What Is At The Heart of Ukraine Story?

What Is At The Heart of Ukraine Story?

                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

On the eve of the Agincourt expedition in France, Shakespeare’s model King, Henry V, is advised by the Bishop of Ely “if that you France will win, then with Scotland first begin.” In other words, if China, marching ahead of the US is the biggest threat to western dominance, its friendship “without limits” with Russia increases the danger by geometrical progression. This must be terminated.

The rise of the Sino-Russia duet would have proceeded for some time more, but it coincided with “US in decline; US in decline” chant rising to a crescendo at disorienting decibel levels. This chant was maddening for a super power afflicted by nightmares of the messy departure from Afghanistan. Some rearguard action was needed to restore self esteem.

True 1,50,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border would be perceived a threat by all “right thinking” people who watch TV but how would they discern that the 24/7 media they watch has overnight become part of the West’s war effort?

German Naval Chief, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach attending a seminar in New Delhi spoke from his heart: “What Putin wants from the West is a little respect which he probably deserves.” It is another matter that he had to resign.

One reaction to the German was from a pretty, pert lady. “Parade Vladimir Putin, XI Jinping, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson at a “swayamvara”, (the ancient Indian custom where princesses selected their partners) who would be garlanded by the maiden?” Boris Johnson, holding onto his job by the skin of his teeth because of Partygate? Joe Biden of Afghanistan and Kazakhstan fame, now trying to redeem himself in Ukraine? Vladimir Putin who has 80 percent support for the war. Above all, he lifted Russia from the debris of the Soviet Union and made it into the power it is today. Xi Jinping who supervises a system which lifted 400 million people out of poverty in 30 years? Who would the maiden garland?

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss who has posed Ukraine as a contest between democracy and autocracy must be in the blues today: her chant was discarded at the hurriedly called meeting in Germany by the Defense Consultative Group on Ukraine. US Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin clarified the picture: the West was not in the game to help Ukraine’s burgeoning democracy (Azov – Nazi battalion et al) against the “barbarian” in occupation of the Kremlin. “We want to weaken Russia” he said bluntly. There could be no clearer admission of the fact that this war is not about Ukraine. I wrote as much two months ago. Indeed, Ukraine is being plied with billions of dollars plus the most sophisticated weapons in the world to fight a proxy war so that the Anglo-Americans do not lose control of world power.

Thinkers and Statesmen of the old school like George Kennan and James Baker admired the Russian people for having brought about the “greatest bloodless” revolution in history. They were distressed that West, which had promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move east “even an inch”, was not keeping its word.

The so called “liberal” interventionists like Clinton brought Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic into NATO in 1999. Like there would be no tomorrow, in 2004 they gave NATO membership to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia. This was in the heady days before the western decline became official. The dates are interesting.

The Bucharest summit of NATO was attended by George W Bush on the one hand and Putin on the other like two sparring pugilists. Bush “lobbied like hell”, for Georgia and Ukraine to be brought into NATO. Putin said over his dead body. Putin’s red line was crossed. This was in April 2008.

In August 2008, Putin invaded Georgia. Why then this surprise over Ukraine? Mikhail Saakashvili holding a degree from Columbia and a favourite of US Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, became the handpicked President. He was given extensive TV time, but in vain. He projected himself as a darling of the West but eventually came a cropper in Georgia. Saakashvili’s rehabilitation in Ukraine was facilitated by President Petro Poroshenko who made him the Governor of Odessa. All because of a good word from Nuland. When Poroshenko was shown the door so was Saakashvili.

When Saakashvili’s conflict with Putin was in its early stages, the earth moved from under the US feet. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed. This was the beginning of the “US in decline” chant which drives Biden mad to this day. Ukraine is his response. Rise and fall of empires is routine but the decline of America has been exceptionally painful because the sole super power moment ended with such abruptness. “Decline” must never be mistaken for “fall”, because the US remains the world’s most powerful country. “Decline” is relative but continuous; it debilitates US conduct in world affairs.

At that moment, when US neocons were sketching designs of the American century, full spectrum dominance, the chosen target to keep the Military Industrial complex in good humour became Islamic terrorism. The Soviet Union had condensed into modern Russia which the West had to celebrate as the success of democracy. But the visceral suspicion of Russia never went away. The visceral became real when Putin restored Russia to its present stature. Russia came in the way, first in Kosovo which after the 72 days bombing of Serbia, was carved out to be kept in European care. Various enclaves of Kosovo are protested by European troops. But Russia drove its tanks and occupied Pristina airport with the West flailing its arms.

Russians are responsible for the US reversals in Syria. Leaders like Tony Blair had warned Barrack Obama to keep a steady focus on Islamic terror. Deviating into conflict with Russia would complicate relations with Europe which, wartime bravado apart, is heavily dependent on Russian energy. And now, as the tide turns in the battlefield and the secrets of Mariupol are about to be revealed, nervous punters on both sides are keeping their fingers crossed.

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What Celebrations In Bleak Mood? Our Eid Milan On Hold

What Celebrations In Bleak Mood? Our Eid Milan On Hold

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Bash me up for gender bias if you like, but during Ramzan, my three sisters fast and four brothers, myself being the eldest, pick up the blessings. This arbitrary division of labour has its traces in divergent schooling.

To keep the wolf from the door, the declining landlords of Awadh fell into deep thought about the next generation’s education. The family was divided down the middle on western education. The conservatives, with abiding family affiliations to the Congress party, insisted on Urdu education. They saw their role model, Jawaharlal Nehru as an Urdu speaking, sherwani wearing (a rose in the buttonhole) Awadhi, Kashmiri Pandit.

The progressives in the family, all communists, invoked Nehru’s other persona – a Fabian socialist with an open mind. Since, my mother’s casting vote was with the progressives, the brothers were admitted to the La Martiniere College, a finer school than which would be difficult to imagine. In consigning the two sisters, who were chronologically my immediate youngsters, to Taleem Gahe Niswaan (Lady’s College), my mother was not letting down her gender: her role models were women of enlightenment, Dr. Rasheed Jahan, Ismet Chugtai who by writing Angarey (embers) and Lehaf (quilt) had caused convulsions in the local clergy.

Boys were set on the path for careers; women would preserve traditions and look at the stars. By the time the third and youngest sister, came of age, my parents had changed their outlook. Naheed was sent to the some school as the boys.

The boys respected namaz and fasting on which our sisters were firm. For ourselves we had found an elegant escape route in our poets. In our region, Ghalib and Josh Malihabadi stoked the iconoclast in anyone who valued a life of the mind.

Ghalib said it for many of us:

Jaanta hoon sawab e ta’at o zohd

(I know the blessings of prayer and abstinence)

Par tabeeat idhar naheen aati

(But my heart is not in it)

Josh’s irreverence was elegant but of an order that would today warrant the appearance of lynch mobs at the clergy’s behest. It is a truth insufficiently repeated that there is not a single verse in Urdu where the mullah or the Islamic variant of the Salvation Army is praised: he is always the butt of derisive humour.

Not for a moment does irreverence mean opposition to the faith. It entailed a critical, even satirical contemplation of the faith’s self appointed intermediaries who were deemed to be of insufficient learning. The weaker the intellect the greater the tendency to deviate from fact and logic into miracle and magic. Aalim or the religious scholar was respected.

Even the most audacious poets never crossed certain red lines. An article of faith was:

“Ba khuda deewana baash-o-ba Mohammad hoshiyar.”

(Take liberties with God but be careful with Mohammad)

Just imagine how tolerant the court must have been where Chandrabhan Brahman crossed even this red line:

Panja dar panja e khuda daram

Munche parwa-e-Mustafa daram)

(My hand clasps the hand of God;

Why should I worry about the Prophet?)

Irreverence was an attitude to be sustained with some delicacy. Even an agnostic like Ghalib was cautious during the period of fasting. He snatches a “morsel of bread” here and a gulp of water there, as he admits in his letters. His furtive forays into food during Ramzan must have influenced our behaviour too particularly in large joint families. The 50 percent who did not fast wore expressions of austerity for the benefit of those who did. The ranks of the “rozedars” (ones who fasted) were inflated by women and cousins who had avoided “English schools” for reasons mentioned at the outset. Schooling, even within the same family, conditioned levels of religiosity.

Cosmopolitan schooling ruptured traditionalism but it did not induce indifference to traditions which had a world to commend them. In fact Urdu culture was itself inherently urbane and cosmopolitan. A great deal of Urdu culture depended on the cultural derivatives of religion. Mir Anees, Nazeer Akbarabadi and Mohsin Kakorvi were the staple of this culture just as Tulsidas, and Malik Mohammad Jaisi were a part of it.

Just as Socrates misguided the youth of Athens, Ghalib did generations of Urdu poetry lovers, among whom was my maternal uncle, Saiyid Mohammad Mehdi, a gentleman to boot, erudite and a card carrying member of the communist party in his youth. Towards the end he did not mind The God That Failed, Arthur Koestler’s disappointment with the creed, as a book in my modest collection.

A Persian quatrain I picked from his circle of friends has remained with me as a whimsical calendar:

“Ba har hafta, faaqa,

Ba har maah, qae,

Ba har saal mus-hil,

Ba har roz mae”

(Weekly fast, monthly ‘kunjal’ or vomit, yearly purgation and daily wine)

I have always wondered if this comes from the same school of Persian etiquette as Omar Khayyam’s code for drinking?

Gar baada khuri to ba khiradmandaan khur

(Drink only with persons of intellect…..etcetera.

In the course of a litigation Ghalib famously informed a magistrate that I am “half a Muslim” because “I drink wine but do not eat pork.”

That would be a misleading yardstick to compare me with, but I suspect my wife and I are conscientious hosts during Ramzan, making arrangements for saheri, the meal before the crack of dawn and “Iftar” the meal after the day’s fast.

With ritual regularity I maintain another practice: I visit Jama Masjid atleast for one saheri and iftar if possible with non Muslim friends. These expeditions show a diminishing success rate. Some years ago, Lord Meghnad Desai and the late Swami Agnivesh accompanied me for saheri to Karim’s in the old city. I had anticipated Swamiji’s inhibitions and carried with me home cooked vegetarian food which the management graciously served.

In recent years I have given up trying. This year we cancelled our Eid Milan celebrations. What celebrations in a mood so bleak? Yes, we shall “observe” Eid privately and ask our sisters to pray for better times.

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Ukraine: Examples Of Media Disinformation From Previous Wars

Ukraine: Examples Of Media Disinformation From Previous Wars

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

It quite beats me how the Pundits have divined the progress of the war in Ukraine when the sources of information are so brazenly one sided. To establish my case, I have pulled out pages from my war diaries to prove how the situation on the ground is often at a variance from what the Western media reports.

Atal Behari Vajpayee as Foreign Minister abruptly cut short his 1979 visit to China when Deng Xiaoping decided to “teach Vietnam a lesson” without even informing Vajpayee. The media accompanying him left for Hong Kong. N. Ram of the Hindu and I placed a request with the “cadre” looking after us: we would like to visit the war front. “Sure” he said and disappeared. After two days he returned. “You cannot go to the front” said he without any change of expression. Ram returned home; I left for Bangkok in quest of a visa to Hanoi.

Abid Hussain who retired as Ambassador to Washington, was then in Bangkok with a UN agency. He introduced me to his Vietnamese colleague, a member of the distinguished Bao Dai family. The source worked like magic. The visa thus acquired gave me access to Xuan Thuy, a senior party leader and accommodation in the VIP Guest House.

In a tight system, information was scarce. In the afternoon the ambassadors including our own Shivaramakrishnan congregated in the badminton court of the Indonesian envoy. From here they retired to their embassies to write “insightful” dispatches. Given my luck, Xuan Thuy’s office acceded to my request: I was driven to the key battle in that war – the battle of Lang Son, 30 kms from the border. From a hilltop, I saw Chinese equipment being carted away by cheering Vietnamese soldiers. The Chinese did not take me to the front; the Vietnamese drove me to the main battle. It was obvious who won.

Armed with the scoop, I caught the flight to New Delhi via Bangkok. I hammered out “Vietnam teaches Deng a lesson.” Even though the story was second lead on page one, the reaction in the office was tepid. Ramnath Goenka, the feisty proprietor of The Indian Express said with a naughty glint in the eye, “a story should be neither too early nor too late.”

After tossing this puzzle at me, RNG blurted out the truth. “Sri was at dinner with the American ambassador.” RNG was always proud that his Editor, Sri Mulgaokar “dined only with the American ambassador” (Other Ambassadors in RNG’s framework were riffraff). At this particular dinner, my Vietnam story came up for mention. “The ambassador had read no such story in the US newspapers.”

