Do you look to RT for an unbiased assessment of Russia's war with Ukraine? C'mon! Russia has its favorite bogeymen: Stepan Bandera, Azov. You must read the other side on these.
I look everywhere I can, Graham. I assume everyone has their bias, of course. I have, you do. But generally our bias is represented by our cherry picking of data isn't it? We favour that which pleases us and supports our own contention.
Not by our deliberate corruption of data or creation of false data.
And we get in the habit nowadays, on the web, after two years of 'training' via the covid insanity (which still persists in my State here) of distinguishing sources according to such measures, don't we? By the slip ups they make. When we catch them distorting or manufacturing.
I didn't catch RT doing any such thing as yet. And note I have very few sources so it's not so much I choose to go to RT so much as my govt forces me to go there by blocking everything/everyone else and by feeding me a diet of such egregious nonsense I can't stomach it.
Yep. It's all about 'favourite bogeymen'. The West's favourite bogeyman is Putin and Russia and I maintain that's basically nonsense and detrimental to everything and everyone.
So that's why I seem to favour Russia, if I do. I am simply trying to 'balance up' and see both sides.
Regarding this current thing though, I think it is worth my pointing out at every opportunity that what we need immediately is Ceasefire and I think that simple fact more important than all the discussions and arguments in the world.
And in that regard it is my current understanding that the Ukraine will not allow it.
If you can give me a better statement of the current positions of 'non-negotiations' then I'd love to have it. Right now this is all I 'know' :
DEMANDS (as of 29 march 2022)
RUSSIA
Recognise the independence of Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republics Recognise Crimea as Russian territory
Demilitarize to only defensive weaponry and no offensive weaponry
Declare neutral status and not join any military alliances or blocs like NATO (constitutional change)
COMPROMISE
Allow Ukraine to join the European Union
De-escalation of military activities in some parts of Ukraine, particularly near Chernihiv and Kyiv.
=====================
UKRAINE
"NATO Article 5" type security guarantee - guarantors to include: Russia, United Kingdom, China, United States, Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, Poland and Israel.
Guarantors will go to war to protect Ukraine if it is invaded (as per what the security guarantee expected)
Territory to be guaranteed do not apply to Crimea and Donbass, however it do include parts of Luhansk and Donetsk's oblast
No objection against joining European Union
15 years moratorium on the status of Crimea to negotiate Crimea's future
Both sides to not use military force to resolve Crimea issue
There have been quite a few articles in the Western press on Azov. Very much at odds with RT.
Don't you find it curious that Russia is condemning Ukrainians, whom they invaded, for vigorously defending their country? In 2014 and 2022? That the so-called "Nazis" are headed by a Jew?
The Russian story does not hang together. If they want to avoid Azov, they can go home. Azov will not follow them.
But that's not what the Russians are doing, Graham, they are condemning the Ukrainians for attacking Ukrainians (DPR and LPR) and attacking Russia.
The Russian story hangs together very well to my way of thinking.
That's my whole point.
You possibly think you're talking to a biased observer with an axe to grind, so to speak.
No. I previously had nil interest in the whole place.
Now I'm saying I look at both stories and the one that makes most sense if the Russian one.
Yes. People such as I should perhaps say that more often and more clearly.
We don't 'know' this or that.
We don't 'come from' this direction or that (except some bias against our own governments who we've learned lie to us continually).
We're talking about what we see and hear. Only.
That's all we know. We keep trying to find out more.
And that brings us back to our own experience again: our own govt censures what we get to see/hear, our own govt swamps us with misinformation - that introduces a bias, naturally and in not in the direction they'd want us to go.
And that's it, see? They want us to go in the direction of 'hate Russia'.
Now when a lying coercive manipulative greedy inhuman govt ( no hyperbole, just look at recent history) wants you to think 'X' - what's your natural reaction?
You think X is probably a lie. So you start looking.
All during Covid they never ever gave the people any true information on what they could do to protect themselves: Vit D, melatonin etc. , etc... Never. Ever. Gave any good advice. Anything honest, true and life saving.
And the same here. They never ever give anything honest, true and lifesaving - for the life protecting thing is clear and they never utter a hint of it: Cease Fire.
and p.s. Azov will follow them. That's very close to the central point. Azov seeks to cancel Russia. They ban the Russian language. To a population all of whom speak Russian to at least some degree. And millions of whom have relatives in Russia.
That's 'following', that's literally reaching into your country and affecting the lives and wellbeing of the people there. Take a visit from Russia to your relatives in Ukraine and get arrested on the street because you speak Russian!
You asked why Ukraine fights. Here is Sir Arthur Keith answering why Finland fought Russia in 1939. Same situation.
To see a modern people in the throes of evolution, let us go to Finland in the critical spring of 1940. Listen to the leader of the trade unionists as he described the situation:2
"The Finnish people cannot be said to have agreed among themselves in peace time. But the moment a real danger threatened us like a thunder cloud, a mighty wind swept over our nation, erasing even the most deep seated differences of opinion and directed the gaze of every citizen to the one all important matter namely, the defense of our liberty and independence and the protection of our women and children.... We shall continue the struggle so long as there is a single man left who is capable of wielding a weapon."
Let us see if we can obtain a reasonable explanation of the state of mind which had been roused in the people of Finland by certain demands made on their country by powerful Russia. At first there was no threat against the corporate life of the Finns; they were requested to surrender certain strong points which were coveted by Russia for defensive purposes. Now, suppose the ultimate purpose of human existence had been such as we have passed in review the development of personality, the provision of greatest happiness to the greatest number, the growth of the soul, glorification of the Creator, security, peace, prosperity; then the Finns ought gratefully to have accepted the demands of Russia. Could not all of these objectives in life have been developed more freely and fully under the protection of Russia than under the weaker power of the smaller state? We receive no explanation from the accepted theories of life. But if we turn to the theory that I have put forward namely, that human nature has been fashioned to advance the cause of evolution then we obtain a ready and sufficient explanation. An evolutionary unit, be it a community, tribe, or a nation, must, to fulfill its destiny, maintain not only its organization and its continuity, but also its independence its right to work out its own destiny. If a nation loses its independence, then it has no longer the power to develop its separate destiny or to pursue the policy of self determination. Thus I regard the spirit of independence
32.
which we have seen roused in the hearts of the Finnish people as a fundamental part of the machinery of human evolution.
In every man there is an instinctive and passionate reaction if his person or liberty is attacked. It is not so clearly recognized that a threat to the life or to the independence of a tribe or of a nation calls forth a mass reaction still more powerful and passionate. How strong that reaction can be is seen in the case of Finland. A warlike spirit flamed up; life, individual liberty, ease, and wealth were sacrificed in the passionate hope that the nation might be free to pursue its way to a self appointed destiny. In such reactions the civilized mind sees only a mass hysteria, a form of madness. The rationalist, on the other hand, who has more extended acquaintance with the ways of Nature, will see in the warlike spirit which rises in a nation when its independence is threatened, not a manifestation of madness, but a demonstration of the stern measures used by Nature to carry out her evolutionary purpose. If madness it be, then there is only one cure to bring to an end the methods pursued hitherto by Nature for human advancement. Civilization and Nature are at war.
I have cited the case of Finland to illustrate my evolutionary explanation of "Independence." Many other recent instances are at my disposal, but I shall use only a few of them. There is the case of Yugoslavia. On the morning of March 27, 1941, Mr. Winston Churchill broadcast this announcement: "Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. . . . Yesterday its freedom and honour were signed away." All the world knows the price in blood and treasure Yugoslavia has paid and is paying for finding her "soul;" yet all the free peoples of the world thrilled approval when she resolved to fight rather than submit to aggressive Germany. Submission would have brought on her the contempt of even the aggressor powers. No spectacle evokes the applause of the world so much as a little nation fighting against overwhelming odds for its right to guide its own destiny. Does not this go to prove how deeply seated the "soul of independence" is in human nature?
If I understand Keith correctly he's saying that nature, evolution, demands that social units, social entities, must pursue their own destinies to the end. Whereas Civilisation may suggest another course be more beneficial ( '...developed more freely and fully..' ).
Hence: 'civilization and nature are at war' . (Is that him or yourself?)
