Who are thou, Mr. White?

A Russian tabloid newspaper “Tvoi Den’” today claims Michael Lee White, whose passport the Russian military found near a Georgian town Zemo-Nikozi, is a US spy hiding in China.

They first reported a story several days ago, citing White’s US army experience as indesputable proof he is a spy and using this evidence to blame U.S. for meddling in the conflict. Russian military spokesman Anatoly Nogovitsyn, who’s been showing Georgian trophy maps for weeks, argued Georgia has started the war with the help of its Western allies. On August 28, Nogovitsyn said White’s presence among Georgia’s special forces was a “fact”.

Prime Minister Putin has also alluded to the fact that “citizens of foreign states” have fought on the ground alongside Georgian forces. Using toughest language to date, Putin lashed out and blamed the United States for using the Russian-Georgian standoff to bolster the popularity ratings of “one of the US presidential candidates”.

Earlier this week the WSJ interviewed Michael White in his dormitory in China where he is teaching English. White confirms he lost the passport in 2005, says he first heard about the conflict last weekend, and appears not to know what the Georgian flag looks like.  

CNN Interviews Itself

This is not a plea for Russia’s case. All sides have made plenty of mistakes. This is a plea for better, more even coverage of this ongoing standoff. Unfortunately, most of the Western coverage has been sloppily, dangerously lopsided in Georgia’s favor.

On Friday, CNN interviewed Fareed Zakaria, the host of “Fareed Zakaria: GPS” on his opinions on Russia.

“Zakaria: [Russia's] recognition of the two provinces is a joke. Almost no country in the world has followed them in this recognition.”

It is true that most Western states have dismissed Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence. The post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States has proved to be disjointed and embarrassingly passive in its reaction.

But how can anyone condemn or dismiss these claims to independence after supporting and embracing Kosovo’s? How it can be dismissed as a “joke”, when Georgia has lost all control of the two regions in recent years? South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s economies have functioned independently from Georgia for years and both republics have appealed to the United Nations, Russia, CIS and EU states as recently as March 2008 to recognize their independence?

Some of the people in these regions are aware of the large-scale geopolitical games and violations of international law committed in their name.  Most just yearn for an end to years of uncertainty and violence. The continuous buildup of military force on both Georgian and Russian sides over the last several months caused the latest flare-up.

“Zakaria: So they might be willing to reverse themselves on this issue. But I can’t see them getting out completely.”

CNN: So Russia wins? [CNN apparently thinks a centuries-old geopolitical conflict is a zero-sum game. Typically, the CNN president recently revealed the network has approached this year’s presidential campaign as a “very long baseball season”.]

Zakaria: Well, even if it wins in the narrow sense, it will lose in a broader sense. Russia’s actions have scared all their neighbors, aroused anti-Russian nationalism, driven the Poles, the Ukrainians and so many other countries closer to the West and away from Moscow.

Countries around the world have been startled by the Soviet-era tactics. And what have they gained for all this? South Ossetia. I think this will go down in history as a major strategic blunder. The Russians have massively overplayed their hand.

So Russia has overplayed its hand. And what legitimacy did the U.S. have for supplying Georgia with arms and training its troops? What about the US humvees discovered near the Georgian port of Poti and the U.S. passport found among the Georgian special forces unit?

Georgia is not even a NATO state yet, so what is the legal basis for US military presence in Georgia? The U.S. naval ships, which are not usually used for carrying humanitarian aid, are still in the Black Sea making the Russian military nervous.

Russia has indeed isolated itself as a result, but Russia did not “gain” South Ossetia. Neither South Ossetia or Abkhazia made appeals or drafted petions addressing annexation.  

Zakaria: The rise of Russian nationalism, an anti-Western and anti-democratic movement, the rise of an elected dictatorship, and above all, the rise in oil wealth, which always produces corruption, dysfunction and arrogance. Russia has moved in anti-modern directions, and much of it has nothing to do with what the West did or didn’t do.

According to the Washington establishment, Russia is “anti-modern” and Georgia is a beacon of democracy. Both, however, banned each other’s television networks and used less than democratic means to crackdown on political opposition. Oddly though, in the U.S. you only hear about big bad Russia oppressing small democratic Georgia.  

Check out EurasiaNet’s coverage of the conflict, appropriately titled “Georgia in Crisis”. EurasiaNet.org is a project of the George Soros’ Open Society Institute, which has championed Mr. Saakashvili’s own rise to power.

If “corruption, dysfunction and arrogance” are symptoms of “anti-modern” societies, then the politics of the Bush administration and their conduct of the war in Iraq must have spurred the post-modern Dark Ages.

I would not be so sure about the role of the West. As the sole superpower in the post-Cold War world, the United States had many opportunities it did not take advantage of.

“The United States did not have a consistent policy towards Russia,” the president of the Brookings Institute Strobe Talbott recently told a Russian magazine The New Times. “When Bush came to the Oval Office, he considered Russia as a second-rate country. It was a colossal mistake, because Russia is not a type of country you can regard as irrelevant.”

The persistent choice of words like “Russian invasion” and “annexation”, which continue to dominate Western coverage of the conflict, is also a misleading and colossal mistake.

Here is a recent AP story stubbornly referring to the “Russian invasion”. And this show will go on.

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like a liberal, talks like a liberal

At least one myth about Dmitry Medvedev can be put to rest.

 

At a speech in Germany in June Medvedev slipped and with a newbie fervor delivered an enigmatic proclamation, quite open to interpretation. “Freedoms of the mass media require protection from the influence of the administrative apparatus at different levels,” he said in Berlin on June 5. Was this a pledge to put an end to the orchestrated call-in sessions with President Putin, where all impromptu calls were carefully written and rehearsed for hours in advance of “live” phone calls with the nations?

 

Even in an environment where Putin maintained high popularity ratings, nothing was left to chance. An elderly woman called in to Putin to swoon, “Is this really you? And before was it also you? Oh, thank you so much!” This was scripted as well.

 

Two months later, there is no end in sight or any radical difference from the pervasive “hidden censorship” on three main television channels that characterized the Putin regime.

 

Russian Newsweek today reports how the same Kremlin operators, including Vladislav Surkov and Aleksei Gromov, continue scrupulous monitoring of most of television broadcasts.

 

The content and even format of the newscast are subject to comments and edits from the Kremlin throughout the day. In addition to ideological guidelines, the top television producers receive unsigned faxes and phone calls with specific edits.

 

Today government officials, cultural and intellectual elite united with human rights activists in applauding Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a “nation’s conscience”, who has spent his life fighting against political repression and censorship. 

 

The reign of political repressions as national politics may in fact be history, but the age of censorship is far from over. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brought to you by SNOB

Mikhail Prokhorov’s brainchild, Snob magazine, is finally out after a much-hyped release. Prokhorov rates 24th on the Forbes list of richest people.

Snobishness, or snobism, its editors tell us, is nothing to be ashamed of. And the best part?Anyone could be a snob! “A man could be a snob, and a woman could be a snob.” The editors’ mission impossible is apparently to revolutionize and give new, positive meaning to the word. “Snob is not the same thing as zhlob,” they say. (derogatory term for someone who does not like to spend money)

In its June issue, Snob is not very different from other Russian glossies. It uses the same sarcastistic brushes to paint the U.S.(Russian Rolling Stone’s feature cover this month is “American Tragedy” on Britney Spears’ fallen star), but Snob is unusually prolific in covering the troubled and sorry state of the United States. The stories range from the dated Eliot Spitzer scandal to free access to condoms in the streets of New York. America’s impending doom provides the backdrop for most of these stories.

The first page of the very first Snob sets the tone and quotes freely from William Thackeray, “I am not so high-minded not to admit to being a snob.” 

So if the idea is for everyone to accept their inner snob and to come to terms with themselves, why is it then so many of the magazine’s authors are American or U.S. based? Why then this tapping into foreign concept, packaging and even font are so similar to the U.S. magazines GOOD and its evil twin, Vice? Is there no Russian equivalent, no Russian, homegrown brand of snobbishness?

The irony of Snob is that it borrows unashamedly from Western snobbish publications, relies heavily on Western talent, but also criticizes the same decadent West and its cultural and economic world dominance.

As the latest dish for the Russian nouveau riche, Snob aims to fulfill a huge demand for more discerning tastes, and sets out to dictate a new moral code, tastes and philosophy for country’s booming well-heeled population.

 And it’s not just a magazine either. Enter Snob the TV Channel, an exclusive club, and an ambitious web media project.

Do not skip the intro animation: www.snob.ru

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Act is too Big for your Country: Russia’s Baby Patriots

Since 2005 the Russian officials proclaimed September 12 “Conception Day” encouraging government officials and other office workers to take long lunches and leave home early in a latest desperate attempt to boost shrinking demographics.

This year, more Russian towns have caught on the baby patriot fever as more prizes and cash incentives are at play. Novye Izvestia newspaper reports Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Nijnij Tagil, Pskov and Kemerov,  Ulyanovsk and St. Petersburg have offered prized to women who gave birth on Russia Day, June 12.

The “Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia’s Day” campaign has led to 87 registered births in Ulyanovsk alone. In Krasnoyarsk the lucky parents of baby patriots received 100,000 rubles in prizes.

Other city officials offered food, toys and even cars in compensation. A St. Petersburg psychologist says the prize incentives has put additional pressure on expectant mothers to give birth on the exact date. “Two women may be staying at the same hospital, but one of them is receiving high city officials with loads of gifts, and the other one receives no compensation from the government. And it’s all because one of them gave birth on the 12th and the other one on the 11th,” she says.

Those families who do make the cut do not always receive their compensation all at once. Six years after their daughter was born,  the Shramkovy family from Nijnij Tagil have just received a set of kitchen appliances from the government. They have named their baby girl…Russia. What else?