[dissident]

https://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/2015 ... d-history/

Shaun Walker’s articles on Russia and the Ukraine in The Guardian often draw accusations of heavy bias against Russia in the comments section. Not without reason. The photo above was presented as showing part of an illegal incursion into Ukraine by a Russian armoured convoy last August. Shaun Walker is credited as having taken it. Roland Oliphant of The Telegraph claimed Walker and he had come across the convoy driving through a hole in the fence at the ‘dead of night’. Even if the photo is genuine it gives lie to the story. The armoured vehicles are driving on a good tarmac road. By the rear tail lights of the vehicle in front and the sky we can deduce it is dusk or dawn. It certainly is not the ‘dead of night’. We can also suppose the two men are sitting in, or on, the vehicle behind. One thing is clear, they are nowhere near a hole or a fence. And they can’t possibly have been concealed, as their account hints towards. The troops manning the convoy would have to be blind not to be aware of the two journalists right in their midst.

The original story – now in The Guardian archives – has been tampered with. The photo has been moved from an article written by Walker in November 2014 to an article published in August 2014. We might ask why. From his article, we can assume Eric Draitser saw Walker’s original, and not the revised version.

In the days of Soviet Russia, the western press often featured articles on the way Russian newspapers altered photographs and printed propaganda and lies. It seems the West is now resorting to similar tactics. If we can’t trust our media to be responsible, it follows we can’t trust our governments either, as they often feed it, especially in times of conflict. Therein lies the road to totalitarianism.

[dissident]

The NATO media propaganda war on Russia:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/20/ ... on-russia/

One recent example of skewed reporting was the treatment of Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko’s claim that Russia had 9,000 troops in eastern Ukraine along with “500 tanks, heavy artillery, and armored personnel carriers.” In Sun King style he commanded there be withdrawal of “all the foreign troops from my territory.”

This was out-and-out nonsense. He had made a totally absurd allegation. It took the Chief of Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, to clarify matters. He said on January 29 that the “Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army.” He made it clear that his soldiers are fighting against irregulars who “are members of illegal armed groups.” This was straight talking by Ukraine’s most senior soldier, but it didn’t receive one line in any western newspaper. There was not a word of his statement publicized in Europe or America. So far as the public in the west is concerned the absurd allegation by Poroshenko is valid.

Despicable war propaganda.

[dissident]

The South African affiliate of The Guardian is engaging in two-bit economic warfare against Russia:

http://johnhelmer.net/?p=12735

South African government officials have attacked Russia’s bid to supply South Africa’s new nuclear reactor programme, accusing Rosatom, the state nuclear power agency, of imposing financially and legally disadvantageous terms which the South Africans, speaking anonymously, term “scary”.

The attack was launched Friday in the Mail & Guardian, a local newspaper associated with the Guardian of London. Just one SA Government official, Enver Daniels, the chief state law advisor in Pretoria, was identified as behind the allegations. Speaking anonymously to the newspaper also was a group identified as “numerous”, and representing the SA ministries of energy, international relations, trade and industry, and the treasury.

Independent European nuclear industry sources say the reported allegations against the Rosatom agreement are not borne out by the published text. According to one source, “this misreading is a deliberate effort that benefits Areva, the Chinese and Americans. It also plays domestic politics in Pretoria.”

One of the sources says that all three agreements – Russian, French, and Sino-American – attempt to influence the tender phase for the reactor purchase in favour of each country’s proprietary technology. The Russian agreement isn’t different on that score, the source claims, except that it isn’t secret. In the published text, Rosatom concedes that the SA Government is free to decide to build 2 Russian technology reactors (2.4GW capacity), and to reserve its decision on what technology to buy for the remaining reactors (7.2GW).

The sources also say the operative term in the agreement is “cooperate”, which is noncommittal. They point to the provision in Art 4.2 – “the mechanism of the practical implementation of these priority projects will be governed by separate intergovernmental agreements” – to leave undecided now, and uncommitted in future, what technological choices the SA Government can reserve. Art. 7 of the agreement also provides for several suppliers of reactors by saying: “The Competent Authorities of the Parties can, by mutual consent, involve third countries’ organizations for the implementation of particular cooperation areas under this Agreement.”