Juno News - The fog of war takes over Ukraine

00:00:00.000 The fog of war sets in, the Ukrainian conflict heats up, and so does the propaganda war playing

00:00:04.740 out on social media. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:12.320 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the program. So before we get to the meat of the

00:00:16.960 program today, I'm going to talk about the conflict in Ukraine. I'm going to talk about

00:00:19.940 Putin's aggression, and I'm going to talk about the unbelievable propaganda that we are being

00:00:24.180 inundated with from all sides on social media. Before, I just want to mark today. Today is

00:00:30.180 March 1st. Today marks the end of the ill-conceived and liberty-restricting vaccine passport regime 0.97

00:00:37.060 in Ontario. Let us never return to this dark place in our history where we had a two-tiered

00:00:42.780 society, where we restricted and prohibited citizens from participating in society, participating

00:00:47.880 in our community based solely on their vaccine status. Ryan O'Connor, a lawyer who's friend of

00:00:52.540 the program we had him on last week, he wrote this. Today marks the end of the rational and

00:00:57.580 anti-science mandatory vaccine passport in Ontario, which only existed because unelected medical

00:01:02.780 officers of health lobbied for it. Never again should Ontarians be denied access to our community

00:01:07.080 based on their vaccination status. Amen to that. Let us never return. Okay, let's get to Ukraine 0.71

00:01:13.360 because I haven't really done an in-depth analysis on the show. So I want to paint a picture of what is

00:01:18.700 going on on the ground in Ukraine. And let me just preface this all by saying it's kind of tough. It's

00:01:23.740 kind of tough to be in a situation, trying to report the news, needing to base your reports on

00:01:28.960 legacy media reporting. As you know, I have a very healthy skepticism of legacy media. They deserve

00:01:34.380 every ounce of skepticism. And so many of the reports that people are putting out today are easily

00:01:39.620 debunkable, often debunked. So much of the stories that have been circulating, that have gone viral,

00:01:44.360 turned out not to be portraying the thing that they were told to be portraying. It's really hard

00:01:50.220 to even get basic facts down because again, we are in the fog of war. We don't know who to trust,

00:01:56.400 whose numbers to trust. The Russians are claiming one thing. Ukrainians are claiming something very 1.00

00:02:00.440 different. And without being on the ground yourself, without having all of the information available at

00:02:05.080 your fingertips, it's hard to parse through. So for this report, for this timeline, I've tried to rely

00:02:09.540 on what I think are the most sort of straight media outlets, the ones that can be trusted,

00:02:14.920 mostly the BBC. I find the BBC to be very straight. And yes, I know that they are funded by British

00:02:18.900 taxpayers. However, I generally speaking find that they can be trusted. Same with places like

00:02:23.580 Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. So that is what we've based our timeline on, and I'll go through

00:02:29.060 it now. So this all started on February 21st, last Monday, when Putin declared the independence of

00:02:35.680 two Eastern Ukrainian separatist regions. So Russia now recognizes the Donetsk People's Republic and the

00:02:42.740 Lunask People's Republic as independent and separate breakaway regions of Ukraine. Let me just note that

00:02:48.180 most of the people, many of the people who live in these regions are in fact Russian speakers, and

00:02:52.580 they would probably, many of them would identify as being Russian in the first place. So first that

00:02:58.580 happened on Monday. By Wednesday, it was very apparent that we were, that there was going to be a war,

00:03:03.360 that Russia was going to invade, and that that invasion happened late Wednesday night here in

00:03:09.060 North America, February 23rd, or Thursday morning, local time on February 24th. We saw a bombing

00:03:15.100 campaign in civilian areas in the city of Kharkiv, as well as Kiev. We're talking about carpet bombs being 0.82

00:03:21.720 dropped in civilian areas beginning on February 24th. So Russia quickly took control of the territory of

00:03:27.760 Chernobyl, and began launching attacks onto Kiev from the north of the city. So as of today, as of

00:03:34.220 recording, the city of Kiev is still being held by Ukraine. That being said, there is heavy military

00:03:39.220 fighting that has continued just outside the city of Kiev, mostly concentrated in and around the airport

00:03:44.400 area. The airport is incredibly strategic and important because you, as you know, there is military

00:03:49.060 supplies being flown in from all over Europe and from the West to support Ukraine. So Russia wants to cut

00:03:54.260 that off, cut off that bloodline of arms of military equipment, of resources to try to cut off the

00:03:59.420 Ukrainian, cut off the Ukrainians from outside support. So that is where the fighting has heavily

00:04:06.000 concentrated. Now, there have already been peace talks that have taken place and have failed. So

00:04:11.720 peace talks were scheduled to take place between Ukraine and Russia. They were announced on the 27th,

00:04:16.160 and they did in fact take place on the 28th. They were facilitated in Belarus, but we were told

00:04:21.240 that those negotiations have failed. No ceasefire. So the war continues. As of today,

00:04:26.200 Tuesday, March 1st, there is a huge convoy of Russian vehicles that is now advancing on Ukraine's

00:04:32.260 capital. It was 50 miles outside the city. It's now much, much closer. Last night, there were reports

00:04:37.680 saying that it was a five kilometer long convoy. Reports on a Tuesday morning are now saying it is a

00:04:42.960 27 kilometer long convoy of Russian military vehicles heading towards Kiev. And just as I am recording

00:04:50.160 this, I got a notification from the Wall Street Journal saying that Russia said it would attack

00:04:55.620 intelligence facilities in Kiev and urged residents to leave, signaling a massive strike on civilian

00:05:01.880 areas may be imminent. So again, this is Putin's aggression. His Russian military is advancing. It is

00:05:08.180 hitting civilian targets. He's openly saying that it is hitting civilian targets. There is no disputing 0.98

00:05:14.040 that, no doubt about these facts. As for the death toll, again, this is tough to verify, but we did our best.

00:05:19.120 So on Monday, Ukraine reported a civilian death toll of 352. Later that day said that another 11 people

00:05:27.240 were killed by Russian strikes in the city of Kharkiv. The Russian defense minister on Tuesday

00:05:32.100 morning claimed that more than 5,710 Russian soldiers had been killed by Ukrainian forces since the start of

00:05:39.360 the invasion. That number, however, has not been confirmed or verified by Russian officials. Ukrainian

00:05:45.120 President Vladimir Zelensky has accused the invading Russian forces of engaging war crimes, noting that

00:05:50.500 16 children have been killed so far, another 45 injured due to Russian bombardments in the first

00:05:56.940 four days of fighting. Gruesome, horrible, horrible stuff. The Daily Mail is reporting that there have been

00:06:03.640 war crimes that have been committed. The International Criminal Court is set to open a probe investigating war

00:06:07.780 crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine after invading Russian forces bombed the city of Kharkiv.

00:06:12.440 A rocket landed. This is the way Daily Mail describes it. It's such an odd way of describing it. A rocket

00:06:18.000 landed in front of the civilian public administration building in Kharkiv on Tuesday morning. By landed,

00:06:24.400 I think they mean detonated, exploded, bombed, and it destroyed a road outside as well as blowing

00:06:30.760 windows out of the building itself. So again, we're seeing cluster bombs in civilian areas. We're seeing

00:06:35.420 accusations of war crimes. We're seeing the mass killing of civilians, including children. Gruesome,

00:06:40.860 gruesome stuff. The situation is truly bad. There is not, I don't have a single good word for Vladimir

00:06:46.420 Putin. I believe that he is a tyrant. He is a megalomaniac. He is fueling this war and he is, 0.97

00:06:51.300 with all likelihood, a war criminal, full stop. Okay, now that I've established that point, 0.63

00:06:56.280 I've established the fact that Putin is a very terrible man. He is loathsome and he is very much 0.98

00:07:02.420 at fault here. I want to now talk about something that you will not hear in legacy media, because like I 0.92

00:07:07.040 said, all of those reports is what you hear day in, day out from the legacy media. If you're following

00:07:12.060 this conflict at all, you already know all those things. I wanted to reestablish those points because

00:07:15.880 it's incredibly important to establish that the overwhelming bad things that are happening and the

00:07:21.360 crimes are being perpetrated by Russian military, by Vladimir Putin, against Ukrainian people who by

00:07:27.540 and large just want to be left alone. They want to be peaceful. They want to live their lives and they

00:07:31.120 don't want to be under Russian control. Okay. So, so, so all of those things you can hear about

00:07:36.000 every day, every minute, every second from legacy media journalists. But I want to talk about something

00:07:40.420 now that you will not hear from legacy media. You won't hear from your pundits, your politicians,

00:07:44.480 your policymakers, or your journalists. And that is that we are being inundated right now with outright

00:07:49.640 propaganda. Everything that you see on social media is propaganda. You cannot trust what you see.

00:07:55.440 Images are being distorted and doctored. Footage is being described in the exact opposite manner of what

00:08:01.120 and the reports on the ground are often confusing. They're inaccurate. Sometimes they're flat out

00:08:06.640 wrong. Sometimes we're even seeing video game footage and clear memes from comedians being reported

00:08:12.900 as fact. Again, this is all propaganda. And sadly, the propaganda that we are seeing, and we're seeing

00:08:18.400 just so much, it's emotional driven. It's, it's there to manipulate you, to get you on board, to get you

00:08:24.060 in line with this thinking that you're either all in, um, you're either with us or you're against us.

00:08:29.200 Anyone who is not completely repeating the narrative that, that Ukraine is good. Everything Ukraine is

00:08:34.560 doing is right. They're just, they're moral crusaders. They're the embodiment of all of our

00:08:38.720 fights for freedom, for all that is good in the world. Anyone who deviates ever so slightly from

00:08:43.520 that narrative is, is just flat out accused of treachery and treason, as I will demonstrate

00:08:49.520 in this show. And sadly, many of us in the West know that we are being the victims of propaganda.

00:08:55.280 And yet they share the reports regardless, because the propaganda helps the side that they like. So

00:09:00.080 as long as the propaganda is there to support, uh, the people that we like, the side that we're on,

00:09:05.040 then we're just a-okay with sharing propaganda. Keep in mind a couple of years ago when ISIS was

00:09:09.040 waging its war across Syria and Iraq, we were repeatedly told and warned that they were using

00:09:13.840 propaganda. They were creating these videos to make themselves look very savvy and cool and make

00:09:19.360 war look like fun and show these men, um, leading their way, uh, to an Islamic caliphate. The whole 0.92

00:09:25.200 thing was designed to manipulate young Muslims from all over the world and convince them to drop their 1.00

00:09:30.320 lives and come over and fight for this Islamist caliphate. It was propaganda. And we knew that. 0.88

00:09:35.280 And every time they shared a video, it was preface saying, this is propaganda. Well, with regards to our

00:09:40.080 era and this time that we're living in digital media and social media, that hasn't changed. And we're

00:09:44.880 watching and we're watching a war. We're watching a conventional war unfold. There's propaganda anywhere,

00:09:50.240 except for we don't have those warnings. We don't have those warnings because the propaganda in large

00:09:54.720 part is being used to promote the side that we're on the Ukrainian side. And so all of this has

00:09:59.920 culminated in elites in our society, whipping themselves into a mass hysteria and a moral panic.

00:10:06.080 Again, everything is based on emotion and emotional images are being used to manipulate us and overwhelm our

00:10:11.520 capacity to think for ourselves, to reason and to think clearly any form of deviation ever so slightly

00:10:17.840 from the media narrative. Any sign of dissent gets quickly equated with being treacherous, being

00:10:23.280 treasonous, being pro Putin, uh, pro Russia, being a shill, being a propagandist. So we should be aware 0.54

00:10:29.920 of that. We should maintain our healthy skepticism of the legacy media, our healthy skepticism of the

00:10:35.120 Trudeau government and of Chrysia Freeland, and avoid the temptation to jump in and to join the

00:10:41.760 propaganda. So we here at True North put together a little montage of some of the leading examples

00:10:47.680 of this propaganda, because from day one in this war, what we've been seeing on social media is again,

00:10:52.720 just being inundated with these scenes, with these images, with these pictures, with these videos,

00:10:56.960 some of them seem like they could have been scripted and set on a, uh, film set in Hollywood.

00:11:01.920 They're just so outright, uh, propagandistic in their nature, and yet they're being shared

00:11:07.520 broadly by, by respectable people in our society. So we have a couple of examples of that, some of the

00:11:13.600 sort of main stories that you may have seen circulating that have unfortunately turned out

00:11:18.160 to be true. And again, you can just see how emotion is driving the way. So here is that montage.

00:11:22.480 is

00:11:36.560 The evolving world and trying to feel about the

00:11:39.300 123rd

00:11:52.960 Wait guys!

00:11:57.500 I'm going the other…

00:12:01.060 So long!

00:12:02.400 What do you want to do?

00:12:23.400 What do you want to do?

00:12:25.400 What do you want to do?

00:12:35.400 In the mansions, where are all these mansions ceased?

00:12:39.400 I don't see that.

00:12:40.400 I see that my family members, my team members are saying that we are crying.

00:12:46.400 We don't have words to rob.

00:12:48.400 This is what is happening, Prime Minister.

00:12:51.400 I want to key in on one of those stories, which was the image of the tank driving over a car.

00:12:56.400 This was shared millions and millions.

00:12:58.400 I think it had over 10 million views, tens of millions of views on social media.

00:13:03.400 We were told that this was a Russian tank just recklessly endangering human lives

00:13:08.400 and driving over a car miraculously.

00:13:11.400 The driver of the car was okay.

00:13:13.400 They pulled him out and apparently he was a-okay and alive.

00:13:16.400 Well, it turns out that that story just simply wasn't as it appears.

00:13:19.400 So it has been debunked by both USA Today and France 24.

00:13:24.400 France 24 is one of the largest and most respected news outlets in Europe.

00:13:29.400 So here is the headline over there.

00:13:30.400 Ukraine.

00:13:31.400 These videos do not show a Russian tank running over a civilian.

00:13:34.400 So they do a very thorough bit of research and basically concluded that the video does not show a Russian armored vehicle driving over a car in Kiev.

00:13:42.400 So to verify these videos, authenticity, they used geotagging, geolocated the exact place and the date that it took place.

00:13:50.400 It happened in the center of the city of Kiev, which, as I mentioned, Kiev is getting bombed.

00:13:55.400 But there is no military presence on the ground in Kiev just yet.

00:13:58.400 There's a convoy heading there and they'll probably be there very soon.

00:14:01.400 But this was circulating from several days ago and there was no military presence on the ground.

00:14:06.400 And so France 24 continues.

00:14:08.400 It says, is it a Russian tank or Ukrainian vehicle?

00:14:10.400 It said, next, we examined the military vehicle involved in the collision, as several journalists and open source investigators claim.

00:14:17.400 The armored vehicle is a Strela 10, a model of anti-aircraft missile launcher used by the Ukrainian army.

00:14:24.400 There are other clues that suggest a vehicle is Ukrainian.

00:14:27.400 For example, there is no large letter Zed painted on the side of the tank, something Russian military has used since the start of the conflict as a distinguishing mark to differentiate their equipment from similar Ukrainian models.

00:14:39.400 Moreover, this type of surface to air missile launcher isn't designed for close combat in an urban environment.

00:14:44.400 Rather, it is used to support retreating troops, according to Rob Lee, a doctoral student at the Department of War at King's College London.

00:14:52.400 And so they continue to just paint the chaotic scene on the ground.

00:14:56.400 So they're trying to figure out why this possible crash happened.

00:14:59.400 So it says, why did the Ukrainian armored vehicle run over a civilian car in part of Kiev?

00:15:04.400 Other videos shot moments earlier provide some answers to this question.

00:15:07.400 We've chosen not to publish them due to their shocking nature.

00:15:10.400 It shows soldiers dressed in Ukrainian uniforms chasing and shooting at the driver of a military truck, which you can see below in red seconds before the armored vehicle crushed the car.

00:15:21.400 So the man driving the military truck was also wearing a Ukrainian uniform.

00:15:25.400 But soldiers could be heard speaking in the videos, explained that he was suspected to be a Russian saboteur disguised as a Russian soldier.

00:15:32.400 Minutes before the incident occurred, Ukrainian deputy minister Anna Miller posted a message on Twitter saying that the Russian army has seized Ukrainian army vehicles and are headed towards the scene.

00:15:43.400 So all this is just to say it's a chaotic scene in Ukraine.

00:15:46.400 Nothing is exactly what it seems.

00:15:48.400 But before we just start sharing videos, sharing tweets, saying that we know exactly what is going on.

00:15:53.400 Why don't we wait?

00:15:54.400 Why don't we verify things?

00:15:55.400 Why don't we confirm the facts?

00:15:56.400 Because, again, the tank driving over a car was not a Russian tank.

00:16:00.400 It was a Ukrainian tank, according to fact checks and reports on the ground.

00:16:05.400 OK, so what is happening today?

00:16:07.400 Tuesday, March 1st, we have the UN General Assembly down in New York.

00:16:11.400 And the big news coming out of the UN General Assembly is that world leaders have walked out of a speech given by the Russian foreign minister.

00:16:20.400 So let me just first by saying that the UN is a pretty toothless organization.

00:16:24.400 The whole idea of an organization trying to maintain world order and global order without having the threat of force, like you can sit there, you can threaten countries to your heart's content. 0.73

00:16:33.400 If you don't have a military to back it up, you are completely useless.

00:16:36.400 And that is what the UN is proving itself to be.

00:16:39.400 It is basically just a club for elites to hang out and enjoy their power and their stature in society.

00:16:44.400 If you're being generous about the United Nations and you and you believe in the good that can be done through dialogue and conversation,

00:16:51.400 you can say that the purpose of the United Nation is to have meaningful discussions to try to avoid war, right?

00:16:57.400 If we all get together, we listen to each other, we sit in a room together, we try to understand each other.

00:17:01.400 We try to make sense of what's happening in the other person's world to try to understand their motivations and what's driving them.

00:17:07.400 Maybe that will avoid the calamity of war because war is a truly terrible thing as we are seeing firsthand.

00:17:12.400 Well, if that is the purpose of the UN, and again, you'd have to have a generous reading of the situation to see it that way.

00:17:18.400 Well, then these world leaders have completely undermined the purpose of the UN by walking out and refusing to listen to a Russian give a speech. 0.67

00:17:25.400 What are they doing? What are they accomplishing? It's performative theater, it's virtue signaling, it's empty rhetoric, empty gestures,

00:17:32.400 which is completely what we have become accustomed to from leaders in the West, from our world leaders.

00:17:37.400 They don't want to listen to Russia. Well, congratulations. Congratulations, United Nations.

00:17:41.400 You've solved this crisis, you've achieved world peace by refusing to listen to those whom you don't agree with.

00:17:47.400 What a farce of an organization. Next, we're seeing over-the-top praise, almost godlike treatment of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

00:17:54.400 So, first off, we started seeing lots and lots of images and lots of people sharing photos of him supposedly on the front line.

00:18:00.400 We were told, wow, this man is so heroic. He has taken off his civilian clothes, he is putting on his combat gear, and he's going to the front line.

00:18:08.400 What a hero, what an absolute saint of a man this is. Well, it turns out that those photos that people were sharing of him on the front lines

00:18:15.400 weren't really photos of him on the front lines. Well, in fact, according to routers and a fact check,

00:18:20.400 those are not current pictures of Vladimir Zelensky on the front lines. No, those were old photographs of him.

00:18:25.400 They were taken several months ago, back in December 2021. They were staged, they were taken by his own photographer in the province of Donetsk.

00:18:33.400 They're not, they're not recent. They're not depicting him fighting today against the Russians. So, the verdict from routers,

00:18:39.400 foul checked, is that this is miscaptioned. Pictures of him are old, haven't been taken back in 2021. And now you'll see people

00:18:46.400 showing them on social media. There is a little disclaimer saying that what you're, what you're seeing is manipulated footage.

00:18:53.400 Basically, it's not, it's taken out of context. Well, let's not let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

00:19:00.400 Charles Adler, a radio host with Global, he, he, he, he really takes the cake for the most over the top praise.

00:19:06.400 This is so embarrassing. He writes this,

00:19:08.400 Finally, a leader conquering the hearts of democracy loving people worldwide.

00:19:13.400 His name is Zelensky, the Lion of Kyiv. Here in Canada, the anti Zelensky, Jason Kenney,

00:19:19.400 a poster child for political shrinkage, exploiting the suffering of Ukrainians with another clumsy sales pitch. 0.85

00:19:26.400 So, what a, what a weird comparison, sort of creepy calling this guy the Lion of Kyiv,

00:19:32.400 conquering the hearts of democracy loving people worldwide.

00:19:36.400 Okay. Okay. Charles Adler, you can continue your man crush over there.

00:19:40.400 And talking about crush, this is a tweet that was making the rounds.

00:19:44.400 Unbelievable. As of, as of Monday afternoon, this thing had nearly 20,000 retweets and 200,000 likes.

00:19:51.400 Okay. I'll, I'll read you this tweet. It is so embarrassing.

00:19:55.400 Breaking. Every woman in your life now has at least a small crush on Vladimir Zelensky.

00:20:00.400 And there's absolutely nothing you can do about, uh, fact check. Not true.

00:20:04.400 No, not true. Not, not every woman has a crush on this guy.

00:20:07.400 By the way, this woman, this super serious policy analyst is a PhD candidate studying,

00:20:12.400 apparently focusing on US military industrial complex.

00:20:16.400 And she's a senior staffer at the UK parliament.

00:20:19.400 And this is her insightful analysis, all about how women just love this guy, apparently,

00:20:24.400 according to her and the 20,000 people who retweeted her.

00:20:28.400 Okay. Andrew Coyne over at the Globe and Mail likewise is adding his praise.

00:20:32.400 He's saying what the Ukrainians are doing is the most heroic goddamn thing I've ever seen in my entire life. 0.91

00:20:40.400 Okay. Andrew Coyne, again, just so overwhelmed with emotion. 0.96

00:20:43.400 It's so hard to be reasonable when you're just inundated with this kind of emotion.

00:20:48.400 And what is, what is Andrew Coyne talking about?

00:20:50.400 Well, it's the report that many Western countries are sending weapons to Ukraine.

00:20:54.400 Ukraine has a very small military.

00:20:56.400 The Russian military spends 10 times as much and they have at least two times,

00:21:00.400 maybe two or three times as many military personnel.

00:21:03.400 So Russia is clearly outmanned.

00:21:05.400 So what has the West done?

00:21:06.400 Many Western countries, including the UK, Germany and Belgium, have rather than sending in their own troops,

00:21:12.400 they're sending weapons.

00:21:13.400 They're sending lots and lots of weapons, automatic rifles to Ukraine,

00:21:16.400 where they're apparently just handing it out willy nilly to anyone on the street.

00:21:19.400 While we had a report over at True North, I spoke to sources, multiple sources,

00:21:23.400 including people on the ground in Kiev who described the situation as chaos and anarchy.

00:21:29.400 Sources saying armed bandits are looting and murdering with impunity.

00:21:32.400 So I'll read from the piece.

00:21:33.400 It says the situation in Kiev is, quote, not as black and white as the media is portraying it, unquote.

00:21:38.400 A source on the ground in Kiev who spoke to True North through a translator said on Sunday,

00:21:42.400 people are more scared of the armed citizens than of the Russian military, said the source.

00:21:47.400 So again, so the ones on the ground in Kiev are the civilians who have been given military weapons

00:21:52.400 to defend their city while some of them are engaging in bad behavior, looting and killing people.

00:21:58.400 Lots and lots of scary scenes.

00:21:59.400 So the source was a senior who lives right in the center of Kiev.

00:22:02.400 He and his wife said they're more scared right now of the looters with the guns.

00:22:06.400 The old man has a military rifle out just in case.

00:22:09.400 Now the source sent several photos of both dead bodies on the side of a road in Kiev,

00:22:13.400 noting that the picture depicts a family that got killed when they were mistaken for Russians.

00:22:18.400 The source also sent two videos, which were also circulating on the messaging app Telegram,

00:22:22.400 showing what was described as armed citizens.

00:22:25.400 Now just questioning anyone in one case, shooting people they deemed suspicious, very scary stuff.

00:22:30.400 So again, there are unintended consequences when you just hand out weapons to tens of thousands of people.

00:22:36.400 There was a report as well that they were letting people out of prison who had military experience.

00:22:40.400 So Russia is so Ukraine is so desperate for manpower, so desperate for help in terms of people on the ground to fight this war.

00:22:48.400 They are letting people out of jail, including bad guys, giving them guns and just hoping for the best, hoping nothing bad will happen.

