Yes, the US government engages in censorship just like the Russians. But, of course, the US corporate media will never admit to such things.
Of course, anti-war voices have been censored for a long time in this country. That’s why all of my favorite journalists work for independent news outlets and are never heard from on the major networks.
However, recently the censorship has become worse. Now independent reporting is being attacked wherever it appears. The video below offers two stories in one. First, independent journalist Abby Martin describes the erasure from the internet of the video archive from her old show “Breaking the Set” on RT television.
If you don’t think our government censors the news, listen to her story. She is not the only one who has experienced it recently.
Secondly, Aaron Mate discusses the role of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the Ukrainian national guard, as well as the influence of Nazi politicians in the Ukrainian government.
But, of course, the average American has no idea that we are supplying military weapons to a government that arms Nazis without hesitation. That’s because of CENSORSHIP.
Mate’s report on Ukrainian Nazis begins at the 20 minute mark.
Martin begins to tell her story of censorship at the 29 minute mark.
Former top Pentagon advisor retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor was recently interviewed by journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone.
The Colonel offers a VERY different perspective on the war in Ukraine, Russia, Putin, NATO, and the US role in this conflict than you will ever hear from the monolithic, pro-war, propaganda machine called “news” in this country.
Colonel Macgregor’s interview takes up the first 60 minutes of this two hour video. Max and Aaron discuss the issues in the second hour.
I strongly encourage you to listen to the Colonel’s words. If only Biden were listening…
Our current American moment offers an glaring example of the corporate media’s power to generate, manipulate. and circumscribe public opinion.
If it’s not broadcast on the news, then it does not exist. Corporate editors at CNN, Fox, or whichever newsroom decide what we will care about today.
They only show us what they want us to see, knowing full well that the average American will never look any further than the edited images her favorite news channel shows to her.
The network news room also decides how we will think and feel about the events they have selected for us to see that day. We are all constantly being manipulated by the big business arms of major media outlets.
Tragically, the conservative wing of the Christian church is among the most easily manipulated because we confine ourselves to the most narrow, like-minded sources of information — Fox News and whichever “Christian” TV and/or radio stations we prefer, all of which are promotional arms of the Republican party.
Thus are we manicured, buffed, groomed, trimmed, and made to fit into the preconstructed box of conventional, American nationalism — including Christian nationalism.
This box guarantees that America always wears the white hat while America’s enemies (as defined by the American government and its communication stooges) always wear the black hats.
Yet, that brand of patriotic, nationalistic identity is as far removed from life in the kingdom of God as is the east from the west, or as far as heaven is removed from hell.
Yet, the wisdom available by way of God’s Image within us, an Image with which every human being is equally endowed, still shines brightly in many.
Anyone who has followed this blog knows how much I admire the investigative journalism of Abby Martin. Her program The Empire Files has long provided a wide-ranging, independent, internationalist perspective on world events. The very perspective that US corporate media will never provide.
Abby was recently interviewed by The Real News Network — another independent outlet I highly recommend — to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the role played by the US and NATO in fostering this conflict.
I suspect that Abby is an atheist or agnostic, although I don’t know for sure. However, her humanistic moral compass points to true north. The following excerpt from her interview provides the most “Christian” analysis that I have yet to hear about America’s relationship to the war in Ukraine.
Abby begins by reminding everyone of the many bombs dropped regularly by the US and our allies around the world every day. The map below was drawn up yesterday. How many Americans are mourning for the brown and black bombing victims in Syria, Yemen, or Somalia?
I’ll tell you: few, if any.
The media ensures that our national heartache is very narrowly circumscribed, limited to only the “worthy victims” that the US government identifies as the victims of “our enemies.”
It also should be noted that these worthy victims are also white Europeans. People who look like us. That is a large part of what makes them “worthy.”
Ukrainians are not like the brown and black “hoards” fleeing as displaced refugees from the homelands that the US and its allies have demolished in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Those poor people are “unworthy victims” who deserve to be turned away at the border.
What condemnable, wicked rubbish is fed to us by our corporate masters under the label “news.”
And oh how completely we condemn ourselves by surrendering our loyalty to the deceitful siren songs of national pride and foreign policy preferences.
Now, please watch as Abby Martin reflects more of the mind of Christ regarding world affairs than I have ever heard from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).
I have decided to shift gears in this third part of this series about US propaganda and the Russian attack on Ukraine
American “news” rarely if ever mention the economic factors that have moved both Ukraine and Russia into their current hostilities.
The manipulative intentions of the European Union (together with NATO) , the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank are central to aggravating the relationship between these two countries.
My eyes first began to be opened to these issues years ago when I first decided that I needed to be better informed about US foreign policy. Two books were crucial to that formative education. The first was, John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, with a new second edition called The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
Perkins tells his story of working for the CIA throughout Latin America on behalf of American corporations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. It’s a mind-boggling account of how the CIA works on behalf of US corporate powerbrokers by forcing 3rd world governments into perpetual indebtedness.
The second book was David Talbot’s book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. Talbot traces the origins of the CIA and the formative role played by US corporations in shaping its “mission” around the world.
Rather than explaining more myself, below are 3 conversations, or 3 parts
Journalist Bryce Greene
of a single conversation, with journalist Bryce Greene, a reporter for F.A.I.R. Media Watch discussing the importance of America’s enforcement of neo-liberal economics via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) throughout the world — including the European Union:
The third installment below is called “The History of US Intervention (in Russia and Ukraine)”
Investigative journalist, Max Blumenthal, is the son of Sydney Blumenthal,
Investigative journalist, Max Blumenthal
who is a well-known journalist, Democratic political consultant, as well as an historian who has written a 5-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Max is an important voice in alternative news media. He is the author of 5 important books, 3 of which I have read — these being Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, and The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the al Qaeda, Isis, and Donald Trump.
Max is also the founder and chief editor of The Grayzone, an alternative, online news site that I follow faithfully. Please note that when I say “alternative news” I mean “much, much more likely to be telling you the actual facts of the situation than any reporter will be telling you on the MSM.”
This story is significant for westerners especially since the US/western media are busy making a very big deal of the fact that Ukrainian president Zelensky is Jewish. Their argument is that Jew could never — no never — be allied with neo-Nazis in his country nor allow them into his government.
Of course, grown ups should know better than to believe such things.
Below is one of Jimmy Dore’s recent conversations with Max. Jimmy does a good job of introducing the issues for discussion during the opening 9 minutes. At the 9:30 mark, Max joins in with further analysis of the role neo-Nazis and fascistic, Ukrainian ethnic nationalism have played in the war with Russia — a conflict that actually began in 2014.
I once read that Americans are the most heavily propagandized people in the world. That may not be true, but I suspect that we rank very high, along side the various authoritarian regimes we pretend to hate.
Propaganda not only involves the spread of false information, it also withholds any information that conflicts with or complicates the establishment, party line.
US news media have been using these methods of disinformation for many years. War always offers a banquet of salacious, opportunities for effective propaganda.
Investigative journalist, Max Blumenthal
This is why you probably have never heard of either Max Blumenthal or Aaron Mate. They are rarely, if ever, invited to appear on mainstream, network, or cable news channels. Their problem is that they are not propagandists for the establishment.
Yet, for my money, Max and Aaron are two of the most important
Investigative journalist, Aaron Mate
independent, investigative journalists working today.
This the first of three posts where I will feature their reporting on the current war in Ukraine. No, neither of them are reporting from the front lines. But I know that Max has been to Ukraine for past investigations, and they both have personal contacts with people in Ukraine today.
They are both also well informed about the modern history of the region, Ukrainian-Russian relations, and the lead up to the current conflict.
Jimmy Dore has been offering them a platform for extended commentary. It’s the best coverage that I have found explaining the US role in sparking this war, and the provocations effected by the fascist, neo-Nazi wing of the Ukrainian military and national government, including the crucial effects of the Ukrainian civil war in the eastern part of the country.
Jimmy will not be to everyone’s taste. But I encourage you to stay put and listen to everything Max and Aaron have to say.
In this first video, Aaron Mate explains “What the Media is Hiding About Ukraine/Russia.”
CBN has a journalist reporting from Ukraine. Here is the conclusion of his most recent report. CBN labels the clip, “Who is going to stand up for freedom and democracy?”:
Is this man a propagandist stooge? Is he ignorant about recent European history? Or is he so heavily invested in American Christian nationalism that he cannot think outside of his tiny American box?
Returning to the ridiculous propaganda created by George W. Bush is not only ignorant but dangerous. Remember when president Bush justified his absurd “war on terror” by declaring that the “terrorists” (whoever they might be) “hated us because of our freedom.”?
That was not true then, and it is not true today.
Explaining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying that “Russia hates Ukrainian democracy and freedom” is merely a lazy conservative’s way of saying, “I don’t know what in the world is happening here.”
Remember, this is the news network that has never seen an American invasion of another sovereign country, or an American led coup overturning a foreign government, that it didn’t approve of.
CBN cheered for America’s criminal destruction of Iraq.
They have applauded the American demolition of Syria.
The list could go on and on…
And now they condemn Russia for invading Ukraine?
This report is a dangerous example of Christian nationalist propaganda. It is dangerous because the obvious tragedy of war is manipulated to serve the interests of imperial America in eastern Europe.
The reporter’s tearful, closing rhetorical question is an obvious appeal to American sympathies. Humanitarian sympathies that will then be corrupted by US politicians and military recruiters who will justify another round of warfare by happily sacrificing the next generation of “freedom fighters” on the altar of imperialistic, American self-righteousness.
Millions of uninformed, patriotic, nationalistic, evangelical American Christians will watch this CBN report and naïvely swallow it all hook, line, and sinker. America wears the shining white hat of freedom. Russia wears the malicious black hat of tyranny.
Such manipulation works best among the uninformed. And, sadly, American evangelicals are among the most uninformed.
The average listener will not know anything about the recent history of American-Russian-Ukrainian relations.
They won’t know about Russia’s protests against NATO expansion, or that the US broke it’s promise to Russia that NATO would not be expanded.
They won’t know about the various proposals for a unified European military arrangement that would have included Russia, all of which were negated by the US.
They won’t know that Russia asked to join NATO several times over the years. Mikhail Gorbachev proposed the idea in 1990. Vladimir Putin asked president Clinton for Russia’s admission to NATO.
They won’t know that the US was deeply involved in the 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych who was replaced by a hand-picked, America-friendly politician.
So, please, it is the height of hypocrisy for anyone to pretend that this current crisis is about the defense of democracy.
The US has always needed its Russian boogeyman. NATO preferred to maintain its “defense profile” as an anti-Russian organization and so rejected or ignored Russia’s requests for membership. Consequently, Russia was deliberately isolated as it watched NATO forces march further and further east, until they now sit cheek-to-jowl on the Russian border.
How many times can you poke a bear with a sharp stick before it turns on you?
We are now witnessing the answer to that question in Ukraine. Yes, Putin’s aggression must be condemned. He and he alone started this war. He is the premier warmonger of the moment.
But the United States as well as every NATO member state must share responsibility for the looming Ukrainian death toll. We too are guilty. We have used and abused Ukraine as a pawn in our psychotic phobia to hate Russia.
Watching a “Christian” journalist wallow in this phobia as he propagates the damnable heresy of Christian nationalism is both pathetic and heartbreaking.
Didn’t he, or anyone else at CBN, ever have a pastor or a professor or a good friend explain to them that as followers of Jesus we are always citizens of God’s kingdom, first, last, and always?
Allegiance to Jesus leaves no room for anyone’s nationalism. Neither does it allow for narrow mindedness, ignorance, or the deliberate exploitation of misinformation. War is too serious a matter.
First, a few words from Stephen Cohen, now deceased, on the absurdity and of our current situation in Ukraine, which could have been avoided. Cohen was a professor of Russian history and p0litics at Princeton and NYU.
Caitlin Johnstone has another good article detailing what the US ought to be doing right now. I’ll give you a hint: it’s nothing at all like what is actually happening.
The article is entitled “12 Thoughts on Ukraine.”
Here is an excerpt:
The U.S. power alliance has a choice between escalating aggressions against Russia to world-threatening levels or doing what anti-imperialists have been begging them to do for years and pursue detente.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the goal of which he claims is not to occupy the country but to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” it. We’ve no reason to put blind faith in any of those claims. Only time will tell.
As of this writing dozens have reportedly been killed. All war is horrific. We can only hope that this one winds up being the least horrific a war can be.
Some thoughts:
This whole thing could very easily have been avoided with a little bit of diplomacy. The only reason that didn’t happen was it would have meant the U.S. empire taking a teensy, weensy step back from its agenda of total planetary domination. I’ve seen people call it “sad” or “unfortunate” that Western powers didn’t make basic low-cost, high-yield concessions like guaranteeing no NATO membership for Ukraine and having Kiev honor the Minsk agreements, but it’s not sad, and it’s not unfortunate. It’s enraging. That they did this deserves nothing but pure, unadulterated, white hot rage.
Narrative managers have been working furiously to quash all discussion of No. 1, however. Like our good friend Michael McFaul here:
This is one of the most influential Russia “experts” in the Western world decrying propaganda while demanding media outlets enact propaganda. Saying what your government wants said instead of objective reporting the truth is the thing that propaganda is.
Please don’t report facts on your media platforms. Don’t let anyone talk about the known actions by NATO powers and Kiev, which experts have long warned would lead to this situation. You’re not allowed to talk about the known U.S./NATO/Ukraine actions which demonstrably led us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom. Your loyalty is to the U.S. empire, not to truth. . .
The primary risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will choose to start one, it’s that one could be triggered by miscommunication, malfunction or misunderstanding amid the chaos and confusion of escalating Cold War tensions. This nearly happened, repeatedly, in the last Cold War. Cold War brinkmanship has far too many small, unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that they can ramp up aggressions without triggering a nuclear exchange. Nobody who feels safe with these games of nuclear chicken understands what they really are. We survived the last Cold War by sheer, dumb luck. We were never once in control. We just got lucky. There’s no reason to trust that we’ll get lucky again. We need to abandon this madness and pursue detente immediately. . .
8. It would now seem the U.S. power alliance has a choice between either (A) escalating aggressions against Russia to world-threatening levels or (B) doing what anti-imperialists have been begging them to do for years and pursuing detente. This is exactly where anti-imperialists have been warning we could wind up if the U.S. didn’t work toward detente with Russia. . .
As a follower of Jesus, I am a staunch anti-imperialist, as I believe every Christian should be.
Whether or not we all agree on that issue, I am convinced that every Christian must be committed to:
Insisting that our government avoid military escalation and conflict by pursuing rigorous diplomacy. It is wiser to be called “weak” by a warmonger than to enter a potentially nuclear conflict through foolish bluster.
Recognizing that we are not the only group of people with legitimate, national security interests. We must recognize that Russia has its own security concerns that have been seriously magnified by NATO, western forces arrayed along its western border. Who is the aggressor here? Seeing issues from the other’s perspective is an essential, Christian virtue.
Closing our eyes and ears to the patriotic, nationalistic, pro-America chanting that accompanies every new military excursion. We are citizens of God’s kingdom first and foremost. Christ’s kingdom is always a peaceable kingdom that never calls anyone to war and never justifies anyone else’s bloody conflict. Do not be deceived by the heresy, idolatry, and blood-lust now bombarding America’s airwaves.
President Biden claims that Russian ground troops have moved into eastern Ukraine, others say that Russian forces remain stationed along the border with orders to remain on alert.
Which story is true? I don’t know, but one thing is certain. The events unfolding along the Russia-Ukraine border are very, very dangerous for all of Europe and the United States.
As a Christian, I believe avoiding war and expanding peace is always the best option. So, once again, as the US media continues the spew the establishment, anti-Russia, anti-Putin party-line, I encourage us all to expand our information horizons.
Below are three analyses of the current crisis going well beyond, and contrary to, the pro-American narrative. Since we may well be looking at another war in Europe, it is imperative for every citizen to be as well-informed as possible.
I hope you’ll take the time to listen to these reports:
The first is by a journalist with the Socialist Workers Party. Ignore the political ad at the end of his report if you choose, but his description of the situation on the ground is very good.
Below is an interview with Ben Aris who was once the Moscow bureau chief for the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. He offers an excellent historical overview and current perspective:
Finally, even though this next interview is 43 minutes long, it is well worth every minute of your time. Aaron Mate interviews Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent.
If only US news media would offer the analysis of people like Aris and Sakwa. But then, mainstream news outlets don’t try to inform us. Their primary purpose is to manipulate us.
Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for the New York Times for 20 years. As an on the ground reporter who has seen war’s destructive power up close and personal, he lost numerous friends and can tell his own near-death experiences.
Perhaps his most important book, in my opinion, is his dissection of war’s seductive, erotic power and the dehumanizing effects it has for all concerned. The book is entitled War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already.
As the US government continues to beat its war drums, feeding our major news outlets with a steady stream of evidence-free accusations against Russia, all intended to stir American blood-lust, we should stop and ask ourselves why opposing voices are never given time publicly to explain their opposition to war with Russia.
Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? Why is there no public debate?
Below is an excerpt from one of Hedges speeches during the lead up the war in Iraq. He summarizes his arguments from his book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. I encourage you to sit down and listen.
The Biden administration is working hard to convince us that America’s newest meaning and purpose is a violent conflict with another major superpower.
Don’t buy it. It’s a lie. It’s a lie forged in the pit of hell and now propagated by devilish warmongers who calculate only dollar signs when they should see precious human lives.
