“In exercising discretion over how unverified or false content is moderated, social media companies have decided to “pick a side,” said Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook.”
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Why it matters that people of good will strive to create an information environment that supports efforts at diplomacy rather than calls for escalation.
Why it matters that people of good will strive to create an information environment that supports efforts at diplomacy. (Interviews in Mariupol by @PLnewstoday: youtu.be )
As people of good will strive to foster an information environment conducive to the pursuit of peace, big tech companies try to cut off the funding of independent journalism.
Pope Francis ‘reflected on Russia’s lethal aggression toward its neighbor and said while he might not go as far as saying NATO’s presence in nearby countries “provoked” Moscow, it “perhaps facilitated” the invasion.’
politico.eu
politico.eu
Network of leading Italian NGOs: “The international community has one task: to obtain a ceasefire and restart with the construction of a respectful and shared international framework that leads to peace.”
ilfattoquotidiano.it
ilfattoquotidiano.it
A Western media outlet - Der Spiegel - does inadvertently share a different perspective on events in Ukraine. The interview is then deleted due to “inconsistencies”.
Is anyone aware of scholarly literature on the legitimacy of proxy war?
Short video clip of Marianna, on her own terms, debunking Western media claims - done with a friend and with a glimpse of dad and baby.
Here’s the link to the ‘explanation’ given for removing the video of interviews with people who got out of the Mariupol steelworks.
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
An influential educator provides an Indian perspective on the contest between Russian propaganda and the West’s.
youtu.be
youtu.be
Profile of Azov Battalion in this video for Time magazine by Simon Shuster from 2019.
youtu.be
youtu.be
A rare thing from The Times: an effort to explain why the Russian view of Nazis is not necessarily well understood in the West. And the article, by @hugorifkind, is not pay-walled.
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
The point made here ought to be plain good sense, not controversial. The fact it has to be made at all is rather an indictment of our 'free press'.
This defence of @EvaKBartlett should never have been necessary. But its point is worth emphasising, also in light of the more general problem Brian Eno identifies: youtu.be
Washington Post interviews Ukrainian volunteers posted to the Eastern front - courageous individuals in an impossible situation.
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
"Westerners would be a lot less cavalier about demanding a foreign population keep fighting until total victory if they truly understood the horrors of war."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com
Now NYT is including a more critical perspective.
Now different sides to the story are emerging within the West’s depiction of Ukraine situation.
How much human suffering might have been avoided by better dialogue among all concerned?
newsweek.com
How much human suffering might have been avoided by better dialogue among all concerned?
newsweek.com
When people in a position to see different sides to a problem fail to do so, they are liable to make it even worse…
To stigmatise conscientious reflection on serious problems for the sake of ideology - especially when that serves vested interests rather than people - is always to risk exacerbating the problem and the harms it brings.
“While an alternative understanding of the devastating war in Ukraine is disallowed, the West continues to offer no serious answers or achievable goals, leaving Ukraine devastated and the root causes of the problem in place.” Noam Chomsky with Ramzy Baroud
counterpunch.org
counterpunch.org
Jonathan Cook explains how intelligence services not only ensure only one side is heard - they act against anyone who strives to let another be heard. And we’re expected to believe that those in the media, and academia, who do their bidding are “protecting democracy”.
British journalist, who’s been reporting from Donbass since 2014, finds himself on UK sanctions list. Graham Phillips has personal assets frozen as a result of his efforts to show aspects of the story suppressed in Western media.
bbc.com
bbc.com
Irish MEP @ClareDalyMEP continues striving to get fellow European Parliament members to resist the influence of propaganda - from all sources, including NATO and US.
Unusually, a mainstream TV channel broadcasts a considered opinion fully acknowledging the need to view the war in Ukraine from more than one perspective.
youtu.be
youtu.be
Amnesty International criticised for doing its job of reporting on evidence - from both sides.
In its zeal to prevent more than one side of the story being heard, the UK government, by imposing sanctions on a British citizen, has effectively ripped up guarantees in force since Magna Carta - argues Graham Phillips, the citizen concerned. Is he right?
youtu.be
youtu.be
Conspicuous self-censorship from CBS News.
(They plan to release an ‘updated’ documentary some time in the future. Here’s what it was originally about:
(They plan to release an ‘updated’ documentary some time in the future. Here’s what it was originally about:
This documentary from 2016 is disturbing but extraordinarily informative.
There is a responsibility of states to protect the human rights of their own people; when they are unable to fulfil this, it falls to others to assist.
Russia’s aid here does not make its invasion right, but preventing people getting that aid is wrong.
Russia’s aid here does not make its invasion right, but preventing people getting that aid is wrong.
“Western governments and publics need to be confronted with the likely consequences of flooding the battlefield with weapons before they prefer such a policy over pursuing diplomatic solutions.” Jonathan Cook on need for impartial human rights monitoring.
jonathan-cook.net
jonathan-cook.net
The Times is now airing another side of the story.
How many have died in vain while The Times was actively involved in silencing any views at odds with the one it is now relinquishing?
How many have died in vain while The Times was actively involved in silencing any views at odds with the one it is now relinquishing?
“The militarists who’ve waged permanent war costing trillions of $ over two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. Anyone questioning the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.”consortiumnews.com
… “War is the primary business of the US empire. Both parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, virtual tax boycott for corporations, wholesale government surveillance, militarization of the police and world’s largest prison system.”
Western media is now monolithically one-sided: for dynamism and integrity in journalism today, you have to look to independent media, Patrick Lawrence tells @ChrisLynnHedges, name checking @EvaKBartlett and @LindseySnell for their war correspondence
youtube.com
youtube.com
“If you were previously unaware that the threat of nuclear annihilation was baked into this proxy war from the very beginning, that just means it's time to reassess your support for this proxy war.” - Forthright clarifications from @caitoz …
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com
“Only by ungodly amounts of propaganda would people consent to having their bank accounts emptied for a US proxy war that benefits them in no way and which places them at greater and greater risk of nuclear annihilation.” @caitoz
“A truly free and liberal society would not use propaganda, censorship & information ops to manipulate the way the public thinks about a war, but if you criticize the way the western empire is using those exact measures you get a bunch of ‘liberals’ defending their use.” @caitoz
Sometimes hearing two sides of a story means going back a few years.
This thread started, back in March, by voicing concerns about how we can continue to access different perspectives on events. Those concerns are further deepened by hearing calls now to brand independent journalists as ‘information terrorists’
thewallwillfall.org
thewallwillfall.org
Well spoken by @ClareDalyMEP , again a lone voice of reason in European Parliament
Most of the world is on the sidelines watching a confrontation between NATO and Russia escalating toward a real risk of nuclear war, while Western media perpetuates a misleadingly selective narrative.
Prof Jeffrey Sachs speaks out.
youtu.be
Prof Jeffrey Sachs speaks out.
youtu.be
In the view of Prof Jeffrey Sachs, it’s the job of the US president to try and exercise some control over the war machine. The world needs a president who’ll properly tackle that job, as dangers escalate to heights not seen since the Cuban missile crisis.
youtu.be
youtu.be
Thread demonstrating what was known in the West about Maidan in 2014…
Thread demonstrating what was known in the West about Maidan in 2014…
Matlock helped negotiate an end to the Cold War, notes @aaronjmate, but because he dissents from Cold Warrior orthodoxy, he's banned from establishment media, who prefer neocon insights of another former ambassador, Michael McFaul.
responsiblestatecraft.org
responsiblestatecraft.org
French journalist on France’s most watched news channel attempts to complete her report but gets cut off…
Jeff Sachs - who once was delivering Reith Lectures for BBC - now can’t get an op-ed published in mainstream media.
This long thread conveying Putin’s speech provides important insight.
A positive step on Twitter. Scott Ritter is back. The former UN Weapons inspector, who called the lies justifying invasion of Iraq, now presents insights that are generally suppressed in Western media.
“US General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made the case that the Ukrainians should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
“The incident serves as a stark reminder that misinformation spreads fast in moments of crisis, which can result in dangerous escalation. This is why journalists are supposed to verify information before they report it.”
responsiblestatecraft.org
responsiblestatecraft.org
4 minutes of wisdom from Jeff Sachs on what Biden administration could learn from JFK.
Russell Brand reminds us - as Western media will not - just how determined the US has been to “wean” Europe off Russian energy and ensure dependence instead on “the tremendous bounty of oil and gas we’re finding in America” (Condoleezza Rice 2014).
youtu.be
youtu.be
Head of private military company operating in Ukraine gives uninhibited assessment. In the full interview, he expands on how the extreme one-sidedness of mainstream propaganda is counter-productive: youtu.be.
A common thread through all these wars: the US strives to keep them going when the parties directly involved would be ready to negotiate. The mainstream media support the warmongers’ manipulated representation of events.
In stark contrast to BBC and the rest of Western media, Indian TV maintains that in the background there are two sides to the story and that a responsible news organisation has a professional obligation to consider both.
Jonathan Cook: “establishment media has never sounded quite so monotone, so determined to beat the drum of war, so amnesiac and so irresponsible. Anyone demurring from the relentless efforts to escalate the conflict is viewed as betraying Ukraine and an apologist for Putin.”
Leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine have admitted they signed 2014 Minsk agreement in bad faith, just to buy time for Ukraine to prepare for Western-backed war with Russia. Aaron Mate @aaronjmate covers this as guest host on Jimmy Dore Show.
rumble.com
rumble.com
Rand: “The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine outweigh the possible benefits for the United States. Although Washington cannot by itself determine the war's duration, it can take steps that make an eventual negotiated end to the conflict more likely.”rand.org
Sobering historical perspective from @georgegalloway …
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