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SammyG007

Listed below are comments made by SammyG007 between Sunday, 10th August 2008 and Friday, 15th August 2008.

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Filming me, filming you 06:08am on 15 Aug 2008 Incidentally many protests in the US are regularly filmed by police. In New York it's quite common. Some of these wind up in permanent files kept by the police and/or the FBI. And many protesters during the 2004 Republic National Convention in NYC were harassed and thrwon in jail.

Of course, since the US is the fount of all that is Good and Pure in this universe, the US police are doing this against errant hooligans to protect the world whereas the Chinese Communist Scum are just pure evil. (You should just begin every article with this and not beat around the bush so much).
Georgian and Russian athletes share emotional embrace 4:58pm on 10 Aug 2008 IDFerrer, actually Northern Ireland is part of the UK - Great Britain really refers to the Island with England, Wales and Scotland.

But I do agree that my analogy is not perfect (no analogy ever is). The main idea was to highlight to a British holier-than-thou commentator a different perspective of how they may react when there's a conflict closer to home.

Incidentally although South Ossetia is part of Georgia (and even Russia has always maintained this), Russia, Georgia and SO had all agreed to an arrangement which existed up to August 6/7th. Georgia broke this and can be acccused on precisely the same thing that Karadzic is accused of - genocide against itws own people. If NATO was justified in getting involved in the Yugoslav conflict, why isn't Russia?

All this is part of a larger narrative whereby actions by the West are always deemed bu the "free" Western media to be ultimately based on noble reasons and those of the Russians on sinister ones. So when the Western airforces bomb civilian targets (even miles away from military ones like in Afghanistan on a daily basis), these are at best "regrettable" and "accidents" 9and at worst outright denied). Similar Russian actions are "barbaric" and "deliberate" (based on Russian's lack of respect for human life) so on.

As one who has no ethnic or nationalistic affiliations with either the West or Russia (or the Middle East) it's enlightening to watch the BBC and contrast it with (say) Russia Today. (If you want to know what's happening in South Ossetia, watch Russia Today at http://streaming.visionip.tv/Russia_Today. If you want to know what's happening in Georgia, BBC would do.)
Georgian and Russian athletes share emotional embrace 4:07pm on 10 Aug 2008 I strongly disagree with your assessment of Davdenko's comments.

So Georgia makes a surprise attack its own people (many of whom are Russian citizens) hours after the latest mediation which called for a truce, razing villages and bombing a town to bits, potentially committing war crimes, using the distraction of the Olympics as a cover and when Russia retaliates (and these facts are not disputed by even the most ardent Russophobe), everyone is supposed to pretend that no one side can be blamed?

If Ireland started bombing Northern Ireland's protestant regions killing thousands and GB retaliated, I suppose Irish and English athletes should hug and say "it's all the same to me. Who knows who's to blame"?

The BBC's russian phobia is well known and documented - it's deep in the DNA of the organization going back to the cold war. To bring it to sports and accuse Davdenko's perfectly reasonable statement as being "undiplomatic" is reprehensible. (In the previous Irish/British scenario, imagine CNN Sports writing "While Beckham said he doesn't support Britian, Ireland, Northern Ireland, he undiplomatically suggested that Ireland was stupid to attack Northern Ireland" imagine the British codemnation of not only Beckham (for being unpatriotic) but CNN for suggesting that Beckham should say otherwise.

If searching deep within your journalistic soul and understanding political nuances is too much for you, stick to pure fluff reporting on sports and don't comment on matters political.

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