You kip if you want to

The media are getting far too excited than is good for them. They have been in a frenzy over UKIP for months. Last week the local election results were reported as a surge of support for UKIP. Given the wall-to-wall coverage and stunts like Nick Clegg's amazing act of stupidity in agreeing to debate Farage on TV, it wouldn't be surprising if there had been. There is only one problem. UKIP gained 22% of the vote in 2013 and 17% in 2014. They had lost support. This should have given pause for thought, but it didn't. Commentators were saved by the European election results, with UKIP topping the polls with 27% of a very low turnout. The media breathed a sigh of relief and their big political story lives on, until they get bored with it that is.

That story isn't as simple as portrayed. European election results rarely correlate to votes in a general election and they hugely over-represent fringe parties. Think back to the last time. Then, it was the BNP that was the talk of the town. Two fascists were elected. Everyone got very excited. Nick Griffin was invited onto Newsnight. This year they were wiped out.

Analysis and reporting has also been lazy (at best) when looking at the figures. In the local elections UKIP lost votes but gained seats. To sustain the narrative, the share of the vote was ignored and the gain in seats highlighted. But the media was keen to paint the elections as a failure for Labour, so in their case they concentrated on share of the vote (the largest, but not enough to win a general election), not on the more than 300 seats gained. The problem of using seats to gauge popular support is that their distribution often reflects the crankiness of the electoral system, rather than share of the vote. Any meaningful comparison has to look at the share of the vote alone.

If you do this, then things look a lot more interesting. Britain seems to be becoming a much more multi-party polity. This will create all sorts of anomalies at the general election as first-past-the-post is poor at giving representation to smaller national parties. The electoral reform debate is not going away.

The second thing that is obvious is that Labour is recovering, pretty slowly, but improving all the time nevertheless. The only two parties that have gained are Labour and UKIP. It is just that nobody seems interested in talking about Labour. Also on the left, there is the continuing support for the Green Party. They are holding their place too.

The Liberal Democrats certainly should be worried, their support is melting away. UKIP is not helping the Conservatives either. They face the prospect of a divided right. The major parties are pretty resilient. I remember back to the times when the SDP was supposed to be the new force that would supersede Labour. They didn't but they did divide the left, leaving the way open for big Conservative majorities. UKIP will not replace the Tories, but they can lose them seats in marginal constituencies.

After the banking crisis and the politics of austerity, some polarisation is apparent. This time the main challenge is coming from an embittered right, itching to be nasty once more. UKIP is its latest indulgence. Certainly they represent an unlovely and authoritarian suburban insurgency, but a new force in British politics? Don't hold your breath.

Mad dogs

The unexpected can sometimes be an integral part of the familiar. An old friendship regained means alcohol-fuelled conversations filled with nostalgic reminiscences of shared times, whilst eagerly taking advantage of the missing years by retelling favourite stories to the only person in our social circles who hasn't heard them a thousand times before. But then the person we have become is not always the same as the person we were. What of this new friendship, this time one between an academic writer and a playwright, neither of whom we had known before? How would that work out? This surprise was put to the test last weekend.

I went to see two one-act plays performed under the title of Mad Dogs and an Englishman, written by my old school friend, Tim Elgood. There was a nagging anxiety the whole time. What if I didn't like them? Even worse, what if I didn't like them when I was sitting next to the very self-conscious author? What if I didn't like them when one of the main characters in the first play was a dog I knew thirty years ago whose portrait was painted by my aunt? Ah. The last bit should give you a clue. How could I not like anything quite so ... well ... idiosyncratic.

Tim writes comedies. Only serious topics make worthwhile comedy. The first play is about three dogs in a dog rescue centre. Like all anthropomorphic writing it is really concerned with the human condition; homelessness, despair, aggression, cynicism, survival, love, and the increasingly pressing need of middle aged males for a pee. There is care and respect for animals underneath too (Tim was always mad about animals and was the only friend I ever had at school who kept a plastic tub in his lean-to containing pet mud leeches). Except he makes you think about them - differently - subversively. Animal themes invite sentimentality and kitsch, not the perception and dark tenderness evoked here. There are jokes and they are funny, but it is the tenderness that makes you smile.

