Guardian headline, March 10 2022
Why indeed bomb a hospital? Humanitarian considerations aside, the military ineptitude and lousy PR 1 should cause sensible folk – their emotions not yet fully at the mercy of propaganda blitz – to exercise caution and a modicum of scepticism (not to be confused with cynicism) in the face of such reports.
For why such stories may be untrue – may in fact be elaborately staged theatre – look again at that Guardian headline.
For how such stories can swiftly gain the status of fact, see the Ukraine on Fire film I linked to earlier. It goes in some detail into how a mix of CIA, shadowy “NGOs” and “colour revolution” backers like the neoliberal billionaire George Soros can direct the necessary funds and media knowhow to sinister forces – jihadists in Syria, neo-Nazis in Ukraine – to stage such PR stunts.
Knowing that systemically power-compliant media will eagerly do the rest.
Proof? Well that cuts both ways, and it’s usually hard to prove a negative – that something did not happen in the manner described. But how about this?
You may well ask why a hospital would be bombed at all, whether or not it houses patients. One possible answer is that the Azov Battalion, again taking a leaf from the Syria jihadists’ playbook, is not only preventing civilians from leaving Mariupol but using them as human shields.
Final thought: US Senators and Congressmen, themselves hardly immune to this propaganda blitz, will vote for that $13bn military aid to prolong a war Ukraine cannot win but which may turn it, at huge and needless loss of life, into a new “Afghan Trap” for Russia. So when we ask the cui bono question of a false flag attack on a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine’s powerful Nazi forces are not the only ones with a motive for such cynical deceit.
If you catch my drift.
* * *
- I’m grateful to Media Lens for alerting me to a 2015 piece by the late Edward S Herman, co-author with Noam Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. In More Nuggets From the Nut House, Mr Herman wrote:
During the Vietnam war U.S. officials placed no restrictions on the bombing of hospitals, and the August 9, 1973 Newsday coverage of congressional hearings on U.S. activities in Laos and Cambodia was headlined “Bombing of Hospitals Called Routine.” One witness, a former Army intelligence specialist, said that while in Quang Tri province in 1969, he routinely listed hospitals among targets to be struck by American fighter planes. Former Air Force captain Gerald Greven said he personally ordered bombing raids against hospitals: it was policy, he said, to “look for hospitals as targets.” The Vietnemese [sic] found that putting Red Cross insignia on hospital roofs was a bad idea as it provided this country with a handy target (Greg Grandin, “Look for Hospitals as Targets,” the Nation, October 5, 2015).
I remain sceptical, however, that Russia – with the world’s condemnatory eyes on her – would think she could get away with the same in Mariupol.
Yes – the babies and incubators are coming back!
Which jiggery pokery causes a stern moralistic slapping:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-embassy-pushes-conspiracy-theory-about-mariupol-victim-s7wncxcqn
“Hateful” is always a giveaway! “Hate” being the ultimate horror in the Western press.
These stories will keep coming. And burden of proof will be reversed. There may be trouble ahead for those of us who refuse to go with the flow …
Hold onto that thought.
In the climate being created anything can happen. No matter how outrageous.
It was only a few weeks back that the Canadian Government froze the bank accounts of not just protesting truckers and their supporters on the streets but also those of small donors to their crowdfunders. With details leaked by hackers on the web enabling those brave boys of the fifth (traditional corporate) and sixth (corporate alternative) column media to doorstep ordinary Joe’s and Joanna’s with the “when did you stop beating your wife’ types of question.
Try living without access to a bank account: You cannot get paid or pay your bills, whether employed or self-employed. You effectively become an outlaw – which in practical terms means you have no rights in law. No due process rights – ask Labour Party Members witch hunted for not following the Official Party Narratives on the basis of allegation = guilt = sanction/punishment.
Or biological women. Now not only cancelled but attacked on the streets across the world by men’s rights activists under the banner of ‘Trans rights’ at International Women’s Day events for the same crime. Not following the Official Narrative.
When the ultra rich like the Chelsea FC Russian owner can have their assets taken from them dissident voices right down to the lowliest of us are fair game in the rapidly evolving zeitgeist in which cancel culture is practiced at every level by an out of control elite and their manufactured mob.
Dangerous times.
Useful to supply a wider guilty-till-proved-innocent zeitgeist, Dave. Though I think the blitzkreig on “Putin apologists” exceeds all those other examples in its hurricane ferocity.
B over at https://www.moonofalabama.org/ has also covered the hospital bombing today.
Thanks ChetG. This adds useful detail.
My wife is talking about whether we should take in Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile the TV shows a Ukrainian woman being carried on a stretcher whilst she recites a poem she wrote about Russian weaponry ….
I mean …. what can you say? I stopped having arguments a while ago. I don’t see what you can say to those who sit horrified by this …. words fail! It makes a nativity play look like a hard hitting documentary.
They can show anything at all now and the public just lap it up.
Incidentally – would the media be pushing for folks to take in refugees? The entire farce shows how ruthless they are about trying to “get everyone on board”. So … a vast publicity campaign about orphaned kids, half the population weep, the other half stare in disbelief at the brazen shameless manipulation, the former call the latter conscienceless fiends etc.
It’s every parody of war propaganda suddenly played for real!
With the Putin-the-new-Hitler narrative – or in today’s Economist, the new Stalin – established over many years, confirmation bias erodes what’s left of critical thinking.
EVERYBODY NOTE – as of 19:10 today, a new and very important link has been added to this post, third paragraph from the end and labelled This is a must watch.
Schizophrenia?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/10/pers-m10.html
They make a very good case for Putin’s action:
And yet Putin is condemned:
I presume this denunciation of Putin refers to his failure to return to the vision of Lenin. And indeed,
Well yes indeed – we should consider the facts. Russia is “more isolated than ever” and the US is encroaching fast. Putin is said to be acting AGAINST the defense of Russia. So if he had refused to invade, that would presumably be “safer” for Russia? How so?
The vision here seems to be the notion that invasion could reverse this encirclement and allow Putin to “reach a deal with imperialism”. But what happens if there was no invasion? The encroachments of NATO would obviously continue and then the aim of the Azov Battalion (clearly the same aim as the US) would be the parcellisation of Russia.
As ever the WSWS hold up their plea for the working masses to unite and ignore all national boundaries. Is Putin supposed to stop and wait for this to happen?
Not just WSWS but almost all the far left groupings apply this rabbit-from-a-hat trick of calling for the rising up of the workers of the world. Great idea but, as you imply, we might forgive the Kremlin deciding it just might not happen any time soon.
“which place international class solidarity above reactionary assertions of national defense”
Don’t you just love the total absence of practical reality expressed in this position statement.
Walter Mitty meets Heath Robinson.
You can just imagine it can’t you? All the cadre lined up chanting in unison that they’d rather be slaughtered by neo-nazi’s armed with NBC WMD’s in the name of waiting indefinitely for the fabled arrival of the theoretical ‘international class solidarity’ across the globe to arrive than defend themselves and their fellows.
“I’m sorry comrades, but protecting yourself from being wiped from the face of the earth like Carthage by people who see you as untermeschen and want to nick your resources and occupy where you live just does not fit in with international class solidarity theory.”
In terms of real life practicality its no different from the Official Narratives as demonstrated here in this timeless classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YW4qKOAVM