The truth is often ignored, at first, and when that becomes impossible, truth-tellers
are often punished. As two incidents starkly reveal, this is certainly the case
when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine and Washington’s unfolding cold war
with Russia.
The first illustration of our truth-telling principle occurred after the “Maidan
revolution” had already captured the imagination of the Western media, which
was busy promulgating the official view as given expression by US government
officials. According to this narrative, the “protesters” were heroes, the government
of “Russian-backed’ Viktor Yanukovich was a coven of devils, and the catalyzing
incident that led to Yanukovich’s ouster, the shooting
of protesters in the Maidan, was the work of the Berkut, the Ukrainian government’s
militarized police.
There’s just one problem with this story: it isn’t true. A leaked phone call between
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union High Representative
for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, revealed that the protesters were shot
by their own leaders — the radical nationalists who had military control of
the Maiden. In the course of their discussion, Paet discusses one Dr. Olga Bogomolets,
who was in line to become the new Health Minister, and at around eight minutes
into the recording Paet drops this bombshell:
Paet: “All the evidence shows that the people who were killed by
snipers from both sides, among police men and people in the street, that they
were the same snipers killing people from both sides.”
Ashton: “Well that’s, yeah…”
Paet: “And [Bogomolets] also showed me some photos and she said
that has medical doctor, she can say that it is the same handwriting…”
Ashton: “Yeah…”
Paet: “Same type of bullets… and it’s really disturbing that now
the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.
So that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers,
it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”
Ashton: “I think they do want to investigate, and I didn’t
know… pick that up — gosh.”
Ashton’s main concern seemed to be that this would get out and discredit the
new government “from the very beginning.”