Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

17 April 14

he acting president of the coup regime in Kiev announces that he is ordering an “anti-terrorist” operation against pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine, while his national security chief says he has dispatched right-wing ultranationalist fighters who spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

On Tuesday, Andriy Parubiy, head of the Ukrainian National Security Council, went on Twitter to declare, “Reserve unit of National Guard formed #Maidan Self-defense volunteers was sent to the front line this morning.” Parubiy was referring to the neo-Nazi militias that provided the organized muscle that overthrew Yanukovych, forcing him to flee for his life. Some of these militias have since been incorporated into security forces as “National Guard.”

Parubiy himself is a well-known neo-Nazi, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991. The party blended radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy also formed a paramilitary spinoff, the Patriots of Ukraine, and defended the awarding of the title, “Hero of Ukraine,” to World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose own paramilitary forces exterminated thousands of Jews and Poles in pursuit of a racially pure Ukraine.

During the months of protests aimed at overthrowing Yanukovych, Parubiy became the commandant of “Euromaidan,” the name for the Kiev uprising, and – after the Feb. 22 coup – Parubiy was one of four far-right Ukrainian nationalists given control of a ministry, i.e. national security.

But the U.S. press has played down his role because his neo-Nazism conflicts with Official Washington’s narrative that the neo-Nazis played little or no role in the “revolution.” References to neo-Nazis in the “interim government” are dismissed as “Russian propaganda.”

Yet there Parubiy was on Tuesday bragging that some of his neo-Nazi storm troopers – renamed “National Guard” – were now being sicced on rebellious eastern Ukraine as part of the Kiev government’s “anti-terrorist” operation.

The post-coup President Oleksandr Turchynov also warned that Ukraine was confronting a “colossal danger,” but he insisted that the suppression of the pro-Russian protesters would be treated as an “anti-terrorist” operation and not as a “civil war.” Everyone should understand by now that “anti-terror” suggests extrajudicial killings, torture and “counter-terror.”

Yet, with much of the Ukrainian military of dubious loyalty to the coup regime, the dispatch of the neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine’s Right Sektor and Svoboda parties represents a significant development. Not only do the Ukrainian neo-Nazis consider the ethnic Russians an alien presence, but these right-wing militias are organized to wage street fighting as they did in the February uprising.

Historically, right-wing paramilitaries have played crucial roles in “counter-terror” campaigns around the world. In Central America in the 1980s, for instance, right-wing “death squads” did much of the dirty work for U.S.-backed military regimes as they crushed social protests and guerrilla movements.

The merging of the concept of “anti-terrorism” with right-wing paramilitaries represents a potentially frightening development for the people of eastern Ukraine. And much of this information – about Turchynov’s comments and Parubiy’s tweet – can be found in a New York Times’ dispatch from Ukraine.

Whose Propaganda?

However, on the Times’ front page on Wednesday was a bizarre story by David M. Herszenhorn accusing the Russian government of engaging in a propaganda war by making many of the same points that you could find – albeit without the useful context about Parubiy’s neo-Nazi background – in the same newspaper.

In the article entitled “Russia Is Quick To Bend Truth About Ukraine,” Herszenhorn mocked Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev for making a Facebook posting that “was bleak and full of dread,” including noting that “blood has been spilled in Ukraine again” and adding that “the threat of civil war looms.”

The Times article continued, “He [Medvedev] pleaded with Ukrainians to decide their own future ‘without usurpers, nationalists and bandits, without tanks or armored vehicles – and without secret visits by the C.I.A. director.’ And so began another day of bluster and hyperbole, of the misinformation, exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and, occasionally, outright lies about the political crisis in Ukraine that have emanated from the highest echelons of the Kremlin and reverberated on state-controlled Russian television, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.”

This argumentative “news” story spilled from the front page to the top half of an inside page, but Herszenhorn never managed to mention that there was nothing false in what Medvedev said. Indeed, it was the much-maligned Russian press that first reported the secret visit of CIA Director John Brennan to Kiev.

