[zer0c]

"It is not possible to accept that the shelling of Tskhinvali during much of the night with GRAD multiple rocket launchers (MRLS) and heavy artillery would satisfy the requirements of ha ving been necessary and proportionate in order to defend those villages. It follows from the illegal character of the Georgian military assault that South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence."

(c) Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia (IIFFMCG) Volume I

Don't trust everything from the mass scream media... and "believe" is something for the church. There is this thing called Google on the internets I "believe".

[FleshGordon]

A good start is assume that ANYTHING published from russian channels will be propaganda. It's a bandit state.

[fsloth]

Most official output from russia needs a really heavy filtering. But to use the word 'bandit state' - I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

To me, a bandit state echoes a temporary institution that is held up mostly through the use and threat of direct violence. To my eyes elements of the current status harken to a russian tzardom hundreds of years back.

Strong autocratic leaders have always been a part of the political apparatus and the fatalistic psyche of the population drive individuls to yield, survive and pour their energies to something else than politics. It is also notable that russia is a typical country suffering from the curse of oil which itself is empirically a really hard thing to avoid or heal from which twists the dynamics even further.

I would suggest three brief bodies of text to explore the problem of russia to those who are not familiar with them:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Kennan's long telegram: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/ke...

And thirdly, a bit longer work that reads like an autobiographic surrealist version of Catch-22, a description of the soviet system which trained most of those now in power (Suvorov:"Inside the soviet military"): http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html

[honeybooboo123]

Dude, what Western people are completely missing, is that we're being bombarded with propaganda too! The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?

Putin is evil and Obama is good, right? Nevermind that the US is still torturing people in the very Guantanamo Obama promised to close.

It's just not as simple as choosing to side with "the good guys" (=The West). In reality, it's a game of politicians vs us little folks, ie. rulers vs subjects.

[mcv]

> The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?

Suddenly? They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.

Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same. It means that the other country should stop. Can we stop making this a race to the bottom?

[honeybooboo123]

> They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.

I'm not so sure about that.

> Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same.

I'm equally against all "countries" (=governments, in practice). You may have noticed they all do bad things, either currently or eventually.

[mcv]

> I'm not so sure about that.

It's easy to verify by looking up some dates. The law against homosexual propaganda stems from June 2013, and has been widely criticized ever since, including calls to boycott the Winter Olympics at Sochi, in February 2014. The protests that led to the Euromaidan revolution started in November 2013, the actual revolution took place in February 2014, and was soon followed by Russian intervention.

If you didn't start to pay attention to Russia until after the crisis started, I can imagine you might think the homophobia criticism came only after the crisis, but it actually started half a year earlier.

[honeybooboo123]

There's been such a massive propaganda campaign over Ukraine that it's difficult to verify anything.

But what we do know is that it's all a geopolitical power struggle. The US wants Kiev under its control, but that control has been slipping.

[zer0c]

Yeah, and WP and Fox News are the trustworthy sources. :D

[BruceM]

I (and others apparently) down-voted this for the tone. Your last paragraph wasn't necessary and detracted from your overall point.

[zer0c]

That's fair enough. Thanks for the hint/clarification.