RUSSIA DESK

DENNIS RICHES—We can thank Stalin and the Soviet people for their sacrifice and their victory over fascism. They defeated the German army in Stalingrad, liberated Auschwitz and marched into Berlin for the final victory. If not for them, the world would have had to accept a Nazi empire with a nuclear arsenal ruling over Eurasia and continuing with its programs of slave labor and genocide. It is impossible to know what it might have done with nuclear weapons, either as a deterrent or as tools for aggression, but based on its record of brutality, it is not a pleasant thing to ponder.

The matter of Crimea’s reunification with the Russian Federation was settled in March 2014. This hard-won decision was made by the local residents themselves in a referendum that followed the unconstitutional coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014. This way Crimeans could remain true to their history, to their Russian culture, the right to speak their native languages, including Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar, and at the same time avoid the dangers of the punitive operation and civil war, which was later unleashed by the Kiev regime in Donbass, as well as the Nazi-like atrocities that Odessa residents suffered in May 2014.

NUSHIN ARBABZADAH—The Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan in 1996, by contrast, strayed from the path of tradition. In a striking breach of precedence, the Taliban militia did not make use of their unspoken right to pillage and loot. They searched the conquered populations’ homes, but only to confiscate weapons and so ensure a monopoly of violence for their state.

In a comical incident that features in Sabour Bradley’s documentary series The Extreme Tourist, the Taliban saw a poster of Rambo with a machine-gun in the home of an Afghan bodybuilder fan of the Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone. Ignorant of the world beyond the sharia law, the Taliban assumed that Rambo was a family member and told the bodybuilder: “Tell your cousin that he must hand over his machine gun to us.” The bodybuilder’s protestation that the poster depicted a fictional Hollywood hero fell flat with the Taliban, who subsequently imprisoned the man.

Corrupt neocon Russiagater Adam Schiff, one of Congress’s biggest criminals, is confronted by real journalist (The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal) and basically chooses to ignore him.

An interview with Oliver Stone in English, with French subtitles. 
The topics range from the Cold War, JFK, and Cuba to Putin and the emerging new Russia-China alliance. Truly must watch material, as usual.