Russia, Ukraine and the West

[Soldier of Macedon]

https://www.rt.com/russia/548071-ger...-rt-broadcast/

Germany’s media regulator has declared RT DE a German-based broadcaster, siding with the Berlin-Brandenburg authorities in attempting to shut down the outlet’s operations. This comes after the German government denied putting any pressure on the channel.......RT DE is a “broadcaster that requires a license under Article 52 of the German Media Treaty (MStV), which was neither applied for nor granted,” the Medienanstalten agency claimed in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the RT DE broadcast “should therefore be discontinued via live stream, including on the internet, via mobile and smart TV app RT News, as well as via satellite.”......RT DE productions said that “MABB is seeking to falsely portray RT DE Productions, which is an independent production company, as the broadcaster of the RT DE TV channel, based in Moscow. We cannot fathom why a supposedly informed and independent regulator would seek to act on what appears to be purely political motivations, under the auspices of a false version of reality, bent to their intentions. By permitting its regulator to act in such a way Germany is telling other nations who abide by European Conventions that it is one rule for them and another for you.” Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor in chief said that “it is ironic that just the idea of a new TV news channel with a different voice appearing in Germany has made the local authorities, including the regulator MABB, so nervous and desperate, as to abandon their much-touted principles such as freedom of speech.”

Always comical when eurocrats talk about "freedom" and "democracy" then twist those values when it doesn't serve their purpose. In this case, the Krauts want to shut down Russia's RT news in Germany, but Russia has hit back.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-shuts-d...als/a-60646973

Russia on Thursday said it was closing the Moscow bureau of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and revoking its employees' accreditations in the country. The Russian Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that it would "terminate the satellite and other broadcasting (output) of Deutsche Welle" on Russian territory. Russia had earlier criticized a German regulator's ban on German-language programming by Russia's state broadcaster RT as an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The Russian government said it was planning to initiate a procedure to label DW a foreign media outlet performing the functions of a "foreign agent," a designation that carries additional government scrutiny. Moscow said it would also ban officials involved in restricting the broadcasting of RT in Germany from entering the Russian Federation. Later, the state State Duma, the lower house of parliament, officially banned DW journalists from entering and from receiving accreditation for events.

Now they're bitching about unfairness. Here are some reactions from these hypocrites.

DW Director General Peter Limbourg said.....the decision could not be seen as a tit-for-tat move, given that Russian journalists are still allowed to continue working in Germany and the differences between DW as a public service broadcaster and RT as a state broadcaster.

German Federal Minister for Culture and Media, Claudia Roth, criticized the decision and said......"DW is also an independent organization. This means that, unlike RT DE, the German state does not exert any influence on programming. I therefore urge the Russian side not to exploit RT's licensing problems for political purposes."

Oh, the semantics. Has anybody watched DW news recently? It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, politically skewed towards the globalist-leftist ideology of former Führer Merkel's party. It is basically the CNN of Germany. Interestingly, the whole time these people were touting DW as a public broadcaster that is independent of any influence from the German state, nowhere in the article is it mentioned that DW is actually owned by the German government. They're just another example of pompous eurocrats who believe their word should be taken for granted because the rest of the world is too stupid to know any better. The reality is that they are about as "neutral" as the BBC and about as "independent" as Al Jazeera.

[Soldier of Macedon]

On Wednesday it was this.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/white-...aine-imminent/

After repeatedly claiming in recent days that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “imminent,” the White House has stopped using the word because it sent the wrong message, press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday.

On Friday, this.

https://news.yahoo.com/veteran-repor...211336377.html

During his opening remarks ahead of a press briefing, [State Department spokesman Ned] Price made the case “that Moscow might create a false flag operation” to justify an invasion of Ukraine, citing the existence of a Russian intelligence propaganda video that allegedly depicts “explosions and fake corpses,” “crisis actors pretending to be mourners” and “images of destroyed locations or military equipment” on the ground in Ukraine. It is the Biden administration’s contention that Russia may stage an attack in the separatist regions of Ukraine as an excuse to intervene on behalf of the Russian speaking people there. If President Vladimir Putin declares these regions independent territory, the video could serve as the “green light” for Russian troops to move in, the U.S. government has claimed.

These people are nuts. The abovementioned Ned Price was torn to shreds by an AP reporter named Matt Lee for making the claim about a false-flag operation without providing any evidence. This is what he had to say when backed into a corner.

“If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price responded.

Basically, these people can say anything, claim it is true, not reveal any evidence, make accusations against anybody that may have concerns or questions, then suggest they should get their news from the Kremlin. Here is the clip, it is quite amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuvb3FEHz3U

[kompir]

They're showing themselves as the degenerates they are.

