Russia: Other Points of View, predictably enough, has had a plethora of “rich” (in the “yeah, that’s rich!” sense of the word) materials to condemn the Western’s media’s tendency to present opinion and sensationalist rhetoric as fact in the service of one point of view (the West’s, or more particularly, America’s neocon foreign policy elite).
Streetwise Professor wrote On Russophobia, The charge of “Russophobia” is hurled around with some abandon, and I have been the target of such accusations on more than one occasion, especially in the hothouse environment of the ongoing Russo-Georgian War. More often than not, this word is used as an ad hominem substitute for reasoned argument,
Patrick Armstron in Russia Today penned a polemic on the Importance of Chronology. The issues he raises are so important that I will quote it in full. … On Thursday August 7, 2008, President Saakashvili of Georgia went on TV and addressed his country. There had been outbreaks of shooting in South Ossetia for some
Russia’s representative at the UNSC, Vitaly Churkin, against the dramatic backdrop of Georgia’s criminal assault on Ossetia that is implicitly backed by the US and its closest allies, made a great speech lambasting Western hypocrisy, comparable to Putin’s bravura performance in Munich. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–huZTkJI4o] Security Council 5953rd Meeting (AM) – SECURITY COUNCIL HOLDS THIRD EMERGENCY MEETING
I noted in my first post, Flare-Up in the Caucasus, Even normally Russophobic media outlets, from what I’ve seen, cannot quite manage to spin this in an anti-Russian way (although I may have to retract this point, when the Op-Ed’s have been written up). Well, I’m retracting it now. The propaganda model has been kicked
It’s official. Wiki even has an article on it (2008 War in South Ossetia). It’s quite balanced and always updated, so I recommend reading it over any news source. I admit that I was under the impression that this conflict would yet simmer for a few years, as they already have been, a spectacle of
America’s desire to have Ukraine and Georgia accede to MAP foundered on European opposition from Germany, France and (somewhat surprisingly) the UK, despite Saakashvili’s implicit comparison of this to Nazi appeasement. Nonetheless, this is good for NATO as an alliance (as we’ve covered previously, the European desire for a rapprochement is linked to Russian logistical
Two weeks ago Illarionov gave an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station. Covering it in-depth is somewhat of a pointless exercise, what with him comparing 1999-2007 Russia with Nazi Germany in 1932-40 (because of their rapid economic growth and Russia’s supposed loss of the rule of law). Now not only is invoking Godwin’s
1. The Myth of Russian Corruption In this blog, I have documented how a) corruption in Russia is similar to the average for middle-income countries and b) it has improved slightly under Putin. This is backed by data from the World Bank’s Governance Indicators, Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer and World Bank statistics on problems
Medvedev gives his first foreign media interview (to the Financial Times), in which he charts the bedrock of his presidency. Will continue to pursue primarily Russia’s, not the West’s, interests. Will work in tandem with Putin, to whom he is neither puppet nor rebel. Will strive to root out “legal nihilism” / proizvol in Russia
This is how the Economist celebrates Russia’s presidential election – the Trouble with Russia’s Economy, represented by a bear gorging itself on oil (i.e. invoking the Myth of the Russian Oil Curse, which we have debunked far too many times to count on this blog). Guess we’ll have to do it again. Never mind that
Rally against Georgia poll result Thousands of opposition supporters have taken to the streets in Georgia in protest at what they say were rigged presidential elections last weekend. Those gathered in the capital, Tbilisi, are demanding a second round of voting. Pro-Western leader Mikhail Saakashvili polled 53%, narrowly averting a run-off against his nearest rival,
Saakashvili wins Georgian elections in first round (January 6th) TBILISI, Georgia: Georgia’s American-allied president won re-election over the weekend and avoided a runoff election in this small former Soviet state by a margin of 1 percent of the vote, according to official results released Sunday. … The main opposition candidate, Levan Gachechiladze, did not concede
At present, all we see is chaos, struggle, economic collapse, ethnic disintegration – just as the observers of 1918 did. How could they have foreseen then that a decade or so later the USSR would have begun to produce chemicals, aircraft, trucks, tanks, and machine tools and be growing faster than any other industrialized society?