By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 25, 2026
The Bucha Massacre, which occurred in March 2022, remains one of the main tragedies of the Ukrainian conflict. Shortly after the Russian strategic retreat and the entry of Ukrainian troops, the narrative quickly began to spread that Russian soldiers had committed a massacre in the city, murdering hundreds of people.
The news spread around the world and was broadcast by all major media aligned with the Atlantic West. Even in spaces that declare themselves neutral, such as Wikipedia, the entry on the Bucha Massacre narrates it as a slaughter perpetrated by Russian soldiers before they retreated from the city. This is, therefore, the “official version” of the story in the Western world and its satellites.
Ukrainian authorities speak of 509 innocent civilians who were allegedly assassinated by the Russians, and indeed Bucha has been used as one of the main arguments to vilify the behavioral standard of the Russians in the special military operation. It seems peculiar to us, however, from the outset that this event was so singular. In general, armies that commit atrocities commit them at various moments and in different places of the conflict, but Bucha constitutes a singular, totally unique, and so far unrepeated instance of an alleged massacre of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians by the Russians.
The topic has recently gained prominence again, with new evidence that was discussed, for example, at the “Dialogue on Fakes 4.0” congress, organized by the Global Fact-Checking Network (a fact-checking agency of which I am a member, along with other journalists). There, Minister Sergey Lavrov mentioned the findings of the report “Heirs of Goebbels: Falsification of the Events in Bucha and Staged Bloody Performances by the Kiev Regime,” produced by a team from the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, and published on September 17, 2026, on the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. (https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/reports/2142212/)
According to the report in question, it was possible to gather sufficient material evidence indicating that the Ukrainian regime manipulated the facts about Bucha in various ways, one of them being the inclusion of Ukrainian military and paramilitary personnel killed in combat as victims of an alleged “massacre” committed by the Russians. Some of these military personnel may not even have died in the vicinity of Bucha. Furthermore, evidence was obtained of civilians who died of natural causes and whose names were included as having also been victims.
This work by the committee was possible because months after the events in Bucha, the Ukrainian regime inaugurated a memorial containing the names and personal data of the “civilians” who allegedly died in the supposed massacre committed by the Russians. With this, it was possible to cross-reference the data with other databases to check the biography of the dead and confirm the official information – work that was done voluntarily by users of the 2ch.su forum. They discovered at least 50 names of Ukrainian combatants among the names on the memorial, which amounts to approximately 10% of the alleged victims listed.
Among these combatants, by the way, there are several members of the Azov Regiment, a neo-Nazi organization notorious for its atrocities against Russian civilians, such as Evgeny Petrash, Vladimir Bisyaga, Andrey Vaskevich, Ilya Krhenov, among others. Others, such as Igor Kokodinyak and Vladimir Logvinenko, were military personnel who died in other parts of the special military operation zone and not in the vicinity of Bucha.
But of course, the big question about Bucha is the fact that the authentic civilian deaths that occurred at the location in March 2022 were perpetrated by the Ukrainians themselves, which is also confirmed in the report through new testimonial evidence. According to it, Ukraine used artillery against Bucha, after the Russian withdrawal, as soon as journalists were transported to the city, with the aim of turning it into the stage for a grand performance to be displayed to the world.
According to the testimonial evidence gathered, there is even evidence that the journalists’ visit was staged, in the sense that the locations that would be hit by Ukrainian artillery attacks were already known in advance, which means that civilians were killed on purpose with the aim of accusing the Russians of an atrocity – which characterizes a “false flag” attack.
Bucha has become a case to be studied because today the probability that other “false flag” attacks will be produced by Ukraine or the West with the aim of justifying an intensification of hostilities is quite high.
RT | September 24, 2026
Ukraine’s government-backed United24 project offered former US service members thousands of dollars to produce pro-Ukraine videos for American audiences, RT’s America Now has found. The offers targeted veterans whose military backgrounds could make the message seem more credible to viewers.
Host Ben Swann and investigative journalist Elizabeth Lane examined how the project, launched by Vladimir Zelensky in 2022 to raise support for Ukraine, approached former personnel, including special operations veterans with YouTube channels and other media platforms.
According to veterans who reached out to Lane, United24 offered around $10,000 for each video, plus $40,000 in advertising support. There was no stated limit on the number of videos they could make. The project would also provide scripts and guidance, while the veterans would ultimately deliver praise for Ukraine and Zelensky in their own words.
Some creators who agreed to the deal were reportedly creating up to five or six videos a week, making nearly a quarter of a million dollars a month, Lane found.
The men who spoke with Lane said they themselves had turned down the money, recognizing that they were being asked to present paid propaganda as their own views.
However, for some, the refusal came with consequences beyond lost income. One veteran, who turned down the offer and later criticized Ukraine for wasting US money on his channel, had people contacting his employer, calling him a Russian agent, and trying to get him fired.
The effort ultimately failed, Lane learned, noting that it is still “crazy that some foreign government is allowed to reach out to an employer of a former veteran and tell them that ‘you should fire this guy because he’s a Russian propagandist.’”
United24 has since tried to deny making such offers, despite Lane’s recorded Zoom calls with multiple veterans that testify to the contrary.
The choice of former service members is central to the Ukrainian propaganda operation, Swann noted, pointing out that many Americans are inclined to trust someone who had served in the US military, unless they find out that the veteran had been offered thousands of dollars by a foreign government to deliver the message.
Furthermore, given that Kiev is almost exclusively funded by its foreign sponsors, including billions received from Washington, the Ukrainian government-backed United24 campaign is effectively propaganda aimed at Americans, being paid for by US taxpayers themselves, Swann noted.
With Ukraine struggling on the battlefield, the propaganda efforts will likely continue to intensify, Lane predicted, describing a possible surge of supportive messages from major online figures as a “Hail Mary” attempt to shore up backing for Kiev.
Watch the full episode of the four-part America Now investigation here.
By Henrick Karoliszyn, DSW | The Defender | September 21, 2026
Pfizer paid $500,000 to two nonprofits that later signed a letter urging Massachusetts lawmakers to eliminate the state’s religious exemption from mandatory childhood school vaccinations, according to the company’s own public grant disclosures and a legislative letter reviewed by The Defender.
The drugmaker’s “US Medical, Scientific, Patient and Civic Organization Funding Report” for fiscal year 2024, posted on Pfizer’s transparency website, lists a $400,000 payment to the American Society for Meningitis Prevention (ASMP) for “Policy Efforts for comprehensive Meningococcal Meningitis Vaccination.”
The same report lists a $100,000 payment to the March of Dimes Foundation in 2024, categorized as a “Vaccine Policy Campaign Maternal Immunization.”
More than a year later, both organizations’ names appear among roughly two dozen signatories on a June 1 letter to the Massachusetts House Committee on Ways and Means urging lawmakers to advance House Bill 2554 (H.2554).
The bill would “remove the non-medical exemption from required school vaccines and enhance data collection and sharing to better track immunization rates,” according to the letter.
Patti Wukovits and Alicia Stillman, ASMP’s co-executive directors, and Chloe Schwartz, March of Dimes’ director of its maternal and infant health initiative, signed on behalf of their organizations.
Massachusetts currently allows parents to opt their children out of school vaccination requirements on religious grounds. The bill would eliminate that option, leaving only medical exemptions.
ASMP separately describes itself as focused on educating young people and parents about meningococcal meningitis. The March of Dimes has publicly credited Pfizer as an “inaugural supporter” of its vaccine-education campaign, describing a partnership that supports work encouraging adherence to the vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Neither organization has publicly addressed the timing of the donations relative to their support for H.2554.
Pfizer’s disclosure does not indicate the money was earmarked specifically for opposing Massachusetts’ religious exemption. The stated purposes are broader vaccine-policy campaigns tied to meningococcal disease and maternal immunization.
