Russia’s Putin and his wife say their marriage is over

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Alexei Nikolsky / AFP - Getty Images file

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila attend a service at Blagoveshchensky Cathedral in Moscow on May 7, 2012.

By Albina Kovalyova, Producer, NBC News

Standing awkwardly side by side, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila Putina announced Thursday their decision to divorce on Russian television.
Putin confirmed the two no longer live together.
“This is the case,” he said. “All my activity is to do with publicity, absolute publicity, and some people like this, and others do not. But there are some people who are absolutely incompatible with this ... Lyudmila Alexandrovna has stood by this post for eight or nine years - so it's a mutual decision.”
Lyudmila confirmed Putin’s words, adding: “Our marriage is over due to the fact that we no longer see each other.”
She also said she did not enjoy publicity or flying on planes.
Their appearance was filmed by the state-controlled television Russia24 as the two prepared to attend the ballet Esmeralda at the Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

Putin's private life has been shrouded in mystery. He has rarely been seen together with Lyudmila in recent years, and rumors have circulated that the first lady had moved to the Elizarova monastery. In 2008, Russian media reported that Putin was set to marry the former Olympic gold medalist gymnast, Alina Kabaeva. The two have also been rumored to have a child together.

Although neither Putin nor Kabaeva have confirmed these rumors, they have been seen and photographed together at public events. Kabaeva retired from sports and became a member of the Public Chamber of Russia – which drafts laws for the Russian parliament.
Putin’s private life has long been a no-go area for journalists, and some critics have raised concerns about how a man with so much authority could be trusted, when so little was known about him. Putin and Lyudmila have two daughters together, but almost nothing is known about them. Maria was born in 1985 and Ekaterina Putina in 1986 and both have been rumored to be living abroad, although in 2011 some photos of them surfaced online.
Putin said both his daughters had been educated in Russia, where they continue to live.
Putin, now in his third term, won the presidential election last year, a move followed by large anti-government demonstrations. There has since been a clampdown on the Russian opposition and demonstration participants, with critics viewing his new term as a return to old authoritarian tactics.

Russia Wants Steven Seagal as Face of Weapon Industry

breitbart

www.washingtonpost.com

(AP) MOSCOW--Russia is looking at Steven Seagal to be the face of its weapons industry as it guns for first place on the world arms market.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the action movie star may head up an international marketing campaign to promote the Degtarev arms plant, Russian news agencies reported. He accompanied Seagal on a visit there Tuesday.

"You're ready to fight American (manufacturers) with your teeth and your intellect, and if Americans are prepared to promote and support you, that says we're learning new ways to work on corporate warfare markets," Rogozin said.

Russian officials are big fans of Seagal, who met President Vladimir Putin in March and claimed to have set up a meeting with Rogozin for a Congressional delegation last week. 

Russia's secret underground town: 200 migrant workers found

ITN

Massive crane collapses into apartment block in Kirov

ITN

Canada pulls plug on funding program to retrain ex-Soviet scientists

Macleans.ca

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird

OTTAWA – Canada is pulling out of two international programs aimed at ensuring ex-Soviet scientists don’t end up working for terrorist groups.

The programs, one in Moscow and the other in Ukraine, were set up in the early 1990s as a means to give weapons experts a place to work following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the work of both centres was given greater heft by G8 nations at the 2002 summit in Alberta, when the international body agreed to spend $20 billion on a ten-year program to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

One of the four key pillars of the so-called global partnership was scientist engagement, via the redirection of former weapons scientists.

Since then, Canada has contributed some $60 million to International Science and Technology Center Moscow and the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine.

The need for the centres has passed, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Tuesday.

“This is an organization which was established as the Cold War was ending to finance support in the former Soviet Union so that senior nuclear experts didn’t go and work in other parts of the world,” Baird said.

“Given we’re some 25 years out from that, the program has largely been successful. Most of the people have retired.”

But a former Canadian ambassador for disarmament questioned why, if that’s the case, Canada appears to be unilaterally abandoning a program that G8 nations championed as recently as the 2011 summit in France.

At that meeting, the G8 agreed to continue funding the global partnership for another 10 years and maintained that the scientist engagement strategy should remain a priority.

“It is a little curious, if that was all restated so recently, that there’s been a decision that this work is now complete and not requiring any further support,” Paul Meyer said.

“You would have thought if there was to be a determination of that nature, that it would be done more collectively by the G8 and other states that have co-operated with the global partnership endeavour.”

Canada is still funding the global partnership; last year, the government announced $367 million over five years aimed at “building on past initiatives to enhance global weapons of mass destruction security.”

“In effect we’re actually spending substantially more than we did when that program was created,” Baird said.

“We’re just focusing it on where the new weapons of mass destruction are.”

In the case of the Moscow centre, its future was placed in doubt two years ago when Russia announced its intention to withdraw.

Many took that as a sign of that program’s eventual collapse, likely by 2015, which is the deadline Russia has placed for the conclusion of research programs taking place in its own country.

Canada’s withdrawal is a logical step, suggested Elena Sokova, the executive director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

“It’s winding down,” she said of the Moscow centre.

“And I think the purpose of the centre has been indeed served. I’m not suggesting there aren’t problems to deal with but the instrument of the centre, the way it was established, the way it served needs, the idea is over. It’s time to move on.”

Meyer said that while the Moscow centre’s demise have been hastened by Russia’s withdrawal, there are still programs being undertaken by other countries and offers from them to play host to the facility headquarters.

Meanwhile, there have been no similar signals sent by the Ukrainian government about a desire to shutter the facility there.

It has, however, been struggling with funding shortfalls, in part because two years ago Canada dramatically scaled back funding to its operations, catching it off guard.

That announcement came just after Canada volunteered to help the organization restructure, according to documents posted on the Ukraine centre’s website.

The decision to stop funding the two centres is the latest exit Canada has made from a multilateral organization or treaty that the Conservative government has declared past its best-before-date.

They include a decision to withdraw from a United Nations convention that fights droughts in Africa and elsewhere.

The government said membership was costly and of little benefit to Canadians.

Makhachkala: Dusty Russian city where Boston suspect felt he ’belonged’

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2013 Getty Images

A view of Makhachkala, where suspected Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent time, on April 25.

By Adrienne Mong, Correspondent, NBC News

MAKHACHKALA, Russia — This dusty capital of Dagestan, Russia’s southernmost republic in the North Caucasus region, was home briefly last year to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old alleged mastermind behind the Boston attacks, spent six months in the Russian Federation in 2012. At least half of that time he was in Dagestan, visiting his father Aznor Tsarnaev, who had moved back from the U.S. a year earlier. Investigators are trying to retrace the younger Tsarnaev’s footsteps and determine whether he met any Islamic militants during his stay.
His father maintains his son's innocence and said he only met relatives while he was there. He said his son was so taken with the place that he began talking about moving to Dagestan. In an interview with NBC News earlier this week, Aznor said his son "felt he belonged" there.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The beach in Makhachkala, Russia, the port city in Dagestan Tsarnaev spent several months in 2012. Its economy is growing rapidly and corruption is rife.

Tough town
A port city that dots the western edge of the Caspian Sea, Makhachkala is surrounded by low-lying mountains on its other sides. (Dagestan means “land of mountains.”)
The beaches reflect none of the glossy luster of Black Sea resorts; speed bumps seem to outnumber traffic lights; Residents and hotel guests complain about long periods of water shortages.
Nonetheless, the capital is enjoying robust economic growth. Construction sites are everywhere and new hotels are being built. Shops are full of well-known western brands, including Apple’s iPhones. Cafés are teeming with young people and families.

But life is not easy in this North Caucasus town. Take the mayor, for instance.
Said Amirov has survived 15 assassination attempts since the 1990s; one of them put him in a wheelchair. He refuses to be photographed in it, wanting to project an image of power and authority in a culture obsessed with male athleticism and physical prowess (wrestling and soccer are the most popular sports).
Though named the Best Mayor of Russia 2012, Amirov is an emblem of corruption, according to one local journalist. When asked about corruption during a press briefing this week about the Boston bombing suspects, Amirov dismissed the topic: “Corruption exists everywhere.”
However, local residents say corruption is particularly rampant in Dagestan.

