82

The Magnitsky case: another example of manipulation in western media war against Russia

by Eric Zuesse


An accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, was employed by a wealthy American investor, William Browder, and died in a Russian prison on 16 November 2006. How did it happen; who was to blame for it? The Russian Government was blamed for it, and this blame produced in 2012 the first set of economic sanctions to squeeze Vladimir Putin out of power.
Magnitsky’s death in prison thus provided the factual basis for the first of the economic-sanctions regimens that were imposed by The West against the Russian Government, the 2012 Magnitsky Act — sanctions that preceded the 2014 sanctions which were imposed on account of Russia’s response to America’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine. However, that account of the Magnitsky incident is full of lies, according to a 2016 documentary investigation into the matter. But publication of this video investigation — at youtube or anywhere — is effectively banned in The West.
Here’s how Gilbert Doctorow, who is one of the extremely few people in The West who managed to see this totally-suppressed-in-The-West investigative news-documentary that was done (and which he said proved to him that the basis of the Magnitsky Act is lies) expressed his shock, at what he saw and learned from it:

Nekrasov [the investigator] largely allows William Browder to self-destruct under the weight of his own lies.A film review: Andrei Nekrasov, ‘The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes’

The case against Browder that Nekrasov unintentionally stumbled upon when making the film is clearly so persuasive and so massive that even some leading members of the anti-Putin coalition in Europe feel strongly that the truth must out, whatever the consequences. … [But] lynch law necessarily operates. Human rights watchers everywhere, beware! … Nekrasov has not been a friend, still less a “stooge” of the Putin regime. Indeed, as he explained at the start of his brief speech, before taking the assignment to do a film about Magnitsky. … Nekrasov had friendly relations with Bill Browder [the U.S. oligarch who was behind Magnitsky].The Empty Seat: William Browder Once Again Takes Charge at the European Parliament

Furthermore, another investigator, Alex Krainer, had his book, which was published on the matter, withdrawn promptly without explanation; so, Krainer put his investigation online, and its findings were entirely consistent with Nekrasov’s findings. The video is embedded above, the transcript can be found here.
And here are my own transcriptions of highlights from the video:

  • 22:00: “The Magnitsky Act is essentially where the new cold war started” “in 2012, yes? And that’s right before Ukraine.
  • 25:00: “The bigger agenda is … Basically what happened during the 1990s when Russia went from communism to capitalism, there was a massive massive transfer of wealth from Russia to The West. So, Western financial institutions and government organizations like the United States Treasury and State Department and USAID, the IMF, the World Bank, and so forth, they arranged this massive transfer of ownership over Russian assets to the Western hand, some of it legally, some of it illegally, but they so completely infiltrated the Russian Government.”
  • 26:00:: “Between $200 billion and $600 billion, depending on whom you ask, of Russian assets were moved to Western ownership. And Bill Browder himself, I think, made maybe a hundred million dollars, maybe a few hundred million dollars, for himself. The reason why his ability to frustrate Russian investigations of his tax-fraud and of his theft of Russian asssets that he was involved with [is that] at the same time [he] protect[s] all of the people and organizations like … HSBC, and Bank of New York, and who knows who else, it’s … legal immunity from prosecution, for all of them.”
  • 27:00: “So, it’s not just Browder’s few hundred million, but up to $600 billion of stolen assets, so that when Russia goes to Western courts, they are obstructed.”
  • 29:40: “Bill Browder is in this network where, essentially, laws don’t apply to them.”
  • This is the Krainer book, The Killing of William Browder, which, finally in 2017, he placed free online. This is an excerpt:

    It is clear that shock “therapy” was little more than a relentless, cruel strangulation of Russia’s economy to facilitate looting of her vast industrial and resource wealth. Nonetheless, most Western-published analyses of this episode tended to treat it as [a] failure of good intentions. While lamenting the outcomes and certain questionable practices, most analysts essentially attribute the failure of [the] Russian transition to honest errors, Russia’s endemic corruption, and perhaps inexperience in many of the drama’s protagonists. In New York Review of Books, Robert Cotrell provides a typical example:
    “One cannot really fault the youthful democratic movements for this failure. They were amateurs and innocents with a hazy grasp at best of what they wanted to achieve and no grasp at all of how concretely to achieve it.”
    Goldman Marshall of Harvard and the Council of Foreign Relations, wrote:
    “To be sure, there were unsettling reports of shady dealings during the takeovers, but most observers explained them away as inevitable side effects of such a far-reaching transformation.”
    Naturally, Marshall fails to detail how or where he polled these “most observers,” but his message to the readers is unmistakable: move along folks, there’s nothing to see here – especially pay no attention to the fact that many of those thousands of westerners who came to Russia “for the best of reasons,” including Bill Browder, Andrei Schleifer and Jonathan Hay, returned from Russia as multi-millionaires. Financial reporter Anne Willamson, who covered Russia for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, [and whose book on the subject has likewise been banned] rightly remarked in her Congressional testimony that, “Americans, who thought their money was helping a stricken land, have been dishonored; and the Russian people who trusted us are now in debt twice what they were in 1991 and rightly feel themselves betrayed.”
    p. 75, The Killing of William Browder

    Anne Williamson’s book on the subject, Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty, Russia, and the United States in the 1990s, was to have been published by a major publisher in or around 1999. It too was completed, but never published; and she did not place hers online, because she’s still hoping for a publisher. But she has summarized, here, her findings.
    In an interview, Williamson explained why no publisher has published her book on the subject:
    http://web.archive.org/web/20020809170802/http://www.russians.org/ann_wndr.htm
    More about Harvard’s involvement in “the rape of Russia” can be found here:
    http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml
    An excellent article about the ways in which today’s Russian Government is trying to extricate itself from the enormous harms that the rape of Russia perpetrated, can be found here:
    http://www.israelshamir.com/article/the-rich-also-cry/
    The war between The West and Russia has been restored, on the basis of news-suppression, if not of outright lies. For some reason, anyone who independently investigates the ‘historical’ account of the origin of the Magnitsky Act is effectively blocked from making public their findings. And, for some reason, the findings, in the three independent investigations that have been done, seem to be essentially the same as each other, and they contradict, each in the same ways, the ‘history’ that has been published about the matter, in The West.
    The other main basis for The West’s sanctions against Russia concerns Ukraine (the U.S. coup there in 2014), and that matter produced both the increased sanctions against Russia, and the massing of NATO weapons and troops on and near Russia’s borders — all likewise on the basis of lies.

    Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

    SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

    If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

    For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

    Categories: latest, Media Criticism, Russia
    Subscribe
    Notify of
    guest

    82 Comments
    newest
    oldest most voted
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    Devan
    Devan
    Feb 5, 2018 1:49 AM

    And Bill Browder has his fans in the House of Lords. https://drowningwitches.com/2017/12/19/5757/

    Charlie
    Charlie
    Feb 3, 2018 10:21 PM

    Browder is not a nice man

    Max Paine
    Max Paine
    Feb 3, 2018 10:18 PM

    Thanks good article.

    summitflyer
    summitflyer
    Feb 3, 2018 2:45 PM

    Downloaded the e book .Will read at my leisure. Thank you Alex Krainer,Eric Zuesse and OffGuardian for making this available to the public.Brouder has done a good job so far of covering his tracks but the truth always finds a way of seeing the light of day.I hope that he spends his last days behind bars.

    rtj1211
    rtj1211
    Feb 3, 2018 8:59 AM

    What a surprise. American crime covered up as America never commits crime, is always good and benevolent.
    ‘Do unto others that which you would have done unto thee’ is a quotation Americans should use when inviting the world to loot America…..

    Jerry Alatalo
    Jerry Alatalo
    Feb 3, 2018 4:19 AM

    Our recent post on the William Browder-Magnitsky Act historic scandal relies on the outstanding investigative work of Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan, co-hosts of “Fault Lines” radio, and two of the few journalists on Earth focusing on this immeasurably important story.
    Mr. Stranahan has rightly described Browder-Magnitsky as the most important story in the world – which nobody is covering. Do the research, then take the actions deemed necessary – most importantly, widest dissemination of the truth.
    https://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/u-s-congress-trump-ignore-truth-on-william-browder-magnitsky-act/

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 3, 2018 12:03 AM

    The source of an argument is irrelevant to its truth, and the typical Trump-Russian method is to indicate the interests of those they speak against. We are just glad the expanding Putin has no interests! The Putinophile Republican led U.S. congress voted 98-2 to keep the sanctions, but that is the same sort of argument. Guess we are just prejudiced against and incapable of trusting tyrants who invest heavily in the suppression of free speech and press.

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 3, 2018 12:11 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    The irony is this comment of yours consists solely of “indicating the interests of those you speak against”.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 12:45 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    Rather, there is an EMPIRICAL EXAMPLE of arguing based upon the interests of those Russia finds it advantageous to argue against. Just saying a thing is false does not make it false, unless you are a Trump-Russian, listening only to Fox news and discounting “MSM” with a mere name. Alex Jones Bright Bart and Adolph Hitler surely do not believe in disinformation on purpose as a political method, so we give everything they say an equal hearing, like, you know, pizzagate (not). They would never say, like, the Pope supports Trump if they did not have empirical evidence. So, WHY is murder wrong? Ask Vlad.

    Nancy Grayson
    Nancy Grayson
    Feb 12, 2018 1:27 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    Your grammar is terrible, you use intermittent punctuation, so it’s real hard to tell exactly what you are trying to say, but if your are saying the liberal media don’t lie and don’t make claims without evidence I’ve just got a couple of questions for you about a few recent claims made by the liberal media. For example
    no.1: Russia hacking DNC
    no.2: White Helmets being heroes unconnected with ISIS
    no.3: Putin has billions of dollars stashed away and is a kleptocrat
    no.4: Putin had Boris Nemstov murdered
    no.5: Putin had Litvinenko murdered
    no.6: Russia shot down MH17
    no.7: Russia invaded Georgia
    no.8 : Russia invaded Ukraine
    no.9: Assad used chemical weapons in Idlib and Ghouta
    no.10: Iraq had WMDs
    no. 11: The Gulf of Tonkin really happened
    Each of these stories appeared in the liberal media as being true. So, find me some “empirical evidence” for each and every one of them and I’ll let it pass. If you can’t do this admit you’re talking horse shit and that our media lies, every day, all the time about practically everything.

    George Cornell
    George Cornell
    Feb 13, 2018 8:30 AM
    Reply to  Nancy Grayson

    !!!

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 2, 2018 11:55 PM

    Now deconstruct the Kaspersky spying and while your at it, the 30-70 million killed in Marxist Russia. Some people think tyranny is good and murder fine, that is how it happens. Oh, and, they believe in controlling opinion, explicitly, as a political method.

    Big B
    Big B
    Feb 3, 2018 10:04 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    “Some people think tyranny is good and murder fine,”
    They are called Americans. You can double your fictitious numbers, and include at least one homeland ethnic cleansing, and two genocides – that are the foundation of the American Dream myth. Russia was never Marxist. [Well, maybe, for six years?] And the ‘Free’ West invented “controlling opinion” as the invisible government. Dream on.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 12:23 AM
    Reply to  Big B

    Count the corpses of Twentith Century Totalitarianism, (and one need not defend Andrew Jackson to do so.)

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 12, 2018 2:38 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    That would be an interesting study: no doubt supporting the inevitable conclusion that it is the state itself that is the totalising power …irrespective of whether it comes from nominally socialist or capitalist roots?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 3:27 PM
    Reply to  BigB

    The Declaration is not “Capitalist,” Marx gave us those opposites. Though it does allow the free market, and “usury,” or investment. Russia had a chance to join the free world, and has so far used it for other purposes, no?
    “The state” is not the same as the 20th century tyrannies on the Left and right extremes, guilty of kill about 1 million of their own people per year when no civil war is even occurring. The numbers for Russia are 30-70 million per year from 1917-1989, but it is hard to count that many corpses.

    Lemony Snicket
    Lemony Snicket
    Feb 12, 2018 3:35 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    On another thread you were asked a question by a commenter. You’ve ignored that question while continuing to post elsewhere. That behaviour indicates you may be trolling. But here’s a second chance at engaging in real discussion.
    Show us solid documented evidence for Russia behaving more immorally and less legally than nations in the “free world.”
    Put up or admit you can only troll evidence-free sniping.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 4:21 PM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    You are wrong about trolling, and I do not have the corpses piled up in my yard. I admit that I believe Paul Johnsom, because that account coheres with many other things, while lies do not cohere. math can be cross checked. but I will post a crime committed by the Trump organization on twitter that is provable and traceable. If you do not look and understand, I cannot do that for you. mmcdonald77 Twitter, in 5 min. My face, but not my clothes, look:

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 12, 2018 5:55 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    People are finding it very difficult to know what you are talking about.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 6:14 PM
    Reply to  Admin

    I am not a troll, and the accuser has spoken falsely. Is that too hard? The principle of identity? Ok.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 4:24 PM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    Because I know myself, I know you are wrong.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 4:25 PM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    “That behavior,” yes, mommey! Your gravitar is prostituting you.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 9:57 AM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    I once had a conversation with B. F. Skinner, who taught us to use that frankly annoying word “behavior.” He is not my mommy either. Understand? And if you think tyrants (you do admit that Vlad is a tyrant, correct?) “behave” ethically, I would have you ask Mr. Browder and Mr. Magnitsky. Understand? Sometimes I speak sarcasticly, and sometimes implicitly. Congress voted 98-2 to impose sanctions,

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 12, 2018 8:40 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    The numbers for Russia are 30-70 million per year from 1917-1989
    Are you insane? That would result in total depopulation in 2-3 years.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 12:47 AM
    Reply to  BigB

    Correction of a misprint, 30-70 million, about one million per year from 1917-1989, when no civil war was occurring, while the Nazis- who learned the concentration camp from Stalin- killed about 6 million and 6 million others from about 1938-1945. The population of the USS was similar to the US, about 250 million around 1989, speaking loosly. There is a reason for this volume of corpses. The corpses are just a symptom.

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 13, 2018 1:22 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    Just to clarify, you’re saying the Russian government killed 1 million of its citizens in concentration camps in 1989?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 1:49 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    Just to clarify, you are hairsplitting when they killed 30-70 million from 1917-1989, oughly, by the most conservative estimates, not counting famine in the Ukraine, the Katayn forrest massacre of Poles, etc? Like the holocaust, do you not need to grant the point? Read Solzhenytsyn. Or is he fake news? But I hope it ended in 1989, and they failed to hit their quota, which I did not say they hit in 1989. Look up the numbers, google it from multiple Sources, and let it sink in deep. Paul Johnson’s Modern Times has an index and chapter titles, take it up with him. Putin is KGB. How do you think he rose to power in Russia. That’s all were saying.

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 13, 2018 2:38 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    You could have just said “no I was taking an average”. Thanks anyway.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:11 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    Apologies for many misspellings. My “r” does not work on this machine, speaking roughly, and too fast.

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 13, 2018 10:32 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    You just typed several “rs” in that sentence.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:43 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    Indeed, the keyboard r does not work, so I have to use the touchscreen r, and sometimes I do not see the missing letter. Satisfied? Have you seen the photo ? There was intentionally no photo of me anywhere on the internet, and the crime is provable and traceable.

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 13, 2018 2:45 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    What photo? Not wanting to be rude but you are spamming this site with repeat posts that seem barely coherent. Could you slow down a little, explain yourself a bit more? If not we are going to pre-mod your posts for a while, just to stem the tide a little.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 5:36 PM
    Reply to  Admin

    The Photo on mmcdonald77Twitter is traceable and proof of a crime, quite serious, as there is no other photo of me ever set on the internet. I was asked to prove things. And I was asked to reply to 6 things. Bye,

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:46 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    I would spell out the significance of it, but I’ll let you all think it out, especially since I can’t spell!

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:49 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    I will print some things from Paul Johnso, though, since no one gets the difference between tyranny and liberty, let alone that between Twentieth Century ideological tyranny and the garden varieties known to the ancients.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 16, 2018 7:44 PM
    Reply to  Admin

    And you could have just said, Thanks?

    bevin
    bevin
    Jul 29, 2018 7:12 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    Paul Johnson ids not reliable in this matter.
    The figures that you use were developed by the Foreign Office for propaganda purposes.
    The Holodomor, to which you refer never occurred- there were famines in the Soviet Union at the time of collectivisation, the Soviet form of the enclosure movement which is almost always a part of capitalist development, and Ukraine was badly hit, though not as badly as other parts of the USSR. But the nonsense that thew famine was a genocidal weapon aimed at the Ukrainian people is Nazi propaganda of the sort treasured by the Bandera nationalists. These last it ought to be noted committed real genocidal crimes, well documented too,, largely at the expense of Polish and Jewish communities.
    It is a fact rarely noted that, after the end of the Second World war in which an estimated 20 plus million Russians were killed, the most catastrophic decline in population and life expectancy occurred after 1989 in the period of capitalist restoration in which market ideologues and others with your viewpoints dominated both Russia and the other former soviet repiublics.
    As to Solzhenitsyn he was a novelist and people like you are his worst nightmare.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 2:11 AM
    Reply to  Admin

    Pol Pot in Cambodia killed 3 million in 3 years, and Maoist China about 40 million, but they have a lot more people. Tyranny is nasty, twentieth century ideological totalitarianism is especially nasty, and Putin is a tyrant, we are not sure what sort. But Trump admires tyrants, like Duterte, Erdugan, etc, and that is the one consistent point in his platform. Flynn, Manafort, and every person in his campaign has illegal or highly questionable ties to Russia. I had Kaspersky, and saw what got through. Did you see the composite photo on Twitter?

    Big B
    Big B
    Feb 13, 2018 10:29 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    The corpses are just a symptom …of government?
    You are using fictitious figures in an ideological and partisan way, just as most who study democide do (e.g. Rummel – Death by Government – largely ignores the US as a leading megamurderer.) Despite his omissions, and sketchy figures – Rummel still manages to make the salient point …governments were the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century; killing, he says. four times the number that died in war. The conclusion is non-ideological and clear …there are no bloodless regimes.
    Hierarchical exploitative dominance structures, i.e. the state, exist for a purpose other than the greatest common good? Time for an emergent and non-dominant, non-perpetuating, non-totalising form of government would be the conclusion I would draw?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:39 AM
    Reply to  Big B

    There is something deeper that is wrong. Both forms of 20th century tyranny arise out of German philosophy.

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 13, 2018 12:00 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    Kant, Hegel, Nietsche and Heideger versus Smith, Ricardo, Locke and Friedman …with Marx and Hayek commuting between …the capitalist ideologues were not all German? WW1 was an inter-capitalist imperialist war …of which WW2 was the logical extension: determined by the Treaty of Versailles (which was the ideological seed bed for Nazism) l could go on, but suffice to say you seem to have an ideological blinker to the totalitarian nature of capitalist imperialism?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 5:39 PM
    Reply to  BigB

    OK.

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 13, 2018 10:52 AM
    Reply to  Big B

    I might add that it is not just each other our ponerological political economies have no regard for. We are also perpetrating mass ecocide. The 6th Mass Extinction is well underway and has accounted for 40% of the megafauna in the last few decades. Government and economy with soul replacing instrumental rationality and externality would seem to be the exigent moral imperative?

