Stupid, brutal Vlad just can’t stop hitting himself. Russia is shelling one of Europe’s largest nuclear facilities, risking a ‘dirty bomb’ incident. He blew up a prison full of valuable POW’s in his own territory. Then he went and blew up his own pipelines. And now he’s also about to blow up a Russian held dam, isolating his own forces. All while regularly committing terrorist attacks on himself to make Ukraine look bad.
If you get your news from Western mainstream media, you may actually believe all of that. Even though each narrative is laughably stupid.
The Western MSM’s quest to support the crusade to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian has them reaching new lows of illogic and blind parroting of their governments’ talking points. The most glaring examples relate to swallowing whole absurd “POO-tin dun it!” narratives from incredibly biased Western and Ukrainian sources and regurgitating them exactly as presented , with no questioning.
The most blatant demonstration of this trend is the mind blowingly stupid argument Russia blew up their own gas pipelines, but it’s far from unique. Hints that Russia is shelling a nuclear plant they occupy, where a disaster would irradiate a large section of Russian territory, is just as idiotic. As is a flood of regurgitated, obviously false Ukrainian propaganda, from the Ghost of Kyiv to claims Russia blew up a prison full of valuable POW’s in their own territory, or is plotting to blow up a dam that would isolate their own forces.
In a scenario that is edging ever closer to pushing over Russia’s redlines and into World War 3, this shockingly complete abandonment of journalistic principles is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Western mass media’s reverse metamorphosis from beautiful butterfly to poisonous worm is nearly complete. We live increasingly in a world of Newspeak and Doublethink, continually reinforced by ever-present telescreens.
The stunning illogic of claims Russia blew up their own incredibly expensive, politically and economically invaluable pipelines is a prime example of the mockingbird media singing the Empire’s tune, no matter how discordant or unmelodic. A huge act of economic and political self sabotage, similar, if not nearly as damaging, as Europe’s disastrous, self crippling sanctions imposed on Russia in response to the invasion.
Collectively, the Nordstream pipelines cost nearly 20 billion dollars to build, and just the gas in the pipes that was released by the breaches was worth 20 million. Due to corrosion from seawater getting into the pipes, short of a prompt repair, that 20 billion will soon turn to scrap metal on the sea floor.
But the silliest aspect of the argument is the careful avoidance of mentioning the huge loss of Russian political leverage the breaches represent. The powerful option to relieve the energy crisis destroying EU economies with the turn of a Russian gas valve has been destroyed with the pipes. One of the most potent cards Russia held to bargain with Europe in an eventual settlement was supposedly thrown away, with the best reason offered that it was done to increase gas prices, and the silliest reason that it was motivated by some cross between spite and petulance.
The gas price argument makes little sense, as gas prices were already high, in part because Russia, in a logical response to Europe’s fanatical and extreme efforts to get Russian soldiers killed, found “maintenance” reasons to stop gas flows. If they wanted to limit gas supplies to pump up prices, they could simply keep finding equipment needing repair, or simply tell the Europeans to pound sand until they stop shipping Ukraine practically their entire stockpiles of many weapons.
The fact that countries like Germany had been demanding Russia increase flows through the pipelines, to the point of all but shoving repaired turbines into their hands, is already forgotten. The hefty percentage of Russian gas revenues, year after year, that now need to be compensated for by sales elsewhere doesn’t rate mention.
The clear evidence of an outside party that not only benefits from the removal of Russian leverage on Europe, but is in line to profit directly from replacing now unavailable Russian gas, that literally said they would stop the pipelines no matter what, are missing from discussions. Speculation that the United States, having both the means and motive, sabotaged the pipelines is smeared as a ‘conspiracy theory’. Such speculations about Russia, with zero motive to trash their own stuff to no discernable gain, somehow don’t rate the same label.
Considering the explosions were the largest act of industrial sabotage in recent history, coverage in Western MSM has faded from view shockingly fast. One suspects a virulently pro-war establishment press smells a turd even they can’t dress up as a brown, squishy, smelly diamond. So instead the other major propaganda tactic used to promote the war is deployed- inconvenient facts are shoved down the memory hole and ignored.
Another clumsy narrative being dragged forward by carefully not asking the wrong questions regarding motives, or lack of them, is vague suggestions (and sometimes outright statements) that Russia is shelling the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, risking anything from a dirty bomb incident from blowing up spent fuel storage facilities, to an actual Chernobyl style meltdown from cutting off the power supply.
Having held the valuable piece of infrastructure, and the territory around it, since early in the war, the reasons Russia would want to keep it intact and safe are numerous. As it is capable of producing lots of electricity, to territories under both Russian and Ukrainian control, it represents both an important asset to newly occupied areas and leverage on Ukraine. Considering its location, where any disaster would irradiate not only Ukrainian but Russian land, as well as directly kill, wound, and poison Russian troops, western MSM’s “who knows who’s doing it?! (but it’s probably those dirty Russkies!)” dodges are embarrassingly silly.
In reality, Western MSM, just like Western militaries, know exactly who is flinging shells at the plant. Between copious photographic evidence of shell and rocket impacts, which can easily be interpreted to determine which direction the projectile came from, to an IAEA report (from a visit long opposed by Ukraine) that studiously avoided blaming a perpetrator, the absence of direct finger pointing at Russia confirms that the criminal threatening nuclear disaster is the other party involved.
Same deal on what appears to clearly have been a missile strike on a prison full of Ukrainian POW’s deep in Russian occupied territory. Again, an illogical narrative is presented to deflect blame from a psychotic, deeply amoral act by ‘the good guys’, to the evil Russians, who supposedly planted explosives in the prison instead of simply ‘disappearing’ any POW’s they wanted to out the back door. The logic of creating a PR black eye instead for no reason is not explained, beyond a convoluted story that they did it to make it LOOK like the Ukrainians did it. What is also barely mentioned is the one logical motive for wanting them dead- that they were talking to the Russians about brutal, criminal acts committed in places like Mariupol with Ukrainian government complicity.
Another recent example of Western establishment press laying out absurd Ukrainian narratives is claims that Russia is plotting to blow up the Kakhovka dam. Again, a valuable, important piece of infrastructure under full Russian control is purported to be under threat from… the Russians. Again, instead of keeping the leverage and options an intact piece of vital infrastructure affords, in this case to increase or decrease water flows downstream, plus the electricity the dam generates, they supposedly plot to destroy it, evidently out of some combination of stupidity and atavistic rage.
And blowing up the dam would certainly be stupid, considering it would seriously endanger supply lines to all Russian forces on the west bank of the Dneiper, both by washing pontoon bridges downstream away and also by destroying an important road and vital railway that both cross the dam itself. Which makes it quite obvious which party in the war would benefit from the destruction of the dam- the ones currently waging a pyrrhic offensive to retake the territory that would be isolated.
And even more recently, the most ludicrous claim yet is being passed on without questioning, that a mass air and sea drone attack on their own Black Sea fleet, again, per the Ukrainian script writers, was in fact no such thing, but instead a series of accidents due to stupid Russians mishandling ammunition. This habit of blaming terroristic or red line pushing attacks that were clearly Ukrainian on Russia is far from a new tactic. The Kerch bridge truck bombing, a terror attack by any reasonable measure, as it targeted civilian infrastructure and killed at least three innocent civilians using the bridge, was sneeringly blamed on Russia as a bizarre scheme to justify retaliatory attacks for the bridge bombing. All while numerous Ukrainian officials sniggered and all but openly claimed the attack, and their Post Office immediately issued a stamp.
All of these stories reflect a Western media atmosphere around the war that is incredibly simplistic and selective, of white hats vs. black hats and shining knights vs. fire breathing dragons. Clear, obvious Ukrainian propaganda, from fictional characters like the “Ghost of Kyiv” and the “Heroes of Snake Island”, false claims of dead Russian generals, and ludicrously high estimates of Russian losses, are passed on by Western MSM without a hint of journalistic skepticism.
The MSM hasn’t leaned this hard into promoting a questionable war narrative since Iraq WMD. If anything, the pro-war propaganda is much more shrill and even more one note, with not a hint of questioning of maximalist, uncompromising “Ukraine must win!” approaches, even when anyone with a brain, including the US government, evidently, realizes that Ukraine, short of WW3, has no chance of ‘winning’ per its ludicrous framing of the term.
It has as much of a chance of winning as the South Vietnamese, a US proxy trying to resist a millennia of struggle to establish a united, independent Vietnam. Or the Afghan proxy government did trying to prop up a Western occupation against the fierce tribesman that long ago gave the land the nickname “Graveyard of Empires“. If the US had insisted on ‘winning’ either of those interventions, the decades spent bloodily trying to impose the Empire’s will would’ve continued to tick by, along with the bodies of the native unfortunates sacrificed to the gods of global hegemony and militarism.
And Russia is not small, undeveloped, or bereft of heavy, modern weapons as those two imperial opponents were. It is the largest country on the planet, with a huge population and massive natural resources, and a military to match. And considering that the US clearly lost both of those wars against weak sisters Afghanistan and North Vietnam, it is pure fantasy to believe that Russia does not have the means to crush Ukraine, simply by putting in more effort and resources than the comparatively minimal forces they’ve deployed so far.
