Tag: ukraine

“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.

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False Predictions About Russia Invading Ukraine Are Making People Fear WW3

If you have been following the mainstream NATO member-state media over the past few weeks, you may be now fearing another world war. Here is why you should not be listening to these discredited mouth pieces for corporate governments in the West.

On the third of February, the White House indicated that “intelligence information” supposedly in their possession had indicated Russia would use crisis actors and staged videos to justify invading Ukraine. This information was eaten up almost uncritically by most Western media outlets. Even those reporting on it with a somewhat critical take still promoted the idea as valid. Matt Lee, a journalist for the Associated Press (AP), repeatedly called on White House spokesperson, Ned Price, for proof of the US government’s allegations during a press conference earlier this month. Needless to say, Price deflected and refused to provide any solid information other than the US accusation itself, which Matt Lee framed as getting into “Alex Jones territory”.

Since then, there have been numerous predictions about when Russia will invade Ukraine, in all of which Moscow is painted as being the irrational aggressor. Tabloid newspapers have gone with headlines like “ON THE BRINK Will there be World War 3?“, whilst others used unnamed  “intelligence sources” to conjure up headlines claiming “Russian invasion of Ukraine set for ‘3am tomorrow’ with missiles and tank attack“. It’s not only the “untrusted” tabloids, which interestingly have a lot of readers, that are conjuring up ridiculous claims and conspiracy theories, almost all the more ostensibly reputable news outlets like the New York Times, BBC and the Guardian have led their readers to believe that Putin is a madman ready to invade Ukraine at any moment. The United States government has stated that an invasion could occur “at any time.” What is interesting is that far before any talk of Russia-Ukraine tensions had surfaced, the Washington Post published a piece on the 3rd of December (2021), claiming that US intelligence sources believed Russia would invade Ukraine with 175,000 troops.

Despite all the fear-mongering of a sudden Russian offensive, all talk from Russia has indicated it wishes to solve the ongoing tensions through dialogue. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, states that his country does not seek war and that they would only engage in a war in self-defense, much to the dismay of Western journalists eager to warmonger and paint Moscow in a similar light to that of the reporting during the Cold War.

What is interesting is that anyone who would dare indicate that the White Helmets in Syria had some role in attempting to stage chemical weapons attacks, specifically the attacks used to justify Western military aggression, would still be laughed out of the room by corporate media in the West. Interestingly, Russia has frequently predicted the tactic of staging attacks to justify US military aggression itself in the past, which were instantly slapped aside as akin to “conspiracy theories”. Yet, when Washington alleges something very similar, without any indication that what they are saying could actually be true, we should believe them?

The United States itself has such a long history of false flag attacks, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to US military intervention in Vietnam, that it has no position to sit and accuse others whilst refusing to accept skepticism towards its own propensity to commit such acts. The problem is that the conspiracy theories of Western governments, their intelligence agencies, and complicit mouthpieces in corporate media, lead to real devastating consequences.

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Biden Promises ‘Widespread Human Suffering’ in Wake of a Russian Invasion

As American diplomats scurry to flee Ukraine, President Joe Biden said Russia is poised to spread misery throughout the country if it follows up its massive troop buildup with an invasion.

Biden spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin for an hour on Saturday. Earlier Saturday, the State Department announced that most U.S. diplomatic personnel are being pulled out of Ukraine, which is currently encircled by about 130,000 Russian troops.

The call focused on “Russia’s escalating military buildup on the borders of Ukraine,” according to a White House readout.

“President Biden was clear that, if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia.

“President Biden reiterated that a further Russian invasion of Ukraine would produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing.

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Tulsi Gabbard Says Biden Administration Wants Russia to Invade Ukraine

Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard has said President Joe Biden‘s administration wants Russia to invade Ukraine so that they can impose “draconian” sanctions on the country.

Gabbard, a Democrat who represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021, told Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson on Friday that Biden could avoid a war by guaranteeing Ukraine would never join the NATO military alliance.

The U.S. warned on Friday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen in the coming days and advised U.S. citizens to leave, while the Russian government has consistently denied it intends to attack.

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Proposal: Just Run All Western News Media Directly Out Of CIA Headquarters

I think it would be a lot more efficient and straightforward if all English-language news media were just run directly out of CIA headquarters by agency officials in Langley, Virginia. This way news reporters could eliminate the middleman and drop the undignified charade of presenting unproven assertions by western intelligence agencies as “scoops” that they picked up from “sources”.

