In Hydro’s defence, their comment was the first time I chuckled reading this thread.

Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to communicate.

I’m not saying the article is telling you to push boundaries. I’m saying the article is treating it like other forms of autonomy restricting actions, rather than as assault. This is accurate for most people and the lens kids will intuitively understand, but it’s not accurate for everyone. Therefore it’s an unintuitive lens for teaching.

This article doesn’t really acknowledge that for some people, tickling can be really painful. “without control or autonomy. It can start to feel bad or scary pretty quickly.” – This can just as well apply to restraining someone. Which is why I’m not sure I agree with the premise. Most things, such as restraining someone, hitting someone, hugging someone, we can sympathise with as kids and therefore approach the notion of consent with sympathy. But tickling is a very different experience for someone who can enjoy it vs someone who can’t.

Get consent.

These aren’t Russian soldiers. This article is about the civil war in Ukraine. These are people with Ukrainian passports. The article uses the phrasing “Pro-Russian” because the separatists wanted economic integration with Russia after gaining independence. This is pragmatic, they would naturally be cut off from the west, and their existing economic integration with Russia was an asset to them. There’s no invasion detailed in this article, other than by the AFU if you consider the break away republics to have been legitimate.

Ok. I misunderstood why you contrasted with Crimea.

Could you be more specific? This is a 7000 word article that doesn’t appear to support your claim from a skim reading, other than possibly the August 25 entry. Though there the claim is also preceded by stating it’s a fabricated lie.

But they didn’t? They invaded Crimea. If you’ve conflated the Donbas and Crimea on a map you will have a very skewed understanding of this conflict.

Are you saying Crimeans want to be part of Ukraine?

You’re trying to say by implication that the ship has sailed on Bush and Obama, but they’re still alive. The USA Olympics team is still around. Even if you should’ve banned them in 1890 doesn’t mean you still can’t. They haven’t apologised, paid reparations, or ceased any of their human rights violating projects.

What support do you think you give? The “support” you give is either A) The cost of running your own propaganda, and paying target-nation actors. B) Weapons you buy from your own capitalists. C) Bribes in exchange for target-nation puppets to exploit their own people for the benefit of your capitalists. There is no fourth category.

What about the 8 years they spent provoking it?

USA probably exploded an actual bomb somewhere while he said that.

Why would ASPI do credible research into the ethnic minorities in China? Who are ASPI again? Actually, what’s ASPI’s own track record of being directly responsible for systematic murder of muslims?

Okay. I think this is a very fair and good comment. So this is their most recent published work. https://uhrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/UHRP-Humanitarian-Needs-Report_2023-02-01.pdf.pdf

Ctrl F, RFA 7 matches, RFERL 6 matches, radio free 7 matches, uhrp.org to see how many times they source themselves. There are 23 matches but only 19 instances of them using circular sourcing. ASPI 1 match. Jamestown 2 matches. There are some better sources in there, like Human Rights Watch, but the HRW article in question uses Adrian Zenz as their source. The only source I’m seeing quickly that isn’t directly with zero steps of separation tied to a NATO member spy agency or propaganda agency is NY Times.

For the New York Times article though be careful following their Tinyurl link because it goes through a Viglink reroute that is unlikely to be safe. I can’t imagine why else they’d find it appropriate to use a tinyurl link in their paper if not to attack readers. You can use an extractor service. But anyway if you read that article you’ll see that their source is only Uyghur Human Rights Project so it’s a circular citation again. No I don’t check stuff like this every time. But by now we should know that Uyghur Human Rights Project is an untrustworthy front for Adrian Zenz and stop when we encounter it.

Adrian Zens is integral to the Uyghur Human Rights Project. I suppose I don’t do new research, I just follow links until I find something I’ve judged as untrustworthy before. He’s not directly credited as a contributor, but Uyghur Human Rights Project uses him as their source for all their publishing, and invites him to their events.

I’d like to draw attention to how every tankie who commented in this thread actually looked at the sources whereas the liberals mostly read the headline.

Can’t you guys just stop using Adrian Zens? Is no one else able to make up unhinged nonsense about China? Literally all it takes is for him to adopt a pseudonym and the credibility of the propaganda increases entirely for free.