Reply to critics of PRAVDA

Pravda.Ru has been criticised for being anti-American.
We have received a lot of mail in recent weeks complaining about Pravda.Ru in general, and me in particular, being anti-American. This could not be further from the truth.

"Grow up!" "Don't write things against the USA" "Why are there are more and more anti-American articles in Pravda.Ru?". The list of complaints goes on and on, frequently with references to Chechnya, as if this was justification for the act of butchery perpetrated by the Bush regime in Iraq.

Well, why do you think there are more and more articles attacking not America, nor the USA, but the policies of George Bush's fascist regime? Do you think this is because Washington obeys the letter of the law, fulfils its obligations under the international agreements it signs and adopts a
foreign policy which is based on the fundamental principles of democracy, namely debate, discussion and dialogue?

Or do you think maybe the reason for the articles criticising the US foreign policy is due to the fact that Washington bases such policy on skulduggery, bullying, cajoling and blackmail, disregards the UNO, derides it as a League of Nations, breaks the UN Charter, breaks the Geneva Convention, slaughters
thousands of civilians, deploys DU, drops cluster bombs into civilian areas and purposefully targets civilian infrastructures so that contracts can be handed out, even without tender?

There have been many such articles in Pravda.Ru's pages in recent weeks and there will be many more. This is not due to any innate desire to attack the US foreign policy, but because the US foreign policy is wrong, it is murderous, it is criminal, it is evil. Stop attacking foreign nations, stop dropping cluster bombs in civilian areas for children to play with, stop pointing guns in the faces of six-year-old boys, stop machine-gunning cars crowded with women and children, stop torturing people and lo and behold, the articles will disappear. Plof!

Invoking Russian policy in Chechnya to justify the act of butchery in Iraq is as useless as it is misguided. What has one situation to do with the other? Chechnya is about bandits and murderers, the sort that George Bush sent to their deaths as governor of Texas. In Russia, the death penalty has been abolished.

Chechnya is about a handful of extremists, paid, aided and abetted by foreign elements who wish to destabilise the Russian Federation, by taking advantage of the innate evil in the hearts of these bandits and terrorists.

Chechnya is about armed insurrection which Russia has every right to put down.

Russia does not however drop cluster bombs on civilians, the troops do not force prisoners to commit acts of sodomy. Chechnya is a democracy with a democratic system, which elected Akhmad Kadyrov as the president, murdered by terrorists a week ago.

The United States of America is deploying its forces in an aggressive manner outside its own national frontiers and for this reason, world public opinion is against Washington. Pravda.Ru is a mouthpiece for such opinions and let it be crystal clear that the vast majority of people outside the United
States of America agree wholeheartedly with the articles and opinions we have published in our pages.

Were George Bush and his regime to concentrate on domestic affairs, then it would be none of our business. However, while Washington pursues this policy, invades foreign lands and steals their resources, perpetrating acts of butchery and torture in the making, it is not only our right but out
obligation as free-thinking people and as journalists with true freedom of expression, to express our views and to uncover the satanistic side of Washington's policy for all to see.

This does not mean that anyone at Pravda.Ru is anti-American. Nobody has anything against the people of the USA, who like anyone else prefer to laugh than to cry, for the same reasons.

Although it would be more comfortable for those who criticise us to read stories which follow the same limited thinking of George Bush, along the lines of "There's the good guy with the white hat and the bad guy with the black hat. The other guy with the grey hat must be bad because his hat ain't white" or "If you aren't with us, you're against us", this is not going to
happen because the real world out there is far more complex than this idiotic, blinkered vision of the world that so many people seem to swallow hook, line and sinker.

If freedom and democracy and winning hearts and minds is about machine-gunning three-year-olds, forcing men to suck each other's penises and blasting the limbs off thousands of kids, then nobody outside the USA is very impressed.

Start behaving in a civilised fashion and the slant of the articles will change accordingly. Pravda.Ru follows and practises a policy of freedom of the press. Therefore for certain the calls to "stop writing bad things against America" will for sure stop when America stops perpetrating satanistic and evil acts outside its national frontiers.