Lee Heidhues 2.7.2022
The mainstream media in America continues to beat the drums of Russian aggression in Ukraine and rev up the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria which gripped the USA for decades.
It’s fair to say that American mainstream media is a government vehicle to promote the party line. Particularly when it comes to the Big Power rivalry.
The People’s World definitely has a pro Russian bias. It’s articles are laced with commentary about “Nazis” and “Fascists” governing Ukraine and the Russians are simply upholding their territorial integrity.
The following should be read with a dose of skepticism. Still, it’s worthwhile to read the party line from the other side.
Excerpted from People’s World 2.7.2022
Over the weekend, on Saturday, Americans heard on corporate news media reports that anonymous U.S. government officials confirmed the Russians are “70 percent ready” for an immediate invasion of Ukraine. Only a day later, they heard that the invasion, which had been described as almost a certainty, would come instead in late February when the ground in Ukraine is frozen enough so that Russian tanks won’t sink in the mud.
Also this weekend, more stories appeared in the media about Germany allegedly harming the “unity” of NATO. Germany has continued to refuse to forego Nord Stream 2, a pipeline designed to carry Russian gas to that country at a time when it needs the gas to meet its energy needs.
The new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, leads a party that has often called for cooperation with rather than confrontation with Russia. Scholz met with President Joe Biden on Monday, who was expected to turn up the pressure on Germany to get in line with Washington’s war message.
The supposedly pending invasion, described as imminent since last December, still fails to materialize.
The media topped this with an even worse scare story coming from U.S. “intelligence”—a claim that as many as 50,000 Ukrainians could die and as many as one million could become refugees flooding into Poland and other countries in Europe when the Russians invade.
As for Ukrainians being killed, the reality ignored by the media is that tens of thousands have already died, but those have been killed by Ukrainian government forces and fascist organizations allied with it attacking people in Eastern Ukraine. There, separatists have been trying to establish two small autonomous republics under the terms of an agreement reached with the Ukrainian government in 2014. Ukraine has reneged on that treaty and instead continues its assaults in the east.
As for refugees, there have been tens of thousands of them already, but they’re not people fleeing a Russian invasion. Instead, they are Russian-speaking Ukrainians fleeing into Russia to escape the Ukrainian military and its allied fascist militias. In order to alleviate that refugee crisis and simultaneously help protect the population in the east, the Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been granted the Russian passports they have demanded. The hope is that this “escape route” will give them the safety and confidence to stay in their homes in Ukraine unless or until it becomes absolutely necessary.
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