There are two new articles of note that concern the Georgian War and the low intensity media war against Russia. The first is Neal Ascherson’s “A Chance to Join the World” in the London Review of Books on the present and future of Abkhazia. The second is Mark Ames’ “Editorial Malpractice” or more aptly named on the Exiled site, “Freddy Gets Fingered: How I Busted the Washington Post’s Op-ed Page Editor.” Therein Ames unmasks WaPo‘s “incessant demonization [of Russian and Putin] puts more weight on ideology than on journalistic professionalism–or simple fact-checking.”
In regard to Ascherson’s article, the big question is the future of now defacto 120 mile coastal strip called Abkhazia. Rejoining a nationalist fueled Georgia set on asserting its “sovereign territorial integrity” by force is out of the question. There appears to be little desire to formally attach to Russia though being its client is inescapable and in many ways desirable. Is a new Abkhazian nation state in the making? Interestingly, much of Abkhazia’s fate might fall on the emergence of a Georgian “Willy Brandt” and his ability to avoid the trap of the Oder-Neisse Problem. Here is Ascherson’s take on the issue:
We have seen this trap before. Well . . . any European journalist of my advanced age has seen it. It was called the Oder-Neisse Problem. It consumed hours of soporific briefings and blackened kilometres of dead paper. It kept West Germany safely hobbled to the Western Allies for just over twenty years.
There are differences of scale and detail, but the similarities are sickening. The Oder-Neisse Problem went like this. After the Second World War, Poland annexed the German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia, and expelled their populations – some eight million people. Most of them ended up in West Germany. Egged on by the Americans, the new West German state refused to recognise the new eastern border on the Oder and Neisse rivers, proclaimed that the ‘frontiers of 1937’ were still in force, and demanded that the rest of the world accept the duty to restore Germany’s ‘territorial integrity’. The enormous expellee leagues gained a stranglehold on politics. For decades, it was assumed that anyone who suggested recognising the Oder-Neisse Line was committing political suicide. West German TV daily predicted the weather, cloudy or sunny, in Silesia as well as in Bavaria.
In public, the Western Allies stoutly supported this position. In private, any French or British diplomat would agree that it was odious and unreal. But that was why they valued it. A West Germany firmly shackled to this impossibilist dogma would never be able to do a deal with the Soviet Union, such as leaving Nato in return for reunification. It was only in 1970 that Willy Brandt decided to lead his country out of the trap by recognising the territorial results of the war and the new boundaries. The expellees threatened to destroy him, but nothing happened. The Allies, who had grown fed up with their own hypocrisy, let Brandt have his way.
When will there be a Georgian Willy Brandt? The notion raises hollow laughter in Sukhum. Georgian politicians still insist that Abkhazia is Georgian, use extreme rhetoric about ‘overcoming separatism’ and walk out of meetings to which Abkhazians are admitted. But as with West Germany, the effect of this ‘impossibilism’ is to make Georgia less independent, not more.
Ames’ target is a much easier bird to pick off. English language media’s bias is well known, and from my unscientific survey the Washington Post and the Guardian tend to be the most vociferous in painting Russian and Putin as a neo-Evil Empire. Noting this may be old hat, but constantly necessary in the trenches of the information war. The target of Ames’ ire is WaPo‘s recent attempt to pin the “assassination attempt” against Karina Moskalenko on Putin even though French police showed that there was no attempt whatsoever. When Ames asked Hiatt why the Post didn’t wait for the investigation before charging, trying and convicting Putin, he responded:
“I am aware of newspaper articles in Figaro and the New York Times that quoted unnamed police sources positing the theory that a broken thermometer was the source of the mercury found in Moskalenko’s car,” he said. “These sources were in Paris, where officials may have a foreign-policy reason not to spark a dispute with Russia, and not in Strasbourg, where the investigation was taking place.” He also implied that Moskalenko, who doubted the “broken-thermometer theory,” as Hiatt put it, was more reliable than the investigators. These were incredible charges leveled at Le Figaro and the French political and judicial systems. But was Hiatt right?
Well as Gomer used to say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise” Hiatt wasn’t right. In fact, with “the magic of a couple of phone calls” to Curille Louis, the Figaro reporter who wrote about the police investigation, Ames discovered the following:
“I am frankly surprised that the Washington Post‘s editorial page editor would say something like this without even calling me to see if what he says was true,” Louis told me, stunned and laughing. “It’s simply not true. I used several sources, but the two main sources were a top police official here in Paris and a top investigator from the prosecutor’s office in Strasbourg.” Louis even named the source in Strasbourg–assistant prosecutor Claude Palpacuer. His sources in Paris are reliable people he has been working with for years. Louis explained that the investigators felt they’d probably solved the case after they tracked down the car’s previous owner, a local antiques dealer who had indeed broken an old barometer (not thermometer) in the car shortly before selling it.
I then asked Louis what he thought about Hiatt’s larger assumption: that Le Figaro‘s sources in Paris could not be trusted because the French might be worried about upsetting Russia. Again, Louis laughed in disbelief: “This sounds like a kind of conspiracy theory. You would have to believe that judges and police officials in two cities conspired to manipulate a Le Figaro journalist in order to plant a story that was not very big news here in the first place. Why would the authorities go through all of this effort for such a small story? I find this idea of a conspiracy completely unlikely.” Louis was disappointed at Hiatt’s accusations: “I suppose I might feel honored that the Washington Post bothers to write about me, but you know, I feel a bit surprised. If he called me I could have explained how I wrote the story. But he didn’t try. Quite often we’re very impressed here by how American journalists work, the high standards they use to source stories…. So it’s disappointing to learn that [Hiatt] came to his conclusions about the way I work without even calling me.”
Kudos to Ames. And to Louis, don’t worry if you keep reading English language reporting on Russia the disappointment will becoming something of a second nature. Many of us have become so inured to it that it wears like a second skin.
Have you ever thought, Kolya, that US journalists are more “clever” in avoiding to write something that makes people really “unhappy”?
Could you find examples when of such work? I mean something that threatening some people so much it’s “worth” killing the writer?
In US most dangerous “killers” are … lawyers.
Also it’s just a statistics. You should add US journalists and even locals who were killed outside US when working for US media. In such nice places like Iraq. It was under US control and they were there for US public entertainment. Whilst Russian journalists doing same job but killed in Chechnya were counted as killed …in Russia, weren’t they? It’s just a country specific “phenomena”. Like shooting in schools
So – all this is about effectiveness. In Russia and other “wild” places it’s more effective just to shoot journalist. In other “civilized” places – it’s more effective to buy him. Or kill him professionally. When you are “the star” in NYT – you would think twice…no, no – seven times before “pissing on crucifix”.
I’ve been insulted on a regular basis (e.g., yesterday by Shedd).
Very easy for you to avoid insults. Stop posting ridiculous comments.
‘Cause little man, I’ll bitch-slap you all day long if I happen by and see some of your nonsense on this forum.
I’m actually quite positive about Russia, but I know stupid when I see it. When you and/or ivanov start reciting Russian government rhetoric, it appears as stupid as thoroughly stupid as GOP members saying “here, here!” when George Bush says he has no regrets or when Dick Cheney says he would still authorize water-boarding.
I don’t condone or approve of my own government assholes or many other unjustified or cruel events in the USA – why would I approve or condone of everything that happens (however negative) in Russia? In fact, I’m far more tolerant of the problems that exist within the Russian Federation, given it’s relatively recent creation.
While I think someone like Politkovskaya was far more an activist than a journalist, I think anyone who attempts to excuse or minimize the many murders and harassments of reporters in Russia is VERY FUCKING STUPID. To my mind, it has very little to do with who did or didn’t order or commit such murders – it has everything to do with a government’s failure to institute law and order within a civil society that claims to be free and law-abiding.
There is logical explanation. You just have to compare number of body guards of Politkovskaya and Madonna and do the maths. Is it 0 to 20?
I also don’t remember reporters killed in CCCP
You might be very negative – no problem indeed
I’m trying to stay with facts – whether they are positive or not. I admit I post here mostly positive facts. But this is only because others do a great job in negative posting. Thus we keep this blog rather balanced, don’t we?
“umm … one? American celebrity”
The number of famous people murdered or assaulted in the US is far more than one.
“You just have to compare number of body guards of Politkovskaya and Madonna and do the maths. Is it 0 to 20?”
