Mr. Putin's World

Obama continues with his strange public approach to Russia. Putin is not a 21st Century man. Russia is a "regional power." Obama is more concerned with the apocalypse.

Here are some things about Putin's world collected from some admittedly biased Internet sites:

Less than four months after Putin took over at the KGB, opposition Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, the most prominent pro-democracy Kremlin critic in the nation, was murdered at her apartment building in St. Petersburg. NYT: "Initial evidence suggests that the killing was a political assassination."
Russian Attorney General, Yury Skuratov, who was investigating high-level corruption in the Kremlin, was neutralized when an illicit sex video involving Skuratov was aired on national TV.
In September 1999 an apartment building in the Pechatniki neighborhood of Moscow was blown up by a bomb. 94 were killed. Less than a week later a second bomb destroyed a building in Moscow’s Kashirskoye neighborhood. That bomb killed 118. The bombings caused the Russian Federation to launch the Second Chechen War. On October 1st, Putin declares Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and his parliament illegitimate and Russian forces invaded. (Sound familiar?) Russia was ultimately convicted of human rights violations before the European Court for Human Rights. There have always been accusations that the apartment bombings were a "false flag" operation but there is no such evidence.

An independent public commission on the Moscow bombings was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. The so-called “Kovalev Commission” was formed to informally investigate charges that Putin’s KGB had planted the Pechatniki and Kashirskoye apartment bombs. Sergei Yushenkov, vice-chair of the group and co-chairman of the Liberal Russia political party was gunned down at the entrance of his Moscow apartment block. Another Commission member, Yuri Shchekochikhin died of poisoning. A third was severely beaten by thugs. The Commission’s lawyer, Mikhail Trepashkin was jailed after a secret trial on espionage charges.
In 2000, reporters Igor Domnikov, Sergey Novikov, Iskandar Khatloni, Sergey Ivanov and Adam Tepsurgayev were murdered --in assassinations at home in Russia. 130 journalists have died violently since Putin came to power, not including journalists killed in Chechnya.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, a vocal opposition journalist and member of the Russian Duma and the Kovalev Commission, suddenly contracted a mysterious illness. In London a tentative diagnosis (made on smuggled biopsy tissue) was made of poisoning with thallium.
Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, Professor of Ethnology and expert on racism and discrimination in the Russian Federation was shot dead in his home in St Petersburg.
Paul Klebnikov , the editor of the Russian edition Forbes magazine who was working on a money laundering story, was shot and killed in Moscow.
Viktor Yushchenko, anti-Russian candidate for the presidency of the Ukraine, was poisoned by Dioxin. (He survived.)
Andrei Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank and another interested in money laundering, was shot and killed in Moscow.
Anna Politkovskaya, author of books and articles on Russian human rights violations in Chechnya and who attacked Putin as a dictator, was shot and killed at her home in Moscow. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote that the only possible motive was political.
Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB defector and author of the book "Blowing up Russia," which accuses the Kremlin of masterminding the Pechatniki and Kashirskoye bombings in order to blame Chechen terrorists and justify an invasion of Chechnya, was fatally poisoned by radioactive Polonium identified as from Russian sources.
In January 19, 2009, Russian human rights attorney Stanslav Markelo was shot in the back of the head with a silenced pistol as he left a press conference at which he announced his intention to sue the Russian government for its early release of the Col. Yuri Budanov, who murdered his 18-year-old client in Chechnya five years earlier.
On July 14, 2009, leading Russian human rights journalist and activist Natalia Estemirove, viewed as the successor to Anna Politkovskaya, was abducted in front of her home in Grozny, Chechnya, taken across the border, shot and dumped in a roadside gutter.

Putin is not directly linked to any of these events but the victims were very public people and they were killed in public places or in a very public way. This kind of brutal, homicidal, intimidating culture is not typical of any century, it is typical of our brutal and violent nature unrestrained, and as such is typical of all centuries. Contrary to Mr. Obama's claims, we have not outgrown it, matured beyond it or experienced any species-changing revelation. Putin is part of what we are and must constantly guard against. And leadership is necessary to do it.

A last word from Anne Appelbaum: “As Russian (and Eastern European) history well demonstrates, it isn’t always necessary to kill millions of people to frighten all the others: A few choice assassinations, in the right time and place, usually suffice. Since the arrest of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, no other Russian oligarchs have attempted even to sound politically independent. After the assassination of Politkovskaya on Saturday, it’s hard to imagine many Russian journalists following in her footsteps to Grozny either.”

Amy Chua and Her Husband

Amy Chua, who created so much angst with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has written another book, this one with her fellow Yale professor and mystery writer husband Jed Rubenfeld. The book is called The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America and tries to find characteristics of success in America.  They argue that eight cultural groups are poised for success because those cultures possess specific traits: a superiority complex, insecurity and impulse control. The groups are: Jews, Mormons, Indian Americans, Iranians, Cuban exiles, Nigerian Americans, Lebanese Americans and the Chinese. Interestingly they say these characteristics are imported from their homelands and their advantages do not persist after two generations in the country. 

Chua says in an interview with NPR that perhaps the basis is that many immigrants come from nations with strong histories of achievement and might try harder in a new country where they have a disadvantage and something to prove. When the preoccupied NPR asked the non sequitur of why activism and "moral authority" are not prominent in her book, Chua answered revealingly (and cautiously):
"We talk about this conventional success, this idea that you have to be successful based on income or education, or you have to be a certain kind of professional, almost as a downside — it's a pathology. And I understand it because a lot of people who are immigrants, they are insecure about survival. So if you just come from a country and you don't know if your kid can make it, you want them to be a professional, you're afraid for them to be an activist or a poet." She did not discuss degrees in transgender studies.

Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld being the smartest guys in the room on NBC:

Sunday Sermon 4/6/14

Today's gospel is the raising of Lazarus. It is the quintessential problem of life and life's relationship with God. Christ does not make it easy either. He is told "the one you love is sick." He is "troubled in spirit." He weeps. He speaks to God as a stage whisper to inform the audience of His relationship and His motives.
The intense experience of  the family is typically muted; Jesus and His revolution is the point here. The specifics--why are Lazarus and Christ so close, what is Christ thinking, why does He weep--these fascinating human points are captivating to us but, while real and active to Christ, are peripheral to this eternal and universal experience.


The Raising of Lazarus
Rilke

One had to bear with the majority -
what they wanted was a sign that screamed:
Martha, though, and Mary - he had dreamed
they would be contented just to see
that he could. But not a soul believed him:
'Lord, you've come to late,' said all the crowd.
So to peaceful Nature, though it grieved him,
on he went to do the unallowed.
Asked them, eyes half-shut, his body glowing
with anger, 'Where's the grave?' Tormentedly.
And to them it seemed his tears were flowing,
as they thronged behind him, curiously.
As he walked, the thing seemed monstrous to him,
childish, horrible experiment:
then there suddenly went flaming through him
such an all-consuming argument
against their life, their death, their whole collection
of separations made by them alone,
all his body quivered with rejection
as he gave out hoarsely 'Raise the stone'.
Someone shouted that the corpse was stinking
(buried now four days ago) - but He
stood erect, brim-full of that unblinking,
mounting gesture, that so painfully
lifted up his hand (no hand was ever
raised so slowly, so immeasurably),
till it stood there, shining in the gloom.
There it slowly, clawingly contracted:
what if all the dead should be attracted
upwards, through that syphon of a tomb,
where a pallid chrysalidal thing
was writhing up from where it had been lying? -
But it stood alone (no more replying),
and they saw vague, unidentifying
Life compelled to give it harbouring.

Cab Thoughts 4/5/14

"The low-IQ U.S. President and his country's Secretary of State John Kerry speak of the effectiveness of 'the U.S. options on the table' on Iran while this phrase is mocked at and has become a joke among the Iranian nation, especially the children." --Iranian Gen. Masoud Jazayeri

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the "special digestive systems" of "ruminant livestock" such as cattle, sheep, buffalo, and goats produce methane, a more potent "greenhouse gas" than even the carbon dioxide we humans exhale or the exhaust from the SUVs we use to take the kids to soccer practice.
The EPA says "cattle emit about 5.5 million metric tons of methane per year into the atmosphere, accounting for 20% of U.S. methane emissions."
One can only imagine how the giant brains at the EPA plan to approach this threat of cow belching and flatulence.

Basilic: adjective: Kingly; royal. From Latin basilicus, from Greek basilikos (royal). Earliest documented use: 1727.
Basil, the aromatic herb of the mint family, is named so because it was used in royal preparations for medicine, bath, etc. A large vein of the upper arm is called the basilic vein due to its supposed importance. The basilisk lizard (and the legendary reptile) are named for their crown-like crest. In ancient Rome, a basilica was a large public court building and the word began to be applied to churches of the same form.

165 out of every 1,000 Indian laborers are injured on the job.

The Pew Research Center's February poll showed the GOP with a 53% to 38% advantage in congressional voting intentions among white registered voters. Pew also found Mr. Obama's job approval among millennials has fallen to 49% in early 2014, down from 70% in the honeymoon months of 2009, his highest rating among any generation. But Rube-publicans do not hold an advantage over Democrats on the two issues that have hurt Mr. Obama most. According to January 2014 surveys, the public has more confidence in Democrats' handling of health care by an eight-point margin (45%-37%). Neither party has a decided advantage on handling the economy, with 42% favoring Rube-publicans and 38% more confident in Democrats.

The Detroit Tigers are planning on paying Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera 292 Million dollars over 10 years.

There is an admittedly loose article in "Poetry" about the nature of language by Slavoj Žižek who points to several poets in different cultures whose poetry preceded and encouraged frightful crimes against others in the culture. "The mainstream tradition ....... idea of language and the symbolic order is that of the medium of reconciliation and mediation, of peaceful coexistence, as opposed to a violent medium of 
immediate and raw confrontation. In language, instead of exerting direct violence on each other, we are meant to debate, to exchange words — and such an exchange, even when it is aggressive, presupposes a minimum recognition of the other." Žižek says this is not always true. He presents the notion that language is an entity in which we live. What if, he asks, "....humans exceed animals in their capacity for violence precisely because they speak?"

"Language as the “big Other” is not an agent of wisdom to whose message we should attune ourselves, but a place of cruel indifference and stupidity. The most elementary form of 
torturing one’s language is called poetry."

Zizek is 65 and seems to have come upon egocentricity, insincerity, savagery and manipulation late.

The Gunfight at the OK Corral was over in thirty seconds.

A new book by Michael Lewis, the bestselling author of Liar's Poker and Moneyball, says the stock market is "rigged" in favor of high-frequency traders. In Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt Lewis says that computer-based high speed trading is set up to benefit these traders at the expense of investors by anticipating orders by a fraction of a millisecond. On CBS' 60 Minutes, Lewis said, "Complexity disguises what is happening. If it's so complicated you can't understand it, then you can't question it."

Who was....Charles Stratton?

The National September 11 Memorial Museum, set to open next month in Manhattan, will feature a quote from Book IX of Virgil's Aeneid: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time." The context of the quote may not quite reflect what the museum's builders intended to convey: The "you" refers to Nisus and Euryalus, who, full of "lust for slaughter," sneak up on the sleeping enemy and butcher them until the ground runs with "warm black gore." Unless the quote is meant as a comment on the perpetrators of the atrocity. But it doesn't look like it. Museum officials have since eliminated the word “Aeneid” from the inscription as it appears on the wall, presumably to distance the sentiment somewhat from its literary context. Maybe they got it from a book of quotes but, often, context is all. Caroline Alexander wrote for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in 2011 the line "offers neither instruction nor solace.”

If corporations are people, are bankruptcy courts death panels? (Stolen from Tobias.)

The National Safety Council’s annual report found 26 percent of all crashes are tied to phone use, but noted just 5 percent involved texting.

Martina Hingis, 33, won the doubles title at the Sony Open, playing alongside Sabine Lisicki. The pair entered the tournament in Key Biscayne, Fla., on a wild card granted by organizers. She at one time held the No. 1 ranking for 209 weeks, placing her behind Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf, who holds the record with 377 weeks. She captured her first Grand Slam title in 1996, when she won in women's doubles at Wimbledon at age 15.

Hamid Aboutalebi has been appointed to serve as the Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. He was one of the students who took the U.S. Embassy over in 1979. Fascinatingly, the U.S. State Dept itself will have to approve his visa. Please file under "Boys will be boys."

Golden Oldies:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/10/work.html

France's ruling Socialist Party suffered losses Sunday in a local vote marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front. The center-right party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy performed strongly across the country as well. What is going on?

There is a new furthest planet from the sun, 2012 VP113, an object currently over twice the distance of Pluto from the Sun is thought to be a dwarf planet like Pluto. Previously, the furthest known dwarf planet was Sedna, discovered in 2003. Given how little of the sky was searched, it is likely that as many as 1,000 more objects like 2012 VP113 exist in the outer Solar System. Some scientists hypothesize that the reason why objects like Sedna and 2012 VP113 have their present orbits is because they were gravitationally scattered there by a much larger object -- possibly a very distant undiscovered planet. Ooooooo!

AAaaaaaannnnndddd......a picture:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: A Review

Annawadi is an Indian slum of 3000 people living in 335 huts on a one-half acre of filth, trash and refuse bordering a lake of sewage and separated by a wall from the modern Mumbai Airport. The journalist Katherine Boo spent years interviewing, videotaping and recording Annawadi residents in their struggle to survive. The result is "Behind the Beautiful Forevers."  It is generally presented as a closer look at poverty in an emerging modern India where an expanding GDP does not show the full story.
It is a lot more.

The nonfiction narrative is loosely hung on a court case involving the entrepreneurial Husain family who has been accused of instigating the self immolation suicide of their neighbor, Fatima, a one legged prostitute and virago. The case is merit-less but the shameless graft and corruption of everyone involved in the so-called justice system is beyond imagination. And the injustice and horrors of the case more than blends with equal horrors in the everyday lives of the Annawadians. The main income sources of the slum is trash-picking as everyone sifts through the refuse of the airport. Metal--a nail or a pin--is prized but anything that can be recycled is of value. Occasionally someone will hit the jackpot, a job at the airport, but usually the graft involved prevents any meaningful income from being earned. The less successful scavengers--if brave--will steal, risking fatal retribution from the guards. The most successful are the middlemen, like the Husains, who buy the scrap for resale. Starvation, illness, drunkenness, despair, envy and suicide are endemic. Every child is rat-bitten and rats are a normal part of the local diet.

The other affliction is corruption, which seems to be the only true quality that is spread equally among the citizenry. It is appalling. The courts, the police, the commissioners, the politicians, the businessmen, the non-profits--everything with any organizing principle is a lie. Graft underlies every transaction. The only schooling are scams to defraud the government. "Corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained."

Yet in spite of this depressing life, the Annawadians have distinctive and admirable qualities. (Admittedly, being constantly scrutinized by a Western journalist might distort your appearance.) And many are upbeat. There is a faith that hard work will be rewarded, that progress can be made. (There is actually no evidence of this progress in the book.) And the people have real individual lives, are defined as individual people. The poor in the U.S. often seem to generalize themselves--or allow themselves to be generalized--and become one of a group; the Annawandians do not. Some of this is the Threepenny Opera quality about them. A major character is, indeed, a one-legged prostitute. A girl, Manju, actually goes to college--the only one from the slum who ever has--and wanders, saint like, through the slum holding little classes for the children. The thief Sunil develops a skill: He is a thief who is unafraid of heights. A man owns some horses and he whimsically paints them like zebras.

There is a tension that develops between the people and their circumstance, a frisson that is echoed by the author's style. She never scolds or preaches. Somehow Boo allows the reader to escape being drowned in trash and excrement with a curious mixture of the specific and distance that elevates the struggle with the pointed ambivalence practiced by legal-conscious reporters. Like the Coen Brothers, she makes the sordid dramatic and not personal. With understatement, litotes and restraint the story becomes less horrible. A deaf-mute candidate for local leadership is "ideal for keeping secrets, less so for campaigning." Regarding the graft in the municipality, "the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade." A hut was "painted a color of green no longer known in the fields." A prisoner is "beaten in the name of an interrogation." A court stenographer does not know the language the defendant is speaking. On a sham school, "[t]he schools Asha and Manju were pretending to run made the income derived from a real school unnecessary." Perhaps as a result of constant practice skirting American libel law, she is always indirect, wry without being snide. She walks the difficult line between tragedy and comedy and spares the reader without torturing the subjects.

This book is often placed in the "inequality" debate and has encouraged the growth of India's economy to be seen in its context, like a social work problem. But, unlike its topic, this book seems to have accidentally outgrown its aspiration. Historically art's great topics have required the struggles of great men. In the last several hundred years topics and their actors have been freed but it takes poignancy and fine writing to make Rosencrantz interesting. Even more is required when your scene is a graft-ridden cesspool. Somehow Boo and her subjects make it all worthwhile.

Putin Redux

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/10/chilean-miners-and-k-141.html

A debate has popped up over which economic system is responsible for the rescue of the Chilean miners. (This, in Chile, where the social security system is privatized.) Only socialistic, non individualistic behavior could allow men to survive underground and could altruistically mobilize citizens for their rescue, say the socialists. Only capitalism could create such wonderful technology and tools for the rescue, say the capitalists. Beneath all this wrangling is the belief that politics and government have a morality, that some systems--but not others--act with righteousness in mind.

It is reminescent of another international claustrophobic nightmare. In August 12, 2000 the K 141 Kursk, a cruise missile sub Oscar class 11 and the largest attack sub ever built, sank in 354 feet of water 85 miles out of Sevenomorsk in the Barents Sea. The sinking was proceeded by an explosion, presumably of the hydrogen peroxide supercavitating torpedo propellant, that measured 2.2 on the Richter Scale then, two and a half minutes or so later, by a second explosion that measured between 3.5 and 4.4 on the Richter Scale. 118 men went down. At some point 23 men retreated to Compartment 9. Everyone died.

There has been a lot of discussion. Why would the Russians use hydrogen peroxide propellant when the British had declared it too dangerous two decades earlier? How long did the men live in Compartment 9? There was a fire; was that from the emergency oxygen source? Did the fire kill the men in Compartment 9? Why did Putin stay on vacation when the country was overwhelmed with the tragedy? But these all beg the real question: Why did the Russians refuse the aid of the British and Norwegian diving teams that are experts in submarine rescue?

There are a number of answers here and, while the truth is not known, none of the possibilities are nice. The government gave up on the men, the sailors were presumed dead, and, the favorite, the government did not want to ask another country (and culture) for aid. They did not want to be seen as inferior in technology and expertise.

The important notion here is that governments, while comprised of people, are not people any more than armies or corporations are. By necessity governments have qualities and interests that may actually be opposed to the interests of their citizens. In the thirties, German Jews were Germans; the American soldiers exposed to radiation at Bikini were Americans and so were the untreated men from Tuskegee; the Russian government denied the very existence of the Chernobyl disaster at the very time the men charged with stopping the disaster climbed into reactor knowing full well they would never survive.

Sometimes government behavior is foolish, sometimes stupid, sometimes outright evil. But no government is any more or less moral than the post office or the LSU lacrosse team is. (But as the Chernobyl example shows, people are often a lot more moral than their governments.) Some may fit better with human nature but the people who make up the government are different from their subjects. Why? Emergent behavior? They sell their souls to the devil? Sunspots? Who knows. But no one should try projecting human qualities on to the structure of an inanimate object; they should just be as careful as they would be around any machine or animal they did not know or understand.
 

