EDITORIAL
Nashi goes to Court
Nashi, Vladimir Putin’s personal Hitler-youth cult, filed suit last week in Moscow accusing a British newspaper (The Independent), two French ones (Le Monde and Le Journal Du Dimanche) and a Germany counterpart (Frankfurter Rundshau) of libel in referring to Nashi as what is, a “Hitler-youth cult comprised of bandits and nationalists.”
It’s telling that Nashi appears to have neither the funds nor the guts to file these lawsuits in Britain, France or Germany where the reports actually occurred. Apparently, Nashi doesn’t think it could win a case in any of those places, and therefore needs to lodge the suit in the corrupt Russia court system, where a ham sandwich could make a case if it had been made by Vladimir Putin.
Also telling is that, once again, Nashi appears to be lying.
The Moscow Times couldn’t find any instance of Nashi being called a “bandit” organization and when the Independent wrote about Nashi it merely said “critics called” Nashi a Hitler-youth group, not that it actually was. That statement is true. We call Nashi a Hitler-youth group, and we are one of its critics. Isn’t truth an absolute defense to libel? Perhaps not in Russia.
And how can it possibly be considered inaccurate or offensive to called Nashi “nationalist”? Nashi is as nationalist as organization on this planet, as as such the comparison to a Nazi group (whose name grows out of the world nationalist itself) is inevitable. As Frankfurter Rundshau editor-in-chief Rouven Schellenberger said in a statement sent to The Moscow Times on Friday: “The fact that we assess today’s reality of Russia in a way that differs from that of the pro-Kremlin youth group is natural for crystal clear democracies.”
Nashi is also a horrifically racist organization. As we’ve said many times before, the only proper translation of its name is “us Slavic Russians” and you’ll look long and hard before you find any dark-skinned Russians in the Nashi ranks even though there are millions of such people who are Russian citizens and tens of thousands in Moscow alone.
Not long ago, Chechen lunatic Ramzan Kadyrov brought suit against the Memorial human rights organization, also alleging libel. What we are seeing is a developing pattern of using the so-called Russian “legal system” to punish and persecute anyone who dares to critize or even talk back to the Putin Kremlin under the guise of legal activity. It’s exactly the same tactic that was utilized in Soviet times, so it’s hardly suprising to see the regime of proud KGB spy Putin practicing it.
Maybe now, at last, as Western media begin to feel the bite of the Putin dictatorship, they will wake up and being fully reporting on what is happening behind the new Iron Curtain. Russia is a backwards country, totally incapable of sustaining a confrontation with the West if the nations and institutions of democracy make a concerted effort to resist. But if we sit back and wait, as Chamberlain waited for Hiltler, we will pay as dire a price.
La Russophobe 
@Not long ago, Chechen lunatic Ramzan Kadyrov
And long (3 years) ago:
July 29, 2006
Ramzan Kadyrov Invites Nashi to Have Fun in Chechnya
http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=693680
Then Kadyrov was invited back to “Our Army” tents to watch a theatrical show. Around ten young men clad in military uniform simulated troop movements, crawling in the dust, lighting land pots and dragging gun dummies behind them. Kadyrov praised the show and began taking photographs with Nashi activists.
Afterwards, Kadyrov attended the seminar called “Protecting Russia’s Sovereignty”. He was asked whether many terrorists remained in Chechnya, and said there are between 50 and 70 now. He confessed it was his dream to destroy Basaev. Then he was asked what is a man’s role in life and in politics. He replied that a man should love a woman and his motherland. He also declared that it is necessary to prolong Putin’s term for about 10 years to preserve Russia’s integrity.
Kadyrov awarded Nashi commissar Yaroslav Zamychkin and Marching Together movement leader Pavel Tarakanov for “Service for Chechen Republic”. Kadyrov promised to restore Chechnya in 3 years, and invited everyone to have fun there.
You can talk about anything else except Kadyrov? I already have a headache from this name. Article discusses the Nashi, not Kadyrov! Or you do not have information about Russia, except that in Russia there is a man named Kadyrov?
Actually rather few people in Russia are “dark skinned” (Central Asians and some Africans, mostly students).
See this sample “black” Caucasian as compared to a pure-white ethnic Russian:
Nashi leader Vasily Yakemenko showed camp life to Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov.
So Yakemenko’s tanned skin is actually darker than this of “a blackass”.
Amusing passage from the same article:
Kadyrov went on in the meantime, noticing a tent on the outskirts of the camp with the banner saying Tashkent. “Ethnic” ghetto of young Uzbek activists suddenly gave an idea to Kadyrov—that Nashi camp should be organized in Chechnya as well.
Anyway, Nashi are a bunch of clowns. They’re from the country of Zhirinovsky, after all.
Soon after this photo was taken, The Heroic Soldat With No Face turned out to be a defector. His face:
http://newshopper.sulekha.com/topic/tbilisi-georgia.htm
Much, much more serious stuff:
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009
Reports: Case opened against Russian activist
By JIM HEINTZ
AP
MOSCOW A lawyer for Chechnya’s strongman president said Tuesday that a criminal libel case carrying possible prison time has been opened against one of Russia’s most prominent human rights activists, news agencies reported.
The report of the case against Oleg Orlov, chairman of the Memorial group, comes less than a week after the European Union awarded its top human-rights honor, the Sakharov Prize, to Orlov and two other activists.
The case stems from Orlov’s statement in July that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov bore responsibility for the July abduction and killing of Natalya Estemirova, the head of Memorial’s Chechnya operation who drew Kadyrov’s ire by reporting on human rights violations there.
Orlov did not say that Kadyrov was directly involved in the killing, but said the former separatist rebel and boxer had created a climate of intimidation and impunity that encourages violent retaliation.
Kadyrov won a civil libel suit against Orlov this month, with the court ordering Orlov to pay 70,000 rubles ($2,300) in penalties and ruling that Memorial must remove Orlov’s statement from its Web site. Orlov has said he would refuse to comply.
The criminal case was opened last week at Kadyrov’s request, state news agencies RIA-Novosti and ITAR-Tass reported, citing Kadyrov lawyer Andrei Krasnenkov.
ITAR-Tass quoted Krasnenkov as saying that a charge of insult could be added to the case “and the overall punishment will make three or four years in prison.”
Orlov, who Memorial said was visiting Sweden, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. Memorial spokeswoman Yulia Klimova said she could not comment on the matter.
The new case underlines the pressures faced by beleaguered Russian rights activists who have sharply criticized the government’s policies in Chechnya and elsewhere but have been stonewalled by the Kremlin.
The Kremlin has strongly backed Kadyrov, whose security forces have been accused of abuses against civilians amid the fight against militants still active in Chechnya after two separatist wars over the last 15 years.
Under Kadyrov, Chechnya has regained a measure of stability and much of the damage of the two wars has been repaired. But separatist rebel activity persists and bloodshed often flares. Two Chechen rebels were killed in the past day, according to the republic’s Interior Ministry, including one suspected in the killing of two police officers on Monday as they checked bus passengers’ documents.
Russia: Drop Criminal Libel Charges Against Activist
Case Brought by Chechen Leader Over Remarks After Rights Advocate Gunned Down
October 28, 2009
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/28/russia-drop-criminal-libel-charges-against-activist
The announcement of the criminal charges comes just days before the European Union and Russia will hold their bi-annual human rights consultations. Human Rights Watch urged the European Union to seize the opportunity of the talks, scheduled for November 5 and 6 in Stockholm, to press Russia to protect human rights defenders and to seek a commitment from Russia to bring its libel laws in line with its international obligations to protect free expression.
The European Union and the United States should further urge the Russian government to demonstrate its commitment to openness and accountability by securing immediate and unfettered access to Russia, including to the North Caucasus, for international monitors who have long sought such access. These include the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly rapporteur on legal remedies for human rights violations in the North Caucasus, and UN special rapporteurs on torture, extrajudicial executions, and human rights defenders.
“If anything, the charges against Orlov should remind Russia’s partners of the urgent need to protect human rights defenders in Russia,” Gill said. “The EU should seize the chance to press Russia for an effective, credible, and transparent investigation into Estemirova’s murder.
Meanwhile on the Putin “Cult of Personality” front (of which Nashi is a big part one might add)
“Vladimir Putin saved KGB offices from East German looters
Vladimir Putin single-handedly defended the KGB’s offices in East Germany from crowds of looters after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new documentary claims.
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 6:45AM GMT 29 Oct 2009
The programme is likely to boost the Russian prime minister’s cult of personality as it casts him as a die-hard Soviet patriot who defied a crowd of rioting East Germans.
Mr Putin was serving as a KGB major in Dresden in 1989 when the wall fell and, according to his and other accounts, brandished a pistol to ward off the angry crowd from ransacking the spy agency’s offices and purloining its files.
Russian state TV has in the past given the episode the hero treatment, while his supporters have cast the incident as “a forgotten feat” that shows why Mr Putin had the mettle to later become first president and then prime minister. The episode now looks set to bolster his carefully crafted image as a strongman who loves his country and is ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for it.
Mr Putin will be shown discussing the incident in a documentary called The Wall to be broadcast on state-controlled TV next month.
The programme’s maker, Vladimir Kondratyev, has defended his decision to make Mr Putin one of the film’s main characters. Mr Kondratyev believes that Mr Putin, who worked as a KGB agent hand-in-glove with the East German Stasi intelligence service during the 1980s, did a lot to hasten the wall’s collapse. Yet his description of Mr Putin’s actions suggests the opposite.
“He was one of the few Soviet citizens who had first-hand experience of East German demonstrators when a crowd ransacked the Stasi’s office in Dresden and then prepared to storm the building where Putin and his Soviet spy comrades were working,” Mr Kondratyev told the daily Kommersant newspaper.
“Putin succeeded in persuading the crowd to fall back.” State TV has in the past described how Mr Putin brandished a pistol in front of the crowd and used his fluent German to make it clear he was prepared to use it.
“This is Soviet territory and you’re standing on our border,” he was quoted as saying. “I’m serious when I say that I will shoot trespassers.” A witness was quoted as saying that Mr Putin issued the threat with his trademark assurance. In the documentary, Mr Putin says that Germany should never have been divided. His feelings about the demise of the USSR are famously more conflicted. He is on record as calling the subsequent Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.””
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6455858/Vladimir-Putin-saved-KGB-offices-from-East-German-looters.html
Yep, its getting awfully creepy in Russia.
Major Putin’s other alleged KGB heroics:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5017264/Did-Vladimir-Putin-meet-Ronald-Reagan-as-an-undercover-KGB-man.html
Experts in Moscow, however, are less convinced.
(…)
Perhaps more tellingly, the man in the photograph appears to have a thicker head of hair than Mr Putin ever did.
;)
Also this:
Hi there
i don’t hope you’ll try to see smb’ else’s point but yours, still : did it ever occur to you you might b wrong?
criticizing Putin for doing his job in a faraway 1989? i’d ve done the same… he’s no sweet cutie afterall
and Nashi should do what they claim, not pretend.. nationalism’s good 4 us, we hate those not white )))
they do fine suing ya – comparison with hitler is too much- he killed too many russians, it’s out of decency