I mean, right now the mass media are churning out stories about “intelligence” which says Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine very soon, citing government officials and anonymous sources. We are never shown the “intelligence”, and we are never shown any evidence of its veracity; we’re simply told what opaque and unaccountable government agencies want us to believe about a foreign government. We’re not even reminded by the publishers of these CIA press releases that western intelligence agencies have a very extensive history of lying about exactly this sort of thing, and we’re certainly not informed that Kyiv appears to be ramping up aggressions in eastern Ukraine.

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‘Nothing More Grotesque Than a Media Pushing for War,’ Says Edward Snowden

Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden on Friday joined global critics who are decrying news outlets for encouraging war with their coverage of rising tensions between the United States and Russia—where he has lived since 2013—over Ukraine.

“There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war,” Snowden tweeted.

After a flood of responses—some highlighting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has stationed over 100,000 troops near his country’s border with Ukraine and is conducting military exercises in Belarus—Snowden doubled down on his anti-war message.

“When you see snide quote-tweets of this from the boot-licking think-tank crowd, look at the ratio and remember that even if they’re loud, they are in the minority,” he said. “Being pro-war is not smart, cool, or sophisticated, and their performative outrage doesn’t change that.”

Snowden is far from alone in blasting a media march toward war that has been compared to the lead-up to U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“Here we go again,” Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, wrote in a Friday fundraising email. “With talk of war in Ukraine rising to a fever pitch, U.S. media outlets are once again beating the drums.”

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Are Warnings About “Imminent Russian Invasion Of Ukraine” Any More Than A Deep-State Intel Operation?

I think what is happening overall is brinkmanship by a number of parties, which is not uncommon in geopolitics, and it is unlikely anything significant happens.

But lets discuss the interests of different parties in each state:

Ukrainian interests

There are interest groups in Ukraine that want Nord Stream 2 sanctioned as it going live in June 2022 would end $3bn of transit revenues that the Ukraine government gets.

The oligarchs in the Ukraine owe a lot of their wealth to milking the state budgets.

Then there are Neo-Nazi militias that were folded into the military without much ‘re-education’ who dream of taking Donbass region back and like to wear WWII Galician division insignia.

So we had a Ukraine forces build up last Feb/ March then a climb down (NS2 was supposed to go live last summer but a German court said the legal structure was not compliant and needed to be changed and then re-approved) now is the last gamble before it goes live.

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The Specious Reasoning Behind Claims That The US Thwarted An Invasion Of Ukraine

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“.

Now here in early February, the Murdoch press has put out a spin piece of a sort we’re likely to see more of in coming days claiming that Russia has not invaded because the US and its allies have “ruined” Moscow’s plans by telling everyone the invasion is coming. In an article titled “Ukraine-Russia tensions: Moscow’s plans ‘ruined’ after US and Britain call out possible invasion“, Ukraine’s defense minister Hanna Maliar tells Sky News that Putin has not yet invaded because his murderous plot was thwarted by a plucky band of imperial states who would not be prevented from speaking their truth.

“It’s important to understand that when we or our western partners name the date of the possible invasion, we are ruining their plans,” Maliar told Sky News. “And the dates that were already told in public – it’s ruined plans, nothing will happen in these days. But the danger still exists.”

In the same piece Ukraine’s information minister Oleksandr Tkachenko was asked if he believed Russia would already have invaded if not for all the western talk of an imminent attack, to which he replied, “As a typical robber, if he does not see defence or at least does not see talking, he will act.”

At no time in the article is any consideration given to the possibility of a far simpler explanation for the missing Russian invasion: that Russia never intended to invade. That possibility is just skimmed right over in favor of the seemingly far less likely scenario that the Russian government thought it could orchestrate a massive invasion without anybody saying anything about it and was forced to abandon its plans in disappointment when that nonsensical gamble failed to pay off.

And now we’ve already got western media publishing other Ukrainian military claims that the real invasion will be coming on February 20th.

“February 20 is noted as a potential start date for the invasion: that is when the Winter Olympics ends in Beijing, and President Putin, 69, eager to woo the Chinese, may not wish to tarnish the event,” The Times wrote in late January.

As February 20th comes and goes without an invasion and predictions of false flag operations and Kremlin-backed coups fail to pan out, we will likely be seeing more such spin jobs from the western media claiming that those things did not happen because of measures that were taken by the US and its allies to prevent it. It may be used to score political points by claiming Biden “prevented” a Ukraine invasion with his willingness to stand up to Putin by pouring weapons into Ukraine and sending troops to Eastern Europe.

These claims will be built entirely on specious reasoning.

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