“I said export world revolution  not revolutionary  cheap pins to the world”

What happens when a nominal communist state is making communist memorabilia of a former communist state? Yes, the communist memorabilia market run by artisans in the former communist state collides. Exactly what is happening in Russia where Chinese “Soviet Union”-era products are flooding the souvenir market. Tourists think they buy something authentic buy a fake low cost product from China.

Read Khristina Narizhnaya’s ‘Made in the U.S.S.R. is now made in China’ article for The Moscow Times here.

Back in May, my sons were in need of new shoes, and, I must admit, I had been putting it off. I was hoping against hope that the canvas sneakers I picked up for them in London on a solo trip over there in April would stay the course until our summer break when we would be back in the land of less expensive and — crucially — expertly fitted footwear. What’s that you say? Muscovite children wear shoes, too, and amazingly, they even fit? That fact is obviously true, but based on our experiences shoe shopping in Moscow, for the life of me I can’t work out how.

Eventually we faced reality and went out to buy the boys trainers and day-to-day footwear, setting off one Saturday for a shopping mall where we knew there were kids’ shoe shops aplenty. I drove, and the boys and husband went by tram (a special treat for my tram-crazy younger son), and as any Moscow resident will not be surprised to learn, the tram got there first.

My husband at this point made a beginner’s mistake and decided to take matters into his own hands — re: the shoes (“What’s that stupid woman making such a fuss about? I shall buy both my sons shoes before she even gets here and demonstrate to her how easy it is!”), and he and the boys went on up to the largest kids’ clothing store.

They stood around in the well-stocked shoe section being ignored for a few minutes until my husband took matters into his own hands and asked an assistant for help. This is the conversation that ensued.

Husband: “Can you help me, please?”

Store Lady (sigh): “Yes. What do you want…” (sigh)

Husband: “We would like to buy some shoes.”

Store Lady looked blankly at my husband, and then with an all-encompassing gesture swept her arms around her and said: “Shooooeees.”

Husband (somewhat taken aback): “Yes, I can see they’re shoes, but I’m not quite sure what size my sons take, so can you help us with that please?”

Store Lady (sigh): “OK.”

She looked at my sons’ feet and started pulling out boxes.

Husband: “Hang on. Can you measure their feet first, please?”

Boy #2 sat down and began to pull his shoes off. Store Lady picked up the first boot from the floor and checked underneath for the size.

Husband: “No, I don’t want you to check these shoes. I want to know what size his feet are now. Can you measure them, please?”

Store Lady picked up Boy #2′s foot and looked at it. “I would say…”

Husband: “No, I would like you to measure them. Can you do that please?”

Store Lady (sigh). “No, we don’t do that. Just try a few pairs on until you get some the right size.”

At this stage my husband turned and swept grandly out of the store, trailed by two boys asking loudly when they were going to get new trainers in tow.

Moscow traffic being what it was, I still had not arrived, so they moved next door, which also sold children’s shoes. And then, after repeating the whole sorry process, they stomped out of that shop, too. By the time I finally got there, they were in Store #3, and this time when the assistant — upon being asked to measure the boys’ feet — pulled out a dressmaker’s tape measure, both I and my husband kept quiet and counted ourselves lucky.

And guess what? They fit.

Last week, the Russian language segment of the popular blogging platform LiveJournal experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that brought down service for much of the week. This was the third such attack on the site this year, prompting vigorous discussion concerning the origins and goals of the attacks and their consequences for the Russian blogosphere. Many fear that the site’s instability could have negative repercussions during the upcoming legislative elections in December.

Various theories for the origin of the attacks have cast suspicion on corporate rivals (eager to steal LiveJournal customers), opponents of the Ukrainian opposition, advocates of a new draft law that outlaws DDoS attacks (looking to substantiate the perceived threat with evidence), and even SUP, LiveJournal’s parent company. Two prominent Russian IT entrepreneurs, Yevgeny Kaspersky and Alexei Exler, have even argued that LiveJournal’s problems were not caused by a DDoS attack at all but by technical failures. By far the most prominent theories discussed in the immediate aftermath of the blog platform’s week of outage suggest the problems are the fault of the government, the state security service, or one of the pro-Kremlin youth groups, and that the perpetrators aim to disable in some way the free discourse that has up until this time characterized Russia’s vibrant blogosphere. Considering the possible ramifications of such an effect in an election year, the Moscow Times has even referred to the latest attack as an act of “cyber war”.

Service problems were first reported on Monday, July 25, 2011. While some initial reports suggested that the problems were merely technical in nature, caused by shortcomings in the LiveJournal infrastructure or work being done on the site rather than attacks, eventually the company publicized data demonstrating that it had in fact been the target of a massive DDoS attack. The attack was so powerful in magnitude, LiveJournal’s head of development explained, that the Verizon and Qwest data centers where the LiveJournal servers are located had not been able to stand the load, causing the entire data center to go offline for 5 hours. Once DDoS mitigation protocols were able to be deployed, it became clear that the LiveJournal servers had been receiving an average of 6 gigabits of traffic (with peaks up to 8 gigabits) compared to their past peak of 2 gigabits. The attacks were directed from virus-infected computers predominantly in Latin America and servers located in North America. By July 29, the DDoS attack had ended, but LiveJournal service continued to be tenuous as administrators struggled to resolve problems created by the attack.

Previous cyberattacks on the LiveJournal site occurred on March 30, 2011 and April 4-6, 2011, also causing outages and serious degradation in service. The most recent attacks are different in extent and character, however. The earlier DDoS strikes targeted specific blogs, particularly several popular opposition blogs known for their criticism of the current regime. The LiveJournal blog of Alexey Navalny, a well known blogger famous for his investigative reporting on major corruption scandals, was widely reported to have been one of the chief targets. Last week’s attack, by contrast, was more expansive, striking at the servers for the entire Russian language LiveJournal service.

LiveJournal is the most popular blogging platform in Russia. It hosts some 5 million Russian language blogs, including those of a many of the most prominent Russian bloggers. The service is distinctive in that it combines features of traditional blogging platforms with those of social network sites such as Facebook. In their 2010 study of the Russian blogosphere, the Berkman Center demonstrated that, though the “blogosphere is highly divided according to platform, … [the] central Discussion Core that contains the majority of political and public affairs discourse … is comprised mainly … of blogs on the LiveJournal platform.”

Bloggers have played an increasingly important role in Russian opposition politics in recent years, organizing protest events, discussing stories not covered by mainstream press, and publicizing corruption scandals and human rights abuses. Offline protest events such as the Strategy 31 marches (organized for the 31st day of each month) and the Blue Bucket driver’s movement (in which protesters have drawn attention to the illegal and reckless use of police sirens by wealthy drivers) have made use of blogs and social media to coordinate real-world events. Bloggers often have aired stories that do not find their way to the light of day through other Russian media sources, including, for example, this month’s scandal-producing coverage of alleged involvement by local police and United Russia employees in apparent inter-ethnic fighting fighting in the village of Sagra, and Navalny’s ongoing crusade to reveal corruption amongst high government officials. The Sagra story became a prominent discussion topic after it was investigated by bloggers, and Navalny’s investigative work has exposed several high profile cases of corruption and abuse of power by prominent Russian officials, including an alleged embezzlement of over four billion dollars from Transneft, Russia’s state-run oil pipeline company.

There has been a great deal of speculation as to the source and purpose of the attacks on LiveJournal. Many in the blogging community have pointed fingers at the government or its affiliates, citing the state security service’s known displeasure with some Internet uses, or the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi’s previous uses of DDoS attacks and past efforts to discredit opposition bloggers.

Different theories have also emerged concerning the attacks’ objectives. A number of observers have suggested that the goal of the attacks has been to shut down key opposition websites or to disrupt the social organizing capacity of online forums at critical moments. With two major attacks occurring during the preparation for Strategy 31 marches, some have suggested that the disruption of these particular protests might have been a goal. Others indicate disruption of discussion of events in Sagra or the Platon Lebedev parole hearings as possible targets.

But many in the blogging community seem more concerned about the possible longer-term strategic objectives revealed by the recent string of attacks. Such routine attacks on the LiveJournal service could, for example, aim to prepare the blogging community and its audience to expect technical difficulties from the LiveJournal site – such that there will be little surprise if such difficulties are experienced also during the vital period surrounding December’s elections for the State Duma or the presidential elections in March 2012. Another possibility, suggested by blogger and high tech entrepreneur Anton Nosik, is that the attacks aim to break up the LiveJournal blogging community, leading bloggers to move to other forums and fragmenting the dense political discourse network that has developed on the LiveJournal platform. As different bloggers move to alternative forums such as Facebook, Google+, and BlogSpot, the argument goes, this will permanently weaken the coherence of the political discourse community that has developed on LiveJournal. Alternatively, the attacks could serve merely as a sort of rehearsal. With so many of the most vibrant Internet communities rooted in one blogging platform, it would not take a complete shutdown of the Internet – as in Egypt this January – to devastate communications in the network-based community at critical moments.

President Dmitry Medvedev has denied any government involvement in the LiveJournal attacks, and has referred to them as “outrageous and illegal,” complaining of the negative impact on his own LiveJournal blog. He has been at pains in recent months to demonstrate his own support of Internet freedom, meeting with representatives of the Russian Internet community and calling for an investigation into the earlier LiveJournal attacks.

Other indications of the Kremlin’s position concerning Internet freedom have been far less clear over the last several months, however. ONI’s recent book, Access Controlled, provides evidence that while Russia has so far avoided the kinds of blatant crackdowns on Internet freedom employed by a number of authoritarian regimes, such as filtering for keywords and blocking certain sites, it has, over the last few years, dramatically increased its use of “second- and third-generation controls.” As Rebekah Heacock explained in an ONI blogpost shortly after the previous round of LiveJournal attacks this spring, “Russian authorities have expanded their control over cyberspace in a more indirect manner, employing a voluntary Internet patrol group, paid pro-government commentators, alleged DDoS attacks, and a new surveillance system to increase pressure on Russian netizens.”

Whatever the source of the recent rounds of DDoS attacks, they clearly raise questions concerning the future of the Russian blogosphere and its continuing relationship to LiveJournal. While the attacks have not yet led to a widespread flight from the platform, they have demonstrated the potential vulnerability of the blogging community’s current reliance on it, and they have prompted some discussion of alternative platforms and the repercussions of dispersion to other services for the community as a whole. Some bloggers have discussed the need to mirror their sites, and others have pointed to evidence that the attacks have already prompted some to move to seemingly more reliable services. Perhaps the one encouraging development to come out of the recent attacks is that they have prompted Russian bloggers to discuss the risk of future disruptions to the blogging service and consider how best to prepare. As Alexey Sidorenko of Global Voices puts it, “the only positive effect of attacks against LiveJournal is that bloggers and digital activists have realized how fragile the Russian blogosphere really is.”

Re-published from ONI under the Creative Commons License

Related articles

• Mystery data centre snag floors LiveJournal (go.theregister.com)
• LiveJournal groans under ‘immense’ DDos attack (go.theregister.com)
• Leading Affiliate Network XY7.com is Back Up and Running Smoothly After Web Attack (prweb.com)
• Morocco: Militant Website Sustains DDoS Attack (moroccotomorrow.org)
• Morocco: Militant Website Sustains DDoS Attack (advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org)
• Why Have Hackers Hit Russia’s Most Popular Blogging Service? (time.com)
• Network Solutions suffers two DDoS attacks (news.cnet.com)
• Pop Clips ” 05 August 11 (dave-lucas.blogspot.com)
• LiveJournal.com and Global Classifieds Site OLX, Launch a Co-Branded Service (prweb.com)

Let’s say you’re part of the arms control industry: you are passionate about arms control agreements as an ironclad method to enhance security.  Although your position doesn’t really have historical success on its side, it has emotion, motherhood, and (of course) the children.

But the U.S. public yawns at arms control (and maybe that works to your advantage) and legislators are skeptical, in part because the post-Cold War arms control paradigm still only has the two usual suspects, the U.S. and Russia.  Why do so many ignore your arms control wisdom?

The solution, of course, is to get your message out.

Where?

In the Moscow Times where you take-to-task Russians who are worried that missile defense will work and will diminish Russia’s national power.    

It’s interesting how arms controllers know much more about what it takes to enhance security than do the politicos, the military, and certainly, the public; perhaps they can come up with a nice state-run economy while they’re at it?

Image via Wikipedia

Some people may thought that I am crazy if they know that I had shed tears when he was removed. I felt as if I lost my uncle. I had also just lost my father at that time.

Yes, two of my respect best friends on the FB thought that  they thought I was crazy to be on the other side of history by siting this : “Gorbachev the Traitor” 17 March 2011, By Boris Kagarlitsky written in the Moscow Times.

But I rebutted my friends and wrote, “He is still a Hero for me. Because of him the following countries could leave Communist IRON GRIP.

East Germany
Poland
Hungary
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
Romania
Albania
Yugoslavia
AND. ..Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
became MUSLIM DOMINANT countries. .

Baltic

Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Eastern Europe

Belarus
Moldova
Ukraine
Transcaucasus

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia

Also became independent. SO I am happy with him, thank him and he is my greatest hero on earth.

Dr Nay Aung Kyaw supported me: AKG@ Gobachev was hero for my late father, but I disagree with him.This world became unipolar because of him, and many consequences that we are witnessing right now is lack of checking mechanism.I do respect your feeling, and Alfatihah for our fathers..
Dr Nay Aung Kyaw continued: USSR disintegrated, that was the beginning of the end of communism (Marxism) . Eastern Europe benefited but the best beneficiaries are the West. I think they should have a statue of him in Washington, London, and Tel Aviv. The power balanc…e in middle east has permanently gone, and I can see the double standard of the West in Europe. Turkey is a member of Nato for so long but not granted as a full member of EU whereas most of the newly liberated eastern European countries became full members of EU.Bigotry is there, double standard is there, my respects goes to the real statesmen in the politics.

Professor Dr Maung Maung Nyo replied: Dear Dr NAK, Hear, hear. What you say is right. Gorbachev ended not only the Soviet Union, but also the balance of power in the world. Now the West is in the supremacy with USA the only Super-Power.

Ko Ko Gyi : According to Wikileaks, even Pope had advised EU not to accept Turkey. (Your ancestor’s country Dr NAK) No more Communists so the West need a boogyman to replace the Cold War. Inorder that the Arm manufactactors and dealers could continue t…o sell arms to both side they need to invent an enemy. Radical Muslims went into that trap and ISLAMOPHOBIA became wide spread. So may be Gobachev could be guilty for disturbing the drinking water of the cunning fox, last year. Gobachev was removed by the stupid Russians. If not they could join EU as a democratic member. Gobachev vacum was filled by the drunkard and now the KGB chief. Gobachev liberated a lot of nations but stupid Russians stopped him from delivering LIBERTY for them.

Dr Nay Aung Kyaw AKG @ fully agree with yr comment.

Ko Ko Gyi : Russians should thank him. Before breakup, Russian Muslims were 5th. largest Muslim population. With their rapid birth rate one day THERE COULD BE A REVERSE take over of Russia by its Muslims. Now even one Chechnya is becoming a hot spot. He is like Malaysia’s Tunku Abd Rahman who kicked LKY and Singapore. If not Chinese could govern Malaysia. Both of them are right.

TQ my respected friends. Please forgive me for using my FB as a raw material for my blog. FB provide the popular topics, ideas, arguments, comments, POV or point of views, news, links and pictures etc. TQ Prof Dr U MMNyo, Ahkogyi Dr Alfred Balwin, my brother Dr NAK for giving your valuable POVs. I believe that Prof Dr U MMNyo, Ahkogyi Dr Alfred Balwin are not wrong but on the opposing side of the political divide. May be, we may be wrong but I believe that if we look from the different sides, we could get a holistic views.  

There are sayings like:

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

“One nation’s hero is another nation’s traitor.”

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s hero”

So something or someone that one person likes very much can be something or someone that another person does not like at all. 

Ko Ko Gyi

Nowadays European integration blocks; European Union and Commonwealth of Independent StatesGorbachev launched a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need for perestroika (economic restructuring). A wave of Revolutions of 1989, sometimes called the “Autumn of Nations”,[235] swept across the Eastern Bloc.[236]

Major reforms occurred in Hungary following the replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1988.[237] In Poland in April 1989, the Solidarity organization was legalized, allowed to participate in parliamentary elections and captured a stunning 99% of available parliamentary seats.[238]

On November 9, 1989, following mass protests in East Germany and the relaxing of border restrictions in Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of Eastern Berliners flooded checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, crossing into West Berlin.[239] In Bulgaria, the day after the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall, leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo and replaced with Petar Mladenov.[240]

In Czechoslovakia, following protests of an estimated half-million Czechs and Slovaks demanding freedoms and a general strike, the authorities, which had caved to pressure to allow travel to the west, abolished provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist party its leading role.[241] President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned, in what was called the Velvet Revolution.[241]

In Romania, which had never undergone even limited de-Stalinization, following unrest, leader Nicolae Ceauşescu ordered a mass rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest. But mass protests against Ceauşescu proceeded.[242] The Romanian military sided with protesters, turning on Ceauşescu, who was executed after a brief trial three days later.[243]

Even before the Bloc’s last years, all of the countries in the Warsaw Pact did not always act as a unified bloc. For instance, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was condemned by Romania, which refused to take part in it.

1. Stars to honour Gorbachev at London charity bash - The Malaysian Insider
 

 

 

Mikhail Gorbachev – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

 

Long Live Luke Harding

Luke Harding

On December 1, 2010, Luke Harding, Russia correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, published a story based on leaked confidential government documents which concluded that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin approved the murder of dissident KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko.

Six weeks later, the very next time Harding tried to enter Russia, his visa was revoked and he was sent back home.  More than three dozen foreign journalists have been refused entry to Russia since Vladimir Putin came to power and many others, like Paul Klebnikov of Forbes, have been murdered outright.

But it’s pretty hard to think of a single pro-Kremlin journalist who has been arrested or exiled or murdered by the Putin Kremlin, isn’t it?

As a Moscow Times editorial about Harding puts it:  ”Apparently, the Kremlin’s notion of the ideal foreign journalist is former New York Times Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty — the quintessential “useful idiot” who self-censored himself so much that he denied the Soviet famine of 1932-33 in his articles published in 1933 in an apparent attempt to please Stalin.”

In other words, the Kremlin’s attitude towards journalists in 2011 is the same as it was in the time of “Soviet power.”  Russia’s leaders, and its citizens, hold journalists in contempt. They see any citizen-journalist who dares to question the Kremlin as a traitor, and any foreign journalist who dares to do so as a spy. They have no problem, in that case, exiling, jailing or murdering such persons, since they are “threats to Mother Russia.”

Just as in Soviet times, the ignorant cretins of Russia, who are the majority, are unable to fathom the notion that such journalists are society’s only hope of learning about its flaws and weaknesses in order to improve and adapt. Without such journalists, the USSR was absolutely blind to its own faults, never reformed them and therefore collapsed in failure resulting from decay and obsolescence.

How is it possible that the people of Russia, having so recently seen the consequences of this blindness, can allow it to continue? Are they suicidal, do they actually want to watch their nation collapse all over again?

There is a “happy” ending to this story in the sense that a tsunami of international outraged forced the Kremlin to back down, admit its rejection of the journalist was totally improper, and re-admit him to the country. Once again, the Kremlin showed its palpable weakness in the face of genuine pressure, proving that its opponents still have very substantial leverage.  A massive outpouring of public opposition could drive Vladimir Putin from office just as it did Hosni Mubarek.

Yet the fact is, it was international pressure.  The people of Russia said and did nothing to protect Harding, just as they have said and done nothing to protect any of Russia’s other dissidents, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Anna Politkkovskaya.  Other countries will not be able to save the Russians from themselves.

The mysterious palatial building that has appeared on Russia’s Black Sea “has nothing to do with our office or the head of the government. We never did any construction there and aren’t planning any,” Mr. Kozhin told the Moscow Times recently.

Dmitry Shevchenko / AFP / Getty ImagesRuLeaks

The complex of several buildings is dominated by a large Italianate style palace on an extensive seaside plot near the small village of Praskoveyevka in the Krasnodar region.

Whistle-blower businessman Sergei Kolesnikov has alleged that it was being built “for private use” by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier told journalists that Putin “did not and does not have anything to do with this building.”

Bloggers and other media sources covered the web rumors after the Russian version of WikiLeaks, a site called “RuLeaks,” posted photos showing the Italian-style mansion under construction. Subsequently, the RULeaks site was blocked, reports RIA novosti.

Environment Watch North Caucasus is investigating the palace because it is being built illegally on protected forestland, group member Dmitry Shevchenko told the Moscow Times.

“We will continue our efforts to raise public awareness of the situation,” Mr. Shevchenko said. “This is the only thing we can do.”

With files from Agence France-Presse

I am also thinking about re-publishing the late comedian Malcolm Hardee‘s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake as an online print-on-demand book. The costs are so low as to be negligible and the percentages to the writer are much higher – on a traditionally printed paperback book the author usually only gets 7.5% of the cover price. People can buy a print-on-demand book as a well-produced traditional paperback or download it from iTunes or Amazon.

Traditional paper books and physical libraries in towns and cities will soon be dead. A book is not bought because it is an object, it is bought an experience or for information. Content is king. The printed word is not dying – it is thriving on Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, mobile phone texting, everywhere. But the printed book will die.

The husband of a friend of mine is the straightest person I know. For many years, he never watched ITV – only BBC TV -because ITV was not respectable, merely a young whippersnapper upstart TV station. Yet he is now thinking of investing in an iPad or the duller and much more limited Kindle because, that way, he could take a whole library of books with him on holiday and read anything he likes when he gets there.

Ultimately, Project Gutenberg and its ilk will put almost all out-of-copyright fiction online; and Wikipedia and Google and the web in general give ultimately unlimited access to known facts. Yes, there are old books, newspapers and magazines with content which cannot be accessed online, but only because they have not yet been digitised.

Online publishers have no reason to ever declare any new ‘book’ out-of-print because the online file can remain in cyberspace forever at no extra production cost. The traditional paper book is dead and so are traditional physical libraries.

A library is just a building to keep books in. Unless they re-invent themselves as leisure centres for the printed word and computer gaming, they will soon be dead too.

What is worrying the printed media industry more immediately, of course, is what is happening and what will happen to newspapers, whose printed, paid-for editions are sliding down a seemingly bottomless pit in circulation terms.

Newspapers were always printing yesterday’s news but there used to be no alternative.

But why should I buy a print newspaper carrying out-of-date news when I can watch live street demonstrations in Cairo or around the Middle East on 24-hour live TV news channels? Why should I buy a UK newspaper when I can read other UK news sources free online and get access to Australian, Chinese, Russian and US print sources free online? AND watch Al Jazeera, BBC TV News, Sky News, Press TV from Tehran or, god forbid, the terminally dull Russia Today channel direct from Moscow?

On my iPad, I have apps giving me access to the Huffington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Straits Times and the Moscow Times. I can access a wider variety of sources worldwide via my Fluent News, Pulse News and Stuff apps. I get daily news update e-mails from The Scotsman and from China Daily.

Why should  buy a newspaper except for a free DVD?

On the other hand, Rupert Murdoch’s launch less than a couple of weeks ago of his iPad-only newspaper The Daily is interesting, though it is only available le in the US at the moment. If, as rumours say, he really does price a future full UK daily electronic newspaper automatically delivered to you every morning at a cost of only 79p per week…

Well, even I might be tempted… but it’s still going go be news I can get elsewhere for free.

The president of LUKoil Overseas, Andrei Kuzyayev, met Ghana’s energy minister, Joe Oteng Adjei, for discussions about the expansion of the company in Ghana, including the development of new projects, according to the latest corporate newsletter, Neftyanie Vedomosti. After leaving Ghana, Kuzyayev held talks in the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, and LUKoil Overseas senior vice president Dmitry Timoshenko visited Liberia’s capital of Monrovia.

Countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia, “which have just come through terrible civil wars … are today, with the interest of foreign investors, quickly resurrecting their shattered economies,” the company’s publication said.[…]

The West African continental shelf is an interesting prospect for many international companies, said Valery Nesterov, an oil analyst at Troika Dialog. “I think almost all Russian companies will be looking at the West African shelf — including Rosneft and TNK-BP,” he added.

LUKoil’s potential resources in the area currently consist of up to 35 million barrels. The company said in September that it might have more petroleum in West Africa than in West Siberia.

Russia’s new dash in Africa continues.  Russian companies are looking to expand abroad. What better place than Africa. The region needs foreign investment, Russia needs new markets.  Africa unlike Europe, Asia, and Latin America, Russian oil companies actually stand a chance to compete on equal terms unlike other regions of the globe that are dominated by American, British, French, Chinese, Norwegian, Canadian, Turkish, Brazilian energy companies.  The more foreign competition there is for Africa’s resources, the better economic opportunities available if managed competently.

Official photograph of General David H. Petraeus, commander, U. S. Central Command

Article Source

By Chris Floyd

Many, many years ago, I noted in the Moscow Times that shortly after the 2003 invasion, the United States had begun hiring some of Saddam‘s old torturers as the invaders sought to quell the then-nascent “insurgency” — i.e., the opposition to foreign occupation that when carried out by white men, such as the French during World War II, goes by the more ringing name of “resistance.” Here’s part of that report, from August 29, 2003:

Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals.”

Perhaps that’s not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime’s new campaign to put Saddam’s murderous security forces on America’s payroll.

Yes, the sahibs in Bush’s Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that’s the word, seems to be that these bloodstained “insiders” will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained “insiders” responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.

Naturally, the Iraqi people even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin “Governing Council” aren’t exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam’s goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they’re certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam’s most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis men, women and children as young as 11 seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their “disappeared” loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: “No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave.” Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.

One of the first stories out of the gate from the gigantic new release of classified documents on the Iraq War by Wikileaks details the willing connivance and cooperation between the American invaders and their Iraqi collaborators in perpetrating heinous tortures against Iraqis. As we know, the Americans themselves were not exactly averse to atrocious maltreatment of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis they have rounded up, overwhelmingly without charges or evidence, over the long, long years of this godforsaken enterprise. (As we’ve often noted here before, at one point early in the Iraq War, the Red Cross estimated that 70-90 percent of the more than 20,000 Iraqis then being held by the Americans as “suspected terrorists” were not guilty of any crime whatsoever. And of course many thousands more have been “churned” through the system since then. Which is doubtless one of the main reasons why there is still an active “insurgency” in Iraq after so many years of continuous “counter-insurgency.” And yes, even after the “victorious” surge led by St. David Petraeus, and after the bogus “end of combat operations” declared by the Peace Laureate himself.)

But the Guardian story focuses on another key feature of the entire American Terror War — indeed, of American foreign policy for a great many bipartisan decades: using proxies to do your dirty work. The Wikileaks documents spell out case after case of torture by the American-installed Iraqi lackeys — often under the watchful eyes of American forces … and countenanced, officially and formally, by the invaders. The Guardian reports:

This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a “fragmentary order” which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, “only an initial report will be made ” No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ”.

…Hundreds of the leaked war logs reflect the fertile imagination of the torturer faced with the entirely helpless victim bound, gagged, blindfolded and isolated who is whipped by men in uniforms using wire cables, metal rods, rubber hoses, wooden stakes, TV antennae, plastic water pipes, engine fan belts or chains. At the torturer’s whim, the logs reveal, the victim can be hung by his wrists or by his ankles; knotted up in stress positions; sexually molested or raped; tormented with hot peppers, cigarettes, acid, pliers or boiling water and always with little fear of retribution since, far more often than not, if the Iraqi official is assaulting an Iraqi civilian, no further investigation will be required.

Most of the victims are young men, but there are also logs which record serious and sexual assaults on women; on young people, including a boy of 16 who was hung from the ceiling and beaten; the old and vulnerable, including a disabled man whose damaged leg was deliberately attacked. The logs identify perpetrators from every corner of the Iraqi security apparatus soldiers, police officers, prison guards, border enforcement patrols.

As the Guardian notes, the Americans were fully aware of what their charges were doing:

….There is no question of the coalition forces not knowing that their Iraqi comrades are doing this: the leaked war logs are the internal records of those forces. There is no question of the allegations all being false. Some clearly are, but most are supported by medical evidence and some involve incidents that were witnessed directly by coalition forces.

It should also be noted that many of the Iraqi “interrogation techniques” noted above have also featured systematically in the American gulag during the Bush-Obama years. In fact, we know that there is a trove of photographic evidence of rapes and tortures that have been seen by top American elected officials, including members of Congress, who talked openly of how sickening these documented atrocities were. Yet this evidence is still being withheld from the American people — at the express order of Barack Obama, and the connivance of his fellow militarists in Congress.

Speaking of the Peace Laureate, the Wikileaks document show that these countenanced and/or winked-at atrocities by the American-installed structure in Iraq are still going on today. They are not just relics of the bad old Bush years:

And it does continue. With no effective constraint, the logs show, the use of violence has remained embedded in the everyday practice of Iraqi security, with recurrent incidents up to last December. Most often, the abuse is a standard operating procedure in search of a confession, whether true or false. One of the leaked logs has a detainee being beaten with chains, cables and fists and then confessing to involvement in killing six people because “the torture was too much for him to handle.”

These are the direct fruits of the staggering act of evil that was — and is — the illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. No, let’s go further than that. These acts are just the latest fruits in an astonishingly brutal and coldly deliberate 20-year effort to destroy the Iraqi people: an effort carried out through four presidential administrations — two Republicans, two Democrats — with the complicity of successive British governments. It is a crusade that has involved two massively destructive major military campaigns and more than a decade of draconian sanctions, all of which have led to the needless deaths of more than one and a half million innocent people.

The Bush-Clinton sanction regime — which also included a continual military component of bombing attacks — is part and parcel of what has happened in Iraq during the past hellish decade … and what is still happening there. As Joy Gordon notes in her landmark study of this cold-blooded berserkery, Invisible War, the sanctions regime:

caused hundreds of thousands of deaths; decimated the health of several million children; destroyed a whole economy; reduced a sophisticated country, in which much of the population lived as the middle class in a First World country, to the status of Fourth World countries — the poorest of the poor, such as Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti; and in a society notable for its scientists, engineers and doctors, established an economy dominated by beggars, criminals and black marketeers.

Gordon’s detailed, richly sourced and morally horrifying account of the sanctions era must be read to be believed. However bad you thought it was, the reality was much worse. I hope to be writing much more on this seminal work in the weeks to come. I strongly urge you to read it. But suffice to say for now that the manner in which Bush and Clinton officials used that dead hand of bureaucracy and cool, convoluted legalistic jargon to hide a crazed policy of murderous intent reminded me of nothing so much as the dealings of Nazi officials with the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz before their final destruction.

We”ll have much more here on the Wikileaks release as people begin combing through the 400,000 documents. Wikileaks has done us all a great service by putting this vast war atrocity — which is still going on — back on the front pages, forcing the murderers and their accomplices and “continuers” in the halls of power to scurry around like rats caught in the light, twisting and squealing, trying to find some way to obscure the gobs of blood dripping from their hands and lips.

Author’s Bio: Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the “Empire Burlesque” political blog.

BACK to margotbworldnews.com

A few weeks ago the Russian blogosphere was shocked by a story out of Vladivostok involving a single mother who was diagnosed with breast cancer. The waiting list for an operation was so long that she decided to take her fate into her own hands. Since she had four years of medical school education, she gave herself a local anesthetic, picked up a scalpel and excised the tumor. She did the operation in her living room, having first closed her two daughters in the kitchen.

As barbaric as this case was, it reflected a remarkable change in the Russian mentality. Russians are beginning to give up the flawed belief, grounded in decades of Soviet paternalism, that the government should solve their problems. Now, they are taking charge of their own affairs.

For example, when fires broke out this summer, the online community pozar_ru appeared on LiveJournal. With the help of this site, volunteers are forming groups that travel to put out fires to this day. They are also coordinating the collection and distribution of assistance to fire victims.

Last week, the Internet helped victims in a different way. A local web site in Ryazan reported that two trucks with humanitarian aid sent all the way from Novosibirsk had arrived in the town of Shatsk and were sent by local bureaucrats straight to the dump. When the news was picked up by the mainstream media, the authorities were forced to take measures, including firing the official in charge of local aid to fire victims.

Now in Russia, the Internet has become a collective watchdog that is forcing bureaucrats to move more quickly than they are used to. And the Internet is not just having an impact on how some bureaucrats work. It’s changing police work, too.

On Sept. 1, on the road between Yekaterinburg and Tyumen, a group of men jumped out of their cars and attacked another car. The suspects broke the windows with baseball bats and shot up the windshield with rubber bullets. The police couldn’t find the suspects. According to the official police version, the attackers’ cars had no license plates, and a search of the local villages turned up nothing.

“Did you get the police version?” asked LiveJournal user piligrim_67. “Three boys from a village wearing gold chains were tired of shoveling pig [expletive]. So they jumped into their simple ‘village cars’ — an Audi, a Volkswagen and an Opel — and hit the highway. They roughed up a stranger passing through and returned to their villages, where they went back to shoveling pig [expletive].”

The blogger was enraged by the police’s inability — or lack of desire — to find the suspects. And so piligrim_67 decided to investigate himself.

A few clicks on Google turned up some clues. That day, two drivers had seen cars that seemed to match the description of the attackers’ cars. The cars had been breaking traffic laws left and right. Someone had even taken a photograph of the cars and posted it on Internet. In the photo, you can clearly see the license plate of one car that the traffic inspector’s version claimed was missing.

With the license plate number, it wasn’t hard to discover the identity of at least one of the drivers. By the end of his second day of work as a private detective, piligrim_67 had already posted his photographs. It turned out that he was the son of a local small-town oligarch, who was a deputy in the local legislature and a member of the ruling United Russia party.

Perhaps it explains why the police, who had their work done for them by the blogger, did nothing. But at this point, piligrim_67’s blog was read in the Urals city of Bogdanovichi, where the victim lived. Men in the Urals are very different from their coddled peers in the civilized big cities. A group of them got together and drove — with baseball bats in hand — to the address of the suspect. The police had a hard time convincing them to go back home. To avoid a Urals lynch mob, the police had to detain one of the three suspects, only to let him go without bail the next day.

That was probably a mistake. To keep the suspects alive and well, the police should have probably arrested them. In the information age, though, they can run but they can’t hide. The 21st-century Big Brother known as the Internet is watching them.

Northeast Asia
China
Several dead in China explosion [Al Jazeera]
China: Mechanical failures to blame for North Korean plane crash [CNN]
Letter from Europe: Building Up Connections With China [NYT]
From 08/18 S Korean treasuries sought by China [FT]
From 08/18 U.S. says SE Asia concerned by China assertiveness [Reuters]
Foxconn to hire more workers in China [BBC]

Koreas/Japan
North Korea Confirms Detention of South Korean Boat [NYT]
North Korea Twitter account banned in South Korea [Guardian]
Japan’s Ozawa may challenge PM in party vote – report [Reuters]

Southeast Asia/Pacific
Myanmar lays down tough rules for upcoming polls [AP]
Australia judge orders witness to remove niqab in court [BBC]

South/Central Asia
Clinton to announce new aid to Pakistan Thursday [FP]
Indian, Pakistani troops clash on Kashmir border [CNN]
Delhi Games boycott call by Dawn Fraser rejected [BBC]
Afghanistan Focus Of Obama Summits With EU, NATO [Defense News]
From 08/18 Taliban prison said found in Afghanistan, 27 freed [Reuters]

Middle East
Hezbollah hands over ex-PM murder ‘evidence’ [BBC] and Lebanese doubt Hariri tribunal will deliver justice [Reuters]

Israel/Palestine
US ‘ready’ to unveil Middle East talks plan [BBC]
Israeli Settlements Said to Delay Start of Direct Peace Talks [Bloomberg]
Al Qaeda Plans for Israel War [Daily Beast]
Report Criticizes Gaza Restrictions [NYT]

Iran/Iraq
Khamenei: Iran won’t talk with U.S. in current climate [Reuters]
Germany: 2 men charged over Iran arms embargo [AP]
Goodbye Iraq: Last US combat brigade heads home [AP]
Iraq war was illegal, repeats Clegg [Indie]

Africa
Violence erupts during South Africa strike [AP]
Lockerbie bomber: 500 youths to celebrate first anniversary of Megrahi’s release [Telegraph]
Kenya accused of illegal World Cup bomb extraditions[BBC]
Mandela charity’s ex-chief cuts ties over diamonds [AP]
Food supplies most at risk in Afghanistan, Africa [Reuters]

Europe
Continent
From 08/18 A Mission to Modernize Germany’s Armed Forces [NYT]
France begins deporting Roma Gypsies [BBC]
Rampaging bull injures 40 in Spanish arena [BBC]

UK
Britain’s David Cameron seeks smaller government, more citizen involvement [WaPo]
Ditch the queen: UK public’s wild ideas for cuts [AP]

Russia/Former Soviet States
Moscow on Alert After Pyatigorsk Blast [Moscow Times]
Moscow to ban vodka sales after 10pm[Telegraph]
Russia to beef up military presence in former Soviet space [Telegraph]
All cafes ordered shut in Chechnya during Ramadan [Reuters]

Americas
Mexican mayor found dead 3 days after kidnapping [AP]
US National Guard troops deployed at Mexico border [BBC]
Venezuelan Brokerages Banned from Bond Markets [LAHT]

Domestic
Gov. Paterson: New spot for mosque would be ‘magic moment’ in history [NYDN]
TIME Poll: Majority Opposes Mosque, Many Distrust Muslims [TIME]
Poll shows more Americans think Obama is a Muslim [WaPo]
Intel to Acquire McAfee, Moving Into Online Security [NYT]

Well, here’s the other thing, pointed out to me by Kevin O’Flynn of The Moscow Times: Medvedev may not be able to accept the gift, according to rules he himself proposed.

Chinese finger trap!

The problem is that last year Medvedev proposed a reform of the Civil Code that caps the value of a gift a civil servant can receive at 3,000 rubles. At today’s rate, that’s $97. The new iPhone starts at $199.

Moreover, only a month ago, Medvedev’s chief of staff ordered the Justice Ministry to work out even stricter regulations the President proposed: no gifts of any kind. At all. Ever.

Even if there is a loophole, existing or not yet existing, that allows the President to accept such coveted toys, it does look rather awkward since the point of Medvedev’s measures has been to root out Russia’s tragicomically endemic corruption.

Even more awkward, of course, is if Steve Jobs was never planning on giving Medvedev the iPhone to begin with.

Russian Police Confiscate Opposition Report on Regime Corruption

Editor’s Foreword:

There is a solecism in the second sentence that was in the original, so, I had to post it “as is”. Here is the sentence as it stands:

The time has come for the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion.

This sentence is a sign of poor and hasty editing… but the Moscow Times is famous for such, that’s why it’s not one of my favoured sources (besides their Neoliberal Corporatist bias, of course). This came in on my Google Alerts twice, so, someone is trying to make a point. Rather snarky, no? They get a Special Big Green Weenie Award…

BMD

******

The Russian Orthodox Church (sic) has called for an end to the “monopoly of Darwinism” in schools, saying religious explanations of creation should be taught alongside evolution. “The time has come for the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion. These ideas should be left in the past . Darwin’s theory remains a theory. This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories, too”, Archbishop Hilarion said on Wednesday at a lecture to Foreign Ministry officials. The atheist Soviet state used Darwin’s theory of evolution to disprove the biblical teaching that God created the world. The theory, which biologists say gives a verifiable explanation for how life forms develop through natural selection, now dominates in Russian schools, as it does in science teaching in most countries. Hilarion said the theory that one species could evolve into another had never been proven. Children “should know about the religious picture, the creation of the world, which is common to all the monotheistic religions”, he said.

Lyudmila Aleksyeva, a veteran dissident, said Russian liberals would fight any attempt to introduce religious teaching into the classroom, particularly in science. “It’s a dangerous idea, and we will do all we can to stop it”, she said. “We overcame communism as the state ideology, and certain forces want to replace it with Orthodox Christianity”. She said it was unlikely that religious teaching would replace Darwin in the national curriculum, but it could find its way into some schools with enough pressure from the church. Hilarion heads the church’s external relations department. His lecture was dedicated to fighting “fanatical secularism” of liberals hostile to religion and called for dialogue with moderate secularists and cooperation with Catholics against common foes.

10 June 2010

Reuters

As quoted in Moscow Times

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/church-wants-end-to-darwin-school-monopoly/408050.html

Editor’s Note:

There are two expat rags in English in Moscow that are of any consequence, the Moscow News and the Moscow Times. The first hews closer to the Russian reality in reporting the news, whilst the latter kisses the bum of the Western corporatist media machine. You can see that in the post above. It’s not closed down… there’s a free press in Russia. It’s simple… people don’t want to read the Western BS… they read stuff like KP and Pravda (which ain’t your daddy’s Pravda… they reinvented themselves after ’91). I can tell you that this story got NO mention in the Russian press save for a reference in NG (which is not remarkable… they have some people who lean towards the zapadnik position). What the Russian press picked up was Alfeyev shooting down a patriarch-pope confab and the story on inter-Orthodox relations. THIS is why English-speaking konvertsy never “get it”. They get their news from tainted sources, so, does it surprise you that they come to crook conclusions? Ah, yes… let’s have an example of such… there are one million people in the OCA! Paffhausen said so! Bobby K said so! It was on the English side of Pravoslavie.ru! There are two words for anything from a Western corporatist journalist on Russia (and that INCLUDES Sophia Kishkovsky at the International Herald Trib… remember that she’s Lyonyo’s daughter (she didn’t have to be any good, one of Lyonyo’s CFR buddies got her the job, no doubt)!):

CAVEAT LECTOR!

As this post abundantly illustrates, take along your BS-ometer whenever you read Western reportage. Much of it can’t be described any other way. Do remember that Reuters gave crook figures on Russian population decline recently. They DO have an agenda… and it’s anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox (do also note that SVS agrees with this agenda, by the way). Bear that in mind…

BMD

Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the Berlin Wall with the famous quote, “Tear down this wall.”

The exact opposite is happening in social media. Today’s social media platforms, the internet in general, can allow us to reach anyone at any time. There are no more walls when it comes to communication. But this isn’t news to you. You know this.

What’s news is that lack of attention people are paying to international social media networks. That’s the wall that needs to be torn down. I became more hip to this idea when I was looking at our Twitter link stats through HootSuite. Apparently 20% of the people who click on our tweets come from the Russian Federation. Seriously, the Russian Federation. It’s amazing what analytics can tell you!

So why is the Russian Federation so interested in what we have to say? I’m not sure, but I am starting to pay attention to Russian business news. I mean I never imagined I would be blogging about my RSS feed to the Moscow Times. I don’t expect to fly to Russia anytime soon, but this kind of data has to make you curious.

Too often, I am so short sited. I think the U.S. is the world and fail to think about the impact we have on the 6.3 billion other people on the planet. No more.

Here’s the challenge. When it comes to planning social media for your company think beyond the U.S. powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter. If you do business outside of the U.S. or sell products online you need to take a look at some of the international players. Start by checking out sites like Orkut which is huge in Brazli or hi5 which is the most international of all social networks reaching people in places like Romania, Peru and Central America.

Check out the World Map of Social Networks or consider the following report by Ignite Social Media, which shows penetration by social media network within a world map.

Where is your business now? Where is it going? Make sure that people beyond the U.S. can have the ability to develop that 1:1 relationship with you, or your company.

Author: Josh Fleming
www.lessingflynn.com
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Before his politically motivated arrest on July 2, 2003 as part of a case against former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Lebedev was director of Group MENATEP, a holding company with diversified assets of $20 billion. Group MENATEP was the majority shareholder of Yukos.

Lebedev’s arrest and prosecution were widely perceived to have been a warning to Khodorkovsky, as well as a means for the government to facilitate the re-nationalization of Russia’s oil and gas industry. Lebedev’s ordeal has been replete with violations of the most basic human rights.

After his arrest in his hospital bed in July 2003, the denial of independent medical attention during the trial, and his sentence at a work camp in Russia’s inhospitable Arctic, this ruling will hopefully bring an end to Lebedev’s six year legal farce.

Now President Medvedev needs to make good on his talk of ending legal nihilism, battling corruption and respecting the rule of law by setting Platon Lebedev free.

But according to the Moscow Times, a Gazprom spokesman on Monday dismissed concerns that a growth in the production of shale gas would pose a threat to the company’s foreign sales.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov reportedly said in an interview with Russia Today television;

“The speculations that shale gas is cheaper than the Russian gas are not true” He added, “It’s a big question whether they are going to make such investments now that the price of gas has dropped on the U.S. market”.

Major natural gas producers in North America have shifted focus to shale gas due to lower production costs. According to various sources, shale gas can reach a break-even point of $4.00 to $4.50 with cost improvements continuing to reduce these costs. Conventional natural gas has a break-even point around $7.00.

Contrary to Mr. Kupriyanov’s statements, major producer continue to invest billions into shale gas plays like BC’s Horn River basin, with many selling conventional producing assets to finance their strategic shift towards shale gas. And apparently low natural gas prices have not delayed plans for two pipelines to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany and Bulgaria under the Black Sea. Mr. Kupriyanov commented that the Nord Stream pipeline (Russia to Germany) was on schedule to be operational in 2011.

In recent years, Gazprom has  cut off natural gas supplies to neighboring countries over price disputes. Many European countries are dependent on natural gas imports from Russia. A potential shale gas discovery within the EU or increased LNG imports, would be a welcome alternative to Russian supplies, and would have a big impact on Russian influence in eastern Europe that Moscow leverages as the primary natural gas provider.

Moscow Times: Gazprom: Shale Gas No Threat

The recent visits to Moscow and Tehran by Hugo Chavez raise a number of concerns about the deepening relations between Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

The motivation behind the Russia-Iran-Venezuela alliance is often misunderstood. On the one hand, there is the narrative that these governments are pursuing national interests, seeking to deepen their security against ever-present external threats and accrue regional power. Others argue that the alliance is driven by an attempt to build an “alternative architecture” of global relations, one that is conveniently unconcerned with democracy and human rights and bound solely by the common value of anti-Americanism.

Both these assumptions are dangerously misleading. In reality, the foreign policies of these three states are driven by the personal interests of clans that control the highest offices of their governments.

In addition to sharing a national leader-for-life mentality, the leaders of these three countries regularly employ the powers of the state in support of clan-controlled businesses, especially in the energy and arms sectors. When Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin travels to Venezuela (he visits Caracas with extraordinary frequency), there is little to no separation between his diplomatic duties and personal financial interests in inking deals between Rosneft and PDVSA. When the Iranians travel to Caracas, they are given a red carpet welcome to jointly operated factories and the assistance of elaborate money-laundering networks.

Chavez’s family and close-knit clan of loyal military officers have become multibillionaires under his rule. Known as the boligarchs, they benefit directly from the alliance of Russia and Iran since it lends much-needed credibility and legitimacy to their plunder of the country. In exchange, Chavez last week visited Moscow and announced that Venezuela would recognize the independence of the Georgian breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On the way, he stopped in Turkmenistan to invite the president to join the Russian-inspired gas cartel — despite the fact that Venezuela is a net importer of natural gas from Colombia.

It is important to recognize that reciprocally reinforcing mechanisms of corruption hide behind the facade of state institutions in all three countries. These systems are inherently duplicitous, using laws and instruments of state authority to enhance rather than control corruption. It is corruption cloaked in nationalism, religion and self-defense. All three countries — with Venezuela far in the lead — have unstable civil-military relations that are fraught with the tensions of unlimited power and limited ability to control some key interest groups. Ironically, Iran is the most pluralist of the three.

What are the symptoms of clan rule?

• The horizontal of incompetence. Rather than a vertical of power, there is a horizontal of incompetence, characterized by a systemic inability to delegate power because of the lack of trust and poorly defined institutional responsibility.

• Short-termism. The ongoing internal fights over property in all three countries leave elites focused more on internal than external battles. Policy flip-flops are the rule rather than the exception. The only constant is the need for crisis. From the Georgian war to the FARC to the virulent anti-Semitism of Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the fire of the invective is inversely proportional to the need to mobilize security forces and keep internal opposition off-balance. The speed of opposition crackdowns is the one constant.

• Definitional anti-Americanism. The image of the Great Satan is another constant that needs to be continually kept alive. For leaders who speak of multivector diplomacy, there is a compulsive need to be obsessed with U.S. power and to foster anti-American attitudes as a tool to unite their societies. Yet in the face of the Obama administration, readiness for this is becoming harder to sustain.

Russia’s legislation to ring-fence the “strategic sectors” of the economy provides a compelling example of clan-based interests at work. It is more accurate to call this the siloviki retirement plan because it protects businesses controlled by key individuals around the prime minister. But even better, it allows them to enrich their friends through tied sales between military, energy, and civilian nuclear technology. And now, if you are Chavez, throwing in recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will give you a cheap credit to buy 100 Russian tanks.

The crackdowns on civil liberties recently in evidence in Tehran, Caracas and Moscow reflect the insecurity of three juntas that lack internal legitimacy and are fighting to maintain the private property they have amassed. Whether it is the Venezuelan boligarchs, the Revolutionary Guard or the siloviki, the torture and cruelty of the jails and show trials are directly related to their interest in safeguarding assets rather than ideology. All three leaderships are engaged in a quest for impunity and the possession of nuclear weapons sought by Iran and Venezuela is part of that process. The success of North Korea is not lost on these leaders. It is small wonder that Russia has so little interest in resolving the nuclear impasse over Iran.

The real danger, however, is that we too often confuse cause and symptom and fail to recognize how false fronts operate in these countries. Nearly all analyses, whether internal or external, see their systems through a prism that hides the power of clans and cabals. In order to formulate effective policies to respond to the new alliance of Russia, Venezuela and Iran, our first step should be to better understand what is motivating such odd bedfellows.

Robert R. Amsterdam is an international lawyer who represents political prisoners in several countries, including Eligio Cedeño in Venezuela and Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia. The views expressed in this comment are his alone.

Courtesy: Moscow Times