PR Vultures
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 2:19PM The Russian liberals are truly magnificent people, they will not miss an opportunity to sponge off any event that happens in Russia. They simply couldn't pass the yesterday's terror attack in silence, they just needed to, yet again, draw attentions to their alleged victimhood and blame everything under the sun on the FSB. Oleg Kozlovsky, a man who wishes to win over the Russian street but can't even give a firm rebuke to LaRussophobe, an ally detrimental to his cause, wrote this...
It is too early to say who organized this terrorist attack. Russian bloggers discuss mainly two versions: Chechen rebels and the state security services. However weird it may sound, the latter version is at least as popular as the former one. In any case, the police and FSB were so corrupted and so busy fighting the opposition that they didn’t find time for the terrorists.
Oleg does not provide us with any links, so that we can corroborate his claim that the FSB version is popular. Like this it seems that he woke up, scribbled something on his blog and pulled the claims out of his butt. I don't know about the FSB, but I know that somebody sure was busy hunting corrupt minded bribe offerers. As you can see this type of operation is rather easy compared to hunting down Wahhabi militants in North Caucasian forests which is being pursued as well.
There is no evidence that the, so called, liberal opposition will be in any way affected by what happened but Oleg seems to wish it will come to that...
Whoever organized this attack, the government will surely try to use this tragedy to further 'tighten the screws' and secure their own power–the way they did after Beslan hostage crisis in 2004. The only question is what exactly they are going to do.
I'd say the FSB has much more important things to do than to care about jackasses named Oleg Kozlovsky.
Another jackass by the name 'Lexus riding Che Guevara' Ilya Yashin knows best how to solve the problem of terrorism. He wants the people in power to resign, including prime minister Putin, FSB chief Bortnikov and minister of interior Nurgaliev.
This is not dissimilar to the way this clown used the opportunity to feast on the economic grief of Kaliningradians in order to promote this type of agenda. We all know that the reaction of locals to this type of PR was more than welcoming. His suntanned, playboy reading buddy Boris Nemtsov who also featured in Kaliningrad made similar assertions on the approach he thinks is the best to resolve the issue of terrorism.
Here is a Russian digest of an interview Nemtsov gave to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Apart from making similar calls for resignation as Yashin, Nemtsov also made this interesting statement:
...As long as the government conducts politics based on suppressing civic rights and relies on corrupt bandits, appointed to govern local republics, terrorism will flourish...
Yes, the Russian government should leave the North Caucasus to the uncorrupted Wahhabi fanatics from the Emirate and their black banner Arab allies. I bet they will establish a state of righteousness in the area. A paradise in which human rights will have a home.
Somehow this statement reminds me of George W. Bush's wishful thinking that only if they didn't live under oppressive and dictatorial regimes they would be friendly to us.
In any case this type of rhetoric will not do the Russian liberal opposition any good and will inevitably lead to ridicule.
Note: A good treaty also has an article on this type of spin.
Reader Comments (15)
Re-"his claim that the FSB version is popular". Quite possibly that is indeed the case within the Russian liberast bubble. I wouldn't put it past them to be so demented as to believe that that there are fanatics out there (takes one to know one) ready to blow themselves up for make benefit of Evil Overlord Putin.
Fuck Kim Zigfeld and her merry band of deluded russophobes. People on there saying it was perfectly acceptable.
The Guardian as well was pretty awful. Straight jumping in on the criticism of Russia, unsurprisingly.
I heard second hand that YL lived up to her reputation Iby saying on Ekho Moskvy that Muscovites don't care when such attacks occur outside Moscow.
Edward Lucas seems to have added mind-reading to his list of skills:
'They call them the 'black widows' - the Chechen women who have lost husbands, fathers and brothers either in battle or to torture and beatings in the Kremlin's concentration camps.
Crazed by grief and loss, their one remaining desire is revenge on their country's tormentors. (note: is Chechnya a country?)
It is a fair bet that the female perpetrators of yesterday's bombing in Russia felt they had nothing to live for, but plenty to avenge. And so they blew themselves up on underground trains in the heart of Moscow.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262222/Moscow-metro-bombings-Chechyna-link-emerges.html
It makes me ashamed to be British that tripe like this is published here (and re the article is Vladimir Putin the 'premier')?
Reminded of what Susan Sontag said about 9/11.
It looks like journalism has turned into a caricature of itself. Lucas also seems to have taken his Daily Mail rant out of his butt last night.
Ed Lucas in the Daily Mail.
Indeed, Russia has designated Sochi, site of the greatest massacre of the native Circassians in 1864, as the venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics. With cruel irony, that is exactly 150 years since the beaches of that resort were bathed in blood and clogged with corpses.
Just by coincidence, if you take a sojourn over the Lucas's website you will see a side banner calling for the boycott of Sochi 2014, for, without any sense of irony, to 'remember Georgia 2008'. (He still peddles the Russia attacked first myth.)
sorry about the bold. The first bold paragraph is the quote, the second is what I wrote about it
The "black widow" grieving female suicide bomber myth has been debunked which started with the Nord Ost siege where the female bombers were 16 to young to be married and the others were there relatives living in Moscow and other areas of Russia proper.
Paul Murphy covered this in a 2004 interview published on his site Russian Eurasian Terror Watch Analysis the only REAL expert on Chechen terrorism.
http://www.retwa.com/interviews.cfm
And why can't we finally talk about the FACT that since the collapse of the USSR western intelligence has been training and supporting Chechen lead terrorism since 91/92 and there are TONS of evidence that western and other foreign intelligence train and finance Islamic terrorism. The Nord Ost siege itself a video was discovered Aslan Maskhadov, Basayeav and the guy who carried attack on a video organising it dated a few months prior on a raid on a Chechen village. And since then links are found connecting the Khattab Islamist network with Babar Ahmed who ran Azzam publications the largest jihadist media and recruitment propaganda since the Bosnian war who had personal contacts with Khattab and distributes Khattabs 2000 video Lion of Chechnya.
There was a BBC documentary on Babar Akhmed which showed a video of Khattab in Azerbaijan public ally thanking Azzam publication in London.
Today the US and Georgia are running the largest international terrorist training camp in the Panski Gorge.
This is REALLY FRUSTRATING no Russian or outlets on blogs or RT will discuss it and even let you post comments with facts backing it up.
Will you Leoš be covering the issue of western supported terrorism and genocide in Russia?
I seriously doubt it.
I’ll send to you all the links and evidence via e-mail and see if you can refute it and put it in your next article.
@ jack / solar sun,
Not to be rude - just friendly advice.
The problem with these theories you propagate here, on Pravda, RT, the S/O forums, etc, is that they are highly unconventional and in my own humble opinion, highly improbable. (Which is not to say they are incorrect - I just find it very difficult to believe that the US is both stupid enough *and* competent enough to run a massive covert terror campaign against Russia, for years, undetected).
Since you believe in this strongly, I recommend opening up your own blog - or expanding the one you already have - and writing about these issues in greater depth. Having a body of work you can reference and cite is very useful; it is also a springboard to getting published more widely. People who are interested can follow it and contribute to thoughtful discussions, and perhaps a community will grow out of it. If you need any help setting this up, I'll be glad to answer any questions.
Otherwise, you will be falling into the same trap as Michael Averko, who kept going on and on and on - regardless of the actual topic at hand - about David Johnson's conspiracy to deny him getting getting a job he could not refuse at not so Russia friendly English Language mass media venues (or whatever the hell his issues were), and eventually became a kind of laughing stock on the Russia-watching blogosphere.
Best, AK.
What's really pathetic is how the likes of Anatoly Karlin play suck-up to the kind of imperfections that are out there.
His stated characterization is inaccurate and in line with some of the sleaze he seems to prefer.
Thanks for proving my point, Mike. ;)
Ayayay... this was such a promising thread and look at it now...
@ Jack
Yes, I have to agree with AK, establish a blog in which you can lay out your ideas, the volume of your comments suggests you should.
@ AK and Michel
Why don't you take personal beef over to the email. I am quite new to the whole Russia blogosphere and have no clue what you are talking about, and I am not entirely sure I really want to know.
@ Napoleon K
Lucas is crazy, just as the rest of Russophobe propagandists.
Fair enough Leos.
I didn't initiate such manner. To use ice hockey terminology, I got to the level of the cheap shot that was dished out.
In contrast, I prefer good point-counterpoint exchanges relating to the subject matter:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/ethan-s-burger/could-partition-solve-ukraine’s-problems
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/adrian-karatnycky/partition-ukraine-i-think-not
It runs in line with the regular discussions I've with folks like yourself and the gentleman who blogs at this venue:
http://theivanovosti.typepad.com/the_ivanov_report/2010/03/peter-lavelles-cross-talk-on-lobbying-in-america.html
@Sublime Oblivion
Is this the same controlled mass media that told us the Serbs were committing a genocide in Yugoslavia and the drum beat for war against Iraq and all the lies leading up to that conflict, etc
An interesting revelation by Justin Raimando at antiwar.com
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/03/30/russias-metro-bombings/
Is there any online instructions on how to build a Wordpress blog? Is it easy?
I was meaning to create a Wordpress but the only problem the news article with links have been taken down from there original websites and most of the information I had was lost about 3 gigs worth shortly after I got broadband internet and my Windows XP crashed and I had to use my recover disk to reinstall Windows loosing the information. I did print of hard copies of some the most important articles but I would have to retype them manually onto the Wordpress blog.
Plus I wanted to create one for a Russian audience but Russian language translator software is crap.
But it is not undetected alot has been written of western support of support of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans which all have connections to Chechen terrorist most if not all have the foreign commanders fighting Chechnya .
Yossef Bodansky Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare (1988-2004) who runs (International Strategic Studies Agency) ISSA the foremost experts of international Islamic terrorism in the Balkans has flat out exerted that British intelligence supports Islamic terrorism in the Balkans with Pakistani ISI including the London bomber mastermind.
As I said the 9/11 attacks where part of this Bosnia-Chechen terror network even the official report said the hijackers were originally intended to fight in Chechnya and under pressure from US intelligence anti-terrorist raid was conducted by Bosnian intelligence of the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence Fund/Al Al-Haramain which KSM, Atta worked through since the Bosnian war and financed there stay in the US and there own court case said that it was running a Chechen training camp and a document called the Golden Chain which the terrorist themselves which includes Abu Hafs and Abdullah Usama Bin Ladin.
The Hamburg cell was recruited to fight in Chechnya with Chechen jihadist recruitment videos discovered in there flats featuring Abu Qatada a Jordanian-Chechen terrorist promoter and recruiter who was in the pay of the MI6 (Hate Preachers Seized at Dawn, Daily Mirror UK, Friday, August 12, 2005)
In Turkey an Islamist trainer named Sakka as referenced in the 1998 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Intelligence Information Report (IIR) of foreign terrorists networks in Russia and the Crimea and central Asia from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey and Azerbaijan a conduit for Islamic forces in Afghanistan to Chechnya for Khattab in a court case in Turkey was revealed to have trained the 9/11 hijackers to originally fight in Chechnya.
“(Sakka's) story is also one of a globetrotting terrorist in an organisation that is truly multinational.
[...]
The Chechens needed trained fighters. Sakka was telephoned by Ibn al-Khattab, the late militia leader controlling the foreign fighters against the Russians. Khattab requested that Sakka’s trainees should be sent on to Afghanistan for military training because "conditions are tough".
[...]
One of Sakka’s chief roles was to organise passports and visas for the volunteers to make their way to Afghanistan through Pakistan. His ability to keep providing high-quality forged papers made Turkey a main hub for Al-Qaeda movements, his lawyer says. The young men came to Turkey pretending to be on holiday and Sakka’s false papers allowed them to "disappear" overseas.
Turkish intelligence were aware of unusual militant Islamic activity in the Yalova mountains, where Sakka had set up his camps.
[...]
Some of Sakka’s account is corroborated by the US government’s 9/11 Commission. It found evidence that four of the hijackers – whom Sakka says he trained – had initially intended to go to Chechnya from Turkey but the border into Georgia was closed.
[...]
Sakka’s lawyer said: "Just like there is money laundering, there is also terrorist laundering and Turkey was the centre of this."
And the mass media does not mention the Chechen connection or barely reference it in any cases involving the major terror attacks in Europe and 9/11.
So it is not a theory it is a fact.
Paul Murphy in his book Wolves of Islam clearly from a variety of sources some direct from the Islamists themselves this vast international terror network working through the Middle East and Europe who should know seeing how he was a CIA counter-terrorism agent in Russia between 94-2000 and he regular contacts in the Russian and American intelligence officials.
And they don’t directly finance and train groups and good term is what has been referred to as a “Network War” where the US and Britain work through various states and groups/organisations to fight a proxy war against Russia and Eurasia just how they used Georgia like Japan in 1904 to launch an attack against Russia in 2008.
http://evrazia.org/article/1128
And do you really think that Al Qaeda run by a Saudi called with a kidney disease Bin Ladin who worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and Bosnia with the help of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan has been decades long ally and sister partner to the CIA/British intelligence?
If that were the case they would arrest those involved in supporting and financing the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But they don’t.
@Leoš Tomíček
I will do and as soon as I set it up. I need help though in gathering census data. Is there anyplace where you can get census date of ethnic compositional background in the Czech Rep?
@Gregor and napoleonk
Yes but who does Lucas work for the Economist magazine and like the other rags The Daily Telegraph and the Guardian newspapers is part of the Guardian Media Group which is own by Lord Jacob Rothschild and I take it you know his extensive connections to Russia and Caspian and other oil interests in Russia?
I wonder who financed his book "The New Cod War" probably some one like the NED financier Olin Foundation who financed Anne Applebaum’s GULAG which work has been debunked by research or revisionist historians like Stephen Wheatcroft, John Arch Getty, etc who have documented, studied and analysed the Soviet archive material.