Though the White House has since confirmed that report, Herszenhorn cites Medvedev’s reference to it in the context of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” Nowhere in the long article does the Times inform its readers that, yes, the CIA director did make a secret visit to Ukraine last weekend. Presumably, that reality has now disappeared into the great memory hole along with the on-ground reporting from Feb. 22 about the key role of the neo-Nazi militias.

The neo-Nazis themselves have pretty much disappeared from Official Washington’s narrative, which now usually recounts the coup as simply a case of months of protests followed by Yanukovych’s decision to flee. Only occasionally, often buried deep in news articles with the context removed, can you find admissions of how the neo-Nazis spearheaded the coup.

A Wounded Extremist

For instance, on April 6, the New York Times published a human-interest profile of a Ukrainian named Yuri Marchuk who was wounded in clashes around Kiev’s Maidan square in February. You have to read far into the story to learn that Marchuk was a Svoboda leader from Lviv, which – if you did your own research – you would discover is a neo-Nazi stronghold where Ukrainian nationalists hold torch-light parades in honor of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Without providing that context, the Times does mention that Lviv militants plundered a government weapons depot and dispatched 600 militants a day to do battle in Kiev. Marchuk also described how these well-organized militants, consisting of paramilitary brigades of 100 fighters each, launched the fateful attack against the police on Feb. 20, the battle where Marchuk was wounded and where the death toll suddenly spiked into scores of protesters and about a dozen police.

Marchuk later said he visited his comrades at the occupied City Hall. What the Times doesn’t mention is that City Hall was festooned with Nazi banners and even a Confederate battle flag as a tribute to white supremacy.

The Times touched on the inconvenient truth of the neo-Nazis again on April 12 in an article about the mysterious death of neo-Nazi leader Oleksandr Muzychko, who was killed during a shootout with police on March 24. The article quoted a local Right Sektor leader, Roman Koval, explaining the crucial role of his organization in carrying out the anti-Yanukovych coup.

“Ukraine’s February revolution, said Mr. Koval, would never have happened without Right Sector and other militant groups,” the Times wrote. Yet, that reality – though actually reported in the New York Times – has now become “Russian propaganda,” according to the New York Times.

This upside-down American narrative also ignores the well-documented interference of prominent U.S. officials in stirring up the protesters in Kiev, which is located in the western part of Ukraine and is thus more anti-Russian than eastern Ukraine where many ethnic Russians live and where Yanukovych had his political base.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland was a cheerleader for the uprising, reminding Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” discussing who should replace Yanukovych (her choice, Arseniy Yatsenyuk became the new prime minister), and literally passing out cookies to the protesters in the Maidan. (Nuland is married to neoconservative superstar Robert Kagan, a founder of the Project for the New American Century.)

During the protests, neocon Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, took the stage with leaders of Svoboda – surrounded by banners honoring Stepan Bandera – and urged on the protesters. Even before the demonstrations began, prominent neocon Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, had dubbed Ukraine “the biggest prize.” [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What’s the Matter with John Kerry?”]

Indeed, in my four-plus decades in journalism, I have never seen a more thoroughly biased and misleading performance by the major U.S. news media. Even during the days of Ronald Reagan – when much of the government’s modern propaganda structure was created – there was more independence in major news outlets. There were media stampedes off the reality cliff during George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War and George W. Bush’s Iraq War, both of which were marked by demonstrably false claims that were readily swallowed by the big U.S. news outlets.

But there is something utterly Orwellian in the current coverage of the Ukraine crisis, including accusing others of “propaganda” when their accounts – though surely not perfect – are much more honest and more accurate than what the U.S. press corps has been producing.

There’s also the added risk that this latest failure by the U.S. press corps is occurring on the border of Russia, a nuclear-armed state that – along with the United States – could exterminate all life on the planet. The biased U.S. news coverage is now feeding into political demands to send U.S. military aid to Ukraine’s coup regime.

The casualness of this propaganda – as it spreads across the U.S. media spectrum from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times – is not just wretched journalism but it is reckless malfeasance jeopardizing the lives of many Ukrainians and the future of the planet.

