“Western media run blatant atrocity propaganda for the Ukrainian government”, May 21, 2022, Caitlin A. Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone.com, at <
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/
And:
““Surrender of Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in Azovstal”, May 21, 2022, Christelle Néant, MRoline, at < https://mronline.org/2022/05/
And:
“In the wake of Russian victory in Mariupol”, May 21, 2022, M. K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, at < https://www.indianpunchline.
~~recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista:
The Corporate Controlled Media, that has become even less reliable a source of news than it used to be, and that more shamelessly than ever functions as a cheerleader for Empire, has outdone itself in publishing articles and posting videos that attempt to demonize the Russians and present a view of the Ukrainians as a bunch of Saints. In the first article, “Western media run blatant atrocity propaganda for the Ukrainian government”, the author, Caitlan Johnstone, states that: “This is what passes for journalism in the western world today. Reporting completely unfounded allegations against US enemies based solely on assertions by a government official demanding more weapons and sanctions against those enemies …. The Ukrainian government is quickly learning that it can say anything, literally anything about Russia, without any evidence at all, and the western mainstream press will report it as an actual news story.”
Of course this is, in reality nothing new as the article further points out: “ …. the US and its proxies have an established history of using atrocity propaganda, as in the infamous 'taking babies from incubators' narrative that was circulated in the infamous 1990 Nayirah testimony which helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War.
“Atrocity propaganda has been in use for a very long time due to how effective it can be at getting populations mobilized against targeted enemies, from the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian children to kill them and drink their blood, to 17th century claims that the Irish were killing English children and throwing them into the sea, to World War I claims that Germans were mutilating and eating Belgian babies.”
The Western media outlets hide behind the fig leaf of putting somewhere near the bottom of their articles a disclaimer such as “ 'this or that outlet' has not independently verified the claim.”
The second and third articles both discuss the recent surrender of the Ukrainian Troops, Fascist Operatives, and Foreign Mercenaries at the Steel Plant in Mariupol. Both, including the first article, “Surrender of Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in Azovstal”, point out that Zelensky has tried to control the narrative by saying the defeated fascists, conscripts, and mercenaries are being evacuated from the factory, when in fact they have surrendered unconditionally. The nearly 2,500 who surrendered are divided into 4 categories. Over 800 are members of the blatantly fascist Azov Unit (Batallion, or Regiment or Army). The Azov Batallion was specifically sent to Mariupol, shortly after the 2014 Euromaidan Fascist Coup, because the population of Mariupol voted to leave Ukraine and join the Donbas republics. The Russians did not help Mariupol the way they helped Donetsk and Luhansk, and therefore the Fascist Government in Kiev was able to send the Azov Batallion there to terrorize and intimidate the Russian Speaking and ethnic Russian population of Mariupol in an 8 year reign of terror and fascist police state operations. These 800+ will not be released or traded. The largest group are members of the 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Army, and they will be examined; those who are fascists or who have committed war crimes will be held for trial, those who do not have that sort of history will be traded. The third group are border guards, they will be examined for war crimes or fascist tendencies;, and those who are free of those stains will be traded. The fourth group are foreign mercenaries, they will be held for war crimes trials.
The third article, “In the wake of Russian victory in Mariupol”, was published later and has the latest figures. It points out that: “The combined American military aid for Ukraine now stands at $54 billion, which is about 81 percent of Russia’s 2021 defence budget. …. (But since the aid is Lend-Lease type and must be paid for, an impossibility for the shattered Ukraine that will emerge from the war, d.m.) Washington can claim compensation if Ukraine fails to redeem the debt, such as with the supply of cheap agricultural products by Ukraine, preferential business deals for American companies, and so on.”
And the overall situation reflects the facts that: “In the final analysis, the tragi-comedy of the Azovstal event underscores that there are no winners and losers in this war. The US wants to win this war, whereas Russia is not fighting a war but is seeking a successful operation to meet certain specific objectives of national security. .... Ukraine is Russia’s neighbourhood, whereas it is 10,000 kms away from America. This disconnect threatens to prolong the war.
“The Europeans don’t have fire in the belly anymore while speaking about the war, which for them is becoming a great disrupter of the manicured, predictable life in their continent, something that they least expected when Washington hustled them into the war.”
While the Corporate Controlled Media in the U.S. likes to focus on the recent applications of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, they ignore the glaring problems in the three largest and most important NATO members, Germany, France, and Italy. All three of which are groaning under economic stresses and have made arrangements to buy their oil and natural gas from Russia in ways that go around the Economic Sanctions imposed by the U.S. rulers.
