Tag: perpetual war

As War Drums Beat for Ukraine, Remember, Lies And Propaganda Started Nearly Every War In US History

War is one of the most primitive and senseless manifestations of the human experience, so naturally, most sane people with families, ambitions and kind hearts want nothing to do with such things. Unfortunately, as we are seeing with the Ukraine / Russia escalation, governments thrive on war, as it gives them a pressing excuse to grab more power and take extrajudicial measures—both at home and abroad.

To get around the obstacle of public opinion, governments have an extensive history of lying their way into war. This is hard to believe for people who think that government has their best interest in mind, but it is something that rulers have been doing since the beginning of time. In the modern United States, people are led to believe that the establishment accidentally flounders its way into war with the good intentions of protecting the country from harm or liberating an ally in distress.

This strategy of deception was illustrated by the Nazi propagandist Herman Goering, who famously said:

“Of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Of course, the Nazi regime is notorious for their brutality and deceit, so this admission is not as stunning as it would be from an American general, but make no mistake that these are the types of thoughts that American generals and politicians have—they are just not brazen enough to say it out loud.

Believe it or not, using deceptive tactics to sway public opinion in favor of war is actually an official part of the US military’s playbook. According to Wikileaks, the U.S. Army’s publication “Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces” recommends funding terrorists for regime change operations and using false flag attacks to destabilize regimes that were unfriendly to western interests.

This is nothing new though, this is a part of American history, as nearly every war that the U.S. has ever been involved in was built upon lies. Below are some of the most well-documented examples of wars that were started because of lies and government propaganda.

Keep reading

The Media’s Odd Double Standard On Evidence Required For Claims Of An Impending Attack

None of these claims being reported by the obedient mass media have any evidence. They’re just government assertions being passed on to the audiences of these media institutions. It’s possible that there’s real intelligence behind them, but if the public can’t see it and verify it it’s the same as there being no evidence. Secret, invisible evidence is not evidence.

And of course completely unspoken in all this straight-shooting news reporting is that the actual evidence seems to suggest that the separatist factions in Ukraine are indeed under attack with a sharp spike in aggression, as explained here by Moon of Alabama.

None of these discrepancies would be worth pointing out if the mass media in the western world did not uphold itself as a free and impartial press whose only job is to report the truth about what’s happening in the world. If the western mass media were openly owned and controlled by the United States government for the explicitly stated purpose of distributing imperial propaganda, there would be nothing odd about brazen one-sided reporting which uncritically accepts unevidenced claims by secretive government agencies with an extensive history of lies. The discrepancy is only noteworthy because it highlights another one: the discrepancy between what the western mass media purport to be, and what they actually are.

Keep reading

The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It’s About Russia)

Well you’ll be shocked to learn that, while the Ukraine invasion we’ve been told for weeks was happening any day now still has not occurred, the US and UK have declared that Russia attacked Ukraine in an invisible and unverifiable way for which the evidence is secret.

“The White House blamed Russia on Friday for this week’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks and warned of the potential for more significant disruptions in the days ahead,” AP reports. “Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said the U.S. had rapidly linked Tuesday’s attacks to Russian military intelligence officers.”

“Technical information analysis shows the GRU was almost certainly involved in disruptive DDoS attacks,” adds a statement from the UK Foreign Office.

No evidence for this claim has been provided beyond the assertive tone with which American and British officials have uttered it, but that likely won’t stop arguments from western narrative managers that this “attack” justifies immediate economic sanctions.

You’ve probably also heard by now that President Biden announced at a press briefing that Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine and violently topple Kyiv “in the coming days,” citing only “intelligence”.

“What reason do you believe he’s considering that option at all?” a reporter asked Biden after his speech.

“We have a significant intelligence capability, thank you very much,” the president answered, and made his exit.

As we were reminded earlier this month in an interesting exchange between State Department spinmeister Ned Price and AP’s Matt Lee, US officials firmly believe that simply placing assertions next to the word “intelligence” should be considered rock solid proof that those assertions are true, and the press are expected to play along with this.

And indeed, a large percentage of the political/media class is responding to Biden’s unevidenced claim that Putin has decided to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Ukraine as though that invasion is actually happening.

Keep reading

Ukraine Defense Chief Says “Low Probability” Of Major Conflict With Russia, Contradicting Biden

Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told parliament on Friday that there is a low probability of any major escalation with Russia. He added that Ukraine intelligence sees every move made in the area.

Tensions at the Russia-Ukraine border have been ongoing, with several Western nations repeatedly predicting a huge war. Ukraine has chided those nations for causing a panic.

“Our intelligence sees every move that could pose a potential threat to Ukraine. We estimate the probability of a large-scale escalation as low,” Reznikov said.

The timing of the statement is interesting given that just the day prior, President Joe Biden stuck by the White House assessment that an invasion is imminent.

“We have reason to believe they are engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine and attack Ukraine.”

The fact that Ukraine’s defense chief, who is certainly closer to the situation than anyone at the White House, directly contradicted Biden’s words is no minor thing.

Keep reading

Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse

Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.

Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January”, that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine“.

This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring, tweeted the following:

“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

And, of course, none of these things happened. The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that “Putin may strike on Weds”, then later pivoted to “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”

Keep reading

Russian Government Mocks Western Media For Desperately Wanting A World War

After the establishment media hyped up and predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine for this past Wednesday that didn’t happen, the Russian government took to Twitter to mock them.

Much of the U.S. and western media ran with dire warnings of an invasion based on Ukrainian intelligence imparted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The media claimed that 200,000 Russian troops would march into Ukraine and a ‘missile blitz’ would ensue.

However, in reality Russia withdrew troops and weaponry after the end of training exercises.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted comments made by spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who said, “Today we mark another day of the ‘start of war with Ukraine,’ which did not happen again, to the Western media outlets’ regret, no matter how hard they whip up the hysteria.”

Keep reading

“Russian Propaganda” Means Disputing US Propaganda

The Associated Press has published yet another article based on unevidenced assertions by anonymous government officials about the scary horrifying frightening Russian menace, this time to accuse another media outlet of promoting propaganda. Without a trace of irony.

“U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies,” AP reports. “The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia.”

“The officials briefed The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence sources,” AP adds, repeating the refrain we’re all familiar with now which is always used to justify a complete absence of evidence or accountability for incendiary claims about governments the United States doesn’t like.

Keep reading