The ASMP and the March of Dimes did not respond to requests for comment from The Defender.
Critics call Massachusetts bill a ‘dangerous attack’
As of September 2026, bill-tracking records show that H.2554 was positively reviewed and referred onward, consistent with the coalition letter’s own reference to the bill having “recently reported favorably out of the House Committee on Health Care Financing.”
The bill’s supporters, including the Massachusetts Medical Society, argue that eliminating nonmedical exemptions would raise vaccination rates — as it has in California, Connecticut, Maine and New York, which eliminated religious exemptions — and reduce the risk of school-based disease outbreaks amid rising exemption rates.
Opponents, including Health Action Massachusetts, call the bill a “dangerous attack on religious freedom and educational access” that would force families who decline vaccination on religious grounds to homeschool their children, including children with special needs, regardless of circumstance.
Drugmakers should be required to define financial ties to lobbying groups
Pharmaceutical industry funding of advocacy groups is not a new practice.
But critics argue it allows companies with a direct financial stake in vaccination mandates to shape public health policy through intermediary organizations rather than lobbying directly.
Gail Seiler, president of Betrayal Project USA, said drugmakers should clearly define their financial ties to advocacy groups that go on to lobby for vaccines.
“When pharmaceutical companies provide substantial funding to organizations that then advocate for public policies affecting the use of those companies’ products, the public deserves complete transparency about those financial relationships,” Seiler told The Defender.
Parental consent for childhood vaccinations is also at issue, Seiler said.
“No parent should be forced to justify a deeply personal medical decision for their child to a corporation, lobbying organization, school system or government official,” she told The Defender. “Informed consent cannot exist without the freedom to say no.”
William M. Snyder, an attorney with Protat Snyder Law, called the financial arrangement “another example of Pfizer using its funds to enable non profits to lobby states to eliminate vaccine exemptions.
Bethany Clark of the Kentucky Medical Freedom Coalition told The Defender that monetary arrangements pharmaceutical companies have with larger organizations make it harder for local ones to have an impact.
“It does raise questions about how much influence corporations have over legislation,” Clark said.
“As a grassroots organization, it’s difficult to see our efforts to pass pro-medical freedom bills or stop bad legislation and wonder if our seeming inability to move the needle in the last few sessions has anything to do with the deep pockets of organizations with a lot of money at stake in the outcome of that legislation.”
Pharma financing vaccine mandate lobbyists should set off ‘every ethics alarm’
Dr. Chris Flowers extended a critique of the funding structure itself. He told The Defender :
“It does not matter whether the product is a vaccine, a software license, or a building material. When the seller finances the advocacy that would force the public to buy it, the conflict is structural.
“Mandates plus manufacturer funding of the mandate campaign is a combination that should set off every ethics alarm. Paying the messengers who then demand a mandate for your product is not philanthropy. It is sales.”
“Religious exemptions exist so the state cannot conscript every family into a commercial market,” Flowers added.
Pfizer and its defenders counter that funding patient- and disease-advocacy groups is standard industry practice disclosed for exactly this kind of scrutiny, and that the grants funded general vaccine-policy work.
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment from The Defender.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 17, 2026
Emergency medicine physician Ron Elfenbein M.D. went from running federally supported monoclonal antibody clinics to facing federal health care fraud charges after challenging the government’s handling of COVID therapeutics.
Corbett | September 18, 2026
Ken Silva of Headline USA joins us to discuss his new book, The Trump Assassination Plots: What the Investigations Missed and Why it Matters. From the unlikely official account of these shootings and plots to the still unexplained aspects of the events to the possibility of a false flag operation to blame a future shooting on Iran, James and Ken discuss all the details of these mysterious events.
Video player not working? Use these links to watch it somewhere else!
