![Uncle Volodya says, "If you like it, you'll find a way to justify it. If you don't, you'll find a way to falsify it."](https://marknesop.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/unclevolodya6.jpg?w=300&h=225)
Uncle Volodya says, “If you like it, you’ll find a way to justify it. If you don’t, you’ll find a way to falsify it.”
Liz Wahl is a proud American. So proud, in fact, that she will hear nothing against the USA, even if it’s true. My country right or wrong, baby. For those who do not know Liz Wahl, she was the news anchor for RT America who quit during a live broadcast, saying she could no longer in good conscience work for a network that “smeared America”. Well, that’s one of the reasons she gave. On occasion she says it is because Russia invaded Ukraine. In fact, neither of those is true, but we’ll get into that in a minute.
She decided “arbitrarily” that March 5th would be her last day; she had wanted to quit for months, but that just did it, the unconscionable way the network was whitewashing Putin’s dangerous invasion of Ukraine. So she went to the bathroom, a couple of hours before she quit, to compose some heartfelt notes – and called her good friend, Jamie Kirchik, the flaming Russophobe and longtime planner of gimmicky attacks against RT, to let him know she was about to put on a big show. She announced her resignation in an emotional speech on live TV.
In which she did not mention once, not a single time, her reason for quitting, which was – she just told you, how could you forget already – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No, instead she blathered on about her family, glancing often at her notes as she recounted how her grandparents had escaped Hungary, fleeing before the Soviet forces in 1956. In fact, Grandpa was already in the USA for 10 years, having immigrated without his family at the close of the war. It was Grandma and some other family members who bribed the border guards and made a run for it in 1956, really stirring stuff.
Too bad, when Liz was interviewing Ron Paul, that she didn’t ask him about the 1956 Hungarian revolt. Because he would have told her it might have succeeded if it had gone the way the Hungarians were promised it would…by the United States. Radio Free Europe coaxed the Hungarians to rise up, promising them if they would only get the ball rolling, Uncle Sam would do the rest. The Hungarians believed them, and began large-scale public demonstrations on October 23rd, 1956.
Americans themselves did not learn what really happened until 1960, when Congressman Michael Feighan told a stunned audience in Buffalo, New York;
“You will recall the revolution broke out on October 23, 1956, and that by October 28, the Hungarian patriots had rid their country of the Russian oppressors. A revolutionary regime took over and there was a political hiatus for five days.
Then the State Department, allegedly concerned about the delicate feelings of [Yugoslavia’s] Communist dictator Tito, sent him the following cable assurances of our national intentions in the late afternoon of Friday, November 2, 1956: “The Government of the United States does not look with favor upon governments unfriendly to the Soviet Union on the borders of the Soviet Union” (emphasis mine).
It was no accident or misjudgment of consequences which led the imperial Russian Army to reinvade Hungary at 4:00 AM on November 4, 1956. The cabled message to Tito was the go-ahead signal to the Russians because any American schoolboy knows that Tito is Moscow’s Trojan Horse.”
Oh, Eisenhower’s government made the expected protests, and said “the heart of America goes out to the people of Hungary,” boo hoo, adding that America would “do all within our peaceful power to help them.” When Spanish President Francisco Franco committed to sending the Hungarians weapons, and negotiated an agreement with German chancellor Konrad Adenauer to refuel his planes there, Eisenhower applied pressure and got it canceled. Bet you didn’t know that while you were grandstanding about how lucky you were to be American, did you, Liz? Sounds like the State Department was just as clueless then as it was toward the end of the first Gulf War, when the USA urged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and then left them hanging while Saddam rolled over them. Betrayal gets to be a habit.
Anyway, it looks to me like the Soviet forces were “just protecting their country”, in the new-age American Foreign Policy lexicon, so that was probably all a big fuss against nothing, and Granny and her associates were western-backed (sort of, in rhetorical terms only) separatist rebels that Hungary was far better off without.
It’s fairly clear that the whole resignation thing was staged; Ms. Wahl describes how she had “reached out” to Jamie Kirchik “a few months before” when he actually appeared on RT and made a great spectacle of himself over gay rights. A subject America dropped like a hot potato as soon as the Olympics in Sochi were over, incidentally, and the issue was no longer useful to beat Russia over the head; see anyone outside lately in rainbow lederhosen, pouring vodka into the gutter? That’s right – you don’t. Although she describes her decision to make a public show of her resignation as spontaneous, it was actually about as spontaneous as open heart surgery. She struck a deal with Kirchik when she first made contact with him, admitting she told him she was willing to “tell the truth about RT”. She called Kirchik from the bathroom the day she resigned, and told him what she was going to do in plenty of time for him to prime other media sources for a PR coup – they were giggling like schoolboys about it on Twitter well in advance of the event.
But it’s only fair if a gal wants a little attention, isn’t it? She certainly would never have gotten it through her journalistic chops. Before her stint as a reporter on Saipan, where she covered local politics, she was an intern at several U.S. networks and freelanced local news at a station in Connecticut. When she was offered the RT job, she grabbed it because she knew if she did not, but wanted to work in the USA, she’d probably have to “move to some Podunk town to cover rescued kittens and the Fourth of July parade.” Hardly sounds the role of a fireball reporter, what? She did show an early nose for a great story, though, bitching about RT’s coverage of the Occupy Movement because it “made America look terrible”. As well it should. As she described it herself, “Occupy was our lead story for weeks and then months, even as the number of protesters dwindled and tents cleared out. We sucked that story completely dry…Eventually, it was accepted that a revolution was not upon us.”
I guess they did suck that story completely dry, because RT was nominated for an Emmy by the international peer community for its coverage of the Occupy Movement in America. But Liz thought they should have devoted more attention to the ill-fated “White Revolution”, in which less than .10% of the population of Moscow staged a couple of weeks of protests while the USA talked it up as if the government of the Russian Federation was about to fall. When liberal Russian celebrities Ksenya Sobchak and Alexei Kudrin took the stage, they were booed off by the Russian crowd. Alexey Navalny shouted that he had enough people to take the Kremlin, but he wasn’t quite sure enough to try it, more’s the pity. The opposition selected a “shadow government” from among its members, partly through internet voting, which held a couple of meetings, playacted at governing to see how it liked it, couldn’t stop quarreling, and disbanded. Sorry. I made it as exciting as I could. Eventually it was accepted that a revolution was not upon them.
Great instincts, Liz. I can’t understand why the New York Times isn’t beating down your door.
Putin supports dictators. Yes, I can see how that would prey upon the mind of a native of the country whose government propped up dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for 30 years, during which time his own subjects tried 6 times to assassinate him, just to let him know how much they loved him. A country whose government was complicit in overthrowing the democratically-elected Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran – because he was going to nationalize Iranian oil assets, which would have been uncomfortable for the USA’s British friends – and foisted the dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the people of Iran for another 26 years. Or, more recently, backed and participated in the coup that deposed democratically-elected Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine and installed a self-appointed junta, which promptly banned opposition parties and brought to power candy king Petro Poroshenko, who has presided over the complete collapse of Ukraine while ignoring his campaign promise to divest himself of his personal business connections.
There is no evidence thus far that Russia has “invaded Ukraine”. None. Oh, Kiev sends the western media its talking points every week, and the western media dutifully reports that Russia invaded yet again, sometimes using photos of bearded cossacks from Georgia in 2008 or idling columns of Russian armor waiting on some road that is not even in Ukraine, or squeals that Russian forces are massing on the other side of the Ukrainian border – which just happens to be Russia, surely an odd place to find the Russian army. The United States Ambassador to Ukraine fires off satellite photographs from Digital Globe on Twitter, showing blurry holes in the ground which he claims were made by Russian artillery, and maybe you can tell a hole made by Russian-fired artillery from one made by Ukrainian-fired Russian artillery of the same caliber, but I’m damned if I can see how. The U.S. State Department claims to have tons of proof, but it can’t show it to the public because – sorry – it’s all classified. You should just believe them because of their track record for timely, accurate information. Ha, ha; sorry, I tried to say that without laughing, I really did, but I just couldn’t do it. Associated Press reporter – a real reporter, Liz, take note – Matthew Lee regularly reduces State Department press conferences to comedy turns, as spokespersons run out of lies and have to just move on to another questioner.
So much for the claim that Russia invaded Ukraine as an excuse for quitting; let’s look at how RT “smears” America. Does it? Does it really? Liz says it “makes America look bad”. By extrapolation, the allusion is that America really is doing well, while RT broadcasts a false vision of what’s happening. Let’s look.
Oh, dear; according to a study by the Center for Retirement Research, using Federal Reserve data, about half of American households will be unable to maintain their living standard in retirement. That could potentially affect about 160 million people; it sounds important. The middle class is being wiped out as manufacturing steadily declines in the USA, and the income gap continues to widen. Nationally, the income gap between wealthiest and median-income households in the United States gained by 15.8 % over 20 years. The proportion of the population aged 25-34 who have post-secondary education has fallen from first to sixteenth in the world, according to the OECD, because of tuition rates which have climbed up and up and up. What do you think the Occupy movement was about?
Well, thanks to the internet, we know what Liz thought. It was about “hippies who were camping out, barefoot and beating drums, [who] had jumped at the opportunity to come together in solidarity against The Man”. Those liars at RT. And the liars who nominated them for an Emmy for the coverage, which they say nobody else seemed particularly interested in supplying. I daresay Putin would derive a great deal of satisfaction from seeing the decline in American manufacturing reverse, college admissions in the USA increase as tuition came down, and American living standards begin to climb again instead of dropping like a rock. That’d be just like him, the soulless bastard, and the slimy propaganda network that does his bidding.
So it was only natural that Liz, with her obviously comprehensive knowledge of the RT organization, should be called to testify before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The deep wellspring of experience who had to google RT two and a half years ago because she knew no more about the network than the night baker at Tim Horton Donuts does; who describes the management of RT as “all Russian guys” but does not appear to know who they are, referring to them even in Congressional testimony as “these people”.
The Committee could have summoned someone from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), who would have told them RT easily leads foreign broadcasters in the United States, with an audience more than 6.5 times as big as its next-closest competitor (Al Jazeera) at a time when FOX, MSNBC and CNN are hemorrhaging viewers. British reporter Oliver Bullough, dedicated Putin-hater, would have told them RT had passed other broadcasters in Britain in 2013 to be the third most-watched in the UK after the BBC And SKY. The BBC, incidentally, is funded entirely by the state and has been caught in lie after lie. Quoth Bullough; “RT does not lie, but it is selective about what facts it uses. Indeed, from its coverage of US politics, you might gain the impression that the only thing saving the Obama administration from collapse is police oppression of dissidents .” Bullough has nothing good to say about RT or about Putin, but he does say that RT doesn’t lie. Or the House Foreign Relations Committee could have summoned representation from the broadcast community which nominated RT for an Emmy.
But the U.S. government already knows RT is increasing viewership, and making inroads on public opinion. That’s why it has to be stopped, by whatever means necessary. At the same time America knows – and has acknowledged – that it is “losing the propaganda war. Therefore, in the interests of fair play, the appearance must be created that the USA is under attack and defending itself – hence the outlandish accusation that Russia is “weaponizing information”, and that its insidious propaganda tentacles are everywhere. They are setting up to ban RT as a threat to national security. Because they can’t compete with it any other way. John Kerry mumbled something about the USA starting a news service in Russian to be aired in Russia, and thereby push the U.S. viewpoint, and I wish he would. It would get the same reception Al Hurra got in Iraq. But if you’ve got money to throw away…
Since the U.S. government has become almost exclusively an organization which solicits information only from sources it knows will tell it what it wants to hear, let me put it to you: would it be likely to want to hear from a source that will tell it it is losing its mind as it pursues ever-crazier fantasies of global economic and military domination? Or would it rather hear from Liz Wahl, who will tell it that RT is a cult of fringe nutjobs who are making up lies about the USA in order to unfairly tarnish its image?
No contest.
Putin’s a better man than I; I would not have agreed to even meet with her.
Putin, is a true statesman he thinks of Russia’s national interests at all times:
euronews… merkel just can’t miss a chance to say russia stole crimea.. they could resolve this in a minute, but the folks that want war aren’t interested.. that is obvious with regard to the issue of crimea and is very visible in all the lies about russian invasion of eastern ukraine, not to mention kiev making war on the same region.. it is hard to take her seriously.. one has to see her as being a servant for those interested in furthering war, while saying they are seeking peace… i can definitely see that.. i am sure others can too – german people in particular..
This meme that Russia stole the Crimea is regular trolled in comments sections to newspapers. The land was stolen from the Ukraine they repeat ad nauseam. Never a word about the “right” to self-determination of a people and a clear ignorance displayed concerning the history of the Crimea, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and Malorossiya.
I say it again: the Crimea really was annexed by Russia – the Russian Empire – in 1783. Before that the Crimean Tatar Khanate had been a satrap of the Ottoman Empire. The Crimea was “given” to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. The Crimean Tatars had been the “original” inhabitants of the peninsula for about 300 years before the 1783 annexation; before that, the inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula had been Pontic Greeks, Armenians, Scythians, Ostrogoths etc. and Slavs, of course, whom Ukrainian nationalists now say were “Ukrainians”.
This nonsensical Yukie claim is typical of the idiocy of the mob as regards history, an idiocy, I suspect, promulgated by Hollywood and popular “historical” potboilers. For example, I have recently watched the film “Gladiator” (my elder daughter is fascinated by ancient Rome, so I thought it might entertain her: she has long got tired of liquidating computer-game Nazi snipers) and right at the start there can be read on the screen: “At the height of its power the Roman Empire was vast, stretching from the deserts of North Africa to the borders of Northern England”.
At the time of the Roman Empire under Emperor Marcus Aurelius (160-180 A.D.), the setting of the film “Gladiator”, there was no Northern England and, therefore, no English/Scottish border, for there was no Scotland either: the Scots, an Irish Celtic tribe, were still at that time in what the Romans called Hibernia. Those who eventually became known as “the English” were at the height of the Roman Empire still in what is now Northern Germany, in the German Federal States of Niedersachsen and Schleswig-Holstein, and in what are now German and Dutch Friesland, and in Jutland, now part of Denmark. The English tribes only began to arrive in the moribund Roman province of Britannia some 300 years after the death of Emperor Mearcus Aurelius – but no matter: that is what the opening titles of “Gladiator” says.
In 1783 at the Treaty of Paris, the United States of America were recognized as being a sovereign state. That use of “were” in the previous sentence and “a” in the expression “a sovereign state” caused a spot of bother some 78 years later. Those states declared their independence from British colonial administration in 1776. Those who made this declaration did not at the time represent the majority opinion in those former colonies: they expressed the opinion of the landed gentry in those colonies, many of whom being inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which opinion was penned by members of that same class. The “natives”, the original inhabitants of those colonies had little or no say in that matter, and they had been resident in the territories of those British North American colonies for far, far longer than the Crimean Tatars had when “their” land was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783.
those who don’t know much about history are doomed to learn it at some point.. in the meantime the msm and western leaders are hopeful those they address and hope to incite remain ignorant… without collective ignorance – they are in trouble.. that they rely on collective ignorance here is an interesting approach, wouldn’t you say?
For sure. That’s why the ruling class purposely kept the hoi-poloi uneducated until comparatively recent times.
The first British education act was passed in 1870. The act ensured basic free education for children between the ages of 5 and 13. Many were against the passing of such an act as it would make the workers “think”.
An apocryphal tale concerning Queen Victoria’s reaction to the proposal made by Prime Minister Gladstone that such an act be passed was that she exclaimed to her first minister: “Educate the working classes? What on earth for?”
Snoop Dogg watches Game of Thrones to ‘learn about history’
Snoop Dogg has revealed that he keeps up with Game of Thrones for “historic reasons”, so that he may better understand “how we got here”.
Snoop contributed the track Lannister’s Anthem to the Game of Thrones: Catch the Throne Vol. 2 mixtape, and spoke to the New York Post about his passion for the show.
“I watch it for historic reasons, to try to understand what this world was based on before I got here,” Snoop said. “I like to know how we got from there, to here, and the similarities between then and now.”
Unfortunately the NYP didn’t probe him further, I’d love to hear what Snoop thinks about us no longer using dragons for transport.
And the Liberasts howl “Fake!”
«Бессмертный полк» обвинили в постановке
“Immortal Regiment” accused of being staged
But there were people who questioned the sincerity of what was happening. For example, bard Veronika Dolina wrote in her Facebook: “I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. But I will say it: I walked along a dozen or so side-streets near Tverskaya Street, Pushkinskaya and Mayakovskaya Squares and Petrovka Street, and all I saw there were buses and buses. And even police cars – dozens of them too. Don’t know how many. Of course, the cameras won’t show this. I’m sorry but I have to say this. This whole march was staged.
Veronica Dolina – “bard”
For “bard” read креакл.
Further down in the KP article linked above:
Yana Poplavskaya
I waited for this day, as did many of my friends and nearest, so as to tell of the heroic deeds of my granddad and to carry his portrait with pride! I am proud of the thousands of people who came out onto the streets of my city today so as to to pay tribute to the memory and heroic achievement of their loved ones and family! My grandmothers fought, as did my grandfathers. Veronica, you should not defile and spit upon that which is dear to me and which cost my nation such a frightful price.
Veronica seems to be claiming that she saw buses that doubtless, in her opinion, transported those who took part in the “Immortal Regiment” march, in which an estimated half a million took part – including my wife and daughter.
Well, I can vouch for the fact that my wife and my daughter travelled to Tverskaya, to Pushkinskaya Square, by metro. In fact, my Lena took her iPhone with her.
Here’s one of the the first of the many shots she took with her iPhone yesterday. That’s Mrs.Exile, left foreground. The escalator is at Pushkinskaya. The other people in the picture must not have come by special bus as well.
Another picture taken in the metro on May 9, this time by my wife – Lena with the plaits
And here’s Lena walking towards the Kremlin walls and one of the approaches to Red Square. Just look at all the Putin hirelings!
The KP article also reports claims that the placards carried in the so-called staged event had been provided by companies – sort of like all those high-quality coloured photographs of Khodorkovsky, which most who waited outside the courthouse where he had his trials and made his appeals in Moscow bore. For some reason, almost all those carrying big blow-up pics of the Nelson Mandela of Russia were really elderly women – pensioners, in fact.
I made my wife and daughter’s placards – the other estimated 498,000 participants I cannot speak for.
These liberals are such miserable, mean spirited shits who cannot understand what patriotism means, what joy and at the same time sadness that millions here feel on May 9 for those whom many alive now never knew, but are ever grateful to for their contribution towards victory over a bestial foe.
We all know you are a Kremlin stooge, ME. LOL.
These liberast clowns expect to gain power while they piss on the Russian population. The are certifiable lunatics and no amount of US help is going to give them what they want. No amount. In Washington they have the delusion that if they throw a few dollars around Russia will just colour revolution itself into their lap. Like the liberasts, the Washington elite are lunatics as well.
Do half a million people live on Tverskaya Street? was there going to be easy close parking there if so many went?
No. So logical for them to go there4 by SPECIAL BUSES that would wait to take them back again later, to whatever suburb or nearby town they came from. What is wrong with that? I mean how does she think people usually get to crowded places?
This bus drivel is pure intellectual insult. The Maidan was composed of demonstrators and later militants shipped in from western Ukraine via trains. They even got free rides. But I suppose they were not “bussed” in so it is OK.
I am sure that Veronica kreakl was so ready to howl “fake!” because being a kreakl, she, by definition, hates Russia, Russians, Russian governments etc. She, like all kreakly, is full of self loathing. (“Why was I born Russian?”) So if she sees folk who are proud of Russia, of Russian achievements, of the heroism of their forebears, she considers them to be idiots in the pay of the “regime”, the state, the governance that she so despises.
Heh, so the presence of police cars near a large public event is an indicator that the event was staged? Well, I guess every event everywhere must be staged then. And buses? Don’t suppose these kreakls are aware that many people take buses for transportation purposes? Just as they don’t seem to be aware of the fact that providing security for public events is considered to be one of official police responsibilities in most counties.
