Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
On Friday, December 26th, National Public Radio aired two superbly done pieces of anti-Russia propaganda, which could as well have been written by the U.S. CIA, or by Voice of America, it was so skillfully deceiving.<\/p>\n
One of these propaganda-pieces, on \u201cMorning Edition,\u201d presented Eleanor Beardsley alleging that the anti-immigrant political parties in Britain and France are anti-U.S. and pro-Russian because they are supposedly all \u201cfar right\u201d; and the other piece, on \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d presented Corey Flintoff alleging that Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin \u201cseized Crimea\u201d (as if he hadn\u2019t actually rescued it) and thereby caused U.S. President Barack Obama and the EU to respond with economic sanctions as punishment for the \u2018seizure\u2019 (actually, as we\u2019ll show, rescue).<\/p>\n
Here, the two \u2018news reports\u2019 will be exposed:<\/p>\n
First, Beardsley\u2019s propaganda-piece: it was titled \u201cEurope’s Far Right And Putin Get Cozy, With Benefits For Both.\u201d<\/a> She noted that, in France, \u201cMarine Le Pen, head of the National Front, has made no secret of her admiration for Putin,\u201d while, across the English Channel, \u201cNigel Farage, the head of UKIP, Britain’s far-right party, called Putin one of the world leaders he admires most.\u201d Beardsley was trying to suggest that Vladimir Putin is a fascist, and she argued on this false basis that \u201cEurope’s Far Right And Putin Get Cozy\u201d because they\u2019re all \u201cfar right.\u201d<\/p>\n What she was trying to get across is more like the opposite of the truth than the truth, because what Putin and Europe\u2019s anti-immigrant parties actually share is not extreme conservatism (which they don\u2019t share at all; Putin isn\u2019t that) but is instead more like the very opposite of that: they share a rejection of U.S. global supremacy or \u201chegemony\u201d: they reject the U.S. as having a right to control their country\u2019s policies and destinies \u2013 in other words: they reject U.S. imperialism, and this is a rejection that all of them share also with progressives in America, hardly with America\u2019s champions of imperialism, such as are, for example, in the U.S., Bill Kristol\u2019s and Robert Kagan\u2019s Project for a New American Century, which was the actually far-right, Rupert-Murdoch-funded, movement that George W. Bush adhered to, that beat the drums incessantly for his \u201cregime change in Iraq,\u201d and for invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n To put this matter clearly, here\u2019s what they all reject, and what President Obama asserted at West Point on May 28th<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cRussia\u2019s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China\u2019s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us. \u2026 So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed <\/em>[properly spelled \u2018past,\u2019 but this is his text] and it will be true for the century to come.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Obama was saying there that any nation, such as Russia, which challenges the right of the U.S. Government to determine the appropriate parameters for all other nations\u2019 policies, must be crushed, because the U.S. is superior. By contrast, anti-imperialists argue that no nation possesses any such right of being \u201cworld policeman\u201d \u2013 the international judge, jury, and executioner<\/em> \u2013 as Obama claims for America. None: not the U.S., not Russia, none at all.<\/p>\n This is an extremely different reality from the lie, the PR hoax, that Eleanor Beardsley was selling to listeners on NPR.<\/p>\n That\u2019s hers; and here\u2019s the other:<\/p>\n Corey Flintoff\u2019s propaganda-piece was titled, \u201cFor Russia’s President, A Year Of Costly Triumphs,\u201d<\/a> and it repeatedly said that the cause of the economic sanctions against Russia is \u201cRussia\u2019s seizure of Crimea.\u201d Parroting the White House\u2019s line that the transfer of Crimea back to Russia \u2013 after the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had donated it to Ukraine in 1954 against the wishes of Crimea\u2019s residents, which Flintoff conveniently failed even to mention \u2013 had instead been \u201cRussia\u2019s aggression,\u201d Flintoff\u2019s account made no mention at all of the key relevant facts, necessary to understand the event, including also the following three:<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0The March 16th, 2014, referendum of the voters in Crimea<\/a>, produced a 96% vote to secede.<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0Gallup polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found<\/a>\u00a0that only 15% considered themselves “Ukrainian.” 24% considered themselves “Crimean.” But 40% considered themselves “Russian.” Even before Obama\u2019s February 2014 coup which overthrew the Ukrainian President<\/a> whom 80% of Crimeans had voted for<\/a>, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine \u2013 and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this extremely bloody coup<\/a>. Furthermore, in April 2014, Gallup again polled Crimea<\/a>, and they found that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as \u201cMostly positive\u201d the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as \u201cMostly negative\u201d; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as \u201cMostly positive,\u201d and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as \u201cMostly negative.\u201d During the intervening year, Crimeans\u2019 favorability toward America had plunged down to 2.8%, from its year-earlier 6%. Clearly, what Obama had done in Ukraine (his violent coup in Kiev) had antagonized the Crimeans. And, as if that weren\u2019t enough, the 2014 poll provided yet more evidence: “The 500 people that were sampled in Crimea were asked [and this is crucial] \u2018Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status [whether to rejoin Russia] reflect the views of most people here.\u2019 82.8% said \u2018Agree.\u2019 6.7% said \u2018Disagree.\u2019\u201d In the hearts of the local residents, Crimea was still Russian territory, after an involuntary hiatus of 60 years; and so the Russian Government accepted them back again, into Russia \u2013 this was not as Corey Flintoff droned, \u201cRussia\u2019s seizure of Crimea.\u201d It was Russia\u2019s protection of them from the invasion of Ukraine by the United States in a bloody coup.<\/p>\n (3) Ever since 1783, Russia\u2019s core national security asset, its Black Sea Fleet, was stationed in Crimea, but Obama\u2019s Ukrainian coup-Government wanted to kick them out (and this is one of the reasons why Obama perpetrated his coup). The aggression here was entirely on the American side. Russia wasn\u2019t responding only in order to protect Crimeans; Russia was especially responding in order to protect its core naval base.<\/p>\n The Obama regime overthrew Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected leader in February 2014 in a brazen act of military aggression against Russia; and National Public Radio (like so many \u2018news\u2019 media) is trying to fool the American public into thinking what the Administration wants them to think: that the aggression is instead by Russia, and is against the rest of the world, so that the already bloated U.S. military should get involved in yet another war, this one that\u2019s now building, against Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n In closing, the key fact should be mentioned that it is Obama and not Putin who is following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler<\/a>. The extreme-conservative, at least in foreign policy, is Obama<\/a>, not Putin. So, Eleanor Beardsley\u2019s falsehood was just about as egregious<\/a> as can possibly be imagined.<\/p>\n \u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse On Friday, December 26th, National Public Radio aired two superbly done pieces of anti-Russia propaganda, which could as well have been written by the U.S. CIA, or by Voice of America, it was so skillfully deceiving. One of these propaganda-pieces, on \u201cMorning Edition,\u201d presented Eleanor Beardsley alleging that the anti-immigrant political parties in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":141616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,526,524,523,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-propaganda","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-warfare","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142801","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=142801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![80% of Crimeans had voted for<\/a>, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine \u2013 and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this](\"http:\/\/observationalism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Ukraine_historical_vs_electoral_2010.png\"){kind=link}