Russia 3

Unionist wrote:

Mobo2000 wrote:

Well that settles it.   Congratulations to everyone who complained.  

I realize there is no point in registering my disagreement with this, but I'll do it anyways.   I am very sorry to see ikosmos go and I hope he will be reinstated.

Yeah, same here. Banned because he has trouble controlling his language? Someone who has participated here since the beginning of rabble.ca? Shit, how are we going to build any kind of movement in this country?

I never liked bannings, except for obvious trolls etc. This one is really unacceptable. And I speak as someone who does not share ikosmos's obsessive apologias for the reactionary regime in Moscow. I speak as someone who comes from an industrial workplace and the trade union movement, where we learn (like it or not) to work together with everyone, regardless of style or opinion - except our enemies.

Please reconsider.

Too bad ikosmos is gone. Fifty percent of the entertainment value here was created by ikosmos. A few hostile, humourless posters take themselves much too seriously and will drive this site into oblivion. So many names missing, so many posters being careful with their words to avoid confrontation with the complainers.

Moscow Has "No Naive Expectations' About Resetting Ties With US - Lavrov

https://www.rt.com/news/375068-lavrov-us-reset-relations/

"Russa does not have any 'illusions' or 'naive expectations' regarding a reset in the relationship with Washington under the new US administration,' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said..."

NDPP wrote:

Moscow Has "No Naive Expectations' About Resetting Ties With US - Lavrov

https://www.rt.com/news/375068-lavrov-us-reset-relations/

"Russa does not have any 'illusions' or 'naive expectations' regarding a reset in the relationship with Washington under the new US administration,' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said..."

Lavrov is a very cunning and crafty chap, not to be underestimated.

Domestic violence law passes third reading. The article provides details about how it will function. (Sorry, HTML not working and I don't have the patience.)

http://tass.com/politics/927623 

Decriminalizing assault on the basis of a family relationship is perverse and morally repugnant.  If the concern is with overciminalization, apply the policy to all assaults.

It is a truly misogynist law. But it seems the "administrative" fine for beating your relatives is $500 or community service or 15 days in jail for the first time you slap someone around. The insidious part of the Russian law compared to Canada is they require the person who was assaulted to gather the evidence and prove the case.

Here is good article explaining some background to the law and why it passed. I still don't like the law but it makes a bit more sense now.

Quote:

The debate began in 2016, when the government decriminalised battery, the least violent form of assault on the Russian statute books. Russia is one of three countries in Europe and Central Asia that do not have laws specifically targeting domestic violence. Instead it is treated like other forms of assault, ignoring the fact that spouses and children are more vulnerable than other victims. But when it decriminalised battery last June, the Duma decided to exempt domestic abuse, instead making it subject to the same two-year maximum sentence as racially motivated offences.

That pleased civil-society groups that had been pushing for tougher rules. But the Russian Orthodox Church was furious. Scripture and Russian tradition, the church said, regard “the reasonable and loving use of physical punishment as an essential part of the rights given to parents by God himself”. Meanwhile, conservative groups worried that parents might face jail. They argued that it was wrong for parents to face harsher punishment for hitting their child than a neighbour would.

Under pressure from such groups, deputies have put forward a bill that makes the first instance of poboi—battery that does not do lasting harm—an administrative violation carrying a fine of 30,000 roubles ($502), community service or a 15-day detention. It also returns the crime to the realm of “private prosecution”, where the victim is responsible for collecting evidence and bringing a case. Repeat offences would be criminal infractions, but only within a year of the first, giving abusers a pass to beat relatives once a year. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, says the bill would help build “strong families”. The bill’s second reading on January 25th won 385 out of 387 votes. It is expected to sail through its third reading and be signed into law by Mr Putin.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21715726-it-fits-traditional-values...

 

More than a month after Russia announced one of its biggest privatizations since the 1990s, selling a 19.5 percent stake in its giant oil company Rosneft, it still isn't possible to determine from public records the full identities of those who bought it. 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-rosneft-privatisation-insight-i...

You mean Open Russia the 'pro-democracy' organ established by oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky? My sources quote Kara Murza's father ruling out deliberate poisoning and told Kommersannt that his son's condition could be explained by an allergy or a high-stress lifestyle with irregular meals and little sleep. Putin should pay Open Russia to stick around, given the miniscule support this 'opposition' enjoys from people who actually live and vote there.

Russian plane just buzzed a USA destroyer ship in the Black Sea

Putin's Russia: where it is and where it's going:

https://www.aei.org/publication/putins-russia-how-it-rose-how-it-is-main...

Scroll down to contents.

Briefly: a corrupt capitalist country where there is no security cannot keep let alone attract capital. The people can no longer exchange freedom for prosperity. If this continues, more repression is the only course for the regime. 

Russia cozies up to right-wing Republicans.  Everything from fundamentalist Christians to abortion to guns.

http://time.com/4696424/moscow-right-kremlin-republicans/

 

Russia's Coming Attack on Canada: The Smear Job on Chrystia Freeland is Only the Start

http://macleans.ca/news/world/russias-coming-attack-on-canada

"...Russia has three objectives as it goes after Canada. The first is to undermine any policies or politicians seen to be against Moscow's interests. For example, the Russian Embassy has already been trying to discredit Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, an outspoken advocate for continued sanctions, with a smear job about her grandfather.

Russia also wants to discredit the broader political system, to undermine Canada's 'faith in the system', be it our own election process, or system of government, or parliamentary affairs.

Finally, it wants to undermine support for our allies, and for the international system including NATO and the United Nations...

It is impossible to say if Moscow will be as successful here, but we do know the Russians are always trying..."

How useful the promulgation of Russophobia is for our elites - justifies and excuses almost anything - except protest or  dissent against it, which it can then demonize and suppress as 'pro-Russian'. And so widespread and deeply entrenched particularly within the 'progressive' liberal-left.

The smear (and the lie) is that she has denied the truth.  And that her paying tribute to her grandfather's work for Ukrainian culture she is praising Nazism. And that the current Ukrainian government are Nazis.

Nope. She didn't.

And nope. They aren't.

She didn't deny that he worked for that paper during the war. And she edited the article that people are using to make that accusation. Does that sound like she is trying to cover anything up?

And your second question doesn't have anything to do with the government of Ukraine, or its policies. But to answer it, is everyone who calls themselves a Banderist, or considers him an important political figure, a Nazi? No.

Is everyone who considers John A Macdonald a statesman complicit in his atrocities? Or a fascist?

Whatever anyone thinks of Canada's role over there, Freeland is right in calling that out as propaganda and smears.

 

I don't know quizzical. You'd have to ask her. Presumably because it concerned a member of her family. And was written by another family member.

Point is, the information about him working for a newspaper which was controlled by the Nazis is in there. So in addition to the fact she has not denied anything, the notion that she is trying to suppress anything is nonsense.

Well, not nonsense exactly. A calculated smear.

 

 

Seems to me that after her Uncle wrote the book that he got her to help edit she did indeed know the truth fully. After that she downplayed it and goiven her Uncle's book wasn't exactly a best seller it was easy for her to carefully give a different impression of his history. Some people don't pick up on those nuances. Christy Clark is another one that is great at telling the half lie. Liberal liars are Liberal liars.

and more from the linked article above......

"However, it is the fact she and her staff tried to pass off her grandfather’s history, which we now know to be true, as Russian disinformation that should concern us all, regardless of our views about Russia’s policies in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine or Syria.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail, we know that Ms. Freeland knew about her grandfather’s collaborationist history for more than 20 years.

In other words, she was lying to us, at a minimum by omission and misdirection. Surely such activities are inappropriate the occupant of any cabinet post, let alone the sensitive and senior foreign affairs portfolio.

Well I'll ask the question again. When did she deny it? Did she lie about any of it?

How is her pointing out some good work he had done a "different version"?  If I say something nice about someone am I required to recite their entire life history? And what does any of it have to do with her work?

(again, except for those trying to smear her)

in  case you missed it Smith from the CTV link above

"An official in Ms. Freeland’s office denied that the minister’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator"

then there's this; "Ms. Freeland has written that her maternal grandparents fled Ukraine in 1939, describing them as “political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.”

​when in fact they left when the Nazi's did in the 1940's. they weren't political exiles  even. ffs. i expect more from the person who is supposed to be representing me on the world stage.

trying to smear those who are saying in truth she is a lying liar as smearers is equivalent to those truthfully calling Trump and friends lying liars as Trump smearers.

 

well smith i continued reading up on all this right here at rabble

i'll let Baglow's blog words answer you:

"So is this story just more Russian disinformation, as Freeland claims?

No, it isn't, as it happens.

One salient point is the lengths to which Freeland has gone to present her grandfather as a mere victim. For example:

I'm…a proud member of the Ukrainian-Canadian community. My maternal grandparents fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939. They never dared to go back, but they stayed in close touch with their brothers and sisters and their families, who remained behind. For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine, which had last existed, briefly, during and after the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution. That dream persisted into the next generation, and in some cases the generation after that.

This is an unvarnished lie. Chomiak did not flee in 1939. He moved to Cracow, the capital of the Nazi Generalgouvernement, to become chief editor of a pro-Nazi collaborationist newspaper called Kravivski Visti. He worked out of offices that had been vacated by their Jewish owners, and then, when the tide of war turned, he continued his work in Nazi-occupied Vienna. He presided over the publication of virulently anti-Jewish articles in 1943, under orders from the occupying Nazi forces, and his editors actively solicited them."

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/2017-03-10t000000/why-foreign-affairs-mi...

oh and i just found this on rabble......

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/2017-03-07t000000/trudeau-government-esc...

is our military and by extension us Ms Freeland's personal military.

this is why she needs to be gone.....

Yeah, I read that article. I'm not sure what Baglow thinks is a lie. Leaving the Soviet occupied part of Poland because they were concerned about persecution is in fact fleeing.

As I said in the other thread, I know everyone considers the Nazis the worst evil in the world, and can't understand why anyone would flee TO that part of Poland. But in fact people fled across that border from both sides to escape persecution, and many were deported back by the Soviets and by the Nazis. I'd suggest reading some of the history, because if you look at what was actually being done by the Soviets there were plenty of people - including many Ukrainians - who had good reason to do just that. And hundreds of thousands who did not, and did not survive.

 

Smih they didn't flee. they moved to take a job.

from the consortium link above

"... Chomiak moved from Ukraine to Nazi-occupied Poland in order to work for the Third Reich under the command of Governor-General Hans Frank, the man who organized the Holocaust in Poland. ..Freeland’s grandfather – rather than being a helpless victim – was given a prestigious job to spread Nazi propaganda, praising Hitler from a publishing house stolen from Jews and given to Ukrainians who shared the values of Nazism.

On April 24, 1940, Krakivski Visti published a full-page panegyric to Adolf Hitler dedicated to his 51st birthday (four days earlier). Chomiak also hailed Governor-General Hans Frank: “The Ukrainian population were overjoyed to see the establishment of fair German authority, the bearer of which is you, Sir Governor-General. The Ukrainian people expressed this joy not only through the flowers they threw to the German troops entering the region, but also through the sacrifices of blood required to fight Polish usurpers.” (Because of Frank’s role in the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity and executed him.)

Beyond extolling Hitler and his henchmen, Chomiak rejoiced over Nazi military victories, including the terror bombings of Great Britain. While praising the Third Reich, Krakivski Visti was also under orders by the German authorities to stir up hatred against the Jewish population. Editorial selections from Chomiak’s newspaper can be found in Holocaust museums around the world, such as the one in Los Angeles, California."

 

 

 

A former Russian press minister and aide to President Vladimir Putin who was found dead in a Washington, D.C., hotel last November died from blunt force injuries, according to a report from the chief medical examiner's office.

It's the first time an official cause of death for Mikhail Lesin has been announced in the case. When Lesin died four months ago, Russian media outlets reported that the cause was a heart attack, citing family members.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/11/470064826/former-putin-aide-died-of-blunt-force-injuries-in-d-c-medical-report-says?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160311

 

Anyone else seen this doc about the Russian Woodpecker?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082596/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar