In honour of St David’s Day and to cheer us up

 

 

Today is St David’s Day, Dydd Dewi Sant. It’s another day full of ‘war reports’ in our MSM. It’s another day without even the slightest hint of articles demanding an accounting for the sudden dropping of ‘mask mandates’ across the world. It’s another day where we need the ‘alt media’, so despised by the Westminster “elite” to find out that some of the covid legislation will be made permanent (link).

It’s another day where the MSM know only one theme: War, and how “we” are sanctioning Putin til the pips squeak. Here’s a nice one: the international Taekwondo Federation stripped Putin of the ‘honorary black belt’ they’d given him – in 2013. Excuse me – but didn’t big bad Putin rob poor innocent Ukraine of the Crimea in 2014, to international horror and disgust? Why then, a naive bystander might ask, wasn’t he stripped of that honour at that time? What has changed? 

Meanwhile the Ukrainian ambassador to the USA had this to say:

“Ukraine’s ambassador to the US says Russia used a vacuum bomb on Monday in its invasion of Ukraine. Oksana Markarova appealed to members of US Congress for more help as her country resists a “brutal war”. “They used the vacuum bomb today, which is actually prohibited by the Geneva convention,” she said.” (paywalled link).

She didn’t say where this vacuum bomb was used. I couldn’t find any images supporting her claim even though the same image of a burnt-out vehicle is all over the place (e.g. link). Her claim reminded me very much of the one telling the world that Saddam’s soldiers (remember him?) had ripped out premature babies from their incubators. By the time it was acknowledged that this was untrue the first Gulf War was over.

Since we’re recalling the Gulf Wars, here’s one other example for ‘it’s different when we do it’. The Ukrainian president told the western world that Putin is committing war crimes by bombarding Ukrainian cities (link). Am I naive to ask if shelling and bombarding e.g. Baghdad wasn’t a war crime because “we” did it in a good cause? 

Ah – but that was then, this is now. Now “we” can feel good because ‘our weapons’ help Ukraine to ‘score victories’ over Putin (paywalled link). Never mind that we don’t see images of those ‘victories’, even though commercial satellites are providing images 24/7. There are also all those drones which Ukrainian forces are using ‘to good effect’. The editor of that DT report is however opuzzled, writing that “Russia could simply jam the radio signals controlling the drones but has not done so.” (paywalled link). Why is that? No answer. 

Meanwhile, the Western MSM, the editor of ‘SpikeOnline’ included, are celebrating their ‘new hero’, the Ukrainian president, who is ever present on social media. It’s irrelevant that the various images of him courageously visiting ‘teh front’ have been debunked as having been taken in April 2021: he’s a hero and that’s that.

When we read that he is ‘winning the cyber war’ we might wonder if this means he’s not winning the actual shooting war. We might also wonder if a ‘modern war’ is now fought on ‘social’ media, that actual events don’t occur unless they fit the narrative of ‘war crimes’ committed by Putin. I found this remark intriguing:

“It is an apparently uncomplicated story of good versus evil that works particularly well online by allowing audiences to pick sides, says Sara McCorquodale, owner of social media intelligence agency Corq and author of Influence. “Binary narratives tend to be more successful on social media. There’s a tribalism that kicks in.” (paywalled link)

You might like to read this text, a good analysis of why this ‘media war’ works. It comes with a warning: strong language is used! While the huge ‘tribe’ of russophobes and Putin-Haters are saturating the international media to an unprecedented extent, economic consequences of their wish for ‘moar sanctions’ are utterly disregarded.

When the PM tells us that the pain “we” inflict on Putin means that we’ll also feel pain it’s only worthy of notice, not of analysis. Again, there are some very odd exemptions in those sanctions. Those Russian banks dealing with payment for gas deliveries seem to be exempt (link, paywalled). There’s also this:

“The White House reacted coolly to a proposal by Volodymyr Zelensky for a no-fly zone for Russian flights over Ukraine, saying US participation in such a move would be tantamount to a direct conflict with Moscow.” (paywalled link

Cynical  old cows like myself might infer from this sniffy remark that the USA and the EU are fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, that it’s not really about preventing the suffering of Ukrainian civilians but about something else. Ms Truss let the cat out of the bag – on Twitter, of course, where else:

“The foreign secretary later posted on Twitter: “We have taken decisive action. We will degrade the Russian economy and isolate Russia on the world stage. Putin must lose.” (link, paywalled)

Yes, it’s about ‘regime change’, about making the Russian people so desperate with all those sanctions, from no more footie to no more other sports, from no more money and no more exports that they’ll surely rise and topple Putin. After all, it worked for Gaddafi, it worked for Saddam, didn’t it! Better not ask who might pick up the pieces of a destabilised Russia: we don’t mention China.

I’ll leave you with two texts you might like to read. They explain a bit more about the actual background to this war. This one is by a former British Diplomat, Alistair Crooke.  The other one is in German so you’ll need to use a machine translator. It’s very long and detailed and was published last year, well before the war. The well-documented analysis of the economic and political situation in Ukraine, the description of interferences by the IMF and the USA is devastating. Reading it is well worth the effort!

It’s another day – Dydd Dewi Sant or St David’s Day. Perhaps you’re not inclined to wear a daffodil or a leek in your lapels. Leeks are good for your health though, which might help if you feel brave enough to step into the acres of pixels spewed out in our MSM.

You might however prefer to keep off the MSM altogether, for health reasons!