Re:Bakhmut Is Gone: An Aerial Look at the War’s Destruction
by photochemsyn on Monday May 22, 2023 @12:08PM
(#36033221)
The NYT at least provides a historical record, though their day-to-day reporting involves a lot of historical amnesia. Take a look at this from 2002:
> "President Bush heads to Moscow this week for his first summit meeting there, one that his advisers call a historic start to Russia's integration with the West... By breeding and experience, Mr. Putin may be the most Westernized leader in Russian history... The American view, as espoused this month by one senior Bush administration diplomat, is that the summit meeting 'really puts the Russian-U.S. relationship on a firm course of long-term partnership, even a long-term alliance.'"
It's curious how little interest the media has in examining why this one-promising 'alliance' failed to materialize, and instead broke apart, with arms control treaties torn up by both sides and escalating belligerence as bad as the worst episodes of the Cold War, such that an outbreak of nuclear war is now an ever-present risk. Any cursory news search will reveal that both Russian and American nuclear forces have moved to what looks like a hair-trigger status, as evidenced by various large-scale nuclear drills, public statements, etc.
Some plausible issues are economic conflicts over who gets to sell fossil fuels to European markets (and where that oil money ends up), the general desire of military-industrial interests in both countries to keep military spending intact, and the general political opportunism involved in nationalistic chest-beating and demonizing of the enemy, etc.
> "President Bush heads to Moscow this week for his first summit meeting there, one that his advisers call a historic start to Russia's integration with the West... By breeding and experience, Mr. Putin may be the most Westernized leader in Russian history... The American view, as espoused this month by one senior Bush administration diplomat, is that the summit meeting 'really puts the Russian-U.S. relationship on a firm course of long-term partnership, even a long-term alliance.'"
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/20/world/in-czar-peter-s-cap...
It's curious how little interest the media has in examining why this one-promising 'alliance' failed to materialize, and instead broke apart, with arms control treaties torn up by both sides and escalating belligerence as bad as the worst episodes of the Cold War, such that an outbreak of nuclear war is now an ever-present risk. Any cursory news search will reveal that both Russian and American nuclear forces have moved to what looks like a hair-trigger status, as evidenced by various large-scale nuclear drills, public statements, etc.
Some plausible issues are economic conflicts over who gets to sell fossil fuels to European markets (and where that oil money ends up), the general desire of military-industrial interests in both countries to keep military spending intact, and the general political opportunism involved in nationalistic chest-beating and demonizing of the enemy, etc.