Dear Robert and Bazz,

The following two links may help:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/07/26/why-putin-shot-down-mh-17/

http://www.newsweek.com/we-shot-down-mh17-says-pro-russian-soldier-260630

Let us not forget that Stalin also denied
the Ukrainian famine - of 1932-33, the wholesale
destruction of the Russian peasantry, and later of the
peasantry and intelligensia in the occupied
territories as well. Concentration camps operated at
a high fever pitch prior to , and during the war years.
While half of the criminals, the Nazis, have been
pursued all over the world for their crimes, the other
half, the communist criminals, were allowed to go free.

They were, in effect, given tacit permission to continue
the operation of their concnetration camps, to expand their
draconian systems to include psychiatric wards, thereby
raising torture, suppression and murder to a science.
The fact that the process persisted was vividly disclosed
to the free world by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in his
book, "The Gulag Archipelago."

Can we really trust anything Mr Putin may say in light of
the Communist philosophy so lucidly expressed by Lenin:

"The communist must be prepared to make every sacrifice,
and, if necessary, even resort to all sorts of cunning,
schemes and stratagems, to emply illegal methods, to
evade and conceal the truth ... The practical part of
communist policy is to incite one (enemy) against
another... not to convince but to break up the ranks of
the opponent, not to correct an opponent's mistakes but
to destroy him, to wipe his organisation off the face of
the earth. This formulation is indeed of such a nature as
to evoke the worst thoughts, the worst suspicions about an
opponent."

No Soviet authority or communist leader has abandoned
this concept.

Foxy, I find it impossible to believe the first link as Russia has
changed a lot since the communist collapse.
If reports are true Putin only has marginal control of the southern
army and one of the Generals would have loved to have that order in
his hands to beat him over the head with it.
BTW that collapse was caused by USSR peak oil !
I'll bet you didn't know that !

The second link has ring of truth to it, but then that soldier would
have no idea who gave the order.
The suggestion that the Ukrainians did it has a major flaw, the operators
probably would have had direct contact with air traffic control.

I do not think looking at present day dangerous world-wide developments through emotions grounded in mid-twentieth century events and situations - as much as I can understand them since I had lived under Communist, ergo indirectly Russian, oppression - is very helpful. I am old enough to remember the times when we needed VoA and RFE to get a better picture, but I would never have thought that the time would come when I would have to brush up my feeble knowledge of Russian to read on the internet assessments of the situation from the other side, albeit equally biased.

In particular, nothing seems to be as absurd as incideenthttp://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/07/26/why-putin-shot-down-mh-17/, where the author claims that Putin had intentionally shot down the MH17. What would he expect to gain? And why would pro-Russian Ukrainians and their Russian supporters need a sophisticated anti-aircraft weapon at all, had Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko (and their American supporters) not decided to bomb their own citizens to submission?

The Forbes article is outdated. So is - although much more relevant to the present-day situation - Putin’s September 2013 article in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), where he warns, among other things, against actions that could lead to the rise in power of the ISIS (now IS). While Putin is being made to suffer for his support of pro-Russian insurgents that got out of his hands, nobody blames those who invaded Iraq and supported anti-Syrian insurgents that got out of their hands in the form of ISIS that are now rampaging in North Syria and Iraq. The ISIS victims in Syria and Iraq exceed many times the 298. The Ukrainians provided just the trigger for disengaging - as it seems now - Putin from an active role in Syria with his support for Assad who was able to hold the ISIS fanatics at bay.

Khodorkowski - who certainly has no reasons to defend Putin - gave a recent interview (http://smi2.mirtesen.ru/blog/43943265943/Mihail-Hodorkovskiy:-Bez-Putina-Rosii-stanet-huzhe). No need to translate the lot, just the title: “Without Putin Russia would be worse off”. Indeed, a Russian version of the madman Yatsenyuk (with a finger on the nuclear trigger in addition ) is the last thing that not only Russia but we all, need.

A lot of people see that we're going the wrong direction and we seem to be the bad guys in the world - but no one in politics can express that which many of us feel.
Does anyone know of anything concrete we can do?
I look at a lot of crap on the internet and one thing I've noticed is that the majority of people around the world are just like me. If I put myself in their situation I'd probably do much the same thing as them - whether their Jewish or Arab, Muslim, Christian whatever. Its just the propaganda that we're exposed to that makes us different. Most people just want to live peaceful prosperous lives and have friends around the world.
But what can I do about it - I'm getting old and I worry about the world I leave behind for my kids - I don't want them to inherit a huge debt and live as slaves paying interest - who gets that billion $ a month anyway?
Putin seems to be the only politician that has any answers and pushes for world peace and international co-operation but most Australians think he's the devil - Yet he seems more Jesus-like to me.
I'm lost .... anyone got any good (non-religious) advice?