Whereas in 2003, Saddam Hussein was used as a fake foil for the threat from Al Qaeda which had really attacked the U.S., this time the southeast Ukrainians are being used as a fake foil for an alleged "threat" from "Vladimir Putin," who has not. (And they are innocent of any other "crime" than wanting to live in peace from neo-Nazis who want them dead.)
The best advice when considering the U.S. press is: Consider it to be propaganda, not basically different from the "news" media in other corrupt countries. This should be obvious to Americans after we invaded Iraq on false pretenses on 19 March 2003. Some people might believe Russia to be more corrupt than the U.S. (and it's rated around 110 of 148 countries, whereas the U.S. is rated around 35; Ukraine is rated around 140). However, when Russia's first Prime Minister (1991-1998), Boris Yeltsin, privatized Russian industry, he reached out to the U.S. for guidance on how to do that, and Lawrence Summers and Harvard's economics department got the assignment and basically taught Yeltsin's people what to do and even carried out much of it themselves; and its top economist, the Summers protege (just as Summers had been Martin Feldstein's protege when both of those men designed Ronald Reagan's economics policies) Andrei Shleifer and his friends siphoned off millions for themselves, while handing out billions to their chosen Russian insiders to become Russia's oligarchs. So, it's hard to say: perhaps the U.S. didn't teach corruption well to Russia, or perhaps the U.S. taught it too well there. But, since Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the entire former Soviet Union, maybe Harvard's economics department can learn from that even-more-advanced model. (Or is it simply a more blatant model? Maybe the U.S. isn't less corrupt, just more sophisticated about its corruption. One won't likely find the answer to such a question by reading major "news" media, nor papers from Harvard's economics department. It's not the kind of thing that America's -- or any -- aristocracy would want the public to understand. Perhaps Summers and Feldstein have taught about it here and here. They're on the member-list both years. And so is Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, the woman who had told Ukraine's junta-government to keep Ukraine together or else the loan-spigot from them would be terminated. She too was there at the meeting on 29 May through 1 June 2014, as well as at the 2013 meeting.)
And isn't this just the killer? How can anybody read that and not be disabused of The Big Lie? (And on those member-lists just linked-to, each of the two years, did you notice that both Henry Kravis and his wife also attended -- both years? As well as the former general, now head of the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Global Institute, David Petraeus, the invader of Iraq, which was another very profitable enterprise -- and he, too, attended both years? So, when Victoria Nuland said, just months before the coup that overthrew Ukraine's democratically elected President, that U.S. taxpayers had invested over $5 billion to bring about "democracy" to Ukraine, why didn't she mention for whom we had invested that money, which brought about this coup?)
Even if America's "news reporting" isn't much good as history, it's masterful as hypocrisy. For propaganda, America really is Number One. We even fooled Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. But unfortunately, the "we" there is America's aristocracy -- not us. The "us" just fight (and kill, and die) in their wars. Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand." In Italy and some other countries, it's more commonly known as "the Black Hand." However, at the level of the international aristocracy, it's just their hand, and it has always been a winning hand. They may fight against each other, but they are remarkably united against us. And, thus, naturally, they don't want us to know about it. Why would they? They and the people who pay them own practically everything. And, "At the Top, Everybody Knows Everybody."
Only fools believe the cover-story. And the few aristocrats need lots of fools -- and get them.
It's just the way things are, and have always been. The "invisible hand" has always been the hand of the aristocracy. Unfortunately, Gorbachev and Yeltsin hadn't figured that out. But, of course, lots of people haven't.
The great men who founded the United Sates of America feared this outcome for the country they were creating; it terrified and obsessed them, and they did all they could to prevent it from happening here. Unfortunately, even they were not able to figure out a way to avoid it.
So, here we are. But at least we can now knowingly make the choice of whether or not to remain as fools. At least that much is now within our power.
So, please pass this along: In the U.S. at least, it's samizdat literature. The only way it'll become known is if people pass it along. It's one thing that each of us can do to say, by action, not words -- to say, this way: no more. It's a choice that each reader of this can make, for himself or herself. This much, is freedom. Let's make the most of it.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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