Cab Thoughts 4/2/14

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster

On average, the human body makes approximately 1000 mg of sulfites every day, an amount that is about one hundred times higher than the sulfites content that can be found in a standard glass of red wine.

Chinese households do not have a lot of investment options so they invest in property. Currently, the price-to-rent ratio of China's eight key cities is 39.4 times – this figure was 22.8 times in America just before its housing crisis. China has consumed just 65% of the cement it has produced in the past five years, after exports. The country is currently outputting more steel than the next seven largest producers combined – it now has 200 million tons of excess capacity, more that the EU and Japan's total production so far this year. Chinese corporations are the most highly leveraged in the world and more than twice as leveraged as U.S. corporations.

Who is.....Jan Koum?

Japan has some serious problems. In the 16 months since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched his plan to regrow Japan’s shrinking economy the yen has depreciated by 22% against the dollar, 28% against the euro and 24% against the renminbi. Their effort to increase exports--into a world economic community with declining demand and prices--demands they drop their prices. So, they are in the situation of the old joke where the business is losing money on every sale so....they try to make it up on volume.

James Neal has a power forward's size, shot and demeanor but is an absolute idiot; he simply cannot avoid taking the crucial penalty. But his bad press lately is difficult to take seriously. After all, his greatest outrage, the kneeing of Marchand, was only the minor outrage in a game where Thompson tried to kill Orpik.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act says that we’re beginning to see what he called the “Kaiserification” of our health care system. Emanuel says we’re witnessing “the end of insurance companies as we know them” and that if they want to survive, they “will have to get into the business of providing care.” At a conference in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business. This is a hugely important change these people plan. 

Eighty-five people have as much money as do the poorest 3.5 billion. The top 1% have almost half the liquid wealth that has been accumulated in the world. But the world is different from the 1800s and 1900s. Wealth is not generated by a few people exploiting the factory worker, wealth is generated by a few people with a new, good idea who then sell it to a huge number of people who pay very little for it. TVs, phones, apps--this is a new and different economic scenario. Google gives away most of their apps. The zero sum argument ending with blood all over the walls just does not have application now. The rich guy is the inventor, the innovator, and his products are cheap and everyone really, really wants them. Is anyone mad at Jan Koum who has been living on food stamps and created tremendous wealth with a partner and less than 70 employees in just a few years on the strength of an idea, a lot of chutzpah, and some venture capital?

These are hard times for community organizers, too.

Golden Oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/07/gamboling-gambling-and-ludomania.html

The battle in the Supreme Court has an interesting twist. The government is willing to allow exemptions to religious groups but that exemption is not available to for-profit groups. So if a business is incorporated and for-profit, it forfeits normal constitutional rights?

 

Only 35% of the working-age population in Puerto Rico actually work.

Stability is the goal of most people and organizations. But the economist Hyman Minsky theorizes that stability leads to instability and the longer the period of stability, the higher the potential risk for even greater instability when market participants must change their behavior. He was generally ignored until the last decade but now has quite a following. His example was an avalanche which is nothing but a stable pile of snow--until it isn't. One wonders if there is a social/political application too.

The National Safety Council’s annual report found 26 percent of all car crashes are tied to phone use, but noted just 5 percent involved texting.

Physicists and engineers are building an International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, in France. When finished it will stand one hundred feet tall and weigh twenty-three thousand tons and will ionize hydrogen to achieve temperatures of over two hundred million degrees Celsius. So, what are they going to contain it in?

Protean: adj. Variable, changeable, versatile; readily assuming different forms or characters. From the Greek "Proteus," a god of bodies of water, who could change his appearance at will. Probably he is the son of Poseidon.

 

 

The milk product "cottage cheese" is probably so named because it was an easy type of cheese for anyone to make at home, or in the cottage. Miss Muffet just separated the curds from the whey and used the curds for cheese.


AAAAaaaaannnndddddd......a poster: