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After Snowden’s NSA Exposure People Wake Up
The Obama administration is miffed about Russia giving temporary asylum to Edward Snowden and is now foolishly thinking of how to "punish" the Russian Federation and its President Vladimir Putin. The New York Times report on the issue mentions several "issues" the U.S. is claiming to have with Russia. These are the Snowden case, the war on Syria, Iran's non-existing nuclear weapon program and nuclear disarmament.
But as can be gleaned from the comment sections of U.S. news outlets and various polls in all these issues many, many people are not on the side of their government. With currently some 50 recommendations the most reader valued comment on the NYT report is this one by one Mark Thomason from Clawson, MI.
I am disgusted. The Russians, THE RUSSIANS, are on the right side of all four issues, and we look like evil.
In Syria, we are backing al Qaeda, and the whole machine of the same Sunni fanatics we were fighting in Iraq.
With Snowden, we are exposed in crimes against a vast number of friends and allies and our own people, exposed in lies we told and still tell (some under oath), and we are begging people to believe we won't torture or kill him while many for good reason don't believe us.
We broke the ABM Treaty, and we are messing with nuclear arms deterrence and safety from nuclear war. We made a deal with the Russians not to expand into Eastern Europe if they dissolved the Warsaw Pact, and we broke the promises and did exactly that, and with ABM's too.
We are the ones who won't talk to the reformist new guy to settle what we say it a huge crisis, even as we say the basis of the crisis is not true, that the Iranians do not have a nuclear weapons program, and the one guy we demonized is going.
We look like what we used to think of our enemies. This is sick.
I fully concur. On all these issues the NSA is the only government entity listening to the people. That Snowden exposed this fact seems to have been the proverbial drop in bucket. A majority of U.S. people are now speaking out against the imperial security state. For the first time in more than a decade one can hope that the bucket's overflow will have some effect beyond comment section rants.
Well, you haven’t addressed the murky tale of Basayev, al-Khattab, the GRU, Berezovsky, and possibly Berezonsky’s then-protégé, Putin. I’d really like to see a clear exposition of it, but just googling around (for the benefit of NSA researchers if no-one else), I found, eg:
Berezovsky financed terrorists by paying ransoms – Chechen prez
Russia Today, Apr 7 2009
Boris Berezovsky encouraged Chechen warlords Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev to kidnap people so that Berezovsky could finance them by paying ransoms, claims Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. In an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Chechen leader said he personally witnessed the agreement. Kadyrov said: “He couldn’t just give money to the militants, so he invented this mechanism. In my presence, Berezovsky suggested to Raduyev and Basayev: ‘Capture people and I’ll ransom them. I’ll get good publicity and you’ll get money.’ He paid millions of dollars to Basayev.” During the time in question, 1996-97, Berezovsky was deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, and negotiated the release of hostages captured in Chechnya. This became a profitable business for rampaging warlords in the de facto independent republic. Both Basayev and Raduyev held posts in the Chechen government under President Aslan Maskhadov. Aleksandr Korzhakov, the former head of Kremlin security, says he believes Kadyrov’s statements 100%. Korzhakov said: “In fact, I’m sure there isn’t a person in Russia who does not believe this idea. We’ve had statements from the people who were kidnapped during the wars. And their stories only support the claim.” Kadyrov also said he believed Berezovsky was behind the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She was exposing crimes in the Chechen republic. He said: “We would need Politkovskaya today to show what she used to say, and what there is now. People arrive and walk freely around Grozny. A normal life! How could our enemies use Politkovskaya effectively? By killing her. Who did it? Berezovsky, I believe.” The official investigation into the murder of the journalist never revealed who ordered it. Four men were tried for doing the killing, but were found not guilty by the jury. Russian prosecutors are now revising the case. According to Kadyrov, ‘Berezovsky and the likes of him’ have drawn Chechnya into two bloody conflicts to cripple and dissolve Russia. Kadyrov said: “The people doing world politics chose our republic because they knew us: our strength, courage, spirituality … In the first and the second campaigns, they used us as a tool, dragged us into this war. The White House (he means, the White House in Moscow, seat of the Russian Government, not the US White House – RB) said: take sovereignty. They armed us and used us against the sovereign state of Russia.”
I can’t see any sign that the US or more specifically the CIA were involved. What I can see is claims that the GRU, that is Russian Army Intelligence, was involved:
In Aug 1999, Basayev and Khattab led a 1,400-strong army of Islamist fighters in unsuccessful attempt to aid Dagestani Wahhabis to take over the neighbouring Republic of Dagestan and establish a new Chechen-Dagestan Islamic republic. By the end of the month, Russian forces had managed to repel the invasion, but admitted suffering more than 1,200 casualties. It was alleged that Alexander Voloshin, a key figure in the Yeltsin administration, paid Basayev to stage the Dagestan incursion, and that Basayev was working for the Russian GRU at the time. In early September, a series of bombings of Russian apartment blocks took place, killing 293 people. The attacks were blamed on terrorists with Chechen links, although this attribution remains controversial. Robert Young Pelton, who was with the rebels in Grozny during the siege, interviewed a captured GRU agent named Aleksei Galkin. Galkin claimed that the government had sponsored the destruction of the apartments. He said that the bombing in Buynaksk was organized by GRU detachments under the general command of Valentin Korabelnikov. After escaping from his captors, Galkin retracted the story and claimed to have been tortured. Although Basayev and Khattab denied responsibility, the Russian government blamed the Chechen government for allowing Basayev to use Chechnya as a base. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement in the attacks, and offered a crackdown on the renegade warlords, which Russia refused. The new Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, famously promised a harsh crackdown on “Chechen terrorists”: “We’ll get them anywhere. If we find terrorists in the shithouse, then we’ll waste them in the shithouse. That’s all there is to it.” By the end of September the Second Chechen War was underway.
Berezovsky had his own spin on what had happened:
According to Alexander Litvinenko’s book Death of a Dissident, Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky said that he had a conversation with the Chechen Islamist leader Movladi Udugov in 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of the phone conversation between Berezovsky and Udugov was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on Sep 10 1999. Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish new Islamic republic of Basayev-Udugov that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but “Udugov and Basayev conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov, but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war.” However, Litvinenko and Berezovsky provided little evidence for their claims. Researcher Henry Plater-Zyberk has described Litvinenko as “a one man disinformation bureau” who was hungry for attention and provided little, if any, evidence for his claims. It was also alleged that Alexander Voloshin, a key figure in the Yeltsin administration, paid Basayev to stage the Dagestan incursion, and that Basayev was working for the Russian GRU at the time.
There’s definitely something under there, to the effect that some elements in the Russian deep state, put it that way, wanted a Second Chechen War, but I can’t find any accounts that cut right through it in a straight line. Sorry this comment is so long, but it’s a really interesting story.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 3 2013 13:45 utc | 46
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