Distortions, lies and omissions: The New York Times won’t tell you the real story behind Ukraine, Russian economic collapse » American University in Moscow

A note arrived a few days ago from one of my best informants in Europe. He had just met across a hotel dining table with a senior German executive, and the topic quickly turned to the crisis in Ukraine and the sanctions regime Washington has imposed on Russia.

I can do no better than give you the pertinent passage in the note:

"… I spoke … breakfast time in Europe… with the head of one of the largest companies in Germany. This declaration was one of the first items he mentioned. I took notes—because it is one of my clients—and here is what he said: ‘It is urgent for Europe to bring Obama and the people making the decisions behind him back to reality. If not, this will spiral first into a financial collapse, which will slam into all of Europe, and then who knows where it goes after that? Everywhere, far-right nationalist forces are building. Look at the last U.S. Congressional elections, and think what is coming. Will America ever have had a more nationalist Congress? Le Pen would be right at home in this crowd. The course we are on now is folly. Can’t they see that?’”

I wish I could say the German exec’s question is a good one, but the grim answer is too obvious. They can see nothing in Washington. We witness the single most reckless, destructive foreign policy this administration has yet devised, comparable in magnitude to Bush II’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry wanted Middle East peace to stand as their legacy on the foreign side. Now they propose restored relations with Cuba as the bronze monument. Forget about it. The devastation of ties with a global power, the dissolution of Ukraine and very possibly the ruination of Europe’s barely beating economic recovery will be what we live with after this administration makes its exit.

I am awestruck as news of recent events unfolds. Ukraine is more than an economic, political and military mess: It is a major humanitarian tragedy now. As the German CEO wants to know, how can we possibly arm neo-Nazis in Ukraine while right-wing extremists and anti-immigration atavists rise all over Europe?

Complete story at - Distortions, lies and omissions: The New York Times won’t tell you the real story behind Ukraine, Russian economic collapse » American University in Moscow

TASS: Russia - Chief of Russian Railways sues New York Times over article

MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. The Moscow Presnensky district court will hold hearings into a lawsuit filed by Chief of the Russian Railways company Vladimir Yakunin against the New York Times daily,

The court hearings into the lawsuit, in which Yakunin claims moral damages for detriment to his honor,dignity and business reputation, will be held at Presensky court in February 19, spokeswoman for the Presnesnsky court Nina Yurkova told TASS.

Vladimir Yakunin has challenged a newspaper report published in its April 27, 2014 issue, alleging that "Yakunin had violated Russian laws."

Yakunin has dismissed as false the information about him published by the New York Times. He demanded that the US newspaper refute that report in the Russian edition of the New York Times and in the Austrian and German editions which have "a New York Times enclosure," Vladimir Yakunin's lawyer Alexey Melnikov told TASS.

The plaintiff claims no financial compensation, the lawyer underlined.

Complete story at - TASS: Russia - Chief of Russian Railways sues New York Times over article

All The Propaganda Unfit To Print: The NYT’s Wretched Bias On The Ukrainian Civil War | David Stockman's Contra Corner

By Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com

In late February, a conference is scheduled in New York City to discuss the risk of nuclear war if computers reach the level of artificial intelligence and take decisions out of human hands. But there is already the old-fashioned danger of nuclear war, started by human miscalculation, fed by hubris and propaganda.

That possible scenario is playing out in Ukraine, where the European Union and the United States provoked a political crisis on Russia’s border in November 2013, then backed a coup d’etat in February 2014 and have presented a one-sided account of the ensuing civil war, blaming everything on Russia.

Possibly the worst purveyor of this Cold War-style propaganda has been the New York Times, which has given its readers a steady diet of biased reporting and analysis, including now accusing the Russians for a resurgence in the fighting.

One way the Times has falsified the Ukraine narrative is by dating the origins of the crisis to several months after the crisis actually began. So, the lead story in Saturday’s editions ignored the actual chronology of events and started the clock with the appearance of Russian troops in Crimea in spring 2014.

The Times article by Rick Lyman and Andrew E. Kramer said: “A shaky cease-fire has all but vanished, with rebel leaders vowing fresh attacks. Civilians are being hit by deadly mortars at bus stops. Tanks are rumbling down snowy roads in rebel-held areas with soldiers in unmarked green uniforms sitting on their turrets, waving at bystanders — a disquieting echo of the ‘little green men’ whose appearance in Crimea opened this stubborn conflict in the spring.”

