This is Hector

It seems Chechnya will be for Russia, what Iraq is for the USA: a useless and unwinable war. "Pacified" Chechnya is indeed absurd. Just as absurd as Bush's victory speech in 2003 in Iraq.

HECTOR:

You fail to mention the only fact that really matters. The American people give Bush low approval ratings and put his opponents in charge of parliament. The Russian people give Putin huge approval ratings and a rubber-stamp parliament.

That's why the American GDP is 12 times larger than Russia's.

Well, the only Russian thing involved in the described above incident was a Russian made UAZ van.
The killed soldiers were in fact Chechens. The battalion Zapad is the pro-Russian Chechen military unit in Russia's army. The policemen were Chechens too.
You may find about it(in Russian)at the Chechen rebels' site:
http://www.kavkaz.org.uk/russ/content/2007/06/20/51491.shtml
Not good, of course, when people get killed. But how can it be helped if bad things still happen?
Chechnya has been waging its war against Russians (or Russia against Chechens) for about 400 years with a few rather short breaks. Russians kind of get used to that. Chechens too. Such a relationship. Dead end. Stalemate.
In Iraq the situation is more dynamic. Looks like George's Bush pink dream to make Iraq a Lighthouse of Democracy for the Arab world will never come true.
So yankees will withdraw without achieving their goals, which is going to be a kind of defeat and humiliation.
Russians may withdraw from Chchnya too. But their war is not such an emotional matter. They fight by inertion. They can stop it any time without much of huniliation. They just do not want it now.
If they stop now and let the insurgents to take over, the world will get another Taleban type regime there. Because all the Chechen Resistance now are radical islamists fighting for Islamic state ruled by Sharia law. And the state is planned to expand till the whole Islamic Umma including all the former Islamic lands taken from Muslims by Westerners (like Spain) are under the rule of Sharia again. And the Caucasus mountains suit for Al-Qaeda training camps really good. The smart people in the West understand it, and this is why they do not insist on Russia withdroval from there.

To LR. You have made an interesting conclusion. I think, it is a new word in the Economic Sciences.
The question arises:
If the Congress falls back to the Republicans, and G. Bush again gets the rating he had after 9.11; and if Russia is back to what she was when Yeltsyn ruled, would the Russian GDP be 12 times large than the USA's?

RUSSIAN:

If you believe that Chechens are not Russians, then they deserve their freedom. Russia is then an imperialist power enslaving the Chechen people, who have a right to fight back against Russian slavemasters. Thanks for confirming this.

If the American people approved of Bush's failed policies in Iraq, they would be idiots. Idiots would ruin their economy, as Russians have ruined theirs (Russia's per capita GDP is similar to that of many African countries with no industrial development at all).

Hector, the US Congress has a lower approval rating than Bush. It's in the teens.

That's the way it goes in American politics. The best part, we have free and fair elections. We have access to an media that isn't controlled by the state. Politcal opponents get equal airtime. The public will exercise its will in the next election cycle as it has done for centuries here, no big deal.

Your last sentence is absurd. Only a moron, I'm not, could figure out your relationship between approval ratings and GDP.

The Iraqis at the end of the day will determine their own fate. They were given the gift of an open democracy vs Saddam's thuggery. The Americans are training them and arming them to police their own country in time.

Russian - Russia is living off of the commodity boom. No skill required in that. You have no technology that the world wants, no middle class with entreprenuerial skills, and you have a population not sophisticated enough to install a open democracy. Russia's birth rate is collapsing, life expectancy is like Bangladesh, you can only fossilize and fade away in time if you don't change.

Putin's bullying the EU and America isn't going restore Russia to anything more than a thug state, a foolish annoyance, circumvented and scorned by the more civilized. But, then, resentment is more important to many Russians like yourself than risk and change. Because the Yeltsin years weren't a success, what sane person expects a better outcome bringing Stalin in the form of Putin back? The state owns everything and censorship is in place just like the failed past. Pathetic.

To LR


I just retransmitt what you loved penny said about your mistakenly taking you for Hector.

Your last sentence is absurd. Only a moron, I'm not, could figure out your relationship between approval ratings and GDP.

Yes, I recognize the Chechen people right for independence.
But enslavement is not the right word. They are not and never been slaves.
Are Scottish people Britain slaves? Or Northern Ireland people? Are the Canadian and Alaskan escimos slaves? How about Siux nation? Are they enslaved?

RUSSIAN:

I suggest you actually speak to a Scottish person before you babble your inane drivel, and learn a bit of their history. If an American spoke about Russia as you just have about Scotland, you'd be outraged, you ridiculously ignorant hypocrite.

By the way, we're glad to see you admit that Chechens are "RIGHT for independence." Not "fight," but "RIGHT." So we assume you will back them in their struggle against Russian imperialists!

This is Hector,

Penny, you're quite a naive little cheerleader. I never mentioned approval rating. I was just comments on the equal absurdities between Putin's "pacified" Chechnya and Bush's victory speech. In both wars the imperialists are losing. Free and fair elections America has? Recall the 2000 election?

As for "Saddam Hussein's thuggery", yeah I remember how the U.S secured his power in the 70's and continued funding his terror up until 1990. Looks like the "door to democracy" was open about the time Saddam came to power. And you're dead wrong, the Americans are getting the crap kicked out of them and the Iraqi puppet regime is growing more incompetent. Just last week there was talk that of the U.S mission "going in rewind", failing to secure "liberated" areas. Look at what America's bombs have done in the mean time.

As for Russia: I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is the result of capitalism, and all of the Soviet achievements being sold off by Yeltsin and Putin to the highest bidder. Life expectancy for males in Russia is now 60 years. Under the Soviet Union it was 83 (U.S is 73). As long as capitalism plagues Russia, it will never go forward.

First off, I'm not Russian although I speak a little. I'm American of Brazilian and Guatemalan parentage. Secondly, America is friends with this "thug state" of Russia. The two are allies in the "war on terror". They have their little disputes, but this is not uncommon for interimperialist rivalry. Comparing Putin to Stalin is outright stupidity. There is no collectivization under Putin. Some things may be state owned today, but basic needs like education and medicine are privatized, just like almost everything else in capitalist Russia. Misery and poverty prevails at an astronomical rate. This is clear proof of capitalisms failure in Russia and most of the world.

RE; If an American spoke about Russia as you just have about Scotland...

I just asked if the Scottish people were slaves? What to be outaged of? If you believe they are not-good. I agree with you.
Chechens are not slaves too. They, like Scotts, just do not have their own foreign policy.
In the USSR they had been way better of than Native Americans on their own land in the USA.
Of course the war brought a lot of destruction and sufferings.

Russia is a multiethnic state. Like some other states in the world. Just more ethnic groups with broad autonomy rights than in any other country. But nobody is enslaved there.