XANDER BLAKELY BLOG

6:30

So, I'm having the quintessential California day, biking in the foothills in the morning, reading at a sunny sidewalk cafe in the afternoon, swimming in the evening at an outdoor pool. Paradise. When I get out of the pool, a man and his young son are getting into the pool. The man has a thick Russian accent. He asks me, "Vat time does ze pool close?" I answer him "Pol syedmovo" (6:30), thinking that speaking in Russian might make him feel good, more comfortable. (I've done this a hundred times with Russians here in the states, and the reaction is almost always positive.) Instead, his tan face went white and his muscles went rigid.

"Why are you speaking Russian to me?" he asked, in English. "Are you with the KGB?"

"No," I answered, "but I did live in Siberia for a few years."

He asked the usual question: "Why?"

I told him the short version of my Siberian years. He was nonplused. Nobody he knew had ever gone to Siberia voluntarily. He told me that he had learned to fear the KGB a long time ago. He gave me vague details of being 'interviewed', but said that the memory of the experience still gives him the shivers. His crime: going to Latvia to advocate for human rights.

Because most (certainly not all) of my experiences in Siberia have been, and continue to be, invigorating, I occasionally forget that for some people, Siberia will always be as dreaded a word as Dachau is for Jews and Gypsies. For some people, the Russian language, even if it is their native tongue, will always sound fearsome.

Caught in Crossfire

If you've been following the Russian media war coverage, as I have, you were also surprised by how much the Russian press downplayed yesterday's incident of Russian ambassador Titorenko's convoy getting caught in US-Iraqi crossfire. There were some serious injuries, but, fortunately, nobody was killed. The incident hasn't been burried in Russian papers, but it hasn't been a banner headline piece either.

Of course Alexander Manikov, a Russian war correspondent who has given some really pathetic and even irresponsible reports of late, was in the convoy and tried to portray the incident in the worst possible light. Keeping with his habit of using selective observations to make damning implications about the US, he said in this report of the incident that he doesn't blame the Iraqis who naturally fired at them because the Americans seemed to have started the conflict, and that the bullet holes in the embassy's vehicles looked like American M16 bullet holes. He also complains that a US military convoy didn't stop to help. Interestingly, the injured Russians sought out and received medical attention, but the report doesn't mention whether they got attention from US doctors or from the Iraqi doctors. (If you were injured, would you go to the Republican Guard doctors or to the US Army doctors for help?)

When I first read the New York Times article, I thought that this was going to produce the same fallout as the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia. However, I think Russia's desire to be a part of the rebuilding of Iraq will make this incident a quickly forgotten asterisk of history.

War Coverage

Keeping an eye on the coverage of the war in Iraq (or, as Arab media call it, the war on Iraq) has been amusing, depressing, and, at times, downright scary.

Last week, the US media got impatient and started asking if we were in another Vietnam yet (as hilariously captured here by Slate's Daryl Cagle)

Russian media were eager to portray this slowdown in Iraq as the beginnings of America stumbling into its own Chechen quagmire. (Don't forget, many Russians predicted that the US would meet a similar fate as the Soviets if they were so foolish as to invade Afghanistan.)

Interestingly, some of the best coverage of the war in Iraq, according to this British report, comes from Russian spies. Apparently, it's so good that market watchers are making a figurative killing by trading on the Russian G2 covering the literal killings going on in Iraq.

Some of the worst coverage, however, comes from the Russian news agencies. What follows are some reports from Russia's Vesti news service:

Date: March 30, 2003
Headline: The War is Dragging On
Subhead: Bombardment of Baghdad Through the Eyes of a Russian Woman
This blatant and bizarre piece is designed to play to the heartstrings of the average Russian. It's an at-home look at the life of a Russian woman who married an Iraqi decades ago and now lives in Baghdad. She's dressed in simple Russian clothes like the babushka at her dacha. She has five kids that speak Russian. She makes a few comments, such as, "Children suffer during war." Though they portrayed her life as hard because of the American bombardment, when they gave her their satellite phone, she called her relatives back in Russia and said, "Don't worry. We're all fine. It's going to be okay." Not once did the Russian journalists ask her what she thinks of Saddam. If she thinks Iraq will be better or worse after him.
video

Date: March 30, 2003
Headline: The War is Dragging On
Subhead: On 15% of Britons Die in Combat. Who is America Fighting Against?
This in an overall balanced piece about the current state of the war, but the headline writer takes some amazing liberties. Beginning with the statistic that only 15% of British casualties so far have died in combat, the follow-on question implies that the rest were killed by Americans intentionally. That's not journalism. That's just absurdism on the same level as the rumors that Israel orchestrated 9/11.
video

Theme: The War is Dragging On
Headline: The Information War is Being Won by Al-Jazeera
This piece is notable because it is reveals that many Russian journalists respect and envy the independent journalism of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera. (This gets to the heart of my disappointment with the overall state of world media affairs.) The Russians respect Al-Jazeera because it is more independent of commercial influence than CNN and they envy it because it is more independent than they are from state influence.
Video

Theme: The War is Dragging On
Headline: Saddam Learned the Lessons from "Desert Storm"
This piece is easily the most pathetic, if unintentionally amusing, of the series. For it they dragged out some retired military folks from the Soviet cellar to talk about how effective Saddam has adapted since the 1991 conflict. Phlegmatic Makhmud Gareyev says that this is a 'barbaric war', as if there were any other kind. Pyotr Deinekin says, "Iraq has airplanes, and not bad ones at that." He says this with a bunch of rusty 1960-vintage Migs in the background.
Video

(Note: after only 4 days, the theme of the war dragging on is gone)
Headline: American's Enter Baghdad?
The question mark is the most revealing part about this report, which is only available in video. The desk anchor says that 'far from all sources' concur that the Americans have entered Baghdad. She even talks live with their war correspondent in Baghdad, Aleksandr Minakov, who says, "Yes, there are tanks. But they are Iraqi tanks. I don't see any signs of the Americans here." Here, of course, is within the Palestine Hotel, where the Iraqis have corralled all foreign journalists. The hotel is in the northwest section of the city. The US Forces were in the south, center and western parts of the city, so it's not surprising that he didn't see them. What he says next, however, is just plain bad journalism. He tells his anchor that the nightly bombardments have been so relentless that it made it seem to him that the allies, in their desperation and frustration, were carpet bombing residential parts of the city. So, because he didn't see US tanks in Baghdad, that means they're not there. But if he hears bombs, but doesn't see where they land, he can claim that it seems like carpet bombing of residential areas.

(Incidently, Manikov was one of the journalists caught in US-Iraqi crossfire with Russian dimplomats yesterday.)

These stories leave an impression rather than impart facts. The impression is similar, if less funny, to what this cartoon implies.

And then, a reality check.

Headline: The last battle in the war
This piece shows that the journalists in Moscow can read the writing on the wall and have changed their tune, from 'war dragging on' to 'war is almost over'. They show Iraqis greeting the Americans in Baghdad and the burnt-out hulks of Soviet-made Republican Guard tanks.

Here is an American perspective on the Iraqi media perspective.

This piece is, by far, the most diverse and comprehensive look at the many different windows on this war.

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.

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.

Law on Language

The Russian Duma recently approved an absurd law that, like similarly silly French Laws, bans the use of rude, offensive and foreign words. The Russian press (much maligned in the West as not a truly free press) had a free for all with the law. This article in particular went out of its way to use as many foreign words as possible to lampoon the law. It also ridiculed one of the law’s supporters, Vladimir Wolfovich Zhirinovsky, who is the leader of a political party that has three foreign words in its four-word title, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. (My friend Dan likes to point out that the LDPR is not liberal, democratic, nor is it really even a party as much as it is a cult of personality...a very, very disturbed personality.)

And this press release from one of Russia’s truly liberal political parties, Yabloko (a proper Russian word that means ‘apple’), gets to the crux of the law's absurdity.

Sergei Mitrokhin (Yabloko) expressed bewilderment: the law forbids the use of "foreign words if there are common analogs in the Russian language". But the word "analog" itself is also of foreign origin.

Depopulation Crisis

The good news: Russia's birth rate is finally up to record levels.

The decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union saw a dramatic drop in Russia's birth rate. (I tracked this statistic closely since I was the largest importer of condoms into Siberia during the same period.) As the years went by and few Russian babies appeared, there were cries--by adults--of an international conspiracy to depopulate Russia. But the sad truth is that abortion, the most common form of birth control during Soviet times, remained a modern Russian woman's first choice for birth control. The number of pregnancies ended by Russian doctors dwarfed the number of pregnancies (and infections of HIV) prevented from ever starting by the shipping containers full of condoms I managed to get to Siberia.

There was no international conspiracy, just extreme economic hardship that made having kids in Russia just too difficult for young parents. (Which is ironic given that demographers have observed a correlation between higher GDP/capita and lower birth rates, as witnessed in the US, Japan, Europe as opposed the high birthrates and low GDP/capita of, say, sub-Saharan Africa.)

The bad news: Russia's death rate also spiked to levels not seen since WWII.

The net result: Russia's population is at 143.1 million and still decreasing.

More revealing statistics.

Nation Building

Based on what the US did, or rather, didn’t do, in Russia after the fall of the genocidal Soviet regime, there is good reason to doubt whether the US will help rebuild Iraq after Saddam is gone. Nation building is just too boring, and, though it saves lives, even American lives, it doesn't garner American votes. (We get the government we deserve.)

In 1991 the Soviet Union underwent a regime change that US politicians and generals could have only dreamed of. So what did the US do with this historic opportunity? Not much. America’s attention waned along with the fighting in the streets of Moscow. Most Americans were too busy with Christmas shopping to turn on the TV and watch the dreaded red flag with the sickle and hammer pulled down and the Russian tri-color rise above the Kremlin on the 24th of December 1991. To our credit, and unlike the French did to the Germans after WWI, we didn’t rub victory in the face of Russians, who, after all, were both the real victims of communism and the victors over it. To our discredit, we didn’t do much of anything to help the new Russia land on its feet. We treated Russia like a welfare case, giving kopecks at a time when we were drowning in our own wealth.

The reason Japan and Germany quickly became democratic after WWII was that America helped immediately and generously. Now Japan and Germany are the 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world. Our generosity back then wasn’t pure altruism; it was motivated by enlightened self-interest.

To contain the spread of the Soviet Union, Japan and Germany had to be economically strong. So why, after 50 years of a tense, bi-polar stand off, were we so stingy with post-Soviet Russia? After all, wasn’t an economically strong Russia our best defense against the resurgence of a communist country with enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy, well, everything?

Perhaps it’s that we didn’t know what to support. I only wish we had had enough wisdom, and will, to pay the carpenter’s fees for rebuilding Russia’s courtrooms to support jury trials. For, although the Russian constitutional called for jury trials back in 1993, as this remarkable piece in the NYTimes points out, they are only now starting to take place. The delays being due to many things, but the most mundane and inexcusable is the legacy of Soviet courtrooms not having the physical space for juries. Also, if we’re feeling really generous, how about we subsidize the compensation Russian jurors receive (from $1.75 to $3.50 per day)?

After all, the limited use of jury trials has already brought down conviction rates from 99 percent to 88. This is a good thing if you think it is worse to imprison an innocent man than it is to let a criminal go unpunished.

In another, more recent, example of the US neglecting to win the peace after winning in war, This NYTimes piece describes President Karzai in Washington begging the US not to forget about Afghanistan if a war happens in Iraq. He also had to beg for money to pay the wages of troops that are going to defend the country from warlords after the US troops leave.