In other words, the story doesn’t start in fall 2013 with the extraordinary U.S. intervention in Ukrainian political affairs – spearheaded by American neocons, such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain – nor with the U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych and put one of Nuland’s chosen leaders, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in as Prime Minister.

Complete story at - All The Propaganda Unfit To Print: The NYT’s Wretched Bias On The Ukrainian Civil War | David Stockman's Contra Corner

New York Times Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp

During my years at Newsweek in the late 1980s, when I would propose correcting some misguided conventional wisdom, I’d often be told, “let’s leave that one for the historians,” with the magazine not wanting to challenge an erroneous storyline that all the important people “knew” to be true. And if false narratives only affected the past, one might argue my editors had a point. There’s always a lot of current news to cover.

But most false narratives are not really about the past; they are about how the public perceives the present and addresses the future. And it should fall to journalists to do their best to explain this background information even if it embarrasses powerful people and institutions, including the news organizations themselves.

Yet, rather than take on that difficult task, most major news outlets prefer to embroider onto their existing tapestry of misinformation, fitting today’s reporting onto the misshapen fabric of yesterday’s. They rarely start from scratch and admit the earlier work was wrong.

So, how does the mainstream U.S. news media explain the Ukraine crisis after essentially falsifying the historical record for the past year? Well, if you’re the New York Times, you keep on spinning the old storyline, albeit with a few adjustments.

For instance, on Sunday, the Times published a lengthy article that sought to sustain the West’s insistence that the coup overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych wasn’t really a coup – just the crumbling of his government in the face of paramilitary violence from the street with rumors of worse violence to come – though that may sound to you pretty much like a coup. Still, the Times does make some modifications to Yanukovych’s image.

Complete story at - New York Times Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp

New York Times propagandists exposed: Finally, the truth about Ukraine and Putin emerges - Salon.com

Well, well, well. Gloating is unseemly, especially in public, but give me this one, will you?

It has been a long and lonely winter defending the true version of events in Ukraine, but here comes the sun. We now have open acknowledgment in high places that Washington is indeed responsible for this mess, the prime mover, the “aggressor,” and finally this term is applied where it belongs. NATO, once again, is revealed as causing vastly more trouble than it has ever prevented.

Washington, it is now openly stated, has been wrong, wrong, wrong all along. The commentaries to be noted do not take on the media, but I will, and in language I use advisedly. With a few exceptions they are proven liars, liars, liars — not only conveying the official version of events but willfully elaborating on it off their own bats.

Memo to the New York Times’ Moscow bureau: Vicky Nuland, infamous now for desiring sex with the European Union, has just FedExed little gold stars you can affix to your foreheads, one for each of you. Wear them with pride for you will surely fight another day, having learned nothing, and ignore all ridicule. If it gets too embarrassing, tell people they have something to do with the holidays.

O.K., gloat concluded. To the business at hand.

We have had, in the last little while, significant analyses of the Ukraine crisis, each employing that method the State Department finds deadly: historical perspective. In a lengthy interview with Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, none other than Henry Kissinger takes Washington carefully but mercilessly to task. “Does one achieve a world order through chaos or through insight?” Dr. K. asks.

Complete story at - New York Times propagandists exposed: Finally, the truth about Ukraine and Putin emerges - Salon.com

Russian news: Putin Disses Merkel in Milan. Displays Confidence, No Sign of Budging on Ukraine. - Russia Insider

This is a typically bogus and biased article from the NYT, but we are running it because it speaks volumes about Russia's position vis a vis the EU on the Ukraine. One has to read between the lines to understand that Putin's symbolic message was: take a flying leap.

Ignore the silly pop-psychology The Times descends to, and their relentless maligning of Putin personally. Also, a typical Times ploy, they manage to slip in a howling falsehood. "Even with Russia’s economy steadily grinding downward, with a recession looming..." Ahem, the economy is growing, and predicted to grow in the coming years. Sanctions aren't working, no recession in sight. In fact the sanctions are strengthening the Russian economy, one of the reasons Putin is feeling so confident these days.

Ahh,The Times..., we could create a whole website dedicated to the nonsense they peddle...

MILAN — He was at it again this week.

First, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia stopped in Belgrade, Serbia, for a military parade evocative of the Cold War. He questioned Kosovo’s sovereignty, took a swipe at President Obama in the Serbian news media and reached a summit meeting in Milan so far behind schedule that he was hours late for a private evening meeting with Europe’s most powerful leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Nor was Mr. Putin done. When he left Ms. Merkel at roughly 2 a.m. Friday, his entourage streaked through Milan to the home of his friend and Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The men talked and enjoyed truffles until about 4 a.m., whereupon Mr. Putin departed, leaving him barely four hours before he joined European leaders, including Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, for a pivotal breakfast meeting.

For Mr. Putin, the helter-skelter blitz through Milan was only the latest demonstration of an unpredictable, often theatrical, diplomatic style that he has employed during the Ukraine crisis to throw his rivals off balance. This time he kept Ms. Merkel waiting late at night. Last month he upstaged President Obama on the eve of a NATO summit meeting focused on Russian aggression when he unexpectedly announced a seven-point peace plan for Ukraine — written on the back of a napkin as he flew for a state visit in Mongolia.

Complete story at - Russian news: Putin Disses Merkel in Milan. Displays Confidence, No Sign of Budging on Ukraine. - Russia Insider

Good Job, Yats—You’ve Destroyed Ukraine’s Economy, Fattened The US Military-Industrial Complex | David Stockman's Contra Corner

The costs of the mainstream U.S. media’s wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged “Russian aggression” by investing as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times article justified these modernization plans by describing “Russia on the warpath” and adding: “Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.”

But the Ukraine crisis has been a textbook case of the U.S. mainstream media misreporting the facts of a foreign confrontation and then misinterpreting the meaning of the events, a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out.” The core of the false mainstream narrative is that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis as an excuse to reclaim territory for the Russian Empire.

While that interpretation of events has been the cornerstone of Official Washington’s “group think,” the reality always was that Putin favored maintaining the status quo in Ukraine. He had no plans to “invade” Ukraine and was satisfied with the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, when the crisis heated up last February, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Complete story at - Good Job, Yats—You’ve Destroyed Ukraine’s Economy, Fattened The US Military-Industrial Complex | David Stockman's Contra Corner

The Powerful "Group Think" on Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp

When even smart people like economist Paul Krugman buy into the false narrative about the Ukraine crisis, it’s hard to decide whether to despair over the impossibility of America ever understanding the world’s problems or to marvel at the power of the U.S. political/media propaganda machine to manufacture its own reality.

On Monday, Krugman’s New York Times column accepts the storyline that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis and extrapolates from that “fact” the conclusion that perhaps the nefarious Putin did so to engineer a cheap land grab or to distract Russians from their economic problems.

“Delusions of easy winnings still happen,” Krugman wrote. “It’s only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine’s government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap — a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap. …

“Recently Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review suggested that the roots of the Ukraine crisis may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian economy. As he noted, Mr. Putin’s hold on power partly reflects a long run of rapid economic growth. But Russian growth has been sputtering — and you could argue that the Putin regime needed a distraction.”

Or you could look at the actual facts of how the Ukraine crisis began and realize that it was the West, not Russia, that instigated this crisis. Putin’s response has been reactive to what he perceives as threats posed by the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the imposition of a new Western-oriented regime hostile to Moscow and Ukraine’s ethnic Russians.

Complete story at - The Powerful "Group Think" on Ukraine | The Smirking Chimp

Will Ukraine Be NYT’s Waterloo? | Consortiumnews

Exclusive: As Ukrainian soldiers from the coup regime in Kiev tighten the noose around anti-coup rebels in eastern Ukraine, the New York Times continues its cheerleading for the coup regime and its contempt for the rebels, raising grave questions about the Times’ credibility, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

For Americans interested in foreign policy, the New York Times has become the last U.S. newspaper to continue devoting substantial resources to covering the world. But the Times increasingly betrays its responsibility to deliver anything approaching honest journalism on overseas crises especially when Official Washington has a strong stake in the outcome.

The Times’ failures in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War are, of course, well known, particularly the infamous “aluminum tube” story by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller. And, the Times has shown similar bias on the Syrian conflict, such as last year’s debunked Times’ “vector analysis” tracing a sarin-laden rocket back to a Syrian military base when the rocket had less than one-third the necessary range.

But the Times’ prejudice over the Ukraine crisis has reached new levels of extreme as the “newspaper of record” routinely carries water for the neocons and other hawks who still dominate the U.S. State Department. Everything that the Times writes about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get anything approaching an accurate understanding of events.

From the beginning of the crisis, the Times sided with the “pro-democracy” demonstrators in Kiev’s Maidan square as they sought to topple democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had rebuffed a set of Western demands that would have required Ukraine to swallow harsh austerity measures prescribed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted for a more generous offer from Russia of a $15 billion loan with few strings attached.

Along with almost the entire U.S. mainstream media, the Times cheered on the violent overthrow of Yanukovych on Feb. 22 and downplayed the crucial role played by well-organized neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of the Maidan protests in the final violent days. Then, with Yanukovych out and a new coup regime in, led by U.S. hand-picked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the IMF austerity plan was promptly approved.

Complete story at - Will Ukraine Be NYT’s Waterloo? | Consortiumnews

New York Times Protects the Fogh Machine | The Smirking Chimp

A principal way that the New York Times and other leading U.S. news outlets engage in propaganda is by selecting which facts to include in a story and which ones to exclude, a process exemplified by a Times article on an interview in which the head of NATO excoriates Russia over Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen accused Russia of playing a “double game,” warned the West not to be fooled by the peaceful overtures of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and declared, “There’s no doubt that Russia is heavily engaged in destabilizing eastern Ukraine, and they continue their activities.”

However, since Rasmussen provided no evidence, his credibility would seem to be central to this story. And, on Wednesday, correspondents Mark Landler and Michael R. Gordon provided some background about Rasmussen, noting that he served as prime minister of Denmark before getting the NATO gig in 2009.

But what is excluded from the Times’ story is what the readers would need to evaluate Rasmussen’s honesty as well as his own ability to weigh evidence. Not mentioned by Landler and Gordon was the fact that this is the same Anders Fogh Rasmussen who swallowed President George W. Bush’s bogus case for invading Iraq hook, line and sinker.

Before the U.S. invasion in 2003, Rasmussen famously declared that “Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think; it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won’t disclose. He won’t tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind.”

Of course, pretty much everything that Rasmussen declared was wrong, but it succeeded in tricking the Danish parliament into voting to join Bush’s “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq. Yet, while Rasmussen was rewarded for his cooperation and his duplicity with the NATO job, a Danish intelligence analyst Frank S. Grevil was imprisoned for four months for disclosing documents that exposed Rasmussen’s deception.

Complete story at - New York Times Protects the Fogh Machine | The Smirking Chimp

Truth Crushed to Earth: Why Ukraine, as part of a global struggle, won't be solved by Kiev's atrocities | The Smirking Chimp

As has become a staple in the schizophrenia on my newsfeed, two posts come up in diametric opposition. Surprise, surprise in the Bizarro World of the western media echo chamber being confronted in any way by forces outside the Bubble. One is a Times fluff piece claiming the Ukie army has "found its footing" against the rebels, a creepy fascist-fellating homily about how brainwashing kids into killing their brothers and sisters is somehow a good thing. The other is from a Russian language post on Pravda.ru, explaining that the Kiev junta is finally forced to admit publicly to mass desertions from its army.

In any rational view, the NYT perspective should be seen as the hollow, meaningless, triumphalist and bombastic bullshit one has come to expect from the Paper of Record. The Gray Lady is the most effete and 'philosophical' (read: full of shit) of the Big Three. And let's recap the breakdown of these loudmouth Dogs of Empire: WaPo is for those who think they run the world; WSJ is for those who actually *do* run the world; and NYT is for those who think they *should* run the world

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/world/europe/ukraine-military-finds-its-footing-against-pro-russian-rebels.html?_r=2

http://www.pravda.ru/news/world/formerussr/ukraine/07-07-2014/1215072-kiev-0/

So it's completely understandable that they would fall into the trap of hyperventilating misinterpretation that followed Strelkov's masterly decision to break out of Slavyansk and fight a better fight. [For more specifics on how badly mischaracterized this brilliant move is see here [ http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/ ] I'm not downplaying the political significance, but it is obviously being overplayed here while the real story is on page 3 (or, in an obscure Russian language publication). The junta is hardly in good shape. The fascists have to admit (po-russki, at least), that soldiers are defecting en masse. Nothing drains morale like getting blasted off a hill. Behind the headlines, an Azov Batallion lost 238 of 320 soldiers overnight. It's a stupid war for a stupid cause, and it is doomed to eventual failure, though perhaps not today. Why people turn against it is largely immaterial. Do I really give a shit whether Americans actually grew a conscience and thought slaughtering millions of innocent people in Southeast Asia was wrong? Well, yes I do, I guess.. but my point is that my opinion on the matter is irrelevant. It was the body bags that turned people against the war.

