ANTISOVIET PROPAGANDA MADE IN PUTIN'S RUSSIA

An open letter to the editors of the wsws web site

  

Dear Sirs,

I am a Russian living in (East) Germany since 1983. I was born in 1956 and remember well enough what my parents (my father was a soldier in the Soviet Army during the WW2), my grandparents and many other elderly people who unfortunately are now dead, told me about the times of the WW2. Therefore I am immune against the present efforts by capitalist propaganda to viciously defame the Soviet Union. On the other hand, I have no illusions about the despotic rule of Mr. (not "comrade"!) Stalin and consider it as an anti-communist regression into the tsarist past.

Generally I enjoy reading the articles published by wsws. Unfortunately the film review "Beanpole (Dylda): Disturbing scenes of post-war Soviet life" by Ms. Clara Weiss ( https:// www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/17/dyld-j17.html ) is a very different kettle of fish. First of all, I am convinced that any review advertising this disgustingly false anti-communist film by the unscrupulous and ignorant putinoid spit licker and scoundrel Balagov does not deserve to be published by your web site.

What Ms. Clara Weiss pathetically tries to "discuss" is plain calumny and lies. I didn't watch the film, but I know pretty well how dishonest and false are the films about the Soviet era which are produced now in Putin's capitalist Russia. This knowledge and the text by Ms. Clara Weiss allow me to tell you confidently the following:

1) All those Soviet people who lived through the WW2 remembered the war time not only as extremely hard, but also as permeated with genuine solidarity and mutual willingness to help, unseen neither before, nor after the war. You should know that whereas the wars of the US-imperialism turn GIs into monsters and psychotics, the righteous war effort of Soviet people made them more humane towards each other. This was told to me even by an elderly acquaintance of my parents who was unjustly imprisoned in 1937 and then volunteered to join a penal battalion of the Soviet army. The first engagement with the enemy was survived by him and just two dozens of others (out of approx. 150 men), and the survivors were transferred either into the regular military service or hospitalized.

2) What a disgusting psychopathic fantasy of misanthropic jerk Balagov is the scene of a female nurse strangling a little boy! I must tell you that such atrocities were simply impossible in the Soviet Union! Putinoid scumbags (Mr. Balagov and his ilk) are handsomely paid for telling shameless and outrageous lies about the Soviet people depicting them as murderous monsters, prostitutes and pervs - in order to brainwash the young generation of Russians, to make them believe that the Soviet past was no better than the horrible inherently criminal and psychopathic reality of capitalism in present-day Russia with all its monsters plus corruption and lawlessness of officialdom and bitter misery of the people...

3) Concerning the sexually perverse scenes in this film reported by Ms. Clara Weiss: I must tell her that there was an overwhelming aversion among Soviet people against homosexualism. Well, there was a lot of promiscuity after the WW2, because far too many men were killed in action, and a certain part of the survivors preferred not to marry but to use this opportunity for having simultaneous sexual relations with a number of women. But Ms. Clara Weiss must know that even in prison camps Russian women would rather masturbate than succumb to lesbian perversion. I heard that from an elderly lady who was imprisoned for 10 years in Stalin's Gulag. Generally, both men and women in the Soviet Union considered homosexualism as degrading, as a sign of personal and social failure - as a man and respectively as a woman.

Summing up: Ms. Clara Weiss before trying to write anything about the Soviet Union in WW2, should first learn telling the truth from lies by reading works of Mr. Simonov, Mr. Sholokhov, Mr. Tvardovski and many others who saw the horrors of WW2 with their own eyes.

SAVE JULIAN ASSANGE FROM THE USA-UK KANGAROO COURT

Repost of the text “Ecuador Hints It May Hand Over Julian Assange to Britain and the US” published here: https://www.globalresearch.ca/ecuador-hints-it-may-hand-over-julian-assange-to-britain-and-the-us/5640357

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“Julian Assange is in immense danger. Remarks made this week by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks editor in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities.

On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US, Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not been heard from.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.

If Assange falls into the hands of the British state, he faces being turned over to the US. Last year, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, asserted that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks courageously published information leaked by then Private Bradley [now Chelsea] Manning that exposed war crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks also published, in partnership with some of the world’s major newspapers, tens of thousands of secret diplomatic cables, exposing the daily anti-democratic intrigues of US imperialism and numerous other governments.

For that, Assange was relentlessly persecuted by the Obama administration. By November 2010, it had convened a secret grand jury and had a warrant issued for his arrest on charges of espionage—charges that can carry the death sentence. The then Labor Party government in Australia headed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard threw Assange, an Australian citizen, to the wolves. It refused to provide him any defence and declared it would work with the US to have him detained and put on trial.

On June 19, 2012, under conditions in which he faced extradition to Sweden to answer questions over fabricated allegations of sexual assault, and the prospect of rendition to the United States, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuador’s embassy in London.

Since that time, for nearly six years, he has been largely confined to a small room with no direct sunlight. He has been prevented from leaving, even to obtain medical treatment, by the British government’s insistence it will arrest him for breaching bail as soon as he sets foot outside the embassy.

The Pursuit of Julian Assange is an Assault on Freedom and a Mockery of Journalism https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pursuit-of-julian-assange-is-an-assault-on-freedom-and-a-mockery-of-journalism/32459

Now, for six weeks and three days, he has been denied even the right to communicate.

Jennifer Robinson, the British-based Australian lawyer who has represented Assange since 2010, told the London Times in an interview this month:

“His health situation is terrible. He’s had a problem with his shoulder for a very long time. It requires an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging scan], which cannot be done within the embassy. He’s got dental issues. And then there’s the long-term impact of not being outside, his visual impairment. He wouldn’t be able to see further than from here to the end of this hallway.”

The effort to haul Assange before a US court is inseparable from the broader campaign underway by the American state and allied governments to impose sweeping censorship on the Internet. Lurid allegations of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US election and denunciations of “fake news” have been used to demand that Google, Facebook and other conglomerates block users from accessing websites that publish critical commentary and exposures of the ruling class and its agencies—including WikiLeaks and the World Socialist Web Site.

WikiLeaks has been absurdly denounced as “pro-Russia” because it published leaks from the US Democratic Party National Committee that revealed the anti-democratic intrigues the party’s leaders carried out to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary elections. It also published leaked speeches of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that further exposed her intimate relations with Wall Street banks and companies.

As part of the justification for Internet censorship, US intelligence agencies allege, without any evidence, that the information was hacked by Russian operatives and supplied to WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton and assist Trump—whom Moscow purportedly considered the “lesser evil.”

In response to the hysterical allegations, WikiLeaks broke its own tradition of not commenting on its sources. It publicly denied that Russia was the source of the leaks. That has not prevented the campaign from continuing, with Assange even being labelled “the Kremlin’s useful idiot” in pro-Democratic Party circles. WikiLeaks is blamed for Clinton’s defeat, not the reality, that tens of millions of American workers were repulsed by her right-wing, pro-war campaign and refused to vote for her.

Under conditions in which the Ecuadorian government has capitulated to great power pressure and is collaborating with British and US agencies to break Julian Assange, there is an almost universal and reprehensible silence on the part of dozens of organisations and hundreds of individuals who once claimed to defend him and WikiLeaks.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in February 2016 condemned Assange’s persecution as “a form of arbitrary detention” and called for his release, has issued no statement on his current situation.

In Britain, the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn have said nothing on the actions by Ecuador. Nor have they opposed the determination of the Conservative government to arrest Assange if he leaves the embassy.

In Australia, the current Liberal-National government and Labor leadership are just as complicit. The Greens, which claimed to oppose the persecution of Assange, have not made any statement in parliament or issued a press release, let alone called for public protests. Hundreds of editors, journalists, academics, artists and lawyers across the country who publicly defended WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 are now mute.

A parallel situation prevails across Europe and in the US. The so-called parties of the “left” and the trade unions are all tacitly endorsing the vicious drive against Assange.

Around the world, the Stalinist and Pabloite pseudo-left organisations, anxious not to disrupt their sordid relations with the parties of the political establishment and the trade union apparatuses, are likewise silent.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International unconditionally defend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. If the ruling elite can haul him before a court, it will hold him up as an example of what happens to those who speak out against social inequality, militarism, war and police-state measures. His prosecution would be used to try to intimidate and silence all dissent.

If Assange is imprisoned or worse, and WikiLeaks shut down, it will be a serious blow to the democratic rights of the entire international working class.

Workers and young people should join with the WSWS and ICFI in demanding and fighting for the immediate freedom of Julian Assange.

The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site

Copyright © James Cogan, World Socialist Web Site, 2018”