Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

War is raging between the West and Russia, with a key battlefield being the "war for public opinion" and control over information, narratives and perspectives. The Ukrainian crisis has again reiterated the polar opposite narratives between Western and Russian media as the information war intensifies. Western news outlets have been incessantly attempting to portray Russia as the belligerent power over the past year, even though many of the facts contradict this perspective. In order to justify an illegal coup in Kiev - which is part of a grander strategy of destabilising, encircling and antagonising the Russian Federation - the presstitutes are hard at work manufacturing narratives and preparing "Americans for conflict with Russia", as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote in his article: 'CNN is Beating the Drums of War'. Considering the majority of conflicts in recent years have been initiated by Western intervention or meddling - including the Ukrainian crisis of course - Russian propaganda relies far more on facts, as there is often no need to invert truth to support Moscow's position.

"War for Public Opinion"

"It's a war for public opinion because whatever the case may be on the ground Western leaders, specifically NATO-countries, they really need public opinion to be backing whatever moves they are making around the world," was how investigative journalist and founder of 21st Century Wire, Patrick Henningsen, described the Western media landscape in an interview with RT. In an attempt to win the "war for public opinion", the West has launched multiple initiatives recently in a bid to successfully influence and shape public perception on current affairs. The European Union (EU) has launched a 3-month project to prepare a "strategic communication" plan to counter what the EU believes to be Russian "disinformation campaigns", according to draft conclusions of an EU summit obtained by Reuters. The project will be led by Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who will present her strategy to EU leaders in June.

A key area of this project will be an attempt to build popular media initiatives for Russian speaking audiences. One organisation that has been involved in initial discussions on this matter is the EU-funded European Endowment for Democracy (EED), which shares a remarkably similar name to the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - the pre-eminent regime change organisation of Western intelligence agencies. A press release from an EED consultation on the "feasibility [of] Russian-language media" projects states: "Around 90 media experts and organisations examined ways of setting up new media initiatives for Russian-language audiences and strengthening cooperation between existing media actors in the Eastern Partnership countries and beyond." There is no doubt that these 'media initiatives' will be nothing more than Western intelligence operations aimed at subjugating the Russian state and reducing support for Moscow's stance on Ukraine and other issues.

Complete story at - Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

The Economist has a funny sense of European values — RT Op-Edge

In the same week that The Economist lauded Ukraine's "commitment to European values," Kiev's current regime kicked out Euronews. Who do they think they are kidding?

Ah, The Economist. Without question, it’s is the best informed news magazine in the world… except on subjects I know something about. Take Ukraine for instance, throughout the country's current crisis, The Economist has been weaving a web of fantasy to its readers. The narrative has continuously blamed Russia for all Ukraine's misfortunes while painting its post-Maidan oligarchic rulers as being somewhere near God's right hand.

After wholeheartedly backing last year’s coup, the windy weekly has been unwilling to admit the severity of Kiev’s economic malaise. Instead, it has maintained the pretence that throwing money at its pro-NATO regime will solve all its problems. Anybody who knows the first thing about Ukraine acknowledges that the lion's share of the dough would be pilfered.

The problem is that a great number of the Western world’s most powerful people take The Economist seriously. The magazine appears both authoritative and credible, and never misses a chance to emphasize its own importance. However, this is “lipstick on a pig” territory. On subjects I’m reasonably informed about (Ireland, Europe, Britain, the ex-USSR for example), The Economist is more often wrong than right. Viewed through that prism, I’m extremely skeptical of the rag’s accuracy on topics I know little of.

In 2005, The Economist announced that Ireland had the highest quality of life in the world. I clearly remember reading the edition in downtown Dublin and that my first thought concerned the quality of the drugs the magazine’s editors were taking. Oddly, I'd penned a column a week earlier for the Ireland On Sunday newspaper predicting a deep recession for my homeland, which was rapidly losing its industrial base as credit-fuelled property madness raged.

Two years later, Ireland’s economy collapsed and a half decade of misery began. Incidentally, the periodical currently lists Melbourne as the best place to reside on earth. If you are in Melbourne right now, given The Economist’s track record, it’s probably best to emigrate before the inevitable happens.

Complete story at - The Economist has a funny sense of European values — RT Op-Edge

Busting Ukraine Fakes (#1) – How Ukraine’s Media Works (Fakes) | The Truth Speaker

Graham Phillips

A series, looking at the fakes behind perhaps the world’s most dishonest media...

When Ukrainian media fakes about myself hit the hundreds, I stopped keeping track. To come in future instalments, but they did everything, from faking civilian cemeteries for cemeteries of the ‘Russian soldiers’ , to seeing ‘Russian soldiers‘ in every single fighter in Donbass (incidentally all Donbass citizens are ‘Russian actors’, in Ukrainian media).