I find that an obscure argument. Why is it not equally it's destiny to be subsumed in the greater whole?
Is it suggesting that the massive 'subsuming' that has placed all our (for instance) Western tribes over the millenia into a few discrete 'wholes' was a triumph of 'civilisation' and a thwarting of evolution? Or the reverse - it was the natural 'evolution'?
Seems to me such a woolly notion that we are free to employ it however we wish, to support whatever contention we care to make.
Then 'the moment a real danger...' We have just observed this is simply not true. Democracy and individual freedoms have been perverted and destroyed all across the planet and virtually not a whisper of protest.
'defence of our liberty and protection of our women and children...' Unfortunately also apparently not true. Our (old) women were carted off to old people's homes there to be done to death by improper treatments and withholding of proper and deliberate exposure to pathogens beyond normal concentrations - in the covid thing.
Our children are jabbed with unproven (but widely suspiciously regarded by many holding good credentials) injections on totally spurious grounds of 'need' and no one, virtually no one, objects, seeks to protect them.
I can see the argument that they see the virus as the menace and are 'fighting' with these injections but I don't believe it for there's no discussion, no comprehension, no interest in exactly what's happening. The mass simply inertly obey. I don't see that as any 'mighty wind'.
Lastly, not to make too long a thing of all this, I don't see thousands of people dying or maimed and the wholescale destruction of property being in any way at a all a 'protection of our women and children' and the very idea of fighting to the 'last man who can wield a weapon.' is ludicrous in all reason. What profit in all of that?
Yes. In romantic literature. Not in pragmatic truth.
There's much that can be said but really only one thing needs saying: Cease fire. Now.
Both sides should be expressing loudly, clearly, continually the desire to cease fire and explaining why they don't.
Keith's point, written in the 40s, is that we are creatures of evolution and we evolved through conflict. It is one of my touchstone books.
He makes a compelling case that evolution, universalism (your view, as I take it) and Christianity are mutually incompatible. We were formed by evolution.
Do you look to RT for an unbiased assessment of Russia's war with Ukraine? C'mon! Russia has its favorite bogeymen: Stepan Bandera, Azov. You must read the other side on these.
I look everywhere I can, Graham. I assume everyone has their bias, of course. I have, you do. But generally our bias is represented by our cherry picking of data isn't it? We favour that which pleases us and supports our own contention.
Not by our deliberate corruption of data or creation of false data.
And we get in the habit nowadays, on the web, after two years of 'training' via the covid insanity (which still persists in my State here) of distinguishing sources according to such measures, don't we? By the slip ups they make. When we catch them distorting or manufacturing.
I didn't catch RT doing any such thing as yet. And note I have very few sources so it's not so much I choose to go to RT so much as my govt forces me to go there by blocking everything/everyone else and by feeding me a diet of such egregious nonsense I can't stomach it.
Yep. It's all about 'favourite bogeymen'. The West's favourite bogeyman is Putin and Russia and I maintain that's basically nonsense and detrimental to everything and everyone.
So that's why I seem to favour Russia, if I do. I am simply trying to 'balance up' and see both sides.
Regarding this current thing though, I think it is worth my pointing out at every opportunity that what we need immediately is Ceasefire and I think that simple fact more important than all the discussions and arguments in the world.
And in that regard it is my current understanding that the Ukraine will not allow it.
If you can give me a better statement of the current positions of 'non-negotiations' then I'd love to have it. Right now this is all I 'know' :
DEMANDS (as of 29 march 2022)
RUSSIA
Recognise the independence of Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republics Recognise Crimea as Russian territory
Demilitarize to only defensive weaponry and no offensive weaponry
Declare neutral status and not join any military alliances or blocs like NATO (constitutional change)
COMPROMISE
Allow Ukraine to join the European Union
De-escalation of military activities in some parts of Ukraine, particularly near Chernihiv and Kyiv.
=====================
UKRAINE
"NATO Article 5" type security guarantee - guarantors to include: Russia, United Kingdom, China, United States, Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, Poland and Israel.
Guarantors will go to war to protect Ukraine if it is invaded (as per what the security guarantee expected)
Territory to be guaranteed do not apply to Crimea and Donbass, however it do include parts of Luhansk and Donetsk's oblast
No objection against joining European Union
15 years moratorium on the status of Crimea to negotiate Crimea's future
Both sides to not use military force to resolve Crimea issue
There have been quite a few articles in the Western press on Azov. Very much at odds with RT.
Don't you find it curious that Russia is condemning Ukrainians, whom they invaded, for vigorously defending their country? In 2014 and 2022? That the so-called "Nazis" are headed by a Jew?
The Russian story does not hang together. If they want to avoid Azov, they can go home. Azov will not follow them.
But that's not what the Russians are doing, Graham, they are condemning the Ukrainians for attacking Ukrainians (DPR and LPR) and attacking Russia.
The Russian story hangs together very well to my way of thinking.
That's my whole point.
You possibly think you're talking to a biased observer with an axe to grind, so to speak.
No. I previously had nil interest in the whole place.
Now I'm saying I look at both stories and the one that makes most sense if the Russian one.
Yes. People such as I should perhaps say that more often and more clearly.
We don't 'know' this or that.
We don't 'come from' this direction or that (except some bias against our own governments who we've learned lie to us continually).
We're talking about what we see and hear. Only.
That's all we know. We keep trying to find out more.
And that brings us back to our own experience again: our own govt censures what we get to see/hear, our own govt swamps us with misinformation - that introduces a bias, naturally and in not in the direction they'd want us to go.
And that's it, see? They want us to go in the direction of 'hate Russia'.
Now when a lying coercive manipulative greedy inhuman govt ( no hyperbole, just look at recent history) wants you to think 'X' - what's your natural reaction?
You think X is probably a lie. So you start looking.
All during Covid they never ever gave the people any true information on what they could do to protect themselves: Vit D, melatonin etc. , etc... Never. Ever. Gave any good advice. Anything honest, true and life saving.
And the same here. They never ever give anything honest, true and lifesaving - for the life protecting thing is clear and they never utter a hint of it: Cease Fire.
and p.s. Azov will follow them. That's very close to the central point. Azov seeks to cancel Russia. They ban the Russian language. To a population all of whom speak Russian to at least some degree. And millions of whom have relatives in Russia.
That's 'following', that's literally reaching into your country and affecting the lives and wellbeing of the people there. Take a visit from Russia to your relatives in Ukraine and get arrested on the street because you speak Russian!
You asked why Ukraine fights. Here is Sir Arthur Keith answering why Finland fought Russia in 1939. Same situation.
To see a modern people in the throes of evolution, let us go to Finland in the critical spring of 1940. Listen to the leader of the trade unionists as he described the situation:2
"The Finnish people cannot be said to have agreed among themselves in peace time. But the moment a real danger threatened us like a thunder cloud, a mighty wind swept over our nation, erasing even the most deep seated differences of opinion and directed the gaze of every citizen to the one all important matter namely, the defense of our liberty and independence and the protection of our women and children.... We shall continue the struggle so long as there is a single man left who is capable of wielding a weapon."
Let us see if we can obtain a reasonable explanation of the state of mind which had been roused in the people of Finland by certain demands made on their country by powerful Russia. At first there was no threat against the corporate life of the Finns; they were requested to surrender certain strong points which were coveted by Russia for defensive purposes. Now, suppose the ultimate purpose of human existence had been such as we have passed in review the development of personality, the provision of greatest happiness to the greatest number, the growth of the soul, glorification of the Creator, security, peace, prosperity; then the Finns ought gratefully to have accepted the demands of Russia. Could not all of these objectives in life have been developed more freely and fully under the protection of Russia than under the weaker power of the smaller state? We receive no explanation from the accepted theories of life. But if we turn to the theory that I have put forward namely, that human nature has been fashioned to advance the cause of evolution then we obtain a ready and sufficient explanation. An evolutionary unit, be it a community, tribe, or a nation, must, to fulfill its destiny, maintain not only its organization and its continuity, but also its independence its right to work out its own destiny. If a nation loses its independence, then it has no longer the power to develop its separate destiny or to pursue the policy of self determination. Thus I regard the spirit of independence
32.
which we have seen roused in the hearts of the Finnish people as a fundamental part of the machinery of human evolution.
In every man there is an instinctive and passionate reaction if his person or liberty is attacked. It is not so clearly recognized that a threat to the life or to the independence of a tribe or of a nation calls forth a mass reaction still more powerful and passionate. How strong that reaction can be is seen in the case of Finland. A warlike spirit flamed up; life, individual liberty, ease, and wealth were sacrificed in the passionate hope that the nation might be free to pursue its way to a self appointed destiny. In such reactions the civilized mind sees only a mass hysteria, a form of madness. The rationalist, on the other hand, who has more extended acquaintance with the ways of Nature, will see in the warlike spirit which rises in a nation when its independence is threatened, not a manifestation of madness, but a demonstration of the stern measures used by Nature to carry out her evolutionary purpose. If madness it be, then there is only one cure to bring to an end the methods pursued hitherto by Nature for human advancement. Civilization and Nature are at war.
I have cited the case of Finland to illustrate my evolutionary explanation of "Independence." Many other recent instances are at my disposal, but I shall use only a few of them. There is the case of Yugoslavia. On the morning of March 27, 1941, Mr. Winston Churchill broadcast this announcement: "Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. . . . Yesterday its freedom and honour were signed away." All the world knows the price in blood and treasure Yugoslavia has paid and is paying for finding her "soul;" yet all the free peoples of the world thrilled approval when she resolved to fight rather than submit to aggressive Germany. Submission would have brought on her the contempt of even the aggressor powers. No spectacle evokes the applause of the world so much as a little nation fighting against overwhelming odds for its right to guide its own destiny. Does not this go to prove how deeply seated the "soul of independence" is in human nature?
If I understand Keith correctly he's saying that nature, evolution, demands that social units, social entities, must pursue their own destinies to the end. Whereas Civilisation may suggest another course be more beneficial ( '...developed more freely and fully..' ).
Hence: 'civilization and nature are at war' . (Is that him or yourself?)
I find that an obscure argument. Why is it not equally it's destiny to be subsumed in the greater whole?
Is it suggesting that the massive 'subsuming' that has placed all our (for instance) Western tribes over the millenia into a few discrete 'wholes' was a triumph of 'civilisation' and a thwarting of evolution? Or the reverse - it was the natural 'evolution'?
Seems to me such a woolly notion that we are free to employ it however we wish, to support whatever contention we care to make.
Then 'the moment a real danger...' We have just observed this is simply not true. Democracy and individual freedoms have been perverted and destroyed all across the planet and virtually not a whisper of protest.
'defence of our liberty and protection of our women and children...' Unfortunately also apparently not true. Our (old) women were carted off to old people's homes there to be done to death by improper treatments and withholding of proper and deliberate exposure to pathogens beyond normal concentrations - in the covid thing.
Our children are jabbed with unproven (but widely suspiciously regarded by many holding good credentials) injections on totally spurious grounds of 'need' and no one, virtually no one, objects, seeks to protect them.
I can see the argument that they see the virus as the menace and are 'fighting' with these injections but I don't believe it for there's no discussion, no comprehension, no interest in exactly what's happening. The mass simply inertly obey. I don't see that as any 'mighty wind'.
Lastly, not to make too long a thing of all this, I don't see thousands of people dying or maimed and the wholescale destruction of property being in any way at a all a 'protection of our women and children' and the very idea of fighting to the 'last man who can wield a weapon.' is ludicrous in all reason. What profit in all of that?
Yes. In romantic literature. Not in pragmatic truth.
There's much that can be said but really only one thing needs saying: Cease fire. Now.
Both sides should be expressing loudly, clearly, continually the desire to cease fire and explaining why they don't.
And the world should be demanding it of them.
Keith's point, written in the 40s, is that we are creatures of evolution and we evolved through conflict. It is one of my touchstone books.
He makes a compelling case that evolution, universalism (your view, as I take it) and Christianity are mutually incompatible. We were formed by evolution.
https://ia803104.us.archive.org/30/items/EssaysOnHumanEvolution/EssaysOnHumanEvolution_text.pdf
I have downloaded it and hopefully will read it.
I better not say anything until I've done so.
:)
In fact I just did but came back and deleted it.