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Russian invasion of Ukraine/Belief of Mainstream Media Narrative

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

 

Yeah, China is completely authoritarian, Taiwan is not, so I think the parallels should make it obvious that this is morally consistent. If this happened, you would be quoting Xinhua, and would tell us that you realized that it was Western propaganda all along telling us that Taiwan was the good guy. But what you are saying doesn't make sense anyway, because the power dynamic makes it so that China is equal to Russia, and Taiwan is equal to Ukraine, so of course Taiwan would receive Western support. Your sentence construction is confusing.

 

 

I drew a comparison, equaling Taiwan with the Donbass (not "equal to Ukraine") only to highlight the hypocrisy, double standards, capricious nature of the MSM's propaganda campaigns. Nothing more than that.

It is selective - in one case glorifying and empathizing with "the victim", here, but ignoring another unjust treatment of some people or an individual, there. The same with 'oppressors'. Of course this makes for a strong influence on audiences who swallow it up.

The Donbas residents in their civil war deserved some attention and even sympathy for their efforts to be self-determining, while under fire from their authoritarian Gvt.  Not that they were all angels, either. But the suffering of civilians, the refugees and the Donbas destruction went entirely unnoticed by the outside world.

Odd. I must assume the world media which has lavished praise and compassion on the plight of all the other Ukrainians lately, had a vested interest and covert motives in backing one 'side' alone, going back quite a while. Quite as if those media chiefs were in on the "preparations" for war.

Edited by whYNOT
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47 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Your comparison doesn't work anyway, there would have to be an intervening third power to equal Russia. 

It works only as far as I intended it to work. The device is to show how the media's power is as important as the fighting itself, or moreso.

Public perception.

"Selective" media coverage which (say) had portrayed the Kyiv government as the brutal aggressor over their repressed fellow Ukrainians seeking self-determination since 2014, would have transformed the global responses to the war totally.

Edited by whYNOT
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11 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Yes, because you have equated incidental activities, which are bad but not essential to a system, with activities that define the essentials of a system. You ironically said that you live in the most free country, meaning that in some way you think it is not a free country, and pretty much in a morally reprehensible country.

 

The system is not free as far as taxation is compulsory, but your inference that I think the regime is morally reprehensible is on the mark.

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18 hours ago, whYNOT said:

I note you beat around the bush and will waste my time with your concretist approach and sophistry.

> you beat around the bush and will waste my time with your concretist approach and sophistry

I can very well understand your frustration: verified concretes are not your strength.

What you disparagingly call „concretist approach” is in reality the fact-check approach, that is asking you to justify/prove your “facts”. I chose to concentrate on facts because they are the raw material for your conclusions, and if they are false, your conclusions have little chance to be correct.

I avoid making myself claims about facts, I decided to challenge yours. This is, indeed, quite comfortable for me, but it is not unfair, because you have a simple solution – just follow the rational rule of never making factual claims without having solid proofs. And then you will feel comfortable too 😉

This shouldn’t be a surprise for you: I informed you about this approach of mine already in June - see here) : “I was essentially fact-checking your facts. And I intend to continue along these lines and abstain, for the time being, from presenting my own narratives. My working hypothesis is that many, if not most of your „facts” are not true.”

As you can see, I was transparent from the very beginning.

This was my first point of principle. The second is about legitimate sources for facts. During a war it is useless to get the facts from the government-related sources of the warring parties: one knows they do engage in propaganda and, thus, one cannot a priori know which clams are true. I explained this before, but you did not comment. Therefore, “facts” (and, consequently also opinions) coming from these sources should have no place in our debate.

Please specify clearly if you agree. If you don’t, show that the above considerations are wrong. [There is only one legitimate use of such sources as sources of information: when looking to find out what are the latest propaganda fads of the respective government.]

Now a third point. I noticed that when I make several points in the same comment, you address only one or two. You are thus wasting my time and effort.

From now on I will address only one point in each comment and expect an answer. This is a change of my debate tactics. The answer may be: the required proof (from legitimate sources only, as explained), or “I have no proof”, or "let me think it over 24 hours" and similar…

Meanwhile, stop pumping new facts (or “facts”), we have a huge backlog to sort out already.

Edited by AlexL
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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

If the Ukraine government has been persecuting and murdering Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, why haven't we heard more about it from organizations like Amnesty International?

I asked myself a similar question: if Russia knew that Russian-speaking Ukrainians were persecuted and murdered since at least 2014, did they do the usual minimum in such circumstances, which is alerting the relevant international organizations?

Indeed, Putin's Russia invoked persecutions and genocide when annexing Crimea and during all the Donbass conflict (2014-2022). During the Donbass war and to this day, Putin's propaganda accuses Ukraine of genocide of civilians.

The first to be alerted should have been the UN Security Council, where the Russian Federation is an important and powerful member. Accordingly, I examined, on the UN SC site, the list of projects of resolution, or other documents, introduced by RF concerning Ukraine. I found none. None whatsoever! (I found some introduced by Ukraine against RF concerning Crimea and Donbass which were vetoed by RF).

The first project of resolution by Russia concerning Ukraine was introduced shortly after the February 24, 2022 invasion and dealt with an alleged development of bio-weapons by Ukraine in collaboration with US/NATO. RF seem to have withdrawn it, because it was never heard of again...

On the other hand, the situation in Donbass was permanently monitored, since March 2014, by a "OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine". (OSCE is the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.) It found no major violations of the Laws of war, for example an unusually high proportion of the civilians. This mission was mandated by the 50+ participating countries and the mandate was extended every year by consensus. RF always voted for the extension, which means it had no major objections regarding a lack of objectivity. The Mission was stopped at the end of March 2022 because Russia voted against a new extension.

The conclusion seems to be that in fact the alleged systematic persecutions and murdering / genocide did not occur and was just another excuse to justify the invasion, along with an alleged imminent attack by Ukraine in Donbass, and many other excuses which were invoked during the 5 months of war but never proved.

Putin's real motivation seem to be a completely different one.

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20 hours ago, whYNOT said:

It works only as far as I intended it to work. The device is to show how the media's power is as important as the fighting itself, or moreso.

No, you failed to do that because you made it pretty apparent that the reason for preferring one side over another is authoritarianism. Then again, I've had to go to the absurd notion that authoritarianism of Russia really is the same as the rest of the West, and all kinds of strange apologetics for authoritarianism. So I guess it makes sense why you think it shows something else. 

 

 

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The US and indeed the whole world is in great danger because Biden and his son have their hands in so much corruption, especially in Ukraine. He has sent them US weaponry that they then hawk all over the world to raise cash. Zelensky has the goods on the Biden Crime Family and he seems able to force Biden to do just about anything he demands. What won't Pedo Peter do to avoid facing the consequences of his family's crimes? None of us are safe. Hopefully Putin can wipe Zelensky off the face of earth soon, eliminating one of Biden's puppet masters.

NPR notices that the Biden regime has been evading decades of corruption in Ukraine and they seem to think it matters:

Corruption concerns involving Ukraine are revived as the war with Russia drags on : NPR

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13 hours ago, AlexL said:

> you beat around the bush and will waste my time with your concretist approach and sophistry

I can very well understand your frustration: verified concretes are not your strength.

What you disparagingly call „concretist approach” is in reality the fact-check approach, that is asking you to justify/prove your “facts”. I chose to concentrate on facts because they are the raw material for your conclusions, and if they are false, your conclusions have little chance to be correct.

 

Meanwhile, stop pumping new facts (or “facts”), we have a huge backlog to sort out already.

The sure-fire way to bog down discussion and block fresh thought-directions, is the demand to validate every piece of data. There are inferences, implications, deductions and value-judgments which need to be integrated 'on the move' during these ongoing, volatile events - in order for one to even attempt to conceptualize the big picture. Your method would have us stuck on the ground floor, "fact-checking" trivia, long after events on the ground have outstripped debate: for better or for worse.

The facts are critical, but need be prioritized (not all facts are "equal", in significance or value) and sometimes be accepted in good faith by other debaters.  (Possible, probable, likely).

