Aaron Mate asks why our news media doesn't not feature voices advocating for a negotiated peace that also acknowledges the historical U.S. involvement that led to the current situation. He states that there are two types of censorship. In Russia you will find the traditional version. Here in the U.S. we have a much more sophisticated version.
Aaron Mate offers some historical context:
On a warm October day in 2019, the eminent Russia studies professor Stephen F. Cohen and I sat down in Manhattan for what would be our last in-person interview (Cohen passed away in September 2020 at the age of 81)...At that point, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky was just months into an upstart presidency that he had won on a pledge to end the Donbas conflict. Instead of supporting the Ukrainian leader's peace mandate, Democrats in Congress were impeaching Trump for briefly impeding the flow of weapons that fueled the fight. As his Democratic allies now like to forget, President Obama refused to send these same weapons out of fear of prolonging the war and arming Nazis). By abandoning Obama’s policy, the Democrats, Cohen warned, threaten to sabotage peace and strengthen Ukraine's far-right.
Saagar Enjeti, on Breaking Points:
The ironclad rule of media bias here on Breaking Points bears repeating: The most pernicious form of media bias is not what they've choosen to show you, but what they choose not to show you. Selective presentation of facts, cherry-picked headlines and curated bias is the name of the game for narratives on cable news. And in the Western press, it's designed specifically to fulfill an ideological or policy agenda. In a time of war, it is perhaps the most dangerous in this serious and crazy environment that we're living in today. We've seen a collective psychosis take over the media and the global elite as they push for a no fly zone, aka World War Three with Russia.
Here are numerous examples of the media hard at work not telling us important information. Here is Russell Brand's concern that the news media is part of a much larger team that does not have your interests at heart:
I'll start by saying that Putin is a bad actor who is acting aggressively and killing innocent people. But I also need to add that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals. Is there really a problem saying both of these things? Turns out that I'm going light on the United States here. As Noam Chomsky recently stated, the United States thinks that it owns the entire world.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Except in today's tribal crazed environment, where the U.S. is entitled to protect its borders through its militarily-enforced hyper-extended sphere of influence but Russia is not allowed to resist NATO's death machines from being parked on its own borders, "because Putin is Hitler." End of Argument. Freddie DeBoer expands on a story about mass hysteria, fact-denial and hypocrisy that risks getting all of us physically roasted in a nuclear holocaust:
The people who say “whataboutism” don’t want to talk about carpet bombing in Cambodia. They don’t want to talk about death squads in El Salvador. They don’t want to talk about reinstalling the Shah in Iran. They don’t want to talk about the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They don’t want to talk about giving a hit list to rampaging anti-Communists in Indonesia. They don’t want to talk about the US’s role in installing a far-right government in Honduras. They don’t want to talk about US support for apartheid in South Africa. They don’t want to talk about unexploded ordnance that still kills and maims in Laos. They don’t want to talk about supporting the hideously corrupt drug lord post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They don’t want to talk about aiding literal Nazis and Italian fascists in taking over the government in Albania. They don’t want to talk about giving support to the far-right government’s “dirty war” in Argentina. They don’t want to talk about the US-instigated far-right coup in Ghana. They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. They don’t want to talk about centuries of mistreatment of Haiti, such as sponsoring the coup against Aristide. They don’t want to talk about sparking 36 years of ruinous civil war, and attendant slaughters of indigenous people, in Guatemala. They don’t want to talk about our drone war in Pakistan. They don’t want to talk about how much longer this list could go on. So when do we talk about that stuff, exactly? . . .
Well, OK, fine: I denounce Putin. I denounce his invasion. I support neither and have never suggested I did. Now will you, dear reader, denounce the oceans of blood the United States has spilled in pursuit of its own selfish interests, in the past century? Or do you have some jury-rigged excuse for every American crime I listed above and all the ones I didn’t have space to fit?
If you want the world to operate under the principle of self-determination of countries, you need to start with the country that is the indisputably most powerful and influential country on earth. And if you’re American your first priority and greatest influence lies in America’s government. I will repeat myself in saying that, if you don’t want to acknowledge our role in the world, it’s so much better simply to say, “I’m an American, I think America comes first, I don’t care about the wrong we do, love it or leave it.” That’s not a very enlightened attitude, but it has the benefit of a certain grim integrity, of plainfaced honesty. To insist that you care about self-determination and the principles of non-interference, and to maintain that the United States has the moral authority to opine about them, and to ignore our bloody history… for me, personally, it’s a bridge too far.
