Please check the comments under this post as that is where most of the substance will be. Some materials will make their way into the post though, so check back now and again.
UPDATE: Tanks of some type on streets of Kiev.
1. NATO Secretary General Warns Russia of ‘Article 5’ Counter Attack
Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, has warned Russia that if Moscow’s attack against Ukraine spills over into other European nations who are member states of NATO, it will force the intergovernmental military alliance to take counteraction.
“For NATO Allies, we provide the absolute security guarantees under the Washington Treaty Article 5. An attack on one will be regarded as an attack on all,” Stoltenberg said in a Feb. 25 press conference.
“And we are clear on this distinction because it is important to make sure that we don’t have an even bigger crisis in Europe where Russia challenge, or is threatening, or attacking any NATO allied country.”
Cyber attacks on NATO nations can also trigger Article 5, Stoltenberg stated. NATO is presently focused on “strengthening our cyber defenses” and providing support to Ukraine, he added.
2. Recycling old news articles and blaming the casualties on the Russians
3. Shallow Fakes. A video exposing BILD for the total leftist fraudsters they are. Like the CBC, NYT, etc. BILD creates a narrative then fabricates or spins what it needs to make you support the issue it wants you to.
One of the things I’ve noticed about the war in Ukraine has been the prevalence of fake photos and fake videos being used to advance the West’s propaganda. The images are generally from some previous conflict, and usually not taken in Ukraine. There are so many of them that it makes me wonder whether this war has produced more fakery than previous wars, or whether the earlier fakes went undetected because the search and detection capabilities of the Internet weren’t as advanced as they are now.
The following video from Germany busts some fake video footage put out by the tabloid Bild. The clips used are from 2014 and 2015, and have nothing to do with the current war. Someone peddled them deliberately as disinformation. Was it Bild itself? Or did Bild just get snookered by some other actor? (Video at link)
4. Please read this essay at Gates of Vienna. He does an excellent job of detailing how both sides are using lies and deception in the current war, but how our side is much more heavy handed and clumsy at it.
Until now I haven’t written about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, mainly because the topic is complex, and I’m not an expert on it. However, I’ve browsed enough data and edited enough material about it to have some idea of what’s going on.
First of all, from my perspective there are no good guys in this war. The anti-Russian invective being generated by Western media and politicians is vile, but anyone who takes the antipodal point of view and regards Vladimir Putin as a righteous defender of Russians and freedom is making a big mistake.
About 98% of what is written about the invasion is propaganda. Virtually anything that appears in the Western mainstream media is part of a carefully crafted narrative engineered by the Deep State (the State Department, the CIA, and analogous institutions on the other side of the Atlantic). However, there are also deep tranches of Russian disinformation out there. It’s more subtly executed than the heavy-handed dreck peddled by CNN and The New York Times, but it’s quite effective. Many people on what I consider my side of the fence have fallen for at least some of it. After all, when they do an about-face from the propaganda of the American MSM, they run head-on into material derived from dezinformatsiya planted in various Russian media outlets.
In other words, the atmosphere around the war in Ukraine is all but opaque with a thick cloud of metallic chaff released by every party that holds an interest in one side or the other in the conflict.
However, one thing that Vladimir Putin says is true: he has invaded Ukraine with the intention of de-nazifying it. The current government of Ukraine contains real Nazis — not the “nazis” decried by Justin Trudeau or the Southern Poverty Law Center, but organizations whose unbroken Nazi lineage may be traced back the SS and Stepan Bandera. You won’t read much about them in the media, but they are there — promoted, funded, and whitewashed by the globalist Left. Those Nazis were installed by George Soros’ NGOs and the State Department in 2014 during the Maidan coup.
For an in-depth analysis of what happened in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, see these two essays by Takuan Seiyo, “Things Are Not What They Seem” and “Ukraine as Quantum Decoherence, Part 1”.
5. Even if you view this as entirely enemy propaganda, (which CBC, CTV, Global News, the NYT, CNN etc. indisputably are against Canadians and Americans) it is important to see the propaganda the enemy makes for you, as well as what they make for domestic consumption if you are to understand a conflict and have any kind of effective role in it.
6. Recent president, Donald Trump last night (Excerpts)
7. Julian Assange: “Nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years, has been the result of media lies”.
(I only have about 15 years as a blogger and occasionally working for non-legacy media orgs. And I am confident this is true. The media is now, and has been for a while, and in many cases always has been a weapon. Nothing more, and nothing less. A strategic weapon at that. Let’s compare how the West treated Julian Assange for being in possession of leaked info (legal) with how the Trudeau govt. used stolen, hacked information against citizens who contributed to a legal protest. And voila! You know all you need to know about the media in the West.)
https://twitter.com/backtolife_2022/status/1497882606653767682?s=20&t=rvKDGD9bF-1maCMIZY7mzQ
8. This makes some sense. It almost sounds like much of what Brad Johnson said, if he could speak more freely.
Please keep eyes peeled. The comments and post hopefully will offer some lucidity, or perhaps just actual information which raises more questions. This is also a good thing. Not knowing what is true is better than being certain of what is false.
