Australian press actively covering up Kiev-Odessa war-crime?
Despite clear evidence available to any internet user as eye-witness film of pro-Kiev radical junta supporters (called the 'Kiev Government' by western press) setting Odessa’s Trade Union headquarters ablaze after they had blocked the exit, and beating up people who managed to get out, and shooting at the people from the anti-government tent camp who barricaded themselves inside the building, most Western mainstream media is pretending they do not know what actually happened in this Western-backed atrocity. Are they counting on our misplaced respect for mainstream media authority to make us close our eyes? [Candobetter editor's note: Thank you to an alert reader who pointed out the artist's careless mistake in mistaking the Swedish flag for the Ukraine flag, in the illustration. This has been rectified.]
Look at the film below, which is footage of the event. It is really easy to see that people are hurling molotov cocktails and hanging about doing nothing to save the people whom they have barricaded inside the building to which they have set fire. The building has been peacefully occupied by anti-junta people for days, so there is no doubt as to who was targeting whom. The burning remains of a tent they torched outside are also visible. There have also been remarks that police failed to attend when called.
Today's Australian Associate Press (AAP) articles as interpreted by the Fairfax Press and Murdoch organs which own AAP seem to be actively covering up this war-crime. Is it the editors at AAP and the Fairfax Press who are doing the covering up or is this the way that the journalist authors, Michel Moutot and Max Delany, actually reported things in their syndicated article, "Fresh attacks on Odessa police headquarters"?[1]
Here is an extract:
'Thousands of pro-Russian protesters have attacked Odessa's police headquarters just days after deadly clashes and a fire there killed dozens of their comrades in what Kiev claimed was a Russian plot to "destroy Ukraine".
Candobetter.net criticism: The vague reference to 'deadly clashes': 'Clash' implies a meeting of equal forces and begs the question of a wholesale atrocity committed by organised forces. Yes, the attack on the union building happened after fights between football-match attenders, but it was much more than street fighting). "Fire there killed dozens of their comrades" allows the confused reader to think that the people fighting for democracy against the junta actually set fire to their own. Use of 'comrades' is probably a gratuitously inflammatory term given the extreme corporate nature of AAP, although the term is current in Ukraine. The uncritical reporting that "Kiev claimed [it] was a Russian plot to destroy Ukraine" fails to reveal that NATO forces are effectively trying to isolate Russia, which is thus at risk of having supplies of food and fuels cut off if they succeed. This is like chaining a bear with its back to the wall and setting some mad dogs on it. What do we expect the bear to do?
AAP's reporting bias here is particularly flagrant in the light that other western media have at least reported what Blind Freddy would say was too obvious to deny:
The Washington Post in "Ukraine suffers deadliest day in months; 34 killed in Odessa" [2] has reported that
"Asked who had thrown the molotov cocktails, pro-Ukrainian activist Diana Berg said, “Our people — but now they are helping them to escape the building.”
The Washington Post also gives more balanced detail of events, reporting that,
"Friday evening, a pro-Ukrainian mob attacked a camp where the pro-Russian supporters had pitched tents, forcing them to flee to a nearby government building, a witness said. The mob then threw gasoline bombs into the building. Police said 31 people were killed when they choked on smoke or jumped out of windows.
In contrast, the AAP sourced article seems soaked in bias:
'The unrest in the southern port city on Sunday threatened a new front in the Ukrainian government's battle against pro-Moscow militants, with an expanded military operation under way in the east against gunmen holding more than a dozen towns.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Russia was executing a plan "to destroy Ukraine and its statehood".'
The article elevates the leader of the Kiev junta into a respectful authority by referring to him only as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, never mentioning how he gained his position from a violent coup that caused the elected PM to flee and ask Russia for help and which keeps disorder through the use of Nazis.
Frightening Nazi marchers in Kiev
(In a separate article I will be putting up this full length documentary on the Nazi militia in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8-RyOaFwcEw)
'Unrest' is a weasle-word for what is happening in Ukraine. Using the term 'Ukranian government' without qualifications as to its illegitimate origins, and then applying the term 'militants' and gunmen to the ordinary citizens who are asserting their democratic rights against real live Nazis is inexplicable except if AAP intends somehow to benefit from this coup. The 'pro-Russian' adjective is also probably inaccurate for these people, who may not necessarily be pro-Russian, but are against fascism. The Washington Post's use of the term 'mob' for the junta activists is better chosen. Why can't the AAP use the anti-junta civilians term for the brave citizens they have chosen to defend their towns as 'self-defence forces' ?
Why occupy the Union building?
What were pro-democracy, anti-junta people doing holed up in the Union building in Odessa? In many towns in Ukraine ordinary people have taken over government buildings in order to fight what is an obvious foreign-backed, Neo-Nazi facilitated coup.
Ukraine, especially in the East, is highly industrialised and unionised. This is a reason for their being well-informed and for their solidarity. They are workers and the union headquarters are the most obvious place for working people to demonstrate their position vis a vis a junta. The union buildings are also a good symbolic choice to demonstrate as citizens defending their rights rather than as a military force.
NOTES
[1] Source of quotes from Michel Moutot and Max Delany's article were: The Sydney Morning Herald: "Fresh attacks on Odessa police headquarters"and The Age: "Fresh attacks on Odessa police headquarters"
[2] Simon Denyer and Anna Nemtsova, Ukraine suffers deadliest day in months; 34 killed in Odessa, Washington Post May 2. The Washington Post is owned by Nash Holdings which is owned by Jeff Bezos see: Jeff Bezos
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