Posted on 10/20/2005 6:18:16 AM PDT by Pokey78
Reader Jack Fulmer sent me the following item, which appeared a century ago — 13 September 1905 — in the Paris edition of the New York Herald:
Holy War WagedPlus ça change, eh? Last week Islamists killed a big bunch of people in Nalchik, the capital of the hitherto more-or-less safe-ish Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. True, in our more sensitive age the Herald Tribune’s current owners, the New York Times, would never dream of headlining such a report ‘Holy War Waged’, though the Muslim insurgents are fighting for a pan-Caucasian Islamic republic from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.
St. Petersburg: The districts of Zangezur and Jebrail are swarming with Tartar bands under the leadership of chiefs, and in some cases accompanied by Tartar police officials. Green banners are carried and a ‘Holy War’ is being proclaimed. All Armenians, without distinction of sex or age are being massacred. Many thousand Tartar horsemen have crossed the Perso-Russian frontier and joined the insurgents. Horrible scenes attended the destruction of the village of Minkind. Three hundred Armenians were massacred and mutilated. The children were thrown to the dogs and the few survivors were forced to embrace Islamism.
And in the long run it’s hard to see why they won’t get it, the only question being whether it’s still worth getting. Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ‘Arab street’, which the West’s media doom-mongers have been predicting for four years will rise up in fury against the Anglo-American infidels, remains as seething as a cul-de-sac in Pinner on a Wednesday afternoon. But the Russian Federation’s Muslim street is real, and on the boil.
Remember the months before 9/11? The new US President had his first meeting with the Russian President. ‘I looked the man in the eye and found him very straightforward and trustworthy,’ George W. Bush said after two hours with Vladimir Putin. ‘I was able to get a sense of his soul.’ I’m all for speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but that’s way too soft; it’s candlelight-dinner-with-the-glow-reflecting-in-the-wine-glass-just-before-you-ask-her-to-dance-to-‘Moonlight-Becomes-You’ soft. Even at the time, many of us felt like yelling at Bush: Get a grip on yourself, man! Lay off the homoerotic stuff about soulmates! This is a KGB apparatchik you’re making eyes at.
But Putin was broadly supportive — or at least not actively non-supportive — on Afghanistan (a very particular case) and Nato expansion (a fait accompli), and some experts started calling Vlad the most Westernised Russian strongman since Peter the Great and cooing about a Russo-American alliance that would be one of the cornerstones of the post-Cold War world.
It’s not like that today. From China to Central Asia to Ukraine, from its covert efforts to maintain Saddam in power to its more or less unashamed patronage of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Moscow has been at odds with Washington over every key geopolitical issue, and a few non-key ones, too, culminating in Putin’s tirade to Bush that America was flooding Russia with sub-standard chicken drumsticks and keeping the best ones for herself. It was a poultry complaint but indicative of a retreat into old-school Kremlin paranoia. Putin was sending America’s chickens home to roost. I wonder if Bush took a second look into the soulful depths of Vladimir’s eyes and decided he wasn’t quite so finger-lickin’ good after all.
Russia’s export of ideology was the decisive factor in the history of the last century. It seems to me entirely possible that the implosion of Russia could be the decisive factor in this new century. As Iran’s nuke programme suggests, in many of the geopolitical challenges to America there’s usually a Russian component somewhere in the background.
In fairness to Putin, even if he was ‘very straightforward and trustworthy’, he’s in a wretched position. Think of the feet of clay of Western European politicians unwilling to show leadership on the Continent’s moribund economy and deathbed demography. Russia has all the EU’s problems to the nth degree, and then some. ‘Post-imperial decline’ is manageable; a nation of psychotic lemmings isn’t. As I’ve noted before in this space, Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century, a third of what it was at the fall of the Soviet Union. It needn’t decline at a consistent rate, of course. But I’d say it’s more likely to be even lower than 50 million than it is to be over 100 million. The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future most Russian women are voting with their foetus: 70 per cent of pregnancies are aborted.
A smaller population needn’t necessarily be a problem, and especially not for a state with too much of the citizenry on the payroll. But Russia is facing simultaneously a massive ongoing drain of wealth out of the system. Whether or not Dominic Midgley was correct the other day in his assertion that the émigré oligarchs prefer London to America, I cannot say. But I notice my own peripheral backwater of Montreal has also filled up with Russkies whose impressive riches have been acquired recently and swiftly. It doesn’t help the grim demographic scenario if your economic base is also being systematically eaten away.
Add to that the unprecedented strains on a ramshackle public health system. Russia is the sick man of Europe, and would still look pretty sick if you moved him to Africa. It has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. From virtually no official Aids cases at the time Putin took office, in the last five years more Russians have tested positive than in the previous 20 for America. The virus is said to have infected at least 1 per cent of the population, the figure the World Health Organisation considers the tipping point for a sub-Saharan-sized epidemic. So at a time when Russian men already have a life expectancy in the mid-50s — lower than in Bangladesh — they’re about to see Aids cut them down from the other end, killing young men and women of childbearing age, and with them any hope of societal regeneration. By 2010, Aids will be killing between a quarter and three-quarters of a million Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are regions that are exceptions to these malign trends, parts of Russia that have healthy fertility rates and low HIV infection. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a ‘Mu-’ and end with a ‘-slim’.
So the world’s largest country is dying and the only question is how violent its death throes are. Yesterday’s Russia was characterised by Churchill as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Today’s has come unwrapped: it’s a crisis in a disaster inside a catastrophe. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has Aids, the Middle East has Islamists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia’s got the lot: an African-level Aids crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Of course, the nuclear materials are all in ‘secure’ facilities — more secure, one hopes, than the secure public buildings in Nalchik that the Islamists took over with such ease last week.
Russia is the bleakest example on the planet of how we worry about all the wrong things. For 40 years the environmentalists have warned us that the jig was up: there are too many people (see Paul Ehrlich’s comic masterpiece of 1970 The Population Bomb) and too few resources — as the Club of Rome warned in its 1972 landmark study The Limits To Growth, the world will run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993. Instead, poor old Russia is awash with resources but fatally short of Russians — and, in the end, warm bodies are the one indispensable resource.
What would you do if you were Putin? What have you got to keep your rotting corpse of a country as some kind of player? You’ve got nuclear know-how — which a lot of ayatollahs and dictators are interested in. You’ve got an empty resource-rich eastern hinterland — which the Chinese are going to wind up with one way or the other. That was the logic, incidentally, behind the sale of Alaska: in the 1850s, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, the brother of Alexander II, argued that the Russian empire couldn’t hold its North American territory and that one day either Britain or the United States would simply take it, so why not sell it to them first? The same argument applies today to the 2,000 miles of the Russo–Chinese border. Given that even alcoholic Slavs with a life expectancy of 56 will live to see Vladivostok return to its old name of Haishenwei, Moscow might as well flog it to Beijing instead of just having it snaffled out from under.
That’s the danger for America — that most of what Russia has to trade is likely to be damaging to US interests. In its death throes, it could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China. In theory, America could do a belated follow-up to the Alaska deal and put in a bid for Siberia. But Russia’s calculation is that sooner or later we’ll be back in a bipolar world and that, in almost any scenario, there’s more advantage in being part of the non-American pole. A Sino–Russian strategic partnership has a certain logic to it, and so, in a darker way, does a Russo–Muslim alliance of convenience. In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact crumbling before his eyes, poor old Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block, the Ayatollah Khomeini: ‘I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan,’ wrote the pioneer Islamist nutcase. ‘I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system.’
In an odd way, that’s what happened everywhere but the Kremlin. As communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Afghanistan and Indonesia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay which would have been ‘Marxist fantasists’ a generation or two back are now Islamists: it’s the ideology du jour. Even the otherwise perplexing enthusiasm of the western Left for the jihad’s misogynist homophobe theocrats is best understood as a latterday variation on the Hitler/Stalin pact. And, despite Gorbachev turning down the offer, it will be Russia’s fate to have large chunks of its turf annexed by the Islamic world.
We are witnessing a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. The ‘ideological vacuum’ was mostly filled with a nihilist fatalism. Churchill got it wrong: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss.
Don't meddle in when the dzhigits are talking, wench! It's not for your weak mind, your place is in the kitchen... and look, all your dishes are unattended again! :-))
BTW, you nickname speaks for itsef. There most zealous are the newly converted.
"HE WAS RUSSIAN, SINCE HE SPOKE RUSSIAN AND LIVED IN RUSSIA"
Using your logic Chopin was a french composer & pianist cause he was living in France & used to speak in french. Considering that Chopin WAS the most well - knowen "Polish" art woker in the world but now we opend that he was a FRENCH guy then i asking myself What did Poland contribute into european civilization culture?
Without Chopin - NOTHING.
What did Poland for european civilization?....
What did Russia for european civilization? - It rescued Europe for many times.
According vox_PL logic everyone who live in America and speak english are americans:).
Your smiley in the end of the phrase is totally inappropriate. Though you used the statement sarcastically, it is exactly true!==
Yes of cause so all millions of illegals in America are "trully americans" according to you:)). I beleive that the majority of FR participants will very much disagree with you.
BTW how about millions of muslims which lived in France and Britain? Are they "trully frenchmen" or "englishmen" too?
Not withstanding thier muslim religion and very different race?
If above is true then of cause Mototov and Stalin who was born by georgian and jewish father and mother are "russains" to you. But it is fortunate that it is only to you.