[Karposh]

That video of the journalist grilling the state department spokesman was absolute gold. Finally, a real journalist asking the right questions and not some scripted rubbish that reinforces the bullshit narrative. "Where's your evidence of what you're alleging?" "I just told you, our agencies have declassified what the Russians are planning to do. They want to create a false flag." "Yes, but where is your evidence?"...and around and around it went. I think what he really wanted to say was "Shut up and just trust us. We're from the Government and we never tell lies." They must really think that every American is as dumb as they think they are. The "weapons of mass destruction" must be a long forgotten memory by now as far as they are concerned.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Originally Posted by Karposh

That video of the journalist grilling the state department spokesman was absolute gold.

Unsurprisingly, Tucker was all over it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hroe2LSBraU

Meanwhile, barely any other mainstream media outlet mentioned the exchange. Instead, they just propagated the wild claim. Below are just a few examples that one could quickly google from Australian media (ABC, SMH, et al.), Al Jazeera and the BBC, where the "false-flag" subject is mentioned. Complete silence. Such is their objectivity. I am not suggesting that Fox News or RT are perfect, but anybody that is interested in obtaining a balanced view of the facts should compare different perspectives. That is the only way to get closer to the truth. Way too many of these MSM personalities have an agenda and they don't even bother to hide it.

https://amp.9news.com.au/article/23e...d-b2761643b32e
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/100804608
https://amp.smh.com.au/world/europe/...04-p59tpk.html
https://www.news.com.au/technology/i...d9681f7115?amp
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2...-role-liveblog
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60248259.amp

Here is an earlier claim about a "false-flag" operation that was mentioned in mid-January. Perhaps they were testing the waters before releasing the declassified nothingness during the recent press briefing. Right now, it seems as though the side that is seeking a pretext to justify an escalation is the West, not Russia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-h...ne-11642182308

Russia has deployed operatives to undertake a “false flag” operation in eastern Ukraine that would fabricate a pretext for invading the country, the White House said Friday, warning it saw signs an invasion could come in a matter of weeks. “The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s proxy forces,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the White House.

[Soldier of Macedon]

DW is scrambling to highlight its legitimacy in light of the conflict with RT. Here is what a few minutes worth of research revealed.

https://www.dw.com/en/dws-moscow-bur...ban/a-60657233

German officials have called the comparison between RT and DW a false equivalence because DW is a taxpayer-funded independent public service broadcaster rather than a state-owned channel.

Maybe somebody from its office should update the DW Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle

Deutsche Welle (pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃə ˈvɛlə] (audio speaker iconlisten); "German Wave" in German) or DW is a German public [de; lt] state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget.

Owner - Government of Germany

In another one of its articles, it indicates the below.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-deutsche-w...-rt/a-60666432

It is true that both Deutsche Welle and RT, once called Russia Today, are state-funded broadcasters aimed at foreign audiences.

State-owned, state-funded, taxpayer-funded. Whatever. It is owned by the government at the expense of taxpayers who really don't have a choice on where their money goes. But what about the independence of DW?

But to ensure that Deutsche Welle is allowed work independently and follow journalistic standards, it is not a part of the federal government's press office. Instead, DW is regulated by public law. This means that though its funding comes from the federal budget, the director is accountable only to the DW Broadcasting Council, which also elects him for six years. And even if there is a change of government in Germany, as was the case recently, the director remains in office. The Broadcasting Council has 17 honorary members: Representatives of civil society, trade unions, churches, and political parties.

Really. Let's take a closer look at the nature of the relationship between the director and this broadcasting council.

https://www.dw.com/en/the-broadcasting-council/a-322842

The Broadcasting Council elects the Director General and advises him/her in matters relating to the programming. The 17 unpaid members of the committee come from politics, business and society. The tenure of the current council (members listed below) began in March 2014.

I was under the impression that a director is not accountable to his advisors, but rather to the company's shareholders, which, in the case of DW, is the German government. Perhaps DW is special. Let's check out these council members.

Dr. Karl Jüsten, Chairman, Commissioner of the German Catholic Bishops Conference, nominated by the Catholic Church; Dagmar Freitag, Deputy Chairman, Deputy Foreign Policy Spokesperson of the SPD Parliamentary Group, nominated by the German Bundestag; Elisabeth Motschmann, Member of the German Bundestag (CDU), Cultural and Media Affairs Spokesperson for the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group, nominated by the German Bundestag; Vera Szackamer, Member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Central Council in Germany, nominated by the Jewish Central Council; Dr. Wolfgang Uellenberg-van Dawen, Head of the Politics and Planning Division at the trade union at ver.di, nominated by the German Trade Union Central Organisations; Frank Kopania, Executive Director Global Ministries, Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), nominated by the EKD; Norbert Barthle, Member of the German Bundestag (CDU), Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, nominated by the German Federal Government; Günter Winands, Director and head of the directorate “media and film, international affairs” at the Federal Government Commission for Culture and the Media, nominated by the German Federal Government; Michelle Müntefering, Member of the German Bundestag (SPD), Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, nominated by the German Federal Government; Ulrike Hiller, Former State Councillor, nominated by the German Bundesrat, Upper House of the German Parliament; Markus Ulbig, Minister of Interior (CDU) of the German federal state of Saxony, nominated by the German Bundesrat, Upper House of the German Parliament; Dr. Petra Tzschoppe, Vice President of the German Olympic Committee, nominated by the German Olympic Committee; Tanja Gönner, Chair of the Management Board, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), nominated by GIZ; Prof. Dr. Klaus Reichert, President of the German Academy for Speech and Literature, nominated by the Academy; Prof. Dr. Susanne Keuchel, Director of the Academy of Arts Education of Germany and of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, President of the German Culture Council, nominated by the German Culture Council; Professor Dr. Dieter Lenzen, President of the University of Hamburg, nominated by the German Rectors' Conference; Frank Thewes, Spokesperson for the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) nominated in coordination with the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA)

