The mass media is not great for accuracy or wide coverage and even less so for trustworthy analysis but it does often provide entertainment. Not always even intentionally.
Like when the western mass media reported one day that the Russians were shelling the nuclear reactor in the Russian-held sector of the Donbas area and, within hours, that the Russians were shelling from there.
We’ve all seen examples of the unreliability of the mass media (run by capitalists for the capitalist system so what can we expect, after all?) in our own country but hard to imagine more consistently unreliable and biased than its coverage of the war in the Ukraine.
Take for example the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline on 26 September last year. The undersea pipeline was delivering Russian gas to Germany; its owners are Russian in financing partnership with European companies and it cost around $9.5 Billion euros to build.
It’s a twin pipeline stretching 1,230 km through the Baltic Sea. Each line comprises around 100,000 individual pipes, each 12 m in length.
So who did the wmm (western mass media) line up to blame, or at least to suggest might have carried out this sabotage? Yep, Russia, major shareholders in the pipeline and major route for exporting of their gas for sale to Europe!
Made no sense at all but to a public marinated in msm propaganda for months …
Now, if you were a reasonable detective, you’d be asking yourself: “Who stands to gain from this?” And you’d have to conclude “enemies of Russia”. Next, who would have the capability and opportunity to do it?
Well, states near the sea there who are not friendly to Russia, obviously. Like Sweden and Norway, whose states have reportedly been investigating for months without any apparent results..
But not just them, also US NATO, who has ships nearby and who carried out the BALTOPS 22 major naval exercise not long before the explosions – including underwater exercises. Sweden and Norway had both participated in the BALTOPS 22 joint NATO exercise.
Ships participating in NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise last year. (Images sourced: Internet)
Who would point the finger of suspicion at them? Not the western mass media, that’s for sure.
However a big fly has very recently landed in the ointment. Seymour Hersh, a long-established USA journalist, who has in his CV a Pullitzer Prize for the exposure of the 1968 US massacre of the Mai Lai village in Vietnam, published a report pointing the finger at the USA.
Of course Russia jumps on that – it’s their pipeline and they consider that the US is fighting a proxy war against them in Ukraine. The US and its allies in turn accuse Russia of just using the accusation to divert attention away from their continued invasion of Ukraine and war there.
Sure, that’s possible. But the blowing of the pipeline is an acknowledged fact and it was blown up by somebody – and the US are looking more and more like the most likely suspects. But don’t expect much help in clearing this up from the wsm.
A naval diver surfaces during NATO’s BALTOP 22 exercise last year. (Images sourced: Internet)
Apparently Hersch’s report is not reliable because he didn’t name his inside sources. Really? He didn’t burn his whistleblowing sources on whom, apart from any considerations of decency, he might need to use in future? Or for reason to be trusted by future whistleblowers?!
Now we have a new version. No, not Russia in the frame any more but some “pro-Ukrainian group” or “anti-Putin Russian group”. And the source for this? An unnamed (but suddenly that’s not a problem any more) US Intelligence agency. Yeah, sure.
Neither wsm massaging nor US laundering is going to clean this story up. In pursuance of its drive for world hegemony, the ruling class of the US has been pushing Russia, its main obstacle in Europe, into war.
Well, despite the dangers, the European allies of the USA can go along with that, some (e.g. Poland) more enthusiastically than others, but ok overall. But to sabotage the pipeline delivering gas to Germany, the big power in the EU?
Reckless, US ruling class, reckless. And not just environmentally.
SOURCES
Spare a thought for a family being tortured by the Irish State, which has jailed one of its sons already and went and jailed another one more recently. Yes, you’ve heard of them, the Burke family.
First of all, their son Enoch who was a teacher, objected to a pupil identifying themselves by another gender.
The school required him to refer to this person not as ‘he’ or ‘she’ but as ‘they’. Oh, you can imagine the torment suffered by poor Enoch!
The Burke family leaving from one of Enoch Burke’s court appearances. Enoch is on the far left (not politically) and Simeon in the centre (not politically either). (Images sourced: Internet)
True, he might only have to refer to this person a dozen times in the year but … being forced to say “they”. This is a sin against Enoch’s religion! His religious rights are at stake here!
So naturally Enoch had to take a stand and naturally too had to do it in a public situation in the school, for which he got suspended while awaiting a disciplinary hearing.
Enoch’s religious principles required him to refuse the suspension and keep attending the school and to disobey a court order, for which (and for his stalwart protests in court) he was sent to prison in contempt of court.
Eventually, of course, he was sacked but he applied to the High Court to prevent that, during which attendance he and his family antagonised the judge by their interruptions and manner.
Then the younger son, Simeon, emulating his older brother, refused to be silent and accused the judge of “forcing the people of Ireland to accept transgender”, obviously an attack on his religion too.
The judge was “shoving transgenderism down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”, cried out the younger Burke. The judge ordered him to leave the court and when he declined, the Gardaí were called.
Young Simeon was removed, during which he was, he told the Judge, “shocked and shaken to the core” and had “been treated in a brutal fashion” by a “mob of Gardaí”. And charged with breach of the Public Order.
Left: Enoch Burke; right: Simeon Burke leaving the High Court. (Images sourced: Internet)
This raised unkind comments on social media from people alleging that they knew Garda “brutal treatment” in Dublin and in Rossport and that Simeon simply had no idea (some going so far as to cruelly dub him “Simple Simeon”, a reference to a similar-sounding children’s game).
Simeon was offered bail in his own name for a paltry sum and with no conditions except to stay away from the High Court but the brave young Burke refused to sign his bail form. So he went to jail too.
Simeon Burke should know something about the law, having studied it at University of Ireland, Galway. He ran for Student Union President there against the Left in general, where, according to Isaac Burke’s media, out of 2,500 votes cast, he received 482 first preference votes.
The legalisation of contraception, divorce and gay marriage are all presumably “crimes against God” too in the eyes of the Burke family and the High Court judges are sworn to protect those decisions.
Some unkind people are pointing out that if the Burkes consider the High Court to be wrong and its operation against their religion, why take their case there for adjudication? Yes, that is puzzling.
But the substantive and original issue remains: should a man of religious conviction be forced to use the third person plural pronoun to refer to any person?
And, come to think of it, did the Burkes object when Christianity was being “shoved down the throats of the people of Ireland, not only in the schools but in the universities”?
According to the media, the nuclear power plant in Ukraine is controlled by the Russian military and being bombed by artillery.
The Ukrainian state spokespersons accuse the Russians of bombing it themselves while the Russian state spokespersons blame the Ukrainian military. Both warn of the danger of a nuclear disaster.
Amidst the trading accusations, about what can we all be sure?
Well, really only of a few things about which there is (or seems to be) agreement:
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, although it is being maintained in operation by the Ukrainian State’s employees is within the area occupied by the Russian military very soon after the Russian invasion.
The plant is being bombed by someone.
Due to the bombing, there is a danger of nuclear disaster, initially in the Donbas region where the plant is located but quickly affecting large areas of at least the Ukrainian and of the Russian states and ultimately affecting other areas of Europe1.
The bombing of the plant should stop immediately and all possible efforts should be expended in that direction.
To go beyond that and arrive at a reasonably safe conclusion about who is doing the bombing, we need to employ critical deductive analysis and to set aside as far as we can our prejudices. We can’t help but have those but we can set them aside for a moment.
Using critical deductive analysis means looking at aspects like what is logical, who benefits from what, what other evidence is available ….
Russian or Donbas military Guard Outside Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Russian-controlled Enerhodar City Zaporizhzhia Region, Ukraine August 4, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko/File Photo
CRITICAL DEDUCTIVE ANALYSIS
Who could benefit from the bombing? In theory, either.
The Ukrainian authorities say the Russian do because they wish to blame their opponents.
Since the Ukrainians have demanded the Russians – apart from withdrawing their military entirely – remove themselves from the area of the nuclear plant, presumably the Ukrainians would benefit from blame attaching to the Russians.
Interestingly, “The US, United Nations and Ukraine have called for a withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the nuclear complex, Europe’s largest, to ensure it is not a target.”2
The Ukrainian state already has US/NATO and the western mass media on its side but a threatened nuclear disaster would inject much greater urgency into the Ukrainian State’s regular calls for more and greater weapons.
Presumably the Russian state, if they were seen to be innocent of this bombing, could use the danger of nuclear disaster to rally greater support within its state and among its allies too.
Who faces the greatest risk in the continued bombing?
Both face a risk of a nuclear disaster, initially and later from fallout. However, initially at least, it is the Russian military in the immediate area, along with the Ukrainian staff of the plant at greatest risk.
But very close behind that in high risk come the civilian population of the Donbas, from which Luhansk militia are drawn – in other words, friends, families, relations, lovers of the Luhansk militia.
Who knows the truth?
Undoubtedly, in the immediate first instance, the Ukrainian military, the Russian military, the people of the locality including the Luhansk militia and, presumably, the staff of the nuclear plant. But also the intelligence services of US/NATO.
The mainstream western media is not publishing interviews with the people of the locality and have slanted their general reporting against Russia, which leaves the Ukrainian State side with the most impact3 in the controversy.
And the intelligence services of US/NATO, who have kept quiet on this issue.
Another accusation which the Ukrainian authorities have made against the Russian side is that they have installed artillery around the nuclear plant from which they have been firing at the Ukrainian military.
This would be against rules of conflict that military should avoid installing their personnel, weapons or material in or around civilian facilities.4
Accusing the Russian military of installing artillery around the site would also seem to provide the Ukrainian military with a reason for shelling the area themselves.
There is a strong inconsistency in the Ukrainian accusation, ignored by the media. We are asked to believe that the Russian military is shelling the facility but also firing from next to it?
One of a number of aerial photos published after missile strike very near the nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe (Image sourced: Internet)
Is it possible? Fire from the position, move all the weapons and personnel out, then bomb it themselves, repeat the whole operation and repeat again? Hardly.
And such movements would surely show up in intelligence reports of US/NATO but they are not confirming it. In fact, the Russian side showed their satellite photos of the site in which no artillery could be seen and also pointed out that the US had their own satelliteimages but was saying nothing.
Satellite imagery was published recently showing smoke from artillery strikes on the site and would surely be available to show alleged Russian artillery installations there and, in fact, their firing from there5.
And very clear satellite imagery was readily available and published in the media to support the Ukrainian authorities’ claim that Russian planes in the Saky airbase in the Crimea had been destroyed on 9th August.6
Aerial Photos Crimean Airbase Before & After Ukrainian Missile Strikes Ukraine War August 9 2022
Another inconsistency of the allegation that the Russians are risking a nuclear disaster is in reconciling it with Russian state war aims.
The Russians say they invaded to prevent the Ukrainian state from becoming an outpost of the US/NATO offensive military alliance along their border and b) to protect the largely Russian-speaking population of the Donbas area from attacks by the Ukrainian fascists and military.
The Ukrainian State, backed up by US/NATO and the media7 say that all of it is to do with Russian imperialism and land-grabbing.
In either case, is it likely that the Russians would risk nuclear contamination of the whole area they wish to occupy or to defend? And is it likely that the Luhansk militia, drawn from the people of the area, would permit their homes and family to be put in such a terrible risk?
CONCLUSION:
Having employed critical deductive analysis of the available evidence, the logical conclusion must be that
The nuclear facility is being bombed by the Ukrainian military
They are bombing it hoping to force the Russian military evacuation out of the area and/or to accuse the Russian military of doing the bombing and to employ it in propaganda against the invading Russian military
and to create a sense of environmental danger from the latter
in which they are accustomed to expect uncritical cooperation from the mainstream western media and from US/NATO
to assist in having states within NATO send them more and more weapons
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN?
Clearly, the Ukrainian military should cease bombarding the nuclear installation immediately
and to assist in that, the western media should make clear who is responsible.
And the International Atomic Energy Agency should send as neutral a team as possible (including perhaps officials and experts from China, Iran and India) to inspect the site and publish their results8.
The USA/ NATO should break their silence on their satellite surveillance and photos of the site.
This process and conclusion will be difficult for a number of key players and for many commentators. The process will expose the Ukrainian military as having been engaged in activity with potential to cause an environmental disaster.
It will expose their political leadership as having lied while trying to blame their opponents. The US/NATO block and their allies will be put in an awkward position for having supported the Ukrainian authorities while they were engaged in that activity.
The whole affair may switch – or at least weaken — wide western public sympathy away from the Ukrainian state. Many people may have to reappraise their positions in part or even completely.
Difficult, yes – but is that any justification for collusion in the possibility of a nuclear disaster?
End.
IAEA Mission Setting Out for Nuclear Power Plant Ukraine 29 August 2022 (Source image: IAEA’s website)
FOOTNOTES:
1Although assessments of the likely affected range of the disaster differ strongly (see Sources)
4Both sides have been accused of violating those rules but in terms of hard evidence, mostly the Ukrainian military, as was revealed in the recent report of the more usually pro-western Amnesty International.
Conflict reporting requires special skills, especially when doing so far from the the actual battleground (as is often the case and usually with western media reporting on the conflict in the Ukraine). Also journalists naturally want to eat, pay their mortgages and university fees for their children etc so it is important to write what is likely to get published which, in the last analysis and usually the first, will be decided by the editors of the news media paying them.
I’ve put together some dos and don’ts to help with that from my experience. Social media also plays an increasingly important role in public opinion and I’ve also provided some brief guidelines for interaction there.
MEDIA REPORTING
DO NOT give any credence to constant reports of Ukrainian military using Ukrainian civilians as human shields. Now that Amnesty International has verified that pattern, publicise all the politicians and military criticising that report.
LOOK FOR and repeat quotes of politicians accusing the Rusians of “targeting civilians”, practicing “terrorism” or even “genocide”.
Any DAMAGE TO CIVILIAN HOMES or other buildings by artillery must always be by the Russian military to the Ukrainian state side of the conflict, never to the other side by Ukrainian artillery. Your editors do not want to read or hear about damage to the other side’s homes or civilian buildings.
However, IT IS GREAT TO REPORT damage to Russian military or Donetsk People’s Militia and Luhansk People’s Militia, because it makes the Ukrainian state forces (and NATO weapons) look good.
DAMAGE TO UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES claimed by the Russians may be reported but always as an unverifiable claim, unless confirmed by Ukrainian state sources.
DAMAGE TO RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES claimed by Ukrainian state sources should always be reported in as fact-seeming a manner as possible (though from time to time some agencies will insert the caveat of being “unable to verify the claims of either side at this time”).
HUMAN INTEREST and emotional stories should always be from the Ukrainian state side. Dog-saving stories did very well but might have been overdone. Refugee or otherwise victim children, old people and women tend to make sympathetic subjects. Your editors are not interested in dogs, children, old people or women from the other side; they will only confuse the picture for readers.
ALWAYS REPORT HUMANITARIAN SUPPLY OR EVACUATION corridors as at Ukrainian or external initiative and if failing, should always be reported as with Russian culpability.
ALWAYS refer to the Donetsk People’s Militia and Luhansk People’s Militia as “pro-Russian” forces and never as defensive in origin.
ALWAYS reference the conflict as beginning in 2022 with the Russian invasion.
IF USING AN EARLIER TIME reference, write that it began with the “annexation of Crimea by Russia” in 2014
NEVER refer to the Russian-speakers in the Donbas region being attacked in 2014 by Ukrainian fascists and military and in some areas successfully defending themselves.
NEVER refer to the Russian-speakers in the Crimea holding a referendum in which a huge majority voted to ask to become part of Russia.
AVOID REFERRING to political parties banned in Ukrainian state territory, reporters arrested or threatened, news media censored or closed and films and books banned. The same can however be freely reported when the Russian state is the one doing it.
ALWAYS refer to the Ukrainian state as a democracy and the 2014 riots and abrupt change of government as a democratic one, never as a coup nor with reference to attacks on LGBT people, Roma, Left-wingers, Russian-speakers or any other group. Do not under any circumstances mention the burning alive of 42 people in a trade union hall by Ukrainian fascists.
ALWAYS precede any reports on Russian military advances as being a response to “setbacks” or “failure” in a supposed “attempt to capture Kyiv”. Never give any credence to claims that the Russian military advance on Kyiv was in order to limit the Ukraine state’s ability to direct, supply and support Ukrainian state military elsewhere in the region. Or that Russia had nowhere enough troops there to try to take Kyiv.
AVOID mentioning the Azov Regiment when possible (this was not possible when reporting on Mariupol, of course, since they were the core of the Ukrainian state forces there) but if doing so, NEVER call them “fascists” or “fascist-led”. It is of course permissible to refer to them as “nationalist” and sometimes as “having some far-Right members”.
ALWAYS refer to Ukrainian state military fighting as “heroic” and any defeats due merely to Russian military equipment superiority. NEVER mention that the Russian invading force were outnumbered by Ukrainian military by four to one OR that the Russian military were not battle-hardened while the Ukrainian military had been fighting the defensive Russian-speaking areas’ militia for eight years.
OCCASIONALLY refer to “demoralisation” or “war-weariness” among the Russian military (NEVER among the Ukrainian armed forces, least of all about their desertions).
FREQUENTLY quote Premier Zelenski at length and Putin, if unavoidable, in brief.
FREQUENTLY quote heads of state and prominent public figures etc of NATO countries, especially its leader, the USA in support of the Ukrainian state and against Russia.
NEVER QUOTE public figures of those same states in criticising NATO or the Ukrainian state – doing so will only confuse people.
ALWAYS present NATO as “a defensive military alliance which is no threat to anyone”.
SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTING GUIDELINES ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE
ANY TIME someone posts an item which shows the Ukrainian regime in a nasty light, respond by posting comments
attacking them personally as “Putinistas” or “Putin whores”
as pro-Russian imperialism or as “Russian shils”
or attack their sources as of “Kremlin origin”, “Russian-funded”, etc
or post links to articles attacking Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine conflict as a reply.
RIDICULE any consideration of Russian claims that NATO has been steadily circling Russia ever-closer (despite the maps appearing to show this is what has been happening). Respond to the person making those claims
attacking them personally as “Putinistas” or “Putin whores” or as “Russian shils”
as pro-Russian imperialism
or post links to articles attacking Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine conflict as a reply.
ATTACK any reference to fascist forces such as the Azov by claiming
that they are just “nationalist” or
they have been broken up and spread through the rest of the forces (not to “infect” the rest, of course not)
accuse the commentators of being “Putinistas” or “Putin whores”
and pro-Russian imperialism or as “Russian shils”
or counter with reference to Russian use of the Wagner group
or post links to articles attacking Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine conflict as a reply.
JUSTIFY BANNING AND CENSORSHIP of journalists and media platforms
We are being constantly reminded by the western press on a daily basis, quite rightly, of civilians being killed in the Ukraine conflict1. On the Ukrainian side. Somehow, the Ukrainian military never fire at the Russian side – or if they do, they somehow never manage to kill civilians.
Amazing, really, in a war which the media keeps telling us is ferocious.
The Russian side is rarely quoted but when it is, its statements are dismissed. They say that the Ukrainian military plant themselves among civilian housing and fire artillery from there. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they and anyway, the Ukrainian State denies it.
The Russian military are, according to the Ukrainian State, not so much careless about the the targets of their bombardment but deliberately aiming at civilian structures.
Why they would do that when, according to the same sources, they want to extend the Russian empire there, is not explained. It’s all about terrorism, according to Zelensky, the Ukrainian premier and media figure.
The Russian State story, not so easy to come by, is that they never target civilian areas deliberately, unless the Ukrainian military are using them to fire from – which according to the Ukrainian State, quoted without question by the western media, the Ukrainian military never do.
BOMBARDMENT AND CIVILIANS
Yesterday’s issue of Breaking News Ireland carried a very unusual photo. It was unusual because it was taken during actual military action, whereas we normally only get photos of damaged buildings and occasionally Ukrainian military standing firm.
Ukrainian Soldiers run after missile strike in residential area of Kramatorsk, Donetsk Region, Eastern Ukraine (posted 13 July) (Cred: Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
But the photo was more unusual than that because it showed Ukrainian soldiers running for cover after a Russian artillery strike, naturally enough but a less-than heroic image for public consumption. The caption tells us it’s in a civilian area in the Donetsk region.
WAIT A MINUTE! In a civilian area? So the Ukrainian military were in a civilian area and got fired on by Russian artillery? Doesn’t that coincide with what the Russians have been saying? Were those Ukrainian military perhaps even firing from that area? We don’t know.
We don’t know because we get hardly any western media coverage from the actual battlefronts, just quotations from the Ukrainian State and, from time to time, commentary from US/ NATO sources. And never any detail from the Russian side.
If we want a more realistic picture, we have to go to sources banned or at least not promoted in the West.
One of those sources is Patrick Lancaster, reporting on the war. In a recent video, he interviewed wounded civilians in a hospital in Izium, Kharkiv region, an area the Ukrainian military left a couple of days earlier and which is now under Russian military occupation.
So refreshing to watch.
Some interviewees blame the Russian State, some blame the Ukrainian State, some seem impartial or keep their own counsel – as one might expect, really, if one thought about it past the propaganda line, which is that everyone there — except the “Russian separatists” — blames the Russians.
And actually, the Breaking News article reported the reluctance of many to leave Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as they are being publicly encouraged to do by the Ukrainian Donetsk Governor, presumably as those areas are going to be pounded by artillery (but by Ukrainian or by Russian?)
This too is interesting, because even anti-Ukrainian State or pro-Russia interviewees (not always the same thing) interviewed by Patrick Lancaster in the Izium town, said that the Russian artillery had hit their town “very hard”.
But then some also stated that Marchenko, the pro-Ukrainian Mayor of the city had announced publicly that the city had been evacuated. All lies, according to one, “only five buses here …. and 50 taxis (but) from Kramatorsk.”
So if the advancing Russian military believed that only Ukrainian military remained in the city …..?
This is a military conflict and of course both sides are firing and, as well as soldiers, civilians are being inevitably killed on both sides. When that happens, is it likely that either side is killing civilians deliberately?
Certainly less likely by the Russians in the Donetsk area, which is a largely Russian-speaking region that has been attacked by Ukrainian right-wing military since that state’s abrupt change of government in 20142.
By the Ukrainian military side, probably more likely on the basis of the previous eight years, or at least of being more careless.
The article I’ve quoted showed a range of attitudes to the call of Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukrainian State’s Governor of the Donetsk region, for civilians to leave and to head into Ukrainian State-held territory — and also of different attitudes to the forthcoming Russian occupation.
Some are going, including a teacher of Russian, which is interesting, because another doesn’t want to go precisely because of the anti-Russian-speakers attitude of the State (and even more so of some of the Ukrainian military).
Some just don’t want to give up their homes and/ or be jobless (or elderly without support) in Ukrainian State territory. Some think they’ll be ok under the Russians while others think they’ll be no better off on the Ukrainian State side.
So, naturally enough a mixed picture but certainly very different to the one being projected day in, day out by the western media. How this article and photo slipped through that blockade is certainly curious.
DOES IT MATTER?
But at the end of the day, does it really matter much to us here in Ireland whether we are being subjected to inaccurate propaganda about the conflict in Ukraine?
Well, if that conflict was sparked by the expansion towards Russia’s borders of the NATO military alliance3, then it does.
If that conflict is part of the shaping up by US/NATO for a war against Russia and China (and possibly India), then it certainly does. Not just because all of those on both sides are nuclear powers and radiation can end up anywhere.
But also because the ruling elite of the British colony in Ireland is part of NATO and the ruling class of the Gombeen state is trying to push it into NATO — or at least into an EU military alliance, which would of course soon enough line up with NATO.
I don’t believe either side in this conflict without proof and analysis. But I do resent the completely one-sided propaganda coming from the western media. Maybe it’s the same in Russia with their own propaganda.
Maybe, but isn’t it the boast of the West that their democracies are superior, with free speech and press?
And if the western media is following the same propaganda line in its reporting out of common interest with US/NATO and EU, is the end result any different from the media in Russia saying what they are told to say?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Would that they would equally well inform us of those beling killed by the Saudi proxy war in the Sudan or by the numbers of migrants being killed on a regular basis as they try to access safety or just a better life in western states – the same states that are usually responsible for their plight in the first place.
2Yes, eight years prior to the Russian invasion. On the rare occasions when the western media refers to this (they did in the Breaking News Ireland article) it is always portrayed as a problem caused by “pro-Russian separatists” without recording that those areas were attacked as Russian-speaking by Ukrainian fascist and far-Right military units, including the Azov Battalion and the people organised themselves in defence, then received Russian supplies and now, eight years later, a Russian invasion. The origin of the Crimea situation is a similar story.
3For those who think this is a ridiculous claim, type “NATO states in Europe map” into a search engine. Also look up “Minsk Agreement”.
Patrick Lancaster reporting from Izum, Kharkiv region, 120 Km/ 75 miles southeast of Kharkiv city (random civilian interviews + civilians wounded in hospital): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iFv5jxInOc
Patrick Lancaster, December 2016 (yes, SIX YEARS AGO) in Luhansk People’s Militia trench, under Ukrainian shelling (breaking Minsk Agreement): https://youtu.be/DAo7go-4l0g
On 2nd June a number of Left anti-imperialist organisations and individuals held a public rally in Bilbo/ Bilbao. The municipal authority refused them use of a building and they held it in the open air in the Etxebarrieta Square. The organisers issued a statement in Euskera (Basque language) and Castillian (Spanish) calling for unity against the war plans of NATO and the EU and denounced the equivocating posture of the ‘official’ left Basque movement, denounced also the militarism of the Spanish coalition Government and advertised a joint demonstration for 18th June in Moyua, on the south side of the river in Bilbao1.
STATEMENT ISSUED BY COORDINATING GROUP (translated by D.Breatnach from Castilian Spanish version published in Ecuador Etxea)
For several weeks, various people and groups from Bilbao, Meatzaldea, Uribe-Kosta, Ezkerraldea and Busturialdea2 have been coming together in this broad initiative to respond to the escalation of war that we are seeing around us. An escalation of war promoted by NATO, with the aim of shielding the world hegemony of the United States against the rise of emerging powers such as China, India, Iran or Russia. A strategy that is doomed to failure, but that will cause, if we do not prevent it first, destruction, misery and death throughout the planet.
In Bilbo/ Bilbao 2nd June, reading the declaration and call to unite and for rally on 18 June in Basque and Castillian (Spanish). (Photo source: Ecuador Etxea)
In relation to the conflict in Ukraine, we believe that in no case can one speak of an inter-imperialist struggle between the NATO countries and Russia. Rather, it is an offensive planned for years to overthrow the legitimate government led by Vladimir Putin and gain control of Russian energy resources and markets. A policy of looting and plundering that the current Russian President put a stop to, no matter how hard it is for some to admit it. Ukraine is nothing more than the operations base and the cannon fodder of Atlanticist imperialism against its historical enemy, Russia.
Many on the Left say that the Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of yesterday. And they are completely correct. The problem is that even the slightest economic planning for social purposes by any State has become an obstacle to the viability of the parasitic capitalism that we live under. There we have the cases of Slovdan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, sadly imprisoned and/or executed in the face of complicit silence or the enthusiastic support of what they call the “international community.”
Those of us who are here today have already learned our lesson: first they demonize the currently out of favour ruler through the media, and then they justify military offensives and imperialist massacres. That is why at this time we cannot make the mistake of placing ourselves at equidistance. Both Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics have every right in the world to defend themselves against the aggressions of NATO and the EU, which conspire and supply weapons to fascist governments like Zelensky’s to harass Russia and destabilize the region. Not to mention the openly Nazi battalions captured in Azovstal, whose release France and Germany now demand in order to advance in the negotiations. What do European governments owe the Nazis in Azov? What do they have to hide and why do they intend to buy their silence?
The truth is that we still do not know the exact reason why the States of the European Union have completely bowed to the interests of the United States. It is evident that the sanctions against Russia and the new oil and gas supply routes imposed by the US only benefit the Yankee tycoons, the Arab sheikhs and the absolutist monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates. NATO vassals like Borrell have definitively cast the old European project into History’s dump. They prioritize profit and military spending to the detriment of the health and living conditions of the broad masses and announce a future of misery and sacrifice for a war in favor of a capitalism that is against us. The European Union is definitely a rotting political corpse, in case anyone ever thought that it could have been a progressive alternative or for oppressed nations like ours.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of “the institutional Abertzale Left” (Basque left-nationalist movement). (Photo source: Internet)
Precisely here in the Basque Country, the official position of the institutional Abertzale Left3 regarding what is happening in the Ukraine is especially embarrassing. It seems unbelievable that those who proclaim themselves heirs to the historic struggles of the Basque Working People, a people of which the majority in 1986 opposed remaining in this criminal organization4, now wave the flag of “no to war” and of ambiguity. It seems immoral to us, both the pacifism that denies the just right to defense of those who are attacked by imperialism, as well as the lukewarm posture of those who do not take a stand, thus facilitating the advance of imperialism. Anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism must be cultivated day by day, if we do not want the ideological and cultural offensive of NATO and the EU to continue having effect, in particular among the sons and daughters of the working class. Thirty-six years later we unambiguously reaffirm ourselves in NO to NATO, no to FASCISM, no to GENOCIDAL IMPERIALISM.
As we said, we are witnessing an implacable propaganda to make us part of this imperialist strategy, so that we do not rebel against what is happening. While they continue to spread one-sided thinking through the big media, television channels that question the official story — such as Russia Today — are closed without the slightest shame, content on the Internet is censored by appealing to supposed “verified information”, journalists like Pablo González5 are imprisonedor political information is systematically eliminated from our streets. They not only want to indoctrinate us, they directly deny us the right to be informed. Where are the defenders of freedom of expression? Are we already living in a hidden state of emergency?
It is our obligation, therefore, to denounce, not only the rise of international fascism, but also the fertile ground that the fascists have in the Spanish State of the bannings, the GAL6, the closure of newspapers and the systematic torture of political dissidents7. Atlantic capitalism will never be able to find a better ally than the PSOE8, veritable experts in the art of manipulating and deceiving the working and broad masses. Sadly, there are times when collective memory seems too fragile. Of course, for this new phase they have found a faithful shield-bearer, the party of Yolanda Díaz9. Seconds were never good, we are already seeing where these wolves in sheep’s clothing are leading us…
We said at the beginning that different people have come together to counteract this hegemonic discourse that manipulates consciences and protects the sequestration of rights and freedoms. From Muskiz to Gernika we rebel today here against this ominous imperialist offensive. All this suffering is not necessary, there is no reason to accept the misery and the war to which NATO and the EU want to condemn us. It is also not the time to stay at home watching, or to follow the war as if it were a video game.
We therefore issue a call to all the towns and neighborhoods of Euskal Herria and other nations to continue organizing the fight against imperialism, capitalism and fascism. And we also invite all the people who are against the imperialist offensive of NATO and the EU to participate in the demonstration that we will carry out in Bilbao, on June 18 at 6:30 p.m. from the Plaza Elíptica.
NO TO NATO! NO TO THE EUROPEAN UNION! NO TO IMPERIALISM!
End statement.
TRANSLATOR FOOTNOTES
1Which is also the location of the representation of the Spanish State in Bizkaia and guarded by armed police.
2A number of towns and districts across the SW Basque province of Bizkaia.
3The ‘official’ leadership of the left-Basque independence movement, e.g the EH Bildu party under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and others.
4In the 1986 referendum on whether to remain in NATO, the Basque Country gave the highest majority for No, with the Canaries and Catalonia coming behind. For the whole Spanish state, nearly 57% voted Yes against 43.15%.
5Basque freelance journalist reporting for Publico (Spanish left online media) and La Sexta, threatened and advised to leave Ukraine by state intelligence services, which he did but arrested by Polish intelligence on 28 February as he was about to re-enter Ukraine with a group of journalists. Poland has charged him with spying for Russia but to date produced no evidence and even denied him access to his lawyer. The Spanish State sent intelligence service agents to question his wife, mother and friends.
6GAL: A Spanish state terror and assassination organisation of the 1980s operating against the Basque resistance which was exposed as led by the Prime Minister (though never even questioned) Felipe Gonzales and directed operationally by the Minister of the Interior and senior Army and Police officers, a number of which received prison sentences.
7The Spanish state has long been accused by human rights organisations of torturing political dissidents and convicted in the European Court of Human Rights a number of times of failure to investigate complaints of torture. The State has closed newspaper and social media sites, jailed rappers, banned political parties, banned demonstrations, closed political cultural centres, disqualified political activists from representation in elections and jailed political activists.
8The main Spanish social-democratic party, currently in coalition government with Podemos.
9Yolanda Díaz resigned from Izquierda Unida (United Left – a broad coalition) but remained a member of the Communist Party of Spain; she is currently Deputy Prime Minister in the Spanish coalition government.
In an article by Virginia Harrison on May 16th, in a context of praising the resistance of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol and in which she stated that the Azov Regiment had in the past (italics mine) had “nationalist far-right affiliations” (as distinct from fascist), she went on to state the following: “The regiment …………….. was a militia formed to fight the Russians after the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 but has become a unit of the Ukrainian national guard.”
Apart from failing to inform readers when and how the Azov allegedly dropped their “far-right affiliations”, the Guardian journalist is claiming the unit was formed to resist a Russian “invasion of Ukraine in 2014”!
Donbas resistance fighters near Donetsk Airport May 26, 2014. (photo credit- AP/Vadim Ghirda). According to the accompanying text, the Ukrainians hit the defenders with airstrikes.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Russia invaded Ukraine early this year, 2022. The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine began in 2014, i.e eight years before the Russian invasion. Prior to the time of the Russian invasion in early 2022, over 14,000 people had already been killed in the conflict.
It was not Russia that began that conflict but the Ukrainian far-Right and fascist forces supported by a section of the Ukrainian oligarchy after it had overthrown another section in the “Maidan Revolution” (sic) in February 2014. Those forces began to impose a fascist and racist agenda, attacking LGBT people, left trade unionists, Roma, Greek Russian minorities and Russian-speakers in general. The new Ukrainian Government also removed any official status or support for Russian – even as a regional language — although the language is spoken by 29.5% of the population, or approximately one for every two speakers of Ukrainian1.
In response to the official and unofficial attacks of the Ukrainian Right, the residents of the Crimea held a referendum on 16th February 2014 in which 90% voted for secession and for incorporation into Russia, which in turn formally annexed the Crimea two days later on the 18th.
11 September 2014 — Funeral of Ukrainian officer — note not only Ukrainian flags but red-and-black of ideological followers of the fascist Stephen Bandera (Credit: Yurkevych-Andriy-pohoron)
At the same time, Russian-speakers began to organise themselves for defence in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas, heavily industrialised regions also known collectively as the Donbas. For eight years before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian government forces including in particular the fascist Azov Battalion, now incorporated into the Ukranian National Guard attacked the Russian-speakers who, in the course of this declared their intention to secede from the Ukraine and asked for support from Russia. A number of fierce battles in 2014-2015 ended with one third of the regions’ territory, its most urbanised part, occupied by two statelets calling themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
During this period Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany signed several versions of the Minsk agreements, which eventually stopped troop advances and reduced fighting significantly. But the Ukraine government never implemented the agreements and the governments of France and Germany failed to push for implementation from the new NATO-supported Ukrainian government.
April 2019 — Damage to Donetsk airport in the battle for its control by the Ukrainian armed forces and the Donbas resistance (Photo sourced: Internet)
The fighting became a trench war, with roughly 75,000 troops facing each other off along a 420-km-long front line cutting through densely populated areas. The territory became one of the world’s most landmine-contaminated areas, its heavy industry and economy ruined, destroyed many houses and public buildings and infrastructure and caused the relocation of millions. All of which occurred before any Russian invasion.
A female of the Donbas resistance as part of a guard force escorting Ukrainian prisoners in 2014.
WHAT THE GUARDIAN PRETENDS
The newspaper, while asking us to “Support the Guardian”, stated:
“The truth, they say, is the first casualty of war. With correspondents on the ground in Ukraine covering the war, as well as throughout the world, the Guardian is well placed to provide the honest, factual reporting that readers will need to understand this perilous moment for Europe, the former Soviet Union and the entire world. Free from commercial or political influence, we can report fearlessly on global events and challenge those in power.
“We believe everyone deserves equal access to accurate news. Support from our readers enables us to keep our journalism open and free for everyone, including in Russia and Ukraine.
“Support the Guardian from as little as €1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you.”
In its mission statement, The Guardian continues:
“Of course, in a serious age, the appetite for thoughtful, clever features beyond the news is possibly greater than ever. Our readers want to be nourished – by meaningful journalism about technology, economics, science, the arts – not fattened up with junk. They want useful, enjoyable reporting on how we live now, spotting trends, catching the mood, understanding what people are talking about – life-affirming, inspiring, challenging. We can be fun, and we must be funny, but it must always have a point, laughing with our audience, never at them. Their attention is not a commodity to be exploited and sold. ……………………
“We will give people the facts, because they want and need information they can trust, and we will stick to the facts. We will find things out, reveal new information and challenge the powerful. This is the foundation of what we do. As trust in the media declines in a combustible political moment, people around the world come to the Guardian in greater numbers than ever before, because they know us to be rigorous and fair. If we once emphasised the revolutionary idea that “comment is free”, today our priority is to ensure that “facts are sacred”. Our ownership structure means we are entirely independent and free from political and commercial influence. Only our values will determine the stories we choose to cover – relentlessly and courageously.”2
Great words, Katherine Viner, Editor-in-Chief – a pity that despite some good journalists on the staff and as correspondents, the Guardian regularly falls short of its own proclaimed ideals. Falsifying history, biased war reporting and obscuring fascist affiliations hardly matches your high moral tone.
End.
FOOTNOTES
12001 Census, quoted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine Also from the same source: “An August 2011 poll by Razumkov Centre showed that 53.3% of the respondents use the Ukrainian language in everyday life, while 44.5% use Russian. In a May 2012 poll by RATING, 50% of respondents considered Ukrainian their native language, 29% Russian, 20% consider both Ukrainian and Russian their mother tongue and 1% considered a different language their native language.”
2Katherine Viner, November 2017: “In a turbulent era, the media must define its values and principles” etc.
Written by Paul Antonopoulos, independent geopolitical analyst
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
Rebel Breeze preface: An interesting article (reprinted from South Front with thanks) about an ethnic minority rarely mentioned in the propaganda war from each of the antagonists and their supporters. Although some alternative media sources alluded to their being persecuted following the abrupt change of Ukrainian government in 2014 and the 8 years that followed in the Donbas region preceding the Russian invasion, the ethnic Greeks dropped out of site despite their large concentration particularly around Mariupol. This article reminds us of them and also of their history as a community in the Ukraine.
The surrender of the Azovstal Plant in Mariupol on May 20 was a major victory for Russian forces as they not only gained control of a major port city, but symbolically drove away the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion from their base. Although consumers of Western mainstream media were bombarded with allegations of war crimes perpetrated by Russian soldiers, such as the Mariupol Drama Theatre (in which local residents warned of a Ukrainian false flag operation days earlier), they had completely ignored the crimes and persecutions faced by non-Ukrainian speakers, including ethnic Greeks.
Mariupol and its surrounding villages are home to 100,000-120,000 ethnic Greeks, who are native Russian-speakers. Only a small number are currently proficient in either Crimean-Mariupolitan Greek or Modern Standard Greek. Mariupol is a city founded in 1778 by Crimean Greeks on the invitation of Catherine the Great to resettle lands that had been conquered from the Ottoman Turks and to escape persecution in the then Muslim-dominated Crimea. A second wave of Greek migrants arrived in the Azov region from Pontos to escape the Ottoman Turkish perpetrated genocide in 1913-1923.
Pontic Greek resistance to Turkish genocide (Photo sourced: Internet)
Yet, despite Greeks having first colonized Crimea in the 7th century BC, more than a millennium and a half before the Slavs arrived in the mid-10th century after the peninsula was conquered by Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev, Ukrainian authorities refuses to recognize the Greeks as an indigenous group to Ukraine. Although the reality is that Crimea is now a part of Russia, Kiev continues to recognize it as occupied territory, and in turn the designation of Greeks as non-indigenous means that they could not access the same resources as other ethnic groups which have been labelled indigenous. This makes preserving language, culture and identity all the more difficult.
Pontic Greek dancers in traditional costumes (Photo sourced: Internet)
The fact that Mariupol Greeks are native Russian speakers and their villages voted in their majority to join the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014, saw them persecuted by the Ukrainian state and their Azov Battalion enforcers. It is recalled that on February 14, only 10 days before the Ukraine War began, one Greek was killed and another wounded in a shooting by the Azov Battalion because they were speaking Russian amongst themselves in the village of Granitne. Before the Russian operation began, this was the line of contact between Ukrainian and Russian forces, and like many of the other Greek villages, had voted to join the DPR.
