Chechen Dictator and Russian Nationalist — NOT Taking Over Ukraine

Yin and Yang of Russian trollitics, highly unlikely bedfellows Leader of Chechnya
Ramzan Kadyrov and nationalist blogger Egor Prosvirnin. (Images remixed by author)

By Andrey Tselikov
Time and time again Russian Internet users and Russophone mass media prove that they will fall for any hoax, no matter how bizarre or unbelievable. It's not as if it is the first time someone took the fake Twitter account of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for the real thing. @KadirovRussia [ru] was started before the real Kadyrov joined Twitter and quickly gained a following. These days, however, almost everyone is aware that although Kadyrov does tweet at his own account, @rkadyrov [ru], he mainly uses it to link to his favorite social networking platform, Instagram [Global Voices report]. Nevertheless, multiple bloggers, forum users, and online media outlets were taken for a ride with a recent tweet by @KadirovRussia:

Crimea is a primarily Russophone region of Ukraine currently protesting the change of power in Kiev. Crimeans are afraid that nationalist Ukrainians will infringe on their culture, and many Russians share their fear, stoked as it is my mainstream Russian media. A beach paradise not far from where the Sochi Winter Games took place, it is also home to a Russian naval base, and is currently a pressure cooker of ethnic tension between Russians, Ukrainians, and Crimean Tartars. Not a day passes that there aren't rumors of Russia deploying troops or Kiev sending its own militia to the region. The most recent development [ru] is that armed men have occupied a regional administration building and hung Russian flags from it.

In this climate the announcement that the gruff Chechen leader has joined causes with nationalist blogger Egor Prosvirnin (of Sputnik & Pogrom fame), who has been vocally advocating for Crimean independence [ru] for the past several days, fell on fertile ground. Never mind that Prosvirnin harshly mocks and lambastes Kadyrov, the news was reported by several Ukrainian outlets, including Ukrainian Komsomolskaya Pravda [cache], Obozrevatel [ru], and Korrespondent [cache], with commentary noting the increasingly violent climate in Crimea. Kadyrov's alleged involvement must have been particularly troubling — it was the Chechen “Vostok” Battalion that was in the lead during Russia's 2008 armed conflict with Georgia over the breakaway province of Abkhazia.

Prosvirnin himself was amused with the confusion, writing [ru]:

Разбудили звонком с НТВ, спросив, правда ли мы с Кадыровым едем в Крым. Спросонья ступил и сказал, что они там совсем что ли ебу дались, и уже повесив трубку понял, что НАДО БЫЛО ВСЕ ПОДТВЕРДИТЬ.

Was woken up with a call from NTV, asking if its true that Kadyrov and I are going to Crimea. I was still dozy and stupidly said that they were out of their f*cking mind, but as I hung up I realized that I SHOULD HAVE CONFIRMED EVERYTHING.

He said that the news might have scared the Crimean Tartars who are currently against any talk of secession. Later he also joked [ru] that Kadyrov has agreed to take charge of the western Ukrainian province of Lviv.

Chechen “Vostok” Batallion troops at a Crimean beach, or what it might look like
if they were. (Images remixed by author.)

Meanwhile, the real Kadyrov has actually sounded off about Ukraine [ru] on his Instagram account:

Получаем информацию, что у проживающих в этой стране соотечественников появились серьезные проблемы с сохранностью бизнеса и личной безопасностью. Мы никогда не претендовали на чужое, но и своё защитим. Следует четко осознавать, что не дадим в обиду чеченцев и других россиян, где бы они не находились.

We have received information that our countrymen living in that country are having serious problems with safety of their businesses and personal safety. We have never wanted what isn't ours, but we will protect our own. It needs to be clearly understood, that we won't let Chechens and other Russians come to harm, wherever they may be.

A troubling statement — perhaps more troubling than any fake news of rapprochement with Russian nationalists.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

The 'History' of Thanksgiving - Which 'Truth' Should We Tell?: Sweetness and Light - Or, Savagery and Strife?

The 'Real History' of Thanksgiving
Which 'truth' should we tell?

One history tells us that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration

of the multiple massacres of Native Americans.

 ________________

But then. . .

Another history tells us that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration

of love and unity between Native Americans and the Pilgrims. . .

New Jersey Waitress Who Was Denied Tip Because She Was Gay May Have Forged Receipt: Report

Dayna Morales, who posted the receipt on Facebook, is sticking to her story. Morales’ image shows a $93.55 bill, no tip, and the message, ‘Sorry, I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle and the way you live your life.’ But the couple came forward with their copy of the receipt and their credit card bill statement to debunk Morales’ story.

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60 Minutes and Benghazi: When a Hoax Sounds Like a Hoax

The fact their main witness had written a book about the Benghazi embassy attack for by a conservative book publisher should have raised red flags for 60 Minutes.  And the fact the witness claimed to have "sneaked" into an al-Qaeda controlled hospital should have
raised in more questions.


