Fools and Blowhards

My answer to Charles Krauthammer's op ed of 13 March:

Krauthammer starts from the false premise that Putin has an expansionist agenda. That in itself precludes any intelligent resolution to the Ukrainian crisis. The point is that Putin simply used Crimea as a negotiating chip to make the EU / US stop the support for the Kiev coup d'etat by thoroughly unsavoury characters. Putin hoped to restore the uneasy (but workable) status quo ante by allowing noises in Crimea about separation. The West would not play, thinking perhaps at the start that Putin was bluffing. He was not bluffing and the result of the Sunday's referendum in Simferopol is a foregone conclusion. Crimea will go back to Russia on short order and that's that.. Nothing president Obama can do about it with or without Charles Krauthammer's unsolicited help. The second stage of Putin's plan is open at this point but will not be much different from the first scenario. The West will either abandon doing mischief in Russia's backyard and agree on a mutually acceptable compromise, or Russia will annex the eastern regions of Ukraine. Again, my reading of the Kremlin strategy that this is going to be done swiftly, before anything in a way of an military opposition can be cobbled up to thwart it or make it long and ugly. Russia will swallow the economic consequences which will be harsh but not catastrophic, given that it has now alternative oil and gas markets in the East. Once the carveout is complete, Putin will sit on his hands and let the new bubble burst in Kiev, much like he did with Yuschenko between 2004-2010. Lesson for the fools and blowhards ? Well, Charles will tell you there will be none.

The End of the Politics of Mindless ?

        It seems pretty clear by now that no one of any political weight in Washington or  Ottawa reads my blog. Which I would say is sad given that I offer an essential point of view that describes me, as the Soviet dissidents under Brezhnev used to say, inakomyslayuschiy.  Curiously, the Mainstream Media in the West, is now the official POV of the nachalniki (ie. the big cheeses), and no-one pays any attention to those "thinking differently" except for the Department of Homeland Security analyzing the NSA intercepts of their smart phones. 

        Of course, in the eyes of the average Joe and Jane, as in the Eastern Europe of my youth,  the mainstream media are professional liars, starting with their describing themselves as "mainstream".  The only difference is that the average anglo today does not have access to intelligent, consistent political viewpoint to shed light on the two official versions of the same political drool. If, for example, I do not believe in equating homosexual partnerships with traditional institution marriage, it instantly disqualifies me in one camp as a pervert who would deny gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folks their civil rights. In the other version naturally I would be a closet fairy who would give them every civil right except the rights of parenthood if they are not parents.  Strange as it may seem, on a certain level these two political stances are equivalent - in being vacuous.  Like in the former USSR, the different personal creeds and obsessions, do not obstruct the party line (though sometimes they were at variance with it).  Dick Cheney may be a supporter of gay marriage, but his view of the Maidan putsch in Kiev coincides with that of Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and president Obama. It was not a putsch: it was a revolution of Ukrainian people in revolt of Putin's henchmen who would deny them the pearly gate of EU.  All of them deplore the thugs in Crimea who deny the OSCE observers (the verb derived from the Czech word obsírati - to 'pooh around') access. None of them would so much as peep for an investigation into the identity of the Maidan snipers who apparently were picking their targets equally among the rioters and the riot police !  Imagine the scandal if they were to be linked to the legitimate government of Ukraine which put out an international arrest warrant on the former president Yanukovich for mass murder.

       Henry Kissinger may have difficulty reading some aspects of the current conflict, but I don't.  The happenings in the Ukraine were prefigured by the Western posture in Libya and Syria, and had I been asked, I would have predicted that Putin would react forcefully if confronted by the meddling and bungling US-led shit-disturbers in his back yard.    Kissinger's reading of course is right on many points, and his viewpoint stands in stark contrast to the bluster and bleating heard everywhere west of Dnieper. He understands the importance of Ukraine to Russia and that it far exceeds any political gambits that Putin may have had in mind.  Above all,  good old Henry understands that this issue far surpasses whoever might be sitting in the Kremlin. Had some strongman (like the late general Lebed') been in power, Russian tanks would have been in Kiev before the Sochi Olympics' closing ceremonies.  The former player of the China-card (which somehow ended in Putin's hand too)  is also sharply critical of the EU's handling of Ukraine, anabashedly accusing its 'bureaucratic dilatoriness' with turning negotiations into a crisis. All good !  Kissinger, in my view,  however does not quite grasp the Crimea power play by Putin.  It is a carefully chosen piece of strategy, which I believe is calculated to extract a price for the West's repeated unprovoked harrassment of Russia and to dissuade Washington and Brussels from trying the heavy-handed tactics again. It is also a revanche for the ugly assault of the West on Russia's traditional Balkan's ally, Serbia, and the forceful separation from its cultural cradle, Kosovo. It happened under Yeltsin who was the friendliest Russian leader to the West since Catherine. The unilateral proclamation of Kosovo independence in 2008, on Putin's watch, left the Russians slighted and humiliated but also resolved.  It might have happened to the Serbian holy land around Kosovo Polje; it will not happen to Russia's holy land of Kievan Rus. There are powerful motivators for Putin to make the West eat the humble pie. 
      
       The US policy makers would do well to take the another look. Hillary's sophomoric parallels won't do.  Is it possible that she is so out of touch she does not know the type of argument she deploys has been a staple of ridicule known as the Godwin's Law ? Incidentally, also someone apparently forgot to tell Madam Secretary that the United Kingdom still holds Munich to be a valid agreement, based on the unalienable right of a people to self-determination. In the unapologetic view of Whitehall, it was Hitler who abrogated the treaty when he took over Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. 

   Putin is an exceptionally shrewd politician who knows how far he can go. I don't think it was his plan to annex Crimea outright, but to hold it as a bargaining chip to make the US and EU more amenable to his point of view.  When he was snubbed, he opted for plan B.  The referendum may still be an open-ended play. If Russia gets what it wants : most importantly the implementation of the accord signed by Yanukovich with the West (Putin has already indicated he does not expect him to return),  recall of the new "governors" in the East, repeal of the despicable language edict, and the absurd "lustration" laws which in effect bar Russian speakers from political office, the plebiscite may be postponed and the region will eventually settle for quasi-independent status with no political satraps from Kiev and Ukrainian military on the peninsula.  But Russians will not de-escalate since from their point of view it was not they who escalated the situation in the first place.  I think secretary Kerry has some leg-work to do.  Let's hope someone at the State Department can decipher the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Preferably someone who knows the correct Russian word if you want to be friendly with them. 

Putin's Osotogari

George Friedman, the chairmain of the global intelligence think tank Stratfor comes to some predictable conclusions in his latest op-ed (Syria, America and Putin’s Bluff, 10/9/2013). Almost from the moment that the Syrian foreign minister announced in Moscow on Monday that his government welcomes the Russian proposal, the reactions in the US were either excessively skeptical or outright negative. From the president’s understated “potentially positive development” (which was really should have been a “potentially the solution to the crisis”) to the CNN cynical panels whose members see the Russian proposal to transfer the barbaric weapons under international as a “sham” or a “ploy” or, perhaps most bizzarely, a stalling tactic.  I say bizzarely because had Obama been resolute in his conviction that Assad’s action merited at least 200 tomahawks, the Syrian dictator would have been by now scrambling to find some of his command posts and airfields in a hopeless rubble.  So the last thing one would want to do here is to accuse the Russians of seeking to delay the overt act of war. Unless of course, one likes to parade one’s lack of smarts. No, the Russians are not playing for time. They simply saw in Kerry’s letting the cat out of the bag an opportunity and acted on it. Swiftly. Decisively.   

       Friedman believes Putin is motivated by a desire to punch above his weight, insinuating that Russia is a world-power capable of brokering a political solution to the Syrian crisis.   In his analysis, Friedman sees Kremlin acting out a revenge against the US for the humiliation of its traditional ally Serbia, in chasing Milosevic out of Kosovo in 1999 and making the historical cradle of Serbia independent. Likewise, Putin is said to be  incensed by what he perceives as meddling in Russia’s internal affairs by the western-financed NGOs.  The encroachment on a Russian sphere of influence, both in the Balkans and in Ukraine little later created a deep sense of resentment, he argues. Friedman believes – not without justification – that Putin took his due on Kosovo in the Georgia conflict of summer 2008.  He smashed the US-trained military of Georgia and liberated the former ethnic enclaves annexed to Georgia during the Soviet days as a payback for the unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence that year.  Since then, the theory goes,  Putin wants to present Russia as a world-power, restoring its Soviet-era ties with Cuba and cozying to the leftist regimes in South America.   All of this projects to Russia’s attitude toward Syria, a Soviet client since 1970. Putin is trying to deny Obama a payback for beating up on “a US client” Georgia in 2008. He has resolved to keep Assad in power. It is a “core issue” for him to maintain the illusion of Russia as a world power.    What can one say about all of this ?  The Stratfor chief may have some points right but the overall analysis is poor and for all intents and purposes useless. In truth it is not as much an analysis as it is a statement of Friedman’s own perception of the US – Russian relationship as the continuation of the Cold War “zero sum” game. 

      The Stratfor chief is far from Metternich’s perception of Russia as a potentially key player in the “global concert” and very close to the traditional paranoid British view of Russia as the vicious bear wont to claw its way into the honeycombs of  its world Empire.  Both views, the latter infecting the US cold-war view of Russia, are deficient. Russia’s traditional preoccupations with stability and outward unity make it predisposed to reactionary backwardness. This may have been no problem for Metternich, whom was no apostle of progress and modernity. But it certainly will cause frictions with cultures and economies which are more dynamic, who will eventually see Russia’s water-wheel as one running on backwater.   The pro-western politicians in Russia itself (the last of whom is Medvedev) know this and seek to change the MO on which Russians operate.  Putin himself, despite Brzezinski’s perception of him as a Mussolini wannabe, attempts to straddle the traditional opposing forces in Russia.  He oscillates between pragmatism needed to make Russia  an economically viable modern power and traditional Russian patriotism rooted in a sense of the country’s special mission which formed with the fall of the Greek Christian Byzantium as Russia’s guide and spiritual protector.  There is, consequently, somewhat of an inner struggle within Vladimir Vladimirovich, which gets played out in his dealings with the West.   To his fans, his perhaps most endearing personal trait is what the Russians call ‘bodrostj’, a cheerful self-confidence and unabashed sincerity. I think this was picked up on by George W. Bush, who shares with Putin certain charming naivete. He certainly did not see in Putin a poseur in search of an empire,  someone overwhelmed by the designs of history and his own place in them.     

       Russia’s foreign policy post-Yeltsin seems to reflect Putin’s personal struggles.  One thing that makes the Russian president an attractive partner to the West is that his (and Medvedev’s) focus is unhesitantingly on internal development of Russia, its economy and prosperity. He is not an ideologue, a crypto-communist,  despite the remark that the Soviet Union downfall was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century, he made in addressing the Duma in 2005.  

      The remark was badly misinterpreted by Brzezinski and others. It reflects the patriotic, not the ideological side of Putin. He believes that the USSR for all its faults offered a sense of security and belonging to Russians.  He refuses to throw away the collective experience of suffering and the heroism of the Russian people in the Second World War (which in Russian has an internal marker, dating from Hitler’s attack in 1941 to his expulsion late in 1944, called the ‘Great Patriotic War’).  In the breakup and economic restructuring, tens of millions lost their livelihood, many among the Russian brightest and best educated reduced to the most horribly undignified existence. The remarks were also to convey Putin’s deepest concerns for the twenty-five-or-so million Russians caught during the breakup outside the borders of the Russian Federation. They were scapegoated by the new authorities for the ills of the Soviet system, denied citizenship, social services and schooling in Russian, equal access to justice, sometimes denied the right to practice Christian religion (in Islamic Central Asia). In addition to these, Russians were the victims of  violence at the hands of criminal gangs and nationalist paramilitaries. Hundreds of thousands of Russian ex-pats were expulsed or forced to emigrate by intolerable conditions.  Thousands were killed. The suffering of non-Russian ethnics in the breakup was even more intense and widespread as ancient national and religious animosities flared up in many places of the former Union.  It may not have been the greatest geopolitical catastrophe, certainly not greater than the world wars, but it was a huge social and humanitarian catastrophe, no doubt.  The civilizational collapse and widespread lawlessness that characterized the breakup of the USSR no doubt also figures hugely in Putin’s reading the situation in Syria and his estimates of what Syria post-Assad would look like.

     Unlike George Friedman, I observe that Putin is free of the pomposity and bluster that was so characteristic of the Soviet leaders after Stalin. Quite to the contrary: he seems to thrive on underplaying Russia’s power. It has been now fourteen years that Russia has belonged to Putin. During this time, there has been not a single instance on the international scene where Putin overplayed his hand, although opportunities there were plenty.  He could have, through his proxies crushed the Orange revolution in the Ukraine. He did not do that – preferring to let the anti-Russian rivals destroy themselves through internal fighting.  He could have attempted to force Poland and the Czechs out of the “shield” business making it simply too costly for them. He could have been much more forceful  the over the treatment of ethnic Russians when dealing with Estonia and Moldova. He could have walked into Tbilisi and forced Saakashvili to flee (which he was on his way to do, anyway). The American could not have done a thing, mired not just Iraq and Afghanistan, as Friedman notes, but in the midst of the biggest financial collapse since 1929. He didn’t.  But even before that, in the second war in Chechnya in 1999, as Yeltsin’s right hand,  Putin showed remarkable restraint. He  prevailed on the military not to use ham-handed frontal assaults like Grachev on Grozny in 1995 but instead profit from the superior numbers to deny the Chechen warlords lines of communication. The Russian army took their bastion, Gudermes, without nearly any fighting giving the jihadis a narrow corridor to escape.  This is not a behaviour of an self-obsessed satrap who imagines himself on the top of the world.  Stratfor analysts would do well to read some of Putin’s speeches in the parliament when he was prime minister fighting with the likes of Zhirinovski or Zyuganov.  He, unlike professional political idiots like McCain and Graham, knows where Russia stands among the economic powers and does not have any illusions about it.  Again, I am hard pressed to see grandiose master plan in what Putin does, or for that matter, any reasonable politician in Russia wants to do. As for Russia’s friendly relations with some of the leftist regimes I would not read anything more to that than Russia exercising its global options and searching for new markets.

      Russia’s policy toward Syria has been remarkably consistent, as it was during the Libyan crisis. For reasons explained above Putin abhors the kind of chaos created by a forceful removal of dictator. From his point of view, bad as Ghaddafi was, he posed no danger to anyone (any more). His misrule was preferable to a state of lawless anarchy and formation of another focal base of terrorist operations in the region.  Same as in Syria, except Russia has some strategic interests in Syria given its proximity to Caucasus and Russia energy supplies and routes. Her Islamic “problem” in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan is exclusively Sunni militancy, specifically Wahhabism that overshadowed in 1990’s the native mild forms of Sufism and Shiite practice (mostly in Azerbaijan) in the region. US anti-Assad alliance with Turkey and the Gulf states directly threatens vital Russia’s interests both political and economic. Russians  worked diligently to kill the Nabucco project and would not want to see it resuscitated or replaced by another “alternate” supply route that competes with Gazprom’s. Politically, Putin has pretty much cleaned up the North Caucasus of the dangerous militancy and has no intention to have another war there. Especially not now, when Kadyrov has built in Chechnya a working model of cooperation between the Federation and an Islamic state within its borders.  The Chechen autonomous republic has become one of the fastest growing regions in Russia.  

      Is there a Putin’s  “bluff” in Syria ?  I don’t think so.  Russia wants to have enough influence in the region to assure its baseline requirements for stability and prosperity. Despite the western media’s protestations, its foreign policy  is not welded to Assad’s regime, and there have been noises coming out of the Kremlin that Russia would like to see him go.  It is just that Putin does not want his departure to precipitate chaos and inter-communal mayhem that would surely follow, if he were to abdicate now. The danger seems even greater because the US State Department insists on a narrative that is simply not reflective of the current reality.  Even if the secularists among the armed rebels were numerically stronger, and this is far from certain now than it was eighteen months ago, the units and brigades are uncoordinated, led by commanders who are often at cross-purposes and, something that does not get much play time at CNN but is an ever-increasing part of the picture, often degenerate into criminal gangs bent on looting and taking hostages for profit.  The islamist rebel groups are often  enlarged by young men disillusioned by the lack of dedication of the more secular FSA units to the “cause”. 

    Putin understands that the chemical attack east of Damascus, whether hatched by the lower ranks within Assad’s military or as a provocation by the rebels, was a pretext for the US to tip the balance of power on the ground in favour of the regime opponents, now in retreat.  This is why Kerry’s “offhanded” remark in London basically shot that plan in the leg.  The Russians quickly prevailed on the Syrians to give up the chemical arsenal as they are strategically useless. Their existence can only be used to legitimize external aggression toward Syria. This was a masterful osotogari by Putin, effectively denying the military option to Obama as politically unsustainable.

Beslan Comes to Boston

Ever noticed the difficulty the media has naming people and things connected to the Boston bombings and generally get anything right in that story ?   I guess the first prize for inanity in the non-stop twaddle the MSM delivered on Boston must go to Wolf Blitzer who described Dzhokar’s flight, running over his brother with a car and a hide-and-seek with the cops as an ordeal.  Close second:  has anyone (other than the news pros) not noticed that Zubeidat Tsarnayeva, the killers’ mother, is an emotionally unstable psycho and a classical portrait of enabler, someone whose judgmental posturing coupled with manifest sociopathic tendencies would be enough to explain her sons finally going nuts ?   And again, I find it interesting that no one in the chase for an improbable Armenian convert to Islam who poisoned Tamerlan’s (see my previous blog) sound mind, cares to observe the extraordinary contempt the Islamic people of the Caucasus hold the Armenians (for their alleged sycophantic and servile nature), and the utter improbability that ethnic Chechens (as perhaps the most warlike people in Caucasus) would take cues from an Armenian – in anything, let alone religious fervour !    

       But my focus in this blog is on the meaning of the strange overuse of the geographic term “Russia” in the reports. Both The New York Times and Washington Post now refer to the capital of Dagestan as Makhachkala, Russia a marked departure with the previous convention in mentioning the region's capital. The major networks refer in unison to the whereabouts of Anzor and Zubeidat as Russia, even though they inhabit the part of Russia that the US foreign policy considers land in which the Russians keep the natives in bondage.   It is as though Novosti and Pravda started to refer to San Juan as USA in connection to hypothetical bombing in Rostov in which Puerto Rican secessionists – for whom Russia was known to have a great deal of sympathy – were implicated.  Surely, this sudden misnaming would be seen as a veiled finger pointed at the US, especially if among the news US was being criticized for not cooperating with Russia as much as Russia would want.  Of course, the overt and covert criticism of Russia’s stance on terrorism that regularly crops up, is the ultimate irony of the Boston tragedy. 

    That in the journalistic equivalent of a hunt for Sasquatch, the importance of  Putin’s statement on Boston would be buried among tall tales about Misha that the relatives are spinning is of course to be expected.  For the US media to admit the US policy toward Russia after the fall of the Soviets is mostly wrong-headed, and at times plain stupid, is as unthinkable as the Moscow editorials in the early eighties admitting that Brezhnev’s politburo was brain-dead.  Of course, Putin is spinning his own yarn but the fact remains he has pacified the Caucasus to a degree which would have not been possible under Yeltsin.  He has been criticized in the West as being heavy-handed. But has he ?  Has anyone actually looked at the way  Russia under Putin has been behaving in North Caucasus ?  And if so, who would be – from the US security point of view – the optimal dominant power in that region ?  US NATO ally Turkey under Erdogan ?  Ahmanidejad and Khamenei ?   Saudi Arabia via the Wahhabi colonies there ?   See what I mean by stupid ?   

    Being a Czech ex-pat I have no illusions about the Russians. But I know enough of Russia, its history and political culture to know that the colossus rarely offers the kind of stability and prospects, civility and realpolitik, that it has been in the last decade under the dynamic duo. There are some significant opportunities that Russia today has to offer in bolstering US security.  All the US has to do is to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate interests and understand where they intersect with their own.  Unfortunately, this perspective has never quite made it past the Cold War view of Russia as a dangerous usurper and a jail of nations (which it was under Soviets but is not any longer, at least not for the moment).  And it is not just the mainstream media or the academics who see themselves in the old war-horse  Zbig Brzezinski (who sees Putin as a Mussolini wannabe). 

       An alternative view of Russia seems to be missing also in the writings of thoughtful critics and people usually immune to popular nonsense.  Surprising that even someone as bright as Daniel Pipes, whose father was an eminent scholar of Russia to boot, does not seem to grasp the opportunity that the Boston bombing presents to Kerry and Obama, in finally – at long last - resetting, the bilateral relations with Moscow as advocated by one of the most knowledgeable people in the US foreign policy business, the former US ambassador to Moscow, George F.Kennan.  For Pipes the Boston tragedy should lead to outlawing burqas and niqabs in the US. Not a bad idea but I do not see a meaningful connection there.  Nor am I particularly impressed by Daniel’s next item on his blog, Education by Murder. My beef with it is not on the analysis side; I am convinced that he is correct in assessing the Islamic danger. It’s on the practical approaches and measures that I see him as coming up short.  It’s the lack of focus and as a result of coherent policy which besets the thinking about Islam,  sadly in both,  the White House and the conservative think tanks.  The  mujehaddin heros the US supported in Afghanistan against the Soviets and in Bosnia against the Serbs, re-appeared as  attackers on US soil unleashing insane mayhem on 9/11.  Is there any wonder that the Caucasian highlanders with a dream of a Caucasian emirate that the US eggs on against the Russians, would eventually appear in the US to do a demo of the insane mayhem that has become all but synonymous in Russia with the name Chechen ? 

    In the drool and drivel that the media has dished on the Boston tragedy,  The Truth About Chechen Threat op ed at the CNN website from early last week summarizes neatly the idiotic posturing that only encourages people and ideologies who wish to destroy the US.  The piece struggles with facts in the most horrendous way:  Shaefer writes – much in the same manner that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva speaks – that ‘the once secular, democratic Chechen independence movement is all but gone..’.  When was there a ‘secular, democratic Chechen independence movement ?’, may I ask.  Pray, it would not be like the secular, democratic movement known as the Arab Spring !  The fact of the matter is that In 1991 Dzhokhar Dudayev, a Dr Strangelove with an idee fixe to nuke Russia's cities, staged a coup and declared himself without any silly pretense of elections, the president of independent Ichkeria. Almost immediately the Islamic theme entered the post-Soviet Chechen politics, and the former Soviet general was attacked by the competing warlords for his lack of islamic fervour.  It is also not true that Chechnya was de-facto independent from Russia in 1996-1999.  In reality, Moscow signed a deal with the separatists in early 1997 under which Russia would withdraw its armed forces and let the locals run their internal affairs, in return – specifically – for Chechnya to remain in the Russian federation and subject to its laws.  The ink was not yet dry on the agreement when Sharia shootings and dismemberments began throughout Chechnya in violation of the treaty. The Russians looked the other way. They kept looking the other way when president Mashkadov proclaimed Sharia the law of the land in 1999. The only felt impelled to go in the second time in response to several bombings (with casualties in the hundreds !) and to Basayev's, Raduyev's and al-Khattab's horde attempting to annex Dagestan.  Shaefer admits that Putin’s 1999 campaign was brilliant but calls it brutal.  Well, it was not brutal or ham-handed as Pavel Grachev’s assaults on Grozny in 1995-96.  Actually, the second war is most remembered in Caucasus for the siege of Gudermes and the expulsion of the islamist warlords from there. It has been described as the battle for the hearts and minds even by people who don't like Russians.  Putin won over even some warlords and prominent political figures who fought against the Russians previously, notably Akhmad Kadyrov, Chechnya’s mufti and later president (assassinated by the Wahhabi allied Islamists in 2004).   

    Schaefer long-term historical memory is also faulty.  Stalin did deport the majority of Chechens from the region after the war in one of his nasty ethnic cleansing edicts. But he did not erase Chechnya from the map as it has never existed, as Schaefer claims. The Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic (established in 1936) continued to exist through the repression.  Shaefer predictably fails to mention the big picture  that overshadowed Russia’s invading in the region in the 18^th and 19^th century.  Turkey is not mentioned by the diligent truther , yet it was Russia’s struggle with the Ottomans for the hegemony in the region - and that above all other causes - that shaped Russia’s political and cultural view of the Caucasus.  The expulsion of the Circassians, Turkey’s allies in the region, is of course regrettable and a dark chapter of Russia’s history. But it needs to be understood in the context of the times and gauged against the brutality of the Ottomans against the Armenians and the Balkan Slavs.   It is a sad irony, that one of the great conquering hero of the early Caucasian campaign, general  Yermolov , was himself a rebel in his youth and a liberal supporter of constitutional monarchy. He and two of Russia’s great poets, Pushkin and Lermontov, believed in Russia’s mission in Caucasus, because they believed civilization must conquer barbarity. Even if Russia was not the model of civilization itself, its intelligentsia has always understood the importance of its window on Europe.   

Shaefer complains about Putin’s success in rebranding the Chechen separatist fighters as terrorists.  He admits that this was not without merit, and mentions a headline grabbing incident at a school in Beslan.  My jaw drops when I read vacuous babble of this kind. If Mr Schaefer can talk himself through the visceral disgust that should grip anyone confronted by the bestiality of the attack on the elementary school in North Ossetia, he deserves nothing but contempt. There is absolutely nothing – no cause under the sun - that can justify assaults on innocent humanity going about the business of living.  And that is the message of Beslan and Boston, if 9/11 did not deliver the message.   

To the New York Congressman Peter King: Instead of criticizing the Russians for what they should have done it would be better to adopt this simple and doable security policy: If you get the names of terrorists that the Bear watches, trust, they bear watching !
 

Reading the Riot Act to Pussy Riot ®

     Back a few years during a strange war waged by a tie-chewing clown from Tbilisi on people he thought he owned, the Russian president (Medvedev) prayed for the West to drop their Sovietologists and get some Russologists, instead. Judging by the press and media reaction to the Moscow court verdict over three members of the psychos who call themselves Pussy Riot four years later, it has not happened yet.

          The Western media coverage of the incident and trial has been abysmal. To begin with, there is the obssessive thought that Putin is Stalin just about to unleash a war on kulaks and starving millions to death. If  the boss feels threatened by a bunch of punk artists and orders them into gulag  (as is intimated in Forbes, e.g.) then things are getting really bad in Russia led by a former KGB killer. Of course, to people who don't know Russian history, language, culture, this makes perfect sense.  The girls were praying to Virgin Mary for Putin's removal before his re-election, so the maniac ordered two years of  hard labour for them. That is all you need (to know), as per one famously accused wife beater.  "Shame (on Putin)", for trying to take away the freedom of screaming obscenities in a church, masturbating with poultry in a supermarket and having sexual intercourse in a museum.  
 
         Another idee fixe about Pussy Riot, is that the verdict is not sanctioned by law, or that it is somehow legally faulty. Again, this is a clumsy attempt to indict Putin for practicing the Soviet era justice in construing a false link to real dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who were fighting real lawlessness of the Soviet system.  This interview from The Economist insinuates that the punk band members were actually victims of "various changes in Russian law that have made life harder for the Russian opposition". As we will see in a moment this is not so.

        Finally, the Western media misrepresent facts.  The incident is mostly described as "performance", i.e. a staged act which has an audience, whether in a planned, advertized event or  an impromptu "flash mob" happening which attracts casual passers-by or onlookers.  Carol Rumens of  The Guardian expresses solidarity with the singers, calls the their prayer "poetry" and opines that the event only shocks believers because they are unused to "trendy vicars putting on rock concerts".   That is an interesting take, given of course, a trendy vicar failed to materialize in this sorry tale.  Then there is a nasty attempt to forge a testimony of the malicious act for which the band found itself indicted under the law, and by the Russian public opinion.  The version of the "Prayer" carried by The Telegraph shows the infamous video and asks if it "was this worth two years in jails". The problem is that the tape as presented by the outlet has Nixon-like erasures on it, precisely at the spots of  the ugliest, hateful  utterances against the object of worship that the building has been dedicated to.  Incidentally, Carol Rumens's translation of the prayer also forgets to insert the "punchline" into text the second time and renders the sratj, sratj, sratj gospodin  (repeated four times in each instance) as  'crap, crap, this godlines; crap, crap, this holiness'. The Guardian blogger seems to overdo her linguistic naivete. The phrase uses the commonest Russian obscenity which shows idiomatic preference for scatology (like the Germans).  In English, the nearest idiomatic equivalent would probably be 'fuck, fuck, fuck the Lord !'.  Why can't they admit it without dancing euphemistic around it, or deny it happened ?

The Pussy Riot Mongering No Problem for Putin 

    Perhaps we are in the terminal stage of cultural insanity which blinds us to the obvious.  The existing political system in Russia is far from that repressive regime that was the Soviet Union, or for that matter, the Tsarist Russia. It may not be not the democracy that most of us in the fondly remember once existed in the West. But neither it is the rapidly decaying, self-destructing, democracy (in name only) that rules in the West today.  It is Russia that is trying to hold its own in a rapidly changing world.  Whatever faults one may find with Putin, he is not Ivan the Terrible or Stalin or, for that matter Brezhnev.  He is not a mass murderer or a senile idiot.  He knows what he wants, and knows how to get it when it is doable. And because what he wants and his accomplishments appeal to most Russians, he happens to be a popular guy. He is not popular in some circles, especially among people who think they could do better than he does. They often exaggerate his faults or accuse him absurdly of monstrous crimes and lawlessness (I will deal with the Khodorovsky, Litvinenko and Politkovskaya affairs in another post). But first thing a bright and informed observer would not that Putin does not need extravagant intimidation and lawlessness. He understands and respects the game of numbers in politics. He grasps the art of public relations (though IMO he should fire the PR manager who counsels him to outdo the photo-op adventures of princes William and Harry). He also has something that is relatively rare in contemporary world politics  - brains.

    People who believe that Putin would feel threatened by the type of political protest that expresses itself in punk rock shrieks as a rule do not have brains.  They are easily persuaded by stupidities they read (if they can read) or hear from the talking heads in the media.  As a rule, they are clueless as to what is going on in their own neighbourhoods, let alone what is going on Moscow, Ekaterinburg or Vladivostok. Anyone who watched the Russian TV and social media debates on the incident and its aftermath,  knows that the principal issue that has exercised most intelligent Russians about this forgettable media storm is precisely the one ignored by Pussy Riot supporters, in Russia and the West. It is the idea that animates the bolshevizing tyrants, from Lenin to Emmanuel Rahm.  Liberty and civil rights do not cover people who believe something else than we believe. Only Pussy Rioters have rights. They can do whatever they please. No one else has rights ! How can anyone but a reactionary monster oppose gay marriage or screaming obscenities at God in a church ?  Naturally, the first casualty of such a way of thinking will be that base ingredient without which democracy - a social order worthy of that name - is impossible.  It is something called civility. People who worship the narcissism of identity politics simply don't get democracy as a social order.

The legal grounds

The charge or implied narrative that Pussy Riot have been victims of a new anti-rioting legislation designed to stifle political opposition to Putin is false. They have been prosecuted under an article first defined in the  Soviet penal code under a heading of  khuliganstvo (though the description from the English "hooliganism" dates from the Tsarist times). It is a clumsy catch-all legal category, describing wilful attacks on public order and common standards of decency, ranging from provocations (e.g. public nudity, sex acts), to vandalism, to simple assault, to attacks on monuments or authoritative symbols of the state, and offenses commonly labelled mischief in Anglo-saxon jurisprudence.  Despite the wide-spread misapprehension, the statute was not devised to suppress political dissidents, who, for the most part, would take great care to present their plight within the accepted norms of behaviour. Indeed the credibility of the Soviet dissidents and the justness of their cause was recognized by their great personal dignity.
   
   The specific incident was deemed to fall under a subcategory zlostnoye khuliganstvo (malicious hooliganism). The charge presumes that the acts were fully intended to cause harm to either a specific person or persons or society at large. The Russian penal code carries penalties for this offense (if committed by more than one person) for up to seven years. The prosecutor asked for three years; the judge gave two years. (In comparison, Canada's Criminal Code's penalty for 'anyone who obstructs, interrupts or interferes with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property' (CC 430 (1) (c)) is a sentence of not more than ten years. No minimum.)

   Two years seems a harsh sentence given that the harms in this case were wholly dignitary. But this is for the Russian legal system to ponder. The country has by tradition higher expectations of individuals to conform to behavioural norms as it considers its well-being rooted in a large consensus.  There is no evidence that I am aware of, that the court proceeded against the accused in a prejudicial manner.

Western Hypocrisy

      Russia Today quizzed a New York-based journalist and activist Don De Bar, who believes that the concerns expressed by Washington regarding the Pussy Riot legal case are phoney and selective. The State Department dragged its feet on legitimate dissent in Bahrain (which hosts its fleet), where recently a prominent anti-government activist was sentenced for three years for activities on social media. Note the markedly different attitude of State Department's spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in that case, saying that the US government does not comment on sentences "in the middle of the process".  Of course that handy "rule" would not apply to Russia, where the lawyers for the three women from the singer group indicated immediately they would appeal the court's verdict.
     
     I have shown the problem with the facts about the incidents in the above quotes from Forbes, the Economist, The Guardian and The Telegraph. The coverage has a marked spin and interest to show the Russian authorities as unfair towards the women, and driven by the interest to stifle public protest.  This narrative simply does not play out and significant distortions have to be deployed to sustain the phoney outrage.

     There are, finally at long last, some voices now emerging  trying to inject reality into our understanding of the Pussy Riot trial and sentence. An intelligent view was registered yesterday by Simon Jenkins who understands the hypocritical white-washing the convicted Russian women in the West.  Former New York mayor Ed Koch stood up for the rights of the Russian Orthodox Church in Huff Post. Finally today, National Post's Chris Selley weighed in with some much needed field-levelling comments.

    No civilized society can tolerate an attack on the beliefs of a religious community in its own house. One may criticize religion, and its beliefs, but one cannot deny the right of people to confess, or appropriate from the believers a sanctuary that is theirs,  for acts hurtful to them. Few nations know this better than the Russians.

     We have noted in the title of this post that Pussy Riot ® is now a registered trademark.  As their lawyer explained, it is not for the money. "On the contrary", the communique said, "the group wishes to discourage attempts to use its name to derive profits or promote questionable projects that contradict its ideals and aspirations."   Really ?  Who would have thunk ?!

A Tale of Two Samaritans

Anatole France is not a household name in the U.S. He is the satirist who wrote L’île des pengouins, une farce mordant featuring the misfortunes of a penguin colony accidentally baptized by a myopic priest and acquiring human nature in consequence. France is also remembered for his saying that the rich and poor are, in the wisdom of the law, equal, and prohibited to sleep under the bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread. This week it is worth while to recall the great literary provocateur, whose books were placed on index librorum prohibitorum by the Vatican, in connection of the bailouts of the markets. Two major rescue missions were announced to protect some people in imminent danger of breaking the law.

One was unveiled by the president of the United States, who plans to bail out “the financial sector”, or whatever remains of it after hurricane Ike. It directs the Treasury to buy out the toxic mortgages to relieve the banks and the remaining two brokerage giants - up to about $700-billion mark, which the Treasury would, ……ehm, ehm, ...have to borrow. How that sort of appropriation can be made in a democracy has not been revealed. The only people known to have that kind of cash would be the Chinese communists who, while the Yanks got distracted by chasing rag-assed suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan, amassed reserves of about 1.7 trillion US$. But if the U.S. lets China to buy out New York City and L.A., then naturally the Times and the Post can’t badmouth the Central Committee over lobbying and influencing U.S. elections (if it is allowed for the local insolvents) , let alone badmouth them over Tibet, when the Dalai Lama has been ready to make a deal with Beijing for years, graciously settling for Lhasa's autonomy within China.

The other rescue mission was announced in Sochi, which I am sure everyone knows is a major Russian vacation resort on the Black Sea, where the U.S. Navy is currently showboating and as of Monday kept afloat by new Treasury short term bills . The last issue gave close to nothing in yield, which strikes sheer terror in the enemies of pax Americana from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.

The plan of the Russian prime minister has called for a massive buyout of Russian securites badly mauled after the Georgia war. This has happened mostly in response to the U.S. generated anti-Russian mongering. The Moscow stock exchange stocks lost about 40% and Putin shut it down. But Putin’s One Russia is strong and has money to throw around. The bailout will not touch its Reserve Funds, including the National Welfare Fund which the Federation uses to manage hyper-liquidity, foreign cash reserves, excess inflation, and fluctuations in resource earnings. The little vindictive man did not think it was necessary. The Federation Reserve Funds combined stand at about US$ 180 billion.

It appears then that the “law of the markets” is quietly settling the difference of opinion between the US and Russia on the most important man on the planet, Mikheil Saakashvili. The US Treasury appears much worse for wear than the Russian, which is good to know. At any rate, I am sure that the poor will be thrilled to learn the stocks have rebounded from the scare and the American bankers and Russian investors are safe in their homes for now.