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BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Category Archives: Syria

Three Medieval Stooges and One MODERN Adult Nation

05 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

medieval v modern, Ukraine v Russia

Thousands of Ukrainians are continuing to express support to European integration and protesting against decision of Ukrainian government to refuse signing of association with EU in Vilnius. 27 November 2013. Kyiv, Ukraine.

March 5, 2022: In the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian army seized 30 units of Russian equipment.

“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets. There is only one reason. We want to be free from a dictatorship. We want to be free from the politicians who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money, just for saving their houses, just for saving their power. I want these people who are here, who have dignity, who are brave–I want them to live a normal life. We are civilized people, but our government are barbarians. That’s not a Soviet Union. We want our courts not to be corrupted. We want to be free . . . .” Posted to YouTube by A Whisper to a Roar, February 10, 2014.

–33–

After New Year’s Day: Reminders: ‘Kurdistan’ v Turkish Aggression

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Kurdistan, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

east-west politics, Kurdish Constitution, Kurdistan, Real Liberalism, realpolitik, Turkish Aggression

“Displacement… & threats to Kurds have prevented us from being happy. Joy has no place in our hearts, as long as children’s cries fill refugee camps. We must not give up, &we must find a ray of hope, but our strength has been drained.” #Kurdistan #Rojava https://t.co/DC5BkVu2lU

— Samira Ghaderi (@Samira_Ghaderi) January 2, 2020

The attack on the US Embassy in #Baghdad should serve as yet another reminder that the US should invest in values-based partnerships, & not abandon allies such as Kurds who are now hosting the fleeing US amabssador and only functioning consulate in #Iraq.

— Namo Abdulla (@namo_abdulla) January 1, 2020

Moscow’s Phantoms of the Soviet Era — old friends, old state relationships, Kurdish political incoherence at the leadership level, and confusion over the idea of liberalism has produced a deadly and medieval quagmire in Northern Syria and opened the gate to thoroughly retrograde politics — thank the Turkish “sultan” Erdogan the (most-un-NATO-like) Egoist. In effect, America’s — and the west’s — chief allies in the fight against Islamic State in Syria have been betrayed to the extent that the west now looks on at their deprivation.

If integrity is to be an international standard, it is important to grasp how artificial and brutal an enterprise has been Bashar al-Assad’s civil war and “war on terrorism”. As BackChannels has commented on Assad’s nurturing of al-Qaeda types early in the Syrian Tragedy, it will list here just a sampling of posts asserting that the state’s theater of war has been developed and managed for totalitarian effects — “Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background (December 9, 2016). The “Kurdistan” and “Syria” categories of this blog contain other listings, of course, and here for convenience are a few quickly chosen URLs to posts that may be helpful to Kurdish political analysts asking the eternal political question: “Where from here”?

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/01/02/moscow-as-medusa-with-all-the-snakes-attached/ |https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/23/a-precarious-kurdistan/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/22/the-devolution-will-be-televised-kurdistan-end-of-ceasefire/ |

Yesterday, ASHARQ published “Syria Kurds Urge Moscow to Return Damascus to Constitutional Committee” (January 1, 2020) with naivete perhaps regarding Russia’s own deeply paternal authoritarian political habits and long-term rejection, so far, of constitutional power. In the days of the Tsar, the peasants found suggested arrangements for “constitutional monarchy” suspect 🙂 , never mind the monarch; the Bolsheviks appear to have produced power for the leadership (incidentally, Stalin himself had a turn in the Tsar’s secret political police, the Okhrana) and death and imprisonment for Russians, among others, by the millions; and, finally, KGB Colonel Putin has come to rule Russia with again despotic controls and with “liberalism” virtually removed from the discourse of the powerful who appear to prefer plunder (ask Khodorkovsky) to responsible political stewardship.

Suggestion for those now arguing about the character of a Syrian Constitution for which the troika of Assad, Putin, and Khamenei have no need as well as the character of a proposed Kurdish agreement between communities: err toward the compassion, complexity, and integrating liberal humanism owned by the rapidly evolving and modernizing west — take cues from the west’s most advanced (and happiest) states, not the ones sinking backward into feudal and nationalist fascism.

Start, perhaps, with Finland, so that what is to end does so where it began.

Related Online

ASHARQ AL-AWSAT. “Syria Kurds Urge Moscow to Return Damascus to Constitutional Committee.” January 1, 2020.

Cuthbert, Olivia. “New Syrian Refugees in Iraq Struggle to Access Education.” Al-Fanar Media, January 1, 2020.


Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Stated on the Amazon page:

The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia.

Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime.

Kurdish leaders should take note of Russia’s early and Imperial history and the character of the state under Putin’s sway, and they should ask whether the same is today authentically interested in their health and well being.

BackChannels knows the historic response: “No friends but the mountains.”

This blog’s editor hopes that the time-honored expression of abandonment and isolation is either no longer true today or that it becomes untrue as EU/NATO and perhaps others take interest themselves in Kurdish aspirations, bravery, hopes, and ideals for a greater and more just and more autonomous state.


Mohamad, Sinam. “Once We Beat ISIS, Don’t Abandon Us.” The New York Times, May 11, 2017.

Pipes, Richard.  Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Pipes, Richard.  The Russian Revolution.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

Polymeropoulos, Marc. “The Inevitable Day of Reckoning in Syria.” Just Security, December 23, 2019.

Wikipedia. “Pyotr Stolypin”.

Wikipedia. “Russian Constitution of 1906”.

–33–

FTAC: After Islamic State, the Continued Rise in the World of Fascist Absolute Power

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

American Retreat from Syria, Degrading Democracy, Democracy v Tyranny, Islamic State, medieval v modern, New Fascism, Syria

Conversation Starter

Blanga, Yehuda. “Implications of the US Withdrawal from Syria.” The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, October 30, 2019.

Inspirational comment for what follows noted that “the #1 and #2 ISIS leaders” were now dead.

True and factored into the response that follows here.


From the Awesome Conversation


Islamist leaders believe themselves — and their followers believe them to be — as Muhammad, the channeled voice of God on Earth. Of rivals for Ayatollah and Caliph there may be no short lists to which another strident Believer may not be added.

As with other dictators, their power resides in part in the closed political systems one or another may be able to wrap around themselves as a defensive as defensive political political, religious, and social bubble. In my reductive way, as much responds in leaders to the humiliations of childhood or early adolescence as part of malign narcissistic development. All become politically absolute — and for practical conclusions, kleptocratic.

In the Syrian theater, Bashar al-Assad cultivated ISIS / ISIL / Islamic State in the gathering of the al-Qaeda types that streamed into his state as the 2011 “Civil War” (I call it the “Syrian Tragedy”) developed. His purpose, and well in the KGB style, was to produce a war he knew he could win by first choosing his enemy. So he bombed the hell out of noncombatant Syrians while failing (deliberately) to focus his forces on the Islamists until the same coalesced and he could add to them.

Russia removed her citizens early in this process, but it by no means abandoned its old client. On the other wing, Iran had its eye on Israel and plenty of nefarious conflict-encouraging and martial power of its own — it is no mistake or coincidence that the IRG and Hezbollah would come to the battle (as would Russian forces).

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

On this reading page, BackChannels has another piece — different author and publication — suggesting about the same thing. Our retreat has been a retreat before “political absolutism” or in the most undemocratic and illiberal support of it.


Related Online

Wechsler, William F. “Five Takeaways from the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Atlantic Council, October 28, 2019.


Addendum: Perpetuation of Threat

The bond between conflict and money may well make the world go around.

That may be fine as a part of our “human condition”.

Here, however, for the remaining and fully functioning liberal democracies of the 21st Century, the underlying argument that might be characterized — as I characterize it — as “Medieval (Absolute Power) v Modern (Democratic Distribution of Power)” involves the leveraging of the presence of unreasoning threat and “unassailable” leadership into the endless “wars of all against all”.

Is that what y’all want?

Putin-Assad-Khamenei, Putin-Erdogan: as much appears the world wanted. Their states are their personal ventures; their slogans the whips for their mobs; their ends: their own aggrandizement.

For the West that should be pushing back: mere containment of these old and evil forces, and the “containment” appears quite permeable for the methods now associated with Russia’s “Active Measures” and “Hybrid Warfare”.


–33–

A Precarious Kurdistan

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Kurdistan, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Kurdistan, political narcissism, Presidential Ethics, Trump Presidency

The official presentations of peace have become surreal.

Most understand that with the repression of democracy, especially through the jailing of journalists and the shuttering of publications, Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan has all but denounced democracy for a turn “east” toward dictatorship.

America’s President Trump has agreed to the program but with one difference, i.e., claiming credit for peace in the region. He has nonetheless praised the Turkish leader, essentially hollowing out the meaning of “NATO” and the related Western ideals, principles, and values that were to be defended before the “Phantoms of the Soviet”, i.e., the forces of feudalism and associated criminals, political criminals, and tyrants.

Turkish news channels ran a countdown clock at the top of their screens to let the country know when the ceasefire in northern Syria would end. Military and political commentators tried to outdo each other’s prognostications about what would come out of the meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the city of Sochi. In the end, the presidents spent six hours discussing their path forward in northern Syria.

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-erdogan-wins-big-as-clock-ticks-for-syria-kurds/a-50955172 – 10/23/2019.

Posted to YouTube by ABC News, October 21, 2019.

Posted to YouTube by CBS News, October 23, 2019.

Yesterday

Posted to YouTube by PBS NewsHour, October 21, 2019.

Posted to YouTube by Guardian News, August 28, 2019.

BackChannels expects the powerful mainstream media (Fake News!) to take note of the discrepancies illustrated here by juxtaposition.

It appears some wealthy — way “up there” in wealth born of thuggery — have in some states displaced democratic processes, evolving liberalism, rule of law and become powers unto themselves acting in their own feudal and wholly narcissistic and malign interests.


–33–

Note

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Kurdistan, Russia, Syria

≈ Leave a comment


Kurdish Border With Turkey

Yesterday’s morning began with live videos of . . . nothing. “Live from Turkey-Syria border as ceasefire ends” said the Ruptly header. It turns out that while the phlegmatic American Congress had been inquiring about the changed state of affairs between Turkey and the West, Russia and Turkey together had been “taking care of” the Kurds . . . .

VOA News, October 23, 2019

Related: “US is biggest loser in Russia-Turkey Syria deal.” CNN, October 23, 2019.


The Devolution Will be Televised: Kurdistan – End of Ceasefire

22 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Kurdistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

End of Ceasefire, Kurdistan, medieval v modern, Putin & Erdogan, Soviet / post-Soviet politics, Turkish Barbarism

There may be a no-fly zone in force for the border of interest. The editor here has been listening to more testimony that watching “action” on the live cameras.




Earlier Today


Posted to YouTube in 2015


Kurdish forces acting as American / western proxies fought and died ejecting Islamic State from Syria. Is the west now to do nothing for them?


Related Online

Bekdil, Burak. “Turkey’s Pyrrhic Victory in Syria”. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), October 22, 2019.

Fahim, Kareem. “Russia, Turkey agree to jointly remove Kurdish fighters along Turkey’s border in northern Syria.” The Washington Post, October 22, 2019.

O’Connor, Tom. “Russia and Turkey Present New Deal for Syria After Six Hours of Talks and U.S. Exit.” Newsweek, October 22, 2019.

Stark, Alexandra and Ariel I. Ahram. “How the United States Can Escape the Middle East’s Porxy Wars.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 22, 2019.


‘America Is Running Away': #Kurds Pelt Withdrawing Troopshttps://t.co/UXb004qBCV

— Rojname News English (@ROJNAME_english) October 22, 2019

Now, the whole rationale Trump put forward for the retreat — to get American troops out of the Mideast and “endless wars” — is in doubt.

Rather than leaving the region, the withdrawing troops will deploy in neighboring Iraq to fight the Islamic State group, which could get new life from the Syrian turmoil. Some U.S. forces are still in eastern Syria, helping Kurdish fighters protect oilfields. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Monday he was discussing keeping them there.

Trump surprised even his own military on the ground when he agreed to remove U.S. soldiers working with Kurdish-led forces near the border in an Oct. 6 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Three days later, Turkey launched its offensive with heavy bombardment along the border.

https://www.courthousenews.com/america-is-running-away-kurds-pelt-withdrawing-troops/ 10/22/2019

–33–

FTAC: Nascent and Socially Progressing Kurdistan and Putin, Erdogan, (Trump’s) Return to Feudal Authoritarianism and Absolutism

17 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Kurdistan, Political Psychology, Syria, Turkey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

authoritarianism, Betrayal of the Kurds, Democratic Confederation, feudal political absolutism, feudal v modern, medieval v modern, Progressive Politics, Rojava

From the Awesome Conversation (on Facebook) —


My general impression has been yours, i.e., PKK fighters accepted some “rebranding” to make their image palatable to the west in their fight for survival against Islamic State. However, here is what the web turned up in related (swift) research:

From January 2019 — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/01/02/moscow-as-medusa-with-all-the-snakes-attached/

From June 2019 – https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/06/25/pkk-a-few-impressions-and-notes-on-the-kurdish-struggle-for-autonomy-and-unification/

The PKK launched with Soviet guidance and support in the late 1970s. Wikipedia nailed it in these two sentences: “The PKK was founded in 1978 in the village of Fis (near Lice) by a group of Kurdish students led by Abdullah Öcalan[19] and in 1979 it made its existence known to the public.[20]The PKK’s ideology was originally a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism, seeking the foundation of an independent Communist state in the region, which was to be known as Kurdistan.”

