BARRY'S BUDDY BILLY

Bill Ayers, circa 1970.

 Barry’s ol’ pal Bill "Boom Boom" Ayers was briefly back in the news again. Billy was speaking at the campus of Kent State University where, in a Vietnam War Protest in 1970, four protesters were shot by Ohio National Guardsmen in what became known as the Kent State Massacre.

After four days and three nights of rioting in the streets, smashing windows, burning down buildings, as well as on-and-off pelting of policemen, firemen and National Guardsmen with rocks, bricks, bottles, tear gas canisters and profanities, some 29 of the Ohio National Guardsmen present fired their M1 Garands into a crowd of several hundred protestors. When the smoked cleared, four students lay dead and nine wounded. It was and still is a tragedy.

Personally, though, I find the cause-and-effect pretty easy to follow. If I were dealing with a couple of platoons of confused and nervous young men with loaded rifles being surrounded by a huge mob, I would probably not start hurling profanities and bricks into their faces to defuse the situation. It’s kind of like one of those TV animal show idiots. “Krikey! Didja see that? When I poked that Black Mamba in the pills with a cattle prod, it struck me!” No shit, Sherlock. Who’da thunk?

Anyway, Bill Ayers was there at Kent State giving some kind of speech about it. Probably something along the lines of, “Their sacrifices will not be in vain because now we’re in charge and next time we’ll be shooting them down in the streets and we’ll fire a lot more than 67 bullets and it will be justified this time because we’re doing it!”

That would be my guess anyway, since when asked by a reporter to compare his own terrorist actions in setting off bombs and trying to kill people with the recent Boston Marathon Bombers’ terrorist actions in setting off bombs and trying to kill people, Ayers threw a typical uber-Liberal hissy bitch fit.

“How dare you compare our activism to their terrorism?!?! Setting off bombs and killing people in order to further wacko Leftist/Communist causes is good, clean, all-American freedom of speech and for the benefit of all mankind. Setting off bombs and killing people to advance religion, any religion, even the Religion of Peace, is an abomination and must not be tolerated!”

He finished by calling John McCain a baby killer. Or words to that effect; I didn’t have the stomach to listen to it all.

For those who get their news from the MSM and think Bill Ayers is an “activist”, “retired professor” and an “American elementary education theorist”, we’ll have to bring you up to speed. Bill Ayers was (is) a genuine domestic terrorist, even though he’s never been to a Tea Party rally nor joined the NRA or ever gone to Mass. As a charter member of the 1960’s radical Communist terrorist group Weather Underground, Billy Boy was involved in detonating bombs at the U.S. Capital Building, the Pentagon, and police stations around the country. Such terrorism was actually just a perfectly legitimate way of showing displeasure with the Vietnam War, at least now that Nixon rather than Kennedy or Johnson was running it, according to Terrorist Bill.

As to his own bomb-throwing days, Bill said in a 2000 interview (while trying to promote one of his books…although I’m certain that such an avowed Communist would never take money from a Capitalist publisher) "I don't regret setting bombs" and, "I feel we didn't do enough" and implied some more bombing might even be in order. After getting his tit caught in a wringer over that, Bill later claimed Weather Underground only engaged in “acts of extreme radicalism against property” and didn’t hurt anyone.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Perhaps the biggest real difference between Ayers’ Weather Underground and the Boston Bombers was one of sheer incompetence rather than lack of deadly intent. When members of the Black Panther Party were on trial for a plot to bomb New York City landmarks and apartment stores, Bill and the Weather Underground tried to ride to the rescue of their fellow left-wing terrorists by attacking the home of the trial’s presiding judge with Molotov cocktails in the middle of the night. Fortunately for the judge and his sleeping family, the intricacies of Molotov technology were just too much for the future college professor and education innovator; Ayers & Co. only succeeded in damaging the family car and melting down a snowman in the yard with their cocktails.

After setting off a couple of real bombs which disappointingly only caused minor damage to the Pentagon and U.S. Capital Building, Bill decided they’d better step things up a bit and commit better radical acts against property. Bill’s Weather Underground sweetheart and two male buddies attempted to construct a really nice bomb by packing steel pipes full of dynamite surrounded by roofing nails and fencing staples, since it’s obviously shrapnel and not blast which radically damages property but doesn’t hurt people. The bomb was destined for nearby army post Fort Dix, NJ, where it was to be exploded in the midst of a family dance at the Enlisted Men’s club, where it no doubt would have done some really radical crepe paper and bottled beverage property damage but was not intended, according to Ayers, to actually hurt anyone in the crowded dancehall when it exploded in a hail of shrapnel.

Since the whole gasoline-in-a-glass-bottle concept of the earlier Molotov cocktails had proven too much for the combined intellect of the Weather Underground, it should come as no big surprise that in the debate over whether to connect the wire to the blasting cap before or after connecting it to the battery, the three terrorists obliterated themselves and indeed the entire four-story townhouse they were in the basement of at the time. Most people would call such wanna-be bombers morons; Bill calls them heroic martyrs for the people.

Bill told an FBI informant in the 1970’s he was pissed because there just weren’t enough bombings being carried out around the country, as per his instructions, presumably for lack of resolve but just as likely from lack of fingers amongst the Intellectual Left’s bomb making experts. Brave Bomber Bill even had to personally send his replacement sweetheart and eventual wife, Bernadine Dohrn, to go plant another TNT-and-shrapnel bomb at a San Francisco police station. When the bomb exploded it committed several radical acts against the police station itself, but also “accidentally” just happened to kill Police Sgt. Brian McDonnell in the process.

Bill and Bernadine spent most of the 70’s on the run from the law, but did find time along the way to get married, the joyous occasion marred by tragedy when fellow Weather Underground friends attempting to tie tin cans and shoes to the bumper of the newlyweds’ car blew it up, injuring twelve people.

Due to another surprising development, FBI misconduct, in 1980 Federal charges against Bill and Bernie were dropped. But the California state charges against Bernadine remained. For the murder of an on-duty police officer, she was hit with the heart-breaking sentence of three years’ probation and a $1,500 fine. That’ll teach her.

Now released from life underground evading the authorities, Bill went to school to become an educator, a highly acclaimed expert in such subjects as (I can’t even make this up) “social justice” and “urban education reform”, but failing miserably (three times) a freshmen-level chemistry class entitled “Black Wire Safe, Red Wire Boom!”. Eventually he became, and again I can’t make this shit up, a "Distinguished Professor of Education" and "Senior Anniversary Scholar" at the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In his spare time, he devoted his towering intellect to caring for the badly burned former students of his short-lived Molotov 101 course.

Bill also worked closely with and for the City of Chicago and former Mayor Richard M. Daley, playing a major role in reforming the Chicago Public School System into what it is today, namely a great big lump of shit and the worst in the country. To this day, the surviving students at Karl Marx Junior High still use a statue of Bill Ayers to hide behind when the daily bursts of gang-related gunfire become too thick to run through. He also wrote a bunch of books nobody but liberal kooks ever read, such as (still not making it up) Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom and Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, and Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970-1974, as well as two autobiographies using the pen name Barack Hussein Obama. He officially retired from teaching in 2010 but vowed to remain, “an arrogant, mouthy pain in the ass” for as long as his city needed him.

There was some controversy concerning the relationship between Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers during the 2008 Election. Obama smoothly explained away the misunderstanding on CNN.

“Sure, maybe we sat together on some exclusive 6-9 member boards of directors for a few different foundations for years at a time, and he may have held an occasional fund raiser and coffee klatch or wife swap in his living room for me. Possibly, he babysat my children once or twice when they were young, from ages two to eight. When he gave money to my campaigns, I took it. It’s not inconceivable that he wrote an autobiography or two for me. I may have even taken long, hot showers with him and perhaps referred to him using playful nicknames such as ‘Obi-Wan’ and ‘Guru’ and ‘Massah’.”

“But to suggest that this cra-a-a-a-zy radical kook is anything more than just some guy I bumped into down in da ‘hood or has influenced me any way, shape or form is just a vicious smear campaign of lies hurled against me by a pathetic and desperate McCain Campaign and Fox News because they’re racists!”

Afterwards, the assembled MSM journalists looked at their watches and minutely dissected Obama’s speech for any discrepancies and, after upwards of 1/10^th of a second of this exhaustive fact-checking, said, “Obama said it. Must be true. Let’s go file our stories and get shit-faced! We sure dodged that bullet!"

The trend continues to this day. This is why Obama can make a “joke” at a recent press banquet that’s he’s not the same “young Muslim Socialist” he once was and the assembled hacks all titter like school girls.

The Press has bent over backwards to ignore Obama’s membership in the Socialist Party ever since 2008. When merely not reporting the story wasn’t enough to make it go away, the bastards actually ran interference for the sonofabitch. Five years later, this past February, the investigative journalists of the Associated Press went so far as to pool their vast information gathering resources to run another “fact check” investigation to definitively dismiss the entire story as just a right wing kook tinfoil hat myth perpetrated by racists.

Then, two weeks later, the very minutes of the New Party Chicago’s own January 11, 1996 meeting are unveiled as proof positive that Barry not only joined the radical New Party Socialist order, but took and signed their oath, and asked for their endorsement.

The MSM immediately reacted with…THUNDEROUS SILENCE. If we don’t report it, and pretend it never happened, then it didn’t. At least as far as the average evening news-watching sheeple is concerned.

So, if the little “joke” about him being a Socialist is actually true, what about the Muslim thing? While I do think he has strong Islamic tendencies and sympathies, not even I think Barack is a real Muslim. That would require belief in a higher power than Barack Obama.

Now that’s a myth. Just ask the media.

Comrade Obama Declares "Loyalty Day"

May Day (now "Loyalty Day") celebration in Soviet Union.

 





May 1st, historically an important day to the world's communists and socialists, has now officially been declared "Loyalty Day" in the U.S. by Premier Obama. (No folks, we just can't make this stuff up.)

In his official proclamation announcing the day of Loyalty to the state, Obama declares "we have reaffirmed our faith in the ideals that inspired our founding," referring to the generation of Americans who rebelled against their own king and the form of government that they had been born into.  The day will supposedly "recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation."

Obama also states: "On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America, our Constitution, and our founding values." Unfortunately, thanks to power-hungry politicians like Obama, allegiance to the latter two items is increasingly making loyalty to the former more difficult every day.

THE 70'S LIVE! RAINY DAY ROCKFORD FILES

 Hey, it's the 70's! I can smoke a cigarette...on TV...while driving!

After ten days of snow and rain, followed by a couple days of high wind warnings, then going back to snow and rain, I started going stir crazy not being able to do much of anything outside. So I broke down and turned on the TV.          
          Other than in the evenings with my wife, I seldom, if ever, watch TV. We have a dish, not being able to pick up any TV stations out here in the sticks otherwise, but even when I’m really bored I can’t seem to find anything worth watching while flipping through the approximately 9,432 channels available.
          In desperation one day last week, as the sleet came down horizontally against the window, I just happened to surf through the old TV series available on Netflix Instant. It wasn't looking a whole lot better than the dish. Most of the series I saw fell into the category, "Hated it when it was on, why the hell would I want to see it again?"

          Suddenly, there was James Garner's face, looking kind of cocky and bemused, an orange Pacific sunset in the background, and over it all were transposed the words The Rockford Files. Things suddenly seemed a little brighter. I sat down with the remote, picked a random episode, and started watching.

          It was kind of like catching up with an old friend. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. James Garner as private investigator Jim Rockford was always the epitome of cool; women wanted him and men wanted to be like him. I still love to hear that Mike Post/John Carpenter theme song with the electric guitar and harmonica. Yeah, the loud 1970’s wardrobes are appropriately cheesy, the cars are old road-oiling Detroit dinosaurs, and the haircuts atrocious, but so what? It was just as good as I recalled, perhaps even better now.

          For starters, I didn’t remember the show being so gritty. The world is out to screw you and people can’t be trusted; Jim Rockford knows this well and acts accordingly. He’s not a glamor boy; he wears cheap sports jackets and lives in a piece of shit old trailerhouse on the edge of a parking lot at the beach. Creditors and bookies fill the telephone answering machine, something that was state-of-the-art technology at the time. 
          "This is the message phone company. I see you're using our unit, now how about paying for it?"

Jim is definitely his own man. Jim is a smartass and does not play well with others. When it pays to be tough and sarcastic, Jim is tough and sarcastic. When it pays to be tactful and polite, Jim is tough and sarcastic. Even if he knows the toes he steps on today are attached to the ass he will have to kiss tomorrow, he goes right ahead and stomps on those toes anyway.

          We know Jim served time in prison, San Quentin, something unheard of for a television good guy at the time. I don’t remember the show ever coming right out and saying what he went to prison for, but we get the distinct impression it was a bum rap. Jim is more than happy to put to good use all those little cons’ tricks of the trade he learned in prison in his new profession.

Jim fought in Korea, where we get the idea he was one of those soldiers who got promoted in combat and busted as soon as his unit pulled back far enough to be out of earshot of small arms fire. Field Marshall Sir Earl Wavell once defined the ideal infantryman as “cat-burglar, gunman, and poacher” with“ a seasoning of devilry.” He was talking about guys like Jim Rockford, guys who win the war against the enemy but lose the peace against the system.
          When the beautiful young damsels in distress used to come up to good old Thomas Magnum, P.I. with fluttering eye lashes and a sob story, he used to fall for them instantly, hook, line and sinker. When one comes to Jim he immediately starts grilling her and trying to trip her up on her story to see whether the bitch is actually just trying to run some kind of con on him. Actually not a bad policy when it comes to strange women, or even not-so-strange women for that matter. My wife excepted, of course.

 Jim doesn’t trust anybody, not easily, except for his dad Rocky, a retired trucker who’d rather be fishing. Even old prison or army buddies who come to Jim for help usually don’t get much traction until they show him some cash. If it’s a check, they have to wait till it clears the bank.

 Wisely, he doesn’t even trust cops or government agents whom he doesn’t know, only his long-suffering old buddy LAPD Sgt. Dennis Becker. I’m kinda getting that way myself, when I get out of my own county where I don’t know the sheriff and most of the deputies on a first name basis. Especially in big cities. Big city and federal prosecutors often prefer “easy-to-catch” to “actually guilty” when it comes to resume building or preparing to run for office.

          The Federal agents Jim meets are sometimes crooked and almost always arrogant and overbearing. They are more than happy to overstep their bounds and step all over Jim’s Constitutional rights simply because they've gotten away with such behavior in the past. Jim is always quick and loud in reminding them of his rights, as is his attorney Beth Davenport (whom someone around here used to have a crush on when he was a pup) and I've even heard them say the "C" word right out loud. On television! Jim is also more than happy to trip up the “friendly” feds to get them out of his way and ready to figure out how to set the crooked ones up to get busted, with a little help from honest cop Dennis.

          In today’s television world, cops and government agents are expected to shit all over the Constitution in every episode. They stomp all over everybody’s Civil Rights, deliberately break every rule in the book, and get extra points for every Amendment they ignore and all the while we've been conditioned to cheer them on as they do. All is forgiven as long as you catch the bad guy in the end, even if you destroy the Republic and leave behind entire cities in cratered ruins in the process.(Just don't falsely accuse a Muslim, the one cardinal sin!)

          On the other end of things, Jim knows that the rules which the system tries to enforce upon him are bullshit. He knows damn well he’s breaking the law when he takes that little Colt .38 snubbie revolver out of the cookie jar and slips it into his waistband. And he doesn’t care. Neither does Dennis when nobody else is looking. Permit? We don' need no steenkin' permit.          
          Jim can handle a gun, but he can't shoot it out successfully against a half a dozen Mafia enforcers with sub-machine guns and chopped .30 carbines (AK-47s were restricted to use by Commie guerrillas in distant lands in the 1970's). Although I did see one episode where Producer Stephen Cannell must have been smoking a little weed; Jim takes out a guy clean at about a hundred yards with his 2-inch .38 snubbie. Hey, not even I'm that good. Maybe Chuck Norris.

          Jim’s a tough guy, but he can’t take out a half a dozen bad guys at once with perfect right crosses and roundhouse kicks in a 2-minute brawl.  In fact, Jim gets the shit kicked out of him on a fairly regular basis. When Jim fights, he fights dirty to inflict hurt on the other guy to keep that other guy from doing the same to him, which is what fights really come down to in the real world.

        Car chases were a bit more realistic in those days. Jim’s a wheel man, but doesn’t perform any flaming five hundred foot jumps through streams of tracer fire between exploding parking garages. He drives that famous gold Pontiac Firebird, and supposedly James Garner did his own driving for the show, as well as other stunts. When pursued, he’d power brake to a stop, throw it in reverse, race through the bad guys backwards, then crank the wheel hard right over and spin around. It's a real evasive driving move and we actually used to call the maneuver “whipping a Rockford”. 
          Not that Jim always got away. The pursuers were, after all, driving those big old lumbering 1970’s gas-guzzling American-made tanks, when engines were defined by horsepower rather than voltage, and people actually wanted to purchase them.
          So, the next time there's nothing good on television (which is pretty much anytime Duck Dynasty or Swamp People isn't on) time-travel back to the 70's and give ol' Jim Rockford a call. If he's not there, leave your name and message and he'll get back to you.

HAS AUSSIE JIM BEEN IN RUSSIA LATELY?

Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: “We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.”

Scientists at Russia’s famous Pulkovo Observatory are convinced that the world is in for a period of global cooling.

Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.

LINKIE

IN DEFENSE OF CHECHENS

Today, we'll include a column from a very Special Guest who'll shed some light on Chechnya, a place most Americans had  never even heard of until last week.

Americans are, in general, ignorant. Especially of anything outside of America, which sometimes to them can include Alaska and Hawaii. Ignorant to to the point of stupidity and blissfully ignorant. We even have numerous large government entities, such as the Department of Education, as well as a dedicated state-run media to keep us blissfully ignorant.

Since they don't know their own history, we can hardly expect the sheeple to have any knowledge of someone else's history. Or even geographical location. Or existence. Today, I kid you not, the Czechs are frustrated as hell because Americans can't figure out the difference between "Czech" and "Chechen". If we start talking about Grozny, expect to hear lots of Americans saying, "Gesundheit" immediately afterwards.

As part of general world history, both of the places mentioned above, as well as the Korean Peninsula, India-Pakistan, parts of Africa, most of eastern Europe as well as large portions of the Middle East have seen copious amounts of blood shed over the years for various causes. For the past century or so this has been thanks in no small part to large military super powers (UK, USA, USSR) who, immediately following world wars, arrogantly and almost arbitrarily draw imaginary lines on maps to create instant nation-states which appear to conveniently suit their own foreign policy needs at the moment.

PARIS, 1919: "Hey look! Here are three separate groups of a few million people who have distinctly different cultures, are geographically isolated from one another and all hate each others guts with a passion! Let's draw a line around them all and call it Iraq!"

"Sounds good. Should we consult anyone who lives there?"

"No, that sounds like a great deal of bother and it's almost time for tea."

I caught a bit of Hannity's talk show Voice of the RNC on the truck radio yesterday while on my weekly trip to the town dump (I live an exciting life). Apparently, I'm no longer a "conservative" because, strangely, I don't believe boy bomber Tsarnaev should be tried as an "enemy combatant". He was and is an American citizen at the time of his crime, so he should be afforded all the rights of an American citizen when tried, although realistically I know that some citizens are more equal than others in our increasingly dyslexic federal criminal justice system. I just don't think foreign nationals/non-citizens should be accorded any of the same rights and "protections" of an actual American citizen, whether they are blowing up people, sneaking into the country illegally, or just getting you and I to pay for their healthcare. Hence, were big brother Tsarnaev alive he would be an "enemy combatant" as he had never gotten his citizenship. You either are one or you ain't one, simple as that.

I'm not particularly anti-Chechen either. In general, I sympathize with a smaller country seeking independence from a larger, heavily-armed neighbor.

I am anti-Islamic; I don't believe it to even remotely resemble a "Religion of Peace". By its own holy tenets it calls for conversion, enslavement, or death for all of us infidels, the "vilest of animals", whom God does not even love. Hey, if you want to go back to the Eleventh Century and treat women like meat, be my guest, just don't include me and mine in your little plans. But that's a cat we'll skin some other time.

However, I am also in total agreement with our guest and with David Kilcullen's Accidental Guerrilla theory, in that Super-powers sending troops to invade and then occupy foreign countries for years or even decades, whether under the guise of "keeping the peace", "fighting terrorism" or "installing democracy" does nothing but create more jihadists by the bushel. It doesn't matter whether you're talking T-80s and Hinds in Grozny or M1 Abrams and Apaches in Baghdad.

Even non-Muslims will get pissed off when you invade their homeland. Consider the barefoot, dirt-poor Confederate private captured after a battle in Georgia during the American Civil War. A Union officer noted that he obviously did not own slaves, and never would, so why was he fighting? "I'm fighting because you're down here." If a battalion of Pakistani troops came and occupied our town tomorrow, you can bet your ass I'd be one of the first in line to go shoot at them.

Since we'll never get national governments, let alone world governments, (and at least one major religion) to stop interfering in other country's and people's affairs, I'll finally put you into the hands of our Special Guest Columnist who can at least explain what can happen as a result of such meddling. Our guest has considerable knowledge of and has traveled extensively in Russia and many parts of the former Soviet Union both before and after the collapse of Communism there. Our guest can not only locate places like Kyrgyzstan, Tbilisi or Azerbaijan on a map, but can also correctly pronounce them. We don't don't let just anybody in here, so listen up.

I used your Christmas present to buy Gulag, by Anne Appelbaum, which I would recommend to you if you don't mind 600 pages of gruelingly depressing reading.  I was reading it at the same time that a Holocaust speaker came to Cedar Rapids, and I was struck by how much we know about the Holocaust, and how little we ever hear about the Gulags and exiles of Soviet times.  Anyhow, this leads me to your blog.

I am  afraid to post to your blog, [Probably because Ben is so mean-Ed] but I feel the Chechens in general (not the Tsarnaev brothers, who seem to be pretty much evil and sociopathic) have gotten a bad rap.  I would argue that the Russian approach to Chechnya helped turn a mostly secular national movement into a holy war with support from throughout the Muslim world.

When the Soviet Union began splitting up in 1991, the Chechens, who had never really wanted to be part of Russia or the Soviet Union used this as a chance to try to declare independence.  While the Chechens were historically Muslim, Islam in the Caucasus was traditionally a fairly tolerant and mild religion, nothing like the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia or Taliban in Afghanistan.  During the years of Soviet rule, much of the population had become pretty secular and the leader of the independence movement was Djokhar Dudaev, a former Soviet general married to a blond Lutheran from Estonia.

During the first Chechen war in the 90s, the Russian troops were underfunded, demoralized, and ill-equipped to fight with the guerrillas. They used carpet bombing and massive aerial strikes, killing civilians and rendering cities and villages uninhabitable. There were many documented instances of Russian troops, sometimes irregulars from neighboring republics, raping women and girls and slaughtering civilians. At one point, something like 40% of the population of the country was displaced, many of them in IDP or refugee camps.   To the best of my knowledge, the first Chechen attack on a civilian target (a horrible hostage-taking at a hospital in Budyonovsk) in greater Russia didn't happen until 1995, as a way of forcing Yeltsin to negotiate more seriously.  The mistreatment of Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia were endlessly used as propaganda to fan pan-Islamic hatred of the West and lead to calls for jihad.
The first Chechen war helped set the stage for the later terrorist acts, general lawlessness, and kidnappings and hostage-takings that have made Chechnya ungovernable until this day and spread into the rest of the region. The second Chechen war had much more of an Islamic character.  The current president, appointed by the Russian government and not elected by the Chechen people, is supposedly Muslim and is in favor of outward displays of Islam like the hijab, but has also been implicated in corruption and human rights violations.

And why were the Tsarnaevs in Kyrgyzstan?

During the 40s, virtually the entire Chechen and Ingush populations (men, women, children, elderly and invalids) were deported thousands of miles to the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Siberian steppes, traveling in unheated cattle cars and often without food, water, or toilets. They were dumped in villages with no supplies, and with a local population that was already underfed and lacking resources, didn't share a common language, and didn't want them there. Of course, many died in transport or in exile, before finally being allowed to return to Chechnya after 1956. Many returned to find their homes and farms claimed by someone else. 

Those who stayed in Central Asia often experienced mistrust and discrimination.  Although the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz are also Muslim, the cultures don't have much in common.  During Soviet times, ethnic Russians were often favored for jobs or educational opportunities; after independence, ethnic Kyrgyz or Kazakhs had the upper hand.

So, I'm not writing this because this sad history excuses what the Tsarnaevs did, but I hate to see an entire people labeled as terrorists.  I have met only a few Chechens, but they were warm, hospitable, and deeply honorable people.