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If you googled “Invasion of South Ossetia” on Monday of this week one of the sites near the top of the list was the vitriolic anti Georgian propaganda web site “war.georgia.su” which detailed Georgian atrocities and planned atrocities against the peace loving people of South Ossetia. When I first saw it, the first thing that caught my eye (other than the over the top blood dripping pro anti Georian propaganda) was that the domain name itself. It did not end in “ge” as in Georgia but “su”, the domain name of sites in the former Soviet Union. This made me...

No, Putin isn't re-building the third Reich: Chamberlain isn't a historic villain because he did nothing after Hitler seized neighboring German-speaking territories. He's a historic villain because he did nothing after Hitler blamed Christianity for poisoning Europe with weakness, swore to destroy the Jews, build a master race, set fire to the Reichstag, seized all police powers, built concentration camps and THEN invaded German-speaking lands. No, Putin isn't re-building the Soviet Union: He has implemented a flat, low tax rate, struck the authority of local commissars to impose taxes, decriminalized tax disputes, decentralized agriculture and industry, seen the numbers of...

I posted this as Putin's Kiss yesterday, and it only got one hit. Maybe if I post its title as a movie on Netflix that might stir more interest, because like the Lives of Others, this movie/documentary is well worth watching. The parallels between Russian society and ours is not only instructive but frightening, and I wish our leftist youth could see themselves as Masha in Putin's Kiss. Want to see what America will become before the end of the Obama regime? Want to see where it is happening right now, and from which we are just days away? Want...

Want to see what America will become before the end of the Obama regime? Want to see where it is happening right now, and from which we are just days away? Want to see a society without law or legal recourse? Want to see how a government takes its cues from the winks and nods of its despot? Want to see how the low information voter idolizes its Dear Leader? Meet Masha Drokova who has been smitten with the kiss of Putin since the age of 15. Watch as she moves up the ranks of the Russian youth organization, Nashi,...

What will it take for the Obama administration to realise that their treasured "Reset" is the foreign policy equivalent of Monty's Python's dead parrot? The insults and harassment heaped upon Michel McFaul, the American Ambassador to Russia, apparently aren't enough. Ever since his appointment in December, Michael McFaul has been subjected to a steady stream of overall hostility from Kremlin-sponsored front groups and the media. Now, the Foreign Ministry itself has joined in. Their latest salvo has taken the form of a twitter war. Russian officials have issued a barrage of tweets berating McFaul for remarks he made to an...

Moscow – Russia not only expressed its solidarity and extended its condolences to the Norwegian government for the 90 and more victims killed in Oslo and Utoya Island last Friday, but also rejected any association with Anders Behring Breivik, the man who carried out the massacre. In his long manifesto, which he posted online under an anglicised version of his name (Andrew Berwick), the 32-year-old mass murderer laid out his plans, citing Russia as an example of a nation that a Europe “liberated” from NATO rule and the alliance with the United States must join in order to halt the...

Moscow, March 10, Interfax – Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, believes a state is entitled to use force to suppress a mutiny. "A state can use force in certain situations, for instance, in suppressing mutinies - I mean mutinies, not people's uprisings - or conspiracies, or attempts to subdue people against their will. When such things happen, the authorities, with support from society, should return force for force," Father Vsevolod said in taking questions from visitors of the Public Council website. The priest made this remark in commenting on concerns by a...

Molotov-Ribbentrop: 70 Years On, Russians Loyal To Their Version Of Events August 23, 2009 By Kevin O'Flynn MOSCOW -- The past is a controversial subject in Russia. And the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is no exception. The nonaggression pact, signed on August 23, 1939, by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop, included a secret protocol that divided up Northern and Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet "spheres of influence." In the run-up to the anniversary, Russia's state television and newspapers pushed a version of historical events that saw the...

Early in the morning of April 16th, Georgian Interior Ministry agents arrested a young Russian man named Alexander Kuznetsov in the Georgian city of Gori.  Kuznetsov had crossed into the disputed territory of South Ossetia a few days earlier, without applying for a Georgian visa, and then entered Georgia proper without legal authority to do so. The territory is internationally recognized as Georgian, but is now controlled by the Russian army after a pitched battle with Georgian forces that caused an international sensation last August. Gori, located a Molotov cocktail's throw from the Ossetian border, is not just any city...

The question whether marriage as an institution should be abolished is now being debated all over Russia with a violence and depth of passion unknown since the turbulent early days of the Revolution. Last October a bill eliminating distinctions between registered and unregistered marriages and giving the unmarried consort the status and property rights of the legal wife was introduced in the Tzik, or Central Executive Committee. So much unforeseen opposition to the proposed law developed that the Tzik decided to postpone its final adoption until the next session, meanwhile initiating a broad popular discussion of the project. Since that...

Anti-western sentiment in Moscow reached fever pitch today after protestors demanded the British ambassador’s dismissal and tens of thousands of youths gathered near Red Square vowing to defend President Vladimir Putin’s parliamentary election victory against foreign-backed provocateurs. With government officials savouring Sunday’s landslide triumph by the president’s ruling United Russia party, the Kremlin signalled its intention to resume its campaign against Sir Anthony Brenton, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow. About 50 youngsters from the Kremlin-created Nashi youth movement picketed the British embassy and waved placards that had the word “loser” emblazoned in English across photographs of Sir Anthony’s face. The movement...

A pro-Kremlin youth movement said it will distribute fliers Monday accusing the United States of planning to incite ''thieves and traitors'' to rebel across Russia -- a move that reflects an increasing strain in Moscow's relations with Washington. Organizers for the group, Nashi, said Sunday it is mobilizing against an alleged threat of a Western-inspired revolt following Sunday's parliamentary victory by President Vladimir Putin's party. United Russia won a solid victory in the election, cast as a referendum on whether Putin should remain Russia's de facto leader after he steps down as president in May. The leaflets, which appeared on...

They've been accused of illegal behavior ranging from harassment of diplomats to violent mob attacks. But with State Duma elections just months away, activists from the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi are teaming up with city police to keep the streets quiet. Critics have accused authorities of turning a blind eye as Nashi's members intimidate political foes. But last week, Nashi began mobilizing brigades of volunteers trained by city police to enforce public order. Some 200 Nashi activists, accompanied by actual police officers, have already begun patrolling the streets, wearing red armbands to show their status as druzhinniki, members of a...

September 22 marks the Day of Resistance in Estonia. The holiday was re-named this year after decades when it was known as The Day of the Struggle Against Fascism. The different interpretations between ethnic Russians and Estonians in the country are causing tensions. The Soviet army entered Tallinn on September 22, 1944, and this day has gone down in history two very different ways. For Russians it is known as the day the city was freed from fascism. For Estonians it is the day when almost 50 years of Soviet occupation began. The date was officially re-named this year and...

Can anyone control the forces the Russian president has unleashed? A couple of weeks back, while news readers were averting their gaze from photographs of a shirtless Vladimir Putin fishing in Siberia, two videos circulating on the Internet laid bare a different, much more chilling, portion of the Russian body politic. The first was a crude bit of agitprop thought to originate with the Nashi, a Kremlin-funded youth movement loyal to Putin whose work involves denouncing the president's critics as fascists, homosexuals or foreign-controlled traitors. The eight-minute clip, which eventually found its way to YouTube, was ostensibly meant to persuade...

For the past several years, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has been sending very clear signals that it is no longer the weakened, troubled and Western-dependent state that it was following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is once again a proud and assertive nation, increasingly recognizable by its actions to historians of its czarist and Communist predecessors. Many will say that its recovery is based on shallow foundations, in fact that it rests almost totally upon the high price of oil and gas - and Russia's fortunate possession of vast supplies of those vital commodities. That is true....

Soviet-style propaganda and a personality cult for Putin are only two of the signs that Russia is edging towards fascism One key concern arising from the recent spat with Russia is this awakening superpower is drifting into the foothills of fascism domestically. The simple defence Russians have offered in recent weeks is that Russians are by nature fiercely patriotic. I knew a Russian who, when the train stopped on the Russian border, picked up handfuls of Russian soil and started to sob. The loss of their empire – the USSR - is keenly felt. Vladimir Putin, for example, described the...

MOST OF US REMEMBER the joke from the famous Robin Williams film Good Morning, Vietnam. "Here's Airman Adrian Cronauer with a little riddle for you. What's the difference between the army and the cub scouts? Ahhhnnn. Cub scouts don't have heavy artillery." The latest incarnation of the scouts in Russia does not have its own artillery--not yet, anyway--but they did have several Russian Air Force (VVS) jets at their disposal this past week. A flight of six Sukhoi Su-27 fighters--part of the VVS's demonstration team--performed Tuesday for thousands of members of the youth group Nashi. The occasion was the group's...

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia". Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland. With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult. But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denounced Britain for making insulting demands that betrayed outdated colonial thinking, in comments likely to escalate a row over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Britain and Russia have each expelled four diplomats in a spat over the murder and Moscow's refusal to extradite the chief suspect in the case. "What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking," Putin was shown saying on Russian state television. "They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never...