Oleg Kashin, Russian journalist under attack
EDITORIAL
Bloodthirsty Russia
Last weekend leading Russian journalist Oleg Kashin lay in an induced coma after being brutally beaten in Moscow by Russian assailants who broke his fingers, cracked his skull and left him for dead. Kashin’s reporting on controversial subjects like Kaliningrad for the maverick Kommersant publishing group directly challenged the Kremlin’s authority and basic anti-democratic policies, and it seems they could no longer be tolerated. In a shocking trivialization of the incident, Russian “president” Dima Medvedev actually Twittered about it, writing “the criminals must be found and punished.” This appears right next to his remarks about cheeseburgers with Barack Obama and other nonsensical, childlike babblings. Julia Ioffe writes:
Many pointed instantly at United Russia’s youth wing, Molodaya Gvardia, which openly threatened Kashin in an August article on its website. It was titled, in the hyperbolic, hyphenated language of early Soviet propaganda, “Journalist-traitors need to be punished!” “They have betrayed their homeland, they have spit on their civic duty!” it blared, adding Kashin to a list of others needing to be punished.
Simultaneously, a horrific mass killing in the Krasnodar region was being reported, with a whole household massacred by knife-wielding maniacs and then set ablaze in their own home, including numerous children.
And to complete this trifecta of savagery, the Sunday Times published a devastating, shocking translation of a text written by a Russian solider describing his acts of perversion and bloodthirsty barbarism in Chechnya.
Nobody — but nobody — can read these three accounts and conclude anything but that Russia is an uncivilized, bloodthirsty nation, and that the people of Russia are just as guilty in these crimes as the perpetrators because they stand mute at best, at worst actively encourage both governmental and non-governmental criminals to continue their bloody rampage.
Elsewhere in today’s issue, we report on the latest effort to compare Russia to other nations, this time by the UN in its human development survey. Russia does not rank in the top 60 countries of the world, and has the second-shortest life expectancy of any nation in its group of 42 less-developed countries. That’s because the blood and gore described in these three accounts is not isolated, but rather affects all levels of Russian society, each and every single person. The whole nation pays the price for this barbaric violence.
Russia has one of the highest murder rates on this planet. It’s rate is three times higher than that of the United States. This is hardly surprising when, as seen in cases ranging from Galina Starovoitova to Natalia Estemirova, from one end of the Putin regime to the other, the Kremlin itself is using murder as a tool of policy. Given that, why shouldn’t childlike Russians copy their parents in the Kremlin and do the same?
We are simply amazed that Russians can believe silencing journalists through murder or intimidation can solve any problem. They saw the USSR try this tactic, and they saw what happened as a result: The country became blind to its own faults, could not reform, and perished.
By attacking Oleg Kashin, Russians have only proved the accuracy of his reporting in the most emphatic way possible, and proved their own cowardice. They are unwilling to face the truth about themselves, just as in Soviet times, because they cannot defend their behavior. Instead, they simply choose to barbarically silence anyone who dares name that truth.
A country like that is not long for this world.
And we are amazed, too, at the craven silence of the Obama administration in regard to this brutal attack. Once again, Obama has shown his mettle — and it turns out he’s made of clay and plastic. He will turn a blind eye no matter how many heroic Russians are liquidated, no matter how many American values are obliterated by the KGB regime.
In so doing, of course, he becomes complicit in their actions.
La Russophobe 
I’ve found just brilliant response to the Kashin assassination attempt
http://sl-lopatnikov.livejournal.com/418961.html
Mind you, this is a professor of the University of Delaware
http://www.ccm.udel.edu/Personnel/homepage/lopatnikov.html
Looks like US academia has no shortage of funds for the benefit of those who hate and despise America
The LJ is deleted now.
Anyway, this is what this gentleman wrote:
Что ж, я сам и писал уже, что российская быдло-интеллигенция борется за единственную понятную ей свободу: свободно гадить и чтобы ей за это ничего не было, – гадить на страну, на ее историю, и на кого угодно.