Ha, ha!! Remember Anatoly Karlin pointing out the serried rows of public buses parked on the side of Bolotnaya, which same had conveyed the massed kreakly in their rosy-cheeked millions to that zenith of revolution in Putin’s Russia? The city commonly lays on extra buses whenever there is a surge in ridership for an event. But the bus has become a symbol of dictatorial license to kreakly, and they cannot see one without speculating on the nefarious motives that resulted in its appearance.
Witness the buses that transport workers to polling stations and for whose sightings Latynina is always on the prowl during election time, ever ready to shout out “Carousel Voting!!!”
Buses are sometimes provided for the transportation of voters in Moscow, specifically for construction and shift workers who have been allowed to have their votes transferred from the registered place of abode to a Moscow precinct.
During the last elections here, Latynina went into paroxysms of delight on sighting buses full of shabbily dressed men, some clearly intoxicated, arriving at a North Moscow polling station. If she had done a little research, she would have found that the men were not “bums” as she suggested, rounded up to give false votes, but tunnellers gathered and transported at the end of their shift to vote: they had been (might still be) constructing road tunnels under the Yauza river and the Sokolniki park in order to relieve traffic congestion. Later that same day the Intrepid Latynina spotted more shift-working “carousel voters” being bussed from a huge printing works.
Oh boo-hoo, Veronika, so proper protests and demonstrations should erupt spontaneously without any stage management and organisation from “thousands and thousands” as if they all obey with a single hive mind to instructions implanted hypnotically or subconsciously?
Exactly!
Just because people employ some basical organizational skills (like making signs, hiring a few buses, whatever), doesn’t mean that the event is not grass-roots.
This particular event is in actuality grass-roots in nature, but has caught on to the point, where it will no doubt become an annual tradition.
And it is happening all over the Russian world: they had similar manifestations in Donetsk and Luhansk, and even in Kiev, believe it or not.
https://twitter.com/newgreatgame/status/597059124858322944
https://twitter.com/newgreatgame/status/597463641965887488
RT: Hard tackle: Polish rugby fans threaten to kill Ukrainian nationalists, return Lvov to Poland
http://rt.com/news/257345-ukraine-poland-fans-rugby/
…“Take back Lvov. Kill Banderovites [followers of Ukrainian nationalist icon, Stepan Bandera],” the banner, written in both Polish and Ukrainian, read.
The vice mayor of the city of Lublin, which hosted the match, told the police to remove the banner.
“The banner contained ultra-rights slogans and called for violence. We had to intervene,” Krzysztof Komorski told Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.
https://twitter.com/WSH1906/status/597284358504972288
However, the police refused to fulfil the official’s order due to the crowed in the stands being too aggressive.
The banner was eventually removed by five cheerleaders, with the girls saying that the fans swore at them, but didn’t attack. …
I’m so excited, I can’t wait for this report and secrets it will reveal:
I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high, the Nemtsov report might be like this book:
A true White Paper from Nemtsov at last.
Be fair, that’s one subject he really was an expert on.
True.
Nemtsov actual book, a list of his conquests:
“Madamina Il Catalogo”….
The report is out!!!
Nemtsov report exposes Russia’s human cost in Ukraine
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32703353
The presenter says at the beginning:
To kill a nation and its country — you have to kill its memories, its history …
… to defile the memory of a Great Country, of a Great Time, a Great Victory…
…to compare communism with fascism, Stalin with Hitler and the Great USSR with Nazi Germany.
So why then this contribution to this end been made by Andrey Makarevich, why has he played such a role recording this video for Ukrainian television?
For with such a seemingly harmless roll Makarevich starts memory loss and the alteration history…
The “artist” Makarevich comes out with the Kiev line: Stalin and Hitler were allies who started the war.
The presenter states that Andrey Makarevich in his video distorts history, inspires his listeners to feel ashamed about their Motherland, the Supreme Commander, their grandfathers, the Communists…
The presenter is Maryana Naumova. She is just turned 16 years of age. She is an athlete, a power-lifter and specialist in the bench press. She is a member of a power-lifter team and absolute world record holder amongst teenage girls in the bench press.
At the World Championships 2011-2014, she was the first girl below 18 years of age to have competed with the best of Russia in the bench press and got her picture on the cover of the biggest powerlifting magazine in the world “Powerlifting USA”.
Maryana Naumova actively promotes sports and a healthy lifestyle, conducts social activities, participates in charity funds such as “City Without Drugs”.
Andrey Makarevich, on the other hand …
https://twitter.com/vallisitsa/status/596206399438356480
Iminhema????
Immingham, they mean.
Not the most salubrious of places.
https://twitter.com/ValLisitsa/status/597387832802594816
Isn’t he the guy who claimed that Lucius Cornelius Sulla was Ukrainian? Or a mighty Proto-Ukr, or whatever? That one was a bit odd. Why did he pick Sulla over Gaius Marius for ahistorical Ukranization?
Preferred a winner to a loser I suppose.
Sulla ended up as dictator of Rome. That is probably what Bebik admires: a dictatorship of Ukraine under one supreme ruler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla
Could also be because of Sulla’s odd name?
Sounds vaguely ethnic.
Nonsense. Capital of Hungary is called Buda, a name believed to originate in the (south) slav word VODA вода meaning water (it’s a place full of hot springs); probably already called that by existing population when the Magyars arrived (though known to the Romans as Aquincum). Not a Scythian Black Sea Digger word at all.
Ministry of Truth suits the guy, anyway. What would a political scientist know about linguistics?
Yay! He is finally getting his due.
And they all speak Russian in that above linked Youtube clip, not in that godly tongue that came from the planet Venus.
This New York Times piece on training the Ukrainian army reeks of American condescension. American trainers clearly see their Ukie trainees as a bunch of apes who don’t even know how to peel a banana the correct way.
Granted, the Ukie army is down on their luck and not much to look at nowadays. But they would be making a HUGE mistake if they let the Americans change their basic structure like they say they will (to the American NCO model). Russian army model is better; there is less micro-management of the troops.
In a similar vein:
Interesting that Zakharchenko is still on crutches.
Is that still from his wounding? I believe that he was wounded in battle a few months back.
A useful site c/o Mark Ames:
Ha, ha!!! If wealthy people in America are genetically superior to the poor due to extensive interbreeding, and their intellect is the cause of their wealth, perhaps Mr. Murray could explain to me how John Kerry got so wealthy. Oh, that’s right; he married the ketchup heiress. Otherwise he would now be poor as a churchmouse, because that giant square jaw and wooden head argue strongly for a past threesome involving his mother, a cigar-store Indian and a bulldozer. You couldn’t make that shit up.
An elite stops being elite once it stops supplementing its numbers with talented outsiders. Or it may try to do that and still fail, because it has already become too hopelessly inbred for the new blood to give it new life – something like this happened to British aristocracy.
Perhaps Chelsea Clinton should have married one of Dubya’s brothers instead of her faceless wotsisname hedge fund manager boyfriend and then the US wouldn’t need to hold any more elections because the country could look forward to being ruled by the high-IQ Bushintons forever.
There have been so many moments recently where you’d think we would have breached the event horizon of terminal-class, grade A, self-serving / self-blinding BS…
But it would appear it’s been our stock in trade – as Mr Murray’s career demonstrates – for a very long time.
The gods cannot be tempted it would appear.
3 миллиона москвичей вышли на улицы 9 мая
3 million Muscovites took to the streets on May 9
I wonder if Veronica (see above, previous page) counted the buses and police cars?
From KP (quick translation):
By the way, this Victory Day may have been one of the most popular in the city. In past years, according to official statistics, there have been involved in the events 2-2.5 million citizens. For many, that same 9th of May may have served them the means which they needed to “escape” to the country. But on the day of the 70th anniversary of the victory, Muscovites seem to have realized that there are more important things than hoes and seedlings.
Take the “Immortal regiment”: in 2014 the event was held at Poklonnaya Hill [Hill of Reverence, site of huge war memorial museum and obelisk in memory of the great Victory and of the fallen – ME] and was but one of many similar events – albeit the most touching. But this year, on Tverskaya Street, Red Square and the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, people were appearing for nearly 3 hours. And almost everyone had in their hands photos of veterans.
In the Telegraph on the eve of the great day of celebration, some commentator stated that the whole May 9 event was staged and that most Russians go to the country, to their dachas, as did his family.
That comment was written by a fellow countryman living here, as I do, with a Russian spouse.
A jaundiced point of view: most Russians do not possess a country summer retreat to which they can escape the “ideological” show staged by a malicious and corrupt state.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Exile set off at 7 o’clock this morning to hoe and plant at our dacha. Today is a holiday in lieu of Saturday the 9th. I wanted to go with her but I have to hold the fort because my brood are all still abed as I write at 10:30 Moscow time, 11th May.
That’s because they are all idle, feckless Russians, I suppose – except for Mrs. Exile. She wouldn’t let me go because she knows which plants go where – flowers and herbs – and she reckons I always balls up things in this respect.
🙂
And one of the first readers’ comments in yesterday’s Telegraph article on the victory celebrations in Moscow:
Barbaric peasants led by tyrants!
The cry of sour grapes led by bad eggs.
By the way, did anyone else notice Defence Minister Shoigu crossing himself before he addressed his comrade troops?
I did and was expecting a comment about this in the Western press.
Not seen anything in this respect yet.
Moscow insider:
Something Truly Amazing Happened at the V-Day Parade
Shoigu’s father is a Tuvan, who traditionally were shamanists, animists, totemists, as were their North American kindred native Americans, and Buddhists
Not Shoigu’s dad!
http://www.vremya.ru/2004/58/13/95605.html
He says he’s Orthodox in this old interview.
I don’t doubt that at all: his mother is/was Russian and i daresay his father is/was Orthodox.
Whatever! He’s light years superior to the former MoD.
True, but an empty chair would have been a better defence minister than Anatoly Serdyukov.
When I watched the parade on youtube, I did notice Shoigu crossing himself.
