Lockstep as usual.
Lockstep as usual.
First, there was the ghost of Kyiv, a modern red baron hero who single-handedly shot down thirty Russian fighter jets in the first days of the war.
Along came an Instagram portrait of a Ukrainian beauty queen with an airsoft rifle and shooters’ goggles who made for more fascinating western war propaganda that sent the Ukrainian flag emoji bearers writhing in a digital sharing frenzy.
Blurry ariel drone footage from Syria has been used to show glorious Ukrainian battlefield victories for the western masses to feed on. Objects exploding on monochromic thermal vision can be just about anything to any true believer.
Even an American battleship on fire was used as a photo prop claiming it was a Russian destroyer attacked by brave Ukrainian freedom fighters on the Black Sea. Actually, it was used twice in the same month, in early and late March. To say the western war propaganda has been sloppy is an understatement.
The Mariupol maternity hospital “bombing” was a staged media operation closely resembling the White Helmets in Syria, as were claims of Russian airstrikes on the theater in the same city which was proclaimed to have been holding thousands of civilians at the time. The western headlines ran with accusations of Russians slaughtering civilians from the sky.
Unconfirmed headlines based on Ukrainian government assertions hit the western sewer rag headlines and instantly the lies are blasted around the world and amplified on attention networks to the unquestioning useful dupes who perform their outrage and hysteria right on cue.
The propaganda war is not the war, but the propaganda war is useful in shaping western policy responses and rallying the hysterical masses who will believe any media headlines they see.
Not a weekend has passed without completely fabricated and unconfirmed stories of Russian atrocities or war crimes against civilians. When confirmed video surfaces of Ukrainian soldiers torturing Russian prisoners of war by shooting them in the legs and breaking their bones, the western media conveniently ignore those inconvenient images that undermine the narratives that need pushing to manipulate the masses.
The latest farce making the headlines across the west over the weekend is accusations of genocide in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, by retreating Russian forces. The western media picked up the images from the Ukrainian government’s propaganda artists and amplified them everywhere. Right on cue, western leaders are voicing their outrage.
If Zelensky visited the site, surely he’s not lying about this ‘genocide’, is he?
There are apparently satellite photos of mass graves.
The Daily Mail says this is evidence of Russian “Genocide”.
The “mass grave” up close. Black hefty bags. Are you outraged yet?
Here’s the comic reacting to the dozens of “bodies” supposedly shot at close range and left in the street. Always putting on his best performance for the cameras with western CIA-controlled photographers of the reliable Getty Images in tow.
Propaganda or not propaganda? That is the question.
The answer can usually be found by watching the western media’s reactions, followed by western leaders. If they’re all in agreement so quickly, then something is usually amiss.
Boris Johnson is happy to play along.
The EU never fails to play along.
The EU never learns or perhaps it enjoys making life miserable for people across the 27-nation bloc. Food and energy inflation is hitting 20-40% across the continent but that’s apparently not enough. They want to levy more sanctions on Russia which will only hurt the European people.
The Russian Defence Ministry denies accusations by the Kiev regime of allegedly killing civilians in Bucha, Kiev Region. Their counterclaims:
Here is a video of the Ukrainian Security Forces arriving in Bucha two days before the western headlines showed bodies and corpses lying in these same streets. Russian forces had left the area. Curiously none of the civilians on camera mention these atrocities, the mass graves, the corpses in the streets, or any of these Russian “genocide” accusations blasted across western corporate-state propaganda sites all weekend. This youtube video has half a million views and will likely get taken down when more people in the west start asking uncomfortable questions that refute the dominant narrative presently driving the “genocide” hysteria.
And here are some comments translated from Russian about that curious video:
Upon the first “liberation” of the city by Ukrainian forces:
What happened in those 48 hours?
Who were the real butchers of Bucha?
Were the corpses fake and brought in for another photo op?
Were civilians in the above video slaughtered by the Ukrainian army?
Turns out the mayor of the town made a video three days before those reports and also curiously makes no mention of all those civilian bodies in the street. Perhaps he didn’t get the memo from the comic’s handlers at Langley yet for what was to take place soon.
April 2nd. Bucha. The footage by the National Police of Ukraine “clean up the city from saboteurs and collaborators with Russian troops”. pic.twitter.com/u1zIGEBOnn
— Maria Dubovikova (@politblogme) April 4, 2022
Translation of Bucha Mayor's Video:
Dear Bucha community. March 31st will go down in the history of our settlement, our entire community, as a day of liberation from the Russian orcs, from the Russian occupiers, by our armed forces of Ukraine. So today, I say that this day is a happy one. A happy one and a great victory for our armed forces in the Kiev region. And we will definitely wait and do everything to achieve a great victory in the whole of Ukraine. Glory to our armed forces of Ukraine, glory to Ukraine, glory to every Ukrainian, no matter in which corner of Ukraine they are now.
Apparently, it takes Ukrainian soldiers about 1-2 days to round up dead civilians from an area (or fake ones), or kill some and stage them accordingly so western propagandists unquestioningly print “Russian War Crimes” and “Putin’s Genocide” in bold black evil print.
Meanwhile here is a 400-page report detailing Ukrainian War Crimes and human rights violations from 2017 to 2020 before a single shot was fired. Some of the topics include the rise of Nazism, Anti-Semitism, Russiaphobia, assaults, and assassination of journalists, attacks on media outlets, offices, and the usual killing of thousands of civilians in the Donbas region who got no western media attention because they were ethnic Russians killed by CIA trained Ukrainian neo-Nazi hit squads. Righteous kills by righteous men.
Some war crimes are more equal than others.
Before the start of Russian military operations, Putin called the Ukrainian attacks on ethnic Russians in Donbas a genocide. Since 2014 roughly 14,000 have been killed. There are images floating around the darker corners of telegram and the Internet, giant PDF files that show images of civilians killed by shelling in Donbas. They are gruesome and real and confirmed by international observers.
While Russia has named dozens of Ukranian officials and generals who are guilty of war crimes, and whom they inteld to hold accountable for those killings, don’t expect any western governments to call for trials of Ukrainian war criminals complicit in that genocide. It was supported by the U.S. and CIA in the aftermath of their 2014 coup, excuse me “dignity revolution”.
Some genocides are more dignified than others.
And don’t expect any western media outlets to report on Ukrainian soldiers shooting and torturing Russian prisoners of war, using civilians as human shields in urban areas like Mariupol, Kharkiv, Sumy, stealing their food and water, or the fact that recent reports reveal western militaries were aiding neo-Nazis in the battle of Mariupol.
Two French military advisors turned up dead in a helicopter crash with Azov soldiers as they tried to flee the city. NATO soldiers in Ukraine, assisting Neo-Nazi battalions? That’s one that will be completely ignored by the western press.
On the butchers of Bucha, who really knows if anything happened there but it’s probably best when in doubt, to resort to the first two Good Citizen Rules.
The first words ever written and posted to this site:
This goes doubly in times of war.
The fog of war always produces the foggiest of war propaganda.
Time will tell the truth. It usually does.
Will the western media correct their lies?
They usually don’t.
Update two hours after posting (SBU are Ukrainian CIA or FSB):
Ukrainian MP Ilya Kiva:
— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 4, 2022
Bucha was "prepared" by the SBU, and planned by MI6.
Ukro-Brit prod. Fail. Could have asked Sean Penn to direct. He's available - and on site.