al Qaeda cohorts simply defies reality.
  
  But an even more fundamental absurdity of Socor's fairy tale is the notion that the Georgians would want to clear out the Pankisi. It is in the interests of Georgia that the Chechens keep an irritant pressure on Russia via the Pankisi. The Georgians are quite happy to have the Pankisi to worry the Russians with: it's payback for the Russian involvement in the loss of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjaria, and moreover, the Chechen/Al Qaeda menace has provided the perfect excuse for Georgia's fantasy-come-true: American military aid. Yet they would never provoke the Chechen terrorists. They tried that once, and have the scars to prove it.
  
  Socor's next lie is that the Russians' concern over terrorists in the Pankisi is only a pretext for renewed imperialism: “Moscow's fixation on the Pankisi problem has for some time distracted international attention away from its more far-reaching moves to thwart Georgia's pro-Western course.” In other words, the dirty Russkis have invented the whole thing. This begs some rather basic questions, such as: why, then, did the US make a deal with the Georgians to accept Green Beret “training” and establish American bases in Georgia if there's no real “Pankisi problem”? When the deal was signed, both parties agreed that the threat of terrorism, spreading from Georgia into Russia and beyond made US help essential. And it was to the Pankisi that the US and Georgian cooperation was specifically directed. Some reports say that Al Qaeda terrorists there were planning “operations” against Western targets in Moscow and chemical attacks on American and Western military bases in Central Asia. Russia has been screaming about this for two years now, to the derision of the West. Now that the West agrees, Russia is still derided, not for lying as previously, but now, for having imperial intentions. President Bush's people, naturally, are not in the least motivated by the idea of securing the Caspian Sea oil routes.
  
  For a truly mad ideologue like Socor, this is conveniently forgotten. All things involving Russia must be understood as manifestations of the big bear's insatiable appetite. Any claim by Moscow to special rights over its former territories must be rejected.
  
  This dogmatic reading of Russian intentions is looking particularly feeble after the events of the past week. When 50 Chechen terrorists can drive right up to a theatre in central Moscow and take 700 hostages, it is not quite so easy to dismiss Russia's fears of Chechen terrorism expanding into new areas so easily. Socor dismisses Russian objections to Georgia's collaboration with the Chechens as a cynical attempt “to generate anti-Georgian sentiment among the Russian public...” In other words, the Russians are just being alarmists so they can mess around with their former client states. I really wonder if anyone is going to take this line after this week's events in Moscow. The 50 Chechens who occupied that theatre and prepared to blow it up, taking 700 hostages with them, were not plants of the FSB nor figments of Putin's speechwriters' imagination. The Russians do face a real threat from Chechen terrorism, and it is just barely possible that the steps they take to oppose it are not animated by some evil ulterior motive.
  
  Socor, of course, will not see this. Moscow could be blown to bits by Chechens, and it would not dissuade him from his well-paid work of demonising poor broken Russia. Every step the crippled Russian state takes to look out for its interests is instantly grabbed by Socor and waved about as proof of the Bear's evil intent. And of all such moves, nothing is easier or more handy to the Russia-baiter than the issue of NATO expansion. It was this bogey to which Socor chose to devote a Sept. 13, 2002 article for the WSJ. Socor's view is simple: President Bush has led the world in a grand crusade against terror. Russia seems to be going along with us - but is it? Can the Bear ever be trusted, even when apparently docile?
  
  Socor tells a grim story: while Russia has made a show of cooperation, it is not happy about NATO expanding to its doorstep and is making an effort to “reconstitute a Russian-led political, military and economic bloc in large parts of the former Soviet domain.” So there are two objections to Putin's policies: first, that he has grumbled about the expansion right up to Russia's borders of an alliance specifically established to prepare for war against Russia; and second, that he is attempting to reestablish some sort of alliance with his neighbors, in which Russia - by far the biggest and most powerful nation in the area - would be cheeky enough to take a leading role.
  
  This sort of Russian revanchism, Socor insists in article after article, is the real threat. He even asserts that Russia's claim to be worried about Islamic terrorism is a facade. When the US taps its citizens' phones, suspends habeas corpus, conducts military operations from the Pankisi to the Philippines and otherwise shreds its Constitutional restraints on government limits, that is a fully justified reaction to 11 Sept. But when Russia pretends to worry about Chechnya, it's mere expansionism in disguise. (You start to wonder if they really believe this stuff. But that's where having me several facsimiles of Mr Socor is useful: I can assure you that he and his like believe it, very much so.)
  
  The most vile of Socor's many lies is the one he told in a special RFE/RLE “Background Report on Russia and Islam” in October of 1999: “Moscow is now blaming Islamic fundamentalism for just about every outbreak of violence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Without any evidence, it holds Chechen Islamists responsible for the recent spate of bombings in Russia. Help us fight this Islamist plague, it asks of other nations [but has failed to help the Kyrgyz Army fight Islamic guerrillas].”
  
  One wonders what Socor feels (or is instructed to feel) about the seriousness of that Islamic threaet now. Moreover, what hard evidence has Socor's lord, Dubya, provided to link bin Laden to the September 11th attacks, or Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda?
  
  That “spate of bombings” killed over 300 Muscovites in their homes. To their credit, a significant percentage of the Russian people and even brave journalists and politicians, who are far less gullible than their American counterparts, considered from the start that the bombings might have been staged by the FSB to create a surge of nationalist feeling which would get the nationalist Putin reelected. But after this week's siege in Moscow, it's hard to deny that there is, to put it mildly, a very real threat of Chechen terrorist violence in Moscow. It is both tied to Islamic fundamentalism as well as something peculiar about the Chechen character. Obviously the Putin people started adding “Islamists” to “Chechens” after 11 Sept. as often as they could, but it isn't as if the Chechens have done much to dispel that notion. Besides, one sure way to get the proverbially deaf and self-interested Bush administration to listen to your pleas for cooperation was to say “Islamic terrorists”. It was the Americans, not the Russians, who made that a bogeyman. Russians don't fear Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kazakhs, Azeris, or any of the hundreds of other Islamic ethnic groups in their region. They fear Chechens. And after this week's nightmare here, it would seem to be difficult to find any reason to object to them for doing so.
  
  But I have faith...faith that Mr Socor, and all the hundreds of other native auxiliaries who do his dirty job for the big western dailies, will find a way. There's some proverb to the effect that the truth will find a way. Will it? I recall believing that once, when I joined this profession. Now I'd put it otherwise: “The lies will found an institute.” And that Institute will keep them rich, happy and proud, lying for their supper and sending their kids to a good Ivy-League school on the proceeds.
  
  Journalists often make bitter jokes on the theme of what would happen if they and their colleagues really had to act as if they believed the drivel they wrote. For me, the most delightful image of this sort is one I mentioned above: the entire Socor family sitting on a grassy meadow, enjoying a delicious picnic lunch made by Mrs Socor, as Mr Socor reads his family his story describing the way the Georgian Army has made the Gorge “lawless and crime-ridden no more.”
  
  He wouldn't even make it to the end of the paragraph before the war-cries sent him and the loved ones fleeing clumsily, hopelessly, toward the family car. Justice: it's a nice dream, at least.
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  • 2003.10.24 | Englishman

    Maybe

    Ale ja ne pobachyv u cij, konkretnij statti, nichogo takogo, schob vkazuvalo na jogo zaangajovanist'. Til'ky fakty.