XANDER BLAKELY BLOG

Reason to Cheer

Before I started reading the usual harrowing news about the war in Iraq this morning, I found this article. It's beautifully written and it made me feel hopeful. It's about how baseball has quietly gone from a uniquely American game to a truly international game, and in the process, has become profoundly even more American in spirit.

(My guess would be that the only other major organization that has a more integrated roster than baseball is the US military. That would be my guess, but I'd be wrong.)

Baseball has even started to sink roots into the cold soil of Russia. This sweet article highlights how some Russian kids overcame long odds to make it to the Little League World Series. It reads like a post-cold-war version of the Bad News Bears. Bears, get it?

Accusations and Denials

Both American and Russian newspapers carry Bush’s accusations and Putin’s denials of Russian arms sales to Iraq. I’m pretty sure that the accusations are true (see my reasoning below), but, like much of Bush’s diplomatic efforts, they are likely to only further sicken already ailing relations with a much-needed ally in the war on terror.

Putin’s denials are not very powerful, nor are they very credible, but they are not unprecedented either. The 40th President of the US was accused, though never convicted, of selling arms to an Axis-of-Evil nation: Iran.

Back in the 1990’s, I visited, almost by accident, a Russian arms factory in Siberia. (You can read about the absurd experience in my book.) My Siberian business partners took me there without telling me it was a military factory. We were looking to rent warehouse space for the trainloads of cocoa beans we were importing for Siberian chocolate factories. With me pretending to be Russian, we made it past security and were shown into the office of the director of the arms factory. He was proud of the quality of weapons they produced, but he was frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to sell them to anybody but the bureaucrats in Moscow, who paid poorly and never on time. He was struggling to find a way to pay his employees. It was clear to me from his tirades that he would have loved to a) sell his products directly on the open market and b) have his products ‘tested’ against the best in the world (i.e. the US military). This second desire was clearly a reflection of his genuine respect for the US military. He seemed to have no animosity for America; most of his venom he saved for, as he called them, the “bastards in Moscow.”

Bottom line: Just as it is a scorpion’s nature to sting, it is a manufacturer’s nature to sell his products, even if they're deadly arms, to buyers, even if they’re wicked tyrants.

(I’m not am impartial spectator in this diplomatic row. My brother is a US Marine Corp pilot. He is in Iraq flying an AV-8 Harrier to destroy Saddam’s regime and to liberate the Iraqis. (In his last email, sent just a few days before the war started, he said that he was reading Tocqueville in his few spare minutes to better understand democracy and America.) So these alleged Russian arms sales puts my brother at greater risk. This concerns me.

More Accusations and Denials…
In related, but mostly ignored in the US, news, Russia has accused the US of Cold War practices by spying on Russia with planes that are supposed to be locating Chechen terrorists in Georgia. Georgia’s defense minister confirmed that US planes might, on occasion, stray into Russian airspace. Imagine the headline if Russian airplanes were found a) flying in Northern Mexico supposedly to help locate separatists rebels and b) these Russian planes strayed into US air space.

I don't know if Bush stopping US spy planes allegedly flying over Russian airspace would cause Putin to stop the alleged arms sales to Iraq. I'm pretty certain, however, that Bush's public accusation won't stop them. As I said before, this concerns me.

Rastafarian in Siberia

In a bold publicity stunt, Rastafarian singer Lenky Roy agreed to go to Siberia to promote his new album called, you guessed it, Siberia. With the war in Iraq stealing all of the media attention from this extreme cross-cultural and cross-country adventure, I decided Lenky and his posse could use all the help they can get. (Plus, I know how difficult it is to publicize anything, for example a book, about Siberia here in the US, especially if you're trying to break the stereotype bonds of gloom and gulags.)

Wired Magazine has some video footage as well as excerpts from one of the participant's diary. Unfortunately, it's not easy to find the online adventure on the Wired website unless you know it's there. Even then, it's difficult to navigate. So, I've done all the searching and listed the video clips and diary entries below:

Videos:
Lenky's arrival in Siberia.
Lenky donning some impressive fur outfits while visiting a Siberian fur factory
A tired Lenky greets the sparse press corps.
Lenky screaming during a raindeer sleigh ride.
My favorite clip: Lenky fumes as he preps for his first and probably last gig in Yakutia.

Audio:
Interview with Lenky.

Photos:
Introductory pictures of Lenky, Jamaica and Yakutia.
Gallery of later shots.
The road rally, complete with rollover
Final shots

Text:
Article introducing Lenky and his Siberian plan.

Jim Hall's Diary
Day 1: From Russia With Gloves
Day 2: Landing Safely in Siberia
Day 4: Fur Coats and Horsemeat
Day 5: Waiting for the Shaman
Day 6-7 The Winter of Lenky's Discontent
Day 8-9 Trying to Find That Reggae Beat
Day 10-11 Good Morning, Yakutsk. You OK?
Day 15-16 You Got Any Fresh Fruit, Mon?
Day 17-18 Siberian Race Starts With a Bang
Day 19-20 Eureka! The Pole of the Cold
Day 22 Tomtor Village

Remember the Russians

This piece in the Washington Post suggests that Bush should have and could have convinced the Russians to support the war in Iraq, which would have served as a tipping point within the Security Council and brought about broad UN support for the war...and the peace afterwards.

Al Qaeda's Manifesto

There is an insightful piece in the New York Times Magazine about the philosophical roots of Al Qaeda's global terrorist agenda. Sayyid Qutb wrote 'In the Shade of the Koran', a voluminous work that is to militant Islam what Karl Marx's Manifesto was to Communism, what Vladimir Lenin's writings were to Bolshevism, what Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' was to Nazism. (Qutb, who was a contemporary of Hitler and Lenin, also wrote from prison.) His first book, Milestones, was an early inspiration for terrorism, but was dismissed as shallow in the West. The author of the Magazine article, Paul Berman, argues that dismissing Qutb is foolhardy.

According to Berman, "Qutb is not shallow. Qutb is deep. ''In the Shade of the Qur'an'' is, in its fashion, a masterwork. Al Qaeda and its sister organizations are not merely popular, wealthy, global, well connected and institutionally sophisticated. These groups stand on a set of ideas too, and some of those ideas may be pathological, which is an old story in modern politics; yet even so, the ideas are powerful. We should have known that, of course. But we should have known many things."

Russian Reaction to War

Putin's Tirade
The video and the text of President Putin's stern condemnation of the US-led war, which he calls a "Big political mistake."

"The first Russian casualties of war in Iraq."
That's how the head of the Lotoshino village described himself and his fellow villagers, who had made big plans to host Vernon Jones, the 'CEO' of DeKalb county and self-proclaimed friend of Michael Jordan. Jones decided to cancel his trip to the remote Russian farming community due to the war in Iraq. Here is the video of all the things the village had planned for Jones, including a disappointed milk maid and a long-tongued cow. Here is the text of the report.

Russian Eye on Iraq
This page seems to be a running war news ticker, complete with countdowns to each wave of American bombs to fall on Baghdad.

After Saddam
The Russian government is officially against the war in Iraq, but they've already expressed an interest to work with the next Iraqi leaders.

Bush Bashing
Even former Soviet leader Gorbachev is doing some Bush bashing at the end of this article, which also features this memorable quote from a Kuwaiti man, "Bush is a real man," Ahmad Hussein Ahmad said, fiddling with the prayer beads in his hand. "His dad liberated Kuwait and now the son will liberate Iraq."

World War Three
Of course, Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky, the foul-mouthed leader of the LDPR, has called the war in Iraq the beginning of World War Three.

Give'm Hell, Harry
Here is a video report from Konstantine Syemin, a Russian reporter aboard the USS Harry Truman. (Here is the text version.) That a Russian journalist can wander freely about a US military vessel makes me hopeful. Syemin films the crew working on the flight deck, sailors eating in the dinning hall, and even a Muslim sailor praying in the ship's secluded prayer space. Hopefully world events will make it possible, perhaps in a few years, maybe sooner, for Iraqi journalists to be so welcome aboard US vessels as well as in the US itself.

Free Crank Calls
Here is a story about a Russian phone company is giving away free calls to Russians if they want to call the White House and rant at Bush. Many are taking advantage of the offer and making the calls.

Putin's Puzzling Position
The Guardian has this piece analyzing Putin's stance against the US war in Iraq, which threatens his important strategic relationship with America. In Russia, though the majority of the population is against the war, few are protesting in the streets. There were a few hundred communists, prone to pathological protesting and some protestors who were paid by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

After the meeting, "party worker Volodya began to give out cash", said the paper. Many protesters demanded more money because they had "waved the flags well" or because "they brought their husbands with them".

Protests
This Moscow Times article has this remarkable quote:

A placard hanging around the neck of a 66-year-old woman read
"Saddam Hussein, Today's Stalin."

"Saddam is acting right. He's not giving up,'' she said. "They will fight to the last.''

NATION BUILDING (II)

With the war in Iraq underway, and with all pundits predicting a quick resolution to hostilities, I thought it time to revisit the issue of Nation Building. So, the question still stands: Will the US help rebuild Iraq? I know that past performance isn’t a perfect predictor of future performance, but it’s often pretty close.

In recent history there have been many regime changes (e.g. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, Taliban Afghanistan, and soon Saddam's Iraq). We can learn from how the US, which caused directly or indirectly, partially or wholly, these regime changes, among others, reacted afterwards toward the post-regime nations. And the US response has varied significantly, from the Marshall Plan for Europe to MacArthur's authoritarian tutelage of Japan, from Clinton's co-dependent diplomacy of bear hugs for Yeltsin to Bush's outstanding promises to Kharzai. Based on these examples, and the trend they reveal, Iraqis can probably count on, but not too heavily, the US to help rebuild their country after Saddam is gone.

Remember 1991? It was only...

a dozen years ago and yet what a very different world. The UN and the US successfully acted together to evict Saddam’s invading army from Kuwait. Having relieved the symptom, the coalition of nations decided not to risk their own blood to root out the cause. So, instead, a lot of Iraqi blood was spilled in Kurdish and Shiite uprisings and the subsequent and brutal Baath crackdowns. The world community had expected Saddam to fall. He didn’t. There was no regime change. (Ergo today’s sequel.)

By contrast, only months later that same year, the Soviet Union underwent a regime change that was mostly unexpected in the West and mostly bloodless in Russia. Rather than muster a bold reconstruction plan, like the post WWII Marshall Plan, post-Cold-War America welcomed Russia into the free world with mostly open arms but mostly empty pockets.

I don’t want to leave the impression that the US didn’t help Russia. It did, but slowly, tentatively, and parsimoniously. By 2001, ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US gave more aid to Russia ($1.15 billion) than any other country, more than Israel ($967 million), Egypt ($799 million) and Ukraine ($282 million). In fact, America gave more ($10.9 billion) in total foreign aid than any other country in the world, more than Japan ($9.7 billion), Germany ($4.9 billion), the UK ($4.7 billion) and France ($4.3 billion).

We’re back to America the generous, right? Wrong, as a percentage of gross national product, America is the least generous of the developed nations. For perspective, the Marshall Plan amounted to almost $14B in 1950 dollars, which is nearly $124 billion in today’s dollars, over ten times what we allocate for foreign aid today.

So, will America help rebuild Iraq? Help, yes. But, with the federal government now running budget deficits for the foreseeable future, there will be no Powell Plan for Iraq as ambitious or as generous as the Marshall Plan was for Europe. Uncle Sam doesn't have enough money to keep America's house in the black, much less assume Iraq's remodeling expenses. Then again, some respected economists debunk the idea the Marshall Plan was the key to Europe's recovery. Generous though it was, the American money had only a marginal, though timely, impact to Europe's recovery. In the end, Iraq will need to rebuild itself.

Thanks to Joyce Park for providing some of the insightful new data points above.

X-Culture to the Extreme

There is a lot of talk about war in Iraq. There are even some prominent people, and some not so prominant people, talking about the tougher, and arguably more important, proposition of peace afterwards. The Cold War, that all-but-forgotten war that nearly led to the incineration of the entire planet, ended just over a decade ago. If you want to see what peace after war looks like, take a look at these stories of Jamaicans singing in Yakutia and Russians studying in Mississippi.

As an example of just how small the world is becoming, a couple of weeks ago I met the Jim, Altura and David, the posse accompanying Rastafarian singer Lenky Roy to Yakutia, Russia. They asked me to give them a tip or two about Siberia. (I told them that gloves weren't good enough where they were going; I meant from them to wear mittens. I think they misunderstood me because they decided not to wear gloves--or anything on their hands--at all.)

After I met this group of enthusiastic guys salivating for adventure, I told my wife, "They're either going to have the best time of their lives in Siberia, or the worst, or, most likely, both." Sure enough, it's impossible to watch the video of them arriving or these pictures and think they aren't having the best time of their lives. But as the video continues, we see Lenky frozen like a statue with a statue of Lenin in the background. Could he look more miserable? (Lenky, not Lenin. Come to think of it, Lenin probably isn't feeling too good these days either.) Knowing the intense ambivalence Siberia inspires, I both envy and pity these guys.

And as for the story about Russians studying in Mississippi, how can you not love the idea of a predominately black ivory tower importing Russians to diversify the school body? I challenge you to find a better example of racial quotas having positive side effects.

Lenses on Russian History (Soul)

There is an article in the NYTimes about an exhibition of photographs showing Russians doing what they do best: sitting at the table, sharing food, making heartfelt toasts washed down with abundant alcohol, and arguing about life's biggest questions. Much of Russia's turbulent history can be seen in these seemingly ordinary pictures: innocent smiles of pre-revolutionary Russian dinners, Spartan settings on Soviet tables, obscene strippers and caviar atop the table of post-Soviet biznessmyeni. It's a brilliant concept to reveal the Russian soul over the table over time. (If anybody has seen this exhibit, please add your comments.)

Here is another noteworthy--actually, it's a breathtaking--photographic exhibit that reveals Russia's colorful history long before standard color photography was invented. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, the technologically innovative photographer to the Tsar left Russia with his glass-plate photographs to prevent the Soviet government from destroying his work and the US Library of Congress purchased these historical treasures to restore and preserve them for future generations.

Speaking of technically innovative and historically insightful, there is a new Russian movie out that was done in one single take, with thousands of actors and a single cameraman who walked for several miles with a steadycam. It's called Russian Ark and you can see the trailer here.

Fall (and Rise) of a Tyrant

According to a soon-to-be-published book, "Stalin’s Last Crime”, top members of the Politburo may have poisoned Stalin, the notoriously paranoid tyrant who saw enemies everywhere, and had them killed by the millions. Comrade Conspiracy getting snuffed out by a conspiracy of his subordinates is either rich irony or poetic justice. Take your pick. But the alleged motive of the suspected conspirators is breathtaking. The four top members of the Politburo, including shoe-banging, corn-obsessing Nikita Khruschev, slipped Joseph Vissarionovich an odorless rat poison, warfarin, during his last meal in order to avoid nuclear Armageddon with the US as well as another round of horrific purges.

A recent NYTimes article outlines how, back in the 1940’s Stalin had fabricated ‘The Doctor’s Plot’, which he, predictably, purported to be a vast conspiracy of doctors bent on murdering top Kremlin officials. When Stalin made the plot public, in the early 1950’s, he had inflated the already imaginary conspiracy to include Jews operating on orders from the US. In a previously secret report, it appears that Stalin was going to expand the conspiracy’s magnitude to include the US plotting to destroy Moscow with a nuclear weapon and then to invade Russia from the east. Stalin ordered the construction of numerous gulag prison camps for what surely would have been another wave of his genocidal internal terror campaign. He also mobilized Soviet Pacific military forces for what looked like the preparation for an external terror campaign that could have resulted in a nuclear war.

I have to say that this theory strikes me as very plausible. I’ve been thinking a lot about Stalin lately, especially as the US moves ever closer to war with Iraq in order to rid that country and the world of a brutal tyrant, who, by the way, idealizes Stalin. It always seemed inexplicable to me that Stalin didn’t use nuclear weapons. A man responsible for the execution, torture, and enslavement of millions of his own people, doesn’t seem like the kind of person to exercise restraint with weapons of mass destruction. (Considering that the deterrent of nuclear weapons is the death of millions of your own people.) As it turns out, it seems that he was just waiting for the right excuse to use them. When the right excuse failed to show up, he fabricated one. Which raises a terrific question: if Stalin’s underlings were too afraid to kill him, or unsuccessful like the 17 assassination attempts to kill Hitler, and the US knew that Stalin was going to kill many of his own people and potentially many American people, would a ‘preventive’ war with the Soviet Union been the right thing to do? Probably. But rat poison sure was a lot more efficient.

If we had gone to war with the Soviet Union and won (without incinerating the world), one thing I'm certain of, Russians wouldn't have welcomed a 'liberating' American Army with flowers and parades in Moscow, as Bush hopes Iraqis will do in Baghdad in a few weeks. As the saying goes, "Better the devil you know."

The Moscow News reports on a comparison of two surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2001 by the Russian Civil Service Academy Sociological Research Center. Of note is how Stalin has regained approval over the decade while Lenin has fallen.

1990 approval ratings for historical figures:
6% Joseph Stalin
74% Peter the Great
57 Vladimir Lenin
55% Georgy Zhukov

2001 approval ratings:
32.9% Joseph Stalin
90.2% Peter the Great
39.9% Vladimir Lenin
80.8% Georgy Zhukov

tATu

When I lived in Siberia in the early 90’s, Western pop music and music videos invaded Russia, saturating radio and television with sounds and sights that many Russians considered vulgar. What a difference a decade makes.

Now a Russian girl group is invading the West. The band’s name, tATu, is a clever combination of pronouns ‘ta’ and ‘tu’, which translate into she and her, respectively, if not so respectfully. The verb that she is doing to her is left up to your imagination to fill in, though their pseudo-lesbian onstage antics leave little to the imagination.

It's hard not to appreciate the irony of the US, home of Britney Spears (retired at 18), complaining that the tATu gals are too young, and England, land of the Spice Girls, trying to censor these little Russkies for being pedophilic.

Another Russian band, Bering Strait, is trying to establish a beachhead in Nashville in an improbable bid to invade the bluegrass and country music scene. Their story of getting to the US should provide plenty of cry-in-your-beer (vodka?) lyrics.