Anniversaries: WWII (70th) and Beslan (5th)
September 1 is a big day for sorrowful anniversaries.
World War II began on this day in 1939—not Pearl Harbor Day as commemorated by Americans, but the combat in Europe that started with the invasion of Poland by Germany. Beginnings are often rather arbitrary, since this conflict was brewing for quite a while, Hitler’s boldness slowly encouraged by the appeasement he received at the hands of western Europe.
But the invasion of Poland finally jump-started the Allies into the realization that “peace for our time” would only come after a long and bloody war. As Churchill said:
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.
September 1, 1939 was the day Britain and France realized that the result of their choice would be war. That war ended up dwarfing all that have come before—or since, at least so far.
The next anniversary marked today is that of the Beslan massacre. Except in Russia, the agony of Beslan has been mostly forgotten—perhaps because people prefer to not remember. I’ve written previously on Beslan anniversaries numbers one and two, here and here. But this year, because of the recent release of Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi, I got to thinking about the one Beslan terrorist who remains behind bars serving a life sentence.
His name is Nur-Pashi Kulayev. He is thought to have been the only surviving terrorist from the massacre, although some say there were more who escaped.
Kulayev deserves to be exactly where he is (or worse); make no mistake about that. But during his trial he told a tale that—if believed—poses a number of interesting moral and legal questions.
Note that huge caveat: “if believed.” I have no idea whether Kulayev’s story is true, because it is self-serving and he has much reason to lie. But that doesn’t mean it’s false, either, and the testimony of the surviving hostages doesn’t appear (at least as far as I can tell from a Google search) to have significantly contradicted the parts of it that they might have witnessed.
According to Kulayev, he didn’t know ahead of time that a school would be the target:
His defence laid in the claim that he was one of the recruited Chechens who were told they would be attacking a military checkpoint, and had no foreknowledge their target was the Beslan school; he was reportedly among several of the militants who argued in favour of capturing the local Beslan police station instead.
While no witnesses have claimed he shot any of the victims, several have testified that he ran around the gymnasium shouting curses and threatening to shoot various hostages with his assault rifle…
In addition, “Nur-Pashi reportedly saved the life of a young Alana Zandrovna, whose mother had left on the second day with her nursing son, after she was caught in the burning gymnasium.”
What are we to make of this? Legally, It is covered by a concept similar to that of felony murder, which basically says that if you’re going to be part of a serious crime that rises to felony level, then you are automatically responsible for every evil and violence that happens during the commission of that crime. Whether Kulayev thought he was setting out for a military checkpoint or not is irrelevant; as a terrorist knowingly engaged in a terrorist activity he is fully responsible and must suffer the consequences.
But a more interesting question psychologically (at least to me) is what such a person might decide to do if faced with such a situation. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Kulayev is telling the truth. What might he have chosen to do instead in an attempt to protect the innocent?
He certainly could have sacrificed himself and tried to take down a few fellow-terrorists into the bargain, although since he was so outnumbered it probably wouldn’t have done too much good. Here’s some further testimony of his that reflects on that issue [emphasis mine—and please substitute the word “terrorists” for the weasel word “militants”]:
Nur-Pashi has testified that [terrorist leader] “Polkovnik” smashed his cell phone in rage, stating that Russian forces were unwilling to negotiate, and also killed three of the militants, including the two female suicide bombers who had objected to the scholastic target by detonating one of their bombs. Nur-Pashi was supposed to be shot himself, by his brother Hanpashi on orders from “Polkovnik”, but Hanpashi refused.
Again, we must take this all with a grain of salt—after all, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was testifying to save himself. But (although I can’t find any details on this either) some corroboration of his testimony might come from the fact that two female terrorists were found to have been killed prior to the massacre’s final debacle.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that some of the terrorists were not told the identity of the target until the last minute. I recall that this was true of at least some of the 9/11 hijackers, who were formed into teams, some of whom knew ahead of time (that would be the pilots-to-be, certainly) and some of whom did not. At any rate, terrorist indoctrination and dedication seem to ordinarily result in the previously uninformed perpetrators’ accepting whatever target they are assigned without protest, and cooperating in its destruction. But if Kulayev is telling the truth, we see what tends to happen to terrorists who express doubts or second thoughts—they are killed by their fellows.
But for the families of the Beslan victims, this is all a side issue of little import. They still grieve, five years later:
At exactly 9:15 a.m., a bell rang out over the city of Beslan and the remnants of School Number 1, where 32 heavily armed militants took more than 1,200 people — children, parents and teachers — hostage on the first day of school in 2004.
Russian television showed hundreds of people lined up at the school’s gymnasium, where the hostages were herded.
They brought flowers, toys and water bottles — symbolizing the water the captives were denied.
I think it is important that we all remember.
There was a strong streak of sadism in most of the terrorists, see links under ‘Beslan – Child rape, torture and ritual murder’ at http://kwelos.tripod.com/subjects.htm
I dub September 1st ‘Neoconservative Vindication Day’.
I thought you would note that Obama decided to be missing at the important commemorations (which i guess would have made working beslan in not too doable).
though why beslan?
http://www.brainyhistory.com/days/september_1.html
Indeed, we must remember Beslan but you do not give the whole story. The families grieve at least partly because they have been denied a proper enquiry. That would reveal the role of the security forces. There is good evidence that they would not negotiate after the first few people had been released; they refused help from other people, including the British who were experienced in negotiating hostage release; and, above all, the storming of the school was an unholy mess. To this day it is not clear who shot whom and who actually killed those children. No enquiry, though. Don’t want to know and let’s hope nobody in the West asks either.
Remembering Beslan will remind us of the character of our enemies.
That’s inconvenient.
Japan surrenders ending WW II 1945, The surrender ceremony was held on September 2 aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri
Helen,
From the footage I saw, the Russian troops had no personal commo, only small arms, no breaching charges and some infantry fighting vehicles with light machine guns and plenty of ammo.
Hostage rescue isn’t supposed to be house-to-house and room-to-room a la Stalingrad.
From the footage I saw….caveat….it was a lousy effort.
Still, they were moving forward, as any man would and a number were killed.
What the living perp could have done depends on when he figured out what was going on. If early enough, he could have effed up the whole thing. If later, taken out a couple, or more, of his erstwhile compatriots, and made the Russians’ response easier.
Life has always been cheap in Russia, and generally as well thru history and the globe for the victorious dogmatic left; Of course Beslan was just another in a long line of islamic linked atrocities.
Whatever happened to our very informative commenter, Sergei?
I always found his posts extremely interesting. Sergei, if you read this, please post something.
I’m keeping my kiddo home from school on 8 Sep to avoid a different kind of assault:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10582301/President-Obama’s-Address-to-Students-Across-America-September-8-2009
Leave the kids alone.
including the British who were experienced in negotiating hostage release
Yes, they are, as we’ve seen recently with the Scottish incident.
I’m afraid I have to give the Russians a pass on this one.
Whether they were competent or not, they were by all appearances doing their best with a horrible situation, and manned up to the task as best they could with what they had.
The situation was the result of actions by a terrorist organization.
So what if some of the terrorists originally thought they were attacking a police station or something similar?
As recent history shows, once they begin murdering innocents, terrorist’s sense of what is or is not an appropriate target, and the means they use, tends to become very flexible.
Example, Al Quaeda.
They hit American’s radar on 9-11 using volunteers that went through a lot of trouble to pull off the mass murder of innocents that occurred that day.
By the end of the Bush II administration, AQ in Iraq was reduced to strapping bombs to mentally handicapped children and paying off the parents just so they could blow up other Iraqis.
As far as I’m concerned, the Russians would be justified in just hanging this piece of $hit.
Regarding the Russians not accepting “help” from western sources, keep in mind that the old USSR raised generations to NOT trust the west.
Old ways of thinking die hard.
Hostage rescue? As in giving the terrorists something in exchange? Doesn’t seem a good idea in the long term, not with these people.
My sympathies always lay with the Russians concerning Chechnya.(?) and I agreed with them when they told the West to butt out during the crushing of the rebellion. Can you imagine how foreign carpings at Sherman’s March would have gone over?
Second Promethea. Where’s Sergei?
I think most people in prison claim they are innocent.
Another thought occurred to me regarding the Russians not accepting any assistance from the West in the situation being discussed.
Can you imagine being on the other side of the conversation, with the current occupant of the Oval Office being in charge of ANY negotiations between the Russian government and terrorists?
Foreign policy changes, sometimes drastically, with each successive administration.
A government given assurances of support today may find themselves abandoned after the next election cycle.
The Russians, sad to say, are probably better off finding their own path through that mess and ignoring Western political pressure/posturing.
But if Kulayev is telling the truth, we see what tends to happen to terrorists who express doubts or second thoughts–they are killed by their fellows.
Beyond the remembrance, I take this as the nut of neo’s Beslan commentary.
I’m sure that it is true. In smaller writ we can see a similar mechanism in how those of us who have left the leftist fold. We are ostracized and subject to character assassination.
It situations like this I am afraid I am not very strong on “nuance” and if I were in charge, this guy would not be around (and costing us good money to feed clothe and house him) to weave his tale of terrorist innocence–I thought it was a police station we were going to attack and cops we were going to kill, not a grade school and children–betrayed.
For all it’s magnitude and grisliness Beslan has been little remembered and almost never brought up as an example of the attitudes of our Muslim brothers, brothers that Barack Hussain Obama was praising the other day at his Ramadan dinner. In fact, in most reporting the fact that the terrorists were Muslim is hardly even mentioned and certainly not stressed.
“everything new is well-forgotten old”
Generated in the depths of KGB think tanks, the Cold War-era propaganda template is comprised of the following linked axioms:
1. Socialism is “progress.”
2. Aversion to “progress” is a sign of outmoded backward thinking.
3. All forward-thinking people are leftists.
4. Leftists always speak for all people.
5. People always unanimously support leftist leaders.
6. Leftists are always under assault from the well-organized capitalist enemy.
7. All workers and peasants hate capitalist exploiters.
8. Armed resistance to a leftist government can only conceivably be staged by CIA agents in the service of American imperialism.
9. Capitalists engage in relentless anti-socialist propaganda, subversion, and sabotage; they will commit any crime in order to kill hope and prevent the masses from liberation.
10. The dying non-socialist sector of the world is run by a criminal conspiracy of capitalist oligarchs operating from the United States (and sometimes from Israel when appropriate).
To blame the hot spots on the U.S. presence would be as insane as to blame fires on firefighters because their trucks are always at the scene.
In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.
Yakov Smirnoff
“The British Secret Service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB.” Clive james
[homosexuals were a big target for conversion and use. they hate everywhere they live as if everwhee is responsible for their lives, AND they are used to living dual and multiple lives as a way of life so that they can maintain a cover. for this reason they are also easy to control. one only needs to look in state to see how their presence is a security risk for the same reason a drug addict is. their lifestyles are not compatible with security]
“It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth”.
— Christopher Gill, British parliamentarian, 1995
“Yet it was, in reality, one of the shrewdest pieces of international hoodwinking in historical record . . . So the Comintern was dissolved [in 1943], and the misguided democratic world rejoiced . . . A glance at your newspaper will show that the former Comintern officers had little difficulty in finding new employment. The Comintern was never dissolved . . . Military Intelligence took over the old chores of the Comintern. It became an active part of the Soviet Fifth Column in democratic countries”.