This is also true. Latynina lives in a gated community with guards and is probably more or less safe.
Thus we keep this blog rather balanced, don’t we?
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That’s a very good point, Ivanov. If there is only one opinion on this blog it will quickly degenerate into the Brezhnev Russia, with Sean handing out “Orders of Lenin” to the “most devoted commentators”.
Latynina is celebrity.
Politkovskaya was activist.
So killing Latynina would much less worthy (?) than Politkovskaya.
Also Latynina is pissing on so many crucifixes that it would be almost impossible to blame Putin
Very easy for you to avoid insults. Stop posting ridiculous comments.
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Shedd,
Have you heard of the expression “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”? Same about “ridiculous comments”.
When I read about “Putin killed Lytvinenko and Polytkovskaya and after that invaded Georgia” I also have to overcome an urge to react most strongly, but I try to control myself. The people reading CNN, Washington Post and Exo Moskvy – don’t know any better. I forgive them and try to present an alternative point of view. My comments are no more ridiculous than anyone else’s.
Also Latynina is pissing on so many crucifixes that it would be almost impossible to blame Putin
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Ivanov,
Are you implicitly implying that Putin killed Polytkovskaya and is after Latynina now? I think Latynina with her most ridiculous articles is quite welcome by the Russian government. Her writings does no harm – most of the Russians can see through Latynina (i.e., “she needs a boyfriend”). In the West it is another matter …
By other words – they are as fucking stupid as of CNN comments!
Whatever you prefer, Shedd
R. President.
I said what I said – “impossible to blame Putin”. As you well know – everything bad in this world came from Stalin. Now it comes from Putin!
According to CNN, WP and other “experts”. But many talents of Latynina might confuse “experts” in pointing out the “right” zakazchik.
Ivanov,
To echo what you’ve just said and cheer you up
, here is an article by Latynina published by Washington Post (I don’t need to comment, it reads like the magazine “Korea” published in North Korea and sold in kiosks throughout Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s). Enjoy!
Life in Putin’s Russia
By Julia Latynina
Sunday, June 22, 2008; B01
MOSCOW On Nov. 9, 2007, during a special operation in the village of Chemulga, in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian special forces shot and killed an individual by the name of Rakhim Amriyev. Eyewitnesses said that they shot him in the head and placed an automatic rifle beside his body. Then, as dozens of villagers who had run out of their homes looked on, the troops used an armored personnel carrier to demolish a wall of the one-room house where Amriyev lived and announced that he had died in a shootout.
You may ask how I can be sure that things happened this way — that Amriyev didn’t fire back, that he wasn’t a terrorist and that the automatic rifle was planted. I’m absolutely certain — because Rakhim Amriyev was 6 years old.
The most striking thing about everyday life in the Russia of Vladimir Putin (and make no mistake, it is Putin’s Russia, despite the election of a new president, hand-picked by the great man) is the incredible corruption of the courts, the police, the special forces — all the institutions that are supposed to uphold law and order in a democracy and that in Russia today have been transformed into a cancer that’s devouring the state. Consider these further examples:
On May 20, 2005, in Moscow, a car driven by the son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov struck and killed 68-year-old Svetlana Beridze as she crossed the street. Beridze, who was in the crosswalk, was hit with such force that she was thrown high into the air and the keys in her handbag were crushed. No criminal charges were brought against the minister’s son, who, his father publicly stated, had “experienced physical and emotional suffering” as a result of the accident. Instead, in what appeared to be an effort to intimidate the dead woman’s family, authorities opened a criminal investigation against her son-in-law, for allegedly assaulting the minister’s son.
Last Sept. 10, Muscovite Natalia Trufanova was driving to her dacha with her family in her old Zhiguli when a motorcade carrying Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev came speeding down the road toward them, driving in her lane. One of the vehicles in the motorcade tore through Trufanova’s car. Eyewitnesses reported that the head of the Supreme Court kept going, leaving it to his underlings to comb through the bodies and the heap of twisted metal. Without batting an eye, the police declared that Trufanova had “driven into the oncoming lane,” which meant that, if she survived, she could be brought to trial. When angry witnesses started posting video on the Web clearly showing that it was the motorcade that was driving in the wrong lane, the lead investigator looking into the accident said that he didn’t have access to the Internet.
On a rainy September evening a week after Natalia Trufanova fell under the wheel of justice, I witnessed an accident on Moscow’s government thoroughfare — the famous Kutuzovsky Prospect. A silver Lexus, traveling at what looked to be about 90 miles an hour, flew out of the far left lane and crossed four lanes of oncoming traffic, crashing into several cars. As I drove past the scene of the accident, the wind blew bits of crushed metal, pieces of cloth and broken glass along the asphalt; bodies still sat in some of the cars. Within the hour, I learned that the driver of the Lexus was a 27-year-old woman with no known occupation; with her in the car was a deputy minister of economic development.
I learned this from a mutual friend (of mine and the deputy minister’s) named Pavel, who had rushed to the scene. The minister was already dead; the young woman was in a daze, due to either pain or drugs. A police sergeant, cheerfully surveying the pile of bodies the girl had left in her wake, asked Pavel in the most businesslike fashion: “So, how are we going to solve this problem?” Apparently they “solved the problem” — they didn’t even bring charges against the woman.
Strange but true: It’s not only ministers, their wives and their children — as well as their lovers — who are going unpunished, but also high-priced prostitutes, high on cocaine, with important addresses in their little black books.
Crime in Russia is hardly being investigated. In May of last year, the body of 4-year-old Nastia Mokryakova, her throat slit, was found in the woods outside Moscow. What do you think the police told the news media? “The child got lost and died of exposure.” A month later, in the Moscow suburb of Tomilino, some maniac strangled 10-year-old Nastia Butenkova, and the first thing the police did was to say that the girl, who’d been found on a staircase with her pants pulled down around her ankles, may have caused her own suffocation. (A public outcry ultimately led to an investigation of both murders.)
It’s not as though this unwillingness to investigate is limited to crimes whose victims are poor. On Dec. 6, 2007, Oleg Zhukovsky, a prominent banker who worked with major clients of the state-run bank VTB, was apparently killed in his suburban dacha. The killers reportedly tied the victim’s hands behind his back, put a plastic bag over his head and threw him into the pool. Before killing him, they apparently forced him to write a suicide note. “Suicide!” the police promptly declared. It’s hard to believe, but their unwillingness to investigate the death of a high-ranking banker had nothing to do with politics or the state. The police simply can’t be bothered.
Of course, there are some crimes that the police do investigate. They accused an acquaintance of mine of giving $20 million to the leader of the Chechen terrorists. Another person I know was accused of trying to privatize the air space above the Arctic Ocean. Of a third, a prosecutor wrote that his bank was trying to foment a revolution and overthrow Putin. These three suspects all had something in common: They are on the Russian Forbes 100 list.
A fourth acquaintance of mine isn’t on that list. He was simply building a highrise in the southern city of Makhachkala. The local prosecutor telephoned and asked him what discount he’d give him on an apartment in the building. “Twenty percent,” my acquaintance replied. The prosecutor thereupon ordered an investigation that turned the man’s company upside down, then called again and demanded a 50 percent discount.
Is this the legacy of the Soviet past? Not at all. In the Soviet Union, criminals were thrown into prison along with the dissidents. Is it the legacy of former president Boris Yeltsin? There was nothing like this under Yeltsin.
This is the distinctive nature of the Putin regime.
Under Putin, the Russian businessman has been transformed into game being hunted by people in epaulets. Who was the first victim of this hunt? Oil company executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for tax evasion in 2005, and his company, Yukos, which the government dismantled and sold off after his arrest. Who was the hunter? Then-president Putin.
The right to commit crime has become part of official privilege. If the victim doesn’t raise a fuss, no one is punished. If the victim appeals to the public, he or she is harshly punished. The very fact of appealing to the public is perceived as a challenge to the regime. But who laid down these rules of the game? Who never punishes his friends? Putin.
In the republic of Ingushetia, death squads are executing people. They’re being shot in front of witnesses, in crowded places, in market squares, at bus stops, and then weapons are being planted on them and they’re being photographed as dead “terrorists.” In some instances, the crowd has shielded the intended victims. In others, the local Ingush police have nearly beaten the Russian executioners to death. Who’s being killed? Those on the so-called Wahhabi lists. These lists were compiled at the order of the FSB (the successor to the KGB) soon after the Moscow theater massacre of 2002, in which Chechen terrorists took an audience hostage and 130 people died when Russian special forces stormed the theater.
But who ordered these lists to be drawn up? Who would think, to stop the problem of terrorism in the northern Caucasus from spreading, of executing fundamentalist Muslims wholesale, simply for their convictions, not for any crimes that they may have committed? Such an order couldn’t have been given without Putin’s knowledge. In the 1970s, then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir had those who had taken part in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics annihilated. But since the Moscow theater incident, Putin has gone her one better — he has even wiped out people who had nothing to do with it.
Each such execution, however, has created more terrorists than it has eliminated, and for all intents and purposes, Russia has lost control of Ingushetia — the only republic where authorities have fully followed the execution order. Who will dare to inform the great Putin, the former KGB man, the courageous hero, who happily sits for photographs in the cockpit of a fighter plane and poses bare-chested on a fishing trip?
In the West, people read that Putin has restored Russia’s power and strengthened the ruling hierarchy. This is the image that the PR agencies he has hired are trying to project. There may not be democracy in Putin’s Russia, they say, but there is order.
Don’t buy it. The Russian authorities aren’t in control of the country — unless we consider their ability to throw any businessman in prison and seize his company to be control. And yet these guys really think they’re strong — and that the measure of a ruler’s strength is the amount of cash in his bank accounts.
latynina@novayagazeta.ru
Julia Latynina is a Russian journalist, novelist and radio host. This article was translated from the Russian by Outlook assistant editor Zofia Smardz.
I wrote:
“To put it simply: it’s more dangerous to be a journalist in Russia than in the US.”
Chris replied:
“We all know this”
and later Chris wrote:
“I was responding to the suggestion by Pseudodima that Latynina had received no death threats. My response was that of course she has, because she is famous, and famous people receive death threats. They’re like stalkers. You get them.”
Okay, clear enough, Chris. I was misreading you.
I don’t read Latynina, mr. President, sorry.
Ivanov,
How can one resist something like this:
“The most striking thing about everyday life in the Russia of Vladimir Putin (and make no mistake, it is Putin’s Russia, despite the election of a new president, hand-picked by the great man) is the incredible corruption of the courts, the police, the special forces — all the institutions that are supposed to uphold law and order in a democracy and that in Russia today have been transformed into a cancer that’s devouring the state.”?
Don’t you think you are missing out? You don’t want to know the REAL truth about “Russia of Vladimir Putin”?
“A former OSCE official in Georgia, whose reporting supported Russian claims about the August war’s start went AWOL, lost his job, is now under scrutiny and Georgia is accusing him of being a spy, the Wall Street Journal reported on December 19.”
http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=20161
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122963718776319647.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Ames is sucking Putin off again? (I thought that was Schroeder’s job?).
Anyways, wasn’t aging Mark “cool dude Hunter-Thomsponesque hip gonzo journalist” Ames bitching about how Putin (or was it Medvedev – not that makes much of differences, purely semantics) shut down his his shitty satire masquerading as serious news ass rag paper (which you can’t flush in the turkish toilets since it will clog it up) and then he bitched on how the Western Media didn’t cover this. Yet his whole “career” was spent as an attempt to insult the crappy Western Media and not speak a word on Mr. Putin.
You can’t have it both ways Mr. Ames. You can’t be that guy in your 20s always recycling and jacking off to your “war stories” from 90s Prague or ’99 Moscow. That crap gets old.
What about Anna Politkovskaya? Wasn’t she a comrade in arms? You don’t write anything on her. I guess it’s just the cynical and manipulative yellow western media trying to bring a story out of nowhere. You criticize the all encompassing “Western Media” and “Western World” as filled with sheeple yet you spew the same jingoistic and nationalistic garbage as any rag such as Pravda.
Ames wrote a whole article about Politkovskaya.
Google is your friend. Ignorance is not.
I have seen the article; the whole point of it was to shit on the Western Media and totally ignore or deflect the circumstances regarding Politkovskaya’s murder (basically: Amerikkka invaded Iraq so Russia can kill it’s journalist. Therefore Russia is better).
What circumstances surounding her murder were deflected or ignored?