European natural gas and electricity prices jumped as Western corporate media continued to drum up headlines of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine that could spark World War 3.

Benchmark European gas prices rose more than 10% to 84 euros a megawatt-hour, the highest in weeks. German power prices also moved higher.

Europe’s energy crunch is set to worsen if tensions in the region deteriorate. Russian gas supply is already low as storage facilities are well below average for this time of year (this means gas supplies will remain tight through spring). The risk of rolling blackouts across the continent increase if Russia cuts off gas to Europe.

“The immediate focus is on the potential for a disruption in Russian energy supplies to Europe, which would be very difficult to deal with, and could create a true energy shortage even beyond the challenge that we’re already seeing,” said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “But before that, Europe was already in an energy crisis.”

According to monthly auction results on Monday, Russian supplier Gazprom PJSC didn’t book additional pipeline capacity for March to send gas to Germany via the Yamal-Europe pipe. Gas flows through Ukraine into Europe are also far below contractual volumes.

On Monday, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, told attendees at a conference in Cairo that politicizing gas in Europe is not a good idea because it translates to higher prices for consumers. Already, the UK has capped energy prices for households to mitigate further soaring costs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why The Kazakhstan Crisis Is A Much Bigger Deal Than Western Media Is Letting On

January 9, 2022

Why The Kazakhstan Crisis Is A Much Bigger Deal Than Western Media Is Letting On

Geopolitical commentator Clint Ehrlich has reported while on the ground in Moscow that “the situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than Western media is letting on.” He further argues that the mayhem unleashed this past week and ongoing violent destabilization significantly increases the risk of NATO-Russia conflict.

He asks the key question: what really is happening in Kazakhstan? After all, he writes “In America, the situation in Kazakhstan is a small news item” but it remains that “in Moscow, it is currently receiving 24/7 news coverage, like it’s an apocalyptic threat to Russia’s security. I’ve had the TV on here while writing this thread, and Kazakhstan has been on the entire time.” Below is Ehrlich’s mega-thread from Twitter exploring the crisis and connecting the dots in terms of why this is a bigger deal than many believe…

Mass protests and anti-government violence have left dozens dead. Russia is deploying 3,000 paratroopers after Kazakh security forces were overrun. The largest city, Almaty, looks like a warzone. To appreciate why Russia is willing to deploy troops to Kazakhstan, it’s critical to understand the depth of Russia’s vital national interests inside the country. This isn’t just any former Soviet republic. It’s almost as important to Russia as Belarus or Ukraine.

First, Russia and Kazakhstan have the largest continuous land border on planet earth. If Kazakhstan destabilizes, a significant fraction of the country’s 19 million residents could become refugees streaming across the border. Russia is not willing to let that happen.

Second, roughly one-quarter of the population of Kazakhstan is ethnic Russians. Kazakh nationalists are overwhelmingly Muslims, who resent the Orthodox-Christian Russian minority. Russia believes that civil war would entail a non-trivial risk of anti-Russian ethnic cleansing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Presstitutes Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela

March 10, 2019

Presstitutes Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela

Washington and the Convict Appointed to Overthrow Venezuela Continue the Lies

Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza?

Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Maurice de Zayas, sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report?

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measly $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

As the United States is completely devoid of any print or TV media, it falls upon internet media such as this website to perform the missing function of honest journalism.

As for the alleged starvation and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, Zayas has this to say:

The December 2017 and March 2018 reports of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) list food crises in 37 countries. “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is not among them.”

“In 2017, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela requested medical aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the plea was rejected, because Venezuela ‘is still a high-income country … and as such is not eligible’.”

The “crisis” in Venezuela “cannot be compared with the humanitarian crises in Gaza, Yemen, Libya, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Haiti, Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, or Myanmar, among others.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Propaganda Multiplier

March 9, 2019

The Propaganda Multiplier

How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

This study by Swiss Propaganda Research was first published in 2016, it is presented here in English for the first time. Translated by Terje Maloy.

The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.

Therefore you always have to ask yourself: Why do I get
this specific information in this specific form at this moment?
Ultimately, it’s always about questions of power.”
Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

INTRODUCTION: “SOMETHING STRANGE”

“How does the newspaper know what it knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Of Suspected Spies & Cathedrals… and Western Media Hypocrisy

January 28, 2019

Of Suspected Spies & Cathedrals… and Western Media Hypocrisy

It’s hilarious to see the double standards of Western media applied in the case of alleged American spy Paul Whelan who is being detained in Russia and facing trial.

Whelan, a former US marine, was denied bail this week in a Moscow court after it emerged that he had been found in possession of state secrets while supposedly holidaying in Russia.

Western media widely aired the theory that the American man has been “set up” by Russian state security after he had received a USB computer stick from someone while staying in a Moscow hotel last month. The person whom he received the disk from has not been identified, but presumably he or she was known to the American, otherwise why would he have accepted the item?

Whelan claims he was in Russia as a tourist and that he didn’t check the contents of the computer mini-disk at the time because he assumed it contained “images of a cathedral he had visited”. He was reportedly arrested soon after receipt of the disk, on December 28, by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.

This sounds eerily familiar. Remember the two Russian men who visited Salisbury in March last year at around the time of the alleged poisoning of former Kremlin spy Sergei Skripal? Months later, those two men were identified as “suspects” on British CCTV cameras whose images were broadcast by media. Both then promptly came forward to give an interview to Russian media in order to clear their names, which they confirmed as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

Petrov and Boshirov claimed they were in Salisbury around March 4 as tourists, not as Kremlin assassins as the British media were sensationally alleging. Asked why they were in Salisbury, the pair said it was to visit the medieval English town’s “famous cathedral” and its 123-meter spire.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Western media, publishing fake news about Russia is a good career move… with no consequences

January 13, 2019

In Western media, publishing fake news about Russia is a good career move… with no consequences

Fighting “Russian disinformation” in the West has become a lucrative business. But, in reality, you’re far more likely to encounter deceitful agitprop directed at Russia.

MOSCOW – CP Scott remains a towering figure in the annals of British journalism. Editor of the then “Manchester Guardian” for an astonishing 57 years, he celebrated his paper’s centenary by laying down a set of legendary principles.

“Comment is free, but facts are sacred,” Scott intoned in the missive. Sadly, almost a hundred years later, facts are free and the right to spread disinformation is becoming sacred, as far as his successors are concerned. Particularly when it comes to coverage of Russia.

Yet another example came over the New Year break. Following a few weeks out of the spotlight after peddling an obviously fake story about Julian Assange/Paul Manafort meetings in London, Luke Harding reappeared. And he came armed with his particular brand of bulls*** and sloppiness.

A sensationalist interview with former Soviet spy ‘Viktor Suvorov‘ was full of fragile fact-checking and downright stupidity. For instance, presenting a pensioner, who defected from a different country almost 40 years ago, as an authority on how Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin operates today stretched credulity. And the piece was also riddled with factual errors, to boot.

For instance, Harding claimed Suvorov’s 1980’s book “Icebreaker” now “has broad acceptance among historians;” a tome which insists “Stalin had been secretly plotting an offensive against Hitler’s Germany” but first he “wanted Hitler to destroy democracy in Europe, in the manner of an icebreaker, thereby clearing the way for world communism.” In other words, not the version you learned at school.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News

January 10, 2019

Back to the USSR: How to Read Western News

The heroes of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers visit the fictional borough of Eatanswill to observe an election between the candidates of the Blue Party and the Buff Party. The town is passionately divided, on all possible issues, between the two parties. Each party has its own newspaper: the Eatanswill Gazette is Blue and entirely devoted to praising the noble Blues and excoriating the perfidious and wicked Buffs; the Eatanswill Independent is equally passionate on the opposite side of every question. No Buff would dream of reading the “that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette”, nor Blue the ”that false and scurrilous print, the Independent”.

As usual with Dickens it is both exaggerated and accurate. Newspapers used to be screamingly partisan before “journalism” was invented. Soon followed journalism schools, journalism ethics and journalism objectivity: “real journalism” as they like to call it (RT isn’t of course). “Journalism” became a profession gilded with academical folderol; no longer the refuge of dropouts, boozers, failures, budding novelists and magnates like Lord Copper who know what they want and pay for it. But, despite the pretence of objectivity and standards, there were still Lord Coppers and a lot of Eatanswill. Nonetheless, there were more or less serious efforts to get the facts and balance the story. And Lord Coppers came and went: great newspaper empires rose and fell and there was actually quite a variety of ownership and news outlets. There was sufficient variance that a reader, who was neither Blue nor Buff, could triangulate and form a sense of what was going on.

In the Soviet Union news was controlled; there was no “free press”; there was one owner and the flavours were only slightly varied: the army paper, the party paper, the government paper, papers for people interested in literature or sports. But they all said the same thing about the big subjects.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The real reason Western media & CIA turned against Saudi MBS

December 15, 2018

The real reason Western media & CIA turned against Saudi MBS

Forces are aligning against Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, lead by elements within the CIA and strong players in the mainstream media. But what is really behind this deterioration in relationship, and what are its implications?

Following the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, western media and various entities, including the CIA, appear to have turned their back on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS). In response to the scandal, the Guardian released a video which its celebutante, Owen Jones, captioned“Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest threats on Earth. Time to stop propping up its repulsive regime.”

The Guardian was not alone in its condemnation. “It’s high time to end Saudi impunity,” wrote Hana Al-Khamri in Al-Jazeera. “It’s time for Saudi Arabia to tell the truth on Jamal Khashoggi,” the Washington Post’s Editorial Board argued. Politico called it “the tragedy of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Even shadowy think-tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Atlantic Council released articles criticising Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi’s death.

A number of companies began backing away from Saudi money after the journalist’s death, including the world’s largest media companies such as the New York Times, the Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Arianna Huffington, CNN, CNBC, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Google Cloud CEO, just to name a few.

The CIA concluded that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s death, and was reportedly quite open in its provision of this assessment. Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, also took time out of his schedule to express concern over Saudi Arabia’s confirmation of the killing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Western Media Make One Death a Tragedy, Millions a Statistic

October 31, 2018

Western Media Make One Death a Tragedy, Millions a Statistic

The Western media coverage devoted to the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi proves the cynical adage that one person’s death is a tragedy, while millions of deaths are a mere statistic.

During the past four weeks since Khashoggi went missing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the case has been constantly in the news cycle. Contrast that with the sparse coverage in Western news media of the horrific Saudi war in Yemen during the past four years.

The United Nations has again recently warned that 16 million in Yemen were facing death from starvation as a result of the war waged on that country by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab partners, with the crucial military support of the US, Britain and France. That imminent death toll hardly registered a response from Western media or governments.

Last week, some 21 Yemeni workers at a vegetable packing plant near the Red Sea port of Hodeida were killed after US-backed Saudi warplanes launched air strikes. Again, hardly any condemnation was registered by Western governments and media pundits.

Admittedly, some politicians in the US and Europe are lately expressing disdain over the Saudi-led war and the possible culpability of Western governments in crimes against humanity.

Nevertheless, in proportion to the public concern devoted to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi there is a staggering indifference in relation to Yemen. How is possible that the fate of one man can provoke so much emotion and angst, while millions of children in Yemen appear to be shrugged off as “collateral damage”.

Partly, the circumstances of Khashoggi’s murder by a Saudi death squad are more easily visualized.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russian Diplomat: “Yes, Russia Is Preparing For War, I Can Confirm It”

October 27, 2018

Russian Diplomat: “Yes, Russia Is Preparing For War, I Can Confirm It”

A week after Russian president Vladimir Putin doubled-down on a warning to Russia’s geopolitical foes first made earlier this year by declaring that Russia would use its “unstoppable” nuclear weapons in response to an incoming missile attack shortly after US president Trump announced the US would pull out of the INF Treaty, , a Russian diplomat has both confirmed (and denied) what US war hawks have been calling out: Moscow is preparing for war, he said, just in case the US starts one.

Speaking at the UN on Friday, Andrey Belousov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Nonproliferation and Arms Control, echoed Putin’s comments from last week that Russia is indeed readying itself for war, but only so it can defend its people against American aggression.

“At a recent meeting, the US stated that Russia is preparing for war. Yes, Russia is preparing for war, I can confirm it”, Belousov said adding that “We are preparing to defend our homeland, our territorial integrity, our principles, our values, our people.”

Russia’s military build-up and large-scale drills, which have often been painted in the Western media as preparations for all-out war, are a defensive necessity, he said.

Russia doesn’t seek a confrontation, he said, unlike the US. “Why else would the United States pull out of the [INF] Treaty, increase their nuclear potential, adopt a new nuclear doctrine that lowers the threshold for nuclear weapons use – that’s the question for us all.”

Belousov’s words came after a Russian draft resolution to reinforce the INF Treaty, which bans intermediate-range nuclear weapons, was overwhelmingly rejected at the UN First Committee.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

OPINION: CBS’s & NPR’s Rabidly False ‘News’ About the Khashoggi Case

October 26, 2018

OPINION: CBS’s & NPR’s Rabidly False ‘News’ About the Khashoggi Case

CBS

It’s a lie to say, as CBS ‘News’ did on October 24th, that Saudi Crown Prince Salman couldn’t have done what Turkey says he did in the Khashoggi case — couldn’t do it, because it’s not in the Saud family’s “DNA” to do such things. To the exact contrary: it is the norm for the Saud family, and has been for decades if not longer. What’s not normal in the Khashoggi case is that it was being done to a Saudi who has so many admirers and friends at high places in The West. That’s what makes the Khashoggi case different from all the others. And the evidence for this — and for the pervasive propagandistic fakery in U.S. mainstream ‘news’ reporting about foreign affairs (such as CBS did there) — will be presented here. This routine and unchallenged lying by the ‘news’-media is a super-scandal that the U.S. and UK press don’t report, but instead they all hide that they had lied and routinely do lie. So, since it’s totally unaddressed, it continues, on and on, for at least decades. Probably none of the major American or British ‘news’-media will publish this American samizdat, exposing the press, but this is being submitted to them all, in the hope that maybe at last, some or at least one of them will finally relent, and break open this mega-scandal — about the press itself. It needs to be made public

—

The constant lying, at any rate, must stop, regardless how it’s done. Though the problem itself, of repeatedly deceiving-the-public-into-wars, is not being reported, some U.S. and UK ‘news’-media are starting to come clean on aspects of the resulting disaster.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Triumph of Evil

October 25, 2018

The Triumph of Evil

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey is unprecedented in its audacity. The response from Washington and the Canadian government is to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, weapons that are being used by the Saudis in their destruction of the Yemeni population. The Russian response, if the report I saw was not fake news, is to sell the Saudis the S-400 air defense system. https://on.rt.com/8pd0

What we can conclude from this is that armament profits take precedence over murder and genocide.

Genocide is what is going on in Yemen. I heard a report today on NPR that Yemeni are dying from starvation and from a cholera epidemic that has resulted from the Saudi destruction of the infrastructure in Yemen. The aid worker giving the report was obviously sincere and upset, but had difficulty connecting the high death rate to the Washington-sponsored war, blaming instead a 20% devaluation of the Yemen currency that raised food prices out of the reach of most Yemeni. She said that the solution to the crisis was to stabilize the currency!

It is difficult to understand why in the Western media and among Western politicians there is so much demonization of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and Russia. It is not these demonized countries that are murdering people in their embassies, conducting wars of aggression (war crimes under the Nuremburg Standard), and embargoing food and medical supplies to the populations that are being bombed. These crimes are being done by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States and its NATO vassals.

Obviously, the Yemeni, like the Palestinians, don’t count. Their slaughter doesn’t cause a moral ripple in the West.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Putin: In a Nuclear Holocaust “We Will Be Martyrs, They Will Drop Dead”

October 22, 2018

Putin: In a Nuclear Holocaust “We Will Be Martyrs, They Will Drop Dead”

Ever since the Euromaidan color revolution in Ukraine, the threat of a thermonuclear confrontation between Russia and the United States has been steadily growing. With the United States and NATO forces having pushed their proxy fighters literally to the border with Russia, the world’s second superpower finally became directly involved in Syria, saving the country from the impending defeat by the Gulf Cooperation Council, NATO, Israel, and American terrorists being funded, trained, and armed for the purpose of destroying the secular government of Syria.

This provided two war fronts where American and Russian soldiers could potentially engage in a direct military clash with one another that itself could potentially escalate to a nuclear war if taken to its logical conclusion.

While Western media promoted each act of war on the part of the West as a valiant fight for freedom and every Russian response as aggression, alt media, MSM, and social media were all nonetheless alight with the stark reality that WW3 could very well have broken out at any minute if the Americans pushed too far or if the Russians failed to respond with their typically cool heads.

MSM, of course, took every chance it could to portray the Russians as aggressive, bent on world domination and the domination of American elections and, thus, if a world war did take place, America would be on the right side of history, even if the earth was uninhabitable.

Recently, however, there have been more rumblings of WW3, with warnings from Russia and concerns from American servicemen and women who are worried that the US is rushing headlong into a world-ending confrontation. Oddly enough, those concerns and worries have not been receiving as much attention in the world press as they have in the past.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics: How the US Weaponizes Them to Accuse China of Debt Trap Diplomacy

October 16, 2018

Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics: How the US Weaponizes Them to Accuse China of Debt Trap Diplomacy

With China and Russia named as the two greatest threats to continuing American hegemony end of last year, the velvet gloves have come off the Washington establishment, baring their knuckles against the Middle Kingdom in plain view of the entire world. In recent weeks, anti-China rhetorics and vitriol emanating from the Oval Office and Capitol Hill have reached feverish, even hysterical, proportions.

The total warfare on all fronts is being waged against Beijing, assisted and amplified by the corporate media. The empire’s propaganda machine is in overdrive, churning out fake news and lies on a 24/7 basis to smear and demonize China. One of such lies is the alleged neo-colonization of developing countries through debt traps sprung by China.

This article puts together all the numbers in four countries – Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives and Malaysia – which are misrepresented by the western press as victims of China’s “debt trap diplomacy”.

SRI LANKA

Lie : Western media have spun tall tales that Sri Lanka, with Chinese loans up to its eyeballs, used 90% of government revenue to service Chinese debts and was forced to “cough up a port” to Beijing.

Fact : China accounted for only ONE-EIGHTH of Sri Lanka’s $65 billion debts. Beijing didn’t demand immediate payment of loans falling due from Colombo. Instead, China acceded to Sri Lanka’s request to restructure the loans. Colombo OFFERED to settle the loans past due by giving a 70% equity in the LOSS-MAKING Hambantota port to a Chinese company. To bring the port up to the operational level, the Chinese company has to spend another $700 million. No competing offer from other parties to take over the port was received before and after the restructuring proposal was completed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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