I can be wrong on a fact, but do not set out to deceive. Your attitude has been this, throughout. Therefore, you have contributed few positive, original lines of opinion but concentrated only on negating my input. I'm sure you are capable of the former - except, you clearly have a strong moral bias towards "one side" alone, which compromises objectivity. Beginning with all evil there, and all good, here, seems nice and tidy - but doesn't explain the reality of what we're seeing and how it came about.

Each simultaneously should be doing their own homework to form their own propositions. All published sources should be taken with a grain of salt, none dismissed automatically. The many paths in researching factual antecedents and developments, ideally, would eventually lead everybody to the same conclusion. 

I'd suppose the common, moral starting place is: "war is bad"; extreme war would be horrific. Up to this stage, it's appalling to see the thoughtless, unprincipled, nihilistic manner that major nations, leaders and military 'experts' are reacting - like reckless children, ready to commit their populations and Ukrainians to ever greater sacrifices. Perhaps the remaining objective thinkers can stop them. Those same, outraged "anti-war" people are showing their true colors, propagating more intense and longer conflict in the name of vengeance. 

Edited by whYNOT
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7 hours ago, Eiuol said:

No, you failed to do that because you made it pretty apparent that the reason for preferring one side over another is authoritarianism. Then again, I've had to go to the absurd notion that authoritarianism of Russia really is the same as the rest of the West, and all kinds of strange apologetics for authoritarianism. So I guess it makes sense why you think it shows something else. 

 

 

I did not mention "authoritarianism" by governments, which you have fixated upon to be the primary, full explanation. The "reason for preferring one side" is created by propaganda, more extreme nowadays than ever.  I claimed that "public perception" (or pubic sentiment) takes precedence. That is formed or informed by the news and social media. Look at it this way, the (losing) battle for minds and individualism is the prerequisite for statism - and statism is the cause of wars [AR]. No country will go to a war if independent thinkers who saw zero value in it were the majority. Media propaganda leads the way to wars when most people replace thinking with feelings and emotions. In which case, authoritarian govts. do the rest.

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14 hours ago, AlexL said:

 My working hypothesis is that many, if not most of your „facts” are not true.”

As you can see, I was transparent from the very beginning.

This was my first point of principle. The second is about legitimate sources for facts. During a war it is useless to get the facts from the government-related sources of the warring parties: one knows they do engage in propaganda and, thus, one cannot a priori know which clams are true. I explained this before, but you did not comment. Therefore, “facts” (and, consequently also opinions) coming from these sources should have no place in our debate.

 

If you don't rigorously discern fact from opinion, this is where you end up. Much of that RT material is basic fact - statements by officials, occurrences, etc., that are available - but not always well-publicized - all over the place. 

Separating them from speculation pieces or "human interest" articles isn't difficult. 

You do seem to realize how tightly Kyiv's govt. controls the foreign correspondents who report from there. Anything critical of Ukraine will certainly get embargoed and the journalist will lose his press credentials and be escorted out. And what is permitted will be faithfully reported by western media which will seldom if ever contradict them or check the information or conduct unbiased investigations, independently. There are cases of dissident reporters who have been silenced even in their European nations. 

You underestimate how the 'free' western media has been dominating the war-narrative. I've said, that's effected by withholding certain information and facts - and stressing others repeatedly - more than outright lies and deception. While they do this too. The "free Press" is often more deceptive than State outlets. Simply, because naive audiences can't believe any "free" and privately-owned media could try to deceive. So the media exploits their faith.

The war was "being won", many media sources and experts trumpeted, even when Ukraine was clearly losing ground.

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13 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

If the Ukraine government has been persecuting and murdering Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, why haven't we heard more about it from organizations like Amnesty International?

 

The social and legal persecution of Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians in Ukraine is a well-documented fact.

The civil war over Donbas can be researched, while not much was publicized back then (or now).

I don't see "a genocide" of the locals as Putin stated, and as little do I accept the "genocidal" motive of Russia's assault on Ukrainians. Not the slightest evidence for this, mere scare-mongering. The opposite, trying to avoid civilian casualties, is closer to true.

