Related: The Washington Post Wants War With Russia
So does the Times:
"Soviet-style propaganda in media fueling crisis" by Celestine Bohlen | New York Times, March 11, 2014
NEW YORK — One of the fixtures of Cold War propaganda was a map flashed across television screens depicting menacing arrows moving toward the borders of an endangered homeland. The cutaway would be to newsreel footage of missiles being fired, marching soldiers, or scenes of devastation from past wars.
In the past week, as the crisis in Crimea deepened, similar images have been running on Russia’s state-run television. Even for the Kremlin’s master propagandists, it is a tenuous stretch — but that’s of no matter. The enemy has been identified: It is the West, allied with “fascist mercenaries” in Ukraine.
Now if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black!
Related: Vladimir Putin’s enemies aren’t all good guys
The JYT thinks they are!
The scale of Russia’s propaganda effort in the current crisis has been breathtaking, even by Soviet standards.
OMG! I'm left breathless by the hypocritical hubris from my propaganda pre$$!
Facts have been twisted, images doctored (Ukrainians shown as fleeing to Russia were actually crossing the border to Poland), and epithets (“neo-Nazis’’) hurled at the demonstrators in Kiev.
They are describing themselves, folks, after all the frauds, fakes, falsehoods, and false flags we have seen these many years!
Representatives of opposing media have reported being attacked during the conflict. As Russian forces have broken up pro-Ukrainian demonstrations in Crimea, some Ukrainian journalists have been beaten and Ukrainian television channels there have been replaced with Russian ones before next Sunday’s referendum about whether to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia belatedly acknowledged that the Ukrainian demonstrators had legitimate gripes against the corrupt and failed government that was driven from power in Kiev.
My government has done no such thing she it comes to ours.
If he were not the boss, though, such an open contradiction of the official line, made at a televised news conference, might have been censored.
We call it an omission or obfuscation.
Like so much about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the massive propaganda onslaught seems strangely anachronistic in a time when access to the Internet was supposed to undercut the influence of state-controlled media.
Isn't that the truth!? My ma$$ media has lost all credibility!
It is all the more puzzling since Russia boasts one of the world’s most active and creative blogospheres, not to mention a thriving community of independent hackers drawn from the same top math schools that feed the ranks of the modern-day successor to the KGB.
Did they go to MIT, too?
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Internet penetration in Russia is proportionately lower than in Europe: The same survey found that 38 percent of small towns had no Internet access. Still, Russia now ranks among the top six countries in the world for Internet use.
That explains all the hits coming from over there.
And yet the propaganda campaign seems to be working.
Not here, ha-ha-ha! My propaganda pre$$ pos must be jealous!
Russian public opinion has been whipped into a nationalist fervor over the fate of Crimea, which most Russians regard as rightfully theirs, even after its administrative transfer to Ukraine in 1954.
Sound familiar, 'murkn?
A poll taken on March 1 and 2 by the state-sponsored VCIOM agency showed that 71 percent of respondents believe that it is necessary to protect Russian-language speakers in Crimea more vigorously.
We gotta fight them over there so they don't come over here.
The primary vehicle for the government’s message is still the main television news, loyally watched in areas at the core of Putin’s electorate.
Same here in AmeriKa -- which is why I never watch it.
Nor is the government ignoring the Internet: Access to 13 Ukrainian websites was blocked this week on VKontakte, Russia’s popular social network. Russia’s top opposition blogger, Alexei A. Navalny, now under house arrest, has been ordered not to use the Internet for two months.
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So sayeth the paper of record that led the charge of lies about Iraq!
And you wonder why I am so sour on them?
Globe carries it forward:
"Ad attacks ‘radical’ backers of minimum-pay hike; In wage fight, echoes of the Cold War" by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, March 11, 2014
This flashback to the Cold War is among the signs that the minimum wage has become a wedge issue in an election year in which the control of Congress is at stake.
Isn't control of Congress at stake in any election year? A very telling comment.
Democrats have adopted a higher minimum wage as a populist appeal to lower- and middle- income families, who have watched the benefits of the recovery accrue to the wealthy, while many Republicans have attacked it as a jobs killer that would hurt small businesses.
I'm tired of election-year $hit-fooleys when it's right back to bu$ine$$ as usual after the vote.
The full-page New York Times ad, taken out by the nonprofit Employment Policies Institute in Washington, a murky pro-business group opposed to raising the minimum wage, had a distinctly 1950s flavor, employing excerpts from quotes that used derivatives of “Marx” four times, praised Soviet-style socialism, and questioned official accounts of the Sept. 11 attacks.
OMG!
They compared being for an increase in the minimum wage with being a conspiracy truthist?!!
Desperation on the cusp of madness!!
Written as an open e-mail to President Obama and The New York Times editorial board, it targeted a handful of the 600 economists supporting a higher minimum wage....
Economists supporting a minimum-wage increase also include six Nobel Prize winners, of which the ad made no mention. It is unclear who is funding the Employment Policies Institute; research director Michael Saltsman declined to name the businesses, foundations, and individuals who are major donors.
But Saltsman denied any “red-baiting.”
Started to get on my nerves so I stopped reading.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE: A minimum-wage attack ad
The hypocrisy from the war-promoting propaganda pre$$ is staggering sometimes.
Fortunately, Russia is not going for the bait:
"Russia ignores US proposal to end Ukraine standoff; Kremlin accused of employing delaying tactics" by Steven Erlanger | New York Times, March 11, 2014
KIEV — Russia said Monday it cannot accept the “fait accompli” of the new Western-backed government in Ukraine and was preparing diplomatic counterproposals to serve “the interests of all Ukrainians,” even as Russian forces strengthened their control over Crimea.
The Kremlin statement was issued less than a week before a contentious referendum on the future of that southern Ukrainian region. It was made public in a televised video showing Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov briefing President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Lavrov said proposals made by Secretary of State John Kerry “did not completely satisfy us” because they used “the situation created by the coup as a starting point.” He told Putin that Kerry had delayed a visit to Moscow and that Russia was working on its own proposals.
Related: John Kerry's Comedy Club Routine
The Russians have no sense of humor?
But in Washington, State Department officials said it was the Kremlin that had thwarted the prospects of a negotiated solution or even another meeting between Kerry and his Russian counterpart by refusing to engage on the US proposals, especially the idea that Russian officials meet with officials from the new Ukrainian government.
I consider who is pointing the finger.
When Kerry sent Lavrov a series of questions Saturday over the Kremlin’s stance, Russian officials never responded, the State Department said.
They were insulted!
“Secretary Kerry made clear to Foreign Minister Lavrov that he would welcome further discussions focused on how to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine if and when we see concrete evidence that Russia is prepared to engage on these proposals,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
After he went to so much trouble to escalate?
The Russian diplomatic moves seemed to Ukrainian officials to be delaying tactics, as Russian forces acted more assertively in Crimea.
It's the same thing we do, Amerikans. Think Iran, Syria peace conferences.
The Russian troops took over a military hospital in the regional capital, Simferopol, and a military base in Sevastopol.
They seized a small Ukrainian naval supply base at Chornomorskoye, on the western coast, where pro-Russian “self-defense units” and police patrolled the town, threatened journalists from The New York Times and a man they were interviewing, and confiscated the journalists’ notes.
A-HA! That's why we get the PIECE of NYT RUBBISH to begin this post! And notice how the pro-Russian self-defense units get the quotations -- as opposed to another batch!
The Russians also took a small base housing a Ukrainian motorized battalion in Bakhchisarai after firing in the air, said Alexei A. Mazepa, a spokesman for the Ukrainian ministry of defense in Crimea. No one was reported hurt.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that lawlessness rules in eastern Ukraine as a result of extreme rightists “with the full connivance” of the Kiev authorities.
The statement claimed that masked men had fired on and injured peaceful protesters last week in Karkiv. Ukraine has said that Russia is fabricating such charges as part of a propaganda campaign to destabilize the Kiev government and justify possible new military action in the east.
Looks like a U.S. move to me!
Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, will speak to the United Nations on Thursday, a day after he meets President Obama in the White House in what the administration intends to be a show of firm US support.
The United States and its allies have joined the Ukrainian government in declaring the Russian occupation of Crimea illegal and the referendum unconstitutional and nonbonding.
And yet they tolerate and accept Israel's decades-long infringement on Palestinians.
The Obama administration has stepped up its attempts to court China’s support for isolating Russia over the military intervention. Official comments from China have been neutral since the Ukraine crisis began, and Obama spoke to President Xi Jinping of China late Sunday in a bid to get Beijing off the fence, the Associated Press reported.
Then he and they are insane, and this project is close to collapse!
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsya, received his counterparts from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, who had come Monday to show support.
“We have to admit that our life now is almost like a war,” he said. “We have to cope with an aggression that we do not understand.”
Almost a big difference.
Just as the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
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I'm already feeling some nostalgia, and it is not for the Globe.
UPDATE:
"The dispute between Moscow and the West over Crimea is one of the most severe geopolitical crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s acting president called for the formation of a national guard and for the mobilization of reserves and volunteers into the country’s armed forces. At the same time, acting Ukrainian Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh admitted that Ukrainian armed forces and equipment were significantly outnumbered by the Russian army and exhorted wealthy Ukrainians to donate money to equip the nation’s army."
Aaaah!
The WaPo says all that Russian money, manpower, and military equipment don't mean squat!
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Ousted leader urges Ukraine troops to ignore orders; Obama to meet with interim prime minister" by Steven Lee Myers | New York Times, March 12, 2014
MOSCOW — As Russia tightened its grip on Crimea, Ukraine’s ousted president appealed Tuesday to the country’s military units to refuse to follow the orders of the new interim authorities, declaring that he remained commander in chief and would return to the country as soon as conditions permitted.
Appearing in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don for the first time since the scale of Russia’s intervention in Crimea became evident, Viktor Yanukovych denounced the West for rushing to recognize and to provide financial assistance to a government he said was a junta.
“You do not have any legal grounds to provide financial assistance to these bandits,” Yanukovych said, specifically questioning a $1 billion pledge from the United States to Ukraine. He cited a US law prohibiting aid to governments that take power in a coup.
I like the citing of our own laws, but my government ignores that when convenient.
Yanukovych’s claims to political legitimacy at home — though supported by few in Ukraine or even in Russia — did little to suggest that a negotiated political solution to the crisis in Ukraine would be found soon.
Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, who was elected interim prime minister of Ukraine after the Parliament stripped Yanukovych of his powers, is scheduled to meet President Obama in the White House on Wednesday, a hugely symbolic gesture of support that underscores how divisive an issue Ukraine’s fate has become between the United States and Russia.
Yatsenyuk told Parliament on Tuesday that Russia’s leaders had refused to speak to him by telephone for the past five days.
“I am ready to talk to the Russians,” he said, according to the Interfax news agency, “but the Russians probably have other problems.”
In Simferopol, the Crimean capital, the regional Parliament adopted a resolution declaring that Crimea would become an independent state if the results of a public referendum to be held on Sunday show a majority of voters want to join Russia.
The pro-Russian regional authorities in Crimea also appeared to sever other links to Ukraine’s capital, canceling incoming flights from Kiev, including one that was turned around after taking off on Tuesday morning. Flights to and from Turkey also were suspended, though Aeroflot flights to Moscow continued.
Notice how that Ukrainian hijacker disappeared as quick as the Malaysian jet?
The Ukrainian government in Kiev has said that the Crimean Parliament is acting illegally and should be disbanded, and the Crimean Constitution itself declares Crimea to be an integral part of Ukraine. Amendments to the Crimean Constitution require approval not only of the Crimean Parliament but also the national Ukrainian Parliament.
The resolution adopted in Simferopol on Tuesday made no reference to the Crimean Constitution but instead cited the United Nations Charter “and many other international instruments recognizing the right of peoples to self-determination.” It also cited a ruling by the International Court of Justice in July 2010 that supported Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.
You have to give the Russians credit; they are ultimate chess masters, using our own moves against us.
Diplomatic efforts between Russia and the United States appear stalled, even as the two sides continued to begin military exercises or maneuvers and to exchange threats of economic and diplomatic retaliation. A spokesman for Russia’s airborne troops announced a new training exercise of 3,500 paratroopers based in Ivanovo, northwest of Moscow, Interfax reported.
What's the U.S. doing?
Yanukovych has mostly remained in hiding since he fled Ukraine, and his public role in the conflict has been so marginalized that he began his remarks by dismissing rumors of his ill health and even death.
“I am alive,” he said, going on to dispute the legality of the actions the Parliament took after a European-brokered agreement on Feb. 21 collapsed. “And I have not been impeached, according to the Ukrainian Constitution.”
