OMNI
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a
Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
Out of the ignorance and
complacency engendered by the avoidance of reality comes hatred and war.
The opening of a Jewish prayer
from the Sabbath service: “Disturb us,
Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency; make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance,
the quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat, the
bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans. Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false
Shabbat which gives us the delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and
hatred.”
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore,
is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime
differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole." -- Robert H. Jackson, Chief U.S.
Prosecutor, Nuremberg
“It has
been a mainstay of this book that successful antiwar movements are those that
have been able to make direct links with
those in the flight path of US
aggression and to bring their struggles and concerns directly into the US
J. William
Fulbright during the height of the Cold War attempted to extend his Exchange Program to the Soviet Union,
but his plan to acquire a part of WWII Lend Lease money the Russians were
repaying was scuttled by US Sovietphobes.
See The Price of Empire. Another Arkansas
native, Betty Bumpers, wife of then Senator Bumpers, created the women’s
organization, Peace Links, to exchange women from the US and Russia
Newsletters
Index:
CONNECTION BETWEEN US ENCIRCLEMENT OF CHINA
AND RUSSIA : See OMNI’s newsletters/blogs on US
Imperialism Westward Pacific/E. Asia, on Iran
Contents Russia/Ukraine Newsletter #3
Contexts
Davies, Historical
Background of US Coups
William Blum,
New Cold War, Same Old US
Bellant, Far
Right Forces in Russia
Amy Goodman, Ukraine
Peter Hart,
Distorting Putin
Dick, Fulbright’s Exchange Program for Official Enemies
Veterans for Peace Opposes
US Troops to Ukraine
Michael Gordon, US
Ratcheting Up the Threats, Deploying
Troops in E. Europe
Cockburn, Crisis into
Catastrophe?
Hooper, Solution Appalling?
McMullen, Russian Greed?
Mayer, Decline of US Empire?
Moss, Whose Advice to Trust?
Lieven, The Way Out?
Forum of 3 Essays on US and Ukraine
Norman
Solomon: Obama, International Law ,
US
Blaming Putin
Chandra
Muzaffar, US Behind Ouster of
Democratically Elected President
Standards
Parry, Obama Only One Able to Prevent War
NATO
Kucinich on NATO
McGovern on NATO
MEDIA
Two Essays by Robert Parry
on Anti-Russian US Corporate Media
Obama Admin. and US Mainstream Media Sing the
Old Imperial
Song
Neocon and Media Support of US
Propaganda Campaign
Two Essays by Peter Hart in EXTRA! also on US Corporate Media
With Official Enemies, Too Much Is Not
Enough
Drill for More Oil and Gas Here, and
Sell to Russia
Gordon, NYT
Parry, Bias of NYT
Contact Arkansas Senators
Contents of Nos. 1-2
By Nicolas
J. S. Davies, AlterNet.org, posted April 8
Traces a pattern of US
interventions, drawing a parallel with happenings in present-day Venezuela
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire
Report #127
By William Blum –
Published April 7th, 2014
Long
live the Cold War
In
1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet
Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the
Bolshevik Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing
through Poland carrying the
first American diplomats dispatched to Moscow Russia ,
the train provided Kennan’s first actual exposure to the Soviet
Union . As he listened to his group’s escort, Russian Foreign
Minister Maxim Litvinov, reminisce about growing up in a village the train was
passing close by, and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the
Princeton-educated Kennan was astonished: “We suddenly realized, or at least I
did, that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves,
that they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as
we had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these
people.”
It hasn’t happened yet.
One would think that the absence in Russia United States is
virtually as hostile to 21st-century Russia
as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding Moscow America Russia
is the only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn’t believe
that the United States China
NATO – ever in need of finding a raison d’être – has now issued a declaration of
[cold] war, which reads in part:
“NATO
foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their commitment to
enhance the Alliance’s collective defence, agreed to further support Ukraine
and to suspend NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia. ‘NATO’s greatest
responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make
no mistake, this is what we will do,’ NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen said. … Ministers directed Allied military authorities to develop
additional measures to strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any
threat of aggression against the Alliance Alliance ,
including surveillance patrols over Poland
and Romania and increased
numbers of fighter aircraft allocated to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States . … NATO Foreign Ministers also agreed to
suspend all of NATO’s practical cooperation with Russia
Does anyone recall what NATO said in
2003 when the United States
bombed and invaded Iraq Russia
nor Ukraine Ukraine , openly
supported by the United
States Washington
One of the main differences between
now and the Cold War period is that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted
or prosecuted for supporting Russia
But don’t worry, folks, there won’t
be a big US-Russian war. For the same reason there wasn’t one during the Cold
War. The United States
Interview
with Russ Bellant, Foreign Policy in Focus, posted March 18, 2014. [Access was forbidden to this article. –Dick]
As Unrest Grows, Is Ukraine
Paying the Price of U.S.-Russian Ties Stuck in Cold War Era?
|
|
 Amy
Goodman, Video Report, NationofChange, April 29, 2014: The |
WILL WE LISTEN TO
SENATOR FULBRIGHT NOW?
