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By John Helmer, Moscow

There are large departments at the Pentagon and NATO headquarters for fabricating lies and faking news. They create the threats against which military forces are the defence. The more threats there are in circulation, the more it costs to produce them, and also to defend against them.  So President Donald Trump is bound to be asking much more in military budget, and insisting at the same time that the NATO allies do more to contribute their share – that’s to say, to the departments of fabricated lies and faked news. Naturally, these are top-secret. Their true costs go unreported to the US Congress and other parliaments which approve the outlays; these are several magnitudes greater than the state budgets for telling the truth.

Last month US European Command (EUCOM) and the Pentagon fabricated the story of Russian Sukhoi jets “buzzing” the nuclear-armed destroyer, USS Porter, in the Black Sea. Read the breaking news here.  Forty-eight hours after this report, the Pentagon started fabricating  photographs of the Sukhois and pumping them into the mainstream media; for that part of the tale, wait a few days more for the publication.

Russia is not the only US Government adversary to be targeted by the info-warfighters. Early this week an exhaustive investigation was published of claims reported by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Wall Street Journal, plus the state Taiwan News Agency, that two Chinese “nuclear-capable bombers” had buzzed the island of Taiwan, triggering a telephone-call between the Taiwan head of state, Tsai Ing-wen, and Trump in Washington. 

The first clue to the faking was that the news appeared days after the event had lost its newsworthiness.  Follow how much was faked, which media published it, and what the political purpose of the fakers was by clicking here

The archive on the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, is an even better known case of expensive fabrications by the US and NATO; for the backfile, start here

Faking as a weapon of warfare is ancient; it isn’t even particularly human. Birds, monkeys and fish do it, too. Disinformation is another word for it. But misinformation can be different. That depends on the intention of the informer.  Misunderstanding can happen. But nowadays in politics we are way beyond misunderstanding Russians.

Because March 8 is the day set down by the Russian government for the celebration of Women’s Day, here’s a small opportunity to appreciate the difference between misunderstanding and misinformation. And because the Soviet Union was the first state to make March 8 into a state holiday, we start at the right place.

Yes, you know best — the Americans came first. The very first celebration of Women’s Day was in New York, organized by the Socialist Party of America and the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union; the date was February 28, 1909. The Socialist International in Europe made the day a political protest from 1910; three years later the first Russian protest for Women’s Day was on the last Saturday of February in 1913. The women’s demonstration in St. Petersburg in February (Russian Calendar) 1917 started the February Revolution.  It was the October Revolution which formalized March 8 as an official holiday.

To celebrate that there is (was) a difference between misunderstanding and war, listen now  to Zhenia Lubich singing her most famous song, “Russian Girl” in the special film directed by Dmitry Gienko. Composed to be sung in English, this is the fourth anniversary of the song, which came a few days after March 8, 2013.  Millions of Russians are still laughing.


Left: European Socialist leaders Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in 1911; Zhenia Lubich in 2013.

As for the film, you have a whole day to interpret what it means. Lubich herself won’t help, and since she is singing in English, that’s ironical. 

“Even before I was in France, I lived in America,” she said in interview after the song became a hit. 

“That’s where I’m especially, sharply aware of the relationship with Russia, and at some moments I really just wanted to escape. To escape to the homeland. And I saw the difference of perception. Maybe all those things led to the fact that the song was written for the Russian Girl. Because, of course, there, abroad, we are perceived in a certain way: there are some stereotypes which I wanted to refute on the one hand; and on the other, to laugh about them. In fact, I am not only mocking the foreigners who perceive Russians this way, but I am also mocking Russians.”  Last July Lubich  added:  “It is clear to the Russian public who knows what I’m singing about, and  it’s also clear it’s foreign to the listener. It is a big irony, and self-irony.” 

First prize for interpreting the song correctly is a pair of protectors for the Russian sole (below, left).  Second, consolation prize is more of the same (right).

The judge’s decision will be final and no correspondence entered into.

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