(english)
Quelli che vogliono squartare la Russia (5)
1. The Chechens' American friends (John Laughland / The Guardian)
2. North Ossetia: Self-Determination and Imperial Politics (James
Petras)
3. Europe's "moral imperialism" (Ivan Nikola Guerra / Pravda.ru)
4. Putin accuses 'complicit' West of harbouring Chechen
terrorists (Chris Stephen / The Scotsman)
MORE LINKS:
Chechnya: From BHHRG's archives
http://www.bhhrg.org/LatestNews.asp?ArticleID=45
Beslan: The real international connection (by Brendan O'Neill)
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA6CA.htm
Putin vents his anger at the West: Don't tell me to talk to
child-killers
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/
story.jsp?story=559044&host=3&dir=73
=== 1 ===
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5010448-103677,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1299318,00.html
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/izbor/Krize_u_svetu/2004-09-13.html
http://www.oscewatch.org/pressDetails.asp?ArticleID=25
The Guardian September 8, 2004
The Chechens' American friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on
terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have
made their own
By John Laughland
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view
that President Putinis somehow the main culprit in the
grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and
headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words
for government", and "Criticism mounting against
Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio
correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to
say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the
terrorists. There have been numerous editorials
encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday
Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism
(usually Russian the widespread use of the word
"rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a
surprising indulgence in the face of
extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called
"mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a
specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and
by its American supporters. The leading Russian
critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are
the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir
Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal
market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy
under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the
Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New
York head office, this influential thinktank - which
operates in tandem with the military-political Rand
Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers
on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the
"Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in
recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities.
The centre has also been assiduous over recent months
in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a
link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
These people peddle essentially the same line as that
expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed
Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages
yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen
rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like
Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country,
although the Russian authorities want him on numerous
charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of
funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are
putting it about that Russian TV played down the
Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported
live, the implication being that Putin's Russia
remains a highly controlled police state. But this
view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of
the impression I gained while watching both CNN and
Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels
had far better information and images from Beslan than
their western competitors. This harshness towards
Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the
US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause
is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya
(ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished
Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the
most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically
support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon
adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth
Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged
on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a
cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld
and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation;
Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security
Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence
officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed
Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato;
Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a
former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading
proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James
Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the
leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to
re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen
rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's
Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause
by emphasising the seriousness of human rights
violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares
the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim"
causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only
international intervention in the Caucasus can
stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC
welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and
a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov,
foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government,
and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from
both political parties, the ACPC members represent the
backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and
their views are indeed those of the US administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the
Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that
the Chechen conflict must be solved politically.
According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns
Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on
Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military,
solution - in other words to negotiate with
terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects
elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the
west itself is somehow the purpose of such support is
to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the
Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to
use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring
Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an
extremely pro-American government, and where the US
already has a significant military presence - only
encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed
to lend credence to the idea in his interview with
foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such western involvement would be
difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are
asking themselves such questions when the same people
in Washington who demand the deployment of
overwhelming military force against the US's so-called
terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate
to hers?
John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki
Human Rights Group - www.oscewatch.org
=== 2 ===
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2004w37/msg00031.htm
North Ossetia: Self-Determination and Imperial
Politics
James Petras - September 8, 2004
The monstrous deliberate slaughter of over 330 parents
and children in the Beslan school gymnasium by Chechen
terrorists is not as the BBC claims a “tragedy” but a
vicious criminal act.
To understand the nature of the conflict between the
Russian state and the Chechen terrorists it is
important to focus on the socio-political forces and
issues in dispute. For the bulk of the US and European
media the issue is the ‘self-determination” of the
Chechens. But who and what does the ‘self” refer to ?
With the disintegration of the former Soviet Union,
both in Russia and in the Baltic, Balkan and Caucasian
states criminal gangs allied with corrupt members of
the former Soviet apparatus seized and pillaged public
resources controlling the economies and state
apparatus. Gangsters became billionaires and
billionaires contracted assassins to eliminate rivals,
competitors and any regulatory authorities who
questioned their practices. According to Paul
Klebnikov - the recently assassinated editor of the
Russian edition of Forbes Magazine - one of the most
brutal of the vicious gangs operating in Moscow was
the Chechen mafia. Allied with Russian billionaires
and through them with the Russian security system they
accumulated large fortunes which they laundered via
Western banks and through their extensive networks
with their operatives in Chechnya. Any Chechen who
protested or questioned the Chechen mafia was quickly
eliminated. For the Chechen mafia operating in Russia,
Chechnya was the “home base” - the sanctuary to which
they could always find a safe haven. The Chechen mafia
was instrumental in financing arming and providing
military cadres and leaders to the Chechen
“independence movement”. What was at stake was the
creation of a mafia fiefdom controlled by gangsters,
warlords and Islamic fundamentalists.
Writing of the First Chechen War (1994-96), Paul
Klebnikov wrote:
“The Chechen War was a gangster turf war writ large.
Chechen organized crime groups in Moscow and other
Russian cities maintained subsidiaries in their
ancestral homeland. Chechnya was a key transit point
in the Russian narcotics trade and the Moscow-based
gangsters sent a large part of their profits back to
the homeland. The same Russian officials and security
officers who patronized Chechen organized crime groups
in Moscow also patronized the Chechen government by
allowing (it) to appropriate millions on tons of
Russian oil at little or no cost” (Godfather of the
Kremlin, Harcourt 2000, page 40).
Klebnikov went on to point out that the Chechen
warlords and gangsters received their arms from
corrupt Russian army commanders and security forces
(page 41). To the question of who are the political
forces of self-determination in the case of Chechnya,
the answer is the gangsters, warlords, and extremist
terrorists, like Shamil Basayen, Salman Raduyev and
fundamentalists like Movladi Udugov. Between 1995-97
the notorious Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky,
maintained a close relationship with these Chechen
warlords (Klebnikov, page 261). Today they both share
a common and absolute hostility to President Putin and
his attempt to control crime and pillage.
Chechen warlords sought to gain a semblance of
“legitimacy” for their fiefdom by provoking a conflict
with Russia and securing US and European support. From
the end of the 1980’s, but particularly after 1991,
the CIA gave the highest priority to fomenting the
break up of the Soviet Union by financing and arming
local separatist movements. The first wave of
break-ups took place in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Georgia. Washington and London were not at all
concerned about whether the new leaders were Islamic
fundamentalists, ex-Stalinist autocrats, or Mafia
gangsters - the important issue was to destroy the
USSR, and undermine Russian influence throughout the
Caucasus and South Asia. Following the “independence”
of these former Soviet republics, the US especially
moved in to create client regimes, signing oil
contracts and building military bases.
‘self-Determination” was a transitional slogan toward
rapid incorporation into the new US hegemonic zone.
Russia under US client ruler Yelsin acceded to all
these US acquisitions “advised” by gangsters, mafia
billionaires and the most corrupt “oligarchs” in
recent history.
The US empire, having succeeded in the first wave of
client acquisition, moved further to foment a second
wave to include other Russian autonomous territories,
even closer to strategic centers of the Russian state.
Chechnya was a choice target for historic reasons.
During the US-sponsored Islamic uprising and invasion
against the secular reform-minded Afghan republic in
1989, Washington teamed up with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan
and other Muslim states (including Iran) to recruit,
finance and arm tens of thousands of Muslim
Fundamentalists from all over the Middle East, North
Africa, Southern Caucasus and Southern Asia. Numerous
“volunteers” from Chechnya fought in Afghanistan
against the Afghan government and its supporters. The
US achieved a pyrrhic victory in Afghanistan: it
severely weakened the decaying Soviet state, but
created tens of thousands of well-armed and trained
fundamentalist network. While one sector of the
Islamic forces went into opposition to the US in Saudi
Arabia and elsewhere another group lent itself to US
imperial strategy in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia
and Russia.
Thousands of Afghans fighters from the Fundamentalist
armies went to Bosnia, where they were armed and
financed by the US to fight against the Yugoslavs and
in favor of a separatist state under US tutelage.
Many writers on the left ignored the presence of these
“volunteers” who were in the frontlines in ethnic
purges of Serb enclaves and who detonated a terrorist
bombing in a major market in Sarajevo to focus Western
opinion on Serb “genocide”. Following the successful
dismemberment of the major regions of Yugoslavia and
the division of the new “mini-states” into US and
European clients, the US moved toward adding a new
regions to the empire. Washington and Europe backed
the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, first with
financing, training and arms and later by declaring
war against the remnant of Yugoslavia. Chechens
participated with the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Army, a widely recognized terrorist group that was
classified as “criminal” by Interpol prior to becoming
a Washington client. The KLA was financed from several
“internal sources”. In part it derived funds from its
control over the drug routes from South Asia and the
Middle East and in the large-scale trade in sex
slaves. Later it raked in dollars and euros from the
brothels in “liberated” Kosovo. Above all it stole
land, businesses and personal property from the
expelled Serb population and stole billions of dollars
from Western aid. Under Nato protection, the KLA
ethnically cleansed over 200,000 residents who were
not ethnic Albanians and became a de-facto client
state living off of Western handouts and with all of
its factories and mines shut. The US contracted
Halliburton to build huge military bases in Southern
Europe, Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan all of which
were US battlegrounds where Washington had sponsored
separatist movements under the guise of
‘self-determination”. These are all now being
converted into client states.
Chechen separatists developed close working relations
and terrorist skills working with the US and Western
Europe in all of these conflicts and became the
beneficiaries of US diplomatic, political and military
support (via Saudi Arabia). Like the Kosovars, the
Chechen leaders came out of a mafia-financed network,
which uses nationalist rhetoric to cloak gangster
rule.
Throughout the 1990’s to the present, the West has
backed the Chechen terrorists even as they draw
heavily on support from Moscow gangsters and Islamic
fundamentalists. Their leaders embrace a “rule or
ruin” policy, refusing any status except to separate
from Russia and become a US client. For the US, a
victory for the Chechen terrorists would become a
springboard for further dismemberment of Russia
throughout the Caucasus.
The Chechens combine the violent tactics they learned
in controlling gangland activity in Russia with the
terrorist practices of the Afghan war which targeted
female rural school teachers and medical workers for
beheading, throat slitting and the skinning of
“Communist” captives alive. Their current practice of
placing of bombs in theaters, airplanes, apartment
complexes and the horrible killing and maiming of
hundreds of school children and their parents and
teachers has a bloody, US-sanctioned precedent. The
Chechens combine the worse of the Mafia and Islamic
fundamentalists - cold-blooded murder of innocent
victims to establish theocratic warlord rulership.
Western Policy In response to the Chechen terrorist
assaults, all the Western mass media continued to
refer to them as “nationalists”, “militants”, “rebels”
and as legitimate representatives of the Chechen
people, even after they had massacred the school
children. In the immediate aftermath, all the print
and electronic media, from the BBC to the Guardian, to
Le Monde, New York Times etc. criticized the Russians
for failing to negotiate with the terrorists - even as
the terrorists were murdering children and even after
they had set off explosives maiming innocent kids.
Nothing captures the profound media commitment to
empire and backing for the dismemberment of Russia
than its support of the terrorists in the midst of
mass murder. The most primitive and craven support for
terrorist demands in the midst of national grief and
international outrage finally provoked the Russian
state to react with indignation - and for some of the
media to temporarily downplay its support of the
terrorists and the breakup of Russia.
The Russian media was no exception. Most of the
privately owned media and commentators yearn for the
return of the Yeltsin period of servility and
enrichment and seek to discredit and destroy the Putin
regime. Many of the billionaire oligarchs have close
working relations with the Chechen leaders, especially
Boris Berezovsky. The oligarchs and their pundits in
the Russian media echo the Western political and media
line of blaming the Russian security forces rather
than the Chechen terrorists. Eyewitness survivors
provide vivid accounts of bombing and killings prior
to the Russian rescue operations - thus putting the
lie to the Western cover-up for the terrorist action.
In England the British government provides asylum to a
major Chechen terrorist leader sought by Russian
authorities. In the United States, one of Chechnya’s
separatist leaders, Ilyas Akhadov, was given asylum
last August, largely through the efforts of “American
Committee for Peace in Chechnya” chaired by Carter’s
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and
Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig - principle
backers of the Fundamentalist invasion and destruction
of the secular Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
Brzezinski’s life-long obsession has been the total
dismemberment of Russia - and its reduction to a
feudal enclave controlled by the West via local
oligarchs, warlords and gangsters - like those he
backs in Chechnya. Brzezinski and his neo-conservative
colleagues in the National Endowment for Democracy -
the civilian face of the CIA - awarded this terrorist
‘spokesman” a research grant, including a monthly
allowance, medial insurance and travel expenses.
Anglo-US governments and their “political fronts”
provide sanctuary to the Chechen terrorist leaders as
part of their strategy to sustain a war of attrition
against Russia and especially Putin using the Chechen
people as guinea pigs. The outcome of Chechen
independence would most likely resemble Kosovo - a
client state, with a big US military base, run by
gangsters and warlords, trafficking in drugs,
sex-slaves and military contraband - and deeply
involved in fomenting separatist terror along Russia’s
southern border - namely the Republic of Dagestan
(which is multi-ethnic and close to the oil and gas
rich Caspian Sea). The enemy of Russia is not an
autonomous Chechen Republic but a terrorist
gangster-run state, controlled by US and British
security forces, aimed at further dismembering Russia
and destroying Putin’s efforts to reform the Russian
state.
One of the possible unanticipated consequences however
is that the terrorist slaughter and maiming of
hundreds of children and parents in Beslan’s public
school, may give Putin the chance to get rid of all
the security officials left over from the Yeltsin
regime. It may force Putin to create a new efficient
security regime capable of breaking up the gangs and
gangsters (Chechen and otherwise) who have financed
the terrorists. More important he will have to realize
that Anglo-US imperialism is not a partner against
terror but an accomplice of terrorists in their
mission to fragment Russia and destroy its public
authority. Conclusion To understand Washington’s
application of the principle of ‘self-determination”
of nations requires a critical class perspective of
the concept. Washington applies it in cases like
Kosovo and Chechnya where it controls the client
forces, despite their political illegitimacy their use
of terrorist methods. For the Anglo-American empire
builders ‘self-determination” is used as a slogan to
dismember adversarial states, and convert the new
mini-entity into an enclave or military base and
political client.
The fundamental question that needs to be raised prior
to the issue of self-determination is what is the
nature of the political and social forces supporting
self-determination - are they part of a national
project or are they mere puppets of an imperial power
struggle. Chechnya illustrates the latter, while Iraq
and Palestine represent cases of independent national
struggles against colonial occupation. The rather
mindless support of many on the left of the Kosovo and
Chechen gangsters under the principle of
‘self-determination” without any prior analysis of the
context and politics reveals their mediocrity and
worse their servile submission to imperial propaganda.
The question of the day is Anglo-American global
imperial expansion - directly through colonial wars
and indirectly through surrogate ‘separatist”
terrorists. The mass murder in Chechnya should at a
minimum, provoke some critical re-thinking of the
issue of what is involved in the Chechen War, who are
its backers and who stands to benefit.
In the United States the principle backers of the
Chechen ‘separatists” are the same neo-conservative
Zionists, who promoted the invasion of Iraq and are
unconditional backers of Israel and ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians: Perle, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, Feith and
Adelman among others. The pro-Chechen “left” travels
with strange comrades!
The dual standards which the US and Europe apply when
evaluating terrorism is most blatantly evident in the
case of Chechnya’s terrorist leaders. Ilyas Akmadov
was awarded asylum in the US despite the fact that
Russian security investigators claim they have
evidence of Akhmadov’s ties to Chechen terrorist
leaders, Aslan Maskhadov and the notorious Shamil
Basayev. Britain has granted asylum to Akmed Zakayev -
a spokesman for Maskhadov and a “Cultural Minister” of
his “opposition government”, as the terrorist network
is referred to by their sponsors. Maskhadov has sent
Umar Khabuyev to France, Apti Bisultanov to Germany ,
among other “ministers at large”. The Western regimes
demonstrate that when it comes to pro-Western Chechen
terrorist there is no crime - even the mass murder of
over 150 children - which is sufficiently brutal to
warrant extradition.
Western regimes” dual policy toward terrorism is
informed by the question of whom the terror is
directed against. It is a myth to speak, as Washington
does, of worldwide struggle against terror. Washington
and Europe in the past and in the present support
terrorist groups in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Chechnya -
as they supported them in the 1980’s in Nicaragua,
Mozambique and Angola. For Washington, the issue of
terror is subordinated to a more basic question: Does
it weaken the enemies or opponents of empire? Does it
lead to future military bases? Can the terrorist
groups be recycled as client regimes? For the past 13
years the US and Europe has been instrumental in
fomenting separatist movements in the former Soviet
Union, Russia and Yugoslavia, which practice terror
and violence to secure their aims. It is only recently
that President Putin has come to realize that there is
no end to imperial expansion - short of Red Square.
His co-operation with Washington in fighting terror
directed against the US (Al Queda) has not resulted in
reciprocal support for Russian efforts to defeat
terror in the Caucasus. The big question is whether
Putin is willing or able to have a complete
reappraisal of Russian foreign policy especially a
reappraisal of US-Russian relations, which is central
to the Kremlin’s struggle against terror.
Finally one may ask why do so many apparent
“progressives” and “leftist intellectuals” parrot the
US imperialist line of ‘self-determination” for
Chechnya? Is it ignorance of the social forces in
Chechnya? Do they simply decontextualize terrorist
acts and impose abstract principles out of slovenly
intellectual habits? Or are they simply bending to
pressure by their right-wing colleagues to
“consistently support ‘self-determination”
everywhere”? Whatever the case these pro-imperialist
toadies are incurable: Even in the midst of Chechen
mass murder of harmless children in Beslan, they blame
“the Russians for not surrendering to terrorists”
demands. Did any of these progressives and principled
leftists condemn Bush after 9/11 for not negotiating
and rewarding Osama Bin Laden? Of course not! They
supported Bush’s “war on terrorism” even when it
involved invading and occupying a foreign country. Why
then the reticence in supporting Putin’s effort to
stamp out terrorism within the boundaries of Russia?
Can it be that the progressives have more in common
with their imperial rulers than they care to admit,
especially when it comes to questions of war and
peace, terrorism and self-determination?
=== 3 ===
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=14094
Europe's "moral imperialism" - 09/07/2004 15:27
I am reading about the ridiculous will of the European driven diplomacy
to request from Russians an "urgent explanations" to the outcome of
Beslan tragedy.
What I asked to myself is "what kind of right they presume to have in
order to demand explanations"?
The real question is: even in a world without war, in a world of
established of democracy, in a world without starving people, is
imperialism possible?
I was tempted to reply "in such a world, it is impossible", then the
European position about Russia made me change the idea. Another kind of
imperialism is possible.
An imperialism with no weapons, with no economic power. A "moral"
imperialism.
Let us take some nations and build them an image of human right
defenders. Let us built them the image of the Kant's republic of peace.
Let us create them an image of pure, angelic
total democracy-driven country. Let us create them an image of "the
land of the true freedom, the land of true pacific collaboration
between peoples".
Let them bring any positive moral attribute. What will be the result?
The result will be they will acquire a terrific moral weight. This
means, they will acquire moral authority.
They will be able to judge anyone in the world. They will be the
absolute court, being able to put on trial entire peoples, their
leadership, anything.
In a democracy-based world, a negative sentence of that "moral court"
can erode any politician, can expel any person or any group from the
civic behavior. Condemnation from that moral court will became a real
ostracism, in the ancient Greek sense of the term: people are literally
expelled from the civic community, period.
What is the matter of that supposed "moral supremacy"? What is its
purpose? The purpose is imperialism.
Being able to go in whatever place and say "this is right, this is
wrong, you should do this, you shouldn't do that".
A new kind of imperialism, that uses the conscience of masses to
erode leadership, and uses moral condemnation to manipulate the
conscience.
I think it was very important that Russia refused any bound about
that imperialism. I think that because, I hope, in future the world
will be really a peaceful word , and I hope democracy will be raised
everywhere. And I think if we accept that "moral supremacy" of some
countries (Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway), then we
will fall under a new
kind of imperialism. We will lose our freedom, even in a "human
right" dressed way to lose them.
Perhaps I have in mind that the "moral supremacy" of the Middle
Europe is a false under the historical point of view. All that
countries were powerful and especially the later colonialists countries.
Belgium should explain to the whole world its role in the Lumumba
affair. And I am not talking things happened 300 years ago, I am
talking about the events occurred some decades ago. Holland should
explain to us its role in that Luna-park that was the apartheid regime
in South Africa. France left Algeria in the 60 decades. Germany...OK,
don't shot fishes in a glass.
What are the historical reasons of that "moral supremacy" they claim
to have? What is the right they created a court in their country that
have authority everywhere in the world, claiming upper of the state
authority of any other government?
I am glad that president Putin defined their position as "blaspheme".
Just an example: Italy had the strongest terrorism phenomena in the
whole West Bank, during the 1970-80s decades. We beat them. We are the
only nation in the West Bank that can claim to have really beaten an
entire branch of terrorism.
In that period that kind of Imperialism was started, and France gave
asylum to some of the most ferocious terrorist. They said we were
"violating their civil rights".
What was the result?
The result is now one ferocious terrorist they given asylum,
condemned in Italy for 4 cold-blood reasonless murders
is wanted by the French police, escaping and hiding in THEIR country,
and they are shaming of that with us.
That is the result of "moral supremacy" they want to build. I
disagree, this is not morality, this is a moral driven imperialism.
This is the reason I approve the position of the president Putin and
of the whole Russia about that Europe driven diplomacy. I think we must
destroy that moral imperialism while it is beginning, forbidding that
countries to have any power out of their borders.
If we fail, we will be condemned to a perpetual trial, a trial with
Middle-European judges who decide what is right and what is wrong to do
in our own houses.
Ivan Nikola Guerra
PRAVDA.Ru
=== 4 ===
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1094802004
The Scotsman
September 18, 2004
Putin accuses 'complicit' West of harbouring Chechen terrorists
CHRIS STEPHEN
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday
accused the West of harbouring Chechen terrorists,
speaking hours after rebel leader Shamil Basayev
claimed responsibility for the Beslan school massacre.
In a statement likely to further chill Russia’s
cooling relations with Europe and the United States,
Mr Putin said the West’s "patronising and indulgent
attitude to the murderers amounts to complicity in
terror".
His remarks came the day after Moscow summoned
Britain’s chargé d’affairs, Stephen Wordsworth, to the
Russian foreign ministry to hear complaints about
London’s decision to grant asylum to a Chechen
politician and an exiled Russian tycoon.
Mr Wordsworth was told that the men, Chechen rebel
spokesman Akhmed Zakayev and tycoon Boris Berezovsky,
should be stopped from making "slanderous statements".
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe has criticised Moscow for
failing to provide accurate coverage of the Beslan
siege and accused the government of opening a
"credibility gap" between the state, media and the
people.
A day of dramatic announcements began with the
statement, via a rebel website, that Chechen guerrilla
leader Basayev was finally accepting responsibility
for the Beslan attack, saying a unit named
Riyadus-Salikhin carried out the operation.
But Basayev insisted it was government forces, not his
rebels, that were responsible for the massacre two
weeks ago that has left 326 dead and another 100
people missing.
"A terrible tragedy occurred in the city of Beslan.
The Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded 1,000
children and adults," said the Basayev statement.
He repeated an earlier offer of peace if the Kremlin
would grant Chechnya independence, something Moscow
has ruled out. "We can guarantee that all of Russia’s
Muslims would refrain from armed methods of struggle
against the Russian Federation, at least for ten to 15
years," said the statement.
The United States yesterday denounced Basayev’s
admission. The US deputy secretary of state, Richard
Armitage, said: "He has proved beyond the shadow of a
doubt that he is inhuman."
Basayev’s comments have also ended speculation that
the Beslan slaughter might trigger a pause in
fighting, with the rebel leader, Russia’s most wanted
man, saying more attacks would follow.
"We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody,
and we will continue to fight as is convenient and
advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said.
What sort of attacks those rules allow is unclear, but
Russia has been battered by a violent summer of
attacks that its security forces have been powerless
to prevent.
Mr Putin, meanwhile, accused the West of hypocrisy by
fighting against Osama bin Laden while at the same
time giving sanctuary to Chechen rebels. "We faced
double standards in the attitude towards terrorism,"
he said.
Mr Putin warned that attempts to negotiate with
Chechen separatists were as dangerous as the
appeasement of Nazi Germany in the years before World
War Two.
"I urge you to remember the lessons of history, the
amicable deal [with Adolf Hitler] in Munich in 1938,"
he said. "Any surrender leads to them widening their
demands and makes losses worse."
Mr Putin’s comments are likely to put further distance
between Russia and the West, which has repeatedly
criticised Russia for human rights violations in
Chechnya.
Eyebrows were raised in Europe this week when Mr Putin
announced that, as part of his campaign against
terrorism, he would scrap elections for Russia’s
regional governors, and will appoint them himself.
Britain is in the firing line because of its decision
to give Berezovsky and Zakayev asylum.
Russia regards Zakayev as a terrorist, and wants
Berezovsky, a former television mogul and
power-broker, to return to Russia to face fraud
investigators. Both exiles are frequent critics of Mr
Putin. ....
