truth & lie in today's war

[SiD]

Parhaps you was complitely SURPRISED that Russia got involved? Was it complete mistery to you that Russia would get involved? So you should think about it before begining of war not after.
And everyone is so surprised about ou forces attcking territories otside conflict zone. Parhaps we should wait your army to reinforce itself, regroup and counter attack? Parhaps your generals would wait but not ours.

[gomboreli]

See you justify everything your govt does. Similarly many Soviet citizens were believing whatever leaders were saying regarding their criminal invasions of Eastern European countries or Afghanistan (they regretted later on though). Nothing much has changed since then apart from the ideology...
I mentioned purely non-military targets such as forests, civilian infrastructure and population and you reply with some phrases about generals and war machine.
Doesn't make big sense to me
Russia being 300 times bigger than Georgia, still seeks expansion at its expense. Admit it, nobody's going to get fool. Putin, a man who obliterated Chechen cities and villages, will never care about human beings. They will serve him only as pawns in his bloody games.

[SiD]

See you justify everything your govt does. Similarly many Soviet citizens were believing whatever leaders were saying regarding their criminal invasions of Eastern European countries or Afghanistan (they regretted later on though). Nothing much has changed since then apart from the ideology...
I mentioned purely non-military targets such as forests, civilian infrastructure and population and you reply with some phrases about generals and war machine.
Doesn't make big sense to me
Russia being 300 times bigger than Georgia, still seeks expansion at its expense. Admit it, nobody's going to get fool. Putin, a man who obliterated Chechen cities and villages, will never care about human beings. They will serve him only as pawns in his bloody games.

Give me war were civilian infrostructure wasnt demaged and no civilian died.

parhaps you was right there and have hard evidence about russian troops burning your forests?

[Eugene from Belarus]

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[Steven]

WOW!!!!!!! Actors involved in war? That's something unheard-of. If this is true, the mass media sources must be punished for their lies!
(didn't expect that from Reuters)

[Hakan G]

Great photoshop work uper
but anyway - people are dead in those photos.

[gomboreli]

