Monday, November 24, 2014

Dave Lindorff: "US news organizations dispense propaganda, not news: Forget ‘Fair and Balanced,’ US Corporate Media Give Only the Government’s Side" @ This Can't Be Happening!

One searches almost in vain for honest reporting on the Ukraine conflict in the US corporate media, which is simply parroting the US government position, which is that the rebels in eastern Ukraine are simply tools of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Yet the murderous shelling of the people of the rebel regions of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine is almost certainly wholly the work of an aggressive Kiev-government led Ukraine military, which has been ramping up its forces in the east in preparation for a renewed assault on the two separatist states of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Each time there is a report of shelling of either city, Lugansk or Donetsk, the US media either completely fail to mention who might be responsible, or they report that “both sides” accuse each other of being responsible, though this is clearly absurd, since even those same media also refer to Donetsk and Lugansk as “rebel-held” or “separatist-held,” or as “rebel strongholds.” Why, one ought to ask, would the rebels shell their own territory, much less the capitals of their respective rebel regions?

The model for how such incidents are to be reported was set on Oct. 6 by America’s version of Pravda, Voice of America. In its article that day, headlined NATO Concerned about E. Ukraine Cease-Fire Violations, it states:

“The new head of NATO said the Western military alliance is concerned about the large number of violations of the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, which he indirectly blamed on pro-Russian separatists.”

Following in lockstep with that approach, here’s what the US media had to say about the conflict in recent weeks:

The New York Times (Nov. 9):

A shaky cease-fire in eastern Ukraine looked ever more tenuous on Sunday as European monitors confirmed reports of unmarked military vehicles driving through rebel-held territory while Donetsk, the region’s biggest city, endured a nightlong artillery battle.

The monitoring group, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that long columns of unmarked military vehicles, some towing howitzers, were spotted over the weekend. The monitors did not speculate as to the origins of the trucks or the people inside them, but Ukrainian officials said the statements bolstered their claims that Russia was again arming and training separatists.

...On Sunday, after what journalists in Donetsk described as the heaviest night of artillery shelling in and around the city in at least a month, the O.S.C.E. observers saw two more unmarked military columns. The observers noted 17 trucks in each column, some equipped with Grad ground-to-ground rocket launchers and others towing more howitzers.

Comment: Notice the focus here on the unidentified military vehicles, but not a word about who would have been firing that heavy artillery barrage into rebel-held Donetsk...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2559

  **********************************************

Time to Pony Up and Back Us!:

There is a reason this site bears the distinction, proudly declared on our masthead, of being: "The only news organization in the US to be labeled a threat by the Department of Homeland Security." It's because we are completely uncowed by the growing threat of the US national security state and its spies and police. We boldly exposed the FBI's ignoring, or worse, of a plot to execute Occupy Movement leaders with silencer-equipped sniper rifles, the Homeland Security Department's leading role in orchestrating the national crackdown on Occupy encampments, the CIA employment of a murderous US consular "employee" in Pakistan, and the identities of three US station chiefs outed one after another in Pakistan (none of the US corporate media, and indeed only two or three alternative news outlets dared challenge the US law barring publishing the identities of US spies, though they had already been outed by news many news organizations outside the US.

If you want articles like this one today, which are simply blacked out by your corporate media, if you want us to really do what we're doing, we need your backing. While we love generous donations, what we'd really like is for every reader to contribute just $5 a year.

Please Use the Paypal button on the home page, or send us a check made out to: Dave Lindorff/TCBH at: POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002

(Don't make it out to TCBH or ThisCantBeHappening or we can't cash it.)

No comments: