South Ossetia-Georgian war

[Uncle_Vanya]

Originally Posted by Tipsy

And I've said that the people on those shows are intimidated. Freedomhouse said it, reporters without borders said, amnesty international says it (1, 2), and Eho Moskvy is specifically cited in one of them.

Yet they themselves admit that Eho Moskvy represents a wide range of views, "intimidation" is another general statement without specifics that goes against the fact that Eho Moskvy is allowed to express their views without censorship.

See here:

I said it was during a Medvedev election (referring to the links that followed), thus Putin wasn't supposed to debate anyone, he wasn't running for President. But anyways, your claim is that the elections were unfair and not competitive, the fact that televised debates allowed other candidates to express their views and the fact that the candidate's commercials were aired on the national television dismisses that claim.

Right, dismiss evidence.

You're not providing any evidence, simply opinion of people who WEREN'T EVEN MONITORING THE ELECTIONS.

You're right in one point; they do have an ideology. They are trying to recognize where the worth and dignity of human beings are being respected - they have a mission goal of spreading democracy and/or human rights. Each organization, freedomhouse, reporters without borders, and now amnesty international are internationally credited in helping the spread of human rights and democracy - it doesn't make what they have to say false.

The fact that they didn't have any means to get people on the ground during the elections, and they do not list in what capacity they were monitoring the elections and the fact that their claims go against the claims of organizations that DID monitor the elections makes what they say false. And don't give me this spreading democracy bull****, rather it is pushing their own narrow view onto other people and acting holier-then-thou and whining, thats all they're good for.

Check the offense-defense spending ratio theories in IR.

Link?

Your source states: "The fairness of the election was disputed." Second paragraph, first line.

It was disputed but not by organization that were monitoring the elections as the quotes by those organizations show. Now the organizations such as freedomhouse who weren't monitoring the elections directly are allowed their opinion, but its not based on any tangible data.

Actually you said "We don't need competitive political environment" in post #131. A competitive political environment provides legitimacy.

I said we don't need it, doesn't mean we don't have it.

"In addition to internal controls on opposition voices, restrictions on international election observers meant that there was insufficient scrutiny to monitor the campaign and election process. Most notably, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) chose not observe the elections in response to substantial obstacles created by the Russian authorities. Other international monitoring missions, such as the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which did send missions, declared that the elections were “not fair,” having failed to meet basic democratic standards due to the overwhelming influence of the United Russia party. Russian opposition members have filed claims of vote rigging, citing suspiciously high voter turn outs in certain regions, and voter intimidation."
(Source)

Again freedomhouse, we already covered the fact that they have an agenda in this and a political bias, they also didn't have any people on the ground monitoring the elections thus all their conclusions are not based on any factual first-hand data. Same as their claims about OSCE. Russian government's requests were not unreasonable:

Russian presidential election, 2008 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that
“ The Russian side consented to 25 observers arriving this week and the rest of them on February, 25. Our proposal was denied. The Office (OSCE) insisted it will not send its observers to Russia unless Moscow accepts its demands. This is an ultimatum a self-respecting country cannot accept[50]."

Actually the evidence I see is Georgia claims to have invaded South Ossetia to stop the shelling of their people and Russia claims it isn't so and in this battle of hearsay I don't know who to believe.

Georgia has lied again and again, about Russian tanks moving towards Tbillissi, etc.

Freedom House – Free Press in Russia – the raw data is available under the “table and charts” links, the academics’ credentials under the “survey team” link, and the methodology under the “methodology” link.
Reporters Without Borders – Free Press Index – academics information, raw data, and methodology all linked from this page.

I check this already, all I see is more general statements and no reference to how this data was gathered.

When even Belarus and Kazakhstan are low-key in their criticism of Georgia, you know that's not true. I want links to statements made by governments that they support Russia's actions in Georgia such as I have seen from Cuba.

2008 South Ossetia war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

""Old Europe" had a more neutral or pro-Russian reaction where Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini stated "We cannot create an anti-Russia coalition in Europe, and on this point we are close to Putin's position".[193]"

That is just one bit.

I don't support the west taking any action against Russia; that doesn't mean I support Russia's move. That source does not support your claim.

You going to have to learn how to read at some point, that source states that Turkey did not allow USN ships to pass into the Black Sea, ships that were meant to aid Georgia, which backs up what I said about Turkey not allowing USN ships to pass into Black Sea. The West has been taking action against Russia for a decade now, NATO has been expanding, not shrinking, it doesn't matter what you support, you're not NATO.

Once again, knowing the intentions of leaders is an impossible task (unless historian get a copy of a journal some years from now, and even that may not have been written in complete honesty).

Unless you have more then two braincells and are able to make up your own mind based on current events.

Their method is under... the methodology link.

And nowhere does it say that they were present during the 2008 Presidential election in Russia. And they don't mention all the facts! They don't mention the fact that there are independent media outlets in Russia (as I have proven), that the internet is not censored and that people are allowed to view foreign media if they wish it. Hell you can buy a fresh copy of New York Times or Times magazine at any big hotel in Moscow, Im not even talking about buying a NTV+ satellite dish and tuning into BBC and SkyNews. Russia is not informationally isolated like Soivet Union was.

Let me bottom line it for you; you are alone:

Doubtful but do go on.

You're arguing for war; the Russian and western leaderships are arguing for peace. Dmitriy Rogozin said the recent actions against NATO are "of temporary character, of regional character, not global character" (source). Russia's foreign minister states "Russia is committed to the ongoing positive development of relations with the U.S. That kind of agenda is set forth in the Foreign Policy Concept—the framework document that sets out the basic directions of Russia's foreign policy—recently approved by President Dmitry Medvedev." NATO hasn't taken any punitive measures and the British, French, and Germans have publicly stated they wish to not push Russia away. Both sides show the signs that this is nothing but a rise in rhetoric, both sides having no interest in a buildup of punitive action and counter punitive action and repeat. You want war; the leadership of the west, Russia, and myself are arguing for peace.

Oh so now you're claiming that you know the true intentions of world leaders even though in this very post you said that its impossible to uncover them. This is just a first step, but the trend can be seen, the stronger Russia gets the more aggressive the West will be towards it. There will be a war at some point, Im not alone, according to latest poll results 23% of Russian population wants Medvedev to act more harshly towards the west. Lets see what happens if Georgia and Ukraine actually join NATO. Non of this makes a war any less necessary.

I'd like to suggest to you a book, if you can find it in English, "Putin: Guidebook for those who care" by Vladimir Solovyev, he doesn't do any asskissing and he explains a lot of whats going on in Russia from his expert perspective since he as a journalist, a businessman and at one time a man with political ambitions has lived through all the goods and bads of new Russia. There is a reason Putin mistrusts journalists, a journalist in the 90s during the Berezovsky era was a prostitute whose opinion could be bought with cash. In either case it is a fact that there are many independent media sources in Russia and only several are state controlled, it is also a fact that the Russian government is not blocking western media sources from reaching Russian people.


Also, freedomhouse apparently receives most of its funding from the US government, so it is not an independent organization:

Freedom House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"As noted in the section on organization above, Freedom House receives most of its funding from the U.S. government, and prominent U.S. government officials reside on its board, most notably past officials have included conservatives."

So your source is a US based, US government funded propaganda machine, it is obviously lacking objectivity in addition to the fact that it didn't do any research on the ground for some of the events its discussing, such as the Russian 2008 presidential election.

Give me some real evidence, ideological nonsense will not suffice.

Here is a PDF discussing Freedomhouse's research methods:

www.researchmethods.org/democracy-indicators.pdf

"Polity IV, Polyarchy and Freedom House indicators are highly correlated to each other
(Casper & Tufits 2003). This is a good base to assume these three indicators have very
small systematic errors, but cannot be used to further assume these indicators have no
random measurement errors. In other words, these indicators have acceptable validity, but
their reliability may be low as high correlation does not guarantee high reliability. A low
reliability can lead to biased estimation in regression modeling. As clearly demonstrated
by Casper and Tufis, these three democracy indicators are not interchangeable, therefore,
not reliable as indicators to measure democracy. In this perspective, the Casper and
Tufis’s article has made a great contribution by drawing our attention to the reliability
issue of democracy measures. Recently, more and more attention has been paid to
measurement error issues in political science (Adcok & Collier 2001, Munck &
Verkuilen. 2002). Many have studied the systematic errors of democracy indicators
(Bollen & Paxton 2000), but not much about the random errors of the democracy
measurements."

Where is more in there.

Here is some information on reporters without borders:

http://www.anti-cnn.com/forum/en/vie...641&highlight=

E:M | How Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is biased against Iran