"I agree with your opening comment. Reading Dan's post on Chechnya, I was wondering how the old USSR seemed to have total control of that situation. Maybe there were some problems and they controlled the news that came out of Chechnya."

The old USSR had interesting ways of controlling the Union. One of them was to station Asian troops in European areas, and vice versa. Or at least the "Homeland Occupation" troops were from a ways off. They could have Georgians in Estonia, and Estonians in Kazakhistan, and so forth.

When they invaded Hungary they used Mongolian troops, as the Europeans might not have been as brutal to other Europeans.

The central government was willing to be ruthless, but that's only half the story. The other half is that the "foreign" troops were willing to be ruthless. It's an effective technique.

"Your comments on the "us vs. them" thing has me baffled. If the violence between Hindus and Muslims is not a Muslim or Hindu thing and "RACE" riots are not a black/white thing, then prithee, what are they?"

Haven't seen "prithee" in communications for a long time. A sort of "Pray, tell", I'd guess.

I think you're right, they are a (name a group) against (name a different group) thing. My point, not well explained, is that diversity doesn't seem to work well much of the time, and when you get ANY two groups in close proximity there's bound to be trouble. Goes for all kinds of groups, North Ireland and Ireland, US Army and US Navy, fundamental Christians and the rest of Christianity, and so on.

So while it is Muslim against Hindu, Palestinians against Israeli, and so on, it's also just group against group, any "us" against some "them" and until people learn that this is one Earth and there are other ways to resolve conflicts (there are) that sort of thing will go on and it doesn't make much difference who.

And that's just one pooch's ponderings.

Arf