Quelli che vogliono squartare la Russia (5)
1. The Chechens' American friends (John Laughland / The Guardian)
2. North Ossetia: Self-Determination and Imperial Politics (James
Petras)
3. Europe's "moral imperialism" (Ivan Nikola Guerra / Pravda.ru)
4. Putin accuses 'complicit' West of harbouring Chechen
terrorists (Chris Stephen / The Scotsman)
MORE LINKS:
Chechnya: From BHHRG's archives
http://www.bhhrg.org/LatestNews.asp?ArticleID=45
Beslan: The real international connection (by Brendan O'Neill)
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA6CA.htm
Putin vents his anger at the West: Don't tell me to talk to
child-killers
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/
story.jsp?story=559044&host=3&dir=73
=== 1 ===
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5010448-103677,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1299318,00.html
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/izbor/Krize_u_svetu/2004-09-13.html
http://www.oscewatch.org/pressDetails.asp?ArticleID=25
The Guardian September 8, 2004
The Chechens' American friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on
terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have
made their own
By John Laughland
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view
that President Putinis somehow the main culprit in the
grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and
headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words
for government", and "Criticism mounting against
Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio
correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to
say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the
terrorists. There have been numerous editorials
encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday
Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism
(usually Russian the widespread use of the word
"rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a
surprising indulgence in the face of
extreme brutality.
On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called
"mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a
specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and
by its American supporters. The leading Russian
critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are
the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir
Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal
market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy
under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the
Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New
York head office, this influential thinktank - which
operates in tandem with the military-political Rand
Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers
on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the
"Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in
recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities.
The centre has also been assiduous over recent months
in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a
link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.
These people peddle essentially the same line as that
expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed
Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages
yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen
rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like
Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country,
although the Russian authorities want him on numerous
charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of
funding Chechen rebels in the past.
By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are
putting it about that Russian TV played down the
Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported
live, the implication being that Putin's Russia
remains a highly controlled police state. But this
view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of
the impression I gained while watching both CNN and
Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels
had far better information and images from Beslan than
their western competitors. This harshness towards
Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the
US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause
is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya
(ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished
Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the
most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically
support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon
adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth
Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged
on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a
cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld
and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation;
Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security
Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence
officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed
Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato;
Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a
former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading
proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James
Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the
leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to
re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen
rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's
Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause
by emphasising the seriousness of human rights
violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares
the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim"
causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only
international intervention in the Caucasus can
stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC
welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and
a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov,
foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government,
and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from
both political parties, the ACPC members represent the
backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and
their views are indeed those of the US administration.
Although the White House issued a condemnation of the
Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that
the Chechen conflict must be solved politically.
According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns
Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on
Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military,
solution - in other words to negotiate with
terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects
elsewhere.
Allegations are even being made in Russia that the
west itself is somehow the purpose of such support is
to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the
Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to
use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring
Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an
extremely pro-American government, and where the US
already has a significant military presence - only
encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed
to lend credence to the idea in his interview with
foreign journalists on Monday.
Proof of any such western involvement would be
difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are
asking themselves such questions when the same people
in Washington who demand the deployment of
overwhelming military force against the US's so-called
terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate
to hers?
John Laughland is a trustee of the British Helsinki
Human Rights Group - www.oscewatch.org
=== 2 ===
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2004w37/msg00031.htm
North Ossetia: Self-Determination and Imperial
Politics
James Petras - September 8, 2004
The monstrous deliberate slaughter of over 330 parents
and children in the Beslan school gymnasium by Chechen
terrorists is not as the BBC claims a “tragedy” but a
vicious criminal act.
To understand the nature of the conflict between the
Russian state and the Chechen terrorists it is
important to focus on the socio-political forces and
issues in dispute. For the bulk of the US and European
media the issue is the ‘self-determination” of the
Chechens. But who and what does the ‘self” refer to ?
With the disintegration of the former Soviet Union,
both in Russia and in the Baltic, Balkan and Caucasian
states criminal gangs allied with corrupt members of
the former Soviet apparatus seized and pillaged public
resources controlling the economies and state
apparatus. Gangsters became billionaires and
billionaires contracted assassins to eliminate rivals,
competitors and any regulatory authorities who
questioned their practices. According to Paul
Klebnikov - the recently assassinated editor of the
Russian edition of Forbes Magazine - one of the most
brutal of the vicious gangs operating in Moscow was
the Chechen mafia. Allied with Russian billionaires
and through them with the Russian security system they
accumulated large fortunes which they laundered via
Western banks and through their extensive networks
with their operatives in Chechnya. Any Chechen who
protested or questioned the Chechen mafia was quickly
eliminated. For the Chechen mafia operating in Russia,
Chechnya was the “home base” - the sanctuary to which
they could always find a safe haven. The Chechen mafia
was instrumental in financing arming and providing
military cadres and leaders to the Chechen
“independence movement”. What was at stake was the
creation of a mafia fiefdom controlled by gangsters,
warlords and Islamic fundamentalists.
Writing of the First Chechen War (1994-96), Paul
Klebnikov wrote:
“The Chechen War was a gangster turf war writ large.
Chechen organized crime groups in Moscow and other
Russian cities maintained subsidiaries in their
ancestral homeland. Chechnya was a key transit point
in the Russian narcotics trade and the Moscow-based
gangsters sent a large part of their profits back to
the homeland. The same Russian officials and security
officers who patronized Chechen organized crime groups
in Moscow also patronized the Chechen government by
allowing (it) to appropriate millions on tons of
Russian oil at little or no cost” (Godfather of the
Kremlin, Harcourt 2000, page 40).
Klebnikov went on to point out that the Chechen
warlords and gangsters received their arms from
corrupt Russian army commanders and security forces
(page 41). To the question of who are the political
forces of self-determination in the case of Chechnya,
the answer is the gangsters, warlords, and extremist
terrorists, like Shamil Basayen, Salman Raduyev and
fundamentalists like Movladi Udugov. Between 1995-97
the notorious Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky,
maintained a close relationship with these Chechen
warlords (Klebnikov, page 261). Today they both share
a common and absolute hostility to President Putin and
his attempt to control crime and pillage.
Chechen warlords sought to gain a semblance of
“legitimacy” for their fiefdom by provoking a conflict
with Russia and securing US and European support. From
the end of the 1980’s, but particularly after 1991,
the CIA gave the highest priority to fomenting the
break up of the Soviet Union by financing and arming
local separatist movements. The first wave of
break-ups took place in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Georgia. Washington and London were not at all
concerned about whether the new leaders were Islamic
fundamentalists, ex-Stalinist autocrats, or Mafia
gangsters - the important issue was to destroy the
USSR, and undermine Russian influence throughout the
Caucasus and South Asia. Following the “independence”
of these former Soviet republics, the US especially
moved in to create client regimes, signing oil
contracts and building military bases.
