COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Consortium News writes: “The revelation that the family of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings was from Chechnya prompted new speculation about the attack as Islamic terrorism. Less discussed was the history of U.S. neocons supporting Chechen terrorists as a strategy to weaken Russia, as ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley recalls.” She is available for a limited number of interviews. Read her piece: “Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons.”
Rowley is a retired FBI agent and former chief division counsel in Minneapolis. She is currently in Texas and just wrote the piece “Why We’re Going to Dallas for the People’s Response to the Bush Lie-Bury.”
BEAU GROSSCUP, bgrosscup at csuchico.edu
Grosscup is author of several books on terrorism including Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment. He said today: “In this very fluid situation there are some obvious realities. Regardless of the events in Boston, there are lots of people in central Asia angry at the nation they hold responsible for their difficult and deteriorating situation. Religiously, those people accept the analysis of Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington that the core issue is a clash of civilizations (Christian vs Muslim). Politically, the U.S. support for dictatorships in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan, its vast system of military bases, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and semi-occupation of Pakistan are all interpreted as aggressive acts of U.S. imperialism.”
On Chechnya Grosscup recalls “the Bush/Putin political deal in the wake of 9/11 in which, in exchange for Russian support of the U.S. ‘War on Terror,’ the U.S. would ignore Putin’s state terrorism that was ravaging Chechnya, specifically its capital city Grosny.
“The international financial system’s (IMF, World Bank, BIS [Bank for International Settlements]) push for privatized economies in the former Soviet Republics, backed by U.S. and European capital has wreaked economic and social havoc on the vast majority of Central Asian people while enriching the politically connected few.”
