Stephen Lendman

He's no diplomat. He's a world class thug. He mocks legitimacy. He disgraces the office he holds. He represents the worst of America's dark side. He's a serial liar. He's been caught red-handed lying numerous times before. He's at it again.

Big Lies infested his Monday Wall Street Journal interview. Truth was nowhere in sight. More on what he said below.

On April 28, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the following:

"Today, in response to Russia's continued actions in southern and eastern Ukraine, the United States is implementing additional restrictive measures on defense exports to Russia." "Accordingly, the Department of State is expanding its export restrictions on technologies and services regulated under the US Munitions List (USML)." "Effective immediately, the Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) will deny pending applications for export or re-export of any high technology defense articles or services regulated under the US." "Munitions List to Russia or occupied Crimea that contribute to Russia's military capabilities. In addition, the Department is taking actions to revoke any existing export licenses which meet these conditions." "All other pending applications and existing licenses will receive a case-by-case evaluation to determine their contribution to Russia’s military capabilities." "The United States will continue to adjust its export licensing policies toward Russia, as warranted by Russia’s actions in Ukraine." "We urge Russia to honor the commitments it made in Geneva on April 17 to deescalate the situation in Ukraine."

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Ron Paul

US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (R) takes her seat
prior to meeting with Ukrainian politicians (L-R), Oleh Tyahnybok,
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Vitali Klitschko in Kiev on Dec. 10, 2013.

It was almost ten years ago when, before the House International Relations Committee, I objected to the US Government funding NGOs to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. At the time the “Orange Revolution” had forced a regime change in Ukraine with the help of millions of dollars from Washington. At that time I told the Committee:

We do not know exactly how many millions – or tens of millions – of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both American and Ukrainian – millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate…

I was worried about millions of dollars that the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various related organizations spent to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs. But it turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg. Last December, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a speech in which she admitted that since 1991 the US government has:

[I]nvested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine…in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government.

This is the same State Department official who was caught on tape just recently planning in detail the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. That five billion dollars appears to have bought a revolution in Ukraine.

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Michael Scheuer

Once again Americans are watching their government involve itself in an issue in which the United States has nothing at stake economically and no genuine national security interest at risk. Ukraine is a place that is worth neither a single American dollar nor more than a brief scan of the headlines by US citizens. And yet Obama and his fellow European interveners and democracy mongers are conducting themselves in a bellicose manner that could lead to some kind of military conflict in eastern Europe. Indeed, they already are conducting warfare against Russia via economic sanctions, a punitive exercise they promise to make more severe in the next few weeks.

And for what? When all is said and done Obama and Team Democracy appear to prefer a war to publicly admitting that it was their democracy crusading last winter in Kiev that brought on this worrying and sharpening confrontation. Into an increasingly bitter political battle between the Kiev regime and its domestic opponents, the EU as an organization and individual European governments sent a steady flow of diplomats, officials, and money to help the Ukrainian opposition prevail over the Kiev regime. This foreign intervention in a purely internal domestic dispute was clearly designed to overthrow the legitimate Ukrainian government. It is the kind of imperialist exercise that the UN was created to condemn and stop, but that organization’s recent history shows that it now exists solely to support unjustified -- and usually unjustifiable -- US and Western political and military interventions.

We will never know how the internal Ukrainian dispute would have worked itself out if the Ukrainians had been allowed an exercise in self-determination, but what we do know is that the EU’s arrogant intervention in the country’s internal affairs tipped the scales in the opposition’s favor and led to the Kiev regime’s collapse. And we know that Obama, Kerry, and Biden steered clear of the problem until they saw that the EU’s intervention might succeed. Faced with that reality, these US leaders put their best interventionist foot forward and joined the Europeans to wreck both Ukraine and European stability in the name of a democracy that will never see the light of day in Kiev. Washington, NATO, and Brussels are now well on their way to creating in Ukraine the same kind of democratic paradise they previously delivered in Egypt, Libya, and South Sudan.

