freshwest
freshwest's JournalNeeded to open more than one window:
EDITED VERSION:NSFW VERSION:
That hissing noise won't be the snakes.
He's going to need the good vibes, Cha:
Ilya Yashin (born 29 June 1983 in Moscow) is a Russian activist and liberal politician, one of key leaders of political party «RPR-PARNAS», co-founder and one of leaders of political movement Solidarnost. He is also the leader of the Moscow branch of the RPR-PARNAS, in which the Solidarnost participates. In 2005 he was one of founders of civic youth movement Oborona. Active participant of Dissenters' Marches and rallies «For Fair Elections». In 2012 he was elected in Russian Opposition Coordination Council.
Until 2008 he was the leader of Yabloko party's youth wing, organizing mass protests and speaking to the media about its causes. However, when he became an active member of the Solidarnost, Yabloko expelled him for "causing political damage".[1]
Yashin is known for making passionate speeches at opposition rallies. He is an active participant of the Strategy-31 campaign for freedom of assembly. In 2005, he spoke against the Nashi movement, which supported President Vladimir Putin.[2]
On 31 December 2010 Yashin was arrested for demonstrating in Moscow at another rally of Strategy-31. He was taken to a police station and detained for fifteen days. He claims evidence was then fabricated against him by the police.[3] Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience, along with Boris Nemtsov and Konstantin Kosiakin.[4]
Following the alleged kidnapping and torture of opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev from Kiev, Ukraine, Yashin was arrested on 27 October, 2012 along with Sergei Udaltsov and Alexei Navalny while attempting to join a Moscow protest on Razvozzhayev's behalf. The three were charged with violating public order, for which they could be fined up to 30,000 rubles (US$1,000) or given 50 hours of community service.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Yashin
But the Draft is a serious matter in Russia:
Conscription in Russia is a 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18–27, with a number of exceptions. The mandatory term of service was reduced from 18 months at the beginning of 2008.[1]That is from the current page. Before being edited, the September 2013 page read:[2]
A significant portion of Russians of conscript age try to avoid conscription, mostly because of specific code of violence which has developed in the army since 1967 called Dedovshchina and also poor conditions in Russian Army, which makes large number of conscript-age Russian youth worry about their health or even lives while in the army...
Just not going to a draft station – draft-dodging. This is a criminal offence, punishable by up to two years in prison, depending on the time spent dodging. Russian police and military draft boards often perform conscription through detention [1]. Quite often the would-be recruit would avoid signing the papers that require to pass the board instead. Without that, the "invitation" is considered undelivered, and not showing up is not illegal. In practice, that means living a decade off the grid. This is countered by knocking the doors at 5 AM and having the recruit sign before he would become fully conscious...
The Russian voencoms respond by using increasingly illegal means, referring to non-existent laws and acts, "losing" documents that jeopardize the chance of a conscript being deemed fit for duty, and continuous psychological pressure, with 2011 probably being the apex due to a low birthrate in 1993. Those that attempted a medical discharge and failed are often punished for their resistance by assigning them to the worst units and jobs possible, e.g. a conscript with a heart defect was forced to volunteer for contract frontline service because he almost died hulking around 50-kilo cauldrons several times every day, since his defect was 3 mm rather than 5. Voencoms are rumored (no other source is simply possible) to have established an unofficial bonus system for every conscript, especially if he was unfit for duty and yet conscripted...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Russia
Edit shows Russian internet scrubbers are working overtime to the main entry and there is a reference to RT. But what was there in 2013, is preserved in the links at the bottom of the page. Those who don't look at them will miss them. A lot more at the links:
CONSCRIPTION THROUGH DETENTION IN RUSSIA'S ARMED FORCES
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/russia/
Only 11 percent of Russian men enter mandatory military service: general
http://www.spacedaily.com/2002/021206145741.ooyw2y54.html
GRAPHIC PIC WARNING FOR BARE BEHINDS, ETC. OF MALE RECRUITS AT LINK:
Medical examination for new recruits in the Soviet Army - circa 1980s
http://www.ipernity.com/doc/57114/5919363
NSA? Meh-SA! Google never forgets! Your ass is not your own!
BTW: The Evil USA has NO Draft. USA! USA! USA!
America got rid of the Draft, which may be why some think all Russian soldiers are volunteers...
