If one reads the news with an uncritical eye, he or she would more than likely believe Vladimir Putin intends to nuke Ukraine. Of course, Putin never said he would use nukes in Ukraine, only if his country faces an existential threat, undoubtedly the same policy followed the USG.
The lies and hysteria spread by the corporate war propaganda media have resulted in frightening millions of people in Europe and America. The fear campaign went so far as to insinuate there will be a nuclear attack staged against New York. The NYC Emergency Management Department played its part by releasing an entirely ludicrous PSA instructing New Yorkers what to do in response to a nuclear attack. Go inside, stay inside, and stay tuned, the video instructs.
Left unsaid is the fact that “sheltering in place” during a nuclear explosion is less than worthless. The PSA assumes a single nuke would be targeted at New York. More fear porn and stupidity. If its existence is threatened, Russia would use its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to replace it SS-18 Satan ICBM. The new missile can travel 6,000 miles and carry 16 independently targeted warheads. It has the capability to destroy and area the size of France.
Needless to say, those “sheltering in place,” from Manhattan to Queens and beyond, would die in place. It is conservatively estimated 4 million people would be killed with an additional 5 million injured. A couple of these nukes targeted at America’s east coast would kill more than 10 million people.
The bogus assertion making the rounds is that Putin will, as Foreign Policy (owned by Graham Holdings Company, an Operation Mockingbird production) puts it, “blow up the world.” Nothing of the sort will happen unless it is the result of a false flag.
It appears that the prospect of a false flag is a distinct possibility. “Russia’s defense chief on Sunday alleged that Ukraine was preparing a ‘provocation’ involving a radioactive device, a stark claim that was strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid soaring tensions as Moscow struggles to stem Ukrainian advances in the south,” Free Press Journal reported on October 23.
Russia’s defense ministry said [Sergei] Shoigu voiced concern about ‘possible Ukrainian provocations involving a “dirty bomb,”‘ a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It doesn’t have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.
Telling lies and making omissions for political oneupmanship is hardly a recent development. One of America’s most revered presidents, John F. Kennedy, wasn’t straight with the media during the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis. Greg Mitchell writes for The Daily Beast (Newsweek),
While Kennedy drew wide praise for his handling of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, he had, in the process, sparked wide resentment among the media for how the White House had manipulated or even lied to the press about it while it was transpiring. Reporters had reluctantly gone along with repeated requests from Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, for self-censorship during the crisis and acceptance of a formal 12-point list of ‘guidelines’ for withholding news. Surely, with the crisis over, the administration might admit it went a little too far—even lying about the president’s health and travel—or at least quickly shed the crisis-spawned secrecy demands.
Arthur Sylvester, a public affairs spokesman for the Pentagon, “set off a firestorm when he admitted the control of information was even tighter than in World War II” during the “crisis,” a practice he defended. “And he used a loaded term in speaking favorably of government ‘management’ of the news. (He stopped short of revealing that Kennedy himself had used the phrase ‘news management,’ and favored the practice.)”
“Journalists of all political persuasions raised a hew and cry, declaring that they were now expected to act as little more than government propagandists.”
There is no “hew and cry” today in corporate media suites over state-produced fake news.
The vast majority of “journalists” simply churn out lies and misinformation handed down by the state without complaint, lest their careers and livelihood arrive at a sudden dead end.
The American public, considered ignoramuses (and, admittedly, many are) by the state and its owners, must be fed a constant stream of big and little lies in order to shield the national security state (NSS) from criticism and public indignation.
Kennedy disliked the media and, in regard to the supposed missile crisis in Cuba, he wanted the CIA to verify the Soviets had removed all missiles from the embattled Caribbean island.
Behind the scenes, JFK continued to rail against the press. There were media reports that some Cuban refugees were claiming the Soviets were hiding some of the missiles they had purportedly removed from the island. In a meeting at the White House with national security aides, Kennedy complained that the American people were ‘bound to think it’s true’ if it appeared in the press and that this could raise tensions with the Soviets again, even “possibly a war.” Such media reports made the Kennedy team appear ‘incompetent or liars.’ He asked CIA Director McCone to verify the removal of the missiles and debunk the news accounts.
Kennedy wanted a “new system” to control what the media told the American people. “Aides argued, however, that it might not be a good idea for the White House to start refuting news scoops by attempting to prove the negative.” Kennedy eventually backed down on his demand the media turn over to the state evidence to back assertions made in news articles.
Naturally, due to the fact The Daily Beast (Newsweek) is a component of the big and small lie propaganda media coopted by the NSS (beginning in the 1950s under the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird), the article quoted above ends with harsh criticism of then president Trump.
Kennedy retreated on this. Even if he’d had his own Twitter feed at that time, one can’t imagine, unlike the current occupant of the White House, that he would have charged that the press ‘is the enemy of the American people’ or that it is ‘frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.’
There is no longer an adversarial relationship between the corporate media and the state. The current effort, ongoing for several years now, is to eradicate the “alternative” media by all means necessary. The information space must be sanitized and made safe for the dissemination of lies and misinformation favorable to the actions of the state, no matter how psychotic or murderous.
The above PSA is a textbook example of the sort of propaganda and scare tactics employed, no matter how absurd or at odds with reality, by the state and its media. The video leaves the impression Putin will nuke New York and much of the east coast. Fear is the preferred template, as it produces an emotional and irrational reaction on the part of the public and forms consensus for illegal and immoral wars abroad and further police state actions at home.
Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.
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