The Ukrainian government is quickly learning that it can say anything, literally anything at all, about what’s happening on the ground there and get it uncritically reported as an actual news story by the mainstream western press.
The latest story making the rounds is a completely unevidenced claim made by a Ukrainian government official that Russians are going around raping Ukrainian babies to death. Business Insider, The Daily Beast, The Daily Mail and Yahoo News have all run this story despite no actual evidence existing for it beyond the empty assertions of a government who would have every incentive to lie.
“A one-year-old boy died after being raped by two Russian soldiers, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights said on Thursday,” reads a report by Business Insider which was subsequently picked up by Yahoo News. “The accusation is one of the most horrific from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but is not unique.”
At the end of the fourth paragraph we get to the disclaimer that every critical thinker should look for when reading such stories in the mainstream press:
“Insider could find no independent evidence for the claim.”
In its trademark style, The Daily Beast ran the same story in a much more flamboyant and click-friendly fashion.
“The dead boy is among dozens of alleged child rape victims which include two 10-year-old boys, triplets aged 9, a 2-year-old girl raped by two Russian soldiers, and a 9-month-old baby who was penetrated with a candlestick in front of its mother, according to Ukraine’s Commissioner for Human Rights,” The Daily Beast writes.
The one and only source for this latest spate of “the Russians are raping babies to death” stories is a statement on a Ukrainian government website by Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova. The brief statement contains no evidence of any kind, and its English translation concludes as follows:
I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during the Russian military invasion of Ukraine to take into account these facts of genocide of the Ukrainian people.
I call on our partners around the world to increase sanctions pressure on russia, to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons, to join the investigation of rashist crimes in our country!
The enemy must be stopped and all those involved in the atrocities in Ukraine must be brought to justice!
This is what passes for journalism in the western world today. Reporting completely unfounded allegations against US enemies based solely on assertions by a government official demanding more weapons and sanctions against those enemies and making claims that sound like they came from an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia bit.
We cannot say definitively that these rapes never happened. We also cannot say definitively that the Australian government isn’t warehousing extraterrestrial aircraft in an underground bunker in Canberra, but we don’t treat that like it’s an established fact and publish mainstream news reports about it just because we can’t prove it’s false. That’s not how the burden of proof works.
Obviously the rape of children is a very real and very serious matter, and obviously rape is one of the many horrors which can be inflicted upon people in the lawless environment of war. But to turn strategically convenient government assertions about such matters into a news story based on no evidence whatsoever is not just journalistic malpractice but actual atrocity propaganda.
As we discussed previously, the US and its proxies have an established history of using atrocity propaganda, as in the infamous “taking babies from incubators” narrative that was circulated in the infamous 1990 Nayirah testimony which helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War.
Atrocity propaganda has been in use for a very long time due to how effective it can be at getting populations mobilized against targeted enemies, from the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian children to kill them and drink their blood, to 17th century claims that the Irish were killing English children and throwing them into the sea, to World War I claims that Germans were mutilating and eating Belgian babies.
Atrocity propaganda frequently involves children, because children cannot be construed as combatants or non-innocents, and generally involves the most horrific allegations the propagandists can possibly get away with at that point in history. It creates a useful appeal to emotion which bypasses people’s logical faculties and gets them accepting the propaganda based not on facts and evidence but on how it makes them feel.
https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa/status/1527722073795198976?s=20&t=M-IYiz85ux0adxeRRKdKtw
And the atrocity propaganda is functioning exactly as it’s meant to. Do a search on social media for this bogus story that’s been forcibly injected into public discourse and you’ll find countless individuals expressing their outrage at the evil baby-raping Russians. Democratic Party operative Andrea Chalupa, known for her controversial collusion with the Ukrainian government to undermine the 2016 Trump campaign, can be seen citing the aforementioned Daily Beast article on Twitter to angrily admonish the New York Times editorial board for expressing a rare word of caution about US involvement in the war.
“Before writing this, the members of the New York Times Editorial Board should have asked themselves who among them wanted to have their children, including babies and infants, raped by Russian soldiers, because that is what’s happening in Ukraine,” Chalupa tweeted.
See that? How a completely unevidenced government assertion was turned into an official-looking news story, and how that official-looking news story was then cited as though it’s an objective fact that Russian soldiers are running around raping babies to death in Ukraine? And how it’s done to help manufacture consent for a geostrategically crucial proxy war, and to bludgeon those who express any amount of caution about these world-threatening escalations?
That’s atrocity propaganda doing exactly what it is meant to do.
Now on top of all the other reasons we’re being given why the US and its allies need to send Ukraine more and more war machinery of higher and higher destructive capability, they also need to do so because the Russians are just raping babies to death willy nilly over there. Which just so happens to work out nicely for the US-centralized empire’s goals of unipolar domination, for the Ukrainian regime, and for the military-industrial complex.
And that wasn’t even the extent of obscene mass media atrocity propaganda conducted on behalf of Ukrainian officials for the day. Newsweek has a new article out titled “Russians Targeting Kids’ Beds, Rooms With Explosives: Ukrainian Bomb Team,” which informs us that “The leader of a Ukrainian bomb squad has said that Russian forces are targeting children by placing explosive devices inside their rooms and under their beds.”
Then at the end of the second paragraph we again find that magical phrase:
“Newsweek has not independently verified the claim.”
The Newsweek report is based on part of an embarrassing ABC News Australia puff piece about a Ukrainian team which is allegedly responsible for removing landmines in areas that were previously occupied by Russian forces. The puff piece refers to the team as a “unit of brave de-miners” while calling Russian forces “barbaric”.
ABC uncritically reports all the nefarious ways the evil Russians have been planting explosives with the goal of killing Ukrainian civilians, including setting mines in children’s beds and teddy bears and placing them under fallen Ukrainian soldiers. Way down toward the bottom of the article we see the magical phrase again:
“The ABC has not been able to independently verify these reports, but they back up allegations made by Ukraine’s President.”
Ahh, so what you’re being told by Ukrainian forces “backs up” what you’ve been told by the president of Ukraine. Doesn’t get any more rock solid than that, does it? Great journalism there, fellas.
The Ukrainian government stands everything to gain and nothing to lose by just saying whatever it needs to say in order to obtain more weapons, more funding and increasingly direct assistance from western powers, so if it knows the western media will uncritically report every claim it makes, why not lie? Why not tell whatever lie you need to tell in order to advance your own interests and agendas? It would be pretty silly of them not to take advantage of the opening they’re being given.
This is something the western press know is happening. They know full well that Ukraine is waging a very sophisticated propaganda campaign against Russia and seeding disinformation to facilitate that infowar. It’s not a secret. They are participating in that campaign knowingly.
The mass media have been cranking out atrocity propaganda about what’s happening in Ukraine since before the invasion even started, like when they reported in February that Russia has a list of dissidents, journalists and “vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons” who it plans on rounding up and torturing when it invades. Funny how we just completely stopped hearing about that one.
And this is all happening at the same time the western political/media class continues to shriek about the dangers of “disinformation” and the urgent need to strictly regulate its circulation on the internet, even after US officials came right out and admitted that they’ve been circulating disinformation about Russia and Ukraine. I guarantee you none of these completely evidence-free claims will be subject to censorship by the “fact checkers” of social media platforms.
The fact that both Silicon Valley and the mainstream news media have accepted it as a given that it is their job to manipulate public thought about this war tells you everything you need to know about how free and truth-based the so-called liberal democracies of the western world really are. We are being deceived and confused into consenting to agendas that could very easily lead to nuclear armageddon, and if we ever raise our voices in objection to this we are branded Putin propagandists and disinformation agents.
It’s getting very, very bad. Turn around, people. Wrong way.
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Surrender of Ukrainian soldiers entrenched in Azovstal
On 16 May 2022, the Ukrainian soldiers still in the basement of the Azovstal factory in Mariupol began to surrender to Russia and the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic).
While we were in Mariupol to film the reopening of a school on 16 May, we were surprised by the silence in the area around the factory. As a reminder, following the evacuation of the last civilians from the basement of Azovstal, the Russian army was shelling the factory daily to prevent Ukrainian soldiers from setting up new firing positions.
But on Monday 16 May 2022, not a single shot was fired at the factory, no Russian army aircraft flew over Azovstal. Nothing. This silence seems strange to us, but because the telephone network is still fully functional, we cannot get any information on what is happening.
It is only on the way back to Donetsk that we learn that a group of about ten Ukrainian soldiers came out of Azovstal to negotiate with the DPR and Russia.
That evening, 51 wounded Ukrainian soldiers (some seriously) were released from Azovstal, surrendered and sent to Novoazovsk hospital for treatment. In addition to this group of wounded, more than 200 other Ukrainian soldiers surrendered and were sent to the Elenovka penitentiary centre. In total, 265 Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered.
According to the doctors who examined the wounded, they are in a very poor condition, suffering from malnutrition, which suggests that the remaining Ukrainian troops in the factory will have to surrender quickly anyway due to lack of food.
We therefore returned to Mariupol on the morning of 17 May, hoping to film the surrender of the next group of Ukrainian soldiers still present in Azovstal. Except that the latter refused to leave if they were filmed leaving. Surrender yes, but their surrender must not be too public. So all the journalists present near the factory are sent away, hoping that this will finally push the Ukrainian soldiers to come out.
See the report filmed on site:
A strategy that paid off, as later in the day a new group of Ukrainian soldiers left Azovstal and surrendered. As in the first group, some of them were wounded, some in serious condition, who had to be taken away in the many ambulances that had been brought near the factory that morning.
https://t.me/intelslava/29119?single
https://t.me/sashakots/32764
The others were taken to a penitentiary centre, the time to determine who is who, and what will be their fate. Because among these Ukrainian soldiers (a generic term I use to facilitate the writing and avoid long sentences) there are several categories of prisoners:
1) The fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, who will have to be judged, and are not exchangeable for Russian soldiers captured by Kiev, as Russia has recalled;
2) Soldiers of the 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (FAU), who, if they have not committed war crimes, could be exchanged for Russian soldiers, or released at the end of the special military operation;
3) Members of the border guards, who, except for war crimes, could also be exchanged or released at the end of the military operation;
4) And there may also be foreign fighters (mercenaries fighting for Kiev or who knows maybe military instructors or advisors), whose treatment will depend on their status. A mercenary will clearly not be treated by the Russians in the same way as a military instructor or advisor from one of the NATO countries. The media impact will not be the same either.
In any case, what is certain is that contrary to what Zelensky tried to make believe (in a totally delirious way), this is not an evacuation, but a surrender of the Ukrainian soldiers who are in the Azovstal factory. These soldiers are not being sent to Ukraine, but to the DPR and Russia. All the communication strategies that Kiev can use to try to transform this mismanagement into a pseudo-victory will not change this fact, this reality!
Although Volodymyr Zelensky has tried to make people believe that those who are now leaving the Azovstal factory will be exchanged, and will therefore be able to return home, this is not the case for many of them. The fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, and some or all of the soldiers of the 36th brigade of the FAU, will have to answer for their crimes against the civilians of the Donbass, and will therefore be tried, with no possibility of being released at the end of the military operation or exchanged for Russian soldiers. Potential foreigners present in Azovstal will not be exchangeable either.
At the time of writing we do not yet have precise figures on the number of Ukrainian soldiers who left Azovstal on 17 May. But given the large number of soldiers who were in the basement of the factory (more than 2,000, including nearly 800 members of the Azov regiment) it will take several days to manage their total surrender and send them to hospital or prison, depending on their condition. It will also be necessary to evacuate and identify the 200 frozen bodies present in the factory’s basement.
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In the wake of Russian victory in Mariupol
Azov fighter posing in front of Nazi posters, Mariupol, Ukraine
Thank God, Russia eschews any triumphalism over the surrender of the so-called neo-Nazi Azov regiment in the Azovstal factory complex in Mariupol. The Defence Ministry in Moscow announced on Friday that a total of 2,439 “Azov Nazis” and Ukrainian servicemen had laid down their arms since May 16, and that the entire Azovstal complex is now under control of Russian forces.
Russia sticks to its version that on April 21, President Putin handed down an order calling off the initially planned storming of the Azovstal plant, as he considered it pointless and ordered that the industrial zone around the plant be tightly sealed off so that “even a fly couldn’t get through.”
Kiev instead claims the “end of combat operations.” President Volodymyr Zelensky called it an “evacuation mission … supervised by our military and intelligence officers” with the involvement of “the most influential international mediators.”
The fog of war has thickened. Russian Duma previously considered to expressly forbid any exchange of prisoners, but has since stood down. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations are set to meet in Belarus on Monday.
Moscow is also keeping mum about the identity of any foreign military personnel who surrendered in Mariupol. In the past week, both US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called their Russian counterparts Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov respectively for the first time since the war began in February.
The resumption of talks in Belarus after two months suggests that Kiev has a negotiating brief that carries the imprimatur of Washington and London. These are big ‘ifs’. The objectives behind the Russian operation are not yet fully realised. Putin has the final word, but he prefers to concentrate more on navigating the Russian economy through the western sanctions.
The situation on the Ukrainian front lines in Donbass remains very complex. There is intense fighting street to street, village to village, as Russian forces continue to advance on the main front lines. Russia is not committing large forces, since operation is highly tactical aimed at cleansing the region of its “Nazi filth” (to borrow from Putin) if Mariupol is any example.
Russian forces made a significant gain in capturing Izyum with the intention to advance further south-west towards the town of Barvenkovo, which is the main stronghold of the Ukrainian forces in Donbass region. They are on the outskirts of the city of Severodonetsk and clashes continue along the road leading to Lisichansk, which has over 10000 Ukrainian troops.
Again, after taking control of Popasnaya, Russian are surrounding the Ukrainian forces in various settlements and breaking through their defence lines in three directions. The US mercenaries, many of whom are likely intelligence agents, continue to fight in the ranks of the Ukrainian forces and several of them have been killed. 35-year old Joseph Ward Clark’s documents revealed that he belonged to a unit of special forces. Russia is striking key and strategically important Ukrainian targets such as warehouses, railways and bridges.
In military terms, Kiev and its western advisors hoped to pin down substantial Russian forces in Mariupol, but were outmanoeuvred. The commander of the Azov army Svyatoslav “Kalyna” Palamar was taken from the Azovstal steel plant yesterday in a special Russian armoured vehicle. All this will demoralise the Ukrainian military.
Therefore, the US announcement of additional $40 billion for Ukraine can be seen as a morale booster. The combined American military aid for Ukraine now stands at $54 billion, which is about 81 percent of Russia’s 2021 defence budget. But, as Americans would say, there’s nothing like free lunch. The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 signed by Biden in May is patterned after the legislation used during World War II to supply weapons to allied countries, stipulating that these aid packages are actually debts that need to be paid back by Ukraine eventually.
Washington can claim compensation if Ukraine fails to redeem the debt, such as with the supply of cheap agricultural products by Ukraine, preferential business deals for American companies, and so on.
The Biden Administration probably hopes to ensure that the interest groups at the top echelons of leadership in Kiev continue with the war effort. Ukraine is a notoriously corrupt country and war profiteering on a massive scale can be expected. Much of the aid will be stolen by corrupt officials.
Going forward, the US diplomacy faces a difficult situation. The EU has virtually shelved the ban on Russian oil and stopped talking about ending Russian gas supplies. The political dynamics in Europe is shifting. After approving five previous sanctions packages against Russia with remarkable speed and unanimity, European leaders have reached the point at which the penalties against Russia carry increasing costs and heightened risk of damage to their own economies, and that is testing their unity.
France, Germany and Italy, amongst many other EU countries, have come to terms with the new Russian regime for payment for gas supplies that effectively bypasses EU sanctions. Potentially, the current delay in the EU oil sanctions will likely have a domino effect.
During the recent weeks, there has been a flurry of ceasefire talk (and negotiations with Moscow) by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Their remarks seem at cross-purposes with what the British and the Americans are saying. Simply put, the European continent’s three most powerful capitals have begun singing from a different song sheet, wanting the war to end quickly and everything to “return to normal” as soon as possible. The point is, divergences over allied war aims are emerging.
However, Russia is unlikely to agree to peace terms that fall short of its demands — a neutral Ukraine and Kiev’s acceptance of the status of Donbass region and Crimea. But then, the head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov said on May 18 that Kherson and Zaporizhia regions should be merged with the Crimea. Earlier, the head of the Kherson region also demanded that the region should integrate into Russia. These are gentle reminders that if the war continues, Zelensky will risk harsher terms of settlement.
In the final analysis, the tragi-comedy of the Azovstal event underscores that there are no winners and losers in this war. The US wants to win this war, whereas Russia is not fighting a war but is seeking a successful operation to meet certain specific objectives of national security. The Ukrainian and Russian peoples have fraternal bonds. Ukraine is Russia’s neighbourhood, whereas it is 10000 kms away from America. This disconnect threatens to prolong the war.
The Europeans don’t have fire in the belly anymore while speaking about the war, which for them is becoming a great disrupter of the manicured, predictable life in their continent, something that they least expected when Washington hustled them into the war.
Above all, this is an operation of necessity for Russia, not of choice. Paradoxically, the choice was entirely upto the US and NATO to appreciate that there is nothing like absolute security. Wasn’t it the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who once said, “Absolute security for one state means absolute insecurity for all others.”
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