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May 31, 2002
Chomsky / Bennett
Debating "Terrorism"
May 30, 2002
Steve Perry
Jim Carrey:
"Love Me!"
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
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The New Crusade:
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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May 31, 2002
Homocidal Russian
Colonel:
"Insane, But Fit for Military Duty"
by
James Dunlop
Chechnya
Weekly
The Russian media have commented at length on
the recent determination by psychiatrists employed at the Serbsky
Institute in Moscow that Colonel Yury Budanov--on trial in a
military court in Rostov-on-Don for having strangled a young
Chechen woman in March of 2000--had been "temporarily insane"
at the time he committed the murder. The head doctor of the team
of psychiatrists who examined Budanov, Galina Burnyashova, observed
in her report, a copy of which was obtained by Moskovskie Novosti:
"In the Serbsky Institute, I am the chief doctor for Budanov.
He is fit for military service, with limitations, and is deemed
as having been insane only during the time that he murdered El'za
Kungaeva. He will stand trial concerning other charges (the abduction
of the young woman, the beating of a subordinate). He has been
assigned compulsory outpatient treatment. His treatment does
not involve isolation. Budanov is not socially dangerous"
(Moskovskie Novosti, May 22). On May 17, a recess in the trial
of Budanov was announced until May 27 (<Presscenter.ru>,
May 17).
In a commentary on the psychiatrists'
finding, which she saw as having been arrived at under heavy
pressure from the Kremlin, award-winning Russian war correspondent
Anna Politkovskaya wrote in the May 16 issue of Novaya Gazeta:
"Colonel Budanov, the commander of a tank regiment, on March
26, 2000, on the night following the election of Putin as president,
abducted, raped and monstrously strangled a young resident of
the Chechen settlement of Tangi-Chu, El'za Kungaeva. Budanov
has been determined to have been insane at the moment he committed
these crimes.... What follows from all this? Extremely simple
and concrete things: The rating of the president among the [military]
officers will go up and become firmer, since the vindication
of Colonel Budanov is the vindication of the methods of the Second
Chechen War. It is as simple as a whistle blast." The message
being sent to "the many-thousand-strong military contingent
in Chechnya" and to all veterans of the war, Politkovskaya
concluded, is this: "Lads, do everything you want, and do
it in the way you have till now. You are heroes and only heroes,
whatever you have done, while any Chechen man or woman is not
a person at all. 'Our' laws do not protect them. 'Our' law is
for 'you' and not for 'them.'"
"I often ask myself," Politkovskaya
went on, "why I do not like President Putin. The answer
has come. Because of his cynicism, and because of the fact that
the 'unhealthy" Budanov is nearer and more understandable
to Putin than is a defenseless village girl, whose misfortune
consisted in the fact that she was born to a Chechen father and
mother. And because of his racism--for dividing the people who
elected him into first- and second-class people. And, finally,
for his openly implanted neo-Sovietism: when, for the sake of
an Idea, even a mythical one (at the present moment it is 'the
struggle with international terrorism'), those who faithfully
serve that Idea (that is, first-class people) can 'do anything.'
The remainder (second-class people) are doomed to be rubbed out."
Asked by the mass-circulation weekly
Argumenty i Fakty to comment on the psychiatrists' determination,
Ruslan Khasbulatov, an ethnic Chechen and a former speaker of
the Russian Supreme Soviet, recalled: "Next to the hall
during the trial [of Budanov] there formed up stormtroopers with
swastikas and Cossacks with whips. The crowd shouted, 'Keep your
hands off Budanov!' The [neo-Nazi] Russian National Unity demanded
that Budanov be vindicated because he is an ethnic Russian while
the murdered El'za was a Chechen. No one among the local authorities
tried to halt the bacchanalia of the extremists. And they put
pressure on the court." "Simple Russian women in Chechnya,"
Khasbulatov continued, "have approached me with the request
that I convey their condolences to the relatives of Kungaeva.
They have recounted to me how 'valorous' commanders have mocked
them and their children. I underline the following: rapists and
murderers have no nationality; they exist among every people...
Budanov turned out to be insane? And what were they looking at
earlier? This colonel had served in the army for twenty years.
An army in which insane commanders serve is a shameful phenomenon"
(Argumenty i Fakty, May 23).
On May 25, the pro-Maskhadov website
<Chechenpress.com> reported: "On May 22, Russian soldiers
kidnapped a young Chechen teacher in Argun. Sveta Madarova is
26 years old, single and lives at 125 Shali Street. In the morning
the Russian soldiers asked her to come down to them. She went
out and disappeared. The officials of the commandant's office
give no information about the visit of the Russian soldiers to
the Chechen teacher.... The cases of encroachment on Chechen
women have become more frequent. Apparently the Russian aggressors
derive inspiration from the impunity of Budanov, who murdered
a 18-year-old girl."
James Dunlop
is the editor of Chechnya
Weekly, where this article originally appeared.
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