It's not just a matter of the moral equivalence of propaganda, but of credibility. When a major media outlet is pushing a narrative that supports a government agenda, skepticism is warranted.

We are not talking just "a government agenda" -- as far as I've seen, the whole democratic world (not only USA and Sweden) say something quite similar regarding Russian propaganda.

How are you measuring what the "democratic world" says, exactly? What it's media says?

Isn't Donald Trump making waves right now for having improbably high support despite thinking Putin is not so bad after all? Dumb though Trump may be he is without a doubt a key part of the "democratic world" right now.

1. Can you condemn Putin for starting wars and annexing area in Europe, just like Hitler in the 1930s? If you refuse I will assume that you work for the Russian junta. (To _only_ condemn USA instead is not an answer.)

2. My sources are e.g. what is said by common EU institutions and by state chiefs in the EU. Like here http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-31932005 BBC is just part of the anti Russian global conspiracy..?

(And you contradict that "the whole democratic world" is saying the same thing -- with what one of the newer populists (that isn't even elected yet) said about something else... Is that REALLY the only argument you have...?!)

Edit: reformatted to make it clearer.

Which area are you talking about? The war in Georgia?

Cuz if you are talking about Crimea then no. "Annexation" doesn't tend to have support of the people and the referendum and repeated opinion polls by western research groups afterwards show very clearly that the Crimeans wanted to join Russia (and believe the referendum was fair).

If your entire logic boils down to "you either agree with X or you work for the Russians" where X is a highly subjective and debatable thing, then you're always going to see shadowy operatives everywhere. That's just a ridiculous way to debate things.

2. The BBC is not a part of any "anti-Russian conspiracy" (there is no conspiracy). That story is just reporting the views of EU officials.

Guess what - I don't trust EU officials. Quite a few of them also believe the entire British population was brainwashed by tabloid propaganda and that's why they rejected the EU in their own vote: the idea that maybe people can genuinely understand the EU and dislike it is unprocessable to them.

So you can't criticize Putin's wars... I don't know of any reputable political party or media which support invasion wars and annexations in Europe today. (No, Putin's own media are not reputable. :-) )

Elections with more than 95% for any side are obviously fake. It smells of Soviet and North Korea. I've only seen people obviously working in St Petersburg argue that could possibly be true. And you...

And my argument is that on one side there is Putin's paid propaganda -- and on the other side there is more or less the collected western democracies of the world. Those countries usually don't agree on much, but this united us.

You think that position of all the democracies is "highly subjective and debatable" -- after believing that any election result over 95% is real!!

That stretched my ability to give the benefit of a doubt far beyond breaking.

(I missed your post, it came a day after.)

Military actions of aggression should be condemned, regardless of whether we call it a war.

Russia annexing Crimea was one such action. The entire American operation in Iraq is another.

Russia and the USA are more alike then their populations are comfortable admitting. Oligarchies cynically masquerading as democracies.

My main point here is: The whole Western democratic world is more or less saying the same thing about Putin.

You have answered two comments of mine without touching that.

(Also -- check the democratic peace theory. USA don't start wars against democracies. Putin just don't want to have prosperous democracies as neighbours.)

And so on.

The Americans absolutely overthrow Democratic governments[0]; they justify it by quibbling that perhaps the governments weren't the right kind of democracy.

I do not take issue with the notion that Russia engages in propaganda, because they obviously do. I believe I've said as much in this thread.

Whether or not I agree with your statement of the existence of a plurality of agreement among the "Western Democratic World" (why not all Democratic nations?), it is no matter. I would expect cooperation among the Five Eyes, for instance.

0: http://www.alternet.org/story/39416/america%27s_100_years_of...

Ah, it was a mistake to mention anything else with you, even in parenthesis...

You are not going to touch that the international community, not only US and Sweden, agree that Putin's Russia is much worse.

(As you are certainly well aware of: The democratic peace theory discuss wars, not involvements in coups during the second "great game", that of the Cold War.)

4 comments (in 2 places) without touching my point... :-( You are not serious, bye.

I did touch it; I stated that it doesn't matter what the international community things.

"Foo did something wrong."

"Bar did the wrong thing as well."

"So what, Quz, Qid and Qaz agree that Foo did something wrong."

It doesn't matter what Quz, Qid and Qaz think. Plurality does not justify propaganda.

Let me put the simple point like this:

Every country do something wrong.

To go from "no country is perfect" to "all countries are equally bad" is Putin's propaganda position -- and the whole democratic world disagrees with your and Putin on this.

It's not a competition; there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse. Both do wrong, and none can objectively say whether one does more wrong than the other.

What we can do is call a spade a spade whenever we see one.

>> there is no objective yardstick by which to measure which country is worse.

That can't be intellectually honest.

There are lots of metrics. E.g. human rights compliance, press freedom, number of murdered journalists in the country/year, freedom indexes and so on.

Bye.

There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective. For instance, in this very thread it is evident that agreement cannot be found upon whether or not cooperating with Government agencies on messaging is an unethical journalistic practice[0].

There are many metrics, but very few of them are objective; that doesn't mean that those which are not objective are not meaningful, but it means that finding agreement is likely impossible.

To be clear: I do not believe that Russia is in the right, in terms of their concealed use of propaganda. That does not mean I must hold my nose and accept that the Americans engage in clandestine propaganda in collusion with private media.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379153

>> There is no objective yardstick because the ethical conditions are subjective.

So the yardsticks measuring differences between dictatorships and dictators are relative..?

THAT is an uncommon claim these days -- it was common before 1989, from communists supporting Soviet.

And then you ignored my examples:

  - Human rights
  - State control of media
  - Personal freedom indexes
  - Risks for critical journalists to be murdered

This is just funny.

s/relative/just subjective/

I have not talked about the "international community", I talked about that the democratic countries agree, regarding Putin's propaganda. Elegant rewrite, by the way.

And so on.

You said Western Democracies agree; and I asked why not All Democracies, and stated that it doesn't matter who agrees.

But I wonder, why do you reject non-Western Democracies?

Why do you care?

You claim -- just like Putin's employees -- that there are no real differences between dictatorships and democracies anyway.

And you won't touch if human rights, freedom, media freedom and so on are irrelevant... (The academic measurements of them are part of the conspiracy against Russia?)

Edit: Enough. I'm not going to get my account banned over a 350 karma troll. Bait away, making more weird claims. :-)

This is in references to illogical comparisons.

"How long does it take a soviet to earn enough to buy a car?" "Well, you lynch black people."

This is not that situation; it is one's state propaganda and another's state propaganda.