‘self-Determination” was a transitional slogan toward
rapid incorporation into the new US hegemonic zone.
Russia under US client ruler Yelsin acceded to all
these US acquisitions “advised” by gangsters, mafia
billionaires and the most corrupt “oligarchs” in
recent history.
The US empire, having succeeded in the first wave of
client acquisition, moved further to foment a second
wave to include other Russian autonomous territories,
even closer to strategic centers of the Russian state.
Chechnya was a choice target for historic reasons.
During the US-sponsored Islamic uprising and invasion
against the secular reform-minded Afghan republic in
1989, Washington teamed up with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan
and other Muslim states (including Iran) to recruit,
finance and arm tens of thousands of Muslim
Fundamentalists from all over the Middle East, North
Africa, Southern Caucasus and Southern Asia. Numerous
“volunteers” from Chechnya fought in Afghanistan
against the Afghan government and its supporters. The
US achieved a pyrrhic victory in Afghanistan: it
severely weakened the decaying Soviet state, but
created tens of thousands of well-armed and trained
fundamentalist network. While one sector of the
Islamic forces went into opposition to the US in Saudi
Arabia and elsewhere another group lent itself to US
imperial strategy in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia
and Russia.
Thousands of Afghans fighters from the Fundamentalist
armies went to Bosnia, where they were armed and
financed by the US to fight against the Yugoslavs and
in favor of a separatist state under US tutelage.
Many writers on the left ignored the presence of these
“volunteers” who were in the frontlines in ethnic
purges of Serb enclaves and who detonated a terrorist
bombing in a major market in Sarajevo to focus Western
opinion on Serb “genocide”. Following the successful
dismemberment of the major regions of Yugoslavia and
the division of the new “mini-states” into US and
European clients, the US moved toward adding a new
regions to the empire. Washington and Europe backed
the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, first with
financing, training and arms and later by declaring
war against the remnant of Yugoslavia. Chechens
participated with the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Army, a widely recognized terrorist group that was
classified as “criminal” by Interpol prior to becoming
a Washington client. The KLA was financed from several
“internal sources”. In part it derived funds from its
control over the drug routes from South Asia and the
Middle East and in the large-scale trade in sex
slaves. Later it raked in dollars and euros from the
brothels in “liberated” Kosovo. Above all it stole
land, businesses and personal property from the
expelled Serb population and stole billions of dollars
from Western aid. Under Nato protection, the KLA
ethnically cleansed over 200,000 residents who were
not ethnic Albanians and became a de-facto client
state living off of Western handouts and with all of
its factories and mines shut. The US contracted
Halliburton to build huge military bases in Southern
Europe, Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan all of which
were US battlegrounds where Washington had sponsored
separatist movements under the guise of
‘self-determination”. These are all now being
converted into client states.
Chechen separatists developed close working relations
and terrorist skills working with the US and Western
Europe in all of these conflicts and became the
beneficiaries of US diplomatic, political and military
support (via Saudi Arabia). Like the Kosovars, the
Chechen leaders came out of a mafia-financed network,
which uses nationalist rhetoric to cloak gangster
rule.
Throughout the 1990’s to the present, the West has
backed the Chechen terrorists even as they draw
heavily on support from Moscow gangsters and Islamic
fundamentalists. Their leaders embrace a “rule or
ruin” policy, refusing any status except to separate
from Russia and become a US client. For the US, a
victory for the Chechen terrorists would become a
springboard for further dismemberment of Russia
throughout the Caucasus.
The Chechens combine the violent tactics they learned
in controlling gangland activity in Russia with the
terrorist practices of the Afghan war which targeted
female rural school teachers and medical workers for
beheading, throat slitting and the skinning of
“Communist” captives alive. Their current practice of
placing of bombs in theaters, airplanes, apartment
complexes and the horrible killing and maiming of
hundreds of school children and their parents and
teachers has a bloody, US-sanctioned precedent. The
Chechens combine the worse of the Mafia and Islamic
fundamentalists - cold-blooded murder of innocent
victims to establish theocratic warlord rulership.
Western Policy In response to the Chechen terrorist
assaults, all the Western mass media continued to
refer to them as “nationalists”, “militants”, “rebels”
and as legitimate representatives of the Chechen
people, even after they had massacred the school
children. In the immediate aftermath, all the print
and electronic media, from the BBC to the Guardian, to
Le Monde, New York Times etc. criticized the Russians
for failing to negotiate with the terrorists - even as
the terrorists were murdering children and even after
they had set off explosives maiming innocent kids.
Nothing captures the profound media commitment to
empire and backing for the dismemberment of Russia
than its support of the terrorists in the midst of
mass murder. The most primitive and craven support for
terrorist demands in the midst of national grief and
international outrage finally provoked the Russian
state to react with indignation - and for some of the
media to temporarily downplay its support of the
terrorists and the breakup of Russia.
The Russian media was no exception. Most of the
privately owned media and commentators yearn for the
return of the Yeltsin period of servility and
enrichment and seek to discredit and destroy the Putin
regime. Many of the billionaire oligarchs have close
working relations with the Chechen leaders, especially
Boris Berezovsky. The oligarchs and their pundits in
the Russian media echo the Western political and media
line of blaming the Russian security forces rather
than the Chechen terrorists. Eyewitness survivors
provide vivid accounts of bombing and killings prior
to the Russian rescue operations - thus putting the
lie to the Western cover-up for the terrorist action.
In England the British government provides asylum to a
major Chechen terrorist leader sought by Russian
authorities. In the United States, one of Chechnya’s
separatist leaders, Ilyas Akhadov, was given asylum
last August, largely through the efforts of “American
Committee for Peace in Chechnya” chaired by Carter’s
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and
Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig - principle
backers of the Fundamentalist invasion and destruction
of the secular Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
Brzezinski’s life-long obsession has been the total
dismemberment of Russia - and its reduction to a
feudal enclave controlled by the West via local
oligarchs, warlords and gangsters - like those he
backs in Chechnya. Brzezinski and his neo-conservative
colleagues in the National Endowment for Democracy -
the civilian face of the CIA - awarded this terrorist
‘spokesman” a research grant, including a monthly
allowance, medial insurance and travel expenses.
Anglo-US governments and their “political fronts”
provide sanctuary to the Chechen terrorist leaders as
part of their strategy to sustain a war of attrition
against Russia and especially Putin using the Chechen
people as guinea pigs. The outcome of Chechen
independence would most likely resemble Kosovo - a
client state, with a big US military base, run by
gangsters and warlords, trafficking in drugs,
sex-slaves and military contraband - and deeply
involved in fomenting separatist terror along Russia’s
southern border - namely the Republic of Dagestan
(which is multi-ethnic and close to the oil and gas
rich Caspian Sea). The enemy of Russia is not an
autonomous Chechen Republic but a terrorist
gangster-run state, controlled by US and British
security forces, aimed at further dismembering Russia
and destroying Putin’s efforts to reform the Russian
state.
One of the possible unanticipated consequences however
is that the terrorist slaughter and maiming of
hundreds of children and parents in Beslan’s public
school, may give Putin the chance to get rid of all
the security officials left over from the Yeltsin
regime. It may force Putin to create a new efficient
security regime capable of breaking up the gangs and
gangsters (Chechen and otherwise) who have financed
the terrorists. More important he will have to realize
that Anglo-US imperialism is not a partner against
terror but an accomplice of terrorists in their
mission to fragment Russia and destroy its public
authority. Conclusion To understand Washington’s
application of the principle of ‘self-determination”
of nations requires a critical class perspective of
the concept. Washington applies it in cases like
Kosovo and Chechnya where it controls the client
forces, despite their political illegitimacy their use
of terrorist methods. For the Anglo-American empire
builders ‘self-determination” is used as a slogan to
dismember adversarial states, and convert the new
mini-entity into an enclave or military base and
political client.
The fundamental question that needs to be raised prior
to the issue of self-determination is what is the
nature of the political and social forces supporting
self-determination - are they part of a national
project or are they mere puppets of an imperial power
struggle. Chechnya illustrates the latter, while Iraq
and Palestine represent cases of independent national
struggles against colonial occupation. The rather
mindless support of many on the left of the Kosovo and
Chechen gangsters under the principle of
‘self-determination” without any prior analysis of the
context and politics reveals their mediocrity and
worse their servile submission to imperial propaganda.
The question of the day is Anglo-American global
imperial expansion - directly through colonial wars
and indirectly through surrogate ‘separatist”
terrorists. The mass murder in Chechnya should at a
minimum, provoke some critical re-thinking of the
issue of what is involved in the Chechen War, who are
its backers and who stands to benefit.
In the United States the principle backers of the
Chechen ‘separatists” are the same neo-conservative
Zionists, who promoted the invasion of Iraq and are
unconditional backers of Israel and ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians: Perle, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, Feith and
Adelman among others. The pro-Chechen “left” travels
with strange comrades!
The dual standards which the US and Europe apply when
evaluating terrorism is most blatantly evident in the
case of Chechnya’s terrorist leaders. Ilyas Akmadov
was awarded asylum in the US despite the fact that
Russian security investigators claim they have
evidence of Akhmadov’s ties to Chechen terrorist
leaders, Aslan Maskhadov and the notorious Shamil
Basayev. Britain has granted asylum to Akmed Zakayev -
a spokesman for Maskhadov and a “Cultural Minister” of
his “opposition government”, as the terrorist network
is referred to by their sponsors. Maskhadov has sent
Umar Khabuyev to France, Apti Bisultanov to Germany ,
among other “ministers at large”. The Western regimes
demonstrate that when it comes to pro-Western Chechen
terrorist there is no crime - even the mass murder of
over 150 children - which is sufficiently brutal to
warrant extradition.
Western regimes” dual policy toward terrorism is
informed by the question of whom the terror is
directed against. It is a myth to speak, as Washington
does, of worldwide struggle against terror. Washington
and Europe in the past and in the present support
terrorist groups in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Chechnya -
as they supported them in the 1980’s in Nicaragua,
Mozambique and Angola. For Washington, the issue of
terror is subordinated to a more basic question: Does
it weaken the enemies or opponents of empire? Does it
lead to future military bases? Can the terrorist
groups be recycled as client regimes? For the past 13
years the US and Europe has been instrumental in
fomenting separatist movements in the former Soviet
Union, Russia and Yugoslavia, which practice terror
and violence to secure their aims. It is only recently
that President Putin has come to realize that there is
no end to imperial expansion - short of Red Square.
His co-operation with Washington in fighting terror
directed against the US (Al Queda) has not resulted in
reciprocal support for Russian efforts to defeat
terror in the Caucasus. The big question is whether
Putin is willing or able to have a complete
reappraisal of Russian foreign policy especially a
reappraisal of US-Russian relations, which is central
to the Kremlin’s struggle against terror.
Finally one may ask why do so many apparent
“progressives” and “leftist intellectuals” parrot the
US imperialist line of ‘self-determination” for
Chechnya? Is it ignorance of the social forces in
Chechnya? Do they simply decontextualize terrorist
acts and impose abstract principles out of slovenly
intellectual habits? Or are they simply bending to
pressure by their right-wing colleagues to
“consistently support ‘self-determination”
everywhere”? Whatever the case these pro-imperialist
toadies are incurable: Even in the midst of Chechen
mass murder of harmless children in Beslan, they blame
“the Russians for not surrendering to terrorists”
demands. Did any of these progressives and principled
leftists condemn Bush after 9/11 for not negotiating
and rewarding Osama Bin Laden? Of course not! They
supported Bush’s “war on terrorism” even when it
involved invading and occupying a foreign country. Why
then the reticence in supporting Putin’s effort to
stamp out terrorism within the boundaries of Russia?
Can it be that the progressives have more in common
with their imperial rulers than they care to admit,
especially when it comes to questions of war and
peace, terrorism and self-determination?
=== 3 ===
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=14094
Europe's "moral imperialism" - 09/07/2004 15:27
I am reading about the ridiculous will of the European driven diplomacy
to request from Russians an "urgent explanations" to the outcome of
Beslan tragedy.
What I asked to myself is "what kind of right they presume to have in
order to demand explanations"?
The real question is: even in a world without war, in a world of
established of democracy, in a world without starving people, is
imperialism possible?
I was tempted to reply "in such a world, it is impossible", then the
European position about Russia made me change the idea. Another kind of
imperialism is possible.
An imperialism with no weapons, with no economic power. A "moral"
imperialism.
Let us take some nations and build them an image of human right
defenders. Let us built them the image of the Kant's republic of peace.
Let us create them an image of pure, angelic
total democracy-driven country. Let us create them an image of "the
land of the true freedom, the land of true pacific collaboration
between peoples".
Let them bring any positive moral attribute. What will be the result?
The result will be they will acquire a terrific moral weight. This
means, they will acquire moral authority.
They will be able to judge anyone in the world. They will be the
absolute court, being able to put on trial entire peoples, their
leadership, anything.
In a democracy-based world, a negative sentence of that "moral court"
can erode any politician, can expel any person or any group from the
civic behavior. Condemnation from that moral court will became a real
ostracism, in the ancient Greek sense of the term: people are literally
expelled from the civic community, period.
What is the matter of that supposed "moral supremacy"? What is its
purpose? The purpose is imperialism.
Being able to go in whatever place and say "this is right, this is
wrong, you should do this, you shouldn't do that".
A new kind of imperialism, that uses the conscience of masses to
erode leadership, and uses moral condemnation to manipulate the
conscience.
I think it was very important that Russia refused any bound about
that imperialism. I think that because, I hope, in future the world
will be really a peaceful word , and I hope democracy will be raised
everywhere. And I think if we accept that "moral supremacy" of some
countries (Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway), then we
will fall under a new
kind of imperialism. We will lose our freedom, even in a "human
right" dressed way to lose them.
Perhaps I have in mind that the "moral supremacy" of the Middle
Europe is a false under the historical point of view. All that
countries were powerful and especially the later colonialists countries.
Belgium should explain to the whole world its role in the Lumumba
affair. And I am not talking things happened 300 years ago, I am
talking about the events occurred some decades ago. Holland should
explain to us its role in that Luna-park that was the apartheid regime
in South Africa. France left Algeria in the 60 decades. Germany...OK,
don't shot fishes in a glass.
What are the historical reasons of that "moral supremacy" they claim
to have? What is the right they created a court in their country that
have authority everywhere in the world, claiming upper of the state
authority of any other government?
I am glad that president Putin defined their position as "blaspheme".
Just an example: Italy had the strongest terrorism phenomena in the
whole West Bank, during the 1970-80s decades. We beat them. We are the
only nation in the West Bank that can claim to have really beaten an
entire branch of terrorism.
In that period that kind of Imperialism was started, and France gave
asylum to some of the most ferocious terrorist. They said we were
"violating their civil rights".
What was the result?
The result is now one ferocious terrorist they given asylum,
condemned in Italy for 4 cold-blood reasonless murders
is wanted by the French police, escaping and hiding in THEIR country,
and they are shaming of that with us.
That is the result of "moral supremacy" they want to build. I
disagree, this is not morality, this is a moral driven imperialism.
This is the reason I approve the position of the president Putin and
of the whole Russia about that Europe driven diplomacy. I think we must
destroy that moral imperialism while it is beginning, forbidding that
countries to have any power out of their borders.
If we fail, we will be condemned to a perpetual trial, a trial with
Middle-European judges who decide what is right and what is wrong to do
in our own houses.
Ivan Nikola Guerra
PRAVDA.Ru
=== 4 ===
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1094802004
The Scotsman
September 18, 2004
Putin accuses 'complicit' West of harbouring Chechen terrorists
CHRIS STEPHEN
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday
accused the West of harbouring Chechen terrorists,
speaking hours after rebel leader Shamil Basayev
claimed responsibility for the Beslan school massacre.
In a statement likely to further chill Russia’s
cooling relations with Europe and the United States,
Mr Putin said the West’s "patronising and indulgent
attitude to the murderers amounts to complicity in
terror".
His remarks came the day after Moscow summoned
Britain’s chargé d’affairs, Stephen Wordsworth, to the
Russian foreign ministry to hear complaints about
London’s decision to grant asylum to a Chechen
politician and an exiled Russian tycoon.
Mr Wordsworth was told that the men, Chechen rebel
spokesman Akhmed Zakayev and tycoon Boris Berezovsky,
should be stopped from making "slanderous statements".
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe has criticised Moscow for
failing to provide accurate coverage of the Beslan
siege and accused the government of opening a
"credibility gap" between the state, media and the
people.
A day of dramatic announcements began with the
statement, via a rebel website, that Chechen guerrilla
leader Basayev was finally accepting responsibility
for the Beslan attack, saying a unit named
Riyadus-Salikhin carried out the operation.
But Basayev insisted it was government forces, not his
rebels, that were responsible for the massacre two
weeks ago that has left 326 dead and another 100
people missing.
"A terrible tragedy occurred in the city of Beslan.
The Kremlin vampire destroyed and wounded 1,000
children and adults," said the Basayev statement.
He repeated an earlier offer of peace if the Kremlin
would grant Chechnya independence, something Moscow
has ruled out. "We can guarantee that all of Russia’s
Muslims would refrain from armed methods of struggle
against the Russian Federation, at least for ten to 15
years," said the statement.
The United States yesterday denounced Basayev’s
admission. The US deputy secretary of state, Richard
Armitage, said: "He has proved beyond the shadow of a
doubt that he is inhuman."
Basayev’s comments have also ended speculation that
the Beslan slaughter might trigger a pause in
fighting, with the rebel leader, Russia’s most wanted
man, saying more attacks would follow.
"We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody,
and we will continue to fight as is convenient and
advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said.
What sort of attacks those rules allow is unclear, but
Russia has been battered by a violent summer of
attacks that its security forces have been powerless
to prevent.
Mr Putin, meanwhile, accused the West of hypocrisy by
fighting against Osama bin Laden while at the same
time giving sanctuary to Chechen rebels. "We faced
double standards in the attitude towards terrorism,"
he said.
Mr Putin warned that attempts to negotiate with
Chechen separatists were as dangerous as the
appeasement of Nazi Germany in the years before World
War Two.
"I urge you to remember the lessons of history, the
amicable deal [with Adolf Hitler] in Munich in 1938,"
he said. "Any surrender leads to them widening their
demands and makes losses worse."
Mr Putin’s comments are likely to put further distance
between Russia and the West, which has repeatedly
criticised Russia for human rights violations in
Chechnya.
Eyebrows were raised in Europe this week when Mr Putin
announced that, as part of his campaign against
terrorism, he would scrap elections for Russia’s
regional governors, and will appoint them himself.
Britain is in the firing line because of its decision
to give Berezovsky and Zakayev asylum.
Russia regards Zakayev as a terrorist, and wants
Berezovsky, a former television mogul and
power-broker, to return to Russia to face fraud
investigators. Both exiles are frequent critics of Mr
Putin. ....