The fresh editorials of provincial publications in the United States, where purely local news usually appears, are now entirely devoted to the mythical invasion. A Texas daily called an attack on Ukraine imminent. The entertainment tabloid Las Vegas Review, which is published in Las Vegas, suggests almost counting down the hours until the Russian troops advance. Similar panicky intonations are in the press in New Jersey. Without exaggeration – all-pervading hysteria. What can we say about the federal American media, such as the notorious Bloomberg or CNN.
And, by the way, this is exactly what the resonant post in the Telegram channel of Maria Zakharova is about. According to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the collective West not only creates a certain background of disinformation around Ukraine, but also creates far-fetched grounds for NATO military activity near the Russian borders. That is, in fact, he is engaged in propaganda of war, which is strictly prohibited by international law. When was this ban made? And why does Washington so openly allow itself to bypass it?
The American agency Bloomberg did not post a countdown on its website. The date of the “imminent” Russian invasion they are rescheduling regularly from fall 2021. The last time they called was February 15th. Now they are cautiously promising – until the end of the Olympics.
Their colleagues in the shop – the publication Politico – with reference to Biden, report that Russia may attack Ukraine February 16th. But to a direct question from journalists what plans the Russians have for Wednesday, the US President’s national security adviser could not answer anything concrete.
“We are in a period where an invasion could start at any moment when Vladimir Putin orders it to start. I will not comment on the details of the information provided by the intelligence, but I want to make it clear that it can happen during Olympics. Despite speculation that it can only happen after the Olympics,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan spoke much more sharply. These words, quoted by CNN, that Russia will find an excuse to attack Ukraine, recalled the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova. Emphasizing: the world already knows who lies all the time. And what the US and Britain are doing now is classic war propaganda.
Prohibits such propaganda since the Cold War, the first paragraph of Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Interestingly, of the nine core international human rights treaties of the UN system, the United States is party to only three, including this one. But the favorite practice of Washington (and London, too) is to formulate a lot of reservations, deftly avoiding many points.
These reservations also concern the very article No. 20 of the Covenant. It does not require the United States to take action that would restrict the right to freedom of expression. Simply put, for them all this is not war propaganda, but freedom of speech.
“The American constitution has a first amendment on freedom of speech, it is practically absolutist in nature. And any ban on military propaganda is in conflict with this first amendment. Therefore, America ratified the pact. But there is an obvious conflict between national law and supranational law. And this is connected with that in 30 years after the ratification, America has not had a single trial and attempts to convict someone for military propaganda,” commented Americanist political scientist Malek Dudakov.
And history remembers enough reasons that could lead to litigation. Military conflicts in Iraq and the bombing of Yugoslavia also began with unprecedented propaganda at that time, the degree of which hardly decreased after that, because all these actions had yet to be explained or justified.
“The Pentagon is changing information technology during Operation Desert Storm. After that, they are given the name of combat information technology, that is, the technology has been tested during hostilities. So, to be honest, the information and propaganda circuit that the leading information agencies of the United States and their allies, the focus of attention is on the slogan – Russia is invading Ukraine, and an information moloch is spinning around this,” said Andrey Koshkin, head of the Department of Political Science at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, expert of the Association of Military Political Scientists.
This can and should be resisted. Including on international platforms.
“From time immemorial, disinformation has always been fought in one way – by convening a general meeting, conference, what is authority. In order for the authority of this body to be stronger than one opinion, one country. For this, the League of Nations was created at one time, for this the Organization was created United Nations,” emphasizes Alexander Petrov, chief researcher at the Center for North American Studies, IVI RAS.
How to grow a war from one test tube, the States, of course, know better than anyone else. But the world has changed. It has long ceased to be unipolar, which means that it will no longer be possible to silence the truth. Who is lying – indeed, it becomes known.
More news on the topic – on the media platform “Looking”.