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Russian invasion of Ukraine/Belief of Mainstream Media Narrative

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5 hours ago, Craig24 said:

I'm calling BS on this claim.  Which western governments have censored RT and Sputnik?  If you are able to link to RT as a source it's obviously not banned where you live and it certainly isn't banned here in the US.  

The channel went off the air here in March, blocked by the service provider. But available on Google.

Available in the US, I did not know. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj0zNvIo5L5AhWZOuwKHYBQD8AQFnoECEIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fedition.cnn.com%2F2022%2F03%2F03%2Fmedia%2Frt-america-layoffs%2Findex.html&usg=AOvVaw1iPtNYmKik9iarvUqC3hff

 

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8 hours ago, Craig24 said:

As a follow up to my last post here's a NY Times article on Russian censorship since the beginning of the conflict.

From the article:

 

I couldn't read the whole article it was paywalled, but didn't the NYT hide Hitler's and Stalin's grossest atrocities? Publish false and unverified accounts "Russia, Russia Russia" , shill for partisan groups while proclaiming to be objective ?

So what does 'blocking access to FB' mean? , is FB the same in Russia?( honestly I don't know) , worst press crakdown in 22 yrs ? Vlad had like a first amendment infatuation while leveling Grozni(sp? ) , cmon man check your sources .

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On 7/23/2022 at 10:49 AM, whYNOT said:
On 7/23/2022 at 1:30 AM, dream_weaver said:

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?

 

d_w, the best place for this discussion IS because this is an Objectivist forum. This war and its global response demands objectivity, from many more outspoken individuals. Not that it is "essential to Objectivism", but that Objectivism is essential and fundamental to (identifying, explaining, judging, resolving) it. In short: O'ism's applicability. None other, and I've read and heard many erudite intellectuals on this war, has the unified principles and methodology.

(I appreciate that opinions can be freely thrashed out here whereas, in other places one might be deplatformed and the site banned for daring to question the controlled, moral agenda).

"'Tis not unreasonable to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger". David Hume

This anti-philosophy is what mankind has absorbed and we are up against.

and in conjunction with the following:

On 7/23/2022 at 4:42 PM, AlexL said:
On 7/23/2022 at 1:30 AM, dream_weaver said:

Can someone enlighten me as to: Why is this discussion essential?

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.

That what is going on between Russia and Ukraine is that an independent and sovereign country was military attacked and an attempt is made to suppress dissolve it or at least continue to dismember it and incorporate the pieces. Crimea was already swallowed (in 2014), and parts of Donbas were already detached from Ukraine. With the second stage of the war, which started 5 months ago, the process continues with a much higher intensity.

It is unique in that it takes place in the 21 century, in Europe, in violation of a dozen of treaties regarding the independency and territorial integrity of post-soviet countries.

It is a textbook case of naked, cynical, perfidious aggression, similar to Nazi Germany (and Russia’s) aggression of Poland in 1939, which started WWII. For an Objectivism forum it is important as an opportunity to discuss the responses of USA and Europe to this war , from the point of view of Ethics and Political Philosophy

These are pretty straight forward, and both provide a basis for examining the events.

Moving on:

On 7/23/2022 at 4:42 PM, AlexL said:

PS: About

Quote

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.

In fact,

- the problem is that Tony is NOT providing conflicting sources, he mainly and consistently provides information, and supports his claims, from governmental sources of one of the warring parties;

- he is also not simply “missing the point”, he supplies “facts” he cannot (and is not willing) to validate.

Let me rephrase my statement.

Tony has been the one adding ongoing materials to the topic.

I know I just read about a brokered deal to ship grain from Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia, followed almost immediately by Russia bombing the seaport referred to in the agreement.

Now I don't use television nor much radio, usually I refer to Drudge Report, Real Clear Media, and <gasp> sometimes even Facebook. I'm hoping without a link the identification is valid enough to stand on it's own merit.

whYNOT replied to your comment to me as followed:

12 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Those conflicting sources are rife. In almost all the mainstream media you get to see, I can be certain. Is it too difficult to entertain other conflicting sources?

Something you don't admit to, that there exists, and has for a long while, an indoctrinating and largely Leftist, western reportage - which is for its adherents, generally accepted as Gospel. Sure, no one likes to acknowledge that their minds have been easily influenced.

