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Guest Post: The True Causes Underlying The Moscow Metro Bombings
Submitted by OilPrice.com
The True Causes Underlying the Moscow Metro Bombings
The tragic news of the 29 March twin suicide bombings of two Moscow Metro stations during the morning rush hour has produced outrage worldwide, with the Kremlin quickly adding that the attacks were carried out by the Caucasus Mujaheddin, a northern Caucasus-based militant Islamist guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Moscow to St. Petersburg express train last November.
The grim death toll can be seen as yet another statistic in the Kremlin’s ongoing war with Chechnya separatists that erupted in December 1994. Underneath and driving the savagery of the last 16 years is a resource that few commentators note – oil.
The two female suicide bombers were caught by closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras boarding the metro at Yugo-Zapadnaya station in the far southwest of the city in the early morning, assisted onto the train by two other women. According to the CCTV videos, the quartet seemed to be between 18 and 20; two of them were clearly of Slavic appearance.
The first bomber blew herself up at Lubyanka metro station at 7.56am. H er bomb, equivalent to about four kilograms of TNT, exploded at the height of rush hour and killed at least 25 people inside a train that had just pulled into the Lubyanka station. The explosive used was believed to be hexogen (RDX); the device was filled with iron scrap and screws for shrapnel. There has been to speculation that the second bomb, detonated at the Park Kultury station, was in fact supposed to have been detonated at the Oktyabrskaya station, next to the Ministry of the Interior.
Kremlin experts lost no time in asserting that the incident had implications far beyond Russia, claiming that the Caucasus Mujaheddin receives inspiration and financial support from unnamed networks both in the East and the West. As the death toll mounts, the bombings represent Moscow’s worst terrorist attack since February 2004, when a suicide bombing killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 100 on a metro train.
What is certain at the moment is that the carnage will continue, as last month Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, fighting for an Islamic emirate embracing the northern Cacuasus, vowed to take the conflict to Russian cities, noting in an interview on an Islamist website, "Blood will no longer be limited to our cities and towns. The war is coming to their cities.”
The attacks are a direct assault on Russian President Vladimir Putin, former KGB operative. The Lubyanka bombing is highly symbolic, as it is the subway stop for the employees of the KGB’s successor organization, the FSB, a two-minute walk from Red Square. London Royal United Services Institute analyst Jonathan Eyal observed, “This is a direct affront to Vladimir Putin, whose entire rise to power was built on his pledge to crush the enemies of Russia ... It's an affront to his muscular image.”
Few today remember that Putin’s first job when appointed Prime Minister on 9 August 1999 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin was to build an oil pipeline bypassing Chechyna, as Transneft, Russia’s pipeline monopoly, controlled the Baku-Novorossiisk line, the sole export route for Azerbaijani “early” oil exports, which crossed 95 miles of Chechen territory, a region which had been at war with the Kremlin since 1994. Following Putin’s appointment Yeltsin held a council of war over Dagestan and Putin made a rash promise that he could end a crisis caused by the incursion of 2,000 rebels from Chechnya into Dagestan in “a week and a half or two weeks.”
Work began on the bypass line on 26 October. The conflict combined with other issues reduced Azeri exports via Baku-Novorossiisk in early 2000 to an average of only 10,000 barrels per day (bpd.) In April 2000 construction finished on the $140 million, 204-mile Baku-Novorossiisk bypass via Dagestan to Tikhoretsk. The bypass had a potential capacity of 120,000 bpd, but by then Azerbaijan already had other plans, having worked with neighboring Georgia to develop an alternative pipeline route to Georgia’s Black Sea port of Supsa, completely outside of Russian control. When Yeltsin resigned on 31 December 1999 Putin became acting President and has continued to lead the Russian state ever since, initially as President and since 2008 as Prime Minister.
