RT is silenced all over Europe – Because truth is the first casualty of War
UPDATE
‘Russia’s #NATO Enlargement Redlines’ – #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow Link:
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html#efmBTnBfi
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the racism behind Europe’s refugee crisis to the surface – Ukrainians, apart from the Black variety, are the Right, White kind of refugees
Why, you might ask, has RT been banned throughout Europe? Britain was supposed to have left the European Union with Brexit yet it has willingly succumbed to the temptation to clamp down on any alternative sources of information or narrative. What have they got to hide?
I listened to RT most of yesterday, before it was taken off air. It was remarkably balanced in its coverage, giving equal time to critics of Russia’s invasion. But that was the problem. The Government does not want any alternative coverage. It wants us to rely on the BBC, which is acting as a cheerleader for NATO. Al Jazeera isn’t much better either.
RT was broadcasting from the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, unlike the BBC. As far as the Government was concerned that was the problem.
Hungary has welcomed 85,000 Ukrainian refugees. Contrast this with the ‘daunting new barrier’ with Serbia
‘capable of delivering electric shocks to unwanted migrants and armed with heat sensors, cameras, and loudspeakers that blare in several languages.
Poland is another country which is noted for its hostile attitude to refugees, erecting barbed wire fences with Belarus. It, together with Latvia and Lithuania, described refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq as ‘not refugees but part of a “hybrid warfare” campaign being orchestrated by Belarus’.
Poland sent 500 troops to fight the ‘invasion’ and there are reports that at least five people died. A Polish soldier who deserted in disgust at the behaviour of the Polish army reported that several refugees had been killed by the army. Contrast this with the welcome given to Ukrainian refugees.
However there is one exception. Black, Asian and Arab people in Ukraine are being prevented from getting out of the country and then, when they manage to get to the border, are being prevented by Poland from entering.
According to Al Jazeera
Since the war started, more than 870,000 refugees have fled from Ukraine to neighbouring countries, the United Nations said. Half of those are currently in Poland. Queues along the border are now tens of kilometres long with some African students describing to Al Jazeera how they have been waiting for days to cross amid freezing temperatures and with no food, blankets or shelters.
On Monday I went to my local store to be greeted with an almost unprecedented unity amongst the press. Every front page had a picture of a Ukrainian child and a variety of emotive headlines. Contrast this with Israel’s murder of Palestinian children.
In just one day this week three young Palestinians were killed with shots to the head. In May last year 62 children were killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza. You could have been forgiven if you missed the front page coverage because there wasn’t any.
White children harmed or hurt make headlines, especially if opposition to the war is in line with American war aims. When it came to the war in Iraq when hundreds of thousands of children were killed, there were no headlines or coverage of victims of American military murder.
When Julian Assange revealed the truth behind one particularly murderous assault from the air, which included shooting down two Reuters journalists, because it was filmed, it was Assange who was penalised. This is the hypocrisy which lies behind the wall to wall anti-Russian propaganda.
There has been a systematic and persistent racism in the coverage of the Ukrainian refugee problem.
A CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata claimed that the attack on Ukraine cannot be compared to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because the Eastern European country is more “civilised”.
“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades,” he said. “This is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”
One shudders to think what D’Agata would have said if he wasn’t being careful.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s former deputy general prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze was interviewed on Radio 4
“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blonde hair and blue eyes being killed every day with Putin’s missiles and his helicopters and his rockets,” Sakvarelidze said.
The BBC presenter responded: “I understand and of course respect the emotion.”
Molotov Cocktails and Resistance
“Amazing mainstream Western media gives glowing coverage of people resisting invasion by making molotov cocktails,” one social media user remarked. “If they were brown people in Yemen or Palestine doing the same they would be labeled terrorists deserving US-Israeli or US-Saudi drone bombing.”
Al Jazeera’s Peter Dobbie was forced to apologise after he said
“What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East […] or North Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”
Nadine White observed how ‘
Visibly fighting back tears during a broadcast from Poland, Lucy Watson of ITV News said: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, third world nation, this is Europe”.
Yes it must be a shock that Europe is tasting a fraction of what it has visited on other countries.
We also saw the hypocrisy of the United Nations on full display today. The General Assembly voted to ‘deplore’ Russia’s invasion. So do I. But compare this with America and Britain’s invasion of Iraq which caused approximately one million deaths as well as destabilisation and slaughter across the Middle East. It was the Iraqi invasion which led to the creation of ISIS. Yet what was the UN response? Absolutely nothing. There was no criticism of the USA.
I won’t bother detailing every instance of media racism because, as they say, every picture tells a story. It is a story of ingrained media racism.
And there’s something else that the mainstream media has not shown. That not all Ukrainians are happy that the United States, which has been enforcing austerity on Ukraine via the IMF and World Bank, is now using them as a pawn in its battle with Russia as it seeks to achieve hegemony in Europe and the world.
What coverage have there been of these demonstrations in Kyiv against US imperialism? Again it doesn’t fit with the BBC narrative and now that RT is off the air, we can be sure that they won’t be shown either.
Tony Greenstein
American Ignorance – ‘the lady on CNN just now said that the damage in Kyiv is something a capitol city in Europe hasn’t seen in almost a century… the siege on Sarajevo began on April 5, 1992 and didn’t end until February 29, 1996’
BBC Racism – ‘But people with ‘blue eyes and blonde hair’ dropping bombs over the Middle East and Africa is OK. And ‘Blue eyes and blonde hair’ is Hitler’s words from the Mein Kampf about the superior Aryan race.’
Non-whites who resist occupation are of course terrorists
Raising funds for Ukrainian military
Raising funds for Ukrainian military 2
And then there is the Jewish Chronicle’s fascist sympathising editor, Stephen Pollard. According to Pollard Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel is ‘anti-Semitic’. But when applied to Russia it is perfectly kosher.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backed the boycott of Russia from sports, but criticised the boycott of last month’s Sydney Cultural Festival over receiving sponsorship from the Israeli embassy.
Claudia Webbe, a British member of parliament, tweeted that the people who genuinely care about Ukrainians are the ones who will welcome all refugees with open arms.
“The rest?” she posted, “Well, they’re pretending.”
See They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine
