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It Is The Mass Media’s Job To Help Suppress Anti-War Movements

We’re not going to get de-escalation, diplomacy and detente unless the people use the power of their numbers to demand those things, and the people are not going to use the power of their numbers to demand those things as long as they are successfully propagandized not to. This means propaganda is the ultimate problem that needs to be addressed.

Caitlin Johnstone, 1 March 23,  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/it-is-the-mass-medias-job-to-help?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=105595703&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

In a new article titled “European antiwar protests gain strength as NATO’s Ukraine proxy war escalates,” The Grayzone’s Stavroula Pabst and Max Blumenthal document the many large demonstrations that have been occurring in France, the UK, Germany, Greece, Spain, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium and elsewhere opposing the western empire’s brinkmanship with Russia and proxy warfare in Ukraine.

Pabst and Blumenthal conclude their report with a denouncement of the way the western media have either been ignoring or sneering at these protests while actively cheerleading smaller demonstrations in support of arming Ukraine.

“When Western media has not ignored Europe’s antiwar protest wave altogether, its coverage has alternated between dismissive and contemptuous,” they write. “German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle sneeringly characterized the February 25 demonstration in Berlin as ‘naive’ while providing glowing coverage to smaller shows of support for the war by the Ukrainian diaspora. The New York Times, for its part, mentioned the European protests in just a single generic line buried in an article on minuscule anti-Putin protests held by Russian emigres.”

This bias is of course blatantly propagandistic, which won’t surprise anyone who understands that the mainstream western media exist first and foremost to administer propaganda on behalf of the US-centralized empire. And chief among their propaganda duties is to suppress the emergence of a genuine peace movement.

As we’ve discussed previously, it has never in human history been more urgent to have a massive, forceful protest movement in opposition to the empire’s rapidly accelerating trajectory toward a global conflict against Russia and China. Other peace movements have arisen in the past in response to horrific wars which would go on to claim millions of lives, but a world war in the Atomic Age could easily wind up killing billions, and must never be allowed to happen.

And yet the public is not treating this unparalleled threat with the urgency it deserves. A few protests here and there is great, but it’s not nearly enough. And the reason the people have not answered the call is because the mass media have been successfully propagandizing them into accepting the continuous escalations toward world war that we’ve been seeing.

People aren’t going to protest what their government is doing if they believe that what their government is doing is appropriate, and the only reason so many people believe what their government is doing with regard to Russia and China is appropriate is because they have been propagandized into thinking so.

The mass media are not telling the public about the many well-documented western provocations which led to the war in Ukraine and sabotaged peace at every turn; they’re just telling everyone that Putin invaded because he’s an evil Hitler sequel who loves killing and hates freedom. The mass media are not telling the public about the way the US empire has been encircling China with war machinery in ways it would never permit itself to be encircled while deliberately staging incendiary provocations in Taiwan; they’re just telling everyone that China is run by evil warmongering tyrants. The mass media are not reminding the public that after the fall of the Soviet Union the US empire espoused a doctrine asserting that the rise of any foreign superpower must be prevented at all cost; they’re letting that agenda fade into the memory hole.

Because people believe Russia and China are the sole aggressors and the US and its allies are only responding defensively to those unprovoked aggressions, they don’t see the need for a mass protest movement against their own governments. If you tell the average coastal American liberal that you’re holding a protest about the war in Ukraine, they’re going to assume you mean you’re protesting against Putin, and they’ll look at you strangely if you tell them you’re actually protesting your own government’s aggressions.

The narrative that Russia and China are acting with unprovoked aggression actually prevents peace, because if your government isn’t doing anything to make things worse, then there’s nothing it can change about its own behavior to make things better. But of course there is a massive, massive amount that the western power alliance can change about its own behavior with regard to Russia and China that would greatly improve matters. Instead of working to subordinate the entire planet to the will of Washington and its drivers, they can work toward de-escalation, diplomacy and detente.