The political tone of the community has been in the direction of “democratic confederalism” — inclusion and input have been part of what nascent “Kurdistan” promoted when it played up the Rojava Experiment.

From the New Internationalist —

“There is no doubt that theirs is a shared ideology, one that has been formulated by their joint leader, Abdullah Öcalan, now in his 21st year of incarceration in a Turkish prison. But the PYD’s organizing principle is democratic confederalism: a system of direct democracy, ecological sustainability and ethnic inclusivity, where women have veto powers on new legislation and share all institutional positions with men.”

Within the short time since forming Rojava’s democratic experiment, child marriage, forced marriage, dowry and polygamy were banned; honour killings, violence and discrimination against women were criminalized. It is the only part of Syria where sharia councils have been abolished and religion has been consigned to the private sphere.”

https://newint.org/features/2019/10/11/assault-rojava

American moderates and progressives would recognize the development of a social democracy — not unlike what we in fact of evolved into, i.e., a modern place with modern laws and cares. That would seem what the Trump Administration has chosen to abandon with a few teary-eyed remarks about America’s soldiery and his (narcissistic paranoid) bent toward American isolationism (after the United States leading the development and defense of democracy in the world since the end of WWII).

Opposed by the PKK and part of the character of Kurdish political incoherence: the Kurdish Democratic Party —

“The KDP has been described as a tribal, feudalistic, and aristocratic party which is controlled by the Barzani tribe.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Democratic_Party

Has North America and Europe the wish to return to systems in which feudal authority commits crimes and invents policy beyond the questioning of the ordinary citizen?

By leaving the field to Putin and Erdogan and being himself autocratic in character, President Trump has suggested an answer to that question.


Note: The author edits and improves on the first off-the-cuff remarks in related threaded conversation on the way to posting the same or very similar on this blog.

—33–

FTAC: Repaired Russo-Turkish Fault Line May Strengthen the East Against the West

14 Monday Oct 2019

Posted by commart in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Kurdistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey

≈ 1 Comment

The great squawk raised against President Trump’s pull-out from Syria after the seemingly finished business of removing ISIS as an area-controlling power in the region may be assuaged by a few cogent and brief observations.

From the Awesome Conversation (on Facebook) —


  1. The Kurds have not been a unified political community.
  2. The PKK is another of the late 1970s-style “liberation” organizations set up by then Communist Moscow.
  3. The regional “balance of power” has included Russian-Turkish animus (for a long time), so a return to that geopolitical fault line may make some historic sense; however, the two former empires appear at present embraced over energy, warm with each the other’s politically absolute character, and cold to the liberal democracies and associated values of the west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Turkey_relations

http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/projects/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2019/10/13/syria-kurdistan-turkey-ceding-american-influence-in-kurdish-syria-and-permitting-isis-resurgence/


In the “Medieval v Modern” framework often mentioned on BackChannels, arrangements between Russia and Turkey suit the Forward-to-the-Past! ambitions of Presidents Putin and Erdogan (and perhaps Trump as well). Ah, well, the past from the present may seem both a bloodier but also more simple day, so that much more suited to the simple minded among leaders. Be that as it may, the PKK’s historic relationship with Moscow may now bring the Kurdish liberation element into renewed contact with the producers of the”KGB Theater” that brought the murderous Islamic State to their doorstep in the first place.



Putin’s Russia has proven itself a deeply destructive and inhumane force in Syria, one that has encouraged a tyrant to bomb and depopulate substantial portions of his own state, and one that has itself repeatedly bombed hospitals into ruin. Call it “Real Estate Acquisition and Development — Moscow Style”. May such a center of power as Moscow now find the Kurds and the PKK inconvenient?

As captive but perhaps (under the new circumstance) uncontainable ISIS elements melt back into the region (how many may it take to rebuild the movement or otherwise influence the politics of the region?), the perpetuation of conflict may seem to suit the greater “eastern” powers, one of which appears to enjoy the development and suspension of “frozen conflicts”.

–33–

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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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