14.12.2021
http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/node/5747/
“Today’s hot topic: Agriculture.”
They were both glancing through the day and were once again surprised how ordinary the agenda seemed.
Half an hour went by as two middle aged men went about and fetched coffee, brewed tea, sat and read for a short moment then got up again with some other excuse. The shed was vibrant with boredom.
“I need to stop. Okay, some development in the realm of agriculture – the country’s self sufficiency level is rising for some categories. Not fruit and berries.”
“Neglected arable land. Owners of the land sit on it while prices increase in order to sell with a profit. From a food production perspective, it’s a problem.”
“Machine park needs renewal. Prices for combine harvesters too high. Loan programs executed. Overall report by the Minister of Agriculture seems to have the Duma’s approval.”
“They have a lengthy review of some laws on election in single-mandate constituencies. I see a democracy at work, not much else.”
Vyacheslav Volodin
VYACHESLAV VOLODIN (UNITED RUSSIA, CHAIRMAN OF THE DUMA)
Dear colleagues, we have an open system: there were four factions in the State Duma, now there are five. And if we talk about the quality of work, everything has been done to ensure that each faction has equal opportunities, this is completely unprecedented, and we will not see this in other countries.
As for the development of the political system, it has stages. And speaking about this, it would be right to emphasize: we did not have parties before, they were created in 2001 based on the law that was adopted. In order for the parties to develop, the legislation was built - first of all for this. Now we have gone through certain stages and we see: the party system has established itself, it shows efficiency and openness. Therefore, now we can discuss the norms of the law, where we are talking about quality and constant feedback with citizens. But we must give this right to regional legislators, let them, based on their situation, take and make these decisions, this is what we are talking about.
— News headlines and perceptions —
“Oleg Nilov does have a short comment on the overall importance of self sufficiency.”
OLEG ANATOLYEVICH NILOV (FAIR RUSSIA - FOR TRUTH)
There is no need to remind you how revolutions in Russia began, both in 1917 and in the 1990s - with hunger riots, strikes, tobacco riots, this is the only possible basis for carrying out coups, at least in Russia, for sure, there is no other way. And all these sanctions, blockades, disconnection from SWIFT… No, this is not the goal, the goal is not to tear the Russian economy to shreds, the goal is to bring our citizens to hunger riots
“As expected. Of course the Russian occupy a very different universe when it comes the East-West conflict. These voices should have been unearthed in a humble and simple way by professional journalists. Not as an item of ridicule – the ridiculer seldom shows better judgment that the ridiculee – but simply as a piece in the puzzle of the world. Imagine these headlines!
Alarmist voices in the Duma:
"EU and USA uses sanctions to trigger revolution in Russia" Pro-European parties in the Rada:
"Russia wants to eradicate all Ukrainians" And then the article would quote these voices and the responses as well. We need cultural insight to see where things are going.”
“Ok. Back to the agenda. In general Russia seems to match the development in most other countries in a world struck by pandemic. It must manage swings in the economy and ensure production levels.”
“When looking at the entirety of the discussions for that day, if you had not told me it was a Russian assembly, I could not have told you which country I was looking at.”
“There is no mention of Ukraine and the war at all. Quite the contrary, their discussions fly in the face of our picture of Russia as a Stalinist totalitarian state where dissidents are regularly poisoned and citizens tortured for kicks.”
“And this is the oddest part: Were do we get these pictures? Media? Peruse any number of articles, and they cannot be said to purport such a black-white picture.”
“Which means it is done magically through hints and headlines. After all, what is a headline? A summary of the article? Almost the contrary. How many people only see the headlines? And yet, journalistic responsibility is for the whole of the article, not the damage done by a headline. The nuanced view comes in the article.”
“Let’s propose a new norm for public speech all journalism and all political debate: Furnish a random pick of people with these transcripts that we are now reading. If they are surprised because their mental image mismatches the reality shown, the providers of those images must be fined daily until the image is corrected in subsequent samples.”
“Sounds good with me. We cannot go about and lie about our fellow people. But exactly the same test also applies to speakers in the Duma when they paint a picture of the West and Ukraine.”
“Honestly, I think this is the only viable road to peace I have heard of in a long time.”
15.12.2021
http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/node/5750/
The entire next day presented nothing on the approaching war. Once again, it was exclusively domestic matters. They were close to just skipping the day, but something was nagging Benedict.
— A quip on consensus —
“I know I keep coming back to the crime of consensus, but every day we read, my fear seems to be confirmed that all the misery of war stems from something horribly ordinary: We are angered when others paint over our perception of the world.”
“Of course we are. From a liberal perspective, we can freely walk around and be angry. As long as we don’t act on it.”
“But how can you discern so frivolously between thought and action? Again, follow the trails: There is a war going on in Donbas(s). That means people are dying on both sides. And at the same time, Russians are reminded through Western media about Russia’s fault this, Russia’s fault that. They don’t have to use the word Russophobia. They can just line up the cases where they are blamed. The presidential election debacles in both 2016 and 2020 dented relations considerably. And by relations, I also mean how the ordinary citizen perceives things.”
“EU’s increasingly hostile stance on Russia is probably doing more damage. The crusade against disinformation raises the aura of legislative commitment to a narrative. We want Russia to acknowledge its lowly position today owing to its totalitarian past.”
“Disinformation – an elastic term denoting themes such as any doubt about USA’s future stability or that Russia did actually not start WW2 when they signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. God fearing men know that USA will last forever being the good guys, and that Hitler really didn’t want to annex Poland, but in order to appease Stalin, he had to conjure up a small army, even though the very thought of violence revolted him.
Observe the fight for “truth” in all its glory. This is as close to ideological warfare we can get.”
“Yes. Clearly Russia under Putin is stepping up its self-preservation dial on identity and heritage. But the EU is doing the same thing simultaneously making it harder to trace the conflict origins. This is the EU speaking:”
EU RESOLUTION - IMPORTANCE OF EUROPEAN REMEMBRANCE FOR THE FUTURE OF EUROPE
C. whereas, as a direct consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by the Nazi-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September 1939, the Polish Republic was invaded first by Hitler and two weeks later by Stalin – which stripped the country of its independence and was an unprecedented tragedy for the Polish people – the communist Soviet Union started an aggressive war against Finland on 30 November 1939, and in June 1940 it occupied and annexed parts of Romania – territories that were never returned – and annexed the independent republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia;
D. whereas after the defeat of the Nazi regime and the end of the Second World War, some European countries were able to rebuild and embark on a process of reconciliation, while other European countries remained under dictatorships – some under direct Soviet occupation or influence – for half a century and continued to be deprived of freedom, sovereignty, dignity, human rights and socio-economic development;
“The real statement lies in the omissions: The M-R Pact shocked the world as they all knew that it was a pact between the world’s greatest ideological archenemies. It had to be purely a ploy to win time. That enmity of course exploded when - predictably - Hitler commenced Operation Barbarossa.
That is EU in a nutshell: Condemning nazism by — demanding ideological Lebensraum!
… The right to interpret history as we see fit.”
“And yet, we have to figure a way to rectify the injustice. Because right now the victims of both Stalin and Hitler have not properly received satisfaction for the horrors perpetrated.”
“You do it yourself… There are no victims of Hitler and Stalin! There are only victims of nazism and stalinism. The damage is done by a consensus in a group. Dictators are powerless as individuals. You can only intimidate so many with a gun, before you are outnumbered by others with guns. Somewhere there has to be a powerful group sharing the dictator’s belief.”
“… And my statement?”
“Yes, yes, I agree totally. There is grave unjustice permeating history. It has to be resolved somehow. But a bunch of Generation Xs in the EU condemning clichéd symbols of the past does not help! We no longer understand the past.”
Maurice smiled once again. “Are you saying that we need to be saved by old farts?”
Benedict had painted himself into that corner. Maurice kindly helped him out of it:
“I can help you here: We don’t avoid nazism by more Nuremberg Trials. On the contrary, we do it by reading nazi ideology until we realise that we ourselves could have been susceptible to thinking like that. Perhaps we already do.”
“Exactly my point.”
“Should we get back to work? What fed your infinite line of digressions?”
“Igor Ivanov, former Foreign Minister of Russia while discussing a change to an existing law. At the time, foreigners having wronged a Russian gravely (i.e. violating their basic human rights) could be denied entry into Russia. But only if they came from USA. The proposed change would widen that scope to all countries.
Can we talk a bit about propaganda versus consensus soon? When is a statement propaganda and when is it reaffirmation in a group already committed to the idea?”
Igor Ivanov
IVANOV E. S. (MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS)
According to the current version of the said federal law, certain sanctions, such as a ban on entry into the Russian Federation, seizure of financial and other assets on the territory of the Russian Federation, suspension of activities of legal entities on the territory of the Russian Federation, may be applied only to US citizens involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. In the context of Russophobia and openly anti-Russian policies of a number of states that are growing every day, and also taking into account the fact that not only US citizens but also citizens of other countries may be involved in violations of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens abroad, the bill proposes to extend the possibility of applying sanctions to all foreigners, regardless of their citizenship.
“Russophobia… Hysteria? Propaganda?”
“The US State Department claims that the word Russophobia is used much more by the Kremlin today than ten years ago… something like that.”
“Actually, the US State Department cites a Medium article written by Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council’s DRFLab (Digital Forensic Research Lab - they take screenshots of social media posts). The article is originally posted on DRFLab’s own site.
Obviously the Atlantic Council is an atlanticist think tank, and the DRFLab follows that perspective.”
Benedict took time to read the article trail that Maurice was pointing at. He followed offshoots that zoomed in on the infamous “little green men” playing key roles in the annexation of Crimea and elsewhere.
“Yeah, this is where it crucially backfires that Russia is trying to present a polished front. In essence, they probably lie, or at least tell half truths. In practice, that gives the West a great incentive to focus on the lie instead of the reality behind the Russian actions. Had the world had a conscience, they would immediately understand the internal pressures that leads to the situations – and may I provocatively add: Nothing a Russian decides to do differs in any way from what an American or a European would do under similar circumstances. All the way down to becoming outright Leninists in the 1920s.”
“For what it’s worth, I have seen very few articles on the US Department of State’s website that could claim to occupy a higher moral ground than that of the Kremlin’s statements. It’s just the political tourist brochures of the two respective countries.
Besides, showing weakness in foreign policy is dangerous too. That includes any admission of guilt.”
“Thanks, Maurice. I know you normally can’t stand my appeasing tendencies, all for peace and all that.
I wont’t lie to you. I find the implicit construction obnoxious. “Fact finders” come in like a crusading legion. We tacitly applaud the verdicts of this higher moral court. They diligently expose new information, and depending on your persuasion, we either revel euphorically over an enemy whose fraudulent moral has been exposed, or we silently weep when our heroes are dragged through the mud due to their own mistakes of not playing straight according to our playbook.
But look at what we are doing here… We are not fact finders. We discover the ordinary people and their mental habitats. The green men without insignia were a more or less ill-conceived pragmatic solution. But the problem they tried to solve was very much more human than that and certainly more real than any Ukrainian politician would like to think about.”
“Yes. Yes, you and I live in a completely different world. We enter the almost private sphere of the participants, and tries to walk in their shoes. Humans have motives which are not that ominous after all.”
“On the other hand, I admit to a danger with this approach: We develop a kind of a sympathy. With Ukrainians and with Russians. But that blinds us to real and actual power grabs (since such will equally have understandable motives). Actions that have an understandable motive can still be disastrous.”
“Ah, but that’s not why we do this. We want to be ahead of the game, to solve it before it becomes a disaster - and the only way is to demonstrate that people can be acceptable.”
“Then I wish us luck. None of us, not Americans, not British, not Ukrainian, not Russian ever considers whether our paranoid ideas are true or not. Case in point: Here is this United Russia woman with a similar thought.”
“That’s Maria Butina. She has a controversial history - charged with acting as a foreign agent - 18. U.S.C §951.”
Benedict perused a few articles on her.
“I see a way too young gun-enthusiastic woman. She formed friendship and ties with various gun associations around the world, particularly the NRA in US. She has worked for a member of the upper chamber in Russia. So she 1) is forming ties on US soil, 2) has ties to the government… Then §951 kicks in. Honestly, from what I see, all these gun-carrying associations developed mutual understanding with each other. Just look at the Wikipedia list of events … Guns guns guns, gun rights in USA, gun rights in Russia. Then came 2016 and the US election, and she got enamoured with the idea that she could help Russia a little having good gun-loving friends everywhere.
She should have known better. It could have been a lousy story of a person having been tricked into smuggling out of naiveté, having to spend years in prison for not knowing the obvious.”
“With her past, she is likely a little bit pissed with the US at this point.”
BUTINA MARIA VALERIEVNA (UNITED RUSSIA)
They [the US] want to rule the roost alone, wanting to see the world as unipolar, wanting to see only their own, liberal values, leaving no room for our traditional, traditional family, where there is a mother, father and children, there is no room for the historical truth about the Great Patriotic War, in which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics defeated Nazi Germany, there is no room for an independent and proud Russia.
“… An older Maria Butina is talking… The family centred Maria, not the gun fanatic Maria.”
At the instigation of these countries or following in their wake, some states have also begun to pursue openly Russophobic policies on their territories and beyond their borders. We have always stood up for our own, for our Motherland, and our generation is no exception, we will not silently endure the bullying and kicks from Russophobes.
“A perfect demonstration of what we just talked about. Circumstances spiralled out of control, and she ended up in prison. Thus marked, she has some right to use the term Russophobia – a victim of harsher foreign policies. And she does. But in the end, it just tightens the screw. Just like 99% of all Western politicians, any chance at grabbing a microphone results in un-nuanced paranoia.”
“She brings up three cases: Yuri Mel, Konstantin Nikulin, priest Feofan. Look them up in wikipedia, we clearly see that opinions are very divided on them. But it’s educational to read a Russian side of the story. They really do stick together.”
BUTINA MARIA VALERIEVNA (UNITED RUSSIA)
Konstantin Nikulin is a Russian citizen, a Russian guy who has been in prison for 14 years, just like Yuri Mel, in a prison in the Baltics, as a Nazi criminal, for the so-called Riga OMON case, without evidence, without guilt. This man, colleagues, was given a life sentence, his life was taken away! Let those who mock Konstantin Nikulin, with whom I talk on the phone every Saturday, I hear the pain in his voice - this is the pain of each of us - let them never set foot on our land.
Dear colleagues, Orthodox priest Father Feofan is a man who was kidnapped from his own home in the middle of the night by the SBU. In 2015, he was taken away, accused of terrorism, brutally tortured, and only thanks to a prisoner exchange was he able to return to his homeland. May those who mocked this holy man never set foot on our land.
And the last thing from my life. My sister got married on Friday. She was supposed to start a family with her beloved man back in 2018, but then in the summer, as you all know, American intelligence came to arrest me and threw me in solitary confinement - without a crime, without evidence and without guilt. My sister is like a daughter to me, she put all her affairs aside, put her life on hold and devoted all her time to the fight for my release. Many, led by our president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, fought for me, and I returned because the whole country stood up for me. I hugged my sister on Friday on her wedding day.
“I think we underestimate how much Russians help Russians and how much they try to protect each other. That is the source of at least the Donbas(s) war.”
“That is indeed their most prominent feature.”
When Benedict left for an appointment, it was Maurice’s turn to linger melancholically on that thought.
We all protect our families at all costs. Our extended families too, our cultural brethren. We want to protect them from harm. We also want to protect them from the mental harm of living as unwanted aliens in foreign lands.
/PARADOX