Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- Ukraine: Propaganda, the Truth and Cockfighting

 

Author`s name Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

 07.04.2022 18:40

Ukraine: Propaganda, the Truth and Cockfighting

Opinion » Columnists

First Quarter 2022. A turning point in the geopolitical history of Humankind and a challenge to human values, dictating the coming decades.

Looking at the world today, I am utterly appalled at what I see. And what do I see? I see a cockfight, an ugly cockfight, surrounded by a hysterical crowd braying, screaming, shouting, their eyes bloodshot with hatred, fists clenched, mouths twisted in fury, eyes burning with the fires of vitriol. Fired up, tense, screaming like banshees. The world today looks like a Medieval witch hunt, or a cellar where the Inquisition tortures people to death using unspeakably cruel methods and devices. The very worst of human behaviour has come back to stare us in the face.

Propaganda and Freedom

People can be branded undesirable and accused of harmful propaganda just because they are exposing facts or expressing their opinions. Is this where we have arrived after all these years of development? Are these the parameters of democracy which everyone says they adhere to? Are these the pillars of our so-called civilised society?

Yet again, what happened to the rule of law? What happened to posture, to balance, to maturity? Let us try to bring some balance with a mature approach to what we see before us.

Taking the mature approach

The case in point today is the military situation in Ukraine which is between Russia and Ukraine. I repeat, Russia and Ukraine and nobody else. Russia has already exposed its reasons for its operation and Ukraine has already said and shown that it does not like being invaded. Nobody does.

The mature approach would be to examine the differences in the positions and facilitate discussion and dialogue which will lead to a peace process and then a reconciliation process. By now everyone knows Russia’s position and everyone knows Ukraine’s position and the main guidelines of a peace agreement seem quite easy to manage. Russia ceases its operation, Ukraine ceases shelling the Russian-speaking citizens in the East, pledges to adopt a non-military approach to the Donbass Republics and Crimea, pledges to respect the right for citizens to enjoy Russian language, culture and traditions and removes Fascists wearing Fascist insignia from its official armed forces, while promising not to join NATO or to hold military exercises with foreign troops on its territory. And it gets to join the European Union.

Now how cool is that? Practically the whole of Europe has benefited from membership, (albeit with a few disagreeing) and now the European Union, a trading organization, would rub shoulders with Belarus, Russia, Lugansk People’s Republic, Donbass People’s Republic, Crimea and Moldova. Problem solved, you smile at a guy you want to sell your products to, you don’t glower at him down the sights of a gun.

See what I am doing here? I am being positive, I am not getting involved, I am minding my own business, I am approaching this situation with balance, I am not braying like a jackass, I am not inciting hatred, I am not posting videos of alleged atrocities from either side. I am calling for a trading solution, I am calling for peace, I am calling for reconciliation.

Censorship and propaganda

What is everyone else doing? They are practising censorship and coupling that with draconian measures against those accused of propaganda. Isn’t censorship a form of propaganda? Isn’t posting videos of incidents allegedly perpetrated by only one side a form of propaganda? Isn’t one-sided reporting complete with hate mongering a form of propaganda? What is this flurry of posts and pictures appearing everywhere if not a concerted and organized propaganda campaign as Russophobia hits the stratosphere?

Where was this sudden wave of concern when the USA and the UK were conducting their campaign in Iraq, dropping more bombs in one day than Russia has done in a month? Or when Libyan kids were being strafed by military aircraft? Or when they were bombing the crap out of Serbia? For those who were nowhere, then I suggest they should feel ashamed of themselves. Nobody said boo to a goose. Except a few concerned like me and what happened? My Facebook account was taken over by one jooj30@hotmail.com and nobody did anything to help me recover it. That was back in 2011. Here we are ten years on and things have got worse.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- The war against a free flow of information

 

Author`s name Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

 04.04.2022 17:58

The war against a free flow of information

Opinion » Columnists

The Internet was invented to provide a free flow of information. It was not supposed to be censored so that lies could parade as the truth

As someone who writes for a Russian newspaper, and as someone who has been reporting on international events over the last few decades, I am sensitive to the need for a free flow of information. As someone who treats his readers like adults, I have never, even once, reported information which I believed was false.

And I can go further. I have, more than once, been offered money and dirt to tarnish the reputation of world-famous figures, including images and videos of sexual scandals, stories which would have made me a pretty penny at times in my life when the pretty penny would have been welcome. Do you know what I did? I refused the cash and refused the evidence. Why?

