Exclusive: Determined to enforce the “group think” on Ukraine, the editors of The New York Times lashed out at Russia for urging an expanded inquiry into last year’s MH-17 shoot-down. But the Times won’t join calls for the U.S. government to release its intelligence on the tragedy, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
It’s good that Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t substitute The New York Times’ editorial board for Sherlock Holmes in his stories because, if he had, none of the mysteries would have gotten solved or the wrong men would have gone to the gallows.
Thursday’s editorial on last year’s shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 reveals that the Times’ editors apparently find nothing suspicious about the dog-not-barking question of why the U.S. government has been silent for a full year about what its intelligence information shows.
President Barack Obama talks with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker following a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, Sept. 18, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
This reticence of U.S. intelligence is especially suspicious given the fact that five days after the July 17, 2014 tragedy which killed 298 people, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence rushed out a “government assessment” citing “social media” and pointing the finger of blame at ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and the Russian government.
But once U.S. intelligence analysts had time to evaluate the satellite photos, electronic intercepts and other data, the U.S. government went silent. The pertinent question is why, although that apparently is of no interest to the Times which aimed its editorial against Russia for seeking a more inclusive investigation, which the Times does find suspicious.
“On the face of it, that looks like an accommodating gesture from the government that is backing the Ukrainian separatists believed to have fired the fatal missile on July 17, 2014, and that probably supplied it to them. It’s not.
“The real goal of the draft resolution Russia proposed on Monday at the Security Council is to thwart a Dutch-led criminal investigation of what happened and a Western call for a United Nations-backed tribunal.”
So, the Times castigates the Russians for seeking to involve the United Nations Security Council and the International Civil Aviation Organization in the slow-moving Dutch-led inquiry, which includes the Ukrainian government, one of the possible suspects in the crime as one of the investigators. But the Times takes no notice of the curious silence of U.S. intelligence.
Appeal to Obama
If the Times really wanted to get at the truth about the MH-17 case, its editorial could have cited a public memo to President Barack Obama from an organization of former U.S. intelligence officials who urged the President on Wednesday to release the U.S.-held evidence.
“As the relationship with Moscow is of critical importance, if only because Russia has the military might to destroy the U.S., careful calibration of the relationship is essential,” wrote the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group first created to challenge the bogus intelligence used to justify President George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003.
The memo signed by 17 former officials, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, continued: “If the United States signs on to a conclusion that implicates Russia without any solid intelligence to support that contention it will further damage an already fractious bilateral relationship, almost certainly unnecessarily. It is our opinion that a proper investigation of the downing would involve exploring every possibility to determine how the evidence holds up.
“What is needed is an Interagency Intelligence Assessment the mechanism used in the past to present significant findings. We are hearing indirectly from some of our former colleagues that the draft Dutch report contradicts some of the real intelligence that has been collected.
“Mr. President, we believe you need to seek out honest intelligence analysts now and hear them out, particularly if they are challenging or even opposing the prevailing group-think narrative. They might well convince you to take steps to deal more forthrightly with the shoot-down of MH-17 and minimize the risk that relations with Russia might degenerate into a replay of the Cold War with the threat of escalation into thermonuclear conflict. In all candor, we suspect that at least some of your advisers fail to appreciate the enormity of that danger.”
Along the same lines, I was told by one source who was briefed by some current analysts that the reason for the year-long U.S. silence was that the evidence went off in an inconvenient direction, toward a rogue element of the Ukrainian government, rather than reaffirming the rush-to-judgment by Secretary of State John Kerry and DNI James Clapper implicating the ethnic Russian rebels in the days after the shoot-down.
According to Der Spiegel, the German intelligence agency, the BND, had a somewhat different take but also concluded that the Russian government did not supply the Buk anti-aircraft missile suspected of shooting down the passenger jet. Der Spiegel reported that the BND believed the rebels used a missile battery captured from Ukrainian forces.
Yet, whatever the truth about those intelligence tidbits, it is clear that the U.S. intelligence community has a much greater awareness of what happened to MH-17 and who was responsible than it did on July 22, 2014, when the DNI issued the sketchy report. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog.”]
No Update for You
When I asked a DNI spokeswoman on July 17, the first anniversary of the shoot-down, if I could get an update on the U.S. intelligence analysis, she refused, claiming that the U.S. government didn’t want to prejudice the Dutch-led investigation. But, I pointed out, the DNI had already done that with the July 22, 2014 report.
I also argued that historically investigations into airline disasters have been transparent, not opaque like this one, and that the American public had an overarching right to know what the U.S. intelligence community knew about the MH-17 case given the existential threat of a possible nuclear showdown with Russia. But the DNI’s office held firm in its refusal to provide an update.
The New York Times’ editorial board could have lent its voice to this need for openness. Instead, the Times used the prime opinion-leading real estate of its editorial page to demand obeisance to Official Washington’s prevailing group think on the Ukraine crisis, that everything is the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The editorial stated:
“Throughout it all, President Vladimir Putin has blamed Ukrainian ‘fascists’ manipulated by the United States and its allies for all the troubles in Ukraine. Nobody outside Russia believes this, and the Russians themselves make little effort to conceal their extensive military support for the separatists.
“The relatives of the people who died on the Malaysian airliner, most of whom were Dutch, deserve answers and justice. There is little question that Russia will block any tribunal. But the Security Council should not be fooled into believing that the Russian counterproposals are an honorable alternative, any more than anyone should be fooled by any of Mr. Putin’s lies about Russia’s military interference in Ukraine.”
