PeterS

Mariupol is part of the Donbas yet Putin is determined to pretty much wipe it off of the face of the earth. I thought Putin was there to protect the Donbas not destroy it?

Also, according to google 13,300 have died in the Donbas war from April 2014 through January 2021. When the rubble in Mariupol is gone through I would imagine that many or more will be found dead. Will those be attributed to the e-vile Nazzies (say that with a Brad Pitt accent in Inglourious Basterds) in Ukraine or the rightfully justified saintly guys in Russia (Say that with a Mary Poppins accent of the same)?

And this is a serious question in spite of my cynicism...

rjoeholl

Aw, Petey Boy, Putin's just doing it to pizz you off.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

I'll start by asking you if you know where the Azov battalion has been based for the past 8 years???

Hint: It's a city in the eastern Ukraine, Donbas region, on the Sea of Azov...

Here's a map... It shows where the conflict in the Donbas over the past 8 years has been... You'll note which areas were controlled by the Ukrainian forces and which by the secessionist...

Please note where Mariopul is...

If you wanted to, you could also google the accounts of Ukrainian civilians in Mariopul that were prevented from leaving...Some were even fired up on... By the Ukrainian forces...

Bonus: Here's a great scene from Mariopul...

Attached file:
(Download)

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

One wonders where, what sources you use in order to continually post your support of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine! I don’t know where the t***h ends and the lies begin! It goes from one extreme to another! China supports Russia and is doing everything Xi can do to sway the minds of those individuals in his country as well as other countries!

Is it any wonder that your every day comments parrot PRO-KREMLIN, ANTI-U.S., and ANTI-NATO…………. “Some militantly pro-Moscow posts have also been taken down, but the predominant narrative on the censored and distorted Chinese internet is pro-Kremlin, anti-U.S., and anti-NATO.”

https://thediplomat.com/2022/04/the-ccps-ukraine-war-propaganda/

China’s massive information control apparatus is typically focused on distorting the information that Chinese citizens are able to access about their own country, with foreign affairs relegated to a secondary level of importance. Yet over the past seven weeks, the Chinese C*******t Party (CCP) leadership’s apparent decision to side with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has fueled a full-blown campaign to shape public opinion and internet chatter about events unfolding thousands of miles away.

Within the deep toolbox of controls available to the CCP regime, three tactics appear to be playing an outsized role in this campaign: f**gship state media echoing Russian state disinformation, manipulation of social media hashtags and trending topics, and censorship of alternative viewpoints and information sources.

The effort has effectively built an isolating wall around China, leaving Chinese news consumers with an image of one of this century’s most significant geopolitical events that is drastically different from the version presented to other populations around the world.

A Three-Pronged Strategy for Distorting Reality

In the weeks since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, three of China’s state media outlets – the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, the national broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), and the nationalistic tabloid Global Times – have been particularly active in feeding Russian state propaganda to Chinese news consumers. Rather than simply promoting Moscow’s official views or statements, they have disseminated content that includes multiple outright falsehoods. For example, they have aired claims that Ukrainian soldiers surrendered their weapons, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fled Kyiv, and that Russian forces have struck only military targets.

Almost as notable as the lies that have been propagated are the basic facts that are missing. There is no acknowledgment that Moscow initiated the war by invading a sovereign neighbor in blatant violation of international law. No airtime is granted to Zelenskyy’s charismatic daily video appearances, which have gone v***l among global audiences. Also absent are the detailed accounts of atrocities in the Kyiv region that emerged after the retreat of occupying Russian troops. Multiple CCTV news broadcasts – including the prime-time program that is still watched by tens of millions of Chinese each evening – made almost no mention of the civilian deaths reported in the town of Bucha in early April, for example. Instead, they focused on topics like successful Russian military strikes and U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine.

The CCP regime has aided the dissemination of pro-Kremlin propaganda by manipulating hashtags and trending topics on domestic social media platforms. There have been numerous examples of Chinese state outlets creating hashtags linked to disinformation narratives that are then aggressively amplified. In the early days of the war, CCTV created a hashtag asserting that Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv, which was reportedly viewed 510 million times. More recently, after the Russian government announced that it would host an anti-f*****m conference in August – part of its disinformation narrative that the invasion was necessary to rid Ukraine of N**is – CCTV posted a related story and created a hashtag on the Weibo social media platform. Within 24 hours, it had reportedly garnered 650 million views and 90 media citations.

Even as they keep their algorithms and trending topics aligned with the government’s priorities, staff at Chinese social media platforms have been busy deleting content that departs from the official line. Among other targets, they have removed posts and open letters by prominent individuals within China who directly questioned the government’s support for Moscow, criticized Putin, voiced support for Ukraine, or decried nationalist netizens’ disregard for China’s own historical suffering at the hands of foreign invaders. In at least two cases, celebrities who called Putin “crazy,” urged followers to pray for peace, or posted photos of anti-war protests in Russia had their Weibo accounts suspended or restricted. The two individuals, former talk-show host Jin Xing and actress Ke Lan, consequently lost their ability to reach 13.6 million and 2.9 million followers, respectively. Some militantly pro-Moscow posts have also been taken down, but the predominant narrative on the censored and distorted Chinese internet is pro-Kremlin, anti-U.S., and anti-NATO.

Censors have similarly moved to suppress first-hand reporting by Chinese residents in Ukraine, including complaints related to the government’s delayed assistance with their evacuation from the war zone. Wang Jixian, a technology worker posting videos from the city of Odesa, found that his social media accounts across multiple platforms, including WeChat, had been shut down. In an emotional video posted to YouTube, Wang angrily lamented the fact that he no longer had a way to communicate directly with his parents, asking friends to alert them that he was still alive. Individual netizen posts and videos on Jinri Toutiao, a widely used content aggregator owned by ByteDance, have been deleted for depicting Russian anti-war protests.

These information-control tactics closely match a leaked set of official media directives from March 3. One directive specifically indicates that foreign news reports cannot be republished, and that social media platforms must “strictly control” commentary that challenges official statements, involves “incitement of Sino-Russian antagonism,” references historical invasions of China, or involves “public anti-war declarations.” This and another directive both enforce a state media monopoly on war-related hashtags and trending topics, noting for instance that “without exception, existing hashtags started by individuals, self-published media, and commercial platforms must not be included in trending topics, and new hashtags are strictly prohibited.”

Voices of Dissent and Resistance

While the space for alternative perspectives on the war in Ukraine is clearly under heavy pressure, some examples of both vocal and quiet resistance have emerged.

Among traditional media, a small number of outlets have referred fairly explicitly to Moscow’s responsibility for the invasion. Xinmin Weekly, a commercial publication in Shanghai, published a March 7 human interest story about a Chinese student’s escape from Ukraine that described how Russian forces had suddenly “launched a war” against Ukraine. Caixin, a financial publication that is widely recognized for its investigative journalism, ran a cover-story analysis that framed the war as a full-scale Russian invasion and published photo galleries showing destroyed buildings.

On February 26, five Chinese historians published an open letter condemning the war and directly challenging the Chinese government’s position. They declared that “as a country that was once also ravaged by war … we sympathize with the suffering of the Ukrainian people.” The authors also bluntly rejected efforts to justify the invasion: “Regardless of Russia’s myriad reasons and all kinds of excuses, the use of force to invade a sovereign country is trampling on the norms of international relations based on the U.N. Charter.”

In early March, the Carter Center’s U.S.-China Perceptions Monitor published a commentary in English and Chinese by Hu Wei, a scholar at several state-affiliated institutions in China. The piece analyzed the long-term implications of the war for China and the world, warning that “China cannot be tied to Putin” and should “choose the mainstream position in the world.” Both commentaries were censored in China, and the website of the U.S.-China Perceptions Monitor was subsequently blocked, but not before its original Chinese post received over 185,000 views.

More subtle expressions of skepticism about the official line and support for Ukraine have also appeared. Journalist Xifan Yang discovered that four out of the top five brooch pins on e-commerce site Taobao had a Ukrainian f**g theme. Users’ comments on the items included statements like “Long live the people of Ukraine!” Researcher Ling Li collected multiple examples of Chinese netizen commentary that departed from the official narrative, including comments like “one can be indifferent to wars but should at the very least not advocate wars, or worse, praise invaders,” which received over 6,900 likes. Even a video by Hollywood star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, aimed at countering the Kremlin’s propaganda among Russian audiences, was spotted circulating on WeChat with subtitles in Chinese.

Given the opacity of the Chinese leadership, it is difficult to determine the exact motivations driving the regime’s support for Putin’s war. It could be part of an effort to tilt the international balance of power, to weaken the United States, to set the stage for a future CCP takeover of Taiwan, or simply to save Xi Jinping from embarrassment over the very public partnership with Putin that he trumpeted in early February, before the invasion. What is clear is that the domestic media narrative is much more reflective of CCP leaders’ views than the superficially more neutral and mild public comments of Chinese diplomats. Once Xi and his cohort decided that it was strategically beneficial to the CCP, if not to China, to throw their weight behind Putin, the party’s information control apparatus was jolted into action.

As the war in Ukraine continues, much is at stake for the cause of freedom, peace, and international order. But regardless of the outcome on the battlefield, the conflict has already resulted in a reinforced CCP propaganda structure and a wider information gap between many in China and the rest of the world.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Your article is false...

Zelensky's interviews are aired...
The war crime accusations have been reported on...
And there isn't a single person on China who doesn't know that Russia initiated the conflict...

As for my reply to Peter, show me where I'm wrong???

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

The entire article is false…….because you said so? LOL!

Why have you stopped posting your sources?

As far as your comment to Peter……I’ll leave that conversation to you and Peter to discuss!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

When did I stop posting sources???

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

I’ve been doing more research on the propaganda of Xi and the CCP……….this is an excellent video with an in-depth study by the Wilson Center.


https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/selling-centennial-2021-what-chinese-c*******t-partys-propaganda-reveals-about-ccp

The Selling of a Centennial, 2021 : What the Chinese C*******t Party’s Propaganda Reveals About the CCP

OVERVIEW

The Chinese C*******t Party was founded in July 1921 as a small, revolutionary group that hoped to impose a foreign ideology—Marxism-Leninism—on a vast, weak, poor agrarian nation. In July 2021, the CCP hopes to use its 100th anniversary to convince China, and the world, that it is the only organization qualified to lead a powerful, wealthy, ambitious superpower. How Xi Jinping and his propaganda ministries tell the story of the past hundred years, and how that experience be understood, speaks volumes about the CCP’s goals and values as it looks to its future.

SPEAKERS

Anne-Marie Brady
Global Fellow, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States & Global Fellow, Polar Institute;
Professor, University of Canterbury and Executive Editor of The Polar Journal


Aynne Kokas
Wilson China Fellow;
Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia and Senior Faculty Fellow, Miller Center for Public Affairs.

Maria Repnikova
Former Fellow;
Assistant Professor of Global Communication, Georgia State University

MODERATOR

Robert Daly

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

I'm glad you found a hobby...

I've always thought that the best way to learn about something is to study the views of others

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

Views and opinions of others are good, but more is needed if you want to know the entire story, or facts! 👍

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Exactly

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

“I've always thought that the best way to learn about something is to study the views of others”. Says CD!

So, IOW, studying the views of others is not the best way to learn about something………..You agree with me that

“Views and opinions of others are good, but more is needed if you want to know the entire story, or facts!”

And we all have OPINIONS! Right CD! 😉

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

My comment was sarcastic... The best way to learn something is almost never to listen to the opinions of others... They're a good secondary source, and add color and emotion to the topic, but tend to be too biased to be trustworthy...

Take me for example... I'm horribly biased about any number of subjects... My opinion is seriously suspect..

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

And here I thought you were just agreeing with me! 😉

I like sarcasm! I use it often! LOL!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

I was agreeing with you