The Stupid Polar Bear

One of the biggest revolutions of the information age has been the overthrow of traditional, state-controlled and private media outlets. This is not the way the owners and publishers of some of the biggest media houses wanted it.

When a country wants to kick-start the ‘war machine’, the media had always been the traditional outlet and means to convince and prepare local populations for some ambiguous government ploy to wage a conflict. The means employed have been the same, for nefarious designs that vary; control of oil, religious tension, ethnic conflict etc

The internet gave the power of information control straight into the hands of the public. Media outlets lost the element of control and the world became astute to government misdoings. It has changed traditional perceptions and created entire revolutions in countries.

Perhaps the most remarkable expose has been the criminal entity called the Russian parliament, the Duma, or what I refer to as ‘Oaf’. When I think of the Russian Duma, I imagine a very stupid polar bear wearing an army generals uniform, a closet communist drunk on cheap vodka.

The Oaf is oblivious to what the rest of the world knows about him and hardly seems to care. This does not surprise anyone, since capitalist democracy has done nothing to change the communist mind-set of the Russian government, who have conducted some of the worst terrorist atrocities and cover-ups that seem to come straight out of a spy novel.

But spy novels are eloquent.

The polar bear named Oaf is about as graceful and meticulous in government cover-ups as a donkey would be at ballet. When a series of apartment building explosions rocked the Russian capital in 2000, flattening entire apartment blocks while residents slept, hundreds of civilians died. A terrified public was told by the government that muslim Chechen rebels were behind the bombings.

The Oaf should have taken lessons from the Mossad in the art of clandestine operations. Basically, the polar bear named Oaf passed out at the crime scene after planting the bombs because he drank too much vodka. What made the entire episode even more dramatic was the Oaf’s complete denial in the face of mounting evidence that elements in the Russian government had conducted the attacks to renew public support for the operations in Chechnya, a war that ordinary Russians were opposed to.

A journalist, a former FSB employee and noted parliamentarians accused the government of orchestrating the bombings with evidence that would convince the toughest of skeptics. All three died in very mysterious circumstances. The entire cycle repeated itself after the Beslan hostage crisis, when hundreds of school children were killed. Again, mounting evidence of government complacency resulted in journalists and government employees who dared to think, disappear and turn up deader than door nails.

I wanted to share some prominent highlights of high-caliber individuals who put forward proof and then faced the ultimate consequence. Were it not for the power of the internet that allows dissemination of information, most of the world would never have known these facts.

Even now, there is not enough coverage of these facts to press for a deeper inquiry, but there has been enough exposition that the Russian government has been muffled and at a loss to offer any explanation. Cornered and hitchhiking at the cross-roads of utter contradiction, the government put a seal on all evidence and a ban on further investigation by anyone (national or foreign) into these events.

So the polar bear left his tracks in the snow, which led investigators to the Duma.

An independent investigation was called for members of the Duma, who cast doubts on the official government explanation of Chechen separatists. Leading members of the Duma, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin led calls for an investigation. A government order was soon issued, that banned any investigation of the apartment building bombings.

Sergie and Yuri continued their own investigation and collected materials that would prove government involvement. Sergie was found murdered just hours before boarding a flight to the United States where he was to meet with FBI officials in 2003. His colleague Yuri was shot outside his home and the culprits never caught.

Other notable state Duma deputies Yury Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Anna Politkovskaya, filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, as well as the secessionist Chechen authorities and former popular Russian politician Alexander Lebed, claimed that the 1999 bombings were a false flag attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya.

An independent public commission to investigate the bombings, which was chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev, was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. The commission asked lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin to investigate the case. Mr. Trepashkin claimed to have found that in the weeks leading up to the bombings, the basement of one of the bombed buildings was rented by FSB officer Vladimir Romanovich and that the latter was witnessed by several people. Mr. Trepashkin was unable to bring the alleged evidence to the court because he was arrested in October 2003 for illegal arms possession, just a few days shortly before he was to make his findings public. Shortly upon his release, Mikhail Trepashkin was killed while abroad in Cyprus and once again, the killers remain at large.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former Russian security service member Alexander Litvinenko, who investigated the bombings, were both assassinated in 2006. Both personalities garnered international attention because of their vocal and public accusations against the FSB for orchestrating the 1999 Moscow apartment explosions.

The fact of the matter is that the base mentality of the polar bear from the north remains communist. Communism thinks like cold steel; example, if there isn’t enough food to go around, start killing your own population. This cold-war Leninist mentality still exists in the higher circles of government, who have become disillusioned with the advent of western democracy and free markets, which they blame for degrading and breaking up Russia. They still think like communists in a capitalist system that is less than 20 years old.