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Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

EVAHBODY SAY “AARRRRGGGHHH!!”

by Bunk Five Hawks X ( 58 Comments › )
Filed under Entertainment, Food and Drink, Humor, Military, OOT, Open thread, Russia, World at July 18th, 2011 - 11:00 pm

[Images via]
There’s a Russian holiday for veterans of the Frontier Guard. English Russia describes it thusly:

On the 28th of May Russian frontier guards traditionally celebrate their holiday. On this occasion soldiers and officers, former or not, jump into fountains, dance, sing military songs, generally speaking they enjoy themselves in a civilized manner…but not always.

Seems like the appropriate thing to do during any heatwave, unless of course there’s something even cooler than that, i.e., The Overnight Open Thread.

Russians and Kabardinians Fight Back Against Muslim Terror

by coldwarrior ( 177 Comments › )
Filed under Chechnya, Islam, Islamic Terrorism, Russia, South Ossetia at March 3rd, 2011 - 11:30 am

The Russians and Kabardinians people of the North Caucuses have had enough of the Wahhabi driven terror and criminal activity in their cities and countryside. They have decided to form a vigilante security force known as the Black Hawks based in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. There comes a point where the situation is so bad that the populace is forced to take matters into its own hands. 10% of the population is responsible for the terrorism and violence. I’ll let you guess their religion.

Frankly, this situation in the Caucuses was bound to come to this. The Police and the FSB are mostly ineffective at preventing Muslim terrorism, not that any police force can effectively do that.  After Beslan, all bets are off. I will keep an eye on these cats and report back.  Here is the information on them and some background.

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“If they continue, we will kill their children,” a masked man told Ren-TV.

From the Russian News Video:

The Black Hawks are we, the ordinary citizens of the republic,” a man covering his face told the reporter. “We are fed up with the outrage created by that bearded evil who don’t let this republic live in peace. We want our friends from other regions to come here without having to fear being shot dead, or robbed.”

“Now they’ve started to bomb the city centre, women and children are become victims of the terrorist war,” the leader of the Black Hawks said. He said that if that continues, the movement will hit back with attacks on militants’ families to make them feel how it hurts. The man pointed out that 9 out of 10 families do know that their children make money illegally, as they their neither work not study but still have pockets full of money. “Why don’t parents of relatives ask them where the money comes from?”

The leader of the new group believes that militants only disguise themselves as fighters for religion and the majority of them simply lead a terrorist war. “They have no faith. The Koran says that no one can kill women or children,” he added. The leader of the anti-Wahhabi movement added that these bandits cannot justify their actions by labeling it a so-called “sacred war” since no one “enslaved them here” and they could live peacefully.

In response to a question about the Black Hawks future plans, their leader said “just watch the news”.

New Threat as Caucasus Vigilantes Vow to Fight Back

Raising the specter of a new wave of violence, ordinary people weary of bloodshed in the North Caucasus have threatened to take up arms themselves to kill militants and their families.

The grass-roots vigilantes have formed a group called the Black Hawks that opposes Wahhabism, a radical form of Islam favored by militants. Based in Kabardino-Balkaria, the group is vowing to restore calm in the mountainous republic beset by a series of recent attacks, including the murder of three Moscow tourists at a ski resort.

“If they continue, we will kill their children,” a masked man who identified himself as a Black Hawks member said in an interview with Ren-TV. “We’ll give them a taste of their own medicine so they know how painful it is.”

Locals are tired of bombings and killings and intend to respond in kind, said the man, whose face was shrouded by a black balaclava and voice was modified.

“They can collect money from tough businessmen, vodka magnates and the like, but they cannot kill our children,” he said in the interview aired late Tuesday.

Militants are known for exhorting money from entrepreneurs.

The Black Hawks are a vigilante group made of “ordinary republican residents” — mostly relatives of slain police officers — who are willing to fight the “forest brothers,” the man said.

He added that families of insurgents would be targeted because most of them were aware that their relatives were fighting with the militants — usually for the money, not their faith.