Если это возмездие за хамство и быдлядство Кашина, то тогда те, кто приделал этого “свободного человека”, правы в квадрате: эти человеческого языка не понимает.
And here’s already a Comitee to Defend Lopatnikov (or something):
http://theobamas.livejournal.com/24233.html
There is also an open letter to the Uni of Delaware http://community.livejournal.com/shevchuk4prez/78045.html , which this committee equals to the denouncing of suspects to the secret police. Obviously, these people have very different understanding of how America works
Could you please explain what Mr. Lopatnikov did and what happened. Your first link is not available and other posters here provided links to non-English sources. I understand that Mr. Kashin is some kind of an opposition reporter or something like that; but what did he publish that caused this violence and how is this all related to Mr. Lopatnikov.
RV,
http://deputat-yehu.livejournal.com/208360.html
The obvious question is, what does this tragedy has to do with the University of Delaware?
Apparently, there is a Russian scientist, Sergej L. Lopatnikov, who is working for the University of Delaware (http://www.ccm.udel.edu/Personnel/homepage/lopatnikov.html).
In his post on LiveJournal.com, titled “Избили гаденыша Олега Кашина. Избили качественно. Правильно. Мое пожелание: пусть сдохнет.” Translation: “[Pejorative] Oleg Kashin was beaten up. Beaten well. Righteously. I wish he would die.” Mr. Lopatnikov wrote (http://sl-lopatnikov.livejournal.com/418108.html): “ХОЧУ НАДЕЯТЬСЯ: ТАК БУДЕТ С КАЖДОЙ АНТИСОВЕТСКОЙ СВОЛОЧЬЮ. … Хочу особо заметить, что тот факт, что российские либералы – есть прямые наследники нацистской сволочи – факт подтверждаемый самими ЛИБЕРАЛАМИ.” Translation: “I HOPE: THIS WILL HAPPEN TO EVERY ANTI-SOVIET [Pejorative]. … I wish to specifically note that fact, that Russia’s liberals are direct heirs of the Nazi [Pejorative] – a fact confirmed by the LIBERALS themselves.”
Please note that the term “liberal” does not have the same connotation as in the States. In Russia it is used to describe people advocating free and fair elections and market reforms.
In case Mr. Lopatnikov removes his cheerful message, screenshot is available.
It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I sincerely wish Mr. Kashin would get a different kind of support from the University of Delaware.
[Update: Sunday night Mr. Lopatnikov deleted his journal. However, scheenshot could be found at http://deputat-yehu.livejournal.com/208360.html ]
Thanks Robert. Hard to believe
Kashin was (guess I should be writing in past tense now) a mainstream journalist with Kommersant (political correspondent) who was also active on the Internet (his LJ: http://kashin.livejournal.com/ ).
Only russian, and idiots read the rusofobija. We regret abaut Oleg.
Russian journalist attacked, second in two days
Today at 16:04 | Associated Press MOSCOW(AP) —
A journalist who works for a suburban Moscow paper has been beaten up by two unknown men.
The attack on Anatoly Adamchuk came two days after a Moscow newspaper reporter was beaten so badly he was hospitalized with a head injury, shattered jaw and broken leg.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89220/#ixzz14hWhDDJR
Editor’s Note: What is being purported to be video footage of the attack on Kashin was recently uploaded to YouTube.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89154/#ixzz14hafa2kM
There is much reporting of Lebedev’s troubles in the British Press.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8116183/Lebedev-claims-campaign-to-force-him-out-of-Russia.html
The world must feel revulsion as the Russian Government beats up another journalist.
It is so obvious that Putin sets the tone and circumstances for these attacks. That Putin approves of the attacks is openly known.
The savage uncivilized pagan barbarians in the kremlin continue to cull the Russian Intelligentsia.
Moscow Times:
Medvedev fumes as more journalists are beaten
Today at 06:01 | Alexandra Odynova
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89295/#ixzz14kuAIhuo
Police have named no suspects in the early Saturday attack on Kashin, but they promised on Monday to investigate a leak that provided the media with gruesome videos of the attack filmed by surveillance cameras.
A 90-second video released by Lifenews.ru late Sunday shows Kashin attacked near his home on Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa by two men, one of whom was holding a bouquet of flowers. [Editor’s caution: The video shows the two assailants bludgeoning Kashin.]
The flowers were apparently used to hide a metal bar that one attacker used to beat Kashin after knocking him down, while the other assailant held the helpless reporter. The video gives no clear view of the assailants’ faces.
Moscow police seniors are “indignant over the video’s release” and have ordered to find out how the media got hold of it, a police official told Interfax.
Despite the inquiry, another video from the scene was released by Lifenews.ru on Monday showing Kashin crawling on his knees after the attack until a yard keeper comes to his aid.
Kashin, 30, was attacked near his rented apartment in downtown Moscow. His jaw, leg and fingers were broken, and he remained hospitalized in a drug-induced coma Monday.
“It’s a potent challenge to the authorities. They must find them … those scumbags,” Vladimir Kashin told Reuters outside the hospital.
“By doing this a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin, they are not just throwing down a challenge to the media. They are throwing down a challenge to everyone,” he said.
Kashin’s supporters continued to stage one-person pickets — the only form of public protests not requiring permission from the authorities — near Moscow police headquarters on the downtown Ulitsa Petrovka. They began the picket Saturday, demanding the arrest of the assailants and organizers of the attack.
Several students from Moscow State University’s journalism department hung a banner reading, “Who beat up Kashin?” out of a university building window facing the Kremlin on Monday.
The banner was swiftly removed by security guards, Interfax reported, citing a university spokesperson.
A group of students calling themselves the “Other Journalistic Department” took responsibility for the protest in a statement e-mailed to The Moscow Times. They did not identify themselves.
Another Khimki forest defender, environmental activist Konstantin Fetisov, remains hospitalized in serious condition after unidentified men beat him up with baseball bats last Wednesday.
Meanwhile, more violence against journalists was reported Monday.
In the Moscow region town of Zhukovsky, a reporter with the independent local Zhukovskiye Vesti newspaper, Anatoly Adamchuk, was attacked by two unknown men late Sunday night near the newspaper’s office, his colleagues said.
Adamchuk, who was hospitalized with head injuries, said the attack might be linked to his professional activity because the assailants repeated “Zhukovskiye Vesti” while beating him, his colleagues said.
Adamchuk recently wrote about the razing of a nearby forest ahead of the MAKS air show slated for next year.
In Saratov, the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Saratovsky Reportyor, Sergei Mikhailov, was attacked by two unknown men, Interfax reported, citing local police.
The incident took place Friday, but Mikhailov only reported it Monday. He said he escaped serious injuries because the assailants were scared off by a passer-by.
Mikhailov said the attackers did not try to rob him, which could mean that the incident was linked to his professional activity.
At least 30 attacks against journalists, including eight murders, have been registered this year, according to the Glasnost Defense Foundation.
Nineteen murders of journalists in Russia remain unsolved since 2000, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/medvedev-fumes-as-more-journalists-are-beaten/422033.html
To be fair, some Russians certainly do feel revulsion about the beating and killing of journalists.
Unfortunately they are in the minority.
Russians Search For Answers Over Journalist’s Beating
November 08, 2010
By RFE/RL
A grainy surveillance camera video has surfaced showing two men savagely beating political correspondent Oleg Kashin in the early morning hours of November 6 in the courtyard outside his Moscow apartment building.
The 30-year-old reporter for the daily “Kommersant,” who’s also a prominent blogger, suffered broken legs, a damaged skull, and fractured fingers. Doctors say he remains in an induced coma but in stable condition.
President Dmitry Medvedev vowed that the authorities would punish Kashin’s attackers, “regardless of position, place in society, or accomplishments.”
His comments came after speculation about the attack spread rapidly over the Russian Internet, prompting solidarity among journalists and bloggers angry at the lack of press freedoms and threats to journalists’ safety in a country media-rights groups rank as one of the most dangerous in the world for reporters.
Few Expect Attackers To Be Found
The online journal openspace.ru posted a petition on November 6 asking Medvedev to find the attackers and take steps to protect journalists in the future.
But website editor Maria Stepanova says she’s unsure whether the appeal will have any effect.
“The hope that Medvedev is going to do something is slim,” she says. “But journalists should have the opportunity to call a spade a spade, even if it causes problems.”
Attacks on journalists are increasingly frequent in Russia, and assailants are rarely brought to justice. Medvedev acknowledged the public skepticism in his statement, saying: “I have seen it written in the press that they will not be found. They will be found. There is no doubt.”
But analysts agree there are few reasons to believe the authorities’ track record will be any different this time. Similar pledges in the past have rarely produced results.
“As of now, the dismal experience [we have] shows that in the 200 incidents of attacks on journalists and activists in the past 10 or 15 years, almost never — with two or three exceptions — has an investigation been able to find or punish the perpetrators,” Nikolai Petrov of Moscow’s Carnegie Center says, “and not once has the person who ordered the attack been named.
Who Hated Kashin More?
Amid the public cynicism over the likelihood Kashin’s attackers will be found, his colleagues have been offering their own versions. “Kommersant” editor Mikhail Mikhailin says three main possible motives have emerged.
“The first is Oleg’s conflict with [Pskov Oblast Governor Andrei] Turchak, which has gained some publicity,” Mikhailin says. “The second possible motive is his coverage of the Khimki forest [highway-construction controversy]. The third one is his investigation of extremist organizations.”
Kashin has had a long-standing conflict with Turchak, whom he’s referred to on his blog by a nickname containing an expletive. He’s also compared Turchak to Chechnya’s authoritarian President Ramzan Kadyrov. Turchak’s son has demanded an apology, and called Kashin “not a journalist, but an informational burp.”
Journalists have also pointed to nationalist and pro-Kremlin youth groups such as Nashi and the Young Guard, about whom Kashin has published critical reports. The Young Guard, the youth wing of the ruling United Russia party, recently posted a picture of Kashin on its website with the caption: “Should Be Punished.”
Carnegie’s Petrov says the pro-Kremlin youth groups were angered by Kashin’s reporting on the well-known controversy over the protected Khimki forest outside Moscow, where locals and environmentalists have demonstrated against official plans to build a highway.
Noting the reference to Kashin on the Youth Guard website, he says this is “something that is done with the complete knowledge of the authorities and could only happen in the run up to an election.”
Russia is due to hold parliamentary elections in December 2011 and a presidential election in 2012.
Khimki Fallout
Kashin has written numerous sympathetic articles about the environmental movement In Defense Of Khimki Forest, which clashed with the authorities over the summer.
Kashin’s colleagues point out that other journalists and activists associated with the conflict have also been assaulted. Two days before Kashin’s attack, environmental activist Konstantin Fetisov was severely beaten outside his Khimki home.
Mikhail Beketov, the former editor of a local paper that closely covered the Khimki movement, was also brutally beaten in 2008.
Attacks against journalists have continued since Kashin’s beating. Two more journalists were assaulted on November 8 in incidents that do not appear to be connected to Kashin’s case.
Anatoly Adamchuk, a reporter for a local paper in the town of Zhukovsky outside Moscow, was beaten by unknown assailants the same day the editor of a paper in the Volga region was also attacked.
http://www.rferl.org/content/Russians_Search_For_Answers_Over_Journalists_Beating/2214404.html
Kashin: The Movie
http://www.lifenews.ru/news/42779
They were not trying to beat him, they were trying to kill him, thats pretty obvious from the tape.
8 were killed in Putinland so far this year, more than 30 were attacked. Several more fled from the country and requested political asylum.
Anyway, they are appearantly beating to maim (especially smashing the victims’ fingers), and to leave them as barely-living lessons for the others, and if they wanted to just kill they would rather use pistols or just knives:
Russian journalists are usually killed or attacked because they threaten powerful financial or economic interests. The chopping down of the Khimki forest to make room for a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg has exactly those interests behind it: It was being financed by Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Putin’s judo buddy, and Putin proclaimed this summer, amid growing protests, that “all decisions have been made.” That is, the road would be built as planned. (This remains the silent consensus in Moscow, despite Medvedev’s August moratorium.)
Moreover the attack on Kashin seems to fit a disturbing pattern. Only a few days ago, Khimki activist Konstantin Fetisov was attacked with a baseball bat when he got out of his car in front of his Moscow home. The left side of his head was bashed in. His wife later found a fragment of the bat that had splintered off from the force of the blow. Like Kashin, Fetisov remains in an artificially induced coma and in serious condition.
Kashin’s case most resembles a far earlier one, however. In the spring of 2008, Mikhail Beketov, a local journalist in Khimki who sought to expose the corruption behind the road, was beaten and left unconscious and bleeding in front of his house. He too slipped into a coma. There are eerie similarities between this attack and Kashin’s: Beketov’s legs were so brutally beaten that one had to be amputated, and he suffered such severe brain damage that he can now barely speak. But his hands were the most symbolic, chilling target. Three of Beketov’s mangled fingers had to be amputated. Whoever got Beketov, and whoever got Kashin, wanted to make sure they never wrote again.
A Russian journalist has been brutally beaten, according to Russian media, in the second such attack in days.
Anatoliy Adamchuk, from the Zhukovskiye Vesti suburban Moscow weekly, suffered concussion and head injuries, according to Ekho Moskvy news agency.
It comes after leading journalist Oleg Kashin was severely beaten outside his home on Saturday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11711132
Meanwhile, a 90-second clip of what purported to show the attack on Mr Kashin, a reporter with Kommersant business daily, showed the extent of the assault.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
The blows were so brutal. It’s incomprehensible. I hope he will survive. I believe it”
End Quote
Vladimir Kashin
Victim’s father
In the black and white film, two figures are seen striking Mr Kashin up to 50 times with an iron bar or similar weapon.
It added that that eight Russian reporters had been killed this year and another 40 had come under attack.
Russian journalism in 2010:
Russia journalist dies after being tortured in prison
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2010/01/russia-journalist-dies-after-being.php
Man imprisoned for killing journalist released early
http://www.globaljournalist.org/worldwatch/2010/03/russia/man-imprisoned-for-killing-journalist-released-early/
The murder of Larissa Yudina is still uninvestigated
http://www.eng.yabloko.ru/Press/2010/10222010-yudina.html
Journalism and Censorship in the Caucasus: Revisiting Stories Never Told
http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/untold-stories/chechnya-assassination-journalist-natalia-estemirova
Since 1993 more than 35 journalists in Russia have been murdered for their work. Of these some 14 were killed in Chechnya, the North Caucasus region or in St. Petersburg. According to the International Federation of Journalists, these figures only account for victims believed–with near certainty–to have been killed for their reporting. Many more have died under mysterious circumstances. Russia is ranked as one of the deadliest places in the world to be a journalist as well as one of the worst countries for solving journalist murders.
And recently:
Mikhail Beketov, the editor-in-chief of a local Moscow region paper who was an environmental activist fighting to save the Khimki forest, was beaten so badly in 2008 that he’s had a leg and several fingers amputated, is missing parts of his skull, and is barely able to speak (see above or this photo gallery). Beketov’s beating bears a striking resemblance to Kashin’s. Today, finally brought justice for him. He was found guilty of slandering the local mayor, Vladimir Strelchenko. Strelchenko is a thuggish individual thought to have ordered the attack (as well as the killing of Beketov’s dog and the torching of his car) in the first place.
(…)
Speaking of other journalists who don’t have the luck of working for President Medvedev’s oligarch buddies, let’s take a look into what’s happening with Anatoly Adamchuk, a journalist for another local paper who fought the cutting down of a different forest. Adamchuk was also attacked over the weekend and remains hospitalized.This proved very convenient for the local police, who came to interrogate him in his hospital bed. One of the theories they’re going on? Adamchuk beat himself up.
Earlier this year, the prison service said almost half of Russia’s inmates are ill, many infected with HIV or with tuberculosis.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89382/#ixzz14nzW8evB
BUT!
and yet, we have been told for some time now, by most of the world’s news media, & also by our western governments, that, “Communism has fallen, and Russia is free now, and rapidly on it’s way to becoming a democratic country”, etc. And, “all basic human freedoms are guaranteed in the Russian Constitution!” Also.,to those of ‘Russian’ self-identity, living abroad from the Motherland, many have been convinced by this ‘new free Russia’ propaganda, to submit their previously anti-communist/anti-Kremlin/anti-Moscow Patriarchate (that phony ‘Russian church’ organization created by Stalin back in 1943, and STILL under the total control of its KGB masters), ….the formerly free Russian Orthodox Church In Exile, TO the KGB Kremlin gangsters. This clever & successful religious-coup has been accomplished by the dedicated Kremlin devils, because many diaspora Russians, have been fooled (with the rest of the world, I might add), into believing that their beloved native Russian homeland, ‘is free now’, what they have yearned for, for many many years. And the additional myth, that the official neo-soviet enslaved state-church of the Russian Federation, the so-called, “Moscow Patriarchate'”is also….’free’ …ha!, ha! ha! what a sad joke and lie.
With the KGB gang in the Kremlin, the Moscow Patriarchate, a huge monolithic corrupt ‘church’ institution, controls the Russian masses, by deceit, murdering, threats, and by dire warnings that IF anyone goes against the government, then…GOD will punish them (an echo from Czarist days), if the police and OMON and Putin’s goons don’t get them first.
What kind of ‘freedom’ is exposed by what is going on now, all these vicious gangster-like attacks on/murdering of, ANYONE who tries to speak the truth, and tries to save their homeland from these Kremlin monsters, led by Putin and Medvedev and crew-?
And, do we hear even one word of righteous holy indignation, from the lips of the many many Moscow Patriarchate’s ‘holy’ bishops or other high clergy? (top heavy in all their layers upon layers of colourful Byzantine Imperial robes and regalia and be-jeweled crowns) about these horrendous crimes against fellow humans, many of whom, are Orthodox Christians! which ‘cry to the Heavens for justice’-?
Because they are paid lackies of the athiest KGB system, or outright KGB agents in clerical robes and with clerical titles, they only utter public statements, supporting the regime, (always, suggesting, that it is GOD HIMSELF who supports the government in current power!) & NEVER speaking against it, though they PRETEND to be God’s servants.
“Freedom” from what and to do what?
Russian court convicts beaten reporter of slander
Today at 14:38 | Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) —
A Russian reporter who was savagely beaten has been convicted of defamation by a court near Moscow.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89466/#ixzz14swG6B3n
More all too Russian stupidity:
Russia convicts injured editor as fears for media grow
A Russian editor nearly beaten to death two years ago has been convicted of slander as fears grow for journalists covering plans for a new motorway.
The court in Khimki, near Moscow, convicted wheelchair user Mikhail Beketov of slandering the local mayor and ordered him to pay nominal damages.
He had reported on plans to build the road through Khimki’s protected forest.
While the motorway plans have been frozen, another journalist and an ecologist were attacked this month.
Oleg Kashin, a correspondent with Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper, is in intensive care after being savagely beaten with an iron bar by two unknown assailants on Saturday. Some of his fingers were smashed in the attack.
