Dimitri, point taken ,anyway have a good one all time to go.

good night, Gonzo
talk to you soon..

Russia Deamnds Release Of Seized Tanker

MOSCOW, Feb 3, 2000 -- (Reuters) Russia demanded the immediate release on Thursday of a tanker seized by the U.S. Navy in the Gulf on suspicion of smuggling Iraqi oil in violation of U.N. sanctions, Interfax news agency reported.

"The Russian side resolutely insists the tanker is immediately released," it quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Sredin as saying. Sredin said Russia had "expressed its puzzlement" to the United States and the United Arab Emirates over the incident.

The deputy minister echoing earlier remarks by Transport Minister Sergei Frank, said the tanker Volgoneft-147 was carrying Iranian fuel oil. He said: "The vessel never entered Iraqi territorial waters or Iraqi ports."

Bahrain-based U.S. Commander Jeff Gradeck, spokesman for the multinational interception force enforcing the embargo, earlier told Reuters the tanker had been tracked beginning with its departure from Iraqi waters and was believed to be carrying petroleum products of Iraqi origin. Interfax news agency earlier quoted Frank as saying judging by the ship's log the tanker was involved in transporting oil products from Iran but there was no way to check the ultimate origin of the fuel.

Russian news agencies earlier quoted unnamed Foreign Ministry officials as saying the affair could sour further already strained Russian-U.S. relations. The latest incident came to light a day after Acting President Vladimir Putin held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Moscow.

Ok, im gonna go too, im really tired. See you all tomorrow. Shastlivo Dimitri, udachi Igor. Ciao.

pokeda, Ultra 😉
do zavtra..

oh.. oh I want to BELONG soo badly.. oh please dear kind good Russians accept me as one of you. I will do anything to belong. Look I am not a Caucus black , I'm almost as white as you dear Russians. Oh Oh please Russians let me belong - to be one of you or at least serve you

How I came to Islam

III&E Brochure Series; No. 17
(published by The Institute of Islamic Information and Education (III&E))

---

All I have to say is all what you know already, to confirm what you already know, the message of the Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) as given by God - the Religion of Truth. As human beings we are given a consciousness and a duty that has placed us at the top of creation. Man is created to be God's deputy on earth, and it is important to realize the obligation to rid ourselves of all illusions and to make our lives a preparation for the next life. Anybody who misses this chance is not likely to be given another, to be brought back again and again, because it says in Qur'an Majeed that when man is brought to account, he will say, "O Lord, send us back and give us another chance." The Lord will say, "If I send you back you will do the same."

MY EARLY RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING

I was brought up in the modern world of all the luxury and the high life of show business. I was born in a Christian home, but we know that every child is born in his original nature - it is only his parents that turn him to this or that religion. I was given this religion (Christianity) and thought this way. I was taught that God exists, but there was no direct contact with God, so we had to make contact with Him through Jesus - he was in fact the door to God. This was more or less accepted by me, but I did not swallow it all.

I looked at some of the statues of Jesus; they were just stones with no life. And when they said that God is three, I was puzzled even more but could not argue. I more or less believed it, because I had to have respect for the faith of my parents.

POP STAR

Gradually I became alienated from this religious upbringing. I started making music. I wanted to be a big star. All those things I saw in the films and on the media took hold of me, and perhaps I thought this was my God, the goal of making money. I had an uncle who had a beautiful car. "Well," I said, "he has it made. He has a lot of money." The people around me influenced me to think that this was it; this world was their God.

I decided then that this was the life for me; to make a lot of money, have a 'great life.' Now my examples were the pop stars. I started making songs, but deep down I had a feeling for humanity, a feeling that if I became rich I would help the needy. (It says in the Qur'an, we make a promise, but when we make something, we want to hold onto it and become greedy.)

So what happened was that I became very famous. I was still a teenager, my name and photo were splashed in all the media. They made me larger than life, so I wanted to live larger than life and the only way to do that was to be intoxicated (with liquor and drugs).

