Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under President Reagan, but in the decades since, he has transformed, because he has become disheartened by the constant lying from the U.S. news-media, especially after "Saddam's WMD" turned out to be fabrications.
Recently, his chief focus of concern has been the rampant lying in the American press about Ukraine. This is what he said on May 24th (and all of this is historically accurate, and it's important to know in order to be able to understand what's going on in Ukraine now):
"Areas of southern and eastern Ukraine are former Russian territories added to Ukraine by Soviet leaders. Lenin added Russian areas to Ukraine in early years of the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev added Crimea in 1954. The people in these Russian areas, alarmed by the destruction of Soviet war memorials commemorating the Red Army's liberation of Ukraine from Hitler, by the banning of Russian as an official language, and by physical assaults on Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, broke out in protests. Crimea voted its independence and requested reunification with Russia, and so have the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Washington, its EU puppets, and the Western media have denied that the votes in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are sincere and spontaneous. Instead, Washington alleges that the protests leading to the votes and the votes themselves were orchestrated by the Russian government with the use of bribes, threats, and coercion. Crimea was said to be a case of Russian invasion and annexation. These are blatant lies, and the foreign observers of the elections know it, but they have no voice in the Western media, which is a Ministry of Propaganda for Washington. Even the once proud BBC lies for Washington."
Nowadays, the most accurate news reporting about events in Ukraine comes actually from Russia. The following report includes some of the latest of that, along with background reporting that I have put together from other sources, including links to videos of the actual historical events.
Unlike what you read in The New York Times or the Washington Post, or hear about on NPR, PBS, Fox "News," MSNBC, NBC, CBS, or ABC -- or even read about in New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, or Foreign Policy -- this is the reality; and all that you would need to do in order to check it out for yourself is to click on the links, all of which are to sources that I have checked out and verified as being true and authentic; you won't find any of this to be false or fake:
The oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who on May 25th was elected by the people of northwestern Ukraine to become the new President of all Ukraine, is now overseeing his troops' bombing of apartment buildings and airports in southeastern Ukraine, where the people broke away from the central government after more than 200 of their compatriots were massacred in Odessa on May 2nd, during an operation that was masterminded by banking, gas, and media, magnate Ihor Kolomoysky. Residents in the southeast no longer feel safe being ruled by Ukraine's oligarchs, who recognize and support the central government in Kiev, in the west -- the very same government that's massacring and bombing the increasingly breakaway public in Ukraine's southeast.
The wealthiest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov, the oligarch who owns most industry in the southeast, and who employs 300,000 people there, is now threatening to fire anyone who supports the breakaway movement. Some of his employees have started quitting, especially after Donetsk was bombed on May 26th by planes flying in from the west. On May 25th, thousands of people massed at his mansion to protest Akhmetov's having joined with the fascists. On May 27th, several of Akhmetov's mines in Donetsk were closed by strikes. And "Poroshenko has promised to use full force until all separatists have been destroyed. He has now vowed to strengthen the military crackdown, making it faster and more efficient." He "says the military operation should last hours and not weeks." His expectation seems to be that his troops will slaughter enough people so as to terrorize the population into submission, quietude, and peace.
Also on May 27th, the U.S. White House stated: "President Obama called President-elect Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine today to congratulate him on his victory and offer the full support of the United States as he seeks to unify and move his country forward. The President stressed the importance of quickly implementing the reforms necessary for Ukraine to bring the country together and to develop a sustainable economy, attractive investment climate, and transparent and accountable government that is responsive to the concerns and aspirations of all Ukrainians. The United States will continue assisting Ukraine in these efforts. The two leaders agreed to continue their conversation during the President's upcoming trip to Europe."
For the basic background on these developments, see this and this.
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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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