At a certain point, the contradictions... collapse under their own weight. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you might be surprised at how immense the structures supported by contradiction might be. The issue being that ideology is weightless and such metaphors are inapplicable. There is no straw that breaks the camel's back.

It is supposed to be very popular in the United States. Let's see if it going to be banned like RT and Sputnik. — FreeEmotion

FAUX News is a lie machine, a dumbing-down machine. Watching them will make you stupid.

The Jewish-led (i.e., evil for them) Ukrainian Neo-Nazi (a good thing for them) government is leading Ukrainians, who are actually just the same ethnicity as Russians, to ethically cleanse their fellow Russians for being Russians. The Jewish led Neo-Nazis are doing this with the help of their now pro-Nazi radical Woke BLM trans rights activist funders in the West. They are also backed by pro-Jewish radical Islamist jihadis (this las line comes from a handful of unconfirmed reports of small numbers of Central Asian mujahideen coming to fight for Ukraine, but makes sense in the context of "ISIS being funded by the Clintons," etc.)

Putin, often referred to only half ironically as "based Putin, savior of the White race," is saving and liberating the Ukrainians, who are actually Russians, but who have been killing Russians for not being Ukrainian.

He is doing so with the help of Chechen shock troops known for war crimes, and now, apparently Syrian irregulars. Thus, he is saving Europe from the ongoing Muslim migrant murder mayhem invasion of the West by sending the first Muslim army to invade Europe north of the Balkans in centuries.

Europe needs to learn to be strong and resist invasions (migration). Ukraine needs to stop resisting this invasion, it's going to get people hurt.

Putin's righteous denazificafation (denazificafation is bad) efforts to defeat "Globalhomo" (yes, this is really the new popular term for the evil elite kabal that runs the world...) won't be hurt by Western sanctions because he has the support of the Chinese Communist Party, who are helping him save the world. Plus, the whole time the invasion was actually about Fauci's bioweapons labs in Ukraine and evidence of Biden's pedophilia, which are in Kyiv. The God Emperor (based Trump himself) was impeached over his efforts to get Zelensky to turn these over.

At a certain point, the contradictions, liberal backed Jewish Neo-Nazis, an ethnicity ethnically cleansing itself, etc. collapse under their own weight. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is one of the most hilarious mental meltdowns I've ever seen :lol:

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But on a serious note, there's some serious Nazi-like fascist iconography being pushed in Russia that just feels like Nazi cosplay with a new logo, especially when it's being pushed from official propaganda sources. And calling Putin a new kind of Hitler was considered "extreme"? Will he put a gun to his temple and denazify Russia now?

FAUX News is a lie machine, a dumbing-down machine. Watching them will make you stupid. — Olivier5

Yeah, if people don't even know what Fox news is or how biased it is, then no wonder so many have a hard time understanding how to decypher both propaganda and what sources to use for rational and logical arguments. Everything starts with media knowledge, fact-checking, research methods that produce logical conclusions and an ability to form all that into a coherent structure as an argument. The blatant cherry-picking to fit the narrative, the Putin is right or wrong depending on the argument, or news outlets that support the narrative or research papers with no connection to the actual premises being presented just form a maelstrom of BS. It all starts with an inability to understand how media works and what to trust and what not to trust. Thank Odin I have an actual education on "media deciphering" or whatever the correct translation would be.

At a certain point, the contradictions, liberal backed Jewish Neo-Nazis, an ethnicity ethnically cleansing itself, etc. collapse under their own weight. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Note that @Isaac, @StreetlightX and others are constantly contradicting themselves, but it doesn't actually matter to them because they are simply not logical enough to notice and care about logic.

Everything starts with media knowledge, — Christoffer

Yes, and many English-speaking media -- such as FAUX -- have been manipulated for decades. Hence Brexit, Trump, and other bizarro anglo stuff. Their public is misinformed, dumbed-down by Murdock and co.

Lmao its like an entire page of dummy spitting and self-adulation.

We should probably ban oil and gas from everyone. Go green.

Twitter has censored stuff before, so I think its credibility is in question. OK, so Twitter says they removed fake accounts which were spreading lies. Of course it is up to me to believe Twitter or not. In any case Twitter have to make a subjective judgement as to what is acceptable or not, what is true or false. That is understood, but I have that right as well. — FreeEmotion

Absolutely. I probably wouldn't trust what Twitter say either, and I don't see any problem saying as much - so long as we're clear about it. I think "Social media companies have removed pro-Russian accounts which they claim are fake" is about the surest ground we have on that particular story.

Thank you for linking the Greenwald article. — FreeEmotion

No problem. It's a good read.

We should probably ban oil and gas from everyone. Go green. — frank

Yeah, but it will take a few years even if the push for this is at a maximum level now. But I do think plenty start to back up and look at the whole picture now. When we already have a movement towards green, I think there are plenty who earlier was a little apathetic against fast change, who are now changing their minds to push for a change faster. I think that government spending and private sectors will now be much more committed to green solutions for everything, and that is a good thing. This is why I've said earlier in this thread that even if we go back to how Russia exported oil before, there will come a time when Russia has no export because there are no nations willing to spend money on oil anymore. Germany has just changed gears 180 into spending on green solution infrastructure in order to try and get rid of the dependency on Russian gas. Nordstream will be gone in a few years, even if Russias export starts up again.

Everything about this invasion has shaken up the global resource- and energy economy to the point where people are trying to move away from dependency on authoritarian nations for natural resources and other trade. No one wants to find their economy and infrastructure being under the power of another nation anymore.

What's a bit worrisome about this is that most of the world's peace relies on trade and if nations start to block trade towards authoritarian nations, they want to have power in some other way, maybe even military solutions.

But all of this will push money into green solution science and that is unquestionably a good thing.

Note that Isaac, @StreetlightX and others are constantly contradicting themselves — Olivier5

Has the quote function broken? There seems to have been a flurry recently of posts referring to what I'm apparently saying without making use of it.

Lmao its like an entire page of dummy spitting and self-adulation. — StreetlightX

Well it seemed that way to me too at first, but I realise now I'd missed this...

It all starts with an inability to understand how media works and what to trust and what not to trust. Thank Odin I have an actual education on "media decyiphering" or whatever the correct translation would be. — Christoffer

We have an actual expert in. Someone with, like, an actual education, in media decyiphering (though one which apparently didn't stretch to the correct spelling of deciphering).

So let's take the opportunity to iron this out once and for all. We can finally learn from our resident expert how we decide what to trust and what not to trust?

Speaking of media literacy:

Has the quote function broken? There seems to have been a flurry recently of posts referring to what I'm apparently saying without making use of it. — Isaac

You straight admitted that you don't care about the truth. Do you need that quoted back to you?

Yeah, the nihilistic Russian spirit shows itself wonderfully in that clip. All while Ukraine is urgently calling for a ceasefire in the Chernobyl region in order to repair the power plant, but so far they get nothing. Either the Russian troops are extremely uneducated, extremely stupid, or are so nihilistic that they act out like angry little children with severely lacking upbringing. Or a combination of all.

they're conscripts. Lost, wretched souls brought up in an environment of extreme bullying and violence.

they're conscripts. Lost, wretched souls brought up in an environment of bullying and violence. — Changeling

Yeah, and they're not gonna be better after killing old disabled people. Fucking hate Russia's treatment of kids like this, it produces a large generation of broken people who might never do anything good in this world. Just violence against themselves, against others, until they die. It's sickening.

Has the quote function broken? — Isaac

(sic)

It doesn't matter if I quote you or not, because your logic is as broken as your grammar. You cannot perceive your own contradictions, you 'blank'. E.g. I recently pointed at one and you ignored it. I suspect simply because you were fundamentally unable to process the info I provided to you.

As a Frenchman, I know very little about marsupials, just like as an Australian, you probably know very little about Europe. But since it doesn't stop you from giving us some ponderous advice on how to manage ourselves, I have some very French advice to offer on how to control your population of kangaroos, while at the same time drastically reducing demographic growth down under... :naughty:

Some of it sure, not all.

The bioweapons thing has been a frequent line of questioning by GOP Congressmen vis-a-vis COVID-19 and is a substantial minority belief among Republicans (the main version being that Fauci used US tax dollars to fund China's creation of the virus). We'll see if the Ukraine version gains traction.

Migrants as an invasion is common rhetoric. Trump, biggest name in the right wing game here, said Putin's invasion was smart and mused how we might invade Mexico to stop their ongoing invasion of the US. Replacement theory shows up in the mainstream, on Tucker, etc. and frames migrant flows as invasions intentionally stoked by "elites." Tucker is an elite heir as is Trump, so if they aren't elites, I wonder who is ?

The election being rigged is a majority Republican opinion in many polls and China is the number one culprit after the DNC. Trump's legal team fighting his loss claimed explicit evidence of Chinese involvement, but never added it to any court filings or produced it. Fox talking heads have mused on it quite a bit and it's all OANN talked about for a while. Then you see the same talking heads going on about how "sanctions are pointless because Putin is smart and will work with China, so why antagonize them. Xi and Putin are so clever, outsmarting the Western "elites," cheers for them."

The allegations of Nazism being a major political force at the very top of Ukrainian politics, with the country's Jewish PM and President, has shown up plenty on cable news.

The less popular stuff is the out right praise of Nazism and calling Putin "savior of the White race," although arguably talk of him as an important global force for good for "standing up against global 'elites' who want to flood the economy with migrants and tear down all traditional values," might be a dog whistle for the same sentiment.

Certainly not in all cases, or even close to a majority, but to be sure in quite a few pindits' cases the "elites" trying to ruin Western civilization and replace us are "the Jews." You know, when someone talks about elites having a close knit set of communities across the world, an oversized role in the academy, politics, Hollywood, the sciences, and finance, "them" not being part of the fabric of the "West," and then immediately segues into talk about Israel, or "just happened" to be showing a slide show of leaders and moguls who just all happen to be Jewish, I don't think I'm picking up false signals. Especially when the comments they allow are filled with people praising them for "naming the Jew."

You straight admitted that you don't care about the truth. Do you need that quoted back to you? — frank

Who said anything about truth? It's just a shit argument.

Who said anything about truth? It's just a shit argument — Isaac

Huh?

I think "Social media companies have removed pro-Russian accounts which they claim are fake" is about the surest ground we have on that particular story.

Thank you for linking the Greenwald article.
— FreeEmotion — Isaac

So it seems we agree. About the Greenwald article, however, I noticed some of the images : Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and the other guy I don't recognize are pictured in Rolling Stone magazine as "These are the guys covering for Putin...".

I lived in the U.S for several years in the 1980s and one thing that impressed me was the idea that everyone had a right to speak their mind 'free speech', including flag burning, American flag burning , Neo-Nazis parading in the streets and so on. All defensible under 'I may not like your opinion but I will defend your right to express it'

Isn't the Rolling Stone treatment about demonizing people they disagree with instead of debating their opinion? It seems that they are unclear on the concept. To quote Greenwald:

Everyone watching this week-long mauling of dissenters understood the messaging and incentives: either get on board or stay silent lest you be similarly vilified. And that, in turn, meant there were fewer and fewer people willing to publicly question prevailing narratives, which made it in turn far more difficult for anyone else to separate themselves from unified group-think. — Greenwald

At least they are not arresting people, only publishing arresting headlines.

Wow. The Economic(s) reasons for war. "A heart-rending but necessary war" sounds as morally empty as it sounds macabre.

:smirk:

FAUX News is a lie machine, a dumbing-down machine. Watching them will make you stupid. — Olivier5

Before I got made stupid by Fox news, I developed a strategy for dealing with the news. I watch and read them all, CNN, FOX, RT, Sputnik and try to build a picture of what is actually happening. When they all agree on something, it is like a 3D image of the truth.

