Terry Adams Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime By RANDY HERSCHAFT and VANESSA GERA | Associated Press – 14 hrs ago 25 Email Print Enlarge GalleryIn this Friday, Sept. 7, 2012 photo, Franciszek Herzog looks at photographs of his father at his home in Hebron, Conn. Documents released Monday, Sept. 10, 2012, and seen in advance by The Associated Press … RELATED CONTENT Enlarge PhotoA memorial to the victims of Katyn, … Enlarge PhotoFILE - In this Feb. 6, 1952 file … WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The American POWs sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area. The testimony about the infamous massacre of Polish officers might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power. The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't want to anger Josef Stalin, an ally whom the Americans were counting on to defeatGermany and Japan during World War II. Documents released Monday and seen in advance by The Associated Press lend weight to the belief that suppression within the highest levels of the U.S. government helped cover up Soviet guilt in the killing of some 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners in the Katyn forest and other locations in 1940. The evidence is among about 1,000 pages of newly declassified documents that the United States National Archives released and is putting online. Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who helped lead a recent push for the release of the documents, called the effort's success Monday a "momentous occasion" in an attempt to "make history whole." Historians who saw the material days before the official release describe it as important and shared some highlights with the AP. The most dramatic revelation so far is the evidence of the secret codes sent by the two American POWs — something historians were unaware of and which adds to evidence that the Roosevelt administration knew of the Soviet atrocity relatively early on. The declassified documents also show the United States maintaining that it couldn't conclusively determine guilt until a Russian admission in 1990 — a statement that looks improbable given the huge body of evidence of Soviet guilt that had already emerged decades earlier. Historians say the new material helps to flesh out the story of what the U.S. knew and when. The Soviet secret police killed the 22,000 Poles with shots to the back of the head. Their aim was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished — officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation. In the early years after the war, outrage by some American officials over the concealment inspired the creation of a special U.S. Congressional committee to investigate Katyn. In a final report released in 1952, the committee declared there was no doubt of Soviet guilt, and called the massacre "one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history." It found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal — something never acted upon. Despite the committee's strong conclusions, the White House maintained its silence on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold War. ___ It was May 1943 in the Katyn forest, a part of Russia the Germans had seized from the Soviets in 1941. A group of American and British POWs were taken against their will by their German captors to witness a horrifying scene at a clearing surrounded by pine trees: mass graves tightly packed with thousands of partly mummified corpses in well-tailored Polish officers uniforms. The Americans — Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. — hated the Nazis and didn't want to believe the Germans. They had seen German cruelty up close, and the Soviets, after all, were their ally. The Germans were hoping to use the POWs for propaganda, and to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies. But returning to their POW camps, the Americans carried a conviction that they had just witnessed overwhelming proof of Soviet guilt. The corpses' advanced state of decay told them the killings took place much earlier in the war, when the Soviets still controlled the area. They also saw Polish letters, diaries, identification tags, news clippings and other objects — none dated later than spring of 1940 — pulled from the graves. The evidence that did the most to convince them was the good state of the men's boots and clothing: That told them the men had not lived long after being captured. Stewart testified before the 1951 Congressional committee about what he saw, and Van Vliet wrote reports on Katyn in 1945 and 1950, the first of which mysteriously disappeared. But the newly declassified documents show that both sent secret encoded messages while still in captivity to army intelligence with their opinion of Soviet culpability. It's an important revelation because it shows the Roosevelt administration was getting information early on from credible U.S. sources of Soviet guilt — yet still ignored it for the sake of the alliance with Stalin. One shows head of Army intelligence, Gen. Clayton Bissell, confirming that some months after the 1943 visit to Katyn by the U.S. officers, a coded request by MIS-X, a unit of military intelligence, was sent to Van Vliet requesting him "to state his opinion of Katyn." Bissell's note said that "it is also understood Col. Van Vliet & Capt. Stewart replied." MIS-X was devoted to helping POWs held behind German lines escape; it also used the prisoners to gather intelligence. A statement from Stewart dated 1950 confirms he received and sent coded messages to Washington during the war, including one on Katyn: "Content of my report was aprx (approximately): German claims regarding Katyn substantially correct in opinion of Van Vliet and myself." The newly uncovered documents also show Stewart was ordered in 1950 — soon before the Congressional committee began its work — never to speak about a secret message on Katyn. Krystyna Piorkowska, author of the recently published book "English-Speaking Witnesses to Katyn: Recent Research," discovered the documents related to the coded messages more than a week ago. She was one of several researchers who saw the material ahead of the public release. She had already determined in her research that Van Vliet and Stewart were "code users" who had gotten messages out about other matters. But this is the first discovery of them communicating aboutKatyn, she said. Another Katyn expert aware of the documents, Allen Paul, author of "Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth," told the AP the find is "potentially explosive." He said the material does not appear in the record of the Congressional hearings in 1951-52, and appears to have also been suppressed. He argues that the U.S. cover-up delayed a full understanding in the United States of the true nature of Stalinism — an understanding that came only later, after the Soviets exploded an atomic bomb in 1949 and after Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe were already behind the Iron Curtain. "The Poles had known long before the war ended what Stalin's true intentions were," Paul said. "The West's refusal to hear them out on the Katyn issue was a crushing blow that made their fate worse." The historical record carries other evidence Roosevelt knew in 1943 of Soviet guilt. One of the most important messages that landed on FDR's desk was an extensive and detailed report British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent him. Written by the British ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in London, Owen O'Malley, it pointed to Soviet guilt at Katyn. "There is now available a good deal of negative evidence," O'Malley wrote, "the cumulative effect of which is to throw serious doubt on Russian disclaimers of responsibility for the massacre." ___ It wasn't until the waning days of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe that reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly admitted to Soviet guilt at Katyn, a key step in Polish-Russian reconciliation. The silence by the U.S. government has been a source of deep frustration for many Polish-Americans. One is Franciszek Herzog, 81, a Connecticut man whose father and uncle died in the massacre. After Gorbachev's 1990 admission, he was hoping for more openness from the U.S. as well and made three attempts to obtain an apology from President George H.W. Bush. "It will not resurrect the men," he wrote to Bush. "But will give moral satisfaction to the widows and orphans of the victims." A reply he got in 1992, from the State Department, did not satisfy him. His correspondence with the government is also among the newly released documents and was obtained early by the AP from the George Bush Presidential Library. The letter, dated Aug. 12, 1992, and signed by Thomas Gerth, then deputy director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs, shows the government stating that it lacked irrefutable evidence until Gorbachev's admission: "The U.S. government never accepted the Soviet Government's claim that it was not responsible for the massacre. However, at the time of the Congressional hearings in 1951-1952, the U.S. did not possess the facts that could clearly refute the Soviets' allegations that these crimes were committed by the Third Reich. These facts, as you know, were not revealed until 1990, when the Russians officially apologized to Poland." Herzog expressed frustration at that reply. "There's a big difference between not knowing and not wanting to know," Herzog said. "I believe the U.S. government didn't want to know because it was inconvenient to them." ___ National Archives page on Katyn: http://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/katyn-massacre/ ___ Randy Herschaft reported from New York. AP reporter Monika Scislowska contributed from Warsaw. ___ Vanessa Gera can be reached at http//www.twitter.com/VanessaGera and Randy Herschaft at http://www.twitter.com/HerschaftAP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Interesting story. It is amazing how long it takes for governments to admit their cover-ups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Interesting story. It is amazing how long it takes for governments to admit their cover-ups. Odd that the cover-up continued after the war when it could have used rightfully demonize Stalin and the Soviets, I think in 1945/6 most people would have understood the need to maintain the coalition against the Axis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Solidarność Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Interesting story. It is amazing how long it takes for governments to admit their cover-ups. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Couldnt agree more !! Shame on us! EISENHOWER'S DEATH CAMPS aka "OTHER LOSSES" http://www.saveyourheritage.com/eisenhowers_death_camps.htm may God have mercy on our souls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Interesting story. It is amazing how long it takes for governments to admit their cover-ups. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Couldnt agree more !! Shame on us! EISENHOWER'S DEATH CAMPS aka "OTHER LOSSES" http://www.saveyourh...death_camps.htm may God have mercy on our souls Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? Evidence for the claims is questionable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses#Criticism_of_Other_Losses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 WIKI ABOUT EARLIER HARD BACK , not later paperback. http://www.amazon.com/Other-Losses-James-Bacque/dp/1551681919 This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. MAY 1 1999 By E. Rodin MD review The first edition of this controversial book caused an international scandal by claiming that almost one million German prisoners of war had died of starvation in American and French death camps after World War II. In 1992, Bacque visited the newly-opened KGB archives where he discovered more evidence to support his claim. This revised edition of Other Losses presents all the relevant new material on the deaths plus new evidence of the suppression of truth by Western academics, press, and governments. Mr. Bacque is to be congratulated for publishing this book which describes the fate German soldiers who had surrendered to General Eisenhower's forces at the end of WWII. They had expected to be treated according to the Geneva convention governing the conduct of armies in regard to captured enemy personnel. This was not to be the case. As Mr. Bacque points out an entire new category of "Disarmed Enemy Forces", DEF, was created. Its only purpose was to avoid having to feed and house these millions of ex-soldiers and thereby bypass the Geneva convention to which America was a signatory. One may argue about the precise numbers of ex-soldiers who died in these "temporary enclosures" but the fact that inhuman treatment did exist cannot be denied. Neither can the fact that a considerable percentage of them was subsequently given to the French for what is called today "slave labor," albeit this term refers nowadays only to non-German nationals. Readers who may feel negatively about Bacque's revelations should be aware that this treatment of former members of the German army was not just happenstance but the execution of the Morgenthau plan to render Germany harmless forever. The plan was not directed against the German leadership or Nazis, but the German people at large. Mr. Baque makes frequent reference to this unfortunate document but readers, who cannot conceive that U.S. personnel may also carry out atrocities should look at the Document section of Warren F. Kimball's "Swords or Ploughshares? The Morgenthau plan for Defeated Nazi Germany."The book clearly shows that Roosevelt had endorsed a policy of "being hard on Germany" and Eisenhower was in full accord. That you cannot be "hard" on a country but only on its people and that this policy is bound to involve cruelties was not a consideration. The conditions changed only after Eisenhower's return to the U.S. and the appointment of Lucius D. Clay as High Commissioner. He clearly saw that the existing situation, even for the civilian population, made neither military nor political sense. It would merely turn the population to communism because even the Russians fed the people in their zone better than the Americans did. It is also to President Truman's credit that he quietly dropped the Morgenthau plan soon after the Potsdam meeting. As a former member of the Wehrmacht I had become aware of the Morgenthau plan in the winter of 1944-1945 but had regarded it as Nazi propaganda. I had always had high admiration for the principles America stood for and the Morgenthau plan seemed to be in total contradiction to those ideals. As mentioned in my book War and Mayhem I had intended to surrender to the U.S. forces towards the end of the war, but changed my mind on VE day and through the grace of God managed to avoid American as well as Soviet captivity. Having read Mr. Bacque's book I am even more grateful for the good fortune which kept me out of DEF status and instead allowed me to go to medical school within about six weeks after Germany's capitulation. I had no idea about the conditions German ex-soldiers were exposed to in those days, just as I had no idea about what really went on in the Nazi concentration camps until after the war. There are things people just didn't talk about. To "let it all hang out" became popular only in the late sixties and thereafter. But for the sake of historical accuracy both sides need to be heard and Mr. Bacque has done us this service for which he deserves our gratitude. ============== My Uncle Was There. April 1, 2000 review By A Customer My uncle served in the US Army during WW2. When I was younger, he had told me about the US prison camps that he had seen as a member of an Army Engineering detachment. His stories are, sadly, supported by the book, "Other Losses". Unfortunately, my uncle is now dead, or else, he could give everyone reading this review an eye witness account of the American attrocities perpetrated on the German people after the war had ended. As he had said, "We were supposed to be the Good Guys!" ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ only post 1999 wiki source more supportive Other Loses Anglo American troops held in German POW camps suffered a 4% mortality rate which was praised by the ICRC and credited to the German military ensuring that POWs continued to receive Red Cross food parcels despite their own food shortages in the final months of the war.[109] Conditions in some of the camps that housed captured German soldiers support claims for a higher mortality rate. Lt. Colonel Henry W. Allard, the commander in charge of the DEF camps in France, later stated "The standard of the PW (POW) camps in the ComZ (U.S. rear zone) in Europe compare as only slightly better, or even, with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about".[109] The U.S. Army's surgeon general described some of the camps as resembling Andersonville Prison in 1864 and noted that the lack of food in some cases led to "extensive malnutrition".[110] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ James Bacque Answers a Critic (8/20/1993) This is a letter by James Bacque, author of Othe Losses. It appeared in The Times Literary Supplement of August 20, 1993. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir,- It is every writer's delight to be attacked in a famous journal by a confused critic, so my thanks go to John Keegan for airing his views on my work in the TLS on July 23. Mr Keegan has been misled by the editors of the book, "Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against falsehood," which he cites to refute me. The principal editor, Stephen E. Ambrose, clearly does not know what he thinks from day to day, because he has varied wildly from strong approval of my book, "Other Losses," to snarling slanders of me personally, together with buffoonish misrepresentations of American army policies. Having kindly read my manuscript, he wrote to me as follows: "I am not arguing with the basic truth of your discovery...you have the goods on these guys, you have the quotes from those who were present and saw with their own eyes, you have the broad outline of a truth so terrible I really can't bear it...you really have made a major historical discovery..." It appears from the latest Ambrose writings that, indeed, the truth was something he could not bear. The same might be said for his co-editor, Gunter Bischof, an Austrian. Keegan admires the "scholarship" of Bischof, but Bischof does not know a displaced persons camp from a prison camp. He chastises me for stating that there was a US Army prison camp at Ebensee in Austria: he says that the camp was for DPs. In fact, I have photocopies of General Mark Clark's secret report about the condition of prisoners of war in the camp, plus US Army medical reports of prisoners in the camp, plus eyewitness accounts of the catastrophe among dozens of thousands of prisoners, including the manuscript of a diary kept by the priest Franz Loidl who ministered to the dying. This manuscript is on deposit in the Church History Institute of the Catholic Theological Faculty, University of Vienna. In the same book so admired by Keegan is a gross error made by Rudiger Overmanns, who does not even know the number of prisoners taken by the Americans. This was not 3.8 million as he says, but over 6 million, according to US Army records in Suitland, Maryland. Of course, this error, conveniently for Ambrose and Keegan, apparently diminishes the number of lives for which the Americans were responsible. Underlying the Ambrose-Bischof book is a series on German prisoners edited by Erich Maschke. Underlying that series is no important documentation from the US Army archives in Washington. The author of the book on the American camps casually omits all the significant records that survived the paper purges of the late 1940s. However, for an expert judgment on the condition of American camps Mr Keegan may rely on the words of an American Lieutenant-Colonel who was in charge of the camps in France in 1945. In a report preserved at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Allard wrote that "the standards of PW camps in the Com Z in Europe compare as only slightly better or even with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about, and unfavourably with those of the Germans". Let us remember that after the war, the Americans executed Japanese for precisely the crimes referred to by Allard. Mr Keegan does not accept the definition of the term "Other Losses" given me by Colonel Philip S. Lauben. He is unaware of the US Army report discovered by Richard Boylan, a senior archivist at the US National Archives, which confirms Lauben. The report plainly states that the "Other Loses" category of prisoners meant deaths and escapes. And finally, of course, 1,700,000 Germans, plus hundreds of thousands of other Europeans, are still missing from their families. This astounding fact is normally neglected by the Western apologists, unless they can also use it to hammer the Soviets, saying they all died in the Gulag. But now that the Soviets are gone, their archives are open and the truth at last emerges. That truth is simple. The Soviets took some 4.1 million prisoners of war east and west, of whom some 600,000 died in slavery. Of the total take, some 2.4 million were Germans. Of these, some 450,600 died, the rest were sent home. Subtracting the 450,600 dead Germans from the missing 1.7 million, we see that some 1.25 million are still not accounted for. Of these, probably 100,000 - 200,000 died in Polish, Yugoslavian and other camps. The number remaining is very nearly the number I said in "Other Losses" of those who died among all Europeans taken prisoner in the West. I wonder if Mr Keegan will consult the Soviet records before attacking them? The surprising thing about the Soviet records is that they are extensive, detailed, accurate and incriminating. For instance, on the subject of prisoners of war, these archives display a dossier for each prisoner, complete with capture records, biographical information, legal,labour and medical history, including X-ray photographs, and so on. The average is about fifteen pages per person. The dossier of Nobel prize winner Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian zoologist contains two hundred pages about him and his work. No such records exist anywhere in the West. In months of work in the archives of the West, I was never able to find the dossier for a single one of the 9 or so million prisoners held. Not one. But in the first hour in the NKVD/KGB archives, I found the archival boxes containing over 4 million personal dossiers. I was allowed to walk up and down the aisles, and take down and photocopy any box I chose at random, and did so. I have scores of photocopies of those records here in Toronto, and Mr Keegan is welcome to consult them. Or he may wish to visit Moscow. He will find interesting information beginning with the story of the Japanese prisoners. The Japanese authorities have long since determined that some 62,000 of their prisoners, chiefly in the Kwantung Army, died in the Gulag. The Soviets lied to the Japanese government for years about the number of deaths, first saying 3,800 had died, then about 4,000, then around 35,000. Finally, the Soviet archives were opened, and mirabile dictu, the death certificates were all there, totalling very nearly 62,000. Do I hear Keegan protesting that Japan is not Germany? On his visit to Moscow, he may see for himself the Soviet records showing that the prisoners of various nationalities were often mixed together in the same camp, so that Japanese were enslaved beside Germans, were all treated the same way, and died in approximately the same ratio of much the same causes. Letters to me from individual prisoners and records at the Hoover Institution in Stanford all show independently of the Soviet archives that this was the case in more than thirty major camps Let me also remind Keegan that the Poles long accused the Soviets of massacring some 14,000 officers at Katyn, but that the Soviet archives reveal that the true total was around 21,000. If John Keegan and his friends wish to attack the authenticity of the Soviet archives, they are going to have to show that the fragmentary documents in the Western archives, airy with lacunae and poxed with evasions, are superior to these tremendous archives which incriminate its masters for a horrifying crime against humanity. What will they say then? That the Soviets are hiding something? JAMES BACQUE 422 Heath St. E. Toronto, Ontario Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 (edited) Normally a major reworking of a book would warrant a new hardcover edition thus I doubt there are important differences between the later paperback and the original. Bacque apparently was a novelist with no previous experience with history, several historians looked into his claims and found them sorely lacking. Amazon reviewers are, with few exceptions, not trained historians – one who self identifies as an MD is obviously not one of those exceptions. You also cite some anonymous reviewer who cited his decades old recollections of stories told him by his now dead unnamed uncle. Of course Bacque rejects criticism of his work, unfortunately for him few if any historians share his convictions. Odd that he would cite documents in the Soviet archives, why exactly would they hold detailed records of prisoners held by the French and Americans? Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? No reply, no surprise.] Edited September 12, 2012 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 (edited) Documentation problems on the critics side. In the same book so admired by Keegan is a gross error made by Rudiger Overmanns, who does not even know the number of prisoners taken by the Americans. This was not 3.8 million as he says, but over 6 million, according to US Army records in Suitland, Maryland. Of course, this error, conveniently for Ambrose and Keegan, apparently diminishes the number of lives for which the Americans were responsible. Underlying the Ambrose-Bischof book is a series on German prisoners edited by Erich Maschke. Underlying that series is no important documentation from the US Army archives in Washington. The author of the book on the American camps casually omits all the significant records that survived the paper purges of the late 1940s. However, for an expert judgment on the condition of American camps Mr Keegan may rely on the words of an American Lieutenant-Colonel who was in charge of the camps in France in 1945. In a report preserved at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry W. Allard wrote that "the standards of PW camps in the Com Z in Europe compare as only slightly better or even with the living conditions of the Japanese PW camps our men tell us about, and unfavourably with those of the Germans". Let us remember that after the war, the Americans executed Japanese for precisely