{"id":342815,"date":"2018-01-08T00:19:57","date_gmt":"2018-01-07T23:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=342815"},"modified":"2018-01-08T14:46:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T13:46:35","slug":"progressive-historian-stephen-cohen-refuses-call-u-s-coup-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/progressive-historian-stephen-cohen-refuses-call-u-s-coup-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the \u2018Progressive\u2019 Historian Stephen Cohen Refuses to Call a U.S. Coup a \u201cCoup\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The most important historical event of recent times was a coup that occurred in 2014 and caused what\u2019s now called \u2018the new Cold War\u2019, which is even worse than the original one was; and, yet, Western \u2018news\u2019media never reported the coup as being anything like what it was, when it happened; and, it still isn\u2019t being recognized by Western \u2018historians\u2019 to have happened, as it did, and to have <i>been<\/i> a coup \u2014 much less who was behind it. The event is instead covered-up, by lies, in the major (and many minor) news media and historical discussions. This is the most dangerous lie and cover-up operation in modern times, because it\u2019s leading toward war between Russia and the United States, unless the truth starts soon to be told in the U.S. and its allied countries. However, instead of informing the public about the event, Western publics have been told only the PR, the propaganda, the myth, that the U.S. regime has presented about the event. These lies have been the \u2018news\u2019 about it, and, then, the \u2018history\u2019 about it, that Western publics today know about the event. And, as will be demonstrated here, the lies about it, such as that it wasn\u2019t a coup but instead a \u2018democratic revolution\u2019, are even more dangerous than if the event hadn\u2019t been mentioned at all \u2014 had been simply blacked-out entirely \u2014 in The West. Sometimes, false \u2018history\u2019 can be even worse than no history at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2017\/03\/24\/what-americas-coup-in-ukraine-did\/\">Not only was the overthrow of Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 a coup, which ended Ukraine\u2019s brief democracy and destroyed the country, but it was an extremely bloody coup, which was perpetrated by the U.S. Government; and, yet, U.S. \u2018news\u2019media still even today refuse to call it a \u201ccoup&#8221; at all; and none acknowledge that it had been long planned and was carried out under the direction of, the Administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who constantly lied through his teeth about the entire matter and blamed Russia for everything, and even had the gall to impose economic sanctions against Russia for Russia\u2019s entirely reasonable and just reaction to it.<\/a><\/span> <span class=\"s4\">In other words, this was, not only \u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/head-stratfor-private-cia-says-overthrow-yanukovych-blatant-coup-history\/\"><span class=\"s5\">as the head of the private CIA firm Stratfor admitted \u2014 \u201cthe most blatant coup in history,\u201d<\/span><\/a> but it was a <i>U.S.<\/i> coup,<\/span><span class=\"s3\"> which America\u2019s \u2019news\u2019media (which are owned by the same billionaires who <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.is\/aQIzs\"><span class=\"s6\">effectively own the U.S. Government<\/span><\/a>) continue to hide from their audiences and to lie about, even when their media refer to it at all. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">America\u2019s so-called \u2018progressive\u2019 so-called \u2019news\u2019media claim to be bastions of honesty in American journalism, but their coverage of Ukraine and of Russia since the coup in Ukraine, and of the resultant return of \u201cThe Cold War\u201d \u2014 which are massively important historical developments that have shaken, to the core, and transformed, international relations \u2014 has been and remains a blatant lie, as will be documented here, with special attention to a prominent contributing editor at <i>The Nation<\/i>, and elite scholar of Russian history, the putatively \u2018progressive\u2019 Stephen F. Cohen, who beats around the bush as to what it actually was, refuses to refer to it as an American coup, and refuses to state clearly the fact that this coup had nothing at all to do with U.S. national security, but was purely a criminal U.S. operation, from start to finish, which President Donald Trump is continuing, by stepping-up U.S. weapons-sales to the fascist regime that Obama had installed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Cohen\u2019s article was published in <i>The Nation<\/i> on January 3rd, and titled, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/four-years-of-ukraine-and-the-myths-of-maidan\/\"><span class=\"s7\">\u201cFour Years of Ukraine and the Myths of Maidan: The history of the Ukrainian crisis, which has made everything it affected worse, is distorted by political myths and American media malpractice.