Things from 20th Century Russian History which would piss off PETA vol XI

For those of you interested in exploring the discomfort in laughing at stupid decisions which cost a whole bunch of lives a long time ago, you can't get any better material than a history of the Soviet military in World War II. Aside from one good general and the willingness to sacrifice in grotesque number its citizens and soldiers, the USSR could have easily collapsed (the long standing joke about the Russian winter helped, yes, but not nearly as much as those other factors) and thus the Allies may have lost the war. There's something for everyone: Stalin's paranoia leading to the execution of almost all of his top ranking military advisors, Stalin's naive belief that Hitler would never betray him, the fact that in some battles between the siege of Leningrad and the turning point of Stalingrad, Russian soldiers had to take arms (uh, weapons, not appendages, though I wouldn't be surprised) off of casualties.

None of that compares to the Anti-Tank Dog. The idea was to train the dogs by starving them and hiding food underneath tanks - since they were training, the tanks were obviously Soviet; this is important to remember. Once in battle, the soldiers would strap explosives onto the backs of the dogs and then hope they would run underneath the assaulting German tanks looking for food and then they could detonate them.

This however, was one simple idea that did not work terribly effectively in combat. As the dogs were trained by placing food under Soviet tanks they would run to the familiar smells and sounds of any Soviet tanks in battle rather than the strange smells and sounds of the German tanks, and with hindsight, one would also expect that in battle a dog would run anywhere but towards a moving tank firing overhead, and in doing so become a menace to everyone else on the battlefield.

Eventually, they must have succeeded because the Germans had a name, hundminen, for this crap and the Germans are pretty serious about naming things. They noticed that the tanks had a hard time hitting the small puppies and so decided to come back at them with flame throwers. Jesus Christ.

I'd like to know what the Soviets had against dogs. It may be that there are so damn many of them running about the country. But they have a long history of doing crazy shit to canines: there was Laitka, the dog they shot into space, the anti-tank dogs and, let's not forget Pavlov. I wonder.

McCain's New Add Apes Triumph of the Will

Respectful campaigning, indeed.

More on Stevens

No big surprises in the indictment; he was charged with accepting more than $250,000 from one of Alaska's biggest oil companies. From the Times' article, though, we get what makes this story particularly salivating for Democrats:

But the indictment dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Stevens’s effort to win re-election in November, and raised the hopes of Democrats who have not won a Senate race in Alaska since 1974. Democrats were already relishing the chance to unseat Mr. Stevens, having recruited Mark Begich, the popular mayor of Anchorage, to challenge him. Mr. Stevens first must face six Republican challengers in the state’s Aug. 26 primary.

This is causing some speculation that the Ds could pick up enough seats to get to 60 - what amounts to a majority now in this marvelous political climate - but I don't think they'll get more than 57, and that's still a bit wide eyed.

About Time

Ted Stevens was indicted today.


A four year investigation. Hope they have some good stuff on him. More to follow when they release the actual indictment.

Putin accuses Russia's biggest coal and steel producer of price-fixing

Mechel's billionaire owner, Igor Zyuzin, did not attend the meeting, claiming that he was ill. This was Putin's rather ominous reply:

"The director has been invited, and he suddenly became ill,'' Putin said. "Of course, illness is illness, but I think he should get well as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will have to send him a doctor and clean up all the problems."

The company is accused of doubling prices for Russian costumers as compared to international ones.

Okay...

I can't sleep. Watch the above and you won't be able to, either. It's an animated farm propaganda piece from the USSR - about 1970 - and it has a whole lotta disco.

Don't worry about the lack of subtitles. I speak the language and I understand nothing.

An easy target, of course, but I'm a little off today

The man whose understanding of our country's questionable history of imperialism is inversely proportional to the smug feeling of manliness he gets out of his surname, Charles, Krauthammer, knocks one out of the park today. Really, a must read for anyone who wants a concrete example of how ridiculous the hand wringing to Obama's recent trip has been.

Matthew Yglesias pretty much sums up what I found to be insane in Krauthammer's understanding of Maliki's endorsement: we, the American people, should vote for McCain because he is the candidate with the cojones to force the Iraqi government into a relationship with us which is repugnant to them.

Actually fuck that, don't read this article. It's smarmy and sounds like a freshman debate position paper written by an overweight ex-video game clerk with snickers stains on his shirt. Spare yourself, read only this paragraph:

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the U.S. seizing the fruits of victory of a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

The stand out euphemism for conquest and imperialist dominance is "fruits of victory" naturally.

But hey, can anyone give two examples of how the situation in Iraq is different than those in Germany, Japan or South Korea?

The Speech

That was a fantastic speech. He didn't falter at all and the number of people who showed up to hear him was inspiring. Watching the coverage afterwords, however, I've noticed that both CNN and MSNBC have suggested that the tone of Obama's speech and the general demeanor of his trip in general could be "used" by the Republicans to show that Obama is arrogant and already acting like the Commander in Chief.

I don't get this, at all. How is that going to be a valid criticism. How else could a contender for the presidency act? You go overseas to show the world and folks watching back home how you will differ from your opponent and how you will differ from your predecessor. Can you imagine McCain drawing the kind of numbers Obama drew in Berlin, were he to give a similar speech? I doubt it. This trip is proving to be disastrous for Republicans who tried to "force" Obama into going overseas in the first place. We get that the Iraqi government agrees with Obama's Iraq policy and now we have this Berlin speech, which will further motivate Obama's base and perhaps lead some people on the fence to view Obama has having confidence not arrogance. Hopefully, anyway. I doubt it'll convert anybody who resolutely thinks McCain has more foreign policy knowledge and expertise than Obama. But those people are fucking nuts, anyway.

What?

I don't understand. Roger Cohen says many things which I do not understand.

That was before Nicolas Sarkozy, who never saw a habit he didn’t want to overturn, became president 14 months ago. Now we have another beautiful singer, who happens to be his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, strumming these lines to him on her new album:

“I gave you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum/ For I am yours/ you are my lord, you are my darling/ you are my orgy/ you are my folly.”

Old and settled in its ways? I think not. America’s first lady may love her man, but not like this. France has stepped out of hibernation on amphetamines.

What?

But this man is a tonic to his country and the most important European leader of his time.

The most important man in Europe in the past 14 months? What?

Because you can’t build a Europe that’s divided toward the United States, as Iraq illustrated, his pro-Americanism has aided E.U. cohesiveness.

What?

In the same way, his warmth toward Israel has given France the room to emerge as a credible Middle Eastern intermediary.

What?

Maybe my salmonella is acting up again but I do not understand anything in this.

It's naive to hope a different poll would have Prokofiev or Shostakovich higher up...

A lot has been made in the past few months of this contest, Name of Russia, which, as one might expect, is designed to find a name from history which can be used as a symbol, an outward face, for Russia to the world. It's inspired by a BBC contest, Great Britons, which named Winston Churchill as its symbol; South Africa named Nelson Mandela.

Russia is on the verge of electing either the dumbest possible man to be at the helm during the worst possible time, Nicholas II or....

Stalin.

Pushkin - who practically invented the modern Russian literary language - is in sixth. About the only good news is that the great bard Vladimir Vysotsky is in third.. Vysotsky was a sort of a Russian Bob Dylan, had Dylan been writing under a regime that would have sent him to a labor camp for performing "North Country Blues."

Anyway, as the article mentions, it’s not as if this poll is definitive or one hundred percent representative or anything; but it is distressing.

And every time I read one of these articles about the resurgence of popular support for Stalin, I’m reminded of why it’s acceptable (in the sense that I would not be socially ostracized, I admit it might not be in good taste) for me to tack up a Soviet propaganda poster, or for that matter wear a tee shirt emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, but it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to put up Nazi propaganda or wear a shirt with a swastika on it. The first can be explained by the fundamental differences between Stalinist propaganda and Nazi propaganda: the Stalinist variety tended towards denial of reality in service towards the idealistic goals of the state and the wisdom of its leader, thus propelling the language into the absurd - 400 page homoerotic novels about factory workers and ridiculously grandiloquent nicknames for Stalin; Nazi propaganda, on the other hand, avoided abstract concepts as its aim, rather focusing on specifics like the Treaty of Versailles and the Jews and that specificity of the targets makes it less apt to ridicule because we can more easily see the subjects the propaganda destroys, making it more disturbing; not to mention that it was also more effective – there isn’t a Stalinist equivalent to Triumph of the Will.

The difference in attitude with regards to the respective symbols of the regimes is a bit trickier. It’s not enough to say that the hammer and sickle are representative of an ideology which transcends its earthly manifestation since the swastika was adopted precisely because it was a mystical symbol of good luck. We can rule that out. But since the tactics we employed battling The Reds were often as brutal and murderous as we made Theirs out to be, I’d venture that most folk who don a shirt with the Soviet emblem on it are doing it more as a denunciation of their own culture than an endorsement of the Soviets’. Also, there’s the point that the swastika and Nazism (as a governing power) died when Hitler did. Despite its simplicity, victory may be all there is to it. However, as hostile as the relationship we’ve had with an economically independent and powerful Russia has been, it may very well turn out that the alliance we struck with Stalin in order to save European culture from Hitler may prove to be a Faustian bargain. I still hold out some hope for Medvedev to be a different leader than Putin, but there’s no denying there is a certain regressive trajectory in our countries’ foreign policy.

To go further and give a concrete example of the type of baffling double standard exists, when Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in as President of Russia, he took command of the Presidential Regiment and honored it on its 72nd anniversary. The Regiment was founded in order to protect Stalin from and to find and root out counterrevolutionary groups in 1936, on the cusp of his most brutal year in power; the next year approximately 700,000 people would be executed during the Great Purge. With that in mind it's hard to see the Regiment as anything other than a terrorist organization given legitimacy by a government whose own legitimacy was brought about by brutality and, well, terrorism.

And can you imagine if Angela Merkel honored a comparable institution founded during the Nazi years? It would be viewed as a grotesque act and an international outcry would probably force her to resign. Yet, so often as that hypothetical comparison is made, there seems to be an undeserved consensus that Russians simply view their “dark period” differently. It utterly baffles me, regardless of whether it’s unnoticed or simply left unsaid that the singular reason why that is happens to be that Stalin sat down at Potsdam and Hitler shot himself in a bunker as his regime fell apart.

Because of that victory, Western textbooks (leaving out college curriculums here for obvious reasons) can feel free to not highlight that millions more died under Stalin than under Hitler; and Russian textbooks can proclaim that the horror of those years was necessary to industrialize the country and helped forge a nation capable of winning WWII. That Russia won WWII despite Stalin is rarely mentioned. He denied that Hitler would even go back on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, despite intelligence reports indicating otherwise. Furthermore, by the time Operation Barbarossa was launched, Stalin had liquidated basically all of the top military advisers and leaders. The USSR won because of the leadership of Marshall Zhukov and the fact that Soviet generals could send wave after wave of cannon fodder soldiers at the Germans.

So, let's get back to reality here. Stalin was an awful, awful leader. Militarily, economically and scientifically incompetent, his inabilities had disastrous consequences that affected almost every citizen who wasn't in the top circles of power. There's a reason why the Russians refer to WWII as The Great Patriotic War. They deserve to feel a sense of pride about the outcome. They arguably did more to cripple Hitler than any other Allied country and the West has yet to recognize that properly. But, to repeat, all of this needs to be understood under the context that, amazingly, they did thus under the leadership of a paranoid lunatic.

Should the ICC go after Bashir?

Julie Flint and Alex de Waal wrote a very interesting op-ed about the current ICC situation in Sudan. You all should take a look at it!

Basically they argue that the ICC shouldn't go after Bashir right now since it would severely endanger the sudanese people, relief workers, and the north-south Comprehensive Agreement.

Last time I vouch for you Mitya

Figures that right after I post about how Putin's not really running things it seems that, at least with regards to Foreign Policy, Putin will be running things. This is a huge reversal in Russian precedent, the Prime Minister has generally focused on domestic stuff. No more.

I don't think this necessarily means that Putin is the real master, yet, but it does indicate that there may be a power struggle developing.

And who knows, maybe the Czech debacle and the G8 summit catalyzed this.

Obama Gives Global Marshall Plan Style Speech

What do we all think, read the speech here.

At one point Obama states:

I will make the case to the American people that it can be our best investment in increasing the common security of the entire world. That was true with the Marshall Plan, and that must be true today.

That's why I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease. To send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.

Anyway it's a pretty great speech, especially when he starts pointing out all the 'what could have beens' if Bush had spent money and diplomatic weight properly.

But I honestly will await a nice policy brief with some details outlining how Obama will do this...you know, get some development experts to write down some specifics.

Good stuff.

This is amazing

From here:

Zizek has won himself such a broad audience that he was approached by Abercrombie and Fitch to write copy for its unashamedly homoerotic clothing catalogue. You might balk at the idea of a Marxist philosopher selling polo shirts, but Zizek understood it as only the next facet of his at best pluralist, at worst contradictory, career. So, next to a Bruce Weber photograph of two hunks in bed with a blonde, we get this: "Does this constellation not merely explicate the fact that, while a man cheats his feminine partner with another real woman, a woman can cheat a man even if she makes love only with him, since her pleasure is never fully contained in enjoying him?"

Zizek has admitted to the Boston Globe that the writing for the Abercrombie catalogue is theoretically barren -- and that he wrote the copy in 10 minutes. But he is undaunted. "If I were asked to choose between doing things like this to earn money and becoming fully employed as an American academic, kissing ass to get a tenured post -- I would with pleasure choose writing for such journals!"

I love that man.

Speculation about Russia's veto.

It's odd to decry a country's lack of transparency and then insist upon reacting to every single one of their actions in strictly black or white terms. And yea and verily do I once again find myself in disagreement with Blake Hounshell over Russia. The Passport blogger suggests that Russia's veto of sanctions against Zimbabwe happened because Putin is still running the shots in Moscow, not Medvedev. He believes this because last Tuesday, Medvedev stated that Russia had concerns over Mugabe's violence during the aftermath of the election. According to him the reversal of this position isn't simply because Medvedev never had any intention of following through on sanctions - that would be uninteresting, banal, and based in reality - nor does Hounshell take into account that it might have anything to do with the Czech-US radar deal which was signed the day Medvedev apparently changed his mind about Zimbabwe. This agreement is something which Russia feels very strongly about and I believe it would be enough for them to retaliate. I also believe that Russia never had any intention of voting for sanctions, but the radar deal incited them to move from abstaining to vetoing. I, uh, also should point out that I think that Russia's veto is wrong.

Also, another possibility is that Russia really doesn't want to go on record as criticizing another country's electoral process. Just throwing that out there.

I really don't think speculation about Russia's political decisions has ever been something that is immediately discernible. That caveat aside, I doubt Putin is the head of a shadow government. It's more likely that Medvedev is sitting in a precarious position atop a massive bureaucratic structure which was built and staffed by Putin. Even if Putin is not the head of the government, in many ways Russia's is a Putinist government. But that hardly means that he's nefariously running the show and maneuvering to contradict Russia's president.

There will inevitably be conflict and tension between Medvedev and Putin (not to mention between Medvedev and Putin's bureaucracy) but I don't think the veto was one of those conflicts. And even if it was I don't think it's as big a deal as Hounshell is implying.

Innaugral Dowd Bash

I think it's a requirement for any aspiring progressive blog to have at least one to two posts every three months reminding everyone that Maureen Dowd is fucking nuts.

Most weeks I read her columns when they're published in print, on Sundays, and invariably she ruins my Sunday. Granted, as of about a month ago, I read them at work and since I didn't particularly get a whole lot of satisfaction from my job, becoming frustrated on a political level was at least something I could handle. Anyway, I waited almost an entire day before giving in to the masochistic urge to read the Feng Shui Princess of Georgetown this week and good lord did she not disappoint.

Her point - and I wish I were kidding here - is that Obama is both a Clintonesque political centrist and that his biggest flip-flop so far was to regret his decision to put his daughters on Access Hollywood because they revealed to a stunned and distraught nation that the Democratic nominee does not care for ice cream.

There are also these two classic moments which I will look back on with either uncontrollable rage or hilarity depending on the outcome in November:

Whether Obama was irritated that he had slipped up and exposed his daughters or was annoyed that his kids were exposing more delicious details about his finicky, abstemious tastes, we’ll never know.
...

The bad news and the good news is that Obama can be opportunistic. He’s more pragmatic than dogmatic. He’s flexible and a bit of a situationalist. If Bill Clinton weren’t still sulking, he would appreciate Obama’s emulation of his style in ’92, taking a bit from the left and a bit from the right.

The self-pitying Bill and the self-flagellating Barack both need to take a cue from the Obama girls.

I'd like to point out that if you're coming down on a political candidate for being potentially elitist, don't use the word "abstemious", okay? Also, as Ives points out in the entry I linked to earlier - even as someone who has no kids and has no plans to have kids in the near future - I would love for MoDo to find one parent who has never second guessed themselves as a parent. It seems to me to be done more out of care than pathological regret, but whatever.

Also, the italicized note at the end, "Thomas Friedman is off today." is too precious for words. I'm glad she brought her A-game to fill Tommy's air bubble with the necessary hot air.

The New Yorker Cover

Thought I should comment on that. Obama's camp is apparently livid at what the magazine calls an obviously satirical photo.

I'm torn, honestly. On the one hand, I think it's a funny image. Hell, I laugh at much, much more inappropriate things every day. Most New Yorker readers will also be able to see it as satire. The magazine claims to have used the cartoon as a cover image to generate discussion as well as controversy. On the other hand, though, I do think that the image is inappropriate and the fact that it's on the cover as opposed to on the inside of the magazine bothers me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. It's probably a deep mistrust of cable media's ability to really take this picture and use it as a springboard for serious discussion. Hell, I think that one of the groups satirized by the image is the media who run with these right wing talking points so very well.

It's frustrating that people do think that Obama is a terrorist Muslim fanatic and Michelle a radical America-hating Black Panther. Precisely because of that, I think it's a funny image. I'm not a national magazine, however. I really think this will generate more press about the New Yorker than it will spark serious discussion on CNN and MSNBC about why some people hold this view of the Obamas.

And here is another good point, although a bit overly dramatic.

[Edit -- Neither of the Obama-related articles in this issue of the New Yorker - one, a brief comment lampooning the flip-flop nonsense, the other a quite long piece about Obama's Chicago roots - have anything to do with the subject matter the cover satirizes. This just further makes me question why that cover was approved.]

Time to Reevaluate?

Two bits of Russian news this afternoon and both of them highlight the incessant hostility between Russia and the West, hostility which stems from our pushing to develop an anti-balisitic missile system in Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration states that this shield will be used to deter an attack from Iran. Russia has maintained that this is unnecessary and that the shield will affect their strategic interests.

Well, now Russia may be cutting off gas to the Czechs in retaliation for allowing the US to build a radar on their territory. Russia, as the article mentions, is the world's largest exporter of energy resources and ever since their current economic windfall, they've been looking to reestablish their influence in Eastern Europe.

I'm anxious as all hell to hear what the Russians' excuse is going to be, what they'll say is "really" the reason they're cutting off gas. They've done this twice before, once in Lithuania after they decided to sell a non-Russian company and once in Ukraine shortly after the Orange Revolution. I think those two incidents were overreactions and unnecessary, but I'm hard pressed to fault the Russians too much for not liking this anti-balistic business. Russia points to recent tests to indicate Iran is incapable of getting a missile that deep into Europe.

But then again, maybe I'm too disillusioned by our saber-rattling towards Iran and want to prove they aren't a threat. It certainly seems as though our pushing the matter isn't helping anything on any side.

And while flexing their energy muscles is arguably sensible, Russia's grudge is pushing them so far as to veto sanctions against Zimbabwe, a move - whether they realize it or not - which is incredibly embarrassing.

On a final note, Robert Farley makes an interesting point: with this current veto, Russia has moved from using its veto power to protect its interests, but not going out of its way to oppose the US, to going out of its way to oppose the US. It's not back to the Cold War, but.....

I Love you Pravda

This is hilarious. I can't find this in Russian and that just makes it more amazing to me. The thrust of it is that Russians take a lot showers. But Russians aren't as insane as Americans!

An average American takes a shower twice a day – this is a holy ritual in the States. A person who neither takes a shower, nor changes his or her underwear for two days is considered an outcast in the USA.

Specialists say that Russians have developed a passion for cleanliness through TV series, films, books and other objects of mass culture, which actively imitate the American lifestyle.

Behind all of that is the half-articulated point that this obsession with cleanliness is pushing Russia to the brink of an ecological disaster because they, along with all the other clean nations, are rapidly depleting the world's fresh water resources.

Just one of several major ecological disasters Russia seems to be on the brink of, honestly. I just love the tone of this article so very much.

Charity and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, Too Much Money on AIDS?

I just came across an interesting article by two dutch economists arguing that the rate at which international aid targeting HIV/AIDS has grown in the past decade is doing more harm than good. It essentially misses the most important demographic issues and fails to strengthen health infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. As they conclude, and many of us already adhere to, "Foreign aid ought to be guided not by fleeting opinion and charity but by evidence and true engagement, aiming at long-term sustainable solutions."

The authors specifically point to the decrease in maternal health care as the major problem. The graph posted shows the evolution of AIDS funding crowding out family planning and basic reproductive health service.


Two interesting points from the authors:

1) HIV/AIDS programmes would profit considerably from a more balanced approach, as maternal health and family planning investments go to the heart of the problems of Sub-Saharan countries – high population growth rates keeping numerous countries trapped in poverty...

In most countries, the total fertility rate, the expected total number of children per woman, hovers around five, far above the replacement rate of 2.1 children. Judging from the demographic health surveys carried out in developing countries, desired fertility rates fell faster over time than the actual rates. This is reflected in high levels of unmet need and high proportions of births that are ill-timed or unwanted. High fertility leads to rapid population growth rates, exacerbating scarcity in health care, education, land for farmers, and all other public domains of life.

2) The unprecedented rise of HIV/AIDS funds is disrupting fiscal policy and local health care systems whereas a more balanced investment in reproductive health and HIV/AIDS would make use of the existing infrastructure.

Vertical programs like HIV/AIDS erode the primary health care systems in developing nations. The new HIV/AIDS funds are swamping public health budgets, in some cases exceeding 150 percent of the government’s total allocation to health care (Lewis, 2006).

Too much money must be spent in too short a time. Such a situation, particularly in the conditions of extreme poverty and poor governance prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, easily results in “poaching” of health care workers and bureaucrats from other worthy public projects.

Does this beg the question of how and if the big charities should go about fighting AIDS?

Russia threatens West, again

Well, this sure as hell is comforting. Russia threatened a military response if the US-Czech missile defense treaty is ratified. Sure, the US claim that it's being built as protection against Iran is full of shit, but - going out on a limb here, I know - Russia's response is ridiculously provocative and sadly telling with regards to their belligerent attitude towards Europe.

The Russians seem to be desperately trying to hold on to their reputation as one of the only major countries to outshine us in the international asshole department.

Guardian Account of How Mugabe Rigged Election

Edwards to Debate Rove, Means he won't be Obama's Veep

John Edwards is slated to meet Karl Rove in a series of debates in the very near future. I hope he does better than the cringing VP debates against Dick Cheney.

Either way looks like Edwards is now out of contention in the Veep-stakes.

Love Thy Neighbor

There's been some interesting news out of Russia over the past few days. First, in a typically surreal political agenda, Russian legislators are considering banning Halloween and all things emo in an effort to save its youth. This, as anyone who is familiar with Russia's youth knows, is insane in a culture where the government holds neo-fascist Pro-Putin Youth Camps. Somehow the Russians never got the memo about how criminalizing already self-righteous and rebellious adolescent behavior is not the greatest deterrent.

Addressing more pressing issues facing his country, Dmitry Medvedev gave an interview to the Times in which he said lots of nice, wonderful things about building political competition (he used the modifier, "correctly" as opposed to incorrectly building political competition and god knows what that means), and continues his assertion that he will do everything he can to eliminate corruption. It all sounds really terrific, but we heard it all before in Putin's first term. He will hopefully need more than rhetoric to bring Russia into cooperation with the EU.

About the only unqualified positive thing I can say about Medvedev is that he's not in the security services. You may remember these guys: descendants of the KGB and NKVD, people who've allegedly poisoned two dissidents, one, a legislator and journalist who was exposed to a chemical that ran him a deadly fever and made his skin peel off in layers, the other exposed to polonium-20, a highly radioactive substance, which killed him slowly and made his hair fall out.

And speaking of Litvinenko, Medvedev states that he's ready to work with Britain regarding the former security officials death. Depending on what he wants from Gordon Brown, this could be a good thing.

The current relationship between Russia and The West, historically a tumultuous one to say the least, is now yet agin on the brink of disaster. But there are nuances today that weren't there yesterday and they're especially worrisome. For instance, Russia is content to alienate the West because they believe that they can negotiate instead with Hamas, with Tehran and with Beijing. They believe that America is on the decline and thus Europe will soon follow. They're hedging their bets. But they're ignoring the fact that they have a terrible relationship with their expanding Muslim population in the Caucuses, a population which has some pretty serious issues with Moscow. What do they even think is going happen? Do they think that radical fundamentalists are going to forget Chechnya? Chechnya makes Iraq look like a Donald O'Connor song and dance number.

Then there's China. The Kremlin has this ridiculous fantasy of an equal partnership between Russia and China. However, China's economy is much more stable, much less dependent on energy resources and while Russia imports a vast number of Chinese goods, the reverse can't be said. When I was in Moscow, I saw kiosks selling Chinese food on practically every metro station, in the huge markets there were entire tables selling chinese tea sets, home decor and other goods. I can hardly imagine there being more than a handful of token novelty stores selling matryoshka dolls in China. If Russia enters into a dependent relationship with China, then, as Andrei Piontkovsky points out, Putin's legacy could see China in control of Russia's mineral rich Far East region. Then what would happen? Russia would be transported back to their pre-Imperial history, nestling in Kiev Rus and utterly dependent on countries who've they've worked so hard to piss off.

[--Edit: Ok. So I've fixed the roughly 6,000 typos and errors in this post. Sorry about that.]

Hitchens Undergoes Waterboarding, Not sure how I feel about it

Here's the Christopher Hitchens Vanity Fair piece, after he voluntarily subjected himself to water-boarding. There is also a video of it linked to the article

I am somewhat proud of my ability to “keep my head,” as the saying goes, and to maintain presence of mind under trying circumstances. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the “dead man’s handle” that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? “That’s to find out if you are trying to cheat, and timing your breathing to the doses. If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements.” I was briefly embarrassed that I hadn’t earned or warranted these refinements, but it hit me yet again that this is certainly the language of torture.

Anyway, I'm honestly not sure I'm quick-on-the-take with this exercise.

Comments?

Jesus

Cops Nab Fugitive Head Fund Manager. That is the headline.

Samuel Israel III, 48, walked into the police station in Southwick, Mass., at about 9:15 a.m. wearing a colored T-shirt and shorts, identified himself and said he was a fugitive wanted by the federal government, officials said.

Nice job, CNBC. Nice job.

War in Southern Sudan...Again

Looks like we are witnessing the beginning of yet another war in Southern Sudan.

Apparently the SPLA was instructed to attack anyone bearing arms in part after mediation talks between Uganda and the LRA were sacked. Joseph Kony refused to sign a peace accord (he said he refused to sign because of an outstanding ICC warrant...). More depressing information here.

Coupled with something I read last month, I assume Khartoum is materially supporting the LRA.

Obama wasn't kidding about not seeing red or blue states

Here is an interesting opinion piece from Trey Ellis about how Obama isn't moving right or left or up or down..he has lately just been himself.

Excerpt:

What if Obama isn't tacking to the center just for the general election as all us good progressives would like to think, but instead he genuinely believes his positions? What if he meant it all along when he said he didn't see red states or blue states but the United States? What if he wasn't kidding when he blamed both the old guard Republicans and the old school Dems for the gridlock that has paralyzed the past decade of so? What if he really is very Christian and not just pretending, as you lefty atheists not-so-secretly wish? I can't tell you how many times I've heard friends say, "He's just like us. He can't really believe that mumbo-jumbo."

Obama WILL Tap New Generation Through Faith-Based and Community Partnerships

Following the AP report this morning that Obama seeks to expand Bush's failed Faith-Based initiative, a flurry of responses from the campaign have made one thing clear: Obama has a clear vision for our generation.

Per my many conversations of late (thank you P.G, M.H, B.E, A.M, and M.A) I have a few initial thoughts.

Obama's plan is actually to completely overhaul and replace Bush's politically mired initiative with a new plan to galvanize religious and community charities to be more involved in government poverty-reduction and social justice programs -- the major point being, we need your help. The campaign estimates the '$500-million-a-year program would also create 1 million new slots for summer jobs and education programs'.

Obama argues:

I'm not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits, and I'm not saying that they're somhow better at lifting people up...What I'm saying is that we all have to work together -- Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim, believer and non-believer alike -- to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

So what about motivations, reality, and vision.

Politically, it's no secret that in the past few months we've witnessed a surge of young and older evangelical voters shifting towards Obama: in addition to single issue "pro-life" voters, there is a strong desire to eradicate the world and local community of injustice, AIDS, malaria, famine, poverty, and violent conflict.

An outward position on the role of faith in solving these problems solidifies Obama's position among these voters. And while critics from the left and right are knee-jerking this as a move towards the "mythical" center, note just how drastically different Obama's approach is than Bush's.

The Post sums:

Obama aides said the current program requires faith-based organizations interested in assistance to attend conferences in Washington to learn how to apply, which has reduced participation to a few savvy groups. Instead, he would set up “community partners” to “train the trainers” to apply in a more streamlined fashion.

But Obama aides said an Obama administration would get tougher on groups that discriminate in hiring practices and assistance. The groups would have to abide by federal hiring laws which reject discrimination based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation. And the groups could use federal funds only to assist anyone in need, not anyone from a certain background or religion. Nor could federal funds be used to prosletyze or spread religious beliefs.

Back when Bush first proposed faith-based initiatives, my skepticism revolved around a) bank-rolling evangelism, b) an empty promise to help the poor and needy, and c) flawed leadership. As I grappled with today's news from Obama, I thought about these three challenges. As the Post reported, the checks-and-balances that Obama wants to put into his initiative give me initial peace of mind that only those groups with a real commitment to implementing social programs will in the end receive grants on a regular basis.

Furthermore, the community partnership approach at least now indicates that his program would be far less dependent on political appointees and motivations -- this in comparison to Bush's top-down, compartmentalized approach that favored a few bigger, wealthier religious groups and left no decision to the communities that it purported to help.

Lastly, Obama's initiative reflects his life experience as an organizer. This is bigger than faith, it is about our generation having the resources and support to implement vast improvements in our community.

See while Obama's initiative will surely gain him votes, it will not tie his hands into politically supporting religious groups. His ideas and framing of the issue so vastly differ from Bush that we can already sense his leadership style. In fact, I couldn't find anywhere in Obama's words this morning a promise that evangelical fat-cats will have a White House willing to hand out blank checks to proselytize.

I found instead the early signs of a future administration that will drastically alter the perception of how our country will serve those in need. Obama's vision may very well challenge our generation to move beyond our cynicism toward a shared responsibility.