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Olga Shedrova

The «anti-terrorist operation» announced by the Kiev-based regime to quell the protests in the south-eastern parts of Ukraine is unpopular in the army.

The local police units in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov and other south-eastern cities refused to take action after the administrative buildings were captured by Donbass protesters. In response acting Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov ordered to start the formation of new police units across the whole country. They should be trained for punitive actions. Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, a citizen of Israel appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk region by the Kiev interim regime, promised cash rewards for the capture of protesters.

The army is also involved into the operations in Donbass. Reservists began to dodge their duty and even switch sides from the very beginning. For instance, on April 11 the soldiers of Alfa security service special operations unit refused to assault administrative buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk captured by local people. One of commanding officers said, «We’ll act in strict accordance with the law. Our unit is created for the mission of liberating hostages and fight against terrorism». On April 24, the unit did not join combat as another attempt to re-capture the building was undertaken.

On April 14 the soldiers of the 25th airborne brigade deployed near Slavyansk switched sides to join the people’s militia. There was an internal revolt in the 93th mechanized brigade based in Cherkassy, the Dnepropetrovsk region.

Reservists called for 10-days active duty account for the major part of army personnel used for the mission of putting the protests down. The mobilization plans have failed, so the age limit for people to be called for active duty has been increased to 55 years. The employees are to hold reservists’ jobs for two weeks, but they are kept on active duty for over a month. Many of them lose employment and have no means to care about their families.

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Robert Parry

Any propaganda war starts by planting stories that your target is getting rich, whether he is or isn’t, the latest move in demonizing Vladimir Putin. But the larger question is what might happen if the neocons succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia.

Now that the demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in full swing, one has to wonder when the neocons will unveil their plan for “regime change” in Moscow, despite the risks that overthrowing Putin and turning Russia into a super-sized version of Ukraine might entail for the survival of the planet.

There is a “little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly” quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme.

If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with “regime change” – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your “regime change” in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program.

So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

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Alex Lantier

As the Obama administration and its allies in Europe escalate their threats against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, the American media plays its assigned role as propaganda mouthpiece.

Not a single critical voice can be found within the so-called mainstream media. The newspapers and television news programs are filled with lies, anti-Russian propaganda, and—preparing for the possibility that the crisis escalates out of control—apologetics for war.

The New York Times, the “newspaper of record,” sets the general tone for the media as a whole. The Times boasts of having 12 reporters in Ukraine, yet it provides no serious reporting on what is happening. This is all the more significant given the extraordinary implications of a major conflict between the United States and Russia that could quickly evolve into the first war between nuclear powers in world history.

Over the past two weeks, the Times has been caught in a series of fabrications. Last week, it ran a front-page lead story replete with photographs handed to it by the State Department and the US-backed Ukrainian government purporting to show that Russian Special Forces are directing the protests in eastern Ukraine.

The Times report was quickly exposed as a fraud, including by the WSWS. It took only a quick search on the Internet to expose the so-called evidence as either doctored or fabricated. Subsequent acknowledgements of the “controversy” over the photographs—exercises in damage control and cover-up—have been buried on the newspaper’s inside pages.

Far from being chastened by these exposures, the Times rapidly moved on to its next assignment from the State Department — a front-page article published yesterday alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a secret fortune of between $40 billion and $70 billion. The Times acknowledged in its own article that the allegations consist of “rumors and speculation” with “little if any hard evidence.” That did not prevent it from seeking to legitimize the gossip by elevating it to the status of a prominent “news” item.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a world class diplomat. John Kerry is polar opposite. He represents the worst of America's dark side. He's vying for Washington's worst ever Secretary of State top dishonor. He's what Paul Craig Roberts calls a "two-bit punk." He's a war criminal multiple times over. Demagoguery punctuates his comments. It exceeds the worst of Cold War rhetoric. He's been caught red-handed numerous times in bald-faced lies. He disdains rule of law principles. He supports war. He deplores peace. He's indifferent to human suffering. He's a monument to wrong over right. He disgraces his country, position and humanity. He belongs in prison, not high office. On April 24, he bashed Russia irresponsibly. He did so recklessly. He did maliciously. Big Lies infested his rhetoric. He turned truth on its head.