Azov Battallion fighters in Ukraine (Photo sourced: Internet)
One woman from the Greek-majority town of Sartana, 17 kilometers northeast of Mariupol, told American journalist Patrick Lancaster that they were forced to endure Ukrainization and could not speak Russian in public unless they wanted to risk a fine.
Between the non-recognition as an indigenous minority, forced Ukrainization and even murder, the Greeks of Mariupol have suffered immensely under the Azov Battalion, yet Western media has remained near silent, or at the maximum they are non-critical of the racist policies of Kiev. Although Western audiences were bombarded with scenes from the battle of Mariupol, including the Greek government’s unverified claims that the Russian air force bombed Greek villages, there has been near silence now about the current situation in the port city and its surrounds.
As the overwhelming majority of Greeks are now in territory controlled by Russian forces, life has resumed as normal as possible for those living close to a warzone. Schools in Sartana are operating again and people are trying to resume business as normal. What is for certain though is that racist killings just for speaking Russian or any other language other than Ukrainian has come to an end.
With the Greeks of Mariupol now a part of the DPR, the Greek government finds itself in a conundrum as they promised to never abandon the autocephalous community but at the same time has agreed to nearly every anti-Russia sanction and demand made by Washington and Brussels. This makes the reopening of the Greek Consulate in Mariupol dependent on the goodwill of the DPR administration.
Only on May 31 it was announced that Greece’s East Germany-made ΒΜΡ-1 infantry fighting vehicles would be sent to Ukraine so Berlin can replace Greece’s fleet with German-made Marder armoured vehicles. As Athens continues its hostile policy, it lessens the chance of any Russian goodwill so that the Greek community can remain connected to the Greek State via the consulate.
The plan to transfer BMP-1’s to Ukraine once again created outrage in Greece as the announcement was not made by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during his joint statement with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but rather by the German leader himself. Greeks lambasted the cowardliness of Mitsotakis of not having made the announcement himself – keeping in mind that over 70% of Greeks in a poll want Athens to have a neutral policy towards the war.
Despite the persecution of Greeks since 2014 whilst living under Kiev’s authority and the Azov Battalion, the Greek government has been near silent on this, only releasing periodical statements that hint towards Ukraine needing to improve minority rights and nowhere near to the same degree of their criticism of Russia.
Greece in the months leading up to the war was making strong attempts to have soft power influence in Mariupol, something that could have continued if there was an acceptance that the entirety of Donetsk was going to be under full Russian control. The harsh reality for Athens is that although the Greeks of Mariupol will be disconnected from Greece, they will live in a far safer environment and with respect to their identity and language, just as the Greeks in Russia’s Crimea, Stavropol Krai and Krasnodar Krai experience.
Anatoly Shariy, a popular blogger who opposes Zelensky but also the Russian invasion, accused of being “pro-Russian” and of “high treason” to Ukraine, has been arrested in Spain for extradition to Ukraine, where he has been threatened by nazis. He has also been threatened by Zelensky supporters at his Catalonian address, where he has registered a complaint with the police. Shariy is considered “not a flight risk” by the Spanish State and is out on bail while his extradition warrant is processed. This is at least the second occasion of Spanish State involvement with the Ukrainian authorities against critics – Spanish secret service agents questioned the family and friends of Pablo González, the Basque reporter on the conflict threatened by the Ukrainian intelligence service and later arrested by Poland on charges of “spying” for the Russians, now in his third month of detention without yet a judicial hearing.
Reporting on the arrest and accusations, most right-wing and conservative media outlets follow what has become their standard practice of mirroring Ukrainian official opinion and refer to him as “pro-Russian” in their headlines and it seems clear that if extradited, Shariy would have little chance of a fair trial.
D. Breatnach
5th May 2022
The following is mostly translation by D.Breatnach from article in Castillian Spanish
According to the Ukrainian government, the Spanish National Police arrested the Ukrainian journalist Antoli Sharíy who has been persecuted by the Kyiv government and threatened with death by the fascist groups that operate under its protection.
Anatoli Sharíy and Olga Bondarenko live with their son in Roda de Berà (DB: near Tarragona, Catalonia, Spanish state) and, for two years, have been harassed at their doorstep by people close to the government of Volodomír Zelenski. The Mossos d’Esquadra (DB: Catalonia police) are aware and prevent physical assault but the threatening messages – also in the image of a blood-stained cradle – have not stopped.
All this is related to the public activity of this Ukrainian couple, who have not set foot in their country for several years. Anatoli Sharí has a YouTube channel with almost three million subscribers and is one of the most influential journalists since even before the Maidan revolt in 2014.
Neo-Nazis have not only leaked the address of his home but also posted the identity of the son, a minor to which, according to his mother Olga Bondarenko, only the Ukrainian Consulate could have access. The last protest took place before Easter, but they fear for their safety especially when the men are allowed to leave Ukraine once the conflict ends.
Until now, all the extradition attempts have been unsuccessful, but after Pedro Sánchez’s visit to Kyiv it seems that everything has been reactivated. The Spanish Government has given way to the bizarre accusation made by the Zelensky government: high treason.
Government-connected investigations
Before leaving the Ukraine, Shari was a journalist based in Kiiv who worked for the Obozravatel outlet. He investigated issues related to illegal casinos, the sale of drugs in pharmacies, murders … Some of them, as he explained in an interview given a few days ago to Nació Digital, “had a connection with the Ministry of the Interior, which covered up the crimes.” At that time, Viktor Yanukovych ruled, a president considered pro-Russian and originally from Donbass.
As a result of some pressure, in 2012 Shari went into exile, passing through the Netherlands and ending up in Barcelona. In 2015 he decided to move to Roda de Berà, albeit without refugee status.
the euromaidan
Between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, the Euromaidan revolt broke out, a series of protests especially concentrated in the capital that sought to oust the then president, Viktor Yanukovych, to force a rapprochement with the European Union. Anatoli watched it from exile, but it was shortly before he began his careeras a political journalist.
The events of May 2, 2014, in Odessa, in which 48 people were killed by the launch of Molotov cocktails when they took refuge from the neo-Nazis in the so-called “House of Trade Unions”, raised alarms. This mass murder carried out by the Pravy Sektor (‘Right Sector’, neo-Nazi) caused Anatoli to start posting videos on the networks expressing his opinion and at the same time communicating information about his investigations.
Olha Bondarenko and Anatoly Shariy (Photo sourced: Internet)
“There has never been as much corruption as now”
Anatoly is accused of treason by supporting Russia on you Tube … but contrary to the accusation, YouTube is known to ban all videos that support Russia.
The first months of the Zelensky government did not meet the expectations of a part of the population, who saw him as a leader who could command respect among the different political outlooks that existed in the country. “We wanted Zelensky to be elected because in Ukraine there are many problems with the battalions and the neo-Nazis,” explains Olga.
Beside her, Anatoli denies that these are few: “It is very easy to control the population with weapons even if they are only 10 out of 100,000.” “They have a lot of power, they have weapons, they attack journalists, a lot of people are afraid and the Government does nothing about them,” he adds. One of the best-known battalions in this sense is the Azov, which has even welcomed among its members different international fighters with extreme right-wing ideology, one of them a resident of Segur de Calafell (DB: in Tarragona, Catalonia).
Break with Zelensky
Although before the elections a good relationship existed between Anatoli Sharí and Volodomír Zelensky, the situation changed drastically in 2020. Cases of corruption, such as speculation with the sale of protective masks that arrived in the country during the pandemic were denounced by Anatoli. He declares that “there has never been as much corruption as there is now, not even with Poroshenko.”
The military operation of the Russian government is considered by Anatoli a “gift” for Zelensky, who was steadily declining in popularity before it occurred. One of his rivals in his political career was Anatoli himself, who since June 2019 has led his own party, with a liberal ideology and a discourse against corruption and against neo-Nazi groups.
Supporters of Shariy’s party in 2019 (Photo sourced: Internet)
“The three main opponents of Zelensky are Viktor Medvedchuk, Poroshenko and Anatoli,” says Olga, who points out that this would be one of the reasons why he was accused of high treason in 2020 and, later, once the war had already started, had his party banned, along with others. “Zelensky is a little tyrant and now he has won the lottery to do whatever he wants,” she says.
The accusation of high treason was used by Zelensky to block Anatoli’s and Olga’s Facebook, YouTube and Instagram profiles, and not only that, but he has also imposed various sanctions such as prohibiting them both and also Olga’s mother from having a bank account.
Alternative media
With the blocking of opponents’ (of Zelensky) social networks, thousands of Ukrainians have had to look for alternatives from which to receive information of all kinds. Views of Anatoli’s YouTube channel every time he uploads a video are almost instantaneous, apart from live broadcasts, and most are either from residents in the country — through VPN services — or from Ukrainians who have had to leave. Through these spaces, they get in touch to help one another, for example when someone needs some medicine, according to Olga.
Meanwhile, the Zelensky government continues to try to narrow Anatoli’s circle more and more. One of his followers, arrested and later fled the country, assured him that, during his arrest, he had been tortured…
************************
Prominent blogger and critic of the Ukrainian government, Anatoly Shariy, has been detained by Spanish police as part of an international operation, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on Thursday.
Shariy was arrested on Wednesday in a joint operation by Spanish and Ukrainian police officers, as well as international “partners”, the SBU said in a statement.
The agency, Kyiv’s successor to the Soviet KGB, said the opposition figure is wanted on charges of treason by Kyiv, among other things. Shariy has been infringing Ukraine’s national security through his media activities, while allegedly acting on behalf of “foreign” forces, it insisted.
The case against the YouTuber with almost 3 million subscribers began in February 2021.
Shariy’s arrest “is one more proof that every traitor to Ukraine will sooner or later receive the deserved punishment from him. It is unavoidable,” the SBU said.
Anatoly Shariy (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Ukrainian announcement was confirmed by the Spanish police
The Ukrainian announcement was confirmed by Spanish police, who told RIA-Novosti that Shariy was arrested in the coastal city of Tarragona on May 4 on an international arrest warrant.
Shariy received political asylum in the EU in Lithuania in 2012. At the time, he said he was fleeing persecution from the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who was branded as pro-Russian by Western media.
Yanukovych was deposed after the Maidan coup in 2014, but the blogger remained a harsh critic of the authorities in Ukraine, be it President Petro Poroshenko or his successor Volodymyr Zelensky.
He condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine after it was launched in late February, but continued to point to what he saw as flaws in Kyiv’s conduct during the ongoing conflict.
The blogger’s political asylum was canceled by Lithuania in January this year.
Shariy was absent from social media on Wednesday, but on Thursday he used Telegram to share a photo of his wife feeding parrots in Barcelona, accompanying it with a comment that read: “This is really a comedy.”
In his Twitter account, according to Publico report, in which Shariy related he had been threatened by a Ukrainian government adviser, the blogger commented: “The only crime I have committed is not to have exposed enough thieves.”
Forensic doctors discover fléchettes – rarely used in modern warfare – in bodies found in mass graves in Bucha, “The Guardian” reported.
Dozens of civilians who allegedly died during presence of the Russian army at the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by tiny metal arrows from shells of a type fired by artillery, forensic doctors claimed. Despite the anti-Russian point of view presented in the research, the results show that these were the AFU who shelled civilians in Bucha.
Pathologists and coroners who are carrying out postmortems on bodies found in mass graves in the region north of Kyiv, where Russian forces have been accused of atrocities, said they had found small metal darts, called fléchettes, embedded in people’s heads and chests.
“We found several really thin, nail-like objects in the bodies of men and women and so did others of my colleagues in the region,” Vladyslav Pirovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor, told “The Guardian”. “It is very hard to find those in the body, they are too thin. The majority of these bodies come from the Bucha-Irpin region.”
Independent weapons experts who reviewed pictures of the metal arrows found in the bodies confirmed that they were fléchettes, an anti-personnel weapon widely used during the first world war.
These small metal darts are contained in tank or field gun shells. Each shell can contain up to 8,000 fléchettes. Once fired, shells burst when a timed fuse detonates and explodes above the ground.
Fléchettes, typically between 3cm and 4cm in length, release from the shell and disperse in a conical arch about 300m wide and 100m long. On impact with a victim’s body, the dart can lose rigidity, bending into a hook, while the arrow’s rear, made of four fins, often breaks away causing a second wound.
Although human rights groups have long sought a ban on fléchette shells, the munitions are not prohibited under international law. However, the use of imprecise lethal weapons in densely populated civilian areas is a violation of humanitarian law.
“According to a number of witnesses in Bucha, fléchette rounds were fired by artillery a few days before Russian forces withdrew from the area at the end of March”, – “The Guardian” reported.
According to Neil Gibson, a weapons expert at the UK-based Fenix Insight group, who has reviewed the photos of the fléchettes found in Bucha, the metal darts came from a 122mm ZSh1 artillery round. It fits the D-30 howitzers, which is in service with both Russia and Ukraine.
“Another uncommon and rarely seen projectile,” said Gibson on Twitter. “This time it’s the equivalent of the US ‘Beehive’ series of Anti-personnel (APERS) projectiles … It operates like a true shrapnel projectile, but is filled with fléchettes and a wax binder.”
The same fléchettes were used by the AFU in 2014 in the LPR:
Flechette found in body in Bucha (published with report)Flechettes with shell part close view.Flechettes with carrier shell parts
Fléchettes have been used as ballistic weapons since the first world war. Dropped by the then-novel airplanes to attack infantry, the lethal metal darts were able to pierce helmets. They were not widely used during the second world war, but re-emerged in the Vietnam war, when the US employed a version of fléchette loads, packed into plastic cups.
“Fléchettes are an anti-personnel weapon designed to penetrate dense vegetation and to strike a large number of enemy soldiers,” according to Amnesty International. “They should never be used in built-up civilian areas.”
A team of 18 experts from the forensic department of France’s national gendarmerie, alongside a team of forensic investigators from Kyiv, have started documenting the situation after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Bucha.
“We are seeing a lot mutilated (disfigured) bodies,” said Pirovsky. “A lot of them had their hands tied behind their backs and shots in the back of their heads. There were also cases with automatic gunfire, like six to eight holes on the back of victims. And we have several cases of cluster bombs’ elements embedded in the bodies of the victims.”
Evidence collected by experts during a visit to Bucha, Hostomel and Borodianka, and reviewed by independent weapons experts, showed that cluster munitions and powerful unguided bombs were used in the region. They killed a large number of civilians and destroyed at least eight buildings. These types of weapons are banned by the majority of countries worldwide.
Talking about artillery shelling, this rules out any version that interprets the events in Bucha as “premeditated genocide of peaceful Ukrainians”. A lot of evidences, such as the “scattered” position of the corpses, confirmed the contradiction.
As soon as the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed the decision to withdraw from the Kiev and Chernihiv regions, the AFU heavily shelled Russian positions in the towns in the Kiev region with artillery. The investigation confirmed that civilians were killed as a result of artillery shelling. The flechettes could be used both by the Russian and Ukrainian artillery. Russian forces deployed in Bucha could not shell on their own positions. Thus, the civilians were killed during the clashes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
(From Southfront.org — FB prevented me from sharing the post direct or even highlighting the text and pasting into my FB page).
Remains of flechette-delivery shell cases in Ukrainian bombardment of the Duhansk People’s Republic (seceded from Ukraine in 2014 and attacked by Ukrainian military since).
The question of bodies with hands tied behind backs remains an open one but there are at least two possibilities: the Russian military did it or the Ukrainian military did. Bear in mind that the Mayor of Bucha videoed that the Russian military had left and all was ok FOUR DAYS before reports of bodies being found began to be made in the media.
Who knows what reasons they would have had if it were the Russians. If it were the Ukrainians, especially the likes of Azov, they may have seen the victims as collaborators with the Russians. There were reports of bodies with white armbands, which is a sign of neutrality in Russian-occupied areas. Some bodies were also photographed beside Russian food supply containers.
Yes, indeed, we have been. Let us look back over the campaign of misinformation about conflict in Ireland for it has much to teach us about the mass media, about human credulity. We don’t need to go back over 800 years – just to the recent the 30-Year War.
In 1968 a civil rights campaign1 took off in the British Six-County colony in Ireland to include a number of marches and sit-ins, which was regularly met with violence from Loyalist2 mobs and the State. As part of the campaign, in 1969 a march from Belfast to Dublin was organised under the slogan “Civil Rights – North and South”. One of that march’s stops was in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, where the marchers sat at a crossroads and were instantly attacked by the armed British colonial police (then the RUC3, now the PSNI).
Some of the marchers had come from Britain to support the campaign and after being attacked in Lurgan, they bought an English newspaper to see whether the incident had been reported. An occurrence in the town had been reported alright but not what had occurred – the report told their readers that a fight between Catholics and Protestants had been broken up by the RUC, keeping the two sides apart. “There wasn’t a Protestant in sight,” commented a marcher angrily, “except those in RUC uniform …. or unless he was one of us4.”
Later that year, in August, the RUC killed four civilians, including a child, in the Divis Flats area of Belfast by firing at the area with a machine-gun mounted on an armoured car. Their claim they were returning fire from the area was widely refuted by local people but repeated in the media. The incident was not investigated until decades later when the claims of family and local witnesses were vindicated in an Ombudsman’s report.
The representation of the RUC as a force for peace between two groups in a sectarian conflict was to be a repeated media disinformation line through the ongoing conflict, as the struggle became an armed one — although to a large degree the honest broker ‘peacemaker’ cloak shifted from the colonial police on to the British Army.
British troops were sent in to the colony (by a Labour Government, in case we had illusions) in August 1969 and were initially greeted by many people in the ‘nationalist’5 community as saviours, sent to keep the sectarian RUC and Loyalist mobs (often enough amounting to the same thing) away from them. Most politicians and the media represented them as peace-keepers. For most nationalists the illusions did not last long as the Army turned their guns on them.
Although no British soldier had been killed in the Six Counties by the IRA as yet6, on 3rd July 1970 the British Army invaded the staunchly nationalist area of the Lower Falls and forced their way into homes, saying they were searching for arms. Local youths mobilised and attacked the soldiers with stones and petrol bombs7. The soldiers responded by pumping CS gas into the area and soon gun-battles between the IRA and the British Army broke out.
‘After four hours of continuous clashes, the British commander sealed off the area, which comprised 3,000 homes, and imposed a curfew which would last for 36 hours. Thousands of British troops moved into the curfew zone and carried out house-to-house searches for weapons, while coming under intermittent attack from the IRA and rioters. The searches caused much destruction, and a large amount of CS gas was fired into the area. Many residents complained of suffering abuse at the hands of the soldiers. On 5 July, the curfew was brought to an end when thousands of women and children from Anderstonstown8 marched into the curfew zone with food and other supplies for the locals.
‘During the operation, four civilians were killed by the British Army, at least 78 people were wounded and 337 were arrested. Eighteen soldiers were also wounded. Large quantities of weapons and ammunition were (allegedly – DB) captured. The British Army admitted afterwards that some of its soldiers had been involved in looting.’9
Mural on the Falls Road depicting Andersonstown women breaking the British cordon, Falls Curfew, 1970 (Source photo: Wikipedia)Cutting of unknown newspaper report displaying misrepresentation of the struggle, despite being friendly towards the women who broke the British Army siege of the Falls Road, July 1970. (Source photo: Step Back Ireland)
At the time, most of the media reported the clashes as unruly elements irrationally attacking the Army who were there to protect them and were only doing their job. However, the opinion of the nationalist community, though ignored by the media had undergone a huge shift and the first serving British soldier (of many to follow) was killed by the IRA the following year.10
Later in 1970, during riots in Derry, the Army shot two men from the nationalist area, Seamus Cusack and Desmond Beattie, claiming afterwards that they were armed, a claim local people denied. There was no investigation by the authorities, obliging the constitutionalist SDLP11 to withdraw from the colony’s parliament in protest.
On 4th December 1971, an explosion in the Catholic-owned McGurk’s Bar in Belfast killed 15 people and injured 16. Due to the bar’s ownership and location, the most logical attribution would be to Loyalists or British forces. It would be hard to pin it on the IRA – unless it could be said to have been an accidental explosion of an IRA bomb during storage or transportation. That was what the “security forces” came up with, which of course was repeated by the media. An alternative media theory was that in some manner it was a result of a feud between the Official and Provisional IRA. In order to construct that theory, the denials of the IRA had to be discounted12, despite the organisations’ track record of taking public responsibility for its actions.
