Those Who Cannot Remember History are . . . Russians!

Kommersant gives us yet another reminder that life in 2007 Russia is no different from life in 1907 Russia for the vast majority of people. Then as now, a tiny cadre of superelite glide through the major cities in gilded carriages while the vast unwashed population languishes in extreme poverty and quite literally dies off. Russia has learned nothing from the extremes of Tsarist behavior, and moreover has learned nothing from the abuses of the post-Tsarist Soviet era. Now, it is combining both forms of failure into one utter nightmare of a society doomed to become “Zaire with permafrost.”

The gap between Russia’s richest and poorest shows no signs of narrowing, according to a new study. The All-Russian Center of Living Standards has presented a report on incomes in Russia in 2006, outlining the emergence of well-off Russians with incomes over 20,000 per capita.

In a study on the income and living standards in Russia, the Center of Living Standards used data of the Russian Statistics Agency and the Pension Fund. The research says the average nominal wage in Russia in 2006 was 10,684, slightly higher than in official reports of the Statistics Agency. LR: That’s $395 per month. And it’s the average. Average means a huge segment of the population is below that, especially since Russia has a large number of millionaires. For every millionaire Russia has, it has to have roughly 3,500 people learning just $100 per month to keep the national average at $395 per person.

According to the study, the income gap between Russia’s 10 percent of riches and poorest people is not narrowing, contrary to reports of the national statistics agency. The difference is still seven-fold, 0.1 percent up last year, compared to 2005.

The percentage of Russians living below the subsistence level went down in 2006 to 11.9 percent from 13.3 percent in 2006. The Russian Center of Living Standards quotes 3,291 rubles a month as the subsistence level in 2006. LR: That’s $4 per day. The Russian government claims $4 per day is enough to live on in Moscow, the world’s most expensive city.

The report also shows that the number of people with incomes between 6,963 and 20,504 rubles grew from 38.7 to 40.4 percent last year. This is the category that the center’s experts call Russian middle class. In its recent study, the Sociology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated the number at 21 percent. LR: In Russia, a monthly income of $750 per month is considered high-end upper middle class. That’s $40 per work day, or roughly $5 per hour for an eight-hour day. An upper middle class Russian doesn’t even earn the American minimum wage. Russia is rolling in oil revenue, and this puny wage group increases by less than 2%? Something is rotten somewhere. Guess where.

The number of “well-off and rich” Russians with incomes higher than 20,500 rubles went up last year from 8.5 to 9.2 percent, according to the Living Standards’ research. LR: That is not a misprint. In Russia, you are “rich” if you earn more than $5 per hour.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Nuclear Nightmare is Spreading

ABC News reports:

An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. “Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country’s nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia’s nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models.

Despite these problems, Russia is moving forward to construct nuclear power stations in other countries. It is already deeply enmeshed in Iran, and now it has been announced that it will place numerous reactors in India:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India. India’s prime minister is calling the relationship with Moscow a new “strategic partnership” with energy at the center. The two countries were allies during the Cold War. These days, they’re refreshing their friendship through energy and military cooperation. Putin will be the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations Friday. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the chief supplier of nuclear know-how to India in the wake of a landmark civilian nuclear deal between New Delhi and Washington. Last year’s US-India pact appeared to give American companies a strong position in India’s nuclear market.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Nuclear Nightmare is Spreading

ABC News reports:

An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. “Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country’s nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia’s nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models.

Despite these problems, Russia is moving forward to construct nuclear power stations in other countries. It is already deeply enmeshed in Iran, and now it has been announced that it will place numerous reactors in India:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India. India’s prime minister is calling the relationship with Moscow a new “strategic partnership” with energy at the center. The two countries were allies during the Cold War. These days, they’re refreshing their friendship through energy and military cooperation. Putin will be the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations Friday. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the chief supplier of nuclear know-how to India in the wake of a landmark civilian nuclear deal between New Delhi and Washington. Last year’s US-India pact appeared to give American companies a strong position in India’s nuclear market.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Nuclear Nightmare is Spreading

ABC News reports:

An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. “Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country’s nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia’s nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models.

Despite these problems, Russia is moving forward to construct nuclear power stations in other countries. It is already deeply enmeshed in Iran, and now it has been announced that it will place numerous reactors in India:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India. India’s prime minister is calling the relationship with Moscow a new “strategic partnership” with energy at the center. The two countries were allies during the Cold War. These days, they’re refreshing their friendship through energy and military cooperation. Putin will be the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations Friday. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the chief supplier of nuclear know-how to India in the wake of a landmark civilian nuclear deal between New Delhi and Washington. Last year’s US-India pact appeared to give American companies a strong position in India’s nuclear market.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Nuclear Nightmare is Spreading

ABC News reports:

An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. “Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country’s nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia’s nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models.