Four parties in Geneva "agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions," he said:

"We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms…We agreed to implement" objectives discussed. "From day one," he added, "the government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments - from day one." "From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings." "He suspended Ukraine's counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people."

Fact: Kiev putschists have no legitimacy whatever. They have no legal authority. They represent mob rule. Fact: "From day one," they violated agreed on Geneva terms. They did so straightaway. They deployed military forces and Right Sector thugs to Eastern Ukraine. They attacked nonviolent civilians. They committed cold-blooded murder. Fact: Yatsenyuk lied. He escalated conflict. Kiev buildings remain occupied illegally.

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Alex Lantier

On Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a lying brief for war aimed at justifying the crackdown by the Western-backed Kiev regime on pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine and possible military action against Russia. Declaring confrontation with Russia to be all but inevitable, he turned reality on its head, blaming the crisis entirely on Russia and clearing Kiev of all responsibility.

“The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid confrontation,” Kerry declared. Citing the April 17 truce talks in Geneva that halted the Kiev regime’s first attempted crackdown, he said: “One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real: the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation.”

He continued: “The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization.”

Let us, indeed, get real. These arguments have not a shred of credibility, and neither does Mr. Kerry.

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Stephen Lendman

It could happen any time. Kiev putschists said "second stage" operations were launched. Strategy calls for "completely isolat(ing)" Slavyansk. It's a freedom fighting stronghold. Self-defense forces prepared. Coop-appointed presidential administration head Sergey Pashinsky said:

"The aim is to…localize the problem." Operations remain ongoing. Pashinsky lied saying "terrorists have placed their key strong points in kindergartens and hospitals."

He called what doesn't exist "classic terrorism." Freedom fighters denounced him. They called his accusations "ridiculous."

Journalist Graham Phillips said area troops built up. Snipers in forests are positioned. Slavyansk was encircled. Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) first deputy head General Vasily Krutov lied saying:

"We will not go the length of (civilian) casualties to storm the city. We understand that this may lead to many people coming to harm."

Freedom fighters brace for the worst. Fascists give no quarter. Armored vehicles positioned around Slavyansk. Troops with no insignia were spotted. Onslaught could follow any time. So could massacring city residents.

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Wayne Madsen

I Was There. Just Ask The New York Times. (Got A Beard Now...)

A major Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy operation is currently playing out in Eastern Ukraine where, in an age of Photoshop and mail order credentials and military patches, photographs of the same bearded Russian "special forces" commando in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in Ukraine this year and Georgia in 2008 are being successfully parlayed to the corporate media and by the Ukrainian ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) headquarters in Vienna. The conspiracy operation follows closely on the heels of CIA director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev where he provided intelligence advice to the unelected junta now governing the country…

The idea that an active duty Russian Special Forces soldier would have a long beard is laughable. No one in the Western corporate media has mentioned that long beards for any actual special forces commando is a strict taboo because any long hair can be detrimental in close hand-to-hand combat. Long hair of any type is not permitted for special forces unless a disguise is required for special missions, such as the beards grown by U.S. special forces personnel who entered Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to make common cause with various anti-Taliban guerrilla forces. The U.S. Special Forces personnel were permitted to wear beards and grow their hair long because to have appeared in the tribal areas without such hair would have made them stand out as foreigners. Generally, however, the potential vulnerabilities inherent with any length of hair that can be pulled by an opponent, including facial hair, is why the Navy SEALS, Green Berets, and the Russian ALFA Group have strict standards barring any long hair among their active duty military personnel except in unusual circumstances like Afghanistan. In 2010, U.S. Special Forces units in Afghanistan were ordered to shave off their beards and conform to military regulation haircuts.

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Alex Lantier

Pro-Russian demonstrators barricaded a checkpoint near one of
the entrances to the city of Slovyansk, Ukraine, on Sunday.

The Western-backed regime in Kiev and fascist militias allied to it launched a bloody crackdown against pro-Russian protests across eastern Ukraine yesterday. With the Kremlin massing forces on Russia’s border with Ukraine, threatening to intervene defend ethnic Russians, the situation is on the brink of a war between Russia and Ukraine, which could escalate into a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Deadly fighting broke out in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk, held by pro-Russian protesters. Ukrainian armored personnel carriers reportedly assaulted several checkpoints set up by pro-Russian forces, though protesters continued to hold the city. Five protesters were reported killed amid contradictory reports. Several Ukrainian armored vehicles were reportedly set afire in the fighting, and protesters rebuilt the checkpoints later in the day.

Thirty thugs armed with baseball bats from the fascist Right Sector militia, which led the February 22 putsch that installed the current regime in Kiev, stormed buildings held by protesters in the nearby port city of Mariupol.

Responsibility for this bloodshed lies above all with the United States and its European allies, who have pressed Kiev to launch these assaults in a policy calculated to provoke Moscow. A first attempt to organize a crackdown a week ago with Ukrainian regular troops came after CIA director John Brennan’s visit to Kiev. It quickly ground down, however, amid popular opposition and refusals by Ukraine troops to fire on the population.

This bloody crackdown underscores the filthy hypocrisy of the Western intervention in Ukraine. During the February putsch, Western governments and media denounced the pro-Russian regime’s attempts to crack down on the fascist groups leading the protests and denounced moves to mobilize the army. Now, after a visit to Kiev by US Vice President Joe Biden, the unelected, far-right puppet regime in Kiev is unleashing a new military crackdown with Western support. Aware of the lack of support more broadly in the army, it is relying directly on the fascists.

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Daniel Larison

Globalist warmongering degenerate Anne-Marie Slaughter
makes her rounds at the Fortune 500-funded Chatham House.
She is the author of the book "A New World Order" and be-
lieves foreign policy should be shifted into the unelected, un-
accountable hands of corporations, foundations, and NGOs.

Anne-Marie Slaughter reminds us why we’re glad that she doesn’t work in government anymore:

The solution to the crisis in Ukraine lies in part in Syria. It is time for US President Barack Obama to demonstrate that he can order the offensive use of force in circumstances other than secret drone attacks or covert operations. The result will change the strategic calculus not only in Damascus, but also in Moscow, not to mention Beijing and Tokyo.

It makes absolutely no sense to argue that bombing a Russian client in one place will change Russian behavior in another place for the better. Nothing would be more useful for Moscow as a matter of propaganda than to have the U.S. illegally attacking another country. The diversion of resources and attention required to start a war with Syria would make U.S. and allied warnings over Ukraine even less meaningful than they already are. Attacking Syria would distract the U.S. from the Ukraine crisis while wrecking whatever semblance of Western allied unity there is. It would potentially be political suicide for any European governments that went along with it, and it would needlessly open up a rift in NATO at the worst possible moment. Fortunately, it isn’t likely that the administration would be foolish enough to follow this advice, but if they did it would provoke a major backlash here at home. More to the point, while it would drag the U.S. directly into the war in Syria, it would have no beneficial effect on the Ukraine crisis, and would more likely cause Russian hostility to the U.S., our allies, and would-be clients in the region to spike even higher. I suppose it might influence how other governments see the U.S., but not at all in the way that Slaughter imagines. Treaty allies elsewhere in the world would be annoyed that the U.S. is wasting its resources on another unnecessary war in the Near East, and other major powers may conclude that our leaders are reckless and foolish.

