Yes, teacher. I will do my reading assignments!
Do you happen to know whether the book was originally written in English or if I may be able to find it here in Hebrew?
You know, this - coupled with the Suicide Bombing tactics the Chechens use - reminds me a lot of the way the Palestinians like to do things. Not exactly likely to make me sympathetic to their cause. I’m not saying that their cause is not just. I’m saying that the way they are going about trying to achieve it is, IMHO, most likely to achieve tha opposite.
I believe it was originally written in English; I think Karny is based in the U.S. these days and sometimes writes for the Washington Post. I don’t know whether it’s also been translated into Hebrew.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if certain Chechen rebels were taking lessons from certain Palestinian terrorists at this point. Of course, suicide bombing, especially of civilians, is morally reprehensible. But you have to admit it does a damn good job of getting people to pay attention.
You’re setting me up with a strawman Eva - and a particular nasty one at that. I’ve no place suggested suicide bombings were the appropriate means to oppose the war (if that’s what your conscience tells you). I do find personal responsibility is what civilisation is built on, and I find it a little disturbing how you dodge your responsibility in the doing of your country. If not Americans (US) who then shall be responsible for the actions of the American (USA) nation? But it cuts both ways, and I assume you’re as quick to absolve all Russian responsibility as you are Chechen. So all responsibility are on Stalin and his cronies’ shoulders. As a student of Soviet history you are of course aware how Stalin’s steel boot was so much heavier (by sheer number if nothing else) on the Russians and Ukrainians than anything felt by the Chechen. Perhaps there is your answer. Of all the miseries created by the Nazis and Communists the one of the Chechen is sadly a fair bit down the list in awfulness (which is not to denigrate their suffering but testaments to the extreme evilness of the Nazi and Communistic rule).
Mostly I’m just opposing this one-eyed blame the barbarian Russians slant the news often takes around here. And I do feel terrorist actions as unleashed by certain Chechen fractions are very, very wrong – regardless of who started or how much attention they garner. Also I think, and Palestinian history teach, they’re like to be very counter productive. And as I said I don’t know how the coverage is where you are, however surely we can both agree, without ick’ing each other too much, that both sides (as far as you accept sides) must take their share of the blame.
Winston, my intent is not to set you, personally, up with anything whatsoever. I was responding primarily to ** Noone Special’s** comment on the similarity of the current round of Chechen suicide bombings with the tactic’s use of longer standing among Palestinian terrorists.
I take issue with your placing equal blame on Stalin for his persecution if various sectors of the Russian and Ukrainian populations during the famine and purges, if only because they probably affected a smaller proportion of the population even if the absolute numbers were greater because of the population size differential; it’s easier logistically to wipe out 1,000,000 people than 150,000,000 or whatever the Soviet opulation was at that time. But do I blame the Russians, or the Ukrainians, or even the Georgians for Stalin’s rise to power, or for “allowing” him to do what he did, since they had little if any power to stop him? No, I don’t.
Do I blame the Russians, as an ethnic group, for the current atrocities in Chechnya? No, but keep in mind that a) the Russians are by far the most numerous ethnic group in the RF, and therefore in the RF military; and b) Putin’s election had some issues from a democratic standpoint, to be sure, but he was in fact elected (although none of the alternatives were articularly thrilling, either, and he sure hasn’t kept any campaign promises to end the war in Chechnya, but then lying for votes is nothing new in a democracy, either). Do I think each individual Russian, as well as each individual non-Russian citizen of the RF, has a responsibility to vote with his/her conscience and work for peace and cleaner politics and freedom from anti-Chechen prejudice on an individual level? Of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m blaming each of them individually for the war in Chechnya.
According to a report on NPR this morning, the people attacking “ethnic” Russians are paying attention. Assaults in Moscow on darker-skinned residents presumed to be Chechens (but who actually may come from other groups) have increased since the recent subway bombing, and skinhead groups say it’s helping their recruiting. Large numbers of Muscovites now say they want all ethnic Russians removed from the capital.
Today’s Radio Free Europe is quoting a large section of a Washington Post op-ed piece on the anniversary of the deportations. I’d post a link to the whole article here if I could, but my IE address bar here is AWOL, and I may not be at work today at all (doctor appt.) Would one of you be so kind?
Yep, that’s the one. Thanks.
You will note at the bottom that the author, a Chechen, was granted political asylum in the U.S. I don’t know the specifics of his case, but I can tell you from experience with hundreds of asylum cases that one does not receive asylum in the U.S. without a determination not only that one has been persecuted and/or would be in danger of persecution in one’s home country because of one’s race, religion, nationallity, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, but that it would be impossible to avoid persecution by relocating within one’s own country. Given how big the RF is, I think that says something.
