MOSCOW, August 28, 2006 -- Russia is at the center of a new international alliance of resource -– particularly oil -– producing countries who are reshaping the global power structure to take care of their friends and leave countries they don’t like sucking the hind tit.
And guess what country is going to be sucking the hindest?
The Bushwhacker and the Neocons in their not very subtle mission to impose their agenda on the rest of the world and to solve their profound energy deficit problems by stealing it from wherever they can – Iraq, Iran, Venezuela -- have instead succeeded in earning the enmity of the very countries they desperately need in order to – literally – survive.
The United States, by using its vaunted position of sole world superpower to browbeat and subjugate those who don’t bow to its whims, has in its approaching hour of dire need made bitter enemies of the only countries that can pull its big energy-slurping ass out of the fire.
The collapse of the American Empire will evoke little sympathy – or aid – from the once-weak and poor oil-rich countries it climbed over on its ascent to superpower eminence.
This is my interpretation of the message embodied in a newly published book, Russian Rubicon - Impending Checkmate of the West, by W Joseph Stroupe, editor of Global Events Magazine online (www.GeoStrategyMap.com).
America’s role of world bully will prove very short lived. When a bully loses its back-slapping pals, he loses his power. A bully can’t dominate alone – on the playground or in the world.
And now, one after another, with Russia as its model, resources-based corporate states “with a profound political affinity for one another and a simultaneous collective disdain and even a hatred for US-led unipolar dominance are proliferating around the globe.”
The chickens hatched by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Wolfowitz, et al, and their Bushwhacker puppet are coming home to roost: Their hand-crafted regime has earned not just the distrust, but the active, seething hatred of an increasing number of countries around the globe that are coming together under the leadership of Russia – which, incidentally, now surpasses Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil exporter.
They are not capitalist democracies. Their governments tend to be autocratic, socialist, with the state dominating the economy. They are not as interested in selling to the highest bidder as they are to making sure their ideological friends are taken care of.
Some time ago, I speculated that it wasn’t just Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions that brought the Putin government down on him, but his cozy ties with U.S. oil companies and hints of agreements to turn control of huge blocks of Russian oil over to them – and even to sell them his Yukos Oil Company. Now it seems this speculation was well founded.
It was Putin’s firm intention to keep Russian oil under control of the Russian State. Oil is the state! And Khodorkovsky was interfering with that strategy.
So now Russia and the world’s other oil-producing countries “are increasingly entering key joint ventures between themselves and in very close cooperation with the powerhouse economies of the rising East, such as China,” Stroupe notes.
For example, as part of the latest $ 1.2 billion deal between Venezuela and China, China will build 20,000 homes in Chavez’s emerging socialist state over the next two years.
“We are witnessing not merely the formation of some new oil-and-gas cartel with Russia at its center,” Stroupe stresses, “but rather the formation of something that includes both producers and the key consumer states of the East in an ever more cohesive de facto confederation…dedicated to the achievement of strategic energy security for those within its clearly defined circle.”
The signs have all been there, I just hadn’t put two and two together; Stroupe did: The increasingly powerful Shanghai Conference, which includes Iran but pointedly excludes – even as observer – the U.S.; Chavez’ “Bolivarian axis” of Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia; China’s increasingly close relations with Brazil and Iran; India’s closing ties with Russia; the growing chumminess of Russia and Venezuela; and Russia and China’s refusal to consider sanctions for Iran over the uranium enrichment brou-ha-ha.
OPEC is moving to the periphery.
And guess who is not “within its clearly defined circle”! Hint: What country is universally despised as arrogant, greedy, violent, cruel, and boasts repeatedly of being the world’s only superpower?
Stroupe puts it more diplomatically: the West (read “The United States”) is being forcibly cast from the proverbial frying pan into the fire as something far more powerful, compelling and all-encompassing than OPEC is coalescing.”
The catastrophic failure of the Neocon scheme under their Bushy figurehead is becoming increasingly clear. The oil security they sought by stealing oil from the Middle East is further from their grasp than ever. What will they do now? What does any bully do when backed into a corner?
I, for one, don’t want to speculate about what Dr. Strangelove will do as his empire begins to collapse around him with no offer of help from all those he has so determinedly and so arrogantly alienated over the past six years.
Rigged terrorist attacks may help him retain power in America, but not in the countries that hold the energy strings. So how will he retaliate? From whom will he steal the oil to which the Amerika of Hummers and McMansions has so relentlessly and smugly addicted itself?
I don’t know, but I think I’m safe here. I don’t think he’ll bomb Moscow.
“They threw us away like a used condum” is how one bitter veteran of the failed coup of August, 1991, described what Yeltsin and Putin have done with the “democracy” they pulled out of the fire when the last clawing remnants of the communist regime tried to oust Gorbachev and reinstall the once-mighty Soviet State.
While I was winging my way back from Dubrovnik last Saturday (Chapt. 214), some 300-400 veterans on both sides of the 1991 stand-off gathered near the White House to reminisce and deplore.
The rather forlorn gathering was described by the Moscow Times: When one liberal speaker declared “we won” in the attempted coup, he was contradicted by another liberal: “We lost!”
“’No, the politicians lost for us,’ the speaker countered.”
One dissident activist told the MT, “it was the first time I felt that I could really affect the situation in my country. Our souls soared. It was such a feeling of unity. We felt invincible. But Yeltsin let us down. He turned out to be rotten to the core.”
Another who headed a group of liberal activists called “the 20th Batallion,” which protected the entrance to the White House, the seat of the Russian government, agreed that “What we got was entirely the opposite of what we dreamed of.
“We went to the barricades for them, laid our lives on the line, but they didn’t keep their promises….We defended the White House! We defended Russia! I commanded the 20th Batallion. Today I am a bum. I have no work. I have no property.”
The communists were equally angry and disillusioned. It has taken 15 years for the Russian economy to get back to its 1991 level, noted one, a professor at a Moscow university. “What, may I ask, has the government been doing this whole time?
“What have our motherland and her people gotten out of the last 15 criminal years,” he asked rhetorically. “The years of criminal capitalism have killed off 10 percent of our people.”
What seems apparent is that the heroism – on both sides – of that critical moment of history was wasted. What they got is the Russian state they’ve always had: One that is first of all preoccupied with its own survival and that of its elite, and to hell with the people.
In Russia, that’s de rigeur. What is dismaying is to see America crawling through – nay, creating -- the muck of contemporary history to reach the realm of despotism in which Russia has always been mired. You first saw it after Katrina. You’ll see a lot more of it in the “perfect storm” to come – spiraling oil prices, food and water shortages, climatic catastrophes: “Save ourselves, our power, and our money; to hell with the people. ”
I’m living in your future.
Cover of "Electric Honey" as it is.
For those of you who were around in the turbulent ’60s, when yet another Republican president brought the nation to the cusp of social revolution, the escapades of the anti-establishment college students depicted in Electric Honey, the recently published book by my friend Sam Love, will strike a familiar and amusing note.
The electric honey of the title was the sweet stuff produced by bees from the pollen of marijuana buds grown on the federal MJ research farm at Univ. of Mississippi. The Nixon Administration made possession and use of the “killer drug” marijuana a heinous crime, but they couldn’t very well outlaw honey. Makes for some fun reading.
A subplot is the preoccupation of superpatriot “Colonel Billy” in restoring the flagging zeal of the anti-communist movement – as well as of his own pre-Viagra manhood. His girlfriend tries to help by tattooing an American flag on her inner thigh declaring what lay behind it “for patriots only.”
Sam sent copies via Marco to my friend Basil and to me. Basil did some early cover designs featuring the tattoo (see photo) which Sam’s female friends thought were sexist, so he didn’t use them. But he kindly cited Basil’s – Vasiliy’s – creative efforts in his ackowledgments.
...and as it might have been.
Anyway, if you want to harken back to those “thrilling days of yesteryear,” look for Electric Honey by Sam Love in your local bookstore or from Amazon