Pogroms again,ha?Wonderfull country Russia is...

[Tugay-bey]

Pogroms Return to Russia
by Matt Taibbi

n the eve of Vladimir Putin's upcoming visit to the United States, there is a troubling new phenomenon developing in the Russian capital. A series of mass skinhead attacks against Muslims, attacks the Russian press are openly calling "pogroms," has disturbed the city in the past two weeks, claiming three lives and prompting more than 300 arrests.

The incidents are among the most serious threats to social order to hit the capital during Putin's reign, and also may tarnish the reputation of America's ally in the Afghan war--particularly as some of the attacks were directed specifically at Afghans.


The worst of the pogroms occurred on October 30, in Moscow's southern Tsaritsino region, where a crowd of more than 300 shaven-headed teenagers--apparently fans of the soccer team Lokomotiv--attacked dark-skinned people outside a street market. When police intervened, part of the crowd dispersed and traveled by subway to the nearby Kakhovskaya region, where they descended upon the hotel Sevastopol and attacked some two dozen Afghan residents, among others, as they came in and out of the building.

There is a small Afghan population in Moscow, mainly ethnic Afghans who were born and raised in ex-Soviet territories bordering Afghanistan: Kirgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. Some are immigrants from the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Many are migrant shuttle-traders who live in hotels, and as such share in the unpopularity experienced by other non-Russian preyezhiye (arrivals) who inhabit Russia's street markets.

Imposing crowds of teenage soccer fans are nothing new in Moscow. In the past few years a curious synthesis of the soccer hooligan and skinhead movements has been observed steadily gaining strength in the city. It's no longer uncommon in Moscow to see crowds of 300-400 soccer fans--dressed in the black bomber jackets and black boots popularized by German skinheads--loitering on the streets in the city's outer regions, and not always on the same nights as soccer matches. In the most celebrated incident prior to the recent pogroms, fans of the Spartak and Torpedo soccer teams rioted outside the US Embassy in the spring of 1999, apparently in protest against the attack on Kosovo.

But these recent incidents are something new. For one thing, the scale and intensity of the violence is unprecedented, as is the fact that the attacks were apparently organized and premeditated. In the October 30 incident, police determined that the 300-plus crowd of teenagers had first gathered in a wooded area of the Tsaritsino region and held an orderly meeting there before heading to the market. One police spokesman, Sergei Shevtsov of the city police press office, even went so far as to say that investigators had determined that the original targets of the attacks were antiglobalist protesters in the city center, where the last day of the Davos economic conference meetings were being held. Only when "advance scouts" determined that there were no antiglobalist protesters there at that time, Shevtsov told Izvestia, did the crowd settle on the dark-skinned workers at the market as a target.

Many people who followed the news, particularly those in the Muslim soccer violence. "These were clearly organized and carefully planned, and not some spontaneous outburst by a group of teenagers," said Geidar Jamal, leader of the Islamic Committee of Russia. "The behavior was both more ferocious than usual, and more controlled."

[Balamut]

You'r trying to show how bad is Russia. How evel it is.
So nobody wouldn't want to visit it, instead, hate it, sitting in their homes in the Canada and UK and other parts... .

Is that your reason for living?

[Verbatim]

Originally posted by Balamut
You'r trying to show how bad is Russia. How evel it is.
So nobody wouldn't want to visit it, instead, hate it, sitting in their homes in the Canada and UK and other parts... .

I understand if you object to the fact that the poster is reporting only BAD things about Russia, ignoring the good. However, what makes you think that, if we don't visit Russia, we are going to be "sitting in our homes" in Canada or the UK? Forget what they taught you in Soviet school. There are other places to visit in the world besides Russia. The Caribbean... Tahiti... France... Spain... Portual... Italy... Nepal... South America... Mexico... Kenya & Tanzania... Costa Rica. I've traveled extensively, and never had to go back to Russia for that.

Originally posted by Balamut Is that your reason for living?

What's yours? A worthless question if I ever saw one.

[Balamut]

MAybe(and looks like) he found one in this, how do you know?
Did I touch your feelings?
NOT sit and don't travel nowhere, BUT BLAME and HATE when siting. So hard to understand?

BTW I was irony.

And more ..."they" tought me in soviet school very well. 2-3 languages, geography, math, chemestry and everything is on high level.

Originally posted by Balamut
And more ..."they" tought me in soviet school very well. 2-3 languages, geography, math, chemestry and everything is on high level.

Yeah, it's clear that Soviet educational system was superior (if we don't consider ideology). BTW, westerners also should forget some propaganda they were taught in their schools...

[Verbatim]

Originally posted by Balamut
MAybe(and looks like) he found one in this, how do you know?
Did I touch your feelings?
NOT sit and don't travel nowhere, BUT BLAME and HATE when siting. So hard to understand?

Apparently, it's hard to understand for YOU that "blaming" and "hating" has nothing to do with "sitting" (two t's). Neither blaming nor hating interferes with travel. A person may hate Russia while traveling to Tahiti. It's wishful thinking on your part that people who don't like Russia vegetate at home. Capisce?

And, please, don't worry about MY feelings -- it's yours that seem to be disturbed the most.

Originally posted by Balamut
BTW I was irony.

Balamut, I hate to be nitpicking, but I just can't resist it when people stick their heads out like this. "Irony" you say? Well, let's see now. Was that dramatic irony, Socratic irony, tragic irony, or just plain old irony? If the latter is the case, I note that irony is defined as the use of words to express a point of view opposite to their literal meaning. Now, please enlighten me (you having a superior education an' all), how does your prior statement fit that definition? For I am puzzled indeed.

Originally posted by Balamut
And more ..."they" tought me in soviet school very well. 2-3 languages, geography, math, chemestry and everything is on high level.

Please, Balamut, who are you kidding? I went to soviet school too, so there is no need to (as they say) try to hang spaghetti on MY ears. Two-three languages? On a "high level"? Hmm. Well, you do speak some English, though it is not on a "high level" by any stretch of imagination. Besides, since you mentioned "2-3", what other two foreign languages do you claim to have mastered? Perhaps you'll be more comfortable conversing in one of those than in English, hm?

[Verbatim]

Originally posted by Alex_Ivanov

BTW, westerners also should forget some propaganda they were taught in their schools...

I'm sure that has a good chance of happening as soon as the Russians stop believing propaganda about the westerners.