EDITORIAL
Medvedev the Destroyer
The funny thing is, he does not look like a destroyer, he looks like a ginormous dweeb. What a disguise!
“Identify those involved in committing this heinous crime. Destroy the ones trying to resist. Show no mercy!”
Such are the alleged words of Russian “president” Dima Medvedev in regard to perpetrators of the March 2010 subway bombings in Moscow.
And lo and behold! Just a few weeks later the FSB reported that it had “destroyed” three of the two bombers’ accomplices, including their guide to Moscow and their guide to the bombing locations, after meeting “stiff armed resistance.”
If mass murder were not involved, this flimsy character of this report would be truly laughable. Apparently, the Russian secret police believe they can just open the phone book, pick three names, “destroy” the people connected to them, blame those people for terrorism, and then close their books and nobody will be the wiser. Indeed, why stop there? Why not pick out a few enemies of the state, or perhaps folks who just didn’t cough up large enough bribes, and kill them, thus two birds with one stone?
The FSB, an organization whose singular purpose is duplicity, expects us to just take their word for it that the people who were killed were connected to the bombing. They’ve been unable to catch the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, of Galina Starovoitova, of Natalia Estemirova, of Stanislav Markelov, despite the passage of many years, but in just a few short weeks, although the bombers themselves were blown to smithereens, the FSB asks us to accept on blind faith that they were able to track down not one, not two, but three stealthy accomplices to the subway bombings.
Do you believe it, dear reader? We certainly don’t.
The words of this ridiculous little man are, if anything, even less credible than those of Vladimir Putin. While Putin is a trained, career liar, at least one has the impression that he is capable of some form of action. Medvedev, however, gives the impression of being exactly what he is, a puppet, no more capable of giving orders that could lead to action than a bag of produce.
So the fact is that not a single word the Putin-Medvedev tandem utters has the slightest credibility. Cold-blooded murder and torture are entirely normal for them, as are the most transparent lies in the service of concealing their horrendous misdeeds. These men are products of the Soviet system, and it is folly to expect anything else from them but neo-Soviet actions.
La Russophobe 
That’s telling ’em! There’s no particular reason you should believe the Russian security services when they say they’ve gotten the guilty parties; they’ve certainly been wrong before.
I liked the part, too, where you pointed out that they’ve been unable to capture or kill those responsible for the murders of Estemirova or Politovskaya. I’m certainly not telling you how to do your job, but at that point I would have contrasted it with a positive example, such as how U.S. law enforcement or security services captured the famous murderer of 3000 Americans, Osama bin Laden.
What? You haven’t actually gotten him yet? But it’s been…..seven years…right, OK, I understand. But you’re still looking for him, right? What? You’re not? Six months after the president announced he would get bin Laden and bring him to justice, he said “I’m not that concerned about him”? Really?
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/14/nation/na-osama14
Well, at least when U.S. security services arrest somebody, they get the right man. Oh…wait.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001944007_fingerprint01m.html
Right, I remember. Hey, but that Brandon Mayfield sure looked good for that bombing in Madrid, didn’t he? Had his fingerprints and everything. Except the Spanish police said they doubted those were Mayfield’s prints, and the FBI fingerprint “expert” turned out to know as much about Indonesian folk dancing or the nocturnal habits of fruit bats as he did about fingerprints; which is to say, nothing.
There are enough areas in which you could contrast Russia negatively with the U.S.A. and probably get away with it. I’d submit that corruption, malfeasance and stupidity among the security services might be one you want to stay away from.
Uh, you seem to have lost track of the thread. Perhaps it’s the vodka.
See, bin Laden ADMITTED his guilt for 9/11. He bragged about it. You have NO IDEA who these people allegedly killed even were, much less whether they were guilty of the crime charged.
And the US has not CLAIMED to have killed the person responsible for 9/11 without actually having any proof of the connection.
And if you are suggesting that Russia is working as hard to find Politkovskaya as the US is to find bin Laden, we have only two words to describe you: Damned liar.
Or as the North American Red Indian would say “him speak with forked tongue!”
You can’t help yourself can you FSB? In true Russian soviet commie fascist fashion you give just a smidgen of truth to give some semblance of decency or honesty, before you sink back into your propaganda fantasy world of deceit and outright lies.
Be good enough to tell me – once again – how I was supposed to have flown from Kyiv to Moscow over the ocean?
In all truth Francis, you are starting to remind me of that US film character “Francis the talking mule”, except the mule was at least honest!
But then what’s that old saying, once a liar, always a liar.
“And if you are suggesting that Russia is working as hard to find Politkovskaya as the US is to find bin Laden”
I hate to break it to you, but Politkovskaya was found. She is dead. Her grave is in this cemetery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troyekurovskoye_Cemetery
Everybody, who visits Moscow, should go there to pay respect. Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagankovo_Cemetery
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novodevichy_Cemetery
Vodka is a bit much for breakfast, though Harvey’s Bristol Cream is lovely over porridge.
See, Umarov ADMITTED his guilt for the Moscow subway bombings. He bragged about it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8597792.stm
“You have NO IDEA who these people allegedly killed even were, much less whether they were guilty of the crime charged.” Sorry, I didn’t realize from the scanty coverage in the article that you knew the identities of those killed, and that the FSB had just selected their names from the telephone book. That being the case, why aren’t you contacting major news outlets with your evidence? If you’re a little overwhelmed, I’ll be happy to contact the BBC in your name, to let them know you have new evidence in the investigation – you just say the word. I’ll let them know you’re interested in making a statement, and if any financial considerations accrue, I’m not looking for a percentage.
If you don’t have any such evidence, you don’t know a thing more than I do. You likewise have no clue if the persons killed were proved to be connected, or if the phone book played any part at all in the investigation. However, if the Chechen rebel leader and would-be Islamic leader of the Northern Caucasus claimed responsibility for the attack, I’d say the FSB were wise to start with Chechens as opposed to, say, Hawaiians. The BBC doesn’t seem to find it surprising at all.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8592689.stm
I confess to being confused what you would have the security services of Russia do. If they sat on their hands and didn’t bother to pay more than lip service to investigating the crime, you’d be all over them like Rush Limbaugh on a chili dog. If they move decisively and quickly to arrest, well, that’s wrong too.
Perhaps we’ll disagree on this point, but I’d suggest the FSB would have been a lot smarter to simply pick some rube for the Politovskaya killing, announce his guilt to the world and execute him. Her value as a martyr would be greatly diminished thereby, and people would quickly forget. I imagine that’s occurred to them as well, they’re not nearly as stupid as you make out. According to you, this is their preferred modus operandi – why do you suppose they haven’t done it in the cases you reference?
Oh, Francis, but Osama and CIA not willing to find him is a problem of the US.
Here, it’s more about why it’s so difficult for FSB to find Doku Umarov for such a long time. Though they say the FSB death list is quite an effective thing:
“Apparently, the Russian secret police believe they can just open the phone book, pick three names, “destroy” the people connected to them, blame those people for terrorism, and then close their books and nobody will be the wiser. Indeed, why stop there? Why not pick out a few enemies of the state, or perhaps folks who just didn’t cough up large enough bribes, and kill them, thus two birds with one stone?”
Every now and then I visit this site and a thought that always crosses my mind when I’m here is: “How come the Russians didn’t kill them yet?”.
So many people to kill, so little time.
>> 1956 In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate “only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them.”
Thanks for that charming irrelevancy, LES; it’s like finding a Winnebago in the middle of the forest, or a yak on the Massachusetts turnpike. What does it have to do with Medvedev, or the Russian security services, or the Moscow subway bombing? Or was today flip-a-coin medications day?
Are you that dense FSB!! Who in the hell do you think would have transported these unfortunate people, or for that matter, any Russiansand the other subdued nations – NONE other then your beloved NKVD, the RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICE – Duh Dumbo, got that point straight.
Bohdan, while the Soviet TcheKa/NKVD – created by the Polish noblemen Feliks Dzierżyński and Wiaczesław Mężyński, along with Latvian and Polish proletarians Jēkabs Peters, Mārtiņš Lācis, Pēteris Stučka, Stanisław Messing and Stanisław Redens – was a terrible organization under Stalin, what does this history have to do with Chechen terrorism?
I almost forgot Theodor Eihmans:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%B9%D1%85%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81,_%D0%A4%D1%91%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
Are you intentionally packing your response with Polish and Baltic names, and specifically mentioning their ethnicities? Are you trying to imply that Poles and Latvians are responsible for those crimes but Russians are innocent? But you forgot about particularly pernicious enemies of the Russian people. How come?
Er, I think you both are wrong. RV is b/c he implies Russians were responsible for henocide of Ukrainians (as if there was one), Voice of Reason is when he implies ChCk was created mostly by Poles and Latvians. Would there be no Russian Lenin (oh, I wished so it would be), there would also be no ChCk.
Why, that’s fascinating, Bohdan! I can’t wait for the contortions as you try to link Nikita Kruschev with the subway bombings, and 1956 with 2010. Don’t forget to leave some room for the Ukrainians, I confess I have no idea where they fit in this.
It’s nice of you to come to LES’s rescue, but he probably won’t notice. Sometimes he lapses into these trancelike states, and blurts odd bits of disassociated history when bumped.
Yes LES! and there’s also the saying by none other then J. Stalin himself, when he complained in a verbal statement to some of his ‘close associates’, that he regretted the Ukrainian nation was too large to be deported in it’s entirety to Siberia.
Yes, Bohdan, everybody knows how much Slavic people – Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusans – have suffered from Georgian monsters like Stalin and Beria.
And under Russian monsters like Lenin, Yehzov, Yagoda, Trotsky, Krushchev, Andropov, Ivan the Terrible etc.
Don’t forget many of Stalins willing executioners were Russian Jews like you, Voice of Retardation.
And why do you keep calling Stalin Georgian, his father was an Ossetian, your precious Ossetians seem pretty proud of him:
Here he is listed under ” Politicians, government and society figures”
Stalin’s father was Ossetian. His mother was ethnic Georgian. (R.K)
For more info on J.Stalin see
http://ossetians.com/eng/
http://ossetians.com/eng/index.php?showcat=jump&f=10
And he is venerated in your beloved “South Ossetia”
It’s Saturday but the kids of Khetagurovo, are at school, the same as everybody their age in South Ossetia. A wide range of Soviet symbols still hang from the school’s walls: red stars, black and white photographs of the local heroes, and many other reminders of the Great Patriotic War (WW II). Only the South Ossetian hymn on a poster reminds us that there’s no Soviet Union any more, despite the disturbing presence of Stalin on a big canvas.
A bell marks the end of today’s classes and dozens of kids walk home under the threatening look of the Soviet leader. None of them witnessed Soviet times, not even its last years. Nonetheless, they all know that the man who bet the Fascists was an Ossetian, “despite her mother being a Georgian”.
“And how did Stalin’s parents get to meet each other?” may have asked one of these kids during today’s classes.
The same question might have been raised in the neighbouring Georgian village. Classes were over exactly an hour ago there.
http://polosbastards.com/pb/south-ossetia-a-land-of-no-crossroads/
And lets not forget the Russian hero worship of Stalin these days…..
New statues, new museums, odes to Stalin in the Moscow metro, and him being voted the 3rd greatest Russian of all time….
Er, Andrew, what I hear, “Jews are the most fierce enemies of the Ukrainian people?” Spoke too much with Less and Bohdan lately?
Soso Dzhugashvili, son ov Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a wonderful Georgian poet, is no Georgian now? How convenient! He must have wrote all his poems in Ossetian, being an Osset, right? :D
Perhaps he’ll now be Russian straight away? Why make him Osset, Russian would be even more convenient?
No D-tard, Vissarion Dzhugashvili was an ethnic Ossetian.
Historical fact.
And he is claimed as the “great son of the Ossetian People”, they still have a Stalin St in Tshkinvali one might add….
And his name is an Ossetian sirname that has be “Georgianised” just as Ossetian names in Russians have been Russified.
He was no “poet”, he was a shoemaker, a drunkard, and a wife and child beater, but I have never heard of him as a post, and so I suggest you find some references, unless of course you are (as usual) talking out your arse.
He was half Ossetian and half Georgian.
Historical fact.
“Vissarion Dzhugashvili was an ethnic Ossetian. Historical fact.”
“He was half Ossetian and half Georgian. Historical fact.”
Ok, if you say so, I’ll accept both historical facts of yours.
Oh and a new Stalin Statue to be erected by the North Ossetians….
Stalin statue to be installed in Russia
April 29th, 2010 – 12:18 pm ICT by IANS –
Moscow, April 29 (IANS/RIA Novosti) A bust-size statue of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin will be erected in the Russian city of Tambov ahead of the World War II Victory Day celebrations.
“The republican committee of the North Ossetian Communist Party made the bust to express gratitude to the Tambov regional committee for helping South Ossetia during the conflict with Georgia (in August 2008),” Andrei Zhidkov, branch head of the Russian Communistic Party, said Wednesday.
The erection of the bust coincides with the 65th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and commemorates Stalin’s contribution to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/politics/stalin-statue-to-be-installed-in-russia_100355587.html
Voice of reason wrote;
Yes, Bohdan, everybody knows how much Slavic people – Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusans – have suffered from Georgian monsters like Stalin and Beria.
comments;
And you russian slaves warship him anyway – build a new monuments and are preparing yourselves to reenter the goulags comes 2012 – we respect your choice….
The problem with Holodomor is that none of claims of genocide is supported with any sources.
Why do we call Holodomor a henocide?
At the bottom line, because some Ukrainians in 1930ies said that some communist official in Kharkov said it was against Ukrainians as a ethnos, and their claims were cited in some book.
What book? Well, a paper book from a library, issued in 2000 or something. There’s no text in the internets, don’t try to find it. Why would one need it?
Where did they hear these Ukrainians talking about the communist official statement? Well, they just heard. Why would you need to know that?
What was the difference between the hunger un Povolzhye and Holodomor? Well, Holodomor was a separate genocide against Ukrainians. What was so special? Well, it was a henocide. Why? Because that communist official said that.
Why did peasants die from hunger in several other regions of the USSR, including Kazakhstan and Russia, at the very same time? Well, it was just a coincidence.
Why Stalin never issued a single order against Ukraine, other than orders on Ukrainization of Ukraine (i.e. purging of Russian language from the public space in Ukraine)? Well, he was a cunning dictator with regards to Ukrainians, unlike what he did to Tatars, or Povolzhye Germans, with Ukrainians he was surprisingly much more careful not to leave any evidence of intent to wipe them.
To sum up, it’s a very credible theory.
Strictly speaking, Stalin’s patronymic initial was “I” – Iosif.
Apparently, you don’t know there are no phone books with names of abonents, because it’s considered a private information in Russia.
Who are the “abonents?” What does this word mean?
Oh, sorry, that’s subscriber in English. Let’s just say my French influences my English :D
Anyway, we’ve got no phone books here, other than that of companies’ phones.
It’s the first time I hear there are no phone books in Russia. Very strange
The Return of Uncle Joe
Crisis-Stricken Russians Nostalgic for Stalin
But Stalin’s genie had been released from the bottle long ago, and the headstrong mayor’s poster campaign only served to stoke the flames of a debate that had been raging for months.
Some interpreted Luzkhov’s decision as a long overdue act of liberation, and several other cities copied his idea. Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia, already began decorating its streets with photos of Stalin last week, and other cities that intend to follow suit include the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh in southern Russia and the industrial city of Kirov in central Russia. In Volgograd, the former Stalingrad, there is even a soft drink on sale featuring Stalin on its label.
Even the parliament in liberal St. Petersburg debated over whether the “brilliant commander-in-chief” should be allowed to become part of the cityscape again. Members of the city council argued that under Stalin’s leadership, Russia “rose from the ashes and became a major power.” But the governor of the district rejected the idea. Now a private initiative has leased advertising space on city buses to display images of Stalin.
The local parliament for the Moscow region is even spending 45 million rubles, or more than €1 million ($1.3 million), to coin new copies of old war decorations, including a “J.V. Stalin” medal bearing the image of the former Kremlin chief and “coated with at least 0.012 mm (0.0005 inches) of silver.”
…….
And now, half a century later, do the Russians still believe in his genius? There is no doubt that Stalin is back in vogue.
More than a dozen new statues of Stalin have been erected in Russia in the recent past, in addition to the more than 200 that still existed in the country: in the Siberian diamond-mining town of Mirny, at High School No. 2 in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains, and in the Siberian village of Kureika, where Stalin spent his exile under the czar.
‘Stalin Raised Us to Be Loyal’
Once again, Moscow residents can read the phrase “Stalin raised us to be loyal to the nation” when they walk into the Kurskaya metro station in Moscow, where a frieze bearing the inscription has now been restored. And anyone who is interested can visit the website of notorious Stalin apologists or, in any bookstore, choose among dozens of works of lightweight Stalin literature, arranged next to the shelves of bestsellers, with titles like: “Stalin’s Great War,” “Stalin’s Terror: The Great Lie of the 20th Century” or the five-volume work “200 Legends About Stalin.”
Volume 14 of Stalin’s “Collected Works,” which were no longer published after 1951, is now on the market again. There is even an 800-page book that contains all the information that was meticulously recorded in notebooks in Stalin’s outer office, such as the names of people who went in and out of the general secretary’s office, together with the exact times of their arrival and departure. A new schoolbook goes so far as to praise Stalin as an effective manager.
Stalin critics, on the other hand, are having a tough time of it. A grandson of the dictator is suing the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy for €258,000 in damages, because the broadcasters claimed that Stalin approved the executions of 12-year-olds in the 1930s. And in Arkhangelsk, a history professor was arrested for investigating the mass deportations under Stalin and — absurdly — charged with having violated the “private sphere of Soviet citizens.”
No Public Outcry
There was no public outcry in either case. According to a survey by the Levada Center, an independent polling organization, almost one in three Russians regards the former Kremlin leader “with respect” or “with sympathy,” while 2 percent of respondents even said that they regarded Stalin “with enthusiasm.” Some 38 percent said they were indifferent to the former dictator, while opponents of Stalin were in the minority.
Does this explain why the chairman of the organizing committee for the May 9 celebration — none other than President Dmitry Medvedev’s chief of staff — initially decided that Stalin posters could not be displayed for the commemorative event, but then caved in? The organizers were “strictly against it,” says his spokesman, but points out that his office, unfortunately, lacks the authority to dictate to Moscow residents how they should decorate their city. At the end of last week, there were rumors that the controversial images might be displayed in only a few prominent places.
On Wednesday, the city government put up small posters of Stalin around Moscow, the news agency Reuters reported. Some of the posters were within exhibits about World War II, while others were displayed outside museums.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,692971,00.html