Tag: propaganda

Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism

It has been clear for some time that US corporate news media have explicitly taken a side on the Ukraine War. This role includes suppressing relevant history of the lead-up to the war (FAIR.org, 3/4/22), attacking people who bring up that history as “conspiracy theorists” (FAIR.org, 5/18/22), accepting official government pronouncements at face value (FAIR.org, 12/2/22) and promoting an overly rosy picture of the conflict in order to boost morale.

For most of the war, most of the US coverage has been as pro-Ukrainian as Ukraine’s own media, now consolidated under the Zelenskyy government (FAIR.org, 5/9/23). Dire predictions sporadically appeared, but were drowned out by drumbeat coverage portraying a Ukrainian army on the cusp of victory, and the Russian army as incompetent and on the verge of collapse.

Triumphalist rhetoric soared in early 2023, as optimistic talk of a game-changing “spring offensive” dominated Ukraine coverage. Apparently delayed, the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June. While even US officials did not believe that it would amount to much, US media papered over these doubts in the runup to the campaign.

Over the last three months, it has become clear that the Ukrainian military operation will not be the game-changer it was sold as; namely, it will not significantly roll back the Russian occupation and obviate the need for a negotiated settlement. Only after this became undeniable did media report on the true costs of war to the Ukrainian people.

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GREENWALD EXPOSES “FRAUDULENT” WAPO DISINFORMATION STUDY, DAVID FRUM, AND ADL PROPAGANDA TO SILENCE DISSENT

Journalist Glenn Greenwald has once again dissected a load of establishment propaganda disguised as legitimate reporting – this time shredding a new, and fraudulent, “disinformation study“ from the Washington Post. And of course, Greenwald has receipts.

The study, which was sponsored by the European Union ‘with an Omidyar-funded group’ accuses Twitter (X) of facilitating “pro-Russia propaganda” by failing to censor more.

“The EU-led study insisted that Elon Musk’s new Twitter policies, and those of other Big Tech platforms, help spread Russian propaganda –– by which they mean that Musk’s reduction of political censorship on the site, and the “failure” of Big Tech generally to censor upon command, is “dangerous,”” according to Greenwald.

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Western press fetishizes Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows

With Ukrainian forces reportedly suffering a level of amputations reminiscent of WWI, a New York Times proxy war propagandist is spinning amputees as sex symbols and painting their gruesome injuries as “magical.”

After 18 months of devastating proxy warfare, the scale of the depletion of the Ukrainian military is so extensive that even mainstream sources have been forced to concede the cruel reality. On August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure.”

By comparison, around 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of the First World War. The publication quotes the head of a group of former military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics who maintained that “Western military surgeons haven’t seen injuries on this scale since World War II.”

While the implications of the Journal’s report have largely been studiously ignored by Western media, at least one mainstream journalist has displayed a keen interest in Kiev’s amputees. The New York Times’ columnist and ardent liberal interventionist Nicholas Kristof practically fetishized the mass disfigurement of Ukrainian combat veterans in the name of Washington’s war du jour. 

In a July 8 op-ed titled “They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with pride.”

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Remember the Atrocities of the Korean War, Not the Propaganda

Today is the 70th anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting between North and South Korea. Almost 40,000 American soldiers died pointlessly in that conflict. If politicians and policymakers were honest and prudent, the Korean War would have vaccinated America against the folly and evil of foreign intervention. Instead, the war was retroactively redefined. As Barack Obama declared in 2013, “That war was no tie. Korea was a victory.”

The war began with what Harry Truman claimed was a surprise invasion on June 25, 1950, by the North Korean army crossing the dividing line with South Korea that was devised after World War II. But the U.S. government had ample warnings of the pending invasion. According to the late Justin Raimondo, co-founder of Antiwar.com, the conflict actually started with a series of attacks by South Korean forces, aided by the U.S. military:

“From 1945-1948, American forces aided [South Korean President Syngman] Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do—where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s U.S.-backed forces.”

The North Korean army quickly routed both South Korean and U.S. forces. A complete debacle was averted after General Douglas MacArthur masterminded a landing of U.S. troops at Inchon. After he routed the North Korean forces, MacArthur was determined to continue pushing northward regardless of the danger of provoking a much broader war. By the time the U.S. forces drove the North Korean army back across the border, roughly 5,000 American troops had been killed. The Pentagon had plenty of warning that the Chinese would intervene if the U.S. Army pushed too close to the Chinese border. But the euphoria that erupted after Inchon blew away all common sense and drowned out the military voices who warned of a catastrophe. One U.S. Army colonel responded to a briefing on the Korea situation in Tokyo in 1950 by storming out and declaring, “They’re living in a goddamn dream land.”

The Chinese military attack resulted in the longest retreat in the history of America’s armed forces—a debacle that was valorized in the 1986 Clint Eastwood movie, Heartbreak Ridge. By 1951, the Korean War had become intensely unpopular in the United States—more unpopular than the Vietnam War ever was. Truman insisted on mislabeling the war as a “police action,” but it destroyed his presidency regardless. When the ceasefire was signed in 1953, the borders were nearly the same as at the start of the war.

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How US and UK Government Propaganda Specialists Collaborated with Nazis in Ukraine

A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine, which MintPress revealed recently.

While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Yet, as we shall see, this collaboration goes much further.

