The Israeli incursion into Lebanon was 100 times bigger TV news story than the Georgian conflict

The Lebanon thing was covered around the clock, though not nearly as significant in its implications.

Our news is really screwed up!

here in the UK on BBC TV 24 hour news - apart from the Olympics of course. Sadly , online , its UK only - summat to do with streaming agreements.

Jesus.

Don

can't abide witchhunts. Puppies for all the right reasons. :)

the Israel-Palestine situation; they're aware of the dramatis personae and the general plot. As a result, the news can cover the story and its implications without having to stop and explain the whole thing at the head of every 15-minute segment.

The conflict in Georgia is a wholly new thing, and most people are completely unaware of the background story here. (I know I didn't know a thing about Georgian breakaway republics a week ago.) The news are faced with a decision. They can:

A. Cover it in depth, knowing that they're giving details and side-stories that are completely without context for most viewers.
B. Provide background information. Problem with this, of course, is twofold: viewers might not have the patience to sit through a lecture on the ethnic makeup, government structure, and post-Cold-War history of Georgia, and they certainly would change the channel the second time they saw it come on.
C. Cover it briefly, in a "hey you should know that the Russians invaded...um...Alabama." sorta way.

CNN's title for the story is "Russia Attacks a Neighbor," so they have their angle set. Without black hats and white hats there's no story.

I see that DU is leaning Russia in this one out of a "enemy of my enemy" reaction. But the former USSR has its reasons for favoring Republicans as the traditional cold warrior party, and I don't know that making nice with Bush is definitive.

My first-blush reaction is to oppose pretty much anything Russia does because the history of Russia is losing and reassembling the Russian empire as it existed at its height... whether under czars or commissars. Russia lost influence in WWI and the revolution and grabbed it all back after WWII. When the USSR fell apart in the 1990s I saw it as a lull before Russia commenced reassembling it sphere.

And Russia's humanitarian claims are, whether righteous, bogus or in-between, utterly indistinguishable from what impelled H*tler (don't want to make this a H*tler thread) to move on the sudetenland, which was ethnically sympathetic to Germany and claimed ethnic persecution, etc..

I have no idea who's right here, and don't pretend to any expertise, but I am generally suspicious of Russia and of claims of rescuing ethnic/linguistic minorities in neighboring countries.

generally sympathetic to the Ossetians and Abkhazians; it would seem hypocritical to support the right of former Soviet states to declare independence, and then deny the same right of self-determination to people who are in much the same situation that the former Soviet states were in: unwilling and reluctant parts of an artificial federation in which they were clearly 'legs on a snake,' as the Chinese would say.

Of course, that in no way means I support the right of nations to decide unilaterally that neighboring nations are going to undergo a border realignment--and that doesn't mean that I think that the Georgians are being entirely unfairly treated in this case. I'm only a Wikipedia-educated sap at this point; I'm sure I'd regret any further statements within a day or two.

But I do not believe Russia is acting out of disinterested humanitarian motives.

I would have been sympathetic to Sudetenlanders (and maybe even ethnic Germans in Alsace-Lorraine), Kurds and Shia in Iraq, kidnapped Israeli soldiers and the tourists lost on the Lusitania, but that doesn't necessarily mean actions taken ostensibly on their behalf are good.

Hence my agnosticism on the current conflict. Like yourself, I just don't know, and am reluctant to pick sides.

if Georgia was "suspected" of hiding imaginary saddam WMD's, then this would be all over the news. Russia would be our best buddies for doing their part on terror and the rest would be history...

BUT...

since we basically controlled the Georgian election, funded them, equipped them and basically set them loose to do as they please, well, we go and hide when they get the smack down by Russia (who is doing the cold war redux via putin and the state dept).

that's the nutshell version.