European court rules against Russia on 1940 Katyn massacre

[Ray]

I'm not your human rights naive activist. I have no illusions about the state of World human rights affairs, especially for those powerful countries, I'm merely stating one of the compelling reason for Polish attitude against Russia (I know we have a sizable Russia-huggers here in this forum).

To be frank, I am neither a Russian hugger nor a Western opinion hugger.

I am but a realist who sees events as fairly and neutral as humanly possible.

If one sees the events of human rights, one will find that it is the western viewpoint which is taken to be the correct and only viewpoint regarding the violation of human rights and the actions taken by the western world as the best way to address the same.

If it were fair, then I would not have quibbles. But is it ALWAYS fair? That s the vexing issue!

Visit the issues of Belgium Congo where insurrection continues and where people are dying daily and there is no accountability and why?

The killing of Patrice Lumumba. Why?

Rwandan genocide. Why is there nothing constructive being done to get the perpetrators? And when it was a worse genocide than Saddam, why did the Western world not intervene here first and not in Iraq, where there was not much going on in comparison?

Zimbabwe. Mugabwe is a tyrant no better than Saddam, and possibly even worse. How come Zimbabwe did not come into the realm of 'Bringing Freedom' that was applied to Iraq?

Iraq. Where was the WMD? And was the insufferable regime of Saddam any less than many others around those parts? How come suddenly Syria is in the focus. Has Syria become so horrible in the last couple of years?

What about Sudan undertaking genocide on the Black Sudanese? How come the human rights abuse there not becoming a cause célèbre?

Why is Charles Taylor the only one indicted by the court at Hague? It takes two hands to clap!

Any more examples you want?

My point is that all these issues are selective and it does not always indicate the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In so far as the Communist Countries or colonial or imperial powers it requires none to elaborate their human rights abuses.

If one digs up history or sees the events happening even now, there is human rights abuses by all countries without exception.

However, the countries which have the media hold over the English speaking world shapes the international opinion.

However, that grip is also going. See Al Jazeera. It proves a fitting challenge to the media Tsars of the western world.

In so far as the media controlling countries, why go far. What Murdoch has done proves that the book Almighty was not terribly wrong!

 

[spikey360]

^^Our hyprocrite Malaysian friend, too fond of double standards and having an enormous affinity for playing the victim card is not in a position I guess to answer such tough questions. I don't think his American masters would be very pleased with his emerging incompetence to address the challenges thrown to him in this thread alone.
All he cares about is conjuring up ghosts from the past, for which the victims themselves were to blame largely. I would not be surprised if he takes up the cause of Indian Maoists next. After all, the Indian forces are 'violating' the rights of Indian citizens, aren't they 'AsianObserve'?? Or is India not Asia?

Oh, digging skeletons from the closet...

This proves what a hypocrite you are. Digging skeletons yourselves and blaming others who follow you. Typical American-slave attitude.

 

[asianobserve]

^^Our hyprocrite Malaysian friend, too fond of double standards and having an enormous affinity for playing the victim card is not in a position I guess to answer such tough questions. I don't think his American masters would be very pleased with his emerging incompetence to address the challenges thrown to him in this thread alone.
All he cares about is conjuring up ghosts from the past, for which the victims themselves were to blame largely. I would not be surprised if he takes up the cause of Indian Maoists next. After all, the Indian forces are 'violating' the rights of Indian citizens, aren't they 'AsianObserve'?? Or is India not Asia?

And all you care to hear is for Russia to be taken seriously again..... Russia is a sick joke!

 

[asianobserve]

To be frank, I am neither a Russian hugger nor a Western opinion hugger.

I am but a realist who sees events as fairly and neutral as humanly possible.

If one sees the events of human rights, one will find that it is the western viewpoint which is taken to be the correct and only viewpoint regarding the violation of human rights and the actions taken by the western world as the best way to address the same.

If it were fair, then I would not have quibbles. But is it ALWAYS fair? That s the vexing issue!

Visit the issues of Belgium Congo where insurrection continues and where people are dying daily and there is no accountability and why?

The killing of Patrice Lumumba. Why?

Rwandan genocide. Why is there nothing constructive being done to get the perpetrators? And when it was a worse genocide than Saddam, why did the Western world not intervene here first and not in Iraq, where there was not much going on in comparison?

Zimbabwe. Mugabwe is a tyrant no better than Saddam, and possibly even worse. How come Zimbabwe did not come into the realm of 'Bringing Freedom' that was applied to Iraq?

Iraq. Where was the WMD? And was the insufferable regime of Saddam any less than many others around those parts? How come suddenly Syria is in the focus. Has Syria become so horrible in the last couple of years?

What about Sudan undertaking genocide on the Black Sudanese? How come the human rights abuse there not becoming a cause célèbre?

Why is Charles Taylor the only one indicted by the court at Hague? It takes two hands to clap!

Any more examples you want?

My point is that all these issues are selective and it does not always indicate the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In so far as the Communist Countries or colonial or imperial powers it requires none to elaborate their human rights abuses.

If one digs up history or sees the events happening even now, there is human rights abuses by all countries without exception.

However, the countries which have the media hold over the English speaking world shapes the international opinion.

However, that grip is also going. See Al Jazeera. It proves a fitting challenge to the media Tsars of the western world.

In so far as the media controlling countries, why go far. What Murdoch has done proves that the book Almighty was not terribly wrong!

Nice list. But they don't interest me. Maybe you should start a thread about all those atrocities...

 

[spikey360]

And all you care to hear is for Russia to be taken seriously again..... Russia is a sick joke!

Ah, there you go again, in absence of valid logical reasoning, you resort to ranting. Carry on, 'Tsar' Putin is taking note.

Nice list. But they don't interest me. Maybe you should start a thread about all those atrocities...

Why would it interest you? it does not serve the purpose of Uncle Sam, your one true Master. You don't care about justice, you don't care about rights. All you care about is showing America, surrounded by a godly halo, which by the way, and in opinion of not only me, but many other countries in the world a satanic stench.

 

[Ray]

Nice list. But they don't interest me. Maybe you should start a thread about all those atrocities...

It is not that I want to start a thread on these atrocities.

All my contention is that these atrocities are a dime to a dozen and so highlighting one is of no use, except for:

1. Knowing and learning about an atrocity; or,

2. Propaganda.

Taking a moral high ground is a waste of time except for academic purpose.

 

[asianobserve]

It is not that I want to start a thread on these atrocities.

All my contention is that these atrocities are a dime to a dozen and so highlighting one is of no use, except for:

1. Knowing and learning about an atrocity; or,

2. Propaganda.

Taking a moral high ground is a waste of time except for academic purpose.

Maybe you should have read my previous posts. I have no moral intention in posting this Thread. I'm simply trying to highlight the thorn in POlish-Russian relations. I find this relevant in light of the comical threats of Russia against their smaller neighbors on the missile defense shield...

 

[pmaitra]

Maybe you should have read my previous posts. I have no moral intention in posting this Thread. I'm simply trying to highlight the thorn in POlish-Russian relations.

You are carrying out a Polish propaganda, and presenting merely the Polish PoV. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with others countering you either.

I find this relevant in light of the comical threats of Russia against their smaller neighbors on the missile defense shield...

Comical indeed:

Mikhail Saakashvili, flanked by the Georgian and EU flags, eating a tie,

Russian Forces confiscating US military equipment from Georgia.

All I can say is that this unnecessary needling of Russia by US from all angles will do not good.

 

[asianobserve]

Why would it interest you? it does not serve the purpose of Uncle Sam, your one true Master. You don't care about justice, you don't care about rights. All you care about is showing America, surrounded by a godly halo, which by the way, and in opinion of not only me, but many other countries in the world a satanic stench.

Off-topic. :cool2:

 

[asianobserve]

Comical indeed:

I admit this shot is comical... :thumb:

 

[Ray]

I find this relevant in light of the comical threats of Russia against their smaller neighbors on the missile defense shield...

I don't think anyone feels that it is a comical threat.

The ABM and Russian resistance is a hot issue in Europe.

The threat is real for both Europe and Russia, depending on who is observing the same.

 

[asianobserve]

You are carrying out a Polish propaganda, and presenting merely the Polish PoV. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with others countering you either.

To accommodate your concern, here's an article from the Proletarian Online claiming that Katyn is NAZI handiwork (never mind the archival documents released by Yeltsin):

"The German Nazis committed the Katyn massacre
Why are we being lied to?



The hype surrounding the film Katyn suggests that 'we' have been misled for years into thinking that it was not the Soviets but the German Nazis who committed the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn.

The opposite is the case. The most cursory examination of history books and the internet will prove that we have been told over and over again that it was the Soviets who committed this heinous crime – and in most cases the possibility that it could have been the Germans is not even mentioned.

The facts

The fact is that the bodies were shot by the Nazis and with German bullets. These bullets were still in the bodies when they were exhumed.

Goebbels, who masterminded the campaign to put the blame on the Soviets in order to cause trouble between the Soviet Union and Poland in a vain attempt to save the German fascist empire, wrote in his diary on 8 May 1943: "Unfortunately, German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn "¦ It is essential that this incident remains top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would have to be dropped."

The German Nazis had killed the Polish officers in order to ensure permanent weakness in the Polish armed forces, which might otherwise have been able to resist them. According to Nazi propaganda, the Slavs, including the Poles, were an inferior race which had to give way to the needs of the Germans for Lebensraum (the Nazi quest to expand eastwards to occupy new land and utilise the space and raw materials for Germany). All Slavs were expendable.

The historical context in which these events occurred arose out of the peace treaty that followed the first world war. After this war it was necessary to allocate disputed territories between various contending parties. To define Poland's eastern frontier, recommendations made by Lord Curzon were accepted, but Poland laid claim to more territory than this, to areas largely inhabited by Byelorussians and Ukrainians (with very few Poles) to the east of what came to be known as the Curzon Line and which had been ceded to the Soviet Union.

Poland forcibly seized back this territory, and kept hold of it until 1939. The Soviet Union reoccupied it after the Nazis invaded Poland and the Polish government fled. Hundreds of Polish army officers who had resisted the Soviet advance were imprisoned at Katyn in the Ukraine, where they were given road-building and other such types of work.

Two years later, on 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union by surprise. The Red Army was forced hurriedly to retreat and the Ukraine was taken over by the Germans. During this hurried retreat, it was unfortunately not possible to evacuate to the Soviet interior the Polish prisoners of war, and they were left behind to be taken over by the Germans, who then massacred them.

Goebbels' lies

The idea of blaming the massacre on the Russians did not arise until some two years later. This big lie was initiated by Goebbels in order to prevent Germany's opponents from uniting. The Germans even purported to announce the names of the Soviet camp commandants who had been in charge of the massacre, attributing to most of them jewish names! All these names were fictitious.

Although there was plenty of evidence that it was the Germans who committed this atrocity, including the evidence of pathologists who examined the corpses and affirmed that the date of death had to have been during the time of the German occupation, this evidence has been suppressed, while Goebbels' lies have subsequently been taken up by all powerful anti-communist forces, from the wealthy press barons, through Polish landlords, to Gorbachev, who has since admitted that he devoted his whole life to the surreptitious dismantling of communism.

All these haters of communism have joined together to put into effect the Goebbels maxim of repeating a big lie often enough because in this way people will believe it. These lies are disseminated through school and university textbooks, but, just in case this isn't enough, now we are subjected to them in popular culture in the form of a film designed to play on emotions in order further to popularise fear and hatred of communism.

Why has this film appeared now?

It is surely no coincidence that we find ourselves at the start of what will probably be the worst recession the world has ever experienced to date.

This recession is caused by the fatal and irremediable flaw in the capitalist system, namely, that to maximise profits it is necessary to reduce the incomes of the vast majority of the people in the world. Relatively impoverished as they are, they cannot purchase the vast masses of goods and services that are today produced using less and less labour power.

But all capitalist wealth depends on being able to sell the products of capitalist industries. There is no shortage of people who want to buy, but a very dire shortage of people who can afford to buy.

Capitalism can never avoid its cyclical recessions because of this trap that it is helpless to do anything about. And the major recessions exact a terrible price in human terms – increased deaths from starvation, subhuman living conditions for the vast majority of humanity, more environmental degradation and, worst of all, the probability of a new world war.

The only way out of this vicious cycle is to deprive the multi-billionaires of their ownership of the means of production and to institute planned production aimed at directly satisfying the needs of the working people rather than allowing the economy to remain in the hands of multibillionaire capitalists who will only produce and distribute good if they can make a profit. This is the socialist system that the Soviet Union established, and which the lies about the Katyn massacre seek to discredit.

The severely increased misery and hardship that lies ahead for working people is bound to cause them to question the capitalist system of production and to realise that socialism is the only possible alternative. This is especially the case in the former socialist countries, where people are finding out the hard way how much better off they were under socialism.

The rich, powerful and influential of the capitalist world, however, stand to lose everything if the mass of working-class people are mobilised to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, because socialism deprives them of the wealth they have accumulated by exploiting the working class (ie, keeping for themselves a substantial part of what is produced through the labour of the working class).

The capitalist class will commit any crime to keep that wealth. To tell lies to avert the possibility that they will ever be required to hand it over is as nothing.

A film like Katyn, if it keeps or makes enough people anti-communist, or even if it neutralises them in the inevitable future struggle to put an end to capitalism and replace it with socialism, will have achieved its purpose of prolonging the agony of the vast majority of humanity so that capitalism can live to fight another day.

Katyn massacres - a Nazi, not a Soviet crime! "

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

 

[asianobserve]

All I can say is that this unnecessary needling of Russia by US from all angles will do not good.

I don't think anyone feels that it is a comical threat.

The ABM and Russian resistance is a hot issue in Europe.

The threat is real for both Europe and Russia, depending on who is observing the same.

So both of you agree that Poland and other smaller Eastern European countries should have limited sovereignty out of consideration for Russia's feelings...?

Reminds me of how the Western powers agreed to Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia so as to maintain peace in Europe...

 

[pmaitra]

So both of you agree that Poland and other smaller Eastern European countries should have limited sovereignty out of consideration for Russia's feelings...?

Reminds me of how the Allied forces agreed to Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia so as to maintain peace in Europe...

It doesn't suit a chihuahua to attempt to growl like a Husky. It looks silly, and the results are often humiliating, like eating a tie.

The US could do nothing, except issue empty warnings to Russia during the Russo Georgian War. Do you think NATO will step in if Russian forces invaded Poland? They can occupy Poland in a week if they want to, despite NATO. Heck, NATO even struggled with the Serbs.

Keep posting your propaganda. As I said, you have every right to do it.

P.S.: Yugoslavia was a communist country too. Was it not sovereign? Was it not outside the Warsaw Pact? Was Iran not sovereign? Was Finland not Sovereign? All were neighbours of the USSR.

 

[asianobserve]

It doesn't suit a chihuahua to attempt to growl like a Husky. It looks silly, and the results are often humiliating, like eating a tie.

I'll bet my right ball that Poland is no chihuahua against Russia (Russia knows this). Of course there'll be no shooting war in that region, there's nothing to be gained by all parties.

 

[pmaitra]

I'll bet my right ball that Poland is no chihuahua against Russia (Russia knows this). Of course there'll be no shooting war in that region, there's nothing to be gained by all parties.

I have no interest in any bet that involves your genitalia.

Here is a pictographic simile:

Poland (left) - Russia (right)

 

[asianobserve]

P.S.: Yugoslavia was a communist country too. Was it not sovereign? Was it not outside the Warsaw Pact? Was Iran not sovereign? Was Finland not Sovereign? All were neighbours of the USSR.

1. Tito knew better, he split from the USSR" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito–Stalin_split
2. This is an interesting Cold War political term: FINLANDIZATION Finlandization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[asianobserve]

I have no interest in any bet that involves your genitalia.

Here is a pictographic simile:

Poland (left) - Russia (right)

If history can be a gauge of how these countries will perform against each other in a future conflict, maybe this can provide a clue... Polish–Soviet War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[pmaitra]

If history can be a gauge of how these countries will perform against each other in a future conflict, maybe this can provide a clue... Polish–Soviet War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Did you see the date? 1919. Rings a bell?

1917 - Russian Empire ends.
1919 - USSR is created.

Guess what? Poland got into this war just when Russia was weak. So you are only confirming what I had said earlier. You only attack when the enemy is weak.

Added:

"Although there had been hostilities between the two countries during 1919, the conflict began when the Polish head of state Józef Pilsudski formed an alliance with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura (21 April 1920) and their combined forces began to overrun Ukraine, occupying Kiev on 7 May."

Historical assessment

Despite the final retreat of Russian forces and annihilation of their three field armies, historians do not universally agree on the question of victory.[N 1] The Poles claimed a successful defense of their state, while the Soviets claimed a repulse of the Polish eastward invasion of Ukraine and Belarus, which they viewed as a part of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War.

 

[pankaj nema]

Frankly even the Polish people Today might not know about this Katyn Massacre

I am hearing it for the first time

That whole period of WW 2 was horrible WIth SIXTY million deaths

And Poland has SPONGED of USSR ever since WW2 till 1989 with the Warsaw Pact and all

SO they have been compensated enough And the Soviets defeated the Nazis and gave freedom to Poland

This is why this Katyn massacre is such an obscure foot note in history

Because the Poles are not complaining