You don't approve of (Russian) government sources - despite many international broadcasters being Gvt. owned - fine and good;

it should be simple for you to counter and contrast an (e.g.) Russia Today's report with some from western media.

Why haven't you?

Instead of negatively hiding behind "prove it" - be proactive, offer some contrary accounts (and definite opinions). I welcome any.

I have seen nothing from you showing and linking to ¬msm¬ reports - perhaps too - critically questioning their factual evidence and clear bias.  

The belief that one side in this conflict alone is evidently, factually honest and the other side deceives all the time, aligns with the a priori belief that moral purity exists on one side - with only evil on the other. Both run against reality and reason, premised upon 'revealed' knowledge - faith.

In all, I have simply been the messenger, indicating that there are other facts (or 'non-facts') and other viewpoints available "out there", ones suppressed in the West, not heard of. These ought to be welcomed by rigorous thinkers.

Discussions and speeches I put up have not attracted any analysis or debate here. E.g. What merit are Mearsheimer's opinions of NATO and the Russian objections? Not a reply.   

In closing, I am under no obligation to "prove" anything that comes from media sources. Because - I was not there on the spot, to personally witness events. As nobody here is, therefore we have to painstakingly draw deductions from ¬all¬ we hear.

But I take the view that Objectivists are independent thinkers who aren't timid about uncovering reality without fear or favor.

The last statement is key. Objectivists are independent thinkers.

Something that can help this ongoing thread is how information is provided. Instead of leaving the thoughts implicit of why a link, or several links, is/are posted—give others reason to click on a link. What did you hope to find? What did you find what was worth while. Are you in agreement with the entire article? Did you disagree with something in the article? What is the essence of the article in a paragraph or two, or even excerpted from the article? 

*********************

After reading Steven Pinker's book Rationality, his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). In light of recent events, it seemed relevant given the escalation of violence being discussed here.

One of the passages was impressive enough to add to the random quote database of Objectivism Online:

Quote
from page 181 of the hard copy edition:
The indispensability of reason does not imply that individual people are always rational or are unswayed by passion and illusion. It only means that people are capable of reason, and that a community of people who choose to perfect this faculty and to exercise it openly and fairly can collectively reason their way to sounder conclusions in the long run. ...

Needless to say, a community of people who choose to perfect the faculty of reason is a compelling and enrolling thought.

Steven Pinker also had another passage to cite for contrast here:

Quote
also from page 181 of the hard copy edition:
Though we cannot logically prove anything about the physical world, we are entitled to have confidence in certain beliefs about it. The application of reason and observation to discover tentative generalizations about the world is what we call science. The progress of science, with its dazzling success at explaining and manipulating the world, shows that knowledge of the universe is possible, albeit always probabilistic and subject to revision. Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.

Yikes. Do I close the book and return it to the library? Perhaps take into consideration that Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist and not an epistemologist and read on to see what other gems he may have strewn away along with some of the chaff?

Or post the The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) by Steven Pinker and expect people to just read it because it came up in a link?

*********************

The events in the world are unfolding constantly. As pointed out a couple of times in the recent movie Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, "No one can know everything."

It is one thing to work with each other to try and elucidate the essentials of what is unfolding. Nor ought there be an expectation to have what is going on in the world broken down in such a way as to be spoon fed, as if this were Gerber Online instead.

*********************

So if folks are interested in what is going on in the Russian - Ukraine Theater, use the process of identification to do so. There is nothing that says it all has to be done in one thread. If someone else want to take the lead of identifying relevant articles to the situation at hand, open a thread to do so and help by setting the example of how to access and separate the 'wheat from the chaff' so to speak.

Edited by dream_weaver
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2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

.

 

The last statement is key. Objectivists are independent thinkers.

Something that can help this ongoing thread is how information is provided. Instead of leaving the thoughts implicit of why a link, or several links, is/are posted—give others reason to click on a link. What did you hope to find? What did you find what was worth while. Are you in agreement with the entire article? Did you disagree with something in the article? What is the essence of the article in a paragraph or two, or even excerpted from the article? 

 

 "What did you hope to find? ...are you in agreement with the entire article".

