Robert Parry: The State Department's Ukraine Fiasco

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. I'm in total disbelief that Parry was once considered a respectable investigative journalist.

Because his narrative of events is so easy to debunk that I simply cannot take him seriously.

First in his continued characterization of the events in February 2014 as a "coup" or a "putsch". The man clearly hasn't seen the inside of a dictionary since his glory days in the 1980s. All he does in this piece--as in past pieces--is repeat the same allegations over in over again, the first clear rule of propaganda. Ergo:

1. Nuland hands out cookies
2. $5 billion
3. John McCain visits Ukraine
4. Nuland's telephone call
5. ???????????
6. Coup!

Of course, none of what he writes actually shows there was an actual coup in Ukraine, but it doesn't stop him from repeatedly calling it that over and over and over again.

Then, he insists there was no Russian military invasion of Crimea in the lead up to Russia's annexation of that territory, writing:

"Almost never does the U.S. press note that the Russian troops were already in Crimea under an arrangement with Ukraine allowing Russians to maintain their historic naval base at Sevastapol. The vote also clearly reflected the popular will of the Crimean people given their historic ties to Russia and the chaos in Ukraine."

Never mind that men on those bases were to be contained to a very small part of the Crimean peninsula, yet the armed green men--which Putin later admitted after the fact to be Russian military--were all over the entirety of Crimea, thus indeed constituting an invasion.

And the notion that supposed 96% was a fair and accurate reflection of public sentiment in Crimea is just as laughable a falsehood.

Oh, and he uses "neo-Nazi" 10 different times in the piece, all about a country where the two notorious far-right, ultranationalist and supposedly "neo-Nazi" political parties garnered a grand total of less than 2% in this weekend's presidential elections. Which--unlike the supposed vote reflecting the "popular will of the Crimean people--was actually monitored and closely scrutinized by outside observers.

I'd be very surprised if Robert Parry didn't have an Order of the Fatherland award on his mantle:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/05/vladimir-putin-pro-kremlin-journalists-medals-objective-crimea

"The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, secretly gave prestigious awards to pro-Kremlin journalists for their "objective coverage" of the events leading up to the March annexation of Crimea, it has emerged.

Putin awarded medals of the "Order of Service to the Fatherland" to 300 journalists including several editors, directors and television hosts known for their Kremlin-friendly coverage in an executive order signed on 22 April that was not made public. After the well respected newspaper Vedomosti first published details of the awards on Monday, presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the order had been signed but declined to provide details."

Hack. A serious hack. But to his credit, he plays to the tinfoil crowd quite well.