From the NYTimes:

Since shortly after 1917, when the new Soviet state outlawed juries, the fates of most accused Russians have been decided by three-member panels that served as judges, jurors and — sometimes — aides to the prosecution. As recently as 1996, the panels were grinding out convictions in 995 of every 1,000 criminal cases.

This winter — glacially, and sometimes grudgingly — their monopoly is starting to crack. An overhaul of Russia's criminal code, pushed through Parliament by President Vladimir V. Putin and adopted in July, gives defendants accused of the most serious crimes the right to demand a jury trial. It also guarantees them Western-style rights.

Much of that had already been written into Russia's Constitution in 1993. In 1999, after six years of fitful experiments, the nation's top court ordered the government to carry out the changes. But Parliament did not consider the legislation until last year. Even after the new criminal code became law, Parliament voted in December to delay the start of jury trials in 20 regions, including Moscow, because a decade's notice had still left officials unprepared.
In fact, there is a lot to prepare. By some measures, Russia's 20,000 judges are only half the number needed for the new system. Courtrooms must have jury boxes, microphones and other items. Juror lists must be compiled, and the jurors must be paid. Last year, an experimental trial in suburban Moscow stalled because the $1.75 per diem failed to lure jurors into the courtroom. The 2003 judicial budget was increased 25 percent $762 million.

Cruising in Russia

In browsing the latest online issue of Kommersant, the
best business-economic-entertainment paper in Russia (think of it as a combination of the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and Playboy), I stumbled across an article about celebrity Aleksei Kortnev taking a PT Cruiser for a week-long test drive in Moscow. Kortnev is the lead singer for Neshastni Slyuchi, which translates as Accident, as in car accident. Think of 'Accident' as a combination of Harry Connick jr., Dave Mathews, and Soul Coughing. I know, it's an odd combo, but it works. Well enough for them to be one of the most famous, and well regarded, bands in Russia. If the idea of a famous Russian musician taking an infamous American cartoon car for a test drive in Moscow doesn't make you smile, Kortnev's comments will.

He starts by praising the Cruiser for how quickly the car heats up, not a trivial matter during the cold Moscow winter. But then complains that it doesn't have seat warmers. (So much for the image of Russians as hearty, masochistic, ice eaters.) He claims to never smoke in the car, but heaps praise on the car's ingenious ash tray. He's surprised, pleasantly, that such innovation comes from, of all people, the notoriously anti-smoking Americans. He also appreciated the two cigarette lighters (one for igniting smokes, one for charging cell phones) and one behind the rear seat (for reasons he doesn't bother to guess). After his wife 'privatizes' the car for much of the week, he determines that it's a chick car. Also, it still suffers from the defect that all cars suffer from: you can't drive it while drunk.

The article is in a Kommersant spin-off magazine, Avtopilot. Fast cars, naked women, and more fast cars. If anybody has any doubt about the Russian soul being incompatible with individualism, hedonism, and capitalism should look at this magazine.

US Neglects/Russia Humiliates

North Korea has been trying desperately to get the attention of the United States with bellicose threats. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il is getting humiliating attention from Russia with news headlines fit for the president of a PTA, not the president of the DPRK.

MOSCOW TO CELEBRATE NORTH KOREAN LEADER'S 60TH BIRTHDAY WITH ARTS & CRAFTS SHOW
MOSCOW, February 12 /from RIA Novosti's Yevgenia Molchanova/ - Examples of Korean arts and crafts will be displayed at Moscow's Novy Manezh exhibition center ahead of Kim Jong-il's birthday, February 16. The North Korean leader is turning 60 this year. Oil paintings, watercolors, embroideries, and ceramics will form the bulk of the exposition. Korean artists give realistic and detailed polychromatic representations of natural landscapes, celebrating the beauty of their country's scenery.

Placed on show along with decorative artwork will be photographs of Kim attending various functions and public events. Visitors will also be able to see photographs featuring Korean customs and traditions.

The exhibition opens Thursday, February 13.

Revealing Statistics

Usually there are two types of statistics: those that bore and those that lie. However, when several boring but true statistics are juxtaposed, often they become much more interesting and insightful. The Harper's Index is the most famous, perhaps infamous, example of this technique. Using this technique, plus the Jeopardy answer-then-question format, I decided to put together my own index below:

• 890,000: Number of inmates in Russia's prisons in 2002.
  
• 1,312,354: Number of inmates in US prisons in 2000.
  

• 118: Number of Russian sailors lost in the Kursk accident.
  
• 129: Number of dead in Moscow's theater siege last fall.
  
• 90: Average number of accident fatalities on Russia's roads...everyday.

• $10,881,700,000: Total exports from Siberia in 2002.
  
• $10,800,000,000: Exports from California in 2001...to Canada alone.
  
• 15,531,000 sq. mi: Size of Siberia (including Russian Far East).
  
• 15,081,000 sq. mi: Size of the United States (including Alaska).
  

• 16.3: Number of deaths (per 1,000) in Russia in 2002
  
• 9.8: Number of births (per 1,000) in Russia in 2002 (up from 9.1 in 2000)
  
• 8.7: Number of deaths(per 1,000) in the US in 2000
  
• 14.2: Number of births(per 1,000) in the US in 2001

• 24.18: Number of deaths(per 1,000) in Botswana in 2001 (hightest in the world)
  
• 48.79: Number of births(per 1,000) in Mali in 2001 (hightest in the world)

  
  

  
  
  • Hawaii: The most Southern State in the US.
    
  • Alaska: The most Northern State in the US.
    
  • Alaska: The most Western State in the US. (Aleutian Islands)
    
  • Alaska: The most Eastern State in the US (The Aleutians Islands again)
    
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I hope the Russians Love their Children

The eXile, a bastard lovechild of a newspaper (part Onion, part Slate) sired by brilliant, bitter and irreverent expatriates living in Moscow, has a piece on Solnyshko, an absolutely horrific but relatively well-off orphanage in the remote (even by Russian standards) Amurskaya Oblast. I’m no supporter of communism or other zero-sum, Robin-Hood economic policies, but it does strike me as particularly callous and even dangerous for the US Administration to be cutting off aid to Russia (for it's economic success, no less) while simultaneously and relentlessly advancing tax breaks for the richest people (as they are clearly over burdened) of the richest country in all human history.

Sting, in one of his most annoying songs, worried aloud that we were in danger of incineration if the Russians didn't love their children. Well, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

From:
The eXile
Bleak House
By Jake Rudnitsky ( jake@exile.ru )

“Visiting these kids is a truly sobering experience. Their condition is a far more direct and painful evidence of modern Russia’s complete degradation and moral bankruptcy than the looting of the country during market reforms, the lack of fundamental rights such as health care and heat, or even the war in Chechnya. Because, while these well-publicized crimes are abstract issues for the people who perpetrate them, the problem of orphans is an intensely personal and individual one. That these kids’ parents are alive and have inflicted such cruelty on their own children is mind-numbing.”

Animating Capital

The Moscow Times has a story highlighting one more quiet battlefield victory in Russia’s uncelebrated war for civil society. The battle over bureaucracy. Economist Hernando de Soto, in his most recent book, The Mystery of Capital, which I reviewed in the Industry Standard back in December 2000, makes a compelling case that a) legitimizing the assets of the poor and b) limiting bureaucracy to small businesses are crucial steps to elevating the tired, huddled masses from the bottom rung of the world economy.

Thus, I couldn't be happier about this line from the MT article:

"Competition became a bigger problem than bureaucracy for the first time," said Andrei Dvorkovich, deputy economic development and trade minister.

Industry Standard

Reanimator
By Alexander Blakely
Issue Date: Dec 04 2000

By Alexander Blakely

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Communism surrenders. Capitalism triumphs. And yet the Third World persists. In fact, as former communist countries atrophy into destitution, the Third World is actually growing in membership and hardship. For those who believe in the power of a market system, why capitalism hasn't panned out for the world's poorest nations remains a mystery.

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has spent a great deal of time trying to solve that mystery, and has garnered acclaim for his market-friendly theories in the process. Time magazine called him a "leader for the new millennium" and Fortune selected him as one of the 50 most stimulating thinkers of the 1990s. He is also the founder of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy - a think tank dedicated to helping developing countries actually develop.

And now, in his pioneering book The Mystery of Capital, de Soto sheds light not only on the Third World's inability to embrace prosperity but also on the West's remarkable ability to perpetuate it.

De Soto's guiding principle is the idea of "animating" capital. In his first book, The Other Path, de Soto found that the poor have unexpected amounts of assets. According to de Soto's calculations, real estate holdings in the Third World are worth $9.3 trillion. That's $2,325 per person. The catch is, the world's poor cannot leverage these assets to raise their standard of living. They have capital, but they can't unlock its real value. The reason for this, de Soto concludes, is that although the poor may physically hold assets, they don't legally own them.

The Mystery of Capital takes this idea and runs with it. Unless an asset is legally owned, it is "dead capital." Without a title, a house is just a temporary shelter. Without a deed, land is only as valuable as what can be stripped from it today. To animate capital, ownership must be fixed on paper and enforced by law. A legal homeowner can borrow money against the value of his home. A legal landowner can confidently invest in the land, and not recklessly extract from it.

But most poor nations have byzantine legal systems that isolate people from legitimate property. De Soto describes how it took his researchers 32 months to get legal approval from 11 agencies to open a manufacturing facility in Peru. The same task took three hours in Tampa, Fla. Then there are the 168 steps (and 13 to 25 years) necessary to legally own property in the Philippines.

In an example closer to home, de Soto examines the United States Homestead Act of 1862 to reveal how developing, agrarian nations can propel themselves toward prosperity. The Homestead Act, it turns out, didn't open the floodgates for mass migration into the Western frontier; the people were already there, illegally. What it did was turn millions of rebellious squatters into legitimate landowners overnight. In effect, it created vast amounts of capital.

De Soto's ideas are particularly significant as we explore yet another frontier in the form of cyberspace. Indeed, for a book about global poverty, it is a remarkably inspiring read. The Mystery of Capital supports Adam Smith's assertion that capital is the bedrock of the wealth of nations. But it also bolsters Marx's claims that the estrangement of people from das kapital is what keeps the poor down.

>Anybody who can make a case that both Smith and Marx were right should either be ignored categorically or listened to very, very carefully.

New Space Race

There is an anecdote that the Russians love to tell because it is both self-deprecating and a backhanded compliment to their former-rivals-then-partners-now-patrons in the US. It goes something like this: Since pens don’t work in the zero-g conditions of space, NASA spent years developing a 0G pen. When the American scientists proudly revealed their million-dollar ‘space-age’ pen, the Russians were impressed. The American scientists inquired whether the Russian had a pen that worked in space. The Russians collectively shrugged their shoulders. “No,” they admitted. “Our cosmonauts use pencils.”

Today, with the grounding of the Space Shuttles, which American engineers still proudly declare as ‘the most complicated machine ever built my man’, the relatively dumb Russian rockets are left with the job of supplying the International Space Station (another hyper-complicated machine of dubious value). And, with the Shuttles out of commission, the only way down from the ISS is a Russian Soyuz landing pod (think of C3PO and R2D2 in the opening scenes of the 1977 Star Wars film).

From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor

"The Russian Space Agency's budget, $265 million last year, is dwarfed by
NASA's $15.5 billion annual allocation."

…The shuttle catastrophe follows a string of accidents with Europe's Ariane rockets, the only other space program potentially capable of resupplying the ISS. In December, an unmanned Ariane-5 lifter, with two satellites, exploded on its launchpad in a $500-million major setback for Europe's space aspirations."

Nightmare Reveals Dream

What could unite people from a nation with a history of religious Puritanism, people from an atheist nation that is history, and a religious people that have been without a nation for most of their history? Answer: Death and Science, not necessarily in that order.

From the Baltimore Sun
Amid prayers, a few tears and the playing of three national anthems -American, Israeli and Russian - the astronauts, cosmonauts and others at yesterday's memorial service sought solace from their colleagues. A similar ceremony is scheduled for today at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Women Drivers

It's hard to come up with a more telling statistic of Moscow's rising economic tide than the number of automobiles on the streets of the Russian capital. An increase of 500,000 cars (25%) over a 4 year period, many of them driven by women, can mean only two things: 1) the Russian middle class is finally becoming a reality and 2) the reality is gridlock.

Christian Science Monitor
February 5, 2003
Taking the wheel puts women in the hot seat
In capitalist Russia, more women are on the road - and driving men crazy
By Claudia Kolker

The worried woman hunches at the wheel as if bracing for a crash and peers
warily at the clogged highway. Plastered on her rear window, a perky
sticker showing a high-heeled shoe implores all drivers behind her:
"Respect me!'"

It's a wilderness out there for Moscow's women drivers.

In Soviet times, economics kept most Russians from owning cars, and custom
kept most women from taking the wheel. But with the advent of capitalism,
prosperity began refashioning Moscow. Although interrupted by an economic
implosion in 1998, the boom has resumed. And as salaries and consumer
spending have increased, so have the traffic jams caused by the swarms of
new vehicles on the capital's roads. The number of cars in Moscow rose from
about 2 million in 1997 to 2.5 million in 2001.

While Russian agencies don't analyze car ownership by gender, the throngs
of drivers now include more women, motorists and officials agree.

Today, one driving instructor says, most students in a class of 12 are
female. A decade ago, only one or two women would surface in a class of the
same size.

The woman driver's emergence has fueled debate, ridicule, and at times
harassment in this forward-looking city with some very old-fashioned ways.

In self-defense, many women now paste triangular warning stickers on their
car windows. Besides the high-heeled shoe, there's a picture of a girl in a
bouffant hairdo, and the Cyrillic letter, "Sh," standing for "student
driver." There's even a sticker with a teapot - a reference to Russian
slang for "bumbling amateur."

The stickers are supposed to prompt automotive gallantry, says auto-parts
vendor Mikhail Brizgin, who began selling them two years ago and now sells
about 10 a week.

But just as often, male drivers respond by honking, barking insults, or
cutting women drivers off in traffic.

Both sides seem to agree on one thing, however: Women really do drive
differently from men.

"I don't know how to put this so as not to offend," offers Roma Agishev, a
young male photographer. "Women are either oriented toward the rules they
learned in driving school, or guided by intuition to avoid risk. Here, at
least a third of the drivers don't follow rules at all. So safe driving
creates dangerous situations."

But bank manager Yevgeniya Volokva says it's men who make driving dangerous.

"Women drive more carefully and more slowly," she says. "They may have kids
in the car, and they're not as crazy. They're not showing off.''

The emergence of the woman driver reflects changes in the marketplace.

Though women worked during Soviet times, they tended to stay in the
background professionally. In today's Russia, businesswomen are in the
foreground of the capitalist landscape. And companies are hiring them for
career-track jobs, which often means travel.

"Women have started to live another way - as much more a part of society,"
says Olga Vazhbina, a young pharmaceutical company executive. "Driving
becomes really necessary if you want to work."

Ms. Vazhbina exemplifies the new businesswoman. She is also an object
lesson in the road shock experienced by some of Moscow's new female drivers.

After her firm assigned her a car three years ago, she ventured into the
capital's harrowing traffic - and soon after landed in a spectacular accident.

"I lost control of the wheel, then I lost the road altogether," she says.
"I hit 15 construction barrels on the way. Then I hit a big stone
construction barrier. Then I went over a fence... It was like a movie. When
it stopped, I escaped from the car, and I was OK. The car was on the edge
of a giant precipice."

She's back behind the wheel now, and pronounces herself a rather good driver.

In fact, a recent study indicated Moscow women drive more safely than men.

Women Drivers

It's hard to come up with a more telling statistic of Moscow's rising economic tide than the number of automobiles on the streets of the Russian capital. An increase of 500,000 cars (25%) over a 4 year period, many of them driven by women, can mean only two things: 1) the Russian middle class is finally becoming a reality and 2) the reality is gridlock.

Christian Science Monitor
February 5, 2003
Taking the wheel puts women in the hot seat
In capitalist Russia, more women are on the road - and driving men crazy
By Claudia Kolker

The worried woman hunches at the wheel as if bracing for a crash and peers
warily at the clogged highway. Plastered on her rear window, a perky
sticker showing a high-heeled shoe implores all drivers behind her:
"Respect me!'"

It's a wilderness out there for Moscow's women drivers.

In Soviet times, economics kept most Russians from owning cars, and custom
kept most women from taking the wheel. But with the advent of capitalism,
prosperity began refashioning Moscow. Although interrupted by an economic
implosion in 1998, the boom has resumed. And as salaries and consumer
spending have increased, so have the traffic jams caused by the swarms of
new vehicles on the capital's roads. The number of cars in Moscow rose from
about 2 million in 1997 to 2.5 million in 2001.

While Russian agencies don't analyze car ownership by gender, the throngs
of drivers now include more women, motorists and officials agree.

Today, one driving instructor says, most students in a class of 12 are
female. A decade ago, only one or two women would surface in a class of the
same size.

The woman driver's emergence has fueled debate, ridicule, and at times
harassment in this forward-looking city with some very old-fashioned ways.

In self-defense, many women now paste triangular warning stickers on their
car windows. Besides the high-heeled shoe, there's a picture of a girl in a
bouffant hairdo, and the Cyrillic letter, "Sh," standing for "student
driver." There's even a sticker with a teapot - a reference to Russian
slang for "bumbling amateur."

The stickers are supposed to prompt automotive gallantry, says auto-parts
vendor Mikhail Brizgin, who began selling them two years ago and now sells
about 10 a week.

But just as often, male drivers respond by honking, barking insults, or
cutting women drivers off in traffic.

Both sides seem to agree on one thing, however: Women really do drive
differently from men.

"I don't know how to put this so as not to offend," offers Roma Agishev, a
young male photographer. "Women are either oriented toward the rules they
learned in driving school, or guided by intuition to avoid risk. Here, at
least a third of the drivers don't follow rules at all. So safe driving
creates dangerous situations."

But bank manager Yevgeniya Volokva says it's men who make driving dangerous.

"Women drive more carefully and more slowly," she says. "They may have kids
in the car, and they're not as crazy. They're not showing off.''

The emergence of the woman driver reflects changes in the marketplace.

Though women worked during Soviet times, they tended to stay in the
background professionally. In today's Russia, businesswomen are in the
foreground of the capitalist landscape. And companies are hiring them for
career-track jobs, which often means travel.

"Women have started to live another way - as much more a part of society,"
says Olga Vazhbina, a young pharmaceutical company executive. "Driving
becomes really necessary if you want to work."

Ms. Vazhbina exemplifies the new businesswoman. She is also an object
lesson in the road shock experienced by some of Moscow's new female drivers.

After her firm assigned her a car three years ago, she ventured into the
capital's harrowing traffic - and soon after landed in a spectacular accident.

"I lost control of the wheel, then I lost the road altogether," she says.
"I hit 15 construction barrels on the way. Then I hit a big stone
construction barrier. Then I went over a fence... It was like a movie. When
it stopped, I escaped from the car, and I was OK. The car was on the edge
of a giant precipice."

She's back behind the wheel now, and pronounces herself a rather good driver.

In fact, a recent study indicated Moscow women drive more safely than men.