I'm afraid there is nothing and nobody "binary": exclusively true/false, right/wrong, to be found out there in the media. "Facts" reported of activities and events, often morph with different eye-witness accounts, I've known; the journalist might often allow in his own biases in what he selectively writes and shows; at times he works in coercive conditions; his Editor has ultimate control of final content, according to the publisher's political (etc.) policies ... these may and do open a wide gap between the objective occurrences in reality and the final reportage presented to consumers.

To read and listen to them, it's like carefully selecting the pieces of articles that you judge to be in accordance with reality, while discarding other pieces that ring dubious/false. The object, to assimilate/ integrate the valid parts all together conceptually, of course.

To illustrate, John Pilger, an old fashioned Leftie journalist I had many occasions to criticize back decades ago, I know to be -also - an expert at his craft, has integrity and is one of the most experienced war correspondents. Certainly his entire writing and world view couldn't be acceptable (to me), while I can respect him and have total agreement on a specific topic like this interview, where he rues the propaganda at work in this war:

"You must be skeptical of -absolutely - everything".

 

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9 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

To read them, it's like carefully selecting the pieces of articles that you judge to be in accordance with reality, while discarding other pieces that are dubious.

Yes. This.

Share what you judge to be in accordance with reality by isolating it from a linked article, or if it is easier, share the part being discarded by isolating it from what you found otherwise to have merit.

You may find value in the 20 minute video you linked here. I've only got 4,568 days left to squander. Why should I squander 20 minutes on that video in an attempt to experience a pseudo vulcan mind meld with you via John Pilger serving as some sort of mystic intermediary between us?

 

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9 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

You may find value in the 20 minute video you linked here. I've only got 4,568 days left to squander. Why should I squander 20 minutes on that video in an attempt to experience a pseudo vulcan mind meld with you via John Pilger serving as some sort of mystic intermediary between us?

 

It's hardly as if I do not communicate directly to all, sans mystic intermediary.

Give the vid a shot, risk boredom for a possible gain.

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6 hours ago, AlexL said:

What exactly is your point with these links - clearly and succinctly ?

To prompt thoughts. And a reassessment for someone, who knows? To learn - as not one individual knows all the facts.

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6 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

How reliable is Monthly Review?

They identify as "socialist" - how does this affect their understanding?

They call the present system "capitalist" - how much do they understand about different systems and about what is at stake?

 

"Reliability and understanding"? I have not the slightest idea. I just came across the site.

 

 

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5 hours ago, AlexL said:

What exactly is your point with these links - clearly and succinctly ?

He's just posting "thoughts". Nothing to see here. No motive. Just innocent links. The facts reveal themselves. If you don't see it, no explanation is possible. If you do see it, you get it. If you disagree, you missed the point. Because after all, if you understood the point, you would agree. Then again, if you don't follow his point, you are hopelessly lost. 

Just now, whYNOT said:

"Reliability and understanding"? I have not the slightest idea. I just came across the site.

Yeah, who knows what they're saying? In fact, who even knows why you showed us the link if you don't even know how much reliability and understanding the source provides? 

6 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Available in the US, I did not know.

The US is surprisingly more free than you would think. 

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18 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Give the vid a shot, risk boredom for a possible gain.

I also looked up propaganda. The 1913 Webster is provided a more positive application of the term from a once upon a time perspective.

Since I reference Steven Pinker's book The Angels Of Our Nature, a quick search came back with a twitter tweet about a recent editorial by him published via The Boston Globe.

In the doublespeak of some of the intellectuals he opens with:

Quote

No one knows whether it will reverse the Long Peace and send the world back to an age of warring civilizations. Maybe — but maybe not.

The longer version of the above is below.

Is Russia’s war with Ukraine the end of the Long Peace?

It provides a brief plug to his book relative to current events. I've found it an insightful look at the history of violence of mankind. I have to remind myself that he is a psychologist now and again.

 

*edit to add: The Long Peace is a chapter in the book that I am currently in the middle of right now. (The stuff serendipity is made of.)