Complete story at - Truth Crushed to Earth: Why Ukraine, as part of a global struggle, won't be solved by Kiev's atrocities | The Smirking Chimp

(c) 2014 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com

New York Times Dishes More Ukraine Propaganda | The Smirking Chimp

As you read or watch the mainstream U.S. media’s accounts of the Ukrainian government’s military offensive against ethnic Russians in East Ukraine, it’s worth remembering that these MSM outlets have been feeding Americans a highly biased narrative of the crisis non-stop from the beginning.

For instance, New York Times correspondent David M. Herszenhorn included in a largely celebratory account of the Ukrainian blitzkrieg that overwhelmed ethnic Russian positions in the town of Slovyansk on Saturday this summary of the conflict’s background:

“The separatist rebellion is the latest, bloodiest chapter in a crisis that began in November after Viktor F. Yanukovych, then Ukraine’s president, rejected a trade accord he had promised to sign with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Protesters took to the streets of Kiev, eventually driving Mr. Yanukovych from office. Within a week, Russia invaded Crimea, then annexed the peninsula.”

Herszenhorn, like nearly all his MSM colleagues, simply can’t find it within himself to display the journalistic integrity needed to present an evenhanded and unbiased explication of how this crisis unfolded. Instead, it’s all about blaming Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putin for everything.

Always absent is the fact that the EU’s trade accord came with a draconian International Monetary Fund austerity plan attached, a prescription to inflict even more pain on the people of Ukraine who have suffered under a post-Soviet economic system dominated by a handful of corrupt oligarchs. The IMF plan would have simply hit the average Ukrainian even harder — with elimination of heating subsidies and devaluation of their currency – while the Ukrainian oligarchs and their Western financial backers would have escaped the pain, as usual. In rejecting the IMF scheme, Yanukovych opted for a more generous $15 billion loan deal from Moscow.

Complete story at - New York Times Dishes More Ukraine Propaganda | The Smirking Chimp

M of A - NYT Claims "Russian Hacker" Attack Without Any Supporting Evidence

A 800 words New York times story on some alleged computer hacking of some energy companies mentions "Russian hackers" ten times.

From Hackers in Russia ... Russian hackers have ... Russian hackers are targeting ... The Russian attacks ... an unusually sophisticated and aggressive Russian group targeting ... believed the hackers were backed by the Russian government ... The Russian hackers ... the Russian hacking group ... The Russian hackers have ... the Russian group intended ...

The story includes zero (as in nil, none) evidence and no reasoning at all why the hackers involved are supposed to be "Russian".

It is the nature of the internet that geo-localizing the original source of an attack is nearly impossible. There are myriad ways hackers from anywhere could frame one country or group as an attacker. It is therefore highly irresponsible and nothing but pure hostile propaganda to attribute any such attack to a certain source, group or country without any further evidence and very sound and detailed technological reasoning.

The NYT story links to a Symantec report about the hacks. Symantec's sole reasoning on the source location, unmentioned in the NYT story, is this:

Analysis of the compilation timestamps on the malware used by the attackers indicate that the group mostly worked between Monday and Friday, with activity mainly concentrated in a nine-hour period that corresponded to a 9am to 6pm working day in the UTC +4 time zone. Based on this information, it is likely the attackers are based in Eastern Europe.

Such reasoning is much too basic to be of any evidence. The UTC +4 timezone includes not only west Russia but also other countries like Iran. It is also just as possible that the computers used for the compilation of the malware were sitting in Ohio, Tel Aviv or Nanking but had their clock settings changed to make it appear that they were in an UTC +4 working environment. Notice that Symantec named the source in question "Dragonfly" probably hinting that the attacks were originally though of as having an Asian origin.

It is highly irresponsible to publicly accuse a certain country as the source of this attack without having any further evidence to support such a claim. Doing so exposes the NYT as a vile propaganda paper again doing the U.S. war-hawk's bidding.

Complete story at - M of A - NYT Claims "Russian Hacker" Attack Without Any Supporting Evidence

The New York Times Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative | Global Research

Washington’s official Ukraine narrative has been that it was all Vladimir Putin’s fault, that the Russian president staged the crisis to restore the Russian empire, a storyline that never made sense and is now being rearranged to explain why Putin is seeking peace.

It’s always interesting when the New York Times promotes a false narrative – as it has on Ukraine by blaming the crisis all on “Russian aggression” – and then has to shift its storyline when events move in a different direction, like President Vladimir Putin’s recent peacemaking initiatives.

On Thursday, the Times explained Putin’s call for an extended ceasefire as a case of him caving in to U.S. pressure. Correspondents Andrew Roth and David S. Herszenhorn wrote:

“Faced with the threat of additional economic sanctions from Washington, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia discussed an extension of the cease-fire, which is to expire on Friday, in a telephone call with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President François Hollande of France and Ukraine’s new president, Petro O. Poroshenko.”

The article then continued the tough-guy, ultimatum-threatening chest-pounding that has become de rigueurfor the State Department and the mainstream U.S. news media. The Times article noted:

“The Obama administration has drawn up plans to escalate sanctions against Russia if it does not back the current peace plan by halting the flow of weapons and fighters across the Russian border. The sanctions could target some of Russia’s largest banks, or energy and defense firms.”

The Times also reported, without skepticism, the unverified allegations that the Russian government is supplying heavy weapons to the eastern Ukrainian separatists who rebelled after violent protests by western Ukrainians ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22.

Complete story at - The New York Times Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative | Global Research

Another NYT ‘Sort of’ Retraction on Ukraine | Consortiumnews

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. media likes to talk about Ukraine as an “information war,” meaning that the Russians are making stuff up. But the false narratives are actually being hatched more on the U.S. side, as a new New York Times story acknowledges, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The New York Times, which has asserted for weeks that the Russian government is behind the unrest in Ukraine’s east, finally sent some reporters to the region to dig up the proof, but all they found were eastern Ukrainians upset by the coup regime in Kiev that replaced President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Times, which has been an unapologetic promoter of the “pro-democracy” uprising that ousted the democratically elected president through violent extra-constitutional means, has recently been promoting the “theme” that Ukrainians would be happy with their new unelected government if only the Russians weren’t “destabilizing eastern Ukraine.”

Times’ editors thought they had the goods two weeks ago with a front-page scoop featuring photographs supposedly proving the presence of Russian special forces troops. According to the Times, the photos “clearly” showed Russian special forces in Russia and then the same soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

However, only two days later, the scoop unraveled when it turned out that a key photo – supposedly showing a group of soldiers in Russia who later appeared in eastern Ukraine – was actually taken in Ukraine, destroying the premise of the entire story.

Complete story at - Another NYT ‘Sort of’ Retraction on Ukraine | Consortiumnews

The 4th Media » Evidence for Russian Involvement in East Ukraine Based on CORPORATE MEDIA’s Shoddy Journalism

WORONCZUK: So, Robert, The New York Times reported that the Ukrainian government had proof that Russian soldiers were behind the takeover of government buildings in Eastern Ukraine. They released these photos to prove that Russia was behind these takeovers despite Russia’s denial of involvement. Now The Times is backpedaling and saying that the photographs they printed were coming under scrutiny. What do you think is the significance of their retraction?

PARRY: Well, it’s always interesting when The New York Times goes with a front page story, a lead piece on Monday citing these photographs as evidence, the sort of slam dunk evidence that Russian troops had gone into Ukraine and were essentially instigating this uprising in these ten cities in Eastern Ukraine. The New York Times presented these photographs but apparently never really checked them out.

The photographs themselves really didn’t prove much. They basically–even if you were to accept them at face value, there are other explanations for why people might be in one place or another beyond the fact that they were sent there by the Kremlin.

But as it turned out, a key photograph that The Times used, one a group photograph which The Times claimed had been taken in Russia, and then these same–some of the same fighters show up in Eastern Ukraine, that was presented as a key piece of evidence that these folks were from Russia and were participating in the Eastern Ukrainian uprising. But it turned out that the photograph was actually taken by a freelance photographer in Eastern Ukraine. So the whole basis of The Times’ story collapses, because these folks were not photographed in Russia, they were photographed in Eastern Ukraine. And that’s what The Times was forced to retract today.

