Have a glass o’ whiskey, say a toast to the lads, and a toast to the lassies…
If you want to be my friend, do NOT put ice in my whiskey… water’s OK… NO soda… that’s how decent human beings drink good whiskey. As a friend of mine says, “Why do you Russians drink vodka when there’s good whiskey to be drunk?” It’s certainly a point of view… let’s have some appropriate music to sip whiskey by…
Last… but by no means, last… Yul Brynner… perhaps, the sexiest man who ever lived… and, yes, he DID have Roma blood, on his mother’s side.
Of course, Russian “Gypsy music” isn’t actual Roma music, but Russians think that it is. You see the same sort of thing in Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, and Romania… and there are Roma musicians who go along with the gag and make a good living, too (thereby “living well”… which IS the best revenge). Actual Roma music is more EASTERN… the Roma do stem from India, I’m told, so, that’s no surprise. Oh, one last thing… one of the greatest fans of Russian “Gypsy music” was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin… no lie.
BMD
Brothers, it’s time for work!
The coming election on 4 March has only two candidates with a serious chance of winning. One, of course, is Vladimir Putin. The other is the candidate of the KPRF, Gennady Zyuganov. VVP genuinely fears his chance of moving the election into a second round, and has moved leftwards as a result. Unlike Mitt Romney, VVP’s a calculating and cool operator. He realises that the only way that he can fashion a winning coalition is to appeal to Russia’s working class… who’ve been voiceless since 1991. Even if Putin wins, there’ll be no return to pro-oligarch policies, as the oligarchs have shown themselves willing running-dogs of Russophobic elements in the West. Do remember Dickie Wood’s escapades at the Vanil Restoran… he’s widely rumoured to be a Langley asset (and he’s not the only one of the “Americans” in Moscow reputed to be such).
The Western media makes much of the “middle class” in Moscow and Piter. These people are unrepresentative in the extreme. Both Neoliberal candidates in the upcoming election only have 8 percent support per the polls, and his VVP’s leftward tack indicates that he doesn’t fear them. In particular, Prokhorov’s hated and mistrusted as a blow-dried and air-brushed pro-Western phoney.
Barbara-Marie DrezhloFriday 17 February 2012
Albany NY
When you hear the propaganda in the media, remember this picture… the “opposition” is nothing but a set of vicious and brutal Islamists bent on ethnic cleansing… you forget that at your peril…
Thursday night, Moscow and Beijing opposed a draft resolution on Syria voted on in the UN General Assembly, but it passed with a majority vote. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) stated that the West “launched a propaganda war” on the Syrian crisis.
Interestingly, on the eve of the UN General Assembly meeting, Western media reported alleged arms shipments from Moscow to Damascus, and the transfer of chemical weapons to Syria accompanied by Russian specialists. Moscow strongly denied these reports. Based on information appearing on Thursday, Russia’s supplying arms and ammunition to Damascus “in a steady flow”. Supposedly, they went to Syrian ports in “secret ships”, along with a “large unit” of spetsnaz. Furthermore, they reported that Moscow supplied Assad with chemical weapons. Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya even showed an interview with a Syrian Army deserter. He said, amongst other things, that pro-governments forces used nerve gas to suppress the opposition. He went on to say that specialists from Russia and Iran directed their use.
The MID issued a strong denial of “these false reports”. It pointed up, “[The West] launched a propaganda war on the Syrian problem, the masterminds of which don’t scruple at slander against Russia”. Aleksandr Filonik, the head of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, agreed with this assessment, saying, “There are other possible causes of the appearance of such a large amount of disinformation. There’s an information war rolling along like a steamroller. You can’t make sense of it… it’s not the whole truth… it’s not total fiction… it’s a mixed-up jumble. Its main purpose is to convince people that something appalling is going on in Syria”. It’s noteworthy that the growth of information “hysteria” also coincided with an announcement by the Syrian leadership concerning a date for a referendum on a constitution. Damascus has long promised to make concessions to the people, but Assad’s opponents claimed that such promises weren’t valid. Now, when such proposals did come forth, the ball shifted to the opposition’s court, so, they followed them up with a new wave of slander. Experts believe that public opinion is being prepared for a possible military intervention in the Syrian conflict.
After the Libyan precedent, without reliable evidence of “atrocities” committed by the government side, such support would be minimal. On the other hand, it’s revealing that these “canards” appeared just before the UN General Assembly vote on a draft resolution on Syria. Boris Dolgov, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said, “In fact, the information war’s being waged on several fronts. There’s no chance involved in the allegations about the supposed arms shipments. Yes, they used them to prepare for the meeting of the General Assembly, before the discussion of the proposals offered by Qatar and other Arab countries. Still, I noted that this campaign also put increased pressure on other players. I mean continued pressure on Iran. We know that Syria’s an ally of Iran”.
The draft resolution approved by the UN General Assembly is a recommendation, not a blueprint for action. China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, voted against it. Specifically, the Chinese Ambassador to the UN noted that the UN action complicated the problem, rather than maintain peace and stability in the Middle East. Russia called the draft resolution “unbalanced”. In particular, Moscow proposed amendments to end the violence on both sides. In addition, Moscow insisted, from the very beginning of the conflict, that we stop the bloodshed without external intervention, and that it’s necessary to establish an internal dialogue of all parties. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated this, saying, “If the international community demands régime change as a precondition for talks, this is a path to full-scale civil war with unpredictable consequences”. In the near future, Aleksei Pushkov, the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the RF Gosduma, will lead a mission to Damascus.
17 February 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_02_17/66276415/
Editor’s Note:
The USA is using the same dreary playbook that it used for every one of its aggressions since the time of Kuwait all the way up to the invasion of Iraq. In fact, some of the lies uttered at the UN General Assembly were the same as those uttered twenty years ago in the matter of Kuwait. It’s a multi-layered affair… it involves actual US government propagandists (like Victor Potapov), Corporate Media journalists (such as Sophia Kishkovsky and Serge Schmemann), Establishment academics (such as Stephen Cohen), think-tank “experts” (like Anya Schmemann), “objective” outsiders (such as Ms Pillay, the lawyer from South Africa (does she have relatives in the US or Britain?)), and even Limousine Liberal “Progressives” (like Katrina vanden Heuvel). Langley cooks up quite a stew, but it’s been using the same “recipe” for two decades… yet, have they gone to the well “once too often?”
Not one of the people named above mentions that the Syrian “opposition” are murderous jihadists bent upon the expulsion of the Christian population and the massacre of the Alawi Muslims. NOT ONE. The Christians of Syria tell us, “Assad’s no monster… we’re safe under his rule. The opposition wants to expel us”. They beg the powers-that-be, but NO ONE’S LISTENING. The Alawis tell us, “The opposition wants to kill us”. NO ONE’S LISTENING to them, either.
None dare call it evil. What say you?
BMD
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.