The irony of this article is overwhelming. Tom
>Excerpts: The Chechen War Comes Home By Yevgenia Albats, NYT, 10.26.2002 >http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/opinion/26ALBA.html [snip] >The second war in Chechnya turned into another brutal, bloody, corrupted and >shameful military campaign that quickly became a dead-end story. Many >thousands of Russian soldiers died. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of >Chechens, both guerrillas and civilians, have been killed. Three years of >the military campaign has turned into an endless and horrific story of >rapes, murders and torture of civilians by Russian troops. As a result, >Chechen civilians, who were almost ready three years ago to give up on >independence in exchange for reinstating some order in their land, are >turning their backs on Moscow forever. They have nothing more to lose: >women lost their children and husbands, countless parents have lost their >daughters and sons. The survivors have no means of livelihood left. Substitute Iraq for Chechnya and the U.S. for Russia and you have a prophecy. >Meanwhile, in Russia the desire for order and security has given birth to >authoritarian politics that have nurtured a closed, unaccountable regime. >In the name of stability, unity, patriotism and, of course, security, any >information from Chechnya has been severely censored. Journalists are not >allowed to report from Chechnya without special permission from the military >authorities. No wonder: in early 2000, I managed to fly over the entire >area of Chechnya in a helicopter; with only a few exceptions, I saw villages >and towns burned to the ground, agricultural land completely destroyed from >huge holes left by heavy bombs. Those reporters who dared to keep reporting >without supervision by the military, like Anna Politkovskaya with Novaya >Gazeta did, were either arrested or, worse, barely escaped being shot by the >Russian military. Television networks, the only medium capable of reaching >households across the vast country, have been prohibited from reporting >anything other than the military's perspective. This would also apply to either U.S./Iraq or Israel/U.S./West Bank. The only difference, as Chomsky points out, is that the U.S. media does it voluntarily. >...So despite the fact that Moscow streets are now filled with policemen >checking papers of those who look non-Slavic and therefore suspicious, >despite the increased activity of the Russian secret services in exercising >surveillance over politicians, despite all of the security precautions, >several dozen heavily armed terrorists managed to stage their attack just a >few miles from the Kremlin. Democracy cannot protect against all >manifestations of terrorism, but an authoritarian regime clearly can do no >better. Mr. Putin's Kremlin seeks to trade freedoms and liberties for the >promise of security. He does so in violation of the Russian constitution. >The tragic result is neither liberties, nor security. Sounds awfully familiar to me. The Patriot Act of 2001 was precisely the trading of liberty for at least the illusion of greater security, all in violation of the U.S. Constitution. -- _________________________________________________________________________ Tom Lowe One of the most powerful aspects of Jackson, Mississippi delusion, or ignorance, is the belief [EMAIL PROTECTED] that what we do does not really matter http://www.jacksonprogressive.com -- Sharon Salzberg