\u201d<\/span><\/a> It\u2019s allegedly \u201cBy Stephen F. Cohen,\u201d but there\u2019s no clarity on why it says such things as \u201cCohen sees,\u201d \u201cWhich brings Cohen to,\u201d \u201cCohen points out,\u201d and \u201cCohen concludes.\u201d It seems to be such an amateurishly edited and badly written article, that one can\u2019t safely attribute any quotation in it to Professor Cohen himself, and one can only trust that the person who did write it was being entirely accurate in the paraphrases of Cohen that the article employs. However, as we shall see, there\u2019s good reason to distrust the magazine itself, even if that article represents with 100% accuracy Dr. Cohen\u2019s expressed views (and I think that it does truthfully represent his actual statements).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The article opens by saying:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Cohen argues that the Ukrainian crisis, which unfolded in late 2013 and early 2014 and which led to Crimea\u2019s annexation by (or \u201creunification with\u201d) Russia and to the still ongoing US-Russian proxy war in eastern Ukraine, is a seminal event of the 21st century.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Later it says:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Two conflicting narratives of the Ukrainian crisis have been a major factor in preventing its resolution. One, promoted by Washington and the US-backed <\/i>[note that it doesn\u2019t say \u201cUS-installed\u201d] <i>government in Kiev, blames only \u201caggression\u201d by the Kremlin and specifically by Russian President Putin. The other, promoted by Moscow and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine, which it supports, blames \u201caggression\u201d by the European Union and NATO, both inspired by Washington. Cohen sees enough bad intent, misconceptions, and misperceptions to go around, but on balance thinks Moscow\u2019s narrative, almost entirely deleted from US mass media, is closer to the historical realities of 2013\u20132014:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then it starts building a case that, if the overthrow of Yanukovych wasn&#8217;t really a democratic action, then the EU is to blame \u2014 the very idea that the U.S. Government might have been the perpetrator is <b>entirely absent from this obscurantist screed<\/b>. It says that, in 2013,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>for whatever reason, \u2026 the EU leadership \u2026 refused<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s8\">Ukraine\u2019s very reasonable offer for joining the EU. However, it <b>hides<\/b> the key facts here, which include especially that the EU was insisting upon terms, for accepting Ukraine\u2019s application for membership in the European Union, which Ukraine\u2019s academy of sciences estimated would cost the Ukrainian Government <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.is\/bhpBa\"><span class=\"s6\">&#8220;$160 billion by 2017\u201d<\/span><\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/03\/160-billion-cost-ukraines-viktor-yanukovych-spurned-eus-offer-20-nov-2013.html\"><span class=\"s6\">see more on that here<\/span><\/a>). <\/span><span class=\"s1\">(Furthermore, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fort-russ.com\/2015\/02\/the-paet-ashton-transcript.html\"><span class=\"s9\">the evidence<\/span><\/a> is clear that the leadership of the EU were shocked, after the fact, to find out that it had actually <i>been<\/i> a coup, and this proves that they hadn\u2019t been anticipating anything of the sort \u2014 which means that <i>The Nation\u2019<\/i>s article misrepresents by suggesting that maybe the source of what happened in Ukraine was \u201cthe EU leadership.\u201d)<\/span><span class=\"s8\"> Then, it says:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>The \u201cmarch\u201d on Ukraine had long been under way. The EU agreement \u2014 purportedly only economic and civilizational \u2014 included provisions binding the new \u201cpartner\u201d to NATO \u201cmilitary and security\u201d policy. (The intent was clear, with President George W. Bush having proposed to fast-track NATO membership for Ukraine in 2008, only to be vetoed by Germany and France.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This way of suggesting that the EU was moving forward with the Republican President Bush\u2019s plan here, indicates clearly that there was very long-term coordination of policy between the U.S. Government and the EU, to lure Ukraine into the EU, and that there was no requirement from the U.S. side that the EU\u2019s offer to Ukraine would be at all attractive to Ukraine\u2019s Government. And that much in the article is true. In other words: This was a set-up, by the U.S.-EU team, but <i>The Nation<\/i> isn\u2019t indicating which of those two \u2014 the U.S, or the EU \u2014 was the leader of the team. Ignorance of the answer to that key question is inexcusable, however, because the answer to it had already been made very clear on 4 February 2014, 22 days prior to the overthrow itself, which was the moment when Obama\u2019s agent handling the Ukraine matter, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM\"><span class=\"s6\">Victoria Nuland, informed the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine whom to get appointed to run the post-coup regime, and when she blurted out \u201cF\u2014k the EU!\u201d because the EU leadership had wanted a moderate, Wladimir Klitschko, to head the new government, and she insisted on a rabidly anti-Russian fascist, \u201cYats\u201d Yatsenyuk<\/span><\/a>, who did receive the appointment \u2014 and then this \u201cYats\u201d promptly started an <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/obama-definitely-caused-malaysian-airliner-downed\/\"><span class=\"s10\">ethnic cleansing operation in eastern Ukraine<\/span><\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2017\/03\/obamas-ukrainian-coup-caused-2-5-million-ukrainian-refugees-russia.html\"><span class=\"s10\">eliminate the over 90% of the people there<\/span><\/a> who had <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.is\/WKMs5\"><span class=\"s10\">voted for the man whom Obama had just ousted<\/span><\/a>. The new Ukrainian regime needed to get rid of those people if it were to have any likelihood of being able to remain in power beyond its first election. The only (and merely vague) reference to any of this reality, in <i>The Nation<\/i>\u2019s article of slippery words, is the merely parenthetical:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>(A phone conversation between the leading State Department official involved and the US ambassador to Ukraine plotting the makeup of a successor government became public.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then comes:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Which brings Cohen to another prevailing media myth: that what occurred on Maidan in February 2014 was a \u201cdemocratic revolution.\u201d Whether it was in fact a \u201crevolution\u201d can be left to future historians.<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was <i>actually<\/i> \u201cthe most blatant coup in history.\u201d And then comes:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>As for \u201cdemocratic,\u201d removing a legally elected president by threatening his life hardly qualifies.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then, comes the remarkable statement asserting vaguely, and only in a subordinate clause so that it\u2019s presumed to be not very important, that \u201cthis was a coup,\u201d but that it was either \u201cspontaneous\u201d (which would mean that it wasn\u2019t planned by the U.S. or anyone and was therefore <i>no coup at all<\/i> but more like an un-led riot) or else \u201cby high-level actors in the West\u201d \u2014 and here is that obscurantist and confusing passage (and, as always, author unknown, though <i>supposedly<\/i> \u201cBy Stephen C. Cohen\u201d):<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Though the overthrow involved people in the streets, this was a coup. How much of it was spontaneous and how much directed, or inspired, by high-level actors in the West also remains unclear.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then comes the article\u2019s only actual description of the event, and only reference to its violence (\u201csnipers\u201d):<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>The rush to seize Yanukovych\u2019s residence was triggered by snipers who killed some 80 or more protesters and policemen on Maidan. It was long said that the snipers had been sent by Yanukovych, but it has now been virtually proven that the shooters were instead from the neo-fascist group Right Sector among the protesters on the square. (See, for example, <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/orientalreview.org\/2015\/09\/11\/the-snipers-massacre-on-the-maidan-in-ukraine\/\"><span class=\"s6\"><i>the reports of the scholar Ivan Katchanovski<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i> The antidemocratic origins of today\u2019s Kiev regime continue to afflict it.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s8\">Whether those \u201cantidemocratic origins\u201d even included the U.S. regime in Washington \u2014 which had actually (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2016\/09\/three-big-lies-pervade-americas-news-media.html\"><span class=\"s10\">since at least 2011<\/span><\/a>) planned and led the whole thing and then dictated whom the new Ukrainian leaders would be \u2014 wasn\u2019t mentioned. Where it says \u201cthe reports of the scholar Ivan Katchanovski,\u201d the link is to an article which likewise doesn\u2019t use the word \u201ccoup\u201d to describe it, and which links to Kathchanovski\u2019s paper, which itself uses the word \u201ccoup\u201d twice, first saying that Yanukovych called it a \u201ccoup\u201d (which doesn\u2019t prove anything), and second again referring to Yanukovych\u2019s having called it a \u201ccoup.\u201d So: <i>The Nation<\/i> has here left its readers twice removed from two vague assertions that the man who was overthrown called it a \u201ccoup.\u201d Furthermore, that description attributes the violence solely to Ukraine\u2019s own Right Sector Party, not at all to its paymaster, much less to a foreign government, much less to the U.S. Government (which might as well have written <i>The Nation\u2019<\/i>s entire article, in order to keep the Democratic Party\u2019s voters\u2019 support of <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/obamas-ukrainian-stooges\/\"><span class=\"s10\">the fascist Ukrainian regime<\/span><\/a> that the Democrat, Obama, had installed).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Then, the article says:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Indeed, Cohen concludes, if the media insists on condemning Trump for mangled narratives and dubious international entanglements, they might want to focus on former vice president Joseph Biden. It has long been known that President Obama put him in charge of the administration\u2019s \u201cUkrainian project.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">So: <i>The Nation\u2019<\/i>s argument here is that Trump continues not Obama\u2019s policy but Biden\u2019s policy. Now, why would they say that? Perhaps in order to smear both Biden and Trump but not Obama and also not the <i>actual<\/i> person who handled this assignment, who was Victoria Nuland, who worked under Hillary Clinton in the State Department, and whom Obama forced upon John Kerry when he took over as Secretary of State, and Nuland and Kerry were practically at war against each other, under Obama, who repeatedly <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/secretary-of-state-john-kerry-v-his-subordinate-victoria-nuland-regarding-ukraine\/\"><span class=\"s6\">backed her against him<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/eric-zuesse\/obama-sidelines-kerry-on-_b_7527342.html\"><span class=\"s6\">again<\/span><\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/2015\/06\/the-reversal-of-kerrys-ukraine-statement-came-from-obama-not-nuland.html\"><span class=\"s6\">again<\/span><\/a>. And he did it <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/209136\/\"><span class=\"s6\">also on Syria-policy<\/span><\/a>. (And, regarding the case of Syria, Obama <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sott.net\/article\/343169-Russia-now-runs-the-peace-process-to-end-Syrias-War\"><span class=\"s6\">sided yet again with Nuland against Kerry<\/span><\/a>.) The sweet-talking slickster Obama was the problem in <i>all<\/i> of this. But a \u2018news\u2019medium that\u2019s beholden to Democratic Party billionaires in order to stay in business is no more trustworthy than is a \u2018news\u2019medium that\u2019s beholden to Republican Party billionaires in order to stay in business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s8\">Now, <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20050208153414\/http:\/\/www.questionsquestions.net:80\/feldman\/feldman03.html\"><span class=\"s6\">if one reads here<\/span><\/a>, one will find out that the ownership of <i>The Nation<\/i> has always been in the hands of \u2018progressive\u2019 aristocrats. The current owner is also mentioned there, Katrina vanden Heuvel. She happens to be Stephen Cohen\u2019s wife. Her father is also discussed there: William J. vanden Heuvel. His role in the CIA\u2019s first coup, which overthrew Thailand\u2019s Government in 1948 and replaced it with a \u201cpolice state,\u201d is briefly mentioned. Also, his having been the \u201cspecial assistant\u201d to Robert F. Kennedy is mentioned. RFK was at that time a Cold-War super-hawk, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationclearinghouse.info\/48487.htm\"><span class=\"s6\">was among the group of his brother, JFK\u2019s, advisors who was supporting secret proposals for the U.S. to create a pretext to start a hot war \u2014 a nuclear war \u2014 with the Soviet Union, in the belief that if they started it they would win it<\/span><\/a>. His brother (JFK) decided not to follow that advice. <\/span><span class=\"s1\">According to David Talbot\u2019s indispensable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government\/dp\/0062276174\"><span class=\"s10\"><i>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government<\/i><\/span><\/a> (p. 360), \u201cThe Dulles brothers<\/span><span class=\"s8\"> were slow to realize that if young Senator [J.F.] Kennedy was their pupil, he was an increasingly rebellious one. Kennedy began questioning the rigid Cold War paradigm that dominated Washington policy-making as early as 1951.\u201d JFK\u2019s fact-finding visit to Vietnam persuaded him, even that early, against the CIA\u2019s view of the matter. But RFK remained a Cold War super-hawk for yet a decade more. As I <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2018\/01\/02\/americans-are-only-now-beginning-to-learn-that-we-live-in-a-dictatorship\/\"><span class=\"s10\">previously noted<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>When Kennedy became President, he found himself surrounded by advisors who were urging him such as, on 22 March 1962, John Kennedy\u2019s own brother and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy urged, when RFK held a meeting to discuss <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/files\/research\/jfk\/releases\/docid-32977055.pdf\"><span class=\"s11\"><i>\u201cthe possibility of U.S. manufacture or acquisition of Soviet aircraft\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>, because:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u201cThere is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack U.S. or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention. If the planes were to be used in such covert operations, it would seem preferable to manufacture them in the United States.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s4\"><i>And, also like <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/files\/research\/jfk\/releases\/docid-32112987.pdf\"><span class=\"s6\"><i>this (on 12 April 1962, from a Major General and CIA officer \u2014 see it on page 16)<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u201cWe could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Even JFK\u2019s own brother RFK, and Secretary of \u2018Defense\u2019 Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk \u2014 plus lots of holdovers from the Eisenhower Administration \u2014 thought that this sort of thing would be worth the President of the United States considering. Fortunately, JFK didn\u2019t. If he had been like them, World War III would surely have occurred.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">RFK became increasingly liberal after his brother\u2019s death; but, when, in 1967, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dump_Johnson_movement\"><span class=\"s10\">\u201cDump Johnson Movement\u201d<\/span><\/a> among grass-roots Democrats to replace the neoconservative Lyndon Johnson as the Democratic Party\u2019s 1968 Presidential nominee, urged RFK to compete against Johnson in Democratic Party primaries so as to give Democratic voters a say in whether to replace Johnson by an anti-Vietnam-War nominee on this the most important public-policy issue of that era, RFK said no, but then his fellow Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy promptly took on the task, to give the Party\u2019s voters a choice on whether or not the Vietnam War should continue being a signature project of the Democratic Party. RFK jumped into the Democratic primaries right after McCarthy came close to beating Johnson in the 12 March 1968 New Hampshire Democratic Party Presidential primary, knowing that his entry into the Democratic Party primaries would split the progressive vote between himself and McCarthy and so would virtually assure that Johnson\u2019s man V.P. Hubert Humphrey (who replaced Johnson as the \u201cpro-war Democrat\u201d when Johnson quit the primary contest on 31 March, but his name never appeared on any primary\u2019s ballot) would receive the nomination, thus continuing this extremely unpopular war as bearing the Democratic Party brand upon it and thus virtually assuring that whomever the Republicans would choose as their nominee would win, which turned out to be Richard Nixon. RFK was assassinated on June 6th, but though the Democratic primary contest was again between one anti-war candidate, now versus whomever the Party\u2019s establishment would prefer, the \u201cbad blood\u2019 which had developed in the interim between the supporters of RFK and the supporters of McCarthy, produced little resistance when the people who controlled the Party handed the nomination to the pro-war Humphrey; and, so, Nixon became the U.S. President. RFK had expected that McCarthy\u2019s supporters would simply flock to him, against the initially far less well-known McCarthy; but, by the time of RFK\u2019s death on the night of his California primary victory, McCarthy had won 5 primaries, and RFK had won 3. Primaries were held in only 15 states. By the time the primaries-season had <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1968\"><span class=\"s10\">ended on June 11th<\/span><\/a>, McCarthy had won 7, Johnson had won 1, and RFK had won 4 \u2014 those three, plus South Dakota on the same night as his California victory. (The only remaining primary was Illinois, on June 11th, which McCarthy won.) The Democratic Party\u2019s leadership <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091027101746\/http:\/\/geocities.com\/Athens\/Rhodes\/3991\/Dem1968.html\"><span class=\"s10\">handed their nomination to Humphrey, though Humphrey hadn\u2019t won even a single primary<\/span><\/a>. This in a country that calls itself a \u2018democracy\u2019. America\u2019s billionaires and centi-millionaires had their way, <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.is\/aQIzs\"><span class=\"s10\">regardless of what the public wanted<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">In the <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/136182101\"><span class=\"s10\">1944 U.S. Presidential contest, the Democratic Party\u2019s controllers forced FDR to accept as his running-mate and (since FDR was then known to be near death) successor, the unpopular Senator Harry S. Truman, despite the President\u2019s strong desire to be succeeded by the much more progressive and vastly more popular Henry A. Wallace<\/span><\/a>; and, so, the Party almost lost the 1948 Presidential election to the even-more-unpopular Eastern Establishment\u2019s New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. The billionaires will choose a loser rather than choose a winner who will win against themselves. FDR had become the candidate in 1932 only because the billionaires were terrified that otherwise there might be a revolution. But, after FDR, the billionaires and centi-millionaires have increasingly controlled this \u2018democracy\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Although historians (Talbot included) haven\u2019t yet integrated into their accounts this important distinction between the geo-strategic views of JFK and RFK (JFK having been the more progressive of the two), this policy-difference was real and very important; but so too was RFK\u2019s unshakable loyalty to his brother, which loyalty overrode everything during JFK\u2019s Presidency, and so the brothers worked well together as a team. However, the Deep State, which is solidly neoconservative and which created neoconservatism, and which consists of the aristocracies of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States, now controls both of America\u2019s Parties equally. Even the Democratic Party\u2019s propaganda-media are neoconservatives, now. And the least-neoconservative of them all is <i>The Nation<\/i>. But even <i>The Nation<\/i> straddles the fence between neoconservative and not. It\u2019s anti-neocon when the neocon is Republican, but neutral when the neocon (or pro-imperialist) is Democratic. And, virtually every Republican in the U.S. Congress, and every Republican Presidential nominee after Wendell Wilkie\u2019s defeat to FDR in 1940, has likewise been a neocon. In today\u2019s U.S. Government, almost everyone whose responsibilities include foreign affairs \u2014 the military, diplomatic, and intelligence, communities \u2014 is neoconservative. Neoconservatism is the norm, throughout. And, so, all of the \u2018news\u2019media are, likewise, supporters of expanding the American empire.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s8\">Unless there is public recognition that the Ukrainian situation that produced Obama\u2019s outrageous sanctions against Russia was caused actually by a U.S. coup, which has no legitimacy, and which installed a racist-fascist anti-Russian regime, the movement toward U.S.-Russia war will continue. The issue here has not been whether \u201cRussia&#8217;s narrative is closer to the truth\u201d; it is instead that the U.S. government has been viciously lying \u2014 and so has its press. They must now publicly acknowledge this fact. Unless they all want World War III \u2014 in which case, everyone needs to condemn all of them, because otherwise there will be WW III, which will be the worst outcome of all, but which is where we are heading.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s12\">Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Theyre-Not-Even-Close-Democratic\/dp\/1880026090\/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1339027537&amp;sr=8-9\"><span class=\"s13\"><i>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>,<\/i> and of<\/span><span class=\"s14\"> <i>\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B007Q1H4EG\"><span class=\"s13\"><i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><span class=\"s12\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Zuesse The most important historical event of recent times was a coup that occurred in 2014 and caused what\u2019s now called \u2018the new Cold War\u2019, which is even worse than the original one was; and, yet, Western \u2018news\u2019media never reported the coup as being anything like what it was, when it happened; and, it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":342820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,96,3604,93,535,40709,19405,59,524,754,523,1235,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-342815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-jfk","15":"tag-kennedy","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-syria","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-war","21":"tag-warfare","22":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}