The presence of a BBC and Daily Mail journalists ought not be ignored; for one it reaffirms that the BBC is the state broadcaster, hence any information, reporting would be deliberately slanted. As such, the Russian military provocation will be recorded and reported. It does make me wonder if the ‘innocent passage’ wasn’t that innocent, if the BBC gets a spectacular scoop, which could be seen as being as an “act of propaganda aimed at affecting the defence or security of the coastal State” under UNCLOS. (The box has now been ticked for the next incursion by a British warship) — handy to note response by journalist that it is common to have journalists on ships when in the Black Sea. Nice for the UK MoD to have handily arranged press coverage but also at the same time, clumsily bolstered a number of legal implications for any future FONOP challenge.
US/UK PSYOPS
-
-
Max Blumenthal on war journalism and the Putin/Biden summit
5 minutes readRJ Eskow and Max Blumenthal discuss the recent Biden/Putin summit, and the (as expected) abominable know-nothng warmongering attitude of the mainstream media.
-
ERIC ZUESSE—The U.S. regime calls this “press freedom” and “national defense” against countries and news-sites that are ‘enemies’ of the U.S., even though America perpetrated the coup against Iran in 1953 that installed the fascist Shah there in order for America and UK to grab Iran’s oil, and Iran is simply trying to avoid becoming again a U.S. colony. Ukraine (after Obama’s 2014 coup there) now is a U.S. colony, but in 1979, Iran stopped being a U.S. colony. The U.S. regime is strangling Iran with sanctions in order to punish it for having freed itself, in 1979, from America’s billionaires.
-
New Evidence Reveals That Senator John McCain and Other High-Ranking Vietnam War POWs May Have Lied to the American Public About Being Tortured
30 minutes readThe unaccounted for would now publicly be described as “POW/MIA,” implying that any serviceperson missing in Vietnam could also be a prisoner of war. This transformed the war from a political issue into a humanitarian one, trading public support for sympathy. It didn’t matter why we were there in the first place: Our boys were there, and by God were we going to do anything to get them home.
-
Biden’s Two-Step Geneva Waltz Simply Buys Him Space
21 minutes readALASTAIR CROOKE—Well, the NATO statement represented something of a Faustian Bargain. West Europeans (Macron and Merkel essentially) were resigned to the fact that they needed to give Biden some ‘China Threat’ language in the final communiqué to bring him – and America – back aboard the multilateral Eurobus. The Europeans have pressing trade ‘bones’ (steel and aluminium tariffs), that they wish to pick with Washington. So they didn’t want China entirely demonised; they need it too much. They wanted it instead, ‘differentiated’. That is to say, they argue that China presents differential threats – military, trade, tech and cultural – each of which should be treated differently. Macron says this approach represents the spirit of his Euro strategic-autonomy campaign.
But on Russia, it was an easy outcome. The NATO dog was allowed to be ‘wagged’ by a ‘tail’ of East European Russophobes and everyone emerged from NATO happy. Russia was mentioned unfavourably 63 times, to China’s only 10 times. China emerged differentiated. We will have to see how successful Europe is castigating China roundly over Xingjian and Hong Kong human rights, and egging on Taiwanese autonomy, whilst at the same time, begging Xi to put his hand in his pocket to help save Europe’s disintegrating economy.