IN HOSPITAL

After a year of financial success and 'high' living, I became very ill, contracted TB and had to be hospitalized. It was then that I started to think: What was to happen to me? Was I just a body, and my goal in life was merely to satisfy this body? I realized now that this calamity was a blessing given to me by Allah, a chance to open my eyes - "Why am I here? Why am I in bed?" - and I started looking for some of the answers. At that time there was great interest in the Eastern mysticism. I began reading, and the first thing I began to become aware of was death, and that the soul moves on; it does not stop. I felt I was taking the road to bliss and high accomplishment. I started meditating and even became a vegetarian. I now believed in 'peace and flower power,' and this was the general trend. But what I did believe in particular was that I was not just a body. This awareness came to me at the hospital.

One day when I was walking and I was caught in the rain, I began running to the shelter and then I realized, 'Wait a minute, my body is getting wet, my body is telling me I am getting wet.' This made me think of a saying that the body is like a donkey, and it has to be trained where it has to go. Otherwise, the donkey will lead you where it wants to go.

Then I realized I had a will, a God-given gift: follow the will of God. I was fascinated by the new terminology I was learning in the Eastern religion. By now I was fed up with Christianity. I started making music again and this time I started reflecting my own thoughts. I remember the lyric of one of my songs. It goes like this: "I wish I knew, I wish I knew what makes the Heaven, what makes the Hell. Do I get to know You in my bed or some dusty cell while others reach the big hotel?" and I knew I was on the Path.

I also wrote another song, "The Way to Find God Out." I became even more famous in the world of music. I really had a difficult time because I was getting rich and famous, and at the same time, I was sincerely searching for the Truth. Then I came to a stage where I decided that Buddhism is all right and noble, but I was not ready to leave the world. I was too attached to the world and was not prepared to become a monk and to isolate myself from society.

I tried Zen and Ching, numerology, tarot cards and astrology. I tried to look back into the Bible and could not find anything. At this time I did not know anything about Islam, and then, what I regarded as a miracle occurred. My brother had visited the mosque in Jerusalem and was greatly impressed that while on the one hand it throbbed with life (unlike the churches and synagogues which were empty), on the other hand, an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity prevailed.

THE QUR'AN

When he came to London he brought back a translation of the Qur'an, which he gave to me. He did not become a Muslim, but he felt something in this religion, and thought I might find something in it also.

And when I received the book, a guidance that would explain everything to me - who I was; what was the purpose of life; what was the reality and what would be the reality; and where I came from - I realized that this was the true religion; religion not in the sense the West understands it, not the type for only your old age. In the West, whoever wishes to embrace a religion and make it his only way of life is deemed a fanatic. I was not a fanatic, I was at first confused between the body and the soul. Then I realized that the body and soul are not apart and you don't have to go to the mountain to be religious. We must follow the will of God. Then we can rise higher than the angels. The first thing I wanted to do now was to be a Muslim.

I realized that everything belongs to God, that slumber does not overtake Him. He created everything. At this point I began to lose the pride in me, because hereto I had thought the reason I was here was because of my own greatness. But I realized that I did not create myself, and the whole purpose of my being here was to submit to the teaching that has been perfected by the religion we know as Al-Islam. At this point I started discovering my faith. I felt I was a Muslim. On reading the Qur'an, I now realized that all the Prophets sent by God brought the same message. Why then were the Jews and Christians different? I know now how the Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah and that they had changed His Word. Even the Christians misunderstand God's Word and called Jesus the son of God. Everything made so much sense. This is the beauty of the Qur'an; it asks you to reflect and reason, and not to worship the sun or moon but the One Who has created everything. The Qur'an asks man to reflect upon the sun and moon and God's creation in general. Do you realize how different the sun is from the moon? They are at varying distances from the earth, yet appear the same size to us; at times one seems to overlap the other.

Even when many of the astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space. They become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah.

When I read the Qur'an further, it talked about prayer, kindness and charity. I was not a Muslim yet, but I felt that the only answer for me was the Qur'an, and God had sent it to me, and I kept it a secret. But the Qur'an also speaks on different levels. I began to understand it on another level, where the Qur'an says,

"Those who believe do not take disbelievers for friends and the believers are brothers."

