MSM – only the truthful information
I’ve been meaning to post the above caricature for quite some time, but as it is usual with many of my posts, it’s been sitting in draft until I felt it “matured” enough. Now, I saw a convergence of two seemingly insignificant events, that made it feel like a good time to post this image.
It is not a secret that anything published in the Western main-stream media about Russia (as well as China, or Syria, or any other state that the Western elites feel is in need of some “democratic bombings”), is presented through a certain prism, where either partial truths or outright lies are given to the audience to form an image of an enemy.
This can be seen in the materials, published both…
… in Peace …
Seemingly such an innocent thing, a report by one of the many Russian TV channels on a vegetable shortage in Europe… But look how it got blown out of proportions both by the 5th column inside and the agents of influence outside of Russia.
Here I am going to demonstrate how the above caricature applies to the everyday reporting. Take a look at the following article in one of the main Norwegian newspapers, Aftenposten: Russlands største TV-kanal hevder det er rasjonering på grønnsaker i butikkene i Norge (Russia’s biggest TV channel claims that there is rationing on the vegetables in Norway). Remember this headline. Interestingly, it is perceived by the population as “Russia is claiming…” – that’s how some people I know recited the story to me.
The article above cites a Russian TV channel – TV1. It translates some snippets of the material, but not all of them, making it sound as if the Russian channel is postulating that it is explicitly in Norway that we ration broccoli and experience vegetable shortage. To Aftenposten’s credit, they provide the link to the channel’s news-item, but who is going to go there and verify it anyway, it being in Russian?
Aftenposten provides the following picture:
With the sub-text of that’s how Russian TV channel presents the state of affairs in Norway, Denmark and Britain. Looks dramatic, right? Russians must be out of their minds, right?
That’s what they want you to think. And they don’t even stop there. In the second half of the article, Aftenposten presents it as “Kremlin’s propaganda” for “Putin’s Russia”, etc, etc.
Let’s go to the source…
It’s a 35-second long filler news snippet, and I’ll give the full translation here:
“Three salads into one hands. European buyers have come to face a shortage of vegetable in the supermarkets. It is unusually empty in the shops of Britain, Norway, Denmark. What’s left in stores is being rationed, for example, selling a few salads and broccolis per person. And the prices are very high – squashes and aubergines saw a price hike of almost 4 times over the last month. The reason for this is a harvest failure due to very cold winter in Italy and Spain – the main suppliers of vegetables during this time of the year. First the agricultural areas where flooded by rain, and then came frost. Experts say, that if the weather does not become better, Europe can also experience shortage of the citrus fruits.”
That’s it. But wait…
This is a still frame from the report, and what does it say? “Photo from the site of www.dailymail.co.uk”. That attribution was “conveniently” omitted in the image, published in the Norwegian Aftenposten.
A quick search leads us to this article:
So! It wasn’t the “crazy Russians spinning a lie”, but rather a short translation of an article from the British Daily Mail. But that won’t sound as sensationalist, would it?
And going back to the outrage, demonstrated by Aftenposten, I did a quick search in the Norwegian news items, and here is what came up:
Grønnsaksmangel etter uvær i Sør-Europa: – Situasjonen er svært krevende (Vegetable shortage after bad weather in Southern Europe – The situation is very demanding). And in it they say that the supply of vegetables to Northern Europe is halved, compared to the same time last year. They even quote PR chief of one of the largest Norwegian supermarket chains COOP, Harald Kristiansen, as saying that it concerns mostly broccoli and iceberg salad, but also, to a lesser degree paprika, tomatoes, cauliflower… I personally noticed a shortage of eco-salads and eco-tomatos, which I usually buy, and which I have not seen in the shops for about a month, without giving it a second thought – there were enough of the local greenhouse non-eco alternatives on the shelves.
So, the news item on TV1 was also truthful, when they included Norway! I’ll leave it to the reader to research the Danish newsfront.
Towards the end of the article, Aftenposten actually refers to the British tabloids, but presents it as if Russian media “twists the British publication”. From my translation above, where does it twist anything?
And finally they say that they took contact with TV1 for comment about the “source foundation for the material”, but got no answer. But the source was specified in the material all along!
Funnily, not only The Daily Mail published these news:
BBC: European vegetables: ‘Perfect storm’ raises prices
The Telegraph: What is causing the 2017 vegetable shortage and what does it mean for consumers?
The Sun: IT’S THE A-BROC-ALYPSE! ‘Perfect storm’ of bad weather wipes out vegetables in Europe – and it’s set to send the price of lettuce, broccoli and peppers soaring in UK supermarkets
What I find interesting in all of this, is how it got quickly tied to “Russia”, “Russia’s biggest TV channel”, and the subsequent demonstration and ridicule on the net, tie in to “Kremlin propaganda”, and the usual ad hominem attack – “Putin’s Russia”. In other words, Western MSM business as usual.
First of all, TV1 is a fully-private channel, with some of its owners spending more time in London, than in Moscow. As there is no censorship on the Russian mediascape, each channel, or media outlet publishes whatever they want – isn’t it what the West wanted all along?
Secondly, how this got twisted in the Russian “5th column environment”:
“Radio Svoboda” – the very same that has a stated goal of government change in Russia (and played the same role against USSR), published a stream of Tweet ridicules under the title “Hungry Europe”, without bothering to say where the news come from and blaming it all on Russia. A series of other “liberal resources” wailed about Russia spreading fakes, for example here, here and here (the last one is an example of how it gets spread on the social media by people who don’t care about doing a source research). And only one outlet, Meduza.io, tried to come to the bottom of it.
Mission accomplished.
As the Russian saying goes, they “made an elephant out of a fly”. And drew Russia’s name through mud in the process. All, over a 35-second long filler newsreel, which was a re-telling of a British news item. All the while leaving the original source, the complete picture, out of the view. Take a look at the caricature at the beginning of my post once again. Telling isn’t it?
… and in War
Presenting half-truths or big lies is typical of any war-mogering propaganda. I could exemplify with Ukraine and its populace at large, that have become ensnared in this kind of the nets of deception, but we can go even bit further back in history, to the Goebbels/Hitler propaganda in the Nazi Germany, and how the people of Germany were made to believe that they were liberating the Eastern lands…
Fast forward to 2008…
In the sitrep article at The Saker, Sandwiching NATO in Ukraine Scott Humor writes:
As we all know the plans to instigate war between Russia and Ukraine go way back. It’s kinetic stage, however, started in 2008. Immediately after the skirmishes in South Ossetia with Georgian and NATO troops in August 2008, in October the Washington Times publishes an article of Jeffrey Kuhner: “Will Russia-Ukraine be Europe’s next war?”
“Europe faces the risk of another major war. In 1939, Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland triggered the Second World War. Today the possible trip wire is not Poland, but Ukraine. And the aggressor will not be Adolf Hitler, but Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.”
That’s a statement; it’s not an analyses, or expert opinion, its a statement of intent. This statement was made not by anyone in the government of Russia. This statement was made by the “deep state” globalist government. It says that they are about to stage a major war in Europe. Like the previous big war in Europe, this new war will be fought under the fascists and Nazi flags. They also say that they will start this war on the territory of Ukraine, the war will be against Russia, and Russians will become the appointed aggressors and even “the invaders“ of their own homeland.
This is a typical for globalists switch, when the victims are named aggressors, and that the Western powers act in order to “stop an aggression” and even better “to prevent an aggression.”
Just let me reiterate: The West calls Russians, who for centuries (if not millennia) living in the Don river basin (Donbas), the descendants of those Russians, who in 1813 liberated Europe from Napoelonic forces, and restored the kingdom of the Netherlands, the Russians who fended off the German invasion of the Don river basin in 1941-43, they call these Russians for “invaders” on their own land! The same justification, that also Hitler used to start his war!
The West went even further to reinforce the parallel.
In 1941 German soldiers were photographing against the backdrop of the Russian fortress of Ivangorod in Narva:
And on February 10th 2017, the Americans decided to repeat the feat. Wonder if the consequences will be the same…
So, with the help of MSM, a Westerner is prepped with a picture of an enemy: a crazy Russian, who must be “liberated” from his own values, political structure, country, life. That’s how wars were usually started by the West, and it always historically fell on Russia’s peoples shoulders to end those wars and bring back balance and peace to our one common continent: Eurasia.
To wrap it up…
Always check the source, even in the face of a simple newsitem, and especially if it want to play on your emotions. Earlier I translated a fragment of a Russian documentary, The Nets of Deception – False Reality, and it would be a good moment to revisit it again.
Seek alternative sources of information. There are a few English-language sources, which will give you either a second opinion, or a direct and unadulterated version directly from the source, here to name a few:
Croudfunded media outlet Russia Insider
Lada Ray’s Futurist Trendcast
The Saker
RT
Global Research
Paul Craig Roberts
TASS
Sputnik News