It was one of the defining moments of the start of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Thirteen Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island were told by a Russian warship to surrender and they responded by telling the Russians to “go f*** yourself” before they were all brutally killed. The recording was confirmed as authentic by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry and reported around the world. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded each border guard the posthumous title of ‘Hero of Ukraine’, saying: “On our Zmiinyi Island, defending it to the last, all the border guards died heroically.”
Here’s the original clip on YouTube – it’s clocked up over 3.7 million views since Thursday.
There’s just one problem. It isn’t true. In fact, as the Russians said at the time, all the border guards surrendered. This morning the Ukrainian navy announced the border guards were in fact alive and being held prisoner by the Russians.
It’s good that the Ukrainian navy has admitted the truth on this, and it’s also good to hear the soldiers are alive, albeit in enemy hands. It’s a reminder, though, that in a war, even more so than in normal times, you can’t always trust what you watch and read. That’s not to say that Putin isn’t an unhinged psychopath, or that Russia’s invasion is actually going to plan. But it’s worth having your antenna primed for propaganda and fakes and not assuming everything you read or see is 100% accurate.
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For years now, I have completely ignored the Not-Journalism spewing from the “news media outlets” listed in the first graph.
Reuters, centrist? Pull the other one. As for the BBC, that stalwart of the Trusted News Initiative which gives us blanket censorship, psyops nudgery and outright cancellation of anything outside The Narrative ™, words fail.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/reuters-fact-check-covid-social-media-pfizer-world-economic-forum/
BBC centrist? I stopped reading there.
Negativity in headlines / news content increases in proportion to propaganda communication. When this kind of collective obsession with negativity and fear enters the collective consciousness we would expect to see, as we have, the onset of an acute mental health crisis. Newspapers are not there to represent a reliable gauge of the state of the world, but too many people believe they are.
It is a fact that a perusal of the local media in any region within a country would reveal that the kind of gloom pedalled by the national and international “legacy media” organisations is mostly a mirage, i.e. when you zoom in on local media you find that the situation is nothing like as bad. Of course I have the utmost sympathy and compassion for the residents of war-torn regions, etc, but it doesn’t translate to impending global meltdown.
A blind belief in the mass media as it stands is enough to cause a mental health crisis in anyone, let alone those susceptible!
Western civilisation is exhausted and will soon receive its coup de grace. So things will get worse. As adumbrated in When the Towers Fall, a coronal mass ejection is about to wreak havoc, probably this autumn. The coronavirus was a portent of what is to come.
If anyone can beat Joy Divison (1979-80) for slightly downbeat lyrics and music please let me know.
Morrissey.
I’d also add Leonard Cohen to the list.
The Verve had a cheery insight to share:
“It’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life.
Try to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die”
So it’s not all doom and gloom, then!
One of my all time favourite bands.
Whether “music” has negative lyrics or not is irrelevant: it’s nearly all bland crap and not worth listening to ….. which is why stations like Greatest Hits Radio (music from the ’70s, 80s and 90s) is going great guns.
I have been saying for some time that pop music and TV were generally much more upbeat in the 60s & 70s. Watching and listening it strikes me how everyone involved seemed to be enjoying themselves without trying to lecture or berate us and how they were able to entertain us without graphic sex and violence. I find the 21st century cynical and depressing but whenever I point this out to younger family members I am told that we were all stupid- literally stupid in some cases whatever that means- because we didn’t realise how awful things were. Whatever happened to innocent fun?