Russia: Other Points of View

WHO YA GONNA BELIEVE...

 

by Patrick Armstrong

The Associated Press or your lyin’ eyes?

AP reported Saturday’s demonstrations in Moscow as follows.

For the anti-Putin (”For Clean Elections”) demonstration in Bolotnaya Square: “The protest — which drew 120,000 people, according to organizers”.

The pro-Putin (“Anti Orange”) demonstration at Poklonnaya Gora: “A separate rally in Moscow in support of Putin drew no more than 20,000 people. Most of them were teachers, municipal workers, employees of state-owned companies or trade union activists, who had come with co-workers on buses provided by their employers.”

However, thanks to the New Media, we no longer have to swallow what the Associated Press says. Here are photos of the pro-Putin demonstration and here are films. Poklonnaya Gora is a very large space and, as this photo shows, it was full (the distance from where the photo was taken to the buildings in the background is about 700 metres). Photo source: http://www.ridus.ru/_ah/img/dl970h1_gN45KnJ-v6GPwA

Here is a space calculator with which, dear readers, you are invited to play, comparing the photograph and your estimate of how tightly packed the crowd is. (When the program loads, hit the button that says НАЧАТЬ and move the tabs at the top around to fit what you estimate the photo to show). You will have no problem getting more than 100,000 and perhaps as many as 150,000. A far distance from AP’s “no more than 20,000”. And also consider how many buses it would take to bus them in. If 50,000 were bussed in, that would be more than 1000 buses which would amount to a tightly-packed line of buses 10 kilometres long or about the distance from Poklonnaya Gora to the Kremlin walls and back again. Surely someone would have noticed!

MAINSTREAM MEDIA JUST CAN’T GET PERESTROIKA 2.0

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

The latest evidence suggests the U.S. mainstream media still just can’t or willfully refuses to ‘get it’ when it comes to Russia’s new reform era – dubbed here variously as ‘Medvedev’s thaw’, ‘the tandem’s thaw,’ and ‘Perestroika 2.0’ nearly four years ago now. 

What began as a result of bias regarding Russia is now reinforced by self-interest; rejection of the “other Russia” they refused to mention for years must continue in order to coverup their prior journalistic malpractice.  But as the expression goes: the coverup is worse than the crime.

Today the U.S. mainstream media is desparately trying to deal with the uncomfortably undeniable ‘Perestroika 2.0’ by studiously ignoring or downplaying it––or pretending it is something else.

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO: THE WHO-DONE-IT-FRAUD -- WAS HE REALLY MURDERED?

by William Dunkerley

The ubiquitous "who murdered Alexander Litvinenko" news story has turned out to be a fraud.

In late 2006, world media outlets were reporting that the former KGB spy was murdered on orders of Vladimir Putin. It was one of the biggest, most sensational news stories of the time. Now a new video turns that account upside down.

The video shows that Litvinenko wasn't a spy, he never worked for the KGB, and the claim that Vladimir Putin ordered the murder is not fact-based. It was merely an allegation made by an arch-enemy of Putin's. What's more, the London coroner hasn't ever concluded that Litvinenko was even murdered. 

The widely-disseminated news stories about Litvinenko don't match the facts. The stories appear to have been fabricated.

The Who-Done-It Fraud video is the first in a series of supplements to my recent book entitled The Phony Litvinenko Murder. The book examines the media coverage of the purported poisoning of Litvinenko by radioactive polonium.

MULTI-CONFESSIONAL EDUCATION IN HYBRID-REGIME RUSSIA

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

The cacophony of condemnation that comprises U.S. mainstream media’s coverage of Russian society and politics does not reflect the ambiguous nature of Russia’s relatively soft authoritarian form of rule.  Sometimes referred to as ‘hybrid’ regimes, Russia’s and tens of other regimes around the world combine some aspects or degree of democracy and authoritarianism.  The regime in Vladimir Putin's Russia is such a hybrid regime, though one that is predominantly a soft, albeit, authoritarianism. 

Given the hybrid nature of Russia’s regime, an objective media, it would be expected, should offer readers, viewers, and listeners a balanced picture that only slightly highlights the authoritarian over the democratic in Russian politics.  Since the U.S. mainstream media choose to highlight only the negative, authoritarian aspect of Russia, it falls to others to raise some of its democratic or at least less authoritiarian qualities.

THERE THE WASHINGTON POST GOES AGAIN …

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

by Gordon M. Hahn

In a confused and rambling article on Russian justice, peppered with digs at the right suitable for Occupy Wall Street, the Washington Post and its writer Kathy Lally produced another article meant to mislead readers into thinking the very worst about Russia. 

The intent of the article was to impress upon readers the alleged fact that none of Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev’s reforms  (previously ignored by the WP) are working.

This past year Medvedev issued instructions and signed into law measures that removed prison terms from the list of punishments that could be meted out by Russian courts for many economic crimes.  The article does its best to give the impression that it is interested in the facts.  Referring to figures showing that only some 35 percent (specifically, 146,490 of 404,333) of those convicted for economic crimes received prison sentences in 2011, this is how that data is framed:

“Detainees are held in intolerable conditions. The water is usually undrinkable ­ the fortunate use electric coils brought by relatives to boil it. Cells are damp and dark. Medical care is routinely denied. Many suffer, and for no reason.

Last year, according to court records, 404,333 people were convicted of economic crimes, but only 146,490 got prison terms. The rest paid fines or got suspended sentences. At the same time, 59 people died in Moscow's pretrial prisons, a half-dozen more than the year before. "We can say one thing for sure," said Valery Borshchev, the head of a public commission that monitors prison conditions in Moscow. "The president's initiatives are not working.”

THE MISSING CHAPTER

Dear reader, we respect different points of view on Russia, and Eric Kraus's voice certainly needs to be heard. His is an acerbic indictment of how mainstream media and political elites of the West handled the new Russia as it hobbled out from under Communism in the 1980s.  He was there, watching it all, and he minces no words in presenting his point of view. Your comments would be appreciated .

Sharon Tennison

The final version can be found by clicking on the following web-link:

http://www.truthandbeauty.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/The-Missing-Chapter2.pdf

NEWSWEEK ON PUTIN'S 'RETURN': NEWS OR CYNICAL PROPAGANDA?

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

With Halloween around the corner, Matthew Owens and and Anna Nemtsova have masqueraded another one-sided piece of biased “analysis,” as news. 

The gist of “Back to the USSR” article is that Prime Minister and former president Vladimir Putin’s decision to run for president and relegate present president Dmitrii Medvedev to the post of premier will put an end to any chance for non-revolutionary regime change in Russia. 

Russians will soon man the barricades and storm the Kremlin and ‘Qaddafi’ Putin and Medvedev, despite the fact that all surveys show that the overwhelming majority of Russians assess their leadership favorably and would vote for either in presidential elections.  In the course of drawing this portrayal, the authors engage in strident judgements about a foreign culture that is highly uncharacteristic for the politically correct U.S. mainstream media, condemning Russians for being “backward, masochistic, and reactionary.”  Oddly, the Russians’ ostensible totalitarian nature does not seem to square with the author’s assessment that Russians are ready to overthrow the present regime in order to attain democracy.

LITVINENKO CASE AGAIN BREEDS JOURNALISTIC MALFEASANCE

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by William Dunkerley

There's never been a definitive determination that Alexander Litvinenko was murdered. That may sound counterintuitive to you if you've been reading popular news reports. But, recent word from the coroner's office in London has set the record straight. What many have reported as fact is not, as of now, an established finding.

Nonetheless, news outlets are at it again, propagating apparently unsubstantiated theories as if they are facts. 

A recent volley of headlines includes:

"Russia murdered Litvinenko, says top prosecutor," The Sunday Times, October 2

"Alexander Litvinenko murder was 'London nuclear terror,'" BBC News, October 13

"Litvinenko coroner to examine if Russian state behind killing," The Telegraph, October 13

ONCE AGAIN THE U.S. MAINSTREAM MEDIA LOOKS PAST THE NORTH CAUCASUS JIHADISTS

by Gordon M. Hahn

Once again, the New York Times has chosen to pass over the most murderous organization in Russia, the Caucasus Emirate (CE) mujahedin, and instead focus on a political pathology that can be tied to ethnic Russians and Russia.  This time, the NYT, has turned to a favorite - Russia’s ethnic ultra-nationalist skinheads – who have engaged in very little violence compared to the CE jihadists and other elements in the North Caucasus.

 The article begins by setting the standard U.S. mainstream biased framework: “Twelve years ago, a little-known bureaucrat named Vladimir V. Putin began a war on Chechnya, vowing to crush a fierce rebellion and return the territory to the Kremlin's control.  It was a decision that made Mr. Putin, then the prime minister, into the man he is today. In a matter of months, amid a rush of patriotic fervor, he was elected Russia's president.”  

The real facts are that the second war started when in August 1999, a force of some 1,500-2,000 foreign globali jihadists, local jihadists, and Chechen fighters invaded neighboring Dagestan to establish a Sharia law-based state.  Dagestanis joined Russians in fighting the invasion off.  Then the Russians made the decision to end the bacchanalia of kidnappings, murders and beheadings being carried out in Chechnya by Chechen criminal and separatist elements and ‘Afghan Arab’ global mujahedin trained, supplied and funded by Al Qa`ida (see Gordon M. Hahn, “Getting the Caucasus Emirate Right,” CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program Report, August 2011, pp. 1-6). 

There They Go Again – U.S. Mainstream Media Again Gets Wrong About Chechenya and the Global Jihad

by Gordon Hahn

The U.S. mainstream media continues to get the involvement of the global jihad and Al Qa`ida (AQ) in Chechnya and the North Caucasus over the last decade and a half.  In September, Time published Simon Shuster’s sadly misinformed “How the War on Terrorism Did Russia a Favor.”  Shuster makes it clear that his real concern is not to understand the history of Al Qaeda’s involvement in this now Jihadi-plagued region, but rather to accuse Russian Prime Minister and former president Vladimir Putin of lying about it.  The U.S. mainstream’s longstanding abhorrence of Putin has been the main driver of all of its ‘news’ reporting and ‘analysis.’

To be sure, there is much to criticize Putin over––but this obsessive disdain for far-from-the-world’s most authoritarian leader has become the prism through which U.S. mainstream media interprets every minor and major issue regarding Russia.  In short, if Putin said it, then it has to be wrong.  

Thus, Shuster argues: “There was scant evidence, however, that the Chechen rebels were part of some global Islamist terrorist network, as Putin and his government repeatedly claimed.”  The fact is that Osama bin laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and AQ in general paid special attention to Chechnya and the Caucasus going back to at least 1996.  Zawahiri even was briefly detained in Dagestan in that year.  A simple internet search will garner you piles of U.S. court documents showing how AQ-affiliated ‘philanthropic’ foundations such as the Benevolent International Foundation and al-Haramain began sending what would come to tens of millions of dollars in funding, training, recruits, and supplies to the de facto independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya (ChRI) during the inter-war period in 1996-1999.