As in those failed wars, the fantasy of a valorous, delightfully Western leaning (and despised domestically) proxy government prevailing against what is portrayed as a subhuman, brutal ‘other’ (smeared to delegitimize their obvious popular support) is promoted with gusto, even as evidence of war winning successes, not token victories, is missing. And these fantasies somehow were kept viable for years and years, as media mockingbirds massaged popular perceptions to a view that some vague possibility of victory existed, and that regardless, such good, noble friends as our proxies could never be abandoned to the tender mercies of Empire despising savages.
And beyond the danger such simplistic, fact free, emotion laden fairy tales lead to evergreen justification for forever war (and the misery and destruction that entails), this fantasy narrative promotion risks a situation where the bad guy gets promoted as the good guy. Where acts of diabolical evil are so thoroughly and masterfully painted by the imperial press with golden tones of righteousness and melodrama (or simply ignored) that it takes the public years to notice the con, like with Iraq WMD or the crusade against godless commies in Vietnam.
So systematic murder of citizens and brutal security structures that torture and imprison, all for having anti-regime views, or just as often baseless suspicions they do, are excused or ignored. Jaw dropping corruption and waste is shrugged at, as is evidence of domestic forces (spooks and corrupt pols) benefiting from it.
The authoritarian, incompetent nature of our shining proxy knights are also dismissed, including their callous schemes of mass conscription and disastrously ill conceived and executed military efforts. Their massive losses are unworthy of mention, the only attention they get is occasional berating for doing such a poor job of toting the Empire’s water.
And beyond this sickening tendency to warp perceptions so black is white and evil is good, excusing and allowing all kinds of horrors, is a much greater danger. By spinning narratives so hard that they drift far from reality, the danger of a catastrophic miscalculation exists, as a deluded American public fails to make a serious effort to stop elite insanity before it is too late.
In Vietnam and Afghanistan, the cost of long, doomed to failure from the start proxy wars was horrific. Beyond the painful cost to the West in dead soldiers and huge sums of wasted money, the impact on the battleground states, even the winners like North Vietnam, was massive by comparison. When the Empire finally gives up (while often continuing the war by other means), it leaves behind devastated, poisoned lands littered with bodies.
In those long, bloody, military industrial complex fattening conflicts, the impact on the American public was minimal- a tiny percentage of the tiny percentage of American population fighting were killed and wounded, and the taxpayer saw little visible impact from the trillions wasted. Unlike those stuck in the middle of the brutal destruction exported onto their countries, US citizens, safe behind two oceans, overwhelmingly went along with their lives completely un-impacted by the blood and treasure being spilled far away.
This proxy war, against a major power, and the world’s largest supplier of many vital commodities, is already inflicting serious damage on the day to day lives of imperial citizens, and even more so the citizens of their European satrapies. And these impacts are just the early signs of the massive economic blowback from poorly thought out sanctions on Russia, like a few vases falling and breaking in the first shock waves of a huge, house wrecking earthquake. By cutting off cheap Russian gas that allowed European industrial economies, like Germany’s, to produce goods at a competitive price, widespread European de-industrialization is all but guaranteed. And although the Empire will benefit by taking up some that lost EU market share, the overall impoverishment of a major US trade partner will badly hurt the US economy, too, eventually. As will impacts on US manufacturing costs from idiotically trying to eliminate commodity supplies from one of the planet’s biggest sources of raw materials.
But the real, increasingly growing danger is this fevered fairly tale dream promoted by imperial stenographers will lead to an end that very much will effect every American, and even more so Europeans- a bloody, likely unwinnable conventional war with Russia. A war that the EU has long planned, if it is losing, to fight with the US nuclear arsenal.
That is the very real, very unnecessary possible result of all this disinformation, misinformation, and spin. That the sweet nectar of simplistic, ratings driving pro-war narratives turns to ash in the mouths of the Western MSM, as the planet burns in a nuclear holocaust.
By ‘valorously’ helping ‘the good guys’ with pro-war propaganda, the imperial press is smoothing the path to Armageddon. The collapse of the foundations of journalism under deeply corrupted, utterly dishonest establishment mass media is endangering all of our lives, and the life of every other creature on the planet. To prop up a foul, nazi-adjacent, authoritarian proxy in a unwinnable fight the West provoked with a coup, followed by years of purposefully failed diplomacy.
I would say they should be ashamed, but they don’t know the meaning of the word. Just like the imperial sociopaths they serve.