Two days earlier, Khimki opposition activist Konstantin Fetisov had his skull fractured in an assault after being released from a police station, where he had been questioned about a protest.
Mikhail Mikhailin, editor-in-chief of Kommersant, said he was sure the attack on Mr Kashin was connected with articles he had written.
“This is the third incident of somebody being badly beaten [after] Beketov and Konstantin Fetisov,” he said.
“The style, the character of the crime, is very much similar to the Khimki beatings.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11717677
Why do I bring up the pathetic fact that the official state-‘church’ of the neo-soviet Russian Federation, says not one word of condemnation about all these terrible crimes against humanity which the current Putin/KGB criminal led Moscow government is committing? Because churches, religious leaders of any nations ,are supposed to be the vocal consciences of their nations, and to promote what is good and to denounce what is wrong and evil, the Voice of the Prophet. However, when those religious entities have sold out to the powers of this world, as in Russia, out of fear or greed or for their own power and monies, rather than to obey or honour God’s commands, then…..we have current Russia, a totally morally bankrupt nation, A HOPELESS PEOPLE! whose official religious leaders, defend murder and oppression, rather than to denounce it. This is the Stalin 1943 created “Moscow Patriarchate,” the supposed official Russian Orthodox Church.
What a shame and scandal on the entire world-wide Orthodox Church, whose various national churches, STILL officially recognize/consort with this communist-created false ‘Russian Church’ as a valid PART of the world-wide Orthodox confederation.
And why don’t the leaders of those other Orthodox national churches, speak out?
It appears that they are affraid to speak against the ‘Russian Church’, because they know WHO really runs it, the gangster Kremlin….which they and their governments FEAR to anger.
They are also corrupt themselves, but just that they do not live in such oppression as is in neo-soviet Russia, they are more free.
Russian journalist out of coma after beating
Today at 15:02 | Reuters MOSCOW, Nov. 12 (Reuters) –
The wife of a Russian journalist who was savagely beaten by unidentified attackers said on Friday he had regained consciousness after lying in a medically-induced coma for almost a week.
Two men used an iron pipe hidden in a bouquet of flowers to attack Oleg Kashin, a political reporter with the newspaper Kommersant, near his Moscow apartment last the weekend, just a few minutes walk from the Kremlin.
They fractured his skull and smashed his legs and fingers in one of a long line of attacks, sometimes fatal, on Russian reporters.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89761/#ixzz154d63Xne
In this article you stated that quote; “Nobody — but nobody — can read these three accounts and conclude anything but that Russia is an uncivilized, bloodthirsty nation, and that the people of Russia are just as guilty in these crimes as the perpetrators because they stand mute at best, at worst actively encourage both governmental and non-governmental criminals to continue their bloody rampage.” In reality, saying that the people of Russia are just as guilty as the perpetrators is not a fair statement. It is likely, true, that people saw what happened but they would have been terrified of the men who were beating the journalist. Wouldn’t you be too? Besides, you have to understand that in Russia, people don’t have the freedom of speech that we have here in America. I’ve recently been researching corruption in Russia, and there are reports of human rights activists being KILLED for speaking against the Russian government. It is not that the Russian people don’t care about what’s happening, but that they are afraid of the government which is trying to silence them.
Well Jack, I don’t think you got it quite right when you said that it is
“not that the Russian people don’t care about what’s happening, but that they are afraid of the government which is trying to silence them.”
To finish my point, Jack, there is enough evidence to show that not only don’t they care, they actually like of what their warlord Putin is doing. Isn’t his approval in the 60’s and 70’s?
Yes, they don’t have freedom of speech, but it seems they don’t even really want to have any. There have been enough sneering statements on this blog and elsewhere denouncing democracy, human rights and the like as Western plots against Russia. So, you portray them as victims, but I am not so sure.
They have made their collective bed, now it’s time to lie in it.
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