Tag Archives: War propaganda

Everyone’s Anti-War Until The War Propaganda Starts, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on April 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

One day the U.S. is filled with people who couldn’t write a coherent sentence about Ukraine or find it on a map, and a week later they’re waiving Ukraine’s blue and gold, putting up the emojis, and hating Russia because politicians of both persuasions told them to. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts. Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout and waving the flags the flags they’ve been programmed to wave and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who’d previously proclaimed themselves “anti-war” are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.

This is because the theory of being anti-war is very different from the practice. In theory people are just opposed to the idea of exploding other people for no good reason. In practice they’re always hit with a very intense barrage of media messaging giving them what look like very good reasons why those people need exploding.

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Posted in Governments, Media, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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The Casualties of Empire, by Patrick Lawrence

Posted on March 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Did Washington maneuver Russia into was because it wants to tie Russia down in a long-lasting Ukrainian insurgency. From Patrick Lawrence at consortiumnews.com:

Diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management are at work now that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies.

Stand with Ukraine rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, Feb. 20. (Victoria Pickering, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The news reports come in daily from Moscow, Kiev and the Western capitals: how many dead since Russia began its intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24,  how many injured, how many hungry or cold, how many displaced. We do not know the true count of casualties and the extent of the suffering and ought not pretend we do: This is the reality of war, each side having its version of unfolding events.

My inclination is to add the deaths in Ukraine these past two weeks to the 14,000 dead and the 1.5 million displaced since 2014, when the regime in Kiev began shelling its own citizens in the eastern provinces — this because the people of Donetsk and Lugansk rejected the U.S.­–cultivated coup that deposed their elected president. This simple math gives us a better idea of how many Ukrainians are worthy of our mourning.

As we mourn, it is time to consider the wider consequences of this conflict, for Ukrainians are not alone among its victims. Who else has suffered? What else has been damaged? This war is of a kind humanity has never before known. What are its costs?

Among paying-attention people it is increasingly plain that Washington’s intent in provoking Moscow’s intervention is, and probably has been from the first, to instigate a long-running conflict that bogs down Russian forces and leaves Ukrainians to wage an insurgency that cannot possibly succeed.

Is there another way to explain the many billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and matériel the U.S. and its European allies now pour into Ukraine? If the Ukrainians cannot win — a universally acknowledged reality — what is the purpose here?

Whether this strategy goes as Washington wants, or if Russian forces get their work done and withdraw to avoid a classic quagmire, remains to be seen. But as Dave DeCamp noted in Antiwar.com last Friday, there is no sign whatsoever that the Biden administration plans any further diplomatic contacts with the Kremlin.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Media, Politics, Propaganda, War

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Ukraine In The Membrane, by Good Citizen

Posted on March 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

If wars were won by propaganda, narratives, commentator invective, and posting flags on social media, Ukraine’s army would be in Moscow by now. From Good Citizen at thegoodcitizen.substack.com:

Crazy insane, got no brain.
“Break a leg. You’re a natural. We got your back.”

Insane In Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky is as much a puppet dictator of a dysfunctional Oligarchy installed through elections by global managers as Joe Biden is a puppet President of a dysfunctional Corporatocracy installed through elections by global managers. You cannot talk about either without being slandered a “conspiracy theorist”. The discerning mind knows there are no more conspiracy theories. The phrase itself was invented as a misinformation tool by the CIA to smear those who asked too many inconvenient questions after they assassinated a President in 1963 right in front of Abraham Zapruder’s camera and the world. No matter how many holes there are in a prepared narrative, including obvious coups, assassinations and lately western fixed elections, one is just supposed to shut up and not believe their lying eyes. Now we are told to shut up and believe Ukraine is a “democracy” fighting to defend “liberal values” and Zelensky is a brave leader defying evil aggression.

The hero worship of Zelensky making the rounds on the propaganda outlets and being amplified on attention networks is the stuff of legend. War is always just propaganda. The servants of power in the Ukrainian Borg, and the war hawks in both parties and their echoes of the blue check brigade across the west want people to believe a hypothetical “western liberal” future wouldn’t be a near first in that poor vassal state, but never mind the facts, in the fog of war propaganda it’s a time for emotions only.

The comic’s performances have been spectacular feats of western manipulation, guilting countries like Germany and Sweden to send more weapons that will likely require a thank-you card from Putin. The comic continues to engineer attention network mobs to pile on the increase of sanctions that will hurt the mobs more than Russians. He’s definitely still a comic, but he’s now also a dangerous lunatic who wants to bring the whole world down with his corrupt regime. With the western corporate-state media propagandists manipulating the Ukrainian Borg who are incessantly cheering him on, this will not end well. The comic’s demands become more insane by the day.

We call on all civilized countries to impose an embargo on Russian oil products, ban Russian citizens from entering your territory and disconnect Russia from SWIFT. We call on NATO, Europe, the United States to close the sky over Ukraine.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on February 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

If truth is the first casualty of war, then rationality is the second. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

Every useful or pleasing claim about the war, no matter how unverified or subsequently debunked, rapidly spreads, while dissenters are vilified as traitors or Kremlin agents.

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 1: (L-R) Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice-chair of the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) listen during a committee meeting on Capitol Hill on December 1, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

Less than a week into this war, that can no longer be said. One of the media’s most beloved members of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), on Friday explicitly and emphatically urged that the U.S. military be deployed to Ukraine to establish a “no-fly zone” — i.e., American soldiers would order Russia not to enter Ukrainian airspace and would directly attack any Russian jets or other military units which disobeyed. That would, by definition and design, immediately ensure that the two countries with by far the planet’s largest nuclear stockpiles would be fighting one another, all over Ukraine.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Media, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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The Media’s Role in the U.S. “War Machine”, by Bill Bonner

Posted on August 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

Some still politely refer to mainstream hacks as journalists or reporters, but more and more they’re called presstitutes or government whores, which are more descriptive and honest. From Bill Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

OITOU, FRANCE – Our subject this week…

…how the Big Tech companies became such jackasses.

Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al. raced ahead with innovations that brought them millions of customers. They provided the equivalent of an “open mic,” where anyone could sing any tune he wanted. Then, they sold the info to advertisers, who used it to find customers of their own.

But then, the tech companies decided to impose their own musical tastes. If they think you’re off-key, you’ll be canceled, deplatformed, and disappeared.

It happened, famously, to Donald Trump. The ex-president is, of course, a moron. And private companies can cut him off if they want.

But if Twitter took down the accounts of every moron who can’t carry a tune, it would be out of business.

Instead, the social media companies just cut off some morons… not all of them. And therein hangs a tale…

Political Business

As politics become more important, private companies become more political. That is, when a country’s elite goes mad, its private sector goes mad, too.

Just try opening a bank account.

First, there are fewer local or regional banks; the smaller ones have been less and less able to survive in the world of complex federal control.

Second, the big banks that are left act more like chartered, federal monopolies. They don’t give you a toaster anymore. They give you a grilling…

Who are you? Can you prove where you live? Where did your money come from?

And then, thanks to the Federal Reserve, you put money on deposit and the banks don’t pay you any interest.

ValuePenguin, whatever that is, tells us that the average rate of interest on savings accounts is 0.06%. At today’s inflation rate, a saver loses over 5% per year.

The big banks get their money from the Fed. They are regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Naturally, they lick the hand of their masters whenever it is offered.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda, War

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John Pilger: The Most Lethal Virus is Not Covid-19. It is War. by John Pilger

Posted on December 14, 2020 | 1 comment

The same people destroying liberty around the world in the name of fighting the Covid-19 “threat” have no compunction about waging murderous wars that kill far more than Covid ever will. From John Pilger at consortiumnews.com:

Covid-19 has provided cover for a pandemic of propaganda, says John Pilger.

Armed Services Memorial. (Geograph/David Dixon)

Britain’s Armed Services Memorial is a silent, haunting place. Set in the rural beauty of Staffordshire, in an arboretum of some 30,000 trees and sweeping lawns, its Homeric figures celebrate determination and sacrifice.

The names of more than 16,000 British servicemen and women are listed. The literature says they “died in operational theatre or were targeted by terrorists”.

On the day I was there, a stonemason was adding new names to those who have died in some 50 operations across the world during what is known as “peacetime”. Malaya, Ireland, Kenya, Hong Kong, Libya, Iraq, Palestine and many more, including secret operations, such as Indochina.

Not a year has passed since peace was declared in 1945 that Britain has not sent military forces to fight the wars of empire.

Not a year has passed when countries, mostly poor and riven by conflict, have not bought or have been “soft loaned” British arms to further the wars, or “interests”, of empire.

Empire? What empire? The investigative journalist Phil Miller recently revealed in Declassified that Boris Johnson’s Britain maintained 145 military sites – call them bases — in 42 countries. Johnson has boasted that Britain is to be “the foremost naval power in Europe”.

In the midst of the greatest health emergency in modern times, with more than 4 million surgical procedures delayed by the National Health Service, Johnson has announced a record increase of £16.5 billion in so-called defence spending – a figure that would restore the under-resourced NHS many times over.

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Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, Medicine, Military, Politics, Propaganda, War

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