1759 lines
92 KiB
Plaintext
1759 lines
92 KiB
Plaintext
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MOTHER ANARCHY
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No.6, December 1993 - January 1994
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LOOK WHO'S CALLING THE FASCIST BROWN
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The leaders of world politics and the media have found yet
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another person that they can berate to flaunt their moral
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superiority: Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The purpose of this piece
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is not to try to excuse any of the fascist's views, but to
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point out the hypocrisy with which the media and the
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politicians of the world act as if they are outraged by the
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man. In fact, Zhirinovsky is no worse than other politicians
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that enjoy the respect and approval of the world political
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mafia.
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Recently it became clear that the politicians of the
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world were going to use Zhirinovsky for their own public
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relations gimmicks to try to separate themselves from
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fascism and to feign moral outrage at his statements. He was
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expelled from Bulgaria, denied entrance to Germany and to
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Australia, etc., etc.. President Clinton made it clear that
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during his purposed visit to Moscow in January he would not
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meet with the leader. Yet at the same time he will visit
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Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin has yet to condemn Zhirinovsky's
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politics. The reality of the situation is that Yeltsin and
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Zhirinovsky are two of a kind, except that Yeltsin has to
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manipulate the scenario and carry out a pernicious type of
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fascism to keep himself in power; for Zhirinovsky is was the
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overt form that got him elected. Of the two, one can even
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argue that it is Yeltsin and his people who pose a more
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serious threat of creating a fascist order in Russia.
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First of all, it is important to point out that Yeltsin
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and his government stands for the predominance of the
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Russian people as the leading nationality in the territories
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of the former Soviet Union and that they have been trying to
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revive Russia's role as the leading military power in the
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region for some time. As the leaders of the former republics
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all know, the respect that they show for the national
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autonomy and separate economic development of these areas is
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mostly political showmanship. The recent CIS summit in
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Ashgabat had Yeltsin pushing for special status for Russians
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living in the former republics. Yet his response to
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foreigners living in Russia has been decisively punitive; as
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many as 100,000 people were deported from Moscow after the
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coup for being foreign, many being brought to war torn
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areas. Visiters to Moscow and Leningrad must pay a fee for
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every day they stay in the city and must get work permits
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and pay 40% taxes. People are checked for their papers
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according to their skin colour. If anything of the sort
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would happen to Russian's living in the former republics,
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this would be practically a declaration of war and we would
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most likely see immediate military intervention. The idea is
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clear: as the leading nation, we have the right to live
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peacefully wherever the hell we want; we can take what we
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want from you, but won't tolerate people we formerly
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dominated using the "wealth" that belongs to the Russian
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people.
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Nursultan Nazarbayev critized Andrei Kozyrev for trying
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to drum up Russian separatism during his election
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campaigning in Kazakhstan by promising special support for
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Russians in the country. He felt that he had set the mood
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that led to votes for Zhirinovsky in the region. The
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difference between Kozyrev and Zhirinovsky is that
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Zhirinovsky would like (at least he says) to take back
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Kazakhstan (as an inferior nation) for use by Russia while
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Kozyrev would rather use more subtle political mechanisms to
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keep part of Kazakhstan for Russia, and to try to guide it
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into their sphere of influence. The latter realises that in
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the long run, such agressive methods of conquest and
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domination are not as benificial as others as military
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agression of the type Zhirinovsky preposes can lead to some
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negative reaction (if the oppressed people have any friends
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with big sticks) and rebellion amongst the local population.
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Kozyrev and his cabal save their necks by pretending that
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they have no vested interests in subordinating different
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countries to Russia, but this is exactly what they hope to
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achieve. Various economic policies have been put into effect
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to try to devastate areas such as the Ukraine in order to
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get them to go along with Russia's policies. Russia has sent
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in troops and promises to send troops on various campaigns.
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Economists promise to rebuild the military industrial
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complex to help the Russian economy and Grachev promises
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that the military will not be cut down as promised and looks
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foward to its renewed "prestige". They are now aspiring to
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the American political model of domination where effective
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control of an area can be rendered without military
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intervention and where any military intervention will find
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some mythical policing/racist-humanitarian justification.
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The word in Moscow is that Yeltsin helped to bring
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Zhirinovsky to power (see Ivan Papugai's article in this
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issue). This is one possibility. In any case, I find it
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amusing that certain politicians in the world are so
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offended by Zhirinovsky. Bill "send back the Haitians"
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Clinton, refuses to meet with the man because he doesn't
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respect sovreign nations. Rumania, itself not "the model of
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democracy" cannot imagine a bigger insult than the fact that
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Zhirinovsky said it wasn't a real nation but a bunch of
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"Italian gypsies". (Given the treatment of gypsies in the
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area, one can guess that the essence of the insult was being
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compared to gypsies.) Germany is afraid of allowing
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Zhirinovsky into the country. Would be nice if their
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government took such decisive action against their own
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nazis. As far as I know, Germany has the most racist
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citizenship laws in Europe. These people have a lot of nerve
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to act morally superior than Zhirinovsky; they all have been
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party to various crimes against humanity, have all implented
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racist and chauvinist policy and all have somehow supported
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people who are just as bad as he in various corners of the
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world.
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The fact that Zhirinovsky has met with popular
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dissaproval and condemnation by the media and many world
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leaders while much of what he talks about already goes on
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uninterrupted in the world probably shows that these other
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leaders are perhaps more dangerous because of the tacit
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approval given to their policies. Zhirinovsky, who now looks
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like the most likely future leader of the country, might
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actually get nowhere because of threats from the
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"international community". Then on the other, is the living
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conditions of Russians continue to deteriorate as they have,
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the Russians will wage war in spite of them.
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LAURE AKAI
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____________________________________________________________
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MORE ON RUSSIAN ELECTIONS
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The question most people are asking in regards to the
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recent elections in Russia is - was it all a mistake? Did
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the people really know who they were voting for when they
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voted for Zhirinovsky or were they fooled? It's really hard
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for some people to believe that the Russian people,
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themselves with a long history of suffering from fascist and
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authoritarian ideology, would want this sort of order for
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their country. I think it's long time for these people to
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wake up and smell the coffee.
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First of all, anybody who has studied the deveolpment of
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fascism and knows Russia at all can see that all the
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preconditions for a surge in fascist ideology have been here
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for the last two years. You have a nation which was brought
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up believing that its people have a special place of
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predominance in the world. From the Orthodox Church's Third
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Rome theory to the Comintern's Third International, the
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Russian people were supposedly charged with a special
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purpose in life: to lead humanity into salvation. In the
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Soviet Union's closed off little fantasy world, the
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Russian's were the most advanced, cultured people on the
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face of the earth and foreigners (especially from the
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"capitalist countries" ) were viewed with suspicion. Then
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suddenly the Soviet myth was "exploded", but in fact only
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partly. The parts about the specialness and superiority of
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the Russian people were bound to stay in the public psyche.
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But as a nation, great Russia was offended; all of a sudden
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people were being told that there is mass incompetence in
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many fields of social life. People should be retrained,
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redirected from the "free world" and their economic experts.
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In countries where Russians once felt themselves superior,
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they are not wanted. People in surrounding countries
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complain about the "poor Russians" who try to go there,
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about how they are mostly drunks, criminals and prostitutes
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who are a wart on their nice prosperous societies. In
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places where Russians were settled, (one can say where
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Russia was "extended") local authorities demand or expect
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Russians to use their language; they would have never
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thought to learn it in the first place. (Doesn't everybody
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appreciate having to learn the language of Pushkin?) Many
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governments are ready to give certain neighbouring countries
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treatment unbefitting to a former colony. Russian prestige
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in on the decline.
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At the same time that Russian prestige is on the
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decline, Russians, including the so-called "intelligentsia"
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(so-called because they're not actually at all that
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intelligent; it is a class of people who earn money by using
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their brains somehow), are busy trying to revive pride in
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the Russian nation. These calls for revival however are
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often closely connected to fascist ideas. (In fact you can
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see that the same type of escape to the glorious cultural
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past had strong symbolic power in Nazi Germany, fascist
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Italy and a number of other places.)
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The bad economic situation also had contributed to the
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rise of fascism, for obvious reasons. There is some basis to
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the popular idea that the destruction of the Russian economy
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was largely caused by intervention by foreign interests; the
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conclusion the fascists draw (and many of their national
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communist allies) is that these foreigners are evil, not to
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be trusted, and that only the Russian people can save each
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other. There is a large appeal of socialist ideology of a
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sort, namely nationalist socialist ideology, which proposes
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well being for all good nazis. Like Germany after WWI, the
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reconquering of lost lands is high on many people's list of
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priorities. (It was Russia who developed that industry,
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Russians who build those factories and who worked there and
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now they want to steal all the wealth for themselves and cut
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us off from it.)
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And the scapegoats are pretty much in place. It seems
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very likely that futher military interventions and attempts
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at annexation will happen in the areas of the Caucasus and
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Central Asia. They have the pretexts: that these areas are
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under conflicts that they are too stupid and barbarian to
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solve, that most of the people from these areas are criminal
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and "uncivilized", that these areas might come under Turkish
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agression or become the victims of their territorial
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ambitions. Things like this are heard in the media all the
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time.
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It should be no surprise to people that Zhirinovsky
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made such a strong showing. The government itself has been
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supporting racist, nationalist (and sexist) policy for quite
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some time now. Incredible things are said in the media.
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Zhirinovsky is simply saying what the people say. When you
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have fascist material being sold on the streets openly for
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some time, with no reaction from the public, this says
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something. (Technically it's illegal to sell this but ask
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what happened when we made an action against people selling
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fascist literature. It was the anti-fascists who were
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arrested and berated by the press, including the most
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popular newspaper in Russia!) There are fascists all over
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the place and they have the support of much of the
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population, of law enforcement officials, of part of the
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military and even part of the mainstream press. But nobody
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wanted to tell you this; the media was too busy serving up
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its ideological bullshit about economic reforms and the
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future of democracy in this country.
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So now the people voted. We can debate about how much
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this was a protest vote against Yeltsin and try to guess why
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people voted they did, but what's really important was that
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the real militant fascists and communists had boycotted the
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election, and that there is even a more extreme segment of
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the population who distrust Zhirinovsky, who, as I have
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heard repeatedly, (even from teachers at my school) "is not
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only a Jew, but a Polish Jew- the worst kind". Zhirinovsky
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of course was much closer in ideology to the so-called
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"moderate wing" of Russian politics. (In fact during the
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campaign, fascist-type commercials were always being run by
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people like Sergei Shakrai and much seemed to actually
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revolve aroung nationalist themes; even discussion of the
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economy was tinged with them and eventually were
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subordinated to them.) So what about the so-called "sane
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segment of the population", who were busy apologizing to
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Western TV consumers for the stupidity of their
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compatriots?
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The segment of the population which is not effected by
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this nationalist and fascist mania is unfortunately small
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and thusfar has been apathetic. They are mostly tired of
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politics and have grown up never knowing a tradition of
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civil society. This total lack of citizen's initiatives in
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politics is so striking that even the staunchly pro-business
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"Moscow Times" has realized its devasting effect on Russian
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society; the most important thing that they could think of
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to wish for the New Year was not a speed up to economic
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reforms, or economic recovery, but "a civil society where
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grassroots political movements force gray-suited bureaucrats
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out of power". (December 30,1993)
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It is important to note that it never even takes a
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majority to get political consent to start fascist
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campaigns. All you need to have is a firm base of
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desperate, fanactical people and a population which thinks
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mostly the same way and is not bent on agression and will
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not get together to wipe out fascist ideology. They cannot
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even begin to think about what ideas need to really be
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attacked because they harbour these ideas as well; they
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cannot make a connection between their own thoughts and
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outright fascism because they do don't understand how deep
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it runs. Wiping out Zhirinovsky's fascism is nothing- it is
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really just the tip of the iceberg, just the part we see.
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What is really enormous is the large mass of fascist, racist
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and nationalist ideology submerged in hypocritical political
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policies and pernicious forms of expression, which is
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naturally the part that is the basis for the ugly face of
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fascism which we know see so obviously before us. The form
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of Zhirinovsky's fascism is so overt that it can be
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understood in no other way, thus many wll be able to see
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that he is a fascist and will reject him as the symbolical
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representation of this ideology, but will not be able to
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completely reject the ideology in and of itself. Thus it is
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bound to take other forms and find other representatives.
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Unfortunately, those that have some understanding of the
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situation are few and far between.
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---------------------------------------------------------
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"Russischer Durchbruch" - Gegenkultur und Neue Rechte in
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RuSland
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Moskau, 19. Dezember, nur 6 Tage nach der Wahl: Im Haus der
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Kultur "Maxim Gorki" findet eine Veranstaltung ganz
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besonderer Art statt. In einer "nonkonformistischen Aktion"
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(so die Veranstalter <ber sich selbst) im Rahmen eines
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"ununterbrochenen Festivals" kommen nationalpatriotische und
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Ideologen der Neuen Rechten mit populFren Vertetern der
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sogenannten Gegenkultur zusammen.
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Alleine der Name dieses Festivals "Russkij Proryv"
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(Russischer Durchbruch) deutet die StoSrichtung - im
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Russischen bedeutet die Wahl von russkij im Gegensatz zu
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rossiskij den (gedanklichen) AusschluS der <brigen in der
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Russischen Ffderation vertretenen Nationalitdten (Ins
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Deutsche werden beide Begriffe mit russisch bbersetzt).
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Als Veranstalter der Aktion werden in der Presseerkldrung
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der Reihe nach die Bewegung der nonkonformistischen K<nstler
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"Russischer Durchbruch", die historisch-religifse
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Gesellschaft "Arktogeja" (Herausgeberin der Zeitschrift
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"Elementy"), die Zeitschrift "Elementy", die Zeitung
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"Savtra"( ehemalige Tageszeitung "Den") genannt.
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Besonders der Name "Elementy" sollte alle die aufhorchen
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lassen, die sich im Westen mit der Neuen Rechten
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beschFftigen. So ist "Elementy" eines dieser neu-rechten
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international erscheinenden (russisch, deutsch, franzfsich)
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Theoriebldtter. Neben dem Chefideologen Alain de Benoist
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gehfren u.a. Claudio Mutti und Robert Steukers zum
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internationalen Redaktionskommitee. Die Zeitschrift, die den
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Untertietel "Eurasische Rundschau" trdgt, versteht sich als
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Kampfblatt fbr eine konservative Revolution. Anknbpfend an
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die antiwestlichen Traditionen der Russophilen im 19.
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Jahrhundert wird ein eigenstdndiger, genuin russischer
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(eurasischer) "dritter" Weg der gesellschaftlichen
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Entwicklung und ein Kampf zwischen "atlantischen und
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eurasischen Mdchten" beschworen. Es geht darum, die
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Vormachtstellung der atlantischen Mdchte einzuddmmen und
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dafbr eine eurasische Koalition zu errichten. In vielen
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dieser "Weltdeutungsversuche" sind vulgdr
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antikapitalistische, antiimperialistische und
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antizionistisch getarnte oder offen antisemitische
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Positionen zu finden. Dies erkldrt auch die Affinitdt dieser
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Bewegung zu den national-kommunistischen und national-
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bolschewistischen Gruppierungen.
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Den vorhin genannten "dritten" Weg auch in der
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"nonkonformistischen" Kultur zu finden bzw. zu definieren,
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war erkldrtes Ziel der Veranstalter: "Im allgemeinen
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BewuStsein herrscht das Stereotyp, nach dem zwei sich
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gegenseitig ausschlieSende Kunstrichtungen existieren, deren
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Vertreter sich selbst die Namen "avangardistisch" und
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"traditionalistisch" geben. Wir haben vor, dieses Stereotyp
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zu zerstfren und eine gesonderte dritte Position
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einzunehmen. ... Die jahrhundertelang sich herausgebildeten
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religifs-kulturellen Traditionen RuSlands sollen ihren
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Ausdruck in modernen, dem Zeitgeist entsprechenden Formen
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unter Anwendung neuester Technologien und
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Kommunikationsmitteln finden."
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Worum es in Wirklichkeit aber in erster Linie geht, wird aus
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dem folgenden Zitat, ebenfalls aus der Presseerkldrung,
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deutlich: "In einer Zeit, die den Wahrheitsbegriff und den
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Begriff des absoluten Wertes in Zweifel gezogen hat; in
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dieser Periode in der die Kioskkultur in unserem Land
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eingefbhrt wurde, verkbnden wir den Nonkonformismus als
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Lebens- und Schaffensstil." Es geht also darum, absolute
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Wahrheiten und Werte a'la "Elementy", d.h. die Einteilung
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der Welt in Gute und Bfse wieder neu und ewig zu definieren.
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Wie aber anders als bber Glauben ist dies mfglich? So spielt
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Irrationalitdt und Religion eine zentrale Rolle in den
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Publikationen der Neuen Rechten.
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Was Viele hier in Moskau nach wie vor nicht verstehen, ist,
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daS eine Gruppe wie "Groschdanskaja Oborona" (Zivile
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Verdeidigung) an dieser Aktion teilnehmen konnte. Ihr
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plakativer Gebrauch des Anarchiezeichens, vielmehr aber ihre
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antisowjetischen ("Vso idjet po planu"- Alles lduft nach
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Plan) und antifaschistischen ("Obschestvo Pamjat" -
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Gesellschaft Pamjat) Lieder sowie das persfnliche Schicksal
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ihres Sdngers Jegor Letov, der selber Opfer sowjetischer
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Repressionen (Zwangspsychatrie) wurde, lie+en starke Zweifel
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aufkommen, daS G. O. so einfach, ohne irgendwelche
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Provokationen an dem "Russischen Durchbruch" teilnehmen
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wbrden.
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Doch das UnfaSbare wurde Wirklichkeit - friedlich auf dem
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Podium vereint saSen wdhrend der Pressekonferenz unter
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anderem Prochanow (Chefredakteur Den), Dugin (Chefredakteur
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Elementy), Neumoew (Sdnger der Rockgruppe "Instrukzija po
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wyschiwanju"- Instruktion zum berleben - erkldrter
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Antisemit) sowie Jegor Letov.
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Auf die Frage, warum er, Letov, an dieser Veranstaltung
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teilnehme, entgegnete dieser, er wdre noch nie Demokrat
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gewesen, heute sei er linksradikaler Kommunist. Sein
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Lieblingspolitiker sei Anpilow, National-Kommunist, einer
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der fbhrenden Verteidiger des WeiSen Hauses, der zur Zeit
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deswegen im Gefdngnis sitzt. Letow duSerte sich erfreut
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darbber, daS alle "Unsrigen", d.h. Kommunisten und
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Nationalisten in dieser Veranstaltung zusammenkamen. Die
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verzweifelte Frage eines offensichtlichen Fans - "Jegor was
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willst Du eigentlich, was ist geschehen? Du warst doch immer
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Du selbst und gegen alle! - beantwortete dieser: "Hfr meine
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Lieder an, in ihnen ist alles enthalten. Ich habe mich nicht
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gedndert, ich verteidige meine Werte."
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Zum eigentlichen Konzert kam es dann doch nicht mehr. Die
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Halle des Kulturhauses war viel zu klein, um den Hunderten
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von agressiven und zumeist auch betrunkenen Punks Platz zu
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bieten, die einzig und allein gekommen waren, um
|
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Groschdanskaja Oborona zu sehen. Der Abend endete in einer
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mehrstbndigen StraSenschlacht zwischen enttduschten Fans und
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OMON, die Trdnengas einsetzte und scharf in die Luft schoS.
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Es wurden bber 60 Personen verhaftet und 10 verletzt,
|
|
darunter 5 Polizisten. Bleibt am SchluS neben der treffenen
|
|
Titelzeile der Tageszeitung "Sevodnja" - "Zivile
|
|
Verteidigung"( = G. O.) rettet nicht vor OMON - nur noch
|
|
hinzuzufugen, daS es keine ernsthaften Versuche gab, das
|
|
Konzert zu verhindern oder wenigstens einen 6ffentlichen
|
|
Boykott zu initiieren.
|
|
|
|
M. M.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
MUCH ADO ABOUT A NAZI
|
|
by Ivan Papugai
|
|
|
|
This man must be either very talented or lucky that he
|
|
is supported by a powerful and invisible sponsor. Most
|
|
probably it's the second. Now he is the most famous deputee
|
|
of the newly elected sub-parliament and everybody says he
|
|
has won the elections. It is only partly true, the same as
|
|
saying that Yeltsinists lost the elections. Maybe they
|
|
really did, but does it really change anything? If the
|
|
elections could change anything they would have been
|
|
abolished. Those who were the architects of this farce tried
|
|
their best and of course after so much money was invested in
|
|
the starting part of their election campaign (the famous
|
|
coup d'etat) they just couldn't afford to lose. They were
|
|
smart enough to make their defeat almost impossible. They
|
|
proclaimed that 25% of the voters is enough to be the basis
|
|
of democracy. And they were right to do that since it could
|
|
have been forseen that in some regions there will be not so
|
|
many people willing to register their opinion when it really
|
|
doesn't interest anybody on the top.
|
|
Only 54,8% of the voters turned up at the polling
|
|
stations. The constitution was approved by the Russian
|
|
people. Of course not by all and not everywhere. In a number
|
|
of regions less than 50% of the voters went to the polls.
|
|
During these elections we saw the highest percentage of
|
|
abstention and voting against everybody (17%), 7% of the
|
|
votes were thrown out because they weren't filled correctly.
|
|
It is interesting to note that almost all the radio and TV
|
|
stations announced on December 12, when the elections were
|
|
the focus of media interest, that at 3 p.m. in Moscow and
|
|
Leningrad only 17 and 20 per cent of the voters respectively
|
|
turned up at the poll stations. But of course it is no
|
|
surprise that by midnight the number was correct - a little
|
|
more than 50%. It is not 99,9% of the Brezhnev era. But they
|
|
don't need so much, this would have been too hypocritical.
|
|
So the man was the first. He got the largest number of
|
|
votes in the majoritarian system, leaving behind all the
|
|
boring and clever; he spoke the language that even three
|
|
year-olds were able to understand. (*) He wasn't rich enough
|
|
to bye more TV time than his vivisectorial opponent Yegor
|
|
Gaidar, but he just used what he had rationally - shuting
|
|
all these gentlemen up, not letting them say a word. These
|
|
respectable gentlemen were not smart enough - they tried to
|
|
reply intelligently, they tried to argue... This is exactly
|
|
what was best for him. He was getting his new status - the
|
|
status of a man whom you can argue with, the one who is
|
|
accepted as an opponent. Tomorrow he will be accepted as a
|
|
member of the political elite. The media will broadcast his
|
|
bullshit -- what he thinks about cosmos exploration, the
|
|
origins of Romanian nation, technical projects like dumping
|
|
all the nuclear waste on the border with the Baltic states
|
|
and making a strong wind using ventilators so they will get
|
|
it all. Just a few phrases ago he was probably speaking
|
|
about the rights of Russian minority on the very same
|
|
territories. He has verbal diarea but nobody seems to feel
|
|
the smell.
|
|
He is not the smartest, he is the brightest of all those
|
|
elected. Those who are the most disaffected with his victory
|
|
try their best to secure his fame. In search of sensation
|
|
and trying to scare those who will probably try to think
|
|
about it seriously, the newspapers write that the majority
|
|
of the military voted for the real man. Later it turns out
|
|
that it's not true -- the military were voting together with
|
|
the civilians so nobody can know whom they really voted for.
|
|
Those military who voted separately from the civilian
|
|
population (1% only) in fact voted for the man. But the
|
|
majority of the military never did. This is what the Central
|
|
Election Committee said while announcing that media reports
|
|
were not true. The report was published in small print in
|
|
some of the papers. Almost nobody paid attention to it. The
|
|
rest now know that military supported the man. Though it is
|
|
not true, the majority believes it. And they are scared. Or
|
|
they love the man themselves. Those who bother to think can
|
|
be easily counted by numbers.
|
|
It's true that in the former Soviet republics he got
|
|
almost half of the votes of the Russian citizens. Of the
|
|
military and the civilians. Because they feel like they were
|
|
betrayed and redundant for their historical nativeland.
|
|
Because he was rather vocal to suuport them. He was less
|
|
vocal about his desire to help the refugees who escaped to
|
|
Russia, but the rest didn't even remember about them. And
|
|
the man can easily promise the Earth and the Moon. Both to
|
|
the workers and the entrepreuners, separately to each group,
|
|
while assuring both that he won't let anybody to violate
|
|
their rights.
|
|
He was obviously a Nazi, but according to the
|
|
information that leaked from the president's office there
|
|
was a secret decision to promote him on TV so that he could
|
|
take votes from the more moderate opponents of the Yeltsin-
|
|
Gaidar course. And so he did. The majority of the Communist
|
|
and Gaidar electorate knew whom they are going to vote for
|
|
already when the elections were announced. It wasn't so with
|
|
the moderate bloc of Yavlinsky, who was both pro-democracy
|
|
and pro-social guarantees. Those who hesitated whom to vote
|
|
for (the overwhelming majority of the people) could have
|
|
voted for Yavlinsky, since he looked smart, intelligent and
|
|
nice and promised his assistance for the poor who were
|
|
suffering from the shock therapy of doctor Gaidar. Of
|
|
course, the guy almost didn't appear on TV. And the man took
|
|
the votes of those who were hesitating.
|
|
He didn't win anyway because this would have been too
|
|
much for a puppet on nomenklatura/secret police strings. He
|
|
won the majoritarian vote, but that was not all. Almost all
|
|
the celibrities and the necessary people got elected through
|
|
the candidate system. The rulers studied the results of the
|
|
April referendum and cut the territory of Russia the way
|
|
that secured their victory. And though everybody thinks the
|
|
man has the majority, it is not true. He posesses no serious
|
|
danger to the system so far. He is the one with whom the
|
|
system can make agreements on particular issues. His
|
|
vocabulary is quite the same - Great Russia, Nation, State,
|
|
etc. - as that of the official propaganda. He is not the
|
|
only Nazi on the podium and he is not the main one. There
|
|
are reasons to believe that he himself votes according to
|
|
the instructions of the invisible conductors. Being a
|
|
"passionate opponent of the Yeltsin regime" he in the same
|
|
time supported the constitution. Of course, he said, the
|
|
constitution is just a piece of paper (true), but for some
|
|
weird reason he called on his electorate to support it. If
|
|
you will read the text of it you will see that this
|
|
parliament is a fiction too. It can't influence the policy,
|
|
neither internal, nor foreign. It is there to be a
|
|
constituonal democratic fiction.
|
|
The past of the man is unknown to the general public. So
|
|
there are reasons to believe he is a serious politician.
|
|
Back in 1988 he was just a crazy man on the street. While
|
|
the oppositional activities were still semi-legal he tried
|
|
to be everything - a Zionist, a radical liberal, a social
|
|
democrat. He was kicked out of everywhere for reasons that
|
|
were obvious. First, he was obviously crazy. Second, he was
|
|
almost surely a provocateur. Some time later his party was
|
|
the first to be registered. Soon he was already running for
|
|
the president of the USSR. He got several million votes and
|
|
was the third popular candidate. Some time later he
|
|
developed his success.
|
|
Out of many people on the street, out of all the insane
|
|
would-be-czars it was he who was chosen by the anonimous
|
|
conductor. Being a marionette he nevertheless made a big
|
|
success. He is accepted now. There is a chance that some day
|
|
the strings will be too thin to hold him. Or that he as a
|
|
leader will be necessary.
|
|
|
|
(*) Literally. My friend's son who is three occasionally was
|
|
left at the kitchen with a TV on when the man was delivering
|
|
his pre-Christmas fairy tail. Being asked what Uncle
|
|
Zhirinovsky said, the boy thought and said that "It's cold
|
|
here 8 month a year so there will be no ice-cream
|
|
advertisments anymore. No more Snickers. The movies will be
|
|
in Russian." Quite close to the original, I bet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
REVIEW: DISINFORMATION AND DISTORTION: An Anarchist Expose
|
|
of AIDS Politics by Joe Peacott. BAD Press P.O. Box 1323
|
|
Cambridge MA, 02238 USA
|
|
|
|
The latest pamphlet put out by BAD Press can be seen
|
|
as a follow up to one written some four or five years ago
|
|
entitled Misinformation and Manipulation: An Anarchist
|
|
Critique of the Politics of Aids. A well researched and well
|
|
thought-out pamphlet, its implications reach out beyond the
|
|
spectrum of AIDS politics itself and is highly recommended
|
|
to our readers.
|
|
The beginning of this 64p. the pamphlet is devoted to
|
|
substantiating Peacott's claim that the government, the
|
|
media and the activist movement have manipulated the facts
|
|
about AIDS to support their own political agendas. This has
|
|
ranged from employing scare tactics to help promote
|
|
chastity and "family values" to manipulating statistics and
|
|
blowing the "epidemic" out of proportion (in relation to
|
|
other diseases and illnesses which have delivered a more
|
|
fatal toll to the population) in order have moral strength
|
|
to beg the government for solutions. (The fact that
|
|
governmental "solutions", with its focus on and interest
|
|
in corporate medicine are far from the best possible is also
|
|
treated extensively in this pamphlet.) In fact, what is
|
|
needed is the truth about the risks of contracting HIV so
|
|
that people can make informed decisions in terms of their
|
|
sexual practices and other personal behaviour (such as drug
|
|
injection), and not scare tactics, and sensationalized media
|
|
treatments of the topic which pander to public paranoia
|
|
about sex as primarily the bearer of bad consequences.
|
|
An excellent section of the pamphlet, which I will
|
|
know reprint almost in its entirety, is the part entitled
|
|
Teenagers, Aids and the Statisticians. Peacott thus
|
|
approaches this topic: (footnotes omitted due to space
|
|
considerations and personal laziness)
|
|
|
|
"Several years ago, one of the more popular and
|
|
inflammatory topics for discussion about AIDS was the
|
|
impending heterosexual epidemic. Since then, because this
|
|
predicted outbreak never arrived, the experts and the media
|
|
have casted around for a new method of frightening people,
|
|
and have decided on the supposed teenage AIDS epidemic. The
|
|
press now subjects us to headlines such as "AIDS Runs Wild
|
|
Among Teenagers," and statements like the following: "AIDS
|
|
and HIV infection are rising fastest among teens and
|
|
college-age kids."
|
|
"Overblown press coverage, however is not justified by
|
|
the facts of HIV-infection and AIDS rates among teenagers.
|
|
Among united states teenagers as a whole AIDS cases dropped
|
|
from 170 in 1990 to 160 in 1991, and among those aged 20-24,
|
|
they dropped from 1626 in 1990 to 1485 in 1991. In 1992, the
|
|
number of cases among teenagers was the same as in 1991, and
|
|
that among 20-24 year olds declined again. Since there were
|
|
so few cases earlier in the epidemic, looking at the
|
|
increase in the cumulative number of cases led one newspaper
|
|
to state, in 1992 that, "AIDS in 13-24 Age Range Grows 62%
|
|
in Two Years," and Karen Hein, and adolescent AIDS
|
|
specialist in New York was quoted in June, 1993, stating
|
|
that AIDS cases among adolescents in the united states have
|
|
increased 77 percent over the last two years. Howver, using
|
|
the technique of looking only at the cumulative case
|
|
figures, as these people have done, obscures the fact that
|
|
while the number of total cases when the computation was
|
|
made was significantly higher than that of two years before,
|
|
the number of new cases had either fallen or remained
|
|
unchanged in the most recent year.
|
|
"...Not content with simply exaggerating the overall
|
|
numbers of teenagers with AIDS and HIV infection, some
|
|
reporters and experts have also greatly overstated the
|
|
extent of heterosexual transmission of HIV among young
|
|
people. One writer in the Boston Herald, for instance, wrote
|
|
in 1990 that, "AIDS in teenagers is being spread through
|
|
heterosexual intercourse, with equal numbers of girls and
|
|
boys being infected." In fact, the majority of cases of AIDS
|
|
in teenagers have occurred among hemophiliacs (the largest
|
|
single group, and almost all men), men who have sex with
|
|
men, and injecting drug users of both sexes. In 1990 only 37
|
|
cases were attributed to heterosexual contact, while in 1991
|
|
there were only 21 such cases. This, of course, does not
|
|
stop an alarmist like Karen Hein from declaring, in total
|
|
disregard of the facts, that "The new face of the epidemic
|
|
is teen-age girls."
|
|
"...In addition to the standard statistical
|
|
manipulations and half-truths that have appeared in the
|
|
press, a number of outright fictional statements and horror
|
|
stories about HIV infection among teenagers have appeared in
|
|
the press and the romour mill. Particularly outrageous were
|
|
the incidents where a blood collecting agency had to
|
|
publically quash rumours that "a third of the Santa Fe High
|
|
School students who donated blood during a recent blood
|
|
drive had tested positive for HIV," since in fact none
|
|
actually had, while the texas health department had to deny
|
|
the claims of a school AIDS counselor that 6 of 179 students
|
|
at Rivercrest high school and seven other students at two
|
|
other schools were HIV-positive, after they were unable to
|
|
locate any of these students.
|
|
"Despite the nonsense we have been subjected to, it is
|
|
clear that AIDS and HIV infection are not widespread among
|
|
teenagers. To put it in perspective, while there are under
|
|
200 cases of AIDS among teenagers every year, 5000 die in
|
|
car accidents (half preventable by seatbelt use) each year,
|
|
and almost 4200 were killed by bullets in 1990. This is not
|
|
to belittle the need for AIDS education among young people,
|
|
but lying about the extent of AIDS and HIV infection among
|
|
teenagers, just as has been done in the case of
|
|
heterosexually active adults, can not only lead to a
|
|
diversion of efforts away from those most at risk, but may
|
|
well promote an irrational fear of sex or an even more
|
|
irrational - and dangerous- fatalism and increased risk-
|
|
taking. As writer Micheal Fumento said in The New Republic,
|
|
"The disinformation campaign that grossly overemphasizes the
|
|
groups and activities least at risk of getting AIDS does
|
|
those in greater jeopardy no favor."
|
|
"The hysteria about teen AIDS has led to a debate
|
|
about AIDS education and condom distribution in the schools,
|
|
the likely result of which, whichever sides wins out in the
|
|
end, will be the continued intrusion of the state into the
|
|
lives of young people, with little, if any effect on the
|
|
course of the AIDS outbreak among students. The conservative
|
|
anti-sex side of the debate supports teaching abstinence as
|
|
the only way to avoid AIDS and is opposed to any sex
|
|
education in the schools at all. The other side, including
|
|
much of the AIDS activist movement calls for extensive sex
|
|
and AIDS education in the schools, sometimes starting as
|
|
early as first grade, and the distribution of condoms in
|
|
schools. Unfortunately, both sides rely on the state to
|
|
achieve their goals and neither side wants young people to
|
|
be told the truth.
|
|
"While the dissemination of truthful information about
|
|
sex and AIDS and easier access to condoms are worthwile
|
|
goals, the approach of the condom distribution and sex
|
|
education supporters is misguided in several ways. First,
|
|
though they want the schools to teach sex education and give
|
|
out condoms, they want students to be told only one message:
|
|
they are all at the same (very high) risk of HIV infection
|
|
and it is always unacceptably risky to have sex without
|
|
latex. One "certified teen speaker for the AIDS Action
|
|
Committee", in an article in the Boston Herald even made the
|
|
preposterous claim that, "If HIV spreads as expected, 160 of
|
|
the 400 people in my high school graduating class will be
|
|
HIV-positive or dead when I go to my 20th reunion." Comic
|
|
books such as The Works and Risky Business, published by the
|
|
San Francisco AIDS Foundation and clearly directed at
|
|
teenagers, make no distinctions between different sexual
|
|
activities in terms of HIV-transmission risk and take great
|
|
pains to put out the message that "viruses aren't
|
|
prejudiced" and "anybody can catch a virus."
|
|
"Likewise, in their song "Let's Talk About AIDS,"
|
|
which was written to support their "Sisters for Life " AIDS
|
|
education campaign aimed at young black women, singers Salt-
|
|
N-Pepa imply that oral and anal sex are equally risky. This
|
|
is simply untrue. As I will discuss in greater depth later
|
|
in this pamphlet, the only really high-risk sexual activity
|
|
is butt fucking (and then, only for the receptive partner,
|
|
or bottom), with vaginal fucking significantly less risky
|
|
for women and very low risk for men. Sucking dick is very
|
|
low risk, and eating pussy is essentially risk-free. So the
|
|
AIDS activists are willing to have students lied to in order
|
|
to frighten them into complying with their version of safer
|
|
sex. Students, and everyone else, should be told the truth
|
|
and encouraged to make their own choices based on reason,
|
|
not fear.
|
|
"The second problem with the activists' program is
|
|
that, besides advocating dissemination of an inaccurate
|
|
message, they have also chosen a flawed messenger. The
|
|
schools are the worst place for kids to learn about sex - or
|
|
anything else, for that matter. Do we want our children's
|
|
ideas about sex to be influenced by authoritarian,
|
|
intolerant institutions and individuals who encourage not
|
|
active decision- making and individual responsibility, but
|
|
passivity and obedience? Can we reasonably expect the state
|
|
and its schools to adequately discuss why buttfucking is
|
|
more risky than eating pussy, or to encourage students to
|
|
consider oral sex instead of fucking as a means of both
|
|
birth control and safer sex?
|
|
"...If the activists feel, as I do, that sex and AIDS
|
|
education in the home and school is inadequate, or that
|
|
condoms are inaccessible, it would make better sense for
|
|
them to act for themselves. Queer Nation has done successful
|
|
leafleting campaigns about homosexuality at high schools.
|
|
Similar informational leafletting - only this time with
|
|
truthful information about HIV transmission - and condom
|
|
distributions by AIDS activist organizations would be time
|
|
and money better spent than that wasted on lobbying school
|
|
committees and other politicians. Instead of encouraging
|
|
state intervention in people's lives, such activity would
|
|
provide a model for independent, voluntary responses to
|
|
problems like AIDS."
|
|
|
|
Peacott believes , with much to substantiate this,
|
|
that measures taken by the government to inform people and
|
|
to help people in regards to AIDS (and presumably to just
|
|
about anything), are largely misdirected, and that much of
|
|
the time and energy put into fighting for changes in
|
|
government policy, is better spent organizing grassroots
|
|
education and help programs. Asides from this, as an
|
|
anarchist, Peacott realizes that taking action for oneself
|
|
or in a community, rather than relying on the government,
|
|
has its own importance as an act of validating the ability
|
|
of people to do by themselves, without the help or the
|
|
sanction of the government. (This premise of course being
|
|
the cornerstone of anarchist philosophy.) Of course, given
|
|
the fact that the state continually takes control of money
|
|
and resources, to restribute as it sees fit, he can
|
|
understand the desire of people to see these resources go to
|
|
things such as health care and education, rather than to the
|
|
military, corporate subsidies, and into poiticians' pockets.
|
|
He writes , "Surely if government is to confiscate my money,
|
|
I'd rather see it spend the stolen goods on improving health
|
|
care for people who have AIDS, than on murdering people in
|
|
iraq and somalia. But this does not mean it is acceptable to
|
|
advocate either higher taxes to pay for this, or a larger
|
|
role for government than it already plays in regulating and
|
|
attempting to control medical research and provision of
|
|
health care."
|
|
A good part of Peacott's arguments against government
|
|
intervention in health care choices revolve around his
|
|
conviction that what would be most helpful is in fact not
|
|
more government action, but rather less; he calls for
|
|
government deregulation of the medical industry as one way
|
|
of improving the situation in health care. (For those of you
|
|
interested in these arguments, I would also recommend a
|
|
previous BAD pamphlet, Regulated to Death: Anarchist
|
|
Arguments Against Government Intervention in Our Lives
|
|
authored by Peacott and Jim Baker, which also contains
|
|
arguments for the deregulation of medicine.) Although
|
|
Peacott admits that ,"A relatively free market in health
|
|
care, in the context of an otherwise statist society, would
|
|
certainly be distorted and far from ideal" -(and here I
|
|
think that he should have also criticized the profit motive
|
|
in health care, and capitalism in general, because a
|
|
relatively free market in which people have the choice of
|
|
purchasing what they want and need, and will have some sort
|
|
of guarantee that this will be available at affordable costs
|
|
can only have a limited scope under capitalism)- he realizes
|
|
that all the same, that health care would probably be
|
|
better, because people would have more choices, and would be
|
|
freed of certain impediments constructed by the state.
|
|
|
|
"Therapeutic drug manufacture and sales should be
|
|
completely deregulated. Government intervention in the drug
|
|
market, through the FDA, the patent system, and the
|
|
prescription system has severly restricted people's access
|
|
to therapeutic drugs. The FDA, through its obstructionist
|
|
rules causes delays, sometimes as long as a decade, in the
|
|
release of effective drugs available in other countries.
|
|
Prescription laws prevent people from choosing which drugs
|
|
they want to take when, and forces them to hire the services
|
|
of expensive conventional doctors in order to obtain the
|
|
medicines they wish to take. And the patent system, by
|
|
preventing competition in the manufacture and sale of drugs,
|
|
allows pharmaceutical companies to charge extortionate
|
|
prices for their drugs. A free market in drugs would produce
|
|
plentiful, cheap and varied medicines for treatment of AIDS
|
|
and its related diseases.
|
|
"...Health care providers should be similarly
|
|
deregulated. The government, through its licensing of health
|
|
care providers and institutions, both limits people's health
|
|
care options and makes available health care artificially
|
|
costly. Most alternative methods of healing, many of which
|
|
may be beneficial to people who have AIDS, are heavily
|
|
regulated and restricted by law, and, consequently unlikely
|
|
to be covered by health insurance policies. Granting
|
|
monopoly status to convential physicians, either MDs or DOs,
|
|
has allowed these groups to control the number of providers,
|
|
maintaining a shortage, and thus driving up prices. Free
|
|
competition among health care providers would allow people
|
|
who have AIDS to choose whatever kind of health care
|
|
provider they desire, and competition between providers
|
|
would drive down costs to affordable levels."
|
|
|
|
There is much here which deserves further serious
|
|
discussion. Deregulation is, and has been a taboo idea, even
|
|
in more radical or liberal circles, due in part to the myths
|
|
of specialization, to the idea (naive) that the government,
|
|
and other official bodies exist to protect us, and that only
|
|
their benevolent wisdom will ensure that we get safe drugs
|
|
and qualified doctors, despite the obvious fact that the
|
|
government has not only approved, but has developed drugs
|
|
and chemical agents that are indeed harmful for human life.
|
|
But perhaps what frightens people more about the idea of
|
|
deregulation is the fear that people will make uninformed
|
|
decisions, or will be led astray by devious drug peddlars,
|
|
or treated by incompetent doctors; what many seem to fail to
|
|
take into account is that now, as doctors are often
|
|
accredited with an unquestionable knowledge of the best
|
|
medical treatments and care methods, people are very reliant
|
|
on their doctors, often taking drugs or submitting to
|
|
treatment with little knowlege of what they are doing, and
|
|
that perhaps allowing medical alternatives to exist more
|
|
openly, and allowing people to educate themselves and
|
|
pratice various forms of medicine will motivate people to
|
|
actually become much more informed, and to start looking at
|
|
medicine as not only the realm of the government approved,
|
|
traditionally ($) educated specialist, but of the average
|
|
person as well.
|
|
Peacott is totally for the individual's right to make
|
|
his or her own choices, even if these choices seem like
|
|
risky behaviour. Different people should be able to choose
|
|
how much risk they are willing to take in their lives; they
|
|
should have ready access to the facts about the risks they
|
|
are taking, but Peacott realises that even when people know
|
|
that something is potentially dangerous, they might choose
|
|
to do it anyway, and that decision should be respected. In
|
|
particular, Peacott addresses the problems of AIDS and
|
|
intervenous drug use. While readily crediting those who have
|
|
campaigned for greater access to needles or have done
|
|
something to make them more readily available to IDUs, he
|
|
also dislikes tendencies which view drug use as a mental
|
|
disease or a moral difficiency, rather than a personal
|
|
choice.
|
|
|
|
"Opposition to needle use arises from the opposition to
|
|
drug use that is so widespread in this country. Many feel
|
|
that drug use for recreational purposes is evil and
|
|
destructive, and therefore to be avoided. Others consider it
|
|
a sign of illness, either physical or "mental". Despite the
|
|
differences in their views of the nature of drug use and
|
|
users, both groups feel that the sale and consumption of
|
|
recreational drugs should be suppressed by the state, and
|
|
users wither punished or "treated". Consequently, anything
|
|
that could be construed as facilitating drug use is to be
|
|
dealt with in a similar fashion. However, there is no
|
|
evidence to support the contention that more people would
|
|
inject drugs if needles were freely accessible. In fact, the
|
|
states with the toughest laws around drugs and needles are
|
|
precisely the places with the highest rates of recreational
|
|
injectable drug use."
|
|
|
|
Part of this pamphlet is addressed to activists and
|
|
Peacott, although often praising the work of activists in
|
|
circumventing the government and medical establishment and
|
|
in trying to work out approaches to alternative education
|
|
about AIDS and treatment programs, also has his share of
|
|
criticism of activists who have double standards of
|
|
tolerance or who alienate people from their cause. As in the
|
|
above passage, Peacott tries to reveal how a certain type of
|
|
pernicious racism has permeated the tactics of many of the
|
|
activists.
|
|
|
|
"It is interesting to note that the activists have
|
|
singled out the catholic church for special contempt,
|
|
although anti-homosexual ideas are spread by many religious
|
|
leaders of all faiths, including many black protestant and
|
|
jewish clergy. However, activists don't attack these people
|
|
becasue they fear being perceived as insensitive to black or
|
|
jewish people. Similar concerns about sensivity don't seem
|
|
to come up when the targets are catholics. Since the
|
|
catholic church is large and influential (and largely
|
|
white), activists consider it a legitimate target for
|
|
actions they would not take against other religious groups."
|
|
|
|
Mostly, however, Peacott criticises the mainstream of
|
|
AIDS activism for relying too much on the government and of
|
|
distorting reality to fit their political agenda. Activists,
|
|
for example, often use unrealiable or misleading statistics
|
|
from the mainstream media which are frequently reported in
|
|
terms of cumulative cases. As Peacott notes, "Concentrating
|
|
on cumulative totals lends an apocalyptic feel to statistics
|
|
about AIDS, making it seem more widespread and dangerous
|
|
than it actually is." Also, "While many in the AIDS
|
|
establishment and the AIDS movement seem wedded to the idea
|
|
of AIDS as holocaust, the numbers don't support their case."
|
|
He notes that, despite the claims of many activists,a good
|
|
deal of money is dedicated to AIDS, disproportionately so in
|
|
relation to other diseases, but that does not guarantee a
|
|
cure. In addition, "...much of the money dedicated to AIDS
|
|
programs, wherever it has been acquired, has been misspent,
|
|
directed at people at low risk of AIDS."
|
|
Among the people at low risk, Peacott points out, are
|
|
female non-IDUs (and non-hemophiliacs), particulary
|
|
lesbians. Still, that doesn't stop the alarmists, the anti-
|
|
sex zealots and some "activists" from playing up the risk.
|
|
|
|
"Safe sex information aimed at women who have sex with
|
|
women is even more distorted than that aimed at homosexually
|
|
active men. Most studies have shown no sexual transmission
|
|
of HIV between women, but there have been a handful of
|
|
anecdoctal reports of such transmission, most recently that
|
|
of two women in texas, although an expert on AIDS among
|
|
homosexually active women has stated that only one of these
|
|
two women is likely to have acquired HIV from another woman.
|
|
Such a small number of cases among the millions of women
|
|
engaging in sex with each other, should be cause for
|
|
reassurance and elation. Instead we see the kind of fear-
|
|
mongering evidenced by the following headline found in the
|
|
feminist journal, New Directions for Women: "Nowhere to
|
|
Hide:AIDS an Equal Opportunity Killer Invades the Lesbian
|
|
Community." Women are frequently advised to use rubber
|
|
gloves and dental dams when having sex with other women,
|
|
despite the fact that most of them know no other women who
|
|
acquired HIV homosexually. Prominent lesbian activists tell
|
|
the story of their decision to get tested for HIV (both were
|
|
negative, of course) in the lesbian/gay press, while safer
|
|
sex groups visit women's bars to hand out kits containing
|
|
gloves, dams and safer sex disinformation, and women-only
|
|
porn movies feature performers who wear gloves and use dams.
|
|
Time, money and effort are being wasted on such efforts,
|
|
while those who are taken in by the arguments of the safer
|
|
sexers are unnecessarily sacrificing their sexual pleasure."
|
|
|
|
And,
|
|
|
|
"...Besides being counterproductive, the anti-drug
|
|
position is also hypocritical coming from the many activists
|
|
who engage in homosexual sex. The same experts and
|
|
"scientists" who still call recreational drug use a disease,
|
|
until recently thought of homosexual sex the same way. Drug
|
|
and needle use, like homosexual sex, are voluntary, private
|
|
activities which are the business of no one but the
|
|
participants."
|
|
|
|
Of course this can lead to a debate over how people
|
|
make choices, over whether free choice really exists, and
|
|
whether something like drug use is a totally private matter.
|
|
(I am writing this for example in a country where alcohol
|
|
abuse is rampant, particularly given the social situation,
|
|
and drunks readily abuse the people around them.) I would
|
|
argue that, while respecting others rights to do as they
|
|
like with their bodies and their lives, including things
|
|
most people would tend to look at as self destructive,
|
|
there must also be a sensitivity of how our actions can
|
|
effect others. (For example, smoking in the workplace.
|
|
Although smoking might be your personal choice, it might not
|
|
be that of your co-worker, and that person's right to a
|
|
smoke-free environment will be enfringed upon if you smoke
|
|
in that person's presence. ) I should say however that the
|
|
possible effects of drug users' actions over other people's
|
|
lives should not be blown out of proportion, especially if
|
|
motivated by any moralistic (and undeserved) contempt of
|
|
drug users; to put things into perspective, I would argue
|
|
that the actions of any number of businesspeople are more
|
|
likely have a much more far reaching and detrimental effect
|
|
on our lives, yet society at large hasn't declared a war on
|
|
them, and most certainly doesn't view them as "mentally
|
|
ill".
|
|
Perhaps more potentially controversial is Peacott's
|
|
insinuation that a largely white activist community, and
|
|
perhaps a smaller non-white one, by separating people on the
|
|
basis of their skin colour (in regards to creating separate
|
|
strategies for communicating with non-white people) is
|
|
helping to perpetuate a largely artificial and unnecessary
|
|
division. In regards to AIDS specifically, he writes that,
|
|
"Much press has been given to the disproportionately high
|
|
rate of HIV infection and AIDS among "people of colour".
|
|
While it is politically correct to lump all people who
|
|
aren't white together under this classification, there is a
|
|
major problem with this group-based way at looking at
|
|
people: namely, that people who are not white do not all
|
|
engage in the same activities, and therefore do not run
|
|
similar risks of HIV infection." In fact, the insinuation
|
|
that Peacott makes (and that I myself am aware of) is the
|
|
fact that a patronizing, latent racism is often behind the
|
|
veneer of separation. (This can also be seen in regards to
|
|
women and the special place accorded them in some activist
|
|
circles.) Peacott gives an example of activists applying
|
|
different standards to people of colour, (confusing
|
|
challenge with contempt), who in such a way failed the
|
|
people they were purporting to help.
|
|
|
|
"This idea that black and latin people need to be
|
|
talked to differently from white people can also backfire
|
|
and directly hurt AIDS education efforts among black or
|
|
latin people. For instance, some area residents objected to
|
|
a billboard in a black neighborhood in Boston that featured
|
|
black people talking about AIDS and condoms, and forced its
|
|
removal. Even though the billboard was designed by two black
|
|
women and other black people publically expressed their
|
|
support for keeping the billboard in place, there was no
|
|
attempt on the part of AIDS activists or service
|
|
organizations to intervene in the incident and prevent
|
|
removal of the sign. This was despite the fact that AIDS
|
|
organizations in Boston were able, for example, to convince
|
|
(and sometimes force) the unwilling local transit authority
|
|
to carry various pro-condom ads. The AIDS groups also tried
|
|
to get the city government to force all bars and restauarnts
|
|
with entertainment licenses to carry condom machines,
|
|
regardless of any opposition based on religious or other
|
|
"cultural" convictions of the proprietors. The unwillingness
|
|
to confront the ignorance and biases of some, while catering
|
|
to that of others, under the guise of "cultural sensivity"
|
|
is based on racist assumptions about the differences between
|
|
people and their ability to learn and change.
|
|
"Interestingly, while the more zealous among the safer
|
|
sexers are willing to distort information about sexual
|
|
transmission of HIV to terrorize people into draping their
|
|
body parts in latex in any and all sexual encounters, they
|
|
are more than willing to deemphasize other kinds of risks
|
|
when it suits their political agenda. For example, the
|
|
activists wish to have condoms distributed by school
|
|
personnel. Therefore, when those who oppose giving out
|
|
condoms in the schools bring up the failure rate when
|
|
condoms are used to prevent conception and claim that they
|
|
would be even more likely to fail to prevent HIV
|
|
transmission, the pro-condom forces routinely dismiss such
|
|
concerns. This is despite the fact that condoms do indeed
|
|
sometimes rip or fall off, although not as often as the
|
|
anti-condom people imply, and are more likely to do so in
|
|
rectal than in vaginal intercourse. Remember these are the
|
|
same folks who themselves exaggerate the practically non-
|
|
existent risk of woman-to-woman transmission of HIV."
|
|
|
|
Disinformation and Distortion, although seemingly a
|
|
pamphlet on a single issue, touches on various important
|
|
ones, from reliance on government, to politics that downplay
|
|
the importance of pleasure in this libertarian critique of
|
|
AIDS politics. Although at times I felt that certain aspects
|
|
of the problem were not sufficiently examined (such as the
|
|
role of the media or capitalism 's influence on health
|
|
care), these are usually well treated in other articles on
|
|
AIDS politics, so perhaps the author felt that they have
|
|
already gotten their fair share (or too much of it) already.
|
|
Joe tries to keep a consistent libertarian view of the
|
|
problem, rejecting increased government action as the
|
|
answer to the problem, instead calling for less government
|
|
meddling in people's lives and for greater individual action
|
|
and responsbility for their actions. I hope that those of
|
|
you who have found this review interesting will take the
|
|
time to read the whole pamphlet, and, more importantly, I
|
|
hope that it will eventually spur some serious debate on any
|
|
of the important issues that the author raises.
|
|
|
|
Laure Akai
|
|
|
|
LOOKING THE GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH: WHY PROPOSED HEALTH
|
|
CARE REFORMS ARE NO ANSWER TO THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS
|
|
|
|
It is no secret that one of the cornerstones of Bill
|
|
Clinton's election campaign was his promised reform of the
|
|
health care system. Leaving aside the fact that his work on
|
|
the reform is well behind the unrealistic schedule he
|
|
promised, the fact is that many people view these reforms as
|
|
a positive step that will be of greater benefit to society.
|
|
Yet, if the reform is carried out, people will immediately
|
|
realise that the new system is little better than the old.
|
|
Yes, the fact that many Americans who need health care
|
|
cannot afford to see a doctor is disturbing, but what is
|
|
even more disturbing is how patients are treated at public
|
|
clinics and through low-cost care providers, and how the
|
|
medical industry, in general operates.
|
|
Anybody reading this article who has had a chance to be
|
|
around a low-cost medical center run by an insurer (or HMO -
|
|
health maintenance organization) or a city hospital,
|
|
particularly in a depressed urban area has probably seen how
|
|
bad the so-called health "care" system can be like.
|
|
Similarly, many who have lived in a country with mass public
|
|
health care can tell you that you are often better off
|
|
paying to go to see a private doctor, or not bothering to go
|
|
to the doctor at all. I myself, family and friends have seen
|
|
enough of the system to know that even if it were free, we
|
|
wouldn't want it.
|
|
I grew up in one of those zip codes in New York which
|
|
automatically qualify you for a Mayor's Scholarship. A block
|
|
away from my home was the borough's general hospital, and
|
|
behind that another hospital, famous for it drug rehab
|
|
center. My mom, a city worker (of the Akaky Akakievich sort)
|
|
had us insured with Health Insurance Plan (HIP) and if we
|
|
had to see a doctor, we went off to the Jamaica HIP Center.
|
|
Although we had this center to go to, we rarely went, for
|
|
various reasons. The first reason obviously was that a trip
|
|
to the doctor took up the whole day or evening. I remember
|
|
that if you went to see the doctor, you often had to wait 3,
|
|
4, or 5 hours and then you were afforded the most minimal of
|
|
care. It was routine that they would skip the checkups (to
|
|
this day I have never had a complete physical) ask you a few
|
|
questions, if necessary look in your throat and check your
|
|
blood pressure, and prescribe a drug or sign your form as
|
|
quickly as possible. Misdiagnoses were common and I remember
|
|
our spice rack being overrun by at least 12 different types
|
|
of pills that my mother was prescribed for her high blood
|
|
pressure. (What she really needed was to eat more fresh
|
|
foods, quit smoking, exercise and, most importantly, she
|
|
needed to quit her job. But, she was tied to the mortgage
|
|
and worked until she died young of a heart attack on the
|
|
job.) The medical center was always the last place anybody
|
|
wanted to go, especially if they were ill, so we went mostly
|
|
to fulfill the needs of the school system to know that we
|
|
were healthy. Then we'd wait for 5 or six hours with all the
|
|
other families trying to get their kids papers signed, and
|
|
when we saw the doctor she would ask how we felt, check our
|
|
weight and height, maybe our blood pressure, declare us
|
|
healthy and send us on our way. If we were sick, it was
|
|
always more convenient to go to the drug store than to wait
|
|
at the doctor. It was this disgust and distrust of the
|
|
doctors that kept me, my family and friends away from them
|
|
more than anything. The fact that we could consult them for
|
|
free was practically worthless to us because their care was
|
|
worthless; it was rare that their help was useful to us, and
|
|
with all the medications they prescribed, we knew that it
|
|
was actually often harmful. On Friday nights the women of
|
|
the neighbourhood would come over the house, and there you
|
|
could here what people thought of doctors: my new medicine
|
|
gives my headaches, I'm retaining water, I stopped taking my
|
|
medicine and I feel much better, etc.etc.. So unlike today,
|
|
when I simply cannot afford any medical care, I didn't go to
|
|
the doctor even then, under the insurance plan, and even
|
|
came down with pneumonia because I didn't treat myself. Dad
|
|
probably hasn't seen a doctor voluntarily for forty years;
|
|
last time he saw one was when he came home after being hit
|
|
by a car and the next day couldn't move. Broken ribs; x-rays
|
|
showed his lungs are black. A lot of people say I should
|
|
make my dad go to the doctor, cause he's old and dying and
|
|
that he's being stupid not to go. But after hearing stories
|
|
such as I've heard about the doctors at the center, and
|
|
after having very bad experiences with them myself,
|
|
including misdiagnoses that recommended this or that
|
|
surgery, I have no faith that doctors will help him. Yes,
|
|
there may be some medicines or medical procedures that help
|
|
people, or there may be better doctors than others, but the
|
|
fact that someone went through medical school does not
|
|
guarantee that he or she is willing or able to help you,
|
|
particularly when they are working under the conditions that
|
|
the clinics often force them to work under.
|
|
I've had some pretty scary experiences in my life, but
|
|
without a doubt the most traumatic I've had to face was my
|
|
stay in a New York City hospital some years ago. I was
|
|
riding my bike home one day when I got hit by a truck in
|
|
front of the hospital. An ambulance driver saw the accident
|
|
and I was taken to the hospital. I was taken into the
|
|
emergency room where I waited for 7 hours with my leg
|
|
shattered before I could see a doctor, gets x-rays taken
|
|
etc.. Not that my injuries were any greater than those of
|
|
the screaming people around me with gunshot wounds, broken
|
|
bones, respiratory and heart problems, etc.. But it is
|
|
easily to understand why 30% or more of the emergency cases
|
|
taken to that hospital don't make it out alive. Of course
|
|
none of us had to wait for so many hours to see the doctor;
|
|
in that time I could have been taken to another hospital
|
|
where such waits don't exist, but of course once you answer
|
|
the first question, "What kind of insurance do you have" the
|
|
wrong way, that's it.
|
|
After I saw the doctor I was told I needed surgery, but
|
|
I'd have to wait eight hours until the morning shift came. A
|
|
month in that hospital followed, until I was able to get
|
|
into a wheelchair by myself and literally escape.
|
|
Unfortunately what I witnessed was not health "care" at its
|
|
worst, but was bad enough.
|
|
In the mornings we would be woken up and forced out of
|
|
beds, most of us being strapped into wheelchairs. As I was
|
|
unable to get into bed myself, I was totally dependent on
|
|
the nurses to do this for me, and even for them to help me
|
|
take a piss. We were often left 6 or 7 hours this way, our
|
|
buzzers being placed out of reach, or our calls for help not
|
|
being answered. I, as well as others with heavy casts on our
|
|
legs, sometimes tipped out of the wheelchair, and there were
|
|
times when people in our ward would have an accident and
|
|
scream and holler for the nurses, being helpless to help the
|
|
others. I faced numerous horrors there: falling out of my
|
|
wheelchair, having my IV put in incorrectly after surgery
|
|
and having to rip it out after my arm swelled up like a
|
|
balloon and after screaming in pain for more than an hour,
|
|
getting no help. Then there was the old woman across from me
|
|
who screamed all night and who the nurses were tired of. The
|
|
wanted her to die quickly because they were tired of
|
|
cleaning the shit out of her bed. They let her die one night
|
|
and all though none of us were happy about the constant
|
|
screaming and smell, and some knew she was better off dead,
|
|
we cursed the way in which she was left to die. The woman
|
|
was alone, and I only remember two people ever coming to
|
|
visit her- women from her church. One time she was asleep
|
|
when one of the visitors came, and I asked about the woman.
|
|
I heard sketchy details about how she grew up in
|
|
Constantinople, about being a refugee, about the woman's
|
|
tough life. I was initially irritated by her, by the fact
|
|
that she kept me up all night with this awful screaming, and
|
|
although I never had a chance to talk to her, after I heard
|
|
about her I was deeply concerned that she should be treated
|
|
well, and was horrified at how badly she was treated in her
|
|
final days.
|
|
One night the woman next to me, who somehow was able to
|
|
get into her wheelchair herself, despite the fact that the
|
|
nurses would put it on the wrong side of the bed so that she
|
|
couldn't easily slip into it, feel out the wheelchair and
|
|
began to scream in pain. Everyone in the room (and I think
|
|
there were 8 or 10 that day as the ceiling was leaking in
|
|
the next room) began ringing their buzzers and the nurse
|
|
came at last. The woman was worried that she hurt her knee
|
|
and demanded that the doctor see her. But it was Saturday
|
|
night, and as a rule we didn't have doctors come to see us
|
|
on the weekends. The nurse admonished her saying that the
|
|
doctors could only be summoned in case of emergency. Soon
|
|
after being back in bed the woman pissed and a large clot of
|
|
blood came out and she called the nurse who admonished her
|
|
again. She bled the whole next day and when the doctor
|
|
finally showed up, it turned out she had been pregnant
|
|
(which she didn't know) and had a miscarriage. The woman and
|
|
her family summoned the person in charge whereupon some
|
|
bureaucrat woman showed up and everyone complained. My
|
|
neighbor vowed to sue the hospital and I promised to back
|
|
her up, but I guess that she got as far as all the other
|
|
people I've known who have tried to complain about
|
|
something.
|
|
Of course these stories are just the tip of the
|
|
iceberg, and, as far as I know, they aren't uncommon. The
|
|
numerous surgeries I had went O.K:, but the doctors
|
|
summarily refused to explain what they were going to do to
|
|
me and in one case, after an operation when my ankle really
|
|
began to hurt, nobody told me my ankle had undergone surgery
|
|
and only when I was having a cast change and could see the
|
|
scar did somebody tell me, "Of course they operated there -
|
|
didn't you know that?" Of course the doctors technically
|
|
did nothing illegal cause the surgery was necessary, but I
|
|
would seriously question the professional ethics of a
|
|
surgeon who refuses to explain the surgery he will perform
|
|
to the patient and upon being questioned refers to me as "a
|
|
pest". A year and a half after the accident I had my last
|
|
operation. I was told it would take six weks to heal. I was
|
|
naturally concerned because I was making a semi-legal living
|
|
and wanted to know when I'd be able to work. I was told
|
|
the operation was "minor" and it was to be ambulatory. The
|
|
fact that it had to be ambulatory, I later learned, was
|
|
because I wasn't going to have some insurance company pay
|
|
for a room, and that under other conditions, I would have to
|
|
had remained in the hospital a few days. This fact however
|
|
was obvious when I woke up after surgery and could only cry
|
|
and ask them what they had done. I was totally dizzy, in
|
|
complete pain and with a cast so high that sitting was
|
|
completely impossible. I asked how I was supposed to sit in
|
|
this cast, which was set so my knee was locked, (an
|
|
uncomfortable position to be in for over 5 minutes,
|
|
especially after surgery) and found out that I was supposed
|
|
to lay in bed for six weeks and not sit up. Then I was sent
|
|
home and couldn't even sit during the car ride, never mind
|
|
how I was supposed to get into bed and stay there for six
|
|
weeks. I couldn't make it for more than one night in the
|
|
thing and wound up breaking it upon and resetting it myself.
|
|
I must add that I healed up much better than anybody
|
|
expected, through the help of medicinal herbs and exercise.
|
|
Of course maybe some of you are thinking that I just
|
|
had bad luck and just bad doctors, and that the majority of
|
|
doctors are really good, caring people. Maybe, but the fact
|
|
is that I received very bad care due to the fact that I'm
|
|
not rich and that I don't have insurance. Throughout the
|
|
whole affair it was clear that I was only going to be
|
|
treated in accordance to how much I could pay. I saw also
|
|
how the hospital lied about the treatment I got to get more
|
|
money reimbursed, and how they would bring me $18 pain
|
|
killers every morning that I would refuse and that they
|
|
would claim I would take, how they put daily physical
|
|
therapy on my tap when I received it to or three times for
|
|
15 minutes. This is what I see in the future of "free and
|
|
universal health care".
|
|
There are of course very many problems concerning
|
|
health care, ranging from how it is administered to what
|
|
methods of healing are to be used. Without getting into the
|
|
question of whether instutionalized medicine should even
|
|
exist (which is a valid one which I don't want to dismiss,
|
|
but which would be better treated by someone more
|
|
knowledgable on the subject), I can say that health care
|
|
will not be seriously improved under the proposed Clinton
|
|
plan. The main problem of course is that health care is
|
|
primarily an industry in which people try to make huge
|
|
profits. In the public health industry as well, most of the
|
|
problems are based in the capitalist/profitist system.
|
|
Let's take for example those nurses at the hospital.
|
|
Any number of people could agree that these people simply do
|
|
not belong in that job. The fact is that they probably don't
|
|
want to do that job anymore themselves. I cannot guess what
|
|
their motives were for choosing the nursing profession -
|
|
whether they were once people who thought they would
|
|
dedicate their lives to helping people or whether they were
|
|
simply drawn to the profession by the relatively good salary
|
|
and stable employment opportunities they would have. But
|
|
these people are not capable of doing their jobs; they view
|
|
the patients as nuisances and are tremendously overworked.
|
|
Their jobs make them tired and irritable, and although this
|
|
is no excuse for neglecting the patients, it is
|
|
understandable.
|
|
I know a few people in the health care profession. I
|
|
remember one friend who upon graduating school and becoming
|
|
a physicians assistant, was expected to be on call on round-
|
|
the-clock shifts. I remember how exhausted she was and how
|
|
she eventually had to take another job and is now waiting to
|
|
be able to get out of the health care profession altogether.
|
|
I asked, what is the sense of exhausting these people who
|
|
after all have a difficult job at which they should be able
|
|
to concentrate so as not to make any mistakes in the
|
|
operating room. It's not fair to them, and not fair to the
|
|
patients. But think about it - the hospitals fork over a lot
|
|
of money because its the only thing that attracts and keeps
|
|
some people in the profession. They don't want to hire more
|
|
high-priced workers. The profession becomes exclusive and
|
|
elitist. The medical schools become more and more elitist
|
|
and expensive, promising graduates big returns, which they
|
|
feel like they deserve after all the money they fork over in
|
|
med school and all the hours they have to needlessly put in
|
|
their first years on the job. One of the first steps in
|
|
reforming health care would have to be making health
|
|
education accessible to everybody who wants access to it,
|
|
allowing more people to be qualified health practitioners,
|
|
putting less pressure on doctors, nurses and other workers
|
|
to work long hours, etc.
|
|
Of course in a country where workers slave a good part
|
|
of their lives just to have a roof over their heads, and
|
|
wealth has a certain status, people have a certain motive to
|
|
make money. If investors, insurers, med schools and the
|
|
like, who don't give a shit about anything more than profit,
|
|
see little profit in health care, they will turn their
|
|
investments elsewhere. The same can be said of workers who
|
|
would choose more profitable professions. For the situation
|
|
to really improve, the profit motive must disappear not only
|
|
from health care, but from society at large. To follow this
|
|
train of thought, we should look at how the profit motive
|
|
negatively effects American health care, how, even when
|
|
there is supposedly public, non-profit health care, there
|
|
can be big money involved, and how the way capitalist
|
|
societies adversely effect health.
|
|
The way that the health care system is structured, a
|
|
lot of money is wasted, particularly by bureaucrats, paper
|
|
pushers and the system of insurance companies. An eighth of
|
|
the cost of health care is administrative. In addition, drug
|
|
companies, insurance companies and hospitals, driven by the
|
|
profit motive, drive up the cost of health care for
|
|
everyone. Since health care is so expensive, many people go
|
|
without, which is a fact so obvious that nobody can deny it.
|
|
Any system which can fail to provide basic medical services
|
|
to so many people is obviously a failure. Now the Clintons
|
|
think its time to change the health care system, but not
|
|
because people go without medical attention so much as (as
|
|
one AFL-CIA operative said) the cost to companies of
|
|
providing insurance for the workers drive up the cost of
|
|
production.
|
|
Apparently, to keep the corporate greedy sated enough
|
|
with the meagre millions they take in every year (as opposed
|
|
to the money they could make shipping this business to
|
|
another part of the world with a more desperate work force),
|
|
the state has thought up a plan.This plan should be more
|
|
cost efficient; they tell the workers who begrudge state
|
|
spending that it will be more cost effective to provide
|
|
preventative medicine than to treat the effects of going
|
|
without it. The fact is that whatever changes they make (and
|
|
it is questionable if they can manage even part of what they
|
|
themselves envision) will profit mostly everybody but the
|
|
people. Coverage will be minimal and will involve copayments
|
|
which will keep the poorest from seeking help. The quality
|
|
of medical care may not improve, and may even worsen as more
|
|
and more people find themselves insured by HMOs where the
|
|
care leaves something to be desired. Medicaid and Medicare
|
|
would be slashed. Many of the very poor and unemployed would
|
|
remained uncovered, with money for existing public medicine
|
|
being cut. The poor working class would be serviced by the
|
|
corporate HMOs and would receive substantially different
|
|
care than the wealthy and professional classes, even though
|
|
in general they run greater health risks. New bureaucrats
|
|
would take over this system, adding new costs; if costs
|
|
need to be managed, it will be at the expense of care and
|
|
not these new bureaucrats. Part-time workers, an ever-
|
|
growing group of people as businesses try to avoid paying
|
|
health care and other premiums, will find that they might
|
|
have mandatory coverage, for which their employers will pay
|
|
a pro-rated amount while they have to fork over the rest.
|
|
It is obvious that the new system, while trying to be
|
|
more cost effective than the old, will also be more
|
|
bureaucratic. Medicaid reciprients will be transferred to
|
|
private carriers, who, with more overhead, are much less
|
|
cost efficient. If the new policies save any money, it will
|
|
most likely do so by cutting on care.
|
|
The idea that people have about free health care (not
|
|
unlike that which many people have about inner city schools)
|
|
is that it is far from perfect, but at least it exists. This
|
|
is a very poor attitude to have when people's lives are in
|
|
question. There is no reason that decent health care cannot
|
|
be given everybody, except that the people who are in
|
|
control have their priorities fucked up, and that health
|
|
care is too regulated and the system run stupidly. What we
|
|
don't need is a more bureaucratic and universal system, but
|
|
more alternative systems of health care which are run by
|
|
people and not corporations or their legal arm - the
|
|
government.
|
|
|
|
L.C.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
THE MISSING PERSON; HEALTH AND ECOLOGY IN POST-PERESTROIKA
|
|
RUSSIA
|
|
Kati Laapaikan
|
|
|
|
The rapid industrialization which communism brought to
|
|
the former Soviet Union proved to be an ecological disaster.
|
|
Some of the worst ecological disasters in history have
|
|
occurred here, including Chernobyl and the depletion of the
|
|
Aral Sea to supply water for cotton crops. But these are
|
|
only the most wide known cases in the world - in addition,
|
|
there are numerous cities which have been contaminated by
|
|
industry, where the people suffer from many of the typical
|
|
diseases associated with industrial pollution. This is why
|
|
the emergence of an ecological movement is of such
|
|
importance. Yet after visiting with some actvists and having
|
|
gotten the feel for the politics of the ecologists, I get
|
|
the feeling that something is missing, something which is
|
|
usually of concern to environmentally aware people in the
|
|
West. This is a connection between the environment and the
|
|
person and between the way that we treat our bodies and the
|
|
way we treat the earth. The environmental movement seems to
|
|
have developed without the traditional health consciousness
|
|
and sense of personal responsibilty for the environment
|
|
that is supposed to accompany it.
|
|
The state of health consciousness in the former Soviet
|
|
Union seems to be nil. Though I had visions of a nation of
|
|
well-trained athletes, in good form and rosy-cheeked, eating
|
|
youghurt and living to the age of 105, the reality is quite
|
|
different. Tired looking, malnourished bodies with
|
|
translucent faces that betray bad health. I found that the
|
|
average diet in Russia is way too high in fats and
|
|
cholestoral, too much salt and too much sugar. Although it
|
|
seems that most food is without preservatives, much of it is
|
|
of questionable quality, and is sold in filthy conditions,
|
|
just right for the transmission of disease. The idea of
|
|
writing the ingredients on anything seems to be useless to
|
|
the Russians, who apparently have little concern for the
|
|
nutritive value of what their consuming. The basics of diet
|
|
are not taught, and so most people that I spoke to were
|
|
totally unaware of the condition between food and health.
|
|
Many people also feel that their health is somehow too
|
|
frivolous a thing to worry about. "I don't know if I'll have
|
|
enough money to last me through the month. I'm supposed to
|
|
worry about my health?", an aquaintance asked me, as if I
|
|
had approached a question to ridiculous to even answer.
|
|
Some Finnish tourists that I met told me of a diptheria
|
|
epidemic in Russia and referred me to the embassy medical
|
|
staff. I took the occasion as an opportunity to find out
|
|
what a foreign doctor thought about Russian health care.
|
|
The opinion was very low. With the exception of a few
|
|
reknowed specialists and a few hospitables which serve the
|
|
elite, Russian hospitals were best to be avoided. Unsanitary
|
|
conditions. Wrong dignoses. Over medication. I told my
|
|
Russian friends about my innoculation. They thought I was a
|
|
crazy person, willing to waste good money on an
|
|
innoculation. I thought, maybe they know something I don't.
|
|
Maybe there is something natural which protects Russians
|
|
from disease. None of them had heard of the epidemic. They
|
|
refused to believe it existed. "Nothing about it in the
|
|
Russian news." I thought, this is incredible. Is there an
|
|
epidemic, or is this something that some doctors thought up
|
|
to squeeze some money out of tourists? "About 600 something
|
|
people died. I don't know if you can call that an epidemic",
|
|
said an American friend living in Moscow. "The papers didn't
|
|
say a word about it, at least not the Russian language ones.
|
|
Back home if you had 60 people who died of a disease, it
|
|
would be on the news and the media would make a big to do
|
|
about it. Experts would give advice and the medical
|
|
community would create a health alert. Of course I am a
|
|
great critic of the medical industry and I dislike the way
|
|
that the media functions in general, but when I see what
|
|
happens here, I really begin to wonder if there is any value
|
|
in human life at all."
|
|
What I found was no preventative medicine, practically
|
|
no health consciousness at all. I did however find that
|
|
traditional herbal medicines were in use, but , as one
|
|
person pointed out, that was only to compensate for the low
|
|
supplies of pharmeceuticals that reach the people. People
|
|
are unaware of the side effects of many of the medicines
|
|
that they take. Analgin, for example, seems to be the most
|
|
popular pain killer. I thought that this would be an area
|
|
which environmental activists might be interested in - in
|
|
helping people heal themselves and live a healthier, more
|
|
balanced lifestyle, in coexistence with environmental
|
|
concerns.
|
|
I brought my idea to various activists, but it seemed
|
|
to fall on deaf ears. I mentioned that I thought it was odd
|
|
to be in a room of people who had protested against the
|
|
emission of pollutants into the air by factories yet had no
|
|
problems about emitting cigarette fumes into the air,
|
|
despite my request not to smoke. (They did open the window
|
|
in the 0+ weather however.) "You yourselves probably do as
|
|
much damage as the factory, if not more," I finally blurted
|
|
out, vexed by so much seeming indifference to the role that
|
|
personal behaviour plays in creating our circumstances, both
|
|
physical and mental. A long tirade followed about how people
|
|
cause pollution and waste energy, how bicycles were
|
|
perferrable to cars, and how cities were environmental
|
|
hazard zones. Finally somebody said, "Yes, it would be
|
|
better if we all lived in the country, but then there
|
|
wouldn't be work for some of us. We all can't be farmers."
|
|
I felt that, although the activists could easily
|
|
understand that city life was unnatural, they were not
|
|
ready to dismantle the idea of the city, and had very
|
|
little, if any critique of technology and industry. "Your
|
|
Western activists are elitist intellectuals," I was told.
|
|
"They always demand the closing of factories without
|
|
thinking of the workers. When there was a camp at
|
|
Cherepovetz, where there is a huge but dangerous
|
|
metallurgical factory which employs the whole city, we
|
|
demanded that the factory use ecologically clean equipment,
|
|
but we didn't demand that it be shut down. If we had
|
|
demanded that, we would have alienated the workers from our
|
|
cause. The main problem of the Russian worker is to feed
|
|
himself, and problems of health and safety come later."
|
|
I wanted to protest that it wasn't just the emission of
|
|
toxins into the air that should be of concern with
|
|
Cherpovetz. The factory is just the end stop in a cycle of
|
|
environmental production, and the people are chained to it
|
|
only because their area was industrialized. However they
|
|
lived before the huge metal works must have been a lot more
|
|
pleasant than spending 8 hours a day in a noisy, polluted
|
|
metal shop, spending 4 hours just to recover from the
|
|
experience, and spending the rest of your life feeling the
|
|
ill effects, both physical and psychic, of their
|
|
employment. I wanted to say all this, but it didn't come to
|
|
my head quick enough. I was busy digesting the dose of guilt
|
|
I had just been fed by my Russian friend, who honestly felt
|
|
he was protecting the working class. Poor
|
|
environmentalists, I thought. Afraid to let people know of
|
|
their own complicity in the ailing environment, too self-
|
|
abasing to say to themselves that their bodies are as
|
|
important as the trees in the taiga.
|
|
Upon my arrival home, I sent a care package of
|
|
literature back to Russia with a friend. I felt that maybe,
|
|
if they saw the case for health consciousness in print
|
|
enough, they would come to believe it was important. If I
|
|
learned one thing during my trip, nothing seems to impress
|
|
people there as much as glossy printed publications. (I
|
|
often wondered curiously what was so interesting about my
|
|
magazines that people would page through them endlessly,
|
|
despite the fact that they didn't read a word of Finnish.) I
|
|
have yet to see the results, but I am waiting.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
NOTICES
|
|
|
|
Radical pamphlets and books need to be printed in the
|
|
Russian language now more than ever. There are several
|
|
ready for publication now but we are having great logistical
|
|
problems with getting them printed. We would like to ask
|
|
people who have access to printing presses to help out in
|
|
this difficult time. We are mostly interested in making
|
|
small print runs of several pamphlets and are more than
|
|
willing to reimburse all or part of the material costs.
|
|
Please contact the publishers of this magazine if you are
|
|
able to help out.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Moscow Institute for the Study of Racism, Fascism and
|
|
Nationalism is looking for people who are doing scholarly
|
|
work on any of the three subjects. Please contact the
|
|
Institute c/o this magazine or on e-mail at
|
|
cube@glas.apc.org
|
|
|
|
Anarchists and other interested people are busy cleaning out
|
|
their new squat on Petrovsky Blvd. in Moscow. The squat,
|
|
known popularly as "Gulyai Polye" (due to the fact that
|
|
there is an authoritarian neighbour by the name of
|
|
Petliura), hopes to open up early in the spring and have
|
|
discussions, performances and other events, as well as serve
|
|
as a meeting place.
|
|
|
|
Russian President Boris Yeltsin has posthumously
|
|
rehabilitated the Kronstadt rebels. Anarchists around the
|
|
world still consider themselves the enemies of the state.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
YOU CAN'T REHABILITATE AN ANARCHIST
|
|
MOSCOW, JAN.10,1994
|
|
|
|
Almost 73 years after the slaughter of the Kronstadt
|
|
rebels, Moscow has decided that they were the victims of
|
|
political repression.
|
|
As yet another part of an assinine flow of symbolic
|
|
gesture against the legacy of the communist past, President
|
|
Boris Yeltsin has decided to officially "rehabilitate" the
|
|
participants in the 1921 Kronstadt uprising. This includes
|
|
restoring full legal rights to all those repressed. Thanks a
|
|
lot, Borya.
|
|
At a press conference held today, Alexander Yakovlev
|
|
released documents that proved that the Kronstadt uprising
|
|
was a rebellion against Bolshevik power and not a rebellion
|
|
supported by the Whites and Western imperialists. No shit
|
|
Alex - tell us something we didn't know. Yakovlev stressed
|
|
that the lesson of the Kronstadt rebeliion is that political
|
|
repression did not begin with Stalin. "Stalin just continued
|
|
doing what Lenin was already doing."
|
|
(We hope that historians of the future will draw the same
|
|
conclusions and figure out that Zhirinovsky was just a
|
|
continuation of Tsar Boris.)
|
|
It is important to note that this rehabilitation is merely
|
|
part of a sophisticated ploy carried out by Yeltsin to make
|
|
him seem morally superior to all things associated with the
|
|
Soviet government. The important thing is not historical
|
|
accuracy, but discrediting Soviet power down to the very
|
|
foundation, as one can discern from Yakovlev's statement
|
|
that, "It is important to remember Kronstadt now, when
|
|
people are becoming nostalgic for the old days". Yeltsin,
|
|
has taken an unprecendented number of moves against the
|
|
symbols of the past and has lamented the tragedy of
|
|
communism mostly in effort to drum up public sentiment
|
|
against his opposition. We think it's funny that someone who
|
|
himself sends the army against a rebellion should label the
|
|
same thing "political repression". If the anarchists of
|
|
Kronstadt were alive today, they'd probably have their guns
|
|
pointed at you Boris Yeltsin!
|
|
We want you to know, Boris Nikolayevich, that you have
|
|
more opposition than just those commie and fascist hacks.
|
|
You can shove your rehabilitation up your ass - down with
|
|
all political repressors and tyrants! Death to the
|
|
dictators, to those that take power through coup d'etats
|
|
after making speeches upon armoured vehicles. We have your
|
|
number Yeltsin, you pig scum. You ain't no better - blood is
|
|
on your hands.
|
|
Yeltsin plans to erect a monument in Kronstadt, to the
|
|
victims of the events. I think he should put one up around
|
|
the White House.
|
|
If he only knew that the spirit of Kronstadt lives on, he
|
|
wouldn't erect a monument.
|
|
You can't rehabilitate an anarchist.
|
|
|
|
FIND YOURSELF SOME OTHER MARTYRS!
|
|
ANARCHISTS HATE ALL TYRANTS - INCLUDING YOU, YOU
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MOTHERFUCKER!
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LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF KRONSTADT!
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Letters
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Dear editors,
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I'd like to thank you for taking the time to think of
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me as I find myself in this difficult position. I read the
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two issues of Mother Anarchy that you sent me with great
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pleasure, especially as they differ so radically from the
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rest of the red-brown crap I am sent. Having read the
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material published in your magazine, as well as Alexander
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Tarasov's excellent pamphlet entitled Provocation, I have
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changed my views on the events that have taken place.
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I'd like to say first of all that I have always
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considered anarchist ideas to be very admirable but too
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idealistic to work. I have always maintained that one must
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take an active part in the political system in order to
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change it. In my own role as Speaker of the Russian
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Parliament, I tried to create an atmosphere in which the
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best direction for the country could be examined openly and
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honestly in order that the best decisions be made. As you
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already know, many people have entered politics for entirely
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different reasons, and know I have begun to realize that all
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the politicians in Russia are bastards.
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I am glad to know that there are some people who are
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ready to see that Yeltsin provoked the events of last
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October. As the legally elected legislature, we felt that
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Yeltsin had no right to usurp our authority. But upon seeing
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that the public did not support us, and furthermore that
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myself and my colleagues were being villanized by the media,
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I realized that the stance of Rutskoi and his friends was
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stupid. In fact, Rutskoi is one of the last people on the
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earth I would want as president, the macho shithead. During
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my unfortunate time in the White House during the seige, I
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had to listen to the most disgusting crap I have ever had
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the misfortune to hear in my life, including constant racial
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epiteths being hurled my way, anti-semtitic nonsense, and
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calls for agression against Russia's neighbours in order to
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bring Russia back to superpower status.
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Now that Russians have elected Zhirinovsky, I am
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tempted to think that the people have gone out of their
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minds. But thinking it over now, I see that such people
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have always been in power here, albeit that they expressed
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their programs in different forms. I try to have faith, like
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you, that the Russian people have not gone insane. I
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realize that you are right, that many people didn't support
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us because we were just as bad for them as was Yeltsin.
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(Especially Rutskoi, that son of a bitch.) I swear that if I
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ever get out of here, I am turning my back on politics. All
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politicians are scum and I don't want to be part of it
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anymore.
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I hope that you will forgive my language, but I am very
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upset , understandably. Please continue to write. It is a
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great relief to know that somebody is willing to send me
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mail besides the Stalinists and a few fans who want me to be
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the president of an independent Chechnya. I wish that those
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idiots would just leave me alone. A special hello to
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Comrade Akai whose constant condemnation of Russian
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nationalism, and particularly of the deportations which took
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place after the coup d'etat is greatly needed and to
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Alexander Tarasov, whose Provocation is an admirable work of
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scholarship.
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For your freedom and mine, (especially mine),
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Ruslan Imranovich
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MOTHER ANARCHY is one of the few remaining independently
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produced, self-financed samizdat publications left in the
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world's newest liberal democracy. The culture of samizdat
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has all but died away completely as people aspire to make
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high cost, widespread publications that are almost
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completely subsidized, and without these subsidies could not
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exist. We on the other hand would like some of our readers
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to get involved with the actual publishing and distribution
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of the zine. Rather than collect money and then bankrupt
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ourselves publishing this zine only to then have to hawk it,
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we ask readers who might find it interesting to pass any or
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all of it on to a friend or to make xerox copies of it and
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spread it around. Nothing is coppyrighted, and anything is
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free to reprinted as well.
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************************************************************
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MOTHER ANARCHY
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P.O.Box 500, Moscow
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107061 Russia
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e-mail: cube@glas.apc.org
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print run:?
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price:?
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editor:?
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artists: koko the monkey, ?
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words: ivan, m.m., kati, laure, l.c., ? and others who
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didn't know we'd swipe their stuff
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next issue: yes
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