We’re not going to get de-escalation, diplomacy and detente unless the people use the power of their numbers to demand those things, and the people are not going to use the power of their numbers to demand those things as long as they are successfully propagandized not to. This means propaganda is the ultimate problem that needs to be addressed. Ordinary people can only address it by waking the public up to the fact that the political/media class are lying to them about what’s happening with Russia and China, using whatever means we have access to.

So that’s what we need to do. We need to fight the imperial disinformation campaign using information. Tell people the truth using every medium available to us to sow distrust in the imperial propaganda machine, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. 

Our rulers are always babbling about how they’re fighting an “information war” against enemy nations, but in reality they’re fighting an information war against normal westerners like us. So we must fight back. We need to cripple public trust in the propaganda machine and begin awakening one another from our propaganda-induced sleep, so that we can begin organizing against the horrific end they are driving us toward.

March 4, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media | Leave a comment

Biden’s “Fools-Based International Order” – a network to bring about war against China.

The Biden administration has a name for this network – the rules-based international order. And sustaining the grip this order has on the world represents an existential challenge for the US.

one is struck by the exclusively militaristic nature of their mission—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) security partnership, and a “revitalized Quad” ……. all, at their core, military alliances.

Militarization of China policy reflects US’ hysteria, By Scott Ritter, Feb 28, 202 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1286369.shtml

When one reads the 2022 National Security Strategy of the US, it becomes crystal clear that, at least according to the world view as promulgated by the administration of President Joe Biden, the US and China are on trajectory that can only lead to one thing – military confrontation. 

At the core of this assessment is the enduring belief on the part of the Biden administration that the key to America’s continued role as a world leader is the reinvigoration of “America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships to uphold and strengthen the principles and institutions that have enabled so much stability, prosperity, and growth for the last 75 years.” 

The Biden administration has a name for this network – the rules-based international order. And sustaining the grip this order has on the world represents an existential challenge for the US.

According to the Biden administration, “The [People’s Republic of China] is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”

According to the Biden administration, “The [People’s Republic of China] is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”

China, the Biden administration believes, is the greatest threat to the US, something the Biden administration makes abundantly clear. “The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit, even as the US remains committed to managing the competition between our countries responsibly.”

The “responsible management” the Biden administration speaks of draws upon an “unrivaled network of allies and partners” which “protects and advances our interests around the world.” The Biden administration’s strategy for “competing” with China requires the US to “assemble the strongest possible coalitions.”

But when one looks at the coalitions highlighted by the Biden administration as being central to this effort, one is struck by the exclusively militaristic nature of their mission—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) security partnership, and a “revitalized Quad”, which brings together the US with Japan, India, and Australia in a security arrangement designed to contain Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region—are all, at their core, military alliances.

“Competition”, when it comes to the US approach toward China, is better defined as “deterrence”, and “deterrence” is a military mission, one which the Biden administration has pledged to “act urgently to sustain and strengthen”, noting that China is the “pacing challenge.” 

The result of the Biden administration’s approach toward China is the militarization of what should be a classic problem of diplomacy, where the traditional tools of negotiation are increasingly replaced by confrontation. 

The most recent example of this militarized approach is the so-called “Chinese Spy Balloon” crisis, where the Biden administration used the incursion by what clearly was a wayward high-altitude balloon equipped with sensors designed to collect atmospheric information used to investigate climate change to generate hysteria about a non-existent Chinese threat. This hysteria culminated in the US employing Air Force fighter aircraft to shoot down the balloon, destroying both it and its scientific payload.

The extent to which the Biden administration has supplanted diplomacy with “militarized” competition is underscored by the fact that, because of this self-generated Sinophobia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled plans to travel to China for high-level talks. At a time when the US and China should be exhausting every opportunity to engage in the kind of constructive dialogue the Biden administration claims as its principal tool for managing its relationship with China, the US has instead embarked on a phrenetic “balloon chase”, where US fighter aircraft scour the American skies for even more “made in China” balloons to shoot down.

The militarization of US-Chinese relations reached its apex recently when US Air Force General Mike Minihan, the head of the US Air Mobility Command (AMC), issued a memorandum declaring that his “gut” told him that the US and China would be at war by 2025, and instructing the men and women under his command practice pistol marksmanship by firing a full “clip” of ammunition into a 7-meter target, aiming for the head. 

While General Minihan’s superiors have distanced themselves from the memorandum, the fact is his undiplomatic language is reflective of a core assessment dating back to 2021 known as “the Davidson Window”, named after the former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Philip Davidson, who postulated at that time that China would invade Taiwan within six years. The “Davidson Window” guides the posture of a US military which, by the Biden administration’s own admission, uses China as its “pacing challenge.”

The Biden administration would be well-advised to become grounded in old-school diplomacy rather than chasing balloons in the sky because, left unchecked, the ongoing militarization of the US-Chinese relationship can only lead to disaster.

March 4, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international | Leave a comment

Space dangers: Contested orbits and mounting space junk

The 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty prohibits ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in space or on ‘celestial bodies’ like the moon. But currently ‘weapons of selective destruction’ fall outside of the OST. Thus a new treaty is urgently needed.  

By Bruce Gagnon , http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2023/02/space-dangers-contested-orbits-and.html

Space orbital parking lots are getting dangerously crowded risking cascading collisions ( Kessler Syndrome) which could become so severe that space flight would be impossible due to the orbiting field of debris. If this was to occur much of life on planet Earth would go dark as our daily activities are enabled by space satellites (GPS, Internet banking, weather prediction, cell phones, air traffic control, etc).

In addition, because of the massive escalation of satellite launches, astronomers are complaining that we are losing the night sky.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX makes rockets and satellites to build Starlink, a broadband Internet system that once completed will cover the entire world. SpaceX has so far put 2,500 satellites into orbit and plans for 42,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) occupying 80% of this space.

The Pentagon funds and tests Starlink to use its military capabilities. Starlink satellites are being utilized by the Ukrainian military to guide drones, artillery shells, and missiles into Russian positions and at civilian targets.

Very recently Musk has begun to slightly restrict the use of Starlink by the Ukrainian military as he feared that Russia might take action against the constellation.

Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) have been tested by India, US, Russia and China. ASAT’s need no explosives, at orbital speeds kinetic energy (one thing smashing into the other) does the job. 

Virtually all warfare on the planet is now enabled by space technology. Thus filling up the increasingly limited parking spaces in various orbital regions will determine which nation has an advantage.

NATO in 2019 announced a new doctrine calling space a ‘fifth operational domain’. NATO maintains that the US-led bloc will use commercial satellites as a military booster. 

The 1967 U.N. Outer Space Treaty prohibits ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in space or on ‘celestial bodies’ like the moon. But currently ‘weapons of selective destruction’ fall outside of the OST. Thus a new treaty is urgently needed.  

Russia and China have been leading the effort at the UN to create a new treaty to ban all weapons in space for many years. But the US and Israel have been blocking such a step for peace in space. The official US line through Republican and Democratic administrations is ‘there is no problem in space, and no new treaty is needed’.

During recent years the numbers of satellites orbiting the Earth has grown dramatically. Thousands more satellite launches have been approved by the Federal Communications Commission despite legal action by a coalition of groups (including the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space).

Each launch releases toxic agents which are destroying the Earth’s ozone layer. In addition, when satellites fall from lower earth orbit and burn-up on reentry they release a deadly stew of electronic particles into our atmosphere.

Russia has issued a warning to the US-NATO that they are ‘exposing civilian space assets to potential attack by utilizing them for military purposes’.

In early February Ukrainian troops fired rockets from a US-made HIMARS system which hit a hospital in Novoaydar, killing 14 Russian-ethnics and injuring 24. Russia claimed that Kiev used western satellites operated by NATO personnel to target the hospital.


In late February China announced that it was preparing to launch close to 13,000 satellites into LEO in a move to counter Musk’s SpaceX network. China stated that they intended to ‘ensure that our country has a place in low orbit and prevent the Starlink constellation from excessively preempting low-orbit resources.

~ Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and lives in Brunswick, Maine.

March 4, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, space travel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A “nuclear alliance” in Europe, as France leads a pack of EU member states to count nuclear energy as “green and renewable” Others disagree.

The EU countries are at odds over the future role of nuclear energy. At a
meeting, eleven countries, including France, agreed to expand nuclear power
cooperation. Germany strictly rejects this.

Eleven member states of the
European Union have agreed on “enhanced cooperation” in the field of
nuclear energy. These include France, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland,
Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and
Slovakia. At the meeting of EU energy ministers in Stockholm, they
specifically decided to promote “new joint projects” alongside existing
nuclear power plants. They also decided to work closely together in the
areas of research and security.

On the one hand, countries like Germany,
Luxembourg, Austria and Spain are strictly against the expansion of nuclear
power in Europe to achieve climate goals. On the other hand, the “nuclear
alliance” led by long-standing nuclear power France wants to further expand
nuclear power. According to a joint statement by the eleven EU countries,
nuclear energy is one of many tools to achieve climate goals. With nuclear
energy, electricity should be produced for the needs of consumers in order
to guarantee “security of supply” in the future. France is committed to
allowing its nuclear power to count toward renewable energy and “green”
hydrogen targets.

Tagesschau 28th Feb 2023

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/atomkraft-eu-101.html

March 4, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

‘Ukrainian kamikaze drone’ crashes down near gas plant just 68 miles from the Kremlin as Putin demands tighter security

  • Images appear to depict a UJ-31 ‘loitering munitions’ kamikaze flying bomb
  • The drone came down near the village of Kolomna

Daily Mail, By JAMES CALLERY FOR MAILONLINE, 1 March 2023

A drone crashed just 68 miles from the Kremlin today in a suspected ‘failed attack’ by Ukraine.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to tighten control of the border with Ukraine after a spate of drone attacks delivered a new challenge to Moscow more than a year after the invasion of its neighbour.

While Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in Moscow, his comments came hours after drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia and authorities closed the airspace over St Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Images shared online appear to depict a Ukrainian UJ-31 ‘loitering munitions’ kamikaze flying bomb after it crashed down near a gas plant more than 300 miles from the border.

It came down near the village of Kolomna hours after Russia’s Defence Ministry accused Ukraine of two attempted drone strikes in the south overnight.

Ukraine does not publicly claim responsibility for attacks inside Russia.

If it was behind the Kolomna drone, it would be its closest attempted strike to Moscow since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

It is also the deepest inside Russian territory any suspected Ukrainian drone has been spotted.

Postings on Russian social media showed the broken grey metal drone in a snowdrift in a woodland area.

Regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said the drone appeared to have been intended to hit a ‘civil infrastructure facility’ but noted that there was no damage.

He said the FSB security agency was handling the situation and there was no threat to residents.

There is a gas compressor plant close to the crash site. 

Reports claimed the low-flying drone may have clipped trees.

Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry accused Ukraine of sending attack drones towards civil infrastructure targets in the southern regions of Adygea and Krasnodar.

It said its electronic anti-drone jamming systems had caused them to miss their targets.

The ministry said: ‘Both drones lost control and deviated from their flight paths.

‘One fell into a field, the other, deviating from its trajectory, did not harm the intended target.’

……………………………………………… While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod that lie north of Ukraine’s Sumy region are not unusual, the hits on the Krasnodar and Adygea regions further south are noteworthy.

…………… Ukrainian authorities offered no immediate acknowledgement or comment on the reported strikes.

Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

Separately, the local government of St Petersburg – Russia’s second-largest city 800 miles north of the border with Ukraine – said early on Tuesday that it was temporarily halting all flight departures and arrivals at the city’s main airport, Pulkovo. It did not give a reason for the move.

Hours earlier, unconfirmed reports on Russia’s Telegram social network referred to the air space over St Petersburg being shut down and to Russian warplane overflights. It was not immediately clear whether this was connected to the alleged rise in drone attacks in Russia’s south………………………   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11803571/Ukrainian-kamikaze-drone-crashes-near-gas-plant-just-68-miles-Kremlin.html

March 4, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US has spent billions on Ukraine war aid. But is that money landing in corrupt pockets?

Tom Vanden BrookRachel Looker, USA TODAY, 17 Feb 23

WASHINGTON – With more than $100 billion in U.S. weaponry and financial aid flowing to Ukraine in less than a year – and more on the way to counter Russia’s invasion – concerns about arms falling into terrorists’ hands and dollars into corrupt officials’ pockets are mounting.

The special inspector general who has overseen aid to Afghanistan since 2012, and some House Republicans, warn of the need for closer oversight of the military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The scale of the effort is massive. The $113 billion appropriated by Congress in 2022 approaches the $146 billion spent in 20 years for military and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, though the cost of sending U.S. troops there was far higher.

“When you spend so much money so quickly, with so little oversight, you’re going to have fraud, waste and abuse,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said in an interview. “Massive amounts.”

Among the American public and on Capitol Hill, support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion remains strong. But it is softening. An Associated Press poll in late January showed that 48% of U.S. adults say they favor the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favor nor opposed. That’s a drop from May 2022, when 60% of U.S. adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.

Support could erode further among Americans and Ukrainians, according to members of Congress and Sopko, without greater transparency and accountability for the tens of billions spent. The costs to American taxpayers can be expected to increase as the Biden administration sends increasingly sophisticated and expensive arms to Ukraine, including Abrams battle tanks.

Assuring that the aid ends up in the right hands, they say, demands greater oversight.

U.S. struggles to account for billions sent to Ukraine

The Pentagon spent $62.3 billion in 2022 on Ukraine for weapons, ammunition, training, logistics, supplies, salaries and stipends, according to the Joint Strategic Oversight Plan for Ukraine Response report. Inspectors general for several agencies released the report in January.

The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spent $46 billion for activities ranging from border security to basic government services such as utilities, hospitals, schools and firefighting. Other government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, spent another $5 billion.

The report noted the difficulty U.S. agencies had accounting for the billions spent.

The Pentagon, for example, was “unable to provide end-use monitoring in accordance with DoD policy” in Ukraine, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general. “End-use monitoring” includes tracking serial numbers of weapons and ammunition to ensure they’re used as intended.

……………………. With few U.S. troops or State Department personnel in Ukraine, keeping inventories is difficult, the report said. Moreover, the vast amount of money complicates the effort. The report notes the danger of corrupt officials siphoning it off.

“State is overseeing unprecedented levels of security assistance in Ukraine, presenting significant risk of misuse and diversion given the volume and speed of assistance and the wartime operating environment,” according to the report…………………….

Lack of Ukraine oversight draws parallels to Afghanistan corruption

Ukraine has a history of corruption, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made stamping it out a priority.

Ukraine ranks 116th out of 180 nations on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. On Feb. 14, the defense minister named new deputies after news reports showed officials in the defense ministry had bought food for troops at inflated prices. 

Corruption corrodes the public’s faith in government, said Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan. Elites in Afghanistan skimmed U.S. aid money, and the obvious corruption alienated Afghans…………………….

‘Need truth tellers’: Republicans demand more oversight

Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., drafted a letter to the White House requesting an expansion to a congressionally requiredreport on the amount of security assistance sent to Ukraine. The lawmakers called for more details on how much money has been sent to Ukraine and how it’s used………….  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/19/oversight-ukraine-russia-military-aid/11271555002/

March 4, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment