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.
John Pilger is an independent, British war-journalist and documentary
Independent journalist and documentary film maker, John Pilger
film-maker who does journalism the old-fashioned way: he goes to the scene and talks to the people involved.
His article, posted today at Consortium News, is entitled “War in Europe & the Rise of Raw Propaganda.” He ably discusses both the tsunami of warmongering propaganda about Ukraine that has swept across American media, as well as the needlessly reckless behavior — principally from the American side — unfolding around Ukraine.
Did you know that Ukraine has been in the midst of a civil war since 2014, a war where the US is backing the side that includes neo-Nazi, fascist militias?
Did you know that the US was a major player in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, an action that helped to stir the civil war ravaging eastern Ukraine today?
Below is an excerpt of Pilger’s article:
Russia’s security proposals ought to be welcomed in the West. . . But who understands their significance when all the people are told is that Putin is a pariah?
Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain. . .
On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.
But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream. . .
The No-Evidence Rule
The Russians are coming. Russia is worse than bad. Putin is evil, “a Nazi like Hitler,” salivated the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia – tonight, this week, next week. The sources include an ex CIA propagandist who now speaks for the U.S. State Department and offers no evidence of his claims about Russian actions because “it comes from the U.S. Government.”
The American Establishment is feverishly propagandizing us into preparing ourselves for a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.
Day after day more anonymous sources – who never provide any evidence to substantiate their “frightening” revelations, and are never asked by the corporate media to produce whatever evidence they may have – drop another scary soundbite into our vapid, undiscerning public discourse.
Fear-mongering among the uninformed is one of propaganda’s most useful strategies because the uninformed are easy to mislead.
Fortunately for energetic propagandists, the average American imagines that world history began yesterday, which makes the general public a sucker for lies and disinformation about that scary world looming beyond our glistening shores.
This time-dishonored tactic is now being exploited with wild abandon by every major American news outlet, without exception. I am urging you: do not believe a word of what you hear on this subject from ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, or Newsmax.
Now that the US is firmly rooted in a “second Cold War” with Russian – a needless and very dangerous antagonism manufactured out of whole cloth by our military-industrial-media complex – its time to beat the drums of war again. Or so the Establishment believes.
Why? Because war always makes a lot of money for the military-industrial complex, including US corporations.
The beast must be fed. It’s hungry. It can’t devour Afghanistan anymore, so it needs fresh meat. God help us all.
Here is what every American needs to know, remember, or investigate concerning the history of US, Russian, Ukrainian relations:
(By the way, for one of the best, most sensible discussions of the current
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (retired). Former chief of staff for Colin Powell during the George W. Bush administration
problems, please watch Medea Benjamin’s informative conversation with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – a man who knows his stuff inside and out — right here.)
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 much of eastern Europe was thrown into turmoil. Two events were particularly troubling for Russia as it watched its empire disappear.
First, the Warsaw Pact, the eastern European counterpart to NATO which had served as the guardian of Soviet security, was quickly disbanded.
Second, East Germany reunited with West Germany, creating a unified German republic as a part of NATO.
Russia, quite reasonably, saw these two developments as an immediate threat to its national security.Not only had NATO, Russia’s historic antagonist, expanded, it had just taken a monumental step eastward towards the Russian border. And many other formerly Eastern-bloc countries were lining up to follow suit.
Mikhail Gorbachev (Photo by: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)
The Russian leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev – who was responsible for the new openness that led to the collapse of Soviet communism – quickly asked for a US guarantee that NATO would not invite any former members of the Soviet Union to join its western alliance.
President George H. W. Bush agreed.
Bush promised that NATO would stop in its tracks, moving no further east
George H. W. Bush
towards the Russian border. (I have always held that NATO should have immediately disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. I was once arrested for demonstrating for this cause. But no one in Washington D. C. listens to me. Alas.)
Unfortunately, Bill Clinton quickly ignored Bush’s pledge to Gorbachev. By manhandling the easily manipulated Boris Yeltsin, Clinton began to expand NATO further eastward.
NATO membership requires that new entrants must possess a certain level of military capability. After all, NATO members all pledge to defend one another in case of an attack.
US weapons companies make a bundle of cash selling new, advanced, American-made weaponry to these fledgling member states. And, of course, all of those missiles, rockets, and guns are generally pointed, you guessed it, towards Russia.
For 30 years, then, Russia has watched its old nemesis, NATO, moving further and further east, coming closer and closer to its western border, in direct violation of the promise given by an American president.
Most recently, NATO invited Ukraine, which borders Russia, to join its
Vladimir Putin
military club. The US wants to begin selling advanced weaponry to Ukraine. Is it any surprise that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees NATO and the United States as a direct threat to Russia’s national security?
Of course, not. He would be stupid not to, and one thing Putin is not, is stupid.
In the current negotiations, Putin’s primary demand is that president Biden not allow Ukraine into NATO. Behaving like a typical American politician, Biden told Putin to drop dead.
And here we are. Unnecessary, dangerous escalation on every front.
Let’s stop and put ourselves in Putin’s shoes.
How would the US respond if an antagonistic country, let’s say China, began to move its military into Canada or Mexico, cheek-to-jowl with the US border?
We all know the answer to that question.
Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?
President Kennedy learned that the Soviets were moving nuclear missiles
President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, June 3, 1961. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
into Cuba. He immediately told Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev that the US would not tolerate Soviet weapons near its borders. We came close to a nuclear war over this, and Khrushchev withdrew the missiles.
Why should we expect Putin and the Russians to react any differently?
What we need right now is an American president who will demonstrate the wisdom and humility of Nikita Khrushchev.
There are no two ways about it folks. In this current “confrontation,” the United States is the threatening aggressor. We have always been the mangy wolf salivating at Russia’s western doorstep. We are the ones causing these problems. Not Russia. Not Putin.
No wonder Putin has become antagonistic!
All of the blame – all of it! – falls on the US and now onto president Biden.
Recall that war-mongering is a bipartisan habit in this country. The US loves to be at war. Powerful people make a lot of money, billions of dollars, from it.
But American saber rattling must stop! Please call or write your senators and representatives. Tell them that you strongly oppose this administration’s position on Russia and Ukraine.
Tell them you do not want a new Cold War with Russia, and they need to stop bad mouthing president Putin in public. It doesn’t help. Putin is not the bad guy in this particular drama.
Tell them that Ukraine has no business joining NATO. The US has no business sending American troops into Ukraine or the surrounding nations.
Perhaps you have heard or read about some recent confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Bedouins living in the Negev in southern Israel.
Below are two video clips of the same incident. The first is from i24 News, an official Israeli news outlet. The second is from Middle East Eye, a London-based news outlet covering news in the Middle East and North Africa.
Notice the differences. How is the same story being relayed in each clip?
First, notice the inflammatory language used in the i24 News clip:
Bedouins are not protesting; they are “rioting.”
Soldiers are only responding to Bedouin “crimes.”
That Bedouins would object to trees being planted (without consultation) on their property is part of “Israel’s crazy reality.”
The only person allowed to speak is a representative of the Jewish-only settlements replacing Bedouin homes and families.
Now notice the language and storyline in the second clip:
Bedouin protesters are allowed to speak for themselves.
The protests are placed within their broader context, which (quite tellingly) is never explained in the i24 clip.
The bigger narrative goes like this.
[a] The Israeli government unilaterally expropriates (i.e., steals) land on which Bedouins have lived for generations; it is now called “disputed land.” The Bedouin village is labeled as “unrecognized,” making it easier to eradicate.
[b] The Zionist process of ethnic cleansing and colonization moves forward.
The Jewish National Fund (the largest land owner in Israel, which prohibits Palestinians from living or working on JNF land) plant trees (probably non-native) on Bedouin grazing land.
The Bedouins are told they must move out.
Bedouin homes are demolished.
The people resist and demonstrate against their expulsion.
The colonizers call the Bedouin resistance “criminal” and “crazy” while their invasion brings “noble” results. (A common technique used by settler-colonizers).
These stark differences in how the story is framed and described illustrates both the construction and the power of propaganda.
It also reminds us of how we should doubt and question every news story presented to us by the media.
Watch the clips again. Who is providing a more accurate version of the actual events?
