Posted on 11/12/2002 8:50:00 AM PST by ppaul
Russia's media expressed has shock over a remark by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-EU summit in which he urged a Western reporter asking about the war in Chechnya to come to Moscow and "get circumcised".
Mr Putin's comments, made at a closing press conference of the Russia-EU summit in Brussels, were played by TVS television station and republished by several major Moscow newspapers and Internet sites.
The Kommersant business daily reports Mr Putin was asked a Danish reporter why Russia was using mine warfare in the separatist North Caucasus republic and exterminating Chechen civilians.
Reports say Mr Putin became infuriated by the question and launched an unprecedented defence of the three-year Chechen war that at one stage went off on a tangent.
"You, if I am not mistaken, represent an ally [of the US war on terror] and are therefore in danger," Mr Putin told the reporter, according to a transcript that appeared in the Vremya Novostei daily.
"They [the Chechens] talk about killing non-Muslims and if you are a Christian, you are in danger. And even if you are an atheist, you are in danger," Mr Putin is quoting as saying.
"If you decide to become a Muslim - even then you are not safe, because traditional Islam contradicts the conditions and goals that they [the Chechens rebels] set.
"But if you are prepared to become the most radical Islamist and prepared to get circumcised - I invite you to Moscow.
"We have specialists that deal with this problem. I suggest that you do such an operation that nothing grows out of you again," Mr Putin reportedly said.
Mr Putin is known for his tough talk that at times becomes interlaced with slang used by criminals and the military.
He launched the war in the predominantly Muslim Chechen republic in October 1999 by threatening to "waste [the Chechens] while they sit in their outhouses".
Russian media say a Kremlin aide explained to reporters after the Brussels press conference that Mr Putin was tired during the summit after a hectic working schedule.
The wide coverage given to Mr Putin's remarks appears unusual for a Russian media that has grown to carefully toe the Kremlin line in recent months.
Advice dismissed
Meanwhile, Mr Putin has brushed aside European advice on a peaceful solution to the Chechen conflict, saying it had to be solved by the Russian and Chechen people alone.
"Of course we listen to advice from our colleagues in Europe," Mr Putin told a news conference in Oslo after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who said he hoped for a peaceful, political solution in Chechnya.
But he added: "It is an internal Russian problem to be solved between the Chechen people and the Russian federation."
Russia has scrapped plans for a partial military pullout from the southerly province since Chechen separatists took a Moscow theatre hostage last month.
The siege ended with the deaths of 128 hostages and 41 rebels.
"We don't want to turn up our noses and say that others' opinions are irrelevant," Mr Putin said.
But he added: "The problem is so complicated that no one can give really good advice."
Mr Putin said Europe had some good examples of conflict resolution but that other conflicts had rumbled on unsolved in other parts of Europe for hundreds of years.
Mr Putin has shown no sign of reining in the Russian military in Chechnya, where thousands of people have died in almost a decade of fighting.
Mr Putin has said a new constitution and elections offer the best prospects of a swift resolution.
"The political process on Chechnya must continue," Mr Schroeder said.
Mr Putin and Mr Schroeder met in Oslo because Mr Putin cancelled a planned visit to Germany last month during the theatre siege. Both men were, by coincidence, on visits to the Nordic nation.
Mr Schroeder and Mr Putin also said a UN resolution seeking to disarm Iraq offered a chance of peace.
Shortly afterwards, Iraq's parliament voted to reject the resolution while leaving the final decision to President Saddam Hussein.
Mr Putin said he hoped Arab countries would bring pressure on Iraq to comply.
Mr Putin said Moscow was keeping up contacts with Baghdad but that only Saddam knew what Iraq would finally decide.
Mr Schroeder reiterated on Monday that Germany would not take part in any US-led attacks on Iraq if Saddam failed to comply fully with the resolution.
Mr Schroeder won popularity before his re-election in September by ruling out sending troops.
Ain't that the 64 thousand dollar question!
I am beginning to think Putin is one of us. Anybody know his Freeper screen name?
Try reading the koran, to be a muslim you are called to exterminate non-muslims so that islam controls the world. I stopped relying on what other people said along time ago and began doing the studying myself.
I did not want them to react in any way.
I would expect them to, however, at least several hundred million of them, IF they truly disagreed with the atrocities of their co-religionists or they believe that all one billion of them are under this suposed "threat". But I do see a lot of genuine, spontaneous rejoicing instead.
Nothing. But true Christians do not force you to believe in Christ. They may argue fervently, you may even be made to feel uncomfortable (most Christians I know TRY not to have that happen) but they should not punish you for not accepting what they say. They may take appropriate action against another's evil actions.
If the origin of truth means we do not all have to believe the same, doesn't that mean that none of the religions are the truth?
I don't believe that any one denomination or religion knows everything, if that is what you are saying. I do know that Christ said "I am the way, the truth and the life. NO ONE comes to God except by me."
I understand the appeal of believing in "all roads lead to God" --- but how do you explain Hitler and people bent on evil?
There must be some kind of dividing line wouldn't you think?
I think you might find CS Lewis' Mere Christianity interesting...he was an atheist until what.. his mid forties? And gradually was drawn to Christianity. In Mere Christianity he explains his journey in a very insightful way. It is a transcription of a series of radio broadcasts and as such has a semi-rambling tone.
I am not sure how I stand on that particular teaching, but he says ( http://www.merelewis.com/CSLmc410.html)
What lies behind that question is partly something very reasonable and partly something that is not reasonable at all. The reasonable part is this. If conversion to Christianity make no improvement in a man's outward actions—if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before—then I think we must suspect that his "conversion" was largely imaginary...
But there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may demand not merely that each man's life should improve if he becomes a Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps—Christian and non-Christian—and that all the people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds. (1) In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non-Christians in the mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in the mass, because there one knows definitely which is which. Also, an animal does not turn (either slowly or suddenly) from a dog into a cat. But when we are comparing Christians in general with non-Christians in general, we are usually not thinking about real people whom we know at all, but only about two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers. If you want to compare the bad Christian and the good Atheist, you must think about two real specimens whom you have actually met. Unless we come down to brass tacks in that way, we shall only be wasting time.
And from his book _The Great Divorce_
'But what of the poor Ghosts who never get [in]....' 'Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.'
On human nature from _Mere Christianty_:
EVERY ONE HAS HEARD people quarreling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say. They say things like this: "How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?"--‘That’s my seat, I was there first"--"Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm"--"Why should you shove in first?"--"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"--"Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.
Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that some thing has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.
All in all I think Mere Christianity might prove enlightening to you. It's quite non confrontational - just expository.
I am outraged at the attacks on the second amendment in this country. I write, call & email every elected official about my views. I then joined others with the same opinion....even forming our own group called The Liberty Belles. We had our first National TV appearance last week.
If it is something that you truly care about, your only choice is to take action. What actions have your friends taken?
Yeah, your probably right. Come to think of it, the last time I heard the Pope cheer on the murder of 3,000 innocent office workers in the name of Jesus Christ, I didn't hear much of an outcry from his followers.
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