cheese it, the cops!

the interview  with shamil basayev last night on abc was quite a scoop. and it was fascinating for basayev's informaility and complete lack of cant. it was just: yeah i'm terrorist. it's my response to genocide .

In the interview, Mr Basayev - speaking through an interpreter - admitted that he was "a bad guy, a bandit".

"Ok, so I'm a terrorist, but what would you call them (the Russians)?

"If they are the keepers of constitutional order, if they are anti-terrorists then I spit on all these agreements and nice words," he said.

The warlord accused Russia of killing thousands of Chechen women, children and old people in what he described as "a colonial war".

When asked if Beslan-style attacks could happen again, he said: "Of course they can. As long as the genocide of the Chechen nation continues... anything can happen."

the july national geographic has an excellent summary of the history and state of chechnya. their figures are a bit different than those i've published in the past, but fundamentally in the same ballpark, their very open-endedness emphasizing the crackdown on information.

population in 1981: 1.1 million
killed since 1994: 100,000-300,00
currently displaced: 210,000

the aptly-named krauthammer accuses amnesty international of ignoring sudan and focusing instead on gitmo etc., in the latest time mag (read it at my dermatologist's office, where i'm being treated for leprosy, or maybe it's just an incredibly gross case of psoriasis): eat me . no one wants an actual assessment of human rights in the world if it involves a moment of self-examination

if you've been following me on chechnya at all, read this and actually get it. it's not that shamayev has been made feareful by the monstrous toll that the resistance had exacted, at least by his own account. it's that he can no longer face the fact that he is a collaborator in the genocide of his own people.

the russian press these days is truly charming. it's no more plausible or less idiotic than pravda at the height of, say, the andopov regime. i like the idea that anyone you kill is a "bandit"; it kind of has a retro, wild west feel. i'm sure they intended the term to be translated "terrorist." and the idea that a "news" organization can a priori justify killing anyone - anyone at all - with a mere adjective is one that has a long long past and a long long future. oh yeah, and a long long present.

shhoting fish in a barrel. still, let's juxtapose this

and this .

it takes a lot of damn gall: they're celebrating victory day in the "great patriotic war" (wwii) in chechnya again, only they're keeping the time and place secret, as well they might. last year on victory day, the chechen resistance blew up the puppet president & co. now you might ask: well, what in the world is wrong with celebrating victory over the nazis? consider this :

Josef Stalin, who accused Chechens of helping Germans during World War II, sent the entire nation into exile, killing about one-third of them on the trek to Kazakhstan.

 

“When they came back, they never stopped thinking of separatism, but it was impossible during Soviet times,” says Gasan Gusejnov, an expert on ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union who has taught Chechen history and politics at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.

 

you wouldn't have to be a chechen nazi to believe that stalin was as much a genocidal maniac as was hitler. much of the chechen resistance was born in exile. the killing of kadyrov on may 9 was rich in the symbolism of justice.
note: reading itar-tass or ria novosti etc is every day more like reading pravda circa 1973. there is hardly even the pretense of factuality. i'll document this a bit as time goes on, but it is, as clearly as anything, proof or autocracy.

it's not hard to see that the catholic church is one of the least responsive and accountable institutions in the history of the world. this has something to do with its size, its bureaucratic structure, and the idea that the church is accountable only to god, or perhaps that its actions are invariably authorized by god, even when they are brutal crimes. at any rate there was an extraordinarily disturbing story on npr this morning about the trials of priests who allegedly participated in the rwandan genocide, including one who apparently had his own church bulldozed with 2000 living tutsis inside. before being apprehended, he was quietly living and giving masses under an assumed name in, um, rome. despite the fact that several priests have actually been found guilty of crimes against humanity in the rwandan genocide, the country's archbishop is quoted as simply flatly denying that any priest participated in any way. evil idiocy. of course this makes you think of the church's decades-long refusal to come to grips with its history of extreme anti-semitism. or the decades-long concealment of child abusers in the priesthood, etc. look. no group as big as the catholic hierarchy is entirely good, and for example in rwanda many priests were killed, often for helping tutsis. but the inyourface lying and coverups profoundly discredit the church as a moral authority on anything. among other things, they betray almost psychotic self-righteousness and deep cowardice.

this story about the disappeared of chechnya is disturbing enough. but combine it with human rights watch reports that include torture facilities and mass graves. and then consider that their mode documentation is extremely conservative: essentially case by case. when all is said and done we will see tens of thousands of kidnapping/torture/execution victims, all of them the responsibility of  russian "security" forces.

so: russian intelligence paid $10 mil for the info that led them to maskhadov. if they think they're going to improve their own security situation by murdering the leader of the moderate nationalists, they've got a rude comeuppance in store. they've invested in the continued destruction of their own citizenry.

at least everyone has not simply fallen silent. this from the washpost editorial page this morning:

The death of Mr. Maskhadov probably eliminates for the near future any chance of a diplomatic end to the war in Chechnya. Mr. Maskhadov, who was elected president of Chechnya at a time when Russia recognized the election as legitimate -- had requested talks with Moscow but was repeatedly refused: The Kremlin insisted on calling him a terrorist, despite his condemnation of terrorism, and would not negotiate. On the same grounds, Russian authorities are refusing to hand over what they call "the body of a dead terrorist" to Mr. Maskhadov's family for burial. Thus will the spirit of brutality continue to perpetuate itself in Chechnya

ponder

if you will: thermobaric or fuel-air weapons .

pictures from grozny

pictures from grozny:

grozny theatre before:

grozny theatre after:

there were people in grozny by the time the russians came. but mostly they were people who couldn't be moved: the elderly and handicapped. maybe 35,000. of course they were all "rebels,"  "terrorists," according to putin. they died almost to a person. but that was redundant. the russians had already emptied and destroyed the city, while trying to surround it and kill every young man in the region.

i am posting my reply to el serracho:

the numbers are hard to come by (because of the absolute-ish press ban in chechnya, obviously enforced only by the russian gov: also it's insanely dangerous to be a journalist in chechnya). this is more or less the (high) average of all the sources i consulted. the truth, unfortunately, is hard here. the best sources say "between 100,000 and 300,000." there is no doubt they leveled grozny with thermobaric weapons: makes dresden circa 1946 look intact. and the cleansing operations throughout the countryside: no idea: sheer rape: kill all the males in the village etc. i'm telling you this is the great untold story of our generation. when it all falls out there will be trials for  crimes against humanity etc. putin has portrayed this as part of the war on terrorism, which we buy because it's convenient, because the rhetoric is familiar, even as we express...reservations.
the palestinians, if you ask me, have been dispossessed and repressed. that is no excuse for killing innocent people. the chechens have been completely destroyed as a culture: murdered in their totality. i am not sure i myself would not respond with terrorism.