The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.
The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians, who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.
While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.
Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups.
I may agree about Central Asia.
I would also like to see Uzbekistan developing and modernizing, as a counterweight to Turkey and a country with no natural enemies (except China, with Uyghurs and Uzbeks being more or less the same people) and big population.
But still Turkey and Pakistan are simply in another block. They may not like Israel, but that doesn’t mean any fundamental split with NATO, West etc.
About Russia - I meant also that before than boom, after Yeltsin’s election of 1996, it was a popular point of view than even if he cheated, the alternative was communists winning that election. And also - it was, yes, very real, but I am not talking about arguments in favor of Putin inside Russia (not persuading everyone, because most of the improvement happened in Moscow, SPb etc), I am talking about Western institutions confirming Russian elections even as massive protests were happening, and also that talking point that if not Putin, then neo-Nazis would win.
Its been a split that’s widened as Turkey was divided from the EU block and NATO/West interests piled into India after Pakistan kicked out its military dictator, Parvez Musharraf, in 2008. A lot of the post-Cold War alliances have shifted as these military juntas have failed. Egypt would likely be another in the Iran/Iraq/Turkey/Pakistan block if Mohamed Morsi - the replacement for Hosni Mubarak - hadn’t himself been couped back out of power in short order. And you know Qaddafi’s Libya would have been on board, as he’s been a Pan-Africanist since the 70s.
Well, the Communist Party did win the referendum in 1992. The cheating and the rapid privatization were what ultimately fractured and collapsed the Soviet party system. Once they no longer had a patronage system to command broad popular support, there was very little incentive (other than ideological orthodoxy) to continue on. But United Russia absorbed more Soviets than just Putin.
The real failure of Communism as an institution came under Brezhnev and Gorbachev, as economic progress stalled relative to the Western peer nations. That, plus the near-total infiltration and privatization denuded the party of its base of support.
If someone came into the US GOP or Dem parties and stripped them of all their donors, their NGOs, and a huge swath of their state/local leadership positions, neither of them would last very long either. But the members of those parties would continue on in some other configuration.
I meant that in 1996 CPRF were the scarecrow and it was said that even if the results were falsified, they shouldn’t be allowed to win the election.
And later instead of CPRF the scarecrow was some poorly-defined neo-Nazis which would come to power if Putin loses the election (implicitly also saying that falsifications are fine to preserve stability or something).
I don’t know about “poorly defined”. I think they were pretty explicitly calling liberal candidates outside the United Russia party out as puppets of Berlin and DC. And its not like the Christian Democrats of Germany (much less the modern Greens or the AfD) have done an incredible job of purging fascist ideology from their ranks.
Russians were very rightly worried about getting the Yugoslavia treatment if a liberal reformer came in to further balkinize the state. And say what you will about the Balkins before Tito’s death, but it got inundated with far-right ideology as soon as his corpse was safely six feet under.
I don’t mean what Russian state propaganda was saying. I mean what people in the West in appearance unconnected to it would often say. That the alternative to Putin is something dangerous, so let them steal elections and let Russia rot further, if that’s more stable.
And since that stable Russia only became unstable in the direction of Ukraine, I’d say it really was a win for Europe. Not a win for Ukraine.
Anyway, after Artsakh I just want a similar portion of all big European nations (USA included) to burn. I’ll say and think deep and sincere condolences, of course. Maybe donate a few $ for restoration.
Like a few of those nations “sent aid” for accommodation of refugees from Artsakh, a cost of a few fighter jets, maybe? A fraction of what they gain yearly from dealing with Azerbaijan. Naturally being silent about any right of return or about dealing with this like with Kosovo. Being suddenly silent even about things which they were loud about before 19.09.2023 .
And of course no intelligence service was aware that this was going to happen, and they totally weren’t silent intentionally and thus complicit.
And of course the sudden surrender of Artsakh has nothing to do with the rumors of a wholesale massacre of a few villages near Drmbon, which were surrounded by Azeris and I don’t remember any news about new arrivals of refugees from there. By pure coincidence that’s also where a few Russian PK’s were killed “by mistake”, including some officers. Anyway, who can search for those people now when there are like a thousand people still unaccounted for.
The thing is, of course, that nothing of what happened there can be a mystery for USA, for example.
I haven’t seen anything - agg worker riots stretching from Spain to Poland, fascist party membership spikes in the face of Ukrainian refugees, sharp contractions in the German economy over energy shortages - that would define this as a win for any European proles. Maybe a few big arms manufacturers - Rolls-Royce and Lockheed Martin - come out ahead. But the lay European is eating shit right now.
The brutality of war never ceases to shock the conscience and terrify the soul.
But Europeans want this war to drag on because they think its going to “bleed Russia”. Its the old Bushism “Fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here”.
Well, I meant, a win compared to things getting unstable sooner in Russia.
But then would they? Most people to support RSFSR’s transformation into modern Russia and democratization were communist after all. In 1996 CPRF represented basically all democratic opposition to Yeltsin. If they won (and it’s a common theory, a bit forgotten in 2024, that they would if not for falsifications), how different would it be? Maybe the Chechen wars wouldn’t be as bloody. Maybe the financial crisis of 1999 could be averted. Maybe their foreign policy inside former USSR would be more directed at preserving ties and not asserting dominance.
And oil prices hiking up in early 00s were not Putin’s doing, so Russia still would have that period of growth. Maybe it would have a bit more Soviet-style laws and political mechanisms, like Ukraine still does. Doesn’t seem too scary.
It’s not what Azeris are capable of, it’s rather trust into certain states on the globe.
Pogroms in Indian countryside may be something unexpected for them, but Artsakh - how many satellite images with sufficiently high resolution and how many reports do, say, US or French intelligence services have on every hour of its existence for a month before 19.09.23? And they didn’t prevent it nor warn about it, not protest\condemn after. This means a greenlight and also implicit statement that Azeri understanding of territorial integrity is above ICJ rulings, above UN charter, above Kosovo as an example, above their own statements, above even agreements signed and in general above any civilized principle.
It’s a bit harder to process, because a hegemon (or a group of such) is still a main guarantor of rules in any system. Which means there are no rules except for “might makes right”. As we can see from Israel’s actions now.
The issue with this is that it won’t bleed Russia dry, while its military will become more competent.
Presumably, we wouldn’t have seen the wholesale nationalization and subsequent fire sale of Russian state assets. It can’t be overstated how badly Russia was basically looted, after they deregulated their export markets and had large parts of their economy liquidated by foreign investors.
The “Russia is an oversized gas station” line wasn’t exactly untrue back in the mid-00s.
But the oil price jump was the direct result of our Iraq invasion. And the Iraq invasion was largely possible only after the US no longer had a USSR operating on a global scale as a counterweight. Also, Russian energy exports were a bandaid on a bleeding gut wound.
Its very possible that a CPRF-run Russia wouldn’t be a net energy exporter but a manufacturing hub attempting to rival Germany and Japan. Far easier to believe a Russia that maintained its universities and laboratories and manufacturing hubs followed China’s lead into the 21st century as a consumer production giant, rather than simply sending out big hoses full of fossil fuels.
It was harder to see when might was something western states projected outward to make things our flavor of right. Much more apparent when we’re on the back foot and other countries are using their own boutique domestic medias to justify a war to their people.
That’s something Europeans simply don’t want to believe, because they still assume Russians are inferior and incompetent.
Much of that had already happened by then, one of the reasons for 1996 election dynamics. And I don’t think there was possibility to make many of Soviet industries profitable or even functional. It was a complete collapse due to administrative rot.
However, that would be a couple fewer years of looting properties which could still be put to some use. Some Soviet plants died later in 90s or even in 00s, which means that they did successfully adjust to market economy.
While that is true, most of that oil wealth was misused, so in just a bit more transparent and democratic system it would be used more efficiently.
And Russia wouldn’t be capable of acting as any kind of counterweight for like a decade in any case. So, if that’s the main reason, it would still happen.
To rival is a strong word, but Russian manufacturing would still exist, and with it a different culture in the society. Which can’t be overstated.
Rather it was harder to see not living somewhere in the ME or Latin America, or Indochina, reading a bit of history.
Now it’s easier for me to see being part Armenian. The whole situation with “the West” pressuring Armenia for the same illegal concessions that T*rks do, including the ethnic cleansing part, just “graciously” throwing a few cents to accommodate refugees and not demanding outright surrender of Syunik, is eye-opening.
Well, the transition from 00s Web to today’s Web looks like it just becoming clumsy, crappy and not cool. It doesn’t seem like a well-planned operation or a result of consistent policy, but I think it is exactly that.
It may be very inefficient, but it adds centralization and vertical control to powerful governments which they lacked before. They now have ability to efficiently suppress any news or viewpoints or discourses they couldn’t in paper media, without accepting responsibility for censorship, and without even spawning discussions of censorship, because of centralized social media where everything can be controlled.
As of Russia, it is simply very hard to believe that a state would spend 200+k lives and a lot of money just thrown out in broken hardware to teach its military to conduct warfare.
But that’s exactly what happened. Instead of doing reforms and making things more efficiently, they preserved their power over Russia, their way of doing things, their culture as a kind of elites etc, while still achieving that goal with expenses they consider acceptable. Ukraine may start losing the war soon.
My point is - it was hard to believe for anyone, not just Europeans.