These points were agreed by a number of friends, in a single conversation yesterday:
- You can’t trust the mainstream news – it’s all propaganda.
- We know Putin is evil incarnate, and it would be a good thing if God, or some good people, “took him out.”
- Everything we know about Putin comes from the mainstream news, and we haven’t tried to read other sources, or listened to Putin explain himself.
Tell me, how do those ideas actually fit together in people’s minds?
Yesterday I was chatting with a retired schoolteacher who vouchsafed to tell me that today’s younger generation are better educated than their elders. I begged to differ, since from my own experience I find illiteracy and innumeracy in the young more common now than in my early adult life. Supporting his contention, he pointed out that both he and I, who were educated in grammar schools, were required to undertake a lot of rote learning, whereas now pupils are encouraged to embark on a voyage of discovery, to think for themselves, explore ideas and even challenge conventions. Well, if that is correct you could have fooled me. Maybe I need to get out and meet young people a bit more since I have not encountered much evidence of independent thinking in any demographic tranche. Listening to Jordan Peterson talk about his experience of working in Canadian Universities (which I doubt differ significantly in this respect from those in the UK) leads me to suspect that thinking for oneself has become less, not more common; indeed, it is sometimes actively discouraged, as we have observed over the past 2.5 years. I say all this without wishing to tar everyone with the same brush, as I know there are some fine thinkers out there.
As to mainstream media and Putin, I guess GBNews may not qualify as ‘mainstream’ just yet, but I find that they are making a good fist of being independent. They have run repeated pieces on the problem of excess deaths and the possible (some say certain) contribution by Covid vaccines to a substantial portion of these deaths. Yesterday they ran a piece on the Nord Stream debacle. In it they ran a clip of Joe Biden saying (I quote), “If Russia invades … Ukraine … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”. Then they ran a clip of the US Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Newland, saying (I quote), “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”. Russia hints that the USA was responsible for the (so far) four leaks thought to be caused by ‘explosions’. On the other hand, USA and the EU want to blame Russia (whilst tiptoeing around explicitly saying so). Well, is it pertinent to ask who loses and who gains from sabotaging the pipelines? Russia has made a major investment (via Gazprom) in the pipes and supplies the gas that runs through them; by continuing to supply gas to Europe it both profits its own economy and retains negotiating leverage, particularly important to them at present. In contrast, USA is a major competitor of Russia and is aiming to supply 75% of Europe’s liquefied natural gas over the next 10 years. Go figure. No doubt there is more to learn, but I am certainly not reflexly going to impugn Putin.
Perhaps folk, whilst capable of thinking, are just too lazy to do the work necessary to check out the facts. It’s so much easier to listen to the MSM news and then effortlessly apply our confirmation bias to select what we choose to believe. It is true, I acknowledge, that we all (me included) too easily succumb to confirmation bias. That surely is all the more reason for doing a little homework from time to time.
Quite so Peter.
On Nordstream, we either believe that Moscow is utterly mad and self destructive, when their conduct of the special operation has been unusually measured and logical, or that Washington (or rather a deep state acting from Washington) is as ruthless and destructive of others as the last twenty years or so of regime change have shown them to be.
There is no third alternative, because any other state capable of doing it would have done it at America’s behest, and we know that because at America’s behest the Western world is cheerfully committing economic suicide. whilst the dollar rises at our expense.
Those who destroyed Nordstream have deliberately consigned millions in Germany to poverty, and through them millions more in Europe and Britain. And I include the servicemen who accepted the orders to do it without refusing. It is an unbelievably cynical and evil act, and it is interesting to see that even in the comments on the Daily Mail coverage, those who blame America outweigh the gainsayers by perhaps 16 to 1. That our governments are not uniting to read the riot act to the Biden marionette tells us that we are being ruled by demons in human form.
Yes you can’t trust the mainstream media. However still 80% is true. they have opinions as always and they agree with each other and don’y have other people hired.
Putin is evil as he kills people to impose his way. However almost all leaders were the same. No Russian leader was not i think.
He case is not allowed because the media consensus thinks he has good points and would unmind opposition to his wrong points. I mean in canada the Indians make the same illegal evil LAND CLAIMS and sometimes kill to back it up. like OKA.
We are living in common stories from previous centuries. oddly the soviet union stopped the common border intrusions that dominted the east there. people forget. just wiki.
I believe the media/governments mostly oppose putin because he imposes his will without thier consent or global consent. its not a defence of obscure boundaries in eastern Ukraine. i mean the media demanded S africa end apartheid though they were legally well founded and governments impose thier will by sanctions etc.
This is about who imposes thier will on peoples and boundaries.
Oddly theu originally were against Ukraine ten years ago because they sae the nationists as actually Nazi like. Indeed Putin uses this claim today to justify his war.
Nobody remembers.
Ah, but the view that Putin is, individually, trying to impose “his way” is the very propaganda that is all we get from MSM.
“Mad dictator” is exactly same trope that the West used on Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Assad, Milošević, and a whole bunch of other uncooperative leaders in order to justify invasions, wars, bombings, assassinations, colour revolutions and so on that have killed millions and brought nothing good. Did you know that $1.5 trillion dollars was spent in Afghanistan? And yet the capital Kabul still has open sewers! The whole “axis of evil” thing was a vehicle for state and corporate corruption.
They have been using the “madman” bit on Putin since he started to push back against the West’s hi-jacking of Russian resources and against the crooked oligarchs who worked with the West (and mostly fled to London), and they have now begun to us it against Xi Jinping in China in the hope, it seems, of overthrowing him too, once (they hope according to available policy documents) Russia is neutralised and broken up for spares.
It ignores what you discover about Ukraine if you enquire more deeply: the overthrow of a democratic government by a US-inspired violent coup in 2014 and the imposition of a NATO-friendly, Russiophobic and significantly Nazi (ACTUAL Nazi, ie Bandaist) government; the burning to death of peaceful protesters in Odessa; the banning of Russian language and culture for the ethnically Russian majority in the East; the shelling of those areas for 8 years, leading to 14,000 civilian deaths; the buildup of NATO arms and training of Ukrainian troops, not to mention the setting up of the bioweapons labs now admitted after information leaks; the early declarations of independence from the junta by the ethnically Russian provinces; the ensuing civil war; and the eventual Minsk agreements ensuring their safety, brokered by European nations but never implemented by Kiev or enforced by the supposed guarantors; the increased shelling of civilian Donetsk and the buildup of Ukrainian Azov troops on the Donbas border early this year; and the appeal of those regions to Russia for protection.
On the Russian side, it suppresses the (publicly broadcast) policy meeting of the various Russian authorities, including the speech of President Putin detailing the historical situation and the very limited military aims of the operation. Also seldom noted is how Putin himself has been criticised in Russia for his moderation (especially as compared to US “shock and awe” tactics), which has cost Russian lives to limit civilian casualties.
Since the war began, note how virtually all the “war crimes” blamed on Russia are implausibly against their own allies, and only serve to terrorise populations on behalf of Ukraine. Russians supposedly execute their own white-arm-banded supporters, destroy their own pipelines, and use American missiles to hit nuclear power stations they already occupy. The most recent accusation, today, is a missile attack on a civilian convoy fleeing Ukraine in one of the newly-incorporated provinces. The press (and many of the comments) blame “Putin,” despite the fact that whilst such an attack on those who have just voted to join Russia makes zero sense, it makes perfect sense as Ukrainian mass punishment, when they have already declared that those who even voted in the referendums are guilty of treason and will be hunted down.
And note how quickly censorship was imposed in our countries to keep us from hearing “the other side” – when has censorship ever protected anything but falsehoods?
Incidentally, as for “global consent” goes the MSM don’t tell us that apart from US, UK, Canada, EU, Australia and NZ most of the rest of the world is supportive of Putin (unless intimidated by the US sanctions). Why do you think China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Africa, Latin America etc are all in conversation with Russia? The MSM also doesn’t mention the mass-protests against support for Ukraine in countries like Czech republic, Serbia, and even Germany.
And with all that complex background available with just a little work on YouTube, I still hear mature Christians saying “Putin is evil, so somebody should take him out.” They should ask themselves why in a predominantly Orthodox Christian country over 80% of Russians support the action in Ukraine – an increase over time.
many things I agree with you and some not in your list.
Yet Putin is another invadir in human history. He is evil as another invador but I don’t men like Hitler Stalin.
it comes down to using his powrr to set in motion men killing men for no just reason. he has creossed boundaries which by now should be sacred. tHey were not in South Africa(boycotts etc) yet otherwise pretty good.. i must disagree with your position on putin. yes agendas are suspect even corrupt for why they rail at him. But him is a vabsurd invador and evil by Gods laws. in fact everything is wrong in the forceful peoples who command our trust and obedience. it is here with Trudeau and his condemning cAnada, canadians, anyone with alledged abuse of Indian childred/Youths
You have a voice of opposition but there are too few that are likewise knowledgable. are people apathetic? submissive? Or is it WWi again and over the trenches for no good reason . WE can and must do better. i try to influence.