Despite these problems, Russia is moving forward to construct nuclear power stations in other countries. It is already deeply enmeshed in Iran, and now it has been announced that it will place numerous reactors in India:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India. India’s prime minister is calling the relationship with Moscow a new “strategic partnership” with energy at the center. The two countries were allies during the Cold War. These days, they’re refreshing their friendship through energy and military cooperation. Putin will be the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations Friday. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the chief supplier of nuclear know-how to India in the wake of a landmark civilian nuclear deal between New Delhi and Washington. Last year’s US-India pact appeared to give American companies a strong position in India’s nuclear market.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Nuclear Nightmare is Spreading

ABC News reports:

An unspecified safety problem prompted an emergency shutdown at a Russian nuclear power plant, but no increase in radiation levels were reported, federal officials said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the first unit of the Balakovo plant around 11:15 p.m. Monday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The plant, located near the Volga River city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, has four 1,000-megawatt pressurized water reactors. Nuclear regulators said the problem was located and corrected Tuesday morning and could be restarted later in the day. “Initial reports indicate the cause of the shutdown was a problem with the safety system. The reactor has been taken off-line,” the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement. The Balakovo plant was the site of a false alarm in late 2004, when a turbine malfunction prompted a shutdown and rumors of a major accident sparked panic among nearby residents. Russian lawmakers recently passed legislation to restructure the country’s nuclear power sector, which includes 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for about 17 percent of electricity generation. President Vladimir Putin has pledged to build another 42 atomic reactors by 2030 and increase the proportion of electricity generation produced by nuclear plants to about 25 percent. Environmental groups have criticized government plans to keep older model nuclear plants operational, saying that graphite reactors like the one that exploded in Chernobyl and other types have serious safety flaws. About half of Russia’s nuclear reactors are of the graphite and older models.

Despite these problems, Russia is moving forward to construct nuclear power stations in other countries. It is already deeply enmeshed in Iran, and now it has been announced that it will place numerous reactors in India:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India. India’s prime minister is calling the relationship with Moscow a new “strategic partnership” with energy at the center. The two countries were allies during the Cold War. These days, they’re refreshing their friendship through energy and military cooperation. Putin will be the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations Friday. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the chief supplier of nuclear know-how to India in the wake of a landmark civilian nuclear deal between New Delhi and Washington. Last year’s US-India pact appeared to give American companies a strong position in India’s nuclear market.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Disease Continues to Ravage Russia

Last week, La Russophobe reported on a severe outbreak of hemhorragic fever in European Russia. This week, there is more bad news to report. Scientific American reports that “Russia has recorded its first cases this year of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in dead domestic birds, the country’s animal and plant health agency said on Monday. Rosselkhoznadzor said in a statement the virus was detected in dead birds found in three domestic yards in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. ‘Yes, it’s H5N1,’ a spokesman for the agency said, when asked to confirm the strain of the virus. Rosselkhoznadzor said measures were being taken to prevent the spread of infection in the three settlements where cases were found — Labinsk, Upornaya and Borodinskaya.”

As usual, the even worse news was the classic neo-Soviet denial from Russian officals that there was any problem whatsoever.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

On Russia’s Extermination of Journalism

Writing in Forbes, journalist Gary Weiss comments on Russia’s spate of journalist killings:

A delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists was in Moscow recently–a high-octane one, led by Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein. There were meetings with Russian officials and journalists, but this was not one of your standard feel-good cultural exchange projects.

The subject was–and is–murder. Thirteen journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000, in a brutal and systematic campaign to snuff out free speech and terrorize the former Soviet republics. One of the slain journalists was Paul Klebnikov, an American who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in July 2004.

Now I’m realistic, or perhaps a bit cynical. I don’t expect most people in this country to be too surprised or even upset about any of this. After all, this is Russia–the country that almost blew us to bits during the Cold War, and where American citizens live and work in an atmosphere of fear, violence and intimidation.

Still, you should care a great deal–you should be screaming and hollering, in fact–about the slaying of Paul Klebnikov, a brilliant investigative journalist who was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. This brazen murder, which has never been solved, was a crime against America as much as it was against Paul, his family and his information-hungry Russian readers.

The time has arrived for our government to initiate an investigation, with the aim of apprehending and prosecuting Paul’s murderers wherever they may be.

That could open up a hornet’s nest of international complications, which is why a formal U.S. investigation has not been launched. But failure to act would play into the hands of the terrorists who carried out this murder. Let’s review for a moment why Paul was killed, and why it requires a strong U.S. response that–for understandable reasons–has not yet been forthcoming.

Unlike the other brave Russian journalists who were murdered, Paul’s audience was as much this country as it was Russia. He wrote books that shaped American perceptions of Russia’s new elite, in addition to his groundbreaking Russian-language investigative reporting.

At the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund, reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).

Paul was murdered to prevent you from knowing about any of this. His murder was intended to send a message: No one, not even an American citizen, is immune to the forces in Russia who believe that a free press impinges on their license to steal.

Paul’s murder was, in other words, an act of terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by this country.

By law, this country can prosecute the murderer of a U.S. citizen overseas when the U.S. attorney general certifies that the murder “was intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against a government or a civilian population.” That’s as neat a description of Paul’s slaying as I have ever found.

Ironically, the Russian authorities–for their own purposes–agree that it was an act of terrorism. They’ve maintained that Paul’s death was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, a Chechen separatist leader and organized crime boss who is already branded a terrorist and wanted by Moscow.

Nukhaev is an obvious suspect because he was the subject of a book that Paul wrote, Conversation With a Barbarian–a critical one, as its title suggests. But Nukhaev is just too convenient a suspect, in the view of many Americans and Russians familiar with the case. For one thing, he is, conveniently, missing.

Two Chechens were put on trial as the actual triggermen in Paul’s murder, and both were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, and a new trial is set for Feb. 15. However, there is no assurance that the defendants will actually bother to attend the trial. Both were freed after the acquittal, and one is believed to have left the country. That alone makes the chances of obtaining justice at a new trial questionable at best.

Russian authorities have maintained that the gunmen were tasked to their mission by Nukhaev. However, Chechen gunmen and killers have been known to perform “muscle” work outside of Chechnya.

The first task of any American investigation would be to clear up the question of Nukhaev’s culpability.

An American interagency group has been monitoring the Russian investigation, and that could be the nucleus for a formal U.S. investigation that would call on the resources of the intelligence community. But there must be a free and open exchange of information between agencies–and that, apparently, has not been happening on the crucial issue of Nukhaev.

Scott Armstrong, a veteran investigative journalist and founder of the National Security Archive, who has been following the Klebnikov case, has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources that significant intelligence on Nukhaev and on Chechen hoodlum gangs has not been shared with law enforcement.

The U.S. needs to resolve its interagency differences and use the full resources of the intelligence community to determine if indeed Nukhaev ordered Klebnikov killed. If he did, we should find him, arrest him and prosecute him. If not, we should find out who did–and put him behind bars if Russian authorities are unwilling to do so.

Obviously, this will cause (to put it mildly) complications in our relations with Russia, which has resented even the private pressure that has been applied in the Klebnikov case.

One might also argue that it sets a precedent whereby other nations may seek to prosecute Americans under their definition of terrorism. All that needs to be taken into consideration, as does the impact of our relations with Russia. But these factors are, I believe, outweighed by our own national interest in preserving the safety of American journalists and businessmen living and working in Russia.

The parallels between Klebnikov’s slaying and the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona journalist slain in 1976, are becoming increasingly apparent. Bolles was killed for probing the mobsters and land-fraud schemes that plagued the Southwest in the mid-1970s.

The Bolles murder resulted in the creation of the Arizona Project, a consortium of journalists that was created to continue Bolles’ work. Scott Armstrong and I, along with Richard Behar and others, are members of Project Klebnikov, which has similar aims in continuing Paul’s legacy. (This column, incidentally, speaks only for myself, not for the project.)

Thanks to dedicated and relentless police work, Bolles’ killers were eventually brought to justice. No such outcome is likely in Russia, because Russia today is more akin to the Arizona of the 1870s than the Arizona of the 1970s–replete with robber barons, overnight fortunes, corrupt sheriffs and gunslingers for hire.

That is a domestic affair within Russia, I guess–but not when terrorism against Americans is involved.

Our government has the tools it needs to speak back to the hoodlums who sent that message to America 30 months ago. Time to use them.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

On Russia’s Extermination of Journalism

Writing in Forbes, journalist Gary Weiss comments on Russia’s spate of journalist killings:

A delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists was in Moscow recently–a high-octane one, led by Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein. There were meetings with Russian officials and journalists, but this was not one of your standard feel-good cultural exchange projects.

The subject was–and is–murder. Thirteen journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000, in a brutal and systematic campaign to snuff out free speech and terrorize the former Soviet republics. One of the slain journalists was Paul Klebnikov, an American who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in July 2004.

Now I’m realistic, or perhaps a bit cynical. I don’t expect most people in this country to be too surprised or even upset about any of this. After all, this is Russia–the country that almost blew us to bits during the Cold War, and where American citizens live and work in an atmosphere of fear, violence and intimidation.

Still, you should care a great deal–you should be screaming and hollering, in fact–about the slaying of Paul Klebnikov, a brilliant investigative journalist who was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. This brazen murder, which has never been solved, was a crime against America as much as it was against Paul, his family and his information-hungry Russian readers.

The time has arrived for our government to initiate an investigation, with the aim of apprehending and prosecuting Paul’s murderers wherever they may be.

That could open up a hornet’s nest of international complications, which is why a formal U.S. investigation has not been launched. But failure to act would play into the hands of the terrorists who carried out this murder. Let’s review for a moment why Paul was killed, and why it requires a strong U.S. response that–for understandable reasons–has not yet been forthcoming.

Unlike the other brave Russian journalists who were murdered, Paul’s audience was as much this country as it was Russia. He wrote books that shaped American perceptions of Russia’s new elite, in addition to his groundbreaking Russian-language investigative reporting.

At the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund, reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).

Paul was murdered to prevent you from knowing about any of this. His murder was intended to send a message: No one, not even an American citizen, is immune to the forces in Russia who believe that a free press impinges on their license to steal.

Paul’s murder was, in other words, an act of terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by this country.

By law, this country can prosecute the murderer of a U.S. citizen overseas when the U.S. attorney general certifies that the murder “was intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against a government or a civilian population.” That’s as neat a description of Paul’s slaying as I have ever found.

Ironically, the Russian authorities–for their own purposes–agree that it was an act of terrorism. They’ve maintained that Paul’s death was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, a Chechen separatist leader and organized crime boss who is already branded a terrorist and wanted by Moscow.

Nukhaev is an obvious suspect because he was the subject of a book that Paul wrote, Conversation With a Barbarian–a critical one, as its title suggests. But Nukhaev is just too convenient a suspect, in the view of many Americans and Russians familiar with the case. For one thing, he is, conveniently, missing.

Two Chechens were put on trial as the actual triggermen in Paul’s murder, and both were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, and a new trial is set for Feb. 15. However, there is no assurance that the defendants will actually bother to attend the trial. Both were freed after the acquittal, and one is believed to have left the country. That alone makes the chances of obtaining justice at a new trial questionable at best.

Russian authorities have maintained that the gunmen were tasked to their mission by Nukhaev. However, Chechen gunmen and killers have been known to perform “muscle” work outside of Chechnya.

The first task of any American investigation would be to clear up the question of Nukhaev’s culpability.

An American interagency group has been monitoring the Russian investigation, and that could be the nucleus for a formal U.S. investigation that would call on the resources of the intelligence community. But there must be a free and open exchange of information between agencies–and that, apparently, has not been happening on the crucial issue of Nukhaev.

Scott Armstrong, a veteran investigative journalist and founder of the National Security Archive, who has been following the Klebnikov case, has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources that significant intelligence on Nukhaev and on Chechen hoodlum gangs has not been shared with law enforcement.

The U.S. needs to resolve its interagency differences and use the full resources of the intelligence community to determine if indeed Nukhaev ordered Klebnikov killed. If he did, we should find him, arrest him and prosecute him. If not, we should find out who did–and put him behind bars if Russian authorities are unwilling to do so.

Obviously, this will cause (to put it mildly) complications in our relations with Russia, which has resented even the private pressure that has been applied in the Klebnikov case.

One might also argue that it sets a precedent whereby other nations may seek to prosecute Americans under their definition of terrorism. All that needs to be taken into consideration, as does the impact of our relations with Russia. But these factors are, I believe, outweighed by our own national interest in preserving the safety of American journalists and businessmen living and working in Russia.

The parallels between Klebnikov’s slaying and the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona journalist slain in 1976, are becoming increasingly apparent. Bolles was killed for probing the mobsters and land-fraud schemes that plagued the Southwest in the mid-1970s.

The Bolles murder resulted in the creation of the Arizona Project, a consortium of journalists that was created to continue Bolles’ work. Scott Armstrong and I, along with Richard Behar and others, are members of Project Klebnikov, which has similar aims in continuing Paul’s legacy. (This column, incidentally, speaks only for myself, not for the project.)

Thanks to dedicated and relentless police work, Bolles’ killers were eventually brought to justice. No such outcome is likely in Russia, because Russia today is more akin to the Arizona of the 1870s than the Arizona of the 1970s–replete with robber barons, overnight fortunes, corrupt sheriffs and gunslingers for hire.

That is a domestic affair within Russia, I guess–but not when terrorism against Americans is involved.

Our government has the tools it needs to speak back to the hoodlums who sent that message to America 30 months ago. Time to use them.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

On Russia’s Extermination of Journalism

Writing in Forbes, journalist Gary Weiss comments on Russia’s spate of journalist killings:

A delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists was in Moscow recently–a high-octane one, led by Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein. There were meetings with Russian officials and journalists, but this was not one of your standard feel-good cultural exchange projects.

The subject was–and is–murder. Thirteen journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000, in a brutal and systematic campaign to snuff out free speech and terrorize the former Soviet republics. One of the slain journalists was Paul Klebnikov, an American who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in July 2004.

Now I’m realistic, or perhaps a bit cynical. I don’t expect most people in this country to be too surprised or even upset about any of this. After all, this is Russia–the country that almost blew us to bits during the Cold War, and where American citizens live and work in an atmosphere of fear, violence and intimidation.

Still, you should care a great deal–you should be screaming and hollering, in fact–about the slaying of Paul Klebnikov, a brilliant investigative journalist who was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. This brazen murder, which has never been solved, was a crime against America as much as it was against Paul, his family and his information-hungry Russian readers.

The time has arrived for our government to initiate an investigation, with the aim of apprehending and prosecuting Paul’s murderers wherever they may be.

That could open up a hornet’s nest of international complications, which is why a formal U.S. investigation has not been launched. But failure to act would play into the hands of the terrorists who carried out this murder. Let’s review for a moment why Paul was killed, and why it requires a strong U.S. response that–for understandable reasons–has not yet been forthcoming.

Unlike the other brave Russian journalists who were murdered, Paul’s audience was as much this country as it was Russia. He wrote books that shaped American perceptions of Russia’s new elite, in addition to his groundbreaking Russian-language investigative reporting.

At the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund, reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).

Paul was murdered to prevent you from knowing about any of this. His murder was intended to send a message: No one, not even an American citizen, is immune to the forces in Russia who believe that a free press impinges on their license to steal.

Paul’s murder was, in other words, an act of terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by this country.

By law, this country can prosecute the murderer of a U.S. citizen overseas when the U.S. attorney general certifies that the murder “was intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against a government or a civilian population.” That’s as neat a description of Paul’s slaying as I have ever found.

Ironically, the Russian authorities–for their own purposes–agree that it was an act of terrorism. They’ve maintained that Paul’s death was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, a Chechen separatist leader and organized crime boss who is already branded a terrorist and wanted by Moscow.

Nukhaev is an obvious suspect because he was the subject of a book that Paul wrote, Conversation With a Barbarian–a critical one, as its title suggests. But Nukhaev is just too convenient a suspect, in the view of many Americans and Russians familiar with the case. For one thing, he is, conveniently, missing.

Two Chechens were put on trial as the actual triggermen in Paul’s murder, and both were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, and a new trial is set for Feb. 15. However, there is no assurance that the defendants will actually bother to attend the trial. Both were freed after the acquittal, and one is believed to have left the country. That alone makes the chances of obtaining justice at a new trial questionable at best.

Russian authorities have maintained that the gunmen were tasked to their mission by Nukhaev. However, Chechen gunmen and killers have been known to perform “muscle” work outside of Chechnya.

The first task of any American investigation would be to clear up the question of Nukhaev’s culpability.

An American interagency group has been monitoring the Russian investigation, and that could be the nucleus for a formal U.S. investigation that would call on the resources of the intelligence community. But there must be a free and open exchange of information between agencies–and that, apparently, has not been happening on the crucial issue of Nukhaev.

Scott Armstrong, a veteran investigative journalist and founder of the National Security Archive, who has been following the Klebnikov case, has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources that significant intelligence on Nukhaev and on Chechen hoodlum gangs has not been shared with law enforcement.

The U.S. needs to resolve its interagency differences and use the full resources of the intelligence community to determine if indeed Nukhaev ordered Klebnikov killed. If he did, we should find him, arrest him and prosecute him. If not, we should find out who did–and put him behind bars if Russian authorities are unwilling to do so.

Obviously, this will cause (to put it mildly) complications in our relations with Russia, which has resented even the private pressure that has been applied in the Klebnikov case.

One might also argue that it sets a precedent whereby other nations may seek to prosecute Americans under their definition of terrorism. All that needs to be taken into consideration, as does the impact of our relations with Russia. But these factors are, I believe, outweighed by our own national interest in preserving the safety of American journalists and businessmen living and working in Russia.

The parallels between Klebnikov’s slaying and the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona journalist slain in 1976, are becoming increasingly apparent. Bolles was killed for probing the mobsters and land-fraud schemes that plagued the Southwest in the mid-1970s.

The Bolles murder resulted in the creation of the Arizona Project, a consortium of journalists that was created to continue Bolles’ work. Scott Armstrong and I, along with Richard Behar and others, are members of Project Klebnikov, which has similar aims in continuing Paul’s legacy. (This column, incidentally, speaks only for myself, not for the project.)

Thanks to dedicated and relentless police work, Bolles’ killers were eventually brought to justice. No such outcome is likely in Russia, because Russia today is more akin to the Arizona of the 1870s than the Arizona of the 1970s–replete with robber barons, overnight fortunes, corrupt sheriffs and gunslingers for hire.

That is a domestic affair within Russia, I guess–but not when terrorism against Americans is involved.

Our government has the tools it needs to speak back to the hoodlums who sent that message to America 30 months ago. Time to use them.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

On Russia’s Extermination of Journalism

Writing in Forbes, journalist Gary Weiss comments on Russia’s spate of journalist killings:

A delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists was in Moscow recently–a high-octane one, led by Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein. There were meetings with Russian officials and journalists, but this was not one of your standard feel-good cultural exchange projects.

The subject was–and is–murder. Thirteen journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000, in a brutal and systematic campaign to snuff out free speech and terrorize the former Soviet republics. One of the slain journalists was Paul Klebnikov, an American who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in July 2004.

Now I’m realistic, or perhaps a bit cynical. I don’t expect most people in this country to be too surprised or even upset about any of this. After all, this is Russia–the country that almost blew us to bits during the Cold War, and where American citizens live and work in an atmosphere of fear, violence and intimidation.

Still, you should care a great deal–you should be screaming and hollering, in fact–about the slaying of Paul Klebnikov, a brilliant investigative journalist who was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. This brazen murder, which has never been solved, was a crime against America as much as it was against Paul, his family and his information-hungry Russian readers.

The time has arrived for our government to initiate an investigation, with the aim of apprehending and prosecuting Paul’s murderers wherever they may be.

That could open up a hornet’s nest of international complications, which is why a formal U.S. investigation has not been launched. But failure to act would play into the hands of the terrorists who carried out this murder. Let’s review for a moment why Paul was killed, and why it requires a strong U.S. response that–for understandable reasons–has not yet been forthcoming.

Unlike the other brave Russian journalists who were murdered, Paul’s audience was as much this country as it was Russia. He wrote books that shaped American perceptions of Russia’s new elite, in addition to his groundbreaking Russian-language investigative reporting.

At the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund, reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).

Paul was murdered to prevent you from knowing about any of this. His murder was intended to send a message: No one, not even an American citizen, is immune to the forces in Russia who believe that a free press impinges on their license to steal.

Paul’s murder was, in other words, an act of terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by this country.

By law, this country can prosecute the murderer of a U.S. citizen overseas when the U.S. attorney general certifies that the murder “was intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against a government or a civilian population.” That’s as neat a description of Paul’s slaying as I have ever found.

Ironically, the Russian authorities–for their own purposes–agree that it was an act of terrorism. They’ve maintained that Paul’s death was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, a Chechen separatist leader and organized crime boss who is already branded a terrorist and wanted by Moscow.

Nukhaev is an obvious suspect because he was the subject of a book that Paul wrote, Conversation With a Barbarian–a critical one, as its title suggests. But Nukhaev is just too convenient a suspect, in the view of many Americans and Russians familiar with the case. For one thing, he is, conveniently, missing.

Two Chechens were put on trial as the actual triggermen in Paul’s murder, and both were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, and a new trial is set for Feb. 15. However, there is no assurance that the defendants will actually bother to attend the trial. Both were freed after the acquittal, and one is believed to have left the country. That alone makes the chances of obtaining justice at a new trial questionable at best.

Russian authorities have maintained that the gunmen were tasked to their mission by Nukhaev. However, Chechen gunmen and killers have been known to perform “muscle” work outside of Chechnya.

The first task of any American investigation would be to clear up the question of Nukhaev’s culpability.

An American interagency group has been monitoring the Russian investigation, and that could be the nucleus for a formal U.S. investigation that would call on the resources of the intelligence community. But there must be a free and open exchange of information between agencies–and that, apparently, has not been happening on the crucial issue of Nukhaev.

Scott Armstrong, a veteran investigative journalist and founder of the National Security Archive, who has been following the Klebnikov case, has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources that significant intelligence on Nukhaev and on Chechen hoodlum gangs has not been shared with law enforcement.

The U.S. needs to resolve its interagency differences and use the full resources of the intelligence community to determine if indeed Nukhaev ordered Klebnikov killed. If he did, we should find him, arrest him and prosecute him. If not, we should find out who did–and put him behind bars if Russian authorities are unwilling to do so.

Obviously, this will cause (to put it mildly) complications in our relations with Russia, which has resented even the private pressure that has been applied in the Klebnikov case.

One might also argue that it sets a precedent whereby other nations may seek to prosecute Americans under their definition of terrorism. All that needs to be taken into consideration, as does the impact of our relations with Russia. But these factors are, I believe, outweighed by our own national interest in preserving the safety of American journalists and businessmen living and working in Russia.

The parallels between Klebnikov’s slaying and the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona journalist slain in 1976, are becoming increasingly apparent. Bolles was killed for probing the mobsters and land-fraud schemes that plagued the Southwest in the mid-1970s.

The Bolles murder resulted in the creation of the Arizona Project, a consortium of journalists that was created to continue Bolles’ work. Scott Armstrong and I, along with Richard Behar and others, are members of Project Klebnikov, which has similar aims in continuing Paul’s legacy. (This column, incidentally, speaks only for myself, not for the project.)

Thanks to dedicated and relentless police work, Bolles’ killers were eventually brought to justice. No such outcome is likely in Russia, because Russia today is more akin to the Arizona of the 1870s than the Arizona of the 1970s–replete with robber barons, overnight fortunes, corrupt sheriffs and gunslingers for hire.