Perhaps a good place to start is with the ongoing role of a key intelligence-linked official who has taken on a propaganda role on behalf of Ukraine since the launch in February 2022 of what the Russian government calls its “Special Military Operation.” Meet Cormac Smith, a member of the first Irish bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics in 1992. He has appeared in scores of news reports passing on Western propaganda talking points about the role of Russia in Ukraine. But who is Smith working for?

According to his own account, he is a “private citizen” supporting “Ukraine/global freedom.” Yet until December 2018, he was the deputy director of communications for the British Cabinet Office – the official body responsible for supporting the prime minister. He was also previously attached to the UK Foreign Office as the strategic communications advisor to the foreign minister of Ukraine.

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People Need To Understand They’re ‘Being Used Against Each Other’: Filmmaker

Most people do not realize that America has been at war for a long time, but it is not a conventional war—it is a psychological war, said a filmmaker who recently released a documentary directing people’s attention to this important issue.

“It’s a war of propaganda,” said Mikki Willis, filmmaker and creator of the “Plandemic” film series. The third installment, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was released in June.

“It’s a war to divide the people and weaken the strength of our collaborative communities to do anything about these new ideologies being forced upon Americans,” Willis said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

The new film does not highlight much about COVID-19 or COVID vaccines as filmmakers stayed away from these topics, Willis said. Instead, the documentary illustrates “what all of those [COVID-related] crises were used to advance.”

To explain their point, the filmmakers drew a comparison to a couple of cultural revolutions in history—primarily Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China—to show that the only way for the past dictators to be able to commit atrocities and genocide was to lure the people into a hypnotic spell, to become their force for doing evil, Willis said.

Organizations, such as Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Hitler’s Youth, Lenin’s Red Army, and Mao’s Red Guards, were examples of such forces formed to accomplish dictators’ evil objectives, Willis added.

“It’s a real wake-up call to the people to understand that we’re being used against each other,” Willis said. “When we are united, that’s when we are literally unstoppable.”

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HOW US AND UK GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA SPECIALISTS COLLABORATED WITH NAZIS IN UKRAINE

AMintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine, which MintPress revealed recently.

While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Yet, as we shall see, this collaboration goes much further.

Perhaps a good place to start is with the ongoing role of a key intelligence-linked official who has taken on a propaganda role on behalf of Ukraine since the launch in February 2022 of what the Russian government calls its “Special Military Operation.” Meet Cormac Smith, a member of the first Irish bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics in 1992.  He has appeared in scores of news reports passing on Western propaganda talking points about the role of Russia in Ukraine. But who is Smith working for?

According to his own account, he is a “private citizen” supporting “Ukraine/global freedom.” Yet until December 2018, he was the deputy director of communications for the British Cabinet Office – the official body responsible for supporting the prime minister. He was also previously attached to the UK Foreign Office as the strategic communications advisor to the foreign minister of Ukraine.

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Best-Selling US Author Cancels Her Own Book In Response To Anti-Russian PR Campaign

Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling American author, announced last week that she would soon be publishing a novel set in Russia. In light of a Russo-phobic public relations campaign unleashed against her, the Eat, Pray, Love author has since rescinded those plans.

In a “massive outpouring of reactions,” Ukrainian readers expressed “anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain,” over the book’s setting, Gilbert said. This led the author to make a self-described “course correction,” shelving the novel indefinitely.

Originally slated for a February 2024 release, Gilbert’s The Snow Forest is set in Siberia during the 20th century. It follows “a group of individuals who made a decision [in the 1930s] to remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and to try to defend nature against industrialization,” says Gilbert. For 44 years, they manage to live undetected but in 1980, they are discovered by a Soviet geological team. According to the Guardian, “a scholar and linguist is sent to the family’s home to bridge the chasm between modern existence and their ancient, snow forest life.”

Gilbert reported that, over the weekend, she was flooded with messages from Ukrainians telling her it was unacceptable to publish her work. “The fact that I would choose to release a book into the world right now, any book, no matter what the subject of it is, that is set in Russia,” is beyond the pale. That was the consensus amidst the deluge.

Absurd accusations were levied against Gilbert, including that her book would be akin to a novel “glorifying” the “brave Germans” during the Second World War.

According to The Atlantic, “Gilbert’s unpublished book garnered a slew of one-star reviews, all from commenters who hadn’t seen the text. Even though her book doesn’t seem to remotely venerate Russian nationalism, Gilbert committed the sin of setting her narrative in Russia – and for some of her readers, that was a deeply insensitive, borderline-treacherous act.”

The author concluded shortly after her announcement, “It is not the time for this book to be published.” Adding “I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced and who are all continuing to experience grievous and extreme harm.” Further, she insisted to her fans that anybody who pre-ordered the book will be “fully refunded.”

Since she announced her decision to pull the book from the publication schedule, Gilbert has been criticized by authors and other writers who feel that caving to the pressure is “setting a terrible precedent.” Even vehement supporters of escalated US involvement in the Ukraine war have admonished Gilbert for participating in her own modern-day book burning.

“In meekly complying with the angriest voices, she accepted their argument that setting a book in Russia is an act of collusion, even though that’s an entirely nonsensical argument. In effect, she’s allowing the irrational feelings of her readers to set the terms of acceptable discourse. For a group to block a book, it just needs to clog the comments on Instagram with hurt feelings,” Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic, said. This was after he recommended the protesters’ energy would be better spent lobbying their governments to send Kiev F-16 fighter bombers instead.

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