Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

it's the Corruption Perceptions Index from the international NGO Transparency International, that site is just listing their rankings.

I guess a bunch of university professors, business leaders, and government officials around the world come up with it. No clue how they go about doing that.

My guess is that it's probably not that different than football S&P rankings.

You can quibble about some things here or there, but even if they're 10 spots off either way, Ukraine and Russia are both pretty corrupt. 

But as with anything, that doesn't excuse Putin for invading a sovereign nation, so it's kinda moot. 

That's been one of the more surprising things about all of this, for me.  A Russian woman working for state television brazenly holds up a sign in the background of a live broadcast, blasting the Russian war, and is taken in for a couple of days and then released.  And then someone else reports a fact that is unpleasant and disruptive, but not a direct indictment of dickface putin's actions, and faces 10 years in prison.

They're not even being consistent in their internal messaging on the home front, which to me, indicates there are some pretty sizeable cracks in the establishment.

Mdot the logic of your discussion is like if someone blows up your chevy truck and your neighbor starts telling you what a dishonest company General Motors is.

Does that diminish the crime that was done?

yeah, not really. 

US just destroyed 80% of buildings and infrastructure in Raqqa - a city of 300,000 people - and turned it into a parking lot a few years ago. US has been bombing 7 different countries continuously for going on two decades now. US launched two major illegal invasions & occupations of two countries in the last 20 years alone. Are Bush and Cheney going to also be prosecuted for war crimes? Yeah, I don't think so.

Make no mistake about it, what Russia is doing is disgusting and inhumane, and even if their illegal invasion of Ukraine continues for another few months (hope it ends sooner) - and you wanted to stack body counts- it's not even close- US would still win that one in a landslide going away just based on Iraq alone where over 1 million Iraqis are estimated to have died.

Two major points: 

A) US can't (and likely won't) call for ICC to prosecute for war crimes - no one in the world will take them seriously. 

B) US doesn't even recognize the ICC as legitimate. Neither does Russia. So the whole "prosecute them" for war crimes thing, is a moot point.

yeah, not really.

US just destroyed 80% of buildings and infrastructure in Raqqa - a city of 300,000 people - and turned it into a parking lot a few years ago. US has been bombing 7 different countries continuously for going on two decades now. US launched two major illegal invasions & occupations of two countries in the last 20 years alone. Are Bush and Cheney going to also be prosecuted for war crimes? Yeah, I don't think so.

Make no mistake about it, what Russia is doing is disgusting and inhumane, and even if their illegal invasion of Ukraine continues for another few months (hope it ends sooner) - and you wanted to stack body counts- it's not even close- US would still win that one in a landslide going away just based on Iraq alone where over 1 million Iraqis are estimated to have died.

Two major points:

A) US can't (and likely won't) call for ICC to prosecute for war crimes - no one in the world will take them seriously.

B) US doesn't even recognize the ICC as legitimate. Neither does Russia. So the whole "prosecute them" for war crimes thing, is a moot point.

Yup.

The U.S. is the world's abusive husband.  
We're simultaneously beating them most days and confused that they don't love us on the others.

usually love the money enuff to put up with the beatings

this isn't going to be a popular article, but from Newsweek, as mainstream as it gets. published today.

https://www.newsweek.com/putins-bombers-could-devastate-ukraine-hes-holding-back-heres-why-1690494

Meh, like every other article, there's some fact, some decent observation, and a whole lot of bullshit.

This statement:

""I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so," says the DIA analyst. "In fact, I'd say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.""

These two things are not mutually exclusive and the fact is that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, we have thousands of accounts of it at this point.  Sure, they could be killing more, but that doesn't negate or excuse the fact that they are intentionally slaughtering civilians and they are leveling cities.  These are indisputable facts.

The rest of the article reads the same way, a little bit of fact, a little bit of reasonable analysis, and a whole lot of bullshit.