SC250-13

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56973.htm

U.S. Says ‘Wants Peace Not War’ as It Arms Ukraine to the Teeth

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shuttling across Europe this week vowing that Washington “desperately wants peace not war” with Russia. This touchy-feely sentiment comes amid reports of additional American and British weapons supplies heading to the NATO-backed Kiev regime.

Ukraine has already been massively weaponized by the United States since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 brought to power a Neo-Nazi regime obsessed with antagonizing Russia. The Biden administration has boosted inventories for anti-tank missiles and other lethal weaponry with plans for further increases. Now it emerges that additional supplies are on the way from both the U.S. and Britain. Britain is to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine along with “military advisors”.

Moscow this week condemned the increased flow of weapons to Ukraine, saying it is recklessly stoking already fraught tensions. The new supply of anti-armor missiles from the U.S. and Britain – reported only days after high-level talks on regional security between Russian and NATO officials were conducted last week – would seem to be one more proof that the Western powers are secretly pushing for war with Russia despite rhetoric appealing for a diplomatic solution.

The frenzy for warmongering seems to have taken over any reasoned dialogue or obligation to diplomacy and international law. Washington and its European allies are whipping up the hysteria of alleged Russian invasion plans for Ukraine. Blinken flew to Kiev on Wednesday claiming that Russia was ready to invade Ukraine “imminently”. The American foreign minister then flew to Berlin to meet with German, British and French counterparts to discuss ratcheting up further economic pain on Russia over its alleged “aggression”. The German government announced this week it was prepared to halt the Nord Stream 2 gas project “if Russia invaded Ukraine”.

The New York Times reported claims that Russia was closing down its embassy staff in Kiev and speculated that the move was a portent of Moscow’s anticipation of war. Russia dismissed the report as groundless and said its consular staff was working as normal in Ukraine. The Ukrainian foreign ministry also appeared to corroborate Russia’s claims.

Russia has repeatedly rejected allegations of an invasion plan. It says that troop movements within its borders are its internal business that requires no explanation. Even the New York Times which has been pushing the invasion narrative admitted this week that American intelligence claims of Russian troop build-up on the border with Ukraine have not materialized.

Moscow says that the military build-up is actually by the Ukrainian armed forces supported by U.S., British, Canadian and other NATO military advisors. Russia maintains that the allegations of a Russian invasion are a cover for the NATO-backed Kiev regime to launch an offensive against the ethnic Russian population of Southeast Ukraine, who have been fighting a civil war with Kiev forces since 2014 when the CIA fomented a coup d’état.

Blinken is due to meet with Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Friday. The Kremlin has said that it expects a legal, written response from the United States regarding the security proposals that Moscow presented last week to American and NATO officials. Those proposals included a commitment from the U.S. and NATO to desist from further eastward expansion and for withdrawal of existing offensive weaponry from Eastern Europe.

American and European NATO allies have already verbally dismissed Russia’s security proposals as “non-starters”. They stated that Russia does not have a veto on NATO deployments. This is a high-handed and provocative rebuff to Russia’s concerns over the threatening encroachment of offensive military forces on its borders.

The United States and its partners seem to be deliberately kicking Russia’s existential concerns into the long grass. Not reciprocating promptly to the security guarantees that Moscow explicitly delineated last week shows that the U.S.-led NATO bloc is menacingly playing for time to wear down Russia’s resolve.

Antony Blinken has made lame excuses for not responding to Russia’s strategic security proposals by saying that the United States needs to first consult with other NATO allies and partners. Washington is making out that it is constrained by an obligation to seek consensus and consultation. Moscow is being told that it will have to put its security concerns on hold while the U.S. confers with its European counterparts. Who knows when that nebulous process will end?

Curiously, there was no such need for “consultation” by Washington when it decided to dramatically pull out of Afghanistan last year. After 20 years of grinding, futile war, the Biden administration did not bother to inform other NATO members about the sudden military withdrawal. Indeed, European appeals for a slower withdrawal were pointedly ignored by Washington which had decided unilaterally to close down operations in Afghanistan.

The notion that the United States indulges consensus and consultation among NATO members is an absurd delusion. Washington, as the presumed hegemonic power, decides alone when and when not to go to war, and its NATO subordinates fall into line like the good little flunkeys that they are.

The militarization in Ukraine is being led by the United States, along with its trusty British bulldog. The conclusion is that Washington has decided to ramp up the push for war against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy – and using a twisted narrative about Russian aggression and invasion. The rebuffing of a historic security detente with Moscow is being disguised by the facade of Washington appearing to be chivalrous and courteous to purportedly find a consensus with allies.

....

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/01/30/msm-pundits-push-idea-that-criticizing-us-policy-on-russia-makes-you-a-russian-agent/

MSM Pundits Push Idea That Criticizing US Policy On Russia Makes You A Russian Agent

One thing I’ve been meaning to write about these last few days has been the way mass media pundits have been insinuating or outright asserting that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is literally an agent of the Russian government.

Carlson has been accused of promoting Russian propaganda by mainstream narrative managers for frequently criticizing the Biden administration’s hawkish posture toward Russia regarding the entirely unsubstantiated claim that Moscow is preparing to launch an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. We’ve been seeing things like Anderson Cooper innocently musing that “It is striking how neatly Kremlin propaganda seems to dovetail with Carlson’s talking points” and this CNN segment from December with Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and tinfoil hat Russiagater Julia Ioffe wondering aloud about why Russian state media seem to be so fond of Carlson. By mid-January, Democratic Party operatives were openly demanding that Carlson be investigated for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

“This isn’t journalism, it’s an ongoing FARA violation. Tucker Carlson needs to be prosecuted as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation and treason under Article 3, Sec. 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for aiding an enemy in hybrid warfare against the United States,” tweeted former DNC official Alexandra Chalupa, best known for colluding with the Ukrainian government in 2016 on opposition research against Donald Trump.

The accusations and insinuations increased, eventually leading to Carlson outright denying being a Russian agent in a recent interview with The New York Times saying, “I’ve never been to Russia, I don’t speak Russian. Of course I’m not an agent of Russia.”

As you would expect, this denial was then spun by the same demented mainstream pundits who’ve spent the last five years being wrong about Russia as evidence that Carlson is a Russian agent.

“Tucker Carlson told The New York Times he’s not a Russian agent amid controversy over his pro-Kremlin stance,” blares a headline by Business Insider.

“What would a Russian agent say if asked if they were a Russian agent?” tweeted former FBI special agent Clint Watts in response to Carlson’s denial.

“Tucker Carlson Denies Being Russian Agent After Taking Kremlin’s Side,” says a viral tweet by former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi.

“Narrator: After he helped destroy American Democracy, it turned out he was, indeed, a Russian agent … though a rather silly one,” added MSNBC’s cartoonish “intelligence” expert Malcolm Nance.

“Tucker Carlson is walking proof that you don’t need to be an agent to be a useful idiot,” former FBI agent Peter Strzok told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, apparently less willing to commit to the bit than his FBI peers.

“Why hasn’t Tucker Carlson registered as a foreign agent?” reads a viral tweet from the notorious Lincoln Project.

I’ve never gotten used to the insane McCarthyite accusations which US liberals will hurl without a second thought at anyone who disagrees with them. Every time it happens it startles and alarms me, and this latest trend of claiming that opposition to US military posture toward a nuclear superpower constitutes evidence of being a treasonous foreign intelligence operative is a marked uptick in the madness.

I’m highlighting this deranged behavior not to defend the odious Carlson, but to point out that it works very much in the US empire’s favor to have a bunch of influential narrative managers aggressively manufacturing the consensus that anyone who criticizes America’s posture toward Russia is suspicious and untrustworthy.

The mass media, whose primary job is to propagandize the masses and who have an extensive history of lying to the public to manufacture consent for war, are not pushing the belief that Tucker Carlson is suspicious and sinister for questioning the official narrative about Russia. They are pushing the belief that anyone is suspicious and sinister for questioning the official narrative about Russia. That’s the message that people are receiving from this line that’s being pushed by narrative managers and ex-federal agents. Anyone who is successfully indoctrinated with this belief will become inoculated against wrongthink about that nation because they will reflexively distrust the motives of anyone who says anything that differs from the officially authorized line.

That’s the real value of this framing for the imperial propagandists. They don’t care about Tucker Carlson, who serves their agendas more often than not. They care about making sure that current and future establishment narratives about Russia will be swallowed hook, line and sinker by the mainstream public without the slightest twinge of gag reflex. You don’t even need to silence dissent if you can simply render it impotent.

It’s worth considering the possibility that all the artificially manufactured Russia hysteria we’ve seen over the last five years has been geared toward building public support for the exact escalations we are seeing today. After all, it says a lot that Russiagate began with unevidenced claims by US intelligence agencies who have an extensive track record of lying, resulted in the reignition of a new cold war against a nation long targeted for destruction by the US intelligence cartel, and now there are tons of weapons being flown in to Ukraine and US troops are being moved to Eastern Europe in response to a threat we’ve still seen no evidence is actually real.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you can control what people believe about a certain thing, then you can control what they will do and what they will allow in response to that thing. Controlling people’s beliefs about reality is controlling their reality. If you can convince people that anyone who disputes what you’re saying about a government you don’t like is suspicious and not to be trusted, then you can keep them believing everything you say about that government.

It’s clear that it is very, very important to the narrative managers that we believe what we are told about Russia. Now we’re just waiting to find out toward what specific end that agenda is being driven.