An editorial in the Moscow Times:
“I felt terrorized!” the young woman told a Moscow Times journalist.
The young woman had not been at Domodedovo Airport, but instead was driving home when a Volvo owned by the Federal Guard Service — with its familiar EKX number plates, which drivers know as an acronym for “Drive Anyway I Want”— and a presidential administration Mercedes entered the oncoming lane and forced her and all the other drivers into the shoulder.
Were the government vehicles speeding to an urgent meeting to resolve a national crisis? Doubtful, since it was a recent Friday evening rush hour and they were heading away from Moscow’s center, toward the elite’s residential area.
Other drivers aren’t so lucky.
Alyona Yarosh, the 23-year-old architecture student lying in the hospital in serious condition after colliding with a Kremlin bureaucrat’s car with a flashing blue light last month, might have just as well been at Domodedovo collecting her luggage. The government is complicit in the carnage in both cases.
A cause of terrorism in Russia is not unlike one of the reasons for traffic jams: the arrogance of the state.
The federal government itself is indirectly supporting terrorism by giving officials the right to run common citizens off the road, and by allowing them to steal from the budget left, right and center, thus reducing essential services to the people and leaving them fundamentally impoverished.
As Gandhi pointed out, poverty and the resentment it breeds are nourishment for political violence.
The flaw of an oligarchy is that those in power don’t feel the pain of the masses.
As long as the powerful have their blue lights, traffic problems will not go away.
As long as volatile areas with undereducated and underemployed youth are ignored or addressed only on a piece of paper on a Moscow-based bureaucrat’s desk, terrorist ranks will swell.
The recent appointment of respected banker Anton Pak to run the newly established Corporation for the Development of the North Caucasus gives us hope that the state might be beginning to understand.
By efficiently attracting investors and funds for projects in agriculture, infrastructure and construction — and the hope that health care and education will be added to the portfolio — there might be a chance to stem the tide of rising fundamentalism by providing jobs and showing the locals the state is serious about caring for its citizens.
Tangible results of these efforts are needed soon.
The previous attempt to “develop” the North Caucasus by promoting ski resorts is at best an absurdity and at worst another blatant effort to siphon off funds. The resorts, hawked last week to foreign investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, are to be built in an area that many embassies have classified as a “no-travel” zone.
For now, the terror continues on the roads and in the airports.
As long as the masses alone suffer and fundamental issues are not earnestly addressed, the terrorists will grow stronger.
And this is true not only for Russia.
In the meantime, we’ll be hurrying through the airport terminal, extra wary of the elite on the highways, and hoping for significant, life-changing progress in projects to develop the North Caucasus.
La Russophobe 
I was always led to believe, by the teachings of the soviet communist powers that be, to “do as I say and not as I do,” as every one was equal?? under J Stalin’s enforced paradise rules, and now carried forward and further enhanced under soon to be president for life – V. V. Putin and his evil henchman’s regime.
Now may I ask? if all the comrades in present day Russia are equal! why are the so called elite (i.e. the “blue capped” KGB, etc. nomenklatura) more equal than the rest of the soviet peasants?
“Now may I ask?”
Wouldn’t you better go and implement your democratic principles in the kingdoms and principalities around the Gulf? Don’t you care about their democratically elected kings, princes and sheikhs?
Why Russia and Putin again? You do really sound a bit unbalanced.
P.S.
By the way they still host a couple of thousands CIA guided “rebels” and “freedom fighters” from the North Caucasus in their parts.
LOL, CIA guided rebels, really RTS you are a mental pygmy, and probably autistic as well.
RTS
When, oh when, will your retarded brain, you classic soviet communist indoctrinated jerk, finally realize that; “LaRussophobe, is a blogg about Russia” dear RTS!
So? what has your ridiculous comment “your democratic principles in the kingdoms and principalities around the Gulf? Don’t you care about their democratically elected kings, princes and sheikhs?” got to do with the subject matter in question?
And, “Why Russia and Putin again?” I’ll tell you why? because this blogg is about Russia and Putin, too.
You do really sound totally unbalanced, comrade.
| February 5, 2011 at 7:54 pm | Reply
“LOL, CIA guided rebels, really RTS you are a mental pygmy, and probably autistic as well”
——————————
Zelimhan Yandarbiev must know better. If you see him Andrew, say Hello from a mental pygmy – rts! :-)
Next time you’ll have a good chance to meet him and that bunch of “rebels and CIA freedom fighters” along with their “presidents” Dudaev and Maskhadov face to face in Tskhinval.
All the saints go marching in?
Why not call this anti colonial resistance? I really don’t understand. Aren’t these terrorists doing what they’re doing because they want freedom from Russian occupants?
Kate’
You are 100% spot on, in your comments, Russia is the only true Empire that still brutally suppresses and denies independence and free speech to its forcefully subdued and annexed colonies.
One only has to look at the Chinese territory that Russia annexed by force from them, and which to this day is a bone of contention between them. I hate to think of the consequences once China becomes powerful enough to realize they are more than a match for the soviet powers to be and retake this territory by force. I also bet that they will, like they ejected all the Belorussians from their territory, will also eject all the Russians – as they too are “occupants” on their, i.e. Chinese, home ground.
Kate | February 6, 2011 at 8:38 am | Reply
“Why not call this anti colonial resistance? I really don’t understand. Aren’t these terrorists doing what they’re doing because they want freedom from Russian occupants?”
————————————-
So do I.
“Ichkeria is an indepedent state the very moment Texas and California are parts of Mexico again.” — V.Putin
Was that a joke or was the dictator serious on that, I don’t know.
Los que iniciaron la guerra,
Preparense pa’ perder,
El país de esos cobardes
Puede desaparecer.
Viva Mexico!!!
Viva Azatlan!!!
LOL, well if Texans want to become part of Mexico, they can do so.
But unfortunately for retards like you, the Mexicans want to become US citizens, not the other way around.
Better to stop listening to your child molesting mass murdering president/PM Putin RTS.
He and his beloved Paramount Leader probably don’t even know that Texas had been an independent country for some years, not a part of Mexico, when it joined the United States. I guess the authors of approved textbooks are not aware of this little fact. I wonder if they teach in Russia that the imperialists ripped Texas from Mexico as a part of the evil plan of American world domination. And as we all know, once imperialists get involved, can Zionists be far behind?
Rts,
So, Texas and California compare fully with Chechnya as examples of the current population’s expectations and wishes to abolish colonial conquests of the past? If so, then why not to give us a little bit more detailed information about the popular movements in Texas/California/Mexico fighting NOW for the cause of Texas and California being a part of Mexico again? Who are they and are they many? After that please continue, for example, by naming even one real person or a “freedom fighter” having REALLY been ready to FIGHT for Texas and California being reincorporated with Mexico during the LAST FIFTEEN YEARS. So that we can compare that on our knowledge of the numbers of Chechens having been involved in the national independence movement and many of them even up to the extent of having been ready to DIE by taking up arms against the Russian occupants during the SAME LAST FIFTEEN YEARS…
For, in order for a political idea to be relevant “in our time” the first prerequisite is the existence of a large enough group of people working actively for this idea to be realised, not only some sporadic words every now and then.
RV:
“I wonder if they teach in Russia that the imperialists ripped Texas from Mexico as a part of the evil plan of American world domination. And as we all know, once imperialists get involved, can Zionists be far behind?”
—————————————-
I wonder if you teach in English the ABC of the foreign policy of your own country…
Monroe Doctrine – (1823)+ Roosevelt Corollary – (1904)
Start a search dr.RV
“The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere, and that is why we oppose what is happening in Cuba today. That is why we have cut off our trade. That is why we worked in the OAS and in other ways to isolate the Communist menace in Cuba. That is why we will continue to give a good deal of our effort and attention to it ” — U.S. President John F.Kennedy said at an August 29, 1962
P.S.
Santa Ana will come back! It’s a matter of a couple of decades.
Demographic shift is obvious all across the state. Anglos are doomed.
LOL, except most of those who move into Texas from Mexico want to be Americans, and want their kids to be Americans
As opposed to the majority of people in the north Caucasus who want the cancer known as Russians excised.
Really RTS, you are a malignant tumor in need of radiotherapy.
Dixi:
“For, in order for a political idea to be relevant “in our time” the first prerequisite is the existence of a large enough group of people working actively for this idea to be realised, not only some sporadic words every now and then.”
—————————-
AZTLAN – google the word, please. Anlos are doomed. No doubt about it.
LOL, but at least we will see the Russians collapse first RTS.
