The Silent Voices Of Stalin's Soviet Holocaust And Mao's Chinese Holocaust
Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung were the most ruthless killers of their own people in the 20th Century, and perhaps in the entire history of mankind. They were responsible for the world's deadliest holocausts—or the mass destruction of human beings—yet their victims have never been identified or honored. It is time for the silent voices of those who died to be heard, and for these human tragedies of epic proportions to be recognized fully.
The famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal once spoke about the duty owed by survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to Jews and non-Jews alike to insure that other holocausts did not occur again, and of course he was correct. Memorials have been erected to those who died at the hands of Adolf Hitler's thugs. However, those noncombatants who were killed by Japan prior to and during World War II, and by the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia, and in Africa and elsewhere are forgotten.
Saddam Hussein's brutality with respect to the Kurds and Iranians, and those Kuwaitis whose fate has only been determined recently in shallow Iraqi graves, pales beside that of Stalin who was Hussein's hero. Aside from ordering the killing of those in the Soviet hierarchy, it is estimated that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million men, women and children—his own countrymen—including millions during the collectivization of the Soviet farms in the 1930s.
History has focused on Hitler's rise to power during that period, and his atrocities in the Nazi death camps and on the battlefields of World War II. Memorials have been erected to the fallen of many nations that brought an end to his cherished dream of a "Thousand Year Reich," and to the Jews who were persecuted and systematically killed by the Nazis. However, there are no memorials or tributes to those who perished under Stalin.
He was revered in the former Soviet Union for having defeated Hitler on his Eastern Front, and for the Red Army's capture of Berlin—even though as the Soviets moved through Germany, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history. As the truth about him became known following his death, a program of "de-Stalinization" was implemented. However, never in the Soviet Union's history were steps taken to honor fully those whose only crime was working on the land. They were peasant farmers, most of them, but they stood in the way of "progress," Soviet-style. To increase agricultural production and to implement the multi-year plans that were being devised for their confiscated farms, which became state-owned lands, they were expendable—and liquidated.
For such a colossal crime to go "unnoticed" outside of the Soviet Union can only be explained by the gathering storm clouds of World War II, and the march of Germany and Japan, which focused the world's attention elsewhere. China and other parts of Asia came under attack and were later occupied by Japan, while Hitler marched into Poland and then conquered Europe. Straddling the Atlantic and Pacific with Hitler in the East and Japan in the West, and still dealing with the Great Depression's aftermath, the United States was preoccupied prior to World War II. Also, there was a strong sense of isolationism—that America was an island, bounded by the Atlantic and Pacific—which militated against our involvement in the Soviet Union's "internal affairs."
China's Mao Tse-tung was directly responsible for an estimated 30-40 million deaths between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what Mao's regime hailed as the "Great Leap Forward." Like Stalin, Mao's crimes involved Chinese peasants, many of whom died of hunger from man-made famines under collectivist orders that stripped them of all private possessions. The Communist Party forbade them even to cook food at home; private fires were outlawed; and their harvests were taken by the state. Those who dared to question Mao's agricultural policies—which sought to maximize food output by dispossessing the nation's most productive farmers—were tortured, sent to labor camps, or executed.
More than 60 million human beings are forgotten, seemingly having disappeared without a trace in the Soviet and Chinese Holocausts of the 20th Century, as if they never existed or were swallowed up by history. Yet they did exist, and they might have produced descendants numbering in the hundreds of millions today. One can only conjecture as to the contributions they would have made to mankind, which are forever lost like the contributions of those Jews, Gypsies and others who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust, and by Japan, and by Pol Pot, and in Africa.
Approximately 70 years have passed since this human tragedy of epic proportions occurred in the Soviet Union. Approximately 25 years have passed since the comparable tragedy occurred in China. It is time for the world to pay tribute to more than 60 million people who perished under Stalin and Mao. While the precise numbers of the victims may never been known, each of us has a duty to honor their memories and take steps to insure that holocausts do not occur anywhere again. China, Russia and the other former Soviet-bloc countries whose citizens numbered among the silent voices must take the lead, and other nations must join as well.
It is possible that relatives and people who knew those who died are still alive today, and can bear witness to what happened and give new meaning to their lives. However, the likelihood of that being true diminishes with each passing day, and it is a race against the clock before they too are gone—certainly in the case of those who might remember victims of the Soviet Holocaust. It is time for the silent voices to be heard again, so they are not forgotten, which would compound their catastrophic fate.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black senator since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War. He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates (www.naegele.com). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal. Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Law, and Who's Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years. See, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles
[2] This article was published first at MensNewsDaily.com on August 9, 2005. See http://www.naegele.com/documents/StalinMaoHolocausts.pdf
Because more than four years have passed, the number of relatives and other people who knew those who perished, and can bear witness to what happened and give new meaning to their lives, has continued to diminish. It is even more of a race against the clock before they are gone too, which would compound the catastrophic fate of those who were victims of Stalin's Soviet Holocaust and Mao's Chinese Holocaust.
Russia's dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin is every bit as sinister and evil as Stalin, and it is unlikely that he will be of any help in such an effort.
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naegeleblog (18:29:08) :
The Rise Of Stalin!
See http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6241M820100305
None of this would be happening if Russia's dictator-for-life Putin was not approving of it. One must never forget that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million men, women and children—his own countrymen—including millions during the collectivization of the Soviet farms in the 1930s.
Also, as the Soviets moved through Germany, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history.
I had a secretary who grew up in Berlin, and was a young girl when it happened. She said that she had seen things no human being should ever experience. Surely, there are Germans alive today who remember this, or have learned of such barbarism.
Putin is Stalin's heir.
On a positive note, the head of Putin's dominant United Russia faction in parliament strongly denounced plans to put up posters honoring Stalin:
"There's nothing to argue about here. Stalin was guilty in the deaths of millions of people," Boris Gryzlov said this month.
See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9EL40780&show_article=1; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin's-soviet-holocaust-and-mao's-chinese-holocaust/
The Most Murderous Tyrant Of The 20th Century
Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, lives in Richland Center, Wisconsin, a sleepy little dairy farming community of the American Midwest, spending more than half of her 84 years trying to escape the dark shadows of her past.
In a Daily Mail article, she states:
"I ran away from Russia because somehow they have two governments," she says with heavy irony.
"There is the official government and then there is the secret police, which was started by Lenin and continued by everybody else. Even now we have a head of government who is a former spy: Mr Putin. I have no time for him."
"And I hate them! I hate the Russian language! We aren't Russian, you see. We are Georgian."
See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268374/Still-running-Stalin-Tyrants-daughter-84-tells-tragic-life-escaping-legacy-new-home-sleepy-U-S-farming-town.html
Timothy D. Naegele (18:29:18) :
Both China And Russia Are America's Enemies . . .
. . . although Russia is a "paper tiger," and a mere shadow of the former Soviet Union—much less at the Evil Empire's zenith, both economically and militarily.
Our real enemy in the world today is China, and its young military leaders believe this, as the New York Times notes in a fine article:
Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.
The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China's rise.
"Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy."
China is also reported to be building an antiship ballistic missile base in southern China's Guangdong Province, with missiles capable of reaching the Philippines and Vietnam. The base is regarded as an effort to enforce China's territorial claims to vast areas of the South China Sea claimed by other nations, and to confront American aircraft carriers that now patrol the area unmolested.
Chinese military leaders seem less inclined to tolerate . . . old practices now that they have the resources and the confidence to say no.
Some experts see increased contact as critical. A leading Chinese expert on international security, Zhu Feng of Peking University, says that the Chinese military's hostility toward the United States is not new, just more open. And that, he says, is not only the result of China's new assertiveness, but its military's inexperience on the world stage.
See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
One of hopefully-many rays of hope is Liu Xiaobo, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison for putting his name to the "Charter 08" human-rights manifesto, which says that the Chinese people "see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values." On what grounds was he imprisoned, you ask? "Incitement to subvert state power."
The Wall Street Journal's excellent Bret Stephens writes:
Where do political prisoners serve their terms? Often in an archipelago of labor camps scattered across China called Laogai. How many camps are there? At least 909, according to the Laogai Research Foundation. How many prisoners? The low-end estimate is 250,000; the high-end is five million. How does the existence of these camps affect broader Chinese society? The Laogai "is more than a place where rights are violated directly, with beatings, medical neglect and forced labor," writes Columbia Prof. Andrew Nathan in "Laogai," a devastating recent book on the subject. "It is also the anchor end of a continuum of rights-violating methods that the regime uses to enforce its form of rule."
Two final questions: First, what does all this say about China? Last year, Hillary Clinton insisted that human rights could not interfere with the totality of the U.S.-China relationship. That is not possible. Repression isn't just woven into the fabric of Chinese life. It is the warp and woof. The regime has gone to extraordinary lengths to disguise that fact, just as it disguises the rest of its weaknesses. But a Nobel for Mr. Liu is the disentangling thread—not on Western terms, but on Chinese ones. How powerful can a state be if it is terrified of a single man?
The second question is about the West. No doubt the travails of Greece expose an Achilles heel. But the real test of the West isn't fiscal. It's moral. Are we willing to pay a small price to keep faith with a lone dissident, one who is willing to pay a large price to keep faith with us? Last week we did. Which is why the West may not be a spent force after all, and why the year belongs to China—the China of Mr. Liu.
See http://www.naegele.com/documents/BretStephens-FromAthenstoBeijing.pdf
Jitendra Desai (16:06:03) :
While USSR is consigned to history, China has become the apple of world's eyes. China's so called grandeur rests on the bones of 40 millions of their countrymen. There is no one in this world to shame the Chinese for this. A sure sign of ominous things to come. Prepare for more millions to die. Not necessarily Chinese. It could be Asian's turn this time.
Russian Despot Putin's Repression Continues, While Obama Is Endorsed
In an article entitled, "Medvedev hints he and Putin won't be 2012 rivals," Reuters has reported:
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed talk of a deepening rift with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in remarks published Monday, strongly hinting they would not run against each other for president next year.
In a Financial Times interview, he also said he hoped Barack Obama, who has helped improve Russian-U.S. ties, would win a new term as U.S. president next year.
Many analysts . . . believe it is Putin who will decide whether to return to the country's top job or endorse his protégé for a second term. With a marginalized opposition, either one would be likely to win.
Medvedev sounded far less equivocal about the U.S. election in November 2012, praising Obama and accusing some of his opponents of turning Russia into a scapegoat.
"There are representatives of a very conservative wing who are trying to resolve their political tasks in part by whipping up passions about Russia," he said.
He suggested a Republican victory could chill ties after a period that included the signing of a new nuclear arms reduction pact and U.S. support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
"I would like Barack Obama to be elected to the office of president of the United States a second time," he said.
See http://ca.news.yahoo.com/medvedev-hints-putin-wont-2012-rivals-213400461.html
It is not surprising that his lapdog, Medvedev, will not oppose Russia's "Hitler," Putin, in perpetuating his brutal de facto dictatorship. Hitler's henchmen and those of Stalin did not oppose them either.
Similarly, it is not surprising that they would endorse and embrace Barack Obama, who was responsible for giving them the New START Treaty. George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major advances in missile defense. The next GOP administration must withdraw from the New START Treaty as soon as it comes to power.
See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1137 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1147 ("Obama And His Democrats Did Not Get The Message—Their Ranks Need To Be Thinned Even More, Starting With Obama") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1167 ("Russia Warns Against START Changes—So What?") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1182 ("Republicans Who Voted To Ratify START Should Be Defeated") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1194 ("The New START Treaty Is Another Obama Travesty—Like ObamaCare—Which The Next GOP Administration Should Withdraw From Immediately") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1245 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1397 ("WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets") and http://www.theotherrussia.org/2011/06/09/russia-nato-missile-defense-negotations-break-down/ ("Russia-NATO Missile Defense Negotations Break Down")
In important testimony before Congress, former world chess champion and chairman of the United Civil Front—a pro-democracy group—and co-chair of the Russian Solidarity Movement, Garry Kasparov stated:
After I left the sport, I joined the pro-democracy movement in my country, motivated by the disturbing course change away from freedom that Russia was undergoing under President Vladimir Putin. I could not accept that my own children would grow up in a totalitarian state as I had. And to those who have suggested that I should leave Russia for my family's convenience and safety, I say that it is my country, one I proudly represented around the world for decades, and so let the KGB leave, not me.
More recently, I traveled across almost all of Russia to talk to and listen to my countrymen, which is the only way for most Russians to hear from a critic of the Putin regime, since we are banned from the mass media. My colleagues and I are dedicated to bringing individual freedom and the rule of law to Russia, and we know very well by now that this cannot happen as long as Putin is in power. We protest in the streets, we provide legal defense for those who are punished for standing up to the regime, and we try to let Russians know that they are not helpless and that they are not alone.
When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, we on the other side of the Wall felt far more hope than you can imagine. Yes, there was fear and confusion as well, but thanks to the courage of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and others who followed them, hundreds of millions of people had the opportunity to grasp the freedom that the western world takes for granted. It was a great moment in world history and those leaders who did not forget about us will in turn never be forgotten by us.
For those who do not follow events in Russia, that is often where the story ends. Communism was proved bankrupt, the Cold War ended, and Russia joined the free world. Unfortunately, that last item on the agenda was never quite completed. Russia under Boris Yeltsin quickly acquired many of the mechanisms of democracy and freedom, but the values and traditions that support them never had a chance to put down roots. Economic chaos, rampant corruption, and widespread violence left many Russians with the impression that these were the fruits of democracy. When former KGB lieutenant-colonel Vladimir Putin took control of the country in 2000, he and his cronies were very quick to exploit that impression, just as the Communists had done in the previous election against Yeltsin.
By the way, I refer to Russia's state security apparatus as the KGB for the expediency of this more widely recognized acronym. Its name has been changed many times over the decades, but calling it the FSB, its current name, does not change its nature. I admit that I had some hopes that the rampant corruption of the last Yeltsin years would be reined in by this unknown but efficient KGB man Putin. I could have never imagined that in just a few years, a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, forefather of the KGB, that had been torn down by jubilant crowds over a decade earlier, would soon find its way back to the plaza, both figuratively and literally.
The new regime quickly began the process of dismantling the fragile new institutions of honest elections and a free media. Rivals and dissenters were purged from the political and business realms, power was tightly centralized in the executive, and the flow of federal money from the wealthy center to the rest of the country was reversed, creating what most resembles a feudal oligarchy. The Putin regime also contains elements of Mussolini's corporate fascism, with giant private monopolies working together with the state. It's really a combination of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The expenses are nationalized while profits are privatized.
One of the most common, and most ignorant, commentaries we of the opposition hear about the situation in Russia today is that we should be grateful, because things are better now than they were in the USSR. This is damning with very faint praise! Why go back to the 1970s to make comparisons? What about 1991? Or 1998? We had many problems then, yes, but we also had far more liberty and the potential to stay on a course to join the free world. Putin took that from us. We are also often told that Russians want a strong hand, a Tsar, and do not really want democracy. I reject completely this notion of a mysterious genetic tendency. Consider China and Taiwan, East and West Germany, and the two Koreas.