— Igor Gouzenko, This Was My Choice, 1948
~ We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal. tennesee williams
~ It is most true, stylus virum arguit, – our style betrays us. ~ Robert burton
~ In politics it is necessary either to betray one’s country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate. ~ Charles Degaulle
this is what was said by Lenin in 1919, which was also quoted with approval by Stalin in 1947: “We are living,” said Lenin, “not merely in a state but in a system of states, and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with Christian states for a long time is unthinkable. One or the other must triumph in the end. And before that end supervenes, a series of frightful collisions between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states will be inevitable.”
Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone here tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there be anyone who fails to realize that the communist world has said, “The time is now” — that this is the time for the showdown between the democratic Christian world and the communist atheistic world? Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long.
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Congressman Barney Frank’s scandalous tolerance of a gay prostitution business operating out of his house, uncovered by the Washington Times in 1989, drew from ABC nowhere near the dramatic amount of attention ABC gave Mark Foley. On the August 25, 1989 World News Tonight, Sam Donaldson noted it just once in passing, a mere 67 words:
“Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, an acknowledged homosexual, today confirmed that his Washington apartment had been used as a callboy headquarters by a male prostitute for a year and a half until late 1987. Responding to a story in today’s Washington Times, Frank said he had hired the prostitute out of his own funds as a personal aide and fired him when he found out what was going on.”
larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/another-original-lr-translation-beslan-and-the-kgb/
its a translation of a russian article on the issue.
Let’s be grateful for small favors. Think what would be happening if Islam were not a religion of peace.
any one other than me realize that obama snubbed all our best allies to have a ramadan meal?
Individual lies form a system of lies when an accumulation of those lies dominates a given society. Once a specific lie is institutionalized, when it becomes the basis for policy decisions, for legislation and law enforcement, it advances the formation of a system of lies. The more lies are being elevated in this way the closer we get to a system where lies dominate. If this continues the next and final phase leads to a society, where lies rule, and that means godless totalitarian rule. Nazi and Communist societies, both socialists, were and are such societies. Lies are being enforced with the power of government and opposition becomes a criminal act. There is no free speech and no right to bear arms. Totalitarian societies are the result of lies and not of economic deprivation. The liar, however, and that title includes just about everybody, is concerned with him- or herself and doesn’t notice the gradual transformation of the society he lives in from freedom to slavery. He doesn’t do anything to reverse the trend.
Systems of Lies – Hilmar von Campe
“One may lie by language by deliberately asserting something which is false. It means lying to others but not to oneself, one is misusing language. But a further step is also possible, by lying the lie may reach a stage in which a person finally believes his own lies so that the distinction between truth and falsehood is lost… Untruth may range from the lie which is immediately recognizable as such to a total, inextricable system of lies…Truth and fiction are combined in such a way that nothing good arises, but the radical lie itself becomes reality.” – Karl Jaspers
anyone else realize that what happened in germany took 12 years to go from start to finish?
from last man standing…
Today, Communism has put on a ‘friendlier’ more ‘human’ face, by a theatrical display of democratism. China for instance, has moved toward an open market economy that is strongly overseen by the CPC (Communist Party of China). This approach was initiated in the post Chairman Mao era and its success is indisputable .
The innate industriousness, creativity and competence of China’s population was unshackled and the West, hoping and trusting in China’s ‘progressive’, measured approach towards ultimate democracy, invested heavily and imparted its precious technological knowledge liberally, thus making that country into the industrial powerhouse it is today. America’s reflexive economic optimism blinds her to the truth about the unbending ideological resolve behind ‘communism with a smile’. And so, today, the tables are turned and the Western powers are financially and industrially dependent on China and facing a very serious and dangerous situation indeed.
The above situation could never have evolved without a masterful and concurrent KGB (Secret Service of the USSR) deception. The West was duped into believing that Stalinist Marxism had died when the Soviet Union disintegrated and collapsed. This was a cleverly instilled belief.
The West concluded that Russia was steadily evolving, moving along the inevitable path towards full democracy. A dangerous pipe dream, as it turned out. The SPECTER of global communism never did die!
The breakdown of the Soviet Union was a staged event, the brainchild of Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the KGB and Gorbachev, his hand-picked successor. Andropov died in 1984, but his puppeteers’ hands reached far into future events because of his mastery of long term strategic thinking and planning. Out of conviction and necessity, the KGB decided to discard the ossified ideological brutality of the Leninist-Stalinist view of Marxism, imposed for decades by the survivors of deadly intrigues and purges, old ruthless men all.
Andropov chose another, more flexible but no less brutal path towards communist world domination: A formula conceived by Antonio Gramsci (l891-1937), the founder of the Italian Communist Party who died imprisoned by Mussolini. Granmsci believed that the Marxist Revolution could succeed by peaceful means. He proposed a subtle, deceptive and manipulative approach, using infiltration by cooperation-blackmail, bribe dispensing and waging psychological warfare through the media. He believed that the Christian religion had to be secularised and culture and morals thoroughly corrupted in order to destabilize Western society and make it ripe for a peaceful power takeover by the ballot box. And so, the grip of the USSR on Eastern Europe was thrown into the fire, as was the old structure of its ruling party, along with its calcified leadership.
This deceptive operation was spearheaded by a group of dissidents, many of whom were top KGB agents and Western organizations of the ‘Godless Collective’; infiltrated religious groups of all denominations, moral and ethical movements of every stripe, (Moral ReArmament was granted repeated close and secret touch with the dissidents), all these were in the grip of clever KGB operatives. Their efforts were the priceless and indispensable smokescreen for what became in effect a ‘coup d’état’. It was a total success and the subterfuge absolutely believable. The West never realized that it was the looser in this UPSIDE-DOWN revolution, as Western capital flowed into Russia and technical know-how was freely dispensed.
The new Russian industrial giant emerged, as it healed its wounds. But it was led, discreetly at the beginning but openly in the present, by the iron-fisted KGB which fills 80% of all government positions with former or active KGB officers. Prime Minister Putin, himself a retired KGB man, is regaining the influence lost by the USSR, by attacking Georgia and by turning off the spigots of the Russian gas pipelines repeatedly. The discomfort in Europe is powerfully felt. In the Western hemisphere, the Gramsci brand of communism, covertly propelled by the KGB and Cuba, has won election after election. In nearly all the countries of South and Central America a form of Marxist socialism has been embraced. President Lula of Brazil, co-founder of the Foro de Sao Paolo, an organization that groups all the Marxist-socialist countries of the world, is its leader.
A global dictatorship is undoubtedly developing before our eyes and the USA is the last man standing in its way. With President Obama in the White House and the financial crisis raging unabated, it is a very wobbly stand indeed!
the people of the past have an excuse, a flimsy one, but still an excuse. they had never experienced or seen such. we have none such protection, we not only saw, and fought it, we then embraced it.
Mark Steyn had an observation about Beslan.
Other revolutionaries and “militants”–he mentioned the US revolutionary war, the IRA, ETA, and others, did not blow up the enemies’ schools. To have done so would have caused their own people to disown them.
To put it delicately, he said, that doesn’t seem to be an issue here.
Based on the material I recently put up here about Obama’s strong Muslim connections, I have no doubt that he is either a closet Muslim, or he has such sympathy and regard for Muslims and Islam and their ultimate aims, and so much hatred for the West, America and unbelievers–whites especially, that he might as well be.
I might also point out that the Muslim doctrines of Takiyya (dissimulation i.e. lying) and Kitman (mental reservation) originated out of the warfare between the majority Sunni and minority Shi’ite sect in Islam as a religiously sanctified way for Shi’ite Muslims to say they weren’t Shi’ites if they were questioned by their enemies the Sunnis. Later, this practice spread to encompass the religiously sanctioned policy for all Muslims–Sunni and Shi’ite–of allowing, even making lying to unbelievers a duty, if it will safeguard or advance the cause of an individual Muslim or of Islam. Thus, from the Muslim point of view, it would be perfectly all right for Obama the Muslim to lie his head off and pretend to be a Christian. To quote Ibn Kathir on Takiyya, “We smile in the face of some people, though our hearts curse them”
At his Ramadan dinner of yesterday, that included a large whose who of Muslims in the U.S. and the Muslim diplomatic corps, including the representative of the PLO, Obama praised the first two Muslim members of Congress Keith Ellison (D-Trojan horse) and Andre Carson (D-Trojan horse). Ellison, you may remember, insisted on swearing his oath of office on the Qur’an, and the media played up the fact that he finessed objections to this by swearing his oath on Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an on loan from the Library of Congress–as if that made every thing all right. This is a case study in Takiyya and Kitman for, while Ellison swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, he did so on the Qur’an which says that there should be no other God but Allah and no other government but Islam and Shari’a law, and from which springs the idea that all other governments are illegitimate and, indeed, blasphemous and must be destroyed, as must freedom and individual choice, to be replaced by obedience to Allah and Shari’a.
In a delicious twist in which I am sure Ellison and all Muslims reveled and which was not, of course, reported by the MSM at the time of Ellison’s use of Jefferson’s Qur’an, Jefferson–as, first, Minister to France and, then, President during the time in the late 1780s through the early 1800s, when the Muslim Barbary Pirates were attacking and seizing U.S. commercial ships that the newly formed U.S. absolutely needed to survive as a nation, and the newly formed U.S. Congress was paying up to $80,000 dollars in gold per year–20% of the entire U.S. budget over a 10 year period–as Jizya i.e. protection money to the Muslim Barbary Pirates so that they would not attack and board our ships, seize the cargoes and sell all the crew and passengers into slavery, Jefferson had this to say about the reason why:
“Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli’s envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress” (http://www.slate.com/id/2157314/):
“The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
It’s also a good day to contemplate this: Bill Maher, Barack Obama, and American exceptionalism:
http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/____Bill_Maher%2C_Barack_Obama_and_the_Truth_About_American_Exceptionalism/2378/
Inspiring!
Alright guys, knock it off.
Didn’t ya’ll get the memo?
Anyone who questions Obama being a Christian (or naturalized citizen, for that matter) is clearly supposed to be standing underneath a tinfoil hat somewhere, and wearing a straitjacket!
Or at least, so I’ve been told several times by folks professing to know better than me…..
We’re past Sept 1.
Yes, it’s a good day. Hit it,
Peggy!
Sorry to go back to Beslan but it is important. If you have a look at the footage properly, you will see that the Russian troops attacked in a disorganized fashion with many other people going along with them, armed and shooting in all directions. There is a reason why the Russian government will not have an enquiry either into Beslan or the theatre hostages.
Hostage negotiation does not involve giving them anythin but in rescuing hostages. Has been done on numerous occasions.
Finally, be warned: every time I am reminded about the Libyan released in Scotland I shall remind you guys of the numerous IRA terrorists that were NOT extradited to the UK from the USA; of the many hundreds of thousands of pounds collected for those IRA terrorists to murder and maim people; and of President Clinton hosting two mass murderers in the White House – Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness (though, funnily enough the picture of them all grinning on the front lawn is no longer available on the internet).
Back to Beslan: nothing I said exonerates the Islamists but you need to look at the behaviour of the Russian security forces as well. Life is cheap for all as somebody said above.
Helen–the point is that, had the Muslim terrorists not attacked the school and taken the children hostage none of the rest would have followed–flawed Russian rescue attempts or not.
You can’t pin any primary responsibility for what happened on the Russians, it was the Muslim terrorists who initiated and were responsible for this whole incident; that the Russians, in trying to respond, didn’t do a particularly good job is irrelevent.
And out of sight, out of mind… as in very poor (cultural) memory…