    Thomas Peterson
    Thomas Peterson
    Feb 13, 2018 10:49 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    did they really kill 70 million people?
    pretty wild figure, what’s the evidence for it?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 10:59 AM

    30-70, about one million per year in Germany, Russia, China and Cambodia, totaling what, about 125 million high end estimates, and that is when no war or civil war was occurring, and does not count the famines and wars caused by Nazism on the right and Communism on the left. There is a “Menshevik” strain of Communism, like in Yugoslavia and Cuba, that is not quite so wicked as that say shown in the movie “The Killing Fields,” about Cambodia under Pol Pot. Fascism too in Italy and Spain failed to kill one million per year. Our point is that there is a theoretical mystery to the cause of this, and that it is different from, say, the “state,” or killings in just wars. Our KKK, too, does not quite fit my theory, but that (The American South) was the first nation based on the principle of race, ever.

    Thomas Peterson
    Thomas Peterson
    Feb 13, 2018 12:14 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    yes thanks, i was wondering what the actual evidence was of millions being killed in the Soviet Union, do you have any?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 5:38 PM

    There is wikipedia, which I trust.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 11:03 AM

    Wikipedia:
    The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[2][dubious – discuss] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 11:04 AM

    Wikipedia:
    The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[2][dubious – discuss] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.
    …According to these scholars, the total death toll of the mass killings defined in this way amounts to many tens of millions; however, the validity of this approach is questioned by other scholars. In his summary of the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, Martin Malia suggested a death toll of between 85 and 100 million people.[1]

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 11:05 AM

    Mass repression in the Soviet Union
    Economic repression
    Collectivization Dekulakization Soviet famine of 1932–33
    Political repression
    Red Terror Great Purge Gulag Psychiatric
    Ideological repression
    Religion 1917-1921 1921–28 1928–41 1958–64 1975–87 Christianity Islam Legislation Science Censorship Images
    Ethnic repression
    Antisemitism Holodomor NKVD Polish Operation Population transfers

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 11:09 AM

    Its pretty nasty. Macabre, and the cause does not appear. I have witten on Twentith Century Ideological Tyranny on wordpress, but we lack the categories to discuss the hypothesis regarding the cause. Genocide, Classocide, and next religiocide (like ISIS), though, see the killing as spiritual and a means to an inverse utopia. ‘Nuff said.

    George Cornell
    George Cornell
    Feb 13, 2018 11:32 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    Nuff said indeed.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 11:11 AM

    But hence, we do not trust Putin, and anyone who thinks these Ruskies are normal businessmen, for example, is a fool. Americans are sooo stupid.

    Hannah32
    Hannah32
    Feb 13, 2018 2:22 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    @mmcdonald72014 – That’s some pretty major and evidence-free race-hate you have going there

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 5:37 PM
    Reply to  Hannah32

    Race hate?

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 13, 2018 4:03 PM

    No is the short answer. Stalin’s democide would account for 6-9 million …maybe adding a percentage for unrecorded extra-judicial killings, so 15mn tops. [Robert Conquest, Timothy Snyder.] The Holodomor was not a genocide (though neither was Stalin blameless); and the Katyn massacre was not carried out by the NKVD. After Stalin, the democide ceased, and there were maybe 3,000 state sanctioned executions? Contrast with America, whose various interventions account for 20-30 mn deaths post-war.
    http://www.hangthebankers.com/us-regime-killed-30-million-people-ww2/
    My POV is not to validate any particular political economy: but to stress that we cannot look back, but must look forward to a transcendent future political economy if we are to avoid another century of war and democide.

    BigB
    BigB
    Feb 13, 2018 4:07 PM
    Reply to  BigB

    [Meant as a reply to Thomas Peterson above.]

    bevin
    bevin
    Jul 29, 2018 7:29 PM

    The figures are a mish-mash of claims, guesses and propagandistic inventions. The Ukraine Famine claims originated in Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda shop.
    As to the charges of deaths caused by the Chinese Communist Party they are wild unsubstantiated and wholly unreliable.
    It is one of the more interesting and significant aspects of these attacks on the Communists that probably the worst crimes of the era were those committed by the Japanese, but since they slipped quickly into the role of dutiful anti-communist ally of imperialism, they were excused.
    The fact that the current Japanese Prime Minister’s father, whose record Mr Abe proudly defends, was a war criminal is little mentioned. Just as the fact that successive south Korean leaders were collaborators who fought in the Imperial Japanese forces is obscured.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 3:30 PM
    Reply to  BigB

    There are states that do not do that, and uphold free speech rather than propaganda or “Kompromat” as a method.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 3:31 PM
    Reply to  BigB

    So we ask “WHY (italics) is murder wrong.” Gangsters, indeed, have trouble answering. It is not easy, by the way.

    Thomas Peterson
    Thomas Peterson
    Feb 3, 2018 10:33 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    What Kapersky spying?
    Don’t tell me you believe the unevidenced rubbish you read in the media?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 12:28 AM

    You know first hand, and not from “media?” No one else believes it either, that’s why were still allowing 4 hunrded million security accounts to be administered through truth-telling Moscow.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 12:31 AM

    Give your theoretical account of WHY murder is wrong. Do you have such an account? And where did you get it, media? Empirical observation? Or do you not have it?

    Nancy Grayson
    Nancy Grayson
    Feb 12, 2018 1:30 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    wtf are you talking about?
    No offence.Just asking.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 7:44 AM
    Reply to  Nancy Grayson

    And you are not saying why you think murder is wrong, nor is Putin. No offence, just asking again, to see if you’all can answer. I thought you could not answer. But enough.
    P.S. you missed a space there between offence and just, so I just can’t understand what your saying. Plato, Crito, 49d. But speech, have you ever noticed, assumes that truth and justice are the goals, not power.

    Lemony Snicket
    Lemony Snicket
    Feb 12, 2018 12:09 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    @mmcdonald I’m confused, why do you keep asking people why murder is wrong? Do you not know?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 9:49 AM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    You know, say it. It’s not MSM. But I suspect that Putin and Trump do not believe THAT murder is wrong. Crito, 49b. The why takes us to the root of law, and I do not think we can go there here. We will stick with the second sentence of the Declaration, all 4 clauses, and we apologize if people here find such talk difficult to understand..

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 7:47 AM
    Reply to  Nancy Grayson

    …And those stupid gravitar pictures are not chosen by me, and I do not think we should allow companies to do that. We have a constitution.

    Thomas Peterson
    Thomas Peterson
    Feb 12, 2018 4:06 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    murder is wrong because we dont have the right to end the life of another human being like ourselves.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 4:29 PM

    And do you see that gangsters do not believe THAT murder is wrong, let alone consider why? And are there no circumstances in which we do not have such a right? Of are we simply to believe the second sentence of the Declaration, without examining the reason that this is true? Either are fine with me.

    Lemony Snicket
    Lemony Snicket
    Feb 12, 2018 5:24 PM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    What gangsters?
    The gangsters who murdered millions in Iraq in an illegal war?
    The gangsters killing teenage stone-throwers in Israel?
    The gangsters in the IMF defrauding citizens all over the world, killing them by neglect and deprivation in order to stuff their pockets and enhance their power?
    The gangsters in Syria, funded by NATO to murder and maim in pursuit of illegal regime change?
    The gangsters in Libya who destroyed civilised country and murdered its head of state on TV?
    The gangsters in Washington who sign off on extraordinary rendition, torture and drone-murder?
    If so – yes. I do see they do not believe murder is wrong.
    Or did you have some other gangsters in mind I didn’t name?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 6:13 PM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    Indeed, Trump and Putin. Accusations do not seal arguments, nor do ad hominem arguments demonstrate anything. We think free government allows for something like penance to occur politically, while tyranny leads to disaster. But if that is too hard, go support Assad and the Russians in the Ukraine, since they are not there.
    To say that others murder does not clear one of murder. Or do you say it does? You are only doing what they did? Ok. All are wicked, so we can only choose wickedness? Too difficult? Plato, Crito 49b, there is nothing else one can do for you, Trump or Putin. I am sure Hillary is a very bad girl, so go be bad, and hope the soul is not immortal. We cannot look, consider and understand for you, and some are not capable.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 13, 2018 9:45 AM
    Reply to  Lemony Snicket