But who you are yourself ethnically. DO you newzealender ethnically since you live in New Zealand. But I presume you was born not as new zealander. SO despite of your mother and father which has nothing to do with New Zealand you are new zealander? Funny:))).
Same way jb6 here according to you is german? Since he lived in Germany and speaks german language?
How about arabs in Israel? AFAIK the third of population of Israel is arabs. Who are they then?
According to you they are jewish:))). They speak ivrit and they live in Israel. So all your conditions are here and they are jews:). Funny indeed:))).
I think israelites on this forum will vehemently disagree with you:))))). They don't recognise arabs in Israel as jewish despite that arabs live there and speaks thier language. I beleive that Israel arabs will disagree to be jewish too.
SO do I.
I don't recognise Molotov, Sverdlov, Stalin, Beria and so on as ethnic russians. And no logical and resonable people do.
Except of those who like it according thier political suit. It is convinient indeed to call any international commi scum as "russians". But they are "russians" same way as arabs in Israel are jewish.
Your ignorance is splended, I will proceed to educate you, with pleasure.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Ukrainian_War
The Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 and 1919 was a conflict between the forces of Poland and Western-Ukrainian People´s Republic for the control over the Eastern Galicia after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.
The first clash happened on November 1, 1918, in the city of Lemberg (called Lwów by the local Poles and Lviv by the Ukrainians). The Ukrainian militias under D. Vitovskyi took the advantage during the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and took control over most of Eastern Galicia. The Western-Ukrainian People´s Republic was proclaimed with Lviv as its capital, and claimed sovereignty upon Eastern Galicia, Carpathians up to the city of Nowy S¹cz in the west, Carpathian Ruthenia and northern Bukovina. However, large part of the claimed territory was also considered Polish by the local populations.
Upon entering Lviv, the Ukrainian forces were successfully opposed by a local self-defence units formed mostly of WWI veterans, students and children. After two weeks of heavy fights within the city, an armed unit under command of Lt. Colonel Micha³ Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski of the renascent Polish Army broke through the Ukrainian siege and arrived to the city. On November 21 the siege was broken and the Ukrainians were repelled. However, heavy fights for other cities claimed by both Poles and Ukrainians continued, and the fights for Lwów lasted until May of 1919.
Since December of 1918 also fights started in Volhynia. Polish units were trying to seize control over the region, while at the same time the forces of the Ukrainian People´s Republic under Semen Petlura tried to expand their territory westwards, towards the city of Che³m. After two months of heavy fights the conflict was resolved in March of 1919 by fresh and well-equipped units under General Edward Rydz.
On May 14, 1919 the Polish general offensive in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia started. It was carried out by units of the Polish Army aided by the newly-arrived Blue Army of General Józef Haller de Hallenburg. The Ukrainian lines were broken, mostly due to withdrawal of the elite Sich Rifles. On May 27 the Polish forces reached the Z³ota Lipa-Brze¿any-Jezierna-Radziwi³³ów line. Following the demands of the Entente, the Polish offensive was halted and the troops of General Haller adopted defensive positions. On June 8, 1919, the Ukrainian forces started a counter-offensive, but after three weeks were stopped near Gni³a Lipa and upper Styr river. Then the Polish commanders decided to ignore the Entente demands and started yet another offensive on June 28, that pushed the Ukrainians back to the line of the river Zbrucz. On July 17 a ceasefire was signed. On November 21, 1919, the Highest Council of the Paris Peace Conference granted the Eastern Galicia to Poland for a period of 25 years, after which a plebiscite was to be held there. On April 21, 1920, Józef Pi³sudski and Semen Petlura signed a Polish-Ukrainian alliance, in which Poland promised the Ukrainian People´s Republic the military help in the Kiev Offensive against the Red Army in exchange for the acceptance of Polish-Ukrainian border on the river Zbrucz.
Don't meddle in when the dzhigits are talking, wench! It's not for your weak mind, your place is in the kitchen... and look, all your dishes are unattended again! :-))==
FOr talking that way to woman I would say to you: "you not gentleman but you are swine".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Lithuanian_War
The Polish-Lithuanian War was an armed conflict between newly independent Lithuania and Poland, from August 1920 to October 7, 1920. It was part of a wider conflict over control of the cities of Wilno (currently Vilnius), Suwa³ki and Augustów that raged between the end of World War I and October 1920. The conflict was won by Poland, which gained control of all the disputed areas and international recognition of its borders. The Polish-Lithuanian War took place simultaneously with the Polish-Bolshevik War and is sometimes considered part of it.
Welcome to high Polish culture? Or is that something you picked up in New Zealand? Wow, what a sophisticated aristocrat you are. /sarcasm
Oh and I don't excuse the Soviet Union, nice straw man attempt. You on the other hand try to rewrite nationalities and ethnicities of those who don't fit into your "Poland is the brave victim" line.
