Sorry! Didn’t see that. My apologies.
Pot meet Kettle.
And, exactly how many times has this happened in Russia?
OK, I’ve got the potato(e) salad all ready. YEEEEE-hawwww!!
Nothing to add . . . but I saw pictures of some of the dead kids and . . . well . . . just . . . fuck. 
What’s worse was the look on some of the faces of the kids who survived. Half naked, and just empty eyes. They’re going to have nightmares about this for the rest of their lives.
A few more stunts like this, and few people will complain if the Russians start talking about genocide.
The Russian police and army were stuck as to what to do. It was all they can hope for to stop further blooshed. They stormed the school only when one of the explosives tied to the gym wall by the hostage-takers exploded. Then all hell broke loose.
Who’s the savage? The occupying imperialistic force or the occupied civilian population who just wants to live in freedom from oppression in an ordered and just society; from which they have been depraved for the past decade.
Furthermore, Israel has tossed themselves into their current predicament. If you do not believe me, I suggest you visit a Palestinian town, live amongst the squalor and drudgery, then visit an Israeli town and compare. Terrorists, generally, behave in the fashion they do because they can see no other option for retribution and to draw exposure to their cause. Let me announce that I am in no way condoning or approving the Chechen school attack (its aftermath drew tears from me). However, you have to at least be able to recognize that they have done this for a reason and maybe we need to understand that reason before we dismiss and condemn them in their plight of continual warfare, occupation, and oppression.
I’m not a super-lefty, relative moralist or anything, and it is often very, very hard for me to remember that not all Muslims are committing, or condoning, these atrocities.
But just to maybe start to restore your faith in humanity, there was a group of Muslims from a nearby town who offered to present themselves to the terrorists as replacements for the children that were being held hostage. Their offer was turned down by authorities for fear that their presence could ignite more violence, but the offer was made.
Cite
(warning: the above article left me sobbing, literally, at my computer)
I’ve been reading about the situation for the last few days and crying whenever I think about it.
Those poor, poor, poor little children.
Good God.
If you’re referring to Israel as an “imperialistic force,” you’re way off base. Look at a map of the middle east sometime. Israel is surrounded by gargantuan Arab Muslim countries with populations exponentially larger than Israel’s few million Jews. To suggest that Israel give up even more land to the Arabs is ridiculous; the Arabs have the entire middle east already. The Arab Muslim-dominated mideast, with its largely homogenous shared language of Arabic and adherence to the same religion, seems more like an empire than tiny Israel.
If you’re referring to Russia as an “imperialistic force,” then you’re correct.
Yasser Arafat, the so-called leader of the Palestinians, has billions of dollars in Swiss banks. The Saudis, who claim Muslim brotherhood with the oppresed inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, have untold more billions. Why don’t these fine Muslim leaders step in and help the Palestinians out of their predicament?
Finally, squalor and drudgery is not an excuse to kill innocent people with suicide bombings. Was Gandhi doing this when India was oppressed by Britain (which was, by the way, a REAL empire with real territory and millions at its disposal, unlike tiny Israel, and which, by the way, was arguably more brutal in its occupation of India than Israel)?
The dude walking into a mall with a bomb on his chest. Sorry, I can understand not being happy with your political situation, but there’s no excuse for this. Ever. And anybody who tries to justify it is just plain out of their mind.
I’ve read various statements in the paper today about the way the russian forces handled the situation. some stated basically that these units aren’t trained to handle such crisis in the same way western units specialized in hostage taking crisis are. Still basically that they’re trained to assault and kill and that the safety of hostages is only a secondary concern. Contrarily to the western teams.
On the other hand, another statement was to the effect that they should ease up on their criticisms because no western countrie faced a situation with so much hostage takers (around 40, if I understand correctly) and so much hostages.
He added besides that the assault force/hostage taker ratio generally accepted as optimal would be 5/1. IOW, they would have needed something like 200 trained specialists (assuming that you could scale things up, and that 200 special forces attacking 40 hostage takers could be as efficient as 20 SP attacking 4 HT), and apparently no western country has a so large unit of people trained specifically to handle hostage taking situations.
By the way, I also read the testimony of a paramedical who stated he believed that the assault was planned by the russian authorities because he and others were brought from the Ossetian capital in the morning and told that they would be needed during the day.
Can everyone just stop hijacking this terrible incident for their own agenda? Please?
Damnit.
The New York Times has a picture of a woman grieving over a murdered child who can’t be more than five.
Stop it. Stop with the Israelis and the Palestinians and anything else. Just be a human being and cry with that poor woman for at least a day. As the mother of a small child myself there are tears running down my face right now.
Goddamn degenerate civilians and their depraved lifestyle!
The first three sentences shows that you can be a compassionate human being. The last one that you are a fucking moron.
We live in a world of contradictions.
'Scuse me? Was I advocating genocide? No. You remember the folks in the US saying we ought to nuke every Middle Eastern nation after 9/11? You think those people are rare? Putin’s already said that he’s going to take stronger measures against the Chechen rebels. Given the bloody history of Russia’s occupation of Chechnya you think that they’re going to start making peace offerings? If anyone’s the fucking moron, it’s you.
I am sorry if I got the wrong impression. Let’s analise the sentence:
“A few more stunts like this, and few people will complain if the Russians start talking about genocide.”
In my opinion the reason why you are a fucking moron is the “and few people will complain”. That part gives the sentence, imho, an entirely new connotation. By using it you are advocating genocide., not simply describing the consequence of further terrorist attacks.-
If I am wrong I am sorry.
I fail to see how you can interpret my sentence as advocating genocide. If I write a sentence that says, “Few people complained about the internment camps where Japanese-Americans were held during WWII.” That is taken as a statement of fact, not approval. Why should what I wrote be interpreted any different?
Nor does my statement that few people will complain imply that folks will necessarily agree with the genocide, even if they don’t complain. Were terrorists to nuke the US, I think that the world’s response would be one of, “Oh shit, now they’ve really gone and pissed the Americans off. God help us all, the Yanks are going to be nuking somebody soon.” Doesn’t mean that they’ll agree with the US nuking somebody, but that they’ve adopted a fatalistic attitude about the whole thing: i. e. There’s a helluvalot of nothing they can do about it. If the Chechens kill more school children, and the Russians decide on genocide (which hopefully they won’t), I think that the world’s going to adopt a similar “There’s nothing we can do about it” attitude. Certainly, their will be folks who’ll protest it, but I think that they’ll be far outnumbered by the folks who’re sick to death of seeing kids get killed by nutbags and won’t care what happens to the Chechens at that point.
I’m sure that the vast majority of Chechens are appalled by what happened. Not because they’re scared of Russian retaliation, but because they’re decent human beings who hate the thought of innocent children being killed.