Posted on 09/05/2004 1:16:11 AM PDT by N. Beaujon
Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry said in a statement that ``Americans stand united with the people of Russia against terrorism and share the Russian people's grief and mourning at these senseless deaths.''see: Russia Holds Suspects as School Siege Leaves 333 Dead (Update1) by Vladimir Todres
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aKPjinVLUzC4&refer=top_world_news
In the U.S., Bush opened a campaign stop in Broadview Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, with remarks about ``the horror'' of children taken hostage at the school. ``That is why our country must be strong and diligent and never yielding'' to terrorists, he said. ``We must bring them to justice.''
I'd say that's quite a contrast.
The Russians often use a word that is pretty much like "fighters" or "militants" to describe what we would call terrorists. The word is "boyevki" Sometimes they say "bandits."
Sometimes they say "terrorists." Usually they say "boyevki."
What the terrorists do they call a "teract." (terrorist act)
They are all perjorative. Stalin used the word bandits to describe his enemies. These are older words than the word terrorist.
http://www.rambler.ru/db/news/msg.html?s=260005085&mid=5004278
This Russian article quotes German publications like Build that claim the terrorists were foreign. It is claimed that some of the terrorists were Jordanian and Syrian. The source is supposedly the German intelligence agency. The German intelligence said they trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
I think the article makes some other points but I am not too sure what it all means.
Build is not always reliable.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2004/0906/806461191HM1RUSSIA.html
Suspect held as child funerals begin in Beslan
Chris Stephen, in Moscow
The first funerals of children killed in the Beslan school siege were held yesterday in the Russian province of North Ossetia as President Vladimir Putin promised a crack-down on Chechen terrorists.
The identity of the group who carried out the hostage-taking remains unconfirmed, with the commander of the main Chechen rebel army, Shamil Basayev, denying his forces were responsible.
The death toll continued to be revised upwards yesterday. In addition to the 338 known to have died - including children, parents and teachers - another 92 of the 435 in hospital are on the critical list, and 180 are missing. Approximately half the dead were children.
Last night, State-controlled First Channel television showed a suspect being taken away in handcuffs by masked commandos.
"This man directly took part in the attack, he is a member of the gang," said Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky. "Tomorrow the court will sanction his arrest and he will be charged."
The man, dressed in a dirty black shirt, looked and spoke like a native of one of Russia's North Caucasus regions, which include Chechnya and North Ossetia. "I did not shoot. I swear by Allah I did not shoot," said the man. "I swear by Allah I want to live."
At the funerals yesterday, the ambulances used to move the dead and wounded on Friday were redeployed to attend to their relatives, some of whom collapsed at the sight of the tiny coffins.
The tearful president of the local province of North Ossetia made a public apology for failing to prevent the massacre: "I want to beg your pardon for failing to protect children, teachers and parents," Mr Alexander Dzasokhov told doctors and relatives of the wounded. The regional Interior Minister, Mr Kazbek Dzantiyev, offered to resign but it was not accepted.
In a rare admission of failure, President Putin told the nation that mistakes had been made in the period leading up to a fortnight of terror attacks across Russia. He blamed "weaknesses" in the government and promised reforms and an attack on corruption. But he also announced there would be no change in Moscow's refusal to negotiate with the rebels.
While some Beslan residents were burying loved ones, others searched for missing relatives, touring local hospitals in hope and morgues in trepidation. Orthodox churches across Russia held memorial services and Mr Putin has declared today and tomorrow days of national mourning.
But questions persisted about the apparent disorganisation of the security forces, their tactics in storming the school, and their failure to prevent some terrorists from escaping.
"normal Muslims"
Thats a laugh.
Why would anyone who is normal claim to belong to an evil ideology?
Who do you think is translating documents for the FBI and CIA?
Who is ratting out the terrorists in their communities?
Loyal American Muslims, That's who.
Plenty aren't keen on these terrorists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3627586.stm
Analysis: The hostage-takers
Stephen Mulvey
BBC News Online Russian affairs analyst
Confusion reigns over the identity of the group who seized the school in North Ossetia, taking hostage more than 1,000 children and their parents and teachers.
The official Russian version says that the hostage-takers were a multinational group linked to the radical Chechen rebel commanders Shamil Basayev and Doku Umarov, funded by al-Qaeda.
Russia says there were 30 hostage-takers
Though some hostages are reported to have recognised Doku Umarov from pictures shown them by investigators, little other evidence has otherwise been produced to support the claim.
Officials initially claimed there were nine or 10 Arabs among the hostage-takers - possibly in an attempt to back up their allegation of al-Qaeda involvement - but some surviving hostages have said they saw no Arabs in the school.
Western experts say that allegations of a direct link between al-Qaeda and Chechen rebel leaders remain unproven - though it is well-known that the rebels receive funding from foreign Muslim sympathisers and that Arab commanders occupy key positions in the rebels' ranks.
Chechen view
The official Chechen rebel leader, Aslan Maskhadov, has condemned the seizure of the school.
In a statement on Sunday, he described the Beslan attackers as "madmen" - but implicitly acknowledged Chechen involvement, by saying that acts of terror were carried out by people whose desire for revenge against acts of brutality by Russian troops had driven them out of their senses.
Shamil Basayev regards Russian civilians as legitimate targets
Earlier, Mr Maskhadov's envoy in Europe, Ahmed Zakayev, said he had been told by the former Ingush leader, Ruslan Aushev, who tried to negotiate an end to the crisis, that the hostage takers were not themselves Chechen.
Interestingly, the Kommersant newspaper on Friday lent some support to this theory, saying investigators suspected that the ringleaders - or at least those who took part in the negotiations - were Magomet Yevloyev (an ethnic Ingush fighter close to Basayev), Vladimir Khodov (from North Ossetia) and an unnamed Russian, possibly one of Basayev's bodyguards.
If it turns out to be true that Chechens were not running the Beslan operation on the ground, this will be a new development.
Radical Islam
It will follow on from the attack on the Ingush interior ministry in June, in which many or most of the estimated 200 militants who took part are thought to have been Ingush rather than Chechen.
It could be a sign of growing support for the Chechen cause - or for the radical Islamism which the most powerful rebel leaders now espouse - in neighbouring parts of the North Caucasus.
The pro-rebel Kavkaz Center website suggested that Mr Khodov was the leader of an Ossetian militant Islamist group, or Jama'at, though it could be deliberately trying to promote the idea of holy war spreading out from Chechnya. (While most Ossetians are Christian or pagan, some are Muslim.)
Whether this is true or not, the Beslan attack helps to confirm that Chechen radicals have effectively sidelined the moderate Aslan Maskhadov, even though he remains officially their leader.
Russian officials may well be right to point the finger of blame at Shamil Basayev, who carried out the first Chechen mass hostage-taking in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk in 1995 and who claims to have masterminded the seizure of a theatre in Moscow in 2002, which led to 129 deaths.
Unlike Mr Maskhadov, he regards Russian civilians as legitimate targets - though never before has he chosen children as his primary victims.
Just keep ratting them out and I might change my mind
for now
Allah is Satan
Here is some background on Chechnya and the Caucasus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3293441.stm
Absolutely,...if JEffin' is (God forbid) elected, I predict we'll be showing plenty of weakness!
President Bush got this lesson drilled home on 9/11. Too bad the French, Germans, and Russians didn't pay attention then!
... Russians have different cultural expectations of how people act in that kind of situation than we do.
... If you can't read the emotions of the Ruskies DON'T confuse them with your own.
I based my comments about Putin on a large number of photographs I had seen posted in threads here included images of many survivors, family members, soldiers, medical personnel, local authorities, and Putin. Putin stood out among all these people as having an utterly impassive expression while visiting the survivors in hospital, so I don't think I am merely being culturally insensitive.
"We can't and shouldn't kill them all."
Now, who is suggesting that?
