Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
The only way to expose lies is within context; so, this will be somewhat lengthy:<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Times<\/em> editorial<\/a> opens with a falsehood: “There is no longer any\u00a0doubt: Russian troops are in Ukraine, not as\u00a0volunteers, as the rebel commander\u00a0in Donetsk would have the\u00a0world believe, but in units equipped with mobile\u00a0artillery and heavy\u00a0military equipment.” Their only cited source for that statement is “a senior NATO officer.” But should anyone take as a source, on that type of matter, either an anonymous U.S.-NATO official, or an anonymous Russian official? That’s hardly an unprejudiced “source,” in either case — and it’s their only source on this.<\/p>\n The context here has to be understood: During the run-up to our 19 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the\u00a0Times<\/em> was similarly taking, as sources, anonymous U.S. officials, who lied about the evidence, saying that aluminum tubes were definitely being used for making weapons of mass destruction, when they weren’t at all, and that\u00a0“uranium from Niger”<\/a>\u00a0was being snuk into Iraq for nuclear bombs that were also a fabrication — outright\u00a0forged ‘evidence,’<\/a>\u00a0selectively accepted, while the\u00a0Times<\/em> selectively rejected, and avoided even to mention, far more-solid evidence to the exact contrary. They wanted us to invade, and we did. The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0apologized for their “errors” years later, after the damage had already been done — damage (many thousands of corpses, and several trillions of dollars in costs) that the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0greatly assisted George W. Bush to produce, by helping to sell the country on doing it.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0is today trying to repeat their catastrophic success, in Ukraine and elsewhere, simply because their readership continue to subscribe, notwithstanding the paper’s proven abysmal journalistic quality — which wins top awards, even after having been demonstrated by that catastrophic experience to be actually dismally, even catastrophically, poor.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0has not improved since then. There has been no accountability for those thousands of corpses, and trillions of dollars, wasted in Iraq. Readers still buy the paper. And, so, this type of ‘journalism’ (actually mere stenography to the existing U.S. regime — Bush then, Obama now) (transparently just that, and nothing more), continues on, uninterrupted.<\/p>\n Anyway, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0allegation here is certainly false<\/em>. There is plenty of doubt, though the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0says, “There is no longer any doubt.” Their citing only one — an entirely untrustworthy — source for their allegation is like calling their readers fools to their very faces, but their readers buy it: they still buy the paper, as if it were reliable; and so they are what the Times<\/em> management think they are, and the Times<\/em> \u00a0merely takes advantage of that, and of them, history-be-damned.<\/p>\n However, one needn’t necessarily go as far as Paul Craig Roberts on this matter, when he headlined on August 17th, “In The West, Respect for Truth No Longer Exists,” and when he said there, “Now we have the media story of the armored Russian column that\u00a0allegedly\u00a0crossed into Ukraine and was destroyed by Ukraine\u2019s rag-tag forces,” and that, “British reporters fabricated this story or were handed it by a CIA\u00a0operative working to build a war narrative.\u00a0The disreputable BBC\u00a0hyped\u00a0the story without investigating.” He\u2019s probably right on all of that except “The disreputable BBC,” because the BBC is reputable just like the Times<\/em> \u00a0is; and bad too, like the Times<\/em> is; but the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0allegation here is certainly false, regardless of whether the paper (or the BBC, or etc.) is \u201creputable.\u201d<\/p>\n The point here, in any case, is that despite the Times<\/em> \u00a0allegation,\u00a0there still hasn’t been any reliable evidence published anywhere<\/em>, that Russia’s troops are fighting in Ukraine (as the opening of the Times<\/em> editorial alleges), nor even evidence on this issue that’s based on trustworthy sources. None at all.<\/p>\n So: the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0editorial opens with this blatant and even glaring falsehood.<\/p>\n Next, their editorial states, “new, tougher Western\u00a0economic sanctions are obviously needed to\u00a0make clear to President Vladimir\u00a0Putin of Russia that the West\u00a0views his lies and escalating aggression as a\u00a0major threat.” But, actually, the existing sanctions hurt “the West,” and might even be helping Russia, by tying Russia more to China and other non-Western countries; so, the\u00a0Times’s<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0“obviously” is likewise (and also quite obviously) false. European Union commerce with Russia is ten times what America’s is; and the EU is definitely hurting from these sanctions. Russia’s\u00a0top-four sources for imports are<\/a>\u00a0China (15%), Germany (14%), Ukraine (5.5%), and Belarus (4.6%); and Russia’s\u00a0top-four export markets are<\/a>\u00a0Netherlands (9.2%), China (8.1%), Germany (6.5%), and Ukraine (5.7%). In the future, on account of the sanctions (that the Times<\/em> says are \u201cobviously needed\u201d and must be made \u201ctougher\u201d), we’ll probably see more of China, Brazil, and India, and less of Europe and Ukraine, there. Furthermore, the likely resulting separation of the world, into these two trading-blocs — one that includes Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand; and the other that includes Russia and most of the rest of the world — could hurt “the West,” far more than it will the rest.