We are very aware that at least 95% of what we all see, hear or read daily about Ukraine-Russia in the apparently varied but in reality highly uniform Western mainstream media will fit like a glove with the ‘US/European Case’ laid out above (here). That is the story we get, end of story, unless we dump the mainstream and look beyond.

The image of there being ‘a wide range of views’ in the mainstream reporting of key policies, such as this, is maintained to some extent by the variety in styles and the different relations to social class which news-providers present.

But there is undeniably – if you step outside the box and search in vain for contrary views or seriously challenging questions – an underlying established framing on all major government issues, foreign ‘interventions’ included, within which mainstream state and corporate reporting confines itself, with extremely few exceptions.

Regarding foreign policy, US and allied actions and motivations are consistently identified as ‘beyond reproach’ in mainstream news presentations, on a par with reverence for the Queen for UK news consumers, or the First Family in the US, say. Within the narrative presented it is true that there are allowances for a few occasional dents in the otherwise irreproachable US ‘good guys’, but these are always presented as ‘mishaps’ or ‘rare exceptions’ and don’t begin to call into question the ‘deeply moral bigger picture’ of their apparent global mission to ‘spread democracy’, (but actually resulting only in spreading their own military and geopolitical dominance at such a huge human cost).

Whether the style of news approval comes in the form of an intellectually concluded ‘reluctant acceptance of the need for a just war’ offered by one style of news provider, or as a jingoistic “Back our Heroes!” and “Stop Vlad!” from another, is effectively irrelevant in terms of the result: ensuring public endorsement of the process of taxation unquestioningly further enriching arms-producing elites by requiring more military hardware pumped out of factories and fired at ‘bad guys’, killing and maiming uncounted, mostly unreported, men, women and children (while at home hospitals and fire stations ‘need’ to close’).

And all done to achieve the US and allies’ unstated geopolitical chess-game objectives, which here includes pushing US-armed and trained forces right up to Russia’s border, disregarding the rights of Eastern separatists who don’t recognise the post-coup far-right Kiev government, and disregarding wider risks of war escalation; while marketed to us through the mainstream as ‘noble deeds to combat Russian aggression’. (2 minutes looking at a map and considering that “it’s NATO that’s getting closer to Russia, not the other way around” should help to dispel that nonsensical piece of propaganda, see Armstrong article in Selected Articles/Links).

The same consistent underlying loyalty to the US and allies is true regarding reporting on eg: Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran … When dealing with any nation which it seeks to control / topple the leadership of, the whole of the mainstream is seen to align with the narrative of leading politicians, reinforcing daily to news-consumers ‘who we should blame’ and ‘who we should support’. Glaring and scratch-deep inconsistencies are left ignored by a ‘mind-already-made-up’ supportive mainstream echoing the pro-war line. Wars and ‘liberating’ regime changes are then seen to carry on ‘smoothly’ without the possibility of there being a well-informed anti-war populace at home joining the dots and uniting in huge protests.

Unlike the mainstream’s ‘loyalty-to-US-and-allies-first’ approach to reporting on international events, we see it as dangerously psychopathically insane and a dereliction of duty in the extreme for purported ‘news’ providers to ignore and file away out of sight and out of mind all of the fresh evidence of other self-serving and mass-murdering US-led coups and wars, also based on false pretexts and using violent extremists as pawns, when presenting their support for a similar US-led escalation in Ukraine.

These are some of the most recent of the US’ violent foreign ‘adventures’ which the mainstream has ‘forgotten to mention’:

• The US-backed proxy invasion and destabilisation of Syria shown to be using US and UN certified Al-Qaeda terrorists (Al-Nusra and others) to try to topple Assad is ONGOING.
• The US-led regime change in Libya using extremist militias and US-led air attacks to topple Gaddafi with no mandate, causing unknown levels of death and destruction, massive numbers of refugees, and leaving citizens at the mercy of violent militias, was started on false grounds in just 2011.
  
• The US-led (second) Iraq War killing several hundreds of thousands directly, and leaving the country in violent chaos was in just 2003.

… the ‘forgot to mention’ list goes on and on, see Nicolas Davies’ excellent article below.

In each case, particularly when it’s been the time for a government to formally commit to involvement in another US-led attack, mainstream news has conveniently completely ignored how each of the previous (or even ongoing!) US ‘freedom / democracy missions’ has caused only mass death, destruction and further conflict.

Should a parent keep buying pets for a child who keeps strangling them, and believe each time afresh the persuasively expressed ‘virtuous intentions’, wiping from their mind past barbarities?

– The mainstream media and leading politicians keep ‘force-selling’ the latest reasons for ‘more US-led war to end suffering’ when it clearly only creates ever more suffering and more war. As citizens we are the people in whose charge governments and media must exist, not vice-versa! We must ‘stop buying’ the one-tracked narrative of the military-industrial-media complex by getting informed independently of the mainstream to take control of our dangerously persuasive spawn before it strangles us all.

We try to take a rational view based on an analysis of past facts with no set loyalties to any group, (however ‘radical’ being rational might seem, given the ‘loyalty-based’ mainstream) in that we see the long list of evidence over many decades of US-allied self-serving coups and catastrophic wars based on lies as a logical reason to firmly reject arguments for more of the same occurring in Ukraine, with a serious risk of becoming a nuclear WW3 conflict with Russia. Based on its repeated role in this madness, we also naturally firmly mistrust the mainstream for loyally supporting and ‘normalising’ these insane arguments.

We urge people to ask themselves the next time they encounter mainstream news “what is NOT being said?”; and also to try shifting around shoes on other feet in the narrative presented – how, for example, would it be reported if it were Russia sending ‘advisory’ troops to Mexico or Canada after fomenting a violent coup on America’s doorstep there? Would America be portrayed as the aggressor?

Once aware of the loyalty-based framing that underpins mainstream reporting, we think people will naturally look elsewhere for a real range of views, perhaps including some of the sources quoted below.

Besides the dominant framing discussed above, there are a very few exceptions in the mainstream that do break the rigid line of establishment conformity, and certainly too there are all kinds of wacko sites and articles that need to be avoided if randomly looking for alternatives, and unfamiliar with reliable sources. We try to collect here (Selected Articles / Links) in one place a mixture of both exceptional examples from the mainstream that are not blinkered by the overriding US and allied adoration there, and also selected voices of reason found (and kept) outside the mainstream.