I’m glad you do, because this is basically the saga of Kommersant Vlast’s publication of its investigation on falsifications in the Russian legislative elections. It has not been removed from the Internet, to the contrary you can still read it on their site and comment on it. It is an extensive work, titled “United Stuffers” (a play on United Russia) featuring a collection of twelve articles. The only part of it that was subject to “censorship” – and the reason given by its tycoon owner Alisher Usmanov for the dismissal of the editor who approved it – is the photograph below:

“PUTIN, GO FUCK YOURSELF.”

The literal translation is different, it sounds something along the lines of “Putin go to the cock” but the meaning is as above. Okay, you might think this is edgy, controversial stuff; perhaps grounds for a warning, but probably not a firing. But then consider the caption: “Correctly filled out ballot, ruled spoiled.” If you think this is anything but a double entendre used by an editor to spell out his feelings for Putin, I have a bridge to sell you to Russky Island. Needless to say, whatever your personal feelings about swearwords, there is no doubt that this would be completely unacceptable in a major newspapers in reference to any Western political leader. This is the Russian version of the NYT we’re talking about, not The eXile.

What this would have looked like in the US… How long would the editor who approved the photo to the right keep his job? Hmm… a few minutes?

It is telling that even in the comments to the article (which was left unchanged apart from the removal of the offending photo) most readers – and Kommersant’s readers tend to be relatively liberal – agree that it was unacceptable.

And now you can’t find Putin’s cock on Kommersant! (Yes, the file was literally called that)

Incidentally, this particular article itself was about the voting in London. It was pretty interesting. Our good man Andrei Sidelnikov, the Strategy-31 Abroad organizer whom I’ve written about here, makes an appearance. There were clear violations of the electoral law (e.g. anti-United Russia political campaign materials close to the polling station). The ballot with big orange letters “addressed personally to the Prime Minister” (as the writer calls the ballot that is the subject of this post) was marked spoiled, which apparently is “in contradiction of the law” because, despite its defacement, there was nonetheless a clear cross next to Yabloko. Nonetheless, that one “stolen” vote didn’t stop Yabloko from voting 43% of the vote in that station, followed by 21% for the Communists, 16% for Fair Russia, and 10% for United Russia. Pretty much what one can expect of Londongrad.

Courtesy of our Strategy-31 Abroad friends and great champions of free elections like Berezovsky.

In reality, this entire ridiculous episode was made out to be like Putin’s oligarch henchmen clamping down on Russian criticism of the elections (which in reality has been widespread and with no serious consequences for the journalists involved to date).

Possibly the most dishonest reporting of this came via The Telegraph (Russian media tycoon Alisher Usmanov fires two after reporting election fraud), which implies that journalists were fired for fulfilling their journalistic duties whereas the actual facts of the matter is that it was a senior editor and business manager getting the boot for things like breaking Kommersant’s own code of conduct. The other photo that The Telegraph alleges the Kremlin / Usmanov took a dislike to – “another photograph from London of a spray-painted image of Putin with the slogan in English “Public Enemy No. 1″” – was unaffected and remains online.

A recent analogue in Western coverage of the Russian media’s “persecution” is the case of the translator who left Inosmi because – according to him – they forbade him from translating “harsh stories” about Putin and United Russia (or to least not feature those stories on the front page). His case was likewise championed in the Western media as evidence of the endless and permanent disintegration of media freedoms in Russia. My guess is that he thought his job sucked and decided to go out with a bang. Whatever the case, a single visit to Inosmi and use of Google Translate will reveal thus story for the absurdity it is; Inosmi not only posts regularly anti-UR and anti-Putin material but positively delights in doing so as it provokes the most voluminous and salacious responses from its varied audience.

Now that’s a wise and tasteful vote.

There are two further points I want to make.

First, Kommersant is privately owned, and theoretically Usmanov can hire and fire pretty much as he pleases. Though parts of his career are shady to say the least, his claims that he does not interfere in Kommersant’s editorial policy are valid, as evidenced by the fact that they had some of the best and most critical coverage of the elections and falsifications. But weren’t the Western commentariat claiming that all Russian media is Kremlin-controlled anyway? Ah, but Usmanov is an oligarch who serves the Kremlin, so there’s no difference. Not unlike our free and independent watchdog press. (To appreciate the scorn in that last reference just read any Glenn Greenwald article on the Western media).

Second, it is especially ironic to see these criticisms coming from American media, where many journalists have been dismissed for far more circumspect criticism of Israel (i.e. not using schoolyard insults) or trying to consider Arab or Islamist viewpoints (not endorse them; just consider them on their own merits). As a general rule the mass media is subservient to the taboos established by power in all societies, but I would venture to say that in 2011 the Russian media, especially print media, has proven to be a much better watchdog of freedoms – as evidenced by the generally excellent coverage of the elections and protests – than has been the case in the US (and much of the West) for years. Which reminds me. Shouldn’t outlets like the WSJ or NYT be covering shit like this as opposed to Russian editors losing their jobs for acting like teenagers?

I guess not. A Russian editors’ obsession with Putin’s cock is far more important.

Letters, we get letters, we get lots of cards and letters every day. Even fan mail from La Russophobe!

Letter to the Editor: Reply to “Given Free Publicity On NTV, Khodorkovsky Only Incriminates Himself Further” (06/11/2011).

In a recent blog post, you touted a report about Mikhail Khodorkovsky on state-owned Russian TV channel NTV. Your post, which implied the Russian Kremlin is being open about its prosecution of Khodorkovsky, was grossly misleading.

You failed to notice that this reporting came only after Khodorkovsky’s conviction. You also failed to notice that public ignorance about the trial itself increased dramatically from 2005, clearly showing that the Kremlin hid the entire proceeding from the public when it counted.

By contrast, you grossly mischaracterize Western reporting of the recent EHCR verdict relating to Khodorkovsky. Contrary to your false claim, a vast number of Western outlets touted the court’s refusal to find Khodorkovsky’s conviction political.

You also mischaracterize the EHCR verdict itself, as did numerous Western reports. The verdict permits Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to submit additional evidence showing political motivation and does not find no such motivation was present. Instead, the decision merely finds that sufficient evidence for a conviction on that point has not yet been submitted, and the court’s rules require a truly profound showing in this regard.

You totally ignore the numerous convictions handed down against the Kremlin by the EHCR for grossly violating Khodorkovsky’s legal rights, actions which the court called “inhuman.” In other words, a stunning formal European pronouncement of Russian barbarism. The Kremlin is now Khodorkovsky’s debtor to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, and there are numerous other challenges by Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to the Kremlin’s illegal actions still pending the European courts.

Predictably, you also totally ignore the ludicrous nature of accusing Khodorkovsky of stealing hundreds of millions of tons of oil, and you ignore the unquestionable fact that Putin has failed to keep his promise to purge Russia of oligarchs. All he has in fact done is to purge the oligarchs who are not pro-Putin, blithely allowing those close to him to continue doing exactly the same things for which Khodorkovsky rots in Siberia.

In short, far from confirming honesty and openness on the part of Khodorkovsky’s foes, your post merely shows in detail how their mendacity and subterfuge continue.

Yours truly,

La Russophobe

Converted into non-gambler terminology, this means that they view VVP as the clear favorite. Whereas a $100 investment into Putin will yield just $56, betting right on a second Medvedev Presidency will net you $138. All the other candidates are (rightly) considered to be insignificant fry – e.g., correctly betting $1 on a Zyuganov win will get you $66 (with the additional EV-lowering risk that it may be promptly confiscated as a product of speculation if you’re in Russia))). Or from the viewpoint of implied odds, you need to have >63.64% confidence that Putin will win OR >42.11% confidence that Medvedev will win to profitably bet on the respective candidates**. So if I had the opportunity I’d totally bet on DAM, but unfortunately that site is closed to US-based political gamblers (thanks to the venal DOJ).

Bookies structure their odds in such a way that they win most of the time; note that the total implied odds add up to nearly 110%. But you can still win despite the handicap, by having special insight or knowledge of the topic. Needless to say, most “Russia watchers” will no doubt claim they have those, at least implicitly (otherwise, what right do they have to their editorials, salaries, etc?). I have previously exposed the self-appointed Kremlinogist priesthood for being full of cranks hiding their fundamental ignorance behind credentials, citations, post hoc narratives, etc. Here is their chance to prove me wrong, all ye Leon Arons and Ariel Cohens and Loco Lucases of the world! And get fabulously rich into the bargain!!!

All social (so-called) scientists should be subjected to this “trial by casino.” As the price of holding publicly funded positions, economists should be forced into investing their money into their own predictions of GDP growth or unemployment; political scientists should use their unique insights to bet on political candidates, parties, and revolutions; etc. Think of this as an idea for an institutional safeguard against fraud, an antidote to the snake oil and two-bit experts polluting economic, social, and political discussions. Because when these “experts” fail, they experience no accountability – largely, by conjuring explanations for why they were wrong, or sweeping their old claims under the carpet altogether – while the common folks who pay for their sated and comfortable upkeep suffer the repercussions of their failed predictions. By subjecting the “experts” to the market discipline of the casino, the quacks will be exposed and bankrupted in a Darwinian struggle for (reputational, pecuniary, etc) survival, and thus cleaning up social sciences and benefiting productive society.

But for now I’ll limit this challenge to Kremlinologists, an especially odious, malign and mendacious strain even by social “science” standards. Come on, bet some of that money you leech off your readers and/or taxpayers. If you don’t, like the pathetic quackacademic you probably are, then consider yourself lower than the meanest bookie on the planet. He at least puts his money where his mouth is.

UPDATE 6/11: Two further things I want to mention. Patrick Armstrong kindly pointed me to this site, which is based on punters’ estimates (as opposed to bookies). There, as of today, the traded odds are that there is a 75% chance that Vladimir Putin will “announce he intends to run for Pres. of Russia before midnight ET 31 Aug 2011.” So betting here – i.e. selling shares – is even more profitable. Not only does it cut out the bookie and get one even better odds that from Stan James above, but that prediction also flies against the Kremlin tradition of announcing their candidate within a half-year of the elections (Yeltsin announced Putin as his preferred successor on Jan 1st, 2000; Putin did the same for Medvedev on Dec 10th, 2008).

Why on Earth could the odds be so tilted? First, this trade isn’t enjoying a lot of volume so lots of potential for skew. Second, the Western media coverage, which focuses on how DAM is a puppet of VVP and on how the master wants his old job back to reassert dictatorship or some such. As with the Russian stock market in the past decade, it offers an excellent opportunity, paraphrasing Eric Kraus, to profit off the difference between the media’s perceptions of Russia and reality.

PS. Speaking of prior elections… I noted that Sean Guillory posted about the Presidential odds in August 2007. Back then, the bookie consensus was that Sergey Ivanov – presumably because of his silovik background – was the favored successor with odds of 2.2/1 (45%), as opposed to DAM with 3.75/1 (27%).

PPS. Track the intrade.com odds below:

* I’d also be willing to take odds of c. 200/1 on figures like Igor Shuvalov or Sergey Naryshkin. They’re very unlikely, of course, but they are dark horse candidates and the payoff, in the event that they are nominated by the Kremlin – after which the chances of theirs winning will skyrocket to near 100% – would be huge.

** That is the reason I took 7/4 odds to bet on a Republican Presidency in 2012. The implied odds for that are 36.36%. My own assessment is that it’s basically a coin flip, because everything hinges on where the economy goes, which in turn depends on whether oil prices spike again between now and summer 2012. I view the odds of that as being significant, about break-even actually. Hence my bet.

Anyhow, since then he has been further mercilessly persecuted by the regime by enjoying tons of attention, getting a second internship, becoming yet another martyr of the liberal blogosphere, and appearing on national TV to defend his allegations from arch-nemesis United Russia deputy Sergey Markov in what is a spectacularly funny explosion of matter vs. antimatter. Go figure.

Alternatively, you could join in on the fun. Like how Russian companies were responsible for the film’s stuns and special effects. Or how back in March 2010 a Inoforum user called vivizul came up with a similar idea for a blockbuster We Are All Georgians. (They should totally film it IMO, perhaps as a sequel). This idea was translated by yalensis at Mark Chapman’s blog, and both kindly gave S/O permission to reprint it as a post. This marks yalensis’ debut as a published writer – congrats!

We Are All Georgians

An ordinary American youth of Gruzian ethnic origin, John Ramboshvili, arrives in his ancestral motherland, in order to visit his elderly, ailing grandfather, who dwells in a Gruzian enclave very close to the gates of Mordor the Roki Tunnel. (Note: for scenes set in the Roki Tunnel one can use the same set as was used in “Lord of the Rings”)

The [hero’s] plane lands in Tbilisi. John strolls down the well-lit streets of the capital and admires the accomplishments of this young Gruzian democracy. The air of freedom is intoxicating for this American youth, and he quietly hums the American national anthem.

Next scene. Our hero arrives at his grandfather’s house. Grandfather is delighted to see him, and as they share a bottle of “Kindzmarauli” [a brand of Gruzian sweet red wine], he tells his grandson all about the accomplishments of the young Gruzian democracy. Together they breathe the air of freedom and sing “Suliko”. Night comes, grandfather goes to bed, and John goes for a walk along the tunnel in order to see with his own eyes this border separating the good guys from the bad guys. Approaching the tunnel, John notices with horror how Russian tanks are quietly creeping out of the dark maw of the tunnel. John takes photos on his cellphone and hastens back in the direction of Tbilisi to warn this young democracy about the impending threat.

Russian flying orcs visiting death and destruction on Middle Earth.

In the town of Tskhinval John meets up with a column of Gruzian tanks. They already know what is up and have arrived in the town in order to protect the peaceful inhabitants. The peaceful inhabitants greet their liberators with fireworks. Above the town appear Russian planes, which begin to bomb it. Right in front of John a bomb falls on a kiosk selling Coca Cola. Enraged by this act of blatant vandalism, John reaches into his backpack, grabs a slingshot equipped with laser sights, and with this weapon he brings down no fewer than 10 Russian planes. At the same time, Russian tanks are appearing on the outskirts of the town. The Gruzian soldiers ferociously resist the aggressors, but there are too many of them. There are 10 Russian tanks and 300 Russian soldiers for every one Gruzian soldier. Plus, the Russians have in reserve 100,000 mounted Cossack cavalry, and border-guard units consisting of FSB-successor-to-KGB butchers.

An epic battle scene. [Close-ups] of faces of Gruzian soldiers, filled with manly courage and valor; and faces of Russian soldiers, distorted by rage and twisted by drunkenness. John Ramboshvili destroys no fewer than 50 tanks.

The Russians, realizing that they cannot defeat the proud, brave and freedom-loving Gruzians in a fair fight, resort to cunning: they sneakily broadcast disinformation that a Russian landing party has set down [behind enemy lines] in Tbilisi itself. The Gruzians, with shouts of “We’ll kill them all with our bare hands!” toss their weapons aside and race back to Tbilisi. John is left alone to hold the front lines. He destroys another 50 tanks and brings down 20 planes. At that point he runs out of ammunition (stones equipped with highly accurate laser guidance for his slingshot), and is forced to retreat. While he is retreating, John witnesses painful scenes of looting and maraudering on the part of the Russian troops. The drunken Russians steal everything in their path. Trucks filled with trophey toilets are moving back in the direction of the Roki Tunnel. Behind the convoy of trucks stretches a line of prisoners. MacDonalds [hamburger restaurants] are blown up, and Coca Cola kiosks are flattened by tanks.

John finally makes it to Tbilisi, where he meets with the youthful Gruzian president. Under his leadership, the Gruzians are getting ready for a counter-attack against the Russians. John tells the Gruzian president everything that he has witnessed. The Gruzian president is so angry about the sufferings of his freedom-loving people that he cannot stop himself from wolfing down his own tie.

Meanwhile the Russians, learning that the Gruzians are preparing a counter-attack, panic and flee back to Tskhinval. John Ramboshvili enters Gori along with the victorious Gruzian warriors, and the grateful inhabitants pelt them with flowers. Even in the smoky ruins one can feel the wind of freedom blowing once again.

And so commenced our email romance. It was a long grind. At times, I even thought her real plan was to crush me to death by follow-up questions, robbing me of my chance for a glorious martyrdom.

After ceaseless goings back and forth, arguments about what is really going on in that land of Russia, some 12,000 words of it, we finally entered wacko paradise - INTERVIEW: Anatoly Karlin. Here are a few lines from the circus wagon to whet your appetites!

• Suppose Shamil Basayev had been found in a lovely home just outside Tbilisi and after Russians assassinated him the Georgian president was invited to Washington and warmly embraced by Obama, how would Russians have reacted?
• So the USA should forget that Russia is trying to destroy it because China is trying even harder?
  
• Frankly, we find your intellectual dishonesty really repugnant, and characteristic of the failed Soviet state. The rulers of the USSR always spoke to the outside world as if they were speaking to clueless idiots. But it was the USSR that collapsed into ruin, wasn’t it?
  
• We don’t believe any thinking person can argue that any other Russia blog that has ever existed has come close to being as inspirational to the blogosphere as La Russophobe… Yet many of your Russophile brethren insist on pretending to dismiss us. Why are they so unwilling to admit how good we are? Why don’t they realize how foolish they look? Is it some sort of psychological complex on their part, or is it a crazily ineffective propaganda scheme?

Indeed. Anyhow, apart from her flattering review of my work and the conspiratorial theorizing, the interview mostly focuses on the bread and butter politics that many of us Russia watchers love to talk about. Enjoy the ride! (I did!!!)

Because some of you guys don’t want to grace La Russophobe with a visit, or are banned from it, I’m reprinting the interview below and opening it to comments.

INTERVIEW: Anatoly Karlin

Anatoly Karlin (who says Russophiles don't have hair on their chests??)

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Welcome to La Russophobe, Anatoly.  Let’s start with current events.  Almost immediately after America’s public enemy #1 Osama Bin Laden was discovered hiding in plain sight in Pakistan and assassinated, the Pakistan government started coming in for heavy criticism in the West, especially in the USA.  And right after that, Russia invited Pakistan to pay the first state visit on Moscow in three decades, and warmly embraced it.  Do you think this was a mistake on the part of the Kremlin?  Does it concern you at all to see Russia providing aid and comfort to nations like Pakistan, Syria, Iran and Libya? Suppose Shamil Basayev had been found in a lovely home just outside Tbilisi and after Russians assassinated him the Georgian president was invited to Washington and warmly embraced by Obama, how would Russians have reacted?

ANATOLY KARLIN: And yet the US – with the exception of a few Republicans – is still okay with continuing to provide Pakistan with dollops of aid every year. It has had close security relations with Pakistan since the 1980’s, when both supported jihadists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. It is ridiculous to condemn Russia for “warmly embracing” Pakistan – even if signing a few accords on anti-drugs and economic cooperation can be construed as such – when the US has much deeper relations with them, and for far longer.

Why talk of hypothetical scenarios, when we’ve got real examples? After the Georgians opened fire on UN-mandated Russian peacekeepers, and invaded South Ossetia, the entire Western political class “warmly embraced” Georgian President Saakashvili – a terrorist to the inhabitants of Tskhinvali, whom his army shelled in their sleep.

As for providing “aid and comfort” to Iran or Libya – by which I take it you mean refusing to formally condemn them – why should Russia feel guilty about it, when the West keeps its peace on regimes that are every bit as odious but serve its interests? Saudi Arabia has no elections and doesn’t allow women to drive cars, which makes it less progressive than Iran. It hasn’t exactly made the top headlines in the US media, but in recent weeks Bahrain has “disappeared” hundreds of injured Shia protesters – and many of the doctors who treated them. Why no crocodile tears for them? Presumably, because Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet and Saudi Arabia is the world’s swing oil producer.

The US tries to pursue its own national interests, like most countries. Human rights are fig leaves, or secondary considerations at best. Good for America! Russia happens to have better relations with countries like Libya or Iran than with Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, and I don’t know why it should torpedo them for the sake of foreign national interests.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: That sure is a whole bunch of words, but you haven’t answered our questions, and if you don’t we won’t publish your answers. We’d like to you to assume that Americans are no better at admitting their hypocrisy than Russians, and won’t stop being offended by Russian actions just because they haven’t been as tough on Pakistan as they should be. Russia is puny economically and militarily compared to America, and America is a world leader while Russia has virtually no allies. Do you or don’t you think it was a mistake for Russia to antagonize the US by meeting with Pakistan in the wake of the Bin Laden arrest? How would Russians have reacted if the US had met with Georgia’s ruler after a hypothetical killing of Basayev in Georgia?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Had Russian special forces killed Shamil Basayev in a Tbilisi suburb, this would have implied a very close security relationship between Russia and Georgia – including Georgian acquiescence for the Russian military to operate throughout its territory (i.e. something analogous to the US-Pakistani relationship). Or do you believe that Spetsnaz is so awesome that it could it just stroll into the heart of Georgia, take out the mark in a heavily defended compound, and exfiltrate back into Russia? I don’t think so, and I’m supposed to be the “Russophile” here. As such, I do not believe the Russians would have objected to the US inviting the Georgian ruler over for some Maine lobster and coffee.

If the Americans are deranged enough to be offended by Russia meeting with Pakistani leaders, then they should grow a thicker skin and / or undergo a sanity check. There are few good reasons not to pursue your national interests; indulging irrational psychoses is not one of them. Fortunately, I haven’t come across anything suggesting that the US got “antagonized” by the Russia-Pakistan meeting – and quite rightly so, as there is no need to get one’s knickers in a twist over perceived slights / ridiculous trivialities.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: The assumption made in our question was that the government of Pakistan was complicit in hiding Bin Laden for years and that the US forces struck without the government’s permission. Pakistan is rife with lurid anti-Americanism, similar to what flies about in Georgia with regard to Russia. Do you have any evidence to show that Pakistan helped the US to kill Bin Laden? Do you really expect our readers to take you seriously when you suggest that if it were discovered that Basayev had been hiding in Georgia for years and that Russians went in and killed him with no open Georgian assistance they would have seen Georgia as their friend?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I don’t have the security clearances (or hacking skills) to have these details of Pakistan’s relationship with OBL. Even CIA Director Leon Panetta doesn’t know, at least publicly, whether Pakistan is “involved or incompetent.”

In your scenario, the Russians wouldn’t see Georgia as their friend; they would see it as a “frenemy,” much like how Americans view Pakistan. Managing frenemies requires delicacy, balance, and a lot of bribes. It’s easy for you to say that the US should “get tough” on Pakistan. The world isn’t that simple. Next thing you know, the Pakistanis will ditch the US, cease all attempts to root out militants and cosy up with China.

By and by, if you’re really that obsessed about Russia’s overtures to Pakistan, you might want to examine China’s role. They have recently offered Pakistan 50 new fighters, which is a much warmer embrace of Pakistan than anything Russia has proffered to date.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: So the USA should forget that Russia is trying to destroy it because China is trying even harder? That’s the most hilariously stupid thing we’ve ever heard! Lots of Americans criticize China harshly, but our blog is about Russia and we don’t intend to lose that focus. Your childish attempts to throw the spotlight away from Russia are ridiculous and sad. You admit you have no evidence that Pakistan did anything except facilitate Bin Laden’s activities, which means that your first answer to our question was an absurd lie. Your suggestion that Russians would do anything other than brutalize Georgia utterly obliterates your credibility. Now please tell us: Russia has risked infuriating the world’s only superpower and biting the hand (Obama’s) that feeds it. What does Russia get in return to counterbalance that in terms of good relations with Pakistan?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I think the idea that China selling fighters to Pakistan – let alone Russia signing economic deals with it – implies that it is trying to “destroy” the US is hilariously stupid, but then again that’s just me.

Russia doesn’t get much, as Pakistan is of little importance to it (unlike China, which partners with it against India, and unlike the US, which desires its cooperation on Islamic militants). But that doesn’t matter since the very idea that building relations with Pakistan “risks infuriating” the US is crazy and absurd on too many levels.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Why talk about hypotheticals, you ask? You don’t get to ask questions here, you haven’t invited us for an interview. But just for the heck of it, because it’s our blog and we make the rules, that’s why. If you don’t want to follow them, then you’ll publish your views elsewhere. Which, of course, is your right — but we’d have thought you’d enjoy a bit of access to our readers.

ANATOLY KARLIN: To clarify, it was a rhetorical question (as are all my questions in this interview). I did not mean to interview you here – though if you’re interested, I’m happy to offer you one on my blog. You’ll generate lively discussions among my readers at a minimum.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: In regard to Libya and Syria, we mean taking actions to block and obstruct Western support for the democratic movements, especially defending the regimes and criticizing the West in public, and providing Syria with weapons. Sorry if we weren’t clear. Can you understand the question now? Hopefully so, because you won’t get a third chance.

ANATOLY KARLIN: It does not concern me in the slightest. My reasons, in simple(r) language: (1) The West supports regimes that are every bit as odious when they serve its interests, (2) therefore, its motives are not pro-democratic, as its claims, but self-interested and imperialist, and (3) by the principles of reciprocity, Russia has every moral right to call the West out on its hypocrisy and support regimes that it is friendly with.

When the US cancels its $60 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, and condemns them for their human rights violations, perhaps then it would have the moral authority to demand Russia do likewise with its disreputable clients. As it stands, Washington’s protests regarding Russia’s relations with Libya & Co. reek of arrogance and double standards that Russia should not be expected to indulge.

BTW, I find your sensitivity to Russia “criticizing the West in public” to be quite hilarious. Surely the beacon of free speech can take some? Or does Russia have to build shrines to it, or rename its main boulevard after G.W. like Tbilisi did, or something? (these are rhetorical questions)

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Are you suggesting that you believe Russian power is such that it can afford to act however it likes regardless of the way in which its actions may provoke the USA and NATO?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Any country’s foreign policy has to take into account the likely reactions of other international actors. I do not believe Russia should “act however it likes,” though not so much for fear of “provoking” the US or NATO (which in any case have limited options for retaliation) but because in most cases cooperation and accommodation – to a reasonable extent – are more productive than mindless confrontation.

Your language indicates that you have a more zero-sum view of global affairs, what with your insinuation that the main reason Russia shouldn’t antagonize the US is because it is “puny” in comparison and “has virtually no allies.” In other words, it has to unconditionally submit to Western whims. Quite apart from its sordid implications – that might makes right, in which case you could make the same argument for why the “puny” Baltics and Georgia should bow down before Russia – it’s not even convincing on its own merits.

Russia is less powerful than the US, but on the other hand it doesn’t have America’s global commitments – the US is fighting three wars at this time, which drastically limits its freedom of action elsewhere. Its economy is much larger than Russia’s, but it has a far worse fiscal position. The US has big markets and technologies to offer, but Russia’s trade with America is insignificant compared with Europe. Besides, Russia enjoys leverage as a big supplier of oil to world markets, and natural gas to Europe, and of nuclear technology and weaponry to potential adversaries of the US (meaning that it’s patently not in America’s interests to alienate Russia). As for NATO, its relevance has plummeted in the post-Cold War period – its members haven’t been able to agree on a plethora of important issues such as the Iraq War, Georgia’s accession, and Libya!

And lest we forget, Russia is hardly alone in its skepticism on Libya. There’s also the other BRIC’s, as well as (NATO members) Turkey and Germany.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  In a recent comment on the Streetwise Professor blog, you called Russian “president” Dima Medvedev a “pathetic shell” and an “empty suit.”  We couldn’t agree more! In return, would you agree with us that Vladimir Putin, who personally handed power to Medvedev, showed extremely poor judgment in doing so, and that this calls all his other policies into question?  After all, though Medvedev has no real power he does have technical legal authority and could thrust Russia into a constitutional crisis at a moment’s notice if he chose to do so.

ANATOLY KARLIN: I don’t view Medvedev as a disaster. On a positive note, he fired more entrenched bigwigs in two years as President than Putin did in eight. But too often, he comes off as naïve and overly submissive to Western demands. A good example is his okaying of the UN resolution authorizing NATO to protect Libyan civilians, which has seamlessly transitioned into a lawless drive for regime change. According to Konstantin Makienko, editor of the Moscow Defense Brief, this will cost Russia at least $8.5 billion in lost economic opportunities (not to mention hurting its image as a sovereign world power).

Putin’s choice of Medvedev wasn’t a mistake. At least, it’s too early to tell. For now, I don’t oppose Dima iPhonechik (as he is known on Runet). On the other hand, I certainly think it prudent that someone like Putin is there to give Medvedev the occasional reality check, and remind him that the West only looks out for itself and that Russia’s only true allies are its army and navy.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: So just to be clear, you don’t think it was a mistake to give enormous power to a “pathetic shell” and an “empty suit,” right?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Most politicians fit this description. So, no.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Are you saying there is nobody in Russia except Vladimir Putin who is not a pathetic shell and empty suit?

ANATOLY KARLIN: That is not what I’m saying, as most Russians are not politicians.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Your answer is profoundly childish, asinine, and indicates you have no wish to be taken seriously. Any intelligent person would have clearly understood were asking whether you are excusing Putin’s choice of a “pathetic shell” and “empty suit” for president because every other person he could have chosen also fit that description. There is no requirement that the Russian president be a politician. Mikhail Khodorkovsky would be president today, for instance, but for Putin having him arrested and sent to Siberia. So we’ll ask again: Are you saying there was nobody who was not a pathetic shell and an empty suit that Putin could have chosen to succeed him?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I don’t know. If I had access to alternate worlds in which Putin nominated other successors, and they got to demonstrate whether or not they were empty suits, then I’d be able to answer the question.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But you’ve already said that you approve of Gennady Zyuganov and Dmitri Rogozin. Wouldn’t Russia have been better off if Putin had named one of them as his successor? We ask you again to stop dodging our questions like a coward: Can you or can you not point to a person Putin could have chosen as his successor who would not have been an “empty suit” and a “pathetic shell”? We realize that you can’t win by answering. If you say there is nobody, then you confirm Russia is a truly wretched land. If you say there is somebody, then Putin made a gigantic error in judgment by not choosing that person. But you must answer. Because if you don’t, everyone will see you as a sniveling intellectual coward.

ANATOLY KARLIN: This implies that anything is better than an empty suit, which is not really the case. For instance, Zhirinovsky is quite obviously not an empty suit, but does any reasonable person want him in power? I don’t think so.

But if you still insist on a concrete answer, a Putin – Zyuganov tandem is my dream team (implausible as it is in practice).

LA RUSSOPHOBE: What makes you say it is implausible? If Vladimir Putin had told the Russian people to vote for a ham sandwich to replace him, they would have done it. What’s more, Putin would not have allowed anybody but the sandwich to receive votes. If Putin had named Zyuganov, Zyuganov would have been elected. Apparently you mean it’s implausible because Putin doesn’t share your admiration for Zyuganov. Why not? What mistake is Putin making in evaluating this fellow?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Presumably, because the gap in their worldviews is too unbridgeable. Zyuganov has condemned Putin as a protégé and stooge of the oligarchy, which to a large extent is true. Though I don’t presume to speak for Putin, I imagine he sees Zyuganov as a Soviet-era dinosaur, whose autarkic leanings and unqualified admiration of Stalin have no place in a modern society. This is also true.

But their incompatibilities are precisely the reason why I’d like to juxtapose them, the idea being that Zyuganov can push for the restoration of a social state, while Putin’s influence will provide a check on his more regressive, Brezhnevite tendencies.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: The single greatest mystery for us about Russia is why, when Boris Yeltsin was universally despised in 1999, in single-digit approval territory with talks of impeachment for genocide, the Russian people followed his instructions like lemmings and picked Putin as his successor.  Can you explain that behavior to us?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I think the conventional explanation is that Putin’s law-and-order image and savvy handling of the Second Chechen War contributed more to his political ascent than Yeltsin’s endorsement.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Do you have any factual basis whatsoever for that ridiculous statement? Are you seriously suggesting that Putin could have emerged from a contested election as the winner without being the incumbent in March 2000? Even if the people were widely impressed in that way, why wasn’t Yeltsin’s approval more than enough to cause the Russian people to reject him? And if Putin did so well, isn’t that a huge positive reflection on Yeltsin, meaning Russians have vastly misjudged him?

ANATOLY KARLIN: From the beginning, Putin worked hard to differentiate himself from Yeltsin and his “Family.” Athletic sobriety versus a fermentation barrel. Sort out the mess, drown the terrorists in the outhouse, reconsolidate the country. Now obviously, incumbency advantages and the oligarch media helped Putin immensely, but for all that there are limits to what those factors could have accomplished by themselves. There was a flurry of short-lived Prime Ministers between March 1998 and VVP’s appointment in August 1999, and their approval ratings bombed nearly as much as Yeltsin’s despite the oligarch media being on the Kremlin’s side throughout.

Putin wouldn’t have won if he hadn’t been the incumbent for the simple reason that he’d have had no administrative resources to draw upon. But his incumbency allowed him to shine, and become popular, and defeat Zyuganov. Had Yeltsin nominated someone like Chernomyrdin, Kiriyenko, Stepashin, or Nemtsov as his successor, then today’s ‘party of power’ might well be the KPRF.

I agree that Yeltsin’s designation of Putin as his successor is one of his best decisions – not that there’s much competition there.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: So you have no factual basis (i.e., a citation to published authority) for your claim, right?

ANATOLY KARLIN: It’s certainly news to me that any of the above is controversial. I guess I can Google up a paper if you insist on it:

“Putin enjoyed a vertiginous rise in popularity following his appointment as prime minister in August 1999. Polls indicated those willing to vote for him as president climbed from 2% in August [to] 59% in January. By then his approval rating as prime minister was 79%. In contrast, for the past several years Yeltsin’s approval rating had been in the single digits. Putin’s rise was fueled by two factors: the war in Chechnya, and the strong showing of the pro-Putin Unity party in the December 1999 Duma elections… It was Putin’s determined handling of the war which then led to his spectacular and sustained rise in popularity.” – from Putin’s Path to Power (Peter Rutland, 2000).

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Do you realize that you are citing a “forthcoming” publication and that the footnote given by the author is blank? Do you realize that your own source says Putin didn’t get above 50% voter inclination until Yeltsin had already made him president? If Putin could have got elected on his own as prime minister, why in the world was it necessary to make him president first? Wasn’t that obviously a gambit to wedge him into office?

ANATOLY KARLIN: You’re just nitpicking now. This was the version accessible on the Web, it was published and if you want a formal citation here it is – Peter Rutland, “Putin’s Path to Power,” Post-Soviet Affairs 16, no. 4 (December 2000): 313-54. The footnote is not blank, it names the source as Yuri Levada.

The same source indicates that the bulk of Putin’s rise in popularity took place during his tenure as Prime Minister, with voter inclination going from the low single digits in August to exactly 50% in December 1999, which I’d say is a winning figure. He was appointed President on January 1^st, 2000, after which his popularity remained stable at a high level. This had the practical effect of bringing forwards the elections by 3 months. Did this make a crucial difference? Putin’s approval rating was 70% in March 2000; it was 61% in June 2000 (but rose to 73% a month later), when the election would have otherwise occurred. Considering that Putin won the 2000 elections with 53% of the vote to runner-up Zyuganov’s 29%, I don’t see how the delay could have made a difference.

Mind you, this is all said with the benefit of hindsight. It may well be Yeltsin wasn’t confident that Putin would maintain his high ratings – for instance, he may have feared that the Second Chechen War would go badly and dent his popularity – and wanted to maximize his chances at the elections by giving him the Presidency early. Alternatively, he may have realized just how deeply he screwed up the post-Soviet transition, and decided that it was in Russia’s national interests to get a new face for the new millennium.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  Despite nothing but pro-Kremlin propaganda on TV, and a soaring price of oil and revived Russian stock market, confidence in the Kremlin just slipped below a majority.  Yet job approval for both Medvedev and Putin remains above 65%. Given that Medvedev and Putin wield dictatorial power and completely control the Kremlin. How is that possible? Are the people of Russia stupid or something?

ANATOLY KARLIN: This is a non-story. Approval for the government always lags the personal popularity of Putin and Medvedev by about 20-30% points, as you can confirm by browsing previous Levada opinion polls. Why that is the case, I’d guess because Tsars are often more popular than their Ministers.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: You’re saying Russia is an irrational country where people hate the government and its policies but don’t hate those who wield absolute authority over the government and its policies?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I’m saying what I said: rulers are often more popular than the government as a whole (for instance, whereas only 19% of Americans trusted the government in Washington in 2010, Obama’s approval rating has hovered from 41% to 52% in the past year).

Anyhow, I would hardly take a government approval rating of 51% (as of May 2010) as evidence that Russians “hate the government and its policies.”

LA RUSSOPHOBE: May 2010? Wouldn’t this year be more relevant? In May 2011, approval fell below a majority. Do you really believe that’s not at all significant? Don’t you think it’s rather idiotic to compare Obama, who has just replaced a highly unpopular president and is undertaking massive reform, and who does not have one tenth the control over the US government that Putin has over Russia, to Putin, who was replaced by a puppet of his own choosing? And don’t you think it’s utterly dishonest for you to use America as a benchmark when it’s convenient for you, but then to say that America is a “different country” and inapplicable to Russia whenever it’s not convenient? Frankly, we find your intellectual dishonesty really repugnant, and characteristic of the failed Soviet state. The rulers of the USSR always spoke to the outside world as if they were speaking to clueless idiots. But it was the USSR that collapsed into ruin, wasn’t it?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Apologies for the mistype, it should have said May 2011. As you can see from the link, government approval was 48% in April and 51% in May. I don’t believe it’s significant, because it’s hardly changed from a year ago when it was 56% in May 2010, and going even further back, government approval was lower than 50% for almost the entirety of the 2000-2007 period, falling to as low as 25% in March 2005.

