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‘Pelted with Little Pieces of Alleged Fact’
Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers. – GK Chesterton
Although the internet, television news, YouTube, Twitter, and blogging were not available to GK Chesterton they have taken on the task of pelting us with alleged fact.
Modern media is a large buffet for those who wish to have their beliefs affirmed, or someone else’s beliefs discarded. Lurid headlines to attract the reader, or the big three, ABC, CBS, and NBC half-hour evening news broadcast. A news show that has about 18 minutes of commercials and a three-minute in-depth report on any given subject. The internet is no better, filled with so-called experts on any number of subjects.
Headline from First Post, a media source in India:
“US ‘Javelin’ misses mark: Anti-tank missile meant for Ukraine lands up with Mexican gangster.”
This headline had its beginning with a Mexican media outlet.
On May 31, a Mexican cable news channel, Milenio Television, reported that a member of the drug trafficking Gulf Cartel had been recorded on video carrying a U.S.-manufactured Javelin shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon, “which has been used during the invasion of Ukraine.”
RT, a Russian propaganda outlet, repeated the story in a Tweet:
Weapon US gave Ukraine spotted in hands of Mexican cartel – media
A militia member was filmed with what Milenio TV believes is a Javelin anti-tank missilehttps://t.co/4KflIUndcM pic.twitter.com/oH0Rzwnw1k
— RT (@RT_com) June 1, 2023
That is not a Javelin missile launcher in the photo. It appears to be an AT4 light anti-tank weapon, manufactured by Sweden’s Saab Bofors Dynamics, or an M136, a license-built copy of the AT4 widely used by the U.S. Army. The gold ring on the launch tube indicates that it is an inert training AT4, or M136.
The United States has provided thousands of AT4s to Ukraine. So has Sweden.
But AT4s are used by militaries around the world, including countries in South America like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
In 2009, AT4s delivered to Venezuela ended up in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group. The Colombian government seized those weapons.
Sweden asked the Venezuelan government how FARC rebels had acquired those arms, which had end user-certificates certifying Venezuela as the final recipient.
Mexico’s drug cartels sought to acquire weapons like AT4s long before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and have previously been videoed carrying such arms.
There are many weapon traffickers that are willing to sell to Mexican cartels, but there is no proof offered that Ukraine sold this weapon to a cartel.
Published in Journalism
Thank you for sifting through the rubble of falsehood and revealing the truth. We all need to get better at this.
This would make great title for a regular post, though in our modern world bombarded might be more accurate than pelted
Modern journalists come off as both dim and incurious. It wouldn’t have been that hard to look up modern, man portable anti-tank and RPG type weapons to confirm what it was. I don’t think it’s even a matter of being lazy, so much as just not caring how the world works.