The second play, Bare Words, is a dialogue between one person. It is about the agony of writing and the role of seduction in art. All writers will identify with it instantly. Others will enjoy it too, even if they come out with a vague sense of horror about what really goes on in an author's mind.

Tim's writing is accessible, intelligent and witty. A word should also be put in for the excellent cast and production, but it was the writer that concerned me. And I feel rather proud to have such a new old friend.

Anyway, go and see them if you can. There is a YouTube taster below.

Moaning

One of the things that I keep reading about the rise of the UK Independence Party is that it appeals to angry people. This is OK as far as it goes, but the sentence isn't complete. No, UKIP appeals to angry people with bugger all to be angry about. It isn't tapping into real deprivation or discontent, but suburban self-pity. So I was pleased to come across this article about the same phenomenon in the United States.

Kathleen Geier skewers a piece of conservative resentment by Tal Fortgang that seems to have gone viral in the States. She is deliciously contemptuous:

Fortang is a college freshman, after all, and it reads very much like the kind of thing a young, upper middle class, white dude with a pretentious vocabulary (see: “Weltanschauung”) and no experience in the real world would write.

But her real points are about the way it was taken up by a fawning press and by the author's of denial of privilege and claim to victimhood. This is a common trick, she writes:

... today’s plutocrats face a huge obstacle: they have struggled with zero major obstacles or hardships in their lives. This makes it very hard to craft biographies and stump speeches that can make the candidate relatable to the average Joe and Jane Sixpack. What to do? The answer, it seems, is to wheel out the grandparents. Cue the violins.

As she says,

They are madly envious of women, people of color, sexual minorities, and the poor for whatever public sympathy they get for their suffering, and they desperately want in on the action.

 The difference in the UK is that you don't have to dredge up any evidence. You just have to pretend.

The whole narrative doesn't just rest on scapegoating or blaming the victims, but on the bizarre claim that the privileged are the real, authentic victims, despite their easy, lucky lives. It is a political discourse based on the grumblings of saloon bar bores, complaints that everything is going to the dogs, together with a sense of peeved indignation that they haven't got even more. What a waste of their lives. Why don't they just enjoy themselves?

Cynicism

Sometimes I wonder about editorial standards. But when I read the Guardian, I abandon all hope at all. If I had received this article as an undergraduate essay, I would have failed it. The Guardian published it.

It would be easy to fisk the piece, but I have a life. Perhaps the most irritating bit is this:

 ... we also witnessed that old standby "no-fly zone", which actually means "flying-and-bombing zone"

Actually no, it means preventing someone else flying and bombing. For example, it was the no-fly zone established over Northern Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991 (remember?) that saved the Kurdish people from Saddam's genocidal suppression of their uprising. It was an achievement that has made John Major into a rather unlikely national hero for the Kurdish people.

Instead, the tactic of a no-fly zone is presented here as a capricious excuse made by someone who just likes bombing "people we don't like in the Middle East" for the hell of it (with no attempt to address the reason why we might not like them). Strip actions from context and meaning and you lose precision and all connection with reality. And this obfuscation is in a column about the clarity of language! As for the bit about Syria ... stop it, I have had enough.

I am prone to making big speeches about the difference between cynicism and scepticism. Scepticism is wholly to be welcomed and is based on evidence, investigation and critical thinking. Cynicism is a posture. It is a generalised mocking stance, one that is inherently conservative. That might sound odd, cynicism often has a radical sound. Yet it answers the question, 'what can we do', with one word; 'nothing'. It is a recipe for paralysis and posing. This article is pure, rampant cynicism.

Sceptics see realities with all their risks, complexities and obstacles. But they don't relapse into fatalism. They believe that something can be done. And on occasion that may mean using military force to stop genocide. Cynicism is the fashion of the moment and I wonder how many lives this bien pensant sneering will cost in the long run.

Oops!

Putin Accidentally Releases REAL Crimea Vote Numbers

As we know, the official results as reported by the Kremlin were 83% turnout, with 97% voting for annexation.Let me repeat that:
Official Kremlin results: 97% for annexation, turnout 83 percent, and percent of Crimeans voting in favor 82%.
President’s Human Rights Council results: 50% for annexation, turnout 30%, percent of Crimeans voting in favor 15%.

Who would have guessed?

History

Thanks to Snoopy for this translation of a must-read interview. A snippet:

...Putin is a thug, in classically conventional sense. He "sees everyone in a coffin" and he does not care for the consequences. And not because he's crazy, absolutely not. It is just that they all were that way in the KGB. And the people who are around Putin: Sergei and Viktor Ivanov, Sechin - are exactly the same.

Thoughts on Moyse

Football v education.

Football.

Appoint a new manager. Not up to the job.
Sack him. 

If Manchester United was a university.

Appoint a new coach. Not up to the job.
Promote him to manager.
All the players complain.
Get rid of them.
Attendances fall.
Write papers about how fans are not economically viable.
Relegation.
Sack the programme sellers.
Relegation again.
Blame the pitch and sack the ground staff.
Another relegation.
Send manager on a management training course.
He fails.
Promote him to director of football and appoint his best friend as manager. Call them the dream team. Drop into the conference.
Give the manager and director of football a big pay rise.
Go bankrupt.
The club bought by China.
The manager and director of football get a huge pay-off. The stadium is named after them in recognition of their outstanding service.
They then write a newspaper column about how the club wasn't good enough for them.

NB. Some of these apply equally to Newcastle United.

Mental health

Which of these is the craziest?

John Pilger regurgitating Russian propaganda and bonkers conspiracy theories about Washington launching a 'proxy "colour" coup against the elected government of Ukraine' and 'Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet' (by invading and annexing part of a state whose territorial integrity they had guaranteed in return for them giving up nuclear weapons - not the best argument for nuclear disarmament), before going on to his latest obsession - an American plot to invade China.

Or,

A certain Mr Amess who has developed a phobia about Kim Kardashian after watching her sex tape; "the sight of Kim writhing around with her huge bum and the sound of her horrible, high-pitch wailing repulsed me … The experience left me terrified and I never wanted to see her face again".

It's obvious. Pilger by a mile. Never mind, the Guardian will always find a home for him.

Nurse!

Hey man!

We are in the midst of a primordial redefining of flow that will remove the barriers to the nexus itself. Who are we? Where on the great quest will we be recreated? Our conversations with other storytellers have led to a blossoming of ultra-dynamic consciousness.

Yep, it is one of those word generator thingies. This one produces a full article of New-Age bullshit at the click of a mouse. Rather like the Alan Sokal hoax, it is indistinguishable from the real thing and just as meaningless. How long will it be before one of these appears on an inspirational quote website?

There is a serious point to all this fun. The generator's creator writes,

Sometimes, there is a better way to pull your head out of the clouds and the charlatans’ hands out of your pockets. All it takes is a sneaking suspicion that this doctrine you’ve come to defend, fund and worship is, all things considered, perhaps a bit silly. Ridicule can be more persuasive than reason when it’s done right.

Not just effective, but funny.

The return of the Plump

Back in Greece for Easter. Spring has been early, but the trees are in blossom and the scent of jasmine and orange blossom compete with the song of the nightingales for airspace. And I have just spotted my first mosquito. Summer is round the corner.

It is a brief trip this time, sandwiched between two events. The first, unusual and lucrative, a colloquium in London that provided intense conversation and even more intense alcohol consumption. It was enormous fun. Most of those present would not have been natural political allies, but what was really interesting was not arguing out the differences, but finding the areas of agreement or, at least, of mutual interest. And discussion is so much more pleasant when washed down by free Rémy Martin.

After Easter I am off to give a paper at the European Social Science History Conference in Vienna. So I am maintaining my academic career, but without the salary (something surely wrong here, ed).

In all this gallivanting, thoughts of blogging have been few and far between. So, try this for some light entertainment.

Friday cat blogging - with a difference

Lisel Hintz has written an excellent piece on the widespread electoral fraud in the Turkish municipal elections for the Washington Post. The vote rigging is unprecedented in a usually clean electoral process. Hintz suggests reasons why it was different this time round.

Among the ingenious excuses coming from the government is the one that a highly convenient power outage that stopped vote counting was caused by a cat. Inevitably, a meme has resulted. The internet is a great device for mockery and when cats are involved, it will take off.

Turkey anyone?

The continuing protests and repression in Turkey have got, at best, sporadic coverage. The attempts to ban Twitter and YouTube after they were used to leak evidence of corruption did get some notice. But the local election results are being portrayed uncritically as an endorsement of Erdogan and an indicator of opposition failure. For example, Simon Tisdall reports in the Guardian;

For the first time, it was suggested, his (Erdogan's) remarkable grip on the working class and rural vote was beginning to slip. The municipal poll results provide scant evidence to support this theory. The AKP's share of the vote was up six points on 2009, at around 45%, while the main opposition trailed with around 29%. On the other hand, the AKP total was 5% down on the last general election, when it polled 50% of all votes. Some voters, at least, may have turned against their prime minister.  

However, this is from a source who knows the country well:

As many of you know, yesterday probably the largest electoral fraud in Turkey since 1946 was discovered in Ankara. The method (writing fake numbers into the computer system that didn't tally with the ballot box counts) were used for hundreds of ballot boxes (the CHP say 70,000 of their votes were not counted or transferred to other parties) seen to have been used in a number of other Turkish cities as well. Once the fraud was discovered, well over a thousand volunteers went out to follow the physical paper trail and there were protests in front of the Supreme Electoral Council (where the fraud had taken place) and in front of polling stations in CHP areas where they are still refusing to count the votes.
The problem: the Supreme Electoral Council was both responsible for the fraud (Efkan Âlâ, the Interior Minister, himself stopped vote counting in CHP areas between 2-5am, apparently in order to allow it to happen) AND it is the body which handles appeals. So it may be that there is no justice, even if the fraud is documented down to the minutest detail (on the Twitter hashtag ‪#‎TutanakNO‬ you can see photographs of almost every ballot box total, and you can compare them online to the Supreme Electoral Council results, if you want to check for yourself).

It seems like the blow to democracy that Tisdall fears has already happened.

UPDATE:

See here for an account of the protests

On writing

I have been confined to the loft writing a paper/article. It has been a bit of a struggle and made me think about the process. Basically, it is weird. I used to think that Orwell's line was the best:

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

But now he has been surpassed by Robert De Niro at the Oscars.

The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.

Yes. Spot on Robert.

I would have left it at that if it hadn't been for a horrible piece of contemptuous arrogance by Hanif Kureishi. A professor of creative writing describing creative writing classes as a waste of time is a classic example of biting the hand that feeds you. It craved a robust response. And Tim Clare was robust indeed; and wise; and funny. Read it all, it is well worth your time. It is relevant to more than creative writing as well. It is a wonderful, touching post about education as a whole and one that everyone who teaches should read and digest. The money line is this:

So it may come as a surprise to learn that I agree with Mr Kureishi, insofar as a creative writing course probably is a waste of time, if your tutors have been picked on the basis of literary prestige and not on their ability – or willingness – to teach a fucking class.

Hat tipped towards Alan and George 

A discerning reader

Well, a reader anyway. At least there's one.

Smoke gets in your eyes

I am having some work done on my house. The builder's name is Joe. He has never heard of Joe the Esso Blue dealer. In fact, he has never heard of Esso Blue.

Of course, when he started out Joe was not the dealer.



But then, by the time he launched his recording career, he was.



I'm getting old, aren't I?

Return

It has been one hell of a week after a friend collapsed with a brain tumour. After rushing around, I am now catching up with reading and whilst scanning the papers two bits of news struck me. The first was the continuing problems at RBS and the Co-op Bank, with accompanying stories about the vast salaries and bonuses given to their senior managers, despite the mess. The second was the announcement of a pay freeze for health service staff. The conclusion is obvious.

This is about more than economic inequity, it is about the value structure of hierarchical societies. The health professionals, from paramedics in the ambulance to the surgeon who operated, were magnificent; empathetic as well as efficient. The care my friend has received cannot be faulted. But where do the rewards and the esteem go - to managers. Management does matter and good management does make a difference. So does bad management. The good ones ensure that people can do their jobs, the bad ones stop them. But, ultimately, what matters is the job and the people who do it. Yet the ideology of managerialism reduces them to chess pieces, to be manipulated at will. Their position is servile, but they are all we care about and without them lives can be lost. They are the ones we need.

Instead of judging people on the work they do, we reward them for where they stand in the hierarchy. And the skills needed to get to those positions are not the ones that save lives.

And a supplementary thought: The technology and pharmacology involved in saving someone's life is awesome. Those who promote 'alternative remedies' or ludicrous (and profitable) sales of sugar pills masquerading as drugs, all the while decrying conventional medicine, can kill.

