FRIDAY MAY 28 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Medvedev and Hamas
(2) EDITORIAL: The Horror of the Russian Bear Market
(3) EDITORIAL: Russia is a Sick, Diseased Country
(4) EDITORIAL: Say “NO!” to Sochi
NOTE: Oleg Kozlovsky shows how the Google search prompt exposes the fraud that is Vladimir Putin.
NOTE: In another truly shocking moment of sports humiliation for Russia, last year’s finalist at the French Open grand slam event Dinara Safina has been ejected from the tournament by Kimiko Date Krumm, who becomes the second-oldest woman to win a match at a Roland Garros in the open era of tennis.
Not ranked in the top 70 players in the world, Japanense journeywoman Krumm outlasted Safina in three sets to blast the tournament’s #9 seed out of the draw in her very first match. Ouch. In other tennis news, Maria Sharapova “won” a tournament in Strasbourg where her closest competition was not ranked in the world’s top 30 (a fellow Russian who lost her first match of the tournament to an unseeded American) and her opponent in the finals was not ranked in the world’s top 60. Way to show them what you’re made of, Masha! Things will be a little bit tougher for our gal Maria at Roland Garros, where she finds herself in the same quarter of the draw as both Justine Henin and Serena Williams. Ouch, ouch.
La Russophobe 
Russian dissidents concerned over Smolensk investigation
25.05.2010 12:55
Five former Soviet dissidents and political opponents of the present-day Kremlin have written an open letter to a Polish newspaper criticising the investigation into the Smolensk air disaster.
The Rzeczpospolita web site in Poland has published an open letter signed by five Russian dissidents, saying that they are “surprised and seriously concerned” over the course of the investigation to determine the causes of the air crash near Smolensk on April 10.
Alexander Bondarev, Vladimir Bukovsky, Viktor Fainberg, Natalya Gorbanevskaya and Andrei Illarionov write that the Russian authorities all but ignored the video message of thanks on youtube by presidential candidate Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of Lech Kaczynski who died in the plane crash.
The letter accuses the Polish government of seemingly being more interested in closer relations with the Kremlin than establishing the truth about one of the greatest national tragedies to befell Poland.
“It seems that Polish friends demonstrate a certain naiveté, forgetting that the interests of the current leadership in the Kremlin are not convergent with those of the nation’s neighbour”, reads the letter which also urges Poles, who “value their freedom”, to defend Poland’s independence “also at the ballot box”, referring to the June 20 presidential elections.
The letter writers were all Soviet dissidents. Vladimir Bukovsky, for instance, was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric drugs and treatments against political opponents during communist times.
http://www.thenews.pl/international/artykul132273_russian-dissidents-concerned-over-smolensk-investigation.html
The text, on Newsweek Poland:
http://www.redakcja.newsweek.pl/Tekst/Polityka-Polska/536923,Rosyjscy–dysydenci-ostrzegaja–polske-przed-obluda-putina-.html
he Russian authorities all but ignored the video message of thanks on youtube by presidential candidate Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of Lech Kaczynski who died in the plane crash.
His message was directed to the Russian nation:
Untinkered Google translation from the Rzeczpospolita original (which was apparently first published by Novaya Gazeta anyway):
Concerned about the conduct of investigations
19:31 24-05-2010, last updated: 24-05-2010 19:31
Open Letter of Russian dissidents Smolensk disaster
Hundreds of thousands of people already familiar with the Internet message to the Russians in the Polish presidential candidate Mr. Jaroslaw Kaczynski was able to express my sincere and heartfelt thank you to the Russians, who are the most difficult time for our two nations during the Poles showed sympathy and support.
The Russian authorities did not consider it appropriate not to publish the text of this message nor answer it. His silence once again proved that for all their official words and expressions of sympathy for the tragic death of President Lech Kaczynski and the persons accompanying him were merely an empty formality, and not to take with a sincere heart (as some of us wanted to believe), but from a purely cyclical. Unfortunately, no wonder here.
However, we are surprised and seriously concerned about the course of the investigation which was to explain the circumstances and reasons for Tu-154 crash near Smolensk. It seems that the Russian authorities are not interested in an explanation of all the causes of the disaster, while the Polish authorities repeated the assurance of “full openness,” the Russian side, nothing happened to it does not actually asking and just waiting patiently until you come to Moscow’s long-promised their materials.
It is difficult to get rid of the impression that the Polish government closer to the current Russian authorities is more important than establishing the truth in one of the biggest national tragedy. It seems that Polish friends have a certain naivete, forgetting that the interests of the current leadership in the Kremlin and Russia’s neighboring nations countries are not converging.
We are concerned that a similar situation in the Polish independence and today, and tomorrow it may be seriously threatened. We hope that Polish citizens who value their freedom they can defend it. Also at the polls to vote.
Alexander Bondariew (journalist, writer, published in “New Polszy)
Vladimir Bukovsky (dissident in the communist era, and now critic of Kremlin policy)
Victor Fajnberg (dissident, in 1968, along with Natalya Gorbanevskaya took part in a demonstration in Moscow against the invasion of Czechoslovakia)
Natalia Gorbanevskaya (Democratic activist, poet, journalist, translator of Polish literature)
Andrei Iłłarionow (economist, former advisor to Putin, now critic of Kremlin policy)
http://www.rp.pl/artykul/2,484507.html
Time to Let the North Caucasus Go
26 May 2010
By Yulia Latynina
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/time-to-let-the-north-caucasus-go/406806.html
Is Russia losing the North Caucasus? To answer this question, we must answer another question: What are the terrorists trying to achieve by detonating bombs in the Moscow metro?
Answer: They want Allah, not Russia, to rule the North Caucasus. They hate the West and despise both Putin’s rule and democracy. The Constitution states that the people rule, but Muslim fundamentalists insist that only Allah should rule, and they condone murder and kidnapping to achieve their goals. That they kill non-Muslim infidels is a given, but they also kill Muslims whom the fundamentalists consider infidels.
As an ideology, the Wahhabi movement is just as widespread in the 21st century as socialism was in the early 20th century. But would it be correct to say Russia and the United States are suffering from the same infectious disease?
Absolutely not. In the United States, terrorist attacks occur about once every five years, but in the North Caucasus they occur every five minutes. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, political Islam was a relatively marginal phenomenon, but after 10 years of Vladimir Putin’s power vertical, the situation has changed radically. For example, Dagestan’s Wahhabis were only a marginal force in 1999, but they have become so powerful now that Russia’s law enforcement agencies are afraid to go after them.
In the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, business owners pay protection money to the Wahhabis. When Ruslan Aushev was president of Ingushetia, the republic did not join the war on the side of Chechnya. But during the years of Putin’s power vertical, Ingushetia was transformed into a safe haven for the mujahedin and instill more fear than the federal troops. Even the new Ingush president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is powerless to improve the situation. It was Putin’s autocratic rule that prompted the militant fundamentalists to grow from a marginalized group to the main power center in the North Caucasus.
If Russia were to liberalize, the situation in the North Caucasus would get even worse. Experience shows that extremists — whether they be social revolutionaries in the early 1900s, members of the Communist Internationals of the 1930s or Wahhabis in the Caucasus — view concessions as an excuse to step up their attacks.
It seems that Russia will be forced to part with the North Caucasus in the same way that France was forced to leave Algeria. This will not lead to peace and tranquility in the region. Either chaos will break out in the North Caucasus or a Taliban-type government will come to power — or both. After that, a new Islamist state will attempt to spread its radical ideology to the neighboring Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, the historical homelands of the Circassians.
Russia will experience the same problems with an independent North Caucasus that Israel now has with the Palestinians.
If Russia does not leave the North Caucasus, one of three scenarios will occur:
1. A third war in the North Caucasus will break out.
2. Russia will pour an endless stream of money into the North Caucasus, while extremists extort as much as half of the funds.
3. Moscow will have to create regimes along the lines of that of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Although Kadyrov has been successful in crushing the Wahhabis, the Kremlin, by financing Kadyrov, has created a host of other problems at home and abroad.
[RR: or why not all three consecutively? And staying on topic…]
Bomb kills 5 at Russian dance show
By Eduard Korniyenko – Wed May 26, 3:43 pm ET
STAVROPOL, Russia (Reuters) – At least five people were killed and 20 injured on Wednesday when a bomb exploded outside a theater in the southern Russian city of Stavropol just before the start of a Chechen dance show, investigators said.
Investigators opened a criminal case under terrorism laws, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.
The ethnically Russian Stavropol region, which borders the violence-racked Muslim republics of the North Caucasus, has been hit by Islamist attacks in the past, but not in recent years.
Islamist rebels have vowed in recent months to expand their campaign of shootings and bombings to Russian cities. Suicide bombers on the Moscow metro in March killed 40 in the worst attack on the Russian heartland since 2004.
The prosecutor’s office statement said the bomb, which contained explosives equivalent to 200-250 grams of TNT, exploded 15 minutes before the start of a concert by a celebrated Vainakh dance troop from Chechnya.
The dance troop is closely associated with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has posed for photographs with the dancers.
“About 15-20 minutes before the start of the concert we heard an explosion. We saw the blast had practically flung aside the crowd that had gathered outside…about 100-150 people,” Rustam, an eyewitness, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Two bodies covered in white sheets lay near the exit of the Stavropol Concert Hall, which was sealed off by police. RIA news agency quoted local hospitals as saying at least 40 were injured in the blast.
‘BRUTAL PROVOCATION’
“This is an unprecedented, brutal provocation,” said Stavropol Region Governor Valery Gayevsky, Interfax reported.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last year ordered that Stavropol Region be included in a new North Caucasus Federal District along with mainly-Muslim Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia in a bid to tackle growing violence.
Medvedev’s new envoy to the district, former metals executive Alexander Khloponin, on Wednesday called an emergency meeting to discuss the bombing, RIA reported.
Stavropol city is 350 km (220 miles) northwest of Chechnya’s local capital Grozny. It has largely escaped Islamist insurgent attacks, but the surrounding region has seen some of the deadliest attacks in the long-running conflict.
Chechen rebels seized hundreds of hostages in a hospital in the Stavropol Region town of Budyonnovsk in 1995 and more than 100 died during the rebel assault and a botched Russian raid.
In the last major attack, seven Russian policemen and 12 gunmen were killed when special forces stormed houses to fight rebels holed up in a village near the city in 2006.
Latynina is completely wrong on a number of issues. For example:
“Kadyrov has been successful in crushing the Wahhabis”
Just 2 quotes:
July 29, 2006
Ramzan Kadyrov Invites Nashi to Have Fun in Chechnya
(…)
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.
(Now, nearly 4 years later, when “the order is restored”, I guess some of these Nashis are “having fun” in uniform there alright, but with real guns and watching for remote-controlled mines and tripwire boobytraps.)
http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=530&id=693680
Now (literally),
Chechen president demands militants counted
25/05/2010
The president of the Russian North Caucasus volatile republic of Chechnya has demanded that law enforcement agencies count the number of militants hiding in mountains.
Sporadic terrorist attacks and militant clashes are common in Chechnya and around it, although the Kremlin has officially ended its military campaign against separatists and terrorists there.
“According to Federal Security Service data, we have some 400-500 militants. In line with other data, 198 people are ranked among militants… I would like to know — where are these data from?” Ramzan Kadyrov told law enforcers on Monday.
Kadyrov said a special commission should be established to deal with the matter.
“We should know exactly how many militants we have, who we believe to be militants and how we count them,” he said.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100525/159142099.html
Oh, but I thought he said it was only 50-70 in 2006. And now what…hundreds? I guess this (“terrorist attacks and militant clashes are common in Chechnya”) is what stands for “crushing them” (and “restored order”) in Russia. Too bad even Latynina bought this silly propaganda.
And speaking of the silly propaganda (Rusia’s usual):
Russian interior minister praises ‘peaceful’ Chechnya
24/04/2010
Just over a year since a counter-terrorism regime was lifted in Chechnya, the North Caucasus republic is enjoying a period of long-awaited peace, Russia’s interior minister said on Saturday.
“Not a single terrorist act has taken place this year in Chechnya,” Rashid Nurgaliyev told Chechen Interior Ministry officials. “I am sure the peaceful labor of Chechens is under reliable protection.”
He also said that only scattered remnants of the militants groups who once “dictated their own conditions” were left in the republic.
The decade-long counter-terrorism operation ended in Chechnya on April 16, 2009 and some 20,000 Russian Interior Ministry troops were subsequently withdrawn from the republic, which witnessed two brutal separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s.
However, Oleg Orlov, the head of the Memorial human rights group, says the number of security personnel killed in Chechnya has in fact increased since the counter-terrorism regime was lifted.
He said [at least] 85 law enforcement officers were killed and 168 injured between April 16, 2009 and the end of March 2010 compared with 50 killed and 140 injured the year before.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100424/158729376.html
RIAN about the peaceful Chechnya yesterday:
Three police injured in Chechnya blast
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100326/158316672.html
Two militants killed in Chechnya last night in security sweep [Kadyrov says]
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15164356&PageNum=0
O, alternatively, these “50-70” guys (Ramzan K. actually kept repeating this number for years, and promising “none the next month/year” repeatedly) killed or injured at least (and really many more) 483 “law enforcement officers” (not including soldiers?) in the last 2 years alone, since April 2008.
They’re just so “crushed” since Ramzan became “the president” (in 2007).
Bobby, I do not understand it, do you rant about evil Russkies do not kill freedom fighters fast enough?
Update – Russia’s “Hero” Ramzan K. (his new right-hand man Magomed D. is also a Putin’s “Hero of Russia” as is AD and many others) is now saying ” 70 to 80″, which is actually an increase since “50 to 70” of 4 years ago (that’s how “crushed” they were):
North Caucasus rebels have recently intensified their activity in Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan republics, and Chechnya does not seem to be an exception. Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, made yet another attempt last week to come up with an estimate on the total number of rebels operating in Russia’s troubled region. This time it has been decided that the figure stands at 198 according to the list of federally wanted persons by Chechnya’s ministry of internal affairs (MVD) (www.yuga.ru/news/189617/). The official number is some four or five times higher than it has been announced to the public until now, and in order to give an explanation, the Chechen MVD stressed that since the beginning of 2010 authorities have managed to completely undercut recruitment for the armed resistance movement (www.vz.ru/news/2010/5/21/403931.html). This data was announced by Chechnya’s first deputy head of the government, Magomed Daudov, formerly a well-known young rebel commander in the Shali sector who later joined the Russian-backed Kadyrov government. Daudov has helped to brutally crush the very comrades-in-arms with whom he used to fight a short while ago. Since the end of last year, Daudov, who replaced Adam Demilkhanov in this role, has become a leading figure behind all of the high-profile operations conducted against the rebels throughout Chechnya.
Ramzan Kadyrov did not like the figure his ministry came up with and he immediately started to claim that out of the total 198 militants approximately 30% has already been killed and many of those wanted by the Russian authorities have gone abroad. As a result, Kadyrov argued, at a maximum, 70 to 80 rebels remain in Chechen territory (www.chechnyatoday.com/content/view/8414/135/). It is worth mentioning that some time ago Kadyrov was incensed at the data brought by Russia’s federal security service (FSB), putting the numbers of rebels in Chechnya at 400. He then demanded that the federal authorities disclose their data and explain to the Chechen authorities how they came up with those high numbers about the armed resistance. The rebel side, on its part, has claimed all along that there are up to 5,000 participating in the armed resistance movement throughout the North Caucasus region (www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2010/01/26/70257.shtml).
According to Russian figures, in the course of one year between April 2009, when the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya was officially ended, and April 2010, 97 servicemen from the MVD, the FSB and the ministry of defense have been killed and 185 have been wounded. By comparison, for the same one year period before the end of the counter-terrorist operation the official figures stood at 52 and 150, respectively. This means that the Russian siloviki had fewer losses during the counter-terrorist operation than after it was terminated. Over the past year, with no anti-terrorist operation officially underway, government forces have liquidated 189 persons claimed to be militants or their collaborators, and captured 186, including 9 persons who have voluntarily given themselves up to Russian authorities (http://reorgia.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/164059/). This confirms the fact that more rebels have been killed or arrested than shown on the wanted list of Russia’s MVD and FSB. It thus remains unclear who has been liquidated and apprehended between April 2009 and 2010 since those numbers are twice the numbers of rebels on the wanted list.
On May 18 one of the most high-profile murders of this year occurred in Chechnya. An explosion on Saykhanov Street in the capital Grozny’s Oktyabrski district killed Lom-Ali Khajiev, the chief of the operative investigative department. In the incident, two police officers and a passer-by were wounded. (www.gazeta.ru/politics/2010/05/18_kz_3369692.shtml). Khajiev, a high-ranking MVD official, was rather independent from the Interior Minister and was closely associated with Kadyrov himself. As far as the wounded officers are concerned, one is Artur Saydaev, the head of the Russian MVD’s criminal investigative department for Chechnya and Zakir Bigulatov, the chief of the criminal investigative unit in Grozny’s Oktyabrski district.
May 21 was not a pleasant day for the Chechen leadership either. First, there was an explosion and a fire broke out in Chechnya’s Mozdok-Kazimagomed gas pipeline segment near the border with Dagestan (http://mirtv.ru/content/view/101817). The location which is in the Shelkovsky district of Chechnya is close to the Kizlyar district of Dagestan. The same day four police officers deployed to Chechnya from Russia’s northern region were injured (www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews.shtml?/20100521092732.shtml). Later, a Russian military serviceman was injured when a mine that exploded in Chechnya’s Achkhoy-Martanovsky district (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/168915/). In another incident, on the outskirts of the village of Martan-Chu in the Urus-Martanovsky district of Chechnya, a group of unidentified men fired automatic shots at a car, killing a police officer and a local resident (http://reorgia.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/168913/).
In addition, there have been reports of rebels “liquidated” in special operations. At times, Ramzan Kadyrov himself personally participates in them as was the case on May 23 near the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya’s Shali district. The authorities later reported that two militants – the Yusupkhajiev brothers – had been killed in this special operation. Once again, it remains unclear why these two men could not be found on the MVD’s wanted list or on Interpol’s website.
The authorities do not like the numbers given by Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov on the persons missing as a result of the Chechnya wars. He claims that 5,000 Chechens are missing in the aftermath of the two military campaigns (www.regnum.ru/news/1286105.html). It is worth mentioning that all figures related to the Chechens are openly driven by ideology. Sometimes these numbers are used by the local Chechen authorities to exert pressure on officials in Moscow and sometimes Moscow readjusts the figures in order to minimize Russian guilt in its operations in Chechnya. For instance, when appropriate, Kadyrov likes to say that 250,000 Chechens were killed during the two wars, and this is exactly the number the representatives of the armed resistance usually adhere to. Nonetheless, when Moscow decides to come up with different numbers, the local Chechen authorities usually accept this data without reservation.
“Chechen Terrorism” Internationale:
Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechnya, a constituent republic of Russia, has been accused of inciting the murder of Chechen exile Umar Israilov in a final report released by the Austrian State Offices of Domestic Security and Counter-Terrorism.
http://www.ecchr.de/kadyrov_case/articles/kadyrov-accused-if-iniciting-murder-in-austria.html
Besides the two direct offenders, the final report now available from the Austrian authorities also names nine other Chechen individuals involved. The report thus exposes the chain of Chechen death squads all the way up to the political peak of the Chechen Republic. Moscow deploys and tolerates the Chechen regime of injustice, with its reach extending as far as major European capitals. Opponents of this regime and particularly witnesses before European courts live in perpetual fear of being attacked for their actions.
So, do you rant about evil Russkies that can not kill freedom fighters fast enough?
Or about evil Russkies killing Chechens too fast?
I believe you should make up your mind first, then go posting:)
@Opponents of this regime and particularly witnesses before European courts live in perpetual fear of being attacked for their actions.
In Chechnya, critics beware
May 03, 2010
There is a disturbing pattern in the deaths and disappearances of more than a dozen critics and political rivals of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. The victims range from human rights activists to former warlords and have little in common beyond having challenged the Kremlin-backed leader of the North Caucasus republic. They have been killed or kidnapped in Moscow, Vienna and Istanbul, as well as in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/opinion/la-ed-chechen-20100503
The latest allegations come from the office of Austria’s public prosecutor, which released the results of a yearlong investigation into the killing of Umar S. Israilov, a onetime Chechen rebel turned whistle-blower who had worked as a bodyguard for Kadyrov before seeking exile in Vienna. The report says that Kadyrov ordered the kidnapping of Israilov, who was shot dead as he tried to escape his abductors. Israilov had filed a case in the European Court of Human Rights accusing Kadyrov of participating in murder, abductions and torture, and reportedly had been warned to withdraw it.
Death in Europe
http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000024-000001-000038&lang=1
The physical elimination of critics of the present Chechen government is by now a topic that is almost exhausted. All of its various aspects have been discussed over and over again, and it is presently the subject of upcoming criminal trials that will feature not only the Chechen leader but also the top Russian government officials who have granted him immunity from prosecution. The history of these extrajudicial killings is rife with new evidence. Now we await transparent legal proceedings in which all the details of the various cases will be consolidated into a single picture.
Dude, and we await transparent investigation in Obama’s orders to murder a priest, US citizen, abroad.
And that is not just fantasies, it is well proved giving a priest murder warrant was exactly what the President of the USA did.
“Extrajudicial killings” differ from “fighting terrorism”?
So what was the death of Abu Laith al-Libi?
“Attacking and invading an independent country” differs from “taking the war on terror to their turf”?
So what is the US operation in Afghanistan?
“Occupation” differs from “Building democracy”?
So what is the US operation in Iraq?
“Murdering dissidents” differs from “holding terror at bay”?
So what is Obama’s order to murder Anwar al-Awlaki?
“Collateral damage” differs from “Cruelly murdering civilians”?
So what are US drones’ missile attacks in Northern Wasiristan?
“Freedom fighters” differ from “terrorists”?
So what are the US military in all those countries?
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/obama_orders_americans_killed_
Greenwald is outraged by this:
Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests.” They’re entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration’s policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges — based solely on the President’s claim that they were Terrorists — produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn’t Obama’s policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind — not imprisoned, but killed — produce at least as much controversy?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations
Confirmed: Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen
Overall, it makes me think I know why:
-it was not that difficult for the previous US administrations up to 2001 to call themselves democrats.
– it’s not difficult for a Saudi girl to stay virgin until marriage.
Both just didn’t have occasions.
The Potamkin village called moscow:
Vienna has been ranked the best city in the world in terms of its quality of life, according to the Mercer Quality of Living Survey.
Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich and Bern were also in the top 10. In the 10th place was Sydney (Australia). London ranked 39th and is the only British city in the top 50 of the list. Honolulu is the top U.S. city at number 31, followed by San Francisco. The top 100 includes only three cities of the former Soviet Union. They are the capitals of the Baltic Republics, which are members of the EU: Vilnius (79), Tallinn (89) and Riga (91). Kyiv is ranked 161, while Moscow 166.
When I was young the christians ran Seattle and Boeing ran the state. Everything was fine except that I could not move my drink from table to table because the christians did not want me to drink so much.
Since then the lefties took over and built a slow, clanking train to nowhere because they were prejudiced against cars.
Soon I will assume command of Seattle and confiscate the lefties cars and make them ride the train. They will say the train does not go within miles of where I work. I will say “no s–t”.
Come to Seattle where there is no money to maintain the streets as everyone has moved to the outlying areas in order not to pay for the train.
Where is Seattle on the list?
Ron,
I am looking at the highlights of this Report right now. Your city of Seattle is ranked 50th in the World and 7th in USA.
Of course, this Report ranks all Canadian cities way ahead of all American cities:
* Vancouver (4th)
* Ottawa (14th)
* Toronto (16th)
* Montreal (21st)
* Calgary (28th)
So, if you are dissatisfied with the lefties-run Seattle, you should immediately move to socialist Canada or to San Francisco.
Well, Canada is more “Constitutional Monarchy” than socialist.
Andrew,
Do you feel it is your duty to contradict everything I say no matter how obvious it is, or do you seriously not know that the conservatives here in USA consider Canada to be “socialist” compared to USA?
Solzhenitsyn spoke briefly to the people of Cavendish of the cost of ridding his country of communism, a task probably not even yet completed. “During a seventy-year reign of terror we (Russians) lost up to sixty million people, just from the regime’s war on its own nation.” That is a sober thing to say in farewell, hardly comprehensible to most of us. He left his “well-translated” books to the local library. One wonders if they are read.
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/schall_solzhenitsyn_aug08.asp
Solzhenitsyn causticly observes that this “comparatively easy” internal repression cost the people of the Soviet Union up to sixty-six million lives between 1918 and 1956 (9).
Note 9 refers to the to Vol.3 of “Gulag Archipelago
http://books.google.com/books?id=-zaM0Gp8ZRkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=solzhenitsyn+sixty+six+million&source=bl&ots=ePV3joy6xc&sig=aAyANb38nzt5IDfY47pvnCcJ2Fg&hl=en&ei=DGL_S6jOLJXQmgOH74ySDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=solzhenitsyn%20sixty%20six%20million&f=false
Ah, you are spamming about Rummel here.
“ internal repression cost the people of the Soviet Union up to sixty-six million lives between 1918 and 1956 (9). Note 9 refers to the to Vol.3 of “Gulag Archipelago”
here is the full text of Vol.3 of “Gulag Archipelago:
http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/gulag3.txt
I searched for “1956” and also for “66” and also for “шестьдесят шесть” in it and found no quotes resembling the one above. Nothing. Nada.
YOU try to find this quote, Andrew. Good luck!
It was citied in the introduction to the Western publication apparently.
Solzhenitsyn also quoted in a Russian publication:
The Dirty Revolution III
History sheds blood. The history of Bolshevism shed the blood of at least sixty-six million, according to the calculations of statistician Prof. I. A. Kurganov, cited by Solzhenitsyn in his Novy Mir essay “The Russian Question at the End of the Century,” Moscow 1994. The crimes against humanity of the Bolshevik genocide up to 1937, i.e., in the first twenty years of the permanent terror, amounted to twenty million victims. In his scientific probing, Solzhenitsyn does not ignore the moral imperfect; he does not fail to connect the uniqueness of the Bolshevik holocaust with the exorcistic destructive hate of a particular ethnic-religious group in old Russia. This may well be the reason why this second volume of Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together has been given the silent treatment or has been distorted, not in Putin’s Russia, but rather in Germany’s establishment media. (An honest translation of this work by Solzhenitsyn would constitute a major contribution to historiography.
So, that claim about “Vol.3 of Gulag Archipelago” was yet another lie? So, Solzhenitsyn himself never derived this figure of 66 million?
Is there an entire industry in lying about Solzhenitsyn?
No, he cited I.A.Kurganov in several essays and publications.
But lets not forget what Solzhenitsyn had to say about the perpetrators, your relatives.
Where and when was Solzhenitsyn talking about my relatives? Wasn’t he talking about YOUR relatives, Andrew?
By “your relatives”, Andrew most likely means Solzhenytsin hated Jews.
Do I understand you right, Andrew?
And, most likely, Andrew speaks of “200 years together” book by S., right, Andrew?
No, he didn’t hate Jews, and was a big supporter of Israel, however, he did believe that Russian Jews, like ReTaRd, needed to take responsibility for their actions.
Given that I never gave Andrew my name or the name of any of my relatives, it is highly interesting why Andrew thinks that Solzhenytsin names my relatives as perpetrators.
However, you have to remember that according to Andrew, anybody who misspels an Ossetian last name, is a Nazi criminal:
Andrew // May 23, 2010 at 5:48 am
“Now ReTaRd, you called him “Bogapsh”. So ReTaRd, I am pointing out that you were unable to tell the difference, or spell the n ame properly. You really are a pathetic little piece of inferior waste. How many people did you and your obviously pro Stalinist parents dobb in to the KGB? How many lives did you ruin in yoiur fanatical support of Russian imperialism? .How many Jews did you feed to the fires .Capo?”
Well, considering that Solzhenitsyn and many other survivors of the Gulag remembered the fact that Russian Jews made up a massively dis proportionally large percentage of the NKVD and it’s death squads, and that VOR is always trying to minimize Soviet atrocities, or claim they never happened in the first place, well I suggest he has a guilty conscience.
If he has a guilty conscience at all that is.
Just for you, Andrew, here is the detailed account of the “scientific” way how Kurganov derived his number of 66 million:
http://toyota-club.net/files/08-01-10/08-08-10_lib_demograf.htm
So, this is how psudo-“scientists” like Kurganov and Rummel operate.
The extent of the terror can be seen in its sheer magnitude. Using the analysis of former University of Leningrad professor of statistics I. A. Kurganov, Solzhenitsyn estimates that sixty-six million people were killed at the hands of the Soviet state. No government, not even the widely accepted archetype of evil, Nazi Germany, has so much brutality to answer for
http://books.google.com/books?id=IbrHOHGWi6YC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=I.A.+Kurganov+Solzhenitsyn&source=bl&ots=wY-yUcsK_s&sig=pEg9vud2tVNoan5g_Lc81ILIezw&hl=en&ei=9o3_S82OHaSimwOhzI2vDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=I.A.%20Kurganov%20Solzhenitsyn&f=false
The deaths of 50 of the bloodiest years of Soviet rule (data professors emigrant IA Kurganov ) were as follows:
The Russian Civil War (1917-1921.) – 13.000.000,
the war against Finland (1918) – 50.000;
against Baltic republics (1918-1919 years). – 110.000;
against Poland (1920) – 600.000;
against Georgia (1921-1922). – 20.000;
against Japan (1928-1931 years). – 30.000;
against Poland (1939) – 30.000,
v. Finland (1939) – 400.000,
World War II (according to Khrushchev) – 20.000.000;
Red Terror (1917-1923).:
academicians, professors, writers, artists, teachers, student – 160.000;
officials, officers, manufacturers, traders – 170.000;
police and gendarmes – 50.000;
clergy – 40.000,
peasants and workers – 1.300.000,
the second wave of Cheka terror (1933-37 years). – 1.600.000;
Yezhov period (1937-1938).:
intellectuals, workers, peasants, – 635.000,
members of the Communist Party – 340.000;
cleaning Red Army – 30.000;
prewar and postwar years (1937-47 years.) – 2.700.000,
were in concentration camps and, if not killed from overwork, abuse and hunger, were confined to the right after the liberation of dying – 20.000.000.
all due to the Soviet regime the population Russia has decreased by at least 67.558.000a man.
http://www.gulag.ipvnews.org/contacts.php
Andrew,
Remember how this argument started when I pointed out the demagogic nature of your sources? Well, quoting the site
http://www.gulag.ipvnews.org/contacts.php
is a good example of highly despicable unscientific sources.
Let me repeat: Solzhenitsyn never computed this number. Instead he came across this Kurganov character’s claims and used them in 1976 when he was trying to wage propaganda against the Soviets. He later regretted using this Kyrganov character and even tried to distance himself from it:
http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/2000/9/solge-pr.html
LANDS grain of between two millstones
Essays about exile
by Solzhenitsyn
PART TWO
(1979 – 1982)
Already close to death IA Kurganov and cheerful to ninety years of SG Pushkarev sent me portions of their remaining or new manuscripts – but it was sluggish, weak at best, and there were no scientific discoveries there.
Dissidents – dishonest Chalidze and Sakahrov – started warning about how dangerous I, Solzehnitsyn, am, and then they started blaming me for what Kurganov wrote in 1957 and Orekhov in 1976.
———
Yeh, right. In 1976 Sozehnitsyn repeated Kurganov’s lies, and then pretends that he doesn’t understand why Chalidze and Sakharov associate Solzhenitsyn with Kurganov.
Solzehnitsyn was a scumball, wasn’t he?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Chalidze
Valery Chalidze (Georgian: ვალერი ჭალიძე; Russian: Валерий Николаевич Чалидзе, Valeriy Nikolayevich Chalidze) (born 1938) is a Georgian-American author, publisher, and the former Soviet dissident and human rights activist.
Chalidze was born in Moscow. He was educated as a physicist at the universities of Moscow and Tbilisi. In the mid-1960s, he joined the Soviet human rights movement and published a samizdat magazine Obshchestvennye problemy (“The Social Problems”). In 1970 Chalidze, along with Andrei Sakharov and Andrei Tverdokhlebov, became one of the three founding members of the Moscow Human Rights Committee.
Dissidents – dishonest Chalidze and Sakahrov – started warning about how dangerous I, Solzehnitsyn, am, and then they started blaming me for what Kurganov wrote in 1957 and Orekhov in 1976
The above passage does not appear in your link ReTaRd, have you been fabricating again?
However, far from distancing himself from Kurganov, he repeatedly cited him, for example in his 1994 “The Russian Question at the End of the Century,” Moscow 1994
See, the problem is VOR, that you automatically label anyone who disagrees with you a “Nazi” a “fascist”, a “demagogue” etc (all very soviet of you one might add).
You falsify or selectively edit quotations, and are generally dishonest.
However, I can just imagine your reaction if someone attempted to revise the Holocaust total downwards.
Andrew, let me repeat:
Do you feel it is your duty to contradict everything I say no matter how obvious it is, or do you seriously not know that the conservatives here in USA consider Canada to be “socialist” compared to USA?
Why are you spamming all this stuff?
Andrew wrote: “Solzhenitsyn repeatedly cited him, for example in his 1994 “The Russian Question at the End of the Century,” Moscow 1994”
Wow, Andrew, I didn’t know that you trusted Solzhenitsyn’s historical claims, but now we can read what Solzhenitsyn wrote about Georgia:
http://solzhenicyn.ru/modules/myarticles/print_storyid_299.html
Wars against Persia had had a long history, and the main purpose of them was – the defense of Georgia. It began with Boris Godunov, when the Georgian czar Alexander begged him to take him under his wing . By religious concepts it seemed necessary and natural – to help fellow Christian people, clamped on the other side of the Caucasus mountain range – but the interests of the Russian people and Russian state were pushed into the background. In 1783 the Georgian czar Irakli came begging for the same…. And the responsibility for Georgia and Armenia forced Russia to a new long – 60 years! with many casualties – war: the conquest of the Caucasus.
But in the exhaustion of vital juices of the population – the Soviet system was not uniform. Today it is hardly news that the brunt of the Soviet economic system exploited the Russian Federation, its budget made a disproportionately large contributions to the Soviet budget, she received the least investment, and its farmers had to sell the product of their work 20 times cheaper than, say, Georgia ( potatoes – oranges). To cut down the Russian people and deplete it of its strength – that was one of unconcealed goals of Lenin. And Stalin continued to follow this policy.
Over these years we in Russia gave asylum to 40,000 Meskhetians, burned out from Central Asia and rejected by the Georgians, where Meskhi originally lived.
And here is what the most authoritative human rights organization “Memorial” writes:
http://berkovich-zametki.com/Snitko21.htm
Russian scientific magazine SOCIS” published a discussion between the historian of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Zemskov, who was the first to publish the well-documented information about the repression in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and demographer at Harvard University Sergei Maksudov. Maksudov was the first who identified demographically the number of victims of Stalinist repression.
Maksudov writes: “At one time I asked a lot of former prisoners of the Gulag on the number of their camps, and I know that most of them tend to greatly exaggerate the practical the role of the Archipelago and its size. I tried to talk with Alexander Solzhenitsyn on his erroneous interpretation of the calculations of Kurganov. The great writer said something like this: because the Soviet government hides information that we have a right to make guesses. “
“Kurganov is a typical representative of emigrant pseudoscience. People like him like close on their own results without and considering all available information on the subject. They make a priori assumptions and do not seek to establish the truth. They don’t listen to readers’ comments. They publish their results in unscientific magazines. They do not try to analyze why the Western demographers reached different results, but usually just hush up other studies or snatch some separate facts convenient for their own theories. They are very hostile to any criticism. While declaring interest in establishing the truth, they refuse to discuss substantive issues. ”
Solzhenitsyn’s narcissism and his Russian chauvinism often again put him it in the position of a whipping boy for scientists. One such example – s his demographic “research” in the field of repression. My purpose is not to establish the humane nature of Stalinist regime. A million people who were shot by a “political” reasons, but actually because of the meanness of the leaders of the regime – is it not enough? Millions of official political repressions and millions who were victims of extrajudicial repression for political reasons – is it not enough? Mass emigration – is it really out of happiness? Squalid living by more than two hundred million people under the political and economic oppression – is not grounds for a death sentence to “Bolshevism”? But in all this, it is necessary follow the truth. And the truth is derived by specialists, and not by politically motivated Joe Blows.
Questions and materials concerning the repression in the Soviet Union, may be sent to:
Scientific Information and Education Centre “Memorial”, Maly Karetny lane 12, Moscow, 103051 Russia or
BOSTON MEMORIAL, 382 Ocean Avenue, Suite 401, Revere, MA 02151
Memorial (society)
Memorial (Russian: Мемориал) is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union’s totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states at the present time, for example in Chechnya.[1]
Memorial’s full official name is International Volunteer Public Organization “MEMORIAL Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society. According to its charter, Memorial aims:
* “To promote mature civil society and democracy based on the rule of law and thus to prevent a return to totalitarianism”
* “To assist formation of public consciousness based on the values of democracy and law, to get rid of totalitarian patterns, and to establish firmly human rights in practical politics and in public life”
* “To promote the revelation of the truth about the historical past and perpetuate the memory of the victims of political repression exercised by totalitarian regimes.” This is done, in particular, by keeping “Books of Memory of Victims of Political Repressions.[2]
Memorial organizes assistance, both legal and financial, for the victims of the Gulag. It also conducts research into the history of political repression and publicizes the findings in books, articles, exhibitions, museums, and websites of its member organisations.
History
Andrei Sakharov wrote that Lev Ponomaryov, Yuri Samodurov, Vyacheslav Igrunov, Dmitri Leonov, Arseni Roginsky and others put forth an initiative to create a memorial complex to victims of Stalin’s repression in the late 1980s. The idea suggested creating a monument, a museum, an archive, a library. This led to an all-Union informal movement which expanded the original goals.
Political work
Through the efforts of the society, on October 30, 1990, the Memorial to the Victims of the Gulag (a simple stone from Solovki) was erected at the Lubyanka Square in Moscow, near the KGB headquarters beside the Iron Felix (the latter was removed in August 1991).
The efforts of Memorial were behind the Law on Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, which was passed in 1991. In 1991 Memorial also contributed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR officially making October 30 a Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression.
[edit] Archives
Memorial also helps individuals to find documents, graves, etc., of politically persecuted relatives. As of 2005[update], Memorial had a database of over 1,300,000 names of such people.[8] The archives were used by British historian Orlando Figes when he was researching his 2008 book The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia.[9]
[edit] Virtual Gulag
One of Memorial’s main projects at the moment is the creation of the Virtual Gulag Museum, which will bring together research and archives from all over the ex-Soviet Union to commemorate and record the existence of the Gulag and the suffering of its victims.[10]
Awards
In 2004, Memorial was among the four recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel Prize, for its work in documenting violations of human rights in Russia and other former states in the USSR.[12] Quoting the RLA jury: “… for showing, under very difficult conditions, and with great personal courage, that history must be recorded and understood, and human rights respected everywhere, if sustainable solutions to the legacy of the past are to be achieved.” In the same year, The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) named Memorial the winner of the annual Nansen Refugee Award for its wide range of services on behalf of forced migrants and internally displaced people in the Russian Federation, as well as refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.[13]
A Memorial activist Natalia Estemirova, who investigated murders and abductions in Chechnya, was herself abducted in Grozny and found dead in Ingushetia on 15 July 2009. In 2009, Memorial won the Sakharov Prize, in memory of the murdered Memorial activist Natalya Estemirova.[14]
http://toyota-club.net/files/08-01-10/08-08-10_lib_demograf.htm
Here are the calculations given by Kurganov:
Russia’s population in 1917 within the boundaries before September 17, 1939 was 143.5 million;
Natural population growth for 1918-1939. normal should be 64.4 million (assuming the population growth rate of 1.7%);
Mechanical growth of population in 1940 – 20,1 mln. This includes the territories annexed in 1940;
Natural population growth for the years 1940-1959. within the present boundaries normally be 91.5 million;
Consequently, the total population in 1959 was to be 319.5 million;
In fact, the 1959 census was 208.8 million
Total losses of population – 110.7 million
Thus, the population of the USSR lost in connection with the events of 1917-1959 years. 110 million human lives “[1].
As we see, the number of “victims of the totalitarian regime” Kurganov defines an indirect way: in his view, the “normal”natural growth of population of the USSR should be “1.7% per year. And if it was less, the difference between estimated and actual figures is the number of people destroyed by the Bolsheviks.
But where did these mysterious 1,7% and why such annual increase should be seen as “normal”? If we look at other countries, and there the figure was much smaller. For example, in the years 1920-1940. population of England had an average annual increase to 0,49%, Germany – 0,61%, Italy – on 0,85%, France – 0,13% [2].
Andrew wrote: “VOR is always trying to minimize Soviet atrocities, or claim they never happened in the first place, well I suggest he has a guilty conscience.”
I am not “trying to minimize Soviet atrocities”. I am trying to establish the truth. Being a compulsive liar, you don’t understand that the truth is more important than political expediency.
BTW, did you know that your most beloved British hero of all times was even in 1953 a great worshiper of Stalin and had an intimate relation with Stalin?
“It is no exaggeration or compliment of a florid kind when I say that we regard Marshal Stalin’s life as most precious to the hopes and hearts of all of us…. I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. (Sir Winston Churchill, The Second World War: Triumph and Tragedy, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1953, p. 361)