That is a domestic affair within Russia, I guess–but not when terrorism against Americans is involved.

Our government has the tools it needs to speak back to the hoodlums who sent that message to America 30 months ago. Time to use them.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

On Russia’s Extermination of Journalism

Writing in Forbes, journalist Gary Weiss comments on Russia’s spate of journalist killings:

A delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists was in Moscow recently–a high-octane one, led by Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger and former Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstein. There were meetings with Russian officials and journalists, but this was not one of your standard feel-good cultural exchange projects.

The subject was–and is–murder. Thirteen journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000, in a brutal and systematic campaign to snuff out free speech and terrorize the former Soviet republics. One of the slain journalists was Paul Klebnikov, an American who was gunned down on the streets of Moscow in July 2004.

Now I’m realistic, or perhaps a bit cynical. I don’t expect most people in this country to be too surprised or even upset about any of this. After all, this is Russia–the country that almost blew us to bits during the Cold War, and where American citizens live and work in an atmosphere of fear, violence and intimidation.

Still, you should care a great deal–you should be screaming and hollering, in fact–about the slaying of Paul Klebnikov, a brilliant investigative journalist who was editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. This brazen murder, which has never been solved, was a crime against America as much as it was against Paul, his family and his information-hungry Russian readers.

The time has arrived for our government to initiate an investigation, with the aim of apprehending and prosecuting Paul’s murderers wherever they may be.

That could open up a hornet’s nest of international complications, which is why a formal U.S. investigation has not been launched. But failure to act would play into the hands of the terrorists who carried out this murder. Let’s review for a moment why Paul was killed, and why it requires a strong U.S. response that–for understandable reasons–has not yet been forthcoming.

Unlike the other brave Russian journalists who were murdered, Paul’s audience was as much this country as it was Russia. He wrote books that shaped American perceptions of Russia’s new elite, in addition to his groundbreaking Russian-language investigative reporting.

At the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund, reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).

Paul was murdered to prevent you from knowing about any of this. His murder was intended to send a message: No one, not even an American citizen, is immune to the forces in Russia who believe that a free press impinges on their license to steal.

Paul’s murder was, in other words, an act of terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such by this country.

By law, this country can prosecute the murderer of a U.S. citizen overseas when the U.S. attorney general certifies that the murder “was intended to coerce, intimidate or retaliate against a government or a civilian population.” That’s as neat a description of Paul’s slaying as I have ever found.

Ironically, the Russian authorities–for their own purposes–agree that it was an act of terrorism. They’ve maintained that Paul’s death was ordered by Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, a Chechen separatist leader and organized crime boss who is already branded a terrorist and wanted by Moscow.

Nukhaev is an obvious suspect because he was the subject of a book that Paul wrote, Conversation With a Barbarian–a critical one, as its title suggests. But Nukhaev is just too convenient a suspect, in the view of many Americans and Russians familiar with the case. For one thing, he is, conveniently, missing.

Two Chechens were put on trial as the actual triggermen in Paul’s murder, and both were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, and a new trial is set for Feb. 15. However, there is no assurance that the defendants will actually bother to attend the trial. Both were freed after the acquittal, and one is believed to have left the country. That alone makes the chances of obtaining justice at a new trial questionable at best.

Russian authorities have maintained that the gunmen were tasked to their mission by Nukhaev. However, Chechen gunmen and killers have been known to perform “muscle” work outside of Chechnya.

The first task of any American investigation would be to clear up the question of Nukhaev’s culpability.

An American interagency group has been monitoring the Russian investigation, and that could be the nucleus for a formal U.S. investigation that would call on the resources of the intelligence community. But there must be a free and open exchange of information between agencies–and that, apparently, has not been happening on the crucial issue of Nukhaev.

Scott Armstrong, a veteran investigative journalist and founder of the National Security Archive, who has been following the Klebnikov case, has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources that significant intelligence on Nukhaev and on Chechen hoodlum gangs has not been shared with law enforcement.

The U.S. needs to resolve its interagency differences and use the full resources of the intelligence community to determine if indeed Nukhaev ordered Klebnikov killed. If he did, we should find him, arrest him and prosecute him. If not, we should find out who did–and put him behind bars if Russian authorities are unwilling to do so.

Obviously, this will cause (to put it mildly) complications in our relations with Russia, which has resented even the private pressure that has been applied in the Klebnikov case.

One might also argue that it sets a precedent whereby other nations may seek to prosecute Americans under their definition of terrorism. All that needs to be taken into consideration, as does the impact of our relations with Russia. But these factors are, I believe, outweighed by our own national interest in preserving the safety of American journalists and businessmen living and working in Russia.

The parallels between Klebnikov’s slaying and the murder of Don Bolles, an Arizona journalist slain in 1976, are becoming increasingly apparent. Bolles was killed for probing the mobsters and land-fraud schemes that plagued the Southwest in the mid-1970s.

