All professional athletes use drugs, ranging from outright (advanced and hardly detectable) steroids to relatively harmless painkillers and “vitamins”. For instance, pretty much all Norwegian skiers get themselves diagnosed with asthma to take performance enhancing anti-asthma meds. There are multiple substances that can be detected in athletes’ blood. The decision on what goes on the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) ban list is made on purely political grounds.
Thus, Meldonium (the stuff that got Sharapova disqualified earlier this year), an anti-ischemia medication that, in theory, supposed to decrease the risk of heart attacks (although the Soviet tests that were conducted during the 1970s only showed significant results on animals; human research has been inconclusive and it’s been prescribed since mostly for the Placebo effect) was banned only because it has been used by the Eastern European athletes. Moreover, the improved screening technologies can detect very marginal trace amounts in the blood stream these days, and Meldonium leaves metabolites that don’t leave the body for, like, 4-5 months. So, given that the updated WADA ban-list is released at the end of the year (either in October or November), there was no way the athletes could clean themselves up before January 2016.
It seems like WADA and various organisations within the IMO/IAAF are being utilised for the Cold War 2.0. They removed wrestling from the Olympic program (athletes from the Caucasus region have always been dominating this kind of sport, brining Russian Federation gold and silver medals), and now we have the Meldonium travesty, as well as the “doping scandal” with Russian track & field athletes being banned from Rio 2016 (Russian women are traditionally dominant in this, with no real competition from other white female athletes).
It’s also funny how Rodchenkov, the “whistleblower”, who supposedly used to curate the “doping program” in Russia now holds a key role in WADA.
I’ve always been wondering what kind medications and “vitamins” do athletes from the US Swimming Team take…
Interesting fact in regards to Pokemon Go: the company that developed it, Niantic Inc, started off as a side project inside Google. Its founder, John Hanke, used to be the Vice President of Product Management for Google’s “Geo” branch (the branch that deals with Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Street View and similar products).
It’s the same Google that hooked up with Hillary Clinton’s team and Al Jazeera network a few years ago to spread and amplify information about the unrest in Syria (renaming streets in Damascus for ideological purposes in real time, as the events were unfolding, along the way) to “encourage more dissent” in the effort to overthrow the lawful president Assad. As of today, that venture has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacement of millions more.
Prior to his Google years, John Hanke used to work for the US State Department, dealing with foreign policy matters…
***
Remember how social media was utilised to facilitate the, so called, Arab Spring in the early 2010s and the Euromaidan riots in 2013-2014 (all the elites needed was to get a bunch of impressionable idiots into the main city square, and then they began initiating the algorithms initially developed by a historian/sociologist Gene Sharp, progressively turning the peaceful protest into mass riots that got over 100 people killed, overthrowing the government and dragging the country into a bloodbath civil war)? Social media manipulation is no joke. And the governments/intelligence agencies understand that well.
Pokemon Go, in theory, can serve as a very convenient tool for crowd manipulation, and former Google and the US State Department employees being behind the product adds certain funk to it.
In the meantime, try to google what sort of companies provide satellite data to Google, and then check the background of the people who founded those companies. Lots of food for thought you will find.
I love BBC. I really do. They are amazing when it comes to wildlife documentaries (used to be absolutely fascinated by those when I was a kid). The Essential Mix program on BBC Radio 1 often offers a fantastic variety of high quality electronic music (ahh! those legendary 1990s trance mixes by Paul Oakenfold!). Their TV show production, both old and new, is superb (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Doctor Who, Sherlock, just to name a few). Can’t say the same about their news service, though. In fact, it is beyond revolting.
These days, I have the same problem with the British Broadcast Corporation as I have with the CNN: whenever I watch or read their news coverage, I get this feeling like somebody just opened up my skull and took a huge dump right inside my head. As I’ve been saying it before – I don’t like it when (pseudo-)journalists do that to me. I have my own sh*t there already.
Indeed, your BSmetre can go off charts when you consume content produced and delivered by mainstream media outlets.
I was thinking of doing something fun today. Let’s take one of the recent articles posted to the BBC web-site and see how they manipulate their audience by distorting information, omitting facts and just generally misinforming and talking BS.
While some of the points the article makes are sound and well-argued, the implications that the author draws, the omission of facts and general distortions make it such cheap propaganda BS.
Let’s take it apart, piece by piece.
Ennius begins with:
“The day after the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber in the vicinity of the Syrian-Turkish border on 24 November, pro-Kremlin TV channels showed an interview with a man they said was the plane’s navigator, Captain Konstantin Murakhtin.”
And right here, in the very first sentence, we get the first minor manipulation attempt. Since when did “in the vicinity of the Syrian-Turkish border” become synonymous with “in the Syrian airspace”? Though not technically misinformation, such wording deliberately blurs the information and draws reader’s attention away from the fact that the Turkish F-16 jet itself violated the Syrian airspace while downing the Russian plane. BBC tries to whitewash Turkey in such way to make Russia look worse?
But, okay, it’s a minor detail, let’s move on.
“Filmed from behind at the Humaymim airbase in Syria, the man categorically denied that the Russian bomber had at any time entered Turkish airspace or that it had received a warning from the Turkish air force, thus apparently adding extra weight to Moscow’s rebuttal of Ankara’s claims to the contrary.”
What Ankara’s claims to the contrary? Like that letter to the UN Security Council, in which they stated that the jet violated airspace for 17 seconds, from which, with the distance it flew provided, you can easily calculate that the plane flew at a speed of 391 km/h (waaay to slow to be true; ordinary passenger jets normally fly at 800-900 km/h, the military jets’ speeds normally exceeds 1000 km/h; so, the letter suggests that those on the Turkish side who were making this up are rather incompetent when it comes to the military aviation, like, really basic level incompetent)?
Either Turkey's statement to UN is bogus or Russian Su-24 jet made extraordinarily slow penetration of airspace https://t.co/1lvb8dLtGq
The fact that he was filmed from behind is easily explained by security measures. Like there have been incidents when certain groups were encouraging people to post personal information about Russian military personnel stationed in Syria and their families online, so that the religious extremists inside Russia could “take revenge on them under Sharia law”: https://www.rt.com/news/317849-ukrainian-russia-isis-revenge/
Plus, there is just a general set of rules regarding revealing the identity of those who participate in anti-terrorist operations (although, to be fair, I’m not sure whether it’s going to help in this particular case – the names and the photos of the two pilots have been all over the social media since the 24th of November; but still, the rules are the rules, I guess).
The article continues:
“Leading Western media generally took the interview at face value [too good we have BBC, an alternative media outlet that questions everything, eh? lol], with many quoting statements attributed to Murakhtin in their headlines. But there are credible grounds for questioning whether the scene shown on Russian TV was at all authentic and the man talking to journalists was indeed Captain Murakhtin. According to Russian media reports, Murakhtin was rescued in a night operation by Russian and Syrian special forces after ejecting from his Su-24 in northern Syria.”
I’m not sure which Russian media reports he refers to exactly, but the pilot got rescued by the SAA (Syrian Arab Army) forces. This information was first reported by the Al Mayadeen (a Lebanese news network) sources. Shortly after, it was confirmed by a Russian ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov, in his interview to Europe 1 radio:
Who reported that the Syrian AND Russian special forces rescued the second pilot? Which Russian media outlets reported it? Please post links to the comments if you find some. Judging by the vibe on the Russian social media and in the blogosphere, Russian mainstream media reported everything correctly and the Russian general public knew well who rescued Murakhtin. Or did Ennius mean the initial Russian rescue team that got ambushed, because the militants on the ground were waiting for them? It’s unclear what this BBC journalist says.
“His pilot, Oleg Peshkov, was killed, possibly as a result of ground fire from Syrian rebels.”
Okay, here where it gets really messy with this “reporting”. It’s been known from day one that the pilot was murdered, in violation of Geneva convention, by Turkmen militants who shot at him while he was still in the air. There was a video of them celebrating the murder over the pilot’s dead body:
All this information has been verified and available to public for over a week, yet, on 03.12.2015, this, so called “journalist” writes a piece for BBC in which he says “Oleg Peshkov was killed, possibly as a result of ground fire from Syrian rebels”. Whitewashing Turkey (and, by extension, NATO) again? Also, notice how these mainstream media journos always refer to these scum as “Syrian rebels” (even though these particular terrorists are Turkmen, with a Turkish citizen being their leader, guarding the buffer zone through which various extremist groups, including ISIS and al-Nusra/al-Qaeda, get their supplies and reinforcements). Low.
“There are aspects of the interview with the man said to be Murakhtin that suggest it was staged or even in some respects doctored. A number of these were identified by TV director and producer Vera Krichevskaya in a report on liberal TV channel Dozhd on 30 November.”
Referencing a “liberal” TV channel Dozhd’, a media outlet that is financed by Western NGOs for the sole purpose of spewing pro-American, russophobic propaganda? K.
See, the issue with the media outlets like Dozhd’ is that they follow the US State Department line, as they are largely influenced by the BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), an organisation which was established to spread pro-American propaganda overseas. In their official reports, they admit that they’ve been having an “affiliate-type” relationship with Dozhd’ (page 12):
Moreover, in their congressional budget request for 2014, they explicitly state that their project, Voice of America (originally funded during the Cold War to spread Western propaganda to the socialist states), fed news content to Dozhd since as early as 2012 (page 69):
(note that this is only the information that is currently unclassified and, thus, available to the public, we never know to what extent things are actually done in reality)
In addition, it’s not entirely clear where Dozhd’ gets its financing from: http://tass.ru/en/archive/669993
So, basically, the Western agencies invests into media outlets in foreign countries, feed them news content and then get their own mainstream media to reference and cite them as “independent and liberal media”? Nice. But nothing new, really. This propaganda method has been practiced for decades.
Needless to say that Dozhd’ frequently gets caught producing Orwellian-style fakes (not surprising, considering who feeds them the content).
But, anyway, let’s move on.
“First, the audio of the interview showed signs of heavy editing. “I can hear every join,” Krichevskaya said. The background noise fades in and out depending on who is speaking. The man said to be Murakhtin sounds as if he were in a studio rather than on an airfield.”
There is some merit to this.
“Second, he moves his head up and down as if he were consulting notes. What is more, some of the phrases he uses do not sound like spoken Russian. Krichevskaya singled out the phrase “our military medics work miracles”, which he uses in response to an inquiry about how he is feeling at the beginning of the interview. Finally, the behaviour of the journalists looks pre-arranged or rehearsed. As Krichevskaya points out, although there are around a dozen of them, they do not interrupt each other at all. Instead, they all put their question in order as if on cue.”
Again, that’s a common practice when dealing with sensitive matters, such as details of the anti-terorrist operations, information on the military personnel stationed overseas, and so on. Whenever officials speak to the press, they use speeches that were written in advance too (or, at least, they follow their dot points). No need to make a conspiracy theory out of this (as if BBC wouldn’t know of such practices).
“The physical condition of the man said to be Murakhtin does not tend to suggest someone who has recently survived an ejection and spent a considerable time out in the open… [blah, blah, blah] … He has a noticeable limp, but otherwise appears to move fairly freely. He does not show obvious signs of pain or discomfort… [blah, blah, blah] … As Keir Giles, an associate fellow of Chatham House, told BBC Monitoring, the man in the video looks “remarkably well for someone who has just ejected”.”
So, the man “has a noticeable limp, but otherwise doesn’t show obvious signs of pain or discomfort”? Well, it would be remarkably strange if a trained and experience military pilot, who, in addition, received instructions prior the interview, would behave like a crying girl (or a soccer player) in front of cameras.
“On 30 November, state news agency RIA Novosti reported that Murakhtin would be spending a month in a Moscow hospital, where he had been visited by his wife. It quoted a former officer as saying this is standard practice in ejection cases. But, according to data from media monitoring organization Medialogiya, the main Russian state TV channels did not report this news. It seems odd that they would not want to keep viewers informed about the progress of a man who is officially a decorated war hero.”
So, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported it, but the “main Russian state TV channels” did not? I don’t really see BBC having an argument here. What does it imply? By the way, Ennis doesn’t report when he accessed the Medialogiya data. Was it on the 30th as well, two hours after RIA released this news? Besides, even if it’s true that the major TV channels didn’t report on this, what’s strange about it? Does Ennis of BBC imply that they all should have made an extensive reportage, showing the hospital, stating its address and the exact hospital wing where the pilot (who just returned from an anti-terrorist mission) will be kept, so anyone could come and visit him?
“The operation that apparently led to Murakhtin being rescued has been given fairly cursory treatment on state TV. Channel One’s flagship weekly news programme Voskresnoye Vremya described the operation in a report captioned “All for One”. But the actual rescue of Murakhtin occupied a fairly minor part of the report and was overshadowed by a much more dramatic sequence about Russian journalists coming under fire in Syria. The equivalent programme on official channel Rossiya 1, Vesti Nedeli, gave the rescue even shorter shrift.”
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the details of such operations are not immediately disclosed to the public and, therefore, are not accessible to the press? BBC is more than welcome to provide full and insightful report into the details of the rescue operation that was conducted by the SAA forces in Syria, if they know something the Russian media doesn’t.
“There are sound operational reasons why the Russians would not want to divulge details of the rescue mission [finally some indications that the author has a bran!]. It is nevertheless strange that they have not made more of a propaganda splash about it.”
*facepalm*
A BBC “journalist” feels confused and surprised that they didn’t make more of a propaganda splash out of sensitive information. It’s rather ironic, if you ask me.
“It is equally odd, perhaps, that the journalists in the “Murakhtin” interview show no curiosity about his experiences: how did he feel, for example, when he knew he was parachuting into enemy territory?”
It is equally odd, perhaps, that the BBC “journalist” doesn’t go further in telling what else he feels confused about and doesn’t state that he finds it odd that they didn’t ask the pilot his wife’s name and what schools do his kids go to.
“This tends to reinforce the impression that the interview was staged simply to achieve the propaganda purpose of providing apparently firsthand corroboration of Moscow’s claims that the Su-24 had not violated Turkish airspace and that its crew had received no warnings.”
Reading this BS article tends to reinforce the impression that it was written purely to whitewash a NATO member Turkey and to further slander Moscow.
“Leading western media generally took the “Murakhtin” interview at face value[unlike you, Ennis, a BBC’s critical freethinker]. But pro-Kremlin media have a proven track record of dubious reporting and even outright fakery, including inventing identities and using bogus witnesses. In April 2014, two of Russia’s leading TV channels ran reports featuring the same man in a hospital bed in Ukraine. But in one report he was a pro-Russian victim of Ukrainian nationalists and in the other he was a German citizen who was funding Ukrainian nationalists. A few months later, state news agency TASS and other Russian media were found to have been quoting a phoney German professor.”
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not familiar with the reports he refers to. Yes, it is true that some Russian media outlets occasionally produce fakes, but it’s rather amusing to hear this kind of accusation coming from the likes of BBC. BBC is gross and horrendous in this regard, perhaps even much more so in comparison to the Russian state media.
Staging chemical attack reports in Syria, digitally altering sound in eyewitness testimonies, deliberately using old footage in their reports and documentaries, with paid actors playing victims, and so on:
Note that these are only the instances I was able to think of straight away. I’m pretty sure that if you spend a couple of hours digging deeper and researching it all properly, you’ll be able to find dozens more of such fakes and misreportings. And that’s only BBC. There are also CNN, Fox News, Sky News, ABC, and so on, all faking and brainwashing their audience in a similar manner. So, BBC complaining about Russian state media is rather bizarre. “Who are you to f#cking lecture me?” – as Lavrov would say.
We continue:
“Then there is Carlos, the Spanish air-traffic controller and Twitter user, who according to several pro-Kremlin media was supposed to have had evidence that the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian warplanes. The only problem is that Carlos does not actually seem to have existed.”
So, who said that this “Carlos” was supposed to have had evidence about MH17? His Twitter or the Russian media? To what extent do you have to disrespect your audience to manipulate in such way? The information was coming from that Twitter account, not from Russian media (Russian media merely cited it, and so did numerous alternative media outlets in the West): http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/carlos-spanish-kiev-air-traffic.html
By the way, in regards to MH17 (mis)reporting, how about that phantom “Russian supplied BUK” that does not actually seem to have ever existed? All Western mainstream media outlets (including BBC) were going crazy with this conspiracy theory from the very beginning, despite the fact that nobody actually saw the said BUK, and all the “evidence” that exists in support of it is just a few unverifiable, poorly dated videos and a couple of photos (some of which are proven fakes). BBC never asked why the US State Department, instead of providing solid forensics data on MH17, like the satellite images, which they have, keeps peddling this cheap conspiracy theory, citing dodgy “social media reports” (the majority of which are either provided directly by the Ukrainian Security Service, SBU, and are proven fakes, or are badly photoshopped images from “anonymous users”): http://7mei.nl/2015/05/18/mh17-buk-launch-photos-are-cheats/ http://kremlintroll.nl/?p=543
“The “Murakhtin” interview may not be fakery on this level, but there are grounds for thinking that it should be treated with a good deal of caution.”
Great point, Ennis! Thanks for the advice!
***
Seriously, what’s up with all this cheap propaganda? BBC hasn’t always been that bad. Even their 2008 reports on Russia-Georgian conflict were well balanced in comparison to the majority of Western mainstream media outlets. Nowadays, however, it’s impossible to read them without fear of giving yourself a concussion with facepalms.
There is a saying: “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger that to produce it”. It seems as if people in the Western mainstream media have been taking advantage of this law. If they state a single lie, you would have to write a paragraph explaining and elaborating on why the statement is false. If they write a paragraph worth of BS, you would have to write an article to refute it all properly. If they write, say, a BBC article, you would have to write a long post to address all the things that they either distorted or lied about (this post, for instance, is way over 3000 words long, and I had to use links with further elaborations on the points I was making, because it’s impossible to fit everything in here). Now, what if it’s a massive 10-pages long pseudo-research piece in the Washingtonpost, NYT or The Economist? Not many people would find time and strength to read a complete and elaborative debunking of such work (and I’m not even talking about the amount of time it would take to disassemble something like that properly, piece by piece).
And there isn’t really any other way to deal with such BS. What else should others do? Lie in response? Not the best strategy (especially considering that the Western mainstream media has perfected such propaganda techniques over the past 100 years and has more resources to propagate its BS).
But, seriously, this systematic, institutionalised russophobia is rather irritating. The sad thing is that many people who don’t consult alternative sources still believe it.
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 28.11.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
Let’s do something that is somewhat unscientific in its nature, yet fun and should be done for the sake of considering different views regarding the recent incident with the Russian and Turkish jets. Let’s adopt a theory that the attack on Russia SU-24 bomber by a Turkish F-16 was a pre-planned provocation and try to see which pieces of publicly available information support it.
1. First of all, it is now known that the Turkish F-16 jet fighter (!) wasn’t on a standby when they, supposedly, received information about a foreign jet moving towards their border. The F-16 has been in the air for much longer prior to the attack, circling, as if waiting to ambush something.
The attack itself was done against all the conventional protocols. Even if the SU-24 violated the Turkish airspace (although both Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian Aerospace Forces command centre say that it did not, and they present empirical data to support their version), and, according to Turks themselves, the supposed violation only happened for 17 seconds, the F-16 didn’t try to establish a direct visual contact wth the supposed intruder. They just shot it down from behind.
Moreover, the Russian Ministry of Defence says that they’ve shared their combat plans for that region (including the flightpaths, possible targets and the types of aircrafts employed during the upcoming operations) with the Americans, who, in turn, were supposed to share the information with Turkey, as Turkey is a part of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition. Russian SU-24 was expected to be seen in that region. So, the Turkish military saying that they didn’t know whose plane that was sounds rather suspicious.
Alternative explanation? Well, maybe the Turkish F-16 fighter jet (armed with advanced AIM-9X rockets) just happened to be there at that time, performing training manoeuvres, or something. And the attack (in violation of all international norms) was a result of someone from the lower chain of Turkish command just screwing up. It might have been a tragic accident that the Turkish side is now embarrassed about and, thus, does not want to apologise, blaming it all on Russians.
Everything is possible.
2. There is an interview with a Russian air-defence expert Alexey Leonkov circling the Russian Internet at the moment. In the interview, he says that two American AWACS aircrafts (one Boeing E-3 Sentry and one E-3A) were in air on that day (one took off from an airbase in Preveza, Greece, and the other one from Riyadh military airbase in Saudi Arabia). The AWACS aircrafts could have been specifically monitoring the exact locations of the Russian military jets over Syria on that day, identifying which of them are in active search for targets mode and which of them have completed their mission and returning back to the airbase (and, therefore, least likely to defend themselves): http://regnum.ru/news/polit/2021108.html
Alternative explanation? AWACS aircraft were just performing their routine data gathering missions. US and NATO have always been gathering intel on the Russian and Syrian aviation activity in that region, so it doesn’t really imply anything specific.
3. Now, when the SU-24 got hit, both pilots managed to eject. On the ground, there were Turkmen militants waiting for them. One of the pilots, Oleg Peshkov, was shot while still in the air (again, that’s a crude violation of the Geneva convention and, therefore, should be regarded as a war crime). The other one managed to hide for 12 hours, until he got rescued by the Syrian special forces and, subsequently, brought back to the Russian military base.
He’s also a member of an organisation called Grey Wolves, which is an ultra-nationalist/nazi group (essentially, it’s a Turkish version of the Right Sector): http://ntv.livejournal.com/426110.html
It also implies connection to various Turkish security services.
There are some hints that the Grey Wolves were also involved in the Operation Gladio back in the days, a NATO-led false-flag attack campaign that brought terror upon European citizens a couple of decades ago: http://operation-gladio.net/operation-gladio
So, in theory, it is possible that these Turkmen and Turkish ultra-nationalists still have connections to NATO and US intelligence agencies, and that their appearance at the SU-24 crash site was preplanned and coordinated (either by Turkish secret services alone or in cooperation with their Western counterparts). Why? To eliminate the Russian pilots as incident witnesses (the survivor later told the press that, contrary to what Turkey is saying, they didn’t receive any warnings) and to send a message.
Alternative explanation? Well, the Turkmen militants, supported by Turkey, have been there for long, and it just happened that a heavily armed group lead by a Turkish national was there, just below the spot when the Russian jet got hit.
4. Right after the incident, Russians sent two helicopters to rescue the pilots. They got ambushed. The Turkmen militants attacked the helicopters with American-made TOW anti-tank systems. One of the Russian marines got killed. It appears that the militants on the ground were expecting the rescue mission and were prepared to ambush it.
Alternative explanation? As above, the Turkmen militants, armed with advanced American weaponry systems, just happened to be there. It’s been a warzone, after all.
5. What surprised many was the fact that Western media TV crews (namely CNN and Fox News, all with cameras, microphones and other heavy equipment) were nearby and interviewed the Turkmen commander almost as soon as the incident happened.
Were they all there on a standby, ready to document something? Seems like it.
Alternative explanation? The Turkmen militants have been complaining that Russian Aerospace Forces target them, so a number different Western mainstream media crews were sent there to investigate. So there were just there by themselves when the unexpected incident happened.
6. The attack happened on the 24th of November, which is a rather symbolic date for Russia-Turkey history. It’s Alexander Suvorov’s birthday. Suvorov was a genius-level Russian general who won multiple wars and battles against the Ottoman Empire, becoming a historic icon of the 18th century Russian history. If the attack was indeed pre-planned, choosing the 24th of November wasn’t random. It’s a part of psychohistorical warfare, plus a symbolic message.
Alternative explanation? It’s just a coincidence.
***
Let’s sum up, shall we?
If we are to say that it was NOT a pre-planned attack, we would have to assume that that a Turkish F-16, armed with advanced AIM-9X air-to-air misses, just randomly happened to be circling near that area on that day, the two American AWACS’ were just doing their routine missions and not sharing their data with the Turks (who are officially a part of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition), the Russian SU-24 got shot down over the piece of the Syrian land controlled by Turkmen militants (with their leader being a member of Turkish neo-nazi group called Grey Wolves, a group that used to be affiliated with NATO intelligence services back in the days). Properly equipped Western TV-crews just happened to be there by a chance to interview the Turkmens on how they murdered an unarmed Russian pilot. It just happened that these militants also had American TOW systems that they readily used to attack the Russian rescue mission, killing one marine. And that it all just happened on Alexander Suvorov’s birthday. Such a long chain of coincidences. Well, it’s an active war-zone, after all, so anything is possible…
If we are to adopt a different view and say that it was a pre-planned attack (and, as demonstrated, there is an overwhelmed amount of evidence for this, on multiple levels), then what would the reasons for it be? Well at the moment, it’s not entirely clear whether it was a solely Turkish/Erdogan venture, or whether it was all planned and coordinated at higher, international levels. It could also be that Erdogan got played.
So, what’s the possible logic behind all of this? To simply create a temporal no-fly zone near Turkish border, so that ISIS could continue to sell the oil? To manipulate Russia into doing something strategically stupid? To set up NATO against Russia so that Erdogan’s family could keep performing their political and financial affairs with ISIS while Russia is distracted? To further test Russian military capabilities? To send some kind of covert message to Russia? Or to simply increase tensions so that American military-industrial complex could get better stock-market figures? Maybe it was a polyfunctional incident?
I don’t know.
Perhaps the time will tell.
Either way, someone’s playing very dangerous and irresponsible games.
I may say quite an obvious thing, but China appears to be heading towards a major crisis. The economic growth that they’ve been experiencing for the last couple of decades (which, by the way, is slowing down rapidly) has its own downsides in countries with large populations. Social segregation is one of them.
Just to give you an abstract example, imagine a small Chinese town with a population of, say, 1 million people. The town becomes prosperous enough to allow every citizen to consume a proper beef steak for dinner at least once a week. In order to keep up with the demand, you have to produce hundreds of thousands of cows. Cattle requires pastures of enormous sizes, hundreds and hundreds of millions of litres of water to irrigate it all, then you have to produce fertilisers, transport it all, pay for logistics, infrastructure maintenance, employ millions of people to maintain it all, and these people need to eat something too, so, when you talk about everything needed to produce rice in quantities sufficient to meet the demand, the numbers will grow exponentially. Don’t forget that resources, both human and natural, are limited, so you can’t maintain a steady economic growth for too long. And even then, people who have to survive on rice to produce beef for the rich aren’t going to stay too happy for long. If you going to cut the beef production, you’re not going to meet the demand, which will cause an additional bunch of problems, as people don’t like it when their life quality (including the quality of food they eat) decreases. The changes in life quality are only welcome when they go up. The opposite direction causes social unrest…
So, the system naturally becomes unstable, creating a risk that everything will just burst into a bloodbath civil war (the Chinese history, pretty much, consists of these cycles when you end up with tens of millions dead at the end of each dynasty rule).
China has been approaching its socio-economic limit (also, don’t forget that it’s been happening with the global economic recession in the background). The Occupy Hong-Kong protests that we saw last year is one of the earlier manifestation of such deep, systemic issues (additional issue for China here is that, these days, natural protests are easily hijacked by geopolitical competitors, who have rich experience in artificially worsening such things).
Chinese historians and sociologists are, of course, aware of this. Over the recent years the government has been setting up multiple research centres all across the country to study the fall of the Soviet Union, to learn from its mistakes and to avoid repeating its faith (Russia was lucky in a way that the disintegration was happening at its periphery back during the late 1980s and the 1990s; if the same thing happens China, they are going to get it across their core).
At the same time, it appears that the Chinese are trying to solve their internal issues by expanding their economic and geopolitical influence over the globe (it’s a very capitalist thing to do). China has been very enthusiastic in investing into Africa, trying to stabilise the Middle East (that’s where Russian and Chinese interests match almost perfectly, by the way), then developing what has been termed the “New Silk Road”, and so on.
If you want to build up and maintain your geopolitical influence, you have to have proper military capabilities, accordingly. So we’ve seen China creating artificial islands in the South China Sea where it creates airbases, and stuff.
No wonder the US neocons are getting frustrated, with all the influence America has been loosing (also, don’t forget Russia asserting its interests in the Middle East for the first time since the fall of the USSR, using airforce to conduct airstrikes in Syria, launching ballistic missiles against ISIS from the Caspian sea, and doing all sorts of amusing stuff).
The world appears to be getting multi-polar once again.
Interesting times we live in.
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 15.08.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
There is one very interesting theory on the true motives Osama bin Laden had while executing the 9/11 attacks.
Going back to history, everyone knows that Osama bin Laden had a vision of a giant, united Grand Muslim Super State that would include over 40 countries all around the globe, ranging from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Kazakhstan to Albania, where people would be living under Salafi style Sharia law. He thought this project could be finished in the 21st century, by the year 2100. That was his life goal. He saw world’s big geopolitical powers as standing on his way, and, therefore, he was trying to strategically undermine them all, one by one.
First, he lead guerrilla fight against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan (with Zbigniew Brzezinski facilitating him and his people through the CIA in Pakistan with weapons, logistics and intelligence, as well as assisting them with information warfare). The 9-year war in Afghanistan caused multiple problems for the USSR, adding to the internal issues that eventually lead to its collapse in 1991. bin Laden saw the fall of the Soviet Union as the first major victory for the Islamic world.
The United States, as the only remaining global superpower, was his next target. And that’s the point from where it gets interesting. Some analysts suggest that he planned major attacks on the United States soil specifically to provoke a military intervention in Afghanistan. bin Laden was hoping, as some suggest, that Americans will get stuck in Afghanistan, fighting for many months, even years, the same way as it happened to Russians a couple of decades earlier. He hoped that the fierce fighting will result in massive civil casualties. He was then planning to use images of killed Muslim women and children for propaganda purposes, to unite people in the Middle East against the United States, evoking waves of radical islamism (to the point when local islamist groups would become coherent enough to start taking over regional governments) and then use the momentum to 1) decrease the US global influence and 2) to gain more influence for Al-Qaeda and similar groups, approaching closer to the Grand Muslim Super State dream.
It’s highly likely that he had this plan in mind while executing the 9/11 attacks. But he miscalculated. He never accounted for one geopolitical figure while planning his strategies – Vladimir Putin. Not many Western people remember it now, but Putin used to be very friendly to the United States and Western Europe during the early years of his presidency, seeking close partnership and economic collaboration (it was later during his political career, after he got fooled, betrayed and lied to on multiple occasions by the Western leaders, many of those times face to face, when he reached a conclusion that the West isn’t interested in working with Russia on equal grounds, that’s when he began pursuing a more independent path, but that’s a topic for another post). He was happy back then to offer Americans the support they needed after those terrible terrorist attacks, so he was able to convince some of the Central Asian leaders to let Bush use their military airbases to carry out airstrikes against the key Taliban positions. The US intervention went tactically much more effective than it was initially calculated by bin Laden, letting them to neutralise the major threats within weeks.
Therefore, Osama bin Laden miscalculated his strategy and lost. Interestingly, it could be speculated that he himself got played by other figures/organisation. Various conspiracy theorists say that the CIA did the 9/11, which I find highly unlikely, given the overwhelming amount of evidence that it was, indeed, the Al-Queda’s job. It should not be dismissed, however, that some elements in the United States ruling establishment might have known of the possibility of such attacks, yet, nevertheless, did nothing to prevent them, allowing bin Laden to be a useful idiot. After all, if you look into what the US military doctrine designers and strategists (e. g. the already mentioned Brzezinski) were saying back in the 1990s, you’ll see that some of them were openly suggesting that the US must take a more active military role in Eurasia, to remain its hegemony in the post-Cold War world. They were also saying that it would take long time to mobilise the American nation for such endeavour (Brzezinski was arguing that the democratic tendencies that are imprinted in the American social fabric will make people very reluctant to support the deployment of troops to another side of the world), UNLESS there will be some kind of a catalytic event that will speed it all up….
I don’t like crazy conspiracy theories, but if you take into account that Brzezinski personally knew bin Laden since as early as the early 1980s, and that too many of Brzezinski’s old ideas have been strangely coming to live (e. g. chaostization of the Eurasian continent, starting from the Middle-East (hello the Arab Spring and ISIS), pulling Ukraine away from Russia to prevent Russia from becoming an economic superpower (hello the Ukrainian Crisis), among other things), and that we now know declassified instances from recent history when security agencies were pulling terrorists attacks on their own citizens (e. g. Operation GLADIO), you will be getting really uncomfortable feeling about the whole thing…
Also, don’t forget that the heroin production in Afghanistan has increased 30-40 times since 2001, so someone has surely been making crazy profits off this (would be interesting to see where all this money go; the rumours are that some of that stuff goes to finance “colour revolutions” and co ups in various interesting places).
So, either way, lots of stuff for researchers and analysts to explore.
Decided to make a list of my personal favourite sic-fi movies. Here are my Top 5. The list goes in chronological order (by the year of move release):
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The apotheosis of space sci-fi cinematography. The movie is almost half a century old now, yet it’s still unbeaten in its genre. Scientific realism, technical details, high production values, deep themes that cover everything from evolution of the Humankind to our strive to explore to the issues with the artificial intelligence – everything is put together perfectly, making 2001: A Space Odyssey a prime example of what the true Science Fiction should be about. An absolute must-see. Lots food for thought this movie gives you. (by the way, I think it was the first movie that had computer generated graphics in it)
Gattaca (1997). A movie about dystopian future society in which each person’s place is predetermined by his/her genes. It kind of depicts what could have happened if nazis had won – eugenics, ultimate biological determinism, cast systems, among other things. But the main message is about the importance of strong free will that can help you overcome the boundaries through hard work. The movie is about personal character and how it is possible to reach the stars if you have the right determination. A must-watch.
The Matrix (1999). My personal favourite movie of all times. The film is brilliant on multiple levels, appealing to a wide range of aesthetic, emotional and intellectual senses. It’s one of those works that you have to re-watch at different ages, because, as you grow older, you start noticing new details and uncover new themes in this multi-layered work of art. I first saw it when I was 8. I was instantly blown away by the fight scenes and the special effect. When I was in my early teens, the movie was getting me with the brilliant atmosphere and the overall cyberpunk aesthetics (e. g. the soundtrack, which is beyond amazing; it played a huge role in forming my taste in music: The Prodigy, Rob Zombie, Lunatic Calm, Ministry, Fluke, Juno Reactor, even Paul Oakenfold, who wrote proper, non-BS trance music for this project, among many other artists). As I grew older, I began seeing the philosophical and religious themes expressed in the movie. The Wachowski brothers did an outstanding job at playing with jungian archetypes and various ambiguous elements, making the movie resonate strongly with various people. The Matrix is not sci-fi about science per se (everyone who understands the basic law of conservation of energy will laugh at the core scientific concept of the film), but it’s about the deep symbolism, and the subtle details. The movie could be seen as a giant metaphor for the post-modernistic world we live in. Replace the machines with the financial elites and the Matrix with the mainstream media and our current socio-economic structure, and we will get a pretty accurate description of the times we live in.
Equilibrium (2002). A much less known sic-fi movie with Christian Bale. It’s about a dystopian post-WW3 society the citizens of which are forced to pharmacologically repress all the emotions to avoid future conflicts. It is quite apparent that the creators of this movie were inspired by The Matrix. In fact, it could be referred to as “The Matrix Light”. Similar themes (a system that represses society’s most human virtues in order to stay afloat, a hero who breaks free and joins a few in resistance to fight it), similar aesthetics (e. g. costume designs and fight scenes), all conveyed at a rather sound level. I wouldn’t say that this movie is an absolute must-watch, but I would recommend it anyway, especially to those who like the sub-genre. I, personally, love it.
Interstellar (2014). A truly brilliant masterpiece. Probably the best space sic-fi since 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t seen anything that would touch me that much in a very long time. The movie is not perfect, there have been some questions raised about the scientific accuracy (although Interstellar touches the topics that are still subjected to theoretical research, and, therefore, Christopher Nolan had the right to make certain extrapolations in the ways he saw them), some of the moments in the plot are also questionable, but it’s not a big issue. The movie is about the Human character, about human strive for survival, compassion, progress and exploration. The movie shows how one selfish jerk can destroy the entire Human race, and how another selfish jerk can save it if they stop being a selfish jerk and try to develop thoughtful compassion and understanding of other’s motives. Interstellar is one of those rare movies that deliver a message (rather than aiming to merely entertain the audience; although visual effects, soundtrack and acting are superb in this film), it raises many grand questions and makes you think. It’s one of those true Science Fiction movies that make you more complete. A true masterpiece. A must-watch.
Bonus. A couple of sic-fi movies that are among my personal favourites that everyone seems to hate: Contact (1997) with Jodie Foster and I Am Legend (2007) with Will Smith.
Also, a couple of my favourite (formally) sic-fi movies that are more valuable as cinematic works on their own, rather than the works of Science Fiction: Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Men In Black and The Avengers (yes, I loved the Avengers! extremely entertaining).
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 17.09.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
You have to be extremely wary of political YouTube comments and Twitter replies these days, as these things have been militarised to create an illusion of public consensus on certain issues, by using fake accounts and outright automated bots. They haven’t figured out how to do it automatically on FB yet (although there are troll armies made up of real people, either paid or honestly obsessed, who are well coordinated; too good FB provides decent moderation tools to fight this plague).
RT (Russian Today) had its YouTube comment section flooded with russophobic trolls at the beginning of last year (you could tell that it was unnatural because the campaign began suddenly, as a wave, following statements in regards to counteracting “Russian propaganda” made by the US State Department spokespeople). Nowadays, you can also see these hordes on Twitter, flooding topics such as the Ukrainian Crisis and the MH17 tragedy (I’m sure similar methods are used for other issues, such as the Syrian Civil War, although I haven’t been engaged in those discussions anywhere other than FB to notice anything strange).
Just a few of articles on the topic:
How the military uses Twitter sock puppets to control debate (by J. M. Porup) “The researchers studied Twitter manipulation during the August 2013 Australian federal election, and identified mass participation of sock puppets (fake accounts), meat puppets (“guns for hire”), bots (automated accounts), and cyborgs (bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots). Automated accounts, in particular, they discovered, are being used for retweeting messages to spread misinformation and disperse propaganda. These accounts “can be used to trend desired hashtags, and thus bump up a piece of misinformation to a wider consciousness.” The frightening thing about Twitter sock puppetry, they conclude, “is not that it is just a nuisance, but that it is capable of swaying elections by appearing to be genuine groundswells of support.” This phenomenon they label “slacktivism” — when Twitter followers mistake astroturfed Twitter content for “genuine voices of political conviction.” Worse, these fake accounts can be used not just to distort debate but to actively suppress dissent” https://www.contributoria.com/issue/2014-03/52ceefe277e4f13f4300001d
The Real War on Reality (by Professor Peter Ludlow) “The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm. This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.”
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media (by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain; published way back in 2011) “The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same. The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”.
[…] Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.” http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
***
From my personal experience, I would say that the best way to go about professional sock-puppets is to simply ignore their comments and avoid engaging them. It’s more about psychological warfare. You waste your time and stamina arguing with these trolls, while you could be doing something else (e. g. doing research or talking to other people). That’s what they seem to be aiming for.
Besides, when you talk to them, you, by default, give them feedback, so they can learn about new arguments and design strategies to dodge them in the future discussions with other people. So, just ignoring them is the most optimal way to go.
Besides mentally exhausting their opponents, they also aim at creating the illusion of public consensus on the issue. That’s a really powerful thing. See, when people are not 100% sure about what to think, they look for others’ opinion (that’s what we have naturally evolved to do, as social beings), therefore, in cases of even a slightest ambiguity, others’ strong opinions can radically change your own perception of reality. It’s been all thoroughly researched by psychologists since the 1950s (see Asch’s Experiments, for instance):
So, yeah, people, be very wary of the political comments on YouTube and replies on Twitter. Nowadays, they can be hijacked by the government intelligence agencies to brainwash you.
(and it’s actually sad, because it minimises the opportunity to have a proper discussion on issues in public cyber-space, and it also, kind of, stigmatises the official US/Western viewpoint, in many cases, because there is no trust in it anymore… *sigh*)
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 10.09.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
This post is probably going to make many of you pissed and angry, but, to hell with it. Someone should say these things anyway, sooner or later.
This refuge crisis… We’ve all seen these terrible images of people drowning, dead kids being washed ashore, poor Syrians fleeing the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the civil war and the rise of ISIS in the region, all these debates about how we have to hold to the higher moral standards, showing compassion towards these poor refugees, being humanistic, and stuff. Well, how about discussing the root causes of this crisis and thinking of the ways to avoid fucking it up even worse?
Syria used to be a nice, secular and stable place four years ago until the United States government began supporting the Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals in their effort to overthrow president Assad. Libya used to be one of the most prosperous countries on the continent, with its leader, Gaddafi, having a vision of the economically united Africa. Until the US and NATO bombed it back to the Stone Age, allowing the president to be beaten up to death in public by barbarians. And I’m not even mentioning the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (it was based on a pretext that Saddam Husain was possessing the weapons of mass destructions; turned out to be a lie), which destroyed the country with all of its security services, making it a perfect breeding ground for various extremist organisations. The responsibility on the current refuge crisis lies on the US foreign policy makers and those who supported it almost entirely. The mainstream media, of course, doesn’t talk about that.
Some still argue that those were the totalitarian dictators that were killing their own people, that they should have been ousted, etc, etc (although I’m pretty certain that most of the accusations made against them is nothing more than made up propaganda BS, same as with the Saddam’s WMD). Well, brining them down didn’t fucking help the situation, did it?
Back in 2011, when American and NATO chiefs were planning airstrikes against the Libyan government and doing their strategic risk assessments, didn’t they predict that the refugees would begin flooding Europe in the aftermath? I find it hard to believe. If they knew that this is likely to happen, why the fuck did they proceed with their aggressive military campaign anyway? Well, I can understand the US doing it, their neocons seek to maintain the US world hegemony, and, therefore, they always try to undermine all the other perspective geopolitical competitors, be it China or EU, but what about the European NATO analysts who were sanctioning this shit? What kind of irresponsible, moronic psychopath do you have to be to allow such stuff to happen?
As for the refugees themselves, to me it appears beyond idiotic to thoughtlessly accept anyone who comes as a refugee. Yes, there are people who are fleeing the war zones, yes, there are people who truly need help and support, but you simply can’t ignore the fact that there is also a very significant number of people who are simply pretending to be Syrian to get the benefits of the welfare state. There are thousands of people coming from all the other, relatively stable regions (some even from the sub-Saharan Africa) who seek to exploit the crisis to get free money from the states that accept the refugees. By blending in, those people make it harder for actual Syrians who flee from the war zones to get in. Plus, most of these opportunists are young, healthy men, who would benefit their own economies if they had stayed in their home countries and worked there.
Those who are running for their lives should be helped now, for sure (since the West has fucked up the situating in their home countries to such degree), but it’s also necessary to be more selective and try to do the background check on the people who are coming in, to make sure that they are not imposters (with such large numbers coming in, I struggle to think of the ways to do it properly).
You can hear the argument that these refuges will provide the workforce and improve the economies of the host countries. Well, I can’t really see it working that way, considering the current unemployment rates in Germany and other EU countries. And, once again, many of those people who sneak into Europe now aren’t even true refugees fleeing the war zones. Many of them simply pretend to be Syrian or Libyan with an intent to live lazy parasitic lifestyle off welfare payments in the host countries, thus, depleting the state budget and worsening the economic recession.
As a result, the situation will escalate, the refugees will be blamed, racial/ethnic tensions will grow, radical movements will gain momentum in Europe (we’ve seen shit like this happening in Germany after the WWI), ethnic minorities will consolidate in response, forming hostile communities (you wouldn’t be able to socially integrate all the newcomers at such rates). It’s going to be a mess.
But, apparently, raising these concerns somehow makes you inhumane and/or racists.
Maybe it’s time to pull your head out of your ass and start thinking on how to solve all these issues constructively and holistically, without relying on emotional propaganda?
Oh, by the way, since you’re all compassionate, humanistic, caring and so easily moved by the media pictures of dead children, I think I would not do wrong if I’ll show you this:
Here is more images of dead children for you:
Those are the images from Eastern Ukraine/Novorossia. The deaths are the results of the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of the civilian areas done by the Kiev forces against their (former) provinces.
A case of Gorlovka, for instance: http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-crimes-in-gorlovka-east-ukraine-the-anna-tuv-story/5473925
Here is the list of kids who died because of the shelling in that one town alone (use Google translate if you can’t read Russian):
Civilians and kids have been dying there for the last 18 months, but, since the assault of the region is being done by the regime that acts within the interests of the United States, nobody gives a fuck.
Seriously, people, once again, the general discourse about the current refuge crisis demonstrates that society thinks what they are being told to think through the mainstream media.
That’s just pathetic and deeply, deeply sad.
This entry is a back-up copy of my Facebook post that I originally made on 28.06.2015. For better user experience, please read, like and/or comment the original post on FB.
Okay, people, this is going to be one of the longest and most important FB posts I’ve ever written.
I feel the need to talk about an ongoing event that is among the most misrepresented topics in the Western political and media discourse – the Ukrainian Crisis. This topic is of high importance, as its escalation may lead to WW3 and then straight to a Nuclear Apocalypse, which, obviously, isn’t going to benefit the majority of people on planet Earth. I believe that people generally should be well-informed and have balanced views on such issues, as the political decisions usually rest on public support. It’s within your responsibility too to prevent bad, misguided political decisions from being made.
Now, regarding the Crisis itself, the coverage of those events by the Western mainstream media to date has been done in a near-Orwellian style, with, so called, political pundits having discussions on-air, during which they struggle to come to consensus on whether Putin is an irrational maniac or a cunning evil genius with world domination ambitions. The general discourse is focused on condemning “Russian aggression” and “Russian behaviour in Ukraine”, accusing it of military invasion, destabilising the region, among other thing. Anyone who dares to disagree is labeled a “Putin’s apologist”. The official Russian viewpoint is labeled “Russian propaganda”, and everyone who considers it (or merely disagrees with the Western mainstream media narrative) becomes “brainwashed by Putin’s lies”.
It’s particularly disturbing that this narrative isn’t debated against within the mainstream media in any Western country (with the exception of Germany, perhaps). It saddens me deeply. I will try my best to explain my understanding of the Crisis. I will support my statements with links to materials that will include relevant articles, raw video-footage, as well as some official documentation.
First, let’s take a look back, just to refresh the memory, and see how it all began.
It wasn’t only that, of course. Many of those who came to power in Kiev were just russophobic in general, with some of them being openly neo-nazi (I will return to this point a bit later).
Evidently, such rhetoric didn’t impress people in the South-Eastern parts of Ukraine, the dominant majority of which are ethnically, linguistically and culturally Russian (especially given that it was an unconstitutional, undemocratic and violent co op; people in the South-East were opposing it from the start). A number of anti-Kiev/pro-Russia protests were carried across the region, with people demanding federalisation (predominantly, they demanded some autonomy through decentralisation from the Kiev government). Here is the footage of protests that occurred in Donetsk, Lugansk and Odessa (the Western mainstream media was very reluctant to report on these):
There were also a couple of reported incidents when protesters were taking over local administrative building by force. In order to be fair, it has to be pointed out that they were using the exact same methods employed by the pro-Euromaindan groups a few months earlier (when they were occupying city administrations in Western provinces and, later, storming administrative buildings in Kiev, with weapons, wearing masks, and everything).
What was suppose to happen in such situation? Well, ideally, the new Kiev government should have set a dialog with the people in the South Eastern provinces, to discuss possible solutions, try to find ways to reach a compromise, all that stuff that governments that call themselves democratic do. What did Kiev do? Well, they sent in tanks, helicopters and armed vehicles to repress the people:
Initially, the military campaign (labeled as “Anti-Terrorist Operation” by Kiev authorities) suffered a massive fail, due to soldiers arriving on the sites and seeing just ordinary people, whom they couldn’t shoot, so they didn’t know what to do. It was later, when battalions formed from ultra-nationalist got involved, that’s when the blood got spilled. For instance, here is video-footage of Dnepr battalion repressing a referendum in the town of Krasnoarmeysk, killing at least one civilian in the process:
Here is another instance of Kiev military shooting at the crowd and killing civilians (filmed in Mariupol on the 2014 Victory Day):
That’s when sh*t hit the fan, forcing people to take weapons and stand up for themselves. Note, those were Kiev soldiers repressing locals’ political will by force (that’s a crime that calls for a tribunal by itself), not “pro-Russian rebels” or “Putin’s thugs” advancing towards Kiev and killing Ukrainians on the way, let along mythical “Russian army invading Ukraine”, as mainstream media often tries to portray the situation.
Also, many people argue (and I tend to agree with them) that the Odessa Massacre that occurred on 02.05.2014, during which neo-nazi burned nearly 50 people alive, served as the point of non-return:
And here is the footage that shows pro-Maidan activists making Molotov cocktails that were used to set the building on fire:
Either way, it’s a civil war, ignited by the US-backed Kiev’s aggression towards its (former?) Eastern provinces.
Interestingly, the U. S. officials knew that the situation may develop into a civil war way back in 2008, as revealed by now leaked documents. A confidential memo sent to the Joint Chief of Staff by William J. Burns (he used to be a U. S. ambassador to Russia) said the following (published by Wikileaks; dated 01.02.2008):
“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region [!]. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence [!!!] or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Again, I want to stress your attention at this particular moment. The U. S. actually knew that if “pro-Western” course is enforced by/on Kiev, that may lead to INTERNAL regional destabilisation and, at worst, a civil war (that’s essentially what we’ve been observing happening there for over a year now). They knew about such possibility, yet they purposefully supported (both politically and financially) the Euromaidan movement (and all the neo-nazi radicals who stuck to it) that, consequently, overthrew the democratically elected president and then waged repressive military campaign against people who had a different opinion. What the hell does Russia (or Putin) have to do with it?
As for the “Russian invasion of Ukraine” accusations, it’s been more than a year since those claims began to appear, and still there is no proper evidence in support of this. No satellite data (it would have been abundant if the accusations were true; NATO and U. S. have been registering all the slightest moves made by the Russian military formations within the Russian territory, yet, no proper data of them crossing the border), no official video documentation, no verifiable video-footage made by journalists and/or locals (everyone has cell phones with cameras nowadays, and the Internet access is widespread in those regions). Also, don’t forget all the international journalists and observers (e. g. OSCE) who are being there constantly.
I mean, just think about it. Remember when Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen a couple of months ago? Remember the amount of data it generated? Remember the Israeli forces moving into Gaza last year on 17.07.2014, and the uproar it caused instantly? A better example, if you actually want to know what Russian military intervention looks like, go back to 2008 and examine the Georgian conflict, when president Saakachvili attacked Tskhinvali and the Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, so Russia had to retaliate (by the way, that conflict is of special significance because it wasn’t covered univocally in the Western mainstream media back then; the American media was forcing the usuall “Russian aggression” narrative, while media outlets like BBC were more neutral in their coverage; that’s because the conflict was solely within the interests of the Republicans in the U. S., as they wanted to use it for John McCain’s presidential campaign; it didn’t go as planned, because they didn’t expect Russia to retaliate properly). By the way, here’s a famous example of how Fox News failed live while discussing the 2008 conflict:
The only things that have actually been properly documented moving from Russia to the region are the numerous humanitarian aid convoys (they are being checked by the OSCE): http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150625/1023817516.html
Also, if the tale of Russian invasion of Ukraine is true, then why doesn’t Kiev also fight it in Crimea? Well, I hope the answer is obvious: that’s because they know that if they go to Crimea, they will actually encounter the Russian troops…
And, let’s be serious here, if Russian troops were really to intervene in Eastern Ukraine/Novorossia, they would have done it fast, as with the Georgian conflict, with many tanks, armoured and support vehicles moving through (with combined personnel of multiple thousands, all crossing the border at once), they would have used air support, with jets and helicopters flying over the region. That would be impossible to hide. And there would be no need to. The Crisis would be over in a couple of days time, in such case (don’t want to put anyone down here, but the Russian military forces objectively have more troops, they are better equipped and have a couple of newer thing in the arsenal).
Here is a good article that elaborates the inadequacy of the “Russia invaded Ukraine” BS/narrative well: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/134
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a chief editor that works for some big mainstream media outlet. How would you go about keeping the narrative in the absence of any proper evidence for months? Well, the BBC made an attempt by coming up with an article that explains the invisibility of Russian army by a military doctrine the BBC editorial named “Maskirovka”: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31020283
“Maskirovka” is an actual Russian word for disguise, but I’ve never heard of such military doctrine, there is no article on it in the Russian language Wikipedia; there is one, however, in the English Wikipedia, but, if you go to the edits history, you’ll see that the majority of it was written in January-February 2015, when the BBC article was published; the BBC article itself is absurd; it’s like the author took a couple of names and dates from the history and began juggling them wildly, making bizarre extrapolations that have no correspondence to reality whatsoever.
The CNN weren’t that sophisticated, apparently, so they decided to just report that there are mobile crematoriums in Eastern Ukraine that Russians use to burn their dead soldiers to hide the evidence: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/05/26/putin-ukraine-josh-rogin-nr-sot.cnn-ap
This story was picked up by numerous other newspapers and media outlets (such as the Business Insider, which has turned into an info-dump, publishing the most bizarre junk “journalists” come up with about the Ukrainian Crisis and Russia). I feel sorry for these “journalists” who have to resort to coming up with these nonsense and then reporting it. I wonder if they have to take any recreational drugs to boost their creativity in the process. Seems like it.
As for the reports of spotting Russian military equipment in the region – those are among the most facile arguments you can come up with. Ukraine is a former Soviet state, and it uses the same weaponry systems as Russians do (with the exception that Russians have been able to implement a couple of new improvements since 1991; and a couple of new models too, such the Armata tank). There are stockpiles of Soviet military gear all over the Ukrainian territory, because, back in the late-1980s and the early 1990s, following the Warsaw Pact dissolution, when all the Soviet military bases were drawn back home from East Germany and East-European countries, a huge amount of weaponry systems condensed at the periphery of the USSR (and then it just stayed there, because Russian politicians were too busy privatising state property during the 1990s and, thus, didn’t have time to attend to this issue). I mean, it’s such a facile argument that appeals to pure ignorance. “Aaahhh!!! A Russian T-80 tank is spotted in rebellious provinces! That proves that Russia supplies them with lethal aid! RUSSIAN AGGRESSION!!!1111”. Following that logic, Putin must also supply Kiev, because 95% of everything they use is of Soviet design too.
So, does it mean that all these countries, whose citizens fight in Eastern Ukraine/Novorossia, both with and against the rebels, have invaded Ukraine or otherwise destabilise the region? Unlikely.
The fact that there are more Russian citizens than citizens of any other country among the fighters is easily explained by the deep cultural ties between Ukraine (particularly its Eastern parts) and Russia. Hell, it used to be one country some mere 24 years ago, with no borders and people were moving back and forth easily. Half of all Russian families have relatives living in Ukraine, so, on social levels, Russians are deeply concerned about the Crisis, with the majority seeing the current Kiev government as an enemy, and many individuals are driven enough to help the rebels, with some even travelling there and joining their ranks.
I do believe that Russia might have sent in some covert operatives into the region, although I have no proof (it’s just that it would be strange if the Russian government wouldn’t try to somehow regulate the conflict that is happening right at its borders), but would that make Putin/Russia bad? Hardly so, given that it wasn’t Putin who initiated the Crisis (I think I’ve already covered this point extensively in this post).
So, let’s get it clear, the Western powers are actually doing what they are accusing Russia of, i. e. providing military aid and training for one of the sides in the conflict. They are doing so officially, yet, they accuse Russia of destabilising the regional situation, using it as a pretext for economic sanctions. Doesn’t that concern people in the West? Or is it just that the majority of people have no time nor analytical skills to see the blatant double standards and the dichotomy employed by the West, both diplomatically and in the mainstream media?
Well, one might argue that the West has the right to do so, as it supports the official government, and not some rebels/separatists. To respond to this, I would like to remind you that the current Kiev government was established as a result of violent, UNCONSTITUTIONAL co op, which was financed and diplomatically supported by the U. S. Essentially, it’s a puppet government that was violently installed by the West: http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/18/foreign-bankers-rape-ukraine/
Why should the Eastern regions comply to it?
“But wait!” you say, “Let’s ask what Ukrainians themselves think about the Crisis. It’s always essential to know what people who actually live in the country think of what is going on, right?”. Right. But before asking such questions, you should decide which Ukrainians to include in the survey. Western Ukrainians? Ukrainians from Kiev? Maybe people who live in the Eastern provinces?
The people of Donetsk and Lugansk regions are saying that they are being bombed and shelled by the Kiev army:
There are many videos of East-Ukranian/Novorossia residents saying what they think is happening. They are all over YouTube. I can post more in the comments if you want me to (it’s just that there are way too many links in this post already). Generally, I would recommend checking Graham Phillips’ YouTube channel. He is a British freelance journalist who has been working in the conflict zone since the very beginning. He has been attacked multiple times by his colleagues in the Western mainstream media, with allegations that he is a “Russian propagandist” being made. He is strongly pro-Russian, indeed. But the special value of his work is that he uploads raw footage online (just adding English subtitles to it). He also interviews random people on the streets, from time to time. So, definitely worth checking (lots of material there that the Western mainstream media won’t show you): https://www.youtube.com/user/gwplondon
Now, what about the other Ukrainians? Well, yes, if you’re going to ask any Ukrainian who doesn’t live in Donbass, the chances are that they are going to blame Russia and Putin for all the horror that has been happening there. Why? Well, let’s talk about the Kiev controlled media…
He is one example of how the Ukrainian media lied (in an Orwellian style), and how these lies were picked up by European politicians and referenced at a UN assembly (I dare you to watch it):
Horrifying, isn’t it?
Well, there is more. Such lies and propaganda are being told by the Kiev media on the daily basis. Literally. The Western mainstream media likes to talk about Russian media faking stuff (yet, they always use that one example of the “crucified boy” story), yet they never mention daily fabrications done by the Ukrainian media.
There is a guy named Anatoly Sharij, he is a Ukrainian journalist in exile. He now lives in Europe and harshly criticises the current Kiev government, debunking their fakes. He uploads short videos to his YouTube channel regularly, showing where and how Kiev media outlets lie to their audience. 3-5 new uploads are made daily! Recently, he began putting English subtitles to some of his videos. So, check it out (it’s truly horrifying to see what Kiev media is doing to their people): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVPYbobPRzz0SjinWekjUBw
Here are some examples of his mini-investigations (don’t forget to turn the subs on):
A Ukrainian TV channel steals video footage uploaded by a Russian volunteer, video footage that shows the results of Kiev authorities, cuts and edits it and then presents it as a “proof” of the rebels committing those atrocities:
A Ukrainian TV channel steals a video report on “anti-war” meeting in Donetsk (filmed by Graham Phillips), edits it, cuts out the bits where citizens accuse Kiev forces of shelling, and then reports the event, making it look like the people are protesting against rebells’ actions:
A Ukrainian TV channel completely distorts information and fabricates negative stories about Russia:
Kiev news websites report a fake story about a rebel commander being killed:
A Ukrainian TV channel spills dirt on Crimean prosecutor by using photoshopped pictures:
Ukrainian news websites glorify Ukrainian airforce by stealing video of Russian jets:
The Ukrainian Security Service lied about the “Russian BUK system” involved in the MH17 tragedy, publishing its photos on their official web-site. The photos turned out to be of a BUK system used by the Kiev forces:
Again, these fake reports and propaganda are being fed to people daily, from all Kiev channels and online news services. It’s like an alternative reality that is being created by the Kiev media and their blogosphere. It’s important to note that a significant portion of such propaganda is aimed at the emotional level of perception, making people feel either sad or angry, to the point when a person’s analytical skills become switched off. I believe that such propaganda, if fed for months non-stop, can stress people to burnout, so there is a risk of becoming brainwashed down to psychosis.
And the scariest thing is that there is no alternative point of view in the Kiev media. All the Russian TV channels became banned straight after the co op (that was one of the first initiatives by the new government), journalists, writers and politicians who voice their criticism towards the government nowadays have bad things happening to them. In April, there were reports of at least 10 opposition figures dying in Ukraine this year alone (including two journalists, Kalashnikov and Buzyna, who were shot dead within a 24-hour period): http://www.thenation.com/article/204921/least-10-opposition-figures-have-died-ukraine-just-year#
The numbers might have increased since then.
By the way, here is the translation of an official statement made by Buzyna about the Kiev media and on why he left his post as a chief-editor in a mainstream newspaper (his opinion cost him his life): http://fortruss.blogspot.ru/2015/04/oles-buzina-on-media-censorship-in.html
There have also been stories about newspapers and news agencies that didn’t support the Euromaidan movement being forcefully shut down right after the coup. I can’t remember the details off the top of my head now, but I might try to specify the info, if you want me to.
The Western mainstream media, of course, isn’t concerned about that. In fact, BBC and CNN often just rewrite the official Kiev press releases (yet, they treat all the information that comes out of Russia as propaganda).
But it’s not only the Kiev media that is guilty of such misinformation. The Western mainstream media has also been caught multiple times producing Orwellian style fakes. For example, here is MSNBC being caught editing video footage from the conflict zone, misinterpreting it by completely turning the meaning upside-down:
Ask yourself: if the evidence of Russian invasion of Ukraine is so abundant, as the media claims, then why the hell do they keep fabricating these stories and publishing fakes?
Another side of the Western mainstream media manipulation is omission of facts. The mainstream media never reports on Kiev forces shelling civilian areas (although there is abundance of video materials on this all over the Internet). You wouldn’t be able to find reports on atrocities committed by neo-nazi battalions in the mainstream media.
CNN, BBC, ABC, etc. will never show you this (just give this link to anyone who treats the info about nazis in Ukraine as “Putin’s propaganda”):
By the way, a quick point about neo-nazis. You can find certain marginalised ultra-nationalist groups in many places all around the globe. There are Hitler worshipers and sympathisers in Germany, the U. S., the UK, and in many other countries. It’s okay to allow a few imbeciles to get swastika tattoos and talk about white supremacy for the sake of freedom of speech, freedom of political expression, and such. But it becomes truly messed up when these imbeciles get to have their own military units (that don’t correspond to the Ministry of Defence), with their representatives holding high positions in the government, allowing their ideologies to spread and giving WWII nazi collaborators a national hero status.
Coupled with constant brainwashing by the media, it can lead to mass-psychosis:
There is an additional level to the mass hysteria that was purposefully brought upon the nation of Ukraine, and it concerns their collective identity. There is one interesting piece on the subject to which I will provide a link in the comment section (it’s a link to a FB post; FB links seem to affect posts’ shareability within the network, so I’ll just post it in the comments).
***
Let’s do a short summary.
It was the West that sponsored the violent, unconstitutional coup in Ukraine’s capital in February 2014. It was the new, radicalised government that suppressed the dissent at home and then refused to talk with the people of Eastern Ukraine, trying to repress them with military force instead. It was Kiev that waged war against its own provinces for having a different opinion. The American officials knew that the crisis could lead to a bloodbath civil war, yet they kept pushing towards it by brining those radicals to power and then supporting their military campaign against East Ukraine/Novorossia, providing military aid and training their troops, while blaming Putin for everything by constructing political and media discourse that is based on facile arguments, misinformation and blatant lies, and then using it to impose economic sanctions on Russia (i. e. waging economic warfare).
Who is the aggressor?
You know what, let’s now do a quick thought experiment. Forget everything I’ve told you. Imagine that the Western mainstream media tells the truth, and that it is, indeed, Putin who has been destabilising the region from the very beginning, orchestrating the crisis and then fuelling the war in Eastern Ukraine. Would that make Russia/Putin bad? Perhaps… But not worse than the U. S., who have actually been doing this in Libya and Syria for years now.
You know what, it’s actually amazing how the mainstream media does its job. The U. S. has been accusing Russia (with no proof) of doing something it ACTUALLY does in Syria, a country that is located 9 000 km away from its borders. The U. S. does support radicals (who kill innocent civilians; some of them end up joining ISIS) there, officially supplying them with weapons, helping them financially, training their fighters, etc. Again, doesn’t that concern people? Or are people so bad at analytical thinking they can’t even spot the morbid double standards in this issue? I mean, the entire media and political discourse about Evil Putin’s/Russian aggression towards Ukraine is so deeply, fundamentally facile, on so many levels, it makes me so angry and frustrated that…. I can’t even finish this thought.
Either way, people, the mainstream media isn’t there to inform you. It’s merely a tool to shape public opinion. A propaganda machine. And the cause benefits no-one, but the military-industrial complex and a bunch of trans-national financial institutions.
That’s not just my personal opinion or some crazy conspiracy theory. It’s actually been studied academically for decades now:
Red pill, anyone?
So, given that the Western mainstream media spews nothing but propaganda, what could you do to form a balanced opinion on the issues? Well, the most obvious way is to consult alternative media (and, no, people, The Guardian isn’t really an alternative to NYT when it comes to Ukraine or Russia), trying to get the other side’s perspective.
There is also a web-resource called Russia Insider, which was founded by Western russophiles to target the Western mainstream media narratives about Russia – http://russia-insider.com/en
As for non-Russian alternative media sources, I would recommend:
Consortium News – https://consortiumnews.com
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity – http://ronpaulinstitute.org
StormCloudsGathering (these guys often dive into conspiracy theories, but, nevertheless, they are excellent at putting info together and giving food for thought) – http://stormcloudsgathering.com
Here is an article that lists additional non-Russian alternative sources on the Ukrainian Crisis:
I think I’ve covered everything I had on my mind in relation to the Western mainstream media coverage of the Ukrainian Crisis. I know this post is long and it’s not something you would normally see on Facebook (I applaud you if you’ve been able to read it all), but it’s just all these points had to be made and explained. The post is really info heavy, so some of you may find it useful to save it and revisit it later, to examine the links more carefully.
Try to put it all together.
Use your brain, always analyse and question everything you watch, hear and read. Especially when it comes to the mainstream media.
Don’t let them brainwash you into the WW3.
Chinese historians and sociologists are, of course, aware of this. Over the recent years the government has been setting up multiple research centres all across the country to study the fall of the Soviet Union, to learn from its mistakes and to avoid repeating its faith (Russia was lucky in a way that the disintegration was happening at its periphery back during the late 1980s and the 1990s; if the same thing happens China, they are going to get it across their core).
Friday begins on Monday 