The Black Hawks first announced their intentions through a series of online videos released last month. The videos were accompanied by several attacks against the relatives of suspected terrorists in Kabardino-Balkaria.

One attack saw unidentified men throw Molotov cocktails in a yard in Nalchik, the regional capital, belonging to relatives of Astemir Mamishev, whom investigators have linked to several killings and who is currently on the run, local news web site Kavkazsky Uzel reported. No injuries were reported. A written threat signed by the Black Hawks was found nearby.

Later in February, grenades went off near houses owned by the families of Mamyshev and another suspected militant accused of murder, Aznaparukh Samayev. No group took credit for the attacks, in which no one was hurt.

North Caucasus militants claimed Wednesday on their Kavkaz Center web site that the Black Hawks actually consist of law enforcement officers looking to terrorize the “mujahedin.”

The web site provided no proof, but the practice is not unheard of. The authorities reportedly have detained family members of suspected militants in the past to pressure their loved ones to surrender.

Still, security analyst Andrei Soldatov expressed doubt that the Federal Security Service was behind the Black Hawks, saying, “The FSB simply doesn’t like creating informal organizations.”

But the Black Hawks may believe they have the backing of officials because their emergence coincided with a call by Kabardino-Balkaria leader Arsen Kanokov last month to establish “an armed people’s militia” to make the republic safer.

“It’s possible that those people think that they have support,” Soldatov, who heads the Agentura.ru web site, said by telephone.

Kabardino-Balkaria has enjoyed relative calm over the past two decades, but things have gone downhill in recent months with a string of attacks that indicate North Caucasus militants may have shifted their focus to the republic.

Islamist militants dealt serious blows to both the republic’s tourist industry and law enforcement infrastructure in February. Three tourists from Moscow were gunned down in the vicinity of Mount Elbrus, and a cable-car support pole was blown up in the area. In Nalchik, the FSB headquarters, an FSB-owned sanatorium and traffic police checkpoints were attacked.

Background:

http://rt.com/politics/anti-terrorist-black-hawks/

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/new-threat-as-caucasus-vigilantes-vow-to-fight-back/431977.html

http://www.rferl.org/content/who_are_kabardino-balkaria_back_hawks/2319966.html

“If your son kills another resident of the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, you will be destroyed,” it read in typed letters. The letter was signed, “The Black Hawks — Anti-Wahhabis.”

Zaporozhian Cossacks Rant on the Ottoman Sultan

by 1389AD ( 68 Comments › )
Filed under Art, Europe, History, Humor, Islam, Open thread, Turkey at December 7th, 2010 - 8:30 pm

Now that Obozo has been bloviating on the idiot box once again, are y’all in the mood for some vulgar humor?

So am I!

Before we go any further, let me make it abundantly clear that I do NOT defend the Cossacks with regard to their pogroms against the Jews. That said, in the interests of giving credit where credit is due, the Cossacks certainly deserve such for winning their battle against the Ottoman Turks in 1676.

The story has it that the defeated Sultan nonetheless had the gall to demand that the victorious Cossacks submit to him.

Remind you of anybody?

Whether or not the legendary account of the Cossacks’ reply is historically accurate, I am in no position to say. If your own blog is PG-rated, you probably won’t want to link to this thread. If their language is too crass for you, or if anything else here offends you, then please use your scroll wheel; otherwise, feel free to have a good laugh!

The painting below is by the magnificent Ukrainian artist Ilya Repin. Click the thumbnail to view a larger image.

From Wikipedia: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

Ilya Repin: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks - click for full view

Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is a historical tableau, set in 1676, exploiting the legend of the reply that the Cossacks sent the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed IV. The Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Host (from ‘beyond the rapids’, za porohamy), inhabiting the lands around the lower Dnieper River in Ukraine, had defeated Ottoman Turkish forces in battle. However, Mehmed demanded that the Cossacks submit to Turkish rule. The Cossacks, led by Ivan Sirko, replied in an uncharacteristic manner: they wrote a letter, replete with insults and profanities. The painting exhibits the Cossacks’ pleasure at striving to come up with ever more base vulgarities. During Repin’s time, the Cossacks enjoyed great popular sympathy. Repin also admired them: “All that Gogol wrote about them is true! A holy people! No one in the world held so deeply freedom, equality, and fraternity.”

