In a recent post at Streetwise Professor, in reply to a Russophobe commentator, democracy activist* and net-buddy Mark Sleboda compiled a damning indictment of the real state of Western freedom. Newsflash: for the world’s (self-appointed) moral arbitrators, it’s nothing to write home about! It’s well worth reading, which is why I’m reprinting it here with his
The next installment of our Watching the Russia Watchers series at S/O features an interview with Peter Lavelle, the main political analyst at the Russia Today TV network, host of its CrossTalk debate show and Untimely Thoughts blogger. (He also has a Wikipedia page!) Peter is opposed to Western media hegemony, considering it neither fair
I’ve recently had a debate with… let’s call him Marcus Stein, about whether you have to be proficient in a relevant language to hold really deep and insightful views about a region, culture or civilization, or whether, to put it in Averkoese, “translation, acquired knowledge (of the subject matters), good contacts (to interact with) and
Still no economic collapse. Still no anti-Putin bunt. Still no demographic apocalypse. As the years pass by, Russophobe canard after Russophobe trope is relegated to the dust-heap of history, only to rise back out of its grave, zombie-like, whenever Boris Nemtsov pens a brilliant indictment hysterical screed on the failures of Putinism or when the militsiya
On the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, signed on August 23, 1939 (also my birthday!), historians, ideologues and everyone in between inevitably fall into a game of recriminations, revisionism and relativism. The anti-Soviet side maintains that the Pact gave Germany a free hand in the
This is a list of common Russophobe myths about Russia and its people, and the successor to a March 2008 post on a similar theme. Please be sure to check the supporting notes at the bottom before dismissing this as neo-Soviet propaganda. Also partially available en français & на русском thanks to Alexandre Latsa’s translation. 1 MYTH: Life has
I am being a sarcastic, of course. Ukraine has banned broadcasting of Russian TV channels. Georgia cut access to the .ru domain and banned Russian TV channels (and Euronews!), no doubt to silence any questioning voices over their criminal aggression as opposed to the likes of Fox, CNN or the BBC, which swallowed the psychopathic
Putin gave an interview to CNN, logically and comprehensively explaining the Russian view on the South Ossetian War. What did CNN do? They censored most of the interview (in stark contrast, Saakashvili’s frequent deranged rantings bouts got prime attention during the conflict), leaving only the stuff that makes Putin look like a loon to the
So let’s get this straight – breaking their own ceasefire, Georgia attacked Russian citizens and peacekeepers, and there are grounds to believe they committed war crimes, in violation of the latters’ peacekeeping mandate. All Russian military action is aimed at repelling the Georgian military from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which at times involves bombing the
Russia’s representative at the UNSC, Vitaly Churkin, against the dramatic backdrop of Georgia’s criminal assault on Ossetia that is implicitly backed by the US and its closest allies, made a great speech lambasting Western hypocrisy, comparable to Putin’s bravura performance in Munich. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–huZTkJI4o] Security Council 5953rd Meeting (AM) – SECURITY COUNCIL HOLDS THIRD EMERGENCY MEETING
I noted in my first post, Flare-Up in the Caucasus, Even normally Russophobic media outlets, from what I’ve seen, cannot quite manage to spin this in an anti-Russian way (although I may have to retract this point, when the Op-Ed’s have been written up). Well, I’m retracting it now. The propaganda model has been kicked