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[lordtiberius]

Give me a break.  She made a fool out herself again.

[Doll]

You really shouldn't be seen laughing at your own midget president.
You may get a visit from the FSB men because of this...
 

Putin is not stupid, don't get excited

[BillyB]

Yeah.... Interesting that of all the Western world leaders, the German lady is the only one who has some balls 

Or a guilt trip for what Germany did to Russians. We'll see if Merkel's visit will get Putin to become a kindler, gentler man.

[Faux Pas]

Today John "Lurch" Kerry is back in Moscow soliciting Putin's help in Syria and nukes for Iran. I suspect the conversation will go something along the lines of "Listen, Vlad, if you'll help a bruddah out in Syria and Iran, I suspect we can forgive that little Ukrainian thingy while Barack is still in office"

 

[lordtiberius]

Syria is not going well.  Some of the regime flunkies are talking about evacuating.  Seems like the Mad King of Moscow can't save his friends and allies.  And what is Barack really offering?  He doesn't control al Nursa, FSA or ISIS.  BHO has no leverage on KSA, Turkey or the Gulf States the primary project champions of the Syrian ousters.  More of the same LOL diplomacy whose only tired refrain is "We're better than Bush."

[Brasscasing]

Syria is not going well.  Some of the regime flunkies are talking about evacuating.  Seems like the Mad King of Moscow can't save his friends and allies.  And what is Barack really offering?  He doesn't control al Nursa, FSA or ISIS.  BHO has no leverage on KSA, Turkey or the Gulf States the primary project champions of the Syrian ousters. More of the same LOL diplomacy whose only tired refrain is "We're better than Bush."

When the current administration was elected I commented (elsewhere) that four years from now (then) we'll be all reminiscing on the good old days of the Bush administration. I guess we can amend that to six years.

It'll be even worse if there's a modicum of truth to this latest supposed revelation...

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/241573-report-obama-lied-about-bin-laden-raid

It'll effectively nullify the one laudable act of the entire Obama administration.

Brass

[Doll]

Give me a break.  She made a fool out herself again.

Proud of it. From you- it is a compliment.

[lordtiberius]

Proud of it. From you- it is a compliment.

At least you are not a liar.

[Muzh]

Yeah.... Interesting that of all the Western world leaders, the German lady is the only one who has some balls 

Do you understand geopilitiks or just frothing from the mouth?

[Muzh]

Give me a break.  She made a fool out herself again.

Here's the other one.

She did not made a fool of herself.

Damn, I wish you people stop spouting idiocy.

[Muzh]

Article in the New Yorker
Putin's Victory Day, not my grandmother's

The holiday has never, in fact, been rooted in living memory. For the first two decades after the war, the Soviet Union tried diligently to forget it. Casualty figures were kept secret. Discussion of Nazi crimes was strongly discouraged, and books about the Holocaust were censored. There were no parades or fireworks: May 9th was a workday like any other.

It was during Leonid Brezhnev’s nineteen-sixties that Victory Day became a celebration of Soviet valor. The tradition of military parades in Red Square was launched; Great Patriotic War veterans were paraded before school children; Soviet directors began making movie after movie about the war. It was a freshly written history with some notable omissions: the Holocaust was never mentioned, the official casualty estimate was fixed at the staggering–but still low–figure of twenty million, and the name of the Red Army’s commander-in-chief during the war went unuttered.

Even twenty years after the end of the war, the number of veterans, many of whom had returned damaged physically or mentally, was starting to dwindle. To keep the pageantry going, the government kept expanding the ranks of people accorded the official status of Great Patriotic War veteran–first to include those who had never seen battle (because, in many cases, they had served in the secret police), then to include those who had worked in the rear for the benefit of the war effort, and later to include soldiers who had taken part in the Soviet Union’s later wars. My grandmother, in fact, received her veteran credentials as part of one of those expansions: her own plan to volunteer for the Army was foiled by pregnancy, so she stayed behind while her twenty-two year-old husband went off to the front and was killed.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vladimir-putin-victory-day-not-my-grandmother?mbid=nl_051115_Daily&CNDID=31904321&mbid=nl_051115_Daily&CNDID=31904321&spMailingID=7731377&spUserID=ODQwNTI2MDI2MjkS1&spJobID=681121154&spReportId=NjgxMTIxMTU0S0

So, Pitbull, Lyudmilla and Doll, did you or your parents were part of the "expansion?"

[Boethius]

The better half tells me that he was told that before 1965, veterans just got drunk, there were no celebrations.
 
Khrushchev released 7 million from the army, and after he was removed, there was concern in the USSR about that, in terms of social unrest. 
 
Brezhnev did not have support in the military, so part of the reason for creating a huge celebration was to mollify the Soviet military.  The Soviets even developed a song for veterans to come out on V-Day.   But, it does celebrate ordinary people who made sacrifices.

[lordtiberius]

Here's the other one.

She did not made a fool of herself.

Damn, I wish you people stop spouting idiocy.

So you agree with Brad?

[mendeleyev]

Doll, I disagree with much of the Obama mismanagement. Because I disagree, however, does not mean that I hate America.

I also disagree with much of the current Putin agenda. That disagreement, however, does not mean that I hate Russia.

In fact, kindly point out where, other than some political issues, I have demonstrated anti-Russian attitudes.

I am waiting for your evidence...

[pitbull]

Article in the New Yorker
Putin's Victory Day, not my grandmother's

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/vladimir-putin-victory-day-not-my-grandmother?mbid=nl_051115_Daily&CNDID=31904321&mbid=nl_051115_Daily&CNDID=31904321&spMailingID=7731377&spUserID=ODQwNTI2MDI2MjkS1&spJobID=681121154&spReportId=NjgxMTIxMTU0S0

So, Pitbull, Lyudmilla and Doll, did you or your parents were part of the "expansion?"

I'll tell you about my family. My grandmother as a young girl suffered through years of Nazi occupation in Belarus, with little to no food and under constant threat of death. I remember one story in particular when the Nazis stuffed her whole small village (women and children mostly) into the largest house and they spent hours there, while the Nazi soldiers waited for the final order to burn them. Those who tried to escape through the windows and run were shot dead. She never knew why they were let go, the two neighboring villages were burnt to the ground with all their people.


Her older brother enlisted as a very young guy and returned home with just one leg. He was considered lucky.


Her future husband went through the whole war, including the liberation of Europe. He came home alive, but his health was quite weak - her died in his 30s and left my grandmother to raise two small kids on her own, through the post-was period.


Roughly every 3rd person died in Belarus in this war, there is no family untouched by this war. Belarus was a separate founding member of the United Nations, together with Ukraine and the Soviet Union, to mark its huge sacrifice and input in the Victory over Nazis. I guess the world was a bit more grateful back then.


So Muzh, what is your problem that you feel the need to dig around in the mud and try to throw dirt? Putin or not, this past May 9th was a huge date for the world, my country and my family. You really need to grow up and show some respect. Or grow some balls like Angela Merkel did 

So Muzh, maybe your parents were part of the many Nazis that the US took in?

"In his new book, The Nazis Next Door, Lichtblau reports that thousands of Nazis managed to settle in the United States after World War II, often with the direct assistance of American intelligence officials who saw them as potential spies and informants in the Cold War against the Soviet Union."

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s

[Muzh]

So Muzh, what is your problem that you feel the need to dig around in the mud and try to throw dirt? Putin or not, this past May 9th was a huge date for the world, my country and my family. You really need to grow up and show some respect. Or grow some balls like Angela Merkel did 

So Muzh, maybe your parents were part of the many Nazis that the US took in?

"In his new book, The Nazis Next Door, Lichtblau reports that thousands of Nazis managed to settle in the United States after World War II, often with the direct assistance of American intelligence officials who saw them as potential spies and informants in the Cold War against the Soviet Union."

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-nazis-were-rewarded-with-life-in-the-u-s

Gee, no need to be so sensitive.

My wife's great Aunt, who died recently, was one of the survivors of her family at the hands of the Nazis. She saw her older sister shot dead for stealing a bit of oil to keep her family warm in the middle of the winter. Trust me, they have no love for what Russia is doing right now. As a matter of fact, they feel that the Nazis are threatening Ukraine's eastern border right now. Their words, not mine.

Regarding my parents family, well, one of my father's cousin, Lt. Frank Irizarri was a B-17 pilot and was shot down over France in 1942. He spent the war in a POW camp in Germany. My father was a just-turned 18 yo kid who served in the waning days of the Pacific theater and his older brother was a fighter pilot based in England. So, no. I don't think they were Nazis.

Regarding Nazis settling in the US, that's old news. As a matter of fact, US luminaries were Nazi sympathaizers. People like Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Joe Kennedy, et.al. were campaigning for Hilter before the start of the war.

So, why don't you talk about the neo-Nazi movement in the former Soyuz? Specially in Russia. Why so quiet?

[Belvis]

Regarding my parents family, well, one of my father's cousin, Lt. Frank Irizarri was a B-17 pilot and was shot down over France in 1942. He spent the war in a POW camp in Germany. My father was a just-turned 18 yo kid who served in the waning days of the Pacific theater and his older brother was a fighter pilot based in England.

You're in fact siding with Nazis when attack the Victory day. You're so different from your great kinsfolk who were fighting in WWII.

[Doll]

So, Pitbull, Lyudmilla and Doll, did you or your parents were part of the "expansion?"

I've never seen my both grandfathers because they were killed in this war- my Tatar granpa was killed on Ukrainian front,  Belorussian grandfather   was the leader of partisan group in Belorussia and was killed in 1943.
My father got through this war 1940-1946.
My mother worked for front.
 
It was the biggest holiday for my parents for all their lives. Dad cried on this day.
   

[AC]

You're in fact siding with Nazis when attack the Victory day. You're so different from your great kinsfolk who were fighting in WWII.

This does not fit the narrative they wish to tell right now.

excerpt
During a quarter century of our thousands of interviews with Holocaust survivors from Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, virtually all credit their survival (in contrast to their betrayal by nationalist neighbors) to the Soviet Union, which was the only serious force in Eastern Europe opposing the Nazis from Barbarossa through to the end of the war. There were no American or British troops in those parts. Most of this small remnant of East European Jewry survived by fleeing eastward to Russia early on (the flight survivors). Some escaped ghettos to join up with the Soviet-sponsored partisans in the forests (the Jewish partisans). And some were saved by inspirationally brave, righteous gentiles (the real local heroes of 1941, who should be honored with statues and streets named for them) who hid them until the Soviets came and freed them in 1944."


http://jewishcurrents.org/neocons-holocaust-revisionism-eastern-europe-30613

[Boethius]

"In his new book, The Nazis Next Door, Lichtblau reports that thousands of Nazis managed to settle in the United States after World War II, often with the direct assistance of American intelligence officials who saw them as potential spies and informants in the Cold War against the Soviet Union."

So did the Soviets.  Engineers and scientists, mostly.

[ghost of moon goddess]

excerpt
During a quarter century of our thousands of interviews with Holocaust survivors from Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, virtually all credit their survival (in contrast to their betrayal by nationalist neighbors) to the Soviet Union, which was the only serious force in Eastern Europe opposing the Nazis from Barbarossa through to the end of the war. There were no American or British troops in those parts. Most of this small remnant of East European Jewry survived by fleeing eastward to Russia early on (the flight survivors). Some escaped ghettos to join up with the Soviet-sponsored partisans in the forests (the Jewish partisans). And some were saved by inspirationally brave, righteous gentiles (the real local heroes of 1941, who should be honored with statues and streets named for them) who hid them until the Soviets came and freed them in 1944."


http://jewishcurrents.org/neocons-holocaust-revisionism-eastern-europe-30613

Yad Vashem has bestowed the ''Righteous Among the Nations'' title on 2,515 rescuers from Ukraine.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/statistics.asp

[AC]

Yad Vashem has bestowed the ''Righteous Among the Nations'' title on 2,515 rescuers from Ukraine.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/statistics.asp

And 6,532 from Poland, who likely suffered the most due to Nationalism in Ukraine and Germany.

[Muzh]

You're in fact siding with Nazis when attack the Victory day. You're so different from your great kinsfolk who were fighting in WWII.

Please, you of all people should not be labeling anyone a Nazi until you look in a mirror.

Heh, heh, heh

[Muzh]

So did the Soviets.  Engineers and scientists, mostly.

Pssst! Stop running around the room wielding a needle. 

[pitbull]

So did the Soviets.  Engineers and scientists, mostly.

I'd love to see some research.


Engineers and scientists are not concentration camp directors or guards like those US imported cause it was "geopolitically favorable"