Putin has made it a centerpiece of his policy to resolve Chechnya for once and for all, but as the Moscow bombings so, eleven years after his accession to power, Chechnya continues to roil Russia. The issues go back to the 1991 December collapse of the USSR. When the first Chechen war erupted in 1994, many observers were baffled as to why Moscow, which had peacefully let the Soviet Union implode, was so determined to hang on to Chechnya, a small poor mountainous region in the Caucasus measuring only 30 by 70 miles.
But oil greased the equation from the outset. The post-Soviet development of the Caspian’s vast reserve of oil and natural gas quickly became Russia’s fixation, with an ever increasing importance as the rest of the post-Soviet economy withered. Energy was the one export that the Russian Federation could still produce that was guaranteed an international market, and its importance has only risen with time.
In May 2007 the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that by 2015 Caspian basin energy production could reach 4.3 million bpd, concluding that in addition to the region's proven reserves of 17-49 billion barrels, comparable to Qatar at the lower estimate and Libya on the high end, the region could contain an additional hydrocarbon reserves up to 235 billion barrels of oil, roughly equivalent to a quarter of the Middle East's total proven reserves. Nor is oil the only energy deposit there. The Caspian's potential natural gas reserves are as large as the region's proven gas reserves and could yield another potential 328 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Russia was determined to hang on to as much of this largesse as possible. An independent Chechnya could not only lead to a loss of revenue from the republic’s modest oil production (of such quality that Chechen oil was used to light lamps in the Vatican) and ruin plans to extract transit fees for Azeri “early oil,” but lead to a significant potential loss of Caspian reserves once the sea’s waters and seabed were divided.
The demise of the USSR opened up a can of worms over the Caspian’s legal status, however. The Caspian is the world's largest inland body of water, with a surface area of 143,000 square miles, its status regulated under the USSR-Persia Treaty of 26 February 1921 and the 25 March 1940 USSR-Iran Treaty. In place of the USSR and Iran there were now five Caspian littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan and wrangling began immediately over the Caspian’s division. The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines the Caspian as “a special inner sea.”
Two opposing positions quickly developed – Russia insisted that the Caspian’s waters and seabed should be divided according to coastal length, while Iran held out for an equitable 20 percent division for each of the five littoral states. Under the Russian formula, Azerbaijan, with 259.1 miles of coastline, would receive 15.2 percent of the Caspian’s waters and seabed, Iran with 319.1 miles of coast - 18.7 percent. Kazakhstan, with 526.4 miles of coastline, would receive the largest share, 30.8 percent of the Caspian, leaving Russia with its 315 miles of shore 18.5 percent of the Caspian and Turkmenistan’s 285.4 miles of coast giving it a 16.8 percent share. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan soon supported the Kremlin’s stance, while Turkmenistan under its mercurial, megalomaniacal leader Sapamurat Niyazov wavered between Moscow and Tehran.
The two Chechen wars threatened to tear Moscow’s proposal apart. After the first Chechen war erupted in 1994 and began to spill over into neighboring Dagestan, a number of the more militant Chechen guerrillas like Shamil Basayev eventually declared their intention to create a unitary northern Caucasian Chechen-Dagestani Muslim state. Chechnya and Dagestan were poorer than the rest of Russia, and Dagestan, though home to a mosaic of ethnic groups, was predominantly Muslim.
While the August 1996 Khasavyurt Accord led to a truce ending the first Chechen war, it would be shattered three years later.
Much had changed in the interim, including U.S. penetration of Azerbaijan’s and Kazakhstan’s energy sectors. As reported by EC-TACIS, for the period 1994-1999 the main sources of foreign direct investment in Azerbaijan were the United States with 28 percent, followed by Britain with 15 percent. FDI in Azerbaijan exploded from only $30 million in 1994 to $827 million in 1999, about 17 percent of Azerbaijan's GDP, with approximately 90 percent of FDI concentrated in the country's hydrocarbons sector, while Kazakhstan FDI accounted for $1.6 billion in the same period. Russia was clearly losing the battle to develop Caspian energy, and an independent Chechen-Dagestani state would make Moscow's position untenable and hence had to be stopped at any cost.
In justifying his 1999 incursion in Dagestan Basayev said, “Our Muslim brothers from Dagestan have asked us for help, and it is our duty to help them,” adding, “Our first and foremost task here is to help protect our Muslim brothers from being exterminated by both the Russians and the puppet government of Dagestan.” Dagestan, with its 249 miles of Caspian coast if independent in conjunction with Chechnya, would pare Russia’s Caspian shoreline nearly back to the Volga delta, leaving it a paltry 66 miles of coastline and shrink its offshore share under Moscow’s own formula by four-fifths, from 18.5 to 3.92 percent of a region of which Dick Cheney observed the year before Putin’s appointment, “I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.”
Upping the ante, in 1998 Bassayev publicly joined the Wahhabi movement even though Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, although a Muslim, had no intention of turning his nation into a strict Islamic state.
After Basayev in 1999 launched guerilla raids into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan which Putin vowed to crush, Maskhadov was forced to finally condemn Bassayev by name but still he did not move to arrest or prosecute him. The raids into Dagestan were followed the next month by series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, killing 293 people and injuring 651, which prompted Putin’s government to invade Chechnya for a second time.
It was war that took no quarter. Basayev determined to take his war into the heart of Russia, declaring all Russians fair game because “They pay taxes. They give approval in word and in deed. They are all responsible.” Among the atrocities perpetuated by Basayev was the June 1995 armed takeover of a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk, with 1,500 people held hostage, 166 of whom died when Russian troops stormed the building, and the September 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan, in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia, where Basayev’s men took some 1,000 adults and children hostage. After Russian security forces stormed the school more than 330 people, half of them children, died. Basayev’s fighters also took their terror campaign to Moscow; in October 2002 taking 700 people hostage in Moscow's Dubrovka theater. In the ensuing attack by Russian special forces 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas were killed.
Maskhadov, the last legitimate president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, elected in an internationally monitored election in 1997, was killed on 8 March 2005 in a village just outside the capital Grozny and Basayev was killed on 10 July 2006. Even journalists were not immune - Anna Politkovskaya, who fearlessly covered the Chechen conflict, was murdered outside her home in Moscow in October 2006. Russia only ended its counter-terrorism operation and pulled out the bulk of its army from Chechnya in April 2009.
In the wake of the Moscow Metro bombings President Dmitri Medvedev pledged to step up security in Moscow and intensify security in the turbulent northern Caucasus, telling his constituents, “We will continue the operation against terrorists without hesitation and to the end…It is necessary to tighten what we do, to look at the problem on a national scale, not only relating to a certain populated area but on a national scale. Obviously, what we have done before is not enough.” As if echoing Medvedev’s words, there have been a half a dozen bombings in Dagestan this month alone.
In perhaps the most ominous legacy of the Chechen conflict, on 23 November 1995 Basayev directed a Russian television news crew to a 32-kilogram package of cesium-137 buried in Izmailovsky Park in eastern Moscow, while after the 2002 Moscow theater siege Ahmed Zakayev stated that Chechen militants would seize a nuclear facility. It is the stuff to give security specialists nightmares worldwide.
The effect of the Moscow Metro bombings rippled across the world; in New York, municipal and Metropolitan Transit authority (MTA) officials intensified security, doubling patrols of the subway system and sending New York Police Department’s heavily armed Hercules units toting machine guns to several transit hubs, including Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. City officials said that a similar response occurred after both the 9/11 and after the 2005 attacks on London's transit system.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in 15 years of conflict in Chechnya – with Medvedev labeling the plotters “beasts” and vowing to “find and destroy them all,” the only certainty is that the bloodshed will continue. Russia will not leave the northern Caucasus because of the Caspian’s future oil prospects, which will leave the region a bleeding militant Islamic sore on Russia’s southern flanks. Russian military officials said last week that there were up to 500 terrorist groups operating in the northern Caucasus, so Medvedev’s revenge squads will be busy.