I figured at the time, he was just praying not to fall down, because it’s a tough job to remain standing in a moving car. Even atheists cross themselves sometimes, when about to undertake something risky.
However, thinking about it now, there’s probably more to it than that.
A lot of people believe that Shoigu is planning to run for President of Russian Federation after Putin retires. Russian electorate will vote for an ethnic minority – no problem with that whatsoever, provided the minority is one of the “good” ones that is loyal to Russia. But I wonder if they would vote for somebody who is a religion other than Orthodox – dubious.
Having said that, I am pretty sure that Shoigu is being sincere in his beliefs and show of beliefs. He is not the kind of guy who would dissimulate, just to gain popularity.
Shoigu was Director and later Minister for Emergency Services for 21 years up to 2012. He directed the establishment of the service, which is organised in a paramilitary way (he is General of Emergency Services, not of the Army). A civil engineer with a PhD in logistics/economics, he’s been on the spot for every major disaster in 20 years, the reassuring smiling face of the State riding to the rescue. Everyone knows him and loves him.
Hes dealt with long term humanitarian disasters, eg Kosovo, in the course of which he’s negotiated with governments and UN agencies etc. He knows how. Also supposedly speaks 6 or 7 languages. He’s not show. He’s a career organiser of things that are important to a normal life.
Published on 7 May 2015
Remarks by Taras Kuzio, Senior Research Associate, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, 10 April 2015.
– Land bridge from Russia to Crimea not possible. Azov Battalion, Donetsk Airport, Debaltseve. Donbas batallion
– 1:10 For Russia to create a land bridge to Crimea Putin needs 50,000-100,000 troops to reach Crimea.
– 1:45 Little green men, GRU, Mongolian troops brought in from Russia’s border with China
– 2:45 Mariupol is a factory town, most polluted city in Europe. Coal mines, Rinat Akhmetov, oligarchs have to be removed
– 3:40 October 2014 elections in Ukraine
– 4:15 Donetsk People’s Republic, Volnovakhe
– 5:18 Four Lenin monuments toppled in Mariupol
– 5:58 Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to absorb Donbas, wants Donbas to remain in Ukraine
– 6:55 Rinat Akhmetov, metallurgical plants in Donbas.
– 7:30 Collapse of Minsk II agreement. Inflow of US military equipment, President Obama
– 8:15 US American Rangers, Polish officers,
– 8:38 Time working against Vladimir Putin
– 9:30 Putin underestimated the West. Russia got away with its invasion of Georgia
– 10:00 No Minsk III agreement, tier 3 sanctions against Iran
– 10:30 Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk
– 11:18 Western journalists speculated about Russia in Ukraine
– 12:00 Putin expanded Ukrainian patriotism into Eastern and Southern Ukraine
– 12:30 Viktor Yushchenko
– 12:46 Putin does not understand the concept of a patriotic Russian speaking Ukrainian
Thank you to St. Vladimir Institute (Lidia Smilka) at the University of Toronto for the recording venue http://www.stvladimir.ca
Taras Kuzio
http://taraskuzio.net
This video was not sponsored
Azov Battalion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Bat…
War in Donbas (Війна на сході України – Російська збройна агресія на сході України)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_D…
2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014%E2%…
2014 Russian invasion of Crimea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Cri…
Euromaidan / Maidan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
What is this retard blabbing on about. Russia had a snap drill of 156,000 troops in the far east. This clown actually thinks it is a challenge for Russia to raise 200,000 troops to wipe his precious regime off the map.
Considering how the rag tag Russian forces mopped the floor with the NATO trained Georgian forces in 2008, I expect any current deployment to do it 10 times quicker. This is rather self evident given that the current regime forces are losing against the Donbas rebels. No, there are no Russian forces fighting Kiev regime forces there.
I sure hope they make Taras Kuzio an honorary General and put him in charge of the Ukrainian Army. His order of battle knowledge is apparently gleaned from the Kiev Post, where it is perfectly acceptable to argue one day that Ukraine desperately needs weapons and even foreign troops because it is at imminent risk of being overrun by the Russian Army, and the next to snort with amusement that Russia could not shift a fat dog from in front of a fire, and that Ukraine could whip them with one hand tied behind its back. His partisan wanna-be-Galician brain is so addled with imaginary Ukrainian heroism that it is hard to take anything he says seriously. But he must be fairly certain there is not going to be a war between Russia and Ukraine, because he would be the laughingstock of the English-speaking world a few days later. Umm…General Kuzio…didn’t you say the Russians only had about 10% trained strength, and the other 90% were drunks and bums?
Merkel-Ferkel yesterday in the Kremlin:
I have arrived in Moscow today during a difficult situation for German-Russian relations. It was important for me, together with President Putin, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of world war II to honour those who died. I have laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and thus I want to say to the Russian people, that I, as German Chancellor, kneel in front of the millions of victims of a war that was unleashed by Nazi Germany. We shall be constantly aware of the fact that the share of the peoples of the former Soviet Union and Red Army soldiers accounted for the majority of casualties in that war. I remind you that the war in the East was carried out as a brutal race war and a war of extermination, and that it brought untold suffering to millions of people.
The occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end WWII is on August 15, 2015.
The occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the German-Soviet War was on the day before her arrival in Moscow.
She could not be in Moscow on 9 May because she had been told not to attend the celebrations.
Putin should have said to his “partner”: Fick dich, Arschloch!
😦
Poroshenko continues to sow confusion where all should be clear. Bandera’s UPA fought fascism, apparently.
“Turning to World War II, the obvious leading role of the Red Army, Ukrainian fronts, the Soviet partisan organizations in driving out Nazis should be noted. Within Ukraine’s second front, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army opened the struggle against fascist invaders. Even at that time it saw Ukraine as an independent state, and not a part of the Soviet empire,”
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/264688.html
I think they should rename Victory Day into Historical Revisionism Day, or Day of Confusion.
And with the term “Ukrainian Front” he conjures up images of the valorous Ukrainian army, whose absence would have meant certain defeat for the USSR, as some stupid Kievan woman said in an interview held on the Maidan recently.
In WWII, the Russian term “front” meant “army” in English, e.g, the British 8th Army in the Western Desert.
The Ukrainian Front started life as the Voronezh Front. Voronezh was the furthest advance for the Wehrmacht 6th Army in central European Russia: from there it was all the way back to Berlin for Fritz.
Before becoming the Voronezh Front, that subdivision of the Red army was known as the Bryansk Front, Bryansk being further west of Voronezh.
After the Voronezh Front had chased the Wehrmacht out of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics (RSFSR [РСФСР], aka “Russia”) and had entered the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Voronezh Front became the Ukrainian Front.
This is not to say that there were no citizens of the UkSSR serving in the Ukrainian Front.
Poroshenko is a sack of shit.
Poroshenko is having his cake and eating it, choking on the cherry stones and blaming the Kremlin for planting cherry trees.
(complicated analogy based on Ukrainian folk imagery)
It is comical how they try to move UPA from the “losers” side of the ledger to the “victors” side.
How many times do we have to say it: UPA was on the LOSING side of the war.
That’s precisely the reason why they had to escape to Canada afterwards, along with their Nazi masters.
And I will say this again: I would respect them more if they just admitted that they lost.
If I believed in their cause, then I hope I would have the guts to say: “Our side lost, but we were still in the right. Heil Hitler!” Then I would respect them for saying that. Just infuriating how duplicitous they are…
He should do this up with a re-enactment style map on a table, little figures showing the locations of the various entities involved, and big arrows drawn showing directions of movements. That way we’d be able to geo-locate the second front, and see which way the Insurgent Army is facing when “repelling”.
“Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.
Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler’s pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany’s other neighbours.”
A forlorn hope, since the Ango-French idea of an alliance was that the USSR would do the fighting while the western allies made sympathetic noises and gathered up the spoils afterward.
Get a load of this:
Tintin has a brother?
That’s a pretty good rundown. A handy list to keep for reference.
“Sympathetic noises” is a great phrase. An emotional gesture without any underlying meaning or commitment. It therefore also has a charge of implied violence to it.
I admire your cynicism.
Listen to Michael Parenti’s lecture on the real causes of WW2:
http://noliesradio.org/archives/32286
If you want the official Western version on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact listen to this:
https://twitter.com/mattklewis/status/597744129767006209
I see the UK is on the list above, making a “Devils’ Alliance”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_potato_(game)
The UK made that Naval Treaty with Nazi Germany behind of France’s back. The Frogs were none too pleased at the time.
prima facia nonsense because Stalingrad.
Thanks for the hour of duelling histories. Made me realise what a great agitprop resource history is for those who would like to “shape” current narratives. You have the white-hat / bad-hat lust for an – ideally, ego-stroking – answer multiplied by the my-eyes-glaze-over factor. Result: maximum impact. Best, this can all be deployed while seeming judicious and balanced to those not checking “facts-not-mentioned.”
More on the Vita Zaverukha continuing saga , aka Ukraine’s “Joan of Arc”.
There isn’t much new info: Vita is still in the pokey, and is still complaining about being tortured and beaten.
The new and shocking thing, is indications of a complete rift between the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Gerashchenko) and the regular Kiev police.
Recall that Vita was arrested and detained by a special unit of the police called “Sokol” (falcon) which replaced Berkut.
Now, the big deal is that Gerashchenko, in his love for dear “Viktoria” and his desperation to save her (from the consequences of her earlier confession) is openly undermining the police investigation. Not only does Gerashcenko take Vita’s side and demand an investigation at the highest level. He goes even further and declares that any suspect in detention has the right to lie to police. This is a shocking statement, because most societies regard it as a crime to lie to the police. Here is Gerashchenko’s statement:
Лицо подозреваемое может заявлять в свою защиту все, что оно хочет заявить, в том числе и неправду, или отказываться от дачи каких-либо показаний и не нести за это ответственность – такое право дает подозреваемому лицу Конституция и Закон», – пишет советник главы МВД.
TRANSLATION:
A suspect is allowed to say in their defense anything that they please, including a lie; they are also allowed to recant from any earlier confessions, without incurring consequences. Such a right is given to the suspect by our Constitution and Law.
‘Sokol’
That’s the same unit Avakov used to whack Sashko Biliy.
I see pain in honey-bunny’s future.
And maybe Geraschenko’s, if he doesn’t shut his fat piehole.
Geraschenko is Interior Ministry. A lot of Pravy Sector ended up with him. So their people should be protected,. It is the police that want to watch what they say. Cop shops have been known to get damaged if they’re holding “innocents”.
Agree with Katkan. Vita has “krysha” in high places.
“Sokol” should watch their backs.
Mighty impressive display on Saturday, but when it comes to the crunch, its the quality of the man (or woman, for that matter) who has his his finger on the trigger that counts …
This photograph was taken in Georgia, 08.08.08, after the defeat of the Georgian army, which had then retreated, partly regrouped and had then decided to come back into Gori. However, the Georgians stumbled upon a Russian checkpoint.
The photograph shows a Russian soldier at the ready with a light machine gun. He is confronting motorized infantry of the Georgian armed forces. The officers of the column threatened the machine-gunner, telling him to get out of the way and let them pass, whereupon they heard his reply: “Go fuck yourselves!”
Then journalists from the Western mass media, who were present in the column, tried to talk to the machine-gunner and received the same reply.
In the end, the convoy turned around and went back to where it had come from.
Foreign journalists then published an article entitled: “You don’t need 300 when only one is enough”.
Source: Почему не победить русских
[Why Russians Cannot Be Defeated]
And the stalwart soldier was a Rossiyanin:
And those swine from Galitsia cry out “To the heroes glory!” – heroes who murder women and children from afar by means of their artillery barrages.
In fact, the steadfast sentry looks as if he might be one of Shoigu’s kinfolk.
Looks like the Tuvans are the Gurkhas of the Russian army – though the difference being they the Tuvans are citizens the country of they serve.
I think they might be related to the Ghurkas.
They’re mountain people from the other side of the Himalayas where Nepal is situated and are of short stature with Asiatic features.
Tuvan on an ‘orse.
that’s a good story if true.. i hope he got a raise or promotion for that! that is the type of person you want on your side, lol.. and yes he does look like the guy upstream – Shoigu..
If you search, the web you’ll see plenty of comments from Russians saying that there must have been a tank off the picture.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t fancy my chances if somebody was pointing a machine gun at me and I was surrounded by other guys jammed together in an unarmored pickup truck. There’s just no good way that scenario could end unless somebody sneaked up behind the Russian and cold-cocked him with a milk bottle, and that doesn’t look very likely.
The sentry’s name is, allegedly, Бато Дашидоржиев [Bato Dashidorzhiev]: most Russian bloggers say he is a Buryat.
See: https://www.facebook.com/forfeitmygame/posts/10202875346164115
One blog says he got killed that same year.
Here he is again:
And again:
So the dog must have been the last straw that finally scared them off.
Many of the Russian blogs have comments from former Russian (that’s Russky “Russian”!) soldiers as regards what great comrades Buryats are, their only failing being that like most Siberian ethnic folk, they go crazy when drunk.
Their ethnic cousins, native Americans, also have a reputation of not being able to metabolize ethanol alcohol. Must be some genetic mutation.
(or maybe the mutation is in being ABLE to metabolize…!)
A lot of east Asians are not able to metabolise ethanol alcohol. I understand sort of vaguely that alcohol is broken down in 3 stages of metabolism in the liver normally and in many Asians (me included), the gene that should produce the enzyme necessary for Stage 2 in metabolising alcohol is a mutant that produces a different enzyme that is not so good at breaking down the Stage 1 by-product acetaldehyde.
You don’t really go crazy, you get kind of sick and nauseous. Maybe the Buryats take their hooch really strong, like 40% alcohol or whatever.
http://www.gbhealthwatch.com/Trait-Asian-Flush.php
Dear Jen:
That is very interesting. Does that mean that you can’t drink any wine or beer?
I can only handle one glass of champagne at a party and I have to have food with it. Beer I don’t touch at all. I get drunk easily and my face goes very red.
More from the whacky world of Banderastan:
Kiev seeks $350bn damages from Russia for ‘aggression’
This claim is in addition to one made by Yats the Rat for damages incurred by Banderastan for Gazprom’s unfair pricing of gas supplied to the Ukraine and for which the Ukraine still has not fully paid.
Glitch in the propaganda machine, engineer called.
“Over 50 vehicles carrying consumer goods that were about to be delivered to the militant-controlled territory were stopped in Donetsk region on Saturday, May 9, the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service said.”
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/264818.html
Published same day as
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on decision-makers in Donetsk and Luhansk to allow Ukrainian aid convoys into the region.”
http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/264801.html
Both true.
Ukraine, mostly in the form of Pravy checkpoint guards, charges ridiculous “permit fees” to cross their checkpoints. Most of these fees don’t make it to the government coffers, surprise surprise. Or insist on actual permits which can be obtained only from areas they can’t go to without a permit. This is partly because they fear the food is going to the enemy army (ie NAF), and partly because they are “trying to save the poor people” from commercial suppliers who are “profiteering”.
Then Ukraine lets trucks through but retains the people’s documents, to make sure they come back. Donbass then won’t let the in, for fear they are saboteurs…. if they came in with no papers they can’t check if they’ve left again.
The aid agencies Merkel is referring to are not local drivers of a truck of cabbages. They are the fancy-named NGOs that want to “fact find” what needs doing, invariably in border villages, of the type recently ejected as “spies” (which they were).
And the vilification pronounced by liberast bloggers goes on:
Почему фото после «Бессмертного полка» оказались свалены в кучу?
Why were photos piled into a heap following the march of the “Immortal Regiment”?
В Интернете появились фотографии, на которых портреты ветеранов с Парада Победы небрежно свалены в кучу. Популяризировал тему известный блогер Андрей Мальгин. Люди начали задаваться логичным вопросом – как это возможно в принципе? Наиболее популярный комментарий:
– “Если бы это были портреты своих ветеранов, разве бы возможно было так с ними поступить?”
On the Internet there have appeared pictures of portraits of Victory Day Parade veterans thrown carelessly into a heap. The theme has been popularized by a well-known blogger, Andrei Malgin. People have begun to ask the logical question – how is this basically possible? The most popular comment:
“If they were portraits of one’s veterans, surely they would not have ended up this way?”
The two placards I made on Saturday morning are here, by my side as I write.
They’ll be used next year.
And I’ll make another: one of my father carrying a lewis gun,1942, Libya.
https://twitter.com/RussiaInsider/status/597775355991187456
and in harpers canuck-stained world “Ottawa considering hate charges against those who boycott Israel.” obviously bds is working.. it’s another reason to not back any of the mainstream political parties here in canada too..
The story appears exaggerated.
i don’t think it is an exaggeration to say harper is the present fuehrer of canada, in bed with zionists and the ukrainian canadian congress lobby group… there – i said that..
Russia’s economy did badly in March: http://in.rbth.com/economics/2015/05/08/russian_gdp_decline_gathers_pace_43025.html
“New data shows that Russia’s economic slump is continuing to snowball, with GDP falling by 3.4 percent in March 2015, up from 1.2 percent in February. As real salaries shrink, the population is cutting spending and looking to safeguard savings. Economists predict that Russia will not be able to arrest the slump in the economy until the end of 2015.”
There was some better news about the economy in April so hopefully the economic contraction will not be as severe in April as it was in March.
You are predictable as gas after eating a double cheese pizza. The article goes on to confirm that the numbers are in line for a total GDP contraction for 2015 of about 2.8% with Q3 and Q4 showing positive growth.
Mark et al – great work as usual! Wish I had more time to participate but in the meantime I will help keep your page views growing!
A film by Dmitry Rogozin
https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/597881561258790914
all that alberta tar sand money has to go somewhere..
Harper is just trolling. $25 Million might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but it wouldn’t keep Ukraine going for a day, considering the debt load they’re taking on.
In Polish political news:
Yesterday in Polish Presidential elections the incumbent, Komorowski has apparently lost the first round to his challenger, Andrzej Duda. This is considered a huge surprise and shock. Komorowski still has a shot at Round #2, but pundits are seeing this as a protest vote. I looked in the usual places (=wiki), but couldn’t find much info about Duda. Since he is the flag-bearer of the party that was founded by the Kaczynski twins, I don’t expect much good to come out of him either.
Of more importance are the reasons behind the protest vote.
This interesting analysis from REGNUM claims that Polish voters were utterly disgusted with Komorowski’s initiative to set up an ALT-Victory Day; and how that all turned out.
Recall that Poland decided to celebrate Victory Day on 8 May (just to spite Russia), and to invite all the world leaders. However, in the end, none of the A-List celebrities (such as Obama) attended. Probably the highest ranking “get” was Ban Ki-Moon, and he is no treat.
Also, according to this article, Polish social media was simply abuzz with people pointing out the very obvious: That the “Victor Nations” assembled in Gdansk consisted mostly of the WWII Loser Nations: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Romania, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine; not to mention the Big Kahuna of the Losers: Germany herself. Of those listed, the nations that were actually Victors were so due to their association with the Soviet Union.
In any case, the list of “victor” nations was so very ludicrous, that even the Poles couldn’t stand the irony. Komorowski was showered with recriminations from his own people, and skewered in social lmedia, where people wrote such comments as this:
“What Komorowski did on Westerplatt, looks all the more like a Hitler holiday, and an act of pure treason…”
“What a shameful spectacle! Where were the representatives of the elites of our new strategic partners? Where are Obama, Hollande, Cameron, Merkel? Maybe they are in the same place as their predecessors from 1939? And here we see Komorowski surrounded by his so-called ‘friends’: Germans, Ukrainians, Croats, Slovaks, Rumanians, Lithuanians and Bulgarians! Now it is clear why this ceremony had to take place in the dead of night….”
“I can’t believe my eyes from the shock of it. What kind of ‘allies’ and ‘victors’ are these, who celebrate Victory Day with us? The leaders of Croatia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Ukraine. Not to mention Germany! In other words, all the allies of the Third Reich…. The U.S., which is considered our strategic ally, didn’t send even so much as a junior Secretary of State. This is impossible to grasp: We are celebrating our ‘victory’ in a group of losers; of our own will we are standing side by side with the very same nations, against whom the civilized world waged a just war. Our President criticizes Russia, and yet it was from East that the liberation of Poland came, while the West – as usual – turned its back on us.”
“Bravo! In the not too distant future they will be telling us, that UPA was the one who liberated us!”
One day later, Komorowski lost his election.
Only remotely interesting detail about Duda is that he did his legal science dissertation on Russian administrative law.
Publish or Perish!
I preferred to perish.
You’re in good company.
People say that Jesus was also a great teacher, but couldn’t get tenure, because he hadn’t published enough. (or at all)
He never lost any of his online work, though. Because Jesus saves.
Trouble in NATO Paradise????
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0511/Honors-for-Ukrainian-nationalists-anger-their-victims-in-Poland
Schadenfreude!!!!….Given the Poles strident demonization of Russia stance….
Ha ha!
Putting a halo on Bandera’s head was a bridge too far for Fred Weir!
Yes, I thought that piece was very candid for Fred Weir, and meant to say so at the time.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2015/0127/European-leaders-survivors-mark-Auschwitz-liberation-70-years-later-without-Putin
Did Kiev send a delegation?
Those bitching about Putin “grabbing land here and grabbing land there” probably thought it was OK for Ukraine to grab Crimea when Krushchev gave it to them, something he had no unilateral authority to do. I don’t imagine too many Ukrainians said they do not accept gifts from dictators.
“I don’t imagine too many Ukrainians said they do not accept gifts from dictators.” they are accepting all the largesse of the western powers – nato, cia, usa, merkel and etc. etc.. what’s the difference, LOLOL! meanwhile ukraine is going to hell in a hand-basket.. blame the ruskies, lol…
I thought that this was a particularly bad New York Times op-ed (by novelist Mikhail Shishkin – has anybody read any of his books?), http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/opinion/mikhail-shishkin-how-russians-lost-the-war.html?referrer=, and so I have written a response here, about the ‘self-hating Russian’: https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/the-self-hating-russian/
Perhaps Shishkin believes Russians are a primitive people, that the Germans would have civilised the unwashed, ignorant and blighted Russian masses. Germany’s defeat in World War 2 prevented this from happening; perhaps this is the source of Shishkin’s resentment? Russian liberals and Russian right-wing racists such as Misanthropic Division and Dmitry Demushkin all seek to emulate West in one form or another, and see Russians as somehow defective.
Shishkin reminds me of anther self-hating liberal from an enemy state – a Chinese liberal that is praised in the West; Liu Xiaobo, who also echoes the West’s prejudices.
In a well-known statement of 1988, Liu said:
It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonisation for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident
Has an American or British political dissident, opposed to the policies of his own government, ever won a Nobel Prize? They are reserved for handing out to foreign political dissidents who lick the west’s boots and yammer about how great their former country will be when the west liberates it and overthrows their government. Westerners who act like that are traitors, and certainly not Nobel Prize material.
If a “protest art” group in New York painted a 30-foot dick on the Brooklyn Bridge, I find it hard to imagine they would get an art prize from the U.S. government.
Has an American or British political dissident, opposed to the policies of his own government, ever won a Nobel Prize?
I don’t know whether you can consider Pintor a political dissident. However he certainly did not approve the policies of his own government, as clearly stated in his beautiful Nobel Prize lecture.
The trick there was the usual one, namely not to silence dissent but to drown it in noise.
Great find; I had never heard of Harold Pinter – shows what an uncultured Philistine I am. The lecture is indeed a thing of beauty, and one paragraph of it may be perfect for my next post, which is in the works. Thanks!!
shows what an uncultured Philistine I am
I could lecture you for hours on this topic, if I wasn’t myself an uncultured monkey much more than you are, and if I had not been introduced to it by an article from the journalist John Pilger.
Dear Paul:
I never heard of Shishkin before, let alone read anything by him; but that says something only me and how out of touch I am with contemporary “Russian” literature. (Shishkin apparently lives in exile, in Switzerland, but presumably he still writes in Russian.)
According to his biograpy, Mikhail Shishkin is half Russian, half Ukrainian (on his mother’s side); Shishkin’s grandfather was repressed in Stalin times; Shishkin’s father was a decorated war veteran (as per his op-ed). By the time Shishkin was born, it was already a broken family, with the father leaving the family, and the boy raised by his grandmother. The boy became ideologically anti-Soviet and engaged in samizdat and tamizdat activities typical of Soviet dissidents. His Ukrainian mother also appears to be a political dissident, and it sounds like there was a mother-son political bond, against the absent (possibly abusive) father. At one point (all this in the wiki bio) Mikhail’s mother was fired from her job at the school because she allowed the boy to attend “Vysotsky parties”.
In other words, if I may indulge in some amateur Freudian psychiatry, it sounds like Shishkin has a lot of “daddy” issues, identified his loathed father with the Soviet state; later with Putin; idealized his mother, which he associates with all good things: Vysotsky, dissidents, the West, etc.
And by the way, this is an enduring theme of the Russian intelligentsia: Just about every Soviet dissident and modern contemporary kreakl was a Vysotsky fan. Vysotsky was some kind of catalyst for this generation.
Anyhow, A few years back, Shishkin emigrated to Switzerland and considers himself to be a political emigre. He publishes on average one book every five years and appears to be able to make a good living from his writing.
According to the wiki entry (which sounds like it was written by Shishkin himself), Shishkin is the greatest Russian writer of our times, a veritable combination of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Bunin and James Royce, all rolled into one. His works are translated into innumerable languages, and even turned into plays.
P.S.
Dear Paul:
Here is a suggested dissertation topic for one of your students:
“The Role of Vysotsky in the birth of the Kreakl Generation”.
Vladimir Vysotsky seems to be a bit of a character with his husky singing voice:
I never got what the big deal was about Vysotsky. I guess it was one of those things that you had to be there at the right time to understand. When it comes to Soviet bards, I prefer Okudzhava.
I spent a full academic year at Voronezh University listening to that bugger howling. My three Russian room-mates played Vysotsky almost non-stop daily. At first, I used to think it was a drunkard singing, which was right, in a way, because booze eventually killed him. In the end I asked them what it was all about, and told them I thought it was crap. They said I had to be a Russian to understand.
Oh yeah, and he had his revenge on me! After I had got wed, Mrs. Exile took me to see her parents’ and grandparents’graves, which are in the Vagankovskoe cemetery, a place where many famous folk are pushing up the daisies, including Vysotsky. And as we approached, I heard his howling again. I thought I was hearing things, but there, next to the gates was a big kiosk flogging off souvenirs of the great crooner, including audio cassettes of his complete works, examples of which were constantly being blasted out from speakers hanging from the frontage of the shop.
Vysotsky’s grave. It’s always covered with flower tributes whenever I pass it. I was there the other week for a spring clean-upof my wife’s folks’ plot.
Well, I have Russian blood coursing through my veins, and I don’t “get” Vysotsky either.
To me, he just seems like some untalented proto-kreakl from the late Soviet period.
If he hadn’t drank and smoked himself to death, he would probably be a member of Makarevich’s band today… heh heh…
The only time I ever came across Vysotsky was when I had a copy of that CD of covers by Albert Kuvezin and his Yat-kha band. They did a song by Vysotsky (something about a giraffe, “Pesnya i girafi” or something like that) and it was the most sickly tune on that album. Just didn’t sit right with the Led Zeppelin (“When the Levee breaks”), Joy Division and Motorhead (“Orgasmotron”) covers.
It was ever thus with Russian self-hating liberals.
Nineteenth-century Russia had some of the most radically “self-hating” liberals ever. They were called Zapadniki, or “Westerners”. The social gulf between traditional-minded Russian masses and the small Western-educated elite was huge: in the 18th century it was even greater: the elite didn’t even speak Russian most of the time and the only contact they had with members of the great unwashed was with their house servants – sort of like “house niggers” in the glory days of the US South. This 19th century Russian elite had nothing but contempt towards the Russian past and with an almost colonial subject’s servility adopted all the newest progressive fads invented in Western Europe.
Here is an extract from a letter written by Dostoevsky in 1867, in which he describes his visit to Turgenev, who was then living as an expatriate in Germany:
Frankly, I never could have imagined that anyone could so naively and clumsily display all the wounds in his vanity, as Turgenev did that day; and these people go about boasting that they are atheists. He told me that he was an uncompromising atheist. My God! It is to Deism that we owe the Saviour — that is to say, the conception of a man so noble that one cannot grasp it without a sense of awe — a conception of which one cannot doubt that it represents the undying ideal of mankind. And what do we owe to these gentry — Turgenev, Herzen, Utin, Tchernychevsky? In place of that loftiest divine beauty on which they spit, we behold in them such ugly vanity, such unashamed susceptibility, such ludicrous arrogance, that it is simply impossible to guess what it is that they hope for, and who shall take them as guides. He frightfully abused Russia and the Russians. But I have noticed this: all those Liberals and Progressives who derive chiefly from Bielinsky’s school, find their pleasure and satisfaction in abusing Russia. The difference is that the adherents of Tchernychevsky merely abuse, and in so many words desire that Russia should disappear from the face of the earth {that, first of all!). But the others declare, in the same breath, that they love Russia. And yet they hate everything that is native to the soil, they delight in caricaturing it, and were one to oppose them with some fact that they could not explain away or caricature, — any fact with which they were obliged to reckon — they would, I believe, be profoundly unhappy, annoyed, even distraught. And I’ve noticed that Turgenev — and for that matter all who live long abroad — have no conception of the true facts (though they do read the newspapers), and have so utterly lost all affection and understanding for Russia that even those quite ordinary matters which in Russia the very Nihilists no longer deny, but only as it were caricature after their manner — these fellows cannot so much as grasp. Amongst other things he told me that we are bound to crawl in the dust before the Germans, that there is but one universal and irrefutable way — that of civilization, and that all attempts to create an independent Russian culture are but folly and pigheadedness. He said that he was writing a long article against the Russophils and Slavophils. I advised him to order a telescope from Paris for his better convenience. ” What do you mean?” he asked. “The distance is somewhat great,” I replied; “direct the telescope on Russia, and then you will be able to observe us; otherwise you can’t really see anything at all.” He flew into a rage.
And take a look at these extracts from Dostoevsky’s “The idiot”:
“I can but thank you”, he said, in a tone too respectful to be sincere, “for your kindness in letting me speak, for I have often noticed that our Liberals never allow other people to have an opinion of their own, and immediately answer their opponents with abuse, if they do not have recourse to arguments of a still more unpleasant nature”.
“Excuse me”, continued Evgenie Pavlovitch hotly, “I don’t say a word against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of a great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without it. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral conservatism; but I am attacking RUSSIAN liberalism; and I attack it for the simple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal, he is a non-Russian liberal. Show me a real Russian liberal, and I’ll kiss him before you all, with pleasure”.
“In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my ‘fact’ consists in this, that RUSSIAN liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence of things themselves–indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our ‘Russian liberals’ for sincere love of their country, and they boast that they see better than their neighbours what real love of one’s country should consist in. But of late they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression ‘love of country,’ and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I hold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it as a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may likely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a liberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be explained among US? By my original statement that a Russian liberal is NOT a RUSSIAN liberal–that’s the only explanation that I can see”.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Nice quotes. Thanks.
Exactly: as he says, the kreakly delight in caricaturing Russia, both because it makes them feel clever and because it brings instant adulation from the western media, which likes to maintain a stable of tame Russia-hating Russians for credibility. I often think what makes a kreakl is a sense that one does not fit in, does not belong. It is the easiest thing to assume that one must be smarter than his fellows, otherwise he would think and feel as they do.
Beautiful piece of observation that you picked out the moment of peak mendacity:
‘Each one of Hitler’s victories was a defeat for Germany. And the final rout of Nazi Germany was a victory for the Germans themselves, who demonstrated how a nation can rise up and live like human beings without the delirium of war in their heads.’
That is a sickening bit of tautological “reasoning” and bombast.
So it was all worth it. Awwww!
paul.. thanks for your article.. i thought it was well written and well said.. instead of deconstructing the same tired bullshit the mainstream western media -this example from the nyt in the form of mikhail shishkin’s comments – you’d be better to try to deconstruct just why the constant onslaught against russia in the same predictable way? that is what is happening here, regardless of the changing representatives from russia or with some dubious connection to russia that wish to support the msm in it’s take down of russia.. forget details on his bullshit.. it is the bigger attempt on the part of the western msm to take down russia.. any propaganda and fodder will do in this ceaseless goal of the western msm.. it is not a free fucking press.. it is a bullshit agenda for war 24/7… that’s how i see it..
after shishkins comments, it will be some other similar minded doofus unwilling to see russia in any light other then the one that capitalism run amok wants to see and define it as.. war=money.. that is the game being played and we are the suckers being played on..
The contradiction inherent to his view did not dawn on Shishkin.
If every defeat for the Nazis was a victory for the German people, and conversely (as he implies) every victory for the Soviets was a defeat for the Soviet people, we obtain again that only one power could have “won” the war, either the Soviets with the fall of Moscow or the Germans (as it happened) with the fall of Berlin.
What one has to really bring home from his article is that no matter how lunatic you are, if you are a “house negro”, as a Russian demoting Russia is, you will always find space in the Free World © This is a despicable form of discrimination, where Russia-hating Russians have an unfair advantage over the rest of the Russia-hating scum.
One of the loudest and most obnoxious Latvian Nazis is an ethnic Russian named Igor Shishkin. Not suggesting any relation, but they would find much to agree on.
Огромная колонна Хаммеров движется на Луганск 10.05.15
Huge column of Hummers moving in Lugansk 10.05.15
Gifts off O’Bummer.
Amongst the comments below are some from a Yukie who twice points out that the blogger who posted the clip gives no evidence that the convoy actually was in Lugansk province, that the clip could have been shot in Lvov province, and that the woman is speaking with a Polish accent, stating that some bloggers have pointed out that the Hummers belong to to the 80th Lvov brigade of the Ukrainian army and are moving along a road in Western Ukraine.
Interesting that the woman’s having a Polish accent raises suspicions off the critical commenter.
Doesn’t he like Poles or something?
Warning! 18+
Этот фильм – смертный приговор для военных преступников Порошенко, Турчинова и д
[This film is a death sentence for war criminals Poroshenko, Turchinov and others]
Well it should be, but it won’t, because this film will never ever be shown by the Western mass media.
You can’t even say its content is old news because it never was news in the West.
Please forgive my long absence, there was this little matter of a General Election which took up most of my time, and as a ‘count agent’, i.e. observing the vote counts where I live, I’ve only just now recovered from the physical demands this incurred, me not being a spring chicken, sigh ….
I’ll now read all your comments, from top to bottom!
🙂
Week is a long time in British politics – I heard Nigel Farage lost his seat and had tendered his resignation as UKIP leader – but the party refused to accept his resignation so he withdrew it and now he’s back as UKIP leader. Good to see you back!
Thanks – it’s good to be back, and great to have the video links to the victory parade in Moscow. Scanning the comments – please to tell me: it is 2015, not 2014, yes? Because the usual suspects are still at it as if nothing at all had changed.
Regarding Nigel Farage: yep, that’s true. It happened yesterday. The members didn’t want him to go, the NEC who had to accept his resignation, listened to the members and rejected that resignation unanimously. Mind – they’ve locked him out of his office until September, so he will now have to take a holiday.
Strangely enough, the members of Labour or the LibDems haven’t pleaded for their leaders to stay …
Welcome back.
Seems the Tories (and Labour) are going nowhere until Britain adopts some form of proportional representation. It would be absurd for either the parties that depend on FPP to shoot themselves in the foot by opening up the field to their competitors – only in New Zealand has a sitting government ever been fool enough to do that.
Electoral reform is most certainly on the top of the agenda, but many of us don’t think PR is suitable at all. The first step is a proper boundary reform, then reform of the scandalous postal voting system, and then perhaps other reforms like the right to recall.
You can see from Germany what sort of politics PR leads to. FPTP, for all is inherent unfairness, means at least that politicians are still tied to their voters, and not to a list drawn up in the back rooms of the political parties.
But this is a huge field, and the debates amongst ourselves have already started.
Welcome back, colliemum.
I think you should run for office yourself, rather than just flaking for the pols!
Thanks – but no way am I going to run for office!
I’d rather be an éminence grise, much more suitable to my age.
Also, the resident collie wouldn’t like me running for office, LOL!
Welcome back colliemum! It looks lit the next few years will be a bit crazy. I read that 8 fire stations are to be closed in London, not to mention the Tories declaring war on the BBC and a free vote on fox hunting. A sign of things to come. At least it won’t be boring!
Hi!
No, things will definitely not be boring – not with the assorted ‘new, young, GLBTQ crowd’ in meltdown on the one hand, and the BBC finally being forced to go back to their roots of being impartial. Not that this means the EU won’t give money to the BBC, nor that this means the mind-meld of the MSM chief editors will suddenly snap and they’ll go back to a strict separation of factual reporting and editorial opinion pieces …
For the near future, watch out for the metropolitan Labour Party – which is as far removed from the old, true Labour Party as one can possibly imagine! – providing the astonished by-standers with beautiful political theatre: are they going to vote for the self-proclaimed “UK Obama” (a certain Chuka Umuna) as leader, or for the lady Yvette Cooper … aaahhhh, decisions decisions …..
welcome back! you can skip mine, as i am mostly in a rage when i talk anyway!
Thanks – I don’t mind reading posts written in righteous anger!
🙂
I see young Tom Balmforth is writing in The Guardian today
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/russia-opposition-boris-nemtsov-ukraine-report-opposition#comment-52010762
He works for Radio Free Europe.
I wonder if he might be related to Richard Balmforth, the Reuter’s correspondent. Richard Balmforth was recently exposed as having spent three years as NATO information officer (1998-2001), where he “ran some projects in Ukraine”.
There’s a web of intrigue if ever I saw one.
The love to broadcast the message that the Russian liberal opposition is “united”. Big deal. We saw them as united as they will ever be, when they formed their “shadow government”, the self-styled “Coordinating Council”, under King Navalny. They had, what, three or four meetings and then disbanded because nobody was listening to them and nothing was getting done.
Maybe the blog author should get in contact with Off-Guardian… In fact, a loose network of such media oversight blogs would be good. They could promote and cross-post each other without duplication, boost each other’s traffic etc. There are already sites like fair.org, medialens, project censored, Article 19, Spinwatch etc… but they’re a bit old skoolyet if very good.
There needs to be a counter campaign to the counter of NATO & the West’s BS anti-Russia campaign, keep tabs on who, what and where they are and how they operate, their funding etc. and to make it clear that they are hiding their origins under ‘academia/whatever’ to influence opinion. Early ones are of course the Guardian’s Eastern Partnership Network (?) & The Interpreter bollox. That means tying in the disparate counter-counter blogs/website. NATO needs to be kept in check and there to be an easy and accessible source for anyone reference directly for comments section vis the author/origin etc. The Western propaganda organs are much better funded, but they rely on bs and FUD…
Extry! Extry!
Here it is, boys and girls:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B80YSM1UOoT6aHc1ZElqZTZ2T2M/view?pli=1
The long-awaited magnum opus just published, hot off the press!
The hard-hitting 64-page expose, for which Boris Nemtsov was murdered in cold blood!
Main theses of Boris expose include:
1) 150 Russian soldiers killed in August 2014
2) 70 Russian soldiers killed in Jan-Feb 2015
3) 53 billion rubes of state budget spent on war
4) 80 billion rubles to help refugees
5) 2 trillion rubles spent on that white elephant called Crimea
All substantiated to a fare-thee-well, I suppose? Cuz I remember reading Yashin howling that nobody would go on the record, so we have only Boris’s word – and Yashin’s, naturally – that there was actually any testimony from relatives at all. And I don’t remember anyone testifying that there were no Russians there at all – Kiev confirms that there are Russians there fighting on its side. But none of them were sent to either side by the state. That’s what Boris said he could prove – that Russian troops were sent into Ukraine, on orders from the government, to intervene. I say that did not happen.
But it is entirely unsurprising to learn it was Boris’s position that Russia should mind its own business and allow Kiev to roll over the eastern cities and kill everything living in them that would not surrender. Mr. Human Rights. Fuck off, Boris – I don’t miss you.
Yashin: we have not been able to confirm that the photo of military equipment is from the Ukraine
Ilya Yashin has presented today the report: “Putin’s War”, which was supposed to prove that Russia has deployed its troops on Ukrainian territory. In the video is one of the quotes from his speech, from which it is clear that all the evidence of this report are simply assumptions and not facts.
In short: “We have assembled photos of Russian military equipment, but we have no evidence that this equipment was photographed in the Ukraine”.
What a joke. August of 2014 was a month of intense fighting, the late August, early September saw the largest losses by regime forces. You would expect that 150 out of the 5000 Russian volunteers in the Donbas could have died during this time.
Clearly this has no relevance whatsoever for “Russian invasion” and “Russian regular forces”. This clown should have added and extra zero after 150 to make it more credible.
Why does Russia’s premier liberal/independent news channel TV Dozhd/Rain re-broadcast BBC (state-owned & controlled channel) news bulletins?
Perhaps TV Dozhd/Rain believes British state media is more trust worthy than Russian state media?
Independent?
Toilet Barf: Tories go to war with the BBC
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/11598450/Tories-go-to-war-with-the-BBC.html
David Cameron, infuriated by the corporation’s election coverage, appoints BBC critic John Whittingdale to “sort out the BBC” ahead of the royal charter review next year …
Oh, dear; punishing the media for being anti-government? How neo-Soviet!
Ahem. It’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s not about ‘punishing Al Beeb’ for being anti-government, it’s about getting the Beeb back to objectivity and not having every programme, from the weather reports to local issues, never mind the ‘big’ ones, sounding like coming from some sort of Labour propaganda ministry.
The point is that we all have to pay for the privilege of receiving the Beeb, we cannot pick and choose. Nobody would demand the Grauniad to write Tory opinion pieces, as nobody insists on the Daily Mail to write about the far left: we don’t have to pay for these papers if we don’t like their political attitude.
We do have to pay for the BBC regardless, and the extreme salaries of their top management (well over half a million ££££ per annum!), so cutting them back to size and demanding that they go back to the proper, old-fashioned divide between impartial reporting and partisan opinion pieces isn’t too much to ask, IMHO!
Oh, I’m certainly not defending the Beeb! I’m merely pointing out how hypocritical it is for Dave (he asked me to call him that) to chunner on and on about the lack of press freedom in Russia and how everything that speaks is under “state control” – and then use his election win as an opportunity to punish a media outlet for not cheerleading for him and his party. Would he accept it if Putin cut the budget for Dozhd (although it is not state-funded, to the best of my knowledge) or appointed an overseer because he believes they are pro-Opposition (which they are).
Good point, but then we’re so used to the hypocrisy of Dave and his party head honchos, it’s simply taken as a given. It’s a constant, which comes under the famous ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam for which the older Cato (I think, too lazy to check it out) became famous. It’s more a ‘groan’ factor at the moment, but might flare up into a ‘bloody hell’ righteous anger factor at any time.
Oh btw – if you really wanna know why the Tories won, then check out a certain Jim Messina, who was one of the two top back room election strategists at Tory headquarters. Mr Messina ‘won’ it for Obama … nuff said.
Dozhd was always a liberast outfit. It’s expensive to run opposition TV stations without heavy financial backing. Especially in a country where the liberast core is about 5% and most of them are freeloading bums and not entrepreneurs with money.
Funny that I don’t see any opposition TV stations/channels in Canada and the USA. Yet somehow they are supposed to be normal in Russia.
about those posters that were thrown away of the immortal regiment.
See below for further info.
http://jpgazeta.ru/popyitki-diskreditirovat-bessmertnyiy-polk-krivo-ubogo-po-zhlobski/
An estimated half-a-million took part in the “Immortal Regiment” event.
If only a third of them were carrying placards and these placards were fakes, as were the alleged relatives carrying them, that means there must be about 170,000 fake pictures dumped somewhere in Moscow.
Pictures of the event taken with my Lena’s iPhone:
All “fakes”?
Lena, the girl shown below in pigtails, was not a fake:
And I made that bloody placard and it’s here next to me as I write!
За атаку на «Бессмертный полк» заплатили 8 миллионов рублей
Журналисты разоблачили тех, кто сфабриковал фотографии выброшенных после Дня Победы портретов ветеранов
8 Million Rubles Paid For the Attack on the Immortal Regiment
Journalists uncover those who after Victory Day set up the photographs of discarded portraits of veterans.
I saw pictures of plenty of people on the march who had simply placed a cherished photograph of a granddad or grandma taken from a photo album and placed it in a transparent document holder and just held the protected photograph up high, as the two blokes to the right of this picture taken on Red Square by my fake wife:
More fakes?
The whole subject of fakes is retarded. Nobody in the west disputes that over 20 million Soviet citizens died during WWII. Ergo there will be millions of descendants with lost relatives. Why would they need to fake them?
Do these liberast maggots expect sane people to swallow their diarrhea that these descendants would not participate in such a memorial. Clearly the do. I say shoot them on site. It will facilitate the human rights of the sane people. Sane people should not have to be terrorized by these sick mental freaks and their attempts at staging bloody revolution and imposing a regime of terror like they are doing in Ukraine. Kill them all without mercy.
Nemtsov’s report is now available please below link:
Putin’s War
https://openrussia.org/post/view/4803/
Note the name “Open Russia”. It means Russia open to rape and sodomy by Uncle Sam and his minions.
it is because the sponsor/s to open russia, as so open and transparent and letting in so much light, they had to name it open russia, lol.. founded by businessman and democracy activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky. – least they got the order right – businessman and then democracy if there is anything left over! funny about those connections to rothchild!!! “This first incarnation of Open Russia has been described by The Guardian as a charity organization.[2] Its board included Henry Kissinger and Lord Jacob Rothschild.” i guess they figure charity work consists of murdering innocent people in faraway countries when they don’t share the ””right”’ political perspective… love how the rothshild family has a history of giving away money too, lolol..
https://twitter.com/PutinRF/status/598184086079836160
https://twitter.com/ofehr_en/status/598048520290082817
As ye sow, so shall ye reap…
Just in case anyone thought the mighty USA could quite easily create alternatives for Russian rocket engines that get US billion dollar military satellites in to space read:
AW&ST: Industry Team Hopes To Resurrect Atlas V Post RD-180
http://aviationweek.com/space/industry-team-hopes-resurrect-atlas-v-post-rd-180
AW&ST: USAF EELV Procurement Plan Riddled With Pitfalls
http://aviationweek.com/space/usaf-eelv-procurement-plan-riddled-pitfalls
#####
As you will probably have picked up from above, the Atlas V has had no failures and that one of the reasons that it is so expensive is that the USAF does not want to loose a billion dollars just to save a few million. It’s requirements are stringent to the extreme. The new guys on the bloc have to measure up. Anyone who forces the USAF to drop requirements will have to wear the price tag. It’s one thing building a military-industrial turkey like the F-35 which is more about locking in US allies for 30 years than being a world beater, but the space stuff is far, far more serious. Hence the USAF’s recent request to Congress to relax the ban on the RD-180 despite it already being banned by Russia for military use…
Cute how the commenters to the first article smugly yap about ripping off the RD-180 design. The same self-righteous, hypocrite vermin would be shrieking at Russia for stealing western “know how”.
We’ll see what they have by 2019. I don’t think they will have what they think they will have.
V-Day made me start listening to the songs from the soviet times and this is my absolute favorite.
This one is just so beautiful. I remember my granddad and I just start to tear up.
It disgusts me that the country I currently reside in is essentially spitting on all my ancestors who fought for their families and their lives.
My favourite:
I love that one as well.. They are both amazing.
There is just so much emotion in them, I cant even describe it.
They just don’t make them like this anymore.
Любэ is my favorite of all the post soviet stuff.
My dad was obsessed with this one.
Ukraine’s parliament passes law to allow interning Russian citizens:
http://tass.ru/en/world/794261
Under law, martial rule legal measures stipulate interning citizens of a foreign state, which threatens with an attack or carries out an aggression against Ukraine,” an explanatory note says
KIEV, May 12. /TASS/. The Ukrainian parliament broadly approved a law on Tuesday, allowing measures to intern Russian citizens living on the territory of Ukraine.
The law on martial rule was approved by 254 deputies compared with the required minimum of 226 voices in its favor.
Ukrainian MPs approved the bill in the first reading on April 9, after which it was sent for finalization after evoking many critical remarks.
“Under law, martial rule legal measures stipulate, in particular, interning (forcefully settling) citizens of a foreign state, which threatens with an attack or carries out an aggression against Ukraine,” an explanatory note to the document says.
Under the law, the imposition of martial rule automatically entails labor duty for the able-bodied population, permits the compulsory alienation of property, bans gatherings and meetings, the activity of undesirable political parties, stipulates media regulation, the forcible sale of property under private or communal ownership, the imposition of a curfew, the restriction of the freedom of citizens’ movement and so on.
The Ukrainian parliament initially planned to pass the law as a whole after discussions pursuant to a shortened procedure. However, MPs who spoke on the bill demanded a full procedure of discussions as there were “a lot of amendments and remarks” to the document.
The document says that “martial law is a special legal regime imposed in Ukraine or on its separate territories in the event of an armed aggression or the threat of an attack, the existence of a danger for the state independence of Ukraine and its territorial integrity.”
Martial rule may be imposed after Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) approves a relevant decree by the country’s president, the document says.
Analysts say the preparation of new editions of the law on martial rule may indicate the government’s readiness to impose it in Ukraine.
The unvictorious.