For more credible views on current events, I look to independent scholars and independent investigative journalists who are not employed by corporate media, either in this country or abroad. My definition of a credible journalist is one who does not identify with, or align him or herself, with those in power, whether in government or the private sector, and who sees his or her job as an adversarial one—to keep those in power accountable to the needs of the poor and middle classes. If they have one, that is their “bias.” Because I find the information provided on foreign policy issues in the New York Times and other corporate mainstream media venues, generally, to be untrustworthy, I’ve put together a small annotated list of alternative articles that you may find more informative and compelling.
A commenter named Banger on the blog Naked Capitalism made this astute point: “most of us have, by now, come to the understanding that to read the New York Times or listen to NPR does not and cannot offer you a realistic view of the world and shouldn’t be expected to—these institutions are political in nature and serve political constituencies.”
So, for a change of pace, click on the links below for a critique of corporate media coverage of Ukraine, and for alternative, in-depth views of what is going on there.
In his article at OpedNews,”The Sunday Morning Television Orgy of John Kerry,” Donn Marten pulls no punches.
He nails corporate media as the official purveyor of propaganda, misinformation, and lies fabricated by the State Department and the White House about foreign policy—in this case about Ukraine. Often, the spin is delivered so fast and furiously, Obama and Kerry will end up contradicting each other. We don’t usually publish rants at OP, but this one has a lot to say, so I invite you to read the rest of it at OpEdNews.com. For a little taste, here’s an excerpt:
Herr Goebbels once famously remarked: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The “big lie” has become the bread and butter of post September 11, 2001 exceptionalist America, and is holy gospel to the reigning political establishment and the state-corporate generated force field of hogwash that protects them. They just keep selling that “big lie,” and the latest and most crassly cynical example is Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The last time that Secretary of State and Skull and Bones alumni John Kerry hit the cycle of the Sunday morning “news” shows, he was pushing a war on Syria that was based on shaky evidence that to this day has not been substantiated. Whirlwind John . . . appeared on all five of the Sabbath day feasts of bullshit that far too many Americans believe are credible discussion forums rather than the interlocked propaganda dispersal systems that they are in reality.
Kerry was seeking to exploit the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over a war zone in Ukraine on Thursday for political gain in order stick the dagger into the hated Vladimir Putin, who foiled Kerry’s last slam dunk case for war, and has been reviled by the neocon infested State Department ever since. . . .
If one wishes to see an example of the rottenness and soulless decadence of the political class of an empire that has abrogated any semblance of morality as it all begins to collapse in on itself, then turn on your television each and every Sunday morning.
If you like thrillers, you’ll like Wayne Masden’s “MH-17: Beware of the ‘Chameleon.’”
The “chameleon” is Ukranian oligarch, gangster, Zionist, and Israeli citizen Ihor Kolomoisky who hides out in Switzerland most of the time. Clocking in with a net worth of $1.7 billion, he is the second richest man in Ukraine. The newly “elected” president of Ukraine, Poroshenko, appointed him governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine. A good move, because he comes with his own mercenary army, complete with missile launchers, which he has deployed to fight the Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists. Masden reports:
Kolomoisky’s forces are armed with advanced weaponry, obtained both from Ukrainian weapons inventories and from purchases on the black market. Kolomoisky’s forces reportedly possess the BUK surface-to-air missile system said to have been used to shoot down MH-17.
But did Kolomoisky’s forces in eastern Ukraine possess a BUK system and use it to shoot down MH-17? We don’t know the answer to that—yet.
Masden reports another interesting fact: right after the U.S. backed coup in February of this year, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, became a director of Kolomoisky’s Ukrainian natural gas and oil company, Burisma Holdings, Ltd. As we can see, at such rarified heights of power, the lines between governments, organized crime, and corporations tend to blur. The Washington Post confirmed the appointment.
Masden’s somewhat hard-to-read article is a mind-numbing collection of disparate facts linked together to describe the extremely complicated power arrangements and factions within Ukraine, including mafia characters like Kolomoisky, the mysterious sales and warehousing of a Boeing 777, and various right-wing elements in the not-very-well-glued-together, U.S.-installed junta. He presents a view of political reality that is layered, murky and difficult to describe in the simplistic terms corporate media and government spin-doctors prefer—i.e. “Putin is evil” or “Russia did it.” My only complaint about Masden’s article is that it’s link free. He has been described as the “always interesting, but unverifiable” Wayne Masden. He investigates and presents his information without sources. His information is compelling and plausible, and with some work, at least some of it can be researched and corroborated. Even if only some of it is true, there’s a lot to ponder. He is often dismissed by the MSM as a “conspiracy theorist” which tells me he is on to something.
“What Putin Knows” is an article by Mike Whitney, an independent journalist who writes at CounterPunch.
So, you may ask, why did Obama get us embroiled Ukraine? Why did he task his State Department Neocon appointee Victoria Nuland to take advantage of local unrest in Kiev, overthrow a legitimately elected government, and install a Nazi-infested right wing junta in its place?
The answer is not complicated. The United States intervenes around the world, either directly or behind the scenes, in pursuit of geopolitical dominance. That’s what we do. It doesn’t matter if the intervention is chaotic, bloody and horrific, if people die as they have in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, or eastern Ukraine, to name a few of our victim nations, or if millions are displaced because of our “adventures” abroad. At home, our government feeds us a steady diet of lies about our “responsibility to protect” and our need to “fight terrorists,” but the agenda remains the same—to further enrich the wealthy, feed the giant maw of the military/corporate/surveillance complex, and keep NATO, America’s auxiliary army, at it’s disposal, well past its “sell by” date—the end of the Cold War. Since the Clinton administration, the idea has been to use NATO to relentlessly encroach on and threaten Russia in order to pull Ukraine, a geopolitical lynchpin, out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into the neoliberal US/EU fold.
Right before the first attack on the separatists in eastern Ukraine, the newly installed illegitimate government in Kiev received a personal visit from CIA Director, John Brennan , a visit which the US government first denied and later admitted. That same weekend, instead of negotiating with the separatists, the Kiev regime mounted its first military attack on pro-federalization protesters in eastern Ukraine. According to globalresearch.ca, “Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals.”
The following is an excerpt from Whitney’s article in which he explains Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” and it’s relationship to the events in Ukraine.
Washington’s plan to “pivot” to Asia by establishing a beachhead in Ukraine and sabotaging trade relations between Europe and Russia, entered a new phase last Thursday when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from east Ukraine. Since then, the western media and prominent members of the US political establishment have used the incident to attack Russia mercilessly and to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin personally responsible for the deaths of the 295 passengers. . . .
Now the politicians and the media are at it again, trying to whip up war fever to get the public on board for another bloody intervention. Only this time, the target audience is not really the American people as much as it is Europeans. The real objective, here, is to build support for additional economic sanctions as well as a deployment of NATO troops to Russia’s western border. Washington wants to sabotage further economic integration between the EU and Russia so that it can control the flow of vital resources to the EU, crash the Russian economy, and establish a tollbooth between the continents. It’s all part of Washington’s “pivot” strategy that is critical to maintaining global hegemony throughout the 21st century. . . .
Washington doesn’t care about the facts. What matters to Obama and Co. is getting the Europeans on board (“ratcheting up pressure within Europe”) so they can gin up the sanctions, shut off Russian gas, deprive Putin of a vital source of revenue, and set up shop (NATO bases) in Eurasia.” Whether US Intel agencies were involved in the missile attack or not doesn’t change the fact that Washington clearly benefits from the tragedy.
It’s no surprise that 24% of respondents in a recent international Gallop poll think we are the most dangerous nation on the planet. That’s because we are.