Having been on the receiving end so often, I can tell you just how Ukraine’s mendacious media works – exemplified by this recent case in point. I arrived at Heathrow airport on March 4th, after having taken part in the MH17 investigation in the Netherlands. At Heathrow, I was detained for four hours, questioned by British authorities about my role in the conflict in Donbass, released without charge. I gave many interviews on the subject, describing exactly what had happened.

How this came out in the Ukrainian media was, such – ‘ ‘Journalist’ Graham Phillips passed on information about Russian occupant troops in Donbass to British Special Services’ - this from state-funded news portal http://antikor.com.ua/, this then disseminated into at least half a dozen Ukrainian news sites, countless social media.

Looking past the clumsily loaded terminology, let’s get to the article itself – ‘Phillips underwent many hours of questioning about my illegal activities in Donbass’ – ok, let’s look past some more troweled-on loaded terminology to get to the article itself.

‘After literally 5 minutes, Phillips agreed to cooperate with British authorities.’

Complete story at - Busting Ukraine Fakes (#1) – How Ukraine’s Media Works (Fakes) | The Truth Speaker

The 4th Media » US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down

Exclusive: Almost eight months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine – creating a flashpoint in the standoff between nuclear-armed Russia and America – the U.S. intelligence community claims it has not updated its assessment since five days after the crash, reports Robert Parry.

----------

Despite the high stakes involved in the confrontation between nuclear-armed Russia and the United States over Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence community has not updated its assessment on a critical turning point of the crisis – the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – since five days after the crash last July 17, according to the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

On Thursday, when I inquired about arranging a possible briefing on where that U.S. intelligence assessment stands, DNI spokesperson Kathleen Butler sent me the same report that was distributed by the DNI on July 22, 2014, which relied heavily on claims being made about the incident on social media.

So, I sent a follow-up e-mail to Butler saying: “are you telling me that U.S. intelligence has not refined its assessment of what happened to MH-17 since July 22, 2014?”
Her response: “Yes. The assessment is the same.”

I then wrote back: “I don’t mean to be difficult but that’s just not credible. U.S. intelligence has surely refined its assessment of this important event since July 22.”

When she didn’t respond, I sent her some more detailed questions describing leaks that I had received about what some U.S. intelligence analysts have since concluded, as well as what the German intelligence agency, the BND, reported to a parliamentary committee last October, according to Der Spiegel.

While there are differences in those analyses about who fired the missile, there appears to be agreement that the Russian government did not supply the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine with a sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missile system that the original DNI report identified as the likely weapon used to destroy the commercial airliner killing all 298 people onboard.
Butler replied to my last e-mail late Friday, saying “As you can imagine, I can’t get into details, but can share that the assessment has IC [Intelligence Community] consensus” – apparently still referring to the July 22 report.

Complete story at - The 4th Media » US Intel Stands Pat on MH-17 Shoot-down

Are We Being Duped Into A War With Russia? • A True Independent Scotland

BY TOM STEELE · 14TH MARCH 2015

Once you are aware that the mainstream press and TV are nothing more than propaganda outlets for the ruling elite, their deception begins to stick out like a sore thumb. We have witnessed the propagandist’s formula for gaining public support for war over recent times with the ousting of Saddam Hussein, Col Gadhafi, and the on-going attempted deposing of President Assad of Syria.

The formula is always the same, first they start drifting out negative stories about their target government and its leader, this builds up over a short period of time and usually reaches a climax when all the mainstream media start painting the leader as a cartoon character or caricature.

The next part of the formula is to then demonise the target leader, usually by applying the tried and tested “Hitler or NAZI” label. This will be swiftly followed by claims that the target leader has either, WMD’S, chemical weapons, training terrorists or is building a nuclear bomb. This propaganda is sometimes accelerated with a “false flag” attack like a chemical weapon attack or a political assassination. Sometimes they will stir discontent by arming a “controlled opposition or fake freedom fighters” which they fund and direct.

The war mongers will then claim the target leader is a “serious danger to peace and stability” or “are capable of striking western cities with some form of ghastly weapon” and demand sanctions be placed on the whole country. They will then go into a false “frenzy of diplomacy” making demands that are impossible for their target to meet…..then they will take us to war.

Complete story at - Are We Being Duped Into A War With Russia? • A True Independent Scotland

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | Navigating the news – Or how to cut through media lies

We are swamped with news every single day. We all say that the media lie, but there’s a problem: most events are usually portrayed in a contradictory fashion in different media outlets. So while we have access to a lot of information and we know that a large part, maybe even the majority of the reported news in mainstream media (but also in alternative media), is either wrong or plain propaganda – COINTELPRO – how can we know what’s really going on?

Take the recent murder of the Russian politician, Boris Nemtsov. Most Western mainstream media squarely point to the Russian state as the perpetrator, or some rogue elements within it, and by extension, to its president Vladimir Putin. At the very least, they suggest it and perhaps attribute some attitude of facilitation or laissez-faire in order to harvest any potentially beneficial political fall-out. The other side calls it a false-flag operation, aided and abetted by Western powers to create chaos and inflame tensions within Russia, to create a “critical mass” that would, at some point in the future, get rid of the current leaders of Russia and impose a new government more in line with Western economic and geopolitical aspirations.

How can we ever get a clear idea of the truth behind the news and where the responsibility lies for what happens in the world with any degree of certainty?

In order to get to a reasonable understanding of current – or past – events, and to get to a reasonably well-defined idea of who is pulling the strings behind any given event, we’re going to need a useful methodology. Of course, for some events it is easier than others. Sometimes information is scarce and the party responsible will do everything to cover their tracks. Some events are buried in the past and much of the information is simply not easily accessible anymore, altogether missing, or available only to a handful of specialized individuals with the right access and accreditation.

The components of this methodology are the following:

• History tends to repeat itself 
• Facts – especially, early facts
• Cui bono
• Bias
• Intuition

Let’s have a look at each more closely.




Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | Navigating the news – Or how to cut through media lies

Putin Wants to Eat Your Children - Washington's Blog

If U.S. television and politicians started saying that Saudi Arabia should be bombed because it kills and tortures innocent people, within a week many millions of Americans would demand just that. And because those voices do say that about ISIS, many millions of Americans do favor a war on ISIS.

My point is not that bombs would be worse than the problem addressed and would make the problem itself worse as well, although that’s all true. Rather, my point is that most people who favor wars do so in order to blindly support a nation, and in blindly supporting that nation they allow it to dictate which wars they will favor. Although war supporters will give you reasons for the wars they favor, they actually favor whichever wars they are told to favor, and no others. And they’ll give you the reasons they are told to believe in as well.

More often than not, the U.S. public is advised to favor a war on a single individual of demonic nature, even though a war against an individual is completely nonsensical. According to nonsensical propaganda, you don’t bomb Iraqis; you bomb former-U.S.-ally Saddam Hussein. You don’t bomb Afghans; you bomb former-U.S.-ally Osama bin Laden. You don’t drone kill Pakistani and Yemeni and Somali children and women and men; you drone kill Al Qaeda Terrorist Number Three, over and over again. You don’t liberate Libya from what stability it had; you kill former-U.S.-ally Muammar Gadaffi. You don’t attack Panama; you attack former-U.S.-ally Manuel Noriega. Et cetera et cetera.

Well, it’s Vladimir Putin’s turn, which means Russia is at risk, which means the world is at risk, and yet the rough beast stumbling toward Bethlehem to be born is as oblivious to its conception as any unborn thing or television viewer.

Complete story at - Putin Wants to Eat Your Children Washington's Blog

How the Public Are Deceived by the 'News' - Washington's Blog

Top ‘News’ Executives Suppress Key Facts;

The Public Sees a Chaotic, Disjointed, Picture.

Here Is How that Is Done, in Personal Detail.

Eric Zuesse

If the public is systematically lied-to by the Government and by a virtually uniformly cooperative press suppressing key facts in order to pump that lie, such as was the case during 2002 and 2003 in the lead-up to America’s invasion of Iraq, then there can’t possibly be an authentic democracy, because democracy is founded upon a truthfully informed public, and so any ‘news’ institution that violates its solemn public trust of reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is traitorous to democracy itself.

That’s why the press has been called “the fourth estate” of government. The first three “estates” are the aristocracy, the clergy, and the public. If the press represent not the public, but instead one of the two other classes — the aristocracy and/or the clergy — then what exists is a dictatorship by that actually ruling class against the public, not a democracy by the public. The public cannot rule in such a country. They instead are manipulated in it.

They may be manipulated to believe that they rule, but it’s only a manipulated illusion then; it’s not real; it’s a fraud, of the most massive type. Such a country cannot possibly be a real democracy; it’s a fraudulent ‘democracy.’

Evidence will be presented here that democracy no longer exists in the United States. Part of this evidence is personal, something that I always prefer to avoid, but which happens to be integral to this particular news-report and analysis. So: it’s necessary, in this case.

Already, a scientific analysis of a massive database has found that the United States is not a democracy but only a fake-democracy, actually an “oligarchy,” more-traditionally called an “aristocracy” (as I shall be calling it in this article); and the personal story narrated here will help to explain how and why this is the way our country actually functions.

Here is the broader framework in the United States, as it operates today: The aristocracy know that the way to control the public is via the ‘news’ media; and they create, buy, and build, all of the ‘news’ media that are of any substantial size or influence. It’s the cheapest way for the aristocracy to control the government; and, besides, any aristocrat who owns a controlling interest in one ‘news’ medium can then sell to his fellow-aristocrats favorable ‘news’ coverage of his own companies and/or of the governmental policies that they seek.

Complete story at - How the Public Are Deceived by the 'News' Washington's Blog

Why the Media War Over Ukraine is a War Against Everyone | New Eastern Outlook

The ongoing media war between the United States and the Russian Federation is pretty much official. Even before the first official shots were fired, through the announcements by Andrew Lack, the newly-appointed chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which compared the English Language Russia Today to the Islamic State and Boko Haram, it was being conducted alongside the other concurrent conflicts: the ground war, the sanctions war, and the currency war.

In any sort of conflict opposing sides will have opposing views, and will present whatever suits their purposes and ignore what they don’t want people to hear. However, history shows us that there is such a thing a Truth, and if you ignore it it will come back and bite you. Ask any American who has served in Iraq and Syria, or any of the Vietnam veterans who came home vilified for doing their duty when, having seen the situation on the ground, they had no idea why they were there to begin with.

It is therefore in the interests of any conflicting party to base their propaganda on facts which give their actions justification. However, in Ukraine only one side is endeavouring to do this, and regretably it is not the US. All the Western powers have no choice but to go along with another projection of the US world view, despite the fact very few people outside the US believe it has any connection with reality. This is important, when people’s lives, and millions of war machine dollars, are involved.

Pot calling the kettle black

The American world view is very simple. It is based on one premise: everyone else has something wrong with them because they are not American. This encourages the US to look for the splinter in everyone else’s eye whilst neither seeing the log in its own nor imagining it could exist.

Consequently the US has expectations of different countries which reflect this prejudice. If they have wrong with them what America says they do, they must therefore want to do what America wants to put it right. Maybe these countries have their own ideas about what they want and what is good for them. But America’s ideas are superior, so what America wants must be what is good for the world as a whole, there is no need to take any other interest into account.

The US view of Ukraine is as follows: Putin’s view of what the new Russia should be is not compatible with the 21st century. His “nostalgia for the years of tsarist or communist conquest” is a utopian and dangerous sympathy out of step with the modern world. Reincorporating or annexing Crimea must therefore be part of an effort to create a buffer zone (East Ukraine, Moldova, Ossetia, Abkhazia and maybe more to come) between Russia and Western sympathizers, because his views are not American, so he must be setting up an anti-American bloc.

As journalist Robert Parry writes, part of the problem is that the neocon propagandists who conduct such wars have been allowed to get away with introducing a fundamental falsehood into the modern American media. The personal has become the political: that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it all about some easily demonised figure.

Complete story at - Why the Media War Over Ukraine is a War Against Everyone | New Eastern Outlook

How 'Reverse Blame' Works: New Book on Ukraine Crisis Exposes US Geo-Scams / Sputnik International

One year since the bloody uprising in Kiev, world’s leading political analysts look into the background of what grew into one of the gravest geopolitical crises.

According to the accepted narrative of the Western mainstream media, the crisis begun when the so-called fresh-faced young pro-democracy activists overturned what they believed was a brutal Russian-backed dictatorship which stood in Ukraine's way, keeping it from joining the European family of nations and sharing in its prosperity. This led to the claimed "Russia's incursion into Ukraine" and what they called "its annexation of Crimea."
However, 22 analysts with impeccable credentials were able to review the events that led up to the current crisis in Ukraine, and an entirely different story emerges.

The authors reveal the true aims of the backers of the military conflict and what they were willing to do in order to achieve their goals. Their book, “Flashpoint in Ukraine”, of course, went unnoticed by the US and European mainstream media. Sputnik got hold of one of the copies.

'Finance in Today’s World Has Become War by Non-Military Means'

In his chapter "The new Cold War’s Ukraine Gambit", Michael Hudson, a world-famous research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City explains what the conflict is actually all about.

"The object is the same as that of military conquest: appropriation of land and basic infrastructure, and the rents that can be extracted as tribute," he writes. "In today’s world this is taken mainly in the form of debt service and privatization. That is how neoliberalism works, subduing economies by indebting their governments and using unpayably high debts as a lever to pry away the public domain at distress prices."

Complete story at - How 'Reverse Blame' Works: New Book on Ukraine Crisis Exposes US Geo-Scams / Sputnik International

Operation Get Putin: Why the Western Media Pushes for War on Russia | The Smirking Chimp

by Brian Cloughley | February 20, 2015 - 9:46am

Voutenay sur Cure, France. | The US war on Iraq began on March 20, 2003 and six weeks before that catastrophic conflict which has had such terrible consequences for the entire world Republican Congressman Joe Wilson showered praise on a newspaper for its weighty support of his president’s determination to invade a country that had done no harm to the United States.

Mr Wilson declared he “would like to call attention to an excellent editorial in today’s Washington Post, written by the newspaper’s editorial staff. They have presented a definitive summary of why we must act to disarm Iraq in preserving the safety of Americans.” And there then arose overwhelming national support for what the WP called “justified military intervention.” The paper carried 27 editorials supporting war on Iraq before the ‘Shock and Awe’ onslaught began destruction of the country. In a mist of majestic inanity its leader of February 5, 2003 declared that

a war in Iraq would not be primarily a humanitarian exercise but an operation essential to American security.

Next day one of the WP’s columnists, Richard Cohen, wrote acerbically that

Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.

Only a columnist with the intelligence quotient of a mentally challenged crustacean would have ventured such judgment, but his views were greeted with enthusiasm verging on veneration. Similar balanced analyses by Washington Post gurus continue to appear today and many are quite as propaganda-intense as those that advocated the calamitous war on Iraq, the failed military campaign in Afghanistan and the destruction of Libya.

Complete story at - Operation Get Putin: Why the Western Media Pushes for War on Russia | The Smirking Chimp

The Battle Behind the Fog of Propaganda: The “Exceptional” U.S. Suffers Crushing Defeat in Debaltsevo

by Mike Whitney | February 21, 2015 - 10:51am

“There’s no city left. It’s destroyed.”
— Anonymous Ukrainian soldier following the battle of Debaltsevo

In less than a year, the United States has toppled the democratically-elected government of Ukraine, installed a Washington-backed stooge in Kiev, launched a bloody and costly war of annihilation on Russian-speaking people in the East, thrust the economy into a downward death spiral, and reduced the nation to an anarchic, failed state destined to endure a vicious fratricidal civil war for as far as the eye can see.

Last week, Washington suffered its greatest military defeat in more than a decade when Ukraine’s US-backed army was soundly routed in the major railway hub of Debaltsevo. Roughly, 8,000 Ukrainian regulars along with untold numbers of tanks and armored units were surrounded in what-came-to-be-known-as “the cauldron.” The army of the Donetsk Peoples Republic led by DPR commander Alexander Zakharchenko, encircled the invading army and gradually tightened the cordon, eventually killing or capturing most of the troops within the pocket. The Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered major casualties ranging between 3,000 to 3,500 while a vast amount of lethal military hardware was left behind.

According to Zakharchenko, “The amount of equipment Ukrainian units have lost here is beyond description.”

Additionally, the US-backed proxy-army saw many of its crack troops and top-notch units destroyed in the fighting leaving Kiev unable to continue the war without assistance from allies in the US or Europe. The full impact of the defeat will not be known until angry troops returning from the front amass on the streets of the Capital and demand Petro Poroshenko’s resignation. The Ukrainian President is responsible for the massacre at Debaltsevo. He was fully aware that his army faced encirclement but ordered them to remain in order to satisfy powerful right-wing elements in his government. The disaster is even more terrible due to the fact that it was entirely avoidable and achieved no strategic purpose at all. Extreme hubris frequently impacts outcomes on the battlefield. This was the case at Debaltsevo.

The debacle ensures that the bumbling president’s days are numbered. It’s nearly certain that he will either be replaced or hanged sometime in weeks ahead. He has already flown his family to safety out of the country, and there’s growing speculation that both Washington and the far-right nationalists who occupy the Security Services will insist on his removal. That paves the way for a second Ukrainian coup in less than a year, a grim reminder of the tragic failings of US policy in Ukraine. Check out this blurb from a post at the Vineyard of the Saker:

Complete story at - The Battle Behind the Fog of Propaganda: The “Exceptional” U.S. Suffers Crushing Defeat in Debaltsevo | The Smirking Chimp

The Propagandists of Empire » CounterPunch:

by MICHAEL WELDON

The international community of left intellectuals and educators faces several urgent challenges in its struggle against the depredations of empire. As educators, our first task is to find the critical tools to understand the relationship between propaganda and empire. John MacKenzie’s marvellous study Propaganda and Empire: the Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960 (1984) reveals how the rulers of the British Empire used every representational medium at their disposal (postcards, theatre, dance halls, music, posters, children’s literature and penny journalism, films, scholarly treatises and school textbooks) to legitimize their nefarious actions in the world. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost: a story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa (1999) chillingly tells the story of how the colonial horrors in the Congo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were intentionally hidden from the public. Public opinion was consciously manipulated and intense pressure placed upon those early voices of human rights, like E.D. Morel, who dared to speak out. Even today, Hochschild observes, Belgium museums provide no trace of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Congolese who were forced into the service of King Leopold’s lust for wealth and personal aggrandizement.

In Covering Islam (1981), Edward Said demonstrated convincingly that many educative forms (schools, cartoons, books, comic strips and films) constructed a uniform iconography of Islam and the Arab. This unquestionably derogatory iconography provides the perceptual frame that profoundly inhibits an open, learning relationship to the other. Perhaps it is this orientalist frame that makes it easy for the North American masses to be deceived into thinking that Arabs and Muslims don’t count for much in the global “clash of civilizations.” To bomb an enemy one must first dehumanize the “hated other” (Said) by incessantly repeating simple phrases, images and concepts. An abstract category must replace real, living breathing men and women who get up in the morning to give their kids breakfast, scold them to hurry up and get off to school. They have to dress, bid their partners a good day as they go about the day’s business. Propaganda creates abstractions that prevent us from seeing the other as fully human.

Like those empires of old, contemporary empires educate their peoples through using propaganda (particularly television, films, print media and photography) and brutal political manoeuvering. Critical intellectuals (and an alert citizenry) have the task of cutting through the lies and deceptions to tell the truth, wherever we are situated, talking, teaching, arguing. Edward Said reminds us that one of our specific jobs is to “break down stereotypes and reductive categories that are so limiting to human thought and communication.” But to accomplish this, we need to be aware of how utterly resistant the propaganda machine of empire is to enlightened criticism. The coverage of the crisis in the Ukraine well illustrates how reality is inverted and the Orwellian universe closes out any form of dissent. The cry of Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, “The earth is squeezing us. I wish we were wheat so we/could die and live again,” expresses our terror that we are intellectually suffocating and won’t rise again.

Those of us who work within the Academy still have some respect (I hope!) for facts, evidence and rational argument (Habermas’s “best argument” that validates truth claims). That is, we believe that, while external and internal states of affairs are mediated through language, nonetheless a world external to the senses of the individual (or propagandist hack) exists. The sun does not rise and fall, medieval theologians. The earth is not flat, ancient geographers. Or Russia is not the aggressor in the Ukraine, think-tank scribblers. Ideally, enlightened intellectuals and educators provide counter-evidence that requires a particular interpretation that rules out other less convincing ones. Yet “facts” do not seem to matter very much to the US (or British or Belgian) propagandists of empire. Those of us who still cling, however desperately, to the vestiges of the enlightenment belief that truth and falsity exist, are aghast at the extent and depth of the US government and media’s willingness to lie, deceive, distort, falsify and exaggerate evidence to serve their geo-political goal of ruling the world. This is also true of Canada’s right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who rules in the fog.

Complete story at - The Propagandists of Empire » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

A Silly Blunder or Back to the Future? CNN Annexes Ukraine to Russia / Sputnik International

The US broadcaster CNN has given the world another riddle: what did it actually mean by marking Russia and Ukraine as one territory on a map, with the Russian national flag obscuring most of Ukraine, when illustrating what it called “Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine?”
CNN is once again in the spotlight over misinformation regarding Ukraine. Having just apologized for calling the Ukrainian National Guard “pro-US troops”, the channel has committed another gaffe.

This time, in its report on what it called “Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine,” it seemed to portray the two countries as one contiguous territory: a presenter stands in front of a map where the countries of Europe are in dark green and separated by light green borders, except for Russia and Ukraine, which are both in light green with a large Russian flag obscuring the supposed boundary between them.



The broadcast was about three “dire challenges” the European leaders are facing, including “the diplomatic and military crisis in the East created by Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine”.

Perhaps the channel is in “dire” need of a better graphics team, which could draw the two countries as distinctly separate, and without a Russian national flag covering most of Ukraine's territory.

Or were the graphics intentional?

Talka notes: Either CNN is totally incompetent (Certainly a distinct likelihood), or this is all planned. This example, placing Ukraine on a map near Pakistan, placing Sloviansk in Crimea, while calling Ulan Bator Ukraine's capital.

Complete story at - A Silly Blunder or Back to the Future? CNN Annexes Ukraine to Russia / Sputnik International

Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine | Consortiumnews

Exclusive: The U.S. news media has failed the American people often in recent years by not challenging U.S. government falsehoods, as with Iraq’s WMD. But the most dangerous violation of journalistic principles has occurred in the Ukraine crisis, which has the potential of a nuclear war, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

A basic rule of journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story and that journalists should try to reflect that reality, a principle that is especially important when lives are at stake amid war fevers. Yet, American journalism has failed miserably in this regard during the Ukraine crisis.

With very few exceptions, the mainstream U.S. media has simply regurgitated the propaganda from the U.S. State Department and other entities favoring western Ukrainians. There has been little effort to view the worsening crisis through the eyes of ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in the east or the Russians witnessing a political and humanitarian crisis on their border.

Frankly, I cannot recall any previous situation in which the U.S. media has been more biased – across the board – than on Ukraine. Not even the “group think” around Iraq’s non-existent WMDs was as single-minded as this, with the U.S. media perspective on Ukraine almost always from the point of view of the western Ukrainians who led the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.

So, what might appear to an objective observer as a civil war between western Ukrainians, including the neo-Nazis who spearheaded last year’s coup against Yanukovych, and eastern Ukrainians, who refused to accept the anti-Yanukovych order that followed the coup, has been transformed by the U.S. news media into a confrontation between the forces of good (the western Ukrainians) and the forces of evil (the eastern Ukrainians) with an overlay of “Russian aggression” as Russian President Vladimir Putin is depicted as a new Hitler.

Complete story at - Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine | Consortiumnews

Article: UKRAINE: The Propaganda War | OpEdNews

Last week Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times called Putin a "thug" and "Hitler". This week Timothy Garton Ash writing in the Guardian comment section says Putin is Slobodan Milosevic.

Both Friedman and Ash say that Putin is threatening Europe and he must be stopped. Both say the only way to stop Putin is to tighten the screws of economic sanctions on Russia, send more lethal military equipment to Ukraine and put NATO boots on the ground. They both call on Obama to do so.

Putin is neither Hitler nor Milosevic. Whenever people write such hyperbole they should immediately be suspected of being propagandists, especially when they heap praise on John "Bomb-Bomb" McCain as Ash does.

Neither Friedman nor Ash can point to any evidence that Putin has been the aggressor in Ukraine, committed genocide as did Hitler and Milosevic, or tried to cause ethnic cleansing. Kiev backed by Obama has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in South-East Ukraine.

Russian tanks are not on the move and threatening Europe. Friedman and Ash are making it up. The Baltic States and Poland are safe no matter how much Obama and the main stream media wring their hands and say they are frightened of Russian aggression in Europe. It is almost laughable if they were not so deadly serious and determined about their ulterior motives for making these stories up.

Only those with exaggerated imaginations or people who want to make things up say that Russia has shown evil intentions on its neighbors. People like Friedman and Ashton keep sticking their finger in Putin's eye hoping that he will lash out irrationally. So far they have been very disappointed.

Throughout the crisis that Washington manufactured in Ukraine, Russia has reacted in a measured and moderate response. When Russia's national security was threatened with the loss of its naval base in Crimea, Russia waited for a democratic referendum to approve annexation. When Novorossiya voted to break away from Ukraine, Russia called for diplomacy and greater autonomy for Novorossiya rather than annexation.

When the government in Kiev surrounded, isolated and attacked the civilian population of Donbas, Russia sent in humanitarian aid. And Russia continues to send in humanitarian aid although it is ignored by the main stream media.

Complete story at - Article: UKRAINE: The Propaganda War | OpEdNews

Speech by John Pilger: 'War by media and the triumph of propaganda' - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond

“The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember.”

Introduction by New Cold War.org editors: The following is a speech by Australian independent journalist John Pilger, delivered to the Logan Symposium of the Center for Investigative Journalism, at the Barbican Center, London UK, on Dec. 5, 2014. The symposium was part of the three-day, inaugural, annual conference of the Center for Investigative Journalism, Dec 5-7, 2014. The theme of the conference was Building an Alliance Against Secrecy, Surveillance and Censorship‘.

Pilger opens his speech by noting, “The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war, with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.”

A portion of Pilger’s speech is dedicated to Ukraine. He tears into liberal media who he accuses of acting as handmaidans to a new cold war. He says their “inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military encirclement and intimidation of Russia is not contentious”.

Enclosed is the full text of his speech; the section devoted to Ukraine and the new cold war is highlighted.

Complete story at - Speech by John Pilger: 'War by media and the triumph of propaganda' - New Cold War: Ukraine and Beyond

Editor of major newspaper says he planted stories for CIA

Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he allegedly accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said he gathered the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short.

Dr. Ulfkotte is the author of a book currently available only in German, "Bought Journalists" (Kopp 2014.) Aged 55, he was also once an advisor to the government of German Chancellor Helmet Kohl.

Among the stories Ulfkotte says he was ordered to plant in his newspaper over the years was a story that Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi was building poison gas factories in 2011. Ulfkotte also claims he was an eyewitness to Saddam Hussein's use of poison gas against Iranians in the war between Iran and Iraq, but that the editors he worked for at the time were not interested, because Iraq was a US ally at the time.

Complete story at - Editor of major newspaper says he planted stories for CIA

Mission Imperative: Why the West and Kiev Regime Must Kill the Truth : Information Clearing House - ICH

By Finian Cunningham

February 03, 2015 "ICH" - "SCF" - The detention, incommunicado, of two female Russian journalists over the weekend by Kiev’s secret police, the SBU, was said to be on the grounds of «national security». That admission by the Kiev authorities, ironically, reveals more than is intended. Journalists «armed» only with cameras threatening national security, you may ask? Yes, you better believe it – because any truth being reported about the nature of the Western-backed Kiev regime and its military onslaught in eastern Ukraine is indeed a very real «security threat» – the threat of being exposed for war crimes and unlawful aggression towards Russia. The legal consequences for the Kiev regime and its Western patrons would be devastating.

The two journalists were named as correspondent Elizaveta Khramtsova and photographer Natalia Kalysheva, who both work for LifeNews based in Moscow. The media outlet’s director Markian Lubkovsky reportedly said he only found out about the detention of his staff after one of them managed to make a hurried phone call before they were «disappeared». Their whereabouts was not known even after several hours from them having been taken into detention. That amounts to abduction and is a grave abuse of international law. Russia’s foreign ministry has demanded that the pair be released immediately. The Kiev-based SBU reportedly would only confirm that the two women will be «expelled in the near future» and that they would be denied future entry into Ukraine.

A second aspect for this heavy-handed treatment of Russian journalists is this: the absolute imperative prevention of the West’s false propaganda against Russia over the Ukraine conflict being completely exposed. More than 80 Russian professional journalists have been expelled from Ukrainian territory since the conflict erupted last year. At least four have been killed by live fire from the Kiev forces. What are the Kiev regime and its Western supporters afraid of?

Washington and its European allies, as well as the NATO military alliance, have for months been churning out claims and bald assertions that Russia has invaded eastern Ukraine with thousands of troops and mechanised divisions. These provocative claims of Russian «aggression» have been amplified, unswervingly and without the slightest investigation or verification, by all Western mainstream media outlets, including the BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle, CNN and the New York Times.

Strangely, these multi-million-dollar Western media corporations do not seem to have the resources to send teams of reporters and camera crews into the eastern Ukraine conflict zones of Donetsk and Luhansk to give appropriate extensive coverage. You would think such an assignment would a basic priority, given the supposed duty to report on extreme violence and also given the all-out-war implications of Western accusations against Moscow. Instead, Western corporate media rely inordinately, and tellingly, on the US State Department, NATO and dubious Kiev regime «sources».

Never perhaps has a war on the European landmass been so under-reported in the real sense of proper reporting. Why such a dearth of on-location news? Again, what are they afraid of? Why the studied reluctance by Western media to find out «the story»? And a big story at that.

In fact, on the rare occasion that the Western media bother to report from the Ukraine conflict location, the information uncovered tends to contradict, or at least not substantiate, the Western grand narrative that claims it’s all Russia’s fault for stealthily subverting Ukraine. On countless occasions, the august New York Times – America’s supposed finest bastion of journalism – has been found fabricating or peddling uncorroborated claims of Russian military presence in Ukraine. NYT’s reporters have also confirmed in one rare report from the location – albeit in an oblique way – that the self-defence militia of Donetsk and Luhansk are manned by local inhabitants, not Russian covert forces, and that the militia are not secretly being armed by the Russian state. Yet this basic fact has not stopped the NYT from, at all other times, peddling rumour and innuendo that fit with the anti-Russian narrative. In another rare report, post-Minsk ceasefire, the NYT also confirmed that the Western-backed Kiev military was shelling indiscriminately, without knowing the coordinates of enemy self-defence fighters. The NYT jokingly referred in that report to the Kiev artillery using «fire and forget» practices. Bear in mind that nearly 5,000 people have been killed since the Kiev regime launched its offensive 10 months ago. Over half of the victims are civilians and many of them have been killed from indiscriminate shelling by Kiev’s army and National Guard units, firing on residential centres with rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. The town of Gorlovka near Donetsk provides a snapshot of the whole criminal story, with nearly 100 civilians, including young children, dying from incessant shelling of houses, apartments, churches, hospitals, schools and public spaces by Kiev’s military since last April.

Complete story at - Mission Imperative: Why the West and Kiev Regime Must Kill the Truth  :  Information Clearing House - ICH

The 4th Media » BBC, Other Media’s Naked War Propaganda about the FICTITIOUS ‘Russian Aggression’

Russian aggression and the BBC’s drums of nuclear war

The drums of war are beating on the BBC and other mass media, writes Oliver Tickell – naked propaganda about fictitious ‘Russian aggression’ intended to soften us up for a war that could wipe out life on Earth.

We must refuse to fall for the endlessly repeated lies, and tell our politicians that our highest priority of all is peace.

“Russian aggression”is the BBC’s meme of the day. I lost count of how many times the phrase popped up in the first 15 minutes of Radio 4’s World at One programme, devoted entirely to the ‘Russian problem – but the theme was drummed in relentlessly.

The idea is that Russia presents a huge a growing threat to world peace and stability. Russian bombers are threatening the ‘English’ Channel (albeit strictly from international airspace). Russia is an expansionist power attacking sovereign nations, Ukraine in particular. And watch it – we’re next!

Commentators wheeled into the studio were unanimous in their views. NATO must stand up to the threat. Presient Vladimir Putin is a dangerous monster who refuses to abide by the rules of the international order. NATO countries must increase their defence spending to counter the Russian menace.

Not a single moderating voice was included in the discussion. No one to ask Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, if alliance aircraft ever fly close to Russia’s borders (they do). No one to point out that the real Ukrainian narrative in is not that of Russia’s ‘annexation’ of Crimea – but of NATO’s US-led annexation of Ukraine itself.

No one to argue that Russia’s assimilation of Crimea was effected with hardly a shot being fired, backed by overwhelming support in a referendum which reflected the popular will – and if you’re in any doubt, just compare it to Israel’s ongoing and endlessly justified annexation of Palestine.

Complete story at - The 4th Media » BBC, Other Media’s Naked War Propaganda about the FICTITIOUS ‘Russian Aggression’