Thus at this point I wished to meet my Muslim brothers.

CONVERSION

Then I decided to journey to Jerusalem (as my brother had done). At Jerusalem, I went to the mosque and sat down. A man asked me what I wanted. I told him I was a Muslim. He asked what was my name. I told him, "Stevens." He was confused. I then joined the prayer, though not so successfully. Back in London, I met a sister called Nafisa. I told her I wanted to embrace Islam and she directed me to the New Regent Mosque. This was in 1977, about one and a half years after I received the Qur'an. Now I realized that I must get rid of my pride, get rid of Iblis, and face one direction. So on a Friday, after Jumma' I went to the Imam and declared my faith (the Kalima) at this hands. You have before you someone who had achieved fame and fortune. But guidance was something that eluded me, no matter how hard I tried, until I was shown the Qur'an. Now I realize I can get in direct contact with God, unlike Christianity or any other religion. As one Hindu lady told me, "You don't understand the Hindus. We believe in one God; we use these objects (idols) to merely concentrate." What she was saying was that in order to reach God, one has to create associates, that are idols for the purpose. But Islam removes all these barriers. The only thing that moves the believers from the disbelievers is the salat. This is the process of purification.

Finally I wish to say that everything I do is for the pleasure of Allah and pray that you gain some inspirations from my experiences. Furthermore, I would like to stress that I did not come into contact with any Muslim before I embraced Islam. I read the Qur'an first and realized that no person is perfect. Islam is perfect, and if we imitate the conduct of the Holy Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) we will be successful. May Allah give us guidance to follow the path of the ummah of Muhammad (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam). Ameen!

-- Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)

PISS FACE--Otherwise you'll have a leakage problem--you already have leakage problem,it is your brain it leaked out a long time ago hence the stutter .

Ismailhukka pipe is bosna

Dimitri,
GO back to Russia and take your smelly self to the cleaners and wipe that stink off.

That long scroll must have been BOOZA I am back ready to stomp all Chechen bandit supporters.

Thank you for being quite. Just do all of us a favor - keep it this way, be a good sport.

taday was I good day
good night everyone.

bye

• World View

by Robert J.
Samuelson

• Periscope
• Letters
• Perspectives
• Interview



RUSSIA
Mothers And Sons

As the Russian death count mounts in Chechnya, the parents of
young conscripts are fighting their own battle: they want to avoid
sending their boys off to die in a seemingly endless war

By Bill Powell
February 7, 2000

Yekaterina Zhadova sensed trouble late last summer when she didn't receive
a letter from her 19-year-old son for more than a month. Nikolai had been
conscripted into the Russian Army in June 1998 and had corresponded
frequently from a base not far from his home in Arzamas, a city of more than
100,000 about 400 kilometers east of Moscow. He had lived there with his
parents in a large, bleak complex of apartment buildings called "Microdistrict
Number 11.'' The fact that he had stopped writing "scared us,'' says his
mother. By mid-September, Russia's latest Chechen war was gathering force.
Troops were in neighboring Dagestan, and soon were rolling into Chechnya
itself. That is what Yekaterina Zhadova was afraid of. On Sept. 24, when she
finally got a letter from Nikolai, concern turned to panic. The postmark was
Voronezh, a southwestern town that lies along the route to the northern
Caucuses. Nikolai wrote that he was participating in "military exercises.'' His
mother didn't believe it. "That's when I realized," she says, "he was on his way
to Chechnya.''

When Zhadova's neighbor in Microdistrict Number 11, Antonina Tsurkan,
received a telegram on Jan. 4, she didn't think much of it. So little, in fact, that
she, a widow with five children, didn't read it right away. Her youngest son,
Andrei, 19, had been in the Army since November 1998, posted with an elite
Spetsnaz unit outside Moscow. Antonina figured the telegram was from
Andrei saying he was coming home for a vacation. In one of his more recent
letters he said his unit had helped "pick and store vegetables" in the
countryside—routine duty for Russian troops. Another letter, dated Nov. 19,
arrived in early December. It said his duty "was going well—even great, if I
may say it—so don't worry." Her son said she should continue writing letters
to him addressed to his base outside Moscow, and they will be delivered "to
where I am now." Then, writing that he had "no time" to produce a longer
letter, Andrei said to his mother and the two of his four siblings still living at
home: "I love you all. Goodbye. See you soon. Your son, Andrei." And then,
just below: "Don't worry about me, Mother. Bye." They were the last words
he would ever write to her. When Antonina finally opened the telegram on
Jan. 4, she learned that Andrei had been killed in Chechnya on Dec. 29.