In the 70s, Henry Kissinger brilliantly achieved what Anthony Blinken is busting his guts to manage over Ukraine – distance Beijing from Moscow. James Reston of the New York Times checked himself into a Beijing clinic to discover the joys of acupuncture. A full blown Washington-Beijing romance was on after Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing. New friend China would not be allowed to be “beaten”, atleast in the Western media.

It took years for it to become conventional wisdom that Vietnam was the only country to have defeated on the battlefield three permanent members of the Security Council – France at Dien Bien Phew, the US in Saigon, and China at Lang Son.

My professional pride was boosted by a call from Defence Secretary, Sushital Banerjee. The Director General of Military Intelligence had found my reports “an eye opener”. It was an awkward moment for Sri Mulgaokar because Sushital called him too that the army top brass would debrief me “for the valuable material” I had returned with. Photographs from my camera also came in handy. In fact Time Magazine used one of them to portray the “calm in Hanoi”.

The toppling of Saddam Hussain’s statue at Baghdad’s Firdous Square on April 9, 2003 is another episode from my diary which reveals similar truths about the West controlled Information Order. Dick Cheney, who was Defence Secretary during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, had by the time of Iraq’s occupation refined the media tricks which he had initiated as the Pentagon boss. The high water mark of that effort was 750 embedded journalists. He was now the all-powerful Vice President to George W Bush. His media team sketched the choreography for him to declare complete victory in Iraq on April 9. Cheney’s victory speech would be interspersed with celebrations along various routes to Firdous Square, opposite Palestine hotel, where a majestic bronze statue of Saddam Hussain would be pulled down by the crowds “ecstatic” at American occupation. Nothing of the sort happened. The cheering crowds did not materialize. There was panic. Tricks come in where facts stop short.

Refugees uprooted from the Shia south during uprisings in recent years, had been settled on the southern edge of Baghdad. The ghetto was named Saddam City. When Iraqis did not come onto the streets to celebrate – the Ba’ath army was still intact – emissaries rushed to Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr to bring out crowds from Saddam City to mark Saddam’s “downfall” namely the statue.

That cheering crowds brought down the statue is a lie perpetrated to this day, even as promos for CNN telecasts. US marines tightened hoops of iron around the statue’s neck and pulled it down with an armoured carrier. The group, photographed from ground angle, were hotel staff and guests. The angle made it look like a crowd. But soon enough, real Shia crowds bitter for years with Saddam’s anti-Shia cruelties, streamed out of Saddam City beating Saddam’s photographs with chappals. The Shias were suddenly in good odour with the Americans. Saddam City was renamed Sadr City. In severe grip of Shia fever was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In a full op-ed column he proposed Ayatollah Ali Sistani for the Nobel Peace prize. Ofcourse, the fever came down soon enough when the Shia arc swam into the US-Israeli ken as the principal culprit in world affairs. The Nobel proposal was hit for a six.

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After Pak Supreme Court Ruling: He Who Wins Shall Lose

After Pak Supreme Court Ruling: He Who Wins Shall Lose 

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi 

 

The Pakistan Supreme Court has handed Imran Khan the license to do a Tayyip Erdogan. In the March 2003 elections, the Turkish strongman romped home on a purely anti American platform. He became a hero because he denied US troops the right of passage through Turkey to Iraq that year. 

 

Anti Americanism is a sure fire electoral trick in a Muslim country nursing a deep grievance against the US for decades of Islamophobia. And Pakistan was yoked into the Afghan war where it lost 80,000 lives. 

 

Did the winds from Ukraine fan the flames in Islamabad? A regime change instigated by the America is Imran Khan chosen narrative. The US, he says, has succeeded in lining up all the old “bandycoots”. If the Khan has taken on real “bandycoots”, they are not going to be satisfied with a mere vote of no confidence. They would like to ground him for good.  

 

Does the predicament in which Imran finds himself have something to do with his official two day visit to Moscow on February 24, just when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was starting? The high stake game that the Americans were leading the West into made it important for them to prove that Khan was on the wrong side of history.  

 

Khan must wrench away from the Chinese and Russian embrace: that was the message. This embrace impedes the world order being sketched and any US move in Afghanistan. It was galling for the Americans that the Kazakh adventure failed in January. It is a cruel admission to make but this war is not about Ukraine. Sadly, Ukrainian blood has been purchased with Western treasure –– in cash and arms. The amazing media management has been breathtaking –– bringing Zelensky live to every European Parliament, nay, even at the Grammy awards. 

 

Who knows, giant screens at football matches may now have mandatory clips of Zelensky; two minutes of silence for Ukraine at all cinema houses. The sky is the limit. The global media which was founded in 1992 at Desert Storm, America’s sole superpower moment, is busting its guts to keep America buoyant even at its nadir.  

 

Some of the West’s war aims are straightforward: to retain Anglo-American dominance on world order; preserve NATO’s centrality to this order; keep Russia in focus as a weakened pariah in Ukraine for as long as possible. The West is having kittens because China and Russia have declared that their friendship has no limits. They have to be separated; that is American policy.  

 

The mindset was on display even when the late king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia persuaded the Americans to end what was an existential threat to the House of Saud and Israel, namely Iran. To target Iran, the “Shia arc”, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas has to be dismantled. That is how the Syrian expedition began. “Get out of the way, Assad” Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, waved her hand imperiously. Has Assad gone? Does the US have a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq after the Stars and Stripes were “cased” on December 31, 2011? The ignominious departure from Afghanistan in August will not be forgotten in a hurry. This was after full 20 years of occupation. So, it is do or die in Ukraine. 

 

Ms Liz Truss, British Foreign Secretary, the cheer leader for “democracy against autocracy” was not around when Secretary of State John Kerry pulled Ashraf Ghani out of the hat as President in Kabul and cajoled Abdullah Abdullah, the real winner of that election, to accept the job of the country’s chief executive. Was that democracy being marketed as the alternative to the other system? 

 

Is Truss pleased with the election results in Hungary and Serbia, Ukraine’s neighbourhood? Viktor Orban and Aleksandar Vucic are both self-proclaimed “illiberals”. At the other end of the world a real life theatre of the absurd produced and directed by the US and UK is being played out. In a moment of pique bordering on desperation Washington, unable to set aside or digest Venezuela’s duly elected President Nicolas Maduro, floated a parallel Presidency and nominated 38 year old Juan Guaido as President. Other than the US and Britain, no European country is part of this side show. 

 

Evo Morales, the first indigenous, Left Wing, anti-World Bank President of Bolivia has been replaced by ideological look-alike, Luis Arce. Was the success of 35 year old socialist, Gabriel Boric in Chile an improvement on the Military dictator, Augusto Pinochet whom the CIA installed after murdering the popular Salvador Allende, a friend of one of the world’s greatest poets, Pablo Neruda? 

 

Colombia, nursed by the US as its pocket borough for decades, has come out of its suffocation. In irreversible lead is another Socialist, a former guerilla leader, Gustavo Petro. President Pedro Castillo of Peru is described as a far left, socialist. Is all this a march of democracy or autocracy? A battle royal is due in Brazil in October where Lula da Silva will take on Jair Bolsonaro known for ignoring pandemics, burning the Amazon patch by patch and being the chief guest at India’s republic day in 2020. One commends to Truss the thought that she sees Edge of Democracy, a masterly documentary on how Lula, the country’s most popular politician ever, was dethroned by International Corporate intrigue.  

 

How do the votaries of democracy in this format approach developments in Pakistan? The principal charge against Imran Khan is that he mismanaged the economy, his team selection is poor and that he is self-righteous and arrogant. Those arrayed against him have proven cases of corruption, against them. Obviously these groups, with a possible signal from the Army, leavened their numbers with defectors, and asked for a vote of no confidence. Khan has shown, on a selective basis minutes of a conversation between Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington and Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia which seems to suggest that the US wants Pakistan to fall in line “or else……” Will this revelation eventually help Khan or is it an Albatross around his neck? 

 

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West Won Media War Almost But At Cost Of Credibility Later

West Won Media War Almost But At Cost Of Credibility Later

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

There are many tragedies being concurrently played out in Ukraine but the one for which the West will pay the price for a long time is the collapse of the credibility of the western media.

In his gripping history of war journalism, The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley provides an impressive catalogue to prove Aeschylus’ dictum: when wars breaks out, the first casualty is the truth.

The “untruth” did not always have to be brazen. Ernie Pyle became a legendary war correspondent writing human interest stories about the ordinary American soldiers during the Second World War. Ed Murrow also covered the war, but the crowning glory of his career was as a CBS News presenter. He fought the system single handedly and demolished Senator Joseph McCarthy for his Communist witch hunt. These writers, anchors, presenters remained journalists outside the Pentagon system.

The few wars that India fought with Pakistan produced a crop of war correspondents notably Barkha Dutt, during Kargil. She too was circumscribed by the Aeschylus principle – be part of the war effort. The editor of The Statesman cancelled my assignment to cover the Bangladesh war for a simple reason: I would be mistaken for a Punjabi from Pakistan and killed by the Mukti Vahini. It is another matter that Peter Hazlehurst of The Times, London had let the cat out: “the battle cry of the Mukti Vahini was “Sat Sri Akal”.

The Vietnam War produced a crop of antiwar reporters. Walter Cronkite’s live coverage of the war gave fillip to the anti-war movement in the US. I have left out some of my favourites: James Cameron, for instance.

The complete dismantling of media ethics is a post Soviet phenomenon, when neo cons flanking George W Bush began to dream up the American century warranting Rupert Murdoch’s all pervasive invasion of the media. A great variety of newspapers began to publish editorials which looked translated versions of some master copy.

Part of the preparation for the American century was the setting up of a global media for which operation Desert Storm was the first trial run. Of all the wars the US fought since the Soviet collapse, Desert Storm, executed by George Bush Senior, was the only one with a clear outcome. It pulverized Saddam Hussain, after luring him into Kuwait. Regime change was not the purpose of this expedition. There were four principal aims of Desert Storm:

(a)  With the Soviet Union gone the previous year, Arab regimes which had been on the other side of the Cold War were put on notice.

(b)  NATO, created to cope with the Soviet threat, was still required to keep world order even after the Soviet Union.

(c)  Even though a reunited Germany was a much more powerful entity now, it would not be promoted in the West’s power hierarchy.

(d)  In other words, the Anglo-American combine retained undiminished control on the world order, exactly as it had since 1945. In Ukraine, this is very much in the bargain.

Victory over communism was never sold as the success of democracy, human rights, freedom of thought; it was primarily a victory of market forces, unfettered capitalism. Towards this end the global media was brought into play. From the terrace of Baghdad’s Al Rasheed hotel, Peter Arnett of the CNN, brought the war into our drawing rooms. A new era in journalism had begun. One telecast divided the world into two sets of audiences: A triumphant West and the Muslim world defeated, humiliated once more.

A world thus divided was custom made to replace the Soviet threat with Islamophobia. This became the glue for western cohesion. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing were all joyous with endless wars, particularly post 9/11. This was bonanza time.

Something akin to the wild West had opened up in the media during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. I shall never tire of repeating the image of a gun wielding Geraldo Rivera of Fox News doing a piece-to-camera that would leave all war correspondents beating their breasts for the loss of ratings to Fox.

“Come Osama, I will settle with you”, said the journalist flourishing his weapon.

Desert Storm and Afghanistan were, both, highly telegenic events. Never in history had the world seen such spectacular fire power. And what fire power. I shall always remember the fright with which I looked out of my 14^th floor, Al Mansour Hotel window. Sounds were terrifying, at immeasurable decibel levels. They were like a giant rattle amplified a million times.

A range of scripts were kept in readiness for the new global media: it would be required for the colour revolution as in Ukraine in November 2004. Protests in the maiden would be blown up by the media. Television would create the impression of a nation in grip of a revolution. The effort has continued to be refined until the latest proxy war the West is fighting with Putin, with the bravery of Ukrainians as fodder. It is breathtaking media management. We are supposed to believe that Lviv and Mariupol and a series of cities are under relentless Russian bombing. Yet the determined western media persons pop up miraculously for the mandated piece to camera. A besieged Volodymyr Zelensky in army casuals, exhorts his people every evening. Not just that, from a country bombed to smithereens, (we are told) he demonstrates a high level of media savvy: he has addressed every European parliament. Is he in a war zone or is he where President Biden met members of his cabinet – Warsaw? It would be a malicious rumour to float: that the war hero is in an American embassy which has been transformed into a TV studio. From here the war can be fought until Putin is on his knees. Wait for the dust to settle as it is likely to soon. A treasure trove of truths will rattle down the cupboard.

The western media will pick up the thread where it left it before the war and resume.

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