First of all, beaing russian, I am very surprised that no russians replyed to this thread, isn't there any? I am a new member, so can only reply now. I do disagree with most of your statements and agree with some, here are my comments:

Originally posted by mrcofee12 on 10-26-2002 05:46 PM

Russia can never be completely independandt because they can't grow enough food for their entire population. That and the fact that Russia doesn't really have that much money as a nation, which is evident by the US having to build half of the parts Russia promised for international space station.

Russia would be a valuable ally though, they're very resiliant.
In a modern world no country can be fully independent, but to your knoledge, Russia is an agricultural country with the population of 148m people and land area of over 17 000 000 sq km. Do you really think we can't grow enough food for ourself ??? We export alot more than produce. I don't think that lack of money was expressed correctly, but however you express it, I have to agree. Not sure about the weight of the space station argument.
For the last sentents, and everyone who posted similar ones: Don't think that the whole world is on the knees in front of US, this is not up to you to decide whether we will be your friends or not. Russia is a mature country, which have invested (in one or the other form) large ammounts of money in American and European banks and therefore helped your economy more than you will ever help Russia. We may not be as advance in technology as US, but there are numerous reasons for this including closed regime. The most important factor, IMHO, is the industrial decentrilasation. You can blame Micro$oft however you want, but you have to accept the fact that this company invested alot (not money though ) into technology. There is countless number of amazing american US companies - SUN, Apple, SGI, HP, IBM, Bell etc etc. In Russia, most of the companies tend to be very small and therefore uncapable of large scale projects. The only succesful company is 1C, which does accounting software. The long term investments not interesting yet dengerous to be considered as a serious business projects for russian companies. Software piracy is also one of the biggest enemies for technological advances; It is almost impossible to find licensed software anywhere in Russia apart from Moscow and St.Petersburg.


Originally posted by pr0active on 10-26-2002 06:53 PM

Irresponsible criticism? Come on, what the Russians are doing in Checheny cannot be excused. The reports coming from Checheny talks about whole people being oppressed, and because of the Twin Tower incident the whole world has forgotten about what's happening over there. The war in Checheny is a big disaster, a catastrophy, and the people living there is experiencing hell on earth.

Every responsible goverment should criticise Russia for their actions, but politics and positioning once again has left a whole people suffering under a super power.
I neither agree nor disagree with this post. Obviously, country like Russia can stop the whole thing in no time. Chechens do not represent any kind of serious enemy for Russia, as well as Taliban for America or any similar case. However, politics is dirty by nature, and bigger countries trying to take advatage of the war. WAR is the quickest and most efficient way billions and humans lifes do not concern certain individuals in Russia (PLEASE, do not confuse "People in Russia" with "Russians"). You may be right about expirience of chechens, but this is nothing, comparing to number feelings of mothers in Russia, who lost their sons in this war. The methods, russians used in war are very different from those imployed by chechens. Are familiar with Hospital capture in Budionovsk? Kidnapping?
About Chechen independency: chechens never really wanted to be part of Russia. They tryed to gain independency during Stalin's times, but he how to fight it, becides no commercial reasons were sought after. During socialism times, Russia could hold this country within the Union by providing it with all the best. While Russians were sharing flats between several families chechens were living in huge houses. When the idea of communism colapsed, noone, of course, wanted to keep supporting this and number of other countries. The reason, which prevented Russia to give full independency to Chechnia is OIL.
I, myself, is not a supporter of racism, but I hate most chechens and there are reasons for this.
There are many chechens in Russia. Most of them are criminals. They are the ones, who make up many of the Russian groups known as "Russian Mafia" - Totally different from "Mafia" though. They kill people in Russia. Many parts of russian cities are controlled by chechens. They are animals from nature, they can kill a human much easier than Russian or American. Having achived nothing for their history, they think they are the supirior nation and if allah is not your god you have to dye.
They do follow religion in their country and have respect for other people their, but I don't see anything but crime from them in my country.


My opinion about the Theatre.
We can only judge the outcome of one case. There may be many reasons for Russian govmnt to act as they did. Suggestions about different gas. This might have been the least dangerous gas, which would act fast enough might not be that inicent. Terrorists had explosions right on them, remember. What, in your opinion, would be priority: 100-200 hostages or All the hostage + everything else around in this situation? The sleeping gas suggestion is hard to fall on though.