Most people now realize that the mainstream media is just a mix of propaganda and advertisement. Its audiences are targeted for being "convinced" about everything from commodities to ideas, especially people. Today, I'd like to focus on one idea and one person: Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.

Press Putin
© New Eastern Outlook
Media Wonderland

Media analysis has become a dark rabbit hole, as in the famous children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Each time you attempt to dig out the truth, you find yourself spiralling ever downward into a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphism (i.e. the personification of nations). A good test of this is simply to Google a person's name or concept. For instance, if you search for Vladimir Putin on any given day, there will never be a positive story on any media outlet Google links you to. Sounds impossible, right? I can show you how it works.

The results today for Russia's president include headlines like "The chilling moment in Russia-Ukraine peace talks — as Putin makes mockery of Trump's efforts to end war" (SkyNews), "How Putin is rebranding the failing of Kursk as a sign of strength" (CNN), or "Trump softens on Putin as Russia's military edge weakens, officials say" (Washington Post). Only the truth lies buried much deeper, as I will demonstrate.

A report on April 15, 2025, by The Conversation titled, "Why does Putin insist Ukrainians and Russians are 'one people'? The answer, spans centuries of colonisation and resistance", is the edge of a pit eventually leading to reason. The Conversation, a non-profit media entity funded by certain universities, government entities, and individual donors, is portrayed as an unbiased academic research portal. However, its value is the extended republication of ideas and "truths." After we begin our freefall into Alice's rabbit hole, the first media entity we come to is Asia Times, supposedly one of the world's most unbiased news outlets. Here's where things get interesting.

A minute deep into the dark abyss of Western propaganda, we discover Asia Times is not objective. There is, as is always the case, an agenda. The subject of Russia and/or Putin on its pages simply reflects all the Russophobia elsewhere. But some would question, "why?" The simple answer is that the people who control The Conversation, Asia Times, and thousands of other media outlets are selling to us. Looking at who runs it, it's important to note that one of the two founders of The Conversation, Andrew Jaspan, initially had a brilliant idea. He and his co-founder, Jack Rejtman, envisioned melding peer-reviewed evidence with real news. Then, once the media outlet expanded internationally, other interests demanded that Jaspan be expunged in 2017 from any say-so at The Conversation. To understand why Jaspan left The Conversation, his new media project, 360info, offers a thousand times more objectivity via the same principles The Conversation was built on. But let's diver further into the abyss.

Echo Chamber for Business

One of the publications that republished the "Why Does Putin..." piece from The Conversation was Asia Times, which, according to other Western media propaganda channels, is one of the most unbiased outlets in Asia. But it's not. We only need to investigate who runs Asia Times to find out why. Uwe Henke Von Parpart runs this English-language media outlet and is also the managing director and chief strategist of Reorient Financial Markets. He is also the chief economist and strategist for Asia for Cantor Fitzgerald in Hong Kong. So, if we realize that Cantor Fitzgerald is one of 24 primary dealers authorised to trade US government securities with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - well, by now, you can feel the bottom of the pit rising fast to meet you.

One of the most interesting facts I discovered. At the same time, deep diving into the propaganda/sales hole was the fact that the boss of Cantor Fitzgerald, billionaire Howard Lutnick, is currently President Trump's Secretary of Commerce. We could get into one of the key sources of Lutnick's income, but the cryptocurrency wonderland has its maze of shenanigans and pitfalls. Let's just say that all this media, all of the geopolitics you are witnessing, are part of what Trump would call "The Art of the Deal." At the bottom of all of these pits, as you might expect, are huge banking concerns that control everything from bond markets to commodities, pharmaceuticals, the defence industry, real estate, and everything else in our lives.

Alice's Money Pit

So, what truth have we uncovered? We can see that the so-called "unbiased" media is anything but. The people who own it are tied by a profit umbilical cord, even if the outlet is a non-profit. Secondly, through the Cantor Fitzgerald/Asia Times connection, we can see an absolute linkage to bonds and securities (and more). For those thinking I may have missed something, given Howard Lutnick being a huge Trump supporter, it's important to note that Lutnick was one of Hillary Clinton's most prominent supporters when the time suited him. And this points us toward the ultimate truth. All of these people are in the game for the same reason. News of "this" makes bonds do "that," for instance. The constant conflicts create unlimited potential for those with the "Art of the Deal" in their DNA. Underneath, there are hundreds of thousands of minions in academia, industry, banking, technology, pharma, defence, etc.

Why does Putin consider many Ukrainians Russians? I mean, why? It's because most Russians consider Ukrainians their brothers and sisters. It's proven by the fact that Kyiv is not a pile of ashes and rubble right now. And because parts of Ukraine are culturally at the core of where the Slavic people came from. Ukraine and the Slavs were indigenous to its central regions. They suffered control and subjugation by the Mongols, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Austrian Empire, and the Ottomans before being absorbed into the Russian Empire. And now other forces are at work seeking to rule them. Vladimir Putin's assertions are not a lie. Slavs being brothers is a huge problem for the Europeans, though.