The explosion had occurred in the pub’s doorway, which would have thrown doubt on the “IRA bomb in transit” story but somehow, the RUC’s forensic examination did not determine that. But even worse, the evidence of an eyewitness had to be dismissed.
‘On 6 December, however, the RUC took a witness statement from an 8-year-old boy. He said that a car had stopped outside the pub with four men inside and “a wee Union Jack stuck in the back window”. He said one left a package in the Great George’s Street doorway and ran back to the car, which sped off just moments before the package exploded. A man and a woman backed up his story, although they did not witness as much as the boy.’13
‘In March 1976 the RUC received intelligence that linked UVF member Robert Campbell and four others to the McGurk’s bombing. Campbell was arrested on 27 July 1977 and held at Castlereagh RUC base. He was interviewed seven times during 27 and 28 July. He admitted his part in the bombing but refused to name the others.Campbell’s story matches that given by the young boy witness.’14
On 29 July 1977, Campbell was charged with the 15 murders and 17 attempted murders and in September 1978 pleaded guilty to all charges (he also had a separate conviction for the murder of a Protestant delivery driver in 1976). He eventually served fifteen years in prison, being released on 9th September 1993.15
Local people searching in the rubble of McGurk’s Bar after the bombing by Loyalists killing 15 but which was blamed on the Republican armed organisations. (Photo credit: AP)
Despite the 1978 convictions and even Campbell’s confessions, the “own goal bomb” theory of responsibility lingered and relatives sought for years to have the case properly investigated, some also alleging that the RUC had colluded in helping the killers get away out of the area and in the false atrributions later, possibly even with the intention of setting the two IRA organisations at one another’s throats.
In what has become a depressingly familiar story, the relatives campaigned on in the face of police inaction and media disinterest for years, during which many of the directly-affected died through natural causes, to receive partial vindication at last in an Ombudsman’s report which laid the blame squarely on a Loyalist gang and castigated the RUC for a biased and inadequate investigation. The report was published in February 2011– it had taken the campaigners only 40 years16.
The introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 was, according to the media, a necessary measure to deal with political violence from all sides. Not one Loyalist was arrested that year, or the next and it was not until 1973 that a single Loyalist had been interned, the total by December 1975, when the measure was ended, having been 107 against 1,874 from the Nationalist community.17
The Paratroop Regiment, British Army shocktroops, were sent into the colony that year too18. Between 9th and 11th August in the Belfast area of Ballymurphy, the Paratroopers caused the deaths of 10 men and a woman and wounded many19. The Paratroopers claimed they had been shot at and were returning fire and that all their targets had been “terrorists”20. The media repeated these lies and, if reporters interviewed wounded and other witnesses, their accounts were not published. There was no investigation and, as with the deaths of many victims of RUC and British Army, there was no inquest concluded until decades later (2021 for these victims21).
The nationalist community called a demonstration in Derry for 30th January the following year to protest the massacres and against the introduction of internment. The Paratroopers were there again and they and other British Army soldiers shot down unarmed demonstrators, causing the deaths of 14 and injuring at least another 15. The Army claimed they had been returning fire from Irish Republicans and had shot only gunmen and bombers and on the whole, the media parroted their claims.
The British put their top judge, Lord Chief Justice Widgery, to hold an inquiry and in April that year his verdict upheld the Army’s version and also blamed the organisers of the march. The media of course promoted that verdict too. It was not until the extraordinarilyy long and hugely expensive Bloody Sunday Inquiry set up 1998 22 produced the Saville Report in 2010 that the British officially (and then of course also the media) accepted what all of Derry and much of Ireland already knew, that the Paras had opened fire in a non-threatening situation and selectively targeted and killed unarmed civilians23.
British soldiers shot another five unarmed people dead in the Springhill area of Belfast on July 9th, yet again as in Ballymurphy the previous year, including a priest administering the last rites but this time their tally was also an thirteen-year-old girl24. The original ‘official’ account of the shootings— that those shot were ‘gunmen’ — was almost immediately discredited, and was changed shortly after; the claim then became that those murdered were simply caught in the crossfire. Again the media covered the Army story without investigation or challenge.
In 1988 on Sunday 6th March British SAS soldiers shot dead three unarmed IRA volunteers in Gibraltar. When it was revealed that the three had been unarmed, firstly the media claimed that they had been about to trigger an explosion but some time later the British found the explosives in a car in a Spanish carpark across the border without any electronic link to the dead volunteers. When the British claimed that the Volunteers had made threatening moves, eyewitnessed testified that not only had they been unarmed when shot but had been extra-judicially executed as they lay on the ground with their hands up in surrender position. One of the eye-witnesses was Gibraltar resident Carmen Proetta, who then became a target for British media slurs, even going to the extent of suggesting that she was a sex-worker.
On Monday 7 March all eleven British national daily newspapers reported the story that a bomb had been found. Many gave detailed information about the size (mostly 500 pounds), purpose and type of the bomb as well as how it was defused. The Daily Mail suggested that the bomb might have a ‘video timing device’, while Today and the Independent mentioned ‘remote control’. The Daily Mirror told us that ‘a controlIed explosion failed to set off the bomb’ whilst the Daily Mail added ‘RAF disposal men defused it later’.25
On 28 April 1988, almost two months after the Gibraltar shootings, the ITV television channel defied British Government pressure and threats of legal action to broadcast “Death on the Rock” an episode of its current affairs series This Week, produced by Thames Television, based on investigations of three journalists and many interviews. This led to a ferocious media attack on the documentary, its programers and the IBA, the governing watchdog authority.
Documentary program maker Roger Bolton’s account of his hounding by government and media about an accurate documentary of the 1988 SAS murders of three unarmed IRA Volunteers in Gibraltar. (Image sourced: Internet).
‘Over the following weeks, newspapers repeatedly printed stories about the documentary’s witnesses, in particular Carmen Proetta, who gave an account of seeing McCann and Farrell shot without warning by soldiers who arrived in a Gibraltar Police car. Proetta subsequently sued several newspapers for libel and won substantial damages. The Sunday Times conducted its own investigation and reported that “Death on the Rock” had misrepresented the views of its witnesses; those involved later complained to other newspapers that The Sunday Times had distorted their comments.’26
A great number of situations arose during the 30 Years War in the British colony that were either unreported or misrepresented by the mass media, including “confessions” obtained through torture, RUC and British Army collusion with Loyalist murder gangs, inhumane treatment of political prisoners, Army shooting of unarmed civilians, extra-judicial executions of Republican Volunteers and blackmailing individuals for information or to carry out agent-provocateur actions.
WITHIN THE IRISH STATE
In 1969 the grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown was blown up by Loyalists27 and between 1971 and 1974 there was a series of bombings in Dublin by Loyalists and British Intelligence. The bombing campaign began by aiming at symbolic structures and went on to target civilians which cost the lives of 36 civilians (and a full-term unborn child) and injured around 490, presumably to pressurise the Irish Government into increased repression of Republican paramilitaries.
In January 1971 the O’Connell Tower in Glasnevin Cemetery was damaged (not repaired finally until 2019, 47 years later)28, presumably as an attack on a prominent Irish Catholic29 icon. But in February 1971 the Wolfe Tone30 monument in Stephen’s Green was also blown up, like the blowing up of the grave, an attack on Irish Republicanism and its rebellious Protestant origins31. Bombings now aimed at civilians in Dublin followed and between 26 November 1972 and 20 January 1973, there were four paramilitary bombings in the centre of Dublin, claiming the lives of three public transport workers and injuring 185.
The first suspicion of responsibility for those bombings should naturally have fallen on the Loyalists and perhaps, by extension, on a British intelligence agency. It didn’t though; in the media and political circles, it was projected on to the IRA.
That could not have made logical sense, since such explosions could only have harmed the IRA among the Irish population. However there was another specific reason why it made even less sense, (if possible): in 1972 Leinster House32 was about to debate repressive legislation that would set up special no-jury courts to convict Republicans with the word of a police officer (at the rank of Superintendent or above) sufficient to convict of “membership of an illegal organisation”, with an automatic two-year jail sentence. The proposed legislation was being put forward by Fianna Fáil but Fine Gael and the Labour Party were mustering to vote against it and if they did, the new legislation would fall.
Scene of 1973 bombing in Sackville Place, Dublin city centre. The bombing the previous year was irrationally blamed on the IRA and the panic was used to collapse the opposition to proposed undemocratic repressive legislation, which was passed and is with us to this day. (Photo sourced: Stair na hÉireann Facebookpage)
In the midst of the horror about the bombing, the opposition crumbled and the bill went through, against protests of many human and civil rights agencies33; it became law, has sent many people to jail on dubious ‘evidence’ and is in force to this day.
The illogical focus on the IRA as the source of the 1972 and ‘73 bombings and the consequent failure to investigate them and follow up on the likely perpetrators had a horrific result in 1974: three bombs in Dublin city centre and one in Monaghan town centre killed 34 and injured around 30034, the highest number of people killed in any one day during the 30 Years War (often conveniently forgotten by the media, as for example in this report https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/army-knew-mcgurks-bar-bomb-was-placed-in-doorway-solicitor-says-35516460.html.)
Not only that, but the failure to energetically investigate the 1974 bombing meant that some of the Loyalist perpetrators were free to murder many civilians in the following years – some of the bombers were members of the infamous Glennane Gang, a Loyalist-RUC-British Intelligence group of killers responsible for up to 120 murders of civilians35.
WITHIN BRITAIN
The events in Ireland were of course being felt by the Irish diaspora in England too. Marches, pickets and public meetings protesting the RUC’s repression of marches for civil rights were held in many British cities, as they were against sending the British Army into the Six Counties, introduction of internment without trial and shooting protesters dead. Some groups on the British Left were also attending these events and occasionally organising their own. Irish solidarity was becoming a major issue for anti-imperialist solidarity in Britain and abroad, in addition to being in a sense a major domestic issue in Britain too.
The IRA began to extend Britain’s war to their homeland in a bombing campaign in 1971, at first targeting property. However, in 1974 bombs in two pubs in Birmingham killed 21 people which was difficult to understand but according to an alleged perpetrator, the warning intended by the bombers was frustrated through out-of-order public telephone boxes. The Guildford and Woolwich bombs, aimed at pubs frequented by British soldiers, killed five soldiers and two civilians overall and injured 101 people.
The horror and outrage resulting from that carnage gave the British State the environment in which they could launch a wholesale clampdown on the Irish diaspora. The Prevention of Terrorism Act was rushed through the Westminster Parliament in 1974, specifically targeting the Irish community. The Act empowered the police to raid homes, to hold suspects without access to a solicitor for up to five days and longer on special application and to summarily deport Irish people from Britain – even to their own colony. It also empowered the police to stop and question Irish people without warrant or having to show cause and thousands were stopped and questioned at ports and airports as they travelled from Ireland to Britain or vice versa, sometimes missing their flights or boat as a result. People were questioned on the street too and on Irish solidarity demonstrations.
In that atmosphere, of which the media was the main facilitator in British society, it was fairly easy for the State to frame nearly a score of innocent people on bombing charges and to sentence them to many years in jail on the flimsiest of “evidence”, later to refuse their right to appeal, later still, granting that right but denying the justice of their cases.
Judith Ward was arrested in February 1974, sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years in October 1974 and her conviction overturned in May 1992.
The Birmingham Six were arrested in November 1974, sentenced to jail for life in August 1975, their convictions finally overturned in March 1991.
The Guildford Four were arrested in December 1974, sentenced to imprisonment for life in October 1975, their convictions finally overturned in October 1989.
Giuseppe Conlon and the Maguire Six were arrested in December 1974, sentenced to 4, 51, 12 and 14 years in 1976, their convictions overturned in 1991. By that time Vincent and Patrick had already served their sentences and Giuseppe Conlon, father of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four, had died in jail.
1Patrick Maguire was only 14 at the time and Vincent only 17.
The innocent Birmingham Six at their appearance in court after being beaten up by prison warders as they arrived at the jail falsely charged with the bombings in Birmingham. The mass media played a major role in their being found guilty and in frustrating campaigns to free them which only succeeded 17 years later. (Image sourced: Internet)
The UK media in particular played a huge part in setting the atmosphere in which these unjust convictions could take place and in making the struggle of the innocent for justice difficult. Even after their acquittal, some of the media insinuated that they had been guilty and had got free through some kind of legal loopholes.
Could the media have known differently? Yes, certainly, not one of the cases would stand up to reasonable inspection. The Guildford Four were hippies living in a squat, the Birmingham Six were escorting the body of a deceased IRA man to Ireland when the bombs exploded, the Maguires were a Tory-voting woman with teenage children, Giuseppe was only in London to help his son after the latter’s arrest and Judith Ward was mentally ill, homeless and penniless37. Their ‘confessions’, obtained through torture and intimidation38, were admitted as evidence against them, although they all retracted them and declared how they had been obtained. The forensic evidence was faulty and besides recording a false positive and even though the defence team had a forensic expert to refute it during their trial, the Prosecution’s expert was the one accepted.
The February 1977 confession by an IRA unit to the Woolwich and Guildford bombing after their capture in the Balcome Street siege was not accepted, although they were able to give details of the bombing. So tortured and retracted ‘confessions’ were acceptable whereas one voluntarily given was not.
Apart from the logical doubts that should have arisen in even a light examination of the cases, the media also had access to detailed refutation of the case against the Birmingham Six. Although much has been made recently of the investigation of the case by Chris Mullin, the publication of his book Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Pub Bombings (1985), the research for which went into the earlier 1984 ITV World in Action documentary, a detailed challenge to the convictions had been published much earlier. Only two years after the arrest of the Birmingham Six, Fathers Murray and Faul had published The Birmingham Framework39, which they had sent to British politicians and media agents. In 1982 the Irish in Britain Representation Group40 also publicly called for the freeing of the framed prisoners and continued to do so for every year thereafter. Other organisations such as the Troops Out Movement41 called for their release also and trade union branches began to support such calls.
Exposure of the case against the Birmingham Six published by Frs. Murray and Faul as early as one year after the convictions of the innocent men. (Source image: Internet)
It suited the State that the British public think the prisoners guilty and the British media played their part in that purpose. In a way, it also suited the State if the Irish community knew the prisoners were innocent since, if even the innocent could be jailed so easily, how could any Irish person be safe except by keeping his or her head down low? Irish solidarity activities declined in occurrence and in numbers attending. With few exceptions, the Irish community in Britain was cowed from 1974 until the Hunger Strikes of 1981 brought them out on the streets again, the terror broken by the spirit of solidarity and outrage.
WHY?
The above examples are only a selection of situations in Ireland during the period under discussion about which we and the world were misinformed or censored. Throughout the 30 Years’ War so many accusations against the British armed forces, including their armed colonial police, have been ignored or recorded disbelievingly by the media – in particular the British section but within the Irish state also – and repeated by media services abroad, to be picked up by other media …. and so on, and on. And likewise with accusations against British intelligence services and their domestic police force.
Why then are the current claims of the Ukrainian government published through the mass media being accepted without question on every count? Why is everything the Russian government says discounted or ignored without checking? Why are we not concerned at banning of alternative media and censorship of commentators who are not repeating the party line? Why are we not outraged at the agreed delivery of Julian Assange by the UK to the USA on charges of “spying” because he exposed their lies and murderous activities in Iraq and Afghanistan? Given our own experience over 30 years of the UK media’s dismal record of reporting on the conflict in Ireland – and its equally dismal repetition in the western media – why are we now believing without critical examination the western media reporting on the war in the Ukraine?
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The civil rights campaign in the Six Counties was in pursuance of equal rights for the Catholic minority with the Protestant majority there, in the electoral franchise, in housing and employment, along with the repeal of the repressive Special Powers Act.
2‘Loyalists’ is a term describing militants – always of Protestant community background – in various organisations — who insist on remaining within the UK. The first armed actions in the 30 Years War were by Loyalists.
3Although the Royal Ulster Constabulary was created in 1922, when Ireland was partitioned, it was in effect a continuation of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British occupation’s gendarmerie (nation-wide semi-military police force, such as exists in Spain, Turkey, Italy, France, etc) in existence throughout all of Ireland since 1822. Although the personnel of the RIC had been mostly Catholic in background (usually with Protestant senior officers), the RUC was determinedly Protestant from the start, both in its full-time and part-time membership. However, a minority of the civil rights campaigners were also from Protestant backgrounds.
4As part of the control structures in the Six Counties, the authorities had recruited only non-Catholics into the colonial police force, which helped unionist politicians and media represent an attack on the police as a sectarian attack. Though a few Catholics have been recruited since the 1990s and Sinn Féin has been supporting recruitment drives in nationalist areas, the PSNI personnel remain overwhelmingly of Protestant background.
5A convenient term used to describe the large minority community, mostly of Catholic background, mostly of the original population but with some earlier intermarriage into the majority community, which is of mostly colonist/ settler origin.
6Ironically, the first serving British soldier killed in the Six Counties was killed by indescriminate firing by the RUC into the nationalist area of Divis Flats in Belfast. Trooper Hugh McCabe of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars was home on leave, staying with his family when the RUC opened fire with machine-gun on the nationalist area (this was one of the incidents that led to the barricading of “no go” areas excluding the RUC and later also the British Army). Three others were also killed by RUC bullets, including a nine-year-old boy. It took over 50 years for the families to get an acknowledgement and apology after an Ombudsman’s report. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/06/ruc-erred-at-troubles-dawn-by-firing-on-flats-from-armoured-cars#:~:text=Patrick%20Rooney%2C%20nine%2C%20Hugh%20McCabe,the%20Divis%20and%20Ardoyne%20areas.
7People had learned to make those in defence against RUC and Loyalist attacks during the earlier Civil Rights period.
8A large Belfast nationalist area separated from the Falls area by unionist areas and the city centre.
11The Social and Democratic Labour Party, advocating reform through legal and constitutional methods.
12Two days after the explosion, on December 6th, both the Official and Provisional IRAs issued statements condemning the bombing and denying any involvement. Local people also denied any association between the pub and either of the armed organisations.
18Despite some time searching online I have not come across the exact date they were there by May 1971 and it may be that they had been sent there as part of plan that included the introduction of internment without trial later that year.
20The fact that one fatal victim was a mother of eight children and another, a local priest, should have alerted media to the fact that the Paras were likely lying and local people likely telling the truth.
22Likely initiated as as a payoff to the Provisionals for buying into the Peace/ Pacification Process, the other being the early release on licence of their members in jail, the inquiry lasted twelve years and cost £195 million.
23No senior Army officer or senior politician of the time has even been charged for those murders. One lower-ranking soldier was eventually charged but in July 2021, the Public Prosecution Service decided it would no longer prosecute him either.
29Daniel O’Connell, a constitutional Irish nationalist politician and Catholic, campaigned for the repeal of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws in which he was largely successful in 1869 and unsuccessfully for repeal of the Act of Union, which had transferred the internal legislation of Ireland through its Parliament to Westminster instead in 1801.
30Theobald ‘Wolfe’ Tone was an Anglican campaigner for reform of anti-Catholic legislation (only Anglicans could be elected to the Irish Parliament) who became a revolutionary Irish Republican when those attempts failed. He was a founder of the revolutionary republican United Irishmen organisation. He was captured by the British after surrender of the French naval ship on which he was travelling on 12th October 1978. Although an officer in the Army of France he was tried for treason and sentenced to be executed; on 19th September 1798 he died in prison of wounds, apparently self-inflicted to deny the State his public execution.
40The IBRG was formed late in 1981 as an independent community organisation, among the issues it took up were those of anti-Irish racism, access to resources for the community, an end to strip-searching of prisoners, freedom for the framed prisoners and British withdrawal from Ireland.
41The Troops Out Movement was founded in 1973 as a broad organisation to mobilise the British public for withdrawal of British troops from Ireland; with branches in many parts of Britain, it organised marches, pickets, public meetings and published pamphlets. The relevant Wikipedia incorrectly claims it was “an Irish Republican organisation” — though it naturally did contain Irish Republicans, it also contained British revolutionary left and social-democratic elements. Though maintaining its independence for decades, it did towards the end of the 1990s become closely linked to Provisional Sinn Féin.
rebelbreeze 