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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