Well, I did google the word AZTLAN and I recommend all the others reading this blog to do the same. Then, after having done that, please, look at this http://www.kentlaw.edu/perritt/courses/seminar/2005-spring-papers/chris-s-Map%207-Grozny%20After.jpg. For that is what it took for Russia (and not only once but twice!) to try to destroy the Chechen independence movement… and still failing in achieving that. Now RTS, if there exists a correspondent popular movement for the reincorporation of Texas and California with Mexico, please tell me what kinds of “counter-measures” the U.S. Government and military forces have been forced to take in order to prevent the Aztlan movement (or whatever it might be) from achieving its political goals? For, surely, if there DO exist any political movement in California/Texas/Mexico carrying even nearby such political weight than that for the independent Chechnya the burden of evidence of U.S. countermeasures or actions coming even a little bit close to those taken by the Russian Government/army and shown in the picture above lies entirely with you RTS…
Andrew | February 9, 2011 at 5:31 am | Reply
“LOL, but at least we will see the Russians collapse first RTS.”
—————————–
Presently we are witnessing the disintegration of Georgia, not Russia. LOL!!! Come back to reality, Andrew. Don’t invent things.
RTS, are you (like Ab) too retarded to use the reply button?
And you don’t think Russia is disintegrating faster?
Russian policies are leading directly to the inevitable collapse of the fascistic Russian empire.
Russia has three “models of development,” Ryzhkov suggests, two of which will prove fatal. The first is a Reich, or “the construction of an ethnic Russian multi-national state, a ‘Russia for the Russians.’ This would mean collapse in the course of the country in the course of the [next] five or six years.”
The second scenario is the Byzantine one, and this, Ryzhkov says, is what is “takin place in Russia now,” something he describes as “the latest attempt to build an imperial state with a strong center in Moscow which will govern the borderlands including the national ones with the help either of local cadres or appointed governors.”
This path too is “dangerous: the extraordinary bureaucratization and centralization of administration will step by step create the basis for separatism because the powers assigned by Moscow will ever less be positively viewed by the local population” and “dissatisfaction [with them] will automatically mean dissatisfaction with Moscow.”
“This crude bureaucratic imperial path has already led to the country to collapse twice, in 1917 and 1991,” Ryzhkov argues. And it can do so again.
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2011/02/window-on-eurasia-number-of-states-may.html
And as Mr Zlobin rightly points out, there is a very high chance of the total collapse of Russian imperialism due to the retarded policies of the government, and the racism of vermin such as yourself RTS
First, the USSR can not be considered a good example of solving the national question. I will not remember the forced displacement of peoples, the fifth item on the passport or voluntarist merging and separation of ethnic entities. Enough to remember that the Soviet Union collapsed it on national boundaries, and everything post-Soviet conflicts are national or ethnic character. In the USSR, of course, there were fewer street nationalism than it is now, since the system of control over the population, it was fundamentally totalitarian. But it was a country where national interests were completely subordinated to political goals, not vice versa. That is, were subordinate. As a result, the Soviet people to voluntarily and promptly disintegrated into nation-states.
Second, the pre-revolutionary Russia also has not been a successful model of ethnic relations. This was one of the reasons for its collapse. By the way, and it broke on national boundaries, some of which then stick together during the bloody civil war and repression.
Third, you can not completely deny the Soviet Union in the presence of the positive experience of the national strategy. I would single out the Soviet linguistic, cultural, educational and scientific-technical policy, which, for all ideologizirovannosti and obvious limitations has considerable amount of rationality and common sense. I am convinced that this was one of the major reasons that the Soviet Union disintegrated relatively peacefully – without a large-scale civil war, transforming into a war between the newly formed sovereign states.
Fourth, Russia still maintains the national administrative structure of the RSFSR, which not only meets the current stage of its development, but is, in my opinion, the basis of its possible future collapse, as happened with Tsarist Russia and the USSR.
Fifth, to solve the national question requires a complete rejection of an internal national division in Russia. Today it’s impossible. Needed, however gradual, but consistent economic, political and psychological work in this direction. On the need to abandon the national structure of the country at different times said by many, including Yuri Andropov, Alexander Voloshin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The problem is that any politician who today speak about it publicly at risk to put an end to his political career.
Sixth, any proposals to tighten internal migration legislation, not only are anti-market and antimodernizatsionny character, but, as the experience of the USSR, as well as several other countries, ultimately ineffective and even harmful, as potentially lead to fanning national controversy. Need a different tool of management of national attitudes and their negative manifestations.