00:22:55.400 Well, there is definitely going to be unintended consequences.

00:22:58.400 And the source also said that they just can't trust Western media, that the propaganda is out of control,

00:23:03.400 and that it's hard to get a clear picture of what is going on.

00:23:06.400 I've heard that theme many times.

00:23:07.400 Joe Warmington, my colleague over at the Toronto Sun, had a great piece today saying that it's not an easy time for Canadians with Russian roots.

00:23:14.400 Joe went down to a Russian area in Toronto, spoke to members of the Russian diaspora, Canadians who are originally from Russia,

00:23:21.400 who describe how difficult it is for them.

00:23:23.400 So I'll read from Joe Warmington's piece.

00:23:25.400 Joe Warmington writes,

00:23:26.400 They won't let you write fair things about us, said Alex standing outside a Russian bakery in the area of Steeles and Bathurst.

00:23:45.400 Tatiana, the owner of a nearby gift shop, echoed the sentiment.

00:23:48.400 Are you against me? She asked.

00:23:49.400 But you can see why Tatiana and Alex would feel otherwise when our governments have passed decrees cancelling Russian vodka,

00:23:55.400 Russian airlines, Russian banking system.

00:23:57.400 And there's even talk about banning Russian hockey players.

00:24:00.400 And he writes this,

00:24:01.400 Leaders should also be reminded not to punish our Russian Canadian friends for the political decisions made in another country that they have no control over.

00:24:08.400 This is such a good point.

00:24:09.400 Whenever our political leaders are talking about despotic governments and terrible decisions happening in China or Iran,

00:24:15.400 they always go to painstaking efforts to make sure that they're drawing a distinction,

00:24:19.400 not talking about Chinese people, talking about Xi Jinping and the communist government,

00:24:22.400 or not talking about the Iranian people, but talking about Rouhani and the regime and the mullahs.

00:24:27.400 However, in this situation, you see political leaders just throwing out Russians, kind of accusing all Russians.

00:24:33.400 We saw this.

00:24:34.400 Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister in Canada, condemns Russian invasion.

00:24:38.400 She says Russia is solely responsible for this crisis.

00:24:41.400 They have chosen deception, intimidation, and manufactured a crisis based on lies and false flag operations.

00:24:47.400 So again, making no distinction, making no effort to distinguish between Putin and the Russian people,

00:24:53.400 and just sort of throwing it out, the Russians, the Russians, the Russians.

00:24:56.400 Now, I want to focus back a little bit on Canada and what is happening,

00:24:59.400 because I don't think Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau should get a free pass.

00:25:02.400 I don't think that the way that they are handling this is very good.

00:25:05.400 Now, you won't get this again from Legacy Media.

00:25:07.400 Here's Andrew Coyne just really openly endorsing Chrystia Freeland.

00:25:11.400 He writes this on Twitter, ringing lines from Freeland.

00:25:14.400 She says this, quote,

00:25:16.400 There are moments in history when the great struggle between freedom and tyranny comes down to one fight in one place,

00:25:21.400 which is waged for all humanity.

00:25:23.400 In 1863, that place was Gettysburg.

00:25:25.400 In 1940, it was disguised above Britain.

00:25:28.400 Today, in 2020, it is Kiev.

00:25:30.400 So, one week after Chrystia Freeland went on a rampage to freeze people's bank accounts 0.76

00:25:35.400 without any due process, without a court order, without the rule of law,

00:25:39.400 not based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms whatsoever.

00:25:42.400 Now, all of a sudden, she's drawing a black and white line saying,

00:25:45.400 freedom versus tyranny, you're either with us, against us.

00:25:47.400 And apparently, now Chrystia Freeland is on the side of freedom, 0.99

00:25:50.400 not just on the side of freedom, but representative of that whole side of freedom,

00:25:54.400 according to Andrew Coyne's ringing endorsement there.

00:25:57.400 We've seen lots and lots of people praising Chrystia Freeland,

00:26:00.400 hardly any trying to hold her to account.

00:26:02.400 So, here's another piece I had over at True North.

00:26:05.400 Freeland posts and then deletes a photo of her holding a Bandera movement scarf

00:26:09.400 from a pro-Ukraine rally in Toronto on Sunday.

00:26:13.400 So, yes, Freeland was caught holding a pro-Nazi banner at a Ukraine protest.

00:26:18.400 You will not see this being covered in the legacy media.

00:26:20.400 Unfortunately, I want to go through this story in some depth

00:26:23.400 because I think it is incredibly, incredibly important.

00:26:26.400 So, our finance minister, who also happens to be the deputy prime minister,

00:26:29.400 she's a former minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, 0.88

00:26:32.400 she was photographed on Sunday with a scarf that promotes a far-right Ukrainian national movement

00:26:37.400 linked to Nazis, neo-Nazis, and extremism.

00:26:41.400 So, remarkably, Chrystia Freeland posted the photo herself on her own social media accounts,

00:26:46.400 apparently ignorant of the radical far-right movement the scarf represents.

00:26:50.400 So, here is that image.

00:26:52.400 She shows a picture of her.

00:26:53.400 And she's clearly holding up this scarf, this black and red scarf.

00:26:56.400 You can see her hand on it right there.

00:26:58.400 She is smiling.

00:26:59.400 Well, she obviously realized that that was a very bad idea because of what the scarf represents.

00:27:03.400 So, that tweet was quickly deleted.

00:27:05.400 The Instagram post was deleted.

00:27:06.400 And she posted the exact same message.

00:27:08.400 We stand united.

00:27:09.400 We stand with Ukraine.

00:27:10.400 She rewrote it in French.

00:27:11.400 And then again in Ukrainian at the bottom,

00:27:13.400 but she found a different version of the picture where she was not carrying the scarf,

00:27:17.400 which again is sort of a tacit acknowledgement that she should not have been posting that photo with the scarf.

00:27:22.400 So, let me tell you a little bit about the scarf.

00:27:24.400 The red and black flag, the red and black on the scarf,

00:27:26.400 has historically represented the Bandera movement in Ukraine.

00:27:29.400 So, what is the Bandera movement?

00:27:31.400 Well, it is named after Stefan Mandera,

00:27:33.400 who was a nationalist Ukrainian politician during the Second World War.

00:27:36.400 He is accused of war crimes and leading atrocities against Jewish and Polish people in Ukraine during the Second World War.

00:27:43.400 He was a collaborator with the Nazis.

00:27:45.400 He sided with the Nazis. 0.80

00:27:46.400 Let me note that he is an incredibly polarizing figure in Ukraine because some love him.

00:27:51.400 Some people in Ukraine love him.

00:27:52.400 They view him as a national hero who fought and helped achieve Ukrainian independence,

00:27:56.400 whereas other people again see him as a Nazi collaborator, a war criminal and a Nazi,

00:28:02.400 someone who led war crimes and atrocities.

00:28:05.400 So, back in April 2021,

00:28:07.400 Euronews described Bandera and the UPA movement as Nazi collaborators and war criminals.

00:28:12.400 Let me read from that.

00:28:13.400 It says, Bandera and the UPA are controversial for several reasons.

00:28:17.400 Critics point to the mass killings of up to 100,000 Jews and Poles,

00:28:21.400 and the fact that the UPA cooperated with Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II.

00:28:25.400 Now, many on social media are saying,

00:28:27.400 well, Chrystia Freeland didn't know that. 0.98

00:28:28.400 How would she know that she was holding this scarf and what it meant?

00:28:31.400 Let me just remind you that Chrystia Freeland is Ukrainian. 1.00

00:28:34.400 She's a Ukrainian Canadian.

00:28:35.400 That's how she describes herself.

00:28:36.400 She speaks Ukrainian.

00:28:37.400 She's fluent in that language.

00:28:38.400 As you can see, she posts in the Ukrainian language.

00:28:40.400 She presents herself as being incredibly politically savvy.

00:28:43.400 This international player.

00:28:44.400 She went to Harvard.

00:28:45.400 She worked for Bloomberg.

00:28:46.400 She's traveled all over the world.

00:28:48.400 She's lived all over the world.

00:28:49.400 She was considered persona non grata by the Russians because of her involvement in Ukraine political scene.

00:28:56.400 So she's incredibly well-versed in Ukrainian politics and culture.

00:29:00.400 And yet you're telling me that she didn't realize what she was holding.

00:29:03.400 She didn't realize what this banner represents.

00:29:05.400 Give me a break. 1.00

00:29:06.400 Chrystia Freeland is either very, very stupid or more likely she thinks you're very, very stupid 1.00

00:29:11.400 and that she can get away with holding up a banner that may be popular among a certain segment of the diaspora, 1.00

00:29:16.400 of the Ukrainian diaspora, and get away with it knowing that no one in the media will hold her to account.

00:29:21.400 Well, that's pretty much exactly right because no one in the legacy media is covering this aside from True North,

00:29:26.400 aside from a couple of people on social media.

00:29:28.400 And again, just to underscore how prominent the idea of the Bandera movement,

00:29:32.400 it is very, very well-known for people who follow Russia and Ukrainian politics.

00:29:36.400 So back in 2017, there was a sort of glowing profile on Chrystia Freeland in iPolitics,

00:29:42.400 in the political journal iPolitics, talking about how she'd become Canada's foreign affairs minister.

00:29:46.400 She'd become Canada's top diplomat.

00:29:48.400 And the Bandera movement is specifically mentioned in this piece because at the time,

00:29:52.400 powerful Russian interests were accusing Chrystia Freeland of being pro-Bandera movement.

00:29:57.400 So I'll read you a bit from this iPolitics piece.

00:29:59.400 It says,

00:30:00.400 Some voices close to the Kremlin will predictably disparage Freeland's appointment.

00:30:04.400 In addition to being a critic of the current Russian government, she's also of Ukrainian heritage.

00:30:08.400 Some Russian voices like to accuse Canada's government of being enthralled to a powerful Ukrainian diaspora.

