He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 12:42pm

Among the most horrendous of crimes our government has committed against the people of Ukraine has been the funding, arming, and training of foreign mercenaries. Among the most evil of crimes committed by Zelensky against the people of Ukraine has been allowing our mercenaries to go unpunished for atrocities committed against his people.

Our Declaration of Independence lists these crimes as reasons for our separation from Britain. Why therefore does my government not recognize the separatist regions of Ukraine and support them against tyranny?

And why are we not condemning and bringing to justice the part of our government that clearly violates our reason for independence?

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

... He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

... For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

... He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Tags:

Ukraine

mercenaries

Declaration of Independence

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Comments

Submitted by on the cusp on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 1:03pm

Follow the money.

n/t

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by QMS on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 1:18pm

Good questions Linda

Why therefore does my government not recognize the separatist regions of Ukraine and support them against tyranny?
And why are we not condemning and bringing to justice the part of our government that clearly violates our reason for independence?

The simple answer is our government does not value the spirit of independence except in the
'for me, but not for thee' framework.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 1:19pm

I don’t have the link

but I recently read that ISIS terrorists are going to be released from Syrian prisons and exported to Ukraine. They were the terrorists that we once armed and trained so they would help America overthrow ASSAD and install a puppet government that Israel would approve of.

3 Americans that went to fight in Ukraine have been captured and are being held by the Donbas military. Plus there’s the rumor of a few generals that were holed up in the steel works plant in Mariupol that we aren’t hearing much about. Several attempts were made to rescue them, but they were stopped by Russia’s military.

And how many people working for Blackwater are still in Ukraine? Prince has been involved there since the 2014 coup. I’m looking forward to seeing the trials for the mercenaries. A lower form of life I can’t imagine.

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by Fishtroller 02 on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 1:57pm

Could you provide links to back up these statements?

"Among the most horrendous of crimes our government has committed against the people of Ukraine has been the funding, arming, and training of foreign mercenaries. Among the most evil of crimes committed by Zelensky against the people of Ukraine has been allowing our mercenaries to go unpunished for atrocities committed against his people."

I have been all over the internet on this and can not find a source that confirms that the US has paid or funded mercenaries in Ukraine.

—

"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Submitted by QMS on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 2:47pm

Have you ever heard of black ops?

@Fishtroller 02

It is blood money spread around with plausible deniability by our alphabet agencies.
Not traceable to any particular source. And certainly not mentioned in a google search.

Submitted by Fishtroller 02 on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 8:56am

Yes, of course I am aware of that, but I still don't see

@QMS

that one can make a definitive statement about the US government directly training and funding mercenaries in Ukraine.

—

"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Submitted by CB on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 3:17pm

US government agencies have

@Fishtroller 02
covertly trained and funded mercenaries in every foregin conflict since the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War in 1898-1902. The recent conflict in Ukraine is no different.

I can find dozens of instances using a google search for the following terms:
us government funded and trained mercenaries

Blackwater Mercenaries: NATO’s Secret Weapon in Ukraine War
March 4, 2022
...
Volodymyr Zelensky reassured his compatriots [2] yesterday: “Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. First ones from 16,000. They are coming to defend freedom, defend life. For us, for everyone.

And it will be a success, I’m sure.” But unsurprisingly, he did not describe who those thousands of “daredevil volunteers” willing to sacrifice lives and limbs in a foreign war were.
...
Although the Pentagon’s military contractors have been known to be training and advising several brigades of neo-Nazis backed by Ukraine’s security forces in the Donbas region since 2014, Erik Prince along with his associates from several other private security firms providing military contractors to the US Department of Defense personally visited Kyiv early last month following the Russian troop build-up and met with security officials of the Zelensky regime, according to informed sources.
...
The black-ops of NATO’s mercenaries in Ukraine were being directed from Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) headquarter and the main center for information and psychological operations in Kyiv. No wonder Russia formally issued an ultimatum on Tuesday, March 1, that it would target the hub of covert warfare.

In fact, private military contractors in close coordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraine’s conscript forces in the use of caches of Stingers and Javelins provided by Germany and the rest of the European nations as military assistance to Ukraine but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking an active part in combat operations in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russia’s security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas.
...
Of the $10 billion humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine announced by the Biden administration, the top brass of the Pentagon is reportedly making preparations for allocating a significant portion of the funds for providing military training and arms to almost a million refugees who have fled Ukraine following the war.

The Machiavellian plan of NATO’s military strategists is to establish refugee settlements with the “humanitarian assistance” in the border regions of Ukraine’s neighboring countries Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and then provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal arms to all able-bodied men of military age in order to “bleed Russia’s security forces” in the protracted irregular warfare.

Top 18 Secret Mercenary Armies of the CIA

The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA.
...

Venezuela failed raid: US has a history of using mercenaries to undermine other regimes
Published: May 18, 2020
...
These events in Venezuela echo past US secret sponsorship of private armies to overthrow governments elsewhere. The US has an extended history of sponsoring insurgents and mercenaries to undermine unwanted foreign regimes.

From Guatemala to Indonesia

In 1954 the US supported ex-Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas in his efforts to overthrow Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz. Armas was the leader of a guerilla army that was trained by the CIA of Guatemalan to invade from Honduras and Nicaragua. The CIA also hired a US company called Civil Air Transport to bomb Guatemala. Arbenz resigned under pressure and went into exile. Armas became president of a new authoritarian regime.

Similarly, President Dwight Eisenhower authorised the CIA to subvert the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957-58. The CIA supported local insurgent factions to carry out guerrilla attacks and also hired mercenary airline companies for logistics and combat missions.
...
Bay of Pigs and Nicaragua

In 1961 the CIA tried to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba by organising an invasion of Cuban dissidents and mercenary forces in a notorious incident known as the Bay of Pigs. According to US government documents, the CIA sponsored Cuban exiles that opposed Castro to “avoid any appearance of US intervention”. The CIA trained a Cuban insurgent force called Brigade 2506 and also hired mercenary airline companies for airborne attacks. Castro’s military defeated the US-sponsored invasion.

During the 1980s, the US also secretly hired mercenary forces to support the Contra insurgency against the socialist Sandanista government of Nicaragua. The CIA mobilised mercenaries to sabotage oil refineries and Nicaraguan ports. Later, the International Court of Justice ruled against the US for employing mercenaries to place underwater mines in Nicaraguan ports. The CIA also asked a company called Keenie Meenie Services to conduct “sabotage operations for the resistance” against the Sandanista government.
...

Submitted by Linda Wood on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 5:01pm

CB, thank you

@CB

for all the work you do to bring these resources together.

#4.1.1
covertly trained and funded mercenaries in every foregin conflict since the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War in 1898-1902. The recent conflict in Ukraine is no different.

I can find dozens of instances using a google search for the following terms:
us government funded and trained mercenaries

Blackwater Mercenaries: NATO’s Secret Weapon in Ukraine War
March 4, 2022
...
Volodymyr Zelensky reassured his compatriots [2] yesterday: “Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. First ones from 16,000. They are coming to defend freedom, defend life. For us, for everyone.

And it will be a success, I’m sure.” But unsurprisingly, he did not describe who those thousands of “daredevil volunteers” willing to sacrifice lives and limbs in a foreign war were.
...
Although the Pentagon’s military contractors have been known to be training and advising several brigades of neo-Nazis backed by Ukraine’s security forces in the Donbas region since 2014, Erik Prince along with his associates from several other private security firms providing military contractors to the US Department of Defense personally visited Kyiv early last month following the Russian troop build-up and met with security officials of the Zelensky regime, according to informed sources.
...
The black-ops of NATO’s mercenaries in Ukraine were being directed from Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) headquarter and the main center for information and psychological operations in Kyiv. No wonder Russia formally issued an ultimatum on Tuesday, March 1, that it would target the hub of covert warfare.

In fact, private military contractors in close coordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraine’s conscript forces in the use of caches of Stingers and Javelins provided by Germany and the rest of the European nations as military assistance to Ukraine but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking an active part in combat operations in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russia’s security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas.
...
Of the $10 billion humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine announced by the Biden administration, the top brass of the Pentagon is reportedly making preparations for allocating a significant portion of the funds for providing military training and arms to almost a million refugees who have fled Ukraine following the war.

The Machiavellian plan of NATO’s military strategists is to establish refugee settlements with the “humanitarian assistance” in the border regions of Ukraine’s neighboring countries Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and then provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal arms to all able-bodied men of military age in order to “bleed Russia’s security forces” in the protracted irregular warfare.

Top 18 Secret Mercenary Armies of the CIA

The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA.
...

Venezuela failed raid: US has a history of using mercenaries to undermine other regimes
Published: May 18, 2020
...
These events in Venezuela echo past US secret sponsorship of private armies to overthrow governments elsewhere. The US has an extended history of sponsoring insurgents and mercenaries to undermine unwanted foreign regimes.

From Guatemala to Indonesia

In 1954 the US supported ex-Guatemalan military officer Carlos Castillo Armas in his efforts to overthrow Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz. Armas was the leader of a guerilla army that was trained by the CIA of Guatemalan to invade from Honduras and Nicaragua. The CIA also hired a US company called Civil Air Transport to bomb Guatemala. Arbenz resigned under pressure and went into exile. Armas became president of a new authoritarian regime.

Similarly, President Dwight Eisenhower authorised the CIA to subvert the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957-58. The CIA supported local insurgent factions to carry out guerrilla attacks and also hired mercenary airline companies for logistics and combat missions.
...
Bay of Pigs and Nicaragua

In 1961 the CIA tried to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba by organising an invasion of Cuban dissidents and mercenary forces in a notorious incident known as the Bay of Pigs. According to US government documents, the CIA sponsored Cuban exiles that opposed Castro to “avoid any appearance of US intervention”. The CIA trained a Cuban insurgent force called Brigade 2506 and also hired mercenary airline companies for airborne attacks. Castro’s military defeated the US-sponsored invasion.

During the 1980s, the US also secretly hired mercenary forces to support the Contra insurgency against the socialist Sandanista government of Nicaragua. The CIA mobilised mercenaries to sabotage oil refineries and Nicaraguan ports. Later, the International Court of Justice ruled against the US for employing mercenaries to place underwater mines in Nicaraguan ports. The CIA also asked a company called Keenie Meenie Services to conduct “sabotage operations for the resistance” against the Sandanista government.
...

Submitted by dystopian on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 4:38pm

maybe this has something...

@Fishtroller 02 @Fishtroller 02 This NED sort of thing is I think what is generally being referred to...

https://kitklarenberg.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-coup-how-cia-front-laid

from the article:

Fast forward to September 2013, and Carl Gershman, NED chief from its launch until summer 2021, authored an op-ed for The Washington Post, outlining how his organization was hard at work wresting countries in Russia’s near abroad - the constellation of former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states - away from Moscow’s orbit.

Along the way, he described Ukraine as “the biggest prize” in the region, suggesting Kiev joining Europe would “accelerate the demise” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six months later, Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.

Writing in Consortium News earlier that month, investigative legend Robert Parry recorded how, over the previous year, NED had funded 65 projects in Ukraine totaling over $20 million. This amounted to what the late journalist dubbed “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

The CIA has been involved

@Fishtroller 02
in every foreign US conflict since it's inception. Ukraine is no exception.

US Mercenaries on the Ground in Ukraine

Blackwater Is in the Donbas with Ukraine’s Azov Battalion

Manlio Dinucci / Il Manifesto & World BEYOND War

(February 1, 2022) — The phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky “did not go well“, CNN headlines: while “Biden warned that the Russian invasion in February is practically certain when the frozen ground makes it possible for tanks to pass through”, Zelensky “ asked Biden to tone down, arguing that the Russian threat is still ambiguous”. While the Ukrainian president himself takes a more cautious stance, the Ukrainian armed forces are massing in Donbas close to the Donetsk and Lugansk area inhabited by Russian populations.

According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, units of the Ukrainian Army and National Guard amounting to about 150,000 men are positioned there, the news is overshadowed by our mainstream which speaks only of the Russian deployment. They are armed and trained, and so effectively commanded by US-NATO military advisers and instructors.

From 1991 to 2014, according to the US Congress Research Service, the United States provided Ukraine with $ 4 billion in military assistance, plus over $ 2.5 billion after 2014. The NATO Trust Fund provided over a billion dollars in which Italy also participated. This is only a part of the military investments made by the major NATO powers in Ukraine.
...
In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $ 10 billion investment foreseen by the plan that is being carried out by Erik Prince, founder of the US private military company Blackwater – now it is renamed Academy – which has supplied mercenaries to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department for covert operations (including torture and murder), gaining billions of dollars.

Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by an investigation of Time magazine, consists in creating a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 Company, and the main CIA-controlled Ukrainian intelligence office. Through them, Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa. It is not known, of course, what would be the task of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater certainly with CIA funding. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia, and other regions from its Ukraine base.
...
At the forefront, ready to massacre the Russians of Donbas there is the Azov battalion, which trained and armed by the US and NATO has been promoted to a special forces regiment. It distinguished by its ferocity in its attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine.

The Azov battalion recruits neo-Nazis from all over Europe under its flag similar to that of the SS Das Reich, it is commanded by its founder Andrey Biletsky who was promoted to colonel. It is not just a military unit but an ideological and political movement, and Biletsky is the charismatic leader in particular for the youth organization that is educated to hate Russians by his book “The words of the white Führer“.

Email From US Special Forces Veteran; 500 US Blackwater Mercenaries in Ukraine?
In response to US Special Forces in Mariupol? I received an interesting email from “Dan” a 23-year Army veteran with four years in special services.
Jan 27, 2015
...

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 6:23pm

Foreign fighters

@Fishtroller 02

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Regiment

... According to The Daily Telegraph in August 2014, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and professional English social media pages had attracted foreign fighters,[58] including people from Brazil, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Greece, Sweden,[151][58] Spain, Slovakia, Croatia, Czech Republic and Russia.[151][162][163][164]

While the February 2015 Minsk II Ceasefire Agreement speaks of the withdrawal of foreign fighters,[165] the agreement was never fully implemented.[166]

... According to the Counter Extremism Project, the Azov Battalion made clear in 2019, that it was no longer accepting foreigners, because foreigners could only serve in the Ukrainian Army as contractors. However, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, it once again actively recruited foreign volunteers.[172][173]

In 2019, support for the group was temporarily not allowed under Facebook's Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy,[174] but as of 2021, the group had used Facebook to recruit far-right individuals from other countries within Europe.[175] and the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy this was relaxed during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[176]

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 7:46pm

Our government

@Fishtroller 02

support of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine:
(bold type for emphasis added by me)

https://labourheartlands.com/jacques-baud-the-military-situation-in-the-...

The Military Situation In The Ukraine
Jacques Baud / French Intelligence Research Center
Guest Author April 15, 2022

... The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state...

In fact, the army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more “attractive.” Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.

So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities—including Swiss.

Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 11:55pm

I’ll just leave this here

@Fishtroller 02

New documents expose secret US wars. The US Govt has conducted at least 23 proxy wars around the world since 2017. Americans are kept in the dark. The US pays surrogate armies and mercenaries to fight these illegal wars. The US kills people 24/7 globally, https://t.co/7y6sTahiQA

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) July 4, 2022

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by CB on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:08pm

Zelensky signs surrender (Edit)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD-k8ZedhDY]

With English subs:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/CJ10cEWfFRZS/

Submitted by ban nock on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 7:33pm

Interesting

All the world's liberal Democracies supporting Ukraine with many foreigners volunteering and joining the Ukrainian army.

And then there are the worlds autocratic authoritarian dictatorships supporting Russia.

Hard to figure out who the good guys actually are.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/ukraine/freedom-world/2022
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2022

Submitted by on the cusp on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 7:58pm

Not for me.

@ban nock n/t

—

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by ovals49 on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:35pm

Nor me.

@on the cusp
What is difficult is accepting the repeated imposition of ‘regime change’ and resource stripping of smaller countries, carried out under the banner of ‘Spreading Freedom & Democracy’, at the point of a gun.

—

“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024

Submitted by ban nock on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:39pm

@ovals49 I've never heard

@ovals49 I've never heard Putin even suggest he was spreading Democracy and Freedom. He has said some outrageous things but I don't think that was one of them.

Submitted by CB on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 9:22pm

It's obvious you don't know Putin

@ban nock
He had been trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement between the Donbass and the Kiev government for 8 years despite many calls for independence. Make sure you study the Minsk Agreements to understand the historical context.

Putin comments on calls to recognize Donbass
15 Feb, 2022 15:47
Lawmakers have voted in favor of a motion supporting the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated his support for diplomatic efforts to put an end to the conflict in the Donbass, despite calls from his country’s parliament for the Kremlin to consider recognizing two breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine.

Speaking at a press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin set out his views on the motion, backed by a majority of MPs earlier the same day, which urged him to consider affirming the sovereignty of the self-declared republics in Donetsk and Lugansk.

According to him, the motion showed that parliamentarians understand public sympathy toward those living in the war-torn Donbass region, comparing the treatment of residents there to “genocide.” However, he went on, “we have to do everything to solve the problems in the Donbass, but first and foremost that has to be through the as-yet unrealized opportunities to implement the Minsk agreements.”

The two treaties, signed by Ukraine and rebel leaders in 2014 and 2015, were designed to put an end to fierce fighting that broke out following the Maidan, which saw the country’s elected government ousted by violent street protests. The majority Russian-speaking Donetsk and Lugansk regions subsequently declared their autonomy from Kiev, which Ukrainian authorities and those in Moscow have never formally recognized. The terms of the deal include a ceasefire and a requirement for peace talks and internal reforms to reconcile the two sides; however, many of its provisions are yet to be implemented.

On Tuesday morning, the Russian parliament voted in favor of a motion addressed to Putin that called for Russia to announce its support for the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, with 351 legislators backing the draft proposal and just 16 opposing. Following the vote on the resolution, Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said that the provision “will be signed immediately” and sent to President Putin for feedback.
...

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 8:57am

@CB read your link to

@CB read your link to Minsk agreements and especially the part labled "efficacy"
Russia broke the agreements many many many times. They kept troops there, continued fighting, and took over part of a sovereign country. I'd be happy if Ukraine took part of Russia as well as Crimea.

Russia is just a rabid mad dog, needs to have it's brain removed and tested for rabies.

#6.1.1.1 He had been trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement between the Donbass and the Kiev government for 8 years despite many calls for independence. Make sure you study the Minsk Agreements to understand the historical context. Putin comments on calls to recognize Donbass 15 Feb, 2022 15:47 Lawmakers have voted in favor of a motion supporting the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated his support for diplomatic efforts to put an end to the conflict in the Donbass, despite calls from his country’s parliament for the Kremlin to consider recognizing two breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow on Tuesday, Putin set out his views on the motion, backed by a majority of MPs earlier the same day, which urged him to consider affirming the sovereignty of the self-declared republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. According to him, the motion showed that parliamentarians understand public sympathy toward those living in the war-torn Donbass region, comparing the treatment of residents there to “genocide.” However, he went on, “we have to do everything to solve the problems in the Donbass, but first and foremost that has to be through the as-yet unrealized opportunities to implement the Minsk agreements.” The two treaties, signed by Ukraine and rebel leaders in 2014 and 2015, were designed to put an end to fierce fighting that broke out following the Maidan, which saw the country’s elected government ousted by violent street protests. The majority Russian-speaking Donetsk and Lugansk regions subsequently declared their autonomy from Kiev, which Ukrainian authorities and those in Moscow have never formally recognized. The terms of the deal include a ceasefire and a requirement for peace talks and internal reforms to reconcile the two sides; however, many of its provisions are yet to be implemented. On Tuesday morning, the Russian parliament voted in favor of a motion addressed to Putin that called for Russia to announce its support for the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, with 351 legislators backing the draft proposal and just 16 opposing. Following the vote on the resolution, Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said that the provision “will be signed immediately” and sent to President Putin for feedback. ...

Submitted by Creosote. on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 5:55am

Do you have any personal thoughts?

@ban nock

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 6:08am

@Creosote. Mostly that I've

@Creosote. Mostly that I've wandered into some sort of alternate reality on the internet.

On the invasion of Ukraine? Just that it's a horrible aggression by a newly emerged pretty crazy dictator. It has certainly focused the attention not only of Europe but the developed countries of E Asia too. China is much more sane but it made a lot of people remember that it's possible for countries to take over neighbors just as happened in WWII.

Submitted by CB on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:32pm

Do you have any clue of the history

@ban nock
behind Freedom House? It has been a propaganda mouthpiece of the CIA since it's inception.

Freedom House

Freedom House is a U.S. government-funded organization linked to the CIA[1] that functions as a foreign policy tool by aiding "regime changes". It also makes 'freedom indexes', creating an academic patina on what would otherwise be known as propaganda; these 'facts' can then be quoted by the press and academia as a reliable source to de-legitimize opponents.
...
Orange Revolution Ukraine 2004

Freedom House was part of a 30-year campaign to take control over the Ukraine, which Victoria Nuland later claimed had cost USD 5 billion. [7]

The US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the US-based Freedom House. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out [[non-governmental organization|non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - both American and Ukrainian - millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.[8]

Another conduit was the Ukrainian NGO International Centre for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the US Government through PAUCI, but on its website you will find that the front page in the English section features a prominent orange ribbon, the symbol of Yushchenko’s party and movement. Reading further on, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board! And this NGO is not the only one the US government funds that is openly supportive of Viktor Yushchenko. The Western Ukraine Regional Training Center, as another example, features a prominent USAID logo on one side of its website’s front page and an orange ribbon of the candidate Yushchenko’s party and movement on the other. By their proximity, the message to Ukrainian readers is clear: the US government supports Yushchenko.[9]
...

CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups

Robert Parry
January 9, 2015 by Consortium News

Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy stress their commitment to freedom of thought and democracy, but both cooperated with a CIA-organized propaganda operation in the 1980s, according to documents released by Ronald Reagan’s presidential library.

One document showed senior Freedom House official Leo Cherne clearing a draft manuscript on political conditions in El Salvador with CIA Director William Casey and promising that Freedom House would make requested editorial “corrections and changes” – and even send over the editor for consultation with whomever Casey assigned to review the paper.

In a “Dear Bill” letter dated June 24, 1981, Cherne wrote: “I am enclosing a copy of the draft manuscript by Bruce McColm, Freedom House’s resident specialist on Central America and the Caribbean. This manuscript on El Salvador was the one I had urged be prepared and in the haste to do so as rapidly as possible, it is quite rough. You had mentioned that the facts could be checked for meticulous accuracy within the government and this would be very helpful. …
...
Financing Propaganda

In 1983, Casey and Raymond focused on creating a funding mechanism to support Freedom House and other outside groups that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. The idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.
...
A Tag Team

From the start, NED became a major benefactor for Freedom House, beginning with a $200,000 grant in 1984 to build “a network of democratic opinion-makers.” In NED’s first four years, from 1984 and 1988, it lavished $2.6 million on Freedom House, accounting for more than one-third of its total income, according to a study by the liberal Council on Hemispheric Affairs that was entitled “Freedom House: Portrait of a Pass-Through.”

Over the ensuing three decades, Freedom House has become almost an NED subsidiary, often joining NED in holding policy conferences and issuing position papers, both organizations pushing primarily a neoconservative agenda, challenging countries deemed insufficiently “free,” including Syria, Ukraine (in 2014) and Russia.

Indeed, NED and Freedom House often work as a kind of tag-team with NED financing “non-governmental organizations” inside targeted countries and Freedom House berating those governments if they crack down on U.S.-funded NGOs.
...
The Russian government’s concerns were not entirely paranoid. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman, in effect, charted the course for the crisis in Ukraine and the greater neocon goal of regime change in Russia. In a Washington Post op-ed, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

With NED’s budget now exceeding $100 million a year — and with many NGOs headquartered in Washington — Gershman has attained the status of a major paymaster for the neocon movement with his words carrying extra clout because he can fund or de-fund many a project.

Thus, three decades after CIA Director William Casey and his propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. struggled to arrange funding for Freedom House and other organizations that would promote an interventionist agenda, their brainchild – the National Endowment for Democracy – was still around picking up those tabs.

Submitted by ban nock on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 9:06pm

@CB CB I just wasted 20

@CB CB I just wasted 20 minutes looking into your sources before I read anything they'd written. Wiki spooks is a CT web site, I mean come on! Robert Parry (who died 5 years ago) of the common dreams article writes stuff about "Ukraine Storm Troopers". Common Dreams scores ok for truthiness, about like DK, but is way over on the left, and with many of those kinds of sites I look at the actual writer of the piece.

I'd recommend shorter comments and reputable sources if you want me to read.

I always check with https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ before reading.

It might well be a while before I look into your sources again so don't get angry, I just have little time.

Thank You for commenting none the less.

#6
behind Freedom House? It has been a propaganda mouthpiece of the CIA since it's inception.

Freedom House

Freedom House is a U.S. government-funded organization linked to the CIA[1] that functions as a foreign policy tool by aiding "regime changes". It also makes 'freedom indexes', creating an academic patina on what would otherwise be known as propaganda; these 'facts' can then be quoted by the press and academia as a reliable source to de-legitimize opponents.
...
Orange Revolution Ukraine 2004

Freedom House was part of a 30-year campaign to take control over the Ukraine, which Victoria Nuland later claimed had cost USD 5 billion. [7]

The US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the US-based Freedom House. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out [[non-governmental organization|non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - both American and Ukrainian - millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.[8]

Another conduit was the Ukrainian NGO International Centre for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the US Government through PAUCI, but on its website you will find that the front page in the English section features a prominent orange ribbon, the symbol of Yushchenko’s party and movement. Reading further on, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board! And this NGO is not the only one the US government funds that is openly supportive of Viktor Yushchenko. The Western Ukraine Regional Training Center, as another example, features a prominent USAID logo on one side of its website’s front page and an orange ribbon of the candidate Yushchenko’s party and movement on the other. By their proximity, the message to Ukrainian readers is clear: the US government supports Yushchenko.[9]
...

CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups

Robert Parry
January 9, 2015 by Consortium News

Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy stress their commitment to freedom of thought and democracy, but both cooperated with a CIA-organized propaganda operation in the 1980s, according to documents released by Ronald Reagan’s presidential library.

One document showed senior Freedom House official Leo Cherne clearing a draft manuscript on political conditions in El Salvador with CIA Director William Casey and promising that Freedom House would make requested editorial “corrections and changes” – and even send over the editor for consultation with whomever Casey assigned to review the paper.

In a “Dear Bill” letter dated June 24, 1981, Cherne wrote: “I am enclosing a copy of the draft manuscript by Bruce McColm, Freedom House’s resident specialist on Central America and the Caribbean. This manuscript on El Salvador was the one I had urged be prepared and in the haste to do so as rapidly as possible, it is quite rough. You had mentioned that the facts could be checked for meticulous accuracy within the government and this would be very helpful. …
...
Financing Propaganda

In 1983, Casey and Raymond focused on creating a funding mechanism to support Freedom House and other outside groups that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. The idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.
...
A Tag Team

From the start, NED became a major benefactor for Freedom House, beginning with a $200,000 grant in 1984 to build “a network of democratic opinion-makers.” In NED’s first four years, from 1984 and 1988, it lavished $2.6 million on Freedom House, accounting for more than one-third of its total income, according to a study by the liberal Council on Hemispheric Affairs that was entitled “Freedom House: Portrait of a Pass-Through.”

Over the ensuing three decades, Freedom House has become almost an NED subsidiary, often joining NED in holding policy conferences and issuing position papers, both organizations pushing primarily a neoconservative agenda, challenging countries deemed insufficiently “free,” including Syria, Ukraine (in 2014) and Russia.

Indeed, NED and Freedom House often work as a kind of tag-team with NED financing “non-governmental organizations” inside targeted countries and Freedom House berating those governments if they crack down on U.S.-funded NGOs.
...
The Russian government’s concerns were not entirely paranoid. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman, in effect, charted the course for the crisis in Ukraine and the greater neocon goal of regime change in Russia. In a Washington Post op-ed, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

With NED’s budget now exceeding $100 million a year — and with many NGOs headquartered in Washington — Gershman has attained the status of a major paymaster for the neocon movement with his words carrying extra clout because he can fund or de-fund many a project.

Thus, three decades after CIA Director William Casey and his propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. struggled to arrange funding for Freedom House and other organizations that would promote an interventionist agenda, their brainchild – the National Endowment for Democracy – was still around picking up those tabs.

Submitted by CB on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 9:45pm

If you just follow the MSM sound bites

@ban nock
you will remain ignorant.

Robert Parry, Investigative Reporter in Washington, Dies at 68

Mr. Parry won the George Polk Award for national reporting in 1984 for his disclosures that the Central Intelligence Agency had provided an assassination manual to the so-called contras, the right-wing insurgents who were seeking to topple the socialist government in Nicaragua. Mr. Parry was part of an Associated Press investigative team based in Washington when he broke the story.

For that reporting, he was also named a finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

In 1985, Mr. Parry broke news of the involvement of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, a deputy director of the National Security Council, in a covert operation to support the contras with proceeds from clandestine arms sales to Iran. Congress had banned such support. The weapons had been sold to Iran to speed the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

In 2015, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard awarded Mr. Parry the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Last year, he received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for a 20th-century war correspondent and presented by a trust set up in her name.
...
Frustrated with the mainstream news media, in 1995 Mr. Parry established the Consortium for Independent Journalism. The organization’s website, Consortiumnews, is financed by contributions from readers.
...
Mr. Parry was featured in “Ukraine on Fire,” a recent documentary film that argued that the 2014 uprising in Ukraine, which some Western news media depicted as a people’s revolution, was actually a coup staged by nationalist groups with the complicity of the United States.

In a telephone interview on Monday, Oliver Stone, one of that film’s executive producers, said of Mr. Parry: “I don’t see him as a conspiracist, but as a man of common sense and integrity. He leaves a giant hole in American journalism.”
...

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 8:59am

@CB AP, Reuters, and

@CB AP, Reuters, and AFP, are not MSM, they are wire services.

Submitted by CB on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 11:23am

These wire services simply

@ban nock
selectively re-publish the MSM stories. They are not independent in the least. You just need to look at how the MSM worked in lockstep to create the conditions, AKA Manufacturing Consent, for the wars the US has been involved in since the 1960's.

Endless War and the Victory of ‘Perception Management’
December 30, 2014

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless war.

To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war.

While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence.

This commitment to what the insiders called “perception management” began in earnest with the Reagan administration in the 1980s but it would come to be the accepted practice of all subsequent administrations, including the present one of President Barack Obama.

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia’s supposed “aggression” in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today’s humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign policy operatives – outraged over Russia’s limited intervention to protect ethic Russians in eastern Ukraine – are demanding that President Obama launch an air war against the Syrian military as a “humanitarian” intervention there.

In other words, if the Russians act to shield ethnic Russians on their border who are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev that was installed with U.S. support, the Russians are the villains blamed for the thousands of civilian deaths, even though the vast majority of the casualties have been inflicted by the Kiev regime from indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.
...
Lost on the Dark Side

You might think that the American public would begin to rebel against these messy entangling alliances with the 1984-like demonizing of one new “enemy” after another. Not only have these endless wars drained trillions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayers, they have led to the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops and to the tarnishing of America’s image from the attendant evils of war, including a lengthy detour into the “dark side” of torture, assassinations and “collateral” killings of children and other innocents.

But that is where the history of “perception management” comes in, the need to keep the American people compliant and confused. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was determined to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome,” the revulsion that many Americans felt for warfare after all those years in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam and all the lies that clumsily justified the war.

So, the challenge for the U.S. government became: how to present the actions of “enemies” always in the darkest light while bathing the behavior of the U.S. “side” in a rosy glow. You also had to stage this propaganda theater in an ostensibly “free country” with a supposedly “independent press.”
...
At this advanced stage of America’s quiet surrender to “perception management,” it is even hard to envision how one could retrace the many steps that would lead back to the concept of a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate. Many on the American Right remain entranced by the old propaganda theme about the “liberal media” and still embrace Reagan as their beloved icon. Meanwhile, many liberals can’t break away from their own wistful trust in the New York Times and their empty hope that the media really is “liberal.”

To confront the hard truth is not easy. Indeed, in this case, it can cause despair because there are so few voices to trust and they are easily drowned out by floods of disinformation that can come from any angle – right, left or center. Yet, for the American democratic Republic to reset its goal toward an informed electorate, there is no option other than to build institutions that are determinedly committed to the truth.

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 6:57pm

@CB you have it

@CB you have it backwards.

Wire services gather factual information and publish it. All subscribers are free to use it as the basis for their stories. Everyone from the NYT to Fox News use the same facts and put their own spin on them. If you go directly to the wire services you get the factual story before spin.

If you ever go to a conflict zone, and I doubt you will, the only foreigners are usually either soldiers, diplomats, or at the cheap hotels stringers for the wire services. Usually big media doesn't have the money to have reporters all over the world.

#6.2.1.1.1
selectively re-publish the MSM stories. They are not independent in the least. You just need to look at how the MSM worked in lockstep to create the conditions, AKA Manufacturing Consent, for the wars the US has been involved in since the 1960's.

Endless War and the Victory of ‘Perception Management’
December 30, 2014

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless war.

To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war.

While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence.

This commitment to what the insiders called “perception management” began in earnest with the Reagan administration in the 1980s but it would come to be the accepted practice of all subsequent administrations, including the present one of President Barack Obama.

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia’s supposed “aggression” in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today’s humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign policy operatives – outraged over Russia’s limited intervention to protect ethic Russians in eastern Ukraine – are demanding that President Obama launch an air war against the Syrian military as a “humanitarian” intervention there.

In other words, if the Russians act to shield ethnic Russians on their border who are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev that was installed with U.S. support, the Russians are the villains blamed for the thousands of civilian deaths, even though the vast majority of the casualties have been inflicted by the Kiev regime from indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.
...
Lost on the Dark Side

You might think that the American public would begin to rebel against these messy entangling alliances with the 1984-like demonizing of one new “enemy” after another. Not only have these endless wars drained trillions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayers, they have led to the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops and to the tarnishing of America’s image from the attendant evils of war, including a lengthy detour into the “dark side” of torture, assassinations and “collateral” killings of children and other innocents.

But that is where the history of “perception management” comes in, the need to keep the American people compliant and confused. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was determined to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome,” the revulsion that many Americans felt for warfare after all those years in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam and all the lies that clumsily justified the war.

So, the challenge for the U.S. government became: how to present the actions of “enemies” always in the darkest light while bathing the behavior of the U.S. “side” in a rosy glow. You also had to stage this propaganda theater in an ostensibly “free country” with a supposedly “independent press.”
...
At this advanced stage of America’s quiet surrender to “perception management,” it is even hard to envision how one could retrace the many steps that would lead back to the concept of a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate. Many on the American Right remain entranced by the old propaganda theme about the “liberal media” and still embrace Reagan as their beloved icon. Meanwhile, many liberals can’t break away from their own wistful trust in the New York Times and their empty hope that the media really is “liberal.”

To confront the hard truth is not easy. Indeed, in this case, it can cause despair because there are so few voices to trust and they are easily drowned out by floods of disinformation that can come from any angle – right, left or center. Yet, for the American democratic Republic to reset its goal toward an informed electorate, there is no option other than to build institutions that are determinedly committed to the truth.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 7:34pm

Groan…

@ban nock

Big media owners are all billionaires and they have plenty of money to go wherever the hell they want.

Most media sites get their stories from the AP. Wendy did a great essay on this, but I’m not looking for something that you wouldn’t bother to read. But keep believing that you aren’t reading propaganda and are just learning facts.

In his 1928 book Propaganda, masterful consent engineer Edward Bernays revealed:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Have you forgotten how all the mainstream media was agreeing that Saddam had WMDs? And all the other lies given so we’d consent that war was necessary and in our best interests?

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by snoopydawg on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 9:15pm

Also too

@ban nock

This essay shows that the AP is lying to you about how Russia is doing in Ukraine and winning the conflict. There is no way that Ukraine can win against Russia’s goals which isn’t to conquer all of Ukraine.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/western-media-spread-copium-to-pro...

Copium pieces like the AP's one have the purpose of claiming that the Ukraine can still win the war and deserves wide support to achieve that.

Battlefield reality speaks against that. There is no chance that the Ukraine can gain superiority over the Russian army. No weapon delivery will help.

You ought to read it so you can remove the blinders your sources have put on you.

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 6:59pm

@CB Oh, and I hope

@CB Oh, and I hope the cut and paste wasn't for my benefit. I don't read that stuff. Only reputable sources.

#6.2.1.1.1
selectively re-publish the MSM stories. They are not independent in the least. You just need to look at how the MSM worked in lockstep to create the conditions, AKA Manufacturing Consent, for the wars the US has been involved in since the 1960's.

Endless War and the Victory of ‘Perception Management’
December 30, 2014

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless war.

To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war.

While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence.

This commitment to what the insiders called “perception management” began in earnest with the Reagan administration in the 1980s but it would come to be the accepted practice of all subsequent administrations, including the present one of President Barack Obama.

In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of foreign policy goals would trump the democratic ideal of an informed electorate. The point would be not to honestly inform the American people about events around the world but to manage their perceptions by ramping up fear in some cases and defusing outrage in others – depending on the U.S. government’s needs.

Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia’s supposed “aggression” in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today’s humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign policy operatives – outraged over Russia’s limited intervention to protect ethic Russians in eastern Ukraine – are demanding that President Obama launch an air war against the Syrian military as a “humanitarian” intervention there.

In other words, if the Russians act to shield ethnic Russians on their border who are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev that was installed with U.S. support, the Russians are the villains blamed for the thousands of civilian deaths, even though the vast majority of the casualties have been inflicted by the Kiev regime from indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.
...
Lost on the Dark Side

You might think that the American public would begin to rebel against these messy entangling alliances with the 1984-like demonizing of one new “enemy” after another. Not only have these endless wars drained trillions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayers, they have led to the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops and to the tarnishing of America’s image from the attendant evils of war, including a lengthy detour into the “dark side” of torture, assassinations and “collateral” killings of children and other innocents.

But that is where the history of “perception management” comes in, the need to keep the American people compliant and confused. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was determined to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome,” the revulsion that many Americans felt for warfare after all those years in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam and all the lies that clumsily justified the war.

So, the challenge for the U.S. government became: how to present the actions of “enemies” always in the darkest light while bathing the behavior of the U.S. “side” in a rosy glow. You also had to stage this propaganda theater in an ostensibly “free country” with a supposedly “independent press.”
...
At this advanced stage of America’s quiet surrender to “perception management,” it is even hard to envision how one could retrace the many steps that would lead back to the concept of a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate. Many on the American Right remain entranced by the old propaganda theme about the “liberal media” and still embrace Reagan as their beloved icon. Meanwhile, many liberals can’t break away from their own wistful trust in the New York Times and their empty hope that the media really is “liberal.”

To confront the hard truth is not easy. Indeed, in this case, it can cause despair because there are so few voices to trust and they are easily drowned out by floods of disinformation that can come from any angle – right, left or center. Yet, for the American democratic Republic to reset its goal toward an informed electorate, there is no option other than to build institutions that are determinedly committed to the truth.

Submitted by Linda Wood on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 12:18pm

Reputable sources?

@ban nock

It depends on what we mean by "reputable." The American people no longer have confidence in the mainstream media.

https://alaskawatchman.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Cultural-Instituti...

Submitted by ban nock on Sat, 07/09/2022 - 12:50pm

@Linda Wood Notice that

@Linda Wood Notice that extremist conspiracy web sites run and moderated by a single person, don't even get a mention. Do you read Quanon? Is that where you get your info? I've said it before, and I'll say it again, wire services are not main stream media, they report. Reuters, AP, AFP.
https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

Submitted by ban nock on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:22pm

You are partially correct

There are technically mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, but you misunderstand who they work for.

Mercenaries are armed forces whose enticement to fight is money, they aren't volunteers.

The Wagner group as well as paid mercenaries from Libya, Syria, and elsewhere have been reported to be operating on behalf of the Russian state in Ukraine. They have been captured.
Screen Shot 2022-07-04 at 7.20.54 PM.png
No mercenaries are employed by Ukraine. We do have lots of trainers in Poland and elsewhere outside the country as well as CIA in Kiev acting as liaisons for the vast amount of satellite and signals intelligence provided by the US. The US does not employ mercenaries either.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60947877
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/19/russia-deployed-20000-merc...

Volunteers in the Ukrainian Army who sign contracts are not mercenaries.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 8:32pm

Sure it doesn’t

@ban nock

The US does not employ mercenaries either.

Those blackwater troops fighting in Iraq that slaughtered civilians were just figments of our imagination even after they were found guilty of the act. I don’t know what you would call terrorists that we created to fight Russia in Afghanistan should be called, but they fit the description of mercenaries. And then we’ve hired them to fight in plenty of our other invasions at $1,000 a day and now we’re using Nazis to fill that role in Ukraine as well as other groups of mercenaries, but keep telling yourself that we are the good guys and would never use mercenaries to fight for our goals.

Edward Bernays would be so proud of you for believing government propaganda. Take a bow.

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by CB on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 12:31am

Neo-Nazis in Ukraine is not Russian propaganda

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg
(Changed header - phrasing wrong)

The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
11/09/17

As the Trump administration mulls sending weapons to Ukraine, the question of far-right forces employed by the Kiev government has returned to the forefront. Some Western observers claim that there are no neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine, chalking the assertion up to propaganda from Moscow. Unfortunately, they are sadly mistaken.

There are indeed neo-Nazi formations in Ukraine. This has been overwhelmingly confirmed by nearly every major Western outlet. The fact that analysts are able to dismiss it as propaganda disseminated by Moscow is profoundly disturbing. It is especially disturbing given the current surge of neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.

The most infamous neo-Nazi group in Ukraine is the 3,000-strong Azov Battalion, founded in 2014. Prior to creating Azov, its commander, Andriy Biletsky, headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine, members of which went on to form the core of Azov. Biletsky had stated that the mission of Ukraine is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival … against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
...
Azov’s neo-Nazi character has been covered by the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, the Telegraph and Reuters, among others. On-the-ground journalists from established Western media outlets have written of witnessing SS runes, swastikas, torchlight marches, and Nazi salutes. They interviewed Azov soldiers who readily acknowledged being neo-Nazis. They filed these reports under unambiguous headlines such as “How many neo-Nazis is the U.S. backing in Ukraine?” and “Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis.”

How is this Russian propaganda?
...

40 House Democrats Signed A 2019 Letter Asking The State Department To Designate Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion As A Terrorist Organization
October 16, 2019

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/04/2022 - 11:39pm

I didn’t say that

@CB

I know that we’ve been working with them since the end of ww2 and have been arming and training them since the coup. I’ve posted plenty of links on them. It’s not me who has been saying that is just Russia propaganda. Our pro war duo has been though.

—

Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

Submitted by CB on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 12:33am

I phrased that wrong

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg
It wasn't meant as a direct comment to you. I'll change.

Submitted by ban nock on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 9:01am

@CB LEV GOLINKIN nope

@CB LEV GOLINKIN nope

Submitted by CB on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 11:46am

I included that excerpt from The Hill

@ban nock
for your edification because Lev Golinkin is obviously not a "Putin Puppet". So, what's your complaint with him?

Submitted by Bob In Portland on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 5:12pm

Toyota trucks

@ban nock The US trained and supplied ISIS, the Mujahadeen and al Qaeda. I knew something was wrong when long lines of new Toyota trucks, each carrying fifty millimeter machine guns mounted on the truck beds, rolling across the desert.

Submitted by Bob In Portland on Tue, 07/05/2022 - 8:53pm

How the US gets its mercenaries and terrorists

CIA Director Bush in '76 organized an intelligence matrix involving the US's allies in the Middle East. It was called "the Safari Club". Simplified, it solved problems for Arab countries with Wahhabi youths and the US having a terrorist army to serve it's goals without responsibility. At first it was to guide young religious radicals from places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt et al into work as gun-toting evangelicals into US targets, both in the US and abroad. The House of Saud has financed the building of mosques around the Muslim world and installed radicals in them to be used in actions or recruit locals. Think of all the terrorism around the world tied to these radicals as cheap, murderous, CIA agents doing violent things that can be blamed on someone else.

As the stream of US and western European mercenaries to Ukraine has dwindled it appears the secret hand guiding the Ukrainian side has begun drawing from their supply of Salafists. ISIS, al Qaeda, whatever. I bet the CIA has these treacherous ops in countries outside the Arab world.

It is amazing how much evil seems to emanate from the bones of George Herbert Walker Bush.

Submitted by Bob In Portland on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 5:08pm

US propaganda these days

@Bob In Portland On the first day of this military operation I watched the NBC Evening News. The first half dozen stories were all about how Russia is bad and how Zelensky is a proud patriot and defender of the WEST. As the week unfolded every half-hour of reportage of Ukraine had Richard Engel breathlessly pranced in front of the camera mostly sticking his microphone in the face of Ukrainian babushkas who dutifully reported that "the Russians are monsters."

I went to Google to find out any speculation about Ukraine would look like after a Russian victory. After going through ten pages I concluded that there was no article. We are not even allowed to contemplate a Russian victory. Western sources say how Russia is losing the war because it's taking so long to do it.

Luckily, I've been reading pro-Russian media which has helped to offset western media's one-sided message. Essentially, Russia is taking over those areas of Ukraine with large ethnic Russian population who have been threatened for using the Russian language. Putin stated two goals at the beginning of the invasion: 1. to demilitarize Ukraine; and 2. to to denazify Ukraine. Putin's statement is not even reported on in the West, because to do so would raise questions about why there are Nazis in Ukraine would go a long way to not only understanding the history of Ukraine but also to force the public to ask who is on the wrong side in this war.

Russia is destroying the Ukrainian army, unit by unit, in a slow, grinding advance. It controls the air, it has destroyed the railway lines and roads that ship western weapons to the frontlines, and has pretty much destroyed those new weapons.

Another thing to understand is that the Russian forces have been extremely careful in not hitting civilian areas. Many of the civilian buildings that are hit by Russian forces had been used as military supply depots, like the recent shopping center. The Ukrainian forces also have placed artillery in civilian areas.

Because the American press does not want to use the word "nazi" most consumers of western media don't know the nazi battalions, like the infamous Azov Battalion. The nazis have been shown to be quite fierce fighters, but also are used as enforcers to keep the rest of the Ukrainian army from surrendering. Nazis are assigned to other battalions to kill any soldiers ready to desert or surrender.

Meanwhile, since the war is being waged in the eastern, ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine, the Uki armies intentionally target civilian targets like churches, as the Ukrainian military does not expect to win back the territory and thus kill as many ethnic Russians as possible.

I expect the war to proceed cautiously, with Russia destroying as much military weapons as possible while perfectly happy to grind to extinction the Nazi military units.

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 07/06/2022 - 5:46pm

I share your perceptions of this conflict

@Bob In Portland

Unfortunately, the american news consumers are not being shown the bigger picture.
There seems to be no nuance available to separate good Ukes from bad Ukes.
Got into it with some folks on independence day. It seems people can only see black
and white on these issues ie: Russo bad, Ukies good. Drives me nuts. When backing up
my opinions with terms like: it is documented, 8 years of killing their own country-folks,
Nazi's, Minsk or NATO, these news consumers revert to: oh, shit, he's a commie. Can see it
in the clouded eye stares. See what you want to see, I guess.

P.S. I am many things, but a commie is not one of them.

#8 On the first day of this military operation I watched the NBC Evening News. The first half dozen stories were all about how Russia is bad and how Zelensky is a proud patriot and defender of the WEST. As the week unfolded every half-hour of reportage of Ukraine had Richard Engel breathlessly pranced in front of the camera mostly sticking his microphone in the face of Ukrainian babushkas who dutifully reported that "the Russians are monsters." I went to Google to find out any speculation about Ukraine would look like after a Russian victory. After going through ten pages I concluded that there was no article. We are not even allowed to contemplate a Russian victory. Western sources say how Russia is losing the war because it's taking so long to do it. Luckily, I've been reading pro-Russian media which has helped to offset western media's one-sided message. Essentially, Russia is taking over those areas of Ukraine with large ethnic Russian population who have been threatened for using the Russian language. Putin stated two goals at the beginning of the invasion: 1. to demilitarize Ukraine; and 2. to to denazify Ukraine. Putin's statement is not even reported on in the West, because to do so would raise questions about why there are Nazis in Ukraine would go a long way to not only understanding the history of Ukraine but also to force the public to ask who is on the wrong side in this war. Russia is destroying the Ukrainian army, unit by unit, in a slow, grinding advance. It controls the air, it has destroyed the railway lines and roads that ship western weapons to the frontlines, and has pretty much destroyed those new weapons. Another thing to understand is that the Russian forces have been extremely careful in not hitting civilian areas. Many of the civilian buildings that are hit by Russian forces had been used as military supply depots, like the recent shopping center. The Ukrainian forces also have placed artillery in civilian areas. Because the American press does not want to use the word "nazi" most consumers of western media don't know the nazi battalions, like the infamous Azov Battalion. The nazis have been shown to be quite fierce fighters, but also are used as enforcers to keep the rest of the Ukrainian army from surrendering. Nazis are assigned to other battalions to kill any soldiers ready to desert or surrender. Meanwhile, since the war is being waged in the eastern, ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine, the Uki armies intentionally target civilian targets like churches, as the Ukrainian military does not expect to win back the territory and thus kill as many ethnic Russians as possible. I expect the war to proceed cautiously, with Russia destroying as much military weapons as possible while perfectly happy to grind to extinction the Nazi military units.