For the same reason that during my finalist exams at school I found myself isolated in a room, locked inside, because due to the subjects I had chosen, there was a clash and I could not sit two exams at the same time, so they let me do the first one then locked me away for the second, immediately afterwards, so that I did not have contact with the other students who had sat the exam. More than that, I realised that inadvertently, I had in my pocket papers with the answers to all the questions. If I had looked, nobody would have known. But I would. I remember sitting there for a few minutes thinking, come on Tim you can get 100% in this and get into your first choice University.

But then I thought, no. That is dishonest, it is cheating and it is totally unfair on everyone else. So I did not look at the papers. The sequel to the story is that I got 80% but indeed that was not enough to get into my top choice University but the reason I failed admission was because of mathematics at a lower level, so I went to my second choice out of five and I can say that my academic career there shaped the rest of my life.

Integrity and decency

And I can go even further, now we are into the truth. At one time in my life, I was unemployed. And homeless. Too proud to ask “Papa” for cash and anyway two thousand miles away from home, sweeping up vegetables from the market floor to make soup and asking for fish heads to use as bait to go fishing, to make some money and enrich the soup. During this time I was offered a dirt story on a very famous singer which would have made me a lot of money. I was down and out, poor, hungry, no roof over my head. I declined the offer which was met with a string of insults and name-calling “imbecile, idiot, jerk, stupid...I will make sure you never do anything in journalism”. That was forty years ago and I pulled myself up through hard work, very hard work. And as I reply to the emails questioning my journalistic register, my journalism is such crap that I bought a farm out of it.

So when I am reporting on events, I am honest, as I always have been. When I give someone my word, it means something. I have never, ever committed any act which means that I cannot go round any corner anywhere on Earth at any time and meet anyone eye-to-eye, and not have to lower my gaze.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- The Global Thinking Project versus The Truth

Author`s name Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

 31.03.2022 19:23 (Updated: 01.04.2022 19:53)

The Global Thinking Project versus The Truth

Opinion » Columnists

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in trouble. The Ukraine situation confirms our worst fears. We are in the middle of an attempt to dictate Humankind’s global values

Before I start, I would like once again to state that tears taste of salt, whether they be Ukrainian, Russian, or Russian-speaking Ukrainian in Eastern Ukraine, whether they be Yemeni, Iraqi, Serbian, Libyan, Syrian, Afghan, or American or British. I am about to attempt to bring some balance to this issue by viewing this conflict from both sides and providing some context, however unpopular this may be. You will not find this approach in western media outlets, which adopt a fascist policy of censorship. 

You cannot respect one side by telling lies and ignoring the other, remember this. If you are not Ukrainian or Russian you should not be taking sides, you should be respecting everyone by viewing all sides and then working towards peace and reconciliation.

 The Global Thinking Project

The Global Thinking Project, or GTP, is my own expression/acronym. This suddenly dawned on me this week when suffering yet another cyber terrorist attack and the usual flurry of death threats, threats to put my dog in acid, insults...all fruits of the season and par for the course in what I do. If this is the price I pay for expressing my opinion freely, then so be it. Welcome to Planet Dearth 2022.

I first noticed the GTP when I was covering the Libya war and when my Facebook account was taken over by one jooj30@hotmail.com. I would have lost all my contacts if I had not written them all down in pencil on paper but a lot of information was lost. Nobody did anything to help me regain access. This happened immediately after I posted my indictment against NATO political and military leaders, visible in my piece Law Case of the Century + my name + Pravda.Ru. It has happened every single time I bring up embarrassing facts which tarnish NATO’s credibility. Facts.

This also happened after a series of people requested friensdhip status then tried to debunk the facts, stating that there were no civilian casualties in Libya, that NATO was not working with terrorists, was not seeking regime change and so on, and this, after I posted documentary evidence that NATO was working with the terrorist group LIFG on its own lists of proscribed groups, and evidence that NATO, not Gaddafy, was bombing civilian structures in Libya. Videos kept appearing then disappearing from the Net.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- Ukraine, Fascism and Imbecility

 Ukraine, Fascism and Imbecility

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, March 20, 2022

Devoid of hype and hysteria, this piece is dedicated to respect all mothers who lose children and whose tears all taste of salt

After three weeks I am finally managing to understand the international reaction to the situation in Ukraine and the more I understand it, the more shocked I am at how utterly uninformed, or misinformed, people are. I am appalled at the shallowness of the media’s approach which in turns feeds gullible audiences and readerships and I am astonished at the biased, one-sidedness which demonises one side and exonerates the other.

Russophobic chips

It is almost as if every western baby was born with a Russophobic chip in their neck, easily activated by a single sound bite. It is like watching a video of a family kicking a dog to death because it bit the postman’s son (who had spent eight years torturing it and pulling its tail). The sheer childishness of reactions among seemingly educated and intelligent people is as amazing as it is sad.

The collective reaction borders on hysteria, with erudite people restricted to breathy, breathless monosyllables about “He”, about “Putin” who is “invading a sovereign nation” and “killing civilians” because “he wants to take over the world” and “he’s coming for us next”. What happened to common sense, logic and a balanced and informed approach? What happened to those who like to do a lot more reading and listening than speaking or writing?

I am one of those and I only write about something when I know what I am speaking about. I am not easily influenced by the media, which unfortunately has taught me to adopt the Hinchey Principle, which is to take a story, stand it on its head, turn it inside out, view it back to front, read the comments under the piece and get somewhere near to the truth.

Drawing the time line

What is even more depressing, in this current situation, is the Pavlovian reaction to draw the time line arbitrarily, devoid of any logic other than to pull the wool over people’s eyes. What the western media has managed to do, and it has worked, is to draw the time line at the beginning of 2022 when the first Russian missiles began destroying, in 48 hours, the billion-dollars-worth of military equipment which NATO had saddled the Ukrainian taxpayers with. After that, censorship of Russian media and social media sources, hundreds of Facebook pages deleted, RT silenced, Sputnik silenced and what happens then? Censorship negates any legitimacy of an information flow, who is to say that it is not just propaganda?

Ucrânia: A comunicação mediática tem o direito de informar

 

Ucrânia: A comunicação mediática tem o direito de informar

 

 

 

A prática fascista da Censura de fontes russas saiu pela culatra. Os leitores e os telespectadores estão a juntar-se para ouvir o contexto da história.

 

História? Mais semelhante a uma tragédia. Alguns membros da minha família foram vítimas do fascismo durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial e as cenas dos fascistas exibindo suásticas e a desfilar pelas ruas da Ucrânia e os vídeos de fascistas usando suásticas e a torturar crianças de língua russa,  trazem essas imagens de novo aos nossos olhos de jovens judeus, ciganos, rapazes negros ou rapazes de famílias de comunistas que entram num campo de concentração com saúde e, três meses mais tarde, apresentam um ar perdido, adoentado e derrotado. Vemos esse olhar nas crianças ucranianas a dizer adeus ao papá. Vemos as mesmas imagens de crianças em Donbass, com esse mesmo olhar. Será uma imagem mais importante do que a outra? Ou mais mediática do que a outra, porque alguém decidiu tomar partido?

 

Estas imagens de Donbass não são mostradas nas fontes dos meios de comunicação ocidentais, nem a RT ou o Sputnik na União Europeia, que adoptou uma política fascista de censura de fontes russas enquanto o Facebook e outros meios de comunicação social estão a fazer um trabalho frenético de supressão de páginas e enquanto o Google faz um trabalho frenético de limpeza de material da Internet

Hoje em dia o fascismo não é só superficial

Ukraine: The media has the right to inform

 

Ukraine: The media has the right to inform 

The Fascist practice of Censorship of Russian sources has backfired. Readers and viewers are flocking to hear the context of the story

 

Story? More like a tragedy. Members of my family were the victims of Fascism during the Second World War and the scenes of Fascists wearing Swastikas parading through the streets of Ukraine and videos of Fascists wearing Swastikas torturing Russian-speaking kids bring up those images again flashing before our eyes of young Jewish, gypsy, black boys or boys from the families of Communists entering a concentration camp healthy and three months later looking wasted, sullen and defeated. Those of us who have visited concentration camps remember that look which should never show in any child’s eyes anywhere. We see that look among Ukrainian children saying goodbye to Daddy. We see the same images of children in Donbass with the same look. Is one more important than the other? Or more mediatic than the other because someone decided to take sides?

 

These Donbass images are not shown on western media sources, neither is RT or Sputnik broadcasting in the European Union which has adopted a fascist policy of censorship of Russian sources while Facebook and other social media outlets are doing a frantic job of suppressing pages and while Google does a frantic job of cleaning material from the Internet.

 

Fascism is not only skin deep today

 

And the result of this? The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Melnyk, who has made it clear in public that he supports the Azov Battalion and supported Bandera, a criminal pedophile torturer and murderer who collaborated with the Nazis and whose gangs hacked little children to pieces. Anyone saying that they support Bandera should be locked away in a psychiatric prison and the same goes for the Azov Battalion. An Ambassador saying that means that the worship of Fascists and Fascism is much more than skin deep. How much of a growing problem is this?

 

And if it is a growing problem, we want to know. So what does the European Union do? It censors out Russian sources, while websites and webpages are closed or blocked or become victims of cyber terrorist attacks, journalists are assailed with death threats and material is removed from the Net. This is the latest Fascist fetish: remove videos and photographic evidence then when presented with the fact, the reply is “Prove it!”

 

Is the censorship policy working?

 

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- Thinking beyond Covid: There's always money for submarines

 Author`s name Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

 22.01.2021 17:46 (Updated: 22.01.2021 20:17)

Thinking beyond Covid: There's always money for submarines

Opinion » Columnists

Thinking beyond Covid: There's always money for submarines

After a year of Covid-19 which has descended on us all like a cloud, let us look beyond the fog and see what lies over the horizon.

Planet Earth 2021. The Human Freak Show reaches its 987th episode as inter-galactic travellers roll up and tune in just inside the Kuiper Belt for their daily dose of laughter at our expense. Their giggles can be heard all over the Universe.

No beds but money for submarines

If it was not so tragic, it might be funny. But it isn't. Many of us, myself included, have lost close family members to Covid-19 and today the number of infections and deaths are even worse than they were last March/April. These days at least doctors and nurses are not wearing plastic bags over their heads but in many countries hospitals are at breaking point with patients dying in ambulances queueing up outside, or else lying on hospital floors because there aren't enough beds. There's plenty of money for submarines, though, of course.

Many are those who refuse to wear masks or who deny that Covid exists or who say the vaccines are in fact a ruse to inject a micro-chip into us so that "they" can kill us all or control us. Not so long ago, the same people were speaking about commercial pilots releasing chemtrails into the atmosphere because "they" wanted to kill everyone. Getting real, turning a blind eye to such a dangerous virus lurking invisibly out of reach may be a safety mechanism (if you cannot see it, it does not exist...go and ask the ostrich) but this is the time for transparency, not denial.

Money for submarines but not to vaccinate people

Many are those who decided to spend last Christmas as usual and to have New Year celebrations as always, despite the obvious risks and now look what has happened. With all our technology, we have managed to pull off the impossible and actually go backwards. Doctors and nurses are overworked to saturation point, non-Covid patients are not daring to go anywhere near a hospital and are suffering the consequences, jobs are being shed by the thousands. In some countries, only a handful of people are being vaccinated because the healthcare system cannot deliver the vaccine and Devil take the hindmost. But there is money for submarines to murder people and to entertain submariners while they do what they do down there, whatever that may be, while there is not enough money to save human lives, of course.

This, while over a trillion dollars are spent each and every year on weapons systems to murder people. There's always money for submarines.

The chronic non-medical problems posed by Covid

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey -- NATO: An anachronism or the cutting edge of the Arms Lobby?

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

 06.12.2019 12:17

NATO: An anachronism or the cutting edge of the Arms Lobby?

Opinion » Columnists

President Emmanuel Macron has called NATO "brain dead", claiming it should focus on real threats and reinvent itself. To what point is this the case?

From the outset, NATO was a fallacy. It claimed to be a defensive organization serving to protect Western Europe and the United States of America against any attack by the Soviet Union, although the structure of the USSR's forces after the Second World War was defensive and NATO's, as we have seen, is and has always been offensive.

In the 1980s and 1990s NATO gave repeated promises to the Warsaw Pact that if the Pact dissolved, NATO would not encroach eastwards. It lied. Now looking at the map we see NATO on Russia's borders in two arenas, namely the frontier with Norway and in the Baltic, while in the south, the flank is occupied by Turkey, a stone's throw away from Russia's southern border and in the center, we have the case of Ukraine, which tomorrow will be a spear in the heart of Moscow.

We only have to look at the history of encroachment and provocation and insolence to see where the heart and mind of NATO lies. The move eastwards is an obvious attempt to station NATO forward bases on Russia's borders, otherwise why would it have lied and moved thousands of kilometers to the east, staged constant acts of provocation and followed these up with insolence and lies in its media??

The constant acts of provocation, and the ensuing lies in the media about Russian aggression. Let us see:  First was Georgia which murdered Russian peace-keeping forces in South Ossetia and was aiming to do the same thing in Abkhazia before Russia intervened with a limited operation to normalize the situation and push the invading forces back. But Russia was branded as the aggressor complete with lies on western media outlets about Russian missile salvoes flying from north to south when the missiles they were showing were Georgian ones traveling northwards.

This was after Kosovo when NATO carved out a narco-state in the heart of the Balkans where today terrorists train for operations in Syria and elsewhere, this after NATO sided with terrorists and organ traffickers (the KLA, or UÇK) and attacked Serbia, and before NATO kidnapped Serbia's President in an act which was illegal by Serbian national, Yugoslav Federal and International Law, and detained him illegally occasioning his premature death under detention in The Hague.