I was only using Obama to illustrate that Russia is hardly atypical in that its leaders are more popular than the government as a whole, not to draw a direct comparison between him and Putin. Ditto for your next question accusing me of double standards.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But Obama doesn’t illustrate that. You again reveal a very poor understanding of how the US government works. Obama has very little power under the US Constitution, so he can’t properly be blamed for most of the decisions that the American public care about. It’s entirely rational to have one view of him and another of the legislature. But Putin has total power, and all of the government’s actions are directly controlled by him. Russians would have to be psychotic to view the government and Putin as being separate, or to allow Putin to escape blame for the government’s failed policies. But what really interests us is this: Isn’t it pretty telling that in a country where the government controls all the TV broadcasts and does not allow any true opposition political parties it cannot manage to generate more than a bare majority of support? What would the rating be if NTV were still going strong and Nemtsov had 75 seats in the Duma? Can’t you admit that the Russian government is obviously failing under Vladimir Putin?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Not really because it is likewise entirely rational to have one view of a Russian ruler (e.g. as competent), and another of the state bureaucracy (e.g. as venal and incompetent). But I digress.

I disagree with your assumptions. Though the Russian state does exert editorial influence over TV broadcasts, as in De Gaulle’s France, this ignores the fact that the print media is largely independent and critical; furthermore, as of 2011, some 42% of Russians accessed the (unregulated) Internet at least once per week. I notice that your own articles are regularly translated on Inosmi (mostly for their entertainment value, if the comments are anything to go by). And the main reason that “true” opposition parties – by which I take it you mean the liberals – aren’t in the Duma has nothing to do with their being “oppressed” and everything to do with their proud association with the disastrous neoliberal reforms of the 1990’s, lack of constructive solutions (their slogans are pretty much limited to “Putin Must Go!” and variations thereof) and worshipful adulation of everything “European” or “Western” as “civilized” in contrast to barbaric, corrupt Russia, or “Rashka” as they like to call it. There is no need to cite Kremlin propaganda or “web brigades” to explain their 5% approval ratings, as their anti-Russian elitism is quite enough to do the trick by itself.

So to answer your questions, by the numbers. The government’s approval rating of 51% is respectable, and the main reason it isn’t higher is that – as with governments anywhere – some of its policies aren’t successful and/or hurt big electoral groups (a good example is the 2005 reforms of pensions benefits, in the course of which its approval rating fell to a nadir of 25%). If Nemtsov had 75 seats in the Duma, this would imply that he somehow managed to reacquire significant support, which would in turn mean that the current regime must have failed in a major way and consequently its approval rating would necessarily be very low. I can’t admit that the Russian government is failing under Putin because to me its failure is very, very far from “obvious.” Give me a call when the protesters at your Dissenters’ Marches start to outnumber the journalists.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  Isn’t it true that the only reason the prime minister of Russia has not been sacked is that his name is Vladimir Putin?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I don’t believe things would be much different if his name was Vladislav, or Ivan, or indeed any other.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: So you’re seriously saying that you believe if Putin were president and Medvedev was prime minister with Putin’s record, Putin would not have fired Medvedev.

ANATOLY KARLIN: This assumes that the reason Medvedev hasn’t fired Putin is because he is the bad man’s puppet.

My impression is that they form one team, with Putin as its unofficial CEO, and Medvedev as his protégé. Their end goals are broadly similar: stabilization (largely achieved under the Putin Presidency), followed by economic modernization, and liberalization. Their differences are ones of emphasis, not essence. Furthermore, Putin has lots of political experience, immense reserves of political capital in the form of 70% approval ratings and influence over United Russia, and close relationships with the siloviki clans.

In other words, Putin is an extremely useful asset, and Medvedev is wise to keep him on board – despite Putin’s occasional acts of symbolic insubordination.

Had Medvedev behaved in a similar way in 2007-2008, then yes, he’d probably have been demoted, or passed over as a Presidential candidate. But why on Earth should Medvedev have done that? At the time, he was an apprentice. He did not have the qualifications to be cocky like Putin does now, e.g. stalling the disintegration of the country, breaking the oligarchs’ power, managing Russia’s economic revival, presiding over a decade of broadly rising living standards, etc.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: One more time. Putin has a bad record as prime minister. No thinking person can dispute that. Are you seriously saying it’s not bad enough to justify his dismissal, not as bad as that of other Russian prime ministers who have been dismissed in the past, that another man with the same record would not have been dismissed by Putin himself?

ANATOLY KARLIN: If approval ratings are anything to go by, then Putin’s record as PM is very, very far from “bad.” He MAY have dismissed a similar PM in his position, but the reasons for that would have been insubordination or his political ambitions – not incompetence or unpopularity.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: The Politburo had high approval ratings too, didn’t it? And Putin’s approval is falling, isn’t it?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I don’t know about the Politburo, as I’m not aware of any opinion polls on them. Yes, Putin’s approval rating has fallen by about 10% points in the past year. So what? It’s still at 69%, a figure most national leaders can only dream of. It’s not unprecedented either. For instance, it was less than 70% from November 2004 to July 2005.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Well, some people would say falling approval is a bad thing. Guess you think they are all morons. Putin’s poll rating slipped below 50% in mid-2003, and right after that both Khodorkovsky and Trepashkin were arrested. Then people in the opposition started dying. Guess by you that’s all just pure coincidence, right?

ANATOLY KARLIN: What? According to the link I provided above, Putin approval rating was in the 70%’s in mid-2003. More specifically, it was at 75% in September, the month before MBK’s arrest. Please read the link more carefully before making insinuations.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Your egomania is getting the better of you, dude. We were not referring to anything you linked to, we were referring to the fact that the war in Chechnya was going really badly in 2003, it was a bloodbath and the Russian people were sick of it. As a result, this. You have totally ignored the wave of arrests and murders that followed. You’re the one who needs to pay more attention. We ask you again: Was it just a coincidence that when the war in Chechnya, Putin’s main claim to fame, started going really badly major opposition figures started getting arrested and killed? Believe it or not, we can keep this up just as long as you can, you’re not smarter or tougher than us, and we will wipe that schoolboy smirk right off your face.

ANATOLY KARLIN: We’ll see about that. Your first problem is that the poll you cite ISN’T of Putin’s approval rate, but of VOTER INCLINATIONS. There is a big difference, namely that whereas you can “approve” of several different politicians, you can only vote for one of them. Hence, the percentage of people saying they’d vote for Putin can always be expected to be lower than his approval rate – which was at 70% in May 2003. That’s relatively low but still well within his usual band of 65%-85%.

Second, I want to see the evidence for your claim that the war in Chechnya was going “really badly” in 2003. In that year, 299 soldiers died in the line of duty, down from 485 in 2002, 502 in 2001, and 1397 in 2000. According to the graph of North Caucasus violence in this paper (see pg. 185), there was no discernible uptick in 2003.

Third, both Trepashkin and Khodorkovsky were arrested in October 2003. That’s a whole five months after the poll showing a slight dip in Putin’s popularity. Your conspiracy theory has no legs.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Are you really unaware of what was happening in Chechnya between the middle of 2002 and the middle of 2004? This is what, just for instance:

“Between May 2002 and September 2004, the Chechen and Chechen-led militants, mostly answering to Shamil Basayev, launched a campaign of terrorism directed against civilian targets in Russia. About 200 people were killed in a series of bombings (most of them suicide attacks), most of them in the 2003 Stavropol train bombing (46), the 2004 Moscow metro bombing (40), and the 2004 Russian aircraft bombings (89).”

“Two large-scale hostage takings, the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis (850 hostages) and the 2004 Beslan school siege (about 1,200), resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians. In the Moscow stand-off, FSB Spetsnaz forces stormed the buildings on the third day using a lethal chemical agent. In the Beslan hostage case, a grenade exploding inside the school triggered the storming of the school. Some 20 Beslan hostages had been executed by their captors before the storming.”

We’re not going to allow any further responses, the fact that you are willing to speak about Chechnya without knowing such basic information makes it clear nothing at all would be achieved in doing so. Let’s move on.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  Suppose that Boris Nemtsov were elected president of Russia in 2012.  What specific negative consequences do you think this would have for Russia?  Would you admit that anything at all in Russia would change for the better if Nemtsov was in charge?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I’m no seer as to predict what will happen with President Borya at the helm, but I can make some inferences from history. As the liberal governor of Nizhniy Novgorod oblast from 1991 to 1996, praised by the likes of Margaret Thatcher, he oversaw an economic collapse that was – if anything – even deeper than in Russia as a whole. Industrial production fell by almost 70%, as opposed to 50% at the federal level; mean incomes declined from 90.8% of the Russian average in 1991, to just 69.5% by 1996.

As Deputy Prime Minister, the New York Times described Nemtsov as an “architect of Russia’s fiscal policy.” In July 29^th, 1998, Borya predicted that “there will be no devaluation.” Three weeks later, on August 17^th, Russia defaulted on its debts. The ruble plummeted into oblivion, along with his approval ratings, and soon after he quit the government. The next decade he spent on self-promoting liberal politics and writing “independent expert reports” whining about Putin that are as prolific (there are now 7 of them) as they are misleading.

Nemtsov hasn’t exactly made a good impression on the two occasions he enjoyed real power. Who knows, perhaps third time’s the lucky charm. But I wouldn’t bet the house – or should that be the Kremlin? – on it.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Same question for Alexei Navalny.

ANATOLY KARLIN: Life may become harder for corrupt bureaucrats and dark-skinned minorities. Supporters of gun rights will have cause to celebrate.

In short, it’s a mixed bag. I wish Navalny well in his RosPil project, but I wouldn’t support any of his political ambitions unless he firmly disavows ethnic Russian chauvinism.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But Putin hasn’t disavowed ethnic Russian chauvinism. So why do you support his political ambitions? Would you criticize Putin if Navalny announces his candidacy and then gets arrested just like Khodorkovsky?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Putin is most assuredly not a Russian (russkij) chauvinist. He has condemned nationalism on many occasions, and stressed the multiethnic nature of the Russian Federation – as well he should, as nationalism is one of the biggest threats to its territorial integrity. If anything, the nationalists hate Putin even more than the liberals. Visit their message boards and you will see endless condemnations of the current regime as a Zionist Occupation Government intent on selling off the country, populating it with minorities, and exterminating ethnic Russians. The Manezh riots and the banning of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) of the past few months should, if anything, convince one that relations between the Kremlin and far-right groups are decidedly antagonistic.

I will certainly criticize the Kremlin if Navalny is arrested on bogus charges (unlike Khodorkovsky, who is quite guilty of tax evasion). Not Putin because it is highly unlikely he’d have anything to do with it. But I very much doubt it will come to that. To have done so much anti-corruption work as Navalny without getting into any major trouble for it – at least up till now – means that he almost certainly has a good krysha (roof), i.e. political protection of some sort.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Please provide a link quoting Putin “condemning” Russian nationalism. And please explain why the cabinet wasn’t multi-ethnic under Putin.

ANATOLY KARLIN: There are literally thousands of links on this topic. Here’s one for your delectation, from December 2010:

“If we don’t appreciate Russia’s strength as a multinational society, and run about like madmen with razor blades, we will destroy Russia. If we allow this, we will not create a great Russia, but a territory riven by internal contradictions, which will crumble before our very eyes… I wouldn’t give 10 kopeks for someone who travels from central Russia to the North Caucasus and disrespects the Koran.”

There is nothing to explain. Off the top of my head, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Elvira Nabiullina and Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev are Tatars, and Minister of Emergency Situations Sergey Shoygu is Tuvan.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Our readers may not be familiar with Life News. Can you tell them what that is? Is it, for instance a national TV network? Has Putin ever condemned Russian nationalism in a speech to the Duma, or one of his national Q&A sessions, or in an address to the nation? Has his government ever handled a nationalist the way it handled Mikhail Khodorkovsky? If Putin is serious about protecting the people of the North Caucasus, why do so many of them have to go to Strasbourg?

ANATOLY KARLIN: As far as I know, it’s an online news site with a TV operation. (I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it, it was the first to get hold of a video of Oleg Kashin’s beating). But you can find the above quotes repeated on hundreds of sites. You can read the full speech here.

Would this Q&A on national TV from December 24^th, 2010 qualify? That’s at least five denunciations of nationalism in one speech:

“We have to suppress extremism from all sides, wherever it comes from… It’s vital that that all Russians citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, recognize that we are children of one country. In order to feel comfortable anywhere on our territory, we need to behave in such a way, that a Caucasian isn’t afraid to walk Moscow’s streets, and that a Slav isn’t afraid to live in a republic of the North Caucasus… I’ve said this many times before, and I say it again, that from its beginnings Russia grew as a multinational and multiconfessional state… This “bacillus” of radicalism, it’s always present in society, just like viruses in nearly every human organism. But if a human has good immune defenses, these viruses don’t propagate. Likewise with society: if society has a good immune system, then this “bacillus” of nationalism sits quietly somewhere on the cellular level and doesn’t seep out. As soon as society begins to slack off, this immunity falls – and so the disease begins to spread… Russia is a multinational state. This is our strength. No matter what they say, those who sabotage these foundations, they undermine the country.”

If by that you mean prosecuting MBK for breaking laws, then just this past month two ultra-nationalists were jailed for the murder of HR lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.

Presumably, there are many Russian cases at Strasbourg because Russia is part of the Council of Europe – which it could leave, if it wanted to – and because it has a big population with a creaky justice system?

LA RUSSOPHOBE: We didn’t say we hadn’t heard of it, we said our readers might not have. Because it’s pretty obscure. On Strasbourg, you’re again missing the point. See, if Russia under Putin really treated the ethnic peoples fairly, then they would not need to go to Strasbourg, and they would not go because it’s lot of trouble to go. And Putin could order that it be so, and it would be so. But he has not done it. And that’s why they go to Strasbourg. You’ve also lost the thread on Putin and nationalism. Putin is only talking about race murders and racism, not Russian nationalism, and only from the perspective that he fears racists who dare to run wild in the streets he’s supposed to control. And it’s only lip service. When is Putin photographed cuddling dark-skinned people? Where is his program for racial tolerance in Russian schools? Has he ever delivered a speech on national television, ever once in his entire tenure, to lecture the nation on race violence? More importantly, though, when has he ever gone beyond race murder to discuss the horrific consequences of raging Russian nationalism — for instance towards Georgia? Never. To the contrary, Putin actively stoked the flames of hostility towards Georgia, actively fuels Russian xenophobia and hatred of the United States, because doing so helps him stay in power. Your attempt to claim that Putin is Russia’s variant of Martin Luther King is absurd on its face. When Politkovskaya was killed for championing the rights of dark-skinned people, Putin basically said she got what she deserved. Putin routinely pours scorn on the Strasbourg court and has done nothing to improve the quality of justice for Russians as a result of its numerous decrees finding Putin’s government guilty of state-sponsored murder, kidnapping and torture. He has never once taken a such a personal interest it the prosecution of a nationalist as he did with Khodorkovsky. That’s what we meant.

ANATOLY KARLIN: I never claimed that Putin is Russia’s MLK, that is absurd, as his job is in governance not civil activism.

By the numbers. “Cuddling dark-skinned people” – what, just like he does with rare and exotic animals? Do you realize how patronizing – and yes, racist – that sounds? I don’t know about his school policies. As far as I know, Putin never gave a speech solely on race violence on Russian TV, but even if he did, I’m sure you’ll just move the goalposts further (as you did here) and ask if he ever apologized to ethnic minority representatives for past hate crimes, as Germany did for the Holocaust.

As for Georgia, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong suspect – better ask Saakashvili why he feels it’s okay to invade a South Ossetia that wants nothing to do with him and murder people with Katyusha rockets in their sleep in the cause of Georgian nationalism. Though I’m aware that you’d have much preferred that Russia turn a blind eye to the attacks on Ossetian civilians and its own peace-keepers, failing to do so isn’t exactly nationalism.

Individual racist hoodlums, reprehensible as they are, are not the grave threat to the state that Khodorkovsky was. As such, a personal interest in their prosecution is not required or expected.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: You mean you actually believe that Navalny could be arrested on bogus charges in order to prevent him challenging Putin for the presidency and Putin might have nothing to do with it? That if Putin gave the order to do no such thing, and let Navalny run if he wanted, Putin might be ignored?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I suppose Putin COULD do it, but that’s beside the point. That’s not how they roll. If the powers that be really, really didn’t want Navalny to run for the Presidency, he’d be disqualified on a technicality. As for the latter point, the notion that Putin would think of “ordering” someone NOT to be arrested is pretty ludicrous as it implies an absurd degree of micro-management on his part.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: There’s no doubt that Khodorkovsky was guilty of some criminal violations, that’s not the point. We believe your comment about him is extremely dishonest and an insult to our intelligence. The point is the Khodorkovsky was arrested for doing things that many other Russian businessmen close to Putin have done and continue to do without charges being filed, and was arrested only when he began making noises about challenging for the presidency, and that unlike any of the others he was lobbying strongly to bring Western accounting transparency to Russian business. Do you honestly believe that Putin himself declares all his income on his tax returns? That Khodorkovsky’s arrest was in no way political?

ANATOLY KARLIN: My main problem isn’t that Khodorkovsky’s arrest was political, but that it wasn’t political enough! Were I in charge like a Sid Meier’s Civilization player, all the other oligarchs would join MBK on his extended Siberian vacation, with their ill-gotten assets confiscated and returned to the Russian people.

And if wishes were fishes… Still, let’s get some things straight. On coming to power, Putin made an informal deal with the oligarchs that allowed them to keep their misappropriated wealth in return for paying taxes and staying out of politics. This wasn’t a perfect solution, but one could reasonably argue that it was a better compromise than the two alternatives: large-scale renationalization, or a continuation of full-fledged oligarchy.

For whatever reason – be it self-interest, hubristic arrogance, or even genuine conviction in his own rebranding as a transparency activist – MBK wasn’t interested in this deal. Instead, he bribed Duma deputies to build a power base and tried to run his own foreign policy through YUKOS. So what if other businessmen close to Putin were involved in shady enterprises, you ask? The “others do it too” argument is for the playground, not a court of law. Unlike them, MBK mounted a direct challenge to the Russian state – funded by wealth he’d stolen from it – that Putin was under no obligation to tolerate.

The bottom line is he failed at his power grab, becoming a victim of the same lawless system that he had no qualms exploiting to become Russia’s wealthiest man in the first place (his sordid activities may have extended to murder). Too bad for him, he should have spent his loot on buying foreign football clubs and luxury yachts, like Abramovich. Smallest violin in the world playing for his lost opportunity to enjoy la dolce vita!

I’d really recommend the liberals adopt some other martyr as the face of their Cabbage Revolution, because Khodorkovsky’s sure ain’t pretty!

As regards Putin’s financial probity, I addressed this question below.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  If you had to choose someone from the opposition to replace Medvedev in 2012, who would you choose and why?

ANATOLY KARLIN: That’s easy, Gennady Zyuganov. The Communists are by far the most popular opposition to the Kremlin today. Plus, they make awesome vids.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: We’re not sure you understood the question. You mean you think Zyuganov is the best choice among all those opposed to Putin and Medvedev to be their successor?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Yes, I’d take the Communists over liberals mooching at Western embassies any day of the week. If you listen to Zyuganov’s recent speech, you will find that he is deeply critical of Putin’s and Medvedev’s record.

I think he’s the best choice among the current opposition, but the issue is, of course, arguable. What’s undisputable is that it’s the most democratic. According to opinion polls, a great many Russians hold socialist (40%), Communist (18%), and agrarian (19%) values – all of which the KPRF espouses. The numbers of those with liberal (12%) or ethnic nationalist (12%) values is much lower.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: So you’re saying you think an avowed communist apparatchik is a better choice to govern Russia than Mikhail Kasyanov, who was hand-picked by Vladimir Putin to run the country?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Zyuganov has some good ideas about reintroducing progressive taxation, strengthening the social safety net, and increasing spending on groups like pensioners, working mothers, students, and public workers. Misha knows how to take 2% kickbacks and whine about his former employer to Western journalists.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: If you are right and, two decades after the collapse of the USSR, the best alternative to a proud KGB spy as Russia’s leader is a shameless Communist apparatchik, doesn’t that say something pretty damning about the people of Russia, the quality of their citizenry and their ability to modernize, adapt and grow? After all, Americans were able to follow Richard Nixon with Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush with Barack Obama. Are they really that much better than Russians in this regard?

ANATOLY KARLIN: If the Communists are Russians’ best alternative, it implies that they suffer much less cognitive dissonance than Americans, who claim to want a Swedish-style wealth distribution but consistently give power to plutocrats drawn from a common “bipartisan consensus.” So that’s another way of looking at things.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  If you had to choose someone, and you could choose anyone at all, to be the next president of Russia, who would you choose and why?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Dmitry Rogozin, because his Twitter feed is the best thing since sliced white bread. Realistically? Despite my criticisms of his rule, I think Vladimir Putin remains the best choice.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But Rogozin is a fire-breathing nationalist. How do you square criticizing Navalny on this ground and then totally ignoring it with respect to Rogozin?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I think advancing Rogozin on the merits of his Twitter feed provides a strong clue on the (non) seriousness of the proposal.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Kevin Rothrock of “A Good Treaty” says Putin won’t return to the presidency in 2012, Medvedev will be reelected.  Do you agree?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Yes, I do. If I had to bet on it, I’d give the following odds: Medvedev – 70%, Putin – 25%, Other – 5%.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: What odds do you give Medvedev of defeating Putin in an “election” that Putin wants to win?

ANATOLY KARLIN: If they go head to head, I’d say: Putin – 75%, Medvedev – 25%.

According to opinion polls, 27% of Russians would like Putin to run as a candidate in the 2012 elections, compared to just 18% who are Medvedev supporters (another 16% would like to have both of them run; I count myself among them). Putin’s approval ratings are consistently higher. He has the support of the party of power and the siloviki, though Medvedev can count on the Presidential Staff. A recent infographic in Kommersant indicates that Medvedev enjoys slightly more media coverage.

I think Medvedev will only get a good chance to beat Putin if the allegations of massive corruption against the latter are found to be actually true. As I argue below, I doubt Putin is personally corrupt – at least, not to banana republic-type levels – so I don’t see that becoming a decisive factor.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Rothrock says the 2012 election won’t be free and fair by European standards. Do you agree?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Mostly, I disagree. As I noted in this post, the results of the 2008 Presidential elections almost exactly matched the results of a post-elections Levada poll asking Russians whom they voted for. The percentage of votes for Medvedev, and the percentage of those who later recalled having voted for Medvedev (excluding non-voters), was exactly the same at 71%. If vote rigging were as prevalent as you guys seem to think, there would logically be a big discrepancy between these two figures, no?

(And before you retort that the director of the Levada Center, Lev Gudkov, is an FSB stooge or some such, consider that he writes things like this: “Putinism is a system of decentralized use of the institutional instruments of coercion, preserved in the power ministries as relics of the totalitarian regime, and hijacked by the powers that be for the fulfillment of their private, clan-group interests.” Doesn’t exactly sound like the biggest Putin fanboy out there…)

The question of whether elections will be fair is a different quantity. The Russian political system is a restricted space, in comparison to much of Europe, which I suppose makes it less fair. On the other hand, it’s hardly unique in that respect. The first past the post system in the UK, for instance, means that in regions dominated by one party, there is no point in voting for an alternate candidate (a feature that has led to artificially long periods of Conservative domination).

LA RUSSOPHOBE: If Putin does return to the Russian presidency in 2012, do you believe there’s any chance he’ll leave power in anything but a coffin?  If so, tell us how you think it could happen.

ANATOLY KARLIN: He might also leave in a helicopter, a Mercedes (or a Lada Kalina, if he’s feeling patriotic that day), or even a computer if “mind uploading” is developed like those technological singularity geeks predict.

Okay, let’s be clear… unlike you, I don’t view Putin as a dictator. The Russian Federation is, at worst, semi-authoritarian, and has been such since 1993 – when the “democratic hero” Yeltsin imposed a super-presidential Constitution with tank shells. If Putin becomes President in 2012, he will likely leave in 2018 or 2024.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But according to your own words, the only way Putin will become “president” in 2012 is if you are very, very wrong. So your prediction about him them leaving office is just drivel, isn’t it? Or are you saying he’ll take a six-year holiday and come back in 2030?

ANATOLY KARLIN: It’s not a prediction, it’s a supposition (note my qualifier: “likely”). As I said, I’m not a seer. What I do know is that Putin honored the constitutional limit on two Presidential terms in 2008, defying the predictions of legions of Kremlinologists, so based on historical precedent I assume he’ll continue to follow the letter of the law.

VVP will be 78 years old in 2030. I suspect he’ll be playing with his great grandchildren by then, not running the country. Unless he takes up Steven Seagal on his offer to become a cyborg, or something.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Could you have asked for a more Russophile-friendly president of the USA than Barack Obama?  If so, how could Obama have been even more Russophile-friendly while still retaining credibility among American voters?

ANATOLY KARLIN: If by “Russophile-friendly” you mean a President who takes a neutral and constructive position towards Russia (as opposed to McCain’s kneejerk Russophobia), then yes, quite a few improvements could be made.

Repealing Jackson-Vanik is one long overdue reform, as Russia hasn’t restricted emigration for over two decades. Introducing a visa-free regimen will make life a lot easier for both Russians and Americans. Agreeing to let Russia have joint control of European ballistic missile defense will alleviate Russian concerns that the system is targeted against them, and will give the US leverage to extract more Russian cooperation on issues of mutual concern such as Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Admittedly, the last will be a difficult pill to swallow, for those who are still entombed in Cold War mindsets.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: You seem a bit confused. The President of the USA can’t repeal a law. Try reading the Constitution. What could Obama have done within his power as president that he has not done? Are you proposing that Europe will have joint control over Russian ballistic missile defense as well?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Presidents can lobby to repeal a law, but OK – point well taken. I don’t deny that Obama has been a good President for US-Russia relations.

This is common sense on his part. The US is an overstretched Power, with a budget deficit of 10%+ of GDP; it’s fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya; China is emerging as a major economic and military challenger; and the government is sinking into dysfunctional partisanship. Reaching some kind of accommodation with Russia is very much in the US national interest, even if the residual Cold Warriors and neocons are too blind to see it.

If the US granted Russia joint control of its BMD systems in Europe, and if – for whatever reason – Russia were to install BMD facilities abroad in Belarus or Transnistria, then yes, it would be justified for the US and a European authority to demand joint control over those Russian BMD systems.

(Ideally, in my view, all parties should abandon BMD projects against next to non-existent threats from countries like Iran, and concentrate their resources on far more pressing issues, such as anthropogenic climate change).

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Are you saying Obama isn’t lobbying to repeal JV?

ANATOLY KARLIN: Obama could be more pro-active about it. It’s been three years now and still no cake.

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  According to Transparency International Russia has become much more corrupt while Putin has held power, and there’s certainly no evidence it has become less corrupt.  Do you believe Putin is personally corrupt, in other words that he’s taken any money or wealth in any form that he has not declared on his tax return while president or prime minister?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I take issue with your first statement. Russia’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was 2.1 in 2000; it remained unchanged, at 2.1, in 2010. How does this indicate that Russia has become “much more corrupt” under Putin? I’d call it stagnation. (And that’s corruption as measured by a metric that has been widely criticized for its subjectivity and methodological flaws. But that’s another topic).

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to Putin’s bank accounts (of course, neither do the legions of journalists writing about his $40 billion offshore fortunes). In fact, as far as I know, these claims originated with Stanislav Belkovsky, a political scientist citing “anonymous sources” in the Kremlin. The sole problem with his thesis? He doesn’t give any evidence whatsoever to back up his claims.

My impression is that Putin is not personally corrupt – at least, not to Suharto-like extremes. Sure, it’s not as if Putin buys his $50,000 watches and vintage cars with his own salary; that’s the job of his staff, to maintain a respectable image. And this isn’t uncommon. For instance, President Sarkozy wears a $120,000 Breguet, among several other luxury watches in his collection.

PS. I noticed in your translation of Nemtsov’s report that he took issue with taxpayer-funded estates “that are at the disposal of the country’s top leaders” as one example of Putin’s incorrigible corruption. The first example of this ‘corruption’ he cited was Konstantinovo Palace, near St.-Petersburg. Some facts: it’s an imperial-era palace that fell into disrepair in the 1990’s; Putin merely ordered its restoration. It’s possible to visit it as a tourist, and in fact I did, in 2003. Like many other cultural attractions, it has its own website. I wouldn’t find it surprising if tourism has already repaid the ‘corrupt’ state investments into its reconstruction.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Please have a look at the nice red-and-white chart in this link. Would you like to change your answer?

ANATOLY KARLIN: The chart shows that Russia’s position fell in Transparency International’s global rankings from 82^nd in 2000, to 154^th a decade later. What the esteemed author, Ben Judah, conveniently forgot to mention was that the sample of countries it was measured against rose from 90 to 178.

So, that’s a no.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: You’re saying that the revelation that there are seventy two more countries in the world than previously thought that are less corrupt than Russia is insignificant? You’re saying that you don’t think it reflects at all badly on Vladimir Putin that there are 153 world nations that are less corrupt than Putin’s Russia?

ANATOLY KARLIN: You’d benefit from a course in Stats 101. Russia’s absolute ranking has fallen, but this was exclusively due to a doubled sample. Its absolute score remains exactly the same at 2.1, and it stayed in the bottom quintile in the global rankings. There is no “revelation” to speak of as statisticians would have ACCOUNTED for the fact that the sample only covered less than half the world’s countries in 2000!

I completely agree with you that Russia’s position in Transparency International’s CPI rankings reflects badly on VVP… if the ‘perceptions’ of their self-appointed experts actually had anything to do with reality! Fortunately for Russia, that is not the case. Quite apart from its methodological flaws – using changing mixes of different surveys to gauge a fluid, opaque-by-definition social phenomenon – it doesn’t pass the face validity test. In other words, many of the CPI’s results are frankly ludicrous. Do you truly believe that Russia (2.1) is more corrupt than failed states like Zimbabwe (2.4) and Haiti (2.2), or that Italy (3.9) is more corrupt than Saudi Arabia (4.7) which is a feudalistic monarchy for crying out loud!? If you do, may I respectfully suggest getting your head checked?

There are many other corruption indices that are far more useful and objective than the risible CPI.

One of them is Transparency International’s less well-known Global Corruption Barometer. Every year, they poll respondents on the following question: “In the past 12 months have you or anyone living in your household paid a bribe?” According to the 2010 version, some 26% of Russians said they did, which is broadly similar to other middle-income countries such as Thailand (23%), Hungary (24%), Romania (28%), or Lithuania (34%). It is significantly worse than developed countries such as the US (5%) or Italy (13%) – though Greece (18%) isn’t that distant – but leagues ahead of Third World territories like India (54%) or Sub-Saharan Africa (56% average).

Another resource is the Global Integrity Report, which evaluates countries on their “actually existing” legal frameworks and implementation on issues such as “the transparency of the public procurement process, media freedom, asset disclosure requirements, and conflicts of interest regulations.” (This involves rigorous line by line examination of the laws in question, as opposed to polling “experts” on their “perceptions” as in the CPI). Russia has relatively good laws, but weak implementation, making for an average score of 71/100 as of 2010 (up from 63/100 in 2006). As with the Barometer, Russia is somewhere in the middle of the pack. It does better on the International Budget Partnership, which – believe it or not – assesses budget transparency. On the Open Budgets Index of 2010, Russia scored 60/100 (or 21^st/94 countries), which is worse than most developed countries like the US (82) or Germany (67), but average for its region, and well above states like Nigeria (18) or Saudi Arabia (1).

Now I hope you won’t take away the wrong impression here. It is not my intention to argue that there’s no corruption in Russia, or that it isn’t any worse than in most of the developed world. But I do not consider Russia’s corruption to be atypical of other middle-income countries, and it’s certainly nowhere near the likes of Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea as those who praise the Corruption Perceptions Index would have you think.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: But Anatoly, you’re still ignoring our questions, and that’s very rude. As TI started bringing in more and more countries within its survey, it found that far, far more of them were LESS corrupt than Russia, and only a handful were MORE corrupt. You can’t seem to decide if TI’s data is reliable, and therefore proves corruption isn’t getting worse in Russia, or unreliable, and therefore can be ignored when it claims Russia is a disastrous failure. Since you don’t care about facts, let’s talk about anecdotes: Have you personally ever actually tried to do business in Russia?

ANATOLY KARLIN: So what?? The experts polled by Transparency International believed Russia to be a corrupt hellhole in 2000 (bottom 9% globally). They believed Russia to be a corrupt hellhole in 2010 (bottom 14% globally). Nothing changed.

Just because more countries were included in the survey during the intervening period says absolutely nothing about corruption trends in Russia!

TI’s data used to compile the CPI is reliable enough at measuring corruption PERCEPTIONS; what I think I made quite clear is that I do not believe those perceptions to be reflective of Russia’s corruption REALITIES, because of the methodological and face validity problems that I discussed above. As such, I do NOT view TI’s CPI as a reliable measure of corruption in Russia. There are far better measures such as the Global Corruption Barometer, the Global Integrity Report, and the Open Budget Index.

You can view Russia’s scores on these, relative to other countries, in my new post on the Corruption Realities Index 2010. It combines the findings of the three organizations above, and in the final results Russia comes 46^th/93 (and before you rush off to claim it is “Russophile”-biased, note that Georgia comes 21^st/93). Nobody would claim being about as corrupt as the world average to be a great achievement, and I never did; but neither is it apocalyptic.

No, I haven’t done business in Russia. Is it supposed to be a prerequisite for studying corruption in Russia? In any case, even if had I done business there, my experiences wouldn’t necessarily be representative of the business community at large.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Well, see, if Russia wasn’t really so bad, or was in stasis compared to other countries, then you’d expect to see an equal division between “less corrupt than Russia” and “more corrupt than Russia” as new countries were added to the mix. But in fact, as new countries are added the overwhelming majority turn out to be less corrupt than Russia. Even if Russia’s score is overstated by one-third, Russia still isn’t among the 100 most honest nations on the planet. A person who truly cared about Russia would be very, very concerned about this. You, instead, seek to rationalize Russian failure and by doing so you help it continue. So as we’ve said before, with “friends” like you Russia needs no enemies.

ANATOLY KARLIN: I doubt Russia’s corruption problem will be fixed sooner by screaming “ZAIRE WITH PERMAFROST!!!” at any opportunity, but that’s just me so let’s agree to disagree.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Why don’t you live in Russia?

ANATOLY KARLIN: This question appears to be a variation of the “love it then go there” argument, which is a false dilemma fallacy.

Anything more I say will only be recapping issues I’ve already addressed in this post.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Again, you’ll have to answer our questions or your interview won’t be published. Bizarre as it may seem to you, those are our rules. Incidentally, our readers aren’t overly interested in following links to your blog. Care to try again?

ANATOLY KARLIN: My reasons for living not living in Russia are simple and mundane: at the present time, I see more opportunities for myself where I currently reside than I do in Russia. I’d prefer to finish my last year in university, and overall, the Bay Area is a pretty rad place to be in.

This may change in the future, as in general, I view myself as a wanderer, a “rootless cosmopolitan” if you will, and some other countries on my to-go list include China, Argentina, and Ukraine / Belarus.

However, I doubt your motive in asking this question is to exchange pleasantries about my life goals. Instead you or your readers may legitimately ask why my opinions on Russian politics, society, etc., should carry any weight when I don’t live there.

First, who I am, where I live, and what flavor of ice cream I like has no bearing on the validity of any arguments I make about Russia or indeed almost anything else. Not only is disputing that a logical fallacy, but for consistency you’d then have to dismiss almost all Western Kremlinologists – including those you approve of, such as Streetwise Professor, Paul Goble, Leon Aron, etc – who likewise don’t live in Russia.

Second, you might be implying that I should “love it or leave it,” i.e. leave the US (which I hate) and go to Russia (which I love). Not only is this also a logical fallacy, a false choice dilemma, but it is also untrue. There are many aspects of the US which I love and likewise many aspects of Russia that I hate, and vice versa.

Third, you may say that I “voted with my feet,” thus proving that USA is Number One. Sorry to disappoint, but one person cannot be generalized to ‘prove’ things one way or another on issues as subjective as which country is better or worse than another. The exercise is entirely pointless given the huge impact of unquantifiable cultural factors and specific and personal circumstances inherent to any such judgment.

Fourth, and finally, even if I did live in Russia, the Russophobe ideologue will only argue that it’s confirmation that I’m an FSB stooge – because, as he or she well knows, the Kremlin crushes all dissent and only allows Putinistas online.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: We don’t believe any thinking person can argue that any other Russia blog that has ever existed has come close to being as inspirational to the blogosphere as La Russophobe.  Just for instance, neither your blog nor the one you (laughably) consider the best in the universe, Kremlin Stooge, would exist without our inspiration.  And if there’s one thing we respect about you, it would be your willingness to admit the extent of our influence.  Yet many of your Russophile brethren insist on pretending to dismiss us. Why are they so unwilling to admit how good we are? Why don’t they realize how foolish they look?  Is it some sort of psychological complex on their part, or is it a crazily ineffective propaganda scheme?

ANATOLY KARLIN: I think you’ve given all the answers in advance.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: No, we’ve given a choice of options, and maybe you can think of another one we haven’t.

ANATOLY KARLIN: It might have something to do with them seeing you as a slanderous egomaniac with delusions of grandeur (“La Russophobe, of course, stands alone as the best Russia blog on this planet, or any other”), though admittedly, also morbidly entertaining, like the artworks of Damien Hirst. But I’m sure they’re just jealous. After all: “ревность – сестра любви, подобно тому как дьявол – брат ангелов.”

You’ll always be an angel to me, La Russophobe!

LA RUSSOPHOBE:  Do you seriously believe Kremlin Stooge is the best Russia blog on the planet, or were you just being a provocateur?

ANATOLY KARLIN: It’s a tossup between Kremlin Stooge (popular coverage), Russia: Other Points Of View (in-depth economy, politics, media), A Good Treaty (society), The Power Vertical (politics), Sean’s Russia Blog (history), and Sublime Oblivion (demography)… well, if you insist, add La Russophobe (the кровавая гэбня).

(Of course, these are only the English-language blogs. There is also Alexandre Latsa’s Dissonance blog, en français, and it goes without saying that there are dozens of extremely good Russia blogs на русском.)

At a minimum, they all offer something unique. Selecting the best one is, by necessity, an exercise in subjectivity. With that caveat, I find Mark Chapman’s Kremlin Stooge, Russia: Other Points of View, and Eric Kraus’ Truth and Beauty to be the most interesting English-language blogs.

Thanks for your thoughtful questions, and wish you the best.

LA RUSSOPHOBE: Thanks for the interview, and good luck with your blogging!

R 130458Z AUG 79
FM AMEMBASSY TEHRAN
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 3182

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TEHRAN 08980
E.O. 12065: GDS 8/12/85 (TOMSETH, VICTOR L.) OR-P
TAGS PEPR, IR
SUBJECT: NEGOTIATIONS

1. (C – ENTIRE TEXT).

2. INTRODUCTION: RECENT NEGOTIATIONS IN WHICH THE EMBASSY HAS BEEN INVOLVED HERE, RANGING FROM COMPOUND SECURITY TO VISA OPERATIONS TO GTE TO THE SHERRY CASE, HIGHLIGHT SEVERAL SPECIAL FEATURES OF CONDUCTING BUSINESS IN THE PERSIAN ENVIRONMENT. IN SOME INSTANCES THE DIFFICULTIES WE HAVE ENCOUNTERED ARE A PARTIAL REFLECTION ON THE EFFECTS OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION, BUT WE BELIEVE THE UNDERLYING CULTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL QUALITIES THAT ACCOUNT FOR THE NATURE OF THESE DIFFICULTIES ARE AND WILL REMAIN RELATIVELY CONSTANT. THEREFORE, WE SUGGEST THAT THE FOLLOWING ANALYSIS BE USED TO BRIEF BOTH USG PERSONNEL AND PRIVATE SECTOR REPRESENTATIVES WHO ARE REQUIRED TO DO BUSINESS WITH AND IN THIS COUNTRY. END INTRODUCTION.

3. PERHAPS THE SINGLE DOMINANT ASPECT OF THE PERSIAN PSYCHE IS AN OVERRIDING EGOISM. ITS ANTECEDENTS LIE IN THE LONG IRANIAN HISTORY OF INSTABILITY AND INSECURITY WHICH PUT A PREMIUM ON SELF-PRESERVATION. THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF IT IS AN ALMOST TOTAL PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF AND LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR UNDERSTANDING POINTS OF VIEW OTHER THAN ONE’S OWN. THUS, FOR EXAMPLE, IT IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO AN IRANIAN THAT U.S. IMMIGRATION LAW MAY PROHIBIT ISSUING HIM A TOURIST VISA WHEN HE HAS DETERMINED THAT HE WANTS TO LIVE IN CALIFORNIA. SIMILARLY, THE IRANIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES NO INCONSISTENCY IN CLAIMING FORCE MAJEURE TO AVOID PENALTIES FOR LATE PAYMENT OF INTEREST DUE ON OUTSTANDING LOANS WHILE THE GOVERNMENT OF WHICH IT IS A PART IS DENYING THE VAILIDITY OF THE VERY GROUNDS UPON WHICH THE CLAIM IS MADE WHEN CONFRONTED BY SIMILAR CLAIMS FROM FOREIGN FIRMS FORCED TO CEASE OPERATIONS DURING THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION.

4. THE REVERSE OF THIS PARTICULAR PSYCHOLOGICAL COIN, AND HAVING THE SAME HISTORICAL ROOTS AS PERSIAN EGOISM, IS A PERVASIVE UNEASE ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE WORLD IN WHICH ONE LIVES. THE PERSIAN EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN THAT NOTHING IS PERMANENT AND IT IS COMMONLY PERCEIVED THAT HOSTILE FORCES ABOUND. IN SUCH AN ENVIRONMENT EACH INDIVIDUAL MUST BE CONSTANTLY ALERT FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO PROTECT HIMSELF AGAINST THE MALEVOLENT FORCES THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE HIS UNDOING. HE IS OBVIOUSLY JUSTIFIED IN USING ALMOST ANY MEANS AVAILABLE TO EXPLOIT SUCH OPPORTUNITIES. THIS APPROACH UNDERLIES THE SOCALLED “BAZAAR MENTALITY” SO COMMON AMONG PERSIANS, A MIND-SET THAT OFTEN IGNORES LONGER TERM INTERESTS IN FAVOR OF IMMEDIATELY OBTAINABLE ADVANTAGES AND COUNTENANCES PRACTICES THAT ARE REGARDED AS UNETHICAL BY OTHER NORMS. AN EXAMPLE IS THE SEEMINGLY SHORTSIGHTED AND HARASSING TACTICS EMPLOYED BY THE PGOI IN ITS NEGOTIATIONS WITH GTE.

5. COUPLED WITH THESE PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS IS A GENERAL INCOMPREHENSION OF CASUALITY. ISLAM, WITH ITS EMPHASIS ON THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD, APPEARS TO ACCOUNT AT LEAST IN MAJOR PART FOR THIS PHENOMENON. SOMEWHAT SURPRISINGLY, EVEN THOSE IRANIANS EDUCATED IN THE WESTERN STYLE AND PERHAPS WITH LONG EXPERIENCE OUTSIDE IRAN ITSELF FREQUENTLY HAVE DIFFICULTY GRASPING THE INTER-RELATIONSHIP OF EVENTS. WITNESS A YAZDI RESISTING THE IDEA THAT IRANIAN BEHAVIOR HAS CONSEQUENCES ON THE PERCEPTION OF IRAN IN THE U.S. OR THAT THIS PERCEPTION IS SOMEHOW RELATED TO AMERICAN POLICIES REGARDING IRAN. THIS SAME QUALITY ALSO HELPS EXPLAIN PERSIAN AVERSION TO ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE’S OWN ACTIONS. THE DEUS EX MACHINA IS ALWAYS AT WORK.

6. THE PERSIAN PROCLIVITY FOR ASSUMING THAT TO SAY SOMETHING IS TO DO IT FURTHER COMPLICATES MATTERS. AGAIN, YAZDI CAN EXPRESS SURPRISE WHEN INFORMED THAT THE IRREGULAR SECURITY FORCES ASSIGNED TO THE EMBASSY REMAIN IN PLACE. “BUT THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TOLD ME THEY WOULD GO BY MONDAY,” HE SAYS. AN MFA OFFICIAL REPORTS THAT THE SHERRY CASE IS “90 PERCENT SOLVED,” BUT WHEN A CONSULAR OFFICER INVESTIGATES HE DISCOVERS THAT NOTHING HAS CHANGED. THERE IS NO RECOGNITION THAT INSTRUCTIONS MUST BE FOLLOWED UP, THAT COMMITMENTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY ACTION AND RESULTS.

6. FINALLY, THERE ARE THE PERSIAN CONCEPTS OF INFLUENCE AND OBLIGATION. EVERYONE PAYS OBEISANCE TO THE FORMER AND THE LATTER IS USUALLY HONORED IN THE BREACH. PERSIANS ARE CONSUMED WITH DEVELOPING PARTI BAZI–THE INFLUENCE THAT WILL HELP GET THINGS DONE–WHILE FAVORS ARE ONLY GRUDGINGLY BESTOWED AND THEN JUST TO THE EXTENT THAT A TANGIBLE QUID PRO QUO IS IMMEDIATELY PRECEPTIBLE. FORGET ABOUT ASSISTANCE PROFERRED LAST YEAR OR EVEN LAST WEEK; WHAT CAN BE OFFERED TODAY?

7. THERE ARE SEVERAL LESSONS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD NEGOTIATE WITH PERSIANS IN ALL THIS:

- –FIRST, ONE SHOULD NEVER ASSUME THAT HIS SIDE OF THE ISSUE WILL BE RECOGNIZED, LET ALONE THAT IT WILL BE CONCEDED TO HAVE MERITS. PERSIAN PREOCCUPATION WITH SELF PRECLUDES THIS. A NEGOTIATOR MUST FORCE RECOGNITION OF HIS POSITION UPON HIS PERSIAN OPPOSITE NUMBER.

- –SECOND, ONE SHOULD NOT EXPECT AN IRANIAN READILY TO PERCEIVE THE ADVANTAGES OF A LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP BASED ON TRUST. HE WILL ASSUME THAT HIS OPPOSITE NUMBER IS ESSENTIALLY AN ADVERSARY. IN DEALING WITH HIM HE WILL ATTEMPT TO MAXIMIZE THE BENEFITS TO HIMSELF THAT ARE IMMEDIATELY OBTAINABLE. HE WILL BE PREPARED TO GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO ACHIEVE THIS GOAL, INCLUDING RUNNING THE RISK OF SO ALIENATING WHOEVER HE IS DEALING WITH THAT FUTURE BUSINESS WOULD BE UNTHINKABLE, AT LEAST TO THE LATTER.

- –THIRD, INTERLOCKING RELATIONSHIPS OF ALL ASPECTS OF AN ISSUE MUST BE PAINSTAKINGLY, FORECEFULLY AND REPEATEDLY DEVELOPED. LINKAGES WILL BE NEITHER READILY COMPREHENDED NOR ACCEPTED BY PERSIAN NEGOTIATORS.

- –FOURTH, ONE SHOULD INSIST ON PERFORMANCE AS THE SINE QUA NON AT ESH STAGE OF NEGOTIATIONS. STATEMENTS OF INTENTION COUNT FOR ALMOST NOTHING.

- –FIFTH, CULTIVATION OF GOODWILL FOR GOODWILL’S SAKE IS A WASTE OF EFFORT. THE OVERRIDING OBJECTIVE AT ALL TIMES SHOULD BE IMPRESSING UPON THE PERSIAN ACROSS THE TABLE THE MUTUALITY OF THE PROPOSED UNDERTAKINGS, HE MUST BE MADE TO KNOW THAT A QUID PRO QUO IS INVOLVED ON BOTH SIDES.

- –FINALLY, ONE SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR THE THREAT OF BREAKDOWN IN NEGOTIATIONS AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT AND NOT BE COWED BY THE POSSIBLITY. GIVEN THE PERSIAN NEGOTIATOR’S CULTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS, HE IS GOING TO RESIST THE VERY CONCEPT OF A RATIONAL (FROM THE WESTERN POINT OF VIEW) NEGOTIATING PROCESS.

LAINGEN

CONFIDENTIAL

A week ago, Andrey Sidelnikov – the co-organizer of the Strategy-31 Abroad protests with Alex Goldfarb, Berezovsky’s PR man – posted a propaganda tract from Khodorkovsky on Facebook, Reform must, and will, come to Russia. Unable to suppress my trolling instincts, I wrote: “He suffers from lack of free speech so much, this Khodorkovsky, he’s a true martyr of the Putin regime”(1). I honestly wondered if they’d get the sarcasm. (Based on my prior trolling, Russian liberals aren’t good at recognizing humor. A few of them had “Liked” one of my older comments about the necessity of destroying the “bloody regime” and “liquidating the Chekists”, in response to some liberast talking point about the supposed illegality of dispersing the (unsanctioned) Strategy 31 protests.)

Sidelnikov himself was the first to respond, citing the “Love it then go there” Argument (“Why aren’t you living under the Putin regime? I mean you like it so much.”) It’s a logical fallacy, but fair enough, it’s not as if this is a serious argument. I was trolling him after all. Nonetheless, I decided to go in with a serious, and rather important, question – “Regardless of your views on the “Putin regime”, why do you choose to associate yourself with the likes of Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, etc? Not only does it hurt your approval ratings, but there are no shortage of other, more deserving, victims and causes in Russia. I’m really curious, why do you liberals regard a billionaire who got his wealth through shady connections as your main hero?” And this is when the party really got going…

Irina's political party?

One charming lady Irina Worthey barged in: “Is that how much Berkeley messed up your mind, you fucking communist? You have an opinion about Khodorkovsky, do you!? Look at ‘im here, folks! Shut your trap now, ok!” (3) Well, I’ve never made any secret of my vast legions of middle-aged female Russian-American-Russophobe admirers. There are at least five I can name, and not all of them just through the Internet… ;)

This was followed by a comment from a Randroid calling itself Serge B., who answered my original question by arguing that Khodorkovsky is the most important political prisoner in Russia – “a good business man working inside a flawed system” – and implicitly suggested I apply for a Kremlin job since “in Russia it appears to me they have a shortage of good PR men”. Thanks for the recommendation! Then Irina decided to come back in, unable to resist feeding the troll (i.e. me) some more: “It’s easy to spew all kinds of shit about Khodorkovsky from Berkeley, while he sits in a cell in that fascist Sovka”. (4)

I decided to play with Irina. “The endless self-irony of the Russian liberasts never ceases to amaze: for thieves – freedom!, for dissidents (against you) – shut up. I love you too! BTW, I really do have Marxist views”. I reckoned that would wind her up good. Then I turned my trolling wiles to the Randroid: ”Of course his prosecution was politically motivated. Putin made it clear that the oligarchs who made their fortunes in the 1990′s (by robbing the state with the connivance of Yeltsin’s Family) could keep their assets – if they kept out of politics. Khodorkovsky didn’t keep his end of the bargain, fancying that a mere hyena like him could take on a wolf pack like the Russian state and win. He was wrong, and lost, and only then did his PRщики begin to portray him as an anti-corruption crusader and democracy hero. So cry me a river about his suffering, there are literally billions of people on Earth who deserve our sympathy more. If you liberals want him to use him as your figurehead, by all means do so, I even support you in that, since these stunts will only hurt you and permanently keep you from attaining any kind of political influence.”

Who is John Galt? Mikhail Khodorkovsky!

True to form, the Randroid started harping on about his idol: “It’s funny how Atlas Shrugged yet again immediately comes to mind…Ayn was great in uncovering idle philosophers like you who complained about the DOers of this world. According to YOU the DOers actually either steal, cheat or get lucky in accumulating wealth, while you sit in Berkley and philosophize. In reality, they actually take nothing or a failed, bankrupt, разворованую (plundered doesn’t seem to carry the same weight) company and create everything (one of the largest and most successful companies in the world).”

I then proceeded to effortlessly pawn him, turning his own libertarian nutjob weaponry against him: ”If Khodorkovsky had been a true Randian hero, he’d have blown up the YUKOS oil fields, retreated to a redoubt in Kolyma with the other oligarchs, and built a perfect society while the rest of Russia crumbled into ruin under Putinist collectivism. Which is exactly what happene.. erm, wait a sec, that’s just lunatic ravin… damn, Ayn Rand is what I meant!”

Then came even more rib-splitting entertainment from Irina, my bestest bud on teh internets. “Serge: Anatoly is a clinical idiot. He must be left alone.” But fortunately for make benefit of our entertainment she wasn’t too keen on following her own advice. “Anatoly: UC Berkeley didn’t do you any good. Your brain’s damaged. I pity your parents, because their son is a Marxist bastard; they, if they’re still alive, must be in a permanent state of what-the fuck!”

I’m really enjoying my conversation with Irina. It’s not that often, even for someone in my position, to get the thrill of being the target of so much primal animal hatred (how I envy Mark Ames!). It’s almost titillating! I proceed to fuck with her mind some more, picking my words with the care and respect a matador has to his banderilla. ”As I said before, Berkeley isn’t involved. My enlightenment, my recognition of the Truth, followed my independent reading of the works of Marx and Engels. Though, one pretty big flaw, is that Marxism doesn’t pay attention to the important role of limited resources and a fragile environment. It is these Limits to Growth that will spell the final doom of capitalism! If you’re interested in discussing this further, and I know you are, I have a page on Facebook, or you could use PM. For I abhor authoritarian collectivism, and like to be surrounded by a diversity of voices!”

Mission “total freak-out” accomplished! I savored her every word, dripping with fiery rage, like a fine rare steak. ”Those like Anatoly have to be liquidated. Where was the school board looking? The Komsomol? The Party organization? How did this shit putrefy out of Berkeley?” Then the rather worrying (considering she lives in Stanford): “Tolya, I’m going to Berkeley, I want to observe you… What’s wrong with you? Were you beaten too little in your childhood?” (7) Don’t worry – I’ve yet to notice any stalkers following me around.

Would have only supported Khodorkovksy for (personal) кapital!

Funny thing is a (real) hardcore Marxist turned up to the discussion, though I have to say that Joerg has some rather non-standard interpretations. “Anatoly, Marx was the first person, who said that environmental pollution is the waste of resources… one has to carefully read his works in the original… And also: if Marx were alive today, he’d be defending Khodorkovsky”. Okay… Well, who knows? Since I haven’t read the “45 easily accessible tomes” of Marx’s and Engels’ collected works “three or four” times, like he claims to have done, I can’t say for certain that they don’t delve into these sustainability issues somewhere, one hundred years in advance of everyone else. The real relationship between Marxism and sustainability is certainly an interesting one. But that’s for another day, and for now, my Khodorkovsky-related trolling hasn’t ended!

The liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a piece on the 14 years the prosecution is seeking, and unsurprisingly, painted the main prosecutor Lahtin in a most unflattering light – though not an undeserved one if the stories about his callous attitudes to court procedures are true.

One shoshunov_n wrote “Freedom for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. To prison with Lahtin. Together with Putin”. I trolled under the title “Liberal Hypocrisy”: “The liberasts are openly saying that they couldn’t care less about real liberalism. God forbid they take power, they’ll be having their own purges in no time against the ‘enemies of the people’”. The liberast radical replied: “What, you’re already afraid? You’re doing the right thing then!” (A voice of reason later added, “What power will they take exactly?? Liberals are empty suits, dogs barking at the wind”.)

"The Russian liberals, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit."

The other conversation there was started by myself, which I kicked off: “Complete marazm. That Lahtin conducts himself in a stupid and clumsy way does not mean that Khodorkovsky is not innocent, or doesn’t deserve prison like a common criminal”. That sure got the liberast antheap at NG into a huff. I’m going to skip the early stages for their relative lack of comedy value, until the time when I asked the same question I asked Sidelnikov’s liberasts: “I’ve never understood this liberal kowtowing before billionaire robbers. If they pay you for this, as with Amsterdam & Peroff or MBK Center, they it’s all nice and clear, by the contract. But most of Russia’s “democratists” shill for Khodorkovsky without even any compensation… why don’t you go protest something like the giveaway of Russian assets under the slogan of privatization? Now those guys really do want to plunder you, to give away your money into the hands of the international financial elites! Oh… but I forgot, the liberals only love those comrades like Khodorkovsky or Soros who rob them blind!”

This elicited a response from one vedma2: “Don’t try to understand [why we support Khodorkovsky], it’s not for average minds”. (9)

I replied, “And so the liberals yet again reveal to us, that they consider themselves to be the representatives of a higher caste, like Brahmins, they they’re better than us ordinary Russians of “average intelligence”, fuck. No wonder less than 5% of the population supports them… Maybe our wisdom is “average”, but our wisdom – it is folk wisdom, that will never betray Russia.”

This concludes my pseudo-intellectual trollfest for the week. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it! And before you ask what’s the point? It’s very simple. (1) I was bored, (2) genuinely annoyed with the Khodorkovsky-worship, (3) suspected it was a good way to demonstrate the close-mindedness and authoritarian instincts of the Russian liberasty that is feted in the West. That of course makes them extremely hypocritical given the values that they profess to espouse.

(1) Так сильно страдает от отсуствия свободы слова, этот Ходорковский, он настоящий мученик и жертва путинского режима!

(2) Не смотря на Ваши взгляды на “путинский режим”, я никогда не понимал либеральную лубовь к товарищам типа Березовского, Ходорковского, и т.д. Это Вам только вредит со стороны общественного мнения, и вообще в российских тюрьмах находятся 800,000 людей, многих из них заслужившие свое наказание намного меньше Ходора (http://goo.gl/dYuE). Действительно, почему Вы, либералы, считаете своего главного героя – миллиардера, который прихватизировал свои деньги темными, и наверняка нелегальными, методами?

(3) Anatoly Karlin: Это тебе, коммунисту хреновому, в Беркли так мозг распотрошили? Мнение у него по поводу Ходорковского есть! Поглядите, люди добрые! Чтоб пасть захлопнул, ясно?

(4) легко нести ахинею сидя в Беркли по поводу Ходоковского, который сидит в клетке в фашистском совке.

(5) Serge: Anatoly is a clinical idiot. He must be left alone.Andrey: Убери Толяна из друзей, иначе я за себя не ручаюсь.

Anatoly: UC Berkeley вам на пользу не пошел. Головной мозг набекрень. Родителей ваших жалко, что сын у них подонок-марксист, они, если еще живы, должны находиться в перманентном охренении, если вы и им подобные речи толкаете.

(6) Как я раньше горовил, Беркли не связан. Мое осознание истины исходила от независимого чтение работ Маркса и Энгельса. Правда, один довольно большой недостаток, традиционный марксизм не обращает внимание на важную роль огрениченных ресурсов и окружающей среды. Именно эти Limits to Growth возможно станут причинами гибели капитализма… Ведь я не являюсь авторитарным коллективистом (в отличие от некоторых здесь), и мне нравится находится вокруг diversity of voices.

(7) таких, как Анатолий надо гасить. куда смотрел школьный коллектив? комсомольский актив? партийная организация? как такое дерьмецо выродилось в Университете Беркли? …

Толян: еду в Беркли, поглядеть на тебя желаю. Че-то мне прям нехорошо, неважно мне как-то от марксизма этого. Че с тобой, Толя? Тебя в детстве мало били?

(8) Никогда не пойму низкопоклонство либералов перед миллиардерами-разбойниками. Если они Вам платят, как Amsterdam & Peroff или МБК-Центр, то все хорошо и понятно, все по контракту. Но большинство российской демшизы тусуется за Ходора без компенсации… почему бы Вам лучше не пойти по-протестовать очередную передачу государсвенной собсвенности под лозунгом приватизации?
http://www.rian.ru/economy/20101020/287620491.html
Вот они действительно Вас хотят обворовать, передать Ваши (российские) деньги прям в руки международной финансовой элиты! Ох,… да-х)) я забыл, ведь, либералы любит когда именно такие, товарищи типа Ходорковского или Сороса, деньги здирают!

(9) А и не пытайтесь. Это не для средних умов.

(10) Итак либералы опять показывают, что считают себя представителями высшей касты, как брамины, толкают, что они якобы лучше нас, обычных россиян “среднего ума”, бля. Не удивительно что их поддерживает менее 5% населения… Может быть мы и среднего ума, но ум наш – народный, который Россию никогда не предаст!

2. Putin made a conciliatory speech on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, much more so than the one a year ago. It was balanced and considered, condemning the crimes of totalitarianism, while avoiding any acknowledgement of modern Russia’s responsibility.

In a bitter irony for the Poles, three days later the firebrand Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tumbled out of the sky while flying (uninvited) to attend a separate commemoration. Among the dead were assorted members of the Polish military, clergy, politicians, and Katyn victims’ families (see list).

First, putting all your eggs in one basket is pretty stupid. High-ranking politicians and generals are important national assets. They shouldn’t all be packed into one plane just to save a little money. In banana republics – which fortunately for Poland it is not – such accidents can cause state breakdown and revolution.

Second, the insistence on continuing to land in Smolensk against the advice of ground control is key to understanding the tragedy. Lech Kaczynski has a history of interference with pilots’ decisions. During the South Ossetian War, he threatened to fire the pilot for countermanding his orders to land in a war zone and instead continuing on to Azerbaijan. Though the threat wasn’t carried out, the pilot is known to have suffered from depression afterwards. The same pilot was flying the aircraft in this case. It will not be surprising if some similar, irresponsible stubbornness typical of Kaczynski was at play here. Or perhaps the pilot just really, really didn’t want to “fail” Kaczynski again.

Few people explicitly blamed Putin, the FSB, or even NKVD trees planters from the 1940′s for the crash. The exceptions were ultra-nationalist Artur Gorski (he who also tried to make Jesus Christ proclaimed King of Poland) and the ever reliable Russian liberast Novodvorskaya. There is absolutely nothing indicating a conspiracy, which in any case is highly unlikely given that this would have produced great risks for very limited payoffs.

Russia has been using the crash as an opportunity to mount a charm offensive towards Poland: Putin hugging Polish PM Donald Tusk; shows of solidarity towards Poland from Russia’s leaders and citizens; the prime-time airing of the Polish movie “Katyn”. I am almost certain that most of it is simulated, at least amongst the Russian leadership. Would America’s elites shed any real tears if Chavez, or Putin for that matter, fell out of the sky while flying to the United States? No, I don’t think so. But it seems to be working.

The fortuitous (for Russia) death of Kaczynski kills two birds with one stones. One of the most prominent and respected Polish proponents of the anti-Russian agenda is elimated, while relations with Poland can be improved so as to ease its concerns over Russia’s westwards-creeping sphere of influence.

3. In recent months, there has been talk of Poland’s reserves of shale gas, which – or so some commentators have suggested – will wean off east-central Europe from its dependency on Russian gas. US giants announced exploratory drilling will begin in Poland within the next few weeks. One oil and gas research group estimates there could be as much as 1.4tn cubic meters of unconventional gas in tight rock formations across northern and central Poland, which have recently become accessible thanks to American developments in hydraulic fracturing technology. These reserves would boost the EU proven reserves of natural gas, now at 2.8tn cubic meters, by 50%. Furthermore, Poland itself – whose own gas consumption is pretty low at 14bn cubic meters of gas (72% imported) – will become self-sufficient for decades. Poland is clearly very enthused about this, offering foreign companies excellent tax incentives for developing the shale gas.

Will this actually produce the desired results? First, the high costs mean that only 28% of gas-producing wells have generated decent profits, making investment risky. Second, they have amazingly huge decline rates – e.g., around 60% per year for the Barnett shale fields in Texas (and up to 80-90% in the Haynesville wells). This makes ramping up production quickly difficult since you have to run so hard just to keep still. Third, the projections indicate European gas production (now c. 200bn cubic meters) will decline while demand (now c. 520bn cubic meters) will increase. Poland’s 1.4tn cubic meters of shale gas reserves are insignificant relative to Russia’s 43tn cubic meters of conventional gas reserves, for which the infrastructure is already built. Finally, it is not even at all clear that Poland switching from coal to shale gas will even be that environmentally-friendly.

Now if there is the political will in Poland, it will probably be able to build up a shale gas infrastructure and ensure itself – and even its Visegrad and Baltic neighbors – energy independence for a few decades, starting from around 2020. (That period may also coincide with Nabucco coming onstream by 2015, if it gets the go ahead this year). The geopolitical configuration of Europe will change. Poland will become a far more significant pole in the European power balance than it is today, while Germany – and Britain further downstream – will become even more dependent on Russian gas, delivered by the Nord Stream pipeline bypassing Poland and the Baltics.

4. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupts, covering northern Europe with a haze of ash and disrupting transatlantic flights.

There are three things to be said about this. First, people in Britain have been reporting that the sky was unusually clear, with nary a cloud in sight, and that there was a spike in temperatures, with people even sunbathing. This was to be expected following the grounding of air fleets in the affected regions, since aircraft contrails, or vapor trails, are a major source of global dimming. This effect limits the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface of the Earth, and has caused the real extent of global warming to have been underestimated. (Or put another way, if all the world’s air fleets were to vanish today, temperatures would immediately spike by about 1C).

Second, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano could trigger off the much bigger Katla volcano. Katla has seen a significantly increased incidence of tremors in the past day. In the worst scenario, albeit a pretty unlikely one, the skies over Europe could remain ashen for up to two or three years – wrecking havoc on transatlantic transport and nudging already-strained airlines into bankruptcy. However, there shouldn’t be any major cooling effect, since even the larger Katla eruptions have historically been an order of magnitude less intense than that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. (Unless the really big one blows off, that is Laki, whose eruption in 1783 caused dearth throughout Europe). That said, the global warming-induced melting of the Icelandic glaciers could make its volcano eruptions both bigger and more frequent in the decades to come.

Finally, see this Oil Drum post about The Possible Impact of the Icelandic Volcanoes on Energy Production. In short, major Icelandic eruptions could cause energy problems due to 1) a decrease in biofuel crop yields and 2) wind turbines having to be shut down so that their turbines don’t get damaged by air particles from the eruption.

5. With the British elections on May 6th 2010 fast approaching, the key debates center around the economy. During the recession, Britain experienced a peak-to-trough fall in GDP of 6.2% and its budget deficit this year will account for 12-13% of GDP. Foreigners are beginning to look at Britain as the new “sick man of Europe”. Below are three articles which, roughly speaking, offer an “optimistic”, a “realistic”, and a “pessimistic”, respectively, view on the British economy.

A) The pain to come: A terrible recession will be followed by a lacklustre recovery, but Britain is no basket-case (Economist). ”The economy may have been lopsided before the recession, but on nothing like the scale of southern Europe. In 2007 Spain’s current-account deficit ran at 10% of GDP; Greece ran one of 14.4%. By comparison, Britain’s 2.7% was a mere bagatelle. The fall in the pound has allowed the economy to regain competitiveness in a way not open to the weaker members of the euro area. As for the resemblances with the 1970s, history is not repeating itself. Inflation has recently flared up, but at 3% in February it is tame; the post-war high, reached in 1975, was 27%… But [Britain's debt figure] is inflated by London’s role as a global financial hub where foreign banks cluster to do international business. Adjusting for this, McKinsey reckoned that debt amounted to 380% of GDP in 2008. Although this was the second-highest after Japan (459%), four other countries – Spain, South Korea, Switzerland and France – had debt above 300%… Britain’s economy was overhyped before the recession, but the gloom has been overdone since the great fall.”

B) A Prayer from the Death Bed: Great Britain Stars in Its Own Greek Tragedy (Spiegel). “The country that was once referred to as “Cool Britannia” is in a serious crisis, with a hole in its budget even bigger than Greece’s budget deficit, now at 12.2 percent. And nobody knows how to fix the problem. Indeed, the problem has become so worrisome, that the European Commission told London on Wednesday to do more to tighten its budget, … “The fiscal strategy outlined in the United Kingdom’s convergence program does not foresee the correction of the excessive deficit by the fiscal year 2014/2015, as recommended by the Council,” the European Commission said in a statement… The accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers have calculated that starting next year, Britain would have to make across-the-board budget cuts of 5 percent a year to come close to cutting the deficit in half by 2014. But because the Brown government has already declared the budgets for health, law enforcement and schools to be off-limits, cuts of up to 10 percent – per year – are to be expected in most areas… And things could even turn out to be much worse if there is no strong economic upturn during this period. … There will also be massive cuts in low-income housing construction and transportation, translating into even more dilapidated housing, more potholes on Britain’s already miserable roads, and new cutbacks in high-speed train service. Universities have already lost close to £1 billion in funding, and various think thanks predict that the defense budget could shrink by about 15 percent between now and 2015.”

C) Election 2010: Debt – A conspiracy of silence (The Independent). ”In 1975 the UK had government interest-bearing debt of about 45 per cent of the total economy (GDP) and the debt was rising at about 8 per cent per year. We then had to crawl to the IMF in 1976.Today, that interest-bearing debt is about 65 per cent of GDP, rising nearly 13 per cent a year. A degree in economics will not be necessary to spot that things are a lot worse than in 1975… The mid-1970s IMF crisis was triggered largely by the fact that foreign buyers of government debt were so nervous of the UK’s ability to repay debt that interest rates roared into the teens. Inflation was a much bigger issue then than now, and foreigners and Brits alike also feared we intended to “repay” our debt with relatively worthless scraps of paper. So there was a buyers’ strike on government debt and we had to be bailed out. Rationally, the currency collapsed in value, and as the cost of importing oil and the like rose, so did inflation. … So how can we get out of this financial hole before our creditors get to us? There are three ways to reduce our national debt: let inflation rip to destroy the debt; increased tax revenues from higher taxes and economic growth; cut government spending. … The political debate talks of a few hundred million here and there – it needs to be about tens and scores of billions. Neither party has plans to deploy actions for the economy remotely commensurate with the size of the problem.”

I lean towards the “realistic” / “pessimistic” sides of the debate. The Government’s rosy projections of 2.5%+ growth are unlikely to materialize. Consumption is going to be kept down by consumer indebtedness, the upcoming hikes in interest rates, and increases in tax rates. There’s little room for export growth, considering the deindustrialization of the British economy. Finally, there itsenergy problems. The North Sea oil and gas fields are fast depleting and Britain’s reliance on gas supplies is increasing. Having failed to make any long-term arrangements with suppliers like Gazprom on the cheap, it will be forced to bid at spot prices on the LNG market to a greater extent than the European nations. Finally, the emerging trends towards the unraveling of liberal globalization cannot bode well for a nation that derived so much of its prosperity from open markets and international financial, legal, and consulting services.

Now what about the elections? Below is a graph of party approval ratings. Of late, the Conservatives, New Labor, and the Liberal Democrats have been running neck and neck.

[Opinion polls on British election: Conservatives, New Labor, Liberal Democrats].

My suspicions are that if the Tories win, there will be attempts at a strong fiscal rentrenchment. The shrinking of the public sector will hurt living standards, but lay the foundations for eventual stabilization. On the other hand, New Labor or the Liberal Democrats will be unwilling, or unable, to follow through will this, and the eventual result would be one default or another accompanied by a sharp drop in living standards. Another possibility is a “hung parliament”, should the three parties all win roughly equal shares of the vote (as seems to be a strong likelihood today). Such a paralysis would delay any actions to address Britain’s imbalances.

6. Demography watch.

• U.S. Birth Rate Decline Linked to Recession – small fall in US birth rates in 2009.
• On migration and population in reunification-era Korea (Randy McDonald) and discussion.
• Russia’s demography Jan-Feb 2010: relative to same period last year, births fall 0.8%, deaths fall 2.0%. Not too surprising since Russia’s recession troughed some nine months back.
• Comparative demography in the CIS states (Demoscope).
• Таджикские трудовые мигранты во время кризиса (Demoscope).

7. Energy & climate blast – lots of important reads these last two weeks.

• Online World3 simulator @ http://live.simgua.com/World.
• Confidential document reveals Obama’s hardline US climate talk strategy.
• The dark side of coal – some historical insights on energy and the economy (Ugo Bardi). 1) In a world devoid of coal or other high-EROEI energy sources, life is hard and dependent on muscle power. 2) It is justifiable, and if so to what extent, to cite the economic ramifications of “peak coal” as a contribution factor to the European crisis of 1914-45 (since oil only began to expand in a big way from the 1950′s).
• Avoiding Collapse (Global Guerrillas)
• Easter Island : A Case Study in the Response to Resource Depletion.
• Hottest Jan-Feb-March on record in 2010. Could the deniers and fudgers STFU already? More.
• The Future of Capitalism – Profits and Growth (George Mobus).
• Peak asphalt: the return of gravel roads (Ugo Bardi).
• Social Security and Medicare Funding Issues: Even Worse when One Considers Resource Constraints (Gail Tverberg).
• Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis (Chris Clugston) – important reference.
• Tipping towards the unknown – “Researchers propose critical planetary boundaries, transgressing them could be catastrophic. But there is hope.”
• You think only leftist losers go on about peak oil? US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015.
• Dancing with the devil known as geohacking & Birth control vs. geohacking (Lou Grinzo).
• The Twilight of the Machine & A Blindness to Systems (John Michael Greer).
• An Introduction to Global Warming Impacts – a summary from Climate Progress. For another key post on Limits, see World Oil Production Forecast – Update November 2009 from Oil Drum.
• A Superstorm for Global Warming Research, an 8-part skeptic series by Spiegel. Criticized here at Real Climate.

8. Eurasia watch.

• The Failure of the Anti-Russian “Freedom Agenda” (Daniel Larison).
• Yanukovych removes Ukraine’s application to join NATO, a move that is supported by the majority of the Ukrainian population.
• Russia’s industrial production in Q1 2010 continues a slow recovery. More encouragingly, after the sudden collapse in late 2008-early 2009, Russian consumer expectations are rapidly approaching their old boomtime highs. Merrill Lynch is particularly optimistic – Russian Economy May Get ‘Biggest Bounce’ in World, making the highest yet prediction of 7% growth  for 2010 (most analysts suggest 4-6%).
• Randy McDonald writes about Soviet computers.
• A detailed study from Russia’s VTsIOM polling agency on the Internet in Russia. Summary: 81% of Russians have cell phones; 46% have computers; 38% are Internet users (23% use it daily).
• Russia Weekly Sitrep (Patrick Armstrong).
• The Sirens of Russia. Post by A Good Treaty about Russia’smigalka culture of impunity – and how it is perhaps slowly beginning to retreat under public pressure and the influence of social media.
• Russian attitudes towards Katyn (Levada). Some 50% of Russians view Poland positively, 26% negatively (AK: these figures are likely the reverse in Poland). Only 43% of Russians have heard about Katyn. Asked who was responsible for it, 19% said the USSR, 28% Nazi Germany, and 53% didn’t know. Around 15% think it was “genocide”, 38% a “crime”, 14% consider it justified under wartime conditions, and 33% didn’t answer. Only 18% think Putin should apologize for Katyn in Russia’s name, while 46% disagree. Of the latter, 47% think he shouldn’t apologize because Nazi Germany was responsible; 34% – because today’s Russia shouldn’t answer for the USSR; and 8%, because it would weaken Russia’s position in relation to Poland.
• Russia: Other Points of View analyzes Stratfor’s coverage of Russia and The Dangers of Meddling in Russia’s North Caucasus.
• The new Journal of Eurasian Studies (h/t Sean) from South Korea. I checked out the first article in its first issue: Eurasian polities as hybrid regimes: The case of Putin’s Russia, which is basically accurate: “It is argued that Russian political development under Putin is best understood not as “authoritarianization” but as a process in which Russia transitioned from a system of “competing pyramids” of machine power to a “single-pyramid” system, a system dominated by one large political machine. It turns out that in single-pyramid systems that preserve contested elections, as does Russia, public opinion matters more than in typical authoritarian regimes.”

9. Mexico and the Failed State Revisited (free Stratfor) has the counter-intuitive take that far from challenging the state, the drug cartels are actually benefiting the Mexican economy because the immense profits reaped from selling drugs to the affluent US can be reinvested into Mexico.

…It is not clear to STRATFOR that Mexico is becoming a failed state. Instead, it appears the Mexican state has accommodated itself to the situation. Rather than failing, it has developed strategies designed both to ride out the storm and to maximize the benefits of that storm for Mexico. First, while the Mexican government has lost control over matters having to do with drugs and with the borderlands of the United States, Mexico City’s control over other regions — and over areas other than drug enforcement — has not collapsed (though its lack of control over drugs could well extend to other areas eventually). Second, while drugs reshape Mexican institutions dramatically, they also, paradoxically, stabilize Mexico. …

On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested overseas, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession. It is difficult to trace where the drug money is going, which follows from its illegality. Certainly, drug dealers would want their money in a jurisdiction where it could not be easily seized even if tracked. U.S. asset seizure laws for drug trafficking make the United States an unlikely haven. Though money clearly flows out of Mexico, the ability of the smugglers to influence the behavior of the Mexican government by investing some of it makes Mexico a likely destination for a substantial portion of such funds.

Of course, there’s also the problem that Mexico’s oil production is plummeting as the supergiant Canterell depletes. (the state oil company is blamed for managerial fecklessness, but geological reasons are more important). An interesting scenario: if Mexico becomes a net oil importer and the US relaxes its drug policies, could it experience a liquidity crisis?

10. Ahmed Karzai and the US have fallen into a blame game of necessity. Karzai criticizes the West for electoral fraud and legitimizing the insurgency. Since NATO troops are, one way or another, going to leave Afghanistan in a few years, Karzai needs to build a base of support amongst his own people and his neighbors (Iran, China) if he wants to survive. The US in turn blames Karzai’s corruption for the sabotage of the war effort, because the alternative would be an indictment of the entire American war strategy. As of now, Karzai may be rightly feeling like Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, – the US no longer regards him as a reliable asset and he is at risk of being overthrown in favor of someone more manageable.

11. From Stratfor. There is relative optimism in Iraq and the US about the security situation as American troops continue a steady withdrawal. However, there remain questions about the governing capability of the new government and the ability of the security forces to maintain stability. Iran retains the potential to inflame ethno-sectarian strife, albeit thus far it prefers to (successfully) exercise its influence through “softer” means. The main problem is that by invading Iraq, the US has destroyed the old Iran-Iraq balance of power – and the forthcoming withdrawal of US forces will actually give Iran much better opportunities for extending their sphere of influence over Mesopotamia.

According to another source, Iraq will take 5-10 years to (re)build a military capable of defending the country against Iran or Syria. “The Iraqi plan is to stock up on superior American weapons, and train Iraqis to use that stuff with effectiveness approaching that of the Americans. That takes money, and time. Iraq is buying second-hand F-16s, but it will take three or four years to get the pilots and ground crews up to an acceptable level of performance. Along with this, the Iraqis want to buy modern anti-aircraft missile systems, and get them into service.” Also recall that it will take about a decade to ramp up Iraqi oil production, if the effort is successful.

Conclusion? The US is withdrawing from Iraq, bogged down Afghanistan, and in uncertain fiscal straits. Iraq has the potential to stand on its own feet, but will need a few years of stability. Thus, Iran will now enjoy a “window of opportunity” of around 5 years to make a play for hegemony in the Persian Gulf.

12. Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance. …

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

Reminds me a bit of this scene from A Sum of All Fears.

13. Peter Lavelle interviews Middle East journalist Robert Fisk back in September 2009. If you want a ten minute video summary of why the West fails in Dar al-Islam – this is it.

14. United States watch.

• Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms to states that have nuclear weapons or haven’t renounced or violence the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is rational and profitable for US interests.
• US gunships attack Iraqi civilians in Wikileaks scandal (see video). This is a non-story – mistakes do occasionally happen (if you really want to get all moral and uptight about this, the relevant question is why the US is in Iraq in the first place). Some might complain the soldiers were cold-hearted by laughing and making morbid jokes, but humor is a typical defense mechanism to scenes of carnage.
• Obama administration ‘looks backwards’ to punish heroes. As I’ve said before, most of the Obama administration’s “change” is more cosmetic than real. It is a continuation of Bush post-2006.
• The march to American Caesarism continues. When did it become legal to assassinate Americans? “Anwar al-Awlaqi, the New Mexico-born cleric living in Yemen, has been placed on a target list that makes him fair game for assassination by the U.S. military or CIA”. The problem isn’t so much the authorization of assassination, which is a useful anti-terrorist tool, but the fact that this further widens the gap between US liberal/rule-of-law pretensions and reality, and hence undermines its international legitimacy. After all, Israel or Russia, states that are not averse to assassinations on foreign soil, don’t portray themseves as guarantors of liberal internationalism. America does.

15. The consevative reaction in Europe spreads to Hungary, with the election of the Fidesz Party to power. By itself this is a normal development unworthy of much comment, except for the fact that the democratic left (the Socialists) have now been marginalized, and now enjoy about the same level of support as the far-right Jobbik and his Movement for a Better Hungary. This party is truly extremist – it has a “Magyar Garda” militia, its symbology draws on the banned Nazi-era Arrow Cross Party, and its rhetoric attacks the Jews above and the Roma below.

Hungary is going to face lean economic times in the years ahead and Viktor Orban of Fidesz can be expected to come under attack by a Jobbik energized by supporters dissilusioned of conventional politics. As Walter Mayr of Spiegel writes in “The Monster at Our Door”: Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power, the end result could be that Orban deserts austerity politics for the seemingly greener pastures of identity politics – for instance, it is known he is in favor of double citizenship for ethnic Hungarians outside Hungary, which could lead to clashes with Romania and Slovakia. (Though it should be stressed this is hardly unusual for Eastern Europe – for instance, Russia’s conferral of dual citizenship was one of the factors provoking conflict with Georgia over S. Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the Romanians themselves are at odds with Russia and Ukraine thanks to their issue of Romanian citizenship to Moldovans).

16. The Caucasus Emirate (Scott Stewart & Ben West), free Stratfor article about what is now the foremost jihadi group operating against Russia in the North Caucasus.

Umarov’s founding statement for the Caucasus Emirate, in which he called for the region to recognize the emirate as the rightful regional power and adopt Shariah, marked a shift from the motives of many previous militant leaders and groups, which were more nationalistic than jihadist. This trend of regional militants becoming more jihadist in their outlook increases the likelihood that they will forge substantial links with transnational jihadists such as al Qaeda — indeed, our Russian sources report that there are connections between the group and high-profile jihadists like Ilyas Kashmiri.

However, this alignment with transnational jihadists comes with a price. It could serve to distance the Caucasus Emirate from the general population, which practices a more moderate form of Islam (Sufi). This could help Moscow isolate and neutralize members of the Caucasus Emirate. Indeed, key individuals in the group such as Umarov and Kosolapov are operating in a very hostile environment and can name many of their predecessors who met their ends fighting the Russians. Both of these men have survived so far, but having prodded Moscow so provocatively, they are likely living on borrowed time.

17. Maoists kill 75 police in central India attack. Not much comment, except to note that many countries, including ostensibly succesful and democratic ones, have violent, festering insurgencies. Russia/Chechnya is hardly unique.

18. Turkey Overtaking Germany No Wishful Thinking on Paradigm Shift (h/t Randy McDonald). “Turkey’s $620-billion economy could move ahead of Germany’s to become the third-biggest in Europe by 2050, behind Russia and the UK”. Such long-term projections are pretty useless, but it’s true that in the medium-term Turkey has bright prospects, in part thanks to its demographic vigor and favorable geographical position.

19. @ any Asian readers or people familiar with the region – how accurate is this “Spenglerian” article on “Asia’s Permanent Advantage” by Chan Akya?

For the frequent traveler, there is a stark dichotomy across the world. Almost without exception, traveling with an Asian carrier to any Asian airport is a pleasure. In contrast, using any airline domiciled in Europe or North America with passage through airports in that part of the world is stunningly inconvenient. …

When you leave the airport in Shanghai and can get to the main city 30 kilometers away within eight minutes on the superfast magnetic levitation train, you cannot help but notice that the actual technology for this wonder comes from Germany. Yet, there are no such trains in operation anywhere in Europe, let alone Germany. …

Surely this is because, here in Asia, we are in the biggest cities you say. … Well, drive from Shanghai in virtually any direction and the first time you see roads that are any worse than those around the city you are a good 200 kilometers away. And even there, the roads are better than many American motorways.

Yeah alright, so the Chinese truck driver barreling towards you looks like he hasn’t slept in three days (very likely), and there is the occasional car wrapped into the milestone on the side of the road; but none of that detracts from the sheer robustness of the infrastructure. …

And then the last observation sinks in. Every single Asian city is heaving at the edges, with millions of people. Yet, crime rates are negligible and social tensions appear well under control. A far cry from the banlieu of Paris or the Turkish quarter of Berlin, for example, not to mention the public housing nightmares of Chicago or Detroit.

It is not the gargantuan dams of China or the super-efficient underground in Singapore that impresses you, but rather the fact that even the most economically backward parts of Asia have taken growth to be their mantra. What’s more, they have the financial muscle to push it through.

With that, your despondency turns to depression. How, you ask, can the “developed” world ever regain its luster?

For a start, all American and European cities will have to reinvest hundreds of billions into their cities to rejuvenate the existing infrastructure. Then the states/smaller countries will have to connect the cities to the rest of the region, install new technology infrastructure, focus on customer service and improve productivity to new heights to compete with the Asians.

Ah, but a minor detail intervenes. Who has got the money to do all that? Well, let us raise taxes you say. Problem is, no one in your country is making much money in the first place so raising taxes will simply drive consumption down and drive the deficit wider. Well, let us borrow the lot you say. Trouble is, no one has the money to lend to you at your abysmally low rates. Except the Asians – who you then recall can play tough once in a while.

And that’s about when you reconcile to the inevitable future – Asia with its apparently permanent advantage on infrastructure and operating efficiency leaving Europe and North America ever further behind. Nothing appears to have the ability to reverse this trend.

See also It’s China’s World. We’re Just Living in It (Rana Foroohar & Melinda Liu) - “The middle kingdom is rewriting the rules on trade, technology, currency, climate—you name it.” Another related post on the same theme is Coal and Treasuries by Gregor McDonald.

20. Military blast.

• The Post New START Nuclear Arsenal – a summary: “1,550 strategic warheads; 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and deployed nuclear capable heavy bombers; A combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and nuclear capable heavy bombers.” See Sublime News #7 for more details.
• Sizing Up Sukhoi’s PAK FA 5th Gen Fighter. Summary: it is a superb dog-fighter and its IRST may be the first to pick up a hostile stealth fighter, but there are questions over whether the Russian MIC is advanced enough to produce and maintain many of these complex planes (more).
• Chinese Fleet Closes In On Okinawa, increases tensions since China started drilling offshore gas halfway between Okinawa and the mainland. Also illustrates increasing ambitions of the Chinese Navy (PS. No longer PLAN) to carve out a maritime buffer space beyond its eastern seaboard.
• South Korea buys CBU-105 sensor fuzed weapons, a cluster-type bomb that is programmed to hunt for tanks below it. An excellent way of stopping any Northern armored assault, this tilts the militay balance on the peninsula further in the South’s favor.
• Andrew Barton describes environmental warfare as a “target-rich environment” and predicts it will become more prevalent. That is in line with my own thinking.
• Iran gets advanced military speedboats, illustrating its asymmetrical strategy geared at closing down the Straits of Hormuz in the event of war with Israel or the US.
• France Backs Away From The Chinese Threat – France won’t supply Pakistan with advanced military hardware since it would pass them on to Chna.
• Case in point – China copies Swedish Bv206 all-terrain vehicle.
• Russia has problems with their Yasen nuclear powers cruise-missile subs.
• Gates Says U.S. Has Conventionally Armed ICBMs. They are not a good idea.
• Iran boosts air defenses with new missile system – an upgraded version of the Hawk, a 1960′s system and probably vulnerable to Israeli/US jamming.
• India sets sights on killer drones.
• Smart trucks in Afghanistan.
• Global IT Supply-Chain Insecurity is important.
• From the Monitor scam to the Gorschkov scam, corruption in military procurement – an eternal scam.
• Future for US naval procurement looks bleak as costs rise and budgets are slashed. Substantial decline in Navy size is inevitable.

21. Things are getting more interesting in North Korea. There is danger of famine. The people are increasingly disillusioned, but unlikely to revolt. A coup by pro-Chinese military officers is a possibility. “Rumors of a North Korean submarine being responsible for the March 26th sinking of a South Korean corvette are growing more popular in the media… Survivors of the explosion agree that the blast came from outside the ship.” Watch this space.

22. Russophobe & liberast watch.

• Link to The Soviet Story propaganda flick. I haven’t yet seen it, or plan to, despite having had the chance. (The screening coincided with my gym-going time).
• David Satter, respected Russia-watched: “The present Russian leadership not only does not care about America’s security concerns, it is indifferent to Russia’s own.” Need more be said?
• The bear is back: Poland’s tragedy, Russia’s gain (Arthur Herman) – “the most insane column in the entire history of mankind”, according to Mark Adomanis.
• Putin wins again: Rebuilding imperial Russia (Ralph Peters), whom Mark Adomanis says is “very likely the single most repulsive figure in American  journalism”. More on Ralph Peters.
• Paul Goble the Propagandist flip-flops from “Muslims will take over Russia!” in 2006 to “Muslims are no longer a demographic reserve” in 2010. Either way, however, Russia is doomed according to according to Goble’s cherry-picked sources. There is something resembling a “discussion” of this article on SWP’s blog.

23. Remember what I wrote about Russians’ attitudes to Stalinism in Sublime News #7? An “interesting” discussion about it developed on a far-right forum.

24. Flotsam and jetsam.

• GDP by… language (Randy McDonald).
• Phrases people search for to arrive at poemless blog.
• Spiegel has a 7-part series on The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI.
• Richard Dawkins plans to arrest the Pope. George Monbiot approves.
• The “Pedophile’s Paradise” (Brendan Kiley) – “Alaska Natives are accusing the Catholic Church of using their remote villages as a “dumping ground” for child-molesting priests—and blaming the president of Seattle University for letting it happen.”
• Just An ‘Average Brunette’ from the Banlieue – the three female challengers to Sarkozy from the Socialist, Communist, and Green Parties. I hope they win!
• Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain: ‘Haaretz’ writer fled to London fearing charges over exposé on Palestinian’s killing. Now while there’s no argument Israel is a liberal democracy, it is highly influenced by the prerogatives of the national security state.
• Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual?
• Ending the Myth of ‘Market Fundamentalism’ (Dean Baker)
• «Я опознал свою дочь» – the Moscow shahidka‘s father speaks out.
• For all their problems, North Korea remains firmly committed to Juche, release “Red Star” operating system based on Linux. (h/t Randy)
• Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics.
• San Francisco “anti-war” rally (are commies, Islamists) according to this conservative-leaning blogger.
• Stalinist Icon (h/t Jason)
• The East German bunker that was to have been the Warsaw Pact operational center for conducting a nuclear war against NATO forces in Europe.
• Cannibal trial halted after juror falls ill looking at pictures of girl, 16, who was ‘eaten with potatoes’. Why did Russia have to cancel the death penalty in deference to European cultural Diktat?
• Dmitry Rogozin: “Sergey Kovalev is a parody and a loser compared with the great human rights activist and intellectual Andrey Sakharov”. Links to К портрету Сергея Ковалёва.
• Tourist attractions… wait a second, how can that be?!
• How do you perform in this Zombie Survival Quiz?

2. Report: US shipping arms ahead of strike on Iran. “Scottish newspaper says US transferred ammunition containers with ‘bunker-buster’ bombs to Diego Garcia in Indian Ocean”. Fact or fear-mongering? The US still needs more time to develop bunker-busters capable of penetrating the deepest Iranian nuclear installations (they are slated for end-2010), so I doubt there’ll be a Gulf Inferno this year. Somewhat related: Hezbollah: Craving war, not wanting it (Nicholas Noe) – as I predicted, an Israel-Hezbollah war is a real possibility in 2010.

3. Russia attacks Georgia! Or so many Georgians believed following the airing of a “scenario” / fake news on a pro-government TV channel, in which President Saakashvili was killed and Russian tanks rolled into Georgia from recycled footage of the 2008 war.

The news station, Imedi TV, had once taken an anti-government line after its oligarch owner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, fell out with Saakashvili. Its offices were stormed during the November 2007 anti-government protests and soon after “democratized” to Saakashvili’s side. Patarkatsishvili, who was living in exile in London, died of a heart attack hours after meeting Berezovsky. (The circumstances remain very hazy. On the one hand, Patarkatsishvili had alleged that Saakashvili had sent hitmen to off him; on the other hand, he was obese and lived an unhealthy lifestyle, so a natural heart attack was entirely possible). But in any case, following Patarkatsishvili’s death, control of Imedi moved to shadowy ownership (“And the truth is we do not know who owns it, because the story we were told, that it was in the hands of a subsidiary of the state investment fund of the gulf emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah, has now been denied, in blunt terms, by that country’s rulers.” – Salome Zourabichvili). Anti-Saakashvili journalists and staff were replaced, and by the time it resumed broadcasting in early 2008 the TV station was firmly under pro-Saakashvili editorial control. (The affair was reminiscent of how Gazprom, an arm of the Russian state, took over NTV in 2001).

So what happened in this saga? Simple. After a brief warning that what would follow is just a possible scenario if Georgia “does not consolidate against the Russian plan”, there was a 30-minute program recycling archive footage of the 2008 war – bombings, Russian tanks, the weeping bereaved, etc. The government is evacuated and shortly afterwards Saakashvili is killed in murky circumstances, to be replaced by Nino Burjanadze, the opposition leader who had been reaching out to Vladimir Putin in an effort to resolve Georgia-Russia differences. This was a way of smearing the opposition as Russian stooges.

There was widespread panic and an abnormally high number of deaths from heart attacks. A day later, Saakashvili defended the hoax news as a robust way of defending Georgia against the Russia jackboot: “No matter the scenarios they have planned out for us, the scenario shown yesterday [on Imedi] was, unfortunately, realistic, and despite the nervous reaction [of Georgians to it], yesterday’s report will will become an obstacle to [Russia's] fulfillment of its plans [against Georgia]“.

• Saakashvili arms women and children against Russia
• The destruction of a Soviet monument to the fallen heroes of WW2
• Saakashvili’s endless meetings with Russia’s (discredited) “liberal” opposition
• Saakashvili pays US firms to lobby for him in Washington

This fits the general pattern of Georgia’s behavior under Saakashvili – a zealous, almost chiliastic, drive to unify the nation and “anchor” itself onto Western security institutions (primarily NATO), so as to escape from Russia’s growing sphere of influence. These actions have been symbolic, with little or nothing of substance… even most Western politicians now regard him as an unbalanced maniac, and are hesitant about dealing with him seriously. Well, there’s always PR companies to spruce up the tree, but you can only do it so many times before the sheen wears off permanently. Right?

4. The London Times comes out with its 2009 list of best world universities. I will take the opportunity to quickly say how stupid and ridiculous these lists are in general.

Let’s look at the Times list. UC Berkeley or the Ecole Polytechnique, known throughout the world, are both superseded by the University of Bristol in Britain, which is a respectable institution but not world-class. It gets stupider as one goes down. Lomonosov Moscow State University, full of world-famous scientists and Russia’s best students, is apparently comparable with British universities like Newcastle or Aberdeen, or Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which famously offers a major in Intimate Apparel. Part of the explanation is that far too much emphasis is placed on the staff/student ratio (UC Berkeley totally flunks this) and the International Student Score (whatever the hell that is), whereas the citation/staff score is not the best measure given the academic tendency to form their own mafia-like cliques (i.e. incessantly cite each other’s work).

The Chinese ARWU estimates are somewhat more accurate, but still lacking.

It would be great if some organization could conduct a real study, which instead of relying so much on subjective weighting of statistics, would test the skills and knowledge of graduates from each university on their subject. (After all, to applicants, that is the thing that matters most). I would suspect that a lot of universities that coast only on their reputations, or on their country’s reputation, will slip a lot. (One really annoying thing is that so many Third Worlders in a position of cultural dependency on the West have an irrational respect for a Western education, no matter how poor it is in practice – how much money they throw away into the wind sending off their students to British polytechs-renamed-as-universities!). I remember reading about a limited study which tested the math knowledge of math graduates from some of the world’s best institutions, the top three were all Japanese universities, fourth was Moscow State University, fifth was either MIT or Caltech.

5. The reader T. Greer sent me the article Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate World Population, Report Warns. Basically, the model indicates that the consequences of a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs, will cause a multi-year temperature plunge and could lead to the starvation of 1bn people.

I disagree with most of it (see my Thinking about Nuclear War). It is just the recycling of the discredited “nuclear winter” theory (see the section on “nuclear winter”). There will be a small temperature drop, but it will only last for a few weeks or months at most. Only in a global nuclear war between Russia and the US can widespread famine be expected due to the cessation of international trade / food shipments and the much bigger mega-tonnages involved (leading to far bigger temperature drops). In the regional war described in the report, only sub-continental Asia will be significantly affected – India will be substantially damaged, losing a few of its cities, but would recover within a few years; Pakistan, however, would probably collapse, and will lose any meaningful independent existence.

6. Serious Problems Emerge For The F-UK-De Group Of Countries by Ed Hugh argues that fiscal union is the only realistic way forward for the EU by this point due to the Mediterranean crisis.

Now, taking us back a bit nearer to that harsh and horrid reality, Daniel does in fact, in his ill-named Working Paper “Adjustment Difficulties in the GIPSY Club“, actually get to the heart of some very important matters… The core of Daniel’s argument is … that the kind of fiscal adjustment currently being proposed for some of the peripheral countries is going to have one, and only one immediate consequence: these countries are going to be sent off to the outer darkness of very, very (see his numbers) sharp GDP contractions, and these contractions run the risk of preciptating pre-Argentina 2000 type situations in one after another of the countries involved, since the contractions in nominal GDP are so large that they effectively take away with the one hand what was given (in the form of sacrfice) with the other, and will lead to a seemingly endless spiral of increases in the debt-to-GDP ratios, which will in turn lead to ever deeper short-term fiscal cuts, and ever stronger contractions, etc, etc. As Daniel argues, the only way to restore competitiveness, and avoid the dreaded Argentine spiral is to carry out some form of internal devaluation. …

… Another reason the F-UK-De group are in trouble if the GIPSYs [Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy] wander off to the outer darkness, is that they will have issues to resolve in their banking systems, as the chart below reveals. German banks may have little exposure to Greek debt, but their exposure to Spain and Ireland is enormous. … Another reason the F-UK-De [France, UK, Germany] group are in trouble if the GIPSYs wander off to the outer darkness, is that they will have issues to resolve in their banking systems, as the chart below reveals. German banks may have little exposure to Greek debt, but their exposure to Spain and Ireland is enormous. …

On the other hand, A Germany (or a Japan) which is not able to maintain a substantial external surplus (which is the only way a country with their kind of demographic profile can attain headline GDP growth, since internal demand is long gone as a “driver”) since without a surplus and without GDP growth the implicit liabilities of ageing populations (via health and pension commitments) will become unpayable, leading to default (or a huge slashing of public welfare commitments) in these countries too.

However, there are no signs that fiscal union is around the corner. Germany does not want to foot the bill, simple as, and instead it looks like Greece to going to turn to the IMF.

7. How Much Of The World Is In a Liquidity Trap? (Krugman) “Almost all advanced countries. The US, obviously; Japan, even more obviously; the eurozone, because the ECB probably couldn’t engage in Fed-style quantitative easing even if it wanted to, given the lack of a single backing government; Britain. Not Australia, I guess. But still: essentially the whole advanced world, accounting for 70 percent of world GDP at market prices, is in a liquidity trap.”

8. China To Connect Its High Speed Rail All The Way To Europe in an excellent demonstration of what the coming age of “scarcity industrialism” will be like.

China hopes to complete this massive infrastructure project within 10 years, which will include three major rail lines running at speeds of 320 km/hour. The first will go from King’s Cross Station in London all the way to Beijing (8,100 km as the crow flies) and will take approximately two days. This line will also then extend down to Singapore. A second HSR line will connect into Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia. The last line to be built will connect Germany to Russia, cross Siberia and then back into China. …

Financing and planning for this monstrous project is actually being provided by China, who is already in serious negotiations with 17 countries to develop the project. China states that other countries, like India, came to them first to get the project rolling, because of their experience in designing and building their own HSR network. Financing for the infrastructure will be provided by China and in return the partnering nation will provide natural resources to China. For instance, Burma, which is about to build its link, will exchange lithium (used in batteries), in order for China to build the line.

China benefits because it will be able to transport materials cheaply into manufacturing centers inside its borders and the Eastern Hemisphere benefits by getting a fast, efficient, low carbon transportation system. Considering China has already become the global leader in HSR, their leadership in this new venture could reasonably shift the balance of power in their direction. Also, get ready for a huge influx of HSR station designs in the coming years.

The themes: 1) the rise of China, 2) China’s quid pro qua approach to international economic relations – as opposed to Washington’s which is based more on values, 3) a strategic project to ensure secure supplies of resources in both the medium-term / next decade (during which the US will keep its naval supremacy – hence China’s need for land-based routes as a backup) and in the long-term / next several decades (during which China’s domestic energy and REM resources will begin to peak and run down).

9. Putting the anti-Toyota witch-hunt and the lambasting of China’s currency manipulation into context – Obama is to create Export Promotion Cabinet in a bid to double US exports by 2015. Strategic trade is back in vogue.

Stratfor has an interesting take on this. Mercantile competition was one of the main triggers for pre-Pax Americana wars (i.e. struggles for raw materials and captive markets). The US-Japan war was a good example. The post-WW2 alliance structure linking the US to Japan, Germany, Western Europe, and the Asian tigers, was partly built on granting them access to the American market and thus enriching them, while they in return recognized and supported US hegemony. This pattern may fade away and present us with a host of unintended consequences as the US abandons this system.

10. Reaction of the Rest watch.

• Neo-Ottoman Turkey: A Hostile Islamic Power by Srdja Trifkovic (h/t Leos Tomicek who analyses it).
• Don’t Forget India (Nikolas K. Gvosdev)
• The Scary New Rich – The global middle class is more unstable and less liberal than we thought in Newsweek. 1) Not news to anyone remotely interested in looking at global opinion polls the last few years, 2) as usual the Western chauvinism is showing – why should non-Western civilizations be pro-Western or liberal?

11. Climate & energy blast.

• NASA: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010. Furthermore, contrary to popular articles by some deniers or skeptics, warming did not slow down during the 2000′s, despite that solar irradiation has been declining to its cyclic minimum during the decade.
• This year is already setting all-new temperature records – warmest ever January, second warmest February, and almost certainly what is going to be the warmest ever March. Ironically, the major exception was the US mainland, which was cooler than average – and unfortunately the heartland of denier sentiment.
• ‘Peak Oil Demand,’ Yes… But Not the Nice Kind: Why There Will Be No Recovery. A good argument for permanent depression / “long emergency” in the OECD. “The fact is that peak demand in the OECD is not merely a function of efficiency gains and biofuels substitution, aided by a temporary recession… Instead, peak demand will be the result of a permanent state of increasing depression in which non-OECD countries not only more than make up for the loss of OECD demand, but outbid them for the marginal barrel. As we enter the post-peak phase of global oil supply sometime around 2012-2014, the price that heavily import-dependent countries like the U.S. would have to pay for that marginal barrel will become increasingly intolerable. In a weakened economy, $100 a barrel (or less) could be the new $120.”
• New study of Greenland under “more realistic forcings” concludes “collapse of the ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560 ppm” of CO2. “A new study has lowered the carbon pollution threshold or “tipping point” for collapse of the Greenland ice sheet to 400 to 560 ppm.  We’re currently at about 390 parts per million atmospheric concentrations of CO2, rising about 2 ppm a year (and yes, total collapse would take a while).”
• Scientists’ IPCC Open Letter. As the commentators note, even though they are completely correct and conservative in their assessments (i.e. not alarmist, contrary to denier propaganda), the problem is that the scientists simply can’t get their point across. My eyes glazed over at the first paragraph.
• Presentation from Dr. Hayhoe on Global Warming: Separating Facts from Fiction, a “must-see” according to Lou at Cost of Energy. I agree that it is a good rundown of the issue, but disagree that it is a good presentation. FAR too much text, which is one of the first things you are told to avoid when counselled on how to make good PowerPoint demonstrations.
• Graduate Starting Salaries (in Engineering) and the Underlying Message. If you want a high salary straight out of grad school, study petroleum engineering (but opt for Computer Science if you want to get to work straight out of college). Not surprising. The industry experienced a big brain drain during the 1980′s-1990′s, and finding and exploiting the newer fields (which tend to be remote and dispersed) is much more challenging.
• Update on rising incidence of “freak storms”
• Bonanza for peakist geeks and collapse theorists – US Minerals Databrowser / data visualization tool unveiled.
• Back from September 2009, but I’ve decided to highlight it here nonetheless – UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

12. Military & security blast.

• Navy Wants Lots of Lasers – from this great blog I found, Defense Tech. As I noted in my On Future War article, effective lasers *are* the holy grail of missile and air defense. The US Navy’s current research projects – 100kW+ Solid-State Fiber Laser that could fit into aircraft pods; shipboard point defense Free Electron Lase; High-Power Microwave Directed Energy Weapons to knock out enemy C&C; The Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long Range Strike (RATTLRS) Program (Mach 3+ cruise missile); Next Generation Integrated Power Systems to power the all-electric warship; the Electromagnetic Railgun.
• Related – Boeing Completes Design of Shipboard Superlaser. I think it is safe to say that the US Navy will feature all-electric ships armed with superlasers, railguns, and hypersonic cruise missiles by the 2030′s.
• Not Enough Food For Too Many People in North Korea; Avoiding Another Pearl Harbor (from N. Korea) is not a problem thanks to US missile defense systems like THAAD and Aegis/SM-3.
• That Elephant’s Going To Do What? Where? – JSF costs spiraling out of control (not exactly news). In fact there are compelling arguments to abandon the project altogether and focus on the development of next-generation UAV’s.
• Anti-Missile Effort Edges Forward – more on the game-changing developments in BMD. Europe to be defended against IRBM’s, and to an extent against ICBM’s, by 2020. As I’ve been saying the days of ballistic missile preeminence are coming to an end.
• Cyber War = Space War – “Its becoming increasingly evident that any future war between modern militaries would be both a space war and a cyber war, in fact, they would be one and the same”.
• Mistrals from France, drones from Israel… and armored vehicles from Italy? This seems rather strange, since although Russia’s UAV and amphibious / sea-based C&C capabilities are weak, it has some of the best armored vehicles in the world. And indeed the Russian Defense Ministry dismissed this report.

13. Tech blast.

• Facebook creeps slightly above Google in numbers of visits. Quite impressive. The two now each account for about 7% of global Internet visits.
• Twitter goes anywhere – but keeps advertising plans under wraps. How Twitter intends to make its money is one of the biggest questions in the hi-tech community. For now, it will be expanding its integration possibilities with Facebook, Google, etc.

14. Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change, marks regress in reason and progress.

AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade. Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard. … By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding “American exceptionalism” and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

Also from Texas Freedom Network

… the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson’s place, the board’s religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to ‘Enlightenment ideas’ in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the ‘writings’ of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas).

Though, perhaps better than closing half your schools altogether, as in Kansas City. Apart from that, I would venture to guess that these Texan history-politicisers would also probably be the first and loudest to condemn Russia’s “rationalization” of Stalinism in a few of its textbooks.

15. Liberast & Russophobe watch – quite a productive week!

• I like many of Peter Lavelle’s Crosstalks, but he made a complete hash of the burqa debate. His “9/11 hi-jackers were not fundamentalists” comments was unrelated and totally wtf. I do not deny the evidence of Western Islamophobia / racism, unlike the guests, but likewise Lavelle totally glosses over Muslim immigrants’ less savory characteristics. Though Douglas Murray made the much better impression, unfortunately he went on to unfairly tarnish all of Russia Today for giving voice to “anti-American” nutters (who are to other people, “marginalized dissidents”). Nikolaus von Twickel – who happens to be a member of an anti-Lavelle Facebook group (wish I had one!) – wrote a largely unsympathetic review of the television station in the Moscow Times. For balance, read Peter Lavelle’s Challenging the Western media hegemony about RT’s mission.
• A Good Treaty has to sit through a one and a half hour talk by Yulia Antoinette, otherwise known as Latynina. The poor man deserves a gold medal for socialist endurance! He also translated the “Putin Must Go!” Petition, which can be summarized as 1) Get rid of Putin, 2) Give the people more stuff, 3) ???, 4) pro-Western, prosperous Russia! Nothing new, move on.
• Leos Tomicek has an excellest 2-part series on liberast hypocrisy and anti-Russianness: The Unholy Alliance and Looking West.
• Eugene Ivanov deconstructs Keith Gessen’s account of the Orange Revolution as “no complicated facts, no sophisticated interpretations – [just] conclusions”.
• Bad Russia journalism. The article Russia corruption “may force Western firms to quit” (Reuters), about Russia’s ostensibly catastrophic levels of corruption: “Berlin-based NGO Transparency International rates Russia 146th out of 180 nations in its Corruption Perception Index, saying bribe-taking is worth about $300 billion a year”, and reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List #51, #19. The 300bn $ figure actually comes from a 2005 report by Indem, which I summarized here. This figure is almost certainly exaggerated by at least an order of magnitude.
• Alexandre Latsa, whose wrote Les 25 mythes Russophobes (based on my Top 50 Russophobe Myths), is condemned as a “reincarnation of Walter Duranty” in the Ukrainian paper Den’.
• Mikhail Gorbachev’s self-serving propaganda piece in the New York Times. No wonder that even twenty years on, only 13% of Russians have a positive opinion of him, while 34% are negative (I am firmly in the latter category).

16. A documentary on North Korea – a ”fascinating” country indeed, a totalitarian ice cavern.

17. Ever wanted to see how a typical Russian face looks like? The researchers Darya Laane and Sergei Petukhov compiled a composite image five years ago and wrote up an article on it.

[Typical representatives of the Vologda-Vyatka zone].

PS. Here is a composite pic of the average Japanese, Chinese, and Korean woman’s face.

18. In Crimea, ethnic Russians burned Ukrainian history textbooks. In Lviv, Ukrainians collected Russian history textbooks for pulping / recycling. Just goes to show 1) how riven the country is, and 2) that the Westerners are more “with the times”, so to speak, in their hatred, while the Crimean Russians are so 1930′s. (h/t @Ukroblogger)

19. Inspirational quotes of the week. Citizenship in a Republic, Teddy Roosevelt.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Thought-provoking quotes from Yukio Mishima (see link for more).

We are ignoring the fact that bringing death to the level of consciousness ic an important element of mental health…Hagakure insists that to ponder death daily is to concentrate daily on life. When we do our work thinking that we may die today, we cannot help feeling that our job suddenly becomes radiant with life and meaning.

20. Humor and interesting flotsam and jetsam:

• Chess Art (in Russian)
• Very cool walking man text-animation
• Girls with Guns 1 / Girls with Guns 2