'Pariah' Putin On Post-MH17 Cover Pages
By Eric Zuesse
28 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org
In the wake of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, widely attributed to Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, many magazines and newspapers around the world issued damning indictments against Russian President Putin, portraying him on their covers as a bloodthirsty fiend, a pariah, a liar, and a murderer.
The August 4 cover of "Time" magazine says the West is losing "Cold War II" against "Putin's dangerous game."
For "Newsweek," Putin is the "West's public enemy number one."
Putin's "Russian Spring" has brought about a "Cold War" in the middle of July, posits Ukraine's "Focus" weekly magazine.
Romania's "Adevarul" daily, dated July 25, pictures Vladimir Putin playing poker with European leaders. The headline reads, "Where does Europe's cowardice in the face of Russia come from?" An explanation follows: "Europe and Russia are tied by bilateral trade and oil and gas that are imported from Russia, so if sanctions are imposed on Moscow, they will affect the EU economy."
"Stop Putin Now!" says the July 28 cover of Germany's "Der Spiegel" magazine with photos of some of the MH17 victims.
The July 28 issue of Poland's "Niepodlegla" calls the Russian leader "Bloodymir."
The July 25 cover of Britain's "Private Eye" features a photo of Putin against the backdrop of the Buk missile-defense system, suspected of bringing down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, and captions it, "I will find those responsible and give them a rocket."
The August 1 U.S. edition of the British news magazine "The Week" shows Putin with "blood on his hands" in front of the Buk surface-to-air missile launcher, which has been blamed for the MH17 downing.
"The Economist" pictures Putin entangled in a "web of lies."
"Getting Away With Murder" -- Canada's "Maclean's" weekly news magazine puts the blame for the MH17 crash squarely on "Putin's ambitions."
Australia's "The Spectator," dated July 26, pictures Russia as an armed bear gobbling up an airplane.
July 25's "Polska" quotes an online statement by a parent of one of the MH17 victims saying, "Mr. Putin, You Killed My Only Child."
And that’s just print-media magazines. The same is being done in radio, TV, and the blogosphere.
How can democracy be possible in a nation like that? The public are manipulated by lies, all supporting the aristocracy’s agenda; and two political Parties are financed by that same aristocracy, to use different sales-pitches for their shared agenda — never to expose the aristocracy’s agenda as being what it is: one in which the aristocracy exploits and uses the public, retaining the profits for itself, while transferring the losses off onto the public, thereby producing ever-increasing already-astronomical wealth-inequalities, and reducing governmental services to the public (which are reduced because more and more of government’s taxation-income is going toward absorbing the aristocracy’s accumulated load of losing bets, and toward paying ever-rising interest on the government’s resulting increasing debt-load).
Is a nation like that a democracy?
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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