The Times’ strident editorial bordered on the hysterical as if the newspaper was frightened that it was losing control of the permissible narrative derived from its profoundly biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis from its beginning in February 2014 when a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Times also put the word “fascists” in quotes presumably to suggest that Ukrainian brown shirts are just one of Putin’s delusions. The Times insisted that “nobody outside Russia believes this” suggesting that if you take note of the key role played by Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, you belong in Russia since “nobody outside Russia” would believe such a thing.
Yet, even the Times’ own correspondents have on occasion had no choice but to describe a central reality of the Ukraine crisis that neo-Nazi and other ultranationalist militias provided the muscle for the February 2014 coup and have served as the point of the spear against ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the U.S.-backed coup regime.
Just this month, Times correspondent Andrew E. Kramer reported on the front-line fighting in which the Kiev government has pitted the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and Islamic militants (some of whom have been described as “brothers” of the Islamic State) against the ethnic Russian rebels. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]
The neo-Nazis and ultranationalists also have squared off against Ukrainian police and politicians, including firefights and protest marches demanding President Petro Poroshenko’s removal, as reported by the BBC. [Also see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mess that Nuland Made.”]
But deviation from the “it’s all Putin’s fault” group think infuriates the Times’ editors into chanting something like the “go back to Russia” insult directed at Americans in the 1960s and 1970s who criticized the Vietnam War. It is just that sort of anti-intellectual conformity that now dominates the debate over Ukraine.
And, unlike Sherlock Holmes who had the astuteness to unlock the mystery of the “Silver Blaze” by noting the dog not barking, the Times editors ignore the curious reticence of the U.S. government in refusing to update its “assessment” of the MH-17 crash. If the editors really wanted to know the truth and achieve some real accountability, the Times would have joined in demanding that the Obama administration end its suspicious silence.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
Ukraine’s Euro-Integration website headlined on July 25th, “Klimkin: ‘If Ukraine Won’t Be an EU Member Within 5 Years, We Won’t Ever’,†and reported that, “Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin claims that if Kiev is required to wait 5 years before applying for membership in the EU, Ukraine’s joining will be postponed indefinitely.†He says, “If we are forced to wait till 2020 to apply, it won’t work even if we are forced to wait another 25 years.â€
Klimkin is quoted as saying that the longer Ukraine waits for membership, the less likely Ukraine’s ultimate membership will be, because “The EU won’t be the same 20 years from now; it will have undergone major changes.â€
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Implies EU Membership Might Be Impossible
By Eric Zuesse
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/07/ukraines-foreign-minister-implies-eu-membership-might-be-impossible.html
Ukrainian military acknowledges it may have shot down flight MH17
By Igor Korotchenko
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/07/ukrainian-military-acknowledges-it-may.html
This article is a translation of the July 26 blog report by Russian journalist and military expert Igor Korotchenko.
Korotchenko is chief editor of National Defense Magazine and director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade.
Korotchenko refers to a July 26 article on the website of REN TV, one of the largest private federal TV channels in Russia.
According to the REN TV article, unspecified “local media” cited an “anonymous source in the Armed Forces of Ukraine”.
The anonymous source claimed that a Ukrainian Buk missile crew accidentally fired a missile on July 17, 2014 while two Ukrainian Su-25 were conducting aerial reconnaissance in the region.
The anonymous source also claimed that the Security Service of Ukraine arrested the commander and crew of the missile battery “that evening”.
The allegations of the REN TV article generally conform to the scenario outlined during the July 21, 2014 Russian Ministry of Defense briefing on MH-17.
The failure to report the striking new revelations from the ongoing trial suggests that the misrepresentation in Ukraine and the West of the Maidan mass killing is driven not by lack of information but by politics.
Unreported Revelations from the Maidan Massacre Trial in Ukraine
By Ivan Katchanovski
https://www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/1064562830240269
NYT: “Nobody outside Russia believes this, and the Russians themselves make little effort to conceal their extensive military support for the separatists.”
I am wondering what is the NYT implying here? I have checked various blogs in various languages on the Ukraine issue and to me it appears that the majority of the readers is rather suspicious about how the issue is portrait in the West and Russia’s apparent responsibility. A blog comment I issued in the Guardian a week ago raising similar questions about MH17 as has been raised by Consortium news got about 30 positive notifications while a post contradicting my post had only 5. So nobody outside Russia takes the Russian view on the Ukrainian crisis serious? What are they implying here? All those having doubts about the opinion of the NYT must actually be Russian? If we have doubts about the “mainstream view” we must all be based in Russia and being paid by the Kremlin to promote the Kremlin views? I don’t think even Pravda would have indicated something like that in the heyday of Soviet propaganda ….
I guess it’s about time for me to join the discussion here, so here goes.
I’ve read a few reactions about this NYT line, and it immediately rang some bells. In the Netherlands, we have de Volkskrant. It’s historically a left-wing newspaper appealing to intellectuals and the likes mostly, that has long been regarded a quality newspaper.
I think de Volkskrant (to be named VK from here on) is widely known and appreciated for it’s rich cultural and scientific pages and probably generally seen as the longstanding rival of the more reactive right-wing Telegraaf (the nation’s highest selling newspaper). In this sense it is important to note that VK has for long been viewed as the sensible, intellectually justified choice whereas the Telegraaf is seen as the sensationalist big-headliner always out to cause a stir.
Anyway, VK got a lot of negative reactions to their initial coverage of the MH17 debacle.
Of course you have to take into account that 193 Dutch nationals were aboard. The nation was in shock, and the victims’ remains were brought back with near-military show. I hate to say it like this, because I genuinely feel for their loved ones, but this left a faint but distinct foul taste in my mouth. I couldn’t help but feel (also because of the way media and politics picked this up as if we were at war with Russia) that this was partly an orchestrated effort to take attention away from the unpopular austerity measures that kept getting worse and worse, and the government that forced them upon the nation.
I will tell you more about some of the odd things that were said and have happened in the Netherlands, like American officials appearing on TV soon after the disaster trying to sell the viewers American weapons and energy… later.
Either way, VK’s reaction to these negative comments (on their site and Facebook) was IMHO nothing short of infuriating, but priceless. I took the time to translate it for people here and elsewhere to read in English, because I feel it is quite telling in it’s tone and argumentation. The piece was written by the paper’s ombudswoman, Annieke Kranenberg.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – — – –
Are the pro-Kremlintrolls active on the Volkskrant site?
“The number of “Putinunderstanders†among the reactions to opinion pieces on the Volkskrant-site is well represented, ombudswoman Annieke Kranenberg writes. Propaganda, as seen at Der Spiegel and the Guardian before?
“We have to draw a line concercing NATO, US and EU expansionism†Annelore, a visitor of volkskrant.nl writes. “They are the ones who have annexed all the old Soviet territories. Now they want to take the last bit as well. Putin is supposed to watch and keep still. On top of that he gets hit with the most wretched of sanctionsâ€.
“It’s Putin time again for many respondents†one “haakaa†responds not long after. “They’d take up residence in the man’s dreamrepublic if they could. (…) Good riddance. Then we can go on with our lives and mourning our dead withouth being treated to your idiotic conspiracytheories about the wicked West. Zastrovje!â€
It may have gone by unnoticed – it did for me at first: respondents are at each others’ throats under the Ukraine pieces on the site. One side is being accused of pro-Kremlinpropaganda, the other of western propaganda. This virtual battle has raged since the outbreak of the Crimea crisis, but has gotten worse after the crash of the Malaysia Airlines craft. “You should count the number of Putinunderstanders in your commentssection†a reader e-mailed .“They outnumber the readers that think otherwise on a daily basis.â€
So I took the suggestion to heart and took a look at the reactions under several opinion pieces about Ukraine (only the opinions section allows for reactions on the Volkskrant site). Take for instance the article “Europe must draw a line against Putinâ€. Out of 123 reactions right now, at least 54 are pro-Putin, anti-American, anti-Brussels or anti-Western – these sentiments often seem to go in hand. Reactions to other opinion pieces show a resembling picture. The number of “Putinunderstanders†is not a majority, but it is very well represented and does not appear to be a representative of the Volkskrant readership.
Foreign media have had to deal with this phenomenon as well. It has been rumoured for a while that Moscow – after it’s internal propagandasuccess – is testing how public opinion in Europe and the US can be manipulated through newssites and social media. At the end of May these rumours appeared to be true, witnessing the revelations of Anonymous International. This activist online-network had hacked into the e-mail conversation between employees and their superiors at an internetbureau near St Petersburg, which showed bloggers get paid to spread Russian propaganda. The e-mails contain among others instructions for these pro-Kremlintrolls on how to behave on Western internetfora. Important “targets†were especially influential American media, like the Huffington Post and Fox News.
The Kremlinprotagonists also appeared in German media, as Der Spiegel showed in “Putin Gewinnt den Propaganda-Kriegâ€. Russian journalists, paid by Moscow, take a seat in talkshows. Edditorial offices are bombed with “explosive information†about the right-wing extremist government in Kiev and Putinfriends are stirring internetfora. At the end of April –before Anonymous International’s revelations – the Guardian’s public editor alreadt warned of the pro-Kremlintrolls. The moderators could no longer handle the influx. At the time, the Guardian had no hard evidence that it was a coordinated action. There were clues though: certain texts were often repeated and pro-seperatist comments in broken English appeared.
The Volkskrant moderators haven’t picked up any signals that the paid pro-Kremlintrolls are manifesting here as well. I am not under that impression either. The number of “Putinsympathizers†is noticed, but many appeared driven by idealism, nationalism or anti-Western sentiments (the number of respondents that distrusts Western government, instances and media and quench their thirst for conspiracytheories is always well represented on internetfora).
It can be imagined that this minority feels a strong need to voice a countering opinion. The respondents complain about the one-sided reporting in the Volkskrant, who claims that the responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine lies with Putin and suggests that there are strong pointers that seperatists fired the missile. A sneering comparison is made to Colin Powell, who in 2003 presented so-called “convincing proof†that Iraq possessed WDM’s. Now Europe again blindly follows the US. Why doesn’t the paper put a Russian perspective next to it?
The editor’s office’s job is not to pass on propaganda and wild speculations, says an old Russia-correspondent who speaks Russian and writes may commentaries and analysis on Ukraine. “When a rebelcommander claims that the passengers where already dead when the plane crashed because the corpses hardly bled, should we report that as serious news? I just picked that out to show the outrageous theories that are going round.†He also filters out the rumours from Ukrainian side. “Acts of cruelty supposedly committed by separatists, but can’t be confirmed anywhere.â€
How a medium itself can become an instrument of propaganda, the Volkskrant found out earlier this year. In a report on right-wing extremist Ukrainians on the Maidansquare in Kiev, a photo of a yellow armband with a sign resembling a swastika. The armband belonged to a Ukrainian ultranationalist, maar a redactor accidentally had written down “Russian ultranationalistâ€. Evidently, a stupid error, regarding the context of the report. Yet, the picture immediately appeared on Russian news-sites (passed onfrom the Netherlands?) as an example of tendencious Western media reporting. The old Russiacorrespondent immediately placed a rectification on these respective sites in Russian, not in the least to protect the correspondent on site from possible aggression.
The old correspondent sees examples of propaganda on Russian sites and social media on a daily basis. He shows a collection of tweets with the exact same words, sent at the same time, but by 45 different users. The tweet is about an elderly woman who was wounded by a mortar fired by the Ukrainian army. Hij does not believe Moscow is paying bloggers in the Netherlands.
The chances of Dutchmen massively embracing the pro-Kremlinframe is not that big of course. But here and there the propaganda may seep through and sow doubts. If Russia has interests, than surely the US has them too?
When does this healthy suspicion turn into a nihilistic distrust, where no-one and nothing is to be believed? It’s up the the Russia expertsof the Volkskrant to guide it’s readership through this tangle of facts, interests and propaganda.â€
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Now… I feel most visitors here are smart and analytical enough to pick out the numerous straw men, smearings and magical ways of knowing certain things she uses to make what really is one sad fuck of an excuse for a point, pardon my French. So I will leave it at this for now.
Oh, and the source :)
http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/-zijn-de-pro-kremlintrollen-ook-actief-op-de-site-van-de-volkskrant~a3708622/
PS. feel free to tidy up my French in the post above.
Investigative journalist Robert Parry continues to report the use by the US vanguard of the MH-17 tragedy as a propaganda tool against Russia.
The US claims to be outraged by the shoot-down, but its purported indignation was easily debunked at the time of the event, when commentators reminded Washington (leaving out many other acts) that it shot down an obviously civilian plane on a commercial route, Iranian Air flight 655, killing the almost 300 civilians on board. “The commander of a nearby U.S. vessel, David Carlson, wrote in the U.S. Naval Proceedings that he ‘wondered aloud in disbelief’ as ‘The Vincennes [the US ship] announced her intentions’ to attack what was clearly a civilian aircraft.â€
The commander of the ship that targeted the civilian vessel, rather than being punished, was given the Legion of Merit, and George Bush Sr. said of the event: “I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are…â€
In fact, (and mysteriously unlike the US reaction to MH-17), virtually no one in the US seemed to care about a civilian plane being shot down when Washington was the culprit. There was “no outrage, no desperate search for victims, no passionate denunciations of those responsible, no eloquent laments by the US Ambassador to the UN about the ‘immense and heart-wrenching loss’â€.
Downing Civilian Airliners and Destroying Ancient Artifacts
By Robert Barsocchini
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/07/downing-civilian-airliners-and-destroying-ancient-artifacts.html
“Throughout it all, President Vladimir Putin … has blamed Ukrainian ‘fascists’ manipulated by the United States and its allies for all the troubles in Ukraine. Nobody outside Russia believes this,
I am a New Zealand citizen who lives in Brisbane Australia. which is outside Russia and I believe this. Does this make me nobody?
There are two ongoing investigations into MH17. The Dutch Safety Board investigation is concerned with the causes of the plane crash. From that I would assume it will mainly report on conclusions based on forensic evidence, from which it would be irresponsible to draw any conclusion as to exactly whom was responsible. In other words, forensic evidence could indicate that a surface to air missile was employed, and that the missile was a BUK. It may even be able to pinpoint from where that BUK was launched. But that’s about as far as it could go. Any other conclusions would be based on circumstantial evidence and opinion. A safety board is not generally qualified to draw such conclusions.
Whether a missile was fired from separatist held territory or Ukrainian held is not a matter for forensic scientists to decide but for a separate body of experts appointed specifically for that purpose to investigate. They, in turn must present their own evidence to a court. Even if a missile was proved to have been launched from territory held by one side, that still wouldn’t mean the front line couldn’t been breached from one side or another solely for that purpose.
The second investigation into MH17 is a criminal investigation being conducted by an international team led by Dutch Chief Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke. That team isn’t expected to report its findings until at least early next year. I would hardly expect the Dutch Safety Board to undermine the Dutch Prosecutor by drawing conclusions as to who was responsible for the attack before Fred Westerbeke’s team has had a chance to go over their forensic evidence contained in their report, which is now promised for October.
So far, the Dutch Chief Prosecutor has stated his international team has yet to identify any suspects for possible prosecution. Any attempt to pre-empt that team’s work by releasing, at what best can only be speculation, would strain the credibility of both investigating teams beyond what would be acceptable to an already skeptical and divided public.
Straining credibility to foster an ever more skeptical and divided public is the modus operandi of the US/NATO Propaganda 3.0 war on Russia. Legal efforts are weapons in the propaganda war.
Apparently Europe isn’t providing visas to the Ukrainian’s who wish to escape their country’s internal battles. Eric Zuesse reports on this condition here….
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/07/eu-visa-slams-ukrainians-after-february-2014-ukrainian-coup.html
Mr. Zuesse explains how the European’s were never really up for any Ukrainian inclusion into their EU clique. Instead this whole arrangement has been orchestrated by the United States who desires to separate Europe from Russia. So far all that is saving the world from a much, much bigger war, is Putin’s rational calm. If Putin were to have a Russian version of Neocon advisers who mattered, we surely would be doomed.
I have a question I’d like to ask all of you. How many people, within your everyday life, have you encountered ever talk about the MH17 shoot down? How often does anyone you know bring up the hard fought struggle the Donbass Patriots are experiencing while they fight for their independence, away from the Kiev Nazi’s grip they have on the Ukrainians? Honestly, do you ever come away believing that no one is listening? Does it seem as though most people around you are more knowledgeable about a dispute between Donald Trump and Bill Maher, as their having a plausible theory about this planes tragic downing? I might add how these people believe that by following such infotainment antics that this is their way of staying informed. Oh, you must know someone who never misses their favorite reality TV show. This brings me to ask, what has happened to our American public’s concern for anything, outside of our own lives? Why, with every fateful event (maybe false flags) are we Americans so easily influenced to give up so many of our inalienable constitutional rights? Are we so protective of our children that we find it worthwhile to give up so much of our hard earned liberties? Have we all loss our minds, to not realize that when we submit to these police state policies , that we are actually handing our children over to big brother? While liberals are running towards Bernie Sanders, is anyone around you questioning to if his candidacy is a chance for real change? We are a society of people who have been beaten down by accepting one government lie after another. The only good thing, is because of this American apathy it is probable that not many of us read this NYT propaganda, regarding Flight MH17. This is the only good news I can speak of while writing my comment here. I wish I knew the answer, to how we could wake America up. I am at a loss to present you all a suitable solution to this communication problem our country has. Lastly, I hug this message board, because of all of you here I at least get the satisfaction to know that there are sane and reasonable fellow citizens out there. That by being informed you may actually sway others to hear the truth about the evil doers who brought down MH17. I am glad to say, how I know that even someone like myself has convinced others within my peer group to see things for what they are. I don’t often introduce world events into every conversation, but when it’s my turn to speak I don’t hold back. I never really even argue. I just state the facts, and recommend references, such as this site and some other sites I have grown to trust. Love to read all your comments here. Please, never stray, because I value all of you. Sincerely Joe Tedesky
I get the feeling that people care more about the latest smart phone or the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass then the wars or conflicts that our government’s are undertaking in the world – I also get the impression that this is “exactly” the way our government’s wish it. I remember taking up the subject about Syria and how the use of chemical weapons didn’t make any sense (also I pointed to the 2kg of Sarin Gas caught in Turkey with Al Nusra Front) with a friend and she told me that she really didn’t follow it and basically that she was not interested in it. I know many things that she is interested in such as what kind of car she drives but she could care a less about the deaths of children half way around the world. I think that she was content enough simply to accept what CTV News, CBC News or whatever our Canadian media was saying about any foreign policy as truth and that was as far into the subject that she was willing to delve. I mean look at YouTube and what the most popular videos are! I don’t know, maybe we would care if war landed on our shores and we were witness to the atrocities of war OR if our governments fought adversaries that were an actual challenge and there was a possibility that we could lose instead of invading some third world nations and bombing some of the poorest people on earth of a different skin colour and faith. The War “on” Terror is really a War “of” Terror in my eyes.
Yes,it is the war of terror,obviously,with the world terrified of US,Israel and our puppets,far more than these self made terrorist orgs. promoted by the real enemy,the ZIonists and their MSM.
Are the Kardashians Cardassians?
The American Dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgqeL0AvZfo
Nailed it! George Carlin really was something else and I really needed a good laugh today! Thank you Abe and RIP George Carlin.
I get the feeling that people care more about the latest smart phone or the size of Kim Kardashian’s butt then the wars or conflicts that our government’s are undertaking in the world – I also get the impression that this is “exactly†the way our government’s wish it. I remember taking up the subject about Syria and how the use of chemical weapons didn’t make any sense (also I pointed to the 2kg of Sarin Gas caught in Turkey with Al Nusra Front) with a friend and she told me that she really didn’t follow it and basically that she was not interested in it. I know many things that she is interested in such as what kind of car she drives but she could care a less about the deaths of children half way around the world. I think that she was content enough simply to accept what CTV News, CBC News or whatever our Canadian media was saying about any foreign policy as truth and that was as far into the subject that she was willing to delve. I mean look at YouTube and what the most popular videos are! I don’t know, maybe we would care if war landed on our shores and we were witness to the atrocities of war OR if our governments fought adversaries that were an actual challenge and there was a possibility that we could lose instead of invading some third world nations and bombing some of the poorest people on earth of a different skin colour and faith. The War “on†Terror is really a War “of†Terror in my eyes.
A choice between fear and love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO3auFJYiKU
Back in the 80’s I picked up a button that said, “Who knows? Who cares? Why bother?”.
It summed up then the reaction I got from most and this was during the time Reagan was saying, “If there were to be a nuclear war, if everyone would just dig a big hole and get in it they would have a good chance of surviving.” Then Robert Scheer wrote his book, “With Enough Shovels”.
Throughout most of my adult life I have been an activist and have found that the vast majority of the people whose paths I have crossed did not know the truth about anything of a foreign policy nature (or domestic either) and they really did not care.
And it has only gotten worse. It seems there is only a sliver of us who “dig and cram for knowledge” (this is what my American History teacher in Ohio circa 1968 implored our graduating class to do).
I find that now our country has become a giant mess of self-absorbed, greedy and thoughtless people who get up every day to have their glass of corporate Kool-aid and then to spend their days fighting to survive and in their spare time to indulge in mind-less Facebook, Instagram nonsense then to end their days in front of their teevees sucking up more mindless propaganda and if they are lucky they might get laid.
Rinse and repeat the next day.
We have become a nation of Stepford citizens and I will betcha if you went to your local DMV with a camera and interviewed the first fifty people who would even talk to you (nobody trusts anybody) that the vast majority would know nothing about Malaysia 17 or the U.S. coup in Ukraine or the recent nuclear deal with Iran or the facts of the 1956 U.S. coup in Iran that overthrew Mossedegh or the bloody Shah we put in power and why the Iranians hate our guts. They would have zero knowledge of the vast power Israel holds over our elected officials and media and on and on it goes.
I think it would be interesting for all of us to go to our local high schools this fall to audit some American history classes just for shots and giggles. To chat it up with the teachers and students.
What are they being taught regarding the JFK assassination? The events of 9/11?
Oh well. It is a beautiful day here in SoCal. Might as well join the rest and go to the beach. I can start reading “Stranger In A Strange Land. Again.
Write on Mr Parry,
These people in the mainstream “news” networks are every bit as guilty as the criminal perpetrators they enable and protect.
Yours is the duty of honor with the integrity and courage to deliver the truth.
Write on I say! You’re providing a great service to the world and humankind.
Write on man, right on!
@consortiumnews.com columnist who wrote this piece.>> Kudos to you and consortium news. Your article is concise, substantive and evidential to a fault. This period in history has given us the worst I’ve ever seen in supposed professional journalism and the NYT is at that top of the list, when it comes to geopolitical/foreign affairs reporting. Oh wait, it’s commentary right?[SARCASM] All that you have in your piece has been fermenting in the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Americans, since the WMD lie of the Iraq “invasion” of 2003, but current day western MSM continues spewing that trash, with the same blind bias to indisputable facts. There is sooooo much in your article that I have verified for myself and have also read others in the west posting similar, if not exactly the same things you have. Once again, Kudos. You too Abe.
Excellent article. Sums up the sad fact that media has learned nothing from Iraq war.
I think that the New York Times has long been a voice of propaganda for the US Government. Go back to Hiroshima and read how the New York Times purported that any deaths by radiation after the dropping of the atomic bombs was “Japanese propaganda”. I am sure that if I systematically went through conflict after conflict that I would find that the New York Times supported the US Government line, as it did with coverage of WMD’s in Iraq.
New York Times: “U.S. Atom Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales” (September 12, 1945):
“Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm That Blast, and Not Radiation, Took Toll”
“ATOMIC BOMB RANGE, New Mexico, Sept. 9 (Delayed) – This historic ground in New Mexico, scene of the first atomic explosion on earth and cradle of a new era in civilization, gave the most effective answer today to Japanese propaganda that radiations were responsible for deaths even after the day of the explosion, Aug. 6, and that persons entering Hiroshima had contracted mysterious maladies due to persistent radioactivity.
To give the lie to these claims, the Army opened the closely guarded gets of this area for the first time to a group of newspaper men and photographers to witness for themselves the readings on radiation meters carried by a group of radiologists, and to listen to the expert testimony of several of the leading scientist who had been intimately connected with the atomic bomb project.”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept12_1945.pdf
The Huffington Post: “The Great Hiroshima Cover-up: How the U.S. Hid Shocking Historic Footage for Decades” (August 2, 2011):
“The Japanese Newsreel Footage
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 civilians instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country — and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.
But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, and as the American occupation began, director Sueo Ito set off for Nagasaki. There his crew filmed the utter destruction near ground zero and scenes in hospitals of the badly burned and those suffering from the lingering effects of radiation.
On Sept. 15, another crew headed for Hiroshima. When the first rushes came back to Toyko, Akira Iwasaki, the chief producer, felt “every frame burned into my brain,” he later said.
At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years “the world…knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction.”
Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.
Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated by the U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ). An order soon arrived banning all further filming. It was at this point that Lt. Daniel McGovern took charge.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/the-great-hiroshima-cover_b_915932.html
The NYTimes, since its last sale, but in fact for some years before that, has become useless for almost anything other than to take a measure of how far down the slope of spreading the propaganda of the rich and powerful in the United States, the top media has slid.
Apart from cultural subjects which I miss, Paul Krugman, and the few opinion writers like him, for whom I still have high respect, still keep me visiting. Like so many others, I have been enjoying the many other news outlets that keep the facts straight or at least supply balance. The coverage of the Ukraine news by the NYTimes is worse than abysmal. The paper is obviously trying to justify all out war with the Russians at the worst, and/or their abject humiliation at the best.
At the moment, Putin, for all his faults, and the Russian Federation are the best hope for peace and order in the world. The NYTimes is all out helping those who think he can be replaced by an internal coup d’état that will deliver the country to America and their plundering corporations. Its editorialists seem to think that if enough money and effort is invested through the National Endowment for Democracy and their ilk, that they will conquer or destroy whatever it is that keeps them independent, proud and strong.
I can only hope that the Russian point of view on the Ukraine, that of a negotiated peaceful loose federation prevails in that unfortunate country. Otherwise it will become like too many other states, almost destroyed by the unwelcome interference of the USA.
Keep up your good work.
On May 30—drum roll, please—came the absolute coup de grâce. The Atlantic Council, one of the Washington think tanks—its shtick seems to be some stripe of housebroken neoliberalism—published a report purporting to show that, in the Times’ language, “Russia is continuing to defy the West by conducting protracted military operations inside Ukraine.â€
Read the report. It’s first sentence: “Russia is at war with Ukraine.â€
“Continuing to defy?†“At war with Ukraine?†If you refuse to accept the long, documented record of Moscow’s efforts to work toward a negotiated settlement with Europe—and around defiant Americans—and if you call the Ukraine conflict other than a civil war, well, someone is creating your reality for you.
Details. The Times described “Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine†as “an independent report.†I imagine Gordon—he seems to do all the blurry stuff these days—had a straight face when he wrote three paragraphs later that John Herbst, one of the Atlantic Council’s authors, is a former ambassador to Ukraine.
I do not know what kind of a face Gordon wore when he reported later on that the Atlantic Council paper rests on research done by Bellingcat.com, “an investigative website.†Or when he let Herbst get away with calling Bellingcat, which appears to operate from a third-floor office in Leicester, a city in the English Midlands, “independent researchers.â€
I wonder, honestly, if correspondents look sad when they write such things—sad their work has come to this.
One, Bellingcat did its work using Google, YouTube and other readily available social media technologies, and this we are supposed to think is the cleverest thing under the sun. Are you kidding?
Manipulating social media “evidence†has been a parlor game in Kiev; Washington; Langley, Virginia, and at NATO since the Ukraine crisis broke open. Look at the graphics included in the presentation. I do not think technical expertise is required to see that these images prove what all others offered as evidence since last year prove: nothing. It looks like the usual hocus-pocus.
Two, examine the Bellingcat web site and try to figure out who runs it. I tried the about page and it was blank. The site consists of badly supported anti-Russian “reportsâ€â€”no “investigation†aimed in any other direction.
I look at this stuff now and think, Well, there may be activity on Russia’s borders or inside Ukraine, but maybe not. Those two soldiers may be Russian and may be on active duty, but I cannot draw any conclusion.
I do not appreciate having to think this way—not as a reader and not as a former newsman. I do not like reading Times editorials, such as Tuesday’s, which institutionalizes “Putin’s war†and other such tropes, and having to say, Our most powerful newspaper is into the created reality game.
We are the propagandists: The real story about how The New York Times and the White House has turned truth in the Ukraine on its head
By Patrick L. Smith
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/we_are_the_propagandists_the_real_story_about_how_the_new_york_times_and_the_white_house_has_turned_truth_in_the_ukraine_on_its_head/
The New York Times has been loudly hailing Eliot Higgins as an “expert” since the 2013 chemical attack in Syria.
In addition to recent NYT articles highlighting Higgins and the faux “citizen journalists” at Bellingcat, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal has turned the NYT op-ed pages into a megaphone for Atlantic Council propaganda on Ukraine.
A March 15, 2015 op-ed piece on Ukraine was authored by Hans Binnendijk and John E. Herbst.
Binnendijk, a senior director for defense policy at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, has served on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group.
Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (2003-2006), now serves as director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and is a principal co-author with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council report accusing Russian of waging war in eastern Ukraine.
A June 9, 2015 op-ed by Adrian Karatnycky decries “Putin’s warlords” in eastern Ukraine.
Karatnycky, a Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Relations Program, was President and Executive Director of Freedom House (1993-2004) focused on instigating regime change in Belarus, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia.
George Soros has worked closely with USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (now doing work formerly assigned to the CIA), the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Institute to initiate a series of color revolutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia following the engineered collapse of the Soviet Union.
Adrian Karatnycky advertises himself as a “leading authority on Ukraine who has worked on-the-ground with the country’s leading policy reformers since the late 1980s”.
Karatnycky manages the Myrmidon Group, “a consultancy with a representation in Kyiv that works with investors and corporations seeking entry into the complex but lucrative emerging markets of Ukraine and Eastern Europe”.
In addition, Karatnycky is on the Board of Directors of an organization called the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter Initiative.
The Chairman of the Board of Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, James C. Temerty, a member of the Advisory Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
Temerty is Chairman of Northland Power, a major Canadian power company. He also serves as Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Business School at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Ukrainian Jewish Encounter works in partnership with the Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.
Mohyla Academy was an all-too-eager recipients of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) cash that poured into Ukraine in March 2014, after the coup d’etat in Kiev.
Mohyla Academy operates the Stopfake propaganda website, which was registered in Ukraine on March 2, 2014. Allied with Bellingcat, Stopfake uses the same faux fact-check disinformation strategy that Eliot Higgins employs.
An Atlantic Council / Ukrainian Jewish Encounter joint delegation headed by headed by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, as well as Karatnycky and Temerty, traveled to Ukraine in June 2015.
On June 23, the delegation met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv.
On June 25, 2015, the Atlantic Council / UJE delegation met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
According to the Ukrainian government website, the parties discussed “cooperation in countering Russian propaganda, which is particularly dangerous part of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, as well as the entire free world and civilized relations between states.” http://www.kmu.gov.ua/control/en/publish/printable_article?art_id=248274875
It is not known whether the group discussed their New York Times op-ed bona fides.
Abe, keeping with your theme, or at least trying to, I googled, ‘how are Jeb’s doing in Ukraine’? I came across an jpost article;
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Candidly-speaking-Putin-Ukraine-and-the-Jews-345546
This jpost article describes how Putin has reached out to Ukrainian Jews. Abe, with all your research techniques can you expound upon this Ukrainian/Jewish relationship. Maybe others here could submit, or tell of what they know of how the Jewish people are doing, while this civil war slogs on. I am curious.
The Right Sector (Ukrainian: Правий Ñектор, Pravyi Sektor) movement was formed as a coalition of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary organizations during the Maidan protests in Kiev at the end of 2013.
In the immediate aftermath of the February 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh was proposed as a deputy to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine but was not appointed.
Yarosh was then offered the position of deputy head of the National Security Council but rejected it as being beneath him.
What happened after the coup may be the world’s most conspicuous case of “Jew-washing”, second only to Islamic State in its demonstrated benevolence to Israel.
At the end of February 2014, Yarosh and the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine Reuven El Din agreed to establish a “hotline” to prevent provocations and coordinate actions when issues arise. Yarosh reportedly assured the Israeli ambassador that Right Sector’s ideology rejects “all manifestations of chauvinism and xenophobia”.
Since the beginning of March 2014, Right Sector has been managing its image with the complicity of western mainstream media.
Consider the case of Oleksandr Ivanovych Muzychko, coordinator of Right Sector in Western Ukraine.
Muzychko (who was given the nom de guerre “Sachko Bilyi”) had vowed to fight “communists, Jews and Russians for as long as blood flows in my veinsâ€.
During the First Chechen War, Muzychko led the UNA-UNSO “Viking” group. In 1995 Muzychko was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to an individual. In 1997 he was accused of attempting to kill a member of UNA-UNSO in Kiev.
In 2003 Muzychko was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for racketeering and kidnapping. In 2009 he was accused in a hostile corporate raid. In 2012 he ran for the national parliament in Rivne district coming sixth.
On 27 February 2014, Muzychko attacked the Prosecutor of the Rivne Oblast in his office and threatened to “slay as a dog” the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov.
On 28 February 2014, criminal proceedings were opened against him.
On March 7, 2014, ITAR-TASS reported that Muzychko was wanted by Russian authorities for war atrocities.
On 11 March 2014, Russian State Duma opposition leader Valery Rashkin urged Russian special services to “follow Mossad examples” and assassinate Right Sector leaders Yarosh and Muzychko.
On 24 March 2014, Muzychko was shot to death in Rivne.
There are conflicting stories about how this happened.
A witness told a local news service that a dozen men took Muzychko out of a cafe, handcuffed him, and beat him and two bodyguards. Others said that they later heard two shots fired near the cafe.
According to Ukrainian MP Oles Doniy, a group of unknown armed people arrived on three Volkswagen minivans and kidnapped Muzychko and five other people from a cafe near Rivne. They murdered Muzychko behind the cafe by two gunshots to the heart.
In another telling of Doniy’s account, a group of attackers forced Muzychko to stop his car, pulled him from it, handcuffed him and shot him.
Police said he was being detained on suspicion of organized crime links, hooliganism and threatening public officials.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry stated that Muzychko was shot after opening fire on police and Sokil special forces. The police were able to capture him and three others, but by the time the paramedics had arrived at the scene, he had died.
On March 25, 2014, police stated that Muzychko had shot himself. This was confirmed by an Interior Ministry inquiry that concluded he had shot himself in the heart as police tried to bring him to the ground after a chase. The inquiry also concluded he had fired previously, resulting in a scratch on his skin, and that the police had acted lawfully.
Reacting to news of the shooting, Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh called for the resignation of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and the arrest of the police who had come for Muzychko.
On March 28, 2014, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, stated, “I strongly condemn the pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Such an intimidation of the parliament is against the democratic principles and rule of law.”
Right Sector moved its headquarters from Kiev to Dnipropetrovsk, governed by Ukrainian-Cypriot-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.
The multibillionaire Kolomoisky lavishly funded the Right Sector paramilitary units.
He funded the Aidar, Azov, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2, and Donbas volunteer battalions, and reportedly spent $10 million to create the Dnipro Battalion.
The exploits of the right wing Ukrainian battalions have been covered by Robert Parry at Consortium News.
The Right Sector has refused to acknowledge the authority of the current coup-imposed Kiev government. In September 2014, Yarosh threatened Poroshenko, saying he could oust him “like Yanukovich.â€
Right Sector continues to reject the Minsk Agreement and has called for renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine.
WITH THANKS TO “ABE”…
With deepest appreciation to “Abe” and what you add
for all of us to consider. Unfortunately —perhaps only
for me!!!) it usually leaves me breathless with nothing
to add.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
It is old news by now that The Times lies aggressively on certain subjects. It is somewhat helpful Abe that you are reporting on some of the people involved but you seem to be only scratching the surface. Who is behind this? Could it be the CIA or some other secret Ministry Of Truth, or is it directly handled by the Hidden Empire? How did they get in control? Did they secretly buy out the Sulzberger family? It seems there must be a bombshell of a story here but I don’t see that anyone is beginning to get close to it.