He appeared in the same conference room at a shopping mall in Rostov where he held a news conference on Feb. 28, the day before President Vladimir V. Putin requested and received authorization from the upper house of the Russian Parliament to use military force in Ukraine.
Since then, Russian forces, backing self-defense militias, have effectively seized control of Crimea.
Secretary of State John Kerry called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov on Tuesday, US and Russian officials reported. But the conversation did not appear to narrow the gap between their positions.
Kerry said during the call that he was still prepared to meet with Lavrov, including this week, but the goal needed to be how to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine, said Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman.
“We respect Russian interests, and we have said all along that we respect the fact that Russia has interests particularly in Crimea,” said Psaki, summarizing Kerry’s position. “But those interests in no way justify military intervention or the use of force.”
Only lies from U.S. government officials and mouthpiece ma$$ media can do that.
On Saturday, the State Department sent Lavrov a series of questions that were intended to probe whether the Kremlin was receptive to the US proposals for addressing the crisis. On Monday night, the Russians responded, Psaki said, but the answers did not signal a shift.
“They largely restate positions that we heard in Paris and Rome,” Psaki said, referring to Kerry’s meetings in Europe with Lavrov last week.
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Can't anyone find a way out of this?
"Inconvenient truths about Russia, US" by H.D.S. Greenway | March 12, 2014
Vladimir Putin is no Hitler, but that being said, it is inconvenient to admit that Putin is acting no differently than many US presidents have acted.
US presidents have, collectively, killed more than the Nazis by now.
The United States invaded the Dominican Republic and Grenada using the phony excuse of protecting American citizens.
Yeah, but when we do it, it is for altrui$tic rea$ons.
The latter was condemned by the UN General Assembly as a violation of international law. From Russia’s point of view, President Clinton’s taking Kosovo away from Serbia was a violation of international norms.
Another not-so-convenient truth that Obama’s critics forget is that there are limits to American power and always have been.
That's a concern!
Neither the United States nor the European Union can physically coerce Russia into leaving Crimea. Russia may no longer be a superpower, but it’s strong enough to preclude any illusions of a military option. This is 2014, not 1914.
But then again, it might be. Certainly more than this rank and fetid AmeriKan carcass of an empire that is lurching towards collapse.
The Bobbsey Twins of toughness, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, love to rail against Obama’s “feckless” foreign policy, but even those hyper-belligerent Republicans, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, couldn’t get Russia to disgorge Abkhazia and South Ossetia when it seized them from Georgia in 2008.
President Eisenhower was not able to save Budapest from Russian tanks in 1956. Lyndon Johnson was not able to save the Prague Spring when Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968. So all the get-tough talk rings false when you consider the reality that it’s only the less powerful countries that can be pushed around. You can go to war against Serbia, Iraq, or Afghanistan, but you can’t really contemplate using force against a nuclear power such as Russia.
Oh my, the words of truth buried deep in an opinion piece in my Glob.
Unhelpful suggestions abound. An op-ed in The Wall Street Journal suggests that the war planes the United States is sending to Poland be equipped to deliver nuclear weapons.
That is what is truly frightening about all this; unlike Gorbachev, the crop of US psychopaths we call leaders will loose their quiver of nukes before they let go of their world domination project.
This confrontation requires cool heads, not mindless escalation.
Insanity and the threat to all human life is now called mindless escalation. Whatever!
Critics say that under Obama, the United States is no longer willing to act as a world power, citing as evidence Obama’s decision not to bomb Syria. As former Republican Secretary of State James Baker said: The trouble with his party is that they never see a war they don’t like.
They both love war, what are ya' talking about?
Why is it that conservatives are so nostalgic for the Cold War?
Wow. The alleged corporate liberalism of the NYT and WaPo is in fact neo-conservatism.
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The inconvenient truth is that Russians are the majority in Crimea, and if Sunday’s referendum were by any chance to be free and fair, the majority would undoubtedly vote to rejoin Russia, where Crimea resided for centuries. It raises some questions when the West says Ukrainians must have the right to decide how they are governed, but not give the same rights to the autonomous region of Crimea....
I no longer have questions regarding U.S. hypocrisy.
If the West really wants to get Putin’s attention it should....
I'm sure he has all the answers.
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I was just thinking of the "founding" of Israel for a moment, and not in a nostalgic way.