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On 7/25/2022 at 3:51 AM, Eiuol said:

He's just posting "thoughts". Nothing to see here. No motive. Just innocent links. The facts reveal themselves. If you don't see it, no explanation is possible. If you do see it, you get it. If you disagree, you missed the point. Because after all, if you understood the point, you would agree. Then again, if you don't follow his point, you are hopelessly lost. 

Yeah, who knows what they're saying? In fact, who even knows why you showed us the link if you don't even know how much reliability and understanding the source provides? 

The US is surprisingly more free than you would think. 

A misrepresentation. If anyone thinks propaganda isn't playing a major role in starting and sustaining this war, then they're well under the sway of that very "propaganda".

To illustrate propaganda in operation, there is no better way than to place contesting articles up for examination, pro and anti, one side or the other's relating of facts and events, narrative and agendas. One doesn't see it until one appreciates the clear contrasts (especially from the prevailing and dominant western news reports).

So, I went to and have put up RT stories where one would expect the most extreme differences from western propaganda.

My "thoughts", right. While I try to be careful to not suggest how others ~are supposed~ to think about and take away from the articles. Would it be better to tell Objectivists what to think and what judgments to make?

Always you return to the "source", a "name" which will somehow, by association, guarantee or degrade the credibility of some individual writer's account, opinions, article, or essay. I've insisted to you before how non-objective that is; authoritarian and intrinsicist. As if the entire "source" (website, magazine, newspaper and broadcaster) automatically lends an account truthfulness and moral respectability - or - e.g. with anything from Russia Today - must be a pack of lies and immorality.

Propaganda's effectiveness has been exacerbated by and depends on the public's dogmatism: the Word of Authority. Simply accepted on mindless faith. 

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13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

If anyone thinks propaganda isn't playing a major role in starting and sustaining this war, then they're well under the sway of that very "propaganda".

I didn't say it's not, I'm responding to the weird notion that RT is relatively reliable and enough so that it is by far your preference for any new source. 

13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

So, I went to and have put up RT stories where one would expect the most extreme differences from western propaganda.

So, what, you're telling us to look at this propaganda just to bring us awareness of the different kinds of propaganda there are? Yeah, that's what we are saying: RT is a propaganda machine. Yet part of your disagreement is that RT isn't really that bad and it tells the blunt truth! If I start to tell you about how they don't tell the truth in any transparent way, you will then start telling me about how everyone is doing propaganda, and RT is no different. 

13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

My "thoughts", right. While I try to be careful to not suggest how others ~are supposed~ to think about and take away from the articles. Would it be better to tell Objectivists what to think and what judgments to make?

You are worried that people might read your opinion and agree with you without analyzing what you wrote?  But you did the exact opposite just above with the video you linked! 

13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

As if the entire "source" (website, magazine, newspaper and broadcaster) automatically lends an account truthfulness and moral respectability - or - e.g. with anything from Russia Today - must be a pack of lies and immorality.

Different sources have different standards, for different topics even. I'm not too concerned about what RT has to say about new movies, or what it says about fashion. The fact that you don't see it as objective to judge the standards and motivations of a media outlet, makes me wonder if you believe that the standards one has with the truth has nothing to do with what a person claims the truth is. Like with epistemology, proper thinking standards lend themselves to truthfulness and reliability, even moral respectability. 

14 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Propaganda's effectiveness has been exacerbated by and depends on the public's dogmatism: the Word of Authority. Simply accepted on mindless faith. 

Indeed, which I guess explains why you have grown a fondness for RT. 

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23 hours ago, Eiuol said:

I didn't say it's not, I'm responding to the weird notion that RT is relatively reliable and enough so that it is by far your preference for any new source. 

So, what, you're telling us to look at this propaganda just to bring us awareness of the different kinds of propaganda there are? Yeah, that's what we are saying: RT is a propaganda machine. Yet part of your disagreement is that RT isn't really that bad and it tells the blunt truth! If I start to tell you about how they don't tell the truth in any transparent way, you will then start telling me about how everyone is doing propaganda, and RT is no different. 

 

Let's get straight just which war propaganda has been most broadcast to more people and more egregiously devious, by a long way: the western media.

There is not a semblance of equivalence.

"That's Russian propaganda!" The smear used to silence opposition and to conceal the West's own propaganda-for-war-machine, working flat-out.

If one maintained that diplomacy, a truce and peace treaties with concessions, were and are the only solution - "appeasement, you are pro-Putin. No peace! We will beat and humiliate him with (Ukraine's) warfare".

Or: tell anyone that the oil shortages, food prices, falling economies, inflation, probable 3rd World hunger, etc. were due not to Putin, but directly caused by our rulers' unthinking imposition of total sanctions (which could have been held in reserve, or incrementally imposed - 'the stick' - with some 'carrots' - to get Putin negotiating, early as March) - that's "Russian propaganda".

(The adolescent's causation - we block and contain Russia's exports to try to kill its economy, then moan and complain that - hell - the world is suffering shortages ... and who's to blame: Russia's invasion!).

I and anyone could go on at length about the blunders and self-sacrifices by the West's leaders that are being justified and sanitized for public consumption: Western propaganda.

You only have to see recently the accounts (begrudgingly and belatedly admitted in western media) of Ukraine's v. Russia's retreats/advances in the field, to know the indoctrinated unreality a large part of the West lives in, when all of a sudden reports of glorious victories are less heard (but still dreamed of). Anyone who knew anything, could and did tell us, mostly unpublished in the msm, from the beginning that Russia was not going to lose this war (in the East). Not an expert, I knew that. Unacceptable!

The latest further arming of Ukraine with more extreme-range weapons at this stage is clearly suicidal. It only prolongs the war and the Russians will advance their lines deeper for a wider buffer zone. But to state any of that -  Russian propaganda!

Edited by whYNOT
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30 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

There is not a semblance of equivalence.

Well yeah, you told me that authoritarian propaganda is not as bad as propaganda from a democratic nation and you said that there is actually good reason to think it is very factual and reliable as a source. 

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Well yeah, you told me that authoritarian propaganda is not as bad as propaganda from a democratic nation and you said that there is actually good reason to think it is very factual and reliable as a source. 

In context of the media response to this war. From my short list above, leaving out dozens of other main examples and hundreds of headlines, etc.etc., can anyone tell me who most propagandized the responses to this war? The facts speak for themselves. Propaganda by the war-mongers who anticipated it, wanted it and want to perpetuate it. They found a strong public response (for now) from many who are simply kind-hearted people, unaware of the war's antecedents.

The fundamental remains. In a democracy the government HAS to get a majority of the people on side to remain in power; an autocracy - by definition, much less so. An autocrat only needs to worry about not being over- repressive and angering his populace, at risk of a revolt. Otherwise he has mostly a free hand in domestic and foreign affairs.

Where and when a free-ish democracy's Press is most supportive of their Gvt. policy, they will tend to indulge in favorable publicity on its behalf, even propaganda. The media-consumer in a free country needs to be discerning to remain free. 

Eiuol: Obviously you wish to stereotype me with favoritism for RT. When all else fails...

"Reliable" was not a word I applied to it. It was another poster's query about a website. I have advised often that one needs to contrast several sources in order to avoid the propaganda trap. One can verify simple facts, many events and politicians' quotations, and those plainly take up the majority of RT stories, and little or no commentary or moralizing. 

Where one might find propagandizing is in RT op-eds and debates, the latter always with some western participants none of whom condones the invasion, while explaining the deep background which few westerners want to know about.

 

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5 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Yup, it would be nice if you did that, I agree.

What? I've been taken to task for linking a few articles. Do you want me to flood the pages with many more?

(besides, I won't. You can do your own reading from freely available western media).

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But here's one. A factual report, I assume. No "editorializing"

https://www.rt.com/russia/559728-ukraine-escalation-rand-report/

Comment beneath: "It seems to me that this Rand group is misnamed. There doesn't appear to be much thinking going on..."

Ha ha! O'ists get around.

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A couple of more quips from The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) from the subsection Where Angels Fear To Tread out of Chapter 6, The New Peace

Quote
pg. 361
I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of his book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up.

