I have been following discussions on the lbo-talk list for couple of years and many times have enjoyed open-mindedness and sense for social justice of its participants. During the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia I shared critical opinions coming out of discussions and recognition by the participants of the Nato assault on the civil population and civil infrastructure disguised under the name of humanitarian intervention and laughable policy of strictly military targets. It has been now couple of weeks that the very same pattern is being used by Russia in its war against Chechnya. Factories, civilian cars and busses, the only airport in Chechnya, all of them became military targets. Military briefings are being staged with the video shots showing destruction caused by the "smart bombs". People of Chechnya are being reduced to the statistically allowed civilian damage (Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy approved the Russian action commenting that he was assured by the Russians that the number civilian casualties will be kept low). In Russia, the racism is in a full blow, people of darker skin colour are being rounded up, intimidated, detained without any charges, their residence documents being stripped away right on the street by the state guards, their businesses closed. They are terrified to even step out of their homes. All these events are followed with a very mild mainstream media interest in the West. It even seems that the USA is using it to justify and reinforce its own fight of the international terrorism, the fight that readily slips into a state terrorism of its own kind.
And what do I hear the from the lbo-talk discussion group? Two weeks of silence on the subject with the exception of couple of messages that even ventured so far to exonerate Russian brutality because it presumably prevents creation of an Islamic state where the women rights would be violated. I guess the killed, maimed and displaced women can fully enjoy all of their rights?
I must say that I am dismayed and disappointed with the participants' response to the war in Chechnya. I hope that it is not representative of the leftist thinking and ethics at the end of the 20th century.
Tomislav Sapic