Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
Vice News uploaded to youtube on November 12th this video of the firebombing of the southeastern Ukrainian village of Iliovaisk<\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=V70lGPnycxk#t=47<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n and they also identified what the incendiary weapon used was.<\/span><\/p>\n Headlining, \u201c’A Rain of Fire’: Ukrainian Forces Used Little-Known Soviet-Era Incendiary Weapons to Attack Iloviask,\u201d their Harriet Salem reported, on November 13th<\/span><\/a>, that Iliovaisk \u2013 a once \u201csleepy town in eastern Ukraine\u201d \u2013 was hit on the night of August 14th by rockets fired from a hill 11 miles away, each of which warheads delivered hundreds of 4,000-degree-Fahrenheit thermite pellets that are illegal to use, except when deployed precisely against military targets, not against civilians, and not imprecisely, such as here (via an \u201cunguided rocket delivered by an outdated 9K51 MLRS system\u201d). Ukraine\u2019s Government wanted to mass-murder the residents there, that\u2019s all.<\/span><\/p>\n The Vice news report didn\u2019t focus on the victims, but on the excuses for this. Salem mentioned instances when the Soviet Union had done this, and when the U.S. had used white phosphorous, and had also firebombed Dresden when Hitler ruled Germany and was attacking throughout Europe. A third of the Vice report was devoted to that; most of the rest was devoted to describing the weapon. As for the victims, they\u2019re just victims. They\u2019re dead. That\u2019s all. War is war, and that sort of thing \u2013 no news there. It\u2019s those people\u2019s tough luck. After all, they had voted for Viktor Yanukovych. And, since Obama had installed a \u2018democracy\u2019 when he overthrew that democratically elected Ukrainian President, Obama needed to get rid of such voters, in order to be able to make his new Ukrainian regime last. That\u2019s nothing Vice News would be interested in. It\u2019s not even British.<\/span><\/p>\n Coloring the \u2018news\u2019 is easier than covering the news, and this is how the \u2018news\u2019 is colored.<\/span><\/p>\n However, for any \u2018news\u2019 medium to analogize firebombings against nazi countries that are invaders and threats to other nations, with firebombings of civilian populations who are purely in a defensive mode and haven\u2019t invaded any nation, is, essentially, to lie. So, that \u2018news\u2019 report is colored lie, because there is no way in which the victims here have anything whatsoever to do with being nazis or even fascists. One can debate the firebombing of Dresden, but only deceivers will analogize this to that. Do the victims of these Ukrainian firebombings deserve this, in any way at all? Of course not. Justice and fairness are alien to the concerns of journalists now.<\/span><\/p>\n The standards of current journalism are beneath contempt. The profession has rotted so much that it\u2019s virtually a branch of PR. It\u2019s designed now to deceive the public. It does what it\u2019s designed to do: propaganda.<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s the real news about the fake news. It\u2019s really big news, especially because the purveyors of fake news can\u2019t report it. They\u2019re not allowed to, even if they want to. It\u2019s like a sewer that pours not into a processing plant that cleanses out all lies, but directly into the public\u2019s minds, polluting politics with those lies, producing \u2018democracy,\u2019 instead of democracy. So, how does such a sewer smell? It smells like \u201cOn the one hand, on the other hand: \u2018fair and balanced.\u2019\u201d It smells \u2018objective.\u2019 There\u2019s the viewpoint of the nazis, and then there\u2019s the viewpoint of their victims. At Vice \u2018News,\u2019 however, no victims were even consulted.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, there is in that \u2018news\u2019 report a link to another \u2018news\u2019 story<\/span><\/a>, about cluster bombs having been used during the prior month, and victims are shown there, but no blood, it\u2019s highly sanitized. That report said: <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cConclusive attribution of responsibility for the specific attacks on populated areas, which amount to a violation of the laws of war and potentially open responsible parties up to prosecution for war crimes, is far from clear cut in a conflict where a dynamic frontline, multiple sites of fighting, and a range of armed groups operating under a loose line of command has made troop and weapon movements exceptionally hard to track on both sides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n No evidence exists that the defenders have been using any cluster-bombs, nor even had access to them. However, there\u2019s plenty of proof that the Ukrainian Government has been routinely using cluster bombs, incendiary weapons, and other illegal armaments, against residential neighborhoods throughout the conflict-zone. Killing and maiming the people there is what the U.S. and other Western nations are financing the Ukrainian Government to do. That\u2019s the very purpose of Western assistance since the coup. And Western \u2018news\u2019 media won\u2019t even call the coup<\/span><\/a> a \u201ccoup.\u201d When we destroyed Ukraine\u2019s corrupt democracy, we called it the introduction of democracy. It\u2019s Big Brother, but not in 1984. And it\u2019s far bloodier. It\u2019s nazism. And it\u2019s covered-up in the West, rather than covered in the West. Because the West is financing it. And associated oligarchs are also financing the West\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 media. This is a cozy club that\u2019s entirely on the delivery-end, not on the receiving-end, of the hell. So, the public in the West don\u2019t get to know much, if anything, about the receiving-end of the West\u2019s nazi operation. This is the new Western \u2018democracy,\u2019 replacing the former real thing. It\u2019s not what one thinks of when the phrase \u201cthe West\u201d is used. But it will come to be, because this is the new \u201cthe West,\u201d and it seems to be the way the West will stay: oligarchic. Fascistic. Even racist-fascistic \u2013 nazi \u2013 which is the worst form of oligarchy. Isn\u2019t that big news? But it can\u2019t be reported in the West.<\/span><\/p>\n Even reporting it in Russia, as frankly as is being done here, isn’t easy. This news report and commentary was submitted for publication to virtually the entire English-language press. Less than 1% accepted it. One, which is located in Russia, rejected it and explained their reason (which none other did): “VICE News despite its many flaws and biases is not the worst outlet covering Ukraine out there. Indeed they may actually be among the better ones, simply because nearly everyone else seems to be so horribly and atrociously bad these days. Also we have been advised by some of our other contributors and co-workers that we sometimes come off as a little too invested or even high-pitched at first sight, so at the moment we are really looking to present a slightly less seemingly-ideological front and looking for something perhaps a little bit more dispassionate if that is the right word.” It’s not the only “word” for that. The phrase used at Fox ‘News’ Channel in the United States, is “fair and balanced.” That’s Western ‘journalism,’ but should it pertain even outside the West? If Western ‘news’ standards are going to prevail even in places such as Russia, then what hope, really, will there be for authentic democracy to emerge? Setting the bar that low is threatening the survival of democracy everywhere. I’ll never accept that.<\/span><\/p>\n ———-<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0and of\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse Vice News uploaded to youtube on November 12th this video of the firebombing of the southeastern Ukrainian village of Iliovaisk https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=V70lGPnycxk#t=47 and they also identified what the incendiary weapon used was. Headlining, \u201c’A Rain of Fire’: Ukrainian Forces Used Little-Known Soviet-Era Incendiary Weapons to Attack Iloviask,\u201d their Harriet Salem reported, on November 13th, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":142204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,77,524,92,51,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142203","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-oil","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-terrorism","17":"tag-torture","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-warfare","20":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142203","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=142203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}