<\/p>\n Consequently, it is ridiculously false to assert, as the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0does (without documentation or support), that “new, tougher Western economic sanctions are obviously needed.”<\/p>\n Sanctions are economic measures; and the sanctions thus far have also driven Russia, along with China and several other countries, to increase their move to abandon the dollar and to establish new alternative international economic institutions so that the end of the dollar as the international reserve currency is now seriously on the horizon, whereas previously it was just talk.<\/p>\n Next, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0editorial praises the assertion by Obama’s U.N. Ambassador in which she had said that Russian troops “fight alongside illegal separatists” in Ukraine. No evidence was presented by the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0on that. (Merely our Government\u2019s saying it is enough for them and their gullible readership.)\u00a0\u00a0Nor is mention being made by the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0that the Obama Administration illegally perpetrated a\u00a0coup d’etat in February that overthrew Ukraine’s last democratically elected President, who had won in his 2010 election a truly nationwide election, that had near 70% turnout in all parts of the country<\/a>. In Ukraine\u2019s subsequent May 25th \u2018election,\u2019 which has been the only one held since our February coup there, only the areas in Ukraine that favored our coup were allowed to vote, and the other areas didn\u2019t even want to vote in that election, because the government that was holding it was\u00a0bombing<\/a>\u00a0them. See the election’s turnout map at wikipedia, which is here<\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2014#mediaviewer\/File:\u00d0\u00af\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00ba\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u20ac\u00d1\u2020\u00d1\u2013\u00d0\u00b2_\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00bf\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2021\u00d0\u00b5\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b3\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d1\u2026_\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2026_\u00d0\u0178\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b4\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bd\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00a3\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2014\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b8_2014_\u00d0\u00bf\u00d0\u00be_\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u20ac\u00d1\u0192\u00d0\u00b3\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2026.PNG<\/a><\/p>\n and this turnout contrasts sharply with the turnout in the election that chose the President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama overthrew in February<\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elections_in_Ukraine#mediaviewer\/File:\u00d0\u0090\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d1\u201a\u00d1\u0152_\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00b8\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bb\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b9.svg<\/a>, in which, as shown there, the turnout was approximately the same throughout the country.<\/p>\n So, what today\u2019s Ukrainian Government insists was a \u2018democratic\u2019 election that included the regions they\u2019re bombing, is in fact not that at all. It didn\u2019t include those regions, but the Kiev regime insists on ruling those regions, regardless of that. Basically, the\u00a0extermination-program in the southeastern half of Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0antagonized the residents there toward the regime that was choosing the candidates and that was holding the 2014 election; and, yet, this new Ukrainian Government claims that the regions that are breaking away from this U.S.-coup-imposed \u2018democracy\u2019 have no right to break away from it, at all, even despite this new government\u2019s\u00a0ethnic cleansing program to get rid of the residents there<\/a>. According to the U.S. regime, the residents there don’t have a right to life — just bomb them some more, until they accept our regime. That’s our ‘democracy,’ which Obama\u2019s people are offering the people there.<\/p>\n Then, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0says, “Mr. Putin has played his dangerous game in Ukraine with cunning and deceit since the ouster in February of the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych lost him a Ukrainian president he could manipulate.” But that (clumsily written) statement is loaded with multiple deceptions: All of Ukraine’s post-Soviet leaders have been profoundly corrupt; this “ouster” was a U.S. coup not against a corrupt one but against one who declined the U.S.-EU offer; and the deal that Yanukovych had rejected from the (then U.S.-dominated) EU wasn’t nearly as good for Ukraine as was the one on offer from Russia: Yanukovych was doing the right thing for his people, all Ukrainians, by choosing Russia’s offer instead. None of this essential background has ever been so much as mentioned in the\u00a0Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n Then, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0continues in their condemnation and lies about Putin: “He annexed Crimea outright.” That is meant to give the false impression that Putin used force in Crimea, rather than the true impression, which is that Obama used force in Kiev, and that it backfired and failed totally in Crimea. A\u00a0Gallup poll in Ukraine in April<\/a>\u00a0of this year found that, while Obama’s coup-regime in Kiev was viewed favorably in Ukraine’s northwest, it was despised and feared in Ukraine’s southeast, which is where Crimea is located. Moreover, in Crimea, “only 2.8% of the public there view the U.S. favorably; more\u00a0than 97% of Crimeans do not.” And this poll was taken right before our campaign to slaughter our regime’s opponents in Ukraine’s southeast, which started on\u00a0May 2nd<\/a>, and which was initiated by\u00a0the U.S. White House<\/a>\u00a0and has been part of Obama’s plan — to eliminate the people in the areas of Ukraine that had overwhelmingly voted for the man whom Obama overthrew in February. Obama doesn\u2019t want Ukraine ever again to have at the top a President who isn\u2019t controlled from the White House, so he\u2019s getting rid of those voters. Crimeans having voted overwhelmingly on March 16th to break away from Ukraine and to come under the protection of Russia is what, in fact, saved the Crimeans from being bombed to smithereens like the rest of the people in Ukraine’s southeast are. Furthermore, Crimea had been a part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 when Khruschev tried to appease the people in Kiev by handing Crimea over to them. Furthermore,\u00a0“Gallup surveyed Crimeans just a few months before\u00a0Obama\u2019s coup in Ukraine,\u201d<\/a> and headlined \u201cPublic\u00a0Opinion Survey: Residents of the Autonomous\u00a0Republic of Crimea, May 16-30, 2013.\u201d They found\u00a0that when asked \u201cRegardless of your passport, what\u00a0do you consider yourself?\u201d 40% said \u201cRussian,\u201d 25% said \u201cCrimean,\u201d and only 15% said \u201cUkrainian.\u201d So: when the Autonomous Republic\u00a0voted after Obama\u2019s coup, when even fewer\u00a0Crimeans self-identified with the now-fascist-run\u00a0Ukraine, it had to have been a foregone conclusion that\u00a0they\u2019d choose Russia (on March 16th), because even prior to that,\u00a0there was nearly a three-to-one preference of Russia\u00a0over Ukraine. That same (and this was pre<\/em>-plebiscite) poll showed 68%\u00a0favorability for \u201cRussia\u201d and 6% favorability for \u201cUSA.\u201d 53% wanted to be part of the Customs\u00a0Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, while\u00a0only 17% wanted to be part of the EU.<\/p>\n Then, the Times<\/em> says, without even pretending to cite a credible (or any) source on it, “The rebels shot down a Malaysian jetliner with a Russian missile,” though\u00a0the credible evidence is unanimous to the contrary<\/a>: The Ukrainian Government itself shot it down — and intentionally<\/a>. However, even if that weren’t the case,\u00a0it was Obama who actually caused that airliner to be downed<\/a>. And the Times<\/em> \u00a0hides all of that essential background and evidence from its readers, just like they did in 2002 and 2003 regarding “Saddam’s WMD,” etc.<\/p>\n A country where a ‘news’ organization such as that can repeatedly win highly touted prizes for ‘journalism’ cannot possibly be a democracy, because the voters are being deceived so much, and so thoroughly, on such basic issues, even of war and peace, and of what the country itself is doing, so that to call such a country “democratic” would be to insult democracy itself.<\/p>\n The problem is not democracy; it is instead the lack of that, which has been and is the problem in America today.<\/p>\n No problem can be solved unless it is first identified and understood. We cannot rely upon ‘news’ media such as The New York Times<\/em> to help us do that, because they are a crucial part of the problem. It\u2019s that deep.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and of \u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse The only way to expose lies is within context; so, this will be somewhat lengthy: The\u00a0Times editorial opens with a falsehood: “There is no longer any\u00a0doubt: Russian troops are in Ukraine, not as\u00a0volunteers, as the rebel commander\u00a0in Donetsk would have the\u00a0world believe, but in units equipped with mobile\u00a0artillery and heavy\u00a0military equipment.” Their