While Russian forces invade Georgia...

[fpb]

...the silver and bronze medallists of one of the Olympic gun competitions not only shook hands, but hugged and did everything in their power to demonstrate the deepest love for each other. The silver medalist was Russian, the bronze Georgian. The BBC commentators were all over this like white on rice, calling it a wonderful display of the power of sports to bring people together.

I find it revolting.

The proper word for it is collaborationist. It is, traitorous. It is, quisling. Sorry, but if your troops have just invaded my country and killed hundreds if not thousands of my people, I will NOT shake your hand and I will NOT act as your friend. There are too many dead between us. I hope the Georgian woman is chased out of her country by popular rage.

Comments

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

I *don't* lump you in with the Fascists - given I'm not prepared to do that to your soldiers fighting during WWII (how could I? What were they supposed to do, betray their country?) I'm hardly going to do that to you.
But when you're saying that lumping current Russian soldiers with those from *1812*, what do you think you are doing?

And at no point did I say that criminals should be forgiven. Probably I should say that, but I won't - I've seen that misused too often. I am saying something quite simple - that people should not be blamed for crimes committed *by other people*. Those athletes are not involved in this war, and your attempt to drag them in just increases the size of the war. The soldiers fighting in the war have no choice in the matter - they must defend their countries. Don't blame them either. Save your fury for those who actually commit crimes.
Or don't you realise that every criminal wants to hide behind the protection of "everybody does it"? Your blanket condemnation of those involved in the war (and worse, those who want it over) just means that should you actually protest true atrocities, your words will be ignored. You'll have cried wolf, and have nothing to say when the wolf actually comes.

Judas Iscariot - how am I defending him? *He* was prepared to betray his own Master if it meant a chance of throwing the Romans out. Again and again, the people tried to make Jesus a mortal king, hoping that His miracles would vapourise the Roman invaders.
Have the Russians massacred the Georgians while they are worshipping? Possibly - certainly the Romans had done that to the Jews. Pilate was sent to Palestine by Sejanus as part of the anti-Semitic part of the plot to overthrow Tiberius.
So - what did Jesus do? Advocate rebellion? No. Discourage people from paying taxes to the invader? No.
So what are you going to accuse Him of? Fraternising with the enemy? No, He wouldn't do that either.
Except - when dealing with the handful who were striving to do the right thing. Those He helped, and praised.

Oh, the historical Mordred probably was a hero - the earliest reference we have to him has him fighting *beside* Arthur, not against him.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Russian soldiers from 1812 were fighting for a good cause - they were the invaded and assaulted party. However barbarous their methods, they were defending their country and people. Their descendants today in Chechenya and Ossetia are not - and their methods are still barbarous. You really are totally unwilling to engage with the fact that Russia's government is criminal and that it commits war crimes regularly, are you? Evidently you do not notice the difference between criminal and not criminal, since you declare that soldiers who took part in World War Two on the Nazi side would have been "betraying their country" if they had rebelled. No, they would have been defending it. I do not blame individual soldiers - poor creatures, what were they to do? - but I will remind you that tens of thousands of Italians, including great men like Arturo Toscanini and Benedetto Croce, had gone into exile or even rejected the Fascist government while remaining in Italy. I am an enemy of fascism. The Italy I stand for is that of Toscanini, of Croce,of Gaetano Salvemini and the brothers Rosselli, of Alcide de Gasperi and Pietro Nenni (both of whom had known Mussolini in his early days, both of whom rejected and defied him) the partisans of 1943-45, even that of people whom, like the national poet Trilussa and two successive Popes, saw through Mussolini late but thoroughly, and rejected him long before the war. I repeat: Why do you insist on talking as though the criminal aggression against France and Greece, the asinine support of our ancient enemy Germany, the betrayal of ancient allies like Britain and the USA, the denial not only of decency, not only of law, not only of old relationships, but even of common sense, national interest and "sacred egoism", should do anything to impress me? Why do you think that Mussolini's revolting enslavement of Italy to its German enemies (and Germans led by an Austrian, yet!) should be something for which I would argue? AND WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH, AFTER RIGHTLY POINTING OUT THAT FASCIST FORCES COMMITTED APPALLING WAR CRIMES IN LYBIA, ETHIOPIA AND YUGOSLAVIA, DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY IN FAVOUR OF THE FASCIST WAR? Mussolini got what he deserved; and by the way, he was the modern version of Judas Iscariot, selling his master - the Italian nation - to their enemies. Graziani was the most revolting person in modern history, the one who most nearly approaches a man with absolutely NO positive qualities: brutal and cowardly, incompetent and unwise, unpatriotic and yet militaristic, without even the energy to be a positive monster.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You as good as say that you do not want to be told about Russian atrocities in Chechenya. Good. I won't tell you about them. Besides, if you have lived so far and not heard them by the score in the news, you must have lived a pretty sheltered life. Or, more likely, made a damned effort to avoid them. If a man who lives in the time of a major villain - and Putin is indubitably a major villain - comes to me and tells me that he has never heard any harm of the man, to me that is not evidence against the villain, but against the man. There is such a thing as a refusal to hear evidence, and it is evidently your attitude.

Who in God's name ever mentioned Pontius Pilate? You evidently are reduced to dragging the most incoherent red herrings across the trail rather than discuss the central fact: that you are siding with murderers and criminals; and that you expect me to side with Italian murderers and criminals only because they are Italian. I suppose that you imagine that because Pilate was from central/ southern Italy, I should find him worth defending; that is certainly part of your logic - so to call it.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

This is the worst, so I'll deal with it.

I have not, at any point, said I don't want about Russian atrocities. In fact, I specifically said that you should speak out against them as they happen. Guess what? *You haven't*
You've been too busy complaining about Olympic athletes.
Now, what do you think will happen if you actually complain about an atrocity? The simple response from any defender of Russia will be "yeah, some nutter who called Olympic athletes traitors for hugging accused us of war crimes."
And no matter how obvious the proof, no matter how horrific the crimes, anything you say will be ignored.
And you expect me to cheer you on?

In any political dispute, there will be people who just slander the other side irrespective of the truth. Now, you try to avoid doing that, yes? But frothing at the mouth about some woman who is trying to do the right thing makes you *look* like you are that sort of person - which means any time you have something intelligent to say, it'll fall on deaf ears.

Now there were some interesting points in some of your replies, but frankly I can't be bothered wading through the venom to answer them.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You talk as though it were my business to convert the "supporters of Russia". First, I am not so arrogant; second, if anyone, after several years of Putin government, tens of thousands of civilians dead in Chechenya, relationships with Europe at an all-time low, 150 murdered journalists at home, Litvinenko killed in London in a way that left no doubt as to the origin of the killers, and the hitman who did the actual murder promoted to the Russian Parliament for his trouble - if anyone has been able to contemplate this multiplication of crimes and still be able to be a "supporter of Russia", then the word is not supporter, it is accomplice. And I have no interest in criminals and their accomplices. I write to please myself and the few people who read my work. If you want something else, I dare say you can find enough know-nothings, hypocrites and traitors in any major mass medium. Like the Brutish Broadcasting Creeperation and its accomplices.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for Modred, I have some information for you: you are talking to the man who knows more about dark age Britain than anyone alive. Google my name ("Fabio P.Barbieri") if you don't believe me, and see what comes up. Teaching ME about Mordred and Medraut is really like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. And while I know tha the error you propagate is not your own, but rather a popular if mistaken scholarly view, the point is that it is grossly mistaken. "The earliest reference we have to him", namely the Annales Britanniae's entry for 937 AD, only mentions that, at the Battle of Camlann, Medraut and Arthur were both killed. This certainly covers the traditional account, and no later source has anything to say about Medraut, let alone the literary Mordred, being a friend of Arthur or fighting together with him. The problem is rather that some sources - Welsh rather than continental or North British - treat Medraut as a hero in and of himself, a model of chivalry. But then, Wales, as opposed to North Britain and to Brittany and the Continent, is the one place where one finds some very negative descriptions of Arthur's character, in the Lives of St.Padarn, St.Cadoc, St.Gildas, and in a poem called "The Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle". Contrary to popular opinion, the view of Arthur in Wales was dubious and often negative until the influence of Continental Arthurian legend began to be felt; so there is nothing strange about his legendary slayer being seen as a man of mark. Besides, I was talking of the Mordred of legend, the traitor and rebel, not of any historical figure. And believe me, I know the difference.