the crimes referred to by Allard+++++++++++++++++ why exactly would they (Russians) hold detailed records of prisoners held by the French and Americans? //END COLBY I dont believe thats what he said. SGaal Edited September 12, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 (edited) Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? No reply, no surprise. No reply, no surprise. Edited September 14, 2012 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 NO RESPONSE TO POST #9 ,NO SUPRISE. ======================================= Len Colby, on 11 September 2012 - 05:24 PM, said: Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ABSURD IMPLICATIONS NEED NO RESPONSE. Gee COLBY SEEMS TO SUPPORT PUSSY RIOT. THE REAL CROSS ABUSERS Pussy Riot uproar continues: FEMEN offers bounty for desecrating crosses http://rt.com/politi...ting-money-952/ The case has split the Russian society. Pussy Riot supporters claim the case was politically motivated, and that the punishment was far too severe. The court verdict was followed by a series of protests and acts of vandalism against religious sites across the country. Sporadic acts of desecration are continuing across Russia. This week, three residents of the central Russian city of Tver burned a wooden Orthodox cross that they had erected near a local chapel. Police apprehended the trio and are currently deciding whether they should be prosecuted, ITAR-TASS reported. ================================================================= Pussy Riot solidarity: Topless Ukrainian activist chainsaws crucifix (PHOTOS, VIDEO) http://rt.com/news/f...pussy-riot-930/ BURN CROSSES BURN SOME SAY ........ (COLBY) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 (edited) NO RESPONSE TO POST #9 ,NO SUPRISE. ======================================= Len Colby, on 11 September 2012 - 05:24 PM, said: Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ABSURD IMPLICATIONS NEED NO RESPONSE. Why not? I imagine you wouldn't feel that way if I had cited such a website. Gee COLBY SEEMS TO SUPPORT PUSSY RIOT. THE REAL CROSS ABUSERS Why is that a logical conclusion but asking you about the white power website "absurd"? Pussy Riot uproar continues: FEMEN offers bounty for desecrating crosses http://rt.com/politi...ting-money-952/ The case has split the Russian society. Pussy Riot supporters claim the case was politically motivated, and that the punishment was far too severe. The court verdict was followed by a series of protests and acts of vandalism against religious sites across the country. Sporadic acts of desecration are continuing across Russia. This week, three residents of the central Russian city of Tver burned a wooden Orthodox cross that they had erected near a local chapel. Police apprehended the trio and are currently deciding whether they should be prosecuted, ITAR-TASS reported. ================================================================= Pussy Riot solidarity: Topless Ukrainian activist chainsaws crucifix (PHOTOS, VIDEO) http://rt.com/news/f...pussy-riot-930/ BURN CROSSES BURN SOME SAY ........ (COLBY) Do you think people should go to jail for such acts? Is there any direct connection between these people and Pussy Riot? Edited September 14, 2012 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 WHAT HATH COLBY WRATH ???????? 10 More Orthodox Crosses Chopped Down http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/10-more-orthodox-crosses-chopped-down/467631.html +++++++++++++++++++++ Pussy Riot? More Like Pussy War MOSCOW—Yesterday afternoon, two women—a mother and her 38-year-old daughter—were found stabbed to death in the southeastern city of Kazan. By the time the news reached Moscow this morning, it arrived with a new bit of information: someone had scrawled “Free Pussy Riot” on the hallway wall. In blood. It’s not clear who did this—or, more significantly, why—but two weeks after the three young women of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail for singing a “punk prayer” in the main church of the capital, the story continues to roil Russian society. And “pussy” continues to appear in Russian headlines. On the morning the sentence was to be handed down, members of the topless feminist group FEMEN in Kiev, Ukraine took a chainsaw to a giant wooden cross commemorating the victims of Stalin’s repressions. Soon, copycats were popping up across Russia. The latest cross was felled by Pussy Riots supporters in the subarctic city of Arkhangelsk. This prompted outrage from the Orthodox community, with the Church’s sharp-tongued spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin darkly prophesying that “those who fell crosses today may move on to murder in the future.” Sure enough, four days later, two women turned up dead with “Free Pussy Riot” scrawled on the wall, as Kremlin loyalists trilled their I-told-you-so’s. (“If you still think that breaking the norms of behavior in a church doesn’t change anything, I recommend you read the latest news,” one of them tweeted.) As if this weren’t enough, shortly after the double-murder swamped the headlines, news broke of a man who had been stabbed to death in St. Petersburg. Whoever killed him left a religious icon on his head. All of this has put Team Pussy Riot on the defensive, with the women’s lawyers trying to distance themselves from the violence. They have labeled the blood graffiti “a case for a psychiatrist” and called the Archangelsk cross-fellers “two mentally-retarded youths.” The faithful, however, have felt compelled to respond in kind. Shortly after the Pussy Riot verdict, there were reports of them attacking people wearing “Free Pussy Riot” t-shirts. One young man, a veteran of the second Chechen War and head of the “Holy Rus” organization, announced that he would form bands of Orthodox “volunteers” to patrol Russia for crimes against sacred artifacts and priests. In truth, Pussy Riot only heightened the cultural tensions underlying Russian society. In the last few years, criticism has mounted against an Orthodox Church that is increasingly lavish (the Church’s press service recently admitted to airbrushing a $30,000 Breguet watch of the patriarch’s wrist), increasingly unapologetic (Chaplin called the patriarch’s sumptuous lifestyle his “cross”), increasingly brazen (a woman thought to be Patriarch Kirill’s lover is suing to take over the apartment of a famous cardiologist dying of cancer) and increasingly seen as a Kremlin franchise. This winter, as anti-Kremlin protests broke out in Moscow, the patriarch called on people to go to church instead, and later enthusiastically endorsed Vladimir Putin ahead of the March presidential election. The people who took to the streets demanding fair elections have, with the help of Pussy Riot, come to see the Church as their enemy, too. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that Putin’s popularity depends, in part, on his support for the Church. (Support that’s not just rhetorical: He returned religious art to the Church from state museums and, the day before his most recent inauguration, he inaugurated a chapel that would pray for his health around the clock.) The Church’s militantly anti-Western, anti-liberal rhetoric appeals to Putin’s natural base of support, most of it in smaller, poorer cities. This population, if they’ve heard of Pussy Riot at all, is conservative, religious, and nationalistic, and finds the ideas of the opposition deeply alien. It is also a fairly huge population. Given the increasing economic and political tensions in the country, these two Russias were bound to come to blows. And, as usual, religion has provided an easy, steadily burning fuse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 WHAT HATH COLBY WRATH ???????? 10 More Orthodox Crosses Chopped Down http://www.themoscow...own/467631.html From Gaal's cited source: Police are looking for the perpetrators. The Altai incident might involve a "sect," investigators suspect, because the cross was removed from the site, Interfax said. The cemetery incident was likely the work of a "psychologically unfit" man, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. Read more:http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/10-more-orthodox-crosses-chopped-down/467631.html#ixzz26YF5gHjC The Moscow Times +++++++++++++++++++++Pussy Riot? More Like Pussy War MOSCOW—Yesterday afternoon, two women—a mother and her 38-year-old daughter—were found stabbed to death in the southeastern city of Kazan. By the time the news reached Moscow this morning, it arrived with a new bit of information: someone had scrawled “Free Pussy Riot” on the hallway wall. In blood. It’s not clear who did this—or, more significantly, why—but two weeks after the three young women of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in jail for singing a “punk prayer” in the main church of the capital, the story continues to roil Russian society. And “pussy” continues to appear in Russian headlines. Professor 'confesses to Russian "Pussy Riot" killings and reveals victims were his ex-girlfriend and her mother' Bodies of women, 76 and 38, were found underneath 'Free Pussy Riot' slogan daubed on wall in blood Mother and daughter died from multiple stab wounds Attack came two weeks after rebellious punk band trio Pussy Riot were jailed for two years Police said confessed murderer was a former classmate of the daughter He had allegedly been stringing her along after she agreed to him help pay off his debts by borrowing tens of thousands of pounds from banks By CHRIS PARSONS and EMMA REYNOLDS PUBLISHED: 13:47 GMT, 31 August 2012 | UPDATED: 17:31 GMT, 31 August 2012 A university professor has 'confessed' to killing his ex-girlfriend and her mother and daubing 'Free Pussy Riot' above their bodies in an effort to mislead police, detectives claim. Russian police arrested 38-year-old Igor Danilevsky after the 76-year-old mother and 38-year-old daughter were found dead in their apartment in Kazan, western Russia, last week. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2196371/Professor-confesses-Russian-Pussy-Riot-killings-reveals-victims-ex-girlfriend-mother.html#ixzz26YGTKpyx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 (edited) NO RESPONSE TO POST #9 ,NO SUPRISE. ======================================= Len Colby, on 11 September 2012 - 05:24 PM, said: Why am I not surprised to see Gaal citing an overtly White Supremacist website? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ABSURD IMPLICATIONS NEED NO RESPONSE Care to answer 3 simple questions: 1) Are the site's views on race at all similar to yours? 2) IF not why did you link to it when there were many others with the same info? 3) What would your response have been if I had cited such a source? Edited September 15, 2012 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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