More Racist Outrage in Kondopoga
Radio Free Europe reports that on Tuesday night "a sports school was torched in Kondopoga, a small city of 35,000 inhabitants in the northwestern Karelia Republic. Reports say that one of the trainers employed there is of Caucasus origin and that several families from Central Asia were living in the school at the time."
Looks like Chechens are not the only ones ready, willing and able to launch attacks on Russian schools.
As RFE notes, this comes after "angry mobs burned down the restaurant where the Russians were killed and destroyed a street market and several stores owned by Chechens and other people from the Caucasus. The violence has been accompanied by street rallies in Kondopoga demanding the expulsion of immigrants."
Meanwhile, RIA Novosti reports that huge numbers of dark-skinned people have fled the town and are now refugees, impoverished and imperiled. To its credit, RIA refers to the actions of the local population as a "pogrom."
Even more horrifying than the violence itself, RFE documents various political leaders in Russia expressing support for the racists, while "President" Putin has remained nauseatingly silent:Several nationalist parties have expressed support for the riots. Some reports claim these parties actually orchestrated them. Aleksandr Belov, the leader of the radical Movement Against Illegal Migration, denies involvement in the rampage. But he backed the protests in Kondopoga during a news conference in Moscow on September 5. "People gathered spontaneously to express their demands," Belov said. "Their demands were simple: [foreigners] get out of here, you have 24 hours. Why? You've come here without invitation and we're fed up with you. These are the two reasons behind the problems in Kondopoga and elsewhere." Belov said representatives of his movement, know for its aggressive xenophobic rhetoric, had plans to station representatives permanently in Karelia to "help," in his words, local residents.
It's quite amazing, even by Russian standards, that a "liberal democrat" in Russia can not only openly call for "ethnic cleansing" but purport to be merely following the edicts of the president of the country, without any challenge from the president himself to that claim, much less public opposition.
But the Movement Against Illegal Migration is not the only group to publicly support the events in Kondopoga. Nikolai Kuryanovich, a deputy from the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, joined forces with Belov at the news conference. This is the solution he proposed to tackle ethnic tensions in Russia: "Once again, this time totally, subjugate the Caucasus and toughen migration laws," Kuryanovich said. "Total cleansing. All criminal elements must be brought to responsibility -- even destroyed -- like the president said. We are waiting for him to make good on his promise to 'wipe them out in the outhouse.'" Kuryanovich also proposed to build what he called a "wall of China" that would separate the North Caucasus republics from the rest of Russia.
Despite President Vladimir Putin's silence, the crisis in Kondopoga has spiraled into a national issue. Ramzan Kadyrov, the prime minister of the pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, has blamed Karelian officials for failing to stop the riots and has vowed to restore order if necessary.
Interfax quotes Communist Leader Gennady Zyuganov as seeking to rationalize the violence by claiming that "despair, substandard living conditions, the absence of jobs and respect for the past engender extremism and aggressiveness." It's a sad day indeed, as it was when the Communists presented the only credible opposition to Yeltsin and Putin, when a Commie Pinko like Zyuganov is a source of truth, but he's right when he says Russia is an economic disaster despite the rising price of oil. How can Russians favor "President" Putin with 70%+ approval ratings when this is so? Ah yes, riddle wrapped in a mystery stuff. But Zyuganov likes to overlook the fact that the only reason Russia is in this economic state today is because his party bankrupted it, and the current president is a proud KGB spy.
But the most horrifying prospect of all is "President" Putin using these events as an excuse for even more draconian crackdowns on civil liberties which will do nothing (as he stands mute on the topic) to quell race violence but which will slam the door on freedom and democracy in Russia, dooming the country to a bleak and hopeless future.
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4 comments:
COEN:
If you had the least bit of intelligence or fairness, you would know and acknowledge that the purpose of this blog is, as stated under its name, to RECORD the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union. As stated in the opening post, its purpose is to provide a clearinghouse for published information from reliable sources documenting this phenonmenon, something that was not previously available. If you meant your comment as a suggestion that we do otherwise, we've considered and reject it.
This blog is the most content-rich and heavily trafficked Russia speciality blog in the world, a fact you obviously can't handle. Naturally, as a person without your own blog or talent of any kind for anything, you are jealous of that fact, and it's not surprising that you would express your jealousy in a pathetic burst of bile. However, even if not only one person read and valued this blog, just as only one person bought one of Van Gogh's paintings during his lifetime, we'd still produce it, because we know its value ourselves.
It's also not surprising that you find Konstantin's total lack of sourcing and bizarre ranting in favor of dictatorship more attractive than the dedicated sourcing in favor of freedom and democracy to be found on this blog. Obviously, it's easier for a total loser like you to feel superior to an abject moron like Konstantin than to us. We wish you lots of "fun and enjoyment" as you read Konstantin's propaganda rationalizing the rise of the Soviet Union and the demise of Russia. Your cold, callous disregard of the fate of the Russian people makes us quite glad that you obviously won't be visiting us any longer.
Oh and, by the way, thanks for adding value to the blog by introducing sourced facts our readers can learn from. Your contributions are most appreciated.
COEN:
If you pause to think for even a second or two, you may realize that our comment about the Liberal Democrats was that it's quite outrageous that Russians allow a party to call itself "liberal democrat" and meanwhile to espouse ethnic cleansing. Vladimir Zhirinovskky, who founded the party, has been espousing this doctrine for years, yet Russians not only have failed to call him to account but have either endorsed him or laughed about his genocidal fantasies as if they were a joke. A civilized country wouldn't allow such people to call themselves "liberal" or define "liberal" in such a way to to include them. Basically, what you've done is aggressively search for some way you can attack this blog, failed to come up with a decent one and then grabbed pathetically for the first straw available to your puny little mind. Didn't work. What's more, we fail to see why you'd come back to this boring blog to read our boring post. Unless of course you were just jealous and actually find us fascinating, as we said.
JAMES:
Naturally we emphathize greatly with your plight. Mike Averko has not even the vaguest sense of ethics or scholarship, he's only interested in attacking the foes of the Neo-Soviet state by any means possible. However, your efforts to correct the record regarding his outrageous propaganda are necessary, since its clear that the editors of Russia blog won't do it themselves (Averko and editor Mamchur are co-participants in the "intelligent.ru" propaganda machine, as described in a post in the blog below) and the unwary lay person could stumble across his drivel and mistake it for fact. The sad thing is that it is absurd misrepresentations like Averko is fond of that brought the original USSR to its knees, and it seems that Russia is going to go right back down the same failed path again.
The most wretched thing about crazed Russophiles like Averko, though, is not their dishonesty but their hypocrisy. If a non-Russophile points out any shortcoming of Russia in comparison to America, say electoral fairness or economic performance, then the Russophile immediately screams that Russia and America are "different countries" and can't be compared. However, when one mentions something like Russian racism, suddenly the Russophile propagandist wants to talk about African and Native American abuse. It's exactly this kind of double standard that prevents Russia from undertaking any kind of meaningful reform.
Keep up the good work!
JAMES: btw, if you are communicating with the editors of Russia blog, you might do us a favor and ask them where the Intelligent.ru website, which publishes editors Mamchur and Ganske as well as Mamchur and any number of other crazed Russophiles, gets its funding. There's no clue on the website itself. Does it come from Mamchur's Discovery Institute? The Kremlin? We'd love to know.
COEN: I guess your mommy dropped you on your head quite lot when you were a boy, and drank a large quantity of vodka when you were utero. That's a pity.
FYI, there's a site counter at the bottom of this page. I said TRAFFICKED, not commented. But then, it's clear that reading is not your strong suit.
However, if you care to use your brain at all (which I doubt), click on the lead post in the sidebar (top ten reasons to hate Russia) and you will see that there are nearly 50 comments on that one post). You utterly pathetic moron.
Also, if you care to be at all fair (which of course you don't) try to actually read this blog. Then you will see posts explaining that ONLY BLOGGER MEMBERS are allowed to comment here and that IT IS NOT OUR GOAL to attract comment (though we freely allow it) but rather to provide a history of the rise of the Neo-Soviet union and a centralized database on the web.
Finally, it would probably be helpful if you want to discuss your blog to actually GO SO FAR AS TO NAME IT. It's not linked on your profile and its rather hard to discuss it otherwise. But then, you being a professional, I guess you are just so far above my head that I can't understand you.
Concerning Konstantin's blog, you might be interested to know that this blog, MUCH younger than Konstantin's, already has more links on Technorati than he does, and he does not reveal his traffic (for the obvious reason that nobody cares about his insane drivel except a tiny clan of rabid Russophile maniacs). It's not suprising that you count yourself among them.
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