This is just outrageous! No knowladge, no intelligence just pure disrespect and contempt for Poland and Poles. What the heck are you doing on this forum??
Most of all tell me when was it when Russia ?? did save Europe?
LOL
n 1938 it was Poland who participated in splitting of Checkoslovakia with Hitler' Germany. In next year Poland was splitted herself by same Hitler' Germany and USSR. But how its hypocritical for poles to complain if just one year before Poland herself did same thing.
It was already explained. Wasn't it? You keep repeating the same "lies" on and on. What is your purpose? Who do you want to convince? What do you do on this forum?
And belive or not we had. Poland pressed the West to act, called for a preventive strike. That is a fact.
Besides, it was in OUR interest not to let Hitler have Chechs! Look at the f***** map!
It was already explained. Wasn't it? You keep repeating the same "lies" on and on. ==
Yes it was explained that way. Poles went to get lands which already was thier and was populated by polish people.
BUT I argue that such kind of explanation EXACTLY same which Stalin did in 1939.
Soviet Union went to get lands which was populated by brother ukranians and beloruses which was suppressed by polish power to free them.
Polish explanation and Stalin explanation is the same. But you poles just don't care about it. That is why I tell that poles remember wrongs done to them ONLY.
Wow, what warped thinking. Maybe if you had backed the Czechs militarly that would have ended things? Oh, but its better to just grab your share and make excuses.
Pointing out the hypocracy of the arguments (which are on a 10 year old's level at that) of your brother Poles. What's the matter, the good Poles don't fit into the same rule being set for the bad Poles like Iron Felix? That's called hypocracy, like a heck of a lot of the arguments put forth here by poles.
Hey, hold your horses. This is plain unjust. There are many prominenet Polish writers - like Henrik Senkevich in the past, or great writer, thinker and philosopher of modern time Stanislaw Lem. How about brilliant Polish movies (just seen it on "Kultura" channel - "Ash and Diamond" by Vaida.)
Gee, I forgot Hmelevska - her books are everywhere. Do you like "Ironiya Sudby"? Barbara Brylska!
Two years ago I was in Poznan on a business trip. Went into Fine Arts museum. What a great place. Spent there nearly two hours. Lots of great paintings and sculptures.
Heh... sometimes Poles are arrogant, but one cannot deny them their influence on European and Russian culture.
In Iva's post I see barely what you call pointing out the hypocracy but some serious antipolish stuff. Can't you see it or just antipolonism tickles your senses?
Once again you show complete ignorance. I think. Or it just makes you feel better. Don't know. The point is, as any reasonable, educated human being knows, that at that point (after Munich) nobody could do anything to save them. In fact I can see your post today if Poles had fought against the Nazis along side of Chechs (doubt about their will). Look those dumb Poles started the WWII!
I seriously doubt I had convinced you, as usuall. I'm not anti-russian, I like Tschaikovsky, Musorgski etc. But if I see that someone questions the heritage and moral responsibility of soviet AND russian crimes by comparing them to little sins of Poles (yes little sins!) my blood starts to boil.
Soviet Union went to get lands which was populated by brother ukranians and beloruses which was suppressed by polish power to free them.So I understand that Lithuanians and Estonians where also freed? Were they happy? Didn't they joined SS to fight brothers Russians?
2. Ukraine. Some lands where indeed ukrainian some half ukrainian halt polish some "pure" polish. When you move back in time you shall see that those lands were indeed Polish for most of the time.
3. Belarus. Majority of "Belarussians" didn't recognise their nationality at all! When asked who you are they used to answer I'm local!
I really don't understand why you keep posting such a crap. SU wanted to free those nations from greedy Poles? Finns were also occupied? Give me a brake.
As to motivation behind events in 1938 and 1939. Poles retook Zaolzie in a hostile act AGAINST NAZIS! It was a clear sign: We don't agree with Munich, we shall fight if situation will be similar. And hell we DID. The Soviet one was different. They secretly negotiated with Hitler! SO it was a joint op!
Nice try, the Polish position was one of the items that Hitler pushed during Munich and got you a chunk of the victim's body. Problem is, you wouldn't ally with him and join his New European Order after you got what you wanted.
by comparing them to little sins of Poles (yes little sins!) my blood starts to boil
The "little sins" were anything but little from 1300s to the late 1700s nor from 1917 to 1939. I'm sure the Ukrainians, Belaruss, Russians, Prussians (original), Teutonics, Lithuanians (in the 1900s), Czechs and Moldovians wouldn't think so.
Oh and I don't make excuses for the sins of the Soviets, those were legion, but dropping all the blame on one ethnic group, that itself suffered well over 20 million killed by those soviets is just as warped.
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