In an interview with reporters, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, the mother of Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, insists her sons are not responsible for the marathon attacks and expresses her regret in relocating the family to the U.S.

“If you have money, you can get anything done,” said a former policeman, who quit his job because he couldn’t stomach the corruption in the local police force.
In a town that features a clothing shop called “Tony Montana” – named after the Cuban gangster played by Al Pacino in “Scarface” – men swagger in leather jackets and sweatpants. Police checkpoints dot the main roads and semiautomatic weapons are on plentiful display.
The majority of women wear hijabs and long skirts, but it’s not unusual to see women with uncovered hair, three-inch Louboutin heels and tiny skirts.
With a population of half a million, the capital is also a cultural crossroads. Dagestan is Russia’s most ethnically diverse republic with more than 30 ethnic groups.
Sectarian strife
Apart from geography, Islam is the other tie that binds so many diverse groups. Arab conquerors introduced the religion to Dagestan in the seventh century, making it the oldest Islamic republic in the Russian Federation. Dagestan has between 1,800 to 2,000 mosques, according to official Russian government reports, more than neighboring Chechnya or Ingushetia.
During Friday prayers, hundreds of men streamed toward the white multidomed Central Mosque, the largest in Makhachkala. As they prayed, heavily armed men – some dressed in camouflage, some in civilian clothes – ringed the edge of the mosque grounds.
It is the perfect snapshot of the strife surrounding Islam in Dagestan.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The Central Mosque in Makhachkala. Dagestan is the oldest Islamic republic in Russia.

In 1999, Chechen rebels invaded, marking the beginning of the second Chechen war. The arrival of Chechen fighters in Dagestan deepened sectarian rifts between Sufis (those who mix Islam with local customs) and Salafis (ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims who believe they are practicing a “pure” form of Islam and adhere strictly to Shariah law).
As terrorist attacks spread throughout Dagestan – now considered more volatile than Chechnya – Russia’s security forces have cracked down further on dissidents and suspected militants, fueling violence, tension and fear.
“As soon as we began preaching Salafism, the government began targeting us,” said Gadzhi Mohamed, who helps run a local Islamic civil rights organization called “Akhlusuna.” In fact, “as soon as someone says ‘pure Islam,’ they become an enemy of the people, created by the state.”

Russia launches ’unprecedented’ crackdown, rights group warns

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Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images file

A woman holds a leaflet, reading "For human rights" and featuring a picture of Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny, during an opposition rally in Moscow on April 17.

By Ian Johnston and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

Vladimir Putin's Russia has launched an "unprecedented" crackdown on political activists and civil society groups, Human Rights Watch alleged in a report released Wednesday.

The New York-based group’s report described a "nationwide campaign" of harassment and intimidation by the former KGB officer's government.

It came on the day Putin critic Alexei Navalny urged a court to throw out what he said were trumped-up charges intended to silence him. It also comes weeks after the State Department cataloged a series of human concerns in Russia, including restrictions to harsh fines for unsanctioned political meetings, electoral fraud and the detention and trial of citizens without due process.

The HRW report, "Laws of Attrition: The Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency," said:

• Putin’s government has sought to portray critics as "clandestine enemies" 
• a number of political activists have been jailed 
• and a series of restrictive laws, including one against treason that could criminalize international human rights campaigners and others that impose "draconian limits on association with foreigners," have been passed.

It also said that hundreds of organizations had been subjected to "intrusive" inspections about a raft of matters such as tax affairs, fire safety and air quality.

In one case, the report said a group was asked for chest X-rays of its staff to ensure they did not have tuberculosis. In another, officials demanded copies of speeches made at a group's meetings.

"Taken together, the laws and government actions described in this report violate Russia’s international legal obligations to protect freedom of association, expression, and assembly and threaten the viability of Russia’s vibrant civil society," the report said.

Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, echoed the HRW findings, saying the democratic climate in Russia has got “much worse” over the past year.

“At first, these new laws were portrayed as something that would only be used as a threat, not a tool that would actually be used,” he said. “Now we are seeing these laws used a lot to target [non-profit] organizations and protests.

“Huge numbers of law enforcement officers are now involved” in the clampdown against political opponents and rights groups, he added.

Sergei Chirikov / EPA file

Russian police officers make their way through a crowd to detain opposition activists in Moscow last month.

“It is important for all democracies to be aware of what is going on in Russia.”

The HRW report cited two cases as "further examples of Russia’s waning commitment to its international human rights obligations": The two-year prison sentences given to two members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot for a political stunt in a Moscow cathedral and the fate of Leonid Razvozzhaev, a political activist accused of organizing a riot who attempted to claim asylum in neighboring Ukraine.

Razvozzhaev went missing in Ukraine after stepping outside the office of a partner organization of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees "to take a break during an asylum interview."

"Several days later he reappeared in custody in Russia. Razvozzhaev appears to have been forcibly disappeared and was forced to sign a confession under duress while in incommunicado detention. Razvozzhaev is in custody awaiting trial in Russia," the report said.

In response to the State Department comments earlier this month, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing the United States of politicizing human rights issues, according to Reuters.

"Americans prefer not to recall their own record (of violations)," the statement said, adding that Washington has recently resorted to disproportionate use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing civilian casualties, Reuters said.

On Wednesday, a court in the industrial city of Kirov adjourned to consider Navalny’s request to throw out charges that he stole $500,000 from a state-run timber firm, The Associated Press reported.

The most prominent opposition leader to be tried in post-Soviet Russia, Navalny has suggested Putin ordered the charges trial to stop his criticism of "swindlers and thieves" in government and sideline him as a potential presidential rival.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Boston, before and after

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The New Yorker

By David Remnick 

In the midst of the Second World War, Joseph Stalin, seized by one of his historic fits of paranoia and cruelty, declared the Chechen people disloyal to the U.S.S.R. and banished them from their homeland in the northern Caucasus to Central Asia and the Siberian wastes. Tens of thousands of Chechens, along with members of other small ethnic groups from the Caucasus and the Crimean Peninsula, died in the mass deportation or soon after—some from cold, some from starvation. The Tsarnaev family eventually settled in a town called Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, not far from the capital, Bishkek. Most who survived the next thirteen years in exile were permitted to return home, in the late fifties, under Nikita Khrushchev, and they reëstablished a sense of place as well as identity. Some remained expatriates. Chechens speak Russian with a thick accent; more often they speak their own language, Noxchiin Mott. The Caucasus region is multicultural in the extreme, but the predominant religion in the north is Islam. The Chechen national spirit is what is invariably called “fiercely independent.” When the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, nationalist rebels fought two horrific wars with the Russian Army for Chechen independence. In the end, the rebel groups were either decimated or came over to the Russian side. But rebellion persists, in Chechnya and in the surrounding regions—Dagestan and Ingushetia—and it is now fundamentalist in character. The slogan is “global jihad.” The tactics are kidnappings, assassinations, bombings.

Anzor Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who lived much of his life in Kyrgyzstan, emigrated a decade ago to the Boston area with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. Despite arthritic fingers, he made his living as an auto mechanic. Members of the family occasionally attended a mosque on Prospect Street in Cambridge, but there seemed nothing fundamentalist about their outlook.

Anzor’s elder son, Tamerlan, appeared never to connect fully with American life. “I don’t have a single American friend,” Tamerlan told a photographer named Johannes Hirn, who asked to take pictures of him training as a boxer. “I don’t understand them.” He studied, indifferently, at Bunker Hill Community College, for an engineering degree. He described himself as “very religious”; he didn’t smoke or drink. Twenty-six and around two hundred pounds, he boxed regularly at Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts. He loved “Borat” (“even though some of the jokes are a bit too much”). He had a daughter, but scant stability. Three years ago, he was arrested for domestic assault and battery. (“In America, you can’t touch a woman,” Anzor told the Times.)

David Bernstein, a retired mathematician from Moscow, who emigrated thirty-three years ago, said he knew the family because he used to take his car in regularly to Anzor. He noticed that Tamerlan sometimes worked at the body shop, although he didn’t seem happy about it. “I talked with Tamerlan about stupid things,” Bernstein recalled. “I asked him if he knew about his name, the great warrior. He talked a little about religion and politics. I said everyone is religious in a certain sense, and he said I should become a Muslim. I put him off, saying everyone invents his own religion.” When Bernstein discovered that his acquaintance was believed to be responsible for an act of terror at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, he was mystified. “I feel like Forrest Gump,” he said. “Suddenly, he is famous through this terrible act, and I had these conversations with him. But who can say they know him, really?”

Dzhokhar, nineteen, had graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he was a locally celebrated wrestler, described as slight, agile, and a little shy. He won a scholarship from the City of Cambridge. He worked for a couple of years as a lifeguard at a pool on the Harvard campus. A fellow-lifeguard remembered him as a “nice” kid with a “good sense of humor.” Dzhokhar’s high-school friends remembered him fondly, too. “He was a cool guy,” Ashraful Rahman said. “I never got any bad vibes from him. He wasn’t a star student, but he was smart. We met sometimes at the mosque in Cambridge. Dzhokhar went to the mosque more than I did, but he wasn’t completely devoted. When I think about this, I have to ask, was he forced to do this? Was he brainwashed? It’s so out of character. And you have to remember—he was a stoner. He was really into marijuana. And generally guys like that are very calm, cool.”

Essah Chisholm, a fellow-wrestler, said, “He was a cool dude.” But when Chisholm and a couple of his friends saw photographs of the Tsarnaev brothers on television Thursday night, they called the F.B.I. tip line. Late that night, the armed confrontation began—a shoot-out, a furious chase, hurled bombs. “It’s mind-boggling,” Chisholm said on Friday afternoon. “Every time I see his name on TV, it’s just unbelievable. To see Dzhokhar’s name, to see his face. I think this had to do with his older brother. Unless he was some sort of sleeper agent, I think his brother had a pretty strong influence. Tamerlan maybe felt like he didn’t belong, and he might have brainwashed Dzhokhar into some radical view that twisted things in the Koran.”

The sense of bland unknowingness—“He seemed so nice!”—began to evaporate the closer we got to the Tsarnaev brothers. Tamerlan’s YouTube channel features a series of videos in support of fundamentalism and violent jihad, including a rant by Feiz Muhammad, an Australian cleric and ex-boxer based in Malaysia; in one video, the cleric goes on about the evil “paganism” in the Harry Potter movies. Another video provides a dramatization of the Armageddon prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan, an all-powerful Islamic military force that will rise up from Central Asia and defeat the infidels; it is a martial-religious prophecy favored by Al Qaeda.

Dzhokhar’s Twitter feed—@J_tsar—is a bewildering combination of banality and disaffection. (He seems to have been tweeting even after the explosions at the finish line last Monday.) As you scan it, you encounter a young man’s thoughts: his jokes, his resentments, his prejudices, his faith, his desires.

March 14, 2012—a decade in america already, I want out
August 16, 2012—The value of human life ain’t shit nowadays that’s #tragic
August 22, 2012—I am the best beer pong player in Cambridge. I am the #truth
September 1, 2012—Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job. I mean I guess fuck the facts y’all are some real #patriots #gethip
December 24, 2012—Brothers at the mosque either think I’m a convert or that I’m from Algeria or Syria, just the other day a guy asked me how I came to Islam
January 15, 2013—I don’t argue with fools who say islam is terrorism it’s not worth a thing, let an idiot remain an idiot
March 13, 2013—Never try to fork a mini tomato while wearing a white shirt, it will explode
April 10, 2013—Gain knowledge, get women, acquire currency #livestrong
April 15, 2013—Ain’t no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people
April 15, 2013—There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don’t hear them cuz they’re the minority
April 16, 2013—I’m a stress free kind of guy

Gregory Shvedov, the editor of a Web site based in Moscow called Caucasian Knot, visits the Caucasus regularly and studies both the jihadist movement and the Russian government and military’s draconian behavior in the region. He was hardly shocked that two ethnic Chechens, raised largely in the U.S. but with a strong attachment to their homeland, might carry out such an act on a “soft target” like the marathon. “These days there are social networks, and people make their decisions from them,” he said from Moscow. “I would not be surprised if they had another life over social media. What kind of videos are they watching? What kind of lectures and YouTubes about jihad?” If Tamerlan did what he is suspected of doing, he might not have got his education, or instructions, entirely through digital means. On January 12, 2012, he flew from New York to Moscow, a regular target of Chechen rage; he didn’t return until seven months later.

The greatest sympathy is reserved for the families of those who were killed by the bombing and in the violent pursuit that followed—and for the dozens who were severely injured in the blasts. Even the most ardent New Yorkers felt a profound allegiance to, and love for, the people of Boston. But, as the day was coming to an end, you could not help but feel something, too, for the parents of the perpetrators, neither of whom could fathom the possibility of their sons’ guilt, much less their cruelty and evil. Interviewed at their apartment in Makhachkala, the capital city of Dagestan, they spoke of a “setup,” an F.B.I. plot. The mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told the television station Russia Today, “Every single day, my son used to call me and ask me, ‘How are you, Mama?’ Both of them. ‘Mama, we love you.’ . . . My son never would keep a secret.” The father described Dzhokhar as an “angel.” By the end of Friday (Saturday morning in Dagestan) their sons were gone—one dead, the other wounded, hospitalized, and under arrest.

The Tsarnaev family had been battered by history before—by empire and the strife of displacement, by exile and emigration. Asylum in a bright new land proved little comfort. When Anzor fell sick, a few years ago, he resolved to return to the Caucasus; he could not imagine dying in America. He had travelled halfway around the world from the harrowed land of his ancestors, but something had drawn him back. The American dream wasn’t for everyone. What they could not anticipate was the abysmal fate of their sons, lives destroyed in a terror of their own making. The digital era allows no asylum from extremism, let alone from the toxic combination of high-minded zealotry and the curdled disappointments of young men. A decade in America already, I want out. ♦

Terrorist suspect may have traveled to Russia in 2012 under alias

nbcpolitics

siglo21.com

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed Friday in a shootout with police, travelled to Russia in 2012, he may have done so under an alias.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month stay in Russia last year “becomes extremely important” as a key to the investigation of the Boston bombings, Rogers told NBC’s David Gregory. His visit to Russia “would lead one to believe that that’s probably where he got that final radicalization to push him to commit acts of violence and where he may have received training” in terrorist techniques. Rogers, a former FBI agent, said the FBI had questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev after being given information from a foreign intelligence service “that they were concerned about his possible radicalization.”
(That foreign intelligence service is widely thought to be Russia’s.)

Because the Boston marathon bombing suspect is an American citizenship, he cannot be tried as an enemy combatant. A panel of national security experts discusses what lies ahead for the investigation.

The FBI, Rogers said, “did their due diligence and did a very thorough job” of investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but when the FBI asked for more help from that foreign intelligence service, it got no further cooperation.
Rogers praised the FBI’s handing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev as “very prudent and very thorough” – and pointed out that the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev before his sojourn in Russia.
But appearing on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., said Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the kind of person "you don’t want to let out of your sight,” and that it was a mistake for federal authorities to have lost track of him.
“Either our laws are insufficient or the FBI failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists and we need to up our game,” the South Carolina Republican told CNN.
The Tsarnaev family were ethnic Chechens, an embattled Islamic nationality in Russia. They were granted legal permanent residence in the United States in 2007.
Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s younger brother who was captured Friday night and is being treated in a Boston hospital, became a naturalized American citizen last year.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said on Fox News Sunday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in serious condition and is “in no condition to be interrogated at this time.”
Scholars have for years pointed to ties between Chechen separatist fighters in Russia and al Qaida and the global jihadist movement.
The biggest questions for investigators now, said NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams , are why Tamerlan Tsarnaev apparently turned to jihadist views and “where did he get his expertise in explosives? Where did he practice them? It seems really unlikely that these two bombs successfully were detonated without some practice runs. Where did he learn to do that? Where did he practice it?”
Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center and an NBC News National Security Analyst, said it is not atypical for a foreign-born Muslim who has lived in the United States for years to become radicalized at some point and then engage in a terrorist plot. He cited the example of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born naturalized U.S. citizen who confessed to a plot to bomb Times Square in New York City in 2010.
Asked whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should receive the Miranda warning that he has a right to remain silent before authorities begin to question him, Rogers said, “He’s a citizen of the United States and that brings all of the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Under the public safety exception, however, I do believe that the FBI has a period of time to try to determine what threats there are today – we don’t know if  there’s other (explosive) devices, we don’t know if there’s other people (involved in the plot). I think Mirandizing him up front would be a horrible idea. Now it’s my understanding that that’s not going to happen. I’ve had conversations with the FBI….”
He added, “We don’t need his confession up front. We need the information that he has to make America is safe.”
In a joint statement issued Saturday, three Republican senators, Graham, John McCain of Arizona, and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, joined by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said the Boston bombing suspect should not be given Miranda warnings. He “clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent,” they said.
“We are encouraged our High Value Detainee Interrogation Team (HIG) is now involved and working to gather intelligence about how these terrible acts were committed and possibility of future attacks,” they said, adding that the decision by the Obama administration to not immediately read him the Miranda warning “was sound and in our national security interests. However, we have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake.  It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect.”
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with that assessment, saying “I am disappointed that it appears this administration is once again relying on Miranda's public safety exception to gather intelligence which only allows at best a 48-hour waiting period that may expire since the suspect has been critically wounded.”

La chica que besó a Putin

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Cuba Encuentro

Carlos Espinosa Domínguez

Pues señor, érase una vez una adolescente que vivía en una ciudad de provincia del centro de Rusia. Supo de la existencia de una organización juvenil que le pareció “la más impresionante subcultura”. Se unió a ella y como era guapa e inteligente, pronto se convirtió en su cara más representativa y visible. Por su entrega y fidelidad, la recompensaron con un auto, un apartamento, una plaza en una de las universidades más prestigiosas y un programa de televisión. Pero la chica conoció a unas personas que pensaban de otra manera, y poco a poco se fue dando cuenta de que la organización de la que tan orgullosa se sentía tenía su lado oscuro. Finalmente, se salió y emprendió una vida independiente.

Contada así, en términos de cuento infantil, la historia de Masha Drokova no parece despertar demasiado interés. Pero lo tiene, y mucho, pues aparte de representar el caso individual de una joven rusa de nuestros días, aporta una imagen del clima político que vive su país, donde existe una lucha entre el despotismo y la democracia. Eso es lo que ha logrado captar la realizadora danesa Lise Birk Perderson en su documental Putin´s Kiss (Dinamarca, 2011, 85 minutos). El filme tuvo su estreno mundial en el Festival de Sundance del año pasado, donde recibió el premio a la mejor fotografía. Desde entonces, se ha proyectado en algunos países. En Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, se pudo ver en Nueva York a mediados de febrero.

Este trabajo estará dedicado a comentar el documental. Pero antes de pasar a hacerlo, me parece conveniente proporcionar algunos elementos informativos que, en buena medida, no se dan en el filme. A partir del 2000, Vasili Yakemenko (1971), un joven más o menos guapo que estudió economía, empezó a hacerse notorio al frente de Caminar Juntos, un grupo juvenil declaradamente partidario de Vladimir Putin. Entre otras actividades, fue notorio por sus ataques contra el escritor Vladimir Sorokin y la banda punk Leningrad. Caminar Juntos además tenía como patrocinadores a dos compañías con vínculos con el Kremlim y Ayuntamiento de Moscú. En los medios de prensa, adquirió el sobrenombre de Putinjugend, en alusión a las Hitlerjugend o Juventudes Hitlerianas.

En el año 2004, Caminar Juntos se vio envuelta en un escándalo, cuando varios de sus miembros estuvieron involucrados en la distribución ilegal de películas pornográficas. A eso se sumaron las disputas financieras de las secciones de Moscú y San Petersburgo. Esa crisis llevó a Yakemenko a crear otra organización, a la que dio el nombre de Nashi (Nuestros). Eso data del año 2005, y ocurrió en un momento muy oportuno para el gobierno de Putin. Tan oportuno, que dista mucho de ser casual.

Entonces, en el Kremlim había un verdadero ataque de nervios a causa de los incidentes ocurridos en algunos de los antiguos países socialistas. Concretamente, se trataba de Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003-2004) y, sobre todo, Ucrania (2004). En este último, había tenido lugar la llamada Revolución Naranja. Durante quince días, medio millón de personas se lanzaron a las calles para protestar por unas elecciones que consideraban fraudulentas. Las manifestaciones populares lograron revertir el resultado de los comicios, ganados por Víctor Yanukovich, el candidato favorito de Putin. Tras una nueva votación, salió encumbrado el opositor Víctor Yuschenko.

Nashi fue creada desde arriba para cumplir una misión específica. Al iniciar el último año de su segundo mandato, Putin encargó al controversial Yakemenko la tarea de formar una organización para comprometer a los jóvenes en actividades de apoyo al gobierno. Nashi, que se define como democrática y antifascista, tiene una agenda que incluye entre sus tareas el trabajo voluntario en orfanatos, ayudar a restaurar iglesias y monumentos en memoria de la Guerra Patria, programas educacionales, campamentos de verano. Sus miembros piensan que Rusia debe ser líder del mundo en el siglo XXI, y para lograrlo es necesario apoyar al gobierno. Quienes no apoyan a este y además lo critican, son etiquetados como enemigos de Rusia.

Esta última labor pasó a ser la prioridad número 1. Putin concibió Nashi como un medio para evitar un movimiento popular como el de Ucrania. Tenía temor de que, siguiendo ese ejemplo, la juventud rusa tomara las calles. En 1905, el zar Nicolás II ordenó que sus tropas dispararan contra unos ochocientos trabajadores, que se congregaron frente al Palacio de Invierno para exigir mejores condiciones de trabajo. El ataque escandalizó a los círculos que rodeaban al zar y este se vio obligado a aceptar las reformas reclamadas por los manifestantes. Los primeros ministros y secretarios generales soviéticos después de 1917, sacaron una enseñanza de aquel hecho: la mejor manera de responder a las manifestaciones populares es evitar a toda costa que tengan lugar.

Luchar contra cualquier forma de oposición

Vladimir Putin, quien llegó al poder después de las masivas protestas ocurridas durante la etapa de la perestroika, adoptó un enfoque similar al cortar las manifestaciones de raíz, aunque la mayoría de las veces trató de evitar la violencia. Durante las elecciones de 2008, a los miembros de Nashi se les asignó la tarea de ocupar las plazas de las grandes ciudades como Moscú y San Petersburgo. Lo hicieron durante todo el día, y con eso impidieron que otros ocuparan ese espacio público para expresar cualquier protesta u oposición. La organización garantizó así que Dimitri Medvedev tuviera una transición tranquila y sin problemas.

Una vez que la “tandemocracia” Putin-Medvedev se estableció en el gobierno, Nashi pasó a encargarse de mantener su relevancia en el panorama de la Rusia postelectoral. Conviene anotar que la relación que sus miembros mantienen con Putin es literalmente la de una religión. Para ellos el mandatario es un dios. Un buen ejemplo es algo que sobre él expresa Masha Drokova en el documental. En su opinión, Putin es de esa clase de hombre que ella escogería como compañero para toda la vida. ¿Las razones? Es carismático, inteligente y, lo más importante, responsable. Va más allá en sus elogios, y declara que Putin “fue enviado a Rusia por Dios”.

Las líneas directrices por las cuales se rige Nashi tienen una gran influencia de los trabajos de Vladislav Surkov (1964), el ideólogo del Kremlim y arquitecto del actual sistema político. En mayo de 2012 fue nombrado viceprimer ministro de la Federación Rusa por un decreto presidencial. Es defensor de la “democracia soberana”, que refuta la idea de que solo puede haber un tipo de democracia. Surkov sostiene que, por el contrario, cada país debe tener la libertad de desarrollar su propia forma. Quienes echen una ojeada a la página web de Nashi, comprobarán que la única fuente que se cita son los textos de Surkov. Aunque rechaza la política de Occidente, le gusta el estilo de vida occidental. La edición rusa de la revista masculina GQ señala que le gustan los trajes a la medida del famoso diseñador italiano Ermenegildo Zegna. Asimismo en su tiempo libre Surkov compone canciones para el grupo de música Agata Kristi.

Oficialmente, el objetivo de Nashi es apoyar el gobierno, creando una futura elite entre los jóvenes más brillantes y leales. Sin embargo, en la práctica su trabajo se centra más en la lucha contra cualquier forma de oposición a Putin. Nashi proclama ser una organización democrática y antifascista, pero sus acciones demuestran algo bien distinto. Si bien es cierto que por un lado denuncian a las tiendas que venden productos caducados y alcohol a los menores (de ello se ven imágenes en el documental), por otro sus miembros tienen ideas conservadoras respecto a cuestiones como el aborto y el uso del condón. Además promueven la hostilidad hacia Europa y Estados Unidos. “Hoy Estados unidos por un lado y el terrorismo internacional por “ se empeñan en controlar Eurasia y el mundo entero”, dice el manifiesto de Nashi. Y agrega: “Su mirada está puesta directamente en Rusia. La tarea de nuestra generación es defender la soberanía de nuestro país, al igual que nuestros abuelos hicieron hace sesenta años”.

La organización además permite e incluso promueve la violencia para intimidar y socavar a los opositores al gobierno. Sus tácticas van desde los desfiles con grandes pancartas en las que aparecen fotos de los “enemigos de Rusia”, hasta defecar encima de sus autores y golpearlos salvajemente. Resulta muy significativo que en una entrevista que le hizo hace varios años Oleg Kashin, hoy uno de los enemigos jurados de Nashi, Yakemenko no tuvo reparo alguno en reconocer que al crear el perfil de la organización tomó algunas de las mejores cualidades de las Hitlerjugend, los Guardias Rojos de la Revolución Cultural China y el Komsomol de la extinta Unión Soviética (los colores y símbolos de Nashi son similares a los de esta última organización).

La asimilación que se ha hecho de esos modelos se pone de manifiesto en algunas de las acciones más notorias de Nashi. En 2006, desarrolló una campaña contra Anthony Brenton, el embajador inglés. Las protestas se fundamentaron en que este había asistido a una conferencia organizada por la coalición opositora La Otra Rusia. Nashi exigía a Brenton que se disculpase por haber apoyado a los que ellos consideran es un grupo de extremistas. La campaña estuvo marcada por concentraciones frente a la residencia oficial del diplomático, así como por interrupciones en los actos públicos en los que estaba previsto que él hablara.

Asimismo en mayo y abril de 2007, Nashi organizó protestas diarias ante la embajada de Estonia en Moscú, con la consiguiente obstrucción del tráfico. El motivo fue el traslado a otro sitio de la estatua al soldado del Ejército Rojo que se hallaba en el centro de Tallin. De acuerdo a la página web de Nashi, eso constituye una evidencia del establecimiento de un régimen fascista en ese país báltico. Las demostraciones estuvieron acompañadas del apedreamiento de la embajada, destrucción de banderas de Estonia y hostigamiento a los diplomáticos. Y aunque no hay pruebas que apunten a Nashi como responsable, por ese mismo tiempo se produjo un sostenido y bien planeado ciberataque a sitios oficiales de Estonia.

Otro incidente fue el acaecido en 2006 con Oleg A. Chirkunov, gobernador de la región de Perm designado por Putin. Permitió a un miembro de un partido de la oposición asistir a una conferencia de la juventud. Eso provocó la ira de los miembros de Nashi, que organizaron piquetes de protesta frente a su oficina, pese a las bajas temperaturas. Sus demandas eran que Chirkunov se disculpara por el error cometido. Por supuesto, este se vio forzado a hacerlo.

La oportunidad de convertirse en alguien importante

Paso ahora a ocuparme de Putin´s Kiss. Las primeras imágenes muestran a los miembros de Nashi cuando participan en un campamento de verano. Los jóvenes se muestran alegres y sonrientes, tras escuchar a Yakemenko expresar que después de los ocho días que durará el “vigoroso programa educativo”, saldrán convertidos en personas diferentes. De ahí, el filme pasa a unas imágenes de mala calidad en las que se ve a dos hombres golpear con unas barras a un tercero cuando iba a entrar en su edificio. Más adelante, nos enteraremos de que se trata del ataque que sufrió el 5 de noviembre de 2010 el periodista del diario Kommersant Oleg Kashin, y que lo dejó en estado crítico. El montaje que se hace en el filme es intencionado e ilustra las dos caras de Nashi, la amable y la siniestra.

Aparece luego Masha Drokova, a quien después vemos con sus padres y abuelos, cuando fue a visitarlos. Nacida en 1989 en Tambov, una ciudad de la zona central de Rusia, a los quince años se unió a Nashi y a partir de ese momento su vida cambió radicalmente. Como a muchos jóvenes ambiciosos, la organización le dio la oportunidad de “convertirse en alguien importante”. Eso ayuda a comprender por qué Nashi es tan popular, sobre todo entre la juventud de las provincias. Para ellos, es la vía más idónea de poder tener potencialmente una carrera en el futuro. Constituye una oportunidad que ganan a cambio de lealtad a Nashi, o lo que es lo mismo, al partido de Putin.

Masha demostró lealtad y dedicación, y pronto ascendió a lo más alto de Nashi. Fue premiada con un auto, un apartamento y una plaza en una de las universidades más prestigiosas. Eso le proporcionó unas condiciones de vida con las cuales muchos jóvenes de Rusia no pueden ni soñar. Además de convertirse en una conocida bloguera, pasó a ser la anfitriona de un programa de televisión. Devino la portavoz de Nashi, lo cual se comprende a través del documental. Para Nashi era el ejemplo vivo de la imagen que quería presentar: una chica provinciana que fue “elevada” por el movimiento juvenil para alcanzar grandes cosas. En Rusia se le conoció además porque produjo una pequeña conmoción cuando espontáneamente le estampó un beso en la mejilla al presidente ruso, cuando este le entregaba una medalla. A partir de entonces, pasó a ser “la chica que besó a Putin”.

Hay una escena de un programa de televisión en el cual Masha participa, que ilustra la manera en que se forma a los jóvenes en Nashi. Interrogada tras abogar por la quema de los libros de Eduard Limonov, no puede defenderse cuando es emplazada por los otros invitados, por sostener una idea tan reaccionaria y peligrosa. Como se ve a lo largo del filme, los miembros de Nashi no están preparados para dialogar y debatir sus convicciones y principios. Su táctica se reduce a insultar con la retórica más incendiaria y a satanizar a los adversarios políticos de Putin. Así, Limonov es gay, Boris Nemtsov es un traidor, Garry Kasparov tiene doble nacionalidad. A propósito de este último, en el documental se aprecia cómo una conferencia de prensa suya es interrumpida por unos jóvenes que hacen volar unos helicópteros de juguete con forma de dildo.

El encuentro y, posteriormente, la amistad que establece Masha con varios periodistas, algunos de ellos críticos del gobierno, hizo que la joven empezara a cambiar. Esas relaciones no fueron bien vistas por la dirigencia de Nashi. Le advirtieron que no debía mezclarse con esa gente; que no podía creer en Putin por el día y por la noche ser amiga de quienes lo critican. Eso la sumió en un conflicto interno y en un dilema moral: ¿le brindaba Nashi suficiente libertad para tener opiniones propias, o la forzaba a someterse por completo a la voluntad de la organización?

Ocurrió entonces un incidente que la obligó a tomar partido. Su amigo Oleg Kashin fue brutalmente golpeado a la entrada de su edificio. Como consecuencia de aquel ataque, le tuvieron que amputar varios dedos. Tenía fracturas en las dos mandíbulas. Recibió severos golpes en la cabeza, y ahora lleva una placa de titanio. Asimismo perdió algunos dientes y hasta hoy el ojo derecho le lagrimea. Dimitri Medvedev comentó en la televisión que en el país existen fuerzas que consideran que, con tales métodos es posible poner una mordaza a quien sea, a un periodista o a un político. Y aunque prometió que los atacantes serían llevados ante la justicia, hasta la fecha no hay ni un solo detenido. Kashin no alberga la menor duda de que fue un acto planeado por Nashi.

Un producto de ingeniería política

Durante el tiempo en que Kashin estuvo en el hospital, periodistas y blogueros realizaron demostraciones silenciosas para reclamar que las autoridades encontraran a los responsables. El tercer día, Masha se presentó y durante algunas horas sostuvo uno de los carteles. Como reconoce Kashin, hacer eso fue un acto de valentía moral. Mucho más lo fue su decisión posterior de abandonar Nashi. En el filme, Masha trasluce cierta melancolía al comentar su desencanto de la organización que la convirtió en su estrella ascendente. Después de su salida, se ha abstenido de participar en la política, aunque conserva su admiración por Putin. Sigue viviendo en Moscú, y de acuerdo a su cuenta en Twitter trabaja como relaciones públicas de una firma de alta tecnología.

Vasili Yakemenko dejó de estar al frente de Nashi. A partir del año 2008, pasó a dirigir el recién creado Comité Estatal para la Juventud. No obstante, sigue considerando la organización como su pequeña brigada. En Putin´s Kiss aparece sonriente, atento a todos los detalles y dando instrucciones, durante la marcha por el Día de la Unidad Nacional. Es indudable que siente mucha satisfacción cuando ve desfilar a aquellos miles de jóvenes traídos en autobuses del interior del país (les dan 500 rublos o bien comida gratis en McDonalds). Portan carteles con las fotos de quienes para ellos son “la vergüenza de la nación”. Entre ellos figura la octogenaria Liudmila Alexeeva, historiadora, disidente y activista por los derechos humanos. Mientras desfilan, se escuchan por los altavoces consignas: “¡No seas un Judas como el líder opositor Nemtsov! ¡Recuerda que vives en Rusia! ¡Este es el mejor país, y gilipollas como ese no se toleran aquí!”. Una vez que llegan al final, los jóvenes arrojan al suelo, con visible encono, las pancartas. Algunos incluso las patean.

Dado que Putin es ahora presidente por otros seis años y que ha prometido presentarse de nuevo a los comicios de 2018, todo augura que Nashi tiene asegurado un largo y brillante porvenir. Sin embargo, la organización que se encarga de hacerle los trabajos sucios al Kremlim no se ha librado de escándalos. No hace mucho, la sección rusa de Anonymous sacó a la luz el pago de 600 mil rublos hecho por los dirigentes de Nashi a blogueros y periodistas. El propósito era que escribiesen artículos para favorecer la imagen de Putin y desacreditar a sus oponentes en las pasadas elecciones. Antes de eso, en 2010 se produjo el embarazoso caso del calendario erótico editado para el cumpleaños del mandatario. En el mismo aparecían, jóvenes estudiantes de periodismo de la Universidad Estatal de Moscú aparecen fotografiadas en provocativas poses. Las imágenes iban acompañadas de frases de doble sentido como “¿Qué tal una tercera vez?”. Según los organizadores, la idea era demostrar que las chicas inteligentes también pueden ser hermosas. La universidad se desmarcó y calificó la iniciativa de inapropiada.

De todos modos, resulta muy poco probable que algo pueda afectar seriamente a Nashi, un producto de ingeniería política que tan eficazmente ha servido al gobierno. De hecho, el año pasado Yakemenko confirmó que la organización había recibido 12 millones de rublos de los fondos estatales. Como muchos han señalado, Nashi constituye la línea de ataque de la política institucional del Kremlim. En la Rusia de hoy, es un elemento clave para que Putin pueda consolidar su particular versión de la democracia. Una “democracia soberana” en la que a los opositores les puede suceder cualquier cosa, desde ser golpeados salvajemente, como Mijáil Béketov (el ataque lo dejó inválido y prácticamente privado del habla), hasta ir a la cárcel, como Mijaíl Jodorkovski, o ser asesinados, como Anna Politovskaia.

Topless protesters give Russia’s Putin an eyeful in Germany

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Is THIS real reason Obama’s confronting North Korea?

wndI

JERUSALEM – Is the Obama administration’s military build up in the Pacific part of the president’s so-called pivot-toward-Asia strategy, a move that could demonstrate the biggest shift in world power since World War II?

Specifically, is Washington using the North Korean nuclear standoff as an excuse to shift massive military might to Asia just as China and other powers seek to create a new economic order that would rival the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund?

It is difficult for most seasoned observers to explain why Obama is suddenly responding to North Korean aggression when the White House did little in 2008 when North Korea refused to allow United Nations inspectors into its nuclear plants.

The Obama administration also took little action when North Korea in 2009 carried out at least two nuclear tests, one of which is believed to have been the cause of a magnitude 4.7 seismic event.

The White House did not allow the U.S. military any significant response when in 2010 North Korea torpedoed a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors. North Korea then shelled a South Korean island with little U.S. reaction.

Now, purportedly in response to aggressive action by North Korea’s new leader, the White House is sending to Singapore a new class of warship designed to fight in coastal waters.

The Pentagon also announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack. This after the Obama administration largely canceled a similar defense system intended for Europe.

U.S. warplanes, including fighter jets, U-2 spy planes and an A-10 attack jet, were seen flying in South Korea yesterday as part of a massive joint military exercise.

The U.S. says it stands “poised to respond” at the border of North and South Korea, where American troops are on high alert amid possible further Pentagon build-up in the region.

U.S. military ‘rebalance’

Why is the U.S. now responding to North Korea?

Time magazine says the “U.S. pivot toward Asia – and the potential for confrontation with China – became a little more real this week with the arrival of a new class of warship designed to fight in coastal waters.”

That pivot has been declared by the Obama administration itself – a professed strategy of putting a greater focus on the Asia region.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “made clear the U.S. and the Department of Defense remain committed to the rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific region,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said after a meeting between Hagel and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Hagel told Loong that “in the future there will be even more opportunities for closer collaboration between the US and Singapore,” Little said.

‘New economic world order’

The U.S. military shift comes as the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – seek to create a monetary system to rival and even surpass the West.

While it received little U.S. media attention, last week at its fifth annual summit the BRICS group unveiled what it said was a new development bank aimed at breaking the monopoly held by Western-backed institutions.

The bank would use $50 billion of seed capital shared equally between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but would clearly be dominated by China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave support for the bank while India’s trade minister said BRICS will “have a defining influence on the global order of this century.”

“It’s done,” said Pravin Gordhan, South African Finance Minister, last Tuesday, adding that “we made very good progress” on the formation of a World Bank-analogue development agency

Iran’s Press TV described the deal this way: “The BRICS bank will present an alternative solution to the Western-dominated global banking system comprised of the Bretton Woods institutions – the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The new bank will provide a collective foreign exchange reserve and a fund for financing developmental projects in order to address the needs of emerging and poor economies.”

Press TV reported, “BRICS members say the current global balance of power is unworkable, with institutions such as the WB, the IMF and the United Nations Security Council irrelevant in addressing matters concerning global economics.”

Under the deal, the two largest economies of the emerging power groups, China and Brazil, agreed to remove nearly half of their trade exchanges out of the U.S. dollar zone – a significant blow to the U.S. dollar.

Some in the U.S. are skeptical the BRICS moves will actually work.

Joseph S. Nye, a professor at Harvard University, wrote in The Australian newspaper: “Tellingly, the meeting in Durban failed to produce any details of the structure of the proposed new development bank, suggesting that little progress had been made in the year since the BRICS’ last meeting in New Delhi, where the plan was announced.”

Continued Nye: “In fact, despite a commitment to launch “formal negotiations” to establish the bank, disagreements about the size and shares of the bank’s capital have not been resolved.”

The New American took the other side, arguing the BRICS bank is a step closer toward a world government.

“Aside from a planetary fiat currency and central bank, the erection of a true world government was at the heart of BRICS regimes’ machinations outlined in their final agreement.”

The publication pointed out the BRICS declaration at the end of last week’s summit included, “We reiterate our strong commitment to the United Nations (UN) as the foremost multilateral forum entrusted with bringing about hope, peace, order and sustainable development to the world.”

See a report on the BRICS summit:

The BRICS statement added, “[W]e reaffirmed our commitment to the promotion of international law, multilateralism and the central role of the United Nations.”

BRICS clearly sees a reshaped economic world in which government-run companies play a significant role.

“We acknowledge the important role that State Owned Companies (SOCs) play in the economy and encourage our SOCs to explore ways of cooperation, exchange of information and best practices,” the declaration states.

“As the global economy is being reshaped, we are committed to exploring new models and approaches towards more equitable development and inclusive global growth.”

With additional research by Joshua Klein.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/is-this-why-obamas-responding-to-north-korea/#0vA1fxswZ4KKlO1p.99

Post-Mortem Shows Russian Tycoon Died from Hanging

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By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press
LONDON
A post-mortem examination found that self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky died by hanging, and there was nothing pointing to a violent struggle, British police said.

Thames Valley Police said Monday that further tests, including toxicology examinations, will be carried out. The force did not specify whether the 67-year-old businessman hanged himself, but they have said there was no evidence to suggest anyone else was involved in the death.

Once one of Russia's richest men and a Kremlin powerbroker, Berezovsky fled to Britain in 2001 and claimed political asylum after a bitter falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He became a vocal critic of the Kremlin.

Berezovsky had survived several assassination attempts in Britain and Russia, including a car bomb in 1994 that killed his driver.

Berezovsky's body was found by an employee on the bathroom floor at his upscale England home on Saturday. The employee called an ambulance after he forced open the bathroom door, which was locked from the inside. Police said the employee was the only person in the house when Berezovsky's body was discovered.

A forensic examination of Berezovsky's home will continue for several days, police said Monday.

A mathematician-turned-Mercedes dealer, Berezovsky built up his wealth during Russia's chaotic privatization of state assets in the 1990s following the breakup of the Soviet Union. In return for backing Russian President Boris Yeltsin, he gained political clout and opportunities to buy state assets like oil and gas at knockdown prices.

Berezovsky helped build Putin's power base but fell out of favor when the new president moved to curb the ambitions of the oligarchs. The tycoon was charged in Russia with fraud and embezzlement.

Berezovsky later associated himself with ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, another Kremlin critic. Litvinenko died after ingesting polonium in his tea at a London hotel in 2006.

In recent years, Berezovsky's fortunes declined with numerous expensive court cases.

Last year, Berezovsky lost a huge legal battle against former business partner and fellow Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich, which left him with legal bills of at least 35 million pounds ($53.3 million.)

Berezovsky had said that Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, cheated him out of his stakes in the oil group Sibneft, arguing that he blackmailed him into selling the stakes vastly beneath their true worth after he fell out of Putin's favor.

But a judge threw out the case in August, ruling that Berezovsky was a dishonest and unreliable witness, and rejected Berezovsky's claims that he was threatened by Putin and Alexander Voloshin, a Putin ally, to coerce him to sell his Sibneft stake.

In 2010 Berezovsky also took a hit with his divorce from Galina Besharova, paying a settlement estimated to be as high as 100 million pounds. 

Russian tycoon’s mysterious death: Home to be sealed off for days

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Monkey Trap Nation

cluborlov

Lukas Brezek

Dmitry Orlov

A few weeks ago I flew back to Boston from St. Petersburg. Nine time zones is a lot to fly through in a day, especially when flying west. It all adds up to a single very long day that just won't end. When I had left Boston, I set up the boat to stay above freezing using a minimum amount of electric heat, so I expected to find a cold boat, but not a frozen one, in spite of the freezing cold and the snow, which was coming down quite heavily when I landed. But it turned out that while I was away the shore power cable's connection to its socket aboard the boat started arcing and burned, leaving the boat without power. (I was lucky; the boat could have burned down.) I spent an interesting couple of hours finding tools and supplies by flashlight, then stripping and splicing cables to restore power. As I finally went to sleep that night, wrapped in an electric blanket aboard a slowly defrosting boat, I thought to myself: “What have I done?” Sure, I flew to Boston because that's where my boat is, but there has got to be a better reason than that!

The next day I wandered out toward the center of town, and on the way saw an apartment building which had burned down, it turned out, the day before. The building had been heated badly, and the fire was caused by an electric space heater. Windows had plywood nailed over them, there were blooms of soot over many of them, and the doors were boarded up and posted “Danger, keep out!” The whole structure seemed to be sagging and caving in on itself. The displaced residents stood around wondering what to do. Ironically, this building happens to be across the street from the local fire station, but you see, the fire station doesn't happen to have any windows on the side that faced it, and so the firemen were quite unaware of the blaze right next door and slow to stir to action. I later found out that the fire got so out of hand that they had to call in help from the neighboring town.

Heat, house fires... see, living in Russia, I almost forgot about these things. In St. Petersburg, apartment buildings are heated using waste heat from power plants. Steam is distributed throughout the city using a network of buried pipelines which provide both heat and hot water. Their cost is just the cost of distribution (which is, at this point, mostly a matter of upkeep) since the energy would otherwise be wasted. The buildings are so warm that nobody wears sweaters indoors, and it is usually warm enough to lounge around in lingerie. On day one of a cold spell it can get a bit chilly indoors, but then somebody somewhere gives a giant steam valve a quarter turn, and things are again toasty. On the first day of a warm spell it can get positively sweltering indoors, and people start cracking windows open even though it's still below freezing outside, until somebody somewhere gives that valve a quarter-turn in the opposite direction. If you find this arrangement inefficient, then you must be sketchy on the concept of waste heat. Power plants are heat engines, subject to thermodynamic limits which cause 2/3 to ½ of the energy consumed to be released as waste heat. Now, there is enough heat wasted by all the power plants in the US to heat every single inhabited structure in the entire country, but instead that heat is vented to the atmosphere or used to heat the rivers and the ocean, and then quite a bit of the electricity they generate is wasted using electric space heaters. In turn, these space heaters cause a lot of house fires.

During my stay in St. Petersburg I did not see a single fire or fire engine, or hear a single fire engine siren. Buildings in St. Petersburg do not have fire exits or fire escapes; they don't need them. The place does not burn. The Emergencies Ministry publishes weekly statistics for things such as fires, and they bear out my casual observation. The reason for this is that houses in St. Petersburg are made of nonflammable materials: masonry and, more recently, reinforced concrete, insulated with hard plaster. If you proposed building something out of flammable materials, such as wood or vinyl siding, your project would not be approved. The walls tend to be thick—5 courses of brick or more—to provide both insulation and the thermal mass to hold in heat. Doors are made with a core of steel plate. Thus, the worst that can happen there is an isolated apartment fire.

Here in Boston, however, houses are made of flammable sticks covered in flammable plastic, the walls are kept thin to waste as much heat as possible, and the windows... you see, windows are like doors in that they need to both open and to close tightly to avoid leaking heat, with the additional requirement of letting through light. And so, Russian windows are basically doors with glass panes in them, that swing open on hinges. But not in the US, all because of some loon of an Englishman who—back in that country's dim and miserable past when the English were so poor that they couldn't even heat their houses and just sat shivering around a fireplace—decided that windows should consist of two empty glass picture frames (square ones) that slide up and down and rattle around in loose-fitting slots, letting through as much air as possible even when shut. The English then started calling normal windows “French windows,” to signal that such continental tendencies would not be tolerated. This curse of an invention then spread to all the other English-speaking countries, including the US.

And so the Russians heat with waste heat from power plants, build well-insulated houses out of nonflammable materials and sit around in their lingerie even as mercury freezes solid and snow-dunes drift slowly past, while the Americans heat their flammable, badly insulated stick-built houses with oil, gas and electricity, do their best to battle hypothermia and are often forced to choose between turning up the heat and being able to pay for food. Does this mean that the Russians are smart and the Americans stupid? I don't think so. People are people. But there is a cultural difference that's worth pointing out, and it comes down to just one thing: short-term thinking. Historically, the Russians seem to have been less susceptible to the short-termism that afflicts so many Americans. This may be less true now, with the recent hectic pace of development in Russia, but still there is plenty of social inertia causing people to continue to ask and re-ask the same inconvenient question over and over again: “And then what?” (“Ну а потом что?”)

Wouldn't it be nice if short-term decisions had short-term consequences and long-term decisions had long-term consequences? Well, too bad; it's the other way around. Short-term decisions have long-term consequences because they tend to lock you into an arrangement that is beneficial in the short term but detrimental in the long-term. Long-term decisions have short-term consequences because planning for the long term incurs short-term expenses. For example: in the short term, it is cheaper to nail houses together out of sticks and put them up in places far removed from the power plants that could heat them for free, but in the long term the heating bills, the house fires and the expense of keeping up a temporary structure tend to get out of hand. On the other hand, in the long-term, it is cheaper to build houses next to steam mains supplied free of charge by a power plant, out of solid masonry, and with steel plate doors and insulated double-windows (saving on fire alarms, fire escapes and fire departments) but in the short term this is more expensive.

What's worse, the consequences of short-term decision-making are cumulative over time: the long-term consequences of short-term decisions just keep piling up. But people are loathe to admit the errors of their ways, and can rarely be made to accept the consequences of their decisions. Instead, the tendency is to regard these consequences as new, entirely unexpected short-term problems to be solved with more short-term thinking. The result is a tendency to double down on every bad bet, and beyond a certain point the consequences magnify and feed on each other until they add up to an intractable, systemic crisis where no more short-term solutions can be found.

* * *

The monkey trap is, as the name suggests, a device for trapping monkeys. It is ingenuous in its simplicity, and also in the fact that it does not actually trap the monkey at all: it is the monkey that does the trapping. The trap consists of a hollowed-out gourd tied to a tree using a vine. The gourd has an opening just big enough to admit a monkey's paw when it isn't clenched into a fist. Inside is a banana. The monkey reaches inside, grabs the banana, but cannot withdraw it. Even as the hunter approaches to collect it, it cannot bring itself to unclench its fist, let go of the banana and escape. What traps the monkey is the monkey's own internal cost/benefit analysis, which is slanted toward the short term, coupled with its inability to consider the long-term effect of its short-term decisions. It is a perfect metaphor for what has caused the US to go off the rails.

Let us take another look at Russia. St. Petersburg now has a standard of living that compares favorably to many places in the US, including some of its more prosperous cities. Salaries are still considerably lower, but then so are the costs. In Russia, many consumer products, such as clothes, electronics, furniture and all of the other things that can cost almost arbitrary amounts of money, are quite expensive, and few people can afford to own closets full of clothes they hardly ever wear. On the other hand, necessities are quite reasonably priced: housing, education, heath care, communications, transportation and all the other basics are far more affordable. The US is the polar opposite. Here, all sorts of consumer items can be had for next to nothing, but when it comes to the necessities (housing, education, health care, communications and transportation) the norm seems to be to bleed people dry.

With housing, the major issue is that incomes have been falling for decades, but housing prices have only gone up. Housing is a cost, not an investment, because a residence is not a productive asset but a place to eat, sleep and recreate. The obvious long-term solution is to crash the real estate market, bulldoze unpromising suburban subdivisions and revert them to farmland, then build non-flammable apartment buildings next to power plants to provide affordable housing. Next thing you know, everybody suddenly has plenty of disposable income and the economy takes off. But that's long-term thinking, you see; short-term thinking is to prop up ridiculous real estate valuations by buying up defaulted mortgages at face value and hiding them inside the Federal Reserve. And so that's what's being done.

With education, the monkey trap was assembled in stages. First, the value of a college education was inflated to the point where only college graduates could get the remaining good jobs. Next, college education was pronounced a birthright, and financial aid was extended to make it universally accessible, on terms that amount to a lifetime of indentured servitude. Next, the price of higher education was inflated out of all proportion to its value, to cash in on the bonanza of free government-guaranteed money. And so now we have a ridiculously overpriced higher education system that is considered mandatory even though for most people earning a degree no longer guarantees an income sufficient to repay the loans. The obvious solution is to do away with the now meaningless college degrees and fall back on certificates, licenses, apprenticeships and other ways of getting people directly into the workplace. But that's long-term thinking, you see; short-term thinking is to make higher education even more mandatory, but somewhat more affordable, by automating it: instead of an actual lecture hall, students are now treated to a virtual experience of listening to a talking head robo-prof over the Internet from the comfort of their parents' basement. The only two subjects that can be taught using this method are test-taking and masturbation.

I could make a similar argument with respect to health care, communications and transportation. Perhaps I will do so next week. Or perhaps you've caught on already. I hope that this will be enough to make you allergic to short-termism.

* * *

But who, you might ask, are the monkeys? Well, that's the funny bit (at least to me). The real monkeys are the people running the system: the people who think they have it made. You see, they can't let go of the banana inside the gourd, because holding onto it gives them power. They are all the people who benefit outlandishly from the current system of bleeding the system dry: the college administrators, the health care administrators, the various managers who make six figures and beyond, and who are all lavishly rewarded for bringing in good quarterly and year-end results, a.k.a. short-term thinking. They think that holding onto that banana inside the gourd for another round will make them even better off. But I believe they are wrong.

Their prize “banana,” expressed in financial terms, consists of stocks (propped up by endless quantitative easing), bonds (issued by a bankrupt government drowning in debt), real estate (which will have to be protected by a private army as the land lapses into chaos), and cash (fiat currency, subject to sudden bouts of hyperinflation). Where are they going to escape to with all this loot? Costa Gringa? El Gringador? The fabled kingdom of Abu Gringadabi? Once the abovementioned pieces of paper all turn out to be worthless, they may not get too far beyond “¡Sus papeles, por favor!” You destroyed your own country; what do you plan to do with ours? Or are they going to construct a luxury artificial island anchored on some shoal in the middle of the ocean and live there? If so, whose navy is going to protect them from the pirates who will show up and say: “What nice island you have! You want something bad to happen to it?” (They only watched the dubbed version of that movie, and something got lost in translation.)

You see, their short-term thinking is... short-termist, enough said, while their long-term thinking is mostly a work of fantasy. You don't want to be like them, do you? In that case, stop thinking for the short term! Oh, and if you do get stuck in a monkey trap: let go the banana, withdraw your paw, hold the gourd hole-down and shake out the banana, grab the banana, run up a tree and eat the banana while, optionally, making eye contact with the hunter. Got that?