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Nikolai Bobkin

Part 1: Washington’s Foreign Policy Tools or Biden Visits Kiev || Vice-President John Biden came to Kiev to see with his own eyes how the events unfold in the country. The second part of the article will be devoted to the results of the visit. Here it’s important to state the fact that Ukraine serves as an irritant for Moscow which may turn into its enemy and that’s the only thing Washington needs Ukraine for. The situation in the country has deteriorated to the point of bringing it to the brink of civil war, but Washington does not care. The main thing is to keep the puppet regime in power. Biden is an author of «color revolutions» policy and the person responsible for staging unrest in other countries, for him Ukraine is just another testing ground no different from North Africa…

Americans are not fantasy prone people, they always have a pattern to follow and they gauge all other nations with their own «democratic criterion» ignoring racial and religious specific features. The same thing is repeated in Kiev. The White House says that Biden will meet leaders of civil society to discuss their role in strengthening democratic institutions.

It’s not an occasion that NGOs are in the focus of his attention, billions of dollars are spent to keep them afloat and they are expected to produce the pre-programmed results. The Ukraine’s government has been using every occasion to stress its independence while it is quite docile and submissive towards all kinds of NGOs and foreign special agencies operatives acting on the Ukraine’s territory. No matter US NGOs always emphasize how open, democratic and transparent they are, in reality they act as close clubs with the criteria for personnel enlistment normally practiced by the CIA when it chooses the agents for the mission of strengthening American influence.

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Ray McGovern

President Vladimir Putin of Russia welcomes President
Barack Obama to the G20 Summit at Konstantinovsky
Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 5, 2013.

Exclusive: The trust between President Obama and President Putin helped avert a U.S. war on Syria and got Iran to agree to limit its nuclear program, but the neocon-driven crisis in Ukraine has dashed hopes of building on that success for a more peaceful world.

The unnecessary and regrettable conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine brings to mind sad remembrances of important junctures at which I watched – as a citizen and a CIA analyst – chances for genuine peace with Russia frittered away.

How vividly I recall John Kennedy’s inaugural address when he bid us to ask not what our country could do for us, but rather what we could do for our country. Then and there I decided to put in the service of our government whatever expertise I could offer from my degrees in Russian. So I ended up in Washington more than a half-century ago.

The missed chances for peace did not wait. On April 17, 1961, a ragtag CIA-trained-and-funded paramilitary group of some 1,500 men went ashore on Cuba’s Bay of Pigs and were defeated in three days by Cuban forces led by Fidel Castro. CIA Director Allen Dulles and the senior military had intended to mousetrap young President Kennedy into committing U.S. military forces to a full-scale invasion, in order to bring what we now blithely call “regime change” to Cuba.

The planned mousetrap, shown for example in Dulles’s own handwriting on paper found in his study after his death, didn’t work. Kennedy had warned Dulles emphatically that he would not send U.S. armed forces into the fray. He stuck to that decision, and thereby created a rancid hatred on the part of Dulles, whom Kennedy fired, and from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Kennedy should also have fired. The top generals, whom Deputy Secretary of State George Ball described as a “sewer of deceit,” had been in on the cabal.

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John W. Whitehead

Cliven Bundy, right, and Clance Cox, left, stand at the Bundy
ranch near Bunkerville Nev. Saturday, April 5, 2014. The U.S.
Bureau of Land Management started stealing Bundy's cattle on
Saturday. BLM says it had been trespassing on U.S. land...

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy

Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government.

Few conflicts are ever black and white, and the Bundy situation, with its abundance of gray areas, is no exception. Yet the question is not whether Cliven Bundy and his supporters are domestic terrorists, as Harry Reid claims, or patriots, or something in between. Nor is it a question of whether the Nevada rancher is illegally grazing his cattle on federal land or whether that land should rightfully belong to the government. Nor is it even a question of who’s winning the showdown— the government with its arsenal of SWAT teams, firepower and assault vehicles, or Bundy’s militia supporters with their assortment of weapons—because if such altercations end in bloodshed, everyone loses.

