NP -

[Joe Allonby]

I'm reading this while sitting here in lockdown listening to helicopters
fly over my house in Brighton near the Watertown line, a few minutes walk
from Arsenal St and the command center. So, after we get done killing this
little shit today, we kick Putin's ass.



On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 10:10 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Places_Where_Violence_Comes_From
>
> Spurred by Prime Minister Putin, who was soon to become president, Russia
> sent its armor back to Chechnya in 1999. This time Russia fought
> unsparingly. With little regard for life or property, its military
> surrounded Grozny and pounded the capital with rockets, artillery, and
> aircraft, collapsing the city around the rebels. Sweeps and barrages
> destroyed villages and towns. The destruction was of an order not seen
> since World War II; Grozny's sagging hulks invited comparisons to Warsaw,
> 1944. The city fell early in 2000, and Putin, by then president, declared
> the battle ended. A new policy took shape. Russia would garrison troops and
> equipment and provide money, instructions, and political support. But local
> administration was to be handed over to Chechens deemed sufficiently loyal,
> a formula flowing from the institutional memory of a weakened empire. The
> appointment of proxies was accompanied by a message that became more hollow
> the more it was repeated on state TV: There is no war. We have won. No
> verified casualty counts exist for the wars, but all agree the human toll
> has been vast, ranging from tens of thousands of Chechens killed to more
> than two hundred thousand. Setting aside the numbers, the years of violence
> and atrocities made clear that as public policy, little could be less wise
> than extensive killing in Chechnya, where tradition asks blood to be washed
> in blood. Chechens are bound by adat, an oral code that compels families to
> avenge the killing of their relatives. By the time President Putin claimed
> victory, enough blood had been spilled for a fury lasting generations. It
> mixed not just tribal urges for revenge and independence but racism and
> militant Islam.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130419/5024e9c2/attachment.html>