Complete story at - The 4th Media » Evidence for Russian Involvement in East Ukraine Based on CORPORATE MEDIA’s Shoddy Journalism

New York Times Propaganda Photos on Ukraine Exposed | Global Research

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New York Times Propaganda Photos on Ukraine Exposed | Global Research

A day after the New York Times published a front-page report purporting to show the involvement of Russian Special Forces in protests in east Ukraine, its report, titled “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia,” has been exposed as a blatant fabrication.

The Times printed low-resolution pictures of fighters—allegedly wearing Russian insignia while in Georgia, and then later as protesters in east Ukraine—asserting they were the same men, thus proving the existence of an armed Russian intervention in Ukraine. It was based on a crude trick first noted by a commenter on a link posted on Reddit. The photos in the Times were down-sampled versions of higher-resolution images circulating online, which show that the men in the different pictures are in fact not the same.

Images from the New York Times with text and captions:



It very rapidly became clear that the Times ’ claims to have proven that Russian soldiers were driving the east Ukraine protests against the pro-Western regime in Kiev were complete rubbish.

The BBC compared the high-resolution pictures of two bearded men theTimes falsely asserted were the same fighter. It concluded, “In the 2014 photos, the man’s greying beard appears to be black, while in Georgia six years ago, the slimmer-looking man shown has a reddish beard.”

Complete story at - New York Times Propaganda Photos on Ukraine Exposed | Global Research

The New York Times Criticized for Submitting to Israeli Censors | Informed Comment

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The New York Times Criticized for Submitting to Israeli Censors | Informed Comment

(By Sarah Lazare)

The New York Times made a rare admission that it submits to Israeli state gag orders, fueling charges from critics that the globally-influential publication plays fast-and-loose with journalistic ethics to give favorable coverage to Israel.

The revelation emerged when the The Times delayed its coverage of the Israeli detention of a Palestinian journalist, due—as it turns out—to a gag order from an Israeli court.

The blackout came to light when journalists who did not heed the gag order exposed the detention and media censorship. The Times's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, then elicited an admission from her own publication that it complies with Israeli media blackouts as a matter of policy.

Gagging Coverage of Journalist's Detention

Journalist and activist Majd Kayyal, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was returning from a conference in Lebanon on Saturday when Israeli Shin Bet secret police detained him for five days, during which he was interrogated and denied access to a lawyer.

Complete story at - The New York Times Criticized for Submitting to Israeli Censors | Informed Comment

Bush crew’s deplorable return: How their reemergence sends a deadly message - Salon.com

It’s been more than five years since Dick Cheney left the White House and nearly eight years since Donald Rumsfeld was booted from the Pentagon. With the obvious exception of George W. Bush himself, no two men were more responsible for the United States’ disastrous and criminal invasion of Iraq, as well as its embrace of a counter-terrorism model built on the twin barbarities of indefinite detention and systematic torture. In the years that have passed since their departure from public office, both men have released best-selling memoirs, made countless media appearances and no doubt added substantially to their already considerable wealth.

In fact, to get a real sense of just how little these men have had to pay for their sins, consider three recent examples.

One is a recent comment from Dick Cheney, delivered in public — not in private, not on background, not via unknown insiders with intimate knowledge of the former vice president’s thinking, but in public — about whether he still supports waterboarding (or torture, as most people besides Cheney tend to call it): “If I had to do it all over again,” Cheney said, “I would.”

The second is the new documentary, “The Unknown Known,” by Errol Morris and about Donald Rumsfeld. Estimations of the film’s quality vary, but all reviewers are unanimous in at least one regard: Rumsfeld, as he comes off in the film, truly has no regrets. Asked by Morris if invading Iraq for the second time, causing hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths and turning millions more into refugees, was worth it, Rumsfeld shrugs off the question and settles for a fittingly cold and glib answer: “Time will tell.”

The third story is, to my mind, the most disturbing. It’s a piece in the New York Times, published Friday, about a third man, a man who ignored warnings of a terrorist attack, plunged his country into two disastrous wars, invaded a sovereign nation without sanction from the United Nations and on false pretexts, signed off on the implementation of a worldwide torture regime, secretly initiated domestic surveillance on an unprecedented scale, oversaw the destruction of one of the world’s greatest cities, and cut taxes for, and thwarted regulations against, the Wall Street power-players who destroyed the global economy and consigned millions of people to lives of poverty, unemployment and deferred dreams. That man is George W. Bush, and the article is a puff piece about his kitschy paintings.

   

Complete story at - Bush crew’s deplorable return: How their reemergence sends a deadly message - Salon.com