Or to be more genteel in speech, we're dealing with Dirty Tricks from Tricky Dick's gangsters.
Dirty tricks are unethical, duplicitous, slanderous or illegal tactics employed to destroy or diminish the effectiveness of political or business opponents. The term "dirty trick" can also be used to refer to an underhanded technique to get ahead of an opponent (such as sabotage or disregarding rules of engagement).Leaking secret information, digging into a candidate's past (opposition research) or exposing real conflicts between the image presented and the person behind the image are always subject to argument as to whether they are dirty tricks or truth-telling. When a candidate runs into trouble or roadblocks in his or her campaign that are traceable to the other side, he/she can easily charge their opponent with dirty tricks. Often, the candidate is right in this accusation, but one candidate's "dirty trick" is another's "political strategy". The distinction changes with the times. Of course imputing the discovery of a past misdemeanor to the other side can be considered a "dirty trick" in its own right.
However, manufactured, irrelevant, cruel and incorrect rumors or outright lies or falsehoods designed to damage or destroy an opponent are easily described as dirty tricks. They serve to tie up the opponent into defending against and answering false charges rather than explaining their policies and platform.
Sometimes dirty tricks are not only aimed at slandering the opponent. Dishing the dirt against your candidate's opponent can be effective at alienating voters in order to turn them off from the entire project. These tactics may reduce turnout in order to assure your candidate gains by having his/her core voters show up at the polls; thus, an operative molds the outcome by angering everyone. The effort to lower an official's or a candidate's popularity in the polls is called "driving the negatives"[citation needed].
Political speech is protected by the Constitution in the United States and it is rare that a wronged candidate sues for slander after an election season is concluded. Laws were introduced in the UK to prevent untrue statements being made about candidates—see Miranda Grell for a 2007 case.
Political candidates have been accused by their opponents of virtually every sin and crime ever described, from graft and vice to bribery and communism, polygamy, drug use, spousal abuse, fascism, pedophilia, miscegenation, adultery, stupidity, demagoguery, and support for nudism.[citation needed]
The story of dirty tricks in American politics begins with the first campaign for President of the United States, in the 1790s. Thomas Jefferson hired journalist and pamphleteer James Thomas Callender to slander his opponent, Alexander Hamilton.[citation needed] After a falling out, Callender turned on Jefferson and published attacks on his previous employer.
The Nixon Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), a private, non-governmental campaign entity, used funds from its coffers to pay for, and later cover up, dirty tricks performed against opponents by Richard Nixon's employee, Donald Segretti. Segretti famously coined the term 'ratfucking' for recruiting conservative members to infiltrate opposition groups (and/or misrepresent them through false flag activities) in order to undermine the effectiveness of such opposition.[1]
As a result of post-Watergate reform legislation, such activities are strictly regulated, though other private entities still may practice what has become commonly referred to as questionable or unethical dirty tricks.
Recent nomenclature equates a Dirty Tricks Squad to any organized, covert attempt to besmirch the credibility or reputation of an individual or organization so as to render them ineffective...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_tricks
Note the exception for private groups in regulations. That is why the media gets away with so much. And of course it's not just DU that has sensed a problem.
It's going on at other websites, and is the mainstay of talk radio and cable television 'news' shows. The emphasis in the Wikipedia article is mine and it fits the pattern. This should be known by everyone here.
The original DU was beseiged by trolls early on. MIRT keeps expelling them.
Some have come to believe the same things the trolls do, and don't fit all the traits defining trolling.
But the terms Ratfucking and Ratfuckers were employed by the GOP referring to what they were doing to Democrats, not each other. Democrats do not do it to the GOP because it goes against our values as we want all to be informed with facts and to encourage voting. When someone says or does otherwise it gives the appearance of Dirty Tricks.
.
Plus a million!
Don Segretti 4.0, A Teabagger Nation
By Driftglass - **June 21, 2010**
'Ratfucking' is a method the GOP began during the Nixon era and consistently after that time. Since they have the money to fund pundits to do this for them, it will continue. Beware.
The practice has won the right many victories for them and very effective in causing Democrats to abandon their candidates and their party. The man who originated the term and method was:
Donald Henry Segretti (born September 17, 1941, in San Marino, California) is a former political operative for the Committee to Re-elect the President (Nixon) during the early 1970s. Segretti was hired by friend Dwight L. Chapin to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which he dubbed "ratfucking"[1]) against the Democrats, with his work being paid for by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, from presidential campaign re-election funds gathered before an April 7, 1972, law required that contributors be identified. His actions were part of the larger Watergate scandal, and were important indicators for the few members of the press actively investigating the Watergate break in in the earliest stages that what became known as the Watergate scandal involved far more than just a simple break in. Segretti's involvement in the "Canuck letter"[2] typifies the tactics Segretti and others working with him used, forging a letter ascribed to Senator Edmund Muskie which maligned the people, language and culture of French Canada and French Canadians, causing the soon to be Democratic presidential candidate Muskie considerable headaches in denying the letter and having to continue dealing with the issue. Many historians have indicated over the years that Muskie's withdrawal from the Presidential primaries, and the disastrous Iowa primary loss to George McGovern that precipitated it, were at least partly the result of Segretti and some of the other "Ratfuckers" creating so much confusion and false accusations that Muskie simply could not respond in any meaningful way.
In 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal (in fact, forged) campaign literature and was sentenced to six months in prison, actually serving four months. One notable example of his wrongdoing was a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old; the Muskie letters accused Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of sexual misconduct as well.[3] After testimony regarding the Muskie letters emerged, Democrats in Florida noted the similarity between these sabotage incidents and others that involved stationery stolen from Humphrey's offices after Muskie dropped out of the race. A false news release on Humphrey's letterhead "accused Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) of being mentally unbalanced" and a mailing with an unidentified source mischaracterized Humphrey as supporting a controversial environmental measure that he actually opposed.[3]
In the 1976 film about Watergate, All the President's Men, Segretti was played by Robert Walden.
Segretti was a lawyer who served as a prosecutor for the military and later as a civilian. However, his license was suspended for two years following his conviction. In 1995, he ran for a local judgeship in Orange County, California. However, he quickly withdrew from the race when his campaign awakened lingering anger over his involvement in the Watergate scandal. In 2000, Segretti served as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign in Orange County.[4]
He holds a B.S. in Finance from the University of Southern California (1963) and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law (1966). While at USC he became associated with Dwight L. Chapin, Tim Elbourne, Ron Ziegler, Herbert Porter and Gordon C. Strachan, they all joined the "Trojans for Representative Government" group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti
Back in the Nixon era
It would be tempting to label this "The Return of the Ratfuckers", but of course the GOP Ratfuck squad (from Corrente) --
Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention during the Watergate scandal investigation that during the 1972 presidential campaign the Nixon campaign committee maintained a "dirty tricks" unit focused on discrediting Nixon's strongest challengers.
According to Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon aide Dwight Chapin hired fellow USC alumnus Donald Segretti to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which Segretti dubbed "ratfucking"
against the Democrats in 1972. The purpose of the operation was to create as much bitterness and disunity within the Democrat primary as possible. One notable example of Segretti's wrong-doing was a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old...
-- has never left us.
Much more worth reading at:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2010/06/don-segretti-40-teabagger-nation.html
This is why we see one thing after another against Obama, Kerry, Pelosi and other Democrats to gin up outrage. Now we can add the Clintons to the list again. The major cable news pundits made their careers on them.
While some things are based on difference of opinion, tearing up Democrats and our leaders is not productive. Many of the issues have been manufactured about the things guaranteed break the hearts of liberal, progressive Democrats, usually by Libertarians who do not want the same things as we do. But they want to destroy Democrats because they are the force that robs their corporatist masters.
So what happens is Democrats feel betrayed and react accordingly, but are not given opposing information fast enough to debunk and restore them.
As soon as one issue has been debunked, they move immediately to another. It is exhausting to rebutt all of these, and after a while by repetition they are established as a truth by the inability to not rebutt them at the speed they are being sent out.
Ratfucking also relies upon the learned perception that the well of political discourse has been turned into a cesspool, and counts on the discouraged to lose the will to get into government to clean the mess up which fulfills its purpose.
Instead, in their place are the Tea Party grifters who become the voices of power, instead of the compassionate who stay out of political life. Thus the RW mission is accomplished.
Another major reason some smears are not rebutted is we don't have Koch billions to fund these smears, so they out vote us with their media dollars and paid pundits. We musr be smart and patient with our movement to not allow them to divide us.
Anyone who followed the political scene for many years would recognize the approach being used with or without using the word 'ratfucking.'
But the term is shorthand for a complicated process. Its purpose is to destroy the reputation or credibility of the Democratic Party and Obama (and now HRC) among those who should be rightly proud of our accomplishments and values. The media is owned by RW billionaires and they do not show our side in a credible fashion.
Make no mistake, it is not just the personality or the actions of our party or our president being attacked, it is the progressive ideas we represent. Those ideas are the enemy the RWers and Koch organizations are fighting by going after our leaders. They will use Citizens United and every other weapon in their hands to defeat us and our hopes for a better America and a better world.
Think of the method employed to ruin the Kennedys, ACORN and so many others. We must not be taken in.
**Yes, some of us realized what was happening as the media and pundits that were formerly trusted, did this in the summer of 2010, and it worked very well. We tried to warn others, but they stayed away from the polls and many states now live under the boot of the Tea Party. Now they live under the boot of Secessionists determined to impose a fascist theocracy on them.
In case you haven't seen my newest pic:
Expect a new one everyday at DU, even without an expiration date. I saw a post yesterday that went after her for something that happened when Bill was in office, and another one about him.
The reichwing can recycle this material endlessly. But I no longer reply to that nonsense:
Uhnope, this guy better watch out for himself, SERIOUSLY.
Because NO ONE is coming to save these guys. The West has bought the 'Putin is always good and the USA is always bad':
More than 300 journalists killed in Russia since 1993, says joint report
The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 shocked the world. "Yet for every Anna, there have been many less widely known journalists killed for their work across Russia," says the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in a groundbreaking report on the 313 Russian journalists killed since 1993...
"Partial Justice" and an accompanying database present a comprehensive record of the murders, "whether taking place in cross-fire in conflict zones, or homicides and contract killings; whether journalists were killed for their work or in unexplained accidents, or even for personal dealings."
http://www.ifex.org/russia/2009/06/24/partial_justice/
to Tarheel Dem:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014704086#post41
I seem to remember a CIA asset who said that leakers should be "shot in the balls."
I wonder who that asset was... and if he was working for Pootie's Spy Network even back then?
Gotta wonder if this guy is flipped--this is quite a switch from the fellah who used to talk like this:
Snowden was incensed at the New York Times, which had described secret negotiations between the United States and Israel over how best to deal with Iran's suspected nuclear program.
"Are they TRYING to start a war? Jesus christ. They're like wikileaks." Snowden wrote. "You don't put that s--- in the NEWSPAPER."
"They have a HISTORY of this s---," he continued, making liberal use of capital letters and profanity. "These are the same people who blew the whole 'we could listen to osama's cell phone' thing. The same people who screwed us on wiretapping. Over and over and over again."
He said he enjoyed "ethical reporting." But "VIOLATING NATIONAL SECURITY? no. That s--- is classified for a reason. It's not because 'oh we hope our citizens don't find out.' It's because 'this s--- won't work if iran knows what we're doing.'"
Perhaps he encountered a shirtless Russian riding a bear on his personal road to Damascus?
to MADem:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014704086#post43
Taking out the opposition:
Putin Declares Himself Dictator With The Navalny Verdict
Alexei Navalny’s five-year prison sentence on fabricated charges removes Vladimir Putin’s last political opponent from the scene. Navalny was charged with stealing a small amount of money during the course of giving pro-bono legal advice to a regional government on the sale of timber.
Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption blogger and activist, was one of the key organizers of anti-Putin demonstrations following the disputed parliamentary and presidential elections of December 2011 and March 2012. He had been a thorn in the side of the Putin machine by exposing its high-level corruption on his blog, which is followed by millions of Russians. He was indicted by Putin’s Investigative Committee – an extrajudicial body that works like the troikas of the Stalin era. Among those exposed by Navalny for the theft of billions were the very members of the Investigative Committee that indicted him. Navalny coined the term widely applied by the Russian people to Putin’s United Russia, as the “party of thieves and scoundrels.”
In a maneuver to secure the Moscow’s mayoral position in a Moscow that has soured on Putin, Putin’s loyalist mayor recently resigned in order to stand in a flash election in September. Navalny had declared his candidacy (and could have easily won a fair election), but his conviction in a provincial court will prohibit him from running for any elected office under Russian law. Putin has removed Navalny from formal politics.
Navalny said in his closing statement: “It’s to make it so someone on all the federal news channels can continually mention my name as this person who stole the Kirov region’s whole forest, this crook, as if that could somehow change what I am writing about those people who are actually crooks, those people who are stealing the government’s billions from us.” Navalny refused to flee Russia to escape the jail sentence which he knew was inevitable.
As is his practice, Putin innocently denies any involvement in the Navalny case. A Kremlin spokesman declared that Putin “does not interfere, can’t interfere, and in this case has no right to interfere.” The political nature of the Navalny prosecution, however, was conceded by Putin’s Investigative Committee, which declared that such a trivial case would not have been dealt with so quickly, except where “the person involved attracts attention to himself with all his might” and “mocks authority...”***
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/07/18/putin-declares-himself-dictator-with-the-navalny-verdict/
Out in the cold: Vladimir Putin’s biggest enemies
1 Barack Obama Putin’s enmity towards Obama is ideological rather than personal. Putin’s KGB worldview is predicated on anti-Americanism: he views Moscow as a rival “superpower” to Washington, in terms of global reach and influence. Since Putin’s “return” as president in 2012 hostile rhetoric about America has hit record levels.
2 Mikhail Khodorkovsky Putin arrested Khodorkovsky – at the time Russia’s wealthiest man – in 2003 and packed him off to jail in Siberia. After a decade behind bars, he was unexpectedly freed by Russia’s president. In the event that Putin steps down from power, Khordorkovsky could play a major role in Russian politics. At least, this is the fantasy among Russia’s liberals.
3 Alexei Navalny The Moscow opposition leader is currently under house arrest. A court recently jailed Navalny’s brother on charges widely seen as fictitious: a sure sign that Navalny’s campaign against corruption and Putin’s leadership has got the Kremlin rattled. Navalny is a tall, charismatic lawyer with nationalist views and a popular blog: plenty of reasons for the authorities to shut him up.
4 Bill Browder Browder’s lobbying campaign following the murder of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been extraordinarily successful, with the US and others banning the officials involved. Corrupt Russian bureaucrats have assets (and very often families) in the west. Without visas they can no longer enjoy them.
5 Petro Poroshenko The pro-western president of Ukraine is in effect at war with Putin, who last year seized a large chunk of Ukraine – Crimea – and fomented a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko says Russia has waged a covert invasion of his country, with troops, tanks and heavy weapons. Putin denies this.
And two dead ones...
Boris Berezovsky Once Putin’s close friend – they went on holiday together in the south of France – Berezovsky became the president’s biggest enemy when the two fell out in 2000. Berezovsky decamped to Britain where he led a noisy campaign against Putin, accusing him of numerous misdeeds. Berezovsky was found hanged in his Surrey mansion in 2013.
Alexander Litvinenko An FSB officer, Litvinenko fled to London and worked for both Berezovsky and MI6. In 2006, two Russians – Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi – allegedly poisoned him with radioactive polonium in a Mayfair hotel. Afterwards, Putin said Litvinenko was too insignificant to be worth murdering. But the British government believes the Russian state killed Litvinenko in a carefully crafted plot.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/25/-sp-bill-browder-kremlin-threatened-to-kill-me-vladimir-putin
There are so many other examples, that the pattern is undeniable. Sorry if you've seen these before, there are others posted at DU such as a long list by Number 23, IIRC. But I'm busy and just found these to show you this guy's days may be numbered.
***So much for those who call Democrats 'authoritarians.' Who's kidding who?
Ah, I just posted before I read your reply. It's great your class is discussing that! An example:
President Obama Reacts to Netanyahu's Address to Congress
By Bloomberg Business - 2015-03-03
President Barack Obama talks about today's speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In his address, Netanyahu said an emerging U.S. agreement with Iran would backfire and ensure that the Islamic Republic would gain a nuclear arsenal.
Obama continues working on real peace, while media spins trivialities. Talk about 'wagging the dog.'
AC: educated, gay, 1% Vanderbilt heir, ex-CIA, does good! O'Reilly: bullies, lies, incites hatred.
And is chief of Roger Ailes' crew of guttersnipes.Love what Maru Kitteh said on that thread:
I happen to believe firmly that AC is one of the few out there that is the real deal. Hat's off.
I like him because he's not a shrieking carnival barker for either the left or the right.
Shrieking carnival barker is my new name for Bill-O. Thanks for posting this.
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