What we’re really faced with, and what we’ll see more of before long, is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.” And it won’t matter what the issue is—whether it’s a rancher standing his ground over grazing rights, a minister jailed for holding a Bible study in his own home, or a community outraged over police shootings of unarmed citizens—these are the building blocks of a political powder keg. Now all that remains is a spark, and it need not be a very big one, to set the whole powder keg aflame.

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Thierry Meyssan

Barack Obama speaks well. In fact, President Obama
does not write his own texts but spends his days reading
speeches written on prompters for him. Meanwhile,
others govern in his place. (Caption: VoltaireNet.org)

The Anglo-Saxon Empire is based on a century of propaganda. It managed to convince us that the United States is "the land of the free" and that it engaged in wars to defend its ideals. But the current crisis over Ukraine has changed the rules of the game. Now Washington and its allies are not the only speakers. Their lies are openly challenged by the government and media of another major state, Russia. In the era of satellites and the Internet, Anglo-Saxon propaganda no longer works.

Rulers have always tried to convince their subjects of the correctness of their actions, because crowds never follow men they know to be bad. The twentieth century has seen new ways of spreading ideas unburdened by the truth. Westerners trace modern propaganda to Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels. It is a way to forget that the art of distorting the perception of things was previously developed by Anglo-Saxons.

In 1916, the United Kingdom created Wellington House in London, followed by Crewe House. Simultaneously, the United States created the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Considering the First World War was between masses and no longer between armies, these organizations tried to intoxicate their own people as well as those of their allies and those of their enemies with propaganda.

Modern propaganda started with the publication in London of the Bryce Report on German war crimes, which was translated into thirty languages. According to this document, the German army had raped thousands of women in Belgium. The British Army was thus fighting against barbarism. At the end of the First World War it was discovered that the entire report was a hoax, made up of ​​false testimony with the help of journalists.

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Delinda C. Hanley

Eileen Fleming has written countless articles and letters describing whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu’s plight, as well as a book, Imagine Vanunu’s Wait for Liberty, available from the AET Bookstore (middleeastbooks.com). Inspired by Dorothy Day, the devout Catholic social justice activist and journalist, and in response to Fleming’s June 2005 trip to Israel/Palestine—the first of eight—Fleming founded WeAreWideAwake.org.

Mordechai Vanunu. In the back, a satellite image
of the Dimona plutonium production centre.

Fleming has written powerful letters about Vanunu to Pope Francis, Archbishop Carlos Maria Vigano, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama, Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report,” and “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart, to name just a few. Many of Flemings letters note that in 1986 Vanunu told London’s Sunday Times everything he knew from his work as a technician in Israel’s secret Dimona nuclear weapons facility. His revelations were published just as Israeli Mossad agents kidnapped Vanunu in Rome. A few weeks earlier Vanunu, a former Orthodox Jew turned atheist, was baptized at a social justice Anglican church in Sydney, Australia.

Vanunu, who spent 18 years behind bars in Israel, many of them in solitary confinement, told Fleming, “In prison, I really began to feel like Jesus and Paul. When Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, it was like me in Dimona, exposing the Israelis’ dirty secrets. I felt like Paul, being thrown in prison for speaking the truth.”

Flemings letters explain that while Vanunu was released from prison on April 21, 2004, he has spent the past decade far from free, living under 24/7 surveillance, and has been prevented from leaving Israel. “It was not ever easy,” Vanunu told Fleming, adding that he finds it especially astounding because “in Israel, a life sentence [for Jewish Israelis] is 25 years. Even murderers go free after 17.”

But Vanunu has had the Palestinian treatment: “They imposed the same restrictions on me that Palestinians receive: no human rights at all; no phone; no visitors, except family, and only through an iron grill; no vacation; no holidays; and no gifts. Even murderers get out for vacations! I was locked up for 18 years and still cannot go on vacation; I cannot leave, and that is all I am asking for—just to leave here.

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Alex Lantier

The New York Times has run a relentless campaign of lies and distortions backing US policy in Ukraine. This has included portraying the opposition in eastern Ukraine to the pro-Western regime in Kiev as proof of an aggressive Russian intervention threatening Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the world.

The newspaper’s article Monday, “Photos Link Masked Men in Eastern Ukraine to Russia,” purports to provide definitive proof that Russian spies are active in eastern Ukraine and manipulating events there.

The article begins: “For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as ‘green men’ have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town, igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces.

“Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and intelligence forces—equipped in the same fashion as Russian special operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February.”

There may or may not be Russian agents in Ukraine, a question the World Socialist Web Site is not in a position to answer. However, even if the Times article proved its charge that Russian spies are active in Ukraine—which, as we will see, it does not—the reader would have a right to ask: So what?

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Robert Parry

The NYT is at it again with a lead story citing grainy photos from the post-putsch regime in Kiev as proving that Russian special forces are behind the popular uprisings in eastern Ukraine, another slanted story coauthored by M. Gordon.

There is now a pattern to New York Times “investigative” stories that seek to pin the blame on some nefarious foreign enemy, as in the 2002 article on Iraq buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges; the 2013 “vector analysis” tracing sarin-laden rockets to a Syrian military base; and now a photographic analysis proving that Russian soldiers are behind unrest in eastern Ukraine.

All these stories draw hard conclusions from very murky evidence while ignoring or brushing aside alternative explanations. They also pile up supportive acclamations for their conclusions from self-interested sources while treating any doubters as rubes. And, these three articles all involved reporter Michael R. Gordon.

The infamous aluminum tube story of Sept. 8, 2002, which Gordon co-wrote with Judith Miller, relied on U.S. intelligence sources and Iraqi defectors to frighten Americans with images of “mushroom clouds” if they didn’t support President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The timing played perfectly into the administration’s advertising “rollout” for the Iraq War.

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Alex Lantier

Amid the crackdown on pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine being carried out by his Western-backed regime, Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called for a military buildup against Russia in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program Sunday. He advocated measures, including US military aid to his government, that pose the risk of a direct clash between nuclear-armed powers.

This aggressive and provocative policy, centered on the standoff in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian protesters and the military and fascist paramilitary forces of the unelected regime in Kiev, is inflaming tensions throughout Europe. Late Saturday and early Sunday, pro-regime forces attacked armed pro-Russian protesters who had set up roadblocks outside Slavyansk, killing at least one protester. A number of pro-regime fascists were also killed or wounded.

One of the pro-regime fighters killed in Slavyansk carried a badge of the fascist Right Sector militia, which led the February putsch that installed the current regime in Kiev. “The personal belongings of a militant killed in the skirmish included a Right Sector badge number 20,” said Vyachaslav Ponomarev, the leader of Slavyansk’s pro-Russian forces. “Badge number one is held by [Right Sector leader Dmytro] Yarosh.”

A week ago, Yarosh called for the “total mobilization” of the Right Sector fascists to crush opposition to the Kiev regime. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “enraged” by the attack in Slavyansk. “It is surprising,” it wrote, “that the tragedy occurred after the signing on April 17 in Geneva of the final statement of the four-sided meeting of representatives of Russia, the USA, EU and Ukraine, which calls for refraining from any violent actions, intimidation, or provocations. The Russian side insists on the strict fulfillment by the Ukrainian side of its commitments concerning the de-escalation of the situation in southeast Ukraine.”

In fact—as the blank check given by the US-puppet regime in Kiev to the Right Sector makes clear—Kiev and its Western backers are ignoring the Geneva statement. Instead, they are pressing ahead with a reckless policy of militarily encircling Russia.

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