Blind Hatred for Iran Is Puerile Tantrum-Throwing, Not Foreign Policy

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

17 April 14

In Congress, emotional demagoguery displaces rational debate

ave you thought much about just how stupid, petty, obtuse, dishonest, and hypocritical so many senators, representatives, and other American officials (including the president) have been in their “patriotic” fervor to protect the rest of us from a 57-year-old professional diplomat whose only demonstrable threatening trait is that he’s Iranian?

The Iranian in question, Hamid Aboutalebi, has a Ph.D. in historical sociology and has served as Iran’s ambassador to Australia, the European Union, Belgium, and Italy, all of which appear to have survived unscathed by his presence. In the 1990s, even the United States was unafraid to allow Aboutalebi to be a member of Iran’s United Nations delegation in New York, and everyone survived that, too.

On April 11, 2014, the White House formally confirmed what it had been indicating for days, that the United States would deny Aboutalebi a visa to enter the country, thereby preventing him from assuming his post as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

As the host country for the UN, the United States has a legal obligation to accept the appointed ambassadors of other sovereign countries. The UN ambassadors from Syria and North Korea were admitted to the country bur required to remain within a 25-mile radius of New York City. The government has cited no precedent, no legal basis, and no credible factual basis for denying Iran its choice of its own ambassador. Iran is appealing the American decision through the UN legal process.

Why was there no public opposition to this rush to misjudgment?

Why has pretty much the entire American national leadership reacted with a pusillanimous stampede into stupidity over a routine appointment that should be a non-issue? Because moral bullying works, even when it makes the least sense. This is a decision that relies for its justification on pure guilt by association. Underlying this travesty is a familiar American weakness of long standing: craven unwillingness to accept accountability for American actions in the past.

Also the president was apparently intimidated by Congressional demagogues passing a probably unconstitutional bill limiting the power granted solely to the president: that “he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers” (Art. II, sec. 3). Asked whether the president would sign that bill, press secretary Jay Carney danced around the legal question while confirming the official decision to demonize the professional diplomat:

“Let me say a couple of things. We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa to Mr. Aboutalebi. We certainly share the intent of the bill passed by Congress, as we have already told the U.N. and Iran that we will not issue a visa.

“We’ll review the legislation; we’re doing that now. And we will work to address any issues related to its utility and constitutionality. But we share the intent of the bill. The bill expands upon a 1990 law for which President George H.W. Bush issued a signing statement expressing constitutional concerns. And, obviously, we will be looking at this issue as part of our review. But as to the intent, we share it. And I think we have made clear in previous statements and today in my statement that we won’t be issuing a visa.”

In other words, the legislation is absurd but we’re not about to stand up to Congress when they’ve got the Iran rage machine going. “We take our host country responsibilities very seriously,” Carney said to the audience that knew he meant the opposite whenever it was expedient. Carney did not explain why the president thinks denying the visa is constitutional or legal or justified, or whether that’s even what the president thinks about Iran. And of course no reporter asked. Who wants to be seen treating a designated scapegoat even-handedly?

This whole mishagas started with what looks now like it could have been an April Fool’s joke that nobody got. On April 1, Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas (with six Republican co-sponsors) introduced a bill (S.2195) that would “deny admission to the United States to any representative to the United Nations who has been found to have been engaged in espionage activities or a terrorist activity against the United States and poses a threat to United States national security interests.”

In the House, Colorado Republican congressman Doug Lamborn and 48 like-minded co-sponsors introduced a bill identical to the Senate version. In support of the bill, Lamborn said, “Last week, we learned something shocking and appalling. The Iranian Government wants to appoint a terrorist as their Ambassador to the United Nations, a man who participated in the 1979 terrorist attack on our Embassy in Tehran. This is unconscionable and unacceptable.”

There is no credible finding or other factual basis to support this hyperbole, which soon became conventional wisdom in Washington.

As in the original Wonderland, the authorities began with the verdict

By April 10, with minor technical amendments added, the bill had passed both the Senate and the House by unanimous consent, allowing most members to keep their fingerprints off it (especially Democratic senators Leahy, Menendez, and Schumer, whom Senator Lindsey Graham thanked personally).