Continuing crisis

The attention span of the British media is not long. The Crimean crisis rumbles on, but has slipped out of the headlines. But interesting things are being written for inexpert eyes like mine. The third of Timothy Snyder's pieces on Ukraine is here. This time he is focusing on Russian propaganda and makes two points. The first is to do with its role in the internal coherence of the regime. The second is about how it is not necessarily about changing minds, but setting the agenda for reportage. I thought this was perceptive:

Plenty of people in the West now spread Russian propaganda, sometimes for money, sometimes from ignorance, and sometimes for reasons best known to themselves. Those who repeat the Russian propaganda conceits do not need to convince everyone, only to set the terms of debate. If people in free societies have their discussions framed for them by rulers of unfree societies, then they will not notice the history unfolding around them (a revolution just happened in Europe!) or sense the urgency of formulating policy in a desperate situation (a European country has just invaded another!). Propaganda can serve this technical purpose no matter how absurd it is.

Snyder is keen to point out that this is a national revolution against an oppressive kleptocracy, not a nationalist coup against Russia, something that is backed up here. This site is well worth exploring for voices coming from inside the revolution.

Of course, the only way farcical propaganda like the stuff Russia is coming out with can begin to set an agenda is if there is something, however small, to point to as 'evidence'. In comments on the other posts, Snoopy points out that, though the Russian account is "bullshit", we should be cautious of the role of the far right and points to this report from David Stern, which is a fair summary of what his contacts are telling him. Stern points out that ambitious, minority far right parties are a European, not merely Ukrainian, phenomenon, not least in Russia. But the aftermath of a revolution may give them opportunities. He comments,

Their role in ousting the president and establishing a new Euromaidan-led government should not be exaggerated... nor should their involvement be played down, especially now they have assumed key ministerial posts. Euromaidan officials are not fascists, nor do fascists dominate the movement.Contrary to some claims, ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers are not being attacked or under threat of violence. And anti-Semitism has played absolutely no role in the demonstrations and government.

That said, Snyder may well be indulging in wishful thinking about the threat of the far right, particularly if we look towards events in Hungary. However, to characterise this as a fascist coup is the equivalent of equating all anti-austerity opinion in Greece with Golden Dawn. Stern is also realistic in pointing out that,

... even though the far right are a minority, for their numbers they have played an outsized, though not decisive, role.

Stern concludes,

Svoboda are not violent fascists and may change with time. But as Ukraine's crisis grows, and the far right helps patrol Kiev's streets in "self-defence units," they bear close watching. Very close.

Snyder's conclusion is concerned with the links between Russian propaganda and Russian authoritarianism and adventurism.

The costs of what Russia has done are very real, for Europe, for Ukraine, and for Russia itself. Russian propaganda has elegantly provided a rationale for Russian tactics and articulately defined a Russian dream for Ukraine. But in the end propaganda is all that unites the tactics and the dream, and that unity turns out to be wishful. There is no actual policy, no strategy, just a talented and tortured tyrant oscillating between mental worlds that are connected only by a tissue of lies. Putin faces a choice: use far more violence, in the hope that another surge will finally make the dream come true, or seek an exit in which he can claim some victory—which would be wise but deflating. He appears to feel the weight of this choice.

Proceeds of crime

1. Petty theft:

Aditya Chakrabortty on senior university management:

Forming before our eyes is a new breed of academic fat cat. Except that, with a handful of exceptions, these academics stopped teaching or researching decades ago and now bob about from campus to campus: cutting here, screwing things up there before moving on to the next debacle. 

...In good times, they justify mega-pay as the going rate for "talent". In bad times, they just take the cash.

Sounds vaguely familiar somehow.

2. Grand larceny

Ben Judah on Russian attitudes to the West:

Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.  

We are not talking big money. But very big money. None other than Putin’s Central Bank has estimated that two thirds of the $56 billion exiting Russia in 2012 might be traceable to illegal activities. Crimes like kickbacks, drug money or tax fraud. This is the money that posh English bankers are rolling out the red carpet for in London.

So bankers, the London property market and Chelsea Football Club are all receivers of stolen goods.

Welcome to the new kleptocracy.

Enjoy

Hours of malicious fun await.

Make your own gay Putin with Putin Gay Dress-Up

Support our fight against Russian anti-gay laws! On June 30 last year Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into law an “anti-gay propaganda” bill, which made it illegal to engage in any behavior that could be considered “gay propaganda.” 

PutinGayDressUp.com wants to make a playful stand against homosexual discrimination and legal actions taken under the regional anti-LGBT propaganda laws. And it is really happening! In St. Petersburg in particular, activists and performers, including international superstars like Madonna and Lady Gaga, have faced fines and legal proceedings for expressing support for the local LGBT community. One individual was arrested and fined in St. Petersburg for holding a sign supporting LGBT rights that sated simply “Gay is Normal.” Six LGBT activists were also detained in front of the State Children's Library in Moscow in July with another “Gay is Normal” banner. And at the end of July, four Dutch videographers filming a documentary on LGBT rights in Russia were briefly detained under the federal law, supposedly for interviewing LGBT youth, and then released and deported on a technicality.  

Unacceptable! If you agree, support our fight, dress-up your own gay Putin and share with the world!

Thanks to C-J

Ukraine: propaganda and reality

Two more articles on Ukraine that are worth your time. I cannot comment on the situation in general, not having the expertise. I liked both these articles because they told me I was right not to. But they deal with something that does interest me, how arguments are constructed and transmitted, often against empirical evidence. Both address the propaganda being bandied about at the moment and are by people who do have considerable expertise on Ukraine and its history.

Timothy Snyder, author of a well-recieved history of Ukraine in the Second World War, follows up an earlier article with this piece in the New York Review of Books. It is a passionate defence of the revolution against its presentation as a nationalist or fascist coup, as repeated in the western world by those like the unlovely combination of Lyndon LaRouche, Ron Paul and the Guardian.

Instead, he argues:

... it was a classic popular revolution. It began with an unmistakably reactionary regime. A leader sought to gather all power, political as well as financial, in his own hands. ... The country, Ukraine, was in effect an oligarchy, where much of the wealth was in the hands of people who could fit in one elevator. But even this sort of pluralism, the presence of more than one very rich person, was too much for the leader, Viktor Yanukovych. He wanted to be not only the president but the oligarch-in-chief. ... Tens of billions of dollars simply disappeared from the state budget.  

It is hard to have all of the power and all of the money at the same time, because power comes from the state, and the state has to have a budget. If a leader steals so much from the people that the state goes bankrupt, then his power is diminished. Yanukovych actually faced this problem last year. And so, despite everything, he became vulnerable, in a very curious way. He needed someone to finance the immediate debts of the Ukrainian state so that his regime would not fall along with it.

For Snyder, the uprisisng is a diverse popular struggle against kleptocracy.

The second, by Anton Shekhovtsov, is a more detailed rebuttal of another article. He links to a petition on change.org by specialists on the Ukrainian far-right that makes for telling reading.

While we are critical of far right activities on the EuroMaidan, we are, nevertheless, disturbed by a dangerous tendency in too many international media reports dealing with the recent events in Ukraine. An increasing number of lay assessments of the Ukrainian protest movement, to one degree or another, misrepresents the role, salience and impact of Ukraine’s far right within the protest movement. Numerous reports allege that the pro-European movement is being infiltrated, driven or taken over by radically ethnocentrist groups of the lunatic fringe. Some presentations create the misleading impression that ultra-nationalist actors and ideas are at the core or helm of the Ukrainian protests. Graphic pictures, juicy quotes, sweeping comparisons and dark historical references are in high demand. They are combined with a disproportionate consideration of one particularly visible, yet politically minor segment within the confusing mosaic that is formed by the hundreds of thousands of protesters with their different motivations, backgrounds and aims.

Their conclusion has universal application,

...we call upon all those who have either no particular interest for, or no deeper knowledge of, Ukraine to not comment on this region’s complicated national questions without engaging in some in-depth research. ... Reporters who have the necessary time, energy and resources should visit Ukraine, or/and do some serious reading on the issues their articles address. Those who are unable to do so may want to turn their attention to other, more familiar, uncomplicated and less ambivalent topics. This should help to avoid, in the future, the unfortunately numerous clichés, factual errors, and misinformed opinion that often accompany discussions of events in Ukraine.

Reporters doing proper research? Whatever next.