You may be tired of reading Perry's reportage on Ukraine. However, I think
he is one of the few people who is telling the truth about what is
happening. And from what I have been reading about the NYT's coverage of
Israel/Palestine, I believe he is correct when he says that the NYT has
become a Neo Con propaganda sheet.
Miriam
Parry writes: "In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York
Times' editorial page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven
'regime change,' no provocation on Russia's border, just Moscow's aggression
- a sign of how propaganda has taken over mainstream U.S. media."
President Vladimir Putin. (photo: Russian government)
NYT's Orwellian View of Ukraine
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
24 June 15
In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York Times' editorial
page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven "regime change,"
no provocation on Russia's border, just Moscow's aggression - a sign of how
propaganda has taken over mainstream U.S. media, writes Robert Parry.
In George Orwell's 1984, the leaders of Oceania presented "Two Minutes Hate"
in which the image of an enemy was put on display and loyal Oceanianians
expressed their rage, all the better to prepare them for the country's
endless wars and their own surrender of freedom. And, now, in America, you
have The New York Times.
Surely the Times is a bit more subtle than the powers-that-be in Orwell's
Oceania, but the point is the same. The "paper of record" decides who our
rotating foreign enemy is and depicts its leader as a demon corrupting
whatever he touches. The rest of us aren't supposed to think for ourselves.
We're just supposed to hate.
As the Times has degenerated from a relatively decent newspaper into a fount
of neocon propaganda, its editors also have descended into the practice of
simply inventing a narrative of events that serves an ideological purpose,
its own version of "Two Minutes Hate." Like the leaders of Orwell's Oceania,
the Times has become increasingly heavy-handed in its propaganda.
Excluding alternative explanations of events, even if supported by solid
evidence, the Times arrogantly creates its own reality and tells us who to
hate.
In assessing the Times's downward spiral into this unethical journalism, one
could look back on its false reporting regarding Iraq, Iran, Syria or other
Middle East hotspots. But now the Times is putting the lives of ourselves,
our children and our grandchildren at risk with its reckless reporting on
the Ukraine crisis - by setting up an unnecessary confrontation between
nuclear-armed powers, the United States and Russia.
At the center of the Times' propaganda on Ukraine has been its uncritical -
indeed its anti-journalistic - embrace of the Ukrainians coup-makers in late
2013 and early 2014 as they collaborated with neo-Nazi militias to violently
overthrow elected President Viktor Yanukovych and hurl Ukraine into a bloody
civil war.
Rather than display journalistic professionalism, the Times' propagandists
ignored the evidence of a coup - including an intercepted phone call in
which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussed how to "mid-wife" the regime
change and handpick the new leaders. "Yats is the guy," declared Nuland,
referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who emerged as prime minister.
The Times even ignored a national security expert, Statfor founder George
Friedman, when he termed the ouster of Ukraine's elected president "the most
blatant coup in history." The Times just waved a magic wand and pronounced
that there was no coup - and anyone who thought so must reside inside "the
Russian propaganda bubble." [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No
Coup in Ukraine."]
Perhaps even more egregiously, the Times has pretended that there were no
neo-Nazi militias spearheading the Feb. 22, 2014 coup and then leading the
bloody "anti-terrorist operation" against ethnic Russians in the south and
east who resisted the coup. The Times explained all this bloodshed as simply
"Russian aggression."
It didn't even matter when the U.S. House of Representatives - of all groups
- unanimously acknowledged the neo-Nazi problem when it prohibited U.S.
collaboration in military training of Ukrainian Nazis. The Times simply
expunged the vote from its "official history" of the crisis. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine."]
Orwell's Putin
Yet, for an Orwellian "Two Minute Hate" to work properly, you need to have a
villain whose face you can put on display. And, in the case of Ukraine - at
least after Yanukovych was driven from the scene - that villain has been
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who embodies all evil in the intense
hatred sold to the American public.
So, when Putin presents a narrative of the Ukraine crisis, which notes the
history of the U.S.-driven expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders and the
evidence of the U.S.-directed Ukrainian coup, the Times editors must dismiss
it all as "mythology," as they did in Monday's editorial regarding Putin's
remarks to an international economic conference in St. Petersburg.
"President Vladimir Putin of Russia is not veering from the mythology he
created to explain away the crisis over Ukraine," the Times' editors wrote.
"It is one that wholly blames the West for provoking a new Cold War and
insists that international sanctions have not grievously wounded his
country's flagging economy."
Without acknowledging any Western guilt in the coup that overthrew the
elected Ukrainian government in 2014, the Times' editors simply reveled in
the harm that the Obama administration and the European Union have inflicted
on Russia's economy for its support of the Yanukovych government and its
continued backers in eastern and southern Ukraine.
For nearly a year and a half, the New York Times and other major U.S. news
organizations have simply refused to acknowledge the reality of what
happened in Ukraine. In the Western fantasy, the elected Yanukovych
government simply disappeared and was replaced by a U.S.-backed regime that
then treated any resistance to its rule as "terrorism." The new regime even
dispatched neo-Nazi militias to kill ethnic Russians and other Ukrainians
who resisted and thus were deemed "terrorists."
The upside-down narrative of what happened in Ukraine has become the
conventional wisdom in Official Washington and has been imposed on America's
European allies as well. According to The New York Times' Orwellian
storyline, anyone who notes the reality of a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine is
engaging in "fantasy" and must be some kind of Putin pawn.
To the Times' editors, all the justice is on their side, even as Ukraine's
new regime has deployed neo-Nazi militias to kill eastern Ukrainians who
resisted the anti-Yanukovych coup. To the Times' editors, the only possible
reason to object to Ukraine's new order is that the Russians must be bribing
European dissidents to resist the U.S. version of events. The Times wrote:
"The Europeans are indeed divided over the extent to which Russia, with its
huge oil and gas resources, should be isolated, but Mr. Putin's aggression
so far has ensured their unity when it counts. In addition to extending
existing sanctions, the allies have prepared a new round of sanctions that
could be imposed if Russian-backed separatists seized more territory in
Ukraine. .
"Although Mr. Putin insisted on Friday that Russia had found the 'inner
strength' to weather sanctions and a drop in oil prices, investment has
slowed, capital has fled the country and the economy has been sliding into
recession. Even the business forum was not all that it seemed: The heads of
many Western companies stayed away for a second year."
An Orwellian World
In the up-is-down world that has become the New York Times' editorial page,
the Western coup-making on Russia's border with the implicit threat of U.S.
and NATO nuclear weapons within easy range of Moscow is transformed into a
case of "Russian aggression." The Times' editors wrote: "One of the most
alarming aspects of the crisis has been Mr. Putin's willingness to brandish
nuclear weapons."
Though it would appear objectively that the United States was engaged in
serious mischief-making on Russia's border, the Times editors flip it around
to make Russian military maneuvers - inside Russia - a sign of aggression
against the West.
"Given Mr. Putin's aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons
into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and
Poland, the allies have begun taking their own military steps. In recent
months, NATO approved a rapid-reaction force in case an ally needs to be
defended. It also pre-positioned some weapons in front-line countries, is
rotating troops there and is conducting many more exercises. There are also
plans to store battle tanks and other heavy weapons in several Baltic and
Eastern European countries.
"If he is not careful, Mr. Putin may end up facing exactly what he has
railed against - a NATO more firmly parked on Russia's borders - not because
the alliance wanted to go in that direction, but because Russian behavior
left it little choice. That is neither in Russia's interest, nor the
West's."
There is something truly 1984-ish about reading that kind of propagandistic
writing in The New York Times and other Western publications. But it has
become the pattern, not the exception.
The Words of the 'Demon'
Though the Times and the rest of the Western media insist on demonizing
Putin, we still should hear the Russian president's version of events, as
simply a matter of journalistic fairness. Here is how Putin explained the
situation to American TV talk show host Charlie Rose on June 19:
"Why did we arrive at the crisis in Ukraine? I am convinced that after the
so-called bipolar system ceased to exist, after the Soviet Union was gone
from the political map of the world, some of our partners in the West,
including and primarily the United States, of course, were in a state of
euphoria of sorts. Instead of developing good neighborly relations and
partnerships, they began to develop the new geopolitical space that they
thought was unoccupied. This, for instance, is what caused the North
Atlantic bloc, NATO, to go east, along with many other developments.
"I have been thinking a lot about why this is happening and eventually came
to the conclusion that some of our partners [Putin's way of describing
Americans] seem to have gotten the illusion that the world order that was
created after World War II, with such a global center as the Soviet Union,
does not exist anymore, that a vacuum of sorts has developed that needs to
be filled quickly.
"I think such an approach is a mistake. This is how we got Iraq, and we know
that even today there are people in the United States who think that
mistakes were made in Iraq. Many admit that there were mistakes in Iraq, and
nevertheless they repeat it all in Libya. Now they got to Ukraine. We did
not bring about the crisis in Ukraine. There was no need to support, as I
have said many times, the anti-state, anti-constitutional takeover that
eventually led to a sharp resistance on the territory of Ukraine, to a civil
war in fact.
"Where do we go from here?" Putin asked. "Today we primarily need to comply
with all the agreements reached in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. . At the
same time, I would like to draw your attention and the attention of all our
partners to the fact that we cannot do it unilaterally. We keep hearing the
same thing, repeated like a mantra - that Russia should influence the
southeast of Ukraine. We are. However, it is impossible to resolve the
problem through our influence on the southeast alone.
"There has to be influence on the current official authorities in Kiev,
which is something we cannot do. This is a road our Western partners have to
take - those in Europe and America. Let us work together. . We believe that
to resolve the situation we need to implement the Minsk agreements, as I
said. The elements of a political settlement are key here. There are
several."
Putin continued: "The first one is constitutional reform, and the Minsk
agreements say clearly: to provide autonomy or, as they say decentralization
of power, let it be decentralization. This is quite clear, our European
partners, France and Germany have spelled it out and we are quite satisfied
with it, just as the representatives of Donbass [eastern Ukraine where
ethnic Russians who had supported Yanukovych have declared independence]
are. This is one component.
"The second thing that has to be done - the law passed earlier on the
special status of these territories - Luhansk and Donetsk, the unrecognized
republics, should be enacted. It was passed, but still not acted upon. This
requires a resolution of the Supreme Rada - the Ukrainian Parliament - which
is also covered in the Minsk agreements. Our friends in Kiev have formally
complied with this decision, but simultaneously with the passing by the Rada
of the resolution to enact the law they amended the law itself . which
practically renders the action null and void. This is a mere manipulation,
and they have to move from manipulations to real action.
"The third thing is a law on amnesty. It is impossible to have a political
dialogue with people who are threatened with criminal persecution. And
finally, they need to pass a law on municipal elections on these territories
and to have the elections themselves. All this is spelled out in the Minsk
agreements, this is something I would like to draw your attention to, and
all this should be done with the agreement of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"Unfortunately, we still see no direct dialogue, only some signs of it, but
too much time has passed after the Minsk agreements were signed. I repeat,
it is important now to have a direct dialogue between Luhansk, Donetsk and
Kiev - this is missing."
Also missing is any objective and professional explanation of this crisis in
the mainstream American press. Instead, The New York Times and other major
U.S. news organizations have continued with their pattern of 1984-ish
propaganda.
_________
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.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
President Vladimir Putin. (photo: Russian government)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/22/nyts-orwellian-view-of-ukraine/https:/
/consortiumnews.com/2015/06/22/nyts-orwellian-view-of-ukraine/
NYT's Orwellian View of Ukraine
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
24 June 15
In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York Times' editorial
page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven "regime change,"
no provocation on Russia's border, just Moscow's aggression - a sign of how
propaganda has taken over mainstream U.S. media, writes Robert Parry.
n George Orwell's 1984, the leaders of Oceania presented "Two Minutes Hate"
in which the image of an enemy was put on display and loyal Oceanianians
expressed their rage, all the better to prepare them for the country's
endless wars and their own surrender of freedom. And, now, in America, you
have The New York Times.
Surely the Times is a bit more subtle than the powers-that-be in Orwell's
Oceania, but the point is the same. The "paper of record" decides who our
rotating foreign enemy is and depicts its leader as a demon corrupting
whatever he touches. The rest of us aren't supposed to think for ourselves.
We're just supposed to hate.
As the Times has degenerated from a relatively decent newspaper into a fount
of neocon propaganda, its editors also have descended into the practice of
simply inventing a narrative of events that serves an ideological purpose,
its own version of "Two Minutes Hate." Like the leaders of Orwell's Oceania,
the Times has become increasingly heavy-handed in its propaganda.
Excluding alternative explanations of events, even if supported by solid
evidence, the Times arrogantly creates its own reality and tells us who to
hate.
In assessing the Times's downward spiral into this unethical journalism, one
could look back on its false reporting regarding Iraq, Iran, Syria or other
Middle East hotspots. But now the Times is putting the lives of ourselves,
our children and our grandchildren at risk with its reckless reporting on
the Ukraine crisis - by setting up an unnecessary confrontation between
nuclear-armed powers, the United States and Russia.
At the center of the Times' propaganda on Ukraine has been its uncritical -
indeed its anti-journalistic - embrace of the Ukrainians coup-makers in late
2013 and early 2014 as they collaborated with neo-Nazi militias to violently
overthrow elected President Viktor Yanukovych and hurl Ukraine into a bloody
civil war.
Rather than display journalistic professionalism, the Times' propagandists
ignored the evidence of a coup - including an intercepted phone call in
which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussed how to "mid-wife" the regime
change and handpick the new leaders. "Yats is the guy," declared Nuland,
referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who emerged as prime minister.
The Times even ignored a national security expert, Statfor founder George
Friedman, when he termed the ouster of Ukraine's elected president "the most
blatant coup in history." The Times just waved a magic wand and pronounced
that there was no coup - and anyone who thought so must reside inside "the
Russian propaganda bubble." [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No
Coup in Ukraine."]
Perhaps even more egregiously, the Times has pretended that there were no
neo-Nazi militias spearheading the Feb. 22, 2014 coup and then leading the
bloody "anti-terrorist operation" against ethnic Russians in the south and
east who resisted the coup. The Times explained all this bloodshed as simply
"Russian aggression."
It didn't even matter when the U.S. House of Representatives - of all groups
- unanimously acknowledged the neo-Nazi problem when it prohibited U.S.
collaboration in military training of Ukrainian Nazis. The Times simply
expunged the vote from its "official history" of the crisis. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "US House Admits Nazi Role in Ukraine."]
Orwell's Putin
Yet, for an Orwellian "Two Minute Hate" to work properly, you need to have a
villain whose face you can put on display. And, in the case of Ukraine - at
least after Yanukovych was driven from the scene - that villain has been
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who embodies all evil in the intense
hatred sold to the American public.
So, when Putin presents a narrative of the Ukraine crisis, which notes the
history of the U.S.-driven expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders and the
evidence of the U.S.-directed Ukrainian coup, the Times editors must dismiss
it all as "mythology," as they did in Monday's editorial regarding Putin's
remarks to an international economic conference in St. Petersburg.
"President Vladimir Putin of Russia is not veering from the mythology he
created to explain away the crisis over Ukraine," the Times' editors wrote.
"It is one that wholly blames the West for provoking a new Cold War and
insists that international sanctions have not grievously wounded his
country's flagging economy."
Without acknowledging any Western guilt in the coup that overthrew the
elected Ukrainian government in 2014, the Times' editors simply reveled in
the harm that the Obama administration and the European Union have inflicted
on Russia's economy for its support of the Yanukovych government and its
continued backers in eastern and southern Ukraine.
For nearly a year and a half, the New York Times and other major U.S. news
organizations have simply refused to acknowledge the reality of what
happened in Ukraine. In the Western fantasy, the elected Yanukovych
government simply disappeared and was replaced by a U.S.-backed regime that
then treated any resistance to its rule as "terrorism." The new regime even
dispatched neo-Nazi militias to kill ethnic Russians and other Ukrainians
who resisted and thus were deemed "terrorists."
The upside-down narrative of what happened in Ukraine has become the
conventional wisdom in Official Washington and has been imposed on America's
European allies as well. According to The New York Times' Orwellian
storyline, anyone who notes the reality of a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine is
engaging in "fantasy" and must be some kind of Putin pawn.
To the Times' editors, all the justice is on their side, even as Ukraine's
new regime has deployed neo-Nazi militias to kill eastern Ukrainians who
resisted the anti-Yanukovych coup. To the Times' editors, the only possible
reason to object to Ukraine's new order is that the Russians must be bribing
European dissidents to resist the U.S. version of events. The Times wrote:
"The Europeans are indeed divided over the extent to which Russia, with its
huge oil and gas resources, should be isolated, but Mr. Putin's aggression
so far has ensured their unity when it counts. In addition to extending
existing sanctions, the allies have prepared a new round of sanctions that
could be imposed if Russian-backed separatists seized more territory in
Ukraine. .
"Although Mr. Putin insisted on Friday that Russia had found the 'inner
strength' to weather sanctions and a drop in oil prices, investment has
slowed, capital has fled the country and the economy has been sliding into
recession. Even the business forum was not all that it seemed: The heads of
many Western companies stayed away for a second year."
An Orwellian World
In the up-is-down world that has become the New York Times' editorial page,
the Western coup-making on Russia's border with the implicit threat of U.S.
and NATO nuclear weapons within easy range of Moscow is transformed into a
case of "Russian aggression." The Times' editors wrote: "One of the most
alarming aspects of the crisis has been Mr. Putin's willingness to brandish
nuclear weapons."
Though it would appear objectively that the United States was engaged in
serious mischief-making on Russia's border, the Times editors flip it around
to make Russian military maneuvers - inside Russia - a sign of aggression
against the West.
"Given Mr. Putin's aggressive behavior, including pouring troops and weapons
into Kaliningrad, a Russian city located between NATO members Lithuania and
Poland, the allies have begun taking their own military steps. In recent
months, NATO approved a rapid-reaction force in case an ally needs to be
defended. It also pre-positioned some weapons in front-line countries, is
rotating troops there and is conducting many more exercises. There are also
plans to store battle tanks and other heavy weapons in several Baltic and
Eastern European countries.
"If he is not careful, Mr. Putin may end up facing exactly what he has
railed against - a NATO more firmly parked on Russia's borders - not because
the alliance wanted to go in that direction, but because Russian behavior
left it little choice. That is neither in Russia's interest, nor the
West's."
There is something truly 1984-ish about reading that kind of propagandistic
writing in The New York Times and other Western publications. But it has
become the pattern, not the exception.
The Words of the 'Demon'
Though the Times and the rest of the Western media insist on demonizing
Putin, we still should hear the Russian president's version of events, as
simply a matter of journalistic fairness. Here is how Putin explained the
situation to American TV talk show host Charlie Rose on June 19:
"Why did we arrive at the crisis in Ukraine? I am convinced that after the
so-called bipolar system ceased to exist, after the Soviet Union was gone
from the political map of the world, some of our partners in the West,
including and primarily the United States, of course, were in a state of
euphoria of sorts. Instead of developing good neighborly relations and
partnerships, they began to develop the new geopolitical space that they
thought was unoccupied. This, for instance, is what caused the North
Atlantic bloc, NATO, to go east, along with many other developments.
"I have been thinking a lot about why this is happening and eventually came
to the conclusion that some of our partners [Putin's way of describing
Americans] seem to have gotten the illusion that the world order that was
created after World War II, with such a global center as the Soviet Union,
does not exist anymore, that a vacuum of sorts has developed that needs to
be filled quickly.
"I think such an approach is a mistake. This is how we got Iraq, and we know
that even today there are people in the United States who think that
mistakes were made in Iraq. Many admit that there were mistakes in Iraq, and
nevertheless they repeat it all in Libya. Now they got to Ukraine. We did
not bring about the crisis in Ukraine. There was no need to support, as I
have said many times, the anti-state, anti-constitutional takeover that
eventually led to a sharp resistance on the territory of Ukraine, to a civil
war in fact.
"Where do we go from here?" Putin asked. "Today we primarily need to comply
with all the agreements reached in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. . At the
same time, I would like to draw your attention and the attention of all our
partners to the fact that we cannot do it unilaterally. We keep hearing the
same thing, repeated like a mantra - that Russia should influence the
southeast of Ukraine. We are. However, it is impossible to resolve the
problem through our influence on the southeast alone.
"There has to be influence on the current official authorities in Kiev,
which is something we cannot do. This is a road our Western partners have to
take - those in Europe and America. Let us work together. . We believe that
to resolve the situation we need to implement the Minsk agreements, as I
said. The elements of a political settlement are key here. There are
several."
Putin continued: "The first one is constitutional reform, and the Minsk
agreements say clearly: to provide autonomy or, as they say decentralization
of power, let it be decentralization. This is quite clear, our European
partners, France and Germany have spelled it out and we are quite satisfied
with it, just as the representatives of Donbass [eastern Ukraine where
ethnic Russians who had supported Yanukovych have declared independence]
are. This is one component.
"The second thing that has to be done - the law passed earlier on the
special status of these territories - Luhansk and Donetsk, the unrecognized
republics, should be enacted. It was passed, but still not acted upon. This
requires a resolution of the Supreme Rada - the Ukrainian Parliament - which
is also covered in the Minsk agreements. Our friends in Kiev have formally
complied with this decision, but simultaneously with the passing by the Rada
of the resolution to enact the law they amended the law itself . which
practically renders the action null and void. This is a mere manipulation,
and they have to move from manipulations to real action.
"The third thing is a law on amnesty. It is impossible to have a political
dialogue with people who are threatened with criminal persecution. And
finally, they need to pass a law on municipal elections on these territories
and to have the elections themselves. All this is spelled out in the Minsk
agreements, this is something I would like to draw your attention to, and
all this should be done with the agreement of Donetsk and Luhansk.
"Unfortunately, we still see no direct dialogue, only some signs of it, but
too much time has passed after the Minsk agreements were signed. I repeat,
it is important now to have a direct dialogue between Luhansk, Donetsk and
Kiev - this is missing."
Also missing is any objective and professional explanation of this crisis in
the mainstream American press. Instead, The New York Times and other major
U.S. news organizations have continued with their pattern of 1984-ish
propaganda.
_________
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.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socializehttp://e-max.it/posizioname
nto-siti-web/socialize