With a slight hat-tip to Karl Popper, who would have been 120 today except for an event he participated in back in 1994,

Quote
pg. 361-362
The goal of this book is to explain the facts of the past and the present, not to augur the hypotheticals of the future. Still, you might ask, isn't the essence of science to make falsifiable predictions? Shouldn't any claim to understanding the past be evaluated by its ability to extrapolate into the future? Oh, all right. I predict that the chance of major episode of violence will break out in the next decade—a conflict with 100,000 deaths in a year or a million deaths overall—is 9.7 percent. How did I come up with that number? Well, it'd small enough to capture the intuition "probably not," but not so small that if such an event did occur I would be shown to be flat out wrong. My point, of course, is that the concept of scientific prediction is meaningless when it comes to a single event—in this case, the eruption of mass violence in the next decade. It would be another thing if we could watch many worlds unfold and tot up the number in which an event happened or did not, but this is the only world we've got.

Per the BBC news on July 1, an underestimate has already reached over 10,000 folk. Granted, the decade would have been over 2021 as the book was published 2011, still ideas matter, and Steven makes a good point in the first citation that the question missing the point. He then succumbs to Popper's error in the second by acquiescing to the notion that the essence of science is to make falsifiable predictions. <sigh>

Edited by dream_weaver
Corrected publication date.
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22 hours ago, whYNOT said:

What? I've been taken to task for linking a few articles.

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.

22 hours ago, whYNOT said:

But here's one. A factual report, I assume. No "editorializing"

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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To add to Eiuol remarks.

12 hours ago, Eiuol said:

 

On 7/28/2022 at 4:31 AM, whYNOT said:

But here's one. A factual report, I assume. No "editorializing"

<link to RT - I am not sharing RT links>

This RT article is supposed to be, according to whYNOT, just a summary of a recently published Rand Corporation’s (RC) study, namely an objective summary (“no editorializing"). But is it ?

 (Please note: I neither endorse nor discuss the quality of this RC study.)

 The study’s objective is, according to its authors, to assist “U.S. policymakers who are trying to help Ukraine while simultaneously avoiding a great power war,” by „identifying pathways to intentional Russian escalation.”

 The authors (or the editors) particularly highlighted the following assessment:

“A Russia-NATO war is far from an inevitable outcome of the current conflict. U.S. and allied policymakers should be concerned with specific pathways and potential triggers, but they need not operate under the assumption that every action will entail acute escalation risks.”

While of central importance, this assessment didn’t find its way to the RT “summary.” Maybe it will find its way into a future RT article about Rand Corporation’s warmongering…😁

In RT’s reading of the study, the study’s objective is to warn the US policymakers of the danger of helping the Ukrainians – with weapons, with sanctions or otherwise. Accordingly, RT “non- editorializing” article avoids expressions like “Russian escalation”, “Russia might purposely choose to target NATO forces”, „Kremlin’s brutal invasion”, „brutality of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine”, „Russian war crimes” etc.

The twisting and spinning by RT begins from the very title:

RC Title: Pathways to Russian Escalation Against NATO from the Ukraine War

RT Title: Think-tank advises US how to avoid war with Russia [instead of: „how to avoid Russian escalation which may lead to a war between Russia and NATO”]

I wonder why does whYNOT approvingly link to an botched RT summary and not to the original study – with his own comments ?

From the comments to the RT article one sees that, unfortunately, RT has a lot of gullible and faithful devotees. However, it is a special, and continuing, success for RT to be approvingly cited in an Objectivism publication, by a "Senior Member"…

Edited by AlexL
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22 hours ago, Eiuol said:

 

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."

 

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? 

 

This is propaganda we are discussing, not 'subliminal' advertisements.

The objective is the substitution of the contents of the mass of reader-listeners' minds with a pre-packaged world-view, distancing them from reality. To be effective, all the facts and non-facts and deceptions and "value-judgments" broadcast and published must be consistent with the "view". Repetitively. Therefore, the attitude on any subject (a war or politics and politicians, etc., etc.) will be permanently lodged in his/her brain and emotion-responses, to be the valid and ¬morally proper¬ one.

You got the people once, you got (many of) them for all time.

"Subtexts" and such nuances can contribute on a minor subconscious key: sensations received (the hateful expression depicted on a politician's face in a photo, a subtle phrasing change, connoting this, rather than that...)

Propaganda is a concerted effort to indoctrinate universally, I think you don't realize how totalitarian/authoritarian it's been in the West, most by the hard Left.

Edited by whYNOT
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