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Entry: Putin Beyond the Propaganda Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/putin_beyond_the_propoganda#17679 Post contents: Mr. Cundiff, You said: "We have a self confessed ignoramus." I confessed no such thing. Before you jump to any conclusions - my formal training is in science, engineering, and accounting. I know all about statistics, correlation, causality, precision, accuracy, etc, etc. There are proper uses of numbers, but wise people can also discern the grander points of what is going on without treating everything as if it were a court trial or a chemistry lab assignment. While I am not an all-knowing creature, I do know that in real life outside of Court TV and the textbook people have to and do indeed come to conclusions every single day without assembling a compedium of footnotes for every action undertaken or every insight made. You also said: "Yet I need the facts proven beyond all reasonable doubt before I can render a guilty verdict. " That's my point - you are putting Russia and Serbia on trial. For what, I am not sure. That is why I asked for your point, sir. Casual observers, admittedly unarmed with a satchel of precise numerical statistics, can observe that Russia has been experiencing some revival of faith and that its leaders have been behaving responsibly in trying to uphold some orderly international system so that the world will not decay into life lived by the law of the jungle. That Russia has been a responsible international player, I think is a fair insight, without knowing the exact causal dimensions of what enabled its leaders to behave this way - whether it was their faith, their education, the way grandma treated them in early childhood - who knows? And one cannot know. But one can clearly judge their behavior. Likewise, the Albanians in Kosovo have behaved reprehensibly regardless of what their religious or the Serbs' religious practices are or are not. We can assemble the facts that demonstrate the exact number, for example, of dynamited churches and monasteries or killed priests in the region, but what does the precision of that number have to do with this discussion? Do you doubt that they are doing these things based on year's worth of independently derived reports, testimony, and pictures from multiple parts of the world. Gee, I guess I don't have the footnote as to whether they dynamited 129 or 133 churches - I guess that makes my point moot. I better call the Bureau of Scientific Truth and Infallible Statistics in Pristina... So, again, I ask what point are you trying to make by putting these two human and imperfect, though generally Christian, nations on your little trial here? And, who, by the way, appointed you judge and jury? Sent at: 2008 05 16