By Robert Parry for Consortium News – A prime example of how today’s mainstream media paradigm works in the U.S. is the case of Ukraine, where Americans have been shielded from evidence that the 2014 ouster of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was a U.S.-supported coup d’etat spearheaded by violent neo-Nazi extremists. As The New York Times has instructed us, there was no coup in Ukraine; there was no U.S. interference; and there weren’t even that many neo-Nazis. And, the ensuing civil conflict wasn’t a resistance among Yanukovych’s supporters to his illegal ouster; no, it was “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.” If you deviate from this groupthink – if you point out how U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland talked about the U.S. spending $5 billion on Ukraine; if you mention her pre-coup intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who the new leaders would be and how “to glue” or how “to “midwife this thing”; if you note how Nuland and Sen. John McCain urged on the violent anti-Yanukovych protesters; if you recognize that snipers firing from far-right-controlled buildings killed both police and protesters to provoke the climactic ouster of Yanukovych…
By Robert Parry for Consortium News. Russia-gate, the hazy suggestion that Putin put Trump in the White House and that Trump is a Putin “puppet” (as Clinton claimed), became the principal weapon to use in destroying Trump’s presidency. However, besides the risks to U.S. stability that would come from an Establishment-driven “soft coup,” there is the additional danger of ratcheting up tensions so high with nuclear-armed Russia that this extreme Russia-bashing takes on a life – or arguably many, many deaths – of its own.
By Phil Wilayto for The Odessa Solidarity Campaign. Washington, DC – When we rang the doorbell at the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C., Ray McGovern and I heard a staff person ask “Who is it?” over the intercom. “We’re the Odessa Solidarity Campaign and we have a letter for President Petro Poroshenko,” we said. When the door opened, a bewildered-looking man was confronted by what must have seemed to him like a sea of reporters. Plus Ray and myself, with the letter. “We’re calling on President Poroshenko to release all political prisoners in Ukraine and end the repression against the relatives of the people who died at the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014,” we said. The staff member slowly took the letter as the TV cameras filmed. (The text of the letter appears below.)
By Odessa Solidarity Campaign for Popular Resistance – In response to the increasing political repression in the city of Odessa, Ukraine, by that country’s federal government, the U.S.-based Odessa Solidarity Campaign has called for an International Day of Solidarity with the People of Odessa, to take place on April 10, the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Odessa from fascist occupation. The day will include activities in 19 cities in 12 countries. In Washington, D.C., members of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign will visit the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States to deliver a letter calling on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to release all political prisoners and end the current repression in Odessa against relatives of the at least 46 martyrs who were murdered at the House of Trade Unions fire on May 2, 2014.
By Eric Zuesse for Global Research – On March 23rd, Gallup headlined “South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering”, and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see it here), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a ‘democratic revolution’, but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it’s now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.
By Michael Krieger for Blitzkrieg – In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. Here’s some of what we learned: An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.
Newsletter China, Drones, Iraq, NATO, North Korea, Peace, Russia, South Korea, Syria, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism, Yemen By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org
March 12th, 2017
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. This weekend marks the sixth anniversary of the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. An earthquake at sea triggered a large tsunami that overwhelmed the plant and destroyed three of the four reactors on the coast. The cores of two of the reactors melted down and their whereabouts remain unknown. Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds shares photos from his trip last year to the area to document the ongoing radioactive contamination. He writes, “these photos cannot adequately convey the scientific and human impact of the worst industrial cataclysm in the history of the world.” On this anniversary, we face another perilous situation that is brewing. Scientists moved the doomsday clock to 2 and a half minutes from midnight.
By Bruce K. Gagnon for Organizing Notes – March 6, 2017 — It’s been nearly three years since the brutal massacre of 46 mostly young progressives by a neo-Nazi-led mob in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. Government repression and right-wing attacks against Odessans demanding justice for that atrocity have been constant, but now have entered a new and much more dangerous stage. On Feb. 23, Alexander Kushnarev, the father of one of the young people murdered on May 2, 2014, was arrested by agents of the federal Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Oleg Zhuchenko, chief prosecutor for the Odessan region, claims Kushnarev had been planning to kidnap and torture a member of the country’s Rada, or parliament. After Kushnarev was arrested, his home was searched and police claimed they found literature that “promotes national hatred between Ukrainians, Russians and Jews.”
By James DiEugenio for Consortium News -It is not very often that a documentary film can set a new paradigm about a recent event, let alone, one that is still in progress. But the new film Ukraine on Fire has the potential to do so – assuming that many people get to see it. Usually, documentaries — even good ones — repackage familiar information in a different aesthetic form. If that form is skillfully done, then the information can move us in a different way than just reading about it. A good example of this would be Peter Davis’s powerful documentary about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. By 1974, most Americans understood just how bad the Vietnam War was, but through the combination of sounds and images, which could only have been done through film, that documentary created a sensation, which removed the last obstacles to America leaving Indochina.
By Alex Christoforou for The Duran. The Obama Administration, with the help of the CIA and main stream media, cleverly diluted the fact they they violently overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and encouraged the illegal, putsch government to attack its own citizens in the east of the country. Oliver Stone was never fooled by Obama’s Ukraine game, which resulted in the former POTUS getting outplayed in Crimea by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oliver Stone is now urging US President Donald Trump to make public any secret documents he has in his possession on the origins of Obama’s conflict in Ukraine.
By Staff of Moon By Alabama – There are serious signs that the Trump administration will continue to seek better relations with Russia. It declines to get involved in the hustling in Ukraine. It is ready to give up on the catastrophic regime-change agenda the neocons implemented in Kiev with the help of Ukrainian Nazi organizations. Let us recap. On New Year the neo-conservative Senators McCain and Graham were in Ukraine to fire up Ukrainian troops at the front lines for a new fight with Russia supported rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk. A few days later then Vice President Biden also dropped in on Kiev. The three are declared enemies of Trump’s more friendly position towards Russia. They obviously intended to reignite the conflict in Ukraine to sabotage Trump’s new foreign policy.
By Staff of Organizing Notes and Rusvesna – Residents of Kharkov walked on a march called “Prayers for peace and love in Ukraine”, which began from the Sviatohirsk Lavra in Donbass and has already made it to Kharkov. In the video filmed by eyewitnesses, people with St. George ribbons [honoring the Soviet defeat of Hitler's Army at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives - the ribbons now declared illegal to wear in the post-coup Ukraine] and badges with Nicholas II are visible among the participants.
By Phil Wilayto for Counter Punch – At the end of World War Two, the city of Odessa in present-day Ukraine was declared a Hero City by the Soviet Union for its determined resistance to Nazi occupation. It’s a designation still valued by the people of this multicultural metropolis of a million people on the western shore of the Black Sea. On May 2, 2016, Odessans once again showed their great capacity for courage. Defying threats by local and national fascist organizations, thousands of city residents, accompanied by international monitors from across Europe and the United States…
By Bruce Gagnon, Phil Wilayto and Regis Tremblay for the United National Antiwar Coalition. Odessa, Ukraine – The three members of UNAC’S delegation that traveled to Odessa on the Black Sea to help monitor the May 2 memorial in Kolikovo Square. From left, Bruce Gagnon, who coordinates a global network opposing nuclear weapons in space; Phil Wilayto, editor of The Virginia Defender newspaper: and Regis Tremblay, an independent documentary filmmaker who will be producing a video about this issue. Many feared that there would be more violence in Odessa, Ukraine yesterday similar to what took well over 50 lives on May 2, 2014. But in fact the day was peaceful when up to 10,000 people gathered near the Trades Union Hall to place flowers and stand with the Mothers Committee in a make shift memorial.
By Bruce K. Gagnon for Space 4 Peace – Many feared that there would be more violence in Odessa, Ukraine yesterday similar to what took well over 50 lives on May 2, 2014. But in fact the day was peaceful when up to 10,000 people gathered near the Trades Union Hall to place flowers and stand with the Mothers Committee in a make shift memorial. The public was blocked from having direct contact with the Trades Hall by huge numbers of local police, national security services and fully armed neo-Nazi Azov battalion members who have been incorporated into the newly formed ‘National Guard’ in Ukraine
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