Exclusive: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger disputes
the mainstream U.S. media’s view of the Ukraine crisis, noting that
Russia’s response was reactive to the West’s actions, not the other way
around. But the MSM keeps up the drumbeat about Russian “aggression,”
writes Robert Parry.
________________
The American public is faced with an information crisis as the New
York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets have become little
more than propaganda organs on behalf of the neoconservative agenda
and particularly the rush into a new Cold War with Russia – so much so
that even ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has broken ranks.
MSM articles consistently reek of bias – and in some cases make
little sense. For instance, Times correspondent David M. Herszenhorn,
one of the leading propagandists, wrote an alarmist story
on Wednesday about a new Russian “invasion” of Ukraine but curiously he
had the alleged Russian tank column heading east toward the Ukrainian
city of Donetsk which would be back toward Russia, not westward into
Ukraine.
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President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972. |
According to Herszenhorn’s article, “The full scope of the Russian
incursion is not clear, [NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Philip M.
Breedlove] said, though the convoys seemed to be heading east toward
Donetsk, an O.S.C.E. spokesman, Michael Bociurkiw, said Wednesday.”
Typical of his anti-Russian bias, Herszenhorn also cited Ukrainian
government complaints that the Russians had been using a shaky
cease-fire to bolster the ethnic Russian rebels in the east, but the
reality is that both sides have been accusing the other of such
maneuvering. Herszenhorn surely knows this but he wrote only:
“Ukrainian officials have complained all along that Russia was taking
advantage of the so-called truce to reinforce the rebels in eastern
Ukraine with more fighters and equipment.”
The reality is that there has been widespread alarm among eastern
Ukrainians that the Kiev regime was using the relative lull in the
fighting to resupply and reposition its forces for a new offensive like
the one that killed thousands over the summer. Though human rights
organizations have criticized Kiev for indiscriminate shelling of cities
and unleashing brutal militia forces on the population, the Times and other mainstream U.S. newspapers have either ignored or downplayed such facts.
On Wednesday, Herszenhorn also compared the alleged new Russian
incursion with the “invasion” of Crimea, although there really was no
“invasion” of Crimea since the Russian troops that were involved in
supporting Crimea’s popular referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin
Russia were already in Crimea under an agreement with the Ukrainian
government regarding the Russian naval base at Sebastopol.
Herszenhorn’s use of the word “invasion” is just an exaggeration like
the rest of the imbalanced reporting that has made a rational U.S.
public response to the crisis in Ukraine nearly impossible.
Since the start of the crisis in February, the New York Times’
coverage has been remarkable in its refusal to present the Ukraine
story in anything like an objective fashion. For example, the Times has
largely ignored the substantial public evidence that U.S. government
officials and agents helped orchestrate the Feb. 22 coup which overthrew
the elected President Viktor Yanukovych. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis.”]
The Times also has buried evidence that extreme right-wing and
neo-Nazi elements played key roles in firebombing police, forcing
Yanukovych and other government officials to flee for their lives, and
spearheading later attacks on ethnic Russians. When this reality is
referenced, it is usually presented with little meaningful context or tacked on in the last few paragraphs of long articles on other topics.
Mocking Medvedev
Herszenhorn himself has been a leading violator of journalistic
standards. For instance, in mid-April, early on in the crisis, he penned
a mocking story from Moscow ridiculing Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev for predicting a possible civil war.
In the article entitled “Russia Is Quick To Bend Truth About
Ukraine,” Herszenhorn accused Medvedev of posting an item on Facebook
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.”
Herszenhorn 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 wrote. Indeed, as the
bloodshed soon grew worse and escalated into a civil war, you might say
Medvedev was tragically prescient.
It was also the much-maligned Russian press that first reported the
secret visit of CIA Director John Brennan to Kiev. Though the White
House later confirmed
that report, Herszenhorn still cited Medvedev’s reference to it in the
context of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” Nowhere in the
long article did the Times inform its readers that, yes, the CIA
director did make a secret visit to Ukraine.
In this upside-down world of MSM disinformation, there has been very
little criticism of the glaring biases of the mainstream Western media
but instead continued attacks on the professionalism of the Russian
media, including an adverse finding
this week by an official British agency that monitors alleged bias in
news outlets operating in the UK. The agency, known as Ofcom, accused
Russia’s RT network of failing to meet standards for “due impartiality”
in early Ukraine coverage.
Interestingly, Ofcom did not judge any of the RT reports false in
their description of neo-Nazi thugs participating in the Feb. 22 coup, a
possible role of coup-related snipers in the slaughter of scores of
people at the Maidan, and the unconstitutionality of the new government.
But Ofcom faulted RT for not meeting the fuzzy concept of “due
impartiality” and threatened regulatory sanctions against RT if it
didn’t shape up. Ofcom defined “due impartiality” as “impartiality
adequate or appropriate to the subject and nature of the programme.”
The image of a British regulatory body threatening RT with sanctions
for not toeing the pro-Western propaganda line that nearly all UK and
U.S. news outlets do has an Orwellian feel to it, singling out one of
the few sources of news that doesn’t accept the prevailing “group
think.”
It would be one thing if the same standards were applied to Western
media outlets for their one-sided reporting on Ukraine, but that
apparently would ruffle too many important feathers.
Kissinger’s Dissent
Curiously, one of the few prominent Westerners who has dared question
the prevailing wisdom on Ukraine is former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger who said, in an interview
with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, that the West was
exaggerating the significance of the Crimean annexation given the
peninsula’s long historic ties to Russia.
“The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest,” the
91-year-old Kissinger said. “It was not Hitler moving into
Czechoslovakia” – as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
others have suggested.
Kissinger noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had no
intention of instigating a crisis in Ukraine: “Putin spent tens of
billions of dollars on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The theme of the
Olympics was that Russia is a progressive state tied to the West through
its culture and, therefore, it presumably wants to be part of it. So it
doesn’t make any sense that a week after the close of the Olympics,
Putin would take Crimea and start a war over Ukraine.”
Instead Kissinger argued that the West – with its strategy of pulling
Ukraine into the orbit of the European Union – was responsible for the
crisis by failing to understand Russian sensitivity over Ukraine and
making the grave mistake of quickly pushing the confrontation beyond
dialogue.
But Kissinger also faulted Putin for his reaction to the crisis.
“This does not mean the Russian response was appropriate,” Kissinger
said.
Still, Kissinger told Der Spiegel that “a resumption of the Cold War
would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis
reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it. … We have
to remember that Russia is an important part of the international
system, and therefore useful in solving all sorts of other crises, for
example in the agreement on nuclear proliferation with Iran or over
Syria. This has to have preference over a tactical escalation in a
specific case.”
When Henry Kissinger starts to sound like the voice of reason, it
says a lot about how crazy the New York Times and the rest of the MSM
have become.
[This story was updated on Nov. 14 with a link to Der Spiegel's interview and its official English-language transcript.]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy
his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the
Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
Source: Consortiumnews
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