<\/p>\n
DOUBLING DOWN ON DOUBLE STANDARDS – <\/strong><\/p>\n THE UKRAINE PROPOGANDA BLITZ<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018The American population was bombarded the way the Iraqi population was bombarded. It was a war against us, a war of lies and disinformation and omission of history. That kind of war, overwhelming and devastating, waged here in the US while the Gulf War was waged over there.\u2019 (Howard Zinn, \u2018Power, History and Warfare\u2019, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, No. 8, 1991, p.12)<\/em><\/p>\n What a strange feeling it was to know that the cruise missile\u00a0shown<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0descending towards an airport and erupting in a ball of flame was\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0fired by US or British forces.<\/p>\n Millions of Westerners raised to admire the ultimate spectacle of high-tech, robotic power, must have quickly suppressed their awe at the shock \u2013 this was\u00a0Russia\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0war of aggression, not \u2018ours\u2019. This was\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0an approved orgy of destruction and emphatically\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to be celebrated.<\/p>\n Rewind to April 2017: over video footage of Trump\u2019s cruise missiles launching at targets in Syria in response to completely\u00a0unproven<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0claims that Syria had just used chemical weapons, MSNBC anchor Brian Williams\u00a0felt<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a song coming on:<\/p>\n \u2018We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two US navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean \u2013 I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: \u201cI\u2019m guided by the beauty of our weapons\u201d \u2013 and they are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is, for them, a brief flight\u2026\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n TV and newspaper editors feel the same way. Every time US-UK-NATO launches a war of aggression on Iraq, Libya, Syria \u2013 whoever, wherever \u2013 our TV screens and front pages\u00a0fill<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with \u2018beautiful pictures\u2019 of missiles blazing in pure white light from ships. This is \u2018Shock And Awe\u2019 \u2013 we even imagine our victims \u2018awed\u2019 by our power.<\/p>\n In 1991, the \u2018white heat\u2019 of our robotic weaponry was \u2018beautiful\u2019 because it meant that \u2018we\u2019 were so sophisticated, so civilised, so compassionate, that only Saddam\u2019s palaces and government buildings were being \u2018surgically\u2019 removed, not human beings. This was keyhole killing. The BBC\u2019s national treasure, David Dimbleby, basked in the glory on live TV:<\/p>\n \u2018Isn\u2019t it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we\u2019ve seen, is the only potential world policeman?\u2019 (Quoted, John Pilger, \u2018Hidden Agendas\u2019, Vintage, 1998, p.45)<\/em><\/p>\n Might makes right! This seemed real to Dimbleby, as it did to many people. In fact, it was fake news. Under the 88,500 tons of bombs that followed the launch of the air campaign on January 17, 1991, and the ground attack that followed, 150,000 Iraqi troops and 50,000 civilians were killed. Just 7 per cent of the ordnance consisted of so called \u2018smart bombs\u2019.<\/p>\n By contrast, the morning after Russia launched its war of aggression on Ukraine, front pages were covered, not in tech, but in the blood of wounded civilians and the rubble of wrecked civilian buildings. A BBC media\u00a0review<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0explained:<\/p>\n \u2018A number of front pages feature a picture of a Ukrainian woman \u2013 a teacher named Helena \u2013 with blood on her face and bandages around her head after a block of flats was hit in a Russian airstrike.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018\u201cHer blood on his hands\u201d says the Daily Mirror; the Sun chooses the same headline.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Our\u2019 wars are not greeted by such headlines, nor by BBC headlines of\u00a0this<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0kind:<\/p>\n \u2018In pictures: Destruction and fear as war hits Ukraine\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The fear and destruction \u2018we\u2019 cause are not \u2018our\u2019 focus.<\/p>\n Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook\u00a0noted<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Wow! Radical change of policy at BBC News at Ten. It excitedly reports young women \u2013 the resistance \u2013 making improvised bombs against Russia\u2019s advance. Presumably Palestinians resisting Israel can now expect similar celebratory coverage from BBC reporters\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n A BBC video\u00a0report<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>was titled:<\/p>\n \u2018Ukraine conflict: The women making Molotov cocktails to defend their city\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Hard to believe, but the text beneath read:<\/p>\n \u2018The BBC\u2019s Sarah Rainsford spoke to a group of women who were making Molotov cocktails in the park.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n For the entire morning of March 2, the BBC home page featured a Ukrainian civilian throwing a lit Molotov cocktail. The adjacent headline:<\/p>\n \u2018Russian paratroopers and rockets attack Kharkiv \u2013 Ukraine\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In other words, civilians armed with homemade weapons were facing heavily-armed elite troops. Imagine the response if, in the first days of an invasion, the BBC had headlined a picture of a civilian in Baghdad or Kabul heroically resisting US-UK forces in the same way.<\/p>\n Another front-page BBC\u00a0article<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0asked:<\/p>\n \u2018Ukraine invasion: Are Russia\u2019s attacks war crimes?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The answer is \u2018yes,\u2019 of course \u2013 Russia\u2019s attack is a textbook example of \u2018the supreme crime\u2019, the waging of a war of aggression. So, too, was the 2003 US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq. But, of course, the idea that such an article might have appeared in the first week of\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>invasion is completely unthinkable.<\/p>\n Generating The Propaganda Schwerpunkt<\/strong><\/p>\n On 27 February, the first 26 stories on the BBC\u2019s home page were devoted to the Russian attack on Ukraine. The BBC website even typically features half a dozen stories on Ukraine at the top of its sports section.<\/p>\n On 28 February, the Guardian\u2019s website\u00a0led<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with the conflict, followed by 20 additional links to articles about the Ukraine crisis. A similar pattern is found in all \u2018mainstream\u2019 news media.<\/p>\n The inevitable result of this level of media bombardment on many people: Conflict in Ukraine is \u2018our\u2019 war \u2013 \u2018I stand with Ukraine!\u2019<\/p>\n Political analyst Ben Norton\u00a0commented<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Russia\u2019s intervention in Ukraine has gotten much more coverage, and condemnation, in just 24 hours than the US-Saudi war on Yemen has gotten since it started nearly 7 years ago\u2026 US-backed Saudi bombing now is the worst since 2018\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n This is no small matter. Norton\u00a0added<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018An estimated 377,000 Yemenis have died in the US-Saudi war on their country, and roughly 70% of deaths were children under age 5\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Some 15.6 million Yemenis live in extreme poverty, and 8.6 million suffer from under-nutrition. A recent United Nations report\u00a0warned<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018If war in Yemen continues through 2030, we estimate that 1.3 million people will die as a result.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Over half of Saudi Arabia\u2019s combat aircraft used for the bombing raids on Yemen are UK-supplied. UK-made equipment includes Typhoon and Tornado aircraft, Paveway bombs, Brimstone and Stormshadow missiles, and cluster munitions. Campaign Against the Arms Trade\u00a0reports<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Researchers on the grounds have discovered weapons fragments that demonstrate the use of UK-made weapons in attacks on civilian targets.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Despite the immensity of the catastrophe and Britain\u2019s clear legal and moral responsibility, in 2017, the Independent\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018More than half of British people are unaware of the \u201cforgotten war\u201d underway in Yemen, despite the Government\u2019s support for a military coalition accused of killing thousands of civilians.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018A YouGov poll seen exclusively by The Independent showed 49 per cent of people knew of the country\u2019s ongoing civil war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced three million more and left 14 million facing starvation.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018The figure was even lower for the 18 to 24 age group, where only 37 per cent were aware of the Yemen conflict as it enters its third year of bloodshed.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The Independent added:<\/p>\n \u2018At least 75 people are estimated to be killed or injured every day in the conflict, which has pushed the country to the brink of famine as 14 million people lack a stable access to food.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n On Twitter, Dr Robert Allan\u00a0made<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0the point that matters:<\/p>\n \u2018We as tax paying citizens and as a nation are directly responsible for our actions. Not the actions of others. Of course we can and should highlight crimes of nations and act appropriately and benevolently (the UK record here is horrific). 1st \u2013 us, NATO, our motives and actions.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n We can be sure that Instagram, YouTube and Tik Tok will never be awash with the sentiment: \u2018I stand with Yemen!\u2019<\/p>\n As if the whole world belongs to \u2018us\u2019, our righteous rage on Ukraine is such that we apparently forget that\u00a0we<\/em>\u00a0are not actually under attack, not being bombed;\u00a0our<\/em>\u00a0soldiers and civilians are not being killed. Nevertheless, RT (formerly Russia Today), Going Underground and Sputnik have been shut down on YouTube and Google as though the US and UK\u00a0were<\/em>\u00a0under direct attack, facing an existential threat.<\/p>\n Certainly, we at Media Lens welcome the idea that powerful state-corporate media should be prevented from promoting state violence. It is absurd that individuals are arrested and imprisoned for threatening or inciting violence, while journalists regularly call for massive, even genocidal, violence against whole countries with zero consequences (career advancement aside). But banning media promoting state violence means banning, not just Russian TV, but literally all US-UK broadcasters and newspapers.<\/p>\n Confirming the hypocrisy, The Intercept\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Facebook will temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company\u2019s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In 2014, the Guardian\u2019s central and eastern Europe correspondent, Shaun Walker,\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018But there is an increasing worry that while the Azov and other volunteer battalions might be Ukraine\u2019s most potent and reliable force on the battlefield against the separatists, they also pose the most serious threat to the Ukrainian government, and perhaps even the state, when the conflict in the east is over. The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi, leanings of many of its members.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The report continued:<\/p>\n \u2018Many of its members have links with neo-Nazi groups, and even those who laughed off the idea that they are neo-Nazis did not give the most convincing denials.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps the hundreds of journalists who attacked Jeremy Corbyn for questioning the removal of an allegedly anti-semitic mural \u2013 which depicted a mixture of famous historical and identifiable Jewish and non-Jewish bankers \u2013 with the single word, \u2018Why?\u2019, would care to comment?<\/p>\n According to our ProQuest search, the Guardian has made no mention of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in the last week \u2013 as it most certainly would have, if Ukraine were an Official Enemy of the West. ProQuest finds a grand total of three mentions of the Azov Battalion in the entire UK national press \u2013 two in passing, with a single substantial\u00a0piece<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the Daily Star \u2013 in the last seven days. \u2018Impressive discipline\u2019, as Noam Chomsky likes to say.<\/p>\n \u2018Russia Must Be Broken\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Britain and the US have been waging so much war, so ruthlessly, for so long, that Western journalists and commentators have lost all sense of proportion and restraint. Neil Mackay, former editor of the Sunday Herald (2015-2018),\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the Herald:<\/p>\n \u2018Russia must be broken, in the hope that by breaking the regime economically and rendering it a pariah state on the world\u2019s stage, brave and decent Russian people will rise up and drag Putin from power.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n If nothing else, Mackay\u2019s comment indicated just how little impact was made by the\u00a0deaths<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0of 500,000 children under five when the US and Britain saw to it that the Iraq economy was \u2018broken\u2019 by 13 years of genocidal sanctions.<\/p>\n For describing his comment as \u2018obscene\u2019, Mackay instantly blocked us on Twitter. His brutal demand reminded us of the\u00a0comment<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0made by columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times:<\/p>\n \u2018Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation\u2026 and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverising you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n We can enjoy the \u2018shock and awe\u2019 of that comment, if we have no sense at all that Serbian people are real human beings capable of suffering, love, loss and death exactly as profound as our own.<\/p>\n On Britain\u2019s Channel 5, BBC stalwart Jeremy Vine\u00a0told<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0a caller, Bill, from Manchester:<\/p>\n \u2018Bill, Bill, the brutal reality is, if you put on a uniform for Putin and you go and fight his war, you probably deserve to die, don\u2019t you?\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Unlike his celebrated interviewer, Bill, clearly no fan of Putin, had retained his humanity:<\/p>\n \u2018Do you?!\u00a0Do kids deserve to die, 18, 20 \u2013 called up, conscripted \u2013 who don\u2019t understand it, who don\u2019t grasp the issues?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Vine\u2019s sage reply:<\/p>\n \u2018That\u2019s life! That\u2019s the way it goes!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n We all know what would have happened to Vine if he had said anything remotely comparable of the US-UK forces that illegally invaded Iraq.<\/p>\n MSNBC commentator Clint Watts\u00a0observed<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018Strangest thing \u2013 entire world watching a massive Russian armor formation plow towards Kyiv, we cheer on Ukraine, but we\u2019re holding ourselves back. NATO Air Force could end this in 48 hrs. Understand handwringing about what Putin would do, but we can see what\u2019s coming\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The strangest thing is media commentators reflexively imagining that US-UK-NATO can lay any moral or legal claim to act as an ultra-violent World Police.<\/p>\n Professor Michael McFaul of Stanford University, also serving with the media\u2019s 101st<\/sup>\u00a0Chairborne Division, appeared to be experiencing multiple wargasms when he\u00a0tweeted<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018More Stingers to Ukraine! More javelins! More drones!\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Two hours\u00a0later<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018More NLAWs [anti-tank missiles], Stingers (the best ones), and Javelins for Ukraine! Now!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Echoing Mackay, McFaul\u00a0raved<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(and later deleted):<\/p>\n \u2018There are no more \u201cinnocent\u201d \u201cneutral\u201d Russians anymore. Everyone has to make a choice\u2014 support or oppose this war. The only way to end this war is if 100,000s, not thousands, protest against this senseless war. Putin can\u2019t arrest you all!\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Courageous words indeed from his Ivy League office. Disturbing to note that McFaul was ambassador to Russia under Barack Obama, widely considered to be a saint.<\/p>\n \u2018Shockingly Arrogant Meddling\u2019 \u2013 The Missing History<\/strong><\/p>\n So how did we get here? State-corporate news coverage has some glaring omissions.<\/p>\n In February 2014, after three months of violent, US-aided protests, much of it involving neo-Nazi anti-government militias, the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, fled Kiev for Russia. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)\u00a0provide<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0some context:<\/p>\n \u2018On February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant Secretary of State [Victoria] Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk \u2014 Nuland referred to him by the nickname \u201cYats\u201d \u2014 should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone \u201chigh profile\u201d be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The BBC\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Nuland picking the new Ukrainian leader:<\/p>\n \u2018I think \u201cYats\u201d is the guy who\u2019s got the economic experience, the governing experience.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n FAIR continues:<\/p>\n \u2018Weeks later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country, calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n We can read between the lines when Nuland\u00a0described<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0how the US had invested \u2018over $5 billion\u2019 to \u2018ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine\u2019.<\/p>\n In a rare example of dissent in the Guardian, Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defence and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute,\u00a0wrote<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0this week:<\/p>\n \u2018The Obama administration\u2019s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine\u2019s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine\u2019s elected, pro\u2010\u200bRussia president was the single most brazen provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway with a vengeance\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Carpenter concluded:<\/p>\n \u2018Washington\u2019s attempt to make Ukraine a Nato political and military pawn (even absent the country\u2019s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018History will show that Washington\u2019s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the US foreign policy establishment\u2019s myopia and arrogance.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Within days of the 2014 coup, troops loyal to Russia took control of the Crimea peninsula in the south of Ukraine. As Jonathan Steele, a former Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, recently\u00a0explained<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018NATO\u2019s stance over membership for Ukraine was what sparked Russia\u2019s takeover of Crimea in 2014. Putin feared the port of Sevastopol, home of Russia\u2019s Black Sea fleet, would soon belong to the Americans.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The New Yorker magazine\u00a0describes<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>political scientist John Mearsheimer as \u2018one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War\u2019:<\/p>\n \u2018For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin\u2019s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that \u201cthe United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.