Tag Archives: propaganda

The Srebrenica “genocide” UN resolution – a closer look

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On the 24th of May 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted the scandalous resolution on the “genocide in Srebrenica”:

84 countries voted in favour,
19 against,
68 abstained.

On our Telegram channel “Beorn and the Shieldmaiden”, we published a note of protest and translated two responses – one from the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Nebenzia, and one from Serbia:

Nebenzia said that the initiators of the adoption of the resolution on the “genocide in Srebrenica” are pushing Bosnia and Herzegovina to confrontation. The Russian Federation sees the resolution as a threat to peace and security in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the region as a whole

🇷🇸🇷🇸🇷🇸

In response to the scandalous UN resolution on Srebrenica, Belgrade began displaying a running line on a high-rise building:
“We are not a genocidal people. We remember.The proud Serbia and Republika Srpska.”

This elicited a rather vehement reply in the chat from someone who claims to have lived through the events. The ensuing discussion did not result in any agreement. However, the discussion itself was very valuable and polite. In the discussion, we referenced fragments of one report that we now decided to present in full below.

Genocide is a term that needs the strictest caution when used. The discussion directed attention to several points as to whether the claim of genocide is substantiated. These points get omitted when emotional responses to the tragedy in 1995 stand alone. Here, we want to address and outline those points:

  1. Was what happened in Srebrenica a genocide? No! The very name, limiting the scope of the crime to one place, indicates this. In the discussion, Israel and the genocide of the Palestinians was argued as a parallel with a request that we abstain from using double standards.
    Here, the case in point is: if some IDF officer bombed out one Palestinian village without the consent of the top command, then that would not be a genocide either, but a war crime, a massacre. What makes the killing in Gaza a genocide is precisely the fact that the IDF is acting systematically and methodically, exterminating all Palestinians with political consent of Netanyahu and the top Israeli military command.
    Hence, Srebrenica can be classified as a war crime, a massacre – just like the massacre of the Serbs in the village of Sijekovac by the Croatian army in April of 1992.
  2. In continuation, what the UN ruling on Srebrinica does is to dilute the definition of what “genocide” is, making it less meaningful in those cases when the genocide is really taking place.
  3. The resolution seeks to place guilt on the Serbs alone. This is done as a continuation of the fragmentation of the Serbian society into several enclaves and, where they can not be displaced, sucking the life force out of them as a nation. The same was done to Russia during the “Wild ’90s” when the constant imposition of guilt and the demand to apologise for all the achievements of the USSR was forced upon the Russians, singling out that one nationality.
  4. Who profits? The strong Serbian communists were the backbone of the Yugoslavian anti-fascist partisan forces during WWII, and the Serbian people to this day carry the collective memory of suffering from collaborators and horror.
    The festering ripping off of old wounds and the push for disintegrating internalisation of blame into a feeling of guilt is intended to become for Serbia what the “Versailles Treaty” was to Germany. The two likely outcomes – either Serbia collapses directly and Serbs disappear, or Serbs fight back, causing the war to flare up again with chaos and countless victims, including as many Serbs as possible – are equally beneficial to US-NATO as they both serve the ultimate goal since the start of the breakup of Yugoslavia: To end the existence of a Serbian people.
  5. The long-term goal of the “Srebrenica genocide” resolution is the real systematic genocide of the Serbs – just like the one that happened during WWII – and which won’t be treated as a genocide as the USA would say it’s OK, having pre-emptively labelled the Serbs as “sub-humans” with, among other things, this resolution.

Before going on, a highly-recommended documentary to watch is “The Murder of Yugoslavia. The Shadow of Dayton.” A Documentary by Alexei Denisov with English subtitles. The interview with Thierry Meyssan at VoltairNet, “Serbia was my textbook about lies”, is also of highest relevance.

Srebrenica, facts without propaganda

11.01.2022

While collecting material on the events in Srebrenica, I very often saw references to this article or quotes from it, but this is how I saw the entire article for the first time. I hope the reader will be interested to read it. Moreover, over the past few months, Srebrenica has once again become a very hot topic. This happened after the publication in July 2021 of the report of the Independent International Commission for the Study of Crimes against All Peoples in the Srebrenica region in 1992-1995. The chairman of this Commission, Gideon Greif, who himself survived all the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp in childhood, made a report to the Government of the Republika Srpska on June 11 last year [2021]. The need to create such a Commission is also mentioned in this article.

Of course, the events in Srebrenica were investigated before the work of this Commission, and many research papers were written. I would like to bring one of them to your attention. There are a lot of myths and various judgments around the events in Srebrenica. Let’s try to figure out the most common ones.

SREBRENICA 1995 – 2015

DRY FACTS WITHOUT PROPAGANDA AND EMBELLISHMENTS

Authors: Stefan Karganovich, Aleksandar Pavich
Consultants: Branko Pavlovic, Chaslav Mancic
Preparation: Miodrag Zharkovich
Editor: Mr. Anya Filimonova
Published by the Strategic Culture Foundation
Belgrade, June 2015

Introduction

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995 is a very important event. We appeal to those who are primarily interested in the truth, not the politicization of events. The 20th anniversary is an occasion to draw a line. Enough time has passed to collect in one place everything that is reliably known, what can be assumed, what can only be guessed. This is an event whose consequences have shaken the entire former Yugoslavia and influenced global world politics in general. The purpose of this publication is to present both to an expert and a layman in this matter in a concise form everything that has been determined so far on the basis of the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as what is still being disputed.

What motivated us to work on this publication?

– The truth is always needed by both victims as well as the accused and convicted, by historians who care about science, and politicians who care about the moral side of the case.

– When we do not know for sure what happened, we can confidently say that it did not happen, and the denial will be presented as the truth. The figures presented in the information space at the international level, on the territory of the former SFRY and for the Serbian public – about the “genocide” and the execution of 7-8 thousand Muslim prisoners of war from the Srebrenica enclave committed by “Serbian forces” do not stand up to any criticism. They simply do not correspond to the established facts;

– Arbitrary figures, virtually unsupported accusations, parliamentary and international “resolutions” and even sentences are used to poison the social, political, interreligious and interethnic atmosphere, sow discord, deepen disagreements and encourage extremism in the territory of the former SFRY. And this is definitely not in the interests of all countries and peoples. Except for those who are interested in constant destabilization, unrest and artificial separation of peoples;

– Srebrenica has been used many times and is still used as a convenient pretext for military aggression against sovereign states or interference in their internal affairs and for provoking internal conflicts (“we must prevent another Srebrenica” is a usual battle cry). That’s why it’s so important to establish the truth about what happened there, no matter how painful or cruel the truth may be for any party in that tragedy;

– After almost 20 years, the ICTY has failed to establish the truth, but only to label an event that has not yet been properly investigated, there is no reliable information about it. Therefore, in order to definitively establish the truth about the events in Srebrenica in July 1995, it is extremely important to create an international independent commission to determine exactly what happened in Srebrenica, so that this event ceases to have a political connotation and the mention of it ceases to be abused. This would finally bring peace to the victims, satisfy the families of the victims – and all normal people sympathize with these families, and it is not disputed anywhere that a crime occurred. The work of such a commission would open up an opportunity for truly facing up the past and for the reconciliation.

This publication is our contribution to the establishment of the truth about Srebrenica in the hope that it may encourage interested international forces, albeit with a huge delay, to take appropriate measures to finally determine its rightful place for this international problem. Without abuse, not to be used as a tool in politics, with no hidden intentions.

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Myths about Stalin. Where do legs grow from? Reblog of a detailed research article

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Black myths have always been attached to the Russian leaders who looked after the interests of the country and did not fall under the spell of the outside influences. Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin is one such leader, whose memory was defamed and desecrated both by the internal political rivals, like Hrushov, and by the external enemies. I plan to publish several articles that take aim at debunking these black myths surrounding the historical figure of Stalin. As always, when looking at history, one must remain dispassionate and look at the events not through the prism of modern sensibilities, but as a contemporary to the events, with all the challenges that the leadership of the USSR faced at that time.

Today, on the 145th anniversary of Iosif Stalin’s birth, I want to start with a reblog of an excellent article by Olga of the Siberian Matrëshka Telegram channel, which I can warmly recommend.

Myths about Stalin. Where do legs grow from?

Olga🪆July 21, 2023

First of all, there was no Communism in the USSR. The USSR had a communist state ideology and a socialist system.

One of the most terrible and destructive myths about the Soviet Union is the lie about the “bloody regime” of Stalin, who allegedly destroyed tens of millions of innocent people. Few people know that this myth was created back in Nazi Germany, and only later it was used by the United States in the information war against Soviet civilization.

Despite a number of fundamental studies based on the factual material of the archives, which showed the inconsistency of Joseph Stalin’s accusations of mass repressions and terror, the false myth supported by slanderers like Solzhenitsyn, Radzinsky, Suvorov-Rezun continues to dominate the information field of Russia and the world community. The dirty work of denigrating Russian and Soviet history continues, within the framework of the global historical and informational confrontation between Russian civilization (Rus) and the West. Citizens of Russia (especially young people), not to mention Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics, continue to be stuffed with horror stories about death and murder in labour camps of the GULAG (Main Directorate of Camps and Places of Detention), stories about millions of people who died of starvation and were deliberately destroyed in the USSR, about the alleged premeditation of the Holodomor in Ukraine, about the inhuman cruelty of the Soviet punitive system, “the bloodiest in the world”. The repressions against the kulaks and the “fifth column” take on an absolutely fantastic character in these stories, and Stalin becomes a villain of a literally galactic scale. All this is superimposed on the image of the USSR-Russia in the world – as an “evil empire” and “Russian Mordor”, where there live “fierce” Muscovites, scoops-padded coats, ready at the first opportunity to drown in the blood of all dissidents in Russia itself, as well as to drive to their “concentration camp” and the surrounding peoples.

The myth of the “bloody Stalinist regime” was created back in Nazi Germany. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, they used information and psycho-technologies to properly indoctrinate the population. The Minister of Propaganda was Joseph Goebbels, who propagated dreams of a racially pure people living in Greater Germany, an empire with vast living space. This living space included the territory to the east of Germany, the Russian lands, including Little Russia-Ukraine. The conquest of living space meant a big war, a war with the USSR. Therefore, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, headed by Goebbels, launched an information campaign around the alleged genocide organized by the Communists in Ukraine, the terrible famine (Holodomor) organized personally by Stalin. The purpose of the Nazi propaganda was to prepare the world community for the “liberation” of Ukraine by German troops from the “bloody Bolshevik yoke”. Later, the Ukrainian Nazis (Bandera) used the same lie about an artificial famine to sit on the neck of the people of Little Russia-Ukraine.

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The Upside-down World of the Western Main Stream Media (MSM)

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MSM – only the truthful information

I’ve been meaning to post the above caricature for quite some time, but as it is usual with many of my posts, it’s been sitting in draft until I felt it “matured” enough. Now, I saw a convergence of two seemingly insignificant events, that made it feel like a good time to post this image.

It is not a secret that anything published in the Western main-stream media about Russia (as well as China, or Syria, or any other state that the Western elites feel is in need of some “democratic bombings”), is presented through a certain prism, where either partial truths or outright lies are given to the audience to form an image of an enemy.

This can be seen in the materials, published both…

… in Peace …

Seemingly such an innocent thing, a report by one of the many Russian TV channels on a vegetable shortage in Europe… But look how it got blown out of proportions both by the 5th column inside and the agents of influence outside of Russia.

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Dutch journalist: Truth in the war in the Ukraine plays a minor role

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This is a translation from Russian of an interview with the Dutch journalist Olaf Koons, published in “Argumenty i Fakty” on the 8th of October 2014.

Dutch journalist Olaf Koons, visited many times the hot spot in the east of Ukraine, and shared with the “AiF” his opinion about what he saw.

The western journalist has an opportunity to cover the conflict from both warring sides.

Vladimir Polupanov, “AiF”: Olaf, you recently returned from another trip to the Donbass. I know that you were in Lugansk, Donetsk, Ilovajsk, Mariupol. What did you, a foreigner, understand about this war?

Olaf Koons: That it is completely pointless, unnecessary and fratricidal.

– In your opinion, who is fighting whom there?

– First of all, the state propaganda wages war from both sides. This is a very powerful thing. The truth in this war plays a small role. The most important role is played by the desire of people to win at any cost. This is what kills them …

Certainly, there is a big geopolitical conflict between Russia and the West, but in the Donbass local people are fighting. 90% of the militias are locals. And in Kiev, they stubbornly do not want to believe it. Two weeks ago I was in destroyed to the foundation Lugansk airport, where there were positions of Ukrainian security forces. In the basement, where the soldiers, they left a lot of books – Andersen’s fairy tales, for example, some men’s magazines. Guess what is the language of these books? Correct – they are in Russian.

– The picture that you saw with your own eyes, is very different from that shown on television?

– The picture is not different. It is one and the same. The question is – how it is all explained and interpreted. You probably read “Life and Fate” by Vasily Grossman. It’s the first time I saw first-hand how it looks in reality. Under Lugansk I saw a village with such level of destruction that is beyond words, – the remains of huts, the church with a fallen dome, tanks and burnt bodies.

Fact:
About 30 destroyer battalions are fighting on the side of Kiev against the militia of the self-proclaimed republics.

– And a strong hatred on both sides?

– Yes, hatred is very strong. And it’s terrible. To understand where the virtual front line is, it is enough to see which search engine is used by the parties. If Yandex – it east, if Google – then west.

– Is a real peace possible there?

– I think that this war is there a long time. Everything’s destroyed, nothing works there. At best, these self-proclaimed republics will be similar to Transnistria. Among the militia they are in a mood to go if not to Kiev, then at least to Slavjansk. The National Guard and Ukrainian battalions (of which there are about 30) also have a desire to continue to fight. Moreover, the elections are coming soon in the Ukraine. So in the near future I think peace will not come to the Donbass.

– What difficulties are faced by the foreign journalists in this hot spot?

– It is difficult place to work. But what’s interesting – you can cover the conflict from both sides and give a more or less objective picture. Because in Syria or Iraq one can only work on one side. In Donbass, after every half kilometre there are roadblocks, where there are all kinds of people, among them there are inadequate. One of the features of this war – everyone resembles each other. Battalions and militia are sometimes completely indistinguishable from each other. Last time I was present at the prisoner exchange on neutral territory, where representatives of the Ukrainian army and militias met. At some point I ceased to understand where is the Ukrainian army, and where are militias. They are all in camouflage, all rough, all swear with Russian obscenities.

But the prisoners, by the way, are very different. They are quite different from each other. The prisoners who were captured by militia are the people of about the same age – young privates. Prisoners captured by Kiev party are usually ordinary people, farmers who only yesterday were digging potatoes. We see that it is certainly not the military.

And another interesting point: in places where the prisoners were exchanged, the reporters of, for example, the First and Perche channels come face to face. And they look at each other with the same hatred as front-line soldiers.

A lot of nonsense

– How is this conflict covered in the Dutch media? You surely have your own propaganda.

– You know, there’s a big difference between propaganda and stupidity (bad journalism). In the Netherlands, a lot of the bad, stupid, journalism. Most Dutch journalists writing about the conflict in the Donbass, have never been there and do not understand what they write about. After the fall of the “Boeing”, the country was awash hatred of Russia, and the people (not at the behest of the state) just splashed out their emotions. But it did not last long. In our embassy here if there are three people speaking Russian, then it’s counted for a lot. In Dutch universities if there are three departments, where they teach the Russian language, Russian literature and Russian politics, then it’s considered as much. There are at most 5 Dutch journalists working in Russia.

If at the university and diplomatic levels there are not many experts, if there are so few journalists, we can understand what the picture of Russia consists of in Dutch society.

– Why do the Dutch not show sufficient initiative to investigate the disaster of “Boeing” at the Donbass?

– A large investigation is under way in the Netherlands, but very slowly. You know, the Dutch have a problem – we all want to make the Dutch way. If in some faraway country where there is war, a plane falls with Dutch citizens on board, then in the Dutch view the crash site should immediately be cordoned off, closed from outsiders and investigated in the Dutch way: very clearly, prolonged, surveying everything meter by meter. It didn’t happen here. I can not say that everyone is happy with how the process goes. For example, I do not understand why I got to the site a day after the fall, while the Dutch experts came there a week later. Spent there a couple of days and left. Because they were afraid. I do not understand why I could work there, but they could not.

– What conclusions could you make while at the crash site?

– I do not know who shot down the plane. If I had my own version, I would have published it on the front pages of all Dutch newspapers. I also do not know what happened on September 11th in America. I was not there. But we have some consensus about what happened there. I think that after some time we’ll get a consensus also in the case of the crash of the Malaysian “Boeing” in the Donbass.