Chechnya is Vladimir Putin's war. And now, with Russian troops bogged
down in a fierce fight over control of Grozny, it is coming home. Last week,
for the first time, Russian media openly questioned the military's official
casualty count. Acting President Putin's public support has, according to one
reputable polling agency, begun to erode, falling from a 54 percent approval
rating to 49 percent—the first ever dip for the man who hopes to be elected
president in his own right on March 26. In Arzamas—home to three young
men killed so far in the Chechen war—and others towns like it across Russia,
parents with soldier sons are petrified that soon they will receive the kind of
telegram Antonina Tsurkan did last month. Some, in desperate response, try
to find ways to get their sons back. Most fail.

Most, but not all. When Yekaterina Zhadova figured out in September that
Nikolai was in Chechnya, her first stop was the nearest branch of the
Soldiers' Mothers' Committee, one of the few effective antiwar groups in
Russia. During the last war the Mothers' Committee had effectively pressured
the military to account for soldiers either missing in action or kidnapped in
Chechnya. At the office in Nizhny Novgorod, about 110 kilometers north of
Arzamas, the chairwoman told Zhadova to go to the committee's Moscow
headquarters for advice. She borrowed some money from friends and
did—even though her husband thought it was a fool's errand. In Moscow,
another committee representative told her: go to Mozdok, the main Russian
staging base for the Chechen campaign; talk to the officers in charge; do what
you can.

In the early days of the war, a handful of mothers had successfully
cajoled—or bribed—military officials to spring their sons from Mozdok. By
the time Zhadova checked into a women's dormitory near the base in
October, the military was cracking down. She says she was routinely
harassed by "political officers'' at the base who "tried to get rid of me.'' She
persisted. "You can get rid of me,'' she said to one official, "after I see my
son. But I am not going to leave this place until I do.'' Every day for two
weeks she appeared at the office of a commander at Mozdok, a man whom
Zhadova does not want to name because, in the end, he broke under her
relentless persistence. One day she showed up outside his office and asked
again to see him. He wasn't in. Where was he, she asked. Gone, an assistant
replied icily, "to get your son."

On the evening of Oct. 13, a bewildered Nikolai arrived in Mozdok and was
taken to see his mother; both were told he would be returning to Chechnya on
the 15th. That night, Yekaterina did not tell her son what she was up to. But in
her bag she had his civilian clothes and his passport. The next day, she told
him. "I've come not just to see you, but to take you back home with me."

The long train ride to Moscow was tense. Several times police asked
passengers for identification documents; not knowing whether the military was
already looking for Nikolai—now officially a deserter—"we were telling
ourselves to stay calm," Zhadova says. "But we were really nervous." Once
they got to Arzamas, the Mothers' Committee representative in Nizhny
Novgorod advised Zhadova to explain the situation to the local military
prosecutor—and to ask that Nikolai be assigned anywhere other than
Chechnya. Zhadova agreed, albeit warily. "Thank God," she says, that when
she and Nikolai met with the prosecutor, "he acted like a normal human
being." He asked Nikolai what he wanted. His reply: "To serve somewhere
else."

In Russia, desertion is punishable by up to seven years of prison. Not for
lucky Nikolai. He was reassigned, to a base in Mulino, about 600 kilometers
from Arzamas. He could, conceivably, be sent back again to Chechnya, but
for now he sits at home, safe and warm, having broken his hand in late
December.

About a month after Nikolai returned to Arzamas, his mother and Antonina
Tsurkan met, for the first time, as they were walking to their apartments.
Zhadova told Tsurkan her story. Antonina was unimpressed. She didn't
realize then that her own son was in Chechnya, and besides, she says, "I have
three sons, and all served in the military. I've always thought it was their duty
to defend the motherland. Before, when we were young, we wouldn't even
date guys who had not been to the Army."

Andrei Tsurkan had not known Nikolai, but he did know a young man named
Aleksei Spirin; they had been in the same first-grade class in Arzamas. Like
Tsurkan, Spirin had also been drafted in November 1998, and less than a
year later was headed for Chechnya. In contrast to Andrei, who hid the truth
from his mother, Spirin gave vent to his fears in a letter his parents received on
Sept. 27. "Maybe this is the last time I will write to you. We will go to
Dagestan to fight... just pray that I will be OK. I don't know what else to
write, I have no words; I am really nervous... Maybe we will see each other
again... Goodbye. Kisses. I love you with all my heart."

When Sergei Spirin, Aleksei's father, received that letter from his only child,
he and his wife, Antonina, were stunned. Aleksei had a chronic blood
problem, and had recently been hospitalized in Podolsk, a town outside
Moscow near where his unit was stationed. He also had terrible eyesight. "He
wanted to be a construction worker but his sight was so bad he wasn't
accepted to any vocational school," his father says.

Nor, according to his father, had Aleksei received any combat training.
Before going to Chechnya he was assigned to the "boiler crew" that supplies
heat and hot water to the unit. "The only day he ever held a gun was the day
[he was inducted]," his father says. Furious at his son's plight, Sergei took all
of Aleksei's medical records to Podolsk and tried to convince officers there
that they had made a big mistake. He did not have Yekaterina Zhadova's
luck. A master sergeant "tore up the documents" he had brought and "threw
them in the toilet." On Oct. 27, 1999, rebel fighters attacked the post in
Chechnya that Aleksei Spirin was defending, and killed him.

Arzamas, says local journalist Nadezhda Atrova, is "in a state of shock." And
not just because their sons have begun to die, but because the conscipts now
in Chechnya seem so pathetically unfit for battle. Aleksei Viktorovich Karpov
served as a warrant officer in the Army for seven years. Now an electrician,
he says he always raised his son, Roman, to "be prepared to serve in the
Army." Inducted, like Spirin and Tsurkan, on Nov. 19, 1998, Roman
Karpov, the only child of Aleksei and his wife Galina, had taken target
practice just twice. "And he missed the target both times," his father says. On
Christmas Eve, Roman was shot three times in the chest while manning a
checkpoint in the Chechen city of Gudermes.

"I don't understand these people who unleashed this massacre where our kids
die," Aleksei says, weeping. "They are not human. There is a political motive
for this. Nobody attacked us. And we sent our sons there... Now we are left
alone. Our life has stopped." Until last week neither Aleksei nor his wife had
heard of Yekaterina Zhadova's success in spiriting her son away from the war
that has claimed their son. Choking with grief, he considers her tale, and then
simply says, "Well done—I support her."

The three 19-year-old boys from Arzamas now lie next to each other in a
cemetery across a shallow ravine from Microdistrict Number 11. All three
graves are marked by polished black headstones bearing their likenesses.
Early last Wednesday morning it was 19 below zero in Arzamas. The Spirins
and Galina Karpova were tending their sons' graves; they brought orange
slices and biscuits to lay on top of them. To Orthodox Christians, the spirits
are alight in the morning and need to be fed. A wisp of frost had obscured
part of Roman Karpov's image on his gravestone. His mother, Galina, bent
over and rubbed at it and rubbed at it, sobbing all the while. "My son," she
cried, "my son. You got so cold, oh, God, you got so cold."

Across the ravine from the cemetery, Nikolai Zhadov waits to report back for
duty in Mulino. His mother says she will go there first to argue that he doesn't
need to return; to argue that according to the law his two months in combat
plus his service before that fulfills his commitment to the Army. Her powers of
persuasion are obvious enough. "Maybe we'll know something after she
goes," Nikolai says hopefully, as his grandmother prepares him a hot lunch.
As she does so, over and over she says, "We just don't ever want him to go
back."