XANDER BLAKELY BLOG

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

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.

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)
    
  Posted by Xander at 08:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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.”

Siberia vs. California

Siberia is gigantic. It contains 1/12th of the Earth's landmass. According to Novosti, Siberia exported almost $11B (that's two ones and nine zeros) in 2002. By contrast, in 2001 the State of California, which is the 3rd largest state but only 1/10th the size of Siberia, had exports of the same amount ($10.8B)...to Canada alone.

Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому региону за 2002 год составил 12,7 млрд долларов

04.02.03 13:09

НОВОСИБИРСК, 4 февраля. /Корр. РИА "Новости" - Сибирь Наталья Решетникова/. Внешнеторговый оборот по Сибирскому таможенному управлению /СТУ/ за 2002 год составил 12 млрд 778,3 млн долларов. В том числе экспорт - 10 млрд 881,7 млн долларов /85,2 проц от объема товарооборота/, импорт - 1 млрд 896,6 млн долларов /14,8 проц/.
Как сообщили во вторник корреспонденту РИА "Новости" в пресс-службе СТУ, по сравнению с 2001 годом стоимостной объем экспорта увеличился на 4,7 проц, а объем импорта снизился на 9,1 проц. В результате прирост товарооборота составил 2,4 проц.

По данным пресс-службы, из 116 стран - партнеров по внешней торговле /в 2001 году их было 120/ ведущими являются страны дальнего зарубежья. Торговля с ними обеспечила 89,2 проц стоимостного объема экспорта и 56,3 проц - объема импорта. Основными партнерами Сибири являются Китай, Великобритания, США, Япония, Нидерланды, Германия, Индия, Турция, Польша.

Среди стран СНГ главные партнеры по внешней торговле - Казахстан и Украина с удельным весом в объеме товарооборота 13,6 проц.

Sweet Siberia

I stumbled upon profound happiness in Siberia, an infamous land of suffering. So what? Surely there is no need to write a book about it. Weirder things happen to people far more interesting than me. If happiness were the only thing to happen while I was there, I never would have bothered to write down a single word. But happiness wasn't the only thing that happened.

While I found enjoyment in the daily life of my little Siberian town, all around, Russia was enduring three simultaneous but distinct revolutions—one economic, one political, and one cultural. The magnitude of this triple trauma is nearly impossible to appreciate, especially for us first worlders. Imagine an economic depression as severe and sustained as America's Great Depression, a cultural awakening as rude as Commodore Perry's battleships arriving in the backward islands of Japan and a political implosion akin to Napoleonic France after Waterloo. All at once. All in the same country. Yes, Russia is a mess right now. Actually, calling it a mess is an understatement. But, by all accounts, it should be much, much worse. Yes, there is unfathomable hardship. But there is also a surprising amount of defiant joy. This is particularly true in the worst part of Russia: Siberia.

Over the years, many Siberians enchanted me with their steady hope amid hopeless chaos. I knew that these were terrific times; I also knew that these were terrific people. It was a privilege to be among them. It was an honor to be accepted by them. I went to Siberia in search of a place severe enough to satisfy my lust for extremes, and I wasn't disappointed. But I also found a place of sublime subtleties.