    I am interested in what our government has done in Libya, and have heard some things worth looking in to. We are citizens of what, prior to Trump, was the leading nation of the free world, with a vote, representatives and a responsibility. But clearly you do not get, say, the difference between tyranny and liberty, or, say, a mafioso made man, who becomes such because he does not believe THAT murder is wrong, an a usual person, who, as Nancy said, knows THAT murder is wrong, if they cannot give an account of WHY. #2, if one throws stones at a cop on any u. S street, what would occur? I will blog on Israel/Palestine, as people forget 1947, when the UN GAVE each a Sovereign nation, and 5 Arab nations were not satisfied, attacked Israel, and lost a war they started. #1, Saddam attacked Kuwait, remember, and Maggie Thatcher taught the first Bush to say “This aggression will not stand. We might then have gane to Bahgdad, but other nations did not agree, so we had a treaty, which Saddam violated, interfering with inspections. There were no WMD’s, contrary to a Trumped up CIA report apparently designed to gain unanimity in the UN, as I understand it, destroying the career onf Colin Powell. The Iraq war was back on, and we removed a tyrant. They did not want us there, so we left, and ISIS entered. Correct, or no? #5 I have opposed torture even of torturers to my Trumpster representative, but he thinks that if it prevents for example a terrorist bombing, it is justified. I agree with John McCain, arguing that if there is something better we could do, that saves even more lives, we are obligated to do that, and that is even to love our enemies. Even still, compare the US “extr. rend.” to the tortures practiced by Saddam, not to mention Assad. Consider the Human Rights Watch and other reports on his prisons. Even Trump acted when Assad chemical attacked kids, and Putin bombed a hospital to cover for him, though of course they will say, what, we did that? I do not know about money and the IMF, but it would not surprise me if oligarchs care more about money than justice (and so must be regulated), just as tyrants care more about power than justice, thinking justice to be a matter for fools who are not manly enough to impose their will. So, what is the difference between tyranny and liberty? Donney likes Duterte. Can you name one person in his campaign who does not have illegal ties to Russia? His go back to 1987, before Gorbachav, and Sessions owned the building where, in 2013, they held the most Christian miss universe pageant.

    Thomas Peterson
    Thomas Peterson
    Feb 16, 2018 9:16 AM
    Reply to  mmcdonald72014

    ” We are citizens of what, prior to Trump, was the leading nation of the free world, with a vote, representatives and a responsibility.”
    Stop mouthing idiotic cliches please.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 16, 2018 12:51 PM

    Im just glad you all would never do such a thing!
    Are YOU a free man?

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 16, 2018 12:52 PM

    Too bad such a saying has become cliche’

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 12, 2018 4:31 PM

    But I do have to go get busy, and will come back later, despite the gravitar, but not for my sake.

    mmcdonald72014
    mmcdonald72014
    Feb 15, 2018 8:06 PM

    I thought, maybe they do not know what a gravitar picture is, and that is why they have trouble even knowing what I’m talking about. Or maybe they do not get wikipedia and twitter.

    Max Paine
    Max Paine
    Feb 2, 2018 7:22 PM

    Is anyone finding it hard to comment on here? I have tried four times now.

    Charlie
    Charlie
    Feb 3, 2018 10:48 PM
    Reply to  Max Paine

    my comments often just don’t go through – no moderation sign or anything , they just vanish, sometimes they go blank or seize up before I even finish typing

    Admin
    Admin
    Feb 3, 2018 11:59 PM
    Reply to  Charlie

    I think we may be having renewed issues over the last day or so. Several people have said their comments disappear as soon as submitted or while typing. Apologies to all for any inconvenience. There’s not much we can do about it sadly. We always advise people to make copies of longer comments and if their comment doesn’t appear immediately (or if it’s not shown to be pending, supposing you have several links) post it again as we will almost certainly not have received it.

    George Cornell
    George Cornell
    Feb 2, 2018 6:43 PM

    Nice to hear the other side. The Americans are such habitual liars, this version of the events does appeal.