> You don't understand. For the Western political commentator class, any
> time a non-Western country engages in armed conflict against a
> numerically smaller foe, it's Imperialism.
> Fred Weir was soooo disappointed to discover that Chechen terrorism
> exists. Slave trade? Mass kidnappings in maternity hospitals? Invasion of
> Dagestan? Never happened. It's all Russia's fault.
Current issue of The Weekly Standard, has a review of, "Darkness at
Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, " by David Satter, who has
written for the FT and WSJ. Published by Yale University Press. Their
webpg. has plaudits by James WW4 Woolsey (his allusions to James Burnham
have they been noted? Burnham in his books in the 50's talked of WW3) and
With that in mind, his book goes into the apartment bldg. bombing that
propelled Putin into power, which came up on the list a few months ago
after Barkey Rosser rejoined.
Negative review, still, at least for the reportage nuggets and as example
of right-wingery on the fSU, those interested should take a look. (And,
Chris, as I'm sure you know Fred Weir is on the left. Is there any Western
educated reporter in the fSU you like? Left, Right, center, nobody? Here,
on a newish list on Communism in the U.S., with contributors from maoist
loon Grover Furr from PLP to neo-cons Klehr and Beichman, is a thread on
Walter Duranty, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=H-
HOAC&user=&pw=&month=0309
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&list=H-
HOAC&user=&pw=&month=0308
http://www.h-net.org/~hoac/ )
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7257-15.cfm
Sun-Sentinel (Florida) July 20, 2003 book review A grim look at the state
of Russia By Scott Shane Books Correspondent
> ...The most disturbing chapter recounts the series of bombs that went off
> in 1999 in Russian cities, leveling apartment buildings and killing more
> than 200 people. Officials blamed terrorists, and the attacks rallied
> the country against the presumed Chechen enemy, setting the stage for
> Putin's rise to power and popularity.
In Ryazan, however, alert residents of one building reported suspicious loiterers, leading to a discovery by the police of what appeared to be a powerful bomb. A few days later, the national FSB security agency announced that the explosives were fakes and the whole incident was merely an exercise.
Following in the footsteps of numerous Russian and Western journalists, Satter lays out a persuasive case that the bomb in Ryazan was real, and was planted by the FSB itself as a provocation. If that's so, then the bombs that did explode also might have been the work of the Russian government, Satter suggests.
Here's the rub: Such a state crime is so monstrous that the reader wants an impartial, dispassionate weighing of evidence. But Satter's footnotes do not make clear how much of the reporting is his own and how much was borrowed from the not-always-reliable Russian media. In addition, he seems so eager to believe the worst that he does not come across as an objective guide.
While Satter's vivid chronicle of corruption, incompetence and gangsterism is worth reading, he fails to offer a convincing analysis of why things went wrong...
-- Michael Pugliese