The point is that Islam when it follows its own Koran is hostile to the rest of the world
It believes it is its responsibilty to conquor the world for Allah.
We need to know and understand what is this source of hatred.
Frankly, I much rather see them converted to Christianity.
Some people on this site do seem ready to "turn the Middle East into glass, etc." Talking like this is a big present to Osama. This talk plays right into his propaganda about how the West is ganging up on the Muslims.
Conversion would be great, but lots of Muslims don't take the Koran more aggressive statements literally. My husband works a lot in the Middle East and the people he meets are devout Muslims but extremely shocked by the terrorists.
A Muslim gave the eulogy at my Grandma's funeral. It was beautiful. He knew all about Jesus and spoke about Jesus. He put in a little plug for his own religion but what he said was lovely. Of course he is educated and wanted to be an American so he may not be typical. I have also known some very lovely teachers and doctors that are Muslim and count them as friends.
I do think that this fundamentalist strand is awful, but many Muslims live in democracies and aren't fanatics. What their book literally says may be a lot different than how moderate educated actually practice and interprete their faith.
There are some really nutty so-called Christian groups (Christian Identity, KKK, etc) in America but we don't condemn ALL Christians. We say they aren't Christians.
That discussion is fortunately getting underway even in Saudi Arabia. They are having a lot of public discussions about what is Islam and what is tradition. I think some of the bad stuff is going to be called tradition. Any cleric who gets out of line in Saudi Arabia is toast these days. Because they aren't a democracy, they can go after people who advocate terrorism. In England Muslim extremists often are calling for terrorism and it is difficult to stop it.
Sometimes they are charged with incitement to murder. I think we should do that here.
I think the realistic thing is to encourage the moderate reforming religious leaders and at the same time exterminate the terrorists.
More money needs to be spent for secular schools so the little boys aren't being inculcated with hatred and death.
In Saudi arabia the parents are really complaining that the teachers are obsessed with teaching about death. People are in revolt against it, and the state-controlled media is criticizing it.
My own impression is that a lot of Muslims feel their culture hasn't kept up with the other civilizations and they have a chip on their shoulder. On the one hand, it is good to notice the good things they do while still going after the terrorists.
I also think that if some solution could be found for Israel and the Palestinians it would help. Of course, the terrorists seem so in control in the Palestinian areas. They don't really want something worked out because every time there is a little progress they blow up some Jews.
There is a book called The Clash of Civilizations. It says that wars now will be on the cultural/ethnic/religious divides instead of between nation states. That sure does seem to be the case. The Balkans, the Caucasus, Palestine.
The Muslims are also killing Black Christians in Africa.
I think Bush has the mix about right. You need diplomacy and espionage, and an Army to take out the really entrenched terrorist regimes; but you also need your own propaganda and cultural programs that teach tolerance and support for better education.
The Russians have been pretty bad to the Chechens historically. It hasn't made them nice. Stalin deported all of them and they didn't return until he died. The war against the Chechens was very indescriminate and totally wrecked the country. Then they were supposed to rebuild it but didn't. None of this justifies the atrocity at Beslan, but the Russians lack tack and respect for other cultures to put it mildly. I think this reactionary fundamentalism is partly due to historical injustices that the terrorists exploit.
Hitler did the same thing. The French screwed the Germans over with reparations after WWI and Hitler used these injustices to get himself into power and do even worse.
Also, let us remember that the terrorists and the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are all competing against each other and killing their own people. The people are pretty dumb not to see this, but they don't. They believe the propaganda.
I think we should really be the terrorists' worse nightmare, but we should fight a just war that spares innocent people as much as we can. Otherwise, we are like Bin Laden.
Yea, they seem legit... more so than your average US charity, if their web site is accurate. I hate giving to a cause & having 90% of my donation go to administrative costs.
Anyway, Russia has been hit hard lately. They're a relatively poor country & deserve all the help we can give.
We viewed the same pictures but saw different things.
Where you saw "impassive" I saw "stone mask of rage."
I have several Russian friends that noted that they had never seen Putin's eyes so full of anger.
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