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The Indy tries to sell NATO as a bringer of peace, but no one is buying BTL

by BlackCatte

The Independent bravely stepped up to the plate yesterday to try and sell the tired, discredited meme of “NATO as defender of freedom” to its readers. But, just as with the Guardian, most of those readers weren’t buying. The Indy declared in its opening para:

Scores of ships and aircraft from 13 countries will take part in war games, in an unprecedented show of military strength.

The Nato exercises off Scotland involve at least 55 warships, 70 aircraft and 13,000 sailors and will include submarine hunts, amphibious landings and ship against ship attacks.

And then added without any blush or trace of irony

They take place against a background of rising concern about Russian expansionism

Russian expansionism? Really?…

NATO expansion 1990-2007

It doesn’t take a Gore Vidal or a Chomsky to spot the holes does it? Especially given the fact that in addition to “Operation Joint Warrior”, latest and “biggest ever” NATO shindig in Scotland, more NATO hardware is tooling through eastern Europe in a “show of solidarity and strength”, US A10s are currently (April 11) arriving in the Czech Republic for “training flights”, and last month NATO ships were ““300 kilometres” off the coast of Crimea doing yet more “defensive” manoeuvres.

The Indy’s readers lost little time in making their views clear. At the time of writing around 80%+ of those comments demurred from the ATL line. Here’s a sample of some of them:

indycomment1 indycomment2 indycomment3 indycomment5

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Filed under: latest, Media Criticism