Tag: russia

Corporate media spreads hoax that Russian cosmonauts wore yellow suits to ‘support Ukraine’

When photos began to circulate online of Russian cosmonauts boarding the International Space Station (ISS), media outlets online quickly spread the hoax that the group had deliberately chosen to wear yellow and blue flight suits in solidarity with Ukraine by wearing the country’s national colors.

The connection between the color of the attire and the conflict in Ukraine spread to outlets like the BBC, Bloomberg Quicktake, The Times, and NPR.

But what many had hoped was an act of heroic defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime turned out to be an unrelated coincidence.  

Veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander for the Russian team aboard the ISS, quickly debunked the story, Reuters reported. In a news conference from the space station, he said the suits had been created six months ago, predating Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. Moreover, Artemyev expressed solidarity with his country, voicing no sympathy for Ukraine.

“Color is just color,” Artemyev said. “It has nothing to do with Ukraine. In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!”

He explained that the team had selected its colors based off of the team’s common alma mater—a college whose primary colors also used yellow and blue. “Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color,” he said.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel. “To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

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People Overestimate The US War Machine And Underestimate The US Propaganda Machine

The European Endowment for Democracy is a spinoff of the US government-funded “NGO” National Endowment for Democracy, which according to its own co-founder was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely orchestrate coups and manage narratives to advance US interests. A page on an NED website says that “All EU member states are members of EED’s Board of Governors, together with members of the European Parliament and civil society experts.”

So this is a media outlet funded by a government-run “NGO” being forcefully pushed in front of millions of western eyeballs by a major Silicon Valley corporation that people have come to rely on for getting information about the world. In the same way Silicon Valley facilitates government censorship by proxy, it also facilitates government propaganda by proxy.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian government also put $200,000 toward Kyiv Independent’s funding. The outlet is being so loudly amplified by Twitter that not only has its Twitter account secured nearly two million followers since its creation in November, but one of its reporters (who calls the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion his “brothers in arms“) has gained a million followers since the start of the Russian invasion.

Do you see how sophisticated just that one tiny component of the US-centralized empire‘s propaganda campaign is? How many seemingly disparate and unrelated elements it has? Multiple countries, NGOs, an ostensibly independent social media platform, an ostensibly independent news outlet. It’s very difficult to see how any of it connects at all if you don’t know where to look. And almost nobody knows where to look.

This highly advanced perception management operation is happening all around the world about any issue the empire has a vested interest in. As anti-imperialist author and podcaster Justin Podur recently put it, “The US Empire is based on the mastery of storytelling. Making reality through propaganda.”

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Sovereign ‘Democracy’ Ukraine: Zelenskyy Suspends 11 Opposition Parties Becoming Head Of A One-Party State

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with the backing of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, declared that all opposition parties would be suspended indefinitely until martial law is declared over.

In a statement issued yesterday evening, President Zelenskyy announced the following decree: political parties who his party, “Servants of the People,” has identified as being pro-Russian would be suspended until the nation-wide martial law is lifted. The list essentially includes every opposition party.

With millions of their constituents now stripped of any political infrastructure, it’s safe to say that this is not the sort of action taken by a ‘democracy.’

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From Iraq to Ukraine, the American Press Loves a War

On this day in 2003, the United States launched its air invasion of Iraq, with the ground component beginning one day later. It was the first stage of a war that would ultimately drag on for over eight years, killing thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians as the U.S. and its allies sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government.

Nineteen years on, Americans watch as a conflict embroils Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning last month has brought frequent reports of deaths of innocents and strikes on civilian spaces.

Horrific scenes from the conflict in Ukraine have fetched headlines much like those published during the Iraq War. But there is a difference between journalistic reporting on a conflict and coverage that trends more toward activism. Reporters operating under the guise of objectivity repeatedly trended toward the latter approach during the Iraq War. Now, as establishment journalists not-so-subtly agitate for a more interventionist U.S. policy in Ukraine, it’s worth keeping an eye on these tried-and-trued hawkish tendencies.

In a press conference on March 15, reporters pelted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki with questions regarding the Biden administration’s opposition to certain military support for Ukraine. There were over one dozen questions mentioning military assistance—including five distinct mentions of a no-fly zone—and only one question about the potential American role in facilitating negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Neither were the numerous questions about military assistance purely fact-based. “Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have made so clear that what they believe they need the most is more warplanes and fighter jets. So why is the U.S. assessing something different?” asked a reporter. “Why does the U.S. believe they know better what Ukraine needs than what Ukrainian officials are saying they need the most?”

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