{"id":1125394,"date":"2023-07-09T13:15:42","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T13:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/?p=13104"},"modified":"2023-07-09T13:15:42","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T13:15:42","slug":"today-in-war-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/07\/09\/today-in-war-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Today In War Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley)<\/em><\/a>:<\/p> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>\u2756<\/p>The New York Times has a new article out with the headline \u201cCluster Weapons U.S. Is Sending Ukraine Often Fail to Detonate<\/a>\u201d and the subheading \u201cThe Pentagon\u2019s statements indicate that the cluster munitions that will be sent to Ukraine contain older grenades known to have a failure rate of 14 percent or more.\u201d<\/p>If you only read the headline \u2014 as\u00a0the majority of people<\/a>\u00a0do \u2014 you would come away with the impression that the news story being reported here is that the US is giving Ukraine weapons that are sometimes defective. That sounds like a newsworthy story by itself, and it\u2019s the only information provided in the headline.<\/p>If you read the subheading in addition to the headline, you would come away with the same impression. You could even read the entire first paragraph and the first part of the second and still think you were reading a story about the US sending Ukraine sub-par cluster munitions.<\/p>Not until you get to the final sentence of the second paragraph would you get to the vital piece of information which explains why the world is\u00a0criticizing the Biden administration<\/a>\u00a0for sending Ukraine these weapons:<\/p>\u201cYears or even decades later, they can kill adults and children who stumble on them.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>The real story of course isn\u2019t that the US has failed to send Ukraine its primo mint-condition cluster bombs, the story is that undetonated munitions will kill civilians and keep killing them even long after the fighting stops.<\/p>A correct headline for this report would have been something along the lines of \u201cCluster Weapons U.S. Is Sending Ukraine Will Kill Civilians for Years to Come,\u201d but because\u00a0The New York Times is a US propaganda outlet<\/a>, we get a headline saying \u201cOopsie, sometimes the little bombies don\u2019t go boom!\u201d<\/p>We saw another interesting instance of war propaganda in the mass media on Saturday with two separate articles advocating NATO membership for Ukraine, one in The Washington Post and one in The Guardian.<\/p>In a Washington Post piece titled \u201cOnly NATO membership can guarantee peace for Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d Marc Thiessen and Stephen Biegun argue that once the war is over Ukraine must be added to the controversial western military alliance. They make the absurd claim that \u201cAlmost 75 years after NATO\u2019s founding, the record is clear. NATO doesn\u2019t provoke war; it guarantees peace,\u201d which would certainly come as a surprise to the survivors of disastrous\u00a0NATO military interventions<\/a>\u00a0in nations like Libya and Afghanistan.<\/p>\u201cNo serious person advocates NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues,\u201d write Thiessen and Biegun. \u201cThat would be tantamount to a declaration of war with Russia. But it is equally true that after a cease-fire, a durable peace cannot be achieved unless that peace is guaranteed by NATO membership.\u201d<\/p> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>This position in The Washington Post that \u201cNo serious person advocates NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues\u201d was published just hours apart from\u00a0a Guardian article by war propagandist Simon Tisdall<\/a>\u00a0explicitly advocating NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues.<\/p>Tisdall writes the following:<\/p>The main objection to this argument was summarised by the former US Nato ambassador Ivo Daalder. \u201cThe problem confronting Nato countries is that as long as the conflict continues, bringing Ukraine into the alliance is tantamount to joining the war,\u201d he warned.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>But there are precedents. West Germany gained Nato protection in 1955 even though, like Ukraine, it was in dispute over occupied sovereign territory \u2014 held by East Germany, a Soviet puppet. In similar fashion, Nato\u2019s defensive umbrella could reasonably be extended to cover the roughly 85% of Ukrainian territory Kyiv currently controls.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>Tisdall makes no attempt to address the glaring plot hole here that West Germany was not at war in 1955, or to explain how placing a NATO \u201cumbrella\u201d over 85 percent of a nation currently at war would be safeguarded against being drawn into the war.<\/p> <\/iframe><\/div><\/div> <\/figure>Lastly we\u2019ve got an article from The Hill titled \u201cBolton hails Biden decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine as \u2018an excellent idea\u2019<\/a>\u201d about professional warmonger John Bolton\u2019s enthusiastic support for the latest cluster munitions development.<\/p>And to be clear, this is not a news story. Reporting that John Bolton likes cluster bombs is like reporting that Snoop Dogg likes weed, or that Flava Flav is fond of clock necklaces. Obviously he\u2019s going to be as enthusiastic about the prospect of children being killed by military explosives as a cartoon mascot for children\u2019s breakfast cereal is for its company\u2019s brand of sweetened starch. He\u2019s cuckoo for war crimes.<\/p>As we\u2019ve\u00a0discussed previously<\/a>, John Bolton\u2019s presence in the mass media proves our entire civilization is diseased. We shouldn\u2019t be looking to such monsters for analysis and expert punditry, we should be chasing them out of every town they try to enter with pitchforks and torches. The fact that we see his opinion mentioned as valid and relevant any time there\u2019s an opportunity to kill more human beings with military violence shows that we are trapped in a madhouse that is run by the craziest among us.<\/p>________________________<\/p>All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is\u00a0<\/em>entirely reader-supported<\/em><\/a>, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on\u00a0<\/em>Patreon<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Paypal<\/em><\/a>, or\u00a0<\/em>Substack<\/em><\/a>, buying an issue of my\u00a0<\/em>monthly zine<\/em><\/a>, and following me on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Soundcloud<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a>. If you want to read more you can\u00a0<\/em>buy my books<\/em><\/a>. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list\u00a0<\/em>on Substack<\/em><\/a>, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I\u2019m trying to do with this platform,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/em><\/a>. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.<\/em><\/p> <\/picture><\/div> <\/figure>Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2<\/p>Featured image via Adobe Stock, formatted for size.<\/p> \n

This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): \u2756 The New York Times has a new article out with the headline \u201cCluster Weapons U.S. Is Sending Ukraine Often Fail to Detonate\u201d and the subheading \u201cThe Pentagon\u2019s statements indicate that the cluster munitions [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775,94,1784,4,583,376,204],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/557"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}