only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":137490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,524,92,51,523,49,36,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-137484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-military","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-terrorism","16":"tag-torture","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-video","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2014#mediaviewer\/File:\u00d0\u00af\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00ba\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u20ac\u00d1\u2020\u00d1\u2013\u00d0\u00b2_\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00bf\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2021\u00d0\u00b5\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b3\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d1\u2026_\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2026_\u00d0\u0178\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b4\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bd\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b0_\u00d0\u00a3\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2014\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b8_2014_\u00d0\u00bf\u00d0\u00be_\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u20ac\u00d1\u0192\u00d0\u00b3\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u2026.PNG<\/a><\/p>\nand this turnout contrasts sharply with the turnout in the election that chose the President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama overthrew in February<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elections_in_Ukraine#mediaviewer\/File:\u00d0\u0090\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d1\u201a\u00d1\u0152_\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00b8\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bb\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b9.svg<\/a>, in which, as shown there, the turnout was approximately the same throughout the country.<\/p>\nSo, what today\u2019s Ukrainian Government insists was a \u2018democratic\u2019 election that included the regions they\u2019re bombing, is in fact not that at all. It didn\u2019t include those regions, but the Kiev regime insists on ruling those regions, regardless of that. Basically, the\u00a0extermination-program in the southeastern half of Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0antagonized the residents there toward the regime that was choosing the candidates and that was holding the 2014 election; and, yet, this new Ukrainian Government claims that the regions that are breaking away from this U.S.-coup-imposed \u2018democracy\u2019 have no right to break away from it, at all, even despite this new government\u2019s\u00a0ethnic cleansing program to get rid of the residents there<\/a>. According to the U.S. regime, the residents there don’t have a right to life — just bomb them some more, until they accept our regime. That’s our ‘democracy,’ which Obama\u2019s people are offering the people there.<\/p>\nThen, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0says, “Mr. Putin has played his dangerous game in Ukraine with cunning and deceit since the ouster in February of the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych lost him a Ukrainian president he could manipulate.” But that (clumsily written) statement is loaded with multiple deceptions: All of Ukraine’s post-Soviet leaders have been profoundly corrupt; this “ouster” was a U.S. coup not against a corrupt one but against one who declined the U.S.-EU offer; and the deal that Yanukovych had rejected from the (then U.S.-dominated) EU wasn’t nearly as good for Ukraine as was the one on offer from Russia: Yanukovych was doing the right thing for his people, all Ukrainians, by choosing Russia’s offer instead. None of this essential background has ever been so much as mentioned in the\u00a0Times<\/em>.<\/p>\nThen, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0continues in their condemnation and lies about Putin: “He annexed Crimea outright.” That is meant to give the false impression that Putin used force in Crimea, rather than the true impression, which is that Obama used force in Kiev, and that it backfired and failed totally in Crimea. A\u00a0Gallup poll in Ukraine in April<\/a>\u00a0of this year found that, while Obama’s coup-regime in Kiev was viewed favorably in Ukraine’s northwest, it was despised and feared in Ukraine’s southeast, which is where Crimea is located. Moreover, in Crimea, “only 2.8% of the public there view the U.S. favorably; more\u00a0than 97% of Crimeans do not.” And this poll was taken right before our campaign to slaughter our regime’s opponents in Ukraine’s southeast, which started on\u00a0May 2nd<\/a>, and which was initiated by\u00a0the U.S. White House<\/a>\u00a0and has been part of Obama’s plan — to eliminate the people in the areas of Ukraine that had overwhelmingly voted for the man whom Obama overthrew in February. Obama doesn\u2019t want Ukraine ever again to have at the top a President who isn\u2019t controlled from the White House, so he\u2019s getting rid of those voters. Crimeans having voted overwhelmingly on March 16th to break away from Ukraine and to come under the protection of Russia is what, in fact, saved the Crimeans from being bombed to smithereens like the rest of the people in Ukraine’s southeast are. Furthermore, Crimea had been a part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 when Khruschev tried to appease the people in Kiev by handing Crimea over to them. Furthermore,\u00a0“Gallup surveyed Crimeans just a few months before\u00a0Obama\u2019s coup in Ukraine,\u201d<\/a> and headlined \u201cPublic\u00a0Opinion Survey: Residents of the Autonomous\u00a0Republic of Crimea, May 16-30, 2013.\u201d They found\u00a0that when asked \u201cRegardless of your passport, what\u00a0do you consider yourself?\u201d 40% said \u201cRussian,\u201d 25% said \u201cCrimean,\u201d and only 15% said \u201cUkrainian.\u201d So: when the Autonomous Republic\u00a0voted after Obama\u2019s coup, when even fewer\u00a0Crimeans self-identified with the now-fascist-run\u00a0Ukraine, it had to have been a foregone conclusion that\u00a0they\u2019d choose Russia (on March 16th), because even prior to that,\u00a0there was nearly a three-to-one preference of Russia\u00a0over Ukraine. That same (and this was pre<\/em>-plebiscite) poll showed 68%\u00a0favorability for \u201cRussia\u201d and 6% favorability for \u201cUSA.\u201d 53% wanted to be part of the Customs\u00a0Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, while\u00a0only 17% wanted to be part of the EU.<\/p>\nThen, the Times<\/em> says, without even pretending to cite a credible (or any) source on it, “The rebels shot down a Malaysian jetliner with a Russian missile,” though\u00a0the credible evidence is unanimous to the contrary<\/a>: The Ukrainian Government itself shot it down — and intentionally<\/a>. However, even if that weren’t the case,\u00a0it was Obama who actually caused that airliner to be downed<\/a>. And the Times<\/em> \u00a0hides all of that essential background and evidence from its readers, just like they did in 2002 and 2003 regarding “Saddam’s WMD,” etc.<\/p>\nA country where a ‘news’ organization such as that can repeatedly win highly touted prizes for ‘journalism’ cannot possibly be a democracy, because the voters are being deceived so much, and so thoroughly, on such basic issues, even of war and peace, and of what the country itself is doing, so that to call such a country “democratic” would be to insult democracy itself.<\/p>\nThe problem is not democracy; it is instead the lack of that, which has been and is the problem in America today.<\/p>\nNo problem can be solved unless it is first identified and understood. We cannot rely upon ‘news’ media such as The New York Times<\/em> to help us do that, because they are a crucial part of the problem. It\u2019s that deep.<\/p>\n———-<\/p>\nInvestigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and of \u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric Zuesse The only way to expose lies is within context; so, this will be somewhat lengthy: The\u00a0Times editorial opens with a falsehood: “There is no longer any\u00a0doubt: Russian troops are in Ukraine, not as\u00a0volunteers, as the rebel commander\u00a0in Donetsk would have the\u00a0world believe, but in units equipped with mobile\u00a0artillery and heavy\u00a0military equipment.” Their only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":137490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,524,92,51,523,49,36,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-137484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-military","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-terrorism","16":"tag-torture","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-video","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2014#mediaviewer\/File:%D0%AF%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%86%D1%96%D0%B2_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%85_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B8_2014_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%85.PNG\"){kind=link}
![http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elections_in_Ukraine#mediaviewer\/File:\u00d0\u0090\u00d0\u00ba\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b2\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d1\u201a\u00d1\u0152_\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b7\u00d0\u00b1\u00d0\u00b8\u00d1\u20ac\u00d0\u00b0\u00d1\u201a\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bb\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b9.svg<\/a>, in which, as shown there, the turnout was approximately the same throughout the country.<\/p>\nSo, what today\u2019s Ukrainian Government insists was a \u2018democratic\u2019 election that included the regions they\u2019re bombing, is in fact not that at all. It didn\u2019t include those regions, but the Kiev regime insists on ruling those regions, regardless of that. Basically, the\u00a0extermination-program in the southeastern half of Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0antagonized the residents there toward the regime that was choosing the candidates and that was holding the 2014 election; and, yet, this new Ukrainian Government claims that the regions that are breaking away from this U.S.-coup-imposed \u2018democracy\u2019 have no right to break away from it, at all, even despite this new government\u2019s\u00a0ethnic cleansing program to get rid of the residents there<\/a>. According to the U.S. regime, the residents there don’t have a right to life — just bomb them some more, until they accept our regime. That’s our ‘democracy,’ which Obama\u2019s people are offering the people there.<\/p>\nThen, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0says, “Mr. Putin has played his dangerous game in Ukraine with cunning and deceit since the ouster in February of the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych lost him a Ukrainian president he could manipulate.” But that (clumsily written) statement is loaded with multiple deceptions: All of Ukraine’s post-Soviet leaders have been profoundly corrupt; this “ouster” was a U.S. coup not against a corrupt one but against one who declined the U.S.-EU offer; and the deal that Yanukovych had rejected from the (then U.S.-dominated) EU wasn’t nearly as good for Ukraine as was the one on offer from Russia: Yanukovych was doing the right thing for his people, all Ukrainians, by choosing Russia’s offer instead. None of this essential background has ever been so much as mentioned in the\u00a0Times<\/em>.<\/p>\nThen, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0continues in their condemnation and lies about Putin: “He annexed Crimea outright.” That is meant to give the false impression that Putin used force in Crimea, rather than the true impression, which is that Obama used force in Kiev, and that it backfired and failed totally in Crimea. A\u00a0Gallup poll in Ukraine in April<\/a>\u00a0of this year found that, while Obama’s coup-regime in Kiev was viewed favorably in Ukraine’s northwest, it was despised and feared in Ukraine’s southeast, which is where Crimea is located. Moreover, in Crimea, “only 2.8% of the public there view the U.S. favorably; more\u00a0than 97% of Crimeans do not.” And this poll was taken right before our campaign to slaughter our regime’s opponents in Ukraine’s southeast, which started on\u00a0May 2nd<\/a>, and which was initiated by\u00a0the U.S. White House<\/a>\u00a0and has been part of Obama’s plan — to eliminate the people in the areas of Ukraine that had overwhelmingly voted for the man whom Obama overthrew in February. Obama doesn\u2019t want Ukraine ever again to have at the top a President who isn\u2019t controlled from the White House, so he\u2019s getting rid of those voters. Crimeans having voted overwhelmingly on March 16th to break away from Ukraine and to come under the protection of Russia is what, in fact, saved the Crimeans from being bombed to smithereens like the rest of the people in Ukraine’s southeast are. Furthermore, Crimea had been a part of Russia from 1783 until 1954 when Khruschev tried to appease the people in Kiev by handing Crimea over to them. Furthermore,\u00a0“Gallup surveyed Crimeans just a few months before\u00a0Obama\u2019s coup in Ukraine,\u201d<\/a> and headlined \u201cPublic\u00a0Opinion Survey: Residents of the Autonomous\u00a0Republic of Crimea, May 16-30, 2013.\u201d They found\u00a0that when asked \u201cRegardless of your passport, what\u00a0do you consider yourself?\u201d 40% said \u201cRussian,\u201d 25% said \u201cCrimean,\u201d and only 15% said \u201cUkrainian.\u201d So: when the Autonomous Republic\u00a0voted after Obama\u2019s coup, when even fewer\u00a0Crimeans self-identified with the now-fascist-run\u00a0Ukraine, it had to have been a foregone conclusion that\u00a0they\u2019d choose Russia (on March 16th), because even prior to that,\u00a0there was nearly a three-to-one preference of Russia\u00a0over Ukraine. That same (and this was pre<\/em>-plebiscite) poll showed 68%\u00a0favorability for \u201cRussia\u201d and 6% favorability for \u201cUSA.\u201d 53% wanted to be part of the Customs\u00a0Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, while\u00a0only 17% wanted to be part of the EU.<\/p>\nThen, the Times<\/em> says, without even pretending to cite a credible (or any) source on it, “The rebels shot down a Malaysian jetliner with a Russian missile,” though\u00a0the credible evidence is unanimous to the contrary<\/a>: The Ukrainian Government itself shot it down — and intentionally<\/a>. However, even if that weren’t the case,\u00a0it was Obama who actually caused that airliner to be downed<\/a>. And the Times<\/em> \u00a0hides all of that essential background and evidence from its readers, just like they did in 2002 and 2003 regarding “Saddam’s WMD,” etc.<\/p>\nA country where a ‘news’ organization such as that can repeatedly win highly touted prizes for ‘journalism’ cannot possibly be a democracy, because the voters are being deceived so much, and so thoroughly, on such basic issues, even of war and peace, and of what the country itself is doing, so that to call such a country “democratic” would be to insult democracy itself.<\/p>\nThe problem is not democracy; it is instead the lack of that, which has been and is the problem in America today.<\/p>\nNo problem can be solved unless it is first identified and understood. We cannot rely upon ‘news’ media such as The New York Times<\/em> to help us do that, because they are a crucial part of the problem. It\u2019s that deep.<\/p>\n———-<\/p>\nInvestigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and of \u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric Zuesse The only way to expose lies is within context; so, this will be somewhat lengthy: The\u00a0Times editorial opens with a falsehood: “There is no longer any\u00a0doubt: Russian troops are in Ukraine, not as\u00a0volunteers, as the rebel commander\u00a0in Donetsk would have the\u00a0world believe, but in units equipped with mobile\u00a0artillery and heavy\u00a0military equipment.” Their only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":137490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,524,92,51,523,49,36,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-137484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-military","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-terrorism","16":"tag-torture","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-video","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elections_in_Ukraine#mediaviewer\/File:%D0%90%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C_%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B9.svg\"){kind=link}