Comments on: Russia to Suppress “Falsifications” about USSR

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:52:55 +0000

LOL – and all that water inbetween where I sat typing and you sat reading.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:42:27 +0000

Hmmm…I thought I was following the leap you made. Maybe not. Don’t forget the time difference.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:58:19 +0000

C’mon, Tom. How many millions of Wahhabists are there versus one individual named Osama bin Laden? His own family rejects him and they are Wahhabi too. You’re making a hugely illogical leap.

If it helps, go back in time to before Osama got radical… to when there were just many hundreds of thousands of Whabbis practicing an incredibly severe form of religion without any of them having gone off the reservation into international terrorism. THAT is the parallel. The simple fact of the matter is that the Sufi sect of Islam didn’t spawn an Osama nor does it seem likely that it could. The leap from harshly extreme fundamentalism (ala Wahhabism or Haredism) to more extreme forms is much shorter than from Sufism or so-called Flexidox Judaism.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:58:11 +0000

So, Kevin, you actually think there’s something in Judaism that somehow resembles Saudi Wahhabism, and since that spawned Osama bin Laden…what, a Jewish Osama is just around the corner? That’s bizarre. I understand the need to believe there’s some kind of moral equivalence here, and if not to invent it, but this is over the edge.

And all of this is “philosophically indistinguishable” from the direction Russia is taking under Mevedev/Putin? History and current reality indicate otherwise.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:34:41 +0000

Loyalty oaths, even hidden under a "kinder, softer" veneer, are of course inherently undemocratic just as Arye Carmon warned in the article. And of course anyone who knows anything at all about Israel knows that a loyalty oath would be opposed as fiercely by the Haredi - Judaism's version of the Wahhabist sect of Islam that spawned Osama bin Laden - and like-minded elements as by Muslims and Christians. The legislation calling for a ban on any public commemorations of the Nakba is philosophically indistinguishable from the two Russian efforts mention in the post here. Particularly the latter one about the history with Nazism. The difference is chiefly a matter of degrees of extremism rather than of substance or philosophy. In all three examples we see extreme nationalists openly attempting to censor history for blatently self-serving motives.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:19:05 +0000

Kevin, I actually read the article you linked to, and it’s true that right-wing elements in Israel are trying to get legislation passed that’s pretty heavy-handed. Loyalty oaths to indicate that citizens are loyal to their country rather than loyal to terrorists trying to destroy it, banning or at least not funding commemorations of the “catastrophe” of their own country’s founding, etc.

However, there’s no comparison, or even any relevance, to the article on Russia. For one thing, there’s functional democracy in Israel, unlike Russia and all Arab countries. That means that the legislation you referred to in Israel is very unlikely to be enacted, at least in extreme forms. For another thing, Russia’s enemies are mostly of their imagination, unlike Israel’s, who, with the support of anti-Israel factions in other parts of the world, fervently work toward the destruction of Israel and its Jewish citizens.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:03:48 +0000

Medvedev is widely seen as a puppet of Vladimir Putin, although lately he’s shown signs of wanting to separate himself a bit from Putin. That’s a sure path to a prison cell, or worse.

Putin is still convinced that Russia is a major power that should heavily influence, if not control, the former republics of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. This idea of criminalizing the actions and ideas of people in countries that are now independent of Russia is pure Putin. We’d be wise to be a lot more suspicious and cautious of Russia than we are now.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:36:09 +0000

Fundamentalism and nationalism have always preferred to criminalize thoughts as a means of forcing their will upon the larger population. Interestingly enough, somewhat similar legislation is afoot in Israel.