Seventh, without abandoning the domestic national-administrative division of Russia has every chance of decay in the next quarter-century, when a new generation of Russians will be the basis of its demography. This decay will take place again on the Limits of national entities. It will be incremental and initially expressed in an increasing reduction of the control of the federal center for ethnic territories, changing the national structure of the army, police and composition of the key economic centers, as well as in the growth of nationalist movements and sentiments.
Eighth, the illiterate and ill-conceived strategy of restructuring the internal structure of Russia to abandon the national administrative structure will also lead to the disintegration of a single state or even a large-scale civil war. This strategy should be part of a gradual but systematic restructuring of the territorial structure of the state based on a balance of economic interests, political equality, parity of the national total of the rule of law and confidence in the institutions of government that is very unlikely in the foreseeable future.
http://www.snob.ru/selected/entry/29528
Behind the Bluster, Russia Is Collapsing
Something even larger is blocking Russia’s march. Recent decades, most notably since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, have seen an appalling deterioration in the health of the Russian population, anchoring Russia not in the forefront of developed countries but among the most backward of nations.
This is a tragedy of huge proportions — but not a particularly surprising one, at least to me. I followed population, health and environmental issues in the Soviet Union for decades, and more recently, I have reported on diseases such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging the Russian population. I’ve visited Russia more than 50 times over the years, so I can say from firsthand experience that this national calamity isn’t happening suddenly. It’s happening inexorably.
According to U.N. figures, the average life expectancy for a Russian man is 59 years — putting the country at about 166th place in the world longevity sweepstakes, one notch above Gambia. For women, the picture is somewhat rosier: They can expect to live, on average, 73 years, barely beating out the Moldovans. But there are still some 126 countries where they could expect to live longer. And the gap between expected longevity for men and for women — 14 years — is the largest in the developed world.
So what’s killing the Russians? All the usual suspects — HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, suicides, smoking, traffic accidents — but they occur in alarmingly large numbers, and Moscow has neither the resources nor the will to stem the tide. Consider this:
Three times as many Russians die from heart-related illnesses as do Americans or Europeans, per each 100,000 people.
Tuberculosis deaths in Russia are about triple the World Health Organization’s definition of an epidemic, which is based on a new-case rate of 50 cases per 100,000 people.
Average alcohol consumption per capita is double the rate the WHO considers dangerous to one’s health.
About 1 million people in Russia have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, according to WHO estimates.
Using mid-year figures, it’s estimated that 25 percent more new HIV/AIDS cases will be recorded this year than were logged in 2007.
And none of this is likely to get better any time soon. Peter Piot, the head of UNAIDS, the U.N. agency created in response to the epidemic, told a press conference this summer that he is “very pessimistic about what is going on in Russia and Eastern Europe . . . where there is the least progress.” This should be all the more worrisome because young people are most at risk in Russia. In the United States and Western Europe, 70 percent of those with HIV/AIDS are men over age 30; in Russia, 80 percent of this group are aged 15 to 29. And although injected-drug users represent about 65 percent of Russia’s cases, the country has officially rejected methadone as a treatment, even though it would likely reduce the potential for HIV infections that lead to AIDS.
And then there’s tuberculosis — remember tuberculosis? In the United States, with a population of 303 million, 650 people died of the disease in 2007. In Russia, which has a total of 142 million people, an astonishing 24,000 of them died of tuberculosis in 2007. Can it possibly be coincidental that, according to Gennady Onishchenko, the country’s chief public health physician, only 9 percent of Russian TB hospitals meet current hygienic standards, 21 percent lack either hot or cold running water, 11 percent lack a sewer system, and 20 percent have a shortage of TB drugs? Hardly.
On the other end of the lifeline, the news isn’t much better. Russia’s birth rate has been declining for more than a decade, and even a recent increase in births will be limited by the fact that the number of women age 20 to 29 (those responsible for two-thirds of all babies) will drop markedly in the next four or five years to mirror the 50 percent drop in the birth rate in the late 1980s and the 1990s. And, sadly, the health of Russia’s newborns is quite poor, with about 70 percent of them experiencing complications at birth.
Last summer, Piot of UNAIDS said that bringing Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic under control was “a matter of political leadership and of changing the policy.” He might just as well have been talking about the much larger public health crisis that threatens this vast country. But the policies seem unlikely to change as the bear lumbers along, driven by disastrously misplaced priorities and the blindingly unrealistic expectations of a resentment-driven political leadership. Moscow remains bent on ignoring the devastating truth: The nation is not just sick but dying.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301976.html