The text of the Sultan’s letter to the Cossacks:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the Sun and Moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians—I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

—Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV

The reply was a stream of invective and vulgar rhymes, parodying the Sultan’s titles:

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

Thou art a turkish imp, the damned devil’s brother and friend, and a secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight art thou that cannot slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil s**ts, and your army eats. Thou a son of a b***h wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, f**k thy mother.

Thou art the Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-f**ker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, Armenian pig, Podolian villain, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, a fool before our God, a grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. Thou wilt not even be herding Christian pigs. Now we shall conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t have a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year in the book, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

More here.


NATO and Russia Begin to Dance, Again.

by coldwarrior ( 149 Comments › )
Filed under Cold War, Elections 2010, Elections 2012, Georgia, Russia, Uncategorized at November 29th, 2010 - 11:30 am

Some very interesting changes are occurring:

This was clear at the Lisbon summit, where Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was treated as the guest of honor, and NATO went further than ever to placate Russia’s concerns over the alliance. It invited Russia to help build a missile-defense umbrella over Europe, a system that Russia has always seen as a threat to its arsenals. And in the new “strategic concept” that NATO adopted on Nov. 20 — its first in 10 years — the alliance declared for the first time that “NATO is not a threat to Russia.”

‘NATO is not a threat to Russia’…that certainly is the end of an era. The end of one and the beginning of another. Without getting into a flurry of links and articles, I think that this statement is directly related to the move by Russia to forge closer economic ties to the EU, Free Trade Zone sized ties. However, to deal with NATO is to obviously deal with the United States. I would think that Russia has finished most of its unpleasant business in her outlying areas like Georgia and Chechnya and has settled on this current incarnation of Russia and this current sphere of influence. Remember,  NATO cut ties to Russia when Russia invaded Georgia, oh, you don’t remember that…well, its forgotten now in Brussels so don’t feel bad.  NATO needs Russia to be part of missile defense as a front line for the rest of Europe.  In exchange, Russia can help NATO in operations in Afghanistan, leverage in Iran, and transit through Russia into the current theater of Afghanistan and beyond, and maybe in the future other areas of operation.
What has come of the meting in Lisbon:
The fact that we are talking to Russia about common threats and the chance to cooperate with Russia on missile defense is an extremely important step,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the summit. “That could be proof that the Cold War has finally come to an end.”
The Chancellor is not speaking in hyperbole here. These are very real and very positive steps. There is no reason at all that Russia and NATO should not be working in concert. I wonder though, what are the ‘common threats’ that the Chancellor was speaking of? Some of the security pages I read speak of the side meetings that Russia has had with Germany, France, and others. Not in this meeting were the US and the UK. The continental press are claiming that Russia wants an Anglo-free trade zone.  Now really, does that make any sense? The US and UK represent a staggering percentage of the globe’s market. I dont for a minute think that the Russians are that foolish to cut out that much capital.
After the ‘cease and desist’ order that the American electorate gave to the Obama administration and the Democrats, countries everywhere were also sent a clear message, America is moving to the right. This move will signal more aggressive foreign policy in the future.
To further twist the negotiations and future plans, Putin runs for the Presidency again in 2012. It’s Medvedev versus Putin. Putin is more a nationalist, Medvedev seeks closer ties with the West. Or so they are portrayed that way. Medvedev is willing to discuss allowing NATO missile defense equipment/personnel in Russia to protect Western Europe (a large step for a Russian) and to protect western Russia. Putin, well, who knows what he will do when he wins the Presidency again. I am sure he will publicly distrust this agreement, what he does privately/diplomatically will be seen.
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As an aside, I did find this rather interesting while researching in the writing of this post:
Turkey, which had seemed to present a potential sticking point, dropped its objections to a common missile defense system when it was satisfied that no country, particularly Iran, would be named as a principal threat. Turkey also wanted money to buy anti-missile components.