From the Empire of Evil to the Empire of Lies

On 8 June 1982 the US president Ronald Reagan made his foreign policy speech historic by calling the Russian Communist state ‘the Empire of evil’. The cold war had by then reached its peak and the flank confrontation between the ideological foes covered all the continents. Next year Moscow destroyed a civilian airplane over the Far East and claimed that the Boeing-747 had been conducting a recon flight under the CIA directives. But in reality the airplane was carrying out a regular flight from New-York to Seoul with 269 passengers on board. All of them died.
Moscow trusted neither Korean nor Afghan tears. The Soviet propaganda justified its unprovoked aggression against poor but proud Afghans by urgent need of rendering international assistance to them. As it turned out, the Afghans had themselves asked Russia to kill 1 million and expel 5 million people out of total 15 million, obliterate cities and villages, apply ‘the scorch earth’ tactics for destruction of agriculture in Qandahar province or assassinate president Hafizullah Amin by some commando groups. Besides, sardonically the Kremlin officially labeled the occupying troops with ‘the limited contingent of Soviet troops’ while in 1983 their number in the country reached 115 000. Although their puppet local communist groups enjoyed the name ‘People’s democratic Party’, they did not have any contact with people or shared any democratic values.
The famous propaganda thesis from the Patriotic War era blamed Germany for attacking the USSR without the declaration of war. But even a short-time search through historic archives proves this allegation false: two Nazi officials handed the relevant document over to their Soviet counterparts beforehand. In Berlin the Foreign Minister Ribbentrop summoned the Soviet representative Dekanozov and in Moscow Ambassador Schulenburg met with People’s Commissar Molotov to submit the declaration of German government on war.
This gesture finally ended two year-long political flirt that existed between the two tyrants. In August 1939 the friendship of National-Socialist and Bolshevik Empires had commenced with dizzy success. On 1 September German forces invaded Poland and the Kremlin, fulfilling the principles of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, on 17 September struck from the back. The Allies defeated the adversary and commemorated this victory by military parade in Brest. The Soviet ideologists certainly never revealed ‘the warm congratulations on the German troops in Warsaw’ that their government expressed to Hitler. Their annexation of Eastern Polish lands was justified by the care for ethnic minorities as if Ukrainians and Byelorussians were aspiring to join the Motherland.
The Patriotic War might indeed start in 1941 for Russia, but hitherto other neighbouring nations were waging similar wars against the Russian expansion. The most notable example was Finland which was subjected to Stalin’s attack on 30 November 1939. Russia copied the German excuse of its Polish invasion and imitated the assault on a Red Army unit near the Finnish border. In reality the Soviets killed their own soldiers deliberately using artillery fire. A gift from the Fuehrer turned out yet to be a hard nut to crack as Finland managed to halt the advance of 630 000 strong Russian forces and prevent the Sovietization.
According to Russian history books, three small Baltic countries were daily dreaming about the restoration of the Soviet jurisdiction until fateful summer of 1940 came. This time it did not take the Communists long to occupy and incorporate these lands into the Empire with Hitler’s blessing.
The similar fate awaited Bessarabia. Romania facing an inevitable armed aggression had to cede this province to Moscow which created the Moldavian Soviet Republic. Bukovina just followed suit.
Therefore, in contrast with prevailing opinion, the Kremlin entered the World War II from the very beginning and conducted a series of foreign conquests which resulted in Soviet expulsion from the UN-predecessor League of Nations. On 22 June 1941 was the start of a defensive period of this war only.
Most appalling lie is yet related to the tragedy of Polish soldiers. The Russians captured 15 thousand Poles fighting the Nazis, took them to Katyn near Smolensk and massacred them all. Later Germans found mass graves but Stalin immediately put the blame on Hitler. This issue was for decades tabooed and it was during the Perestroyka time when the Soviet government finally admitted this crime. Last year famous Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda depicted this horrible reality in film ‘Katyn’.
Russian leaders of both Tsarist and Communist periods would justify all their bloody crimes by humanistic ideas and protection of certain peoples. Nothing much has changed since then. Now the well-being of Ossetians has become an excuse for brutal attack in the South Caucasus where as Moscow claimed it conducted peace enforcement operation based on international law.
Chapter I of UN charter finds not only use of force but also the treat of use of force inadmissible. A UN member state, the Russian Federation, has also violated the principle of territorial integrity which is a priority in the international law. The UN Chapter VI envisages the peace enforcement operations but upon the UN decision only. Russia was definitely not authorized for such an operation in August 2008.
The Kremlin in its information campaign described the events in Georgia as the genocide of Ossetians. The Russian Ambassador Kovalenko on midday of 8 August announced 2 000 civilian deaths in Tskhinvali. Russian media outlets hysterically claimed that Georgian soldiers were massacring Ossetian men, raping women, rolling with tanks over infants etc. Putin who arrived from Beijing to Vladikavkaz personally listened to such stories from refugees.
Tatyana Lockshina from the Human Right Watch tried to find these facts: ‘A lot of people in Tskhinvali talk about Georgian atrocities. When I ask for details, they admit the lack of information. Someone urges me to see a certain Vasya living next street. Vasya tells me similar stories, but he’s not a witness either. He advises to talk to Fedya, but Fedya hasn’t seen anything, refers to some other people and so endlessly... We could not find witnesses who would confirm those alleged brutalities’.
In general initially announced death figures may rise as a result of additional casualties found or severely injured people died later on. The scale of Russian lies broke even this logic: the number of killed gradually declined! The rebels eventually declared the figure 1600 and Bastrykin, the Chairman of Investigating Committee at the Russian Prosecution General’s Office, announced 134.
It’s hardly possible that the Russian Embassy staff could do a body count on August 8 in Tskhinvali taken by Georgian forces. Thus, Ambassador Kovalenko deliberately lied. Apocalyptic stories on Georgian atrocities did not prove true either. Tskhinvali, which was declared no more existing by Russian sources, despite heavy damage was still no match with Stalingrad, Vukovar or Grozny. Moscow also cried loud that all damaged buildings in the city resulted from just Georgian actions implying that 58-th Army in its massive counter-attack probably applied blank ammunition and tear gas only.
These cascades of lies were aimed at justification of Russian actions for the international community. Worse than that by concocting non-existing crimes against humanity the Kremlin attempted to use sensitivity of ethnical issue and artificially provoke hatred and retaliation among Ossetians against ethnic Georgians.
Russia as an USSR’s successor country indeed proudly continues the deeds of its dead predecessor.

[Terry]

these are only words. However times have changed. Russia is different from USSR. It's not imperialistic. It's just powerful. In result, powerful countries make powerful actions.

[Yalta1945]

gomboreli told us just a very small part of the recent history, which is already enough to see how it is continued in the present events. The link between some earlier years and the present provided by gomboreli characterises the current regime in Russia so well that it cannot be dismissed.
Russian aggressiveness abroad has been accompanied by such domestic changes as strangling independent media (especially, TV) and imposing the new state control of media (which is used for minimizing any criticism of state and for making propaganda), misbalances in power structure (building so-called vertical power and alike), the take-over of oil and gas industry (using these resources as a weapon in international relations), unfair elections, assassinations of the Kremlin’s critics, very hostile campaigns against opposition, in general; discrimination against independent NGOs and sponsoring fascistic-like youth organizations (Nashi, Molodaya Gvardiya, etc.), and so on.
When the current financial crisis broke out in Russia, Putin just warned everybody to avoid using word “crisis”. The man seems to be totally lost in his virtual reality. Putin said that the outflow of foreign capital from the country is triggered by "speculation from western companies", but his former economic adviser A.Illarionov stated that Russia itself is for the most part to blame for its current financial crisis. Among the reasons for Russian crisis, the economist mentioned „the contradiction between [on the one hand] the open global markets, the process of integration of Russian society in the world system, the tolerance and respect as leading principles of international co-existence and [on the other hand] Russian authorities' paranoid and aggressive foreign policy and cult of isolation and violence“ – source: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-115354">http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-115354</a><!-- m -->

The Kremlin lied about its actions in Caucasus heavily. As for the war against Georgia, read this:

Russia’s Long-Planned Invasion on „The New York Times“
Saakashvili saved Georgia from coup, former Putin aide says
http://euobserver.com/24/26921

Illarionov Commenter Proves Russia started the Georgia Conflict
http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/0...-conflict/
N.B. I saw much more details on the web in other languages (Russian and other) - it only takes time to translate smth from that.
Andrey Illarionov: Second Georgian War
http://www.finrosforum.fi/?p=1240

And this is how Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the scarce democratic opposition politicians in the Russian parliament, characterized the regime (excerpt from the full text of the stunning description):
[for full text: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/20...7/006.html]
[for full text: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/0...ections-2/]

Putin’s regime is the Russian version of the typical authoritarian model. One could describe its foundation in terms of a bureaucratic monopoly. Russia shares the following fundamental characteristics with countries such as China, Pakistan, Egypt, Belarus, Iran and Venezuela: heavy policy control, censorship in the main media channels and the systemic hounding and persecution of nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups and opposition parties. The absence of the rule of law is also a standard for all autocracies. Another characteristic that Moscow shares with other authoritarian governments is the enormous role that the security services, including the Federal Security Service and Prosecutor General’s Office, play in society. But in contrast to other autocratic governments, the main source of Russia’s authority is the so-called vertical power structure, composed of 1.6 million federal bureaucrats — a figure that has grown 1.5 times since Putin has come to power. In China and Cuba, for example, the source of power is a monopoly political party; in Chile during Pinochet’s reign, it was the army; in Iran, it is the religious leaders; and in Saudi Arabia, it is the ruling dynasty.
In contrast, there was some division of power under President Boris Yeltsin. The main centers of power in the 1990s were:
• the president and his administration
• the ministers in the Cabinet, who had a fair amount of autonomy, particularly under Prime Ministers Viktor Chernomyrdin and Yevgeny Primakov
• governors who were popularly elected
• large business
• mass media
• political parties in the Duma
During the Yeltsin era, political consensus depended on striking compromises among the Duma, Federation Council, Cabinet and even within the Kremlin.
Not a trace of these elements of pluralism has remained under Putin’s presidency. For the last seven years, all of the above-mentioned centers of influence have been stripped of their independent authority. Having just become president in 2000, Putin began constructing his vertical power model by taking control of the three largest nationwide television stations. Then, he weakened governors as an independent power base by reforming the Federation Council and by canceling direct gubernatorial elections. Then the Kremlin moved on to destroying the political power of business <…>
All power is now concentrated in the hands of bureaucrats. <…> One could say the government has been strengthened and reborn, but it has assumed a grotesque and malignant form where corruption and lawlessness have become more important than civil duty among bureaucrats.
The crown jewels of the country’s national wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin’s inner circle. <…>
<…> Putin has created a Soviet-oligarchic model: a synthesis of Soviet monopoly on political power combined with the nepotism and corruption from the 1990s. <…>
See also A plea to save Russia from an enemy within
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[Yalta1945]

I‘ll give you a link to the original research made by three Russians on the subject which I call anti-Russian propaganda made by the Putinists.
Commissars of the Internet (EN), September 16, 2006
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Виртуальное око старшего брата (RU)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ds.ru/ss1.htm">http://ds.ru/ss1.htm</a><!-- m --> and <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://gulag.ipvnews.org/article20060916_01.php">http://gulag.ipvnews.org/article20060916_01.php</a><!-- m -->

The authors observed that “what one finds on Russian web-forums is an orgy of hatred, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, violent propaganda, amoral barbarism and raving. A normal person, after reading forums like these, becomes ill.”
They noted that it had not been so initially. Second, there is come contradiction about it:

Until 1998-1999, forums on the RuNet were fairly uniform in the sociological characteristics of their users. About 70-80% of the audience consisted of people in agreement with one another, people of liberal and democratic persuasions, representatives of the Russian middle class, and Russian-speaking émigrés. Now, just four years later, totalitarian opinions have suddenly risen to 60-80% of all postings on Russian forums.
This sharp quantitative spike has not corresponded with the range of public opinion, and is at odds with data from Internet polls on current issues of modern life.

Then an investigation follows, and every detail of it cries for our attention. It’s a thrilling article. I provide the first link to the translated article above, although I read the original Russian version and I do not know if the translation is perfect (haven’t checked the translation).
I stroke upon this text today, and it was very useful for me to understand why Russian chauvinism is so vastly presented on the internet forums, while the opposition to it from Russia looks meek.
My view is that such means as described in the article aimed at the distortion of democratic discussion in Russia constitute the part of other coercive methods which altogether have the goal to hijack the political discourse in Russia by the group of imperialists and new fascists, and these methods all deserve to be called anti-Russian propaganda.
While proponents of such methods call them “nationalization of minds”, it is “ideological cleansing” in fact. Democrats are being purged off the forums. Then the task of brainwashing of the rest of the usually young public becomes much easier. It would be just consequent if recruiting for doing similar tasks on the foreign international forums would then take place much easier, too. Of course, this would require some adaptation to the international audience. It’s also not necessary that every participant makes this task as part of his duty in some organization. If a person comes from the brainwashed community, he/she can make it voluntarily on perception of his/her conviction and his/her individual duty. The goal of such “commissars of the internet” on the international stage should also be different. One of the most obvious goals seems to be convincing us that they represent the true face of Russia, and that the different way of thinking is marginal in Russia.
We should not mix up temporary tendencies in the nation’s life with the nation itself. Was an opposition to Nazism “anti-German”? Nazism was defeated but the nation keeps living on without it. Putinism is now a tendency in Russia but it will be defeated.

Also interesting reading in Russian: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.grani.ru/Society/m.119861.html">http://www.grani.ru/Society/m.119861.html</a><!-- m -->

And please take into account countries’ standings in the rank of freedom of press that can be found on the site of Reporters Without Borders / Reporters Sans Frontières:

Only peace protects freedoms in post-9/11 world
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29031">http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29031</a><!-- m -->

[SiD]

you know i took your first link and surprisingly noticed funny sight Welcome to La Russophobe!. :haha . Well i read what is ther about so called "brigade". nothing interresting actualy.
Autors surprised that opinion changed since 1999 but they do not consider that computer is much more affordable now that it was than and internet became more widespread in Russia. So i would find reasons in improvement of life of common people not in some mythic brigade. I am also interested what polls do they mean, most interesting is thier claim that "protected" polls show that 80% is supporting US. . You know i do not need polls to tell that it is very hard to believe to say the least.
And i am absolutly shure that even most skilled of your "comissars of internet" (if they ewen existed) couldnt convince you in anything . You know you cant accept that you wrong even if it is obvius that you are, your rusophobic views already made you invincible to any mythic commisar.
And of course wenn you compare current government with Nazism it is compliete nonsense.

[Faw_Peter]

What is this link about? Can somebody explain me please?
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