WATCH ON: 
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 
or DOWNLOAD THE MP4
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
SHOW NOTES:
Ken Silva – Substack / Headline USA website
Trump ‘left instructions’ to bomb Iran ‘at levels that they’ve never seen’ if he’s assassinated
The Trump Assassination Plots: What the Investigations Missed and Why it Matters by Ken Silva
It Looks Like Trump Restarted the War with Iran over a Phony Assassination Threat
The HighWire with Del Bigtree – September 17, 2026
GLP-1 drugs are easier to get than ever, even as reports of overdoses, severe reactions, vision loss, and multibillion-dollar lawsuits continue to mount. Del and Jefferey look at how quickly these drugs are being prescribed, how little time some providers spend with patients, and why proper dosing and medical follow-up may make all the difference.
Sputnik – 19.09.2026
“This treaty is mostly for show, but in legal terms it’s much ado about nothing” because “the US already had free access to Greenland and the main responsibility for the defense of Greenland,” Swedish military and geopolitics analyst Mikael Valtersson told Sputnik, commenting on the new US-Denmark Greenland deal.
While the agreement grants the US permanent military access, basing and overflight rights, Valtersson pointed out that Washington already had these rights, and that it was the US itself that “voluntarily and drastically reduced its own military resources on Greenland” after the end of the Cold War.
Valtersson suspects the deal is “mainly a PR stunt for the US government ahead of the upcoming midterm elections in November.”
However, given fears in Denmark and Europe in general that the current administration’s “erratic foreign policy” might trigger an actual military conflict over Greenland, which “would have created a huge crisis in Transatlantic relations,” the agreement is likely to be a relief to the EU, and will let Copenhagen “stop worrying about a potential military confrontation with the US” over the dependency.
Prominent Israel flunkies too dumb and lazy to produce their own genocide apologia
By Mouin Rabbani | September 19, 2026
When journalists are exposed for fabricating or plagiarizing their reports, responsible media typically remove the offending columns from their websites. They will often additionally attach a health warning to the rest of that journalist’s published work.
Numerous journalists have in fact, and quite properly, been fired for fabricating and/or plagiarizing their stories.
In recent weeks the historian Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill has published a series of remarkable exposés on Twitter demonstrating that a number of the most prolific, aggressive, shameless and invariably vulgar Israel flunkies and genocide apologists have consistently resorted to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to produce their third-rate propaganda.
In other words these fraudsters, including John Spencer, Andrew Fox and various fellow travelers, are so lazy and intellectually limited they don’t even possess the capacity to formulate and articulate their own lies. In some cases they have additionally and explicitly denied that that they use AI.
As Cockerill has thoroughly and convincingly demonstrated and documented, these clowns are not using AI to improve or edit or polish their original work, but rather to produce it from scratch. This is an important aspect of this fraud, particularly when they subsequently proclaim that they do not use AI at all.
Is such intellectual and literary fraud the equivalent of fabrication or plagiarism? In my view it is both, since most or all of the material is lifted from pre-existing literature stored by AI programs, and produced by that program rather than the flunkie who proudly attaches their name to it
Needless to say the consequences for such fraud should mirror those for more traditional forms of fabrication and plagiarism.
Yet, for these shameless genocide apologists and intellectual prostitutes, the most likely consequence will be for them to fail upwards yet again. Because Israel.
NB: For the full details consult Cockerill’s Twitter account: @History__Speaks.
A new Unbekoming paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | September 18, 2026
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists.
A woman opens a letter. Her mammogram from last week has been flagged. She needs to come back for further imaging.
Another gets a phone call. The biopsy result is back. She has ductal carcinoma in situ. Stage 0. The surgeon can see her Tuesday.
Another sits across from a BRCA counsellor who tells her that carrying the mutation gives her a lifetime risk of 87 percent. There is a procedure that can protect her.
Another has been on a hormonal IUD for three years. Her mood, her cycle, her sense of herself have all changed. Her GP prescribes an antidepressant.
None of them are being told what the published medical literature actually shows.
This new book is what the published medical literature actually shows.
The Argument
H. Gilbert Welch’s autopsy studies show that up to 39 percent of middle-aged women carry breast cancer they will die with, never from. The screening apparatus finds those cancers, calls them disease, and initiates the treatment cascade.
The twenty-five-year Canadian National Breast Screening Study, the most rigorous mammography trial ever conducted, found that one in five diagnosed cancers were overdiagnosis. The screened group and the unscreened group had the same mortality.
The 87 percent BRCA lifetime risk figure a genetic counsellor cites was derived from families selected because they already had clustered breast cancer cases. When the same variant is examined in general-population samples, the risk drops to 17 percent. A woman is being told her risk is roughly five times what the corrected data shows.
A 2004 Australian analysis by Morgan, Ward, and Barton calculated the contribution of chemotherapy to five-year survival across all cancer types. The number is 2.1 to 2.3 percent. Almost every woman who consents to chemotherapy for breast cancer believes she is consenting to something that materially changes her survival probability. The published contribution to five-year survival across all cancers is roughly one in fifty.
None of this is fringe. Every study cited above appeared in the establishment’s own journals. Cochrane. BMJ. New England Journal of Medicine.
The problem is that a woman standing at the consultation desk does not have this evidence in front of her when she is asked to sign.
That is what the book is for.
Structure
Part I is the compact clinical guide. Designed to be read in one hour by a woman with a decision on her calendar: a mammogram Friday, a callback Tuesday, a biopsy result waiting, an IUD consultation the week after next. Four branches. Three questions per branch. The exact wording to use with the clinician on the other side of the desk.
Part II is the evidence in full. Twelve chapters walk through the argument. Gøtzsche on the screening question. Welch on overdiagnosis. The Boobs documentary. What cancer actually is (Warburg, Seyfried). What turbo cancer is. Root canals and breast cancer (Levy, Haley). Iodine and the Japanese paradox (Derry). The BRCA gene and the women who lost their breasts to a hypothesis. Hormonal IUDs and the 2024 Danish cohort of 78,595 women. Tirza Derflinger on better breast health for life. Paul Marik on the perioperative window.
Part III is the preparation tools. The Decision Toolkit. The Personal Action Plan, sequenced across six intervention layers from immediate substrate reduction through terrain rebuild. And “But My Doctor Said,” the eleven objections a woman will hear when she acts on what she has learned, and what the evidence actually shows for each one.
Part IV is the physical reference. The Conversation Card and the Clinical Checklist. Designed to be brought to appointments.
Who It Is For
The woman with a mammogram scheduled who has never been told the screening question is contested.
The woman who has been called back and is being pulled into the diagnostic funnel.
The woman who has been told she has DCIS and is being scheduled for surgery.
The woman who has been offered BRCA testing.
The woman who has been prescribed a hormonal IUD.
The woman whose mother, aunt, sister, friend, or daughter is in one of those situations, and who wants to have a better conversation with her.
The book is not medical advice. It is the published medical literature laid out clearly enough that a woman can make her own informed decision, before she consents to anything.
The Terrain Frame
Every Unbekoming book is written inside the terrain framework, which holds that the internal environment of the body, its toxic burden, nutritional status, electromagnetic exposure, and stress load, determines whether illness manifests. This book is no exception.
The book names one primary cause of the injury the medical system calls breast cancer, substrate accumulation, and three specific contributors: injection load, oral toxicity, and continuous synthetic-progestin exposure. Chapter 5 makes the full case, drawing on Warburg, Béchamp, Cowan, and Seyfried. A woman does not need to accept the framework to use the clinical chapters. She may find herself reaching for it by the time she finishes them.
The Paperback
Available now on the Lulu Bookstore. 359 pages. Source-cited throughout. Published without commercial sponsorship.
AUD 37.99 / USD 24.99 / GBP 19.99 / EUR 23.99 / CAD 34.99.
The digital edition will be released to paid subscribers within 6 months.
This is the seventeenth title in the Unbekoming print catalogue, and the first to unite the compact clinical guide with the full paradigm framework in one volume.
A woman with a mammogram scheduled on Friday has time to read Part I before she goes in. She may still decide to keep the appointment. She may not. What she will not do is walk into that room without knowing what she was never told.
That is the point of the book.
The Shelf
The full Unbekoming print catalogue is at lulu.com/spotlight/unbekoming. Seventeen titles now, across paradigm, remedy, and critique. All direct from the printer.
A new independent investigation found that Kiev presented Ukrainian troops as civilian victims of the staged incident
RT | September 17, 2026
Britain orchestrated the ‘Bucha massacre’ narrative to prolong the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, citing a new investigation into the alleged victims.
Zakharova said new evidence proves that Bucha was a “brazen falsification” commissioned by Kiev’s foreign sponsors and amplified by the Western media to eliminate any chance of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
She singled out the UK government as the primary organizer of the false flag operation, adding that the “key role” of spreading the story was assigned to the BBC.
In March 2022, Russian forces withdrew from Kiev Region, including Bucha, as a good-will gesture in support of a potential settlement at the Istanbul peace talks. Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk and residents initially said everything was calm and peaceful in the town, which is around 20 km from central Kiev.
Days later, images of bodies strewn across the streets of Bucha were broadcast by the Western media, supported by NATO-aligned OSINT fact checkers, triggering a storm of international accusations against Moscow that contributed to the collapse of peace talks.
Zakharova noted that there is still “no single website, no single figure, no lists – neither consolidated nor fragmented,” that would provide any verifiable information about the alleged victims of the Bucha ‘massacre’. The UN, Kiev, international organizations, and Western media have never provided a list despite repeated Russian requests.
The unverifiable nature of the incident strongly implies that it was falsified, and suggests that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres knowingly made himself “part of this provocation,” Zakharova said.
Given that no public list of victims exists, Thursday’s report – which was presented by Maksim Grigoriev, the head of the International Public Tribunal on Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis – examined the names on the Bucha memorial instead – the closest thing to an official list, its authors say.
The memorial contains over 500 names and has repeatedly served as a backdrop for visits by Western leaders.
Grigoriev said researchers cross-checked the names against Ukrainian media, military records, and social-media accounts, and found that those they traced were Ukrainian servicemen, including Azov and territorial-defense fighters, rather than civilians allegedly murdered by Russian troops.
The soldiers were also found to have had little or no connection to Bucha, and were killed and buried nowhere near the town.
Among the examples cited were Evgeny Petrash and Vladimir Bisaga, who the investigation identified as Azov fighters buried in Kiev and Uzhgorod, respectively. Two other names, Ruslan Belousov and Roman Dovgalyuk, were identified as Ukrainian military pilots killed when their aircraft was shot down near Berezovka – far from Bucha.
The report also features a number of eyewitness accounts from several conflict-zone towns, pointing to a wider pattern of Ukrainian forces killing civilians and then blaming Russia once Western reporters arrive.
One witness said Ukrainian troops opened fire on civilians collecting water, with journalists arriving to film the aftermath within minutes.
Grigoriev said these testimonies show that Kiev repeatedly used civilian deaths to manufacture material for the Western media and claimed that the same method was used in Bucha.
Zakharova stated that the new findings will be submitted to Russian law enforcement, international organizations, and international courts. The investigators behind the report also urged foreign journalists to conduct their own examination.
Read the full report here.
Sputnik -15.09.2026
NATO intelligence services found no evidence whatsoever of Russian involvement in the drone incident at Leipzig Airport and informed their authorities accordingly, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said.
They also pointed to multiple signs of a Ukrainian footprint in the incident.
NATO intelligence therefore recommended that the authorities refrain from accusing Russia, the SVR added.
Ignoring the advisory, the German authorities blamed Russia outright — chiefly to justify the “mega-spending” on Germany’s militarization, the Foreign Intelligence Service said.
On August 5, Leipzig police said an airport employee had discovered a drone carrying an unidentified explosive device in the cargo aviation security zone. German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt blamed Russia without providing any evidence.
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