Putin's economic miracle is another common myth. If you look at the numbers, the real economy was ready to boom in 2000 even with oil prices in the teens. Russia was recovering from the 1998 default and market reforms were taking effect despite the high corruption level. And yet now, even with oil back near $100, the outlook is still poor. The country is falling apart as the oligarchs steal the money faster than it can be pumped out of the ground. We are quickly becoming a resource-dependent petro-dictatorship. Putin and his gang are not Communists, or nationalists, or anything else. There is no ideology, only power and money.
But we have elections, yes, we do have elections. We go through the motions of voting and put on a show of campaigning and counting, all as if it really mattered—even though we all know it is all only for show. Putin is so secure in his power he did even bother changing the constitution to take another term. He simply put his shadow, Medvedev, in his chair temporarily, and continued business as usual. America and the rest of the free world prefer to go along with the charade, to allow Russia a place in the G-8 as if Russia were a real democracy. To those who say that Putin is popular, and that fake elections and suppression of dissent are irrelevant, I ask them, "how do you know?" Would you trust opinion polls in a police state? If he is so popular, why jail opposition activists, why blacklist so many rivals and so many topics from the media?
As for Medvedev, he is bait for a trap. For more than three years now, first as Putin's hand-picked "candidate" and now as president, he has been making statements that give credulous Russians and willingly duped foreign officials false hope that he will lead a liberalization movement against Putin. But how can a man be in conflict with his shadow? For all his talk, Medvedev has done nothing to ease the oppression while doing much to make it worse. Laws have been passed that broadly define opposition members as extremists, even terrorists, and the list of political prisoners continues to grow longer. In theory, Dmitri Medvedev can create the Medvedev Era with one stroke of his pen, by signing an order to relieve Vladimir Putin from his post as prime minister. But as the popular joke in Russia goes, "There are two parties in Russia today. The Putin party and the Medvedev party. The problem is Medvedev doesn't know which one he belongs to."
A cynic may ask, "why does it matter to us if Russians do not have freedom of speech? We have enough problems now, why take a stand?" For decades, America led the fight to contain the spread of Communism. Not only because it threatened American interests, but because every president understood that being America meant standing up for American ideals worldwide. The USSR was not just a threat, it was, in Reagan's typically blunt term, the evil empire, to be resisted on moral grounds. Its people were victims to be aided, not enemies to be destroyed.
When the wall fell, the free world celebrated and in so doing, let down its guard. Just as all the professional analysts were surprised by the collapse of the USSR, it seems today few are willing to admit Russia has slipped back into darkness. This is a terrible mistake, as the spread of the corruption of Putin's corporate state is a serious threat to freedom worldwide. It only imitates capitalism, while in reality it is a state-run machine for looting national resources in Russia and the shareholders of companies abroad. Corruption, not oil or gas, has become Russia's biggest export. The western appeasement crowd that keeps calling for engagement that will eventually transform Russia cannot see that it is the West, not Russia, that is being transformed by this contact.
Drawn by the lure of big profits, western presidents, prime ministers, and corporations have lined up to sacrifice their professed ideals in order to do business completely on the Kremlin's terms. Transparency International ranks Russia as 154th of the 178 nations on their corruption index. On their list of the world's twenty-two largest exporting nations, Russia scores by far the worst in evaluating its corporations' readiness to pay bribes while doing business abroad. After over a decade of Putin and increasing economic engagement with the rest of the world, Russia's rankings have gotten worse, not better. The neighboring nations most closely allied with Putin's government have also dropped steadily in the corruption rankings. The problem inside Russia has become epidemic. According to estimates made by the leading Russian expert in corruption, Georgyi Satarov, the overall amount of bribes in the Russian economy skyrocketed from $33 billion to more than $400 billion per year during Putin's rule.
Putin is also not above the old-fashioned use of force, as he demonstrated by invading neighboring Georgia and annexing its sovereign territory. Which, by the way, is still occupied by military force and where Putin continues to make threats. Kremlin provocations inside Georgia continue via a series of terrorist bombings that have been strongly linked to Russian intelligence officers operating from the annexed territory of Abkhazia. An official list of these state-sponsored terror attacks issued by the Georgian government is attached to my submitted testimony. The Kremlin has had no qualms blackmailing its neighbors and Europe over natural gas, at one point cutting supplies and causing shortages to half of the European Union during winter. Always looking for new sources of cash, the Kremlin continues to supply military and nuclear technology to belligerent states like Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. It is often said that the US needs Russia's help in various regions, but it has been clear many times that the Kremlin's only interest is self interest. Putin is delighted to help the United States stay stuck in Afghanistan and to stir up conflict in the region, as any incident drives up the price of oil, the money from which keeps the oligarchs in power.
Putin's closest allies, those who keep him in power, are not faceless gray Politburo members who aspire to nothing more than a nice house or car. Putin's oligarchs own global companies, buy real estate in London, Biarritz, New York City. The money they have pilfered from Russia's treasury goes to buy art, yachts, and American and British sports teams. In short, they wish to enjoy the spoils and this makes them vulnerable. Putin needs the West's support because that is where they all keep their money.
They are vulnerable to limitations on banking, acquisitions and travel, leading to what I call the "Do not Fly, Do not Buy List." Even the suggestion that their investments abroad might be investigated would cause shockwaves in the Kremlin power structure. So many of their assets come from shady deals and looted properties that if the West ceases to rubber-stamp their money-laundering operations they will cease to treat Putin as the all-powerful guarantor of their wealth. As the famous Washington saying goes, follow the money and you will get results.
This treatment of denying visas and investigating investments must not be reserved for Putin's wealthy supporters. The entire Kremlin power structure, especially the judiciary, is made up of loyalists with no regard for the rule of law. Those who violate their oaths and betray the laws they should be upholding should not be granted immunity by the civilized world. The police and prosecutors who fabricate evidence, the judges who rubber-stamp the convictions, the officials who rig the elections, they can and must be held accountable. They are following orders from above, yes, but just because they will not pay for their crimes in Russia does not mean they should be treated as decent citizens when they leave the protection of the KGB police state.
The creation of a new police state in Russia is not an anonymous, blameless crime. I have included with my submitted testimony lists we have compiled of the officials involved in numerous grave violations of Russian law and Russia's international commitments. There are many precedents for taking action against such individuals. The members and leaders of the Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia, were above the law in their native Sicily. But many were refused entry to the United States due to their criminal connections. Those who whitewash the murders of journalists and opposition members and those who carry out the repression of Putin's Russia should be treated with equal scorn by the civilized world. These are not warlords or soldiers, they are bureaucrats who side with power because they want the easy life. If their lives become less easy, you will be surprised at how quickly things can turn.
The final argument is that Russia is too strong, that its oil and gas reserves make the Kremlin too powerful and influential to resist. This is similar to the theory that the US cannot stand up to China on Tibet or anything else because China holds so much American debt. But the Chinese are not fools. They know that the day after America defaults, the Chinese economy would explode to the moon. It's economic mutually assured destruction, and the same principle is in effect with Russian resources. Russia cannot cease selling oil and gas to the West, despite the occasional threat. The pipelines are in place, the contracts are written, and the entire Kremlin oligarchy depends on the high profit margins to stay in power. Without the cash surplus that comes with $100 per barrel oil, the hollow state of the Russian economy would quickly be revealed.
I look forward to the day when a strong, independent, and economically and culturally vibrant Russia takes its place among the leading nations of the world as an equal partner. This can only happen when our people are free to choose their leaders and free to achieve their dreams. Our problems are for us to solve; we do not beg for help. What we ask is that America and the other leading nations of the free world live up to their own traditions and rhetoric. End the hypocrisy of treating Putin's regime like a democratic ally. Stop treating the oligarchs who plunder our nation like legitimate businessmen. Stop allowing the agents of a police state to travel without restrictions or shame.
When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, in Baku, Azerbaijan, we were told America was the enemy. But most of us understood that there must be something good there if the government was so keen on keeping it from us. Generations of American leaders faced down nuclear annihilation to fight for the rights of those behind the Iron Curtain. Surely the threat of Putin's Russia is nothing in comparison. From the Marshall Plan to Jackson-Vanik, the United States has listened, spoken, and acted. There is no longer a wall that needs to be torn down, but courage is still necessary to protect our most sacred values. I thank you again for inviting me here today and I wish you all the courage to act.
See http://www.theotherrussia.org/2011/06/19/kasparov-asks-congress-to-take-a-courageous-stand/ ("Kasparov to Congress: Take a Courageous Stand [And Stop Treating Vladimir Putin And Other Corrupt Russian Officials As Members Of An Actual Democracy]") (emphasis added)
The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt has added with respect to Kasparov:
Given that chess champions are rock stars in Russia, he could have settled into an easy life of celebrity there. Or he could have joined the opposition to Putin's kleptocracy, as he has, but from a safe and comfortable apartment in London or Manhattan.
Instead, he has maintained a life in Russia, where—given the grisly fate met by many journalists and human rights advocates—he lives with bodyguards and anxiety.
He does not live without hope for Russia's future, however. And to that end, he came to Washington (meeting with executive and congressional officials) with three essential messages:
First, the ostensible power struggle between Putin, now prime minister, and his hand-picked president, Dmitry Medvedev, is a sham. Putin pulls the strings. Americans, including the Obama administration, have been taken in by this shadow play, Kasparov says, which is useful for Putin—Medvedev gives the regime a friendlier face to the West—but essentially irrelevant.
Second, Putinism is not working, and therefore its continuation is not inevitable. Despite being an oil exporter at a time of sky-high oil prices, Russia's economy is ailing. Capital is fleeing, infrastructure is decaying, and people are noticing.
And having quarantined Russia from democracy movements that flared in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, Putin now has to worry about infection from the Arab Spring. "Putin did everything to prevent an Orange Revolution, but now comes the ghost of Tahrir Square," Kasparov said.
Finally, the United States has at its disposal a practical tool that could help undermine Putin's hold on power—specifically, a bill sponsored by Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin that would ban visas for and freeze assets of Russian officials implicated in rank abuses of justice or abrogations of freedom inside Russia.
"To outsiders, this may not seem like much," Kasparov said. But it would undermine what Kasparov sees as the fundamental principle and purpose of Putin's regime: that officials who are loyal to Putin can accumulate assets and park them abroad—and that Putin can protect them.
"If you are loyal to the boss, to the capo di tutti capi, you are safe, inside Russia and out—in Dubai, London, Lake Geneva," Kasparov said. "If something happens to even a small group of these people, it will cause a dent in the monolith of power."
Putin has bought off and corrupted so many European officials that Europe will not act first, Kasparov said. But the United States could—and because Russian oligarchs increasingly are investing in the United States, U.S. action would make a big difference.
"Don't tell me you don't have leverage," Kasparov said.
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/garry-kasparov-has-a-suggestion/2011/06/17/AGPUyiYH_blog.html
The KGB lieutenant-colonel who became Russia's ruler, Putin, must be tried, convicted for his many crimes globally, and terminated. His lackey, Medvedev, is also complicit; and he too must be tried, convicted and imprisoned, at the very least.
The West's goal must be to bring down a Russia increasingly focused on domination and replace it with a democratic nation that lives at peace with the world—and this is true with respect to China as well.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/china-is-americas-enemy-make-no-mistake-about-that/ (see also all of the footnotes and comments beneath the article and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin's-soviet-holocaust-and-mao's-chinese-holocaust/#comment-900)
China Salutes 90 Years Of Oppression
In a fine article about China that is worth reading entitled, "Chinese Party Marks Nine Decades," the Wall Street Journal discusses what 90 years of communism has brought to the Chinese people and the world, and what the future may hold. It states in pertinent part the following:
Eager to bolster its legitimacy in the eyes of an increasingly restive and Internet-savvy society, China's Communist Party is marking its 90th anniversary Friday with a no-holds-barred campaign to reassert its airbrushed version of modern history.
For a Chinese leadership spooked by uprisings in the Arab world, the campaign is designed to hammer home the message that only the party could have engineered China's emergence as the world's second-largest economy, and only the party can keep raising living standards, while maintaining social stability.
But for its critics[,] its heavy-handed efforts are only highlighting the party's failure to evolve politically and to come to terms with its own past, especially the 1958-61 Great Leap Forward—when millions starved to death in a push to jump-start industrialization—and the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303763404576417503968123210.html
What the Journal's article fails to emphasize is that China's ruthless dictator Mao Tse-tung was directly responsible for an estimated 30-40 million deaths between 1958 and 1960, as a result of what his regime hailed as the "Great Leap Forward." Like the Soviet Union's equally-brutal dictator, Joseph Stalin, Mao's crimes involved Chinese peasants, many of whom died of hunger from man-made famines under collectivist orders that stripped them of all private possessions.
Approximately 70 years have passed since this human tragedy of epic proportions occurred in the Soviet Union. Approximately 50 years have passed since the comparable tragedy occurred in China. It is time for the world to pay tribute to more than 60 million people who perished under Stalin and Mao.
While the precise numbers of the victims may never been known, each of us has a duty to honor their memories and take steps to insure that holocausts do not occur anywhere again. These victims are forgotten today, seemingly having disappeared without a trace and having been swallowed up by history, as if they never existed. This compounds the crime against humanity.
Just think of the contributions that the offspring of those who perished might have made to this world, whose numbers might be in the hundreds of millions today.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/
The Journal's article continues:
The domestic security apparatus, meanwhile, has been using increasingly arbitrary and extrajudicial methods to silence the party's most prominent critics, including China's most famous contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, even after many of them have been released from custody.
On Wednesday, Beijing police visited the home of Mao Yushi, an 83-year-old liberal economist who isn't related to Chairman [Mao Tse-tung] and has been highly critical of his policies, as well as of an increasingly vocal campaign to rehabilitate his memory in the last few months.
The police told him he had to cancel a planned interview with the Voice of America that evening and was no longer permitted to give interviews about the founder of Communist China, Prof. Mao said.
"I was very surprised—I've never experienced anything like this in recent times," said Prof. Mao, who has also received threatening telephone calls and emails since Maoist revivalist websites launched a campaign to have him prosecuted for criticizing Chairman Mao in a recent book review. "The government's aim is to emphasize the legitimacy of the party—that is their purpose—so they are avoiding talking about the party's mistakes."
Like many Chinese of his generation, he said he personally suffered under Chairman Mao, almost dying of hunger during the Great Leap Forward, when he estimated that 80 or more people in his village of 700 starved to death.
He and other liberal Chinese have long hoped the party will edge toward reassessing its past, especially as a new generation of leaders, many of whom were forced to work in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, prepares to take power next year.
Instead, the party appears to be moving in the opposite direction, growing increasingly reluctant to acknowledge publicly even the mistakes it has admitted in the past.
Earlier accounts had admitted, for example, that the population dropped 10 million in 1960, but hadn't given an overall death toll for the Great Leap Forward, which some historians put as high as 30 million-45 million.
China is America's enemy; and the United States' and the West's goal must be to bring down a China increasingly focused on domination, and replace it with a democratic nation that lives at peace with the world. The Chinese people have been oppressed and intimidated long enough, and they deserve nothing less. The same is true of the Russian people, who live under Putin's barbarous regime—in a country where Stalin's memory is being rehabilitated as well.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/ (see also the footnotes and comments beneath the article)
jimmy (21:41:51) :
Our real enemy is Israel. Gee, that was not so difficult to figure out, was it?
Thank you, Jimmy, for your comment.
While I have disagreed with many things that Israel has done over the years, and I disagree vehemently with the policies of Netanyahu—and have expressed my views on these subjects perhaps ad nauseam—I do not believe that Israel or the Israeli people are our enemies.
I am not anti-Semitic; and I believed in its "David vs. Goliath," "cat with nine lives" ability to survive when I was growing up. I have thought highly of former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and even Ariel Sharon whom I came to like before his second stroke—and Rabin's wife, Leah.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran (see also the footnotes and comments beneath the article)
While I would like to see Israel survive, I am not convinced that it will.
See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/israels-senseless-killings-and-war-with-iran/#comment-544 ("Why I Write And Say What I Do"); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/the-madness-of-benjamin-netanyahu/ ("The Madness Of Benjamin Netanyahu")
The Armenian Holocaust
In addition to those who died as a result of Hitler's Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's Soviet Holocaust, Mao's Chinese Holocaust, and other holocausts through history—some of which are discussed above—the world must never forget about the Armenian Holocaust either.
It consisted of the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I, which resulted in an estimated 1-1.5 million deaths.
Those who died might have produced descendants numbering in the millions today. One can only conjecture as to the contributions they would have made to mankind, which are forever lost.
See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide; see also http://abcnews.go.com/International/turkey-freezes-relations-france-armenian-genocide-bill/story?id=15228910#.Tvj67hzWq1k ("Turkey Freezes Relations With France Over Armenian Genocide Bill") and http://www.wsj.com/articles/one-hundred-years-later-a-bloodbath-haunts-turkey-1429695006 ("Consequences of Mass Killings of Ethnic Armenians Still Reverberate"—"One hundred years later, a bloodbath haunts Turkey")
WORLD WAR III [UPDATED]
Has it begun already?
Is this what Barack Obama's betrayal of Ukraine thus far has given us? Will he go down in history as the Neville Chamberlain of our times, who handed Crimea, Ukraine and more to Russia's Putin without a fight, like Hitler was appeased? Will Obama be viewed by history as a coward, a racist and a liar—and much much worse?
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-4422 ("BARACK OBAMA'S COWARDLY BETRAYAL OF UKRAINE") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ ("Is Barack Obama A Racist?") and http://washingtonexaminer.com/poll-most-americans-believe-obama-lies-on-important-issues/article/2547367 ("Poll: Most Americans believe Obama lies on important issues")
Both Drudge and Edward Lucas—writing for the UK's Daily Mail—have raised the specter of World War III, having begun already with Putin's aggression, like Hitler before him. Lucas states:
Deep in the flat and featureless landscape of eastern Ukraine, it is all too ­possible that the outline of World War III is taking shape.
Whipped up by the Kremlin ­propaganda machine and led by Russian ­military intelligence, armed men are erecting road blocks, storming police stations and ripping down the country's flag.
They are demolishing not just their own country—bankrupt, ill-run and beleaguered—but also the post-war order that has kept most of Europe and us, here in Britain, safe and free for decades.
Vladimir Putin is striking at the heart of the West.
His target is our inability to work with allies in defence against common threats. The profoundly depressing fact is that the events of the past few months, as Russia has annexed the Crimea and ­suppressed opposition in Ukraine, have shown the West to be divided, humiliated and powerless in the face of these land grabs.
We are soon to face a bleak choice. We can chose to surrender any responsibility we have to protect Ukraine and the Baltic states—almost certainly Putin's next target—from further Russian incursion. Or we can mount a last-ditch attempt to deter Russia from furthering its imperial ambitions.
If we do choose to resist Putin, we will risk a terrifying military escalation, which I do not think it an exaggeration to say could bring us to the brink of nuclear war.
Putin knows that. And he believes we will choose surrender. For the real story of recent events in Ukraine is not about whether that country has a free-trade deal with Brussels or gets its gas from Moscow.
It is about brute power. It is about whether Putin's Russia—a rogue state on Europe's doorstep—can hold its neighbours to ­ransom, and whether we have the will to resist him. So far the answer to the first question is yes. And to the second a bleak no.
The Russian leader believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was a 'geopolitical catastrophe'. He believes Russia was stripped of its empire by the West's chicanery. And quite simply, he wants it back.
When the Soviet Union was ­dissolved in 1991, the former captive nations of Eastern Europe scrambled into Nato and the protection it offered as fast as they could.
But the bitter truth is that Russia did not reform its ambitions in 1991. The Kremlin has always retained its imperialist outlook.
While modern Germany has ­forsworn militarism and empire, and is liked and admired even by countries such as Poland, which suffered horribly at Hitler's hands, Russia has not.
Putin believes its historic destiny gives Russia the right to seize land, intimidate and blockade its neighbours. The Russian leader sees Ukraine not as a real country, just a territory, and one he is determined to dominate.
First he took ­Crimea. Now he has launched an operation in the east and south of Ukraine.
Russian troops are prowling the border as the Ukrainian authorities launch a desperate attempt to regain control of government buildings and police stations in key ­cities that have been seized and occupied in recent days.
Only yesterday it was reported that between four and 11 people had been killed as Ukrainian troops re-took Kramatorsk ­airfield from pro-Russian forces.
Putin has presented the Ukrainian leaders with an impossible choice. Either they consent to the dismemberment of their country. Or they fight a war they cannot win.
Ukraine's ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-led soldiers are quite unsuited to deal with the fraught challenge facing them.
Any bloodshed against a single Russian soldier will give Putin a pretext to use his military might. For her part, Russia has played a brutally clever game. She has ­deliberately sought to humiliate and destabilise Ukraine.
Now Putin can claim his soldiers must be allowed to intervene because the very social disorder his outriders have engineered demonstrates that the authorities cannot maintain order.
The hypocrisy is breath-taking. But the Ukraine adventure is ­stoking a patriotic frenzy at home which ­distracts the public from his regime's incompetence and thievery.
But the biggest benefit to the ­Russian president lies abroad. He makes no secret of his hatred for the West. He is contemptuous of, yet fears, our soft power. He resents the laws, liberty and prosperity that our citizens enjoy. They throw into bleak contrast the dismal life that his own ­corrupt and incompetent rule offers Russians.
He also despises our weakness. He sees a Europe and America that talk tough but have failed to ­provide a united response to the growing catastrophe. Yes, we talk a good game—Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for 'a clear and united international response'—but our deeds do not match our words, and Putin knows it.
In his bleak world view, only force and money count. He believes we in the West are too weak to defend ourselves when threatened. So far, his assessment looks right. Even Nato—the bulwark of our security since 1949—is creaking under the strain of the Ukraine crisis.
Nato's gutsy commander, General Philip Breedlove, wants to share international intelligence with Ukraine and boost Nato's forces in its most vulnerable member countries: Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
But the White House has blocked the first recommendation. And European countries such as ­Germany are blocking the second.
Vainly, our leaders hope diplomacy will make Putin back down. Surely he can be made to understand that confrontation is not in Russia's interests? The markets are already punishing the rouble and big ­Russian companies.
But that approach fundamentally misunderstands a man like Putin. He is prepared to make his people suffer economic pain and risk war for what be believes is their national interest. We in the West are not.
Having taken Ukraine, he will turn his attention to the Baltic states. Members of the EU and Nato, their lawful societies, elections and ­thriving economies are an implicit rebuke to those who preside over sleaze and brutality in Russia.
Now Putin sees a chance to humiliate them—and the West. He does not need to invade, just to provoke. Using social division and agitation he will raise the pressure—whether economic or political—on one or more of the Baltic states until it becomes unbearable.
Nato and the EU—on current form—will merely appeal for ­dialogue and threaten sanctions. ­But nothing will happen. Which means the Baltics will buckle, and Putin will take back lands which he believes are rightly Russia's.
That will be the end of Nato—and the dawn of a terrifying new world in which international rules count for nothing and the strong dominate the weak. Russia—ruthless and greedy—can play divide and rule for decades to come.
Suppose we do try to resist, with our shrunken armed forces and craven allies? With the latest round of cuts, the British Army is about to become the smallest it's been since the Napoleonic wars.
Meanwhile, our once 'special ­relationship' with America was tested by our ­failure to support Obama over intervention in Syria.
What's worse, the West's ­intelligence operations have been severely ­compromised by the exploits of Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who has taken refuge in Moscow, having stolen tens of thousands of secret state documents.
Deplorably, the complacent and self-indulgent journalists who so damagingly published the West's intelligence secrets and effectively blinded our spies have been awarded America's greatest journalistic honour, the Pulitzer Prize.
If the West does stand up to ­Russia, Putin will put its nuclear forces on alert, all the while decrying our 'aggressive behaviour'.
As the centenary of the Great War in July approaches, historians are vying to pinpoint the chain of events which started that conflict.
I may be wrong, but in 100 years time, will their successors look back at the events in Ukraine to make sense of the beginnings of the next world conflagration?
See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2605578/Edward-Lucas-I-hope-Im-wrong-historians-look-say-start-World-War-III.html (emphasis added); see also http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/17/jews-ordered-to-register-in-east-ukraine/7816951/ ("Jews ordered to register in east Ukraine") and http://www.jpost.com/International/Odessa-Jewish-community-mulls-emergency-evacuation-351334 ("Odessa Jewish community mulls emergency evacuation") and http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Ukrainian-Jews-form-defense-force-to-combat-anti-Semitic-attacks-351701 ("Ukrainian Jews form defense force to combat anti-Semitic attacks")
Lucas is correct that the Cold War never ended. It merely morphed into a different form, with Putin becoming Stalin's heir—or Hitler's, take your pick.
What Lucas fails to recognize is that the United States is still the world's only Superpower, and the most powerful nation on earth, both militarily and economically. It has a broad array of more than adequate "non-military" tools at its disposal to decimate a weak Russia economically, and bring the pygmy Putin to his knees.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-4010 and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-4452 ("Decimating Putin: America's Financial Neutron Bomb"); see also http://watchdog.org/138940/solar-flare-emp/ ("Experts: Civilians not ready for EMP-caused blackout")
War has begun. Russia must be dismembered; and Putin must be terminated.
Russians to Putin: We Will Not Forget Stalin's Crimes
In an article subtitled, "As Putin tries to paper over the atrocities of Stalinism, thousands of Russians are taking to the streets to say, 'Never forget,'" the Daily Beast has reported:
From the early morning into the late night, thousands of Muscovites poured into Lubyanka Square, home of the former KGB, now the FSB.
The protest, devoted to naming the victims of Stalin's "Great Terror," has taken place on Lubyanka every October for the last nine years. Russians pay tribute to the one million people executed by the Soviet regime in 1937 and 1938, including more than 40,000 people killed in Moscow alone. But never before has Moscow seen so many people willing to participate in the memorial as last week.
Each participant had a piece of paper in hand with the names of two victims, their ages, professions, and dates of execution. There were 40,000 names all together. Shivering in the cold, damp wind, Tatyana Lokshina, the Russia program director and a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, waited in line to make her point: The victims were killed secretly and now the time had came to speak their names out loud. Lokshina's piece of paper said: "Alexander Smirnov, 51, an ordinary collective farmer, was executed by shooting on July 10, 1938; Aleksey Smirnov, 67, a senior security guard at a savings bank in the Ukhtomsky region, was executed by shooting on February 17, 1938."
Lokshina's husband, Alexander Verkhovsky, had also been waiting in line to read his two names for almost three hours. The protest on Lubyanka Square was symbolically important for Lokshina and thousands of other Russian families. "The KGB secretly executed hundreds of thousands of people, as if on a death conveyer, depriving victims of their lives and the victims' families of their right to remember," she said. "By our collective readings of names, we return their memory to Moscow residents."
To many Russians, Moscow is a big monument of mass terror with Lubyanka Square at its heart. Nowadays, Moscow's dark history is hidden underneath layers of luxurious hotels, restaurants, bars, beautiful public parks with WiFi and bike trails. But the shadows still exist in people's memories.
The number of activists reading the names last Thursday was unprecedented, organizers from the Memorial Human Rights Center told The Daily Beast. It demonstrated that many Russians today are willing to look back at the scale of Stalin's terror. "People around me in line said that the ghost of modern repressions grows more and more obvious; once again people live with fear of arrests. I am sure that nobody out of the thousands of Russians coming to Lubyanka this week wanted the return of mass repressions to Russia," Lokshina told The Daily Beast.
But the Kremlin sent a controversial message that day. As if to mock the day of memory, authorities detained the director of a Ukrainian language library in Moscow, Natalya Sharina. Armed policemen in masks had raided her library the day before and allegedly found some banned literature, some "anti-Russian propaganda." If convicted, the 58-year-old librarian could go to prison for four years. Her story resonated with Russians, as the armed men arrived to grab the woman in the early morning hours—a well-known signature of the FSB and its predecessors. The methods did not seem to have changed.
Earlier that week, Memorial Center had presented a unique project, an interactive map called "Topography of Terror" in Moscow. Dozens of people worked on it for several years, putting together a map of prisons, burial sites of KGB victims, and sites of mass murders. One of the terror sites was between Lubyanka and Varsonofyevsky streets, the so-called "black block." Beginning from 1918, secret police tortured and executed detainees right in the heart of Moscow, in the building that still belongs to the FSB today.
Signs on wooden billboards at the protest proclaimed: "The city as a history book." In the 1930s, KGB vehicles—nicknamed chernye vorony, or "black ravens"—picked up detainees from almost every building around Lubyanka headquarters. "I remember that terrifying time as if it were yesterday—my parents could not sleep at night, they expected a knock at the door," Irina Nagornaya, a Moscow pensioner, told The Daily Beast. Nagornaya's family lived in an apartment on Potapovsky Street, not far from Lubyanka square. "People were detained for reading the wrong books, for making the wrong comments," Nagornaya remembered. "Some did not do anything wrong, but the KGB still dragged them away from home to gulags or to execute them, and their families never saw their loved ones again."
See http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/03/russians-to-putin-we-won-t-forget-stalin-s-crimes.html (emphasis added)
The total number of people killed by Stalin and his goons were more than 30 million. As I have written:
Aside from ordering the killing of those in the Soviet hierarchy, it is estimated that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million men, women and children—his own countrymen—including millions during the collectivization of the Soviet farms in the 1930s.
[A]s the Soviets moved through Germany, they raped at least two million German women in what is now acknowledged as the largest case of mass rape in history.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin's-soviet-holocaust-and-mao's-chinese-holocaust/ ("The Silent Voices Of Stalin's Soviet Holocaust And Mao's Chinese Holocaust")
The murderous Putin is every bit as sinister and evil as Stalin, Hitler and Mao.
He came to prominence as a KGB operative in East Germany—or the DDR, as it was known before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Erich Honecker's government—which was one of the most repressive regimes in the Soviet Union's orbit, or the Evil Empire.
After its collapse, he and his cronies and thugs hijacked Russia's incipient democracy, and have been exploiting it ever since. The Russians deserve better. He must be terminated or history will repeat itself.
The world must never forget that Putin left the Olympics in Beijing to launch his aggression against Georgia. Then, he left the Olympics in Sochi and launched his aggression against Crimea and the rest of Ukraine.
Also, the world must never forget that in addition to downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17—and killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board—Putin killed Alexander Litvinenko and countless others.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-7486 ("Putin Meets Economic Collapse With Purges, Broken Promises")
The Dark Side To China's Campaign Against Official Graft
The Wall Street Journal has reported:
When Liu Chongfu returned home to his pig farm in December 2014 after months in detention, he was haunted by what he had done. Under interrogation, he later told his family, he falsely admitted to bribing government officials.
Back home, released without being charged, Mr. Liu had nightmares and splitting headaches. His conscience weighed on him, his family said. So he publicly recanted in March 2015. In a written statement sent to the court, he said interrogators had deprived him of sleep and threatened his family to extract a phony confession that helped send four other men to prison.
In his statement, also posted online, he said he lied "because they forced me to where there was no other way than death. I didn't want to die."
President Xi Jinping has called his anticorruption campaign, one of the leader's defining initiatives, a "life or death" matter. It is among the most popular elements of his administration, given how corruption has been endemic in China and how it threatens to undermine confidence in Communist Party control.
Since the campaign began in 2013, its reach has allowed Mr. Xi to root out resistance to his rule and secure party control over a society that is more prosperous and demanding.
Mr. Liu's confession and retraction suggest a dark side to Mr. Xi's efforts. Families around China say overzealous authorities have forced confessions, tortured suspects and made improper convictions.
The farmer tried to retract his confession before, while still in detention. "I cannot violate my conscience to do this," he told his interrogators, according to his statement, a transcript of a video he made with his lawyer. He knew it would send innocent officials to jail, he said, and that "the real tragedy is still to follow."
The four were convicted anyway.
Since Mr. Liu publicly recanted, families of the four have tried to expose what they call the antigraft campaign's overreach. Some joined more than 200 families of fallen officials nationwide in an open letter this summer accusing the campaign of creating a climate of fear.
The twin daughters of one official whom Mr. Liu's confession helped imprison took to social media. "The person who bribed has reversed his confession," they wrote. "My father was tortured into confessing."
After Mr. Liu's retraction, prosecutors threw him back in jail and this time won his conviction for issuing 550,000 yuan ($81,000) in cash bribes. He continued to deny handing out that cash.
This spring, he lost an appeal of his two-year prison sentence. His prison term ended early this month and he returned home, said a person familiar with his family. Mr. Liu, 54 years old, declined to comment. Taizhou law-enforcement authorities and related government agencies declined to comment or didn't respond to inquiries.
Popular support
The Communist Party says the drive has punished more than 1 million officials with penalties ranging from demerits to dismissal to imprisonment. Its antigraft agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has kept a relentless pace, with investigative teams descending on bureaucracies from Beijing down to provincial towns.
It is particularly in outlying areas where some officials, lawyers and suspects' families have suggested the campaign has gone awry.
At his 2014 trial for accepting bribes of more than $1.5 million, Zhou Jianhua, who chaired the standing committee of the deep-south city of Xinyu's legislature, told the court a former boss framed him for reporting the boss's wife's involvement in corruption. Mr. Zhou said in court he was tortured into confessing. He received a suspended death sentence, commuted to life.
Xinyu authorities didn't respond to inquiries. The incarcerated Mr. Zhou couldn't be reached for comment.
In Binhai county, north of Shanghai, investigators for more than a month detained the head of the judicial bureau, Deng Chengwei, burned him with cigarettes and beat him with electric cables, his wife said. After confessing, Mr. Deng recanted in court. He was sentenced to 11½ years for taking 315,000 yuan in bribes.
The Binhai prosecutors' office declined to comment. Prison authorities said they couldn't make Mr. Deng available for comment. His wife said he falsely confessed.
It isn't known whether the allegedly forced confessions are a significant part of Beijing's campaign, and if those recanting are now telling the truth.
"Our party has internally checked all leaders and cadres' cases, and they all have objective facts," Wu Yuliang, the antigraft commission's deputy secretary, told a media briefing this year. "The evidence is as strong as a mountain." The commission didn't respond to requests for comment.
In China, high-priority political campaigns typically come with targets and pressure on officials to pursue them. To meet Beijing's economic-growth goals, local officials often strive to outdo one another. Results include wasteful overbuilding and padded statistics, economists say.
"The anticorruption campaign shouldn't be about competition. We can't have 'anticorruption GDP' and only look at numbers or make targets," Huang Jianguo, then party secretary of Hunan province's discipline inspection commission, was quoted as saying in state media last year. "Anticorruption needs to be based on the facts." He couldn't be reached for comment.
Fu Hualing, a University of Hong Kong law professor, said lack of clear ground rules in the campaign, and questions about whether it is being used to mete out punishment for other reasons—such as failure of officials in economically lagging areas—has created uncertainties. "Who will be prosecuted? Who will not? It's clearly not a legal standard," he said. "But what is the standard? Outsiders don't know."
A pig farmer's tale
The anticorruption drive tore through Taizhou, the pig farmer's town, as part of its nationwide rollout. Lying between green hills and the sea to the south of Shanghai, Taizhou is a prosperous area of farms and small factories.
A carpenter, Mr. Liu in the 1990s stumbled on a book, "How to Raise Pigs Fast." He and his wife started a farm.
Pig prices fluctuated, and they ran up debt. Zhu Liuxia, their 28-year-old daughter, remembers shoveling manure with her sister before they were tall enough to reach the top of pigsties. She has been running the farm with her mother, working 14 hours a day. "There was never an easy time," she said. "And then this happened."
Investigators bore down on the agriculture bureau of Taizhou's Jiaojiang district in 2014, part of a nationwide push to end misdeeds affecting farmers, including land seizures and misuse of poverty relief and other funds. Investigators detained officials including the bureau's head and deputy, all of whom had dealings with Mr. Liu as a constituent.
Authorities took Mr. Liu into custody in April 2014. In May, investigation records show, interrogators questioned him five consecutive nights about whether he paid kickbacks for government subsidies.
After interrogators threatened to bankrupt his farm and to arrest his wife and daughter, he confessed, he said in his retraction video, a copy of which The Wall Street Journal obtained. They coached him, he said, to claim he gave cash bribes. Prosecutors said those bribes totaled 550,000 yuan from 2011 through 2013.
"They said if you don't get your words right, either you die or get disabled," Mr. Liu said in the video. Starting in May 2014, authorities began detaining the four officials and putting them on trial.
That August, Mr. Liu tried to recant when authorities offered to release him, family members said. They kept him jailed. Based on his earlier confession, the four officials were convicted and sentenced to 5 to 11 years in prison.
During trials, one wrote the Chinese character "injustice" on his palm, showing spectators, said the wife of one official on trial, who attended.
All confessed to taking cash bribes during pretrial interrogations, court documents show. Two said they also took supermarket gift cards of 1,000 yuan (about $150) to 2,000 yuan from Mr. Liu. One told the court he received cards totaling 9,000 yuan over five years.
Shopping-card-giving is common in China, especially over holidays, and Chinese businessmen say giving officials gifts and small sums of cash is customary. Holiday gifts of cards to officials are so pervasive as to not usually be prosecuted as bribery, say Chinese criminal lawyers. The charges against Mr. Liu didn't include giving cards.
Under China's 1997 criminal law, officials are generally liable only for accepting gifts of 5,000 yuan or above, with some exceptions for aggravating circumstances such as past bribe-taking or threatening demands. This year, the threshold rose to 30,000 yuan.
Three recanted during trial, saying they were innocent of taking cash bribes. Another recanted his cash-bribe confession during a subsequent trial on appeal.
One of them, Chen Xialin, a former soldier and deputy director with the agriculture bureau, had helped Mr. Liu get government subsidies. For a month in detention, Mr. Chen was interrogated overnight and forced to work days assembling holiday lights, according to a transcript of an interview he did with Mr. Liu's lawyer. When Mr. Chen nodded off in the iron chair he was bound to, investigators shouted and bashed plastic bottles onto a table.
"You will definitely be doing jail time," his interrogators told him, according to a transcript of his interrogation viewed by the Journal. "Even if you don't confess, it's what leaders have decided." His only hope, they said, was to confess and try to get a lighter sentence. He confessed to receiving 120,000 yuan in cash bribes and 8,000 yuan in supermarket gift cards over four years from Mr. Liu.
Mr. Chen recanted in court, denying taking bribes and saying sleep deprivation and duress forced his false confession, court documents show. The court sentenced him to 10 years and three months imprisonment.
The four officials, incarcerated now, couldn't be reached for comment. Each of their wives told the Journal her husband was innocent.
Mr. Liu was released without charge. That wasn't unusual—China has until recently focused on punishing bribe takers, not givers.
Back home, his wife and daughter said, he stopped tending the pigs and would break into tears. "He used to see the world as good," said Ms. Zhu, his daughter. "But things became dark for him: He just thought, 'How could the world be like this?' "
About three months later, Mr. Liu issued his retraction. When it surfaced online, "it was like seeing sunlight," said the wife of one of the imprisoned officials.
Four months later, Mr. Liu was arrested and tried for bribery, convicted and imprisoned.
On a hot summer day, the wives of the officials whom Mr. Liu's confession had helped jail were in the court audience. They had hoped Mr. Liu's retraction would help free their husbands. As the trial proceeded, Mr. Chen's wife, Xu Guanqing, feeling the court was arbitrarily finding Mr. Liu guilty, stood up and shouted sarcastically: "If you say he's guilty, well, then he must be guilty?" she recalled. Bailiffs ejected her.
One recent day in a room with peeling wallpaper, Ms. Xu stared around the 800-square-foot apartment the couple has shared for two decades. They used to watch news about the national anticorruption campaign on television.
"We really welcomed it," she said. "He'd say, 'They caught another tiger!' "
Now that the campaign has hit home, she feels lost. "Look at the conditions we are living in," she said, pointing to rips in their couch to demonstrate there was no evidence of bribe-fueled extravagance. For years, she said, she has worked a warehouse job to augment Mr. Chen's 6,000-to-7,000-yuan monthly salary. "This is truly a miscarriage of justice."
The court ordered Mr. Chen's family to pay 40,000 yuan in fines and return the money he was convicted of taking, Ms. Xu said. Officers searched the house and saw "we had nothing to give."
Ms. Xu is allowed to visit her husband once a month for a half-hour, she said. During one visit, she brought news his father had died.
"I hate Liu Chongfu," she said of the pig farmer. "But I also sympathize with him. He was also forced into doing what he did."
Mr. Liu's family has been keeping a low profile in town. Mr. Liu, now back home, is showing signs of depression, and the family has taken him to the hospital for treatment, said a person familiar with the family. He doesn't want to speak publicly, the person said, because the family is worried police are monitoring them.
See http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-anticorruption-drive-ensnares-the-lowly-and-rattles-families-1482248291 ("China's Anticorruption Drive Ensnares the Lowly and Rattles Families") (emphasis added; chart omitted)
Pursuing the "peasants" must send fear far and wide in China, since it is reminiscent of Mao Tse-tung's "Great Leap Forward" between 1958 and 1960, when an estimated 30-40 million Chinese died.
Like Stalin in the USSR, Mao's crimes involved Chinese peasants, many of whom died of hunger from man-made famines under collectivist orders that stripped them of all private possessions. The Communist Party forbade them even to cook food at home; private fires were outlawed; and their harvests were taken by the state.
Those who dared to question Mao's agricultural policies—which sought to maximize food output by dispossessing the nation's most productive farmers—were tortured, sent to labor camps, or executed.
See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin's-soviet-holocaust-and-mao's-chinese-holocaust/ ("The Silent Voices Of Stalin's Soviet Holocaust And Mao's Chinese Holocaust"); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/china-is-americas-enemy-make-no-mistake-about-that/ ("China Is America's Enemy: Make No Mistake About That")
Are The Russian People Crazy?
The Moscow Times has reported:
A record 70 percent of Russians approve of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's role in Russian history, according to a poll published by the independent Levada Center pollster on Tuesday.
Stalin's image has been gradually rehabilitated in the 2000s from that of a bloody autocrat to an "outstanding leader." President Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades and a Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.
Seventy percent of Russian respondents told the Levada Center in 2019 that Stalin played a positive role for Russia. Stalin's previous record approval rating stood at 54 percent in 2016.
A record low of 19 percent viewed Stalin's role negatively, down from 32 percent in 2016.
"Stalin begins to be perceived as a symbol of justice and an alternative to the current government, deemed unfair, cruel and not caring about people," Academy of Sciences sociologist Leonty Byzov was quoted as saying by the RBC news website.
"It's purely a mythological image of Stalin, very far from the real historical figure," Byzov added.
The share of Russian respondents who said Stalin's crimes were unjustified has decreased from 60 percent in 2008 to 45 percent this year, Levada said.
Of the 51 percent who viewed Stalin favorably as a person, 41 percent said they respect him, followed by 6 percent who sympathized with and 4 percent who admired him. Only a combined 13 percent said they dislike, fear or hate Stalin, while 26 percent had neither positive or negative views of the Soviet leader.
Stalin's positive approval rating stayed consistent across all age groups, with the exception of the 18-24 age group who were largely indifferent.
Russian society's perception of Stalin has gone through three transformations in the past two decades, Levada sociologist Karina Pipiya said. Equally positive and negative views dominated the 2000s, followed by more neutral opinions in 2008-2014. Negative and neutral views began to subside in 2015.
Levada conducted the survey among 1,600 respondents between March 21-27.
See https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/16/stalins-approval-rating-among-russians-hits-record-high-poll-a65245 ("Stalin's Approval Rating Among Russians Hits Record High") (emphasis added)
As stated in my article above:
[T]here are no memorials or tributes to those who perished under Stalin.
Vladimir Putin is Stalin's heir, and deserves a fate similar to that of Benito Mussolini.
See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ ("The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War") and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ ("The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America's Uranium To Russia's Killer Putin")