However, civilians were certainly killed in the Donbas by Kyiv's indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas**, totaling combatant and non-combatant deaths above 22,000.

If AI, the UN, and any organizations voiced concerns about that long civil war, I have not seen where they actively did a single thing to end it. That should raise suspicion by itself. Maybe, I speculate, they were told to butt out.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi0mpSYhoz5AhXEolwKHUdtDuYQFnoECBoQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCasualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War&usg=AOvVaw2vgfH37WVebSyjea27Kdhz

**exactly as Kyiv is once again doing recently.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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5 hours ago, whYNOT said:

The sure-fire way to bog down discussion and block fresh thought-directions, is the demand to validate every piece of data. There are inferences, implications, deductions and value-judgments which need to be integrated 'on the move' during these ongoing, volatile events - in order for one to even attempt to conceptualize the big picture. Your method would have us stuck on the ground floor, "fact-checking" trivia, long after events on the ground have outstripped debate: for better or for worse.

Oh please!  This looks like a big giant dodge to me.  If you think there's been ongoing persecution against those pesky Russo-Ukrainians just prove it already.  

Edited by Craig24
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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

 

However, civilians were certainly killed in the Donbas by Kyiv's indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas**, totaling combatant and non-combatant deaths above 22,000.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi0mpSYhoz5AhXEolwKHUdtDuYQFnoECBoQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCasualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War&usg=AOvVaw2vgfH37WVebSyjea27Kdhz

**exactly as Kyiv is once again doing recently.

 

Another quibbler. This link was in a reply to the "murdering" of Easterners.

For many, it is not the veracity of facts that matters, it's the dislike of facts. 

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I noticed somewhere above skepticism re. Putin's stated justification citing (in part) the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements.

This comprehensive and most impartial - I think - essay published on the eve of the invasion, should put the notion to rest.

Clean up please.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj3zIPq3oz5AhXCm_0HHfmYBkEQFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmacmillan.yale.edu%2Fnews%2Ffrustrated-refusals-give-russia-security-guarantees-implement-minsk-2-putin-recognizes-pseudo&usg=AOvVaw0x-1bNWxlFhHOp_ntbfMsu

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20 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

... why haven't we heard more about it from organizations like Amnesty International?

 

I don't think there's a ("man-made") organization or institution etc., whose original good purpose and goals cannot be undermined. It shouldn't be forgotten, each is the product of the integrity of individual people who presently run them, who may corrupt or subvert the organizations from within, for "vested interests": ideologies, politics, wealth, powerlust, prestige and so on.

 

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3 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

I don't think there's an ("man-made") organization or institution etc., whose original purpose and goals cannot be undermined. It shouldn't be forgotten, each is the product of the integrity of individuals who presently run them, who can corrupt or subvert the organizations from within, for ideologies, politics, wealth, powerlust, prestige and all the rest.

In other words you believe that Amnesty International is being bribed in some way to keep their mouth shut about any persecution or genocide?  Is that your claim?  If so, can you prove that?

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13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

The sure-fire way to bog down discussion and block fresh thought-directions, is the demand to validate every piece of data. There are inferences, implications, deductions and value-judgments which need to be integrated 'on the move' during these ongoing, volatile events - in order for one to even attempt to conceptualize the big picture...

🤣🤣🤣

1. Look Tony, this is not a site where people post their works of fiction. Not in this section, anyway.

I don’t think you got a license from this site’s owners which grants you the extraordinary privilege to be dispensed from the burden of grounding your assertions in FACT !

When asked for proof, you say that it is not available, that it is hidden from truth-tellers and truth-seekers because it is suppressed by powerful Forces. And thus we have a full circle – so typical of conspiracy theories. But, curiously, it is available to you through such notorious truth-seekers and truth-tellers as the Putinist Russia state-owned agencies like Russia Today, RIA Novosti, TASS and other Dimitri Simes’es.

