Now I know where my taxes go, or Appeasing the unsatiale?

I really should stop reading news. Reading this article have confirmed what I always knew: The taxes I pay are used in many ways... almost none of which is beneficial.

You see, Ruud Gullit is considered a star. And why should a veritable star choose to train the backwater team in bandit-infested place? Ok, the challenge may play a big part in it, but he would expect the adequate compensation for it. Chechnya isn't exactly the safest place in Russia.

But surely they can afford it, right? Well, the answer is: Yes. The industry in Chechnya was destroyed during the wars, many of the people who stayed there seem to forget how to do honest work, but there are money in Chechnya. I have heard tons of stories from my friends about Chechens coming to China and buying stuff like furniture, expensive lighting fixtures, gilded toilets (yes, they make these here) in quantities that make the palaces of Tzars look like a woodsman's cabin. But how do they get the money?

The first answer that comes to mind is crime. When there's war, drug trafficking and slavery (yes, some of these Chechen 'freedom fighters' did keep slaves) – some people are bound to get rich. But again, as my sources have told me, the people coming to China for gilded toilets were nothing of the kind, they were no murderers and slave drivers. Some of them were sometimes arrogant and pompous, but no drug traffickers between them.

Quite a lot of Chechens have fled to the interior Russia, or have moved there long before the war started. There are prominent businessmen of Chechen persuasion... but they are not the ones buying 50-meter Jacuzzi pools in China (they order them from Italy). So how come these men are so rich?

Well, after the war they decided to rebuild Chechnya with the idea that if Chechens had honest work to do, homes to live in and some peace they will stop killing schoolchildren and taking people in hospitals hostage. It almost worked (there still are terrorist bombings, but that's what you get with radical ideology – radical Islam in this case – infiltrating your country). But the plan did not work as planned, it seems.

But the policy of appeasing the Chechens has some rather spectacular failures. Every nation on Earth has it's share of jerks. Chechen jerks sometimes are being rather loud, what with "Chechen Pride parades" that were popular some years before (all the stupidity of Gay Pride parade, but with gun firing and reckless driving) and firing guns in the center of Moscow now and then, but the cases are often dismissed in courts as they claim it to be "the national tradition". But again, the jerks are a small (although loud) minority, and "being a jerk" is in no way a defining characteristic of Chechen people in general. And again, the people building palaces in Chechnya are not of this sort.

The answer is simple. Russia have been pumping money into Chechnya from the moment the Kadyrov clique took power. Right now everyone with any influence there is swimming in money and they build palaces and equip their motorcades with Porsches, as their mentality is on the feudal level. So it's our tax money that pays for the football hobby of Kadyrov, for the palaces with garages filled with Porsches and gilded human waste receptacles. And their appetites are growing...