There were no meaningful hearings on the bill. There was no presentation of evidence. There was no meaningful debate about any substantive impact the bill might have. There was only unrelenting demagoguery. Some more examples:

• Senator Cruz: Mr. Aboutalebi was an active participant in the terrorist group that took 52 Americans hostage on November 4, 1979, and held them for 444 days. There are no circumstances under which the United States should grant such a person a visa, and our immediate concern is to prevent Mr. Aboutalebi from ever setting foot on American soil.


• Senator Schumer: [Aboutalebi] was a member of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, the group that seized the embassy on November 4, 1979, and held American staff hostage until 1981. There were New Yorkers I knew among that group…. We should not further aggravate the pain of the individuals and families who suffered through the hostage crisis by allowing this individual to have a visa and diplomatic immunity within the United States.


• Senator Graham: … this is a unique moment when all 100 Senators support the following statement to the Iranians: We remember who you are. We remember what you have done to our country and to our fellow citizens, and we are not going to forget. If you are listening in Iran, we have a very clear-eyed view in the Senate of who we are dealing with. So this is a very appropriate time to speak with one voice. I hope the Iranians will understand that we are resolved, Republicans and Democrats, to make sure they never possess a nuclear weapon.

Not one member of Congress said, “Let’s look at this rationally.”

The people charged with writing the laws of the United States have acted with reckless disregard for the truth. There is no evidence that Aboutalebi is a terrorist. There ‘s no evidence that he was involved in hostage-taking. There is some evidence that he may have been involved as a translator or mediator during the hostage crisis, but even that is uncertain. Apparently he was a member of the student group in 1979, when he was a 22-year-old grad student and his country was in the midst of a revolution. All this accusatory bombast is the basis for guilt by association, this is generic McCarthyism, and this is what Congress does by unanimous consent.

A bipartisan majority of American senators, all of them actually, refused to stand up for due process or rules of evidence or even simple fairness when rushing to judgment was the easiest, best way to avoid any anything close to being a profile of good sense, never mind courage. A bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives was equally unprincipled.

This choice of self-destructive, empty vengeance was driven in great part by one of the former hostages, Barry Rosen, whose attorney Tom Lankford was a lead demagogue: "At a time when the 52 American Hostages and their families remain without reparations and relief, the idea that one of their self-styled kidnappers and torturers would be allowed to receive a visa, enter the United States and then hold himself out at the rank of U.N. Ambassador makes a mockery of the horrific acts he and Iran perpetrated."

We don’t know what this spiteful, bird flipping diplomacy will do to something actually important, like the multilateral negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. We can hope the Iranians and other parties will behave with more maturity and judgment than the US has shown.

Many of the most vociferous voices raised against Aboutalebi belong to senators and representatives who are determined to have NO accommodation with Iran. This unopposed, orchestrated hate is Orwellian (as in 1984’s daily Two Minutes Hate ritual). These haters are people for whom war with Iran has no more seriousness than a Beach Boys song parody, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”

Yes, it’s true that in 1979 Iranians took 52 Americans hostage and held them for 444 days. And yes, that was a terrible thing. But it was a terrible thing with a real context. This was not a gratuitous act of mindless anti-Americanism, this was an opportunistic crime committed in reaction to American criminality and brutality in a country with which America was displeased.

Twenty-six years earlier, in 1953, the United States overthrew Iran’s elected government (even more blatantly than the recent Ukraine coup). The US then gave unending support to the Shah of Iran and the brutal police state he inflicted on millions of people for a quarter century, people held hostage and brutalized in their own country by their own government, all for the political convenience of the United States. Like the 52 American hostages, some 52 million Iranians still wait for reparations and relief.

The jabbering jingoes in control of this foreign policy decision, deceitfully selling Aboutalebi’s imagined transgressions, need to get over their exceptionalist self-involvement. Americans desperately need to have a sense of history, a sense of responsibility, a sense of proportion, and real humility. That would be true American exceptionalism.

Government by dishonest emotional blackmail isn’t government at all, it’s moral hostage-taking.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.