Domodedovo bombing.

In relation to the humour;
I'm surprised at how soon it started in this thread with 35 dead and so many wounded in comparison to the one about the Tuscon shooting where only a paltry 6 people were killed.

That's because they were presumably too busy arguing over whether the shooter was a Teabagger to joke, that and a lack of i guess recent popular games about lone shooters assassinating US legislators. Or it could be as simple as people not thinking of it....

EDIT: That bombing is very similar to the 'No Russian' mission where you just snipe russian civilians hence the reference I believe.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:38:25 PM by BalloonFleet

@Ian: Are we going to compare massacres solely on the fact one had more deaths? Having a mass-murder, especially of a politician in a political assassination is a whole different beast than a terrorist attack of a civilian airport.

The No Russian jokes started because the key part of the plot involves a separatist group staging the US in an attack on an airport in Moscow. I guess the irony fueled the humor.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:39:41 PM by saladofstones

Personally I'd say a huge death toll of civilians (via suicide bombing) would mean a longer time before people started making jokes, don't get me wrong I don't think they should be censored or that they are too soon, I'm just surprised at how quickly they were and made a comparison to a recent tragedy.

Also, MW 2 meh not my cup of tea so the references flew over my head. @Ian: Are we going to compare massacres solely on the fact one had more deaths? Having a mass-murder, especially of a politician in a political assassination is a whole different beast than a terrorist attack of a civilian airport.

Personally I'd go with the fact that this tragedy is happening to others, foreigners, ones that have a history with the US (where the majority of tropers are based).

Back to the topic:
As said before, messing with Russia leads to a huge retaliation.

Also the Russian media are looking for 3 men in connection to the bombing.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:46:00 PM by IanExMachina

@Ian: Russia isn't as strong as it used to be so a practice of massive retaliation might not work. If it was Chechnya, which might be it considering how many attacks they have done, it would be a pretty blood conflict.

As much as I want to say that this should be avenged, we went into the Afghanistan because of a similar attack and it didn't really work for us.

Also Russia fucked over Chechnya already twice (see my post above on first page) and chechens still are fighting for their freedom

Personally I'd say a huge death toll of civilians (via suicide bombing) would mean a longer time before people started making jokes, don't get me wrong I don't think they should be censored or that they are too soon, I'm just surprised at how quickly they were and made a comparison to a recent tragedy.

I think that's part of why too in hindsight, the mentality of the "high score" terrorists receive - aka "TERRORISTS WIN". You saw that also when Seung-Hui Cho got a high score in V-Tech, as 33 deaths WAS a new record for school shootings.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:49:55 PM by BalloonFleet

I doubt Russia would rely solely on military might, more likely cloak and dagger stuff.

@Balloon Fleet
Talking about the mentality of the jokes I personally feel that there would be a better satisfaction/higher score with a tasteless joke about the young girl who was born on September 11th 2001 being killed, than the seemingly faceless 35 Russian civilians.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:51:52 PM by IanExMachina

@Ian: They've tried Spetznas-backed black-ops raids but at this point Chechnya has more or less "fought off" so to speak Russia's attempts to destroy it as a movement.

The thing is, I don't know if they did it, its likely, but their last attacks were a lot more personal than this but given their last series of bombings I can see this. Involving hostages and really, really brutal treatment of them. Russia responded in kind but that has only hardened both sides resolve to not like each other. I can see Chechnya being involved in some capacity OR that this might be used as a justification (which is unlikely, Russia seems pretty war-weary lately and Georgia wasn't a bloodless campaign).

edited 24th Jan '11 4:51:19 PM by saladofstones

The thing is, I don't know if they did it, its likely, but their last attacks were a lot more personal than this. Involving hostages and really, really brutal treatment of them.

They haven't been doing the 'abduct and torture or shoot ethnic russian soldiers' thing for a while now, now it's suicide bombings and insurgent attacks. Even their hostages of children were more of a 'kill them' not 'sadistically torture them' AFAIK (i.e. Beslan)

Talking about the mentality of the jokes I personally feel that there would be a better satisfaction/higher score with a tasteless joke about the young girl who was born on September 11th 2001 being killed, than the seemingly faceless 35 Russian civilians.

Damn. I forgot about that, I didn't go into the other thread honestly, but when I heard that said on CNN I couldn't halp but snicker at the symbolism.

EDIT: Also point out that Major Tom and the earlier posts were relatively-tame, instead of flat-out going "LOL RUSSKIEES GOT PWN 3 D BY CHECHENS AGAIN GG TERRORISTS WIN".

edited 24th Jan '11 4:57:16 PM by BalloonFleet

Yeah I realized that since I forgot how long ago that was :V It was my mistake.

I haven't heard of the new state they are proposing, but does it include the oil fields of the Caucasus region?

@balloon: I learned about the school raids since it related to what I would have to do as a first-responder in the event of a terrorist attack (the Chechnya raids were studied by different terrorist and rebel factions, and before the specific lesson on that it was discovered that Al-Qaeda has a large degree of information of LA school district schools, including the plans of first-responders and a lot of documents/media information on the Checnya school raids). They did rape most of the hostages and did place some hostages, including children, on mines, more or less, so they couldn't move. They did do some pretty good booby-trapping of the school and did well against the Spetsnaz (as well as anyone could hope for, really) which concerns the US since there is no way we would handle a raid like that.

edited 24th Jan '11 4:58:42 PM by saladofstones

I don't know, but AFAIK The oil fields are further south in Azerbaijan and Georgia/Abkhazia or whatnot. It's not exactly a "new state' just a new federal administrative zone, similar to say the Tensessee Valley Valley district, or the Appalachian Federal District used for census and coordination of poverty-alleviation

also link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Caucasian_Federal_District

EDIT:

They did rape most of the hostages and did place some hostages, including children, on mines, more or less, so they couldn't move. They did do some pretty good booby-trapping of the school and did well against the Spetsnaz (as well as anyone could hope for, really) which concerns the US since there is no way we would handle a raid like that.

Ahh, I see. I didn't know that, the russian documentary on Beslan I watched didnt mention that. Or I didnt seen the whole thing. Eh. I remember War Nerd phrasing it like this: "If a woman is willing to take school children hostage and kill them and/or blow herself up, she went through a lot worse than just losing her husband in a war"

edited 24th Jan '11 5:04:08 PM by BalloonFleet

Russia fucked over Chechnya some two or three centuries ago, and ever since they're having problems with it. Had only they known, they'd never touch Caucasus at all.

I wonder, what is with these guys. Barely enough people to man a district of a large city, and a pain in the ass for centuries. I'd very much respect it if they didn't go for the kiddies and civvies.

Same reasons why the Serbs are still around. Territory is everything. They seem to have a pretty defensible region. Or at least they were never broken down, even though Stalin came close to annihilating them.

Everything I've seen on them is that they are brutal, extremely so and this cannot be overlooked but they know what will happen to them if they fail and are captured. The fate of a Russian prisoner of war isn't kind, especially in the hands of the Spetsnaz, VDV, or similar groups. I am aware that they are Muslim but I haven't seen anything to tie them to the bogeyman of the "Muslim Extremist" since if anything they could be political or ethnic extremists. They have done some damage against Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan since evidently they are interested in getting in on the opium trade.

To be fair, the then-Russian Empire knew how much of a bitch controlling the caucuses people were, so they kicked out a lot of them (especially the Circassians). They thought kicking out most of them would work, or even a majority. It didn't - even when Stalin deported all the chechens they still stayed intact as a nation. Fuck, Suffering makes them STRONGER than slavic russians...

EDIT:

After years of fighting the Russians, there are so few men of military age left in Chechnya that the insurgents have to drop their Islamic rules and let Chechen war widows volunteer for suicide missions, like the group that occupied a Moscow musical theater in 2002.

By the time a “war widow” is ready to take over a Moscow theatre and plant bombs around the exits, she’s seen a lot more than her husband’s death. She’s lived through something that we can’t even imagine

He exxagerates I think with the sex imbalance as i'ds assume both women and men get killed, just the women get raped first....

http://exiledonline.com/please-dont-help-the-georgians/

EDIT: 60% female, 40% male. Shitty imbalance. The Chechens are advocating Polygamy now instead.....and a 3:2 ratio of females/males isnt -that- bad. Still sucks though....

edited 24th Jan '11 5:30:14 PM by BalloonFleet

@Fleet: It can be best described that you may disagree with your country and feel that it is wrong. But if your home is under attack, a person will fight even if they don't believe in it just because they feel that it has to be protected. I can definitely understand it, if someone invaded California, as much as I hate it, I would fight to defend it because it is my home.

Inb4 calls for California separatist movements (which for some God-forsaken reason actually exist).

Inb4 calls for California separatist movements (which for some God-forsaken reason actually exist).

...there are just so you know.

@Balloon: I know, that is what that section you quoted said.

Typical. So terrorists are only bad if they present a threat to America. Against Russia, it's ok. Noted.

Seems like expedience. Nobody in Britain was all that worried about Al-Qaeda or other Islamic terrorists until the London bombs in 2005; the media generally treated them as America's problem, something that we were fighting against in Afghanistan but not really a great threat at home.

Then again, a lot of people were still concerned by the IRA. Britain had, after all, been targeted by a terrorist campaign for close to thirty years by that point, one which some individuals in America (mostly east coast types, I understand) had supported financially.

This one does not expect them to care, that would be unreasonable. But treating terrorists that attack Russia as somewhat less bad guys than those who attack America, and extending more sympathy to the former than the latter is one heck of double standard. How would America react to the countries that give Al-Quaeda "token support", hmm?

edited 25th Jan '11 3:06:34 AM by Beholderess

Its human nature to be more objective and neutral regarding someone else's problems and conflicts than ones own.

Does it mean that sympathy for terrorists is an objective and neutral reaction?

Oh well. This one is certainly not neutral. But it does leave a bitter taste.

I have yet to meet an American who has any sympathy for airport suicide bombers. No matter what the media may call them.

@behold: Way to pick and choice, they are referred to as both terrorists AND rebels here. The difference being that they are rebel, or more often refereed to as separatists, because they are part of Russia. The IRA went under the same thing and even the Taliban are referred to as Rebels.

Take your ax to grind somewhere else please.

Well, given that Russia has supported anti-american factions throughout the Cold War, I'd say "not well"

If I had to give an oversimplification, the US and Russia are still enemies and Russia has done some pretty bad revisionism, which you missed, regarding treating Stalin as a hero.

edited 25th Jan '11 8:55:13 AM by saladofstones

OK, are we actually turning this into US vs Russia? Does the Cold War really have anything to do with this incident?

And didn't Medvedev publicly condemn Stalin, IIRC?

edited 25th Jan '11 9:13:47 AM by Exploder