lbo-talk-digest V1 #1979

Tom Lehman uswa12 at Lorainccc.edu
Mon Oct 11 12:22:01 PDT 1999


Wasn't the speaker of the Russian parliment who comrade Boris forced out at gunpoint a Chechen? And along with him his own vice president! It's been all down hill since then, hasn't it.

TL

Tomislav Sapic wrote:


> To the participants of the lbo-talk list:
>
> 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



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