Oh look – there’s another one!

 

Oh dear. The economy, inflation, even the war in the Ukraine must all have eased off and got much better because the print editions this morning scream about two things only: a Tory MP being jailed for alleged rape, and a ‘feud’ between the wives of two formerly prominent football players – check it out at the usual place (link).

Honorary joint first place goes to the FT which writes about high employment stoking inflation and the DM which reports on the BoE where staff only need to be in the office one day a week. You won’t find that in the online DM edition this morning. The joint runner-up place go to The Times and the grauniad for mentioning that Tory MPs are putting pressure on Sunak to impose a windfall tax on oil and gas suppliers. As if such windfall tax wouldn’t be handed down, ultimately, to us poor plebs who’ll have to pay them!

Here’s a revolutionary thought: why not lift VAT on all fuel costs, at least temporarily? Too difficult? Oh for a 1st Duke of Wellington! When he was PM his Treasury civil serpents told him some accounting reform simply couldn’t be done for many various reasons. He told them that, if they were incapable of carrying out those reforms, he’d send them five Army pay sergeants who would and could do it. I understand that those treasury people suddenly found they were after all able to do as they were told …

I apologise for this brief excursion into history but shall add another historical quote because the history of the MSM embigging themselves as ‘guardians of democracy’ but miserably failing is a very long one. Thomas Jefferson remarked that “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” The covid years and the current war in the Ukraine have and are showing the truth of his words. Here’s one more of his observations which sadly could have been written today:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” (Th Jefferson).

How ‘free’ and ‘civilised’ are we today, in this ‘free democracy’? How free can we be when access to information is curtailed by the state? How free and civilised can we be when our MSM, this ‘pillars of democracy’, havens raised one squeak about the access to foreign information denied to us? How free can we be when we’re denied the information on which we can criticise the government?

As predicted by me, the DT is this week’s propaganda outlet regarding the war in the Ukraine. There are five articles on this morning’s online front page, one being a pseudo-erudite piece on why the brave Azovstal neo-nazis may have a similar influence on the outcome on this war, insinuating that Russia will lose, as other famous ‘sieges’ did (paywalled link).

Deliciously, the author claims that this siege was a ‘moral booster’ and this is why the Ukrainian government calls it ‘evacuation’, not surrender. Clearly, that’s why western MSM are slavishly using that word as well – apparently our ‘moral’ also needs boosting. Facts, bare military facts, no longer matter. Across history the group which puts down its arms has surrendered. No woolly words can change that.

Inadvertently, he provides another example illustrating that believing one’s own propaganda is fatal. Clearly, our propaganda ministry assumes that “we” won’t know better because they have stopped us from accessing “the enemy’s” news sites. Sadly, in the modern world of the internet, this isn’t true. Mt Oliphant, the author, writes:

“The Ukrainian government and military are insisting that the defenders of Azovstal succeeded in tying down Russian forces that could have been used elsewhere. […]“They did not allow the enemy to transfer groups of up to 17 battalion tactical groups (about 20,000 personnel) to other areas,” the General Staff said in a statement on Tuesday morning.” (paywalled link)

Those of us who do look at Russian sources even though it’s becoming more difficult by the day, know that those “20,000” forces have long been withdrawn when Mr Putin told his generals not to go into Azovstal to fight bunker floor by bunker floor but shut the whole area down and use artillery. Interestingly, the author of this piece actually mentions this decree, but facts don’t matter.

Then he indulges in describing a siege from the Napoleonic wars. It’s the Siege of Genoa where Massena was stuck. You can read all about this here. The DT’s author’s point is that

“Massena finally agreed to withdraw he, like the Ukrainians, insisted on calling it an “evacuation”. Any use of the word “capitulation,” he warned, and the deal was off.” (paywalled link)

Masséna must have been a prophet to demand using ‘evacuation’, the word now used by the Ukraine! We’re also told that the Austrians, because of that siege, were then beaten by Napoleon at Marengo, allowing the DT writer to ask: “Could the defenders of Mariupol have done the same for Ukraine?” (paywalled link).

Ahem. Is there an Ukrainian Napoleon in sight? Anywhere? I must have missed reports about him … Meanwhile, Reuters pushed the first report about ‘concerns’ that the Russians might treat those poor neo-nazis really badly. ‘Tis easy to do because neither Reuters nor our MSM nor indeed our government speaks to Russia. They also push the story that these soldiers would be exchanged for Russian POWs. At the end of this report, Reuters does quote one Russian:

“Russian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said there had been no deal, tweeting: “I didn’t know English has so many ways to express a single message: the #Azovnazis have unconditionally surrendered.” (link)

Yep, them there are the facts and no amount of waffling western ‘reports’ can change that. Meanwhile, the Russian mill of Justice is starting to grind slowly, see here. The ever more valuable Larry Johnson meanwhile writes about Ukrainian squirrels – don’t miss it (link)!

I leave you with a video by Eva Bartlett, documenting the ongoing war crimes committed by the Ukraine. Read her text below that video as well. But remember: “we” plebs cannot possibly understand what she documents because we must praise the near-napoleonic ‘non-surrender’ of those Azovstal neo-nazis and then immediately talk about footballers’ wives’ feuds and Tory ‘rapist’ MPs.

Enjoy the rest of the day – there are squirrels which need to be chased, and the weather is lovely …

 

 

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