Robert Parry

Exclusive: As Ukrainian soldiers from the coup regime in Kiev tighten the noose around anti-coup rebels in eastern Ukraine, the New York Times continues its cheerleading for the coup regime and its contempt for the rebels, raising grave questions about the Times’ credibility.

For Americans interested in foreign policy, the New York Times has become the last U.S. newspaper to continue devoting substantial resources to covering the world. But the Times increasingly betrays its responsibility to deliver anything approaching honest journalism on overseas crises especially when Official Washington has a strong stake in the outcome.

The Times’ failures in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War are, of course, well known, particularly the infamous “aluminum tube” story by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller. And, the Times has shown similar bias on the Syrian conflict, such as last year’s debunked Times’ “vector analysis” tracing a sarin-laden rocket back to a Syrian military base when the rocket had less than one-third the necessary range.

But the Times’ prejudice over the Ukraine crisis has reached new levels of extreme as the “newspaper of record” routinely carries water for the neocons and other hawks who still dominate the U.S. State Department. Everything that the Times writes about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get anything approaching an accurate understanding of events.

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Finian Cunningham

Residents of Slovyansk paying their respects in a memorial, set up
at the bottom of a Lenin statue, to four pro-Russian demonstrators
who recently died. (Photo: Mauricio Lima / The New York Times)

With a death toll of at least 50 over the weekend inflicted by the Western-backed unelected, fascist regime in Kiev, has the time come for Russian President Vladimir Putin to send his troops into eastern Ukraine?

The escalating violence committed by the Kiev junta under the Orwellian guise of "an anti-terror operation" strongly warrants that President Putin should give the go-ahead.

The stakes are high. Washington and its European allies, their puppet regime in Kiev and the Western mainstream media have for weeks been accusing Russia of covertly orchestrating protests in eastern and southern Ukraine. With no facts to support its claims, Washington alleges that Moscow is "building a pretext to invade and annex Ukrainian territory".

If Russia intervenes now, there will be howls of Western assertions that Moscow's "sneaky plot" is finally being executed. Already Washington is lining up more sanctions against Russia for alleged violation of Ukrainian sovereignty - again based on groundless assertions. And with NATO military forces assigned to Russia's neighboring countries, a Russian invasion of Ukraine might risk a broader war.

But regardless of Western propaganda accusing Russia of malfeasance and in the face of Western threats of punitive response, Moscow should act with boldness based on the facts.

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Finian Cunningham

There seems little doubt that the arrest of Irish republican leader Gerry Adams this week over alleged involvement in a tragic murder 44 years ago is politically motivated.

The political interests pushing this agenda have no respect for victims of Ireland's recent 30-year conflict. These interests are being selective in their focus on victims, cynically vying for political gain, and in particular to damage the rise of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party.

Later this month, Ireland is heading into European Parliamentary elections, which up to now was promising to see major electoral gains for Sinn Féin, the party of which Adams has been president of since 1983.

In recent years, Sinn Féin has emerged has the fastest growing political party in both the British-occupied north and the independent southern state. It has become the second biggest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, while in the southern legislative chamber, Dail Eireann, Sinn Féin has seen its number of parliamentarians expand three-fold over the past three elections to become an increasingly pivotal force there.

Sinn Féin can rightly claim to be the only all-Ireland party with representatives and organizational structure that transcend the British-imposed border, which partitions the island into northern and southern jurisdictions. Sinn Féin is distinguished from all other political parties by its manifesto calling for a united, independent country.

That manifesto not only threatens the British interest of maintaining its political presence in the North of Ireland; the so-called Irish political parties in the South of Ireland also see their establishment interests challenged by the growing popular support for Sinn Féin and its calls to shake-up the stagnant status quo on both sides of the border.

This is the important context in which the Sinn Féin leader was taken into custody this week by police in Northern Ireland. Adams has not been charged but his arrest over the murder took many observers by surprise, coming seemingly out of the blue. The allegations will revive memories of a dark episode in Ireland's 30-year conflict.

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