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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/29/22 in all areas

  1. You been taken to task for linking nothing but RT articles. If you linked other sources as well, or even compared and contrasted RT articles with articles from others, then I wouldn't have said anything. You haven't joined in on the skeptical analysis of RT articles, as you proposed we do. Worse, when we ask what your point is about linking a particular article, you don't really say. Read a bit more carefully, one notable thing that they have done here is take a quote and then chop it up within the same sentence, not as a simple gap like a pause in what somebody said. This is a way to get it to feel like a paraphrase, but it gives just enough room to exaggerate or minimize a phrase by the words the insert in between. "NATO should still “increase force presence in the east” but focus on “defensive” capabilities and re-evaluate activities such as drills “to avoid creating a false impression of preparation for offensive action,” the researchers said." See how the word focus is put just before defensive? We don't have any context for the word defensive, and the word 'but' is in there even though increasing force presence is not necessarily offensive. It's trying to suggest that NATO is obviously planning an invasion or assault and there's no way it could be defensive. The paragraph here by RT makes you want to believe that increased force presence is the opposite of defensive, and anything that appears defensive is actually an attempt to hide preparation for offensive action which is in the form of increased force presence. I think this kind of quote splitting is always on purpose, it is a pretty good way to notice a subtext. Your first reaction should be to look at the report that it is quoting, did you do that? Here it is: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1971-1.html This isn't some special attention I'm giving to RT because I hate it, I do this thing with any kind of article I read about world events. Democracy Now is not so bad as an information source for this conflict, or at least because it isn't one of the actual participants in the conflict.
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  2. "A new season of war". Why do I report "Russian propaganda"? Because no one hears the "other story", as here, the background events glossed over, hidden, indeed suspiciously stifled, in the West's media - out of sight out of mind, like a falling tree which did not make a sound. This conflict supposedly started on 24 Feb? If you were living there, in eastern Ukraine, not quite. [edited for brevity] 17 Jul, 2022 14:38 "A view from Donbass: Ukraine has treated the people of this region as sub-humans, this made peace impossible" How Kiev has tried to dehumanize people in its former East – first domestically, then everywhere By Vladislav Ugolny, a Russian journalist based in Donetsk: "The military conflict in Ukraine, which began on February 24, was preceded by a long war in Donbass. Over the course of eight years, it claimed the lives of at least 14,200 people (according to the OHCHR), over 37,000 were wounded, hundreds of thousands became refugees or had their homes destroyed. A de-escalation was achieved in February 2015, as both sides realized that a bad peace was better than a good war, and attempted to find a political resolution on the basis of the Minsk agreements. That, however, failed to bring peace to Donbass, which instead faced eight long years of economic and legal blockade, compounded by chaotic shelling of areas near the frontlines. They were eight hard years, which involved rebuilding bombed schools, hospitals, and houses, a rather humiliating dependence of formerly well-to-do people on humanitarian aid, an economic slump due to the economic blockade imposed by the Ukrainian government, restricted access to pensions, and the risk of being wounded or killed for those who lived in urbanized frontline areas. People who voted for the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the referendum in May 2014 could never have imagined living in this endless terror. They were forced to wait for that terror to stop until February 2022, when Russia recognized the independence of Donbass and then deployed its military to, among other things, protect it and liberate territory occupied by Ukrainian forces since 2014. It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, but the people of Donbass now know that war will soon be over for them. The people’s militias of both republics are doing everything in their power to achieve victory as soon as possible. It may seem to an outside observer that some citizens of Ukraine backed by the Russian military are fighting other citizens of Ukraine backed by NATO. This description, however, would satisfy neither side of the conflict. Donbass residents no longer consider themselves citizens of Ukraine, while the Ukrainian government and society at large deny their sovereignty and dismiss them as collaborators and mercenaries for Russia. Both are wrong. In reality, it was precisely this denial of sovereignty that led Donbass to renounce everything having to do with Ukraine, and it started way before 2014. Let me add here that what was said above applies to the whole southeastern region of Ukraine, also known as Novorossiya; however, the case of Donbass was the most dramatic and revealing manifestation. It all began with dehumanization. After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine was too big to be uniform. The enthusiasm of Galicia in the west to build a nation-state was mixed with depression in the southeast over the loss of a shared economic space with Russia. Machine building in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, and Zaporozhye declined, Odessa’s Black Sea shipping operations were shut down. The country survived thanks to metallurgy and coal mining. Both industries were centered around Donbass. [...] Children were killed in Donbass. Nobody gave a damn, except Russia and the repressed Russians in the rest of Ukraine.... All of this convinced Donbass it had the moral high ground, which allowed it to stand tall and weather eight years of incredible hardship. The Ukrainians were granted the chance to reach a political settlement with the Minsk agreements, if they agreed to treat Donbass as a sovereign region within Ukraine. Had they done this, Donbass would have lost interest in politics, returned to its industrial roots, and left policymaking in the hands of western Ukraine again in a few years’ time. But they wouldn’t do this, even for the sake of stopping the war. Recognizing the sovereignty of Donbass was a red line for Ukraine, and so was dialogue with Donbass. The Ukrainian leadership stuck to those red lines even after Russia said it was going to put an end to the ongoing slaughter at its doorstep. So, what we now have is a new season of war, which has been going on for Donbass since 2014. The two people’s republics’ armies are storming Ukrainian fortifications as the Ukrainian military continues to bomb residential areas in Donetsk. People in Donbass stopped wondering “what they are capable of.” Now they know that the Ukrainian army and government are capable of anything – bombing cities, torturing people, and trying to pass off Donetsk people that they killed for Kiev residents, supposedly killed by Russian missile strikes. The only thing they can’t do is admit that the citizens of Donbass are people just like them, people who have their own interests and are prepared to fight for them until they win or die in battle". https://www.rt.com/russia/559061-children-donbass-world-not-care/
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