Should Rhodes Stay?

The BBC informs, Oriel College at Oxford University for some reasons decided to keep the statue of Cecil Rhodes on its building.

Reuters image from the BBC publication.

This decision is strongly opposed by "Rodes Must Fall" campaigners. THis campaign succeeded in South Africa, where a Rhodes statue was removed. The idea was adopted in Oxford by activists students insisting that Rhodes' views were incompatible with the modern 'inclusive culture'.

I have no doubt his views are incompatible. How could we expect it other way, talking about a British imperialistic (and as such, surely white) politician of 19th century?

The matter is that history was just the way it was. One can remove a statue, but no one can change history. History is to be studied, its lessons are to help us here, today, avoid mistakes of the past, and find better ways to future that is supposed to be better than the present and way better than the past.

Human Odessa Cries: Set Vladimir Grubnik Free!

Address of Odessa Human Rights Activists
Concerning Surgeon Vladimir Grubnik

Arrested by the SBU on a Charge of Terrorism

Here goes the full transcript of what the girl says in Russian.

Human rights activists of the city of Odessa are pledging to spread around information on the horrible fate of an Odessa local, whose only fault is that he did not accept categorically the anti-human and lawless political regime in the territory of present Ukraine.

The matter is that Vladimir Yuriyevich Grubnik was brutally arrested in Odessa on October 19, 2015. Grubnik is a candidate of medical sciences, a professor of the Odessa National Medical University, a surgeon of the Odessa City Clinical Hospital No. 11, and a member of the European Association of Endoscopic Surgery.

The Ukrainian authorities charge him with participation in terrorist activity, though he denies this guilt completely. Being arrested, Vladimir was badly beaten; it is visible on photographs, which are attached to the published material. It was followed by methods of physical abuse, content in a punishment cell. At the same time, to the best our knowledge, Vladimir Grubnik has developing symptoms of  tuberculosis, which he suffered before.

#protectDrGrubnik

You Are Welcome to Feel Russia

For quite a while, I have never seen such nice videos about my country.

I am happy there are people able to create such decent pieces.

Here, you are welcome to follow Prof. Günter from Stuttgart, Germany. Don't be misled with the Russian title in YouTube; the video is in good English (with some German accent, so far my Russian ear can get it).

Quite a different, but also very impressive travel did Li Feng from Beijing. By the way, her English is surprisingly good.

I understand perfectly well these videos have something to do with advertising and PR.

But this is advertising I like, and the country I love and belong to wholeheartedly.

I just would like to share my feeling so that you feel Russia at least a bit better :)

What They Say Putin Said

The current year started with a prominent interview of Vladimir Putin to the German Bild. He spoke to German journalists on January 5.

Here goes the "original" German version. Why did I put the word 'original' in the quotation marks? The answer is pretty simple: it is a German text; that means, a translation of the words our president said to the interviewing staff in Russian.

For those of you, who do not speak or even understand German, the title goes: "Why Did Putin Frighten Merkel With His Dog". And the subtitle below: "Vladimir Putin explains his world: the NATO is agressive, Merkel is earnest, and the Russian Crimea is a God's justice".

You like it or not, that's what the Bild wrote in German.

Being a major German paper, they published the English translation of the interview as well. Here it is.

Totalitarianism Now

For many years all those 'political' words like 'democracy', 'communism', 'totalitarianism', 'dictatorship', etc., are just a matter of verbal play. Those who act in favor of the so called 'Western values' are good guys, 'democracies'. Those who dare to play against or at least their own games, are bad ones, 'totalitarian regimes', 'communists' or 'tyrannies'.

Henceforth, the world has, e.g., Saudi Arabia presiding the UN Human Rights Council. Unfortunately, this is not a circus; this is the Orwellian world we live in.

A gem news came from Denmark. One of the best foreign undergraduates at the Aarhus University Marius Youbi was expelled from Denmark back to his native Cameroon for... working too hard.

His crime was from time to time exceeding by 1.5 hours the weekly limit established for part-time jobs done by foreign students.

Nice. Wasn't that one of the basic values of that 'capitalism dream': work harder to achieve more?

Now they play some more 'democracy' in the form of the 'freedom of speech' and sign a petition to let Youbi stay in the country and finish his education — well, he has just two semesters left on his way to his diploma in electrical engineering.

However, the world will undoubtedly go on calling Denmark a 'democracy', and calling Russia kind of 'resurrecting totalitarianism', and calling Saudi Arabia... oops, you'd better don't give names to this honorable country presiding the UN Human Rights Council.

Happy New Year from Russia!

To have a good start for this promising year, just a short video from holy mother Russia.

What do you think we Russians do having consumed our daily liter of vodka?

Falling asleep? Nope. Our balalaikas and matryoshkas can wait for a while, but our BEARS cannot wait for us to have a good time together.

Just like this Pavel plays with his brown friend Dima (diminutive for Dmitry).

Facebook and the Freedom of Speech

Yesterday I posted in my Facebook account the following message:


It's bilingual; the English part reads:

Things are even worse than I thought. Recently, Facebook banned quite a number of respected personalities, including:
Dmitry Puchkov
Zakhar Prilepin
Ruslan Karmanov
Ivan Rakhmetov
Lev Shyaransky
SHAME ON FACEBOOK'S POLITICAL CENSORSHIP!
GET THE UKRAINIAN NAZIS OFF THE RUSSIAN FACEBOOK MANAGEMENT!

At present, this post of me, being far from any 'top-bloggership', has 244 'likes' and 41 'shares', and the count is still going on. That means, not only I see the problem, and do it this way.

Pro-Ukrainian activists seem to completely win the management over the Russian language segment of the social network.

Any possible kind of Russophobic, anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda is allowed, including posts that contain all obscenities the russian language is so rich of, including those based on racial or ethnic hatred. However, even the most innocent traces of dislike regarding the sutiation in Ukraine, its foreign and internal policies are usually punished with temporary bans. The five popular accounts I name as examples, are banned for a month now, and these are 'heavy bans', preventing the people even from private messages.

I see the situation as totally intolerable. Instead of uniting people, the Zuckerberg's invention has become a place for political trolling and spreading international hatred; one the basic democratic rights, namely the freedom of speech, is openly biased and suppressed.

Any Facebook user can see it with his or her own eyes: there are many ways to complain for the acivity he or she considers unappropriate. However, it's almost impossible to complain over these complains, to complain over unfair actions of Facebook's authorities.

The top managenet of Facebook, apparently, is not aware of the situation, because such awareness requires good knowledge of Russian. Thus,

Shame on Facebook!
Shame on Zuckerberg!
Stop political censorship in Facebook now!
Get the supporters of Ukrainian Nazis off the Russian Facebook management!

RT Celebrates 10 Years on Air

My sincere congratulations to the people behind the project.

You've done great job, you are alive and kicking'em all, and you still have a lot to do in the future.

Watch RT and think different, people!

Is Erdoğan a Man of His Word?

Yesterday Al-Jazeera quoted Recep Tayyip Erdoğan:

I will say something very strong here. If such a thing is proven, the nobility of our nation would require that I would not stay in office.

So he commented recent Vladimir Putin's accusations that Turkey had shot down the Russian Su-24 to protect oil supplies from ISIL.

Meanwhile, earlier today Elissa Smith of Pentagon told RIA Novosti:

We reject the assumption that the Turkish government is in arrangement to IS for oil smuggling. We didn't see any proofs in support of such charges.

Come on, people, here are the proofs as presented today by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Cameron's 70,000 Moderate Fighters and Freedom of Speech

Sometimes reading Western media reveils true gems of journalism (albeit seldom without some specific Western taste).

Now it's Independent and an article of Robert Fisk titled "David Cameron, there aren't 70,000 moderate fighters in Syria - and whoever heard of a moderate with a Kalashnikov, anyway?". You are very welcome to follow the link and read it yourself, it well worth it.

However, the author cannot just pass by, leaving Russia untouched.

Vladimir Putin comprehends this. He knows that Turkey is helping Isis – this is why he is going to destroy the Isis oil smuggling route to Turkey – and, as a former serving KGB officer, he understands the cynicism of any crisis. If an American aircraft had strayed into Turkish airspace, he asked at his Kremlin press conference with François Hollande last week, does anyone believe that Turkey would have shot down the US pilots? We all know the answer to that. If Turkey wished to destroy Isis, why does it bombard Isis’ Kurdish enemies? Why does it imprison two of Turkey’s top journalists for reporting how the Turkish intelligence service smuggled weapons to Islamist fighters in Syria? And Putin is hardly going to object if the EU is bent on suicide-through-fear.

You know what?

The EU members do remember, I hope, advantages of unification and joining forces. So do we, former citizens of the Soviet Union. It's just natural, for people to unite. And unnatural — to disintegrate. The USSR fell apart due to problems carefully fed up by external forces using hot and cold warfare; and it became a geopolitical tragedy that cost tens millions of lives; at least 13 millions for Russia alone; quite close to losses in the WW2.

Now some external forces are striving to blast the EU from inside. And it looks like some people see some profit Russia could get of it. I would greatly appreciate if you explain me the reasons of such thoughts; I just do not see any advantages for Russia from Europe in flames.

It looks like authors are just obliged to bite Russia and/or Putin at least once. In the "world of democratical rights and freedoms" only that speech is free, which is politically correct and meets some "corporate standards", isn't it?