00:30:14.400 In 2015, a spokesman for the Russian government-owned oil company Rosnaft claimed that Canadian sanctions against Russia's energy sector

00:30:22.400 were inspired by pro-Bandera lobbyist.

00:30:24.400 Stefan Bandera was an anti-Soviet Ukrainian partisan who was allied with Nazi Germany for some time during the Second World War.

00:30:31.400 Of course, it doesn't help that Chrystia Freeland's own grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.

00:30:36.400 This is reported by the Ottawa Citizen back in 2017, back before they got the $600 million grant from the Trudeau government,

00:30:43.400 and they used to do actual journalism.

00:30:45.400 They wrote, the headline was,

00:30:46.400 Chrystia Freeland's granddad was indeed a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine.

00:30:51.400 He was the chief editor of a Nazi propaganda newspaper during the Second World War.

00:30:55.400 The Globe and Mail reported that they reached out to Chrystia Freeland's office and they denied it.

00:30:59.400 They denied that her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.

00:31:02.400 But the Globe later reported that Chrystia Freeland did, in fact, know about her family history.

00:31:06.400 She had known this for decades.

00:31:08.400 Now, let's take a step back.

00:31:09.400 All of this creates two major problems for Chrystia Freeland. 0.94

00:31:12.400 I will walk you through both of them right now.

00:31:14.400 The first problem this creates for Chrystia Freeland is the tremendous double standard in the eyes of Canadians.

00:31:21.400 So just weeks ago, just weeks ago, Justin Trudeau and his allies in the legacy media,

00:31:25.400 they relentlessly smeared every single Conservative MP as Nazis.

00:31:30.400 They called them Nazis. Why?

00:31:32.400 Because one still unidentified provocateur crashed the protest,

00:31:36.400 was there for a short period of time near the protest before quickly disappearing.

00:31:40.400 And yes, he had a Nazi flag.

00:31:42.400 Justin Trudeau infamously accused a Conservative MP of Jewish heritage, Melissa Lansman,

00:31:47.400 of, quote, standing with those who wave swastikas.

00:31:50.400 They happily smeared an entire group of working class people and Conservatives 1.00

00:31:54.400 because of the actions of one individual who was there with that despicable Nazi flag.

00:32:00.400 Well, in the case of Chrystia Freeland at the Ukrainian rally in Toronto,

00:32:03.400 she wasn't simply spotted at the same rally as a Nazi.

00:32:06.400 No, no, no.

00:32:07.400 She was literally holding the flag that represents a Nazi movement.

00:32:11.400 So again, just flat out double standard.

00:32:13.400 Now, the second problem this presents for Chrystia Freeland is a problem with her image abroad. 0.99

00:32:17.400 The first was her problem here in Canada.

00:32:19.400 The second is a problem for her image abroad.

00:32:22.400 So Chrystia Freeland and the Liberals right now are opening themselves up to smears and propaganda from the Putin regime.

00:32:29.400 So when Putin announced his invasion into Ukraine, the justification that he gave was to denazify the country.

00:32:35.400 That is what he said.

00:32:36.400 He said that there is a Nazi element in Ukraine and they are there to denazify the country.

00:32:41.400 Make no mistake, Putin's war efforts rely on propaganda,

00:32:45.400 which presents the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian military and Ukraine's allies in the West,

00:32:50.400 including Chrystia Freeland, as supporting an extremist far right Nazi movement in Ukraine.

00:32:55.400 That is what Putin is banking on.

00:32:57.400 And that is what Chrystia Freeland just fell into. 0.78

00:32:59.400 So when a prominent Western leader is photographed with a banner that represents a Nazi movement,

00:33:05.400 she is naively playing into Vladimir Putin's hands.

00:33:08.400 So Chrystia Freeland can scrub her own social media to her heart's content. 1.00

00:33:11.400 But the reality is a photo of her carrying the black and white scarf, the bandera scarf,

00:33:16.400 is making rounds on social media and is being used on other news sites.

00:33:20.400 Here it is being used on an NPR affiliate showing Chrystia Freeland with that flag.

00:33:24.400 This is a significant misstep by Chrystia Freeland.

00:33:27.400 And if we had a free press, they would be covering this.

00:33:29.400 They would be talking about this.

00:33:30.400 They would be analyzing it.

00:33:32.400 They will be covering it because it's newsworthy.

00:33:35.400 It's interesting. It's important.

00:33:36.400 And again, Chrystia Freeland is falling into the trap of Putin and his propaganda.

00:33:41.400 But the problem is here in Canada, you cannot trust the legacy media.

00:33:44.400 You simply can't.

00:33:45.400 And this war that we're seeing play out on social media is simply amplifying that fact.

00:33:50.400 We are in the midst of the fog of war.

00:33:52.400 We're being heavily inundated with propaganda from all sides, from both sides, from all sides.

00:33:57.400 We need to be aware of that.

00:33:59.400 We need to remain vigilant, remain skeptical.

00:34:02.400 Try to verify, try to vet every single thing that you're seeing because there is a heck of a lot of fake news out there.

00:34:08.400 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - March 02, 2022

The fog of war takes over Ukraine

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