\u201d\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Mearsheimer argues that Russia views the expansion of NATO to its border with Ukraine as \u2018an existential threat\u2019:<\/p>\n \u2018If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Mearsheimer adds:<\/p>\n \u2018I think the evidence is clear that we did not think he [Putin] was an aggressor before February 22, 2014. This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him. My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n In 2014, then US Secretary of State\u00a0John Kerry<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0had the gall to proclaim of Russia\u2019s takeover of Crimea:<\/p>\n \u2018You just don\u2019t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Senior BBC correspondents somehow managed to report such remarks from Kerry and others, without making any reference to the West\u2019s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The pattern persists today. When Fox News recently spoke about the Russia-Ukraine crisis with former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, one of the key perpetrators of the illegal invasion-occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, she nodded her head in solemn agreement when the presenter\u00a0said<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2018When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The cognitive dissonance required to engage in this discussion and pass it off as serious analysis is truly remarkable.<\/p>\n Noam Chomsky\u00a0highlights<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0one obvious omission in Western media coverage of Ukraine, or any other crisis involving NATO:<\/p>\n \u2018The question we ought to be asking ourselves is why did NATO even exist after 1990? If NATO was to stop Communism, why is it now expanding to Russia?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n It is sobering to read the dissenting arguments above and recall Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s\u00a0warning<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>to MPs last week:<\/p>\n \u2018Let me be very clear \u2013 There will be no place in this party for false equivalence between the actions of Russia and the actions of Nato.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n The Independent reported that Starmer\u2019s warning came \u2018after leading left-wingers \u2013 including key shadow cabinet members during the Jeremy Corbyn-era key, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott \u2013 were threatened with the removal of the whip if their names were not taken off a Stop the War letter that had accused the UK government of \u201caggressive posturing\u201d, and said that Nato \u201cshould call a halt to its eastward expansion\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n Starmer had previously\u00a0waxed<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Churchillian on Twitter:<\/p>\n \u2018There will be dark days ahead. But Putin will learn the same lesson as Europe\u2019s tyrants of the last century: that the resolve of the world is harder than he imagines and the desire for liberty burns stronger than ever. The light will prevail.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Clearly, that liberty does not extend to elected Labour MPs criticising NATO.<\/p>\n In the Guardian, George Monbiot contributed to the witch-hunt,\u00a0noting<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0ominously that comments made by John Pilger \u2018seemed to echo Putin\u2019s speech the previous night\u2019. By way of further evidence:<\/p>\n \u2018The BBC reports that Pilger\u2019s claims have been widely shared by accounts spreading Russian propaganda.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Remarkably, Monbiot offered no counter-arguments to \u2018Pilger\u2019s claims\u2019, no facts, relying entirely on smear by association. This was not journalism; it was sinister, hit and run, McCarthy-style propaganda.<\/p>\n Earlier, Monbiot had\u00a0tweeted<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0acerbically:<\/p>\n \u2018Never let @johnpilger persuade you that he has a principled objection to occupation and invasion. He appears to be fine with them, as long as the aggressor is Russia, not Israel, the US or the UK.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In fact, for years, Pilger reported \u2013 often secretly and at great risk \u2013 from the Soviet Union and its European satellites. A chapter of his book, \u2018Heroes\u2019, is devoted to his secret meetings with and support for Soviet dissidents (See: John Pilger, \u2018Heroes\u2019, Pan, 1987, pp.431-440). In his 1977 undercover\u00a0film\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>on Czechoslovakia, \u2018A Faraway Country\u2019, he described the country\u2019s oppressors as \u2018fascists\u2019. He commented:<\/p>\n \u2018The people I interview in this film know they are taking great risks just by talking to me, but they insist on speaking out. Such is their courage and their commitment to freedom in Czechoslovakia.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/BBC-Ukraine-civilian-Molotov-cocktail-resize2-e1646323978542-566x381-2-300x202.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n