Practice attack
I’m glad to see that the hostage crisis in Moscow is over, but troubled to see that the Putin government took advantage of it to attack their foes in the media. The Moscow Times reports that one TV station was shut down and attempts were made to shut down the web site of the radio station Ekho Moskvy. Interestingly, one of the stations the government intimidated was its own Mayak, which was long available on shortwave and which can still be heard occasionally with its beautiful rendition of Mussorgsky’s "The Great Gates of Kiev" as its signature tune.
Posted at 4:57 AM
It is good that the Chechen maniacs are not in control of the situation anymore, but it is troubling that the "sleeping gas" that the Russian Army used is most likely a variation on BZ gas which the US gov and Russia have done many experiments with for domestic "crowd control". BZ is a powerful hallucinogen that disturbs the communication of all types of nerve cells with each other. It is much more than a "sleeping gas" and is much more like a nerve agent.
I can’t judge if this was the right thing to do or not considering the cirmumstances, but it is a MUCH more serious action than a "Valium Gas" as reported by the initial reports. BZ is a massively powerful agent that kills many that it comes in contact with. We can now point to Russia as another country, like Iraq, that has used nerve agents against its own people. But we won’t, because we equate the Chechins with Al Quaeda, correctly or not.
Posted by lilbro at 8:26 PM, October 27, 2002 [Link]