Saturday, April 19, 2014

Paper Kindling for War Propaganda: Using Jews to Ignite Ukraine

Paper Kindling for War Propaganda: Using Jews to Ignite Ukraine

by C. L. Cook - Pacific Free Press

The newspaper clipping pinned to my wall bears the date: Friday, May 19, 2006. It's yellowed headline, in 20 point caps says: 'IRAN EYES BADGES FOR JEWS.' Though the version on my wall emanated from Canada's National Post newspaper, variations of the copy appeared across the country the same day, and indeed featured on Israel-friendly covers around the world.

Beneath the headline is a large, black and white photograph of a man and woman standing shoulder to shoulder in winter dress and looking directly into the camera. Behind them a snow-blown and deserted city street. The streetscape is generic; it could be any city in America, Europe, or almost anywhere, but the pale piece of cloth in the shape of the Star of David sewn over the heart on each of the pair's overcoats stamps indelibly the time.   

The hatted man's expression is not blank, or impassive so much as fixedly determined to remain inscrutable. His moustache is trimmed, his scarf and coat expensive, but worn. The woman's hair is tied in a scarf, her coat second-hand and looking more like a man's, perhaps once belonging to the man she stands beside now.

Her hands are in her pockets, her shoulders slightly stooped as if by the cold, her head tilting a little to the right, towards her partner in the picture. Her eyes betray a lively intelligence, her subtle, crooked smile a mischievous humour. Below the couple, the caption reads:

"A Jewish couple wear stars in the Budapest ghetto, 1944. The Nazis required the stars be worn to distinguish Jews from non-Semites. Now, the government of Iran is formulating a law to require non-Muslims to wear distinctive colours: yellow for Jews, red for Christians."

The article and its evocative accompanying photo were printed at the height of a concerted media campaign to expand America's wars in western Asia to Iran. The drum beat for that expansive carnage hasn't faltered so much as modulated in pitch ever since. That the article's main contention was false, proven a fabrication cut, as they say, from whole cloth, mattered little when revealed a couple days after the sensational "news" spread across media platforms around the globe. The news cycle just moved along.

February 17, 2014 dateline: Donetsk, Ukraine. A sonorous U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry appears before the cameras of the world in a Geneva press conference alongside his British counterpart, Baroness Catherine Ashton to denounce reports Jews living in Donetsk, a restive area of Eastern Ukraine resisting the Kiev-based coup regime, were delivered leaflets demanding they register with separatist officials, or face fines and/or property forfeiture.

This "news" too spread across the world in a blink, coming as it did during the Jewish high holiday of Passover. Thanks to the imprimatur of Secretary Kerry, the report shared prominent air space with other news of developments in Ukraine, helping propel NATO's bellicose language and demands Russia surrender its former territory to the western-backed coup.

Less covered by the international media were later revelations the "official" leaflet was at best a hoax, and perhaps part of a much darker program involving the real life neo-Nazi actors employed by America's National Endowment for Democracy to bring down the government of Ukraine's erstwhile, and democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Here's a photo of the fraudulent leaflet, replete with the London Daily Mail's "sinister" caption.

Sinister: A leaflet distributed in Donetsk, Ukraine calling for all Jews over 16 years old to 'register'. The leaflet also demanded the city's Jews supply a detailed list of all the property they own, or else have their citizenship revoked - DailyMail.co.uk
 
Asia Times correspondent, Pepe Escobar summarizes John Kerry's and the media occlusion of the facts well in his article, 'On Nazis, Jews and Ukraine 'De-escalation,' saying;

"The State Department, for all its sleek machinery, would not even bother to verify that real anti-Semitic posturing had in fact been coming out of regime changer neo-Nazi outfits of the Right Sector kind, coupled with the warning by Rabbi Reuven Azman of Kiev for Jews to leave Ukraine."

Escobar typifies official Washington's acceptance of the demonstrably false, and ludicrously transparent, claims as;

"A not-so-subtle push to imprint in misinformed layers of public opinion the toxic tie-up between Russophobia and anti-Semitism."

Utilizing previous misinformation exercises, Canada's Prime Minister traveled to Ukraine to stand next to the Kiev coup's "Prime Minister," Arseniy Yatsenyuk to condemn Russia's leadership, and promise further sanctions against some of President Putin's friends doing business in the West.

Harper chided Putin, saying;
   
"When a major power acts in a way that is so clearly aggressive, militaristic, and imperialistic, this represents a significant threat to the peace and stability of the world, and it's time we all recognized the depth and the seriousness of that threat."

In the wake of the phony leaflet campaign, and perhaps convinced Canadian public opinion had been sufficiently massaged to allow another armed adventure abroad, Harper pledged military support to bolster the growing NATO force amassing along Ukraine's borders. After accusing Vladimir Putin of "returning international relations to the law of the jungle," Harper smiled for the cameras and shook the hand of the man put into power by neo-Nazi thugs and murderers.

Regarding international lawlessness, the widely respected American scholar, specializing in Russian studies, Stephen Cohen observes of the Western position during the run-up to the current "crisis;"

“One last point, also something that nobody in this country wants to talk about: The Western authorities, who bear some responsibility for what’s happened, and who therefore also have blood on their hands, are taking no responsibility. They’re uttering utterly banal statements, which, because of their vacuous nature, are encouraging and rationalizing the people in Ukraine who are throwing Molotov cocktails, now have weapons, are shooting at police. We wouldn’t permit that in any Western capital, no matter how righteous the cause, but it’s being condoned by the European Union and Washington as events unfold.” 

Those events unfolded further in the killings by sniper fire of at least 20 protesters and police in Kiev's Maidan, or 'Independence Square.' Initially blamed on the Yanukovych government, responsibility for those killings is now being lain at the feet of Stephen Harper's friend and fellow Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

On April 10, 2014, Germany's TV ARD aired the results of their investigation into the sniper attacks of February 20th, focusing on the involvement of both the "new government of Ukraine" and foreign mercenaries. It was information that had already been hinted at by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia Urmas Paet to High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union, Baroness Ashton on February 26, 2014. The irony of all this seems entirely lost on John Kerry, Stephen Harper, Catherine Ashton, and their acolytes in the Western press.

At this date, it appears, the only hope left for averting another disastrous war and conflagration is the good sense of NATO principals, something entirely absent these recent years, and a polity not swayed by the bald-faced claims made by bellicose leaders, dutifully repeated and passed off as honest reportage by a fatally flawed media.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Donetsk resisting the coup government are being portrayed in that media as "pro-Russia militants," determined to undermine their "legitimate" rulers in Kiev.

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