2. I asked you to specify clearly if you agree about the following point of principle – about about legitimate sources for facts:

«During a war it is useless to get the facts from the government-related sources of the warring parties: one knows they do engage in propaganda and, thus, one cannot a priori know which clams are true. I explained this before, but you did not comment. Therefore, “facts” (and, consequently also opinions) coming from these sources should have no place in our debate»

You did nothing.

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5 hours ago, whYNOT said:

I noticed somewhere above skepticism re. Putin's stated justification citing (in part) the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements.

This comprehensive and most impartial - I think - essay published on the eve of the invasion, should put the notion to rest...

<link>

What is that article supposed to prove - about Putin having or not justified, in his February 24 speech, the attack on Ukraine by the non-implementation of the Minsk accords ?

I will not wait for your non-answer to this question and observe that the Professor Emeritus David R. Cameron does NOT say that Putin mentioned Minsk in his speech. He only says that Putin was frustrated by Minsk noncompliance (among numerous other frustrations he has). 

Therefore this essay puts nothing to rest.

The question of what Putin said in that speech is put to rest by my comment where I examined the official transcript of his full speech. The conclusion was that Putin did NOT mention the Minsk accords in his speech. And, as stressed, Prof. Cameron does NOT say the contrary - HE is not a crook.

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20 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Zelensky has the goods on the Biden Crime Family and he seems able to force Biden to do just about anything he demands.

Can you prove your claim that "Zelensky has the goods on the Biden Crime Family" ? Or you think that Biden sends all the weapons Zelensky demands and from this you infer your claim ? 

1. This inference is fallacious.

2. In fact, Biden is very reluctant to send to Ukraine the weapons it needs, many qualitative and quantitative restrictions are imposed, Congress has to put political pressure on Biden, the Lend-Lease Law signed in May seems to be stuck, etc.

According to the most recent report of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (July 1, 2022, see here), weapon deliveries by USA as a percent of its per capita GDP are on the 12-th rank, behind Estonia (1), Latvia (2), Poland (3)... Germany (9), Italy (10) and Australia (11)...

Yeah, "about anything he demands" ! That is why Zelensky had to send his wife to beg the Congress for more and better weapons ??

Or you believe that, in fact, Biden sends in secret orders of magnitudes more, but this is unreported ? Well, I count on Putin's spies - he has everywhere,  first and foremost in Ukraine - to make a huge fuss about it if it were the case. But Putin is silent... Maybe he participates in the conspiracy...

These facts would mean, by a contrario, that Zelensky does NOT have the goods on Biden😁

Edited by AlexL
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20 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Media propaganda leads the way to wars when most people replace thinking with feelings and emotions. In which case, authoritarian govts. do the rest.

I wonder, what would happen if the media propaganda provided by Russia Today combined forces with Putin's extremely authoritarian government? Maybe they would start a war with the Ukraine with exaggerated claims of genocide. 

Oh wait, I don't need to wonder, because this literally happened.

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18 pages since this thread was split from another topic.
Can someone enlighten me as to: Why is this discussion essential?

The gist I get is that @whYNOT continues to make continued contributions to a thread that was broken off to segregate @Economic Freedom's observation that the mainstream media has provided little other than "propaganda".

@Jon Letendre has joined in with several others denouncing Tony.

The evaluations Tony makes continue to provide ongoing weight as someone engaged with various sources providing conflicting sources. What intrigues me is the number of individuals that suggest Tony is missing the point here.

For one, I ask myself: "What is essential about what is going on between Russia and Ukraine?"

In the responses so far, I'm not grasping what, in particular, is the essential significance.

In so far as Objectivism is concerned. (as this is Objectivism Online) it would be the core of why such a discussion is essential to Objectivism that is eluding me.

Can anyone help me here, or is the "obvious" beyond my capacity to grasp here, giving the "limitations" of language to communicate in this venue?

 

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8 hours ago, AlexL said:

Can you prove your claim that "Zelensky has the goods on the Biden Crime Family" ?

Of course. And you could also, very quickly and easily. But first you would have to want the truth.

Edited by Jon Letendre
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