Five of them have ties to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), which claims to be “liberal conservative” (whatever that means) and “centre-right,” which is a bit comical. The CDU led the German government until last year, when their junior coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), won the largest number of votes in the election and formed a new coalition with a left-leaning Liberal party and the Greens. Three of the council members above are linked with the Marxist-turn-Socialist SPD that runs the current German government.

Follow the logic of DW. It grudgingly concedes that it's funded by the German government but claims to be independent of government influence. It states that its independence is ensured through a broadcasting council of 17 members and that its director is advised by (or accountable to) them only. Yet, the tenure of the current broadcasting council began in March 2014, when the CDU and SPD were in a coalition government, and collectively, 8 out of 17 council members are directly associated with their parties. Remove the bureaucratic fluff and the hands of the German government are all over DW. I won't even bother looking into the other council members, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them also have a connection to politics or government-funding.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-deutsche-w...-rt/a-60666432

It is true that RT's English website also states: "RT is an autonomous, non-profit organization that is publicly funded from the budget of the Russian Federation." But the website does not reveal much more about RT: Not about its budget, not about its structure, not about any supervisory bodies. What seems clear is that there is no principle of state neutrality governing RT, as is required for DW.......In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that RT "cannot but reflect the official position of the Russian government on events in our country and the rest of the world."

Neutrality, right. How many times has DW stringently criticised CDU's Merkel? Amusingly, the only reason why they have softly criticised the current Chancellor, SPD's Olaf Scholz, is because he's not sufficiently anti-Russian like some of his NATO counterparts.

[kompir]

The mainstream media, whether privately or "state" owned, are in a desperate fight for survival. This desperation is coming across in many ways, one of those being the semantics described by SoM above.

[Soldier of Macedon]

So, since Merkel concluded her 16-year reign over the EU, the leadership is left to a timid socialist in Germany (Scholz) and an opportunist with a Napoleon complex in France (Macron). Over the last couple of days, they have been on diplomatic missions to discuss the Russia-Ukraine situation. Scholz was in the U.S., where he regurgitated the standard "we are united" rhetoric yet refused to specifically agree with Biden on using the cancellation of Nord Stream 2 as a punishment against Russia. Macron was in Moscow and Kiev, where he pretended to be more important than he was and lied from one place to another.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...ukraine-crisis

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him in their marathon talks a day earlier that Moscow would not further escalate the Ukraine crisis. Macron’s remarks on a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday came as the Kremlin denied that he and Putin struck a deal on de-escalating the crisis.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...eal-on-ukraine

While Macron’s aides have been trying to portray the president as a key figure in the western engagement with Putin, his visit to Moscow added a dose of confusion to the picture as a French official talked up an agreement and then backed away from their comments. “For me, it was about blocking the game to prevent escalation,” Macron told reporters on the plane to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy. “This target is accomplished.”……….

The official in Macron’s office, who asked not to be named, at first said that Putin had agreed not to undertake any new military initiatives in the region and to withdraw Russian troops from Belarus once they have concluded the exercises they are involved in. The official didn’t give a timeline for the soldiers to leave Belarus. The French official later said Putin’s commitment on military initiatives was not firm, but rather conditional on his view of the evolving situation………..

En route to Moscow on Monday, Macron had told reporters the “Finlandization” of Ukraine was one option that could help ease the tensions. That’s a reference to the Soviet Union’s influence over Finland during the Cold War even as the government in Helsinki remained formally independent. Yet during his Tuesday press conference, Macron denied even making a reference to the “Finlandization” of Ukraine.

Watching the press conference, it is clear that he is out of his depth when dealing with Putin. But the frog has such a deluded sense of self-importance that he thought he could waltz into Moscow and manipulate Putin the way Chirac clowned around with Yeltsin during the Kosovo war. Good luck with that.

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Soldier of Macedon

...Watching the press conference, it is clear that he is out of his depth when dealing with Putin. But the frog has such a deluded sense of self-importance that he thought he could waltz into Moscow and manipulate Putin the way Chirac clowned around with Yeltsin during Kosovo war. Good luck with that.

The West loves to portray Putin as the village idiot but he plays the long game like a chess master.

[Risto the Great]

Macron can't even manage the streets of Paris.