British journalists are celebrating the lack of opposition to war in parliament.

US Rep. Eric Swalwell let the cat out of the bag when he admitted on CNN that Ukraine was the “greatest return on investment for any military expenditure ever” because it bled the Russian economy and military and didn’t cost a single American life.

We are told this is healthy, but it’s anything but…

Ricky Hale and Council Estate Media, Mar 06, 2025, [Excellent tweet excerpts , references and graphics]  https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/british-journalists-are-celebrating?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1336368&post_id=158430860&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

We are seeing consent for World War III being manufactured before our eyes, and even if you think war is unavoidable, even if you’re convinced that Russia is so dangerous, war is the only way to stop it from conquering Europe, you should listen to anti-war voices.

Now more than ever, you should listen to the other side of the argument because if we’re right, it could help avert nuclear catastrophe, and if we’re wrong, well, war happens anyway. The approach of the warmongers guarantees war whereas the approach of the peacemakers is the only way to avoid war. Shouldn’t we at least give peace a try?

We have violated peace agreement after peace agreement with Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, and make no mistake, those violations were not moments of recklessness, they were deliberate provocations. We were seeing what we could get away with.

I’ve seen viral memes bragging about how we expanded NATO to Russia’s doorstep and broke red line after red line and Putin didn’t retaliate so we should bring Ukraine into NATO. This overlooks that NATO expansion was one of the key factors that led to war.

After 30-odd years of inaction from Russia, our encroachment eventually provoked a massive retaliation. So here’s a thought, could we just make a peace deal and honour it and see what happens? Could we try that? What’s the worst that could happen? The deal fails and we end up fighting Russia? We’re fighting Russia anyway!

While Sir Keir Starmer is doing his war is peace thing, mainstream media propagandists are falling over themselves to cheer him on. One of the worst culprits yesterday was Lewis Goodall who couldn’t hide his delight that anti-war voices are being ignored.

For those who don’t know, Goodall is one of the hosts of the News Agents, which I’m told is the number one podcast in the UK. Prior to that, Goodall was political correspondent at Sky News and policy editor of BBC Newsnight. Goodall came out with one of the worst political takes I’ve seen in quite some time, a take that received a huge online backlash.

Goodall was celebrating that there is almost no divergence of thought in our politics on a matter as serious as war. He was celebrating the groupthink and lack of dissenting voices as healthy. He seemed to think only other countries have tyrants while our tyrant has actively participated in the Gaza genocide and stamped out dissent at home.

Goodall’s simplistic takes on Russia and Ukraine explain why he was so successful in the mainstream media: he blindly parrots establishment narratives with no attempt at nuance. If someone like him ever attempted nuance, they would never make it into those positions. Only loyal servants of the empire rise to prominence in the mainstream media, and those who dissent are rarely given the platform to speak.

One of the absurd aspects of Goodall’s post is that clearly not everyone wants to see peace. Sir Keir Starmer could have simply issued a statement pushing for a peace deal, yet he chose to invoke the Iraq war, talk of boots on the ground, and planes in the air, and use the most provocative language possible. Starmer and European leaders were openly hostile to peace negotiations from the start and we’re now pretending they want peace?

Starmer’s supporters say a peace deal would mean the “capitulation” of Ukraine and then they demand the capitulation of Russia! They argue that it’s perfectly reasonable to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, but NATO encroaching on Moscow’s doorstep was precisely why the war started!

A neoliberal’s idea of peace is demanding that Russia surrenders to NATO. They are not remotely interested in compromise because if they wanted a settlement, they would have honoured the Minsk Agreements.

There is no way Starmer’s advisors would not have told him boots on the ground would mean war with Russia. This was not a clumsy use of words, it was a deliberate provocation. The only question is does he intend to go through with it? War with Russia isn’t realistic at present because we don’t have the numbers or the equipment to put up any serious fight.

It is for this reason I don’t expect World War III to happen in the immediate future. As I said in my last article, I think Europe’s neoliberals might wait until the end of Trump’s term and hope for an anti-Russia president. Hopefully, things will have fizzled out by then, but for now, the ruling class does not want us talking World War III down. They want us ready to be their foot soldiers in case they decide to do something crazy.

Have you noticed how we’re not seeing a word of caution from mainstream journalists, not even a “maybe World War III is not such a good idea” or “perhaps our approach is not the best way to avoid it”? There is no caution, simply the narrative that Starmer is looking statesman-like and anyone outside the groupthink is basically a traitor. How is this healthy?

Not only did we see Starmer invoking the illegal invasion of Iraq that killed over a million people, we saw a Tory MP invoking World War 1.

We are not supposed to hear the counter-arguments to Starmer’s position because those arguments would make the public think twice. People have to be convinced there is no alternative to war with Russia before they will go along with it. They have to be convinced that Russia is a supreme evil and Ukraine is noble and pure. This explains the following response from Lewis Goodall: [on original]

This dumbing down of the conversation is very deliberate. Lewis Goodall is far too intelligent to think this is all there is to it, but he talks this way anyway. Putin is ready to negotiate a settlement and it is European leaders who are unwilling. Zelensky knows that if he agrees to peace, the neo-Nazis will probably hang him from a tree.

US Rep. Eric Swalwell let the cat out of the bag when he admitted on CNN that Ukraine was the “greatest return on investment for any military expenditure ever” because it bled the Russian economy and military and didn’t cost a single American life. Who cares that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died? If this was simply a fight for Ukrainian liberation, Swalwell would not have used this framing. Make no mistake, this was always about leading Russia into a trap and Ukrainians were simply our pawns.

John Pilger wrote for the Guardian in 2014 about how our backing of neo-Nazis in Ukraine was leading to war with Russia. Many western officials echoed the sentiments. If anyone echoes those sentiments today, they will be dismissed as a Putin puppet, sacked from their jobs and driven out of public life.

We are not allowed to talk about how concerned the media used to be that we were arming and training the Ukrainian far right. We are not allowed to talk about how they pressured Zelensky into taking a more hostile stance towards Russia. We are not allowed to talk about the things the media used to talk about like the neo-Nazi problem in the Ukrainian military, or the fact Ukraine is Europe’s most corrupt country, or how Kyiv bombed eastern Ukraine for eight years and received widespread criticism for all of these things. We are now told Ukraine is a beacon of “liberal democracy” and ironically it is.

None of this is to say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was deserved: provoked and deserved are two very different things. The Ukrainian people don’t deserve to be caught in the middle of a conflict between two superpowers that we have deliberately kept going.

We are not allowed any dissenting opinions on war, any acknowledgement of where we might have gone wrong, or any criticism of Ukraine or Zelensky. If you think that NATO and Ukraine and Zelensky have been perfect all the way, you are not a thinking adult. Real life doesn’t work like that and aside from anything else, NATO’s track record of intervention is abysmal. There is no reason to think another intervention would be any better.

If you can’t accept that NATO has been imperfect (to say the least), you must ask why debate is shut down and why those who attempt debate are labelled as Putin puppets and worse. What does the establishment have to fear from debate if it has the correct arguments?

I’m old enough enough to remember when politicians pretended to respect the importance of debate, when it was acknowledged that it was essential to the healthy functioning of society, but propagandists like Goodall are now telling us that lack of debate is actually healthy!

History tells us that whenever there is a lack of debate in our politics, whenever the parties agree on something, it rarely ends well for the working class and often a lot of people end up dying. Everyone should understand that the people who committed a genocide are demanding your blind obedience on their other war. Does this sound like a good idea to you?

March 6, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, UK | Leave a comment