The Bolles murder resulted in the creation of the Arizona Project, a consortium of journalists that was created to continue Bolles’ work. Scott Armstrong and I, along with Richard Behar and others, are members of Project Klebnikov, which has similar aims in continuing Paul’s legacy. (This column, incidentally, speaks only for myself, not for the project.)

Thanks to dedicated and relentless police work, Bolles’ killers were eventually brought to justice. No such outcome is likely in Russia, because Russia today is more akin to the Arizona of the 1870s than the Arizona of the 1970s–replete with robber barons, overnight fortunes, corrupt sheriffs and gunslingers for hire.

That is a domestic affair within Russia, I guess–but not when terrorism against Americans is involved.

Our government has the tools it needs to speak back to the hoodlums who sent that message to America 30 months ago. Time to use them.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

eXile update: Mark Ames, Spineless Sellout

La Russophobe continues to be quite impressed with the ability of her new chatbox to generate content for the blog, which it has already done twice in its short period of existence. It seems it was quite a good idea to bring non-blogger members into the loop!

First, a reader clued us in on photographs of Vladimir Putin’s version of Air Force One, and then a reader alerted us to the fact that Mark Ames, publisher of the eXile, is an employee of the Kremlin. No wonder he and the eXile hate us so much! Here’s a post from March 2006 on the Big Soccer blog:

I freaking can’t believe it… The new Russian government produced English language channel, Russia Today, is now running their streaming video feed…for those of you interested (works best with Real Player) paste this into your media player of choice:

http://www.webtelek.com/media/russiatoday.asx

Pretty professionally done, happened to watch “Vremya” & “Segodya” this evening , interesting how the news lineup in order of importance/emphasis was quite different. Anyway, the channel is mainly news, but they do run a documentary or two in between newscasts…so I’m watching tonight, they’re running some documentary about the Siberian oil town of Khatimansisk, and who would you guess who is narrating the documentary??!! I about fell over….

None other than Mr. Counter-Culture & Whore-sampler par excellence, taking a break from his job as chief muckety-muck as editor of the eXile, Mr. Mark Ames. That’s right, he’s working for the Russian government!!! What a total sell-out! BTW, the web address for the new channel :http://www.rttv.ru

Apparently, Ames laid the groundwork for his approach to Russia Today state-owned TV with a post in July 2005 accusing American media of being similarly controlled by the state. Sturmovik! blog has also commented, saying: “The funniest & most ironic exable of this is RT employing Mark Ames, the Hunter S. Thompson wanna-be and chief editor of the notorious Moscow counter-culture ex-pat publication “The eXile” as their tour guide through the hinterlands of Russia; not surprisingly, the eXile makes no mention of this apparent 180 degree turn by Mr. Ames, who has make a career of castigating just about everything establishment.” Sturmovik agrees that, as La Russophobe has previously reported, it appears the Kremlin has got its hooks deep into David-Johnson-affiliated Russia Profile as well.

By the way, if you Google Mark Ames you will find that LR’s post about him back in September, which the eXile chose not to mention in its recent article about LR, is in the top 20 hits. So, that’s probably another reason why he and his rag are a bit irked with us.

Here’s what dear Mark had to say about America to a Russian reporter from the ROL website in March 2002, a few months after the Twin Towers fell:

ROL: Why are Americans so fat? Is it a question of diet or lack of exercise?

AMES: That’s actually a serious question. The answer is to be found in their brains. A wave of advertising washes over them, saying: You will eat this! You will eat that! We have the very best hamburgers and hotdogs in the world — completely full of sh*t. The people have sold themselves, and then when they see in movies the images of people with slender figures and look at themselves in the mirror, they are plagued by self doubt, feeling they are deformed, and to forget this doubt they AGAIN BEGIN TO GORGE THEMSELVES. Americans are also terrified of serial killers and maniacs, and the result is that nobody talks to anybody at work, and they even eat all alone. And it’s so dull for them that they just keep stuffing themselves like pigs. It’s simply amazing, I find, how much garbage can be stuffed inside one American at a single sitting.

Mark was apparently not aware that Americans live far longer, healthier lives than Russians, who are governed of their own choice by a proud KGB spy and whose diets, bereft of vegetables, consist largely of fried fat and vodka (hence short life span). He was also apparently not aware that just because nobody liked HIM at work in America, and so ignored him, that’s not necessarily the case for everybody. Poor dear. He must have been so lonely!

So to sum up: It’s just fine for Mark and the eXile to hate America, the world’ s most successful country, as much as they like. But it’s a high crime for LR to hate Russia, the world’s least successful country, and she must be condemned for it. It’s just fine for Mark and the eXile to publish anonymously written and sourced stories about LR, but it’s highly suspicious if LR is anonymous. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with purporting to criticize the establishment while being employed by it, and nothing at all suspicious about attacking the enemies of your employer.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !