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Category Archives: 21st Century Modern

FTAC: JCPOA & Tehran – Morning Note to Joe Biden

30 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Middle East, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Atlantic Alliance, Beijing-Tehran, Biden, JCPOA, Moscow-Tehran

The Right x American-Israeli Right appears to be threatening the Left x American-Israeli Left with claims of a nuclear peace accord revival — return to Kerry’s pink tie escapade and a massive drug deal of a bribe — when, in BackChannels estimation, those days are gone forever. Russia has mumbled through its bullying in Crimea and destruction in Syria; Tehran has never done other than despoil its environment and disappoint its politically suffocated (and once modern) constituency.

From the Awesome Conversation


Given the Moscow-Tehran post-Soviet nexus and Tehran’s aggression via IRGC directly (Syria) and proxies (e.g., Houthi insurgents, Yemen; Hezbollah, worldwide), I’d suggest not doing the $1B drug deal again. Hold the west’s position in the ME; repair the Atlantic Alliance (!); and leverage China — Tehran’s oil buyer — off the extremist-supporting tack.


As if I ruled the world . . . .

The post’s a feel-good made possible by Biden’s page on FB – why not send a note across the virtual hall now that all has been reduced to plain text e- communications? So done although one may ask where such a “missive” really lands — is there a virtual cookie jar for FB or other e-notes to the President? 🙂

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Spend a Measly $1.3B on a Home and the Whole Neighborhood Gets Curious

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Democracy & Rule of Law, medieval v modern, Navalny's Documentary, Putin's Kleptocracy, Putin's Regime, Russia's Mafia State

DW -> YT 1/20/2021.

Navalny’s team is calling for people to fill the streets and to support him and to express their anger with the regime. And the whole thing has become like a snowball. It went viral when Navalny released his movie about Putin’s palace [editor’s note: an online investigation, released after Navalny’s return to Russia last week, that explores Putin’s massive Black Sea estate and the money flows that financed it in great detail], which has already reached some kind of astronomical number of views. And now we’re seeing the accumulated effect of 20 years of Putin’s dictatorship, the growing disappointment of the Russian people with their socioeconomic conditions, and anger about corruption and the wealth of Putin’s oligarchs. We’re seeing a clear a message from the young generation of Russians that they’re not going to tolerate Putin’s indefinite rule.

Gary Kaparov as quoted by Jonathan Tepperman, “Russia Is in Agony, but Putin’s Dictatorship Is Going Down,” Foreign Policy, January 26, 2021.

AC -> YT 1/28/2021

Yes, laziness — or efficiency — has me fooling with style in the captioning of YouTube videos.

🙂

Absolute Power, corruption, and criminality in Russia have apparently left bereft much of the Russian Federation’s constituency. Programmatic theft, so forced in and around Russia under the Bolsheviks and especially vicious during Stalin’s tenure, has undermined affection and trust for Putin as the “Great Leader”. From leveraging himself into power with the Moscow Apartment Bombings to the presence of the palace (long covered but not quite so investigated as by Alexei Navalny) to now this latest confrontation having to do with basic integrity in state leadership, Putin as wrapped together — but also around himself — the most rogue forces of Russian civilization.

The appellation “Russian Mafia State” has at this pass garnered broad internal popular interest and now there’s a product — Navalny’s documentary — able to inform Russians about their own deep exploitation.


The YouTube counter approaches 99 million views on this captioned video –>

Posted by Алексей Навальный to YouTube, January 19, 2021.

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Old Nationalism – Russia’s 19th Century Revival

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

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19th Century Political Absollutism, medieval v modern, Russia's Nationalist Revival

v

Address starts about 20 seconds in. Posted to YouTube by Reuters, January 27, 2021. Listen for the “Accusation(s) in a Mirror”.

In which virtual century would you wish to live — Putin's 19th of perpetual war mired in unresolvable religious differences that serve primarily political absolutism? Or the 21st Century with its democratic modernity and reality? https://t.co/jw3e6YtPJO

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) January 27, 2021

Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin is able to manipulate elections and suppress genuine dissent. Rampant corruption facilitates shifting links among bureaucrats and organized crime groups.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2020

How has Russia gotten so far with its illiberal cultural and political program for the west?

Start here —

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection To Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Then try this —

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Reinforcement: Reflexive Control: Islamic Terrorism and Perceived Threat –> Newest Nationalism and Renewed Feudal Conflict.” BackChannels, April 2018.

Add “Active Measures” and have a look at this blog’s post, “Russian Active Measures, Donald Trump, and Either Evil or Gullible Americans (Or Both)” (July 22, 2020).

Not only is Russia not free, it is also not in any meaningful sense “productive” beyond its resource exporting businesses that account for about $281.5 billion of its overall exports. It has conflated itself with mafia (see, for example, Leonid Nevzlin’s “The Result of 20 Years of Putin: Russia as a Mafia State,” Institute of Modern Russia, January 24, 2020) and become a spirit dampening oligarchic estate that has brought ordinary Russians — damaged by corruption, under-served by government — out to protest in the face of state arrests and brutality.


Posted by DW News to YouTube, January 23, 2021.

In Russia, the robber barons and thugs have won their state, but the same appear to be losing the hearts and minds of Russians who have not themselves experienced the privileges known to favorable association with the “Vertical of Power”.


We are two civilizations: one lives in the 19th Century and is heady with Absolute Power and the desire for the wars of all against all; the other world lives in the 21st Century and wishes to address global issues via global cooperation with democracy and freedom foremost. https://t.co/g3XUi7SbW0

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) January 27, 2021

###

Relay on Holocaust Memorial Day

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Anti-Semitism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, Hitchcock, Holocaust Memorial Day, Holocaust Remembrance

Memory of the Camps
By FRONTLINE, directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sergei Nolbandov.

For Holocaust Memorial Day – Memory of the Camps – https://t.co/X1dj4s8tsF

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) January 27, 2021

During Joe Biden’s presidential confirmation, the entire free world watched in horror and fear at the onslaught of incited crowds on the sanctuaries of American democracy – the Senate and House of Representatives. But for those of us who noticed Israeli flags hoisted alongside the neo-Nazi shirts, the experience was even more shocking.

For anyone for whom Zionism and humanism are important, especially those who remember the trauma of the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, it is hard to think of a more disturbing connection than the one we witnessed that night.

Tamir, Nadav. “New antisemitism hates Jews, loves Israel – opinion.” The Jerusalem Post, January 20, 2021.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Wednesday marked the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by urging people to keep a close watch on ideological extremism, because “these things can happen again”.Slideshow ( 3 images )

Pullella, Philip. “On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Pope warns against new nationalism.” Reuters, January 27, 2021.

In which virtual century would you wish to live — Putin's 19th of perpetual war mired in unresolvable religious differences that serve primarily political absolutism? Or the 21st Century with its democratic modernity and reality? https://t.co/jw3e6YtPJO

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) January 27, 2021

###

Quick Note: From Tribalism to Stewardship

24 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brave Next World, Future Philosophy, Futurism, global culture, Global Stewardship

Mine!

Ours.

All of Ours.


We each of us know what belongs to each by way of our persons and our families, and if we’re a little larger than that, our companies and communities, but we falter some with “my air; my water; my mountains; my rivers; my shores”. Some objects are too large for singular possession. Even subdivided and sold off in lots — so one might own a patch or an estate (and hunting grounds) — such resources and spaces may have lives of their own and greater than appreciated. OUR rain forests, for example, may be critical to OUR planetary oxygen supply.

As our species matures — however else we may think of ourselves (as framed by our nearly 7000 living language cultures and directed, somewhat, by our 4300 active religions), we may consider the fragility of our species foremost — we may do well to look far forward of our positions rather than fix and freeze ourselves as we are. If we are to contemplate, for example, the end of the Eon of Oil and continued Global Warming or merely increasingly severe oscillations in temperature, this may be the best time to think about the energy resources and insulating technologies of the 22nd Century.

Why not — and why not this minute?

It’s never too late?

It’s never too soon.


What if?

What if the world hadn’t to deal with what have become essentially political criminals?

Posted to YouTube by A Whisper to a Roar, February 10, 2014.

What are we — or what is the world — still doing here — in the same frozen situation — with Ukraine?

Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said on January 11 that Russia “has done everything to fulfill nothing.” His latest attempts with his German counterpart “to hold another round of talks at the level of foreign minister were unsuccessful,” Mr. Kuleba said. He said the continuing deadlock is a situation in which, “on the one hand, there is progress on Donbas, and, on the other, there is no progress.”

Nahalyo, Bohdan. “External relations: a promising start to 2021 for Ukraine”. The Ukrainian Weekly, January 22, 2021.

While it may be understood that we are not all angels, one might wonder why any state population must be made to weather the bullying criminality of gangs, more or less, of so-called “state elites” and leaders — or invasion by alien forces ordered by the same with precisely that mentality?

I had thought both the feudal and medieval eras known to European and Russian history finished off by the allied powers of World War II.

Take a moment to remember who compelled the Euromaidan revolution of 2013-14: https://yanukovychleaks.org/en/

While at this post-Trumpian moment (start HIS history as an American President with Manafort, his first choice for campaign manager), no American has the right to ask how others could have been blown so far off course from the modern and practical demands for accountability, integrity, and responsibility in governance, the complaint begs a question as applicable to every capital as well as Kiev and Moscow: who would be the good stewards of states and regions and on up the scale to global assets?

Nix the political criminals whose fields of vision narrow always to themselves in their own dismally small glory.


Posted to YouTube by DW News, January 24, 2021.

These “leaders” that draw out crowds to brave their batons and bullets and mass arrests — who would have time for them were they not so brazen and stuffed full of themselves?


An advertisement for Good Stewards of any geopolitical space: ability to both imagine and think beyond one’s own existence and interests; ethical; good-willed; holistic; honest; magnanimous; possessed of high integrity; responsible; sense of humor a must.


What if through democracy coupled with ambitious public education, the world really could think about and tend to its own collective future well being as expressed through Qualities of Living x Area-Squared (or Cubed) for any geopolitical space?

For “Earth Consciousness and Process”: Thomas Berry.

For an Advanced Psychology and Spirituality: Abraham Maslow.

I know at this point — I am 65 — my references are a bit dated but I feel their spirit still to be realized. If those who wish for themselves and future generations better lives, the answers, means, and methods are certain to be found in the comprehending of global issues and the development of related cooperation across space and time.

The slogans, e.g., “Think Globally — Act Locally”, have been around for a long time. The businessmen and politicians up to the challenge of producing a better world NOW and for setting up into the next century? Apparently, far less than would seem immediately desirable.


Posted to YouTube by Conservation International, October 5, 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)

Books and circulars, first, radio, television, and films, later, have long presented us to ourselves, and so much so that it has long been common to reference our behavior in terms of characters well known. There has been the Great White Hunter’s perspective too in which the white guy — the Ernest Hemingway of one American generation; the Peter Beard of another — would view the journey into the “back of beyond” as exotic, and one day not too long ago, it was exotic.

The Grand Tour may be that no longer.

We are all here making our appearance known on desktop around the world. “Global Culture” — what we look like in recordings worldwide — has had these other and epic tours since the 1990s, and now we in North America have had in place for at least 14 years an astonishing “World Wide Web” through which all may see the world — including themselves — in states closer and closer to real time — or with live feeds within seconds of “real time”.

How are we now supposed to separate?

We can’t.

It’s too late — and we’re not going to go backward into more parochial decades or centuries.

In fact, we’re going to go through the life process and illness and death in the company of our virtually relayed but quite real familiars — our Facebook buddies, Twitter rosters, Instagram producers, and such — thousands of miles from our own desktops. When these new old friends fall ill . . . we’ll know it depending on our emotional and relational distance, not our geography. We’ll be asking what can be done (hit the FB “Cares” icon!) and what can we do — and about so many things: what can be done and what can we do sitting where each of us sits?


In terms of the larger picture, the significance of the Euromaidan, or generally the Maidan, of 2013-14 can hardly be overstated: it not only caps the period of hybrid post-Soviet existence initiated by independence in 1991, but also provides a kind of closure to the complex and drawn-out process of Ukrainian nation-formation that began in the 19th century.

George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Chyzhevs’kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Harvard University (USA) as quoted here: Minakov, Mykhailo. “The Significance of Euromaidan for Ukraine and Europe.” Focus Ukraine, a blog of the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, November 21, 2018.

Putin (and Russia) Out of 19th Century Now!

Ukraine — Welcome to the 21st Century!

And let’s move on . . . .

###

FTAC: Russia for Modernity

24 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia

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Tags

Pro-Navalny Protests, Russia Against Putin

From the Awesome Conversation

Russia’s in trouble today — https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/world/europe/photos-russia-navalny-protest.html — and partially for stubbornly clinging to its 19th Century political culture with its absolute and uncaring power. While the state has strongly supported its Defense and Energy businesses, and used the latter to pry Turkey from NATO (in spirit — the matter’s complicated but the Turkish Stream energy project plays strongly in Erdogan’s relationship with Putin) — it’s in trouble (as usual) for being backward. Sooner or later, it too will have to deal with modern issues, including democracy, environmental ethics, and human rights.


I repeat —


Inspiration for the post: Biden’s working of the Keystone Pipeline issue seemingly to Russia’s advantage as an energy competitor. Recall that the United States under Obama had become energy independent and energy exporting. However, underlying issues having to do with . . . human agency and responsibility may more determine the politics of the future — if we as a species are to have a future that more opens time than closes down in darkness within it.

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Russia for Navalny

23 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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Tags

Black Sea Monstrosity, Navalny, Navalny Protests, Putin's Kleptocracy, Putin's Palace, Putin's Pseudo-Democracy

Rounding up the Unusual Suspects

Protests demanding the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny erupted in cities across Russia on Saturday, with a demonstration in Moscow extending into the evening.

At least 2,500 people, including a politician, have been detained, according to the OVD-Info protest monitor. Around 90 rallies took place in over 60 cities across the country.

Of those, at least 940 people were detained in the capital Moscow and over 350 in St Petersburg.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-police-detain-thousands-at-pro-navalny-protests/a-56321592

Earlier Today

Video of the day. pic.twitter.com/C8qIqz0kDo

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) January 23, 2021



President Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-democracy may have control of its opposition but, at least not at this hour, its opposition’s long-simmering constituency.

I’ve never seen snowballs thrown at police.

That’s got to be a come-down from bottles, Molotov cocktails, and rocks although plastic bottles appear to be in supply.


https://www.dw.com/en/russia-navalnys-wife-detained-at-moscow-protest/a-56321592


“Sorry for the poor quality. Very bad light in the paddy wagon”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @yulia_navalnaya


https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/europe/putin-palace-navalny-russia-intl/index.html

Related

“Putin’s palace. History of world’s largest bribe” – Navalny’s latest anti-corruption video (posted to YouTube Jan. 19, 2021).

In English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin%27s_Palace

Putin Palace Sea View. CCA 3.0, Wikimedia.

Published in September 2015 – and still . . . all true!

Karen Dawisha (RIP) – Published by Simon & Schuster Books and posted to YouTube September 30, 2014.

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FTAC: Onward – Addressing a Reactionary Politics

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Political Psychology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beijing and Moscow's Political Absolutism, Far Out Right, medieval v modern, Old Communists - Wealthy Party Elites, Rule by the Rich

I don’t know why I should have the spread of friends that I do on Facebook, so many have turned out reactionary conservatives muttering about a communist front that just hasn’t been shaping up as such. Have a look at the Communist Party USA’s membership number. Read Jacobin if you want to — I rather appreciate the alternative views but seem to be missing out on the sound of the earth-shaking thundering herd raging behind it. Inspiration for the following: the boast that former President Trump fought Chinese Communism (China’s elite society and growing class of billionaires left that blue serge lifestyle behind some time ago) and rightly put “America First!” The slogan was old before it came out of his mouth and the go-it-alone of the paranoid narcissistic personality may have only abetted Putin’s 19th Century ideas for destroying the political cohesion of a truly democratic and modern EU/NATO.

November’s election and today’s inauguration brought back to the United States of America the most fundamental of American principles and values riding right beside our glorious Constitution: a government by and for — i.e., responsible and responsive to — The People of the Nation in all our varied colors, cultures, and creeds.

We are Americans — no adjectives required unless appreciated and enjoyed — once again.

From the Awesome Conversation


“America First” also references the earlier “America First Party” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943)

Beneath the banner of Communism, Beijing’s financial, ideological, and political realities differ quite from what imagination may supply in minds restricted by tired old presumptions. The state has been fairly minting billionaires and producing an elite within lines of authoritarian control in some ways mirroring what Moscow has going in the way of a deeply autocratic and politically repressive state.

For all intents in the United States, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) may at best boast a membership around or beneath 10,000.

Excessive autocratic control — totalitarian in China these days — backed by military and paramilitary force have marked Beijing and Moscow’s respective narratives. In EU/NATO, the post-9/11 “New Nationalism” has similarly scarred “The West” in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. However, as bad ideas reach their nadir, one may expect the reactionary drift (also in the United States) to reverse and more return to practical democratic approaches to a spread of tough and real — rather than imaginary — issues involving how we live together and how we (Americans) work together as a political society.


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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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