By Peter Hart
60 Minutes retracted its report about Benghazi, after documents surfaced that cast doubt on the reliability of their key source. But his story was dubious from the start.

Media reporters and critics are devoting enormous space to a 60 Minutes report about Benghazi that has been retracted. The program explained that new documents contradict one of their main sources. But even without those documents, CBS should have suspected they were being hoaxed.

Lara Logan, CBS' correspondent for the hoaxed story.

On November 10, 60 Minutes aired an unusual correction: It was no longer standing by their October 27 report about the attack on a US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. The segment has been disappeared from the CBS website–a dramatic step, for sure, and one that makes the brief correction that appeared at the end of the show all the more unusual.

On the new broadcast, correspondent Lara Logan explained that one of the main sources, a security contractor named Dylan Davies, gave an account that CBS could no longer trust to be accurate.

But why did they believe him in the first place? Davies' story–which he also told in a book published by Threshold, a conservative imprint of CBS-owned Simon & Schuster–should have raised some red flags. Here's part of the CBS segment, where Davies is identified as Morgan Jones:

LOGAN: On a night he describes as sheer hell, Morgan Jones snuck into a Benghazi hospital that was under the control of Al-Qaeda terrorists, desperate to find out if one of his close friends from the US Special Mission was the American he'd been told was
there.

JONES: I was dreading seeing who it was, you know?

LOGAN: Mm-hm.

JONES: And it didn't take long to get to the–to the room. And I could see in through
the–through the glass. And I didn't even have to go into the room to see who it was. I knew who it was immediately.

LOGAN: Who was it?

JONES: It was the ambassador, dead.

So he sneaked into an Al-Qaeda controlled hospital and immediately found Stevens' body. Did this not strike CBS as dubious? If not that part, then surely this part of the interview would raise some red flags: 

LOGAN: Not long afterwards, Morgan Jones scaled the 12-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with Al-Qaeda fighters.

JONES: One guy saw me. He's–he just shouted. I couldn't believe that he'd seen me, because it was so dark, and he started walking towards me.

LOGAN: And as he was coming closer?

JONES: As I got closer, I just hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face.

LOGAN: And?

JONES: Oh, he went down, yeah.

LOGAN: He dropped?

JONES: Yeah, like–like a stone.

LOGAN: With his face smashed in?

JONES: Hm. Yeah.

LOGAN: And no one saw you do it?

JONES: No.

LOGAN: Or heard it?

JONES: No, there was too much noise.

A skeptical interviewer might start to wonder about this person's account, since it is, well, unbelievable.

One of the most significant challenges to the story came when the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung (10/31/13) reported that Davies seemed to have told a different story: 

"But in a written account that Jones, whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies by several officials who worked with him in Benghazi, provided to his employer three days after the attack, he told a different story of his experiences that night.

"In Davies' 2-1/2-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beachside villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, "we could not get anywhere near…as roadblocks had been set up."

"He learned of Stevens' death, Davies wrote, when a Libyan colleague who had been at the hospital came to the villa to show him a cellphone picture of the ambassador's blackened corpse. Davies wrote that he visited the still-smoking compound the next day to view and photograph the destruction."

Evidently CBS was unaware of these documents–despite the fact that they initially defended their reporting by claiming they'd spent one year reporting the story.

The corporate media have been unusually dogged in pursuing the Benghazi story–which has been pushed by right-wing media and several Republican politicians. The level of attention has always been hard to figure out, but it seems to center on the fact that some Republicans believe that the Obama administration misled the country about who exactly attacked the US facility. The White House had initially raised the issue of an anti-Islam video being the motivation for the attacks, which some thought was  a coverup, since they contend the attack was actually a carefully orchestrated assault by Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

Lara Logan (left) and Davies. CBS provided Davies a global platform for his lies.

The controversy has been blown wildly out of proportion; as I noted (FAIR Blog, 10/17/12), there were contemporaneous media accounts from the scene of the attack where some of those involved declared they were furious about this video.

In any event, the White House was not linking the video to the attack for very long, so as coverups go, it was never a very good one.  But Benghazi continues to be an obsession on the right; it's entirely possible that the drive to report "what really happened" led CBS to believe an unbelievable story. In the wake of the Benghazi attack, Logan gave a speech that included an impassioned call for a US military response (which was noted by Democracy Now! on November 11): "I hope to God that you are sending in your best clandestine warriors, who are going to exact revenge." So it seems possible that Logan's dedication to that particular cause may have impacted her judgment.

Her brief apology struck many observers as insufficient. Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone  (11/11/13) wrote, "Sunday's brief acknowledgment didn't resemble a news program seriously trying to get to the bottom of how it got duped."

Indeed, there are important questions to ask about how CBS mishandled the criticism of the story, and the segment itself.

But on some level the answer is quite straightforward: An unbelievable account of a dramatic event is probably unbelievable for a reason.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.