Sunday, July 20, 2014

Ukraine: down the memory hole

"Moment they realised it was a civilian plane"

From the Daily Mail, Saturday 19 July 2014, page 4

Interesting to compare the Daily Mail's print edition with its online counterpart. Sam Greenhill's helpful contextualisation (boxed in red above) seems to be missing, at least on my visit to the site (c. 9.30 am).

Perhaps the exclusion is merely to avoid giving more material to conspiracy theorists to fuss over, but in the present climate of profound public distrust it could have the opposite effect. As it is, both versions of the article are festooned with caveats ("appear", "claim", "allegedly" etc).

A little verbal telltale in the translation - "yards" for "gardens" - said "American English" to me, though whether that means translated by an American, or by a Ukrainian who has learned the American version of English, I couldn't say.

From the online Daily Mail (accessed 20 July 2014)

Nothing is what it seems.

And speaking of context, here is the sterling Peter Hitchens  (embedded link is mine):

One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, war is hard to stop and often takes shocking turns.
 
So those who began the current war in Ukraine – the direct cause of the frightful murder of so many innocents on Flight MH17 on Thursday – really have no excuse.
 
There is no doubt about who they were. In any war, the aggressor is the one who makes the first move into neutral or disputed territory.
 
And that aggressor was the European Union, which rivals China as the world’s most expansionist power, swallowing countries the way performing seals swallow fish (16 gulped down since 1995).
 
Ignoring repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from Moscow, the EU – backed by the USA – sought to bring Ukraine into its orbit. It did so through violence and illegality, an armed mob and the overthrow of an elected president.
 
I warned then that this would lead to terrible conflict. I wrote in March: ‘Having raised hopes that we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world – and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?’
 
Now we see. Largely unreported over the past few months, a filthy little war has been under way in Eastern Ukraine.
 
Many innocents have died, unnoticed in the West. Neither side has anything to boast of – last Tuesday 11 innocent civilians died in an airstrike on a block of flats in the town of Snizhne, which Ukraine is unconvincingly trying to blame on Russia. 
 
 
from Wikipedia


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1 comment:

A K Haart said...

Interesting quote from Hitchens. From the inside it may appear to be more benign than it really is - even to Eurosceptics.