And the division of the Caspian’s offshore waters? As far away as a final peace in the north Caucasus.
Source: http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-true-causes-underlying-the-moscow-me...
This article was written by Dr. John CK Daly for Oilprice.com who offer detailed analysis on Crude Oil, Geopolitics, Gold and most other commodities. They also provide free political and economic intelligence to help investors gain a greater understanding of world events and the impact they have on certain regions and sectors. Visit: http://www.oilprice.com
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Well, if you wanted to raise the floor price for crude, you've got it. Needless to say, a better chance for teh breakout north of $83, $100 easy after that. Good-bye stock rally.
Good summary.
Looks like the Kremlin's "silent war" with the "Emir of the Caucasus Emirate" is beginning to get a little noisy.
This may be in retaliation for Anzor Astemirov's death last week.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iA4v9X9IpQYeMtx2pSc31...
Putin knows how to rile up the masses. Fear is the best motivator. Russia is still a basket case. While 60 Minutes reports on Russia's richest man and his lust for adventure, basketball and escorts, the reality in Russia is far less glamorous. Listen carefully to the CBC radio interviews below (especially parts 1 & 3; part 2 is another revealing interview on Afghanistan):
*** The Current is in Moscow with
Russia Revealed: Monday & Tuesday ***
March 30/2010 - Russia Revealed Part Two
30/03/10: Pt 1 - Modern Moscow
Nearly 20 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia is a country transformed but not always in the ways Russians had hoped.
Right click to Download 30/03/10: Pt 1 - Modern Moscow
[mp3 file: runs 21:58]
30/03/10: Pt 2 - Col. Sergey Goncharov
An interview with Colonel Sergey Goncharov, a veteran of the former Soviet Union's Alpha Unit during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He says that western forces, including Canadian troops, are making many of the same mistakes that Soviet forces did and won't be able to avoid a similar disastrous fate unless they re-think their approach.
Right click to Download 30/03/10: Pt 2 - Col. Sergey Goncharov
[mp3 file: runs 24:24]
30/03/10: Pt 3 - Novaya Gazeta
The reporters at Novaya Gazeta have paid a high price to pursue critical stories of the powerful elite in Russia because too many Russian journalists have died for the story.
Right click to Download 30/03/10: Pt 3 - Novaya Gazeta
[mp3 file: runs 27:55]
So, do we actually know if these bombings were committed by genuine "separatists" opposing Moscow, or if they might simply be sophisticated false flag operations? Russia would seem to be just about the king of false flag operations.
I certainly would put it past Putin.
The media is now calling them "The Black Widow Bombers".
Take off your tinfoil hats, gentlemen, and put your thinking caps on before you devolve this comment thread any further. This is absolutely groundless speculation. There is no reason to even suggest that this may have been a "false flag."
Think about it:
-They have the bombers on video.
-The Chechens have every motivation to pull off this kind of attack and have proven countless times in the past that they are willing and able to do this sort of thing. Russia has been victimized by such attacks many times in the past.
-This attack severely damages Putin's credibility. Putin would not order an attack that damaged him so much.
-There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence that anyone other than the Black Widow bombers themselves, and likely a few other unknown accomplices, were involved.
The notorious Russian FSB has a documented history of staging false flag events in order to accomplish political agendas.
Vladimir Putin came to power as a result of an FSB orchestrated reign of terror in the autumn of 1999 which involved blowing up apartment blocks all over Russia and blaming the attacks on Chechen separatists, allowing Putin to start a new war and secure victory in the presidential election.
FSB agents were caught planting Hexogen explosives underneath an apartment block in Ryazan. Records indicate that the first call the “terrorists” made after planting the bomb was to FSB headquarters and the culprits were allowed to flee the country by authorities.
The FSB admitted planting the sacks of explosives, but later claimed they contained sugar and were used as part of a drill to test security procedures. Authorities first stated that a terrorist attack had been averted and that the sacks did contain Hexogen, until FSB involvement was discovered at which point the story was changed.
Alexei Kartofelnikov, the first eyewitness to see the explosives and alert the police, went on the record to state that the substance was clearly not sugar, describing the material as looking more like rice and yellow in color – a clear match for the description of Hexogen.
The FSB had planted real explosives and were caught in the act of staging a false flag terror attack, forcing them to concoct an elaborate cover story while blocking any real investigation and silencing whistleblowers.
This may possibly be true, but it's also completely irrelevant.
f you're going to suggest that this attack was a "false flag," I'd ask you to present any evidence whatsoever; "the FSB has (probably) done so in the past" does not count as "evidence."
Apply Occam's razor: the simplest solution is usually the best one, and we must discard evidence that makes our answer more complex than necessary.
I hereby present my theory:
This terrorist attack was caused by terrorists.
Please try to prove me wrong using actual evidence regarding this attack.
Now that the war in Chechnya is officially over, Putin's credibility rests on his ability to ensure the safety of the Russian people. His inability to protect them from terrorist attacks serves the Chechen militants, not Putin.
More food for thought:
-Putin does not need to stage terrorist attacks to do whatever he likes in the North Caucasus. There is nothing stopping him right now from taking any actions he likes. He didn't hesitate to stomp all over Georgia when they made a tactical miscalculation.
-He would have nothing to gain and everything to lose by staging a "false flag" attack. It casts him as weak and ineffective and unable to keep his promises of security.
As I wrote in one of my previous comments, Putin is a master politician. The old Vladimir Putin is back, confronting a terrorist attack in Moscow by using the same kind of coarse and colorful language that helped him win the presidency a decade ago:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9EP5O4G0.htm
I wouldn't put anything past him - he's the one pulling the strings in Russia:
All good points, Missing Link. But I don't feel bad about asking the question. Russia, and they are not alone in this area, have staged so many false flags and used so many ruses for political ends that I pretty much assume the opposite of the party line in such matters.
They just restricted vodka sales by adding taxes , this is a shot across the bow.
There is absolutely no bias in this article. Doesn't get any more clear than that.
Among the atrocities perpetuated by Basayev was the June 1995 armed takeover of a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk, with 1,500 people held hostage, 166 of whom died when Russian troops stormed the building, and the September 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan, in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia, where Basayev’s men took some 1,000 adults and children hostage. After Russian security forces stormed the school more than 330 people, half of them children, died.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it suggests that as the RESULT of actions by special forces, there were casulties. The reality was that people escalped from the school and the fuckers started shooting at kids, then special forces rushed in.
It's tiresome to yet again hear someone implying that the "real" reason for a terrorist attack is petroleum, as if installing windmills is the ticket to peace. They don't want peace. They want bloodshed, and if oil is the stated reason, it's only a proxy to ply the sheeple with propaganda. The real reason muslims want war is, well, islam.
Without a doubt Russia has energy reasons for its actions, right or wrong. But when you have an islamic country as your neighbor, the presence or absence of oil has nothing whatever to do with their objective, which is to rip out your gutsack and strangle you with your infidel entrails.
+1. Boiled down, it's all about who has power. Oil, currency, ideology, water, healthcare, whatever....these are all means to the end. In the end, it's all about power and control. The stakes are global.
for the higher ups it IS about oil.. to get the people to die for it you have to mask it with religion
and to the above question about false flags..if EVERYTHING were false flags then there wouldn't need to be ANY false flags
War is often about resource and resource is often, wait, always a source of power
Some logic you got.
A simple question for you - do you know which country the 9/11 hijackers came from and its relationship with US?
Yes.
/points finger
THAT'S RACIST!!!!!
I'm kidding, of course. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to parrot the leftist party line that gets repeated robotically whenever anyone criticizes Islam.
I've read the Koran cover to cover, and I agree with you 100%. One need look no further than the Islamic "holy" book to understand the roots of Islamic terrorism.
I'm pretty sure I'm racist, because I get told that a lot by leftists, who represent the very soul of truthfulness.
" 1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."
(Deuteronomy 13:1-10)
That's your Bible, not Koran.
Hey Zina, that's true but we are now in the New Testament dispensation. Your Bible quotes were when Israel was under a Theocracy in the Old Testament. It is history of God's dealing with His people back then not now. Perhap's that was your point.
My point is that millions of Christians have the Bible as sacred book, and that Deuteronomy words don't make this millions of Cristhians become terrorists.
If you go to Jakarta (Indonesia) or Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) you will probably make a lot of good muslim friends, and they will have the Koran as sacred book, but that will not make them terrorists.
"Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov, fighting for an Islamic emirate embracing the northern Cacuasus.....'
More jihad.
Another article pretending it's not.
Like any of these 'Freedom fighters' would ever actually personally gain by killing others.... they are ignorant tools , lambs , all of them; both sides. . This is where International politics should have been involked , an be able to protect national sovereignity of a people, but obviously international co-operation is a sham in the face of profit and a barrel, .....money speaks louder than words.
Has anyone seen a hot spot map of conflicts/pipelines? I suspect it would show a lot of conflict along these routes. I'm also wondering about Afghanistan in this regard.
Where is Project Mayhem when we need him? He always had great maps.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Kazakhstan/images/IEA_oilmap.gif
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/images/AzPipeMap.gif
Without a Chec incident over here who knows what would have happened to America.
Oh wait, eventual independence, minus the bloodshed. Nevermind.
The only reason we here in the US have been spared this deserved retribution is because the countries we are keeping under our jackboot are oceans away.
Don't doubt for a second that we will not eventually reap the sorrows of empire (h/t Chalmers Johnson). Galatians 6:7 bitches.
Also, do not for one second doubt that if some foreign nation invaded US soil, occupied us, raped our women, killed our children, turned our men into objects of scorn, derision and ridicule, and tried to indoctrinate us into a wholly alien way of life by gunpoint and a constant stream of projected and residual violence, we would rise up and use our own bodies if necessary to defend our families, our homes, our communities, our honor, and our way of life. Anyone who says we wouldn't is actually a gutless coward (and doesn't even realize it).
There have been many examples of Americans sacrificing themselves (uh, "suicide mission", anyone?) in American history. We simply choose to conveniently push those episodes to the back of the stacks when it's our turn to be the godless aggressor.
In other words, there is no American exceptionalism. We're human, just like everyone else. We wouldn't stand for that. Think about that the next time you hear about a "jihadist" in Iraq or Afghanistan (or Pakistan, or Palestine, or ...)
You're no daisy, America.
I am Chumbawamba.
Take your noxious anti-Americanism and stuff it up your cornhole, chumba.
You just had to hijack a thread about Russia and Chechnya to take cheap shots at the USA, didn't you? You're pathetic.
Close your eyes for a moment: "The USA is only in your mind."
There is a storm coming, and all the debt-slaves will be caught surprised on their couches, choking on their popcorn in the dark, wondering what happened. What does it mean to be an American when the rule of law has been suspended? Speaking of the thought processes that have directed human history can only add to this thread. Your comment belongs over at the glue-HuffingPost.
+1 for harsh reality, Chumba.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/03/bullets-from-drug-war.html
After pipelines and poppy fields, is there any other reason to be in Afghanistan?
geo pol?
No, but what a compliment! I try to be original, but most of my content is the attempt to relate familiar opinions - I have no agenda except that of "waking" our fellow compatriots.
Maybe we should stop this charade of being exceptional, and start stoning women for the crime of being raped, and strapping c-4 and ball bearings to our kids and send them to school with a detonator, because we value them so much.
Would you like a plane ticket to Tehran?
I'm sure you will find an abundance of persons such as yourself,with whom you can plot to remove "our" jackboot.
Sadly,I can only afford a one-way.
Jihadist in sneer quotes is a dead giveaway,bro.
Oh, you mean the rest of my screed wasn't a "dead giveaway".
And exactly what does it give away? That I understand America's current role as gluttonous hegemon without my Fox News issued red white and blue covered glasses?
Where do people like you come from?
Would YOU like a plane ticket to Tehran? Cuz I assure you, your ideological point of view is much more in line with the mullahs that you ascribe mine to being.
I am Chumbawamba.
See, Mr. Wamba, the issue is not "American Exceptionalism." It's not that "We're human, just like everyone else."
If either of those applied, then we would have to consider possible reasons why Chechens might not want to live under Putin's Russia. Clearly, anyone who is reasonable would love that. I mean, really. Just look at the guy. Where's my passport? I'm there...
I don't think anyone really wants to get into the Devil's Calculus about the relative bastardy of the Chechen terrorists and Putin's Russian-well, what can we call them? I guess they have uniforms, so by current definitions they aren't terrorists. But I wouldn't want them anywhere near me.
And who even wants to think of what kind of savagery could ensue when desperate people who would otherwise have nothing of value might gain access to the most indispensable commodity in the world today.
These are difficult, and disgusting, issues to examine critically.
Fortunately, we don't have too. The Chechens are Muslims. Ergo, they ain't human. Phew. Now it's so much easier.
Yeah, why would they not want to live under Putin? Maybe everyone would play nicer if they left each other alone?
are you fucking serious ? that is garbage
The set up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GQ#.22Vladimir_Putin.27s_Dark_Rise_to_Power.22_controversy
The article:
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/09/07/vladimir-putins-dark-rise-to-power.html
The first thing I heard about this is that Mossad gave support to the Chechens who did this deed. The reason: Russia is making arms deals with Iran, and those arms will eventually be used against Israel after they launch a pre-emptive assault on Iran. They'd rather their enemies be defenseless.
Of course it's largely speculation. But it kinda makes sense if you think about it.
The false flag makes less sense in Russia where less propaganda is needed to justify violence. They simply kill everybody and that's that. Think of the theater hostage situation a few years back: 100 hostages died to 25 kidnappers.
Nuts! This has been going on since 1783, I don't believe for a minute that that Mossad was even in existence in 1783. Not everything has to do with teh Jooz
It's not oil, it is natural gas. The oil reserves are reletively low but Chechnya is sitting on top of some of the biggest natural gas reserves in the world. That's what this is about and always have been in modern history. Russia could give a shit less about a bunch of sheep farmers wanting independence in a contained mountain region. Sure, give them independence, let them try to forge trade relations with the world!
It would be much less of a headache for the Russians, just let them independent.
But in 1994-1995 when I studied at the Moscow Institute of Social and Political Studies, Cherdomyrdin was the PM, also head of GAZPROM. This is not about what oil may be there, it's about natural gas. Then we have a problem. I was there for the first attack in December 1994. I remember the Russian paratroopers guarding the metro stations - and as a former American paratrooper, I went out with them after their duty for drinks and chasing skirts. Doesn't matter whether Russian or American, all paratroopers are the same.
But I guarantee you, this war is not only about oil, which is secondary, but about natural gas. Now that I reside in Germany, the issue of Russian natural gas is something to pay attention to.
Interestingly--or tragically, I guess is more appropriate--this is the same reason that Gaza must suffocate and die: Israel wants the huge natural gas deposit off the coast of Gaza, decidedly owned by the Palestinians being in their territorial waters.
It always comes down to filthy lucre.
I am Chumbawamba.
Zbigniew Brzezinski.
janet tavakoli has written an interesting piece over at Huffington Post
how to corner the gold market
She makes it sound like this has happened! Wow. Thank you.
First off in the second Chechen war Russia decimated the Chechen rebels and there numbers went from like 55,000 to less than 500. So its not a false flag because the chechen rebels lost the war.The war is over, Russian troops do not occupy the streets of Grozny and the other major cities its the local police that are fighting the low level insurgents. Chechnya is under Russian control so its actually terrorist that attacked Russia. They are just rebels that are desperate and did an attack in Russia. I guess Putin will finish them off.
In a world where oil may soon be above $ 120 again, we can only expect more wars, violence and chaos. Expensive oil means expensive freight rates, expensive fuel for agricultural machinery, expensive fertilizers and other chemicals, expensive plastics ... The worst is yet to come.
Join the Tea Party you hate so much and save the day.
Tea is not a new clean alternative fuel.
So Cliché
The apartment complex bombings deserve a closer look. They occurred in the middle of the night and the perfect pancaking of the cement walls, floors and ceilings leads one to believe that Russian Special Forces (and their semtex) did the job. It was the perfect crime to blame on the Chechen rebels and widen the war with fuel/air bombs.
The Chechen resistance and rebels may respond with an ethylene oxide and shotgun shell surprise. This would give new meaning to the term Red Square. I hear Grozny is nice this time of year.
This just posted on Drudge Report
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20100330/capt.photo_1269989290778-1-0.jpg?x=40...
DYNAMIC DUO LEAD CHARGE ON IRAN
The story about Chechnya is very biased.
- Historically (during the last 5 centuries), Russian leaders were looking for expantion. It took Russia two centuries to conquer the Caucasus. However, their people never accepted Russian barbaric colonial invaders.
- For many centuries, Russian invaders committed endless string of terrible crimes against peoples they conquered.
- In 1943, Stalin accused Chechen people in collaboration with Nazi invaders and forcefully deported most of them to Siberia. It is important to note that
- Nazi have never been in Chechney. Consequently, it was another lie of the bloody Soviet dictator.
- During this forceful deportation, more than 35% of the entire Chechen population perished.
- After Stalin's death, Chechen people started to return back to Chechney
- Following the demise of the Soviet Empire, many former Soviet nationalities got freedom. However, Russia did not want to leave Chechney. It did not want to compromise its oil and natural gas interests.
- Chechen people did not want to accept Russian dictate any more. So Russian, once again, invaded Chechney. To justify the new wars in Chechney, Russian security forces blew 3 apartment complexes in various Russian cities killing hundreds of innocent peoples. Why was it Putin's job? Residents of the fourth apartment complex to be blown away spotted strangers and called to police. When police arrested these strangers who were installing explosive devices and brought them to a police station, it was discovered that these strangers were officers of the Russia State Secutity. Police called to Moscow, the identities of these strangers were confirmed, they were released, and the case was closed.
- The last Chechen war was nothing else but a genocide against Chechen people. 25% of them lost their lives.
Conclusion: It is Russia and its gangster-rulers who are war criminals. Chechen people are just fighting for their lives and their freedom. They are freedom fighters. Their fight against Russian terrorists are fully justified. Disclaimer: I am not a Chechen. I am not a Muslim either. I am a Christian. I strongly believe that Russia was and is an "Evil Empire". Reagan was right." blew up apartments to justify war"
"flew planes into buildings to justify war"
So Chechenia just happens to be muslim too ?? No connection ? My gosh ! I thought they where Buhddists
So much for freedom fighters:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/09/world/4-foreigners-are-found-beheaded-in-chechnya.html?pagewanted=1
Two militant expansionist civilizations/cultures/religions that share borders and most of modern history as enemies?
There is another rather interested party that has been materially supporting terrorism down there - oil producing countries in the middle east.
Renegotiating Dubai debt while oil prices are high is a substantial advantage for the debt holder. And it was in Dubai where Russians killed on of their most wanted terrorist couple of years ago.
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