Russia 101202 Basic Political Developments

Russian Opposition Activist Speaks Out for Visa-Free Regime

http://news.err.ee/politics/b32048e3-300d-4b61-95de-98b0a7999619

Published: 09:55

Lev Ponomaryov, one of Russia's most prominent human rights and civil society activists, has expressed his support for visa-free travel between the EU and Russia, saying it would be a collosal victory for the democrats and opposition in his country.

Speaking at a seminar entitled “Russian Voices” in Tallinn on December 1, the leader of the For Human Rights movement said that the visa question was one of the few issues where he agreed with Putin and Medvedyev, rus.err.ee reports.

“Of course I understand that Europeans are afraid of it. But I think that it's a very important step for the future of Russia, though I don't know why the Russian government is insisting on it,” he said.

“Maybe there's something dangerous behind it [...] but I think that the resulting gain will be collosal for Russians, the Russian population, Russian democrats and the opposition. It seems to me that the sooner we change the visa regime, the better.”  

Ponomarev agreed with skeptics in the audience who said that before the visas system can be liberalized, Russia has to ease current restrictions on foreigners' movements within the country. “There are already changes in that direction,” he said.

In addition to his role as head of For Human Rights, Ponomarev is a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and was a member of the Russian parliament from 1993 to 1995.

Leaked U.S. document portrays Moscow as haven of corruption

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106146.html
By Will Englund

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, December 2, 2010

MOSCOW - Control of the city is in the hands of a "kleptocracy," and it passes on a portion of the bribes and protection money it collects all the way to the Kremlin, the U.S. Embassy in Russia reported in a memo in February.

Both the police and the Federal Security Service run huge protection rackets that help account for the high cost of living in Moscow, it said. They collect money not only from legitimate businesses but from organized criminal groups as well. Each layer of the bureaucracy - what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has termed the "vertical of authority" - takes its cut as the money moves up the ladder.

The memo, which was sent to Washington under the name of Ambassador John Beyrle, was posted by WikiLeaks on its Web site Wednesday. The memo is based on sources whose names have been redacted. It was written while Yuri Luzhkov was still Moscow's mayor, and it blames him for much of the corruption. He was fired in October by President Dmitry Medvedev, but there has been little evidence of a cleanup since then.

Luzhkov and his wife, Yelena Baturina, who owns a prominent construction firm, have consistently denied corruption accusations over the years, and he has won several libel suits over such accusations. In September he told a Russian television station, when asked about a documentary suggesting he was corrupt: "It is mad, it is filth, it is a mess."

Russians overwhelmingly believe that theirs is a corrupt society, polls have shown. But it is unusual to find the particulars spelled out as they were in the embassy's report, and it is unheard of that it should be diplomats from a foreign country doing so.

"The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional,' and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government," the memo says. "Criminal elements enjoy a 'krysha' (a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning 'roof' or protection) that runs through the police, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), and the prosecutor's office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy.

"Analysts identify a three-tiered structure in Moscow's criminal world. Luzhkov is at the top. The FSB, MVD and militia are at the second level. Finally, ordinary criminals and corrupt inspectors are at the lowest level. This is an inefficient system in which criminal groups fill a void in some areas because the city is not providing some services."

The report says that the FSB rakes in money from the biggest firms, and that the police target small businesses.

One source, it said, "explained that Moscow business owners understand that it is best to get protection from the MVD and FSB (rather than organized crime groups) since they not only have more guns, resources, and power than criminal groups, but they are also protected by the law. For this reason, protection from criminal gangs is no longer so high in demand."

The memo notes that, while the collection of money is comprehensive, the protection itself can be spotty; even those who pay are sometimes subject to arrest. Those who do not pay quickly find their businesses shut down on one pretext or another.

Medvedev has talked several times about fighting corruption but has admitted that he has made little headway. The embassy memo relays reports of men taking suitcases, presumably stuffed with cash, into the Kremlin itself.

"In his fight against corruption, Medvedev has to rely on bureaucrats," Georgy Satarov, director of the Moscow think tank Indem, said in a recent interview. "But he is a part of this bureaucracy. He is not part of a political class, because a political class doesn't exist in Russia anymore."

Without politics, without an opposition, without a separation of powers, he said, corruption is inevitable.

Nationwide, Indem estimates that corruption costs Russia more than $300 billion a year. The country was ranked 154th in a recent survey on global perceptions of corruption by the nongovernmental organization Transparency International (countries are ranked from least to most corrupt).

The disclosure of the U.S. Embassy memo, which didn't occur until late evening Moscow time, is sure to stir displeasure within the Russian government, although to the extent that Luzhkov can be blamed for Moscow's failings, it might be an opportunity for the Kremlin to argue that it is solving the problem.

Interviewed for CNN by Larry King, Putin suggested that the WikiLeaks documents may be fabrications and reacted angrily to a disclosure that U.S. diplomats had called him Batman to Medvedev's Robin.

"The truth of the matter is, this is about our interaction, which is an important factor of the domestic policies in this country," he said. "But to be honest with you, we didn't suspect that this would be done with such arrogance, with such a push and, you know, being so unethically done."

About Gagarin and About Myself

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2010/12/02/about-gagarin-and-about-myself/

After spending nine days in a medically-induced coma and undergoing multiple operations, Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin is thankfully on his way to a strong recovery. After a brutal beating on November 6 that left him with skull fractures, broken shins and a set of maimed fingers, Kashin is well enough to walk on crutches and joke about flirting with his nurses in Moscow Hospital No. 36.

In an interview with television personality Leonid Parfenov, Kashin said he has no idea who ordered his beating, that his assailants said nothing during the attack, and that a variety of the topics of his articles could have been motivating factors. But which one it was – the Khimki Forest, Kremlin-sponsored youth groups, or insulted Russian governors – Kashin couldn’t say. An investigation under the supervision of prosecutor general is still ongoing.

In his first article since the attack, Oleg Kashin reveals that, far from embodying the glorified image of a fearless crusader that developed while he lay unconscious, the Kommersant journalist wishes most of all to simply go on with his work as usual. That, and to get rid of the feeding tube stuck up his nose.

By Oleg Kashin

November 29, 2010
Kommersant/Vlast

An unfamiliar man in a white coat took an instinctive step to the side, and my hand, stretching towards his chest pocket, grasping only air, falls back again to the mattress.

“What does he want?” asks the man, feeling his pocket.

“The pen, probably,” posed a woman’s voice; and that woman, who I didn’t see, was right: the pen, of course, I needed the pen. The blue gel pen from the chest pocket of the white coat of that man.

“A writer,” the man with the pen said respectfully – but he did not give me the pen. Discussing the amusing incident, the entire delegation took off, leaving me alone with the artificial ventilation lung that went through a special hole made in my throat. The hole was made lower than the vocal chords; therefore, even after regaining consciousness, I couldn’t speak. Seeing the pen in the doctor’s pocket, I would have been thrilled to take the pen and, at least on my own bandaged hand, write: “It itches under the cast!!!!!!” – they would read it and help, scratch it with something. And instead of that – the backs recede in their white coats, and there’s no help at all. At that point I still didn’t know that one of the backs belonged to a paid agent of the LifeNews publication – the resident resuscitation expert (I exposed him a week later), and who, several hours later and under the heading “Braveheart,” told how I demanded a pen and paper in order to begin, even while still attached to an artificial breathing machine, to write the horrible truth about the people behind the attack on me.

In the resuscitation ward, wrapped in tubes and wires, I could sleep (and slept) as much as necessary in any form, whether artificially medicated or healthily and naturally. I could keep quiet, I could (from the ninth day onwards) speak and, even while I couldn’t talk, still resolved the communication problem: a childrens chalkboard, left behind by someone, was found, and by drawing a rectangle with my hands in the air – a conventional gesture that everyone immediately understood for some reason – I could write what I was concerned about and what I wanted on this board. Only, I didn’t need to write about the itchy cast; they removed it faster than the board turned up. Therefore, the main topics of my notes were complaints about the probe in my nose – they fed me through the nose with some kind of special food – and flirting with the nurses. My life in those days, any way you look at it, was interesting and fascinating.

But aside from me personally – yes and the doctors and nurses as well – who knew about this life? Nobody knew. My real life was happening, maybe, a half-hour drive from the hospital. Outside of the police office at Petrovka, switching places with one another, my friends and former enemies stood in solitary pickets with posters of my name, having suddenly become friends (I say this without irony; enemies may sometimes seriously become friends). A newspaper called “Kashin,” completely devoted to me, was printed. On Pushkin Square, and afterwards on Chistie Prudy, rallies were held in my defense. “Do you want the classic Kashin or the one with his signature?” girls politely asked a line of pensioners waiting for my portrait, which they could attach to their chests.

The term “Journalist Kashin” appeared in President Medvedev’s lexicon. When a group of students in the journalism department at Moscow State University, locked in a classroom with windows facing the Kremlin, hung a poster out the window reading “Who beat Kashin?” a joke started going around: Dmitri Medvedev barricaded himself in his office, with windows facing the journalism department, and hung a poster out the window: “It wasn’t me!” – the joke is from Twitter, but who could guarantee that it didn’t really happen? The events in the week after my beating proved it: anything is possible, anything in general. The universal childhood dream, not to die but to be at one’s own funeral and hear who says what and how, came true for me alone. “Oleg, you’re going to wake up and be stunned!” – a phrase from the book of honorable recordings from a routine Kashin rally. And it’s true, I woke up and was stunned.

Journalist Kashin – that is to say, I – quietly came to in the resuscitation ward. A half-hour drive away from me, somebody was going on a rampage, somebody who even people who knew me personally were ready to take for Journalist Kashin, brave and uncompromising, personally presenting a threat to the Kremlin, as well as hope for freedom and happiness. “Kashin, get up! Kashin, write!” cried the square. The square didn’t know that I was already up in bed and was writing on the board: “I want to go to the bathroom.” The tabloids quoted Journalist Kashin (but not me): “They will not silence me!” – unfortunately, without indicating what topic Journalist Kashin wanted to have his say on. There was only one thing that interested me at the end of the second week after the attack. There was once a handsome young pilot named Gagarin. He was somehow chosen to be astronaut number one, and at the age of 27, or something, he flew into space for a bit more than an hour. He came back – and that was it, there was no more life, just presidiums, banquets, presentations that stamped the impending doom onto his handsome young face. This went on for seven years before he died for good. I lay in the resuscitation ward, flipped through the “Kashin” newspaper, and thought about Gagarin and how we are alike.

But I have one important advantage over Gagarin. The New Year’s recess – a terrific, as I understand now, invention. December is now beginning, I’ll likely be ill the whole time, and then the country will start to drink. We’ll return to work together, the country after the holidays and myself after rehab. Nobody will remember. Nobody will notice. And it will be normal, like before, to work. After all, they will not silence me.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

A scramble for the Arctic

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/11/20101130181427770987.html

With one fifth of the world's oil and gas at stake, countries are struggling to control the once-frozen arctic.

Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 01 Dec 2010 16:26 GMT

From her office in the frozen north, Delice Calcote has watched big powers vie for control over the Arctic with little concern for its original inhabitants.  

"This is our land," said Calcote, a liaison with the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, an advocacy group representing the region's indigenous peoples. "We aren't happy with everyone trying to claim it."

But as the planet warms, as northern sea lanes become accessible to shippers, as companies hungrily eye vast petroleum and mineral deposits below its melting ice, a quiet, almost polite, scramble for control is transpiring in the Arctic.

"Countries are setting the chess pieces on the board. There are tremendous resources at stake," said Rob Huebert, director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

The frozen zone could hold 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources, according to the US energy information administration.

Competing claims

Canada, the US, Russia, Norway and Denmark have competing claims to the Arctic, a region about the size of Africa, comprising some six per cent of the Earth's surface.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is supposed to govern resource claims in the region.

"At this point, everyone is following the rules and say they want cooperation; behind the scenes developments are happening that suggest it may not be so cooperative," Huebert said.

Under maritime law, countries can assert sovereignty up to 200 miles from their coast line. Article 76 of the UN convention allows states to extend control if they can prove their continental shelves – underwater geological formations - extend further than 200 miles. 

Presently, the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is testing the strength of the UN convention as Canada, Russia and Denmark all claim the potentially resource-rich region.

"Russia recently submitted a claim [but] the UN didn’t buy it [on scientific grounds]," said Gilles Rhéaume, a public policy analyst with the Conference Board of Canada, who recently authored a report on Arctic sovereignty. "Will the legal means be used to determine claims? We don't know."

A panel of elected geology experts rule on claims under the UN convention. They are mandated to make decisions based solely on scientific merit.

New colonialism

But polite conventions did not stop Russia from planting a flag more than 4,000 metres below sea level under the North Pole in 2007, in a flash-back to past imagery of colonial control.

"This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'," Peter MacKay, Canada's foreign minister, said at the time.

But Canada, which prides itself on being the "great white north," is also seen as an aggressor by many analysts. The country plans to build at least five navy patrol boats to guard potential shipping lanes in the Northwest Passage, along with new Arctic military bases and a deep water port on Baffin Island.

"Russia and Canada are the only two Arctic states who have ramped up the rhetoric on the military front," said Wilfred Graves, a researcher at the University of Toronto.

Much of Russia's military capacity, especially naval power, rusted away with the collapse of the Soviet Union, while Canada – protected by the US defence umbrella - lacks powerful military hardware.

Like small dogs with more bark than bite, or the impotent Hemmingway character sleeping beside a rifle, Canada and Russia are likely upping the rhetoric due to an inability to seriously project hard power.

Domestic politics also loom large, as leaders posture to look strong on sovereignty issues, pledging to defend national interests from hostile outsiders.

"The US, despite its military power, doesn't rattle swords in the same way," Graves said.

The Norwegians are talking the most cooperatively, said Huebert, the University of Calgary professor, but "they are arming very assertively" recently buying at least five combat frigates with advanced AEGIS spying and combat capabilities. "The Danes are rearming too," he said. 

Indigenous concerns

As big powers assert claims, wrangle over the geology of their respective continental shelves and stock up their militaries, indigenous peoples in the Arctic have faced a colonial scramble since Europeans first arrived.

"Statehood happened without our consent," says Delice Calcote, the indigenous activist from Alaska. Russia first colonised the region, and then sold it to the US in 1867 for $7.2m.

"It is our land and our water. They [the US] don't own it, it is ours," Calcote said, echoing the view of some indigenous peoples from Greenland, through Canada, Norway, and Siberia.

While Sarah Palin, Alaska's former governor and current right-wing political star, won standing ovations for her chants of "drill baby drill", Calcote said her people rely on oil donated from Venezuela, despite the teritories’s vast petroleum wealth.

"They [Venezuela’s leftist government] know about the horrible conditions in the villages: no running water, no sewers and the decline in our traditional food sources," Calcote said.

The harsh divide between official state policy, and the conditions of people actually living in the Arctic, is not confined to the US.

"The Canadian Arctic has some of the highest levels of poverty and substance abuse in the country," said Graves, who participated in a major conference linking northern communities with southern researchers and academics.

"In [Inuvik] one of the larger communities in the Arctic, none of the indigenous people I met exhibited any concern with the military approach to the Arctic.

"People were interested in unemployment, a lack of resources [and] climate change … in Greenland, the situation is probably similar, [Arctic residents] don't feel they have any voice in the south, with respect to climate change and policy."

Melting ice

Global warming, partially caused by burning fossil fuels, is largely responsible for the new scramble for the northern region, as once impenetrable ice blocks melt at an alarming rate.

"It's a terrible irony that melting ice caps are allowing companies and even governments to open up the possibilities of new oil developments," said Ben Ayliffe, a senior climate campaigner with Green Peace in the UK.

Cairn Energy, a corporation based in Scotland, recently began drilling oil wells in waters off Greenland's coast. "There are reasonable [environmental] concerns given the extreme nature of drilling in the Arctic," said Ayliffe who's organisation has tried to physically block drilling.

"If something went wrong up there, the companies do not have the money to cover the cost of the spill," he said, adding that Cairn refuses to publish a spill response plan.

Climate change concerns notwithstanding, a Gulf of Mexico-type oil spill in the Arctic would wreak havoc on what Ayliffee calls "an iconic area of the natural world."

Cold Warning

Global warming and the hunt for resources are not the only trends leading to the latest scramble. "During the Cold War, the Arctic was a buffer zone, insulating North America from the Soviets and vice versa," said Graves. "It served a valuable function and no one was willing to tamper with it too much."

Like conflicts in the Balkans or the Democratic Republic of Congo, kept in check by Cold War politics, the end of the bi-polar world order transformed relations in the Arctic. That, onto itself, is not a recipe for a fight. 

"Conflicts exist, but there are so many mechanisms designed to deal with it that the likelihood for physical conflict is very remote," said Gunhild Hoogensen, a professor specialising in the Arctic at the University of Tromso in Norway.

Perhaps new frigates and bases are merely political theatre, the war dance of international relations where countries can flex - before negotiating - without spilling blood.

But with more than one fifth of the planet's energy reserves potentially on the line, the stakes couldn't be higher.

The invasion of Iraq was "largely about oil," according to Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US federal reserve. And unenforceable UN conventions on conflict settlement might be insufficient to prevent the Arctic scramble from turning violent.

"We are truly in a period of transition," Huebert said. "I could see us heading for either cooperation or conflict."

You can follow Chris Arsenault on Twitter: @AJEchris