By Dick Bennett
Blum tells about the
young diplomat George Kennan in 1933 traveling to Russia US
had recently recognized the Soviet Union after
fifteen years of severed relations. The train
passed near where Litvinov had grown up, and he described his youth there. Blum quotes Kennan: : “We suddenly realized, or at least I did,
that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that
they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we
had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these
people.”
The friendly relations, in which the
Soviet people were human beings, lasted
through WWII, but ended soon afterward during the period of the so-called “Cold
War” (which Blum avers never really ended), when the US Soviet
Union in the Program. “What is important,” he wrote in The Price of Empire “is that we come to
think about each other as human beings” (230).
One of his most persistent peacemaking ideas is that of “joint ventures”
by which adversaries might learn about each other. And his most famous joint venture was that of
educational exchanges. For Fulbright,
exchanges, “from the standpoint of world peace and order, probably the most
important and potentially rewarding of our foreign-policy activities” are
educational exchanges (231).
The
obstacles inspired by the Cold War were formidable, but Senator Fulbright in
the early 1970s began conversations with a representative of the Soviet
Ministry of Cultural Affairs. The moment
was crucial. Détente seemed
hopeful. Among other agreements, the SU
had agreed to repay the US $800 million to the US WWII Lend-Lease program. Fulbright proposed to the Ministry
representative that part of that money, “maybe a hundred million,” be applied
to an exchange of US and SU students and teachers. The SU was receptive to the suggestion
because it would allow them to pay in rubles instead of dollars.
But the full weight of Sovietphobic
paranoia crushed the idea and détente in general through an amendment by
Senator Henry Jackson on Russian Jewish emigration in a trade bill. In Fulbright’s opinion, Jackson
Recalling that history gives credibility
to Blum’s belief that the conflict over the Ukraine Soviet
Union is now capitalist, the competition is over military and
resources power. And as in the days of the Soviet Union, Russia is surrounded by US Russia
US
Plans Military Drills in Eastern Europe
Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
Gordon writes: "The United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia in an attempt to reassure NATO's Eastern European members worried about Russia's military operations in and near Ukraine, Western officials said Friday."
READ MORE
Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
Gordon writes: "The United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia in an attempt to reassure NATO's Eastern European members worried about Russia's military operations in and near Ukraine, Western officials said Friday."
READ MORE
PETER
HART, BEATING UP ON PUTIN AND US DOUBLE STANDARDS
Mar
05
2014
Putin's 'Delusions' and
Double Standards
An effective
propaganda system will either mostly disappear inconvenient facts, or allow
this information to surface if it comes out of the mouth of an enemy leader who
is said to be out of touch with reality.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
deliriously suggested that some US
That seems to be
thinking when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Has Vladimir
Putin lost touch with reality?" wondered a Washington Russia 's
military presence in Crimea , and that
"the political system he has created has insulated him from the
truth."
There's nothing to
suggest that Putin was actually telling the truth; he's apolitician,
after all.
But all of this
conjecture about his mental state does a good job of obscuring the fact that
some of what he said made perfect sense. In the New
York Times story
(3/4/14) about the press conference, for
instance, readers are told that Putin "delivered a version of the crisis
that was fundamentally at odds with the view held by most officials in the United States , Europe and Ukraine
This passage is
definitely at odds with how US leaders talk about the crisis:
Above all, Mr. Putin
appeared defiant, evidently frustrated by what he described as false promises
by foreign diplomats and double standards that justify American or NATO military
operations in the name of protecting human rights or democracy but disregard
Russian concerns.
"We are often
accused of illegitimacy in our actions, and when I ask the question, 'Do you
think everything you do is legitimate?' they say yes," he said, and then
went on.
"It's necessary
to recall the actions of the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya,
where they acted either without any sanction from the UN Security Council or
distorted the content of these resolutions, as it happened in Libya," he
said. "There, as you know, only the right to create a no-fly zone for
government aircraft was authorized, and it all ended in the bombing and
participation of special forces in ground operations. Our partners, especially
the United States, always formulate their geopolitical and state interests, and
then drag the rest of the world with them, guided by the well-known phrase ‘If
you're not with us, you’re against us.'"
How completely out
of touch!
John Kerry: Out of touch with reality?
Consider these
remarks alongside some of what Secretary of State John Kerry has been saying
recently. On Meet the Press(3/2/14), he
explained, "You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in
order to assert your interests."
And then yesterday (3/4/14) in Kiev
To call these
comments at odds with reality would be far too kind. As Robert Parry noted (ConsortiumNews, 3/4/14):
Since World War
II–and extending well into the 21st century–the United States US invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq , plus American
bombing operations from Pakistan
to Yemen to Libya
Indeed, one of the
more revealing parallels might be Ronald Reagan's 1983invasion
of Grenada. While the circumstances in Ukraine University
of San Francisco Stephen Zunes
"The coup gave
us the excuse, and because the people of the island where so shell-shocked and
outraged at what had been done, they welcomed in large part the US invasion
that they would have probably fought off had it taken place while Bishop was still
in power," he said.
Zunes noted the
Reagan administration had been trying to undermine Bishop's regime, and said
the invasion molded Grenada
In Ukraine , a coup following a violent round of
demonstrations has led Russia
to move forces into Crimea , in part–they
claim–to protect ethnic Russians. US political leaders and media elite scoff at
this reasoning. But is it any less bogus than Reagan's?
There are plenty of
other examples, of course; George H.W. Bush's invasion of Panama was
based in part on his suggestion that he needed to protect Americans there. The
NATO military actions in Kosovo were intended in large part to support a secessionist
uprising.
These–and plenty
other–incidents are conveniently forgotten by much of the media, with a few
exceptions, like the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson (3/3/14):
Before Iraq there was Afghanistan ,
there was the Persian Gulf War, there was Panama ,
there was Grenada Moscow for its outrageous
aggression, we reserve the right to fire deadly missiles into Pakistan , Yemen ,
Somalia
But this history
must be obscured in order to give US elites the chance to mock Putin. The Washington
Post editorial
worries that Putin "may actually believe his own propaganda."
Perhaps. But there's little doubt that we believe our own.
FILED UNDER: AP, MEDIA
CRITICISM, NEW YORK
TIMES, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, WAR/MILITARY,WASHINGTON
POST TAGGED
WITH: EUGENE
ROBINSON, GRENADA, JOHN
KERRY, VLADIMIR
PUTIN
A
Protest in the Capital and a Media BlackoutJonah
Goldberg Swings at Obama on Nukes–and Hits Reagan
About Peter Hart
Activism Director
and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR.
He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of
FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The
Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has
been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox
News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los
Angeles
Veterans
for Peace Oppose US Troop Deployments near Ukraine
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/04/30-3
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/04/30-3
By Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch.org, posted April 22
An argument on
"the perils of intervention" based on recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Cynthia Hooper, History News Network, posted April
20
The author
teaches Soviet and post-Soviet history at College of the Holy Cross.
By David Lee McMullen, History News Network, posted April
20
The author
teaches history at the University
of South florida
By Arno J. Mayer, CounterPunch.org, posted April 18
The author is
a professor of history emeritus at Princeton
University
By Walter G. Moss, History News Network, posted May
11
The author is
a professor of history emeritus at Eastern
Michigan University
By Lawrence S. Wittner, History News Network, posted May
11
The author is
a professor of history emeritus at SUNY Albany
By Anatol
Lieven , New York
Two Essays on NATO
April 29, 2014
Dennis J. Kucinich
GET UPDATES FROM DENNIS J.
KUCINICH
Is NATO's Trojan Horse
Riding Toward the 'Ukraine Spring'?
Read more
GET
WORLDPOST NEWSLETTERS:
Ukrainian citizens
have rallied in the bitter cold at Independence
Square Kiev
But while the draft of the EU
"Association Agreement" is
being sold as an economic boon for Ukrainian citizens, in reality it appears to
be NATO's Trojan Horse: a massive expansion of NATO's military position in the
region. What's more, the Agreement occurs under the cover of nebulous economic
promises for a beset population hungering for better wages.
In a country where
the average monthly minimum wage stands at about $150 USD, it's not hard to
understand why Ukrainians are in the streets. They do not want to be in Russia
But is the plight of Ukrainians being exploited to usher in a new
military agreement under the guise of economic reform?
For NATO, the goal
is expansion. The prize is access to a country that shares a 1,426-mile border
with Russia Ukraine serving as the new front for Western
missile defense at the doorstep of Russia U.S. nuclear deal with Iran fall apart, Ukraine
As an EU deal appears imminent, few people are asking questions
about NATO's role in the deal, which was meant to facilitate jobs and trade.
Economic conditions in Ukraine
While NATO is not specifically mentioned in the draft of the
"Association Agreement," the proposal, which was posted online (and
translated to English here) by the Ukrainian cabinet in August, pledges
convergence of foreign and security policy.
Read: NATO
expansion.
For instance, in
the draft of the Agreement, foreign and security policy mandates:
"The Parties shall explore the potential of military and
technological cooperation. Ukraine
The draft of the
Agreement's preamble links Ukraine to "ever closer convergence of
positions on bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual
interest" including the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the
European Union and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) -- which
underscores the military nature of the agreement.
Since 22 of 28 members
of the EU have NATO membership, there is little doubt that Ukraine
If the EU Agreement is ratified, Ukraine Ukraine
NATO members are also under pressure to contribute more and more
of their GDP to military expenditures. "It is time to move beyond the '2
percent rule,'" says the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
The former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, in his farewell
remarks in June, 2013,described the sentiment:
"The gap between American and European contributions to the Alliance
When military
spending goes up, domestic spending goes down. The winners are unlikely to be
the people of Ukraine Independence Square
To wit, the
preamble to the Agreement is hazy on the implementation of visa-free travel for
citizens of Ukraine
For Greece , Spain
For the protesters in Kiev
Dennis J. Kucinich is a former 16-year member of Congress and
two-time U.S.
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, posted May 15
Chiefly on the
history of NATO expansion in the 1990s, by a former analyst in the Soviet
Foreign Policy branch
THREE ESSAYS FROM Z MAGAZINE
Published
on Monday, March 3, 2014 by Common Dreams [I read the essay in
Z Magazine (April 2014). Solomon’s
thesis is that although the US
is the “biggest outlaw,” its leaders and some media blame Russia
Heard
the One About Obama Denouncing a Breach of International Law?
Breaches of international law are a serious
matter... when some country other than the
Unfortunately, during the
last five years, no world leader has done more to undermine international law
than Barack Obama. He
treats it with rhetorical adulation and behavioral contempt, helping to further
normalize a might-makes-right approach to global affairs that is the antithesis
of international law.
Fifty years ago, another former law professor, Senator Wayne
Morse, condemned such arrogance of power. “I don’t know why we think, just
because we’re mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for
right,” Morse said on national TV in 1964. “And that’s the American policy in
Southeast Asia—just as unsound when we do it as when Russia
Today, Uncle Sam continues to preen as the globe’s big sheriff
on the side of international law even while functioning as the world’s biggest
outlaw.
Rather than striving for an evenhanded assessment of how
“international law” has become so much coin of the hypocrisy realm, mainline U.S.
On Sunday night, the top of the New York Times home page reported: “Russian President
Vladimir V. Putin has pursued his strategy with subterfuge, propaganda and
brazen military threat, taking aim as much at the United
States and Europe as Ukraine
Following close behind,
a Times editorial appeared
in print Monday morning, headlined “Russia ’s Aggression,” condemning “Putin’s
cynical and outrageous exploitation of the Ukrainian crisis to seize control of
Crimea .” The liberal newspaper’s editorial
board said that the United
States
Such demands are righteous—but lack integrity and credibility
when the same standards are not applied to President Obama, whose continuation
of the Bush “war on terror” under revamped rhetoric has bypassed international
law as well as “civilized behavior.”
In these circumstances, major
U.S.
For instance, last
October the McClatchy news service reported that “the Obama administration
violated international law with top-secret targeted-killing operations that
claimed dozens of civilian lives in Yemen and Pakistan,” according to reports
released by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Last week, just before
Obama leapt to high dudgeon with condemnation of Putin for his “breach of
international law,” the Los Angeles Times published
an op-ed piece that provided illuminating context for
such presidential righteousness.
“Despite the president's insistence on placing limits on war,
and on the defense budget, his brand of warfare has helped lay the basis for a permanent
state of global warfare via ‘low footprint’ drone campaigns and special forces
operations aimed at an ever-morphing enemy usually identified as some form of
Al Qaeda,” wrote Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National
Security at Fordham University’s law school.
Greenberg went on to
indicate the scope of the U.S.
government’s ongoing contempt for international law: “According to
Senator Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.), the Obama administration has killed 4,700
individuals in numerous countries, including Pakistan ,
Yemen and Somalia
But especially in times of crisis, as with the current Ukraine
This
work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding
director of the Institute for
Public Accuracy. His books include Made Love, Got War and
War Made Easy: How Presidents
and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For documentary based on this book, see www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.
[The
article is accompanied by a cartoon showing Uncle Sam painting a map of circles
around “US Spheres of Influence” (regions and nations all over the planet), while
the Russian Bear with a small map of Russia
[I
read this essay in Z Magazine (April
2014) with the title “Ousting a Democratically Elected Leader in Ukraine
and Elsewhere.” Muzaffar argues that
the US-supported ouster of the democratically elected Pres. Yanukovich is part of a long history
from Mossadegh and Allende to Morsi and attempts in Venezuela
and Thailand . The purpose of these coups or “regime
changes” is hegemony.--Dick]
If Ukraine is on the brink of a catastrophe, it is
mainly because the present regime in Kiev
They had
ousted a democratically elected president through illegal means. President
Viktor Yanukovich who had come to power through a free and fair election in
2010 should have been removed through the ballot-box.
His opponents not only betrayed a democratic principle. They subverted a ‘Peace Deal’ signed between them and Yanukovich on 21 February 2014 in which the latter had agreed to form a national unity government within 10 days that would include opposition representatives; reinstate the 2004 Constitution; relinquish control over Ukraine’s security services; and hold presidential and parliamentary elections by December 2014. According to the Deal, endorsed byGermany , France
and Poland
His co-signatories had no intention of honouring the agreement. Without following procedures, parliament, with the backing of the military, voted immediately to remove Yanukovich and impeach him. The Parliamentary Speaker was elected interim President and after a few days a new regime was installed. One of the first acts of parliament was to proclaim that Ukrainian is the sole official language of the country, thus downgrading the Russian language, the mother-tongue of one-fifth of the population. Anti-Russian rhetoric which had become more strident than ever in the course of the protest against the Yanukovich government has reached a crescendo in the wake of the overthrow of the government.
The protest gives us an idea of some of the underlying issues that have broughtUkraine Kiev , over the
decision of the Russian-backed Yanukovich to reject closer economic ties with
the European Union (EU) in favour of financial assistance from Moscow
But these legitimate concerns tell only one side of the story. The protest movement had also brought to the fore neo-Nazis and fascists sworn to violence. Armed and organised groups such as the Svoboda and the Right Sector provide muscle power to the protest. They are known to have targeted Jewish synagogues andEastern Orthodox Christian
Churches Kiev
Elites inGermany , France , Britain ,
the United States and within
the NATO establishment as a whole are very much aware of the role of neo-Nazi
and fascist elements in the protest and in the current Kiev US
Ambassador to Ukraine
admitted that her country had spent 5 billion US dollars promoting anti-Russian
groups in Ukraine US and the EU,
control over Ukraine Russia Ukraine Ukraine
It is largely because of these geopolitical and geo-economic challenges that Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is flexing his military muscles in Crimea, in the easternUkraine region,
which not only has a preponderantly Russian-speaking population but is also
home to Russia ’s Black Sea fleet. Besides, Ukraine Ukraine
The catastrophe inUkraine
Some of these dimensions are also present inVenezuela
The truth is that a lot of the violence is emanating from groups linked to disgruntled elites who are opposed to the egalitarian policies pursued by Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. They are disseminating fake pictures through social media as part of their false propaganda about the Venezuelan government’s violence against the people — pictures which have now been exposed for what they are by media analysts.
Support for this propaganda and for the street protests inVenezuela Venezuela
A third country where a democratically elected leader is under tremendous pressure from street demonstrators at this juncture isThailand Ukraine
and Venezuela Washington
and London who perceive the current government
in Bangkok as more inclined towards China
There are a number of other instances of democratically elected leaders being overthrown by illegal means. The most recent — in July 2013 — was the unjust ouster of President Mohamed Morsi ofEgypt Iran
It is only too apparent that in most cases the ouster of democratically elected leaders have been carried out directly or indirectly by the self-proclaimed champions of democracy themselves! It reveals how hypocritical they are. What really matters to the elites in theUS ,
Britain
His opponents not only betrayed a democratic principle. They subverted a ‘Peace Deal’ signed between them and Yanukovich on 21 February 2014 in which the latter had agreed to form a national unity government within 10 days that would include opposition representatives; reinstate the 2004 Constitution; relinquish control over Ukraine’s security services; and hold presidential and parliamentary elections by December 2014. According to the Deal, endorsed by
His co-signatories had no intention of honouring the agreement. Without following procedures, parliament, with the backing of the military, voted immediately to remove Yanukovich and impeach him. The Parliamentary Speaker was elected interim President and after a few days a new regime was installed. One of the first acts of parliament was to proclaim that Ukrainian is the sole official language of the country, thus downgrading the Russian language, the mother-tongue of one-fifth of the population. Anti-Russian rhetoric which had become more strident than ever in the course of the protest against the Yanukovich government has reached a crescendo in the wake of the overthrow of the government.
The protest gives us an idea of some of the underlying issues that have brought
But these legitimate concerns tell only one side of the story. The protest movement had also brought to the fore neo-Nazis and fascists sworn to violence. Armed and organised groups such as the Svoboda and the Right Sector provide muscle power to the protest. They are known to have targeted Jewish synagogues and
Elites in
It is largely because of these geopolitical and geo-economic challenges that Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is flexing his military muscles in Crimea, in the eastern
The catastrophe in
Some of these dimensions are also present in
The truth is that a lot of the violence is emanating from groups linked to disgruntled elites who are opposed to the egalitarian policies pursued by Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. They are disseminating fake pictures through social media as part of their false propaganda about the Venezuelan government’s violence against the people — pictures which have now been exposed for what they are by media analysts.
Support for this propaganda and for the street protests in
A third country where a democratically elected leader is under tremendous pressure from street demonstrators at this juncture is
There are a number of other instances of democratically elected leaders being overthrown by illegal means. The most recent — in July 2013 — was the unjust ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of
It is only too apparent that in most cases the ouster of democratically elected leaders have been carried out directly or indirectly by the self-proclaimed champions of democracy themselves! It reveals how hypocritical they are. What really matters to the elites in the
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the
International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
Malaysia
An African
American Perspective
Ukraine
by
AJAMU BARAKA. Counterpunch, April 28-20, 2014.
[I read this essay in Z Magazine (April 2014). Baraka argues against US contradictions, double standards,
imperialism, white supremacy, and hypocrisy, from a radical African-American
perspective. The title is misleading,
for the article is not about liberalism.
–Dick]
Reading the March 2 editorial in the New York Times on the so-called revolution in
Ukraine, I couldn’t help but marvel at how easily elite opinion makers in the
U.S. can call for the use of public resources to bail out the people and
government of Ukraine without significant opposition or even serious
questions. The Times editorial forcefully argued that in
response to the “revolution” in Ukraine ,
Western powers must “provide prompt and substantial assistance to the Kiev U.S.
In
response, the Obama administration is calling on Congress to agree to a
long-term aid package for Ukraine
Yet,
when it comes to crisis situations like extending unemployment benefits to the
1.3 million people who lost them in December or the forced bankruptcy of
Detroit, a major city that happens to have an African American majority, or
maintaining food assistance for the working class and poor in the form of the
food stamp program, elite opinion in both parties has embraced the “common
sense” position that significant reductions in public expenditures and services
at every level of government are a reasonable and unavoidable necessity.
The Times editorial further argued that since
President Yanukovych left the Ukrainian treasury bare, the West should provide
immediate assistance. But what about the people in Detroit, whose government
coffers were left bare as result of the predatory looting by big banks that
targeted African American families with sub-prime loans and floating interests
rates that resulted in them losing their homes? Where is their relief?
And when
those same banks seized the properties of more than 100,000 families through
foreclosure and then refused to pay property taxes to the city of
Detroit—helping to create a fiscal crisis for the city—where was the Federal
assistance to replenish the city’s coffers?
They
call Pres. Yanukovych a dictator, but curiously, there was no outcry against
the governor of Michigan when he engineered
the passage of an anti-democratic piece of legislation that allowed him to
impose a one-person dictatorial regime over the people of Detroit
But the
elite do not call that process anti-democratic or dictatorial. Why? The
explanation for this myopia an apparent inability to see a double standard is
not just capitalist avarice and cynical ruling-class self-interest. It is
rooted in the pathology generated by the disease of white supremacy.
Let me
elaborate. What many conclude is hypocrisy—a gap between high-sounding rhetoric
and actual behavior—is not hypocrisy at all, but rather a cognitive deficiency.
It is
the same cognitive deficiency that allows Secretary of State John Kerry to
state without any sense of irony, in response to reports that Russia might be
moving troops into Crimea, that “You just don’t, in the 21st century, behave in
a 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up
pretexts.” If someone had reminded Kerry that it was the “trumped-up pretext”
of weapons of mass destruction that was the basis for the illegal invasion and
destruction of Iraq by the U.S.
Kerry’s
comments are representative of a liberal, Eurocentric consciousness in which
the same standards of measurement don’t apply to Westerners because they are
the standard. It is not just arrogance but an inculcated sense of omnipotence
in which the Western worldview, values and interpretations don’t just reflect
universal reality, they are the only reality that counts.
When
President Obama and members of the corporate elite condemn the Russians for
violating international law, the contradictory nature of that position is clear
to those of us who are the ongoing victims of Western oppression and whose
lives depend on seeing reality as it is.
From our
point of view, it is absolutely bizarre that the same country that violates the
sovereignty of other states worldwide with drone strikes, military
interventions and political subversion can actually suggest to the Russians
that it runs the risk of being a “pariah” state.
The U.S. is playing a very dangerous game by
attempting to implement its strategy of encircling the Russian Federation Russia
Perhaps
the Russians did not fully understand what those of us from the African
American community have always understood—that U.S.
geostrategic decision-makers will ally themselves with right-wing forces if it
will help them maintain the hegemony of their empire, from racist nationalists
in Ukraine to rightist
Islamic fundamentalists in Syria
The rise
of right-wing racist political movements is not seen as a real threat for
decision-makers in the capitals of Paris , Washington and London Ukraine
The
frantic mobilization of public funds to assist the “revolution,” the
unrestrained political support for an illegitimate government, and the easy
dismissal of racist and anti-Semitic extremism coming from significant elements
in that “revolution” all suggest that this is a bogus process that has nothing
to do with justice, human progress and certainly not liberatory revolutionary
change for the majority of the people in Ukraine.
A
cardinal principle of the African American revolutionary tradition is to be in
solidarity with people(s) engaged in struggles against oppression anywhere in
the world. However, we are also always aware of the international balance of
forces and the efforts by Western imperialism, our principle enemy, to confuse
and ideologically disarm normally anti-imperialist forces with the
appropriation of the vocabulary of social change and mass struggle. In that
regard the enemy has succeeded: Employing the language of humanitarian concern
and subtle appeals to a defense of the liberal state and the Western civilizational
project, the ideological confusion among the left in the U.S.
When
U.S. radicals and progressives are unable to make a distinction between the
right and the left and align themselves with a movement in Ukraine that has as
its main objective to become more European and capitalist, and at the same time
amplify the critiques of the rightist forces in Venezuela who want to murder
the embryonic revolution in that country, the backwardness of radical thought
in the U.S. is on full display.
In the
U.S. where an African American is being murdered by police forces and
vigilantes at a pace of one every 28 hours, where a million of our folks are
entombed in the dungeons of this nation’s prisons, where state laws are being
employed to deny us our democratic rights, where ex-panther Eddie Conroy is
finally released from prison after 44 years, still leaving dozens of our
political prisoners who are going into their fourth and fifth decades in
prison, African American radicals must be clear on the principle enemy and the
principle contradiction.
And for
us, the enemy and the principle contradiction is not on the other side of the
world in Russia
Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer
and educator. His latest publications include contributions to two recently
published books “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA
Robert Parry | What Obama Can Do to Save Ukraine
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, May 7, 2014
Parry writes: "The fate of Ukraine - whether it descends into civil war or finds a path back from the brink - may rest with President Obama and whether he can work with Russian President Putin."
READ MORE
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, May 7, 2014
Parry writes: "The fate of Ukraine - whether it descends into civil war or finds a path back from the brink - may rest with President Obama and whether he can work with Russian President Putin."
READ MORE
By John
Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, posted
March 26, 2014
On the rise of far-right
influences in Russia
MEDIA
TWO ESSAYS BY ROBERT PARRY ON MEDIA
Robert Parry: When Is a Putsch a Putsch? (The US
False Narrative about Ukraine
Secretary
of State John Kerry accuses Russia
of a “contrived crisis” in Ukraine
as the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev
sends troops to crush resistance in the ethnic-Russian east. But the most
“contrived” element of this crisis may be the false narrative in Washington .
by Robert Parry
The mainstream U.S. news media, which hailed the Feb. 22
neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup overthrowing the democratically elected president of Ukraine as an expression of “democracy,” is now
decrying public uprisings in eastern Ukraine
It apparently has reached the point where the MSM is so tangled
up in its propagandistic narrative that it can’t give American readers anything
close to an objective reading of what is actually going on in Ukraine
The way the MSM now summarizes the Feb. 22 coup is simply to say
that President Viktor Yanukovych fled after weeks of protests by Ukrainians who
favored “good government” and opposed “corruption,” as the Washington Post wrote on Tuesday.
Airbrushed out of the
picture is the fact that the uprising had financial support and political
encouragement from U.S. officials, including neocon Assistant Secretary of
State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and the neocon-controlled,
U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from
Ukraine Crisis.”]
Also, disappearing from the frame was the inconvenient truth
that neo-Nazi militants organized themselves from the start as
paramilitary units with the intent of staging a violent putsch against
Yanukovych’s elected government.
The MSM’s simplistic narrative turned this complex Ukrainian
reality into a morality play of good guys vs. bad guys, the noble protesters
against the nasty Yanukovych backed by the even nastier Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
For instance, the New
York Times on Sunday published a long and flattering
profile of a Ukrainian
man named Yuri Marchuk who was wounded in clashes around Kiev
The Neo-Nazi Connection
Only in the latter half of the article do we get a hint of a
darker side to the tale. We’re told that Marchuk is “carefully skirting
questions about the arrival of guns stolen from a government depot in the
western Ukraine city of Lviv
But what we’re not told
by the Times is that Lviv is a neo-Nazi stronghold where 15,000 members of the far-right
Svoboda party held a torchlight parade in honor of World War II Nazi
collaborator Stepan Bandera and where Svoboda has been mounting a campaign to
have the local airport named in honor of Bandera, whose fascist paramilitary
force took part in the exterminations of Jews and Poles.
However, since it’s been the consistent MSM practice to
white-out the role of the neo-Nazi brown shirts – all the better to protect the
pleasant narrative of a Kiev Spring – the Times ignores the Bandera angle and
the significance of the Lviv reference.
Instead, we’re simply told: “organizers in Lviv said they alone
were sending 600 people a day to Kiev
It was during that clash when Marchuk, a leader of a “sotin” or
paramilitary force of 100 fighters, was shot in the right leg and suffered
other wounds. After getting a splint on his leg, Marchuk said he returned to
City Hall “checking on the fate of the 35 members of his hundred who had
volunteered for that Thursday. Two were killed, 12 wounded, the rest all right,
he found,” the Times reported.
We have to read down even further, to the fourth paragraph from
the end, to learn that Marchuk is “close to Oleg Tyagnibok, leader of the
nationalist Svoboda party,” though again the significance of that fact is not
explained. The article continues in heroic terms:
“In these revolutionary times, he [Marchuk] suggested, it is not
enough simply to be a patriot. You have to defend what you treasure. ‘To sit in
the kitchen and simply cry about how much we love Ukraine
But what is left out of this story is far more important than
what is put in. The reporter should have pressed Marchuk about exactly what he
thinks Ukrainians should “treasure,” whether he admires Nazi collaborator
Bandera and what he would like to do with the ethnic Russians living in
east and south Ukraine
Wouldn’t the story have been more interesting to Times’ readers
if Smale had blended the grays of Marchuk’s far-right politics into this
two-dimensional tale of the “white hat” Marchuk fighting bravely against the
“black hat” Yanukovych.
But that would have violated an unwritten rule of the MSM’s
coverage of the Ukraine
Seeing a ‘Putsch’
Yet, while the crucial neo-Nazi violence in carrying out the
Feb. 22 coup is whisked away to the memory hole and the word “putsch” is
carefully avoided, an opposite phenomenon has occurred in reporting about
resistance to the new Kiev government in Crimea
and now eastern Ukraine
In those cases, the resistance is blamed on Russian
“aggression,” since it’s apparently unthinkable that ethnic Russians who have
witnessed a violent overthrow of their elected president – spearheaded by
neo-Nazis – might actually want to resist the imposition of an unelected and
extreme new government.
This alternative narrative – one that makes much more sense than
the MSM’s storyline – is that the ethnic Russians feel disenfranchised by the
coup organized in western Ukraine
where the capital of Kiev
An American parallel might be: what would happen if the Red
States elected a U.S.
president but people in the Blue States around Washington D.C.
The rump Ukrainian parliament also passed a harsh austerity plan
demanded by the Washington-based International Monetary Fund in order to secure
$18 billion in loan guarantees. Even acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk,
the handpicked choice of U.S. Assistant Secretary Nuland to run the new government,
has acknowledged that the IMF plan is “very unpopular, very difficult, very
tough.”
The coup regime also has appointed new governors to bring the
eastern and southern provinces under Kiev
“KIEV , UKRAINE
– Pro-Russia demonstrators in eastern Ukraine
declared separatist republics in two cities on Monday, and Ukrainian officials
accused Moscow
“In Washington , the Obama
administration expressed deep skepticism that the scattered uprisings and
building takeovers in cities such as Donetsk
The article by Kathy Lally and Will Englund continues in that
vein, presenting essentially a conspiracy theory that blames the Russian
government for the political unrest, albeit without presenting any actual
evidence to support the suspicions.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry, who has emerged as
the leading spokesman for the hawkish State Department bureaucracy,
blamed the eastern Ukrainian resistance to Kiev ’s
control on undercover actions by Russia
“What we see from Russia
So, while the Feb. 22 coup in Kiev was portrayed as a simple
uprising of Ukrainian patriots – with no attention paid to the $5 billion that
Assistant Secretary Nuland herself said the U.S. has invested in Ukraine’s
“European aspirations,” nor the 65 projects in Ukraine run by the U.S.-funded
NED, nor with little notice of the organized violence by neo-Nazi paramilitary
forces from western Ukraine – the resistance to the coup in Crimea and now in
eastern and southern Ukraine could only result from dark manipulations
orchestrated by Russian President Putin in the Kremlin.
It is that kind of biased journalism that has now become the
norm of the MSM and, indeed, across significant parts of the “blogosphere.”
Rather than learning to be more skeptical after the Iraq War deceptions a
decade ago, the major news outlets appear to have become even more gullible,
more integrated into the government’s propaganda structure, less able to
provide balanced and independent journalism.
The U.S.
reporting on crises in Iraq ,
Syria , Iran and now Ukraine
Old-fashioned reporting – where journalists took pride in
uncovering information that spoiled a U.S.
Indeed, it is hard to tell if the officials are captive to the
false narratives spun by the MSM or if the MSM is parroting back the lies of
officialdom. They seem to feed off one another as Official Washington’s narrative
spirals further and further from reality.
© 2014
Consortium News
Robert Parry broke
many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and
Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush,
was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to
Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth’
Robert Parry | The Dangerous Neocon Role
in Ukraine
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
Parry writes: "The American mainstream news media has rarely bought in so thoroughly to a U.S. government propaganda campaign as it has in taking sides in support of the post-coup government in Ukraine and against Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine."
READ MORE
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
Parry writes: "The American mainstream news media has rarely bought in so thoroughly to a U.S. government propaganda campaign as it has in taking sides in support of the post-coup government in Ukraine and against Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine."
READ MORE
TWO ESSAYS BY PETER
HART on MEDIA IN EXTRA! MAY 2014
“’Radioactive’ Putin Is ‘Stalin’s Spawn.’”
“A Convenient
Crisis: Oil, Gas Ukraine US media”
pushed drilling for more oil and gas in the US and for “turning some of
Vladimir Putin’s customers into US buyers.”
[--Dick]
ROBERT PARRY ON BIAS OF NEW
YORK TIMES
FOCUS:
Robert Parry | Will Ukraine Be NYT’s Waterloo
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, May 4, 2014
Parry writes: "Everything that the Times writes about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get anything approaching an accurate understanding of events."
READ MORE
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Reader Supported News, May 4, 2014
Parry writes: "Everything that the Times writes about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get anything approaching an accurate understanding of events."
READ MORE
CONTACT ARKANSAS
SENATORS
Sen. John Boozman
Republican, first term
320Hart Senate Office Building
Washington , D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4843
Fax: (202) 228-1371
Arkansas offices:
FORT SMITH :
(479) 573-0189
JONESBORO : (870) 268-6925
LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153
LOWELL : (479) 725-0400
MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129
STUTTGART : (870) 672-6941
EL DORADO
Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Republican, first term
320
Phone: (202) 224-4843
Fax: (202) 228-1371
LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153
MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129
Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Sen. Mark Pryor
Democrat, second term
255 Dirksen Office Building
Constitution Avenue and
First Street NE
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2353
Fax: (202) 228-0908
Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336
Website: www.pryor.senate.gov
Democrat, second term
255 Dirksen Office Building
Constitution Avenue and
First Street NE
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2353
Fax: (202) 228-0908
Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336
Website: www.pryor.senate.gov
Contents
Russia
Four Questioning
Mainstream Media Pro-War Media
Patrick Smith,
US/New York Times Spin
Stephen Cohen,
Anti-Russia Is Old Anti-Soviet
Parry, Group
Think
Alternative
Analysis
(Plenty of
protest against the pro-war Obama administration and media, but all together
reflecting a comparatively small readership.
If you agree with the analyses of these alternative views that try to
view Russia outside the US
The Nation Editorial
Alterman, Cold
War Hysteria Revived
How
Russia/Ukraine Look in Beijing
Charles
Pierce, Dick Cheney’s View
Luke Harding , US
Refuses Crimea Poll
Ray McGovern,
Putin Says No to Regime Change on Its Border
Bruce Gagnon, Danger
of War Following US-led Coup for Gas and Oil
Pilger, Other
Coups, Same Superpower
Robert
Freeman, Ukraine
Mark Swaney
More Reading
Via Historians
Against War (HAW)
Via Common
Dreams
Via FAIR TV
Contact Arkansas 
Contents Russia/Ukraine #2
Alternative Perspectives
Who Is Threatening Whom?
Dick, Google Search: US Bases Surrounding Russia
Steve Weissman: US Participated in Coup That Toppled
Yanukovytch
Stephen Cohen, Cold War
Again?
Two Essays from Bruce Gagnon
Bruce Gagnon, Boxing in the
Bear (with Francis Boyle and Chandra Muzaffar)
Gagnon, Preparing for War
with Russia
Franklin Spinney, What Is
the Real Price of Starting a New Cold War?
US Corporate Old Cold War Media
Ira Chernus: Showdown with Russia
END RUSSIA
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