For example Sputnik:

Is the Russian Military Operation in Quagmire or Going According to Plan? — Sputnik

What is the end effect going to be on the Russian economy of almost all Western companies either pulling out of Russia or refusing to do business in Russia?
As many of our listeners are aware, our sister outlet, RT, was shut down permanently last week. This was largely a result of both domestic and international governmental pressure. RT also shut down in every European Union country, and lost its license in the UK. Here in the US, Congress was looking at ways to cut off Russian news, and was exploring a shutdown of RT and Sputnik. — Sputnik

Not very propaganda like for the man on the street is it? Is this sort of think 'critical of the government?' I would this sort of negative, demoralizing stuff would have got them all in prison not so long ago.

This is what the average Russian person must know: the war goes on, objectives have not been met, heavy sanctions have hit Russia and these things cannot be censored.

What you describe is called triangulating information sources. It's an important skill, but like any process for information management (tabulating, analysis, stats etc ) it is subject to the following cardinal rule: Garbage in, garbage out. If your data is BS, your analysis will be BS, no matter how fine your analysis skills.

You cannot triangulate three lies to find the truth.

Therefore, the correct procedure comes from selecting generally trustworthy sources, good quality sources of data, journalists who don't make it their duty to lie to their audience but rather look for the truth and say it as they see it, with of course some perspectives and biases as we all have but genuine, and then -- only then -- triangulating these good quality sources to check for possible biases.

At least they are not arresting people, only publishing arresting headlines. — FreeEmotion

Well, yeah. That's the point. One cannot defend free speech with one breath and then condemn demonisation with the other. Demonisation is, after all, a form of speech (in the widest sense).

I don't think it's particularly healthy for a society to have too many barriers to the discussion of ideas, but I don't believe reasonable grounds is too high a threshold to meet, nor do I think that this freedom is top of any list of freedoms society ought to try to ensure, like freedom from oppression which some speech act might impinge on. It's a useful freedom, but it's not by any stretch the most important one.

In our recent exchange, for example, you might think those accounts that Facebook froze were not, in fact, fake at all, but just genuine Russian accounts and Facebook lied - nothing implausible about that, but you don't have reasonable grounds to say it, and that's not too restrictive a threshold to expect.

In your "Neo-Nazis parading in the streets" example, such tolerance can lead to oppression (that being the raison d'être of such groups) and I can't think of a single reason why their freedom of speech should be more important that another's freedom from fear.

It's useful, but not the be all and end all.

As far as banning RT and Sputnik, I don't know enough about those outlets to form an opinion. I've never read either and I've no idea if there's a trail of shoddy journalism in their wake or not. I can see a perfectly legitimate case for banning both in Ukraine - they're at war with Russia and enemy propaganda can be damaging in war, so even suspected sources of it are legitimate targets for suppression, but in Europe and the US, I suspect it's just virtue signalling, I can't seriously see enough people getting their news from Russian media to sway anything.

Therefore, the correct procedure comes from selecting generally trustworthy sources, good quality sources of data, journalists who don't make it their duty to lie to their audience but rather look for the truth and say it as they see it, with of course some perspectives and biases as we all have but genuine, and then -- only then -- triangulating these good quality sources to check for possible biases. — Olivier5

If you can find me a single person who admittedly gets their information from non-trustworthy sources, bad quality data or journalists who make it their duty to lie your comment might have been something other than vapid condescending bullshit.

Otherwise, the same arguments about the truth of some position or other simply get shifted to the trustworthiness of some source of other with no more conclusive objectivity than before.

If we can disagree about some fact then we can disagree about the trustworthiness of a source (that being a fact). It's ridiculous to suggest there's some 'correct procedure' by which one can find 'the truth'. The sources you trust will deliver the truths you prefer - that's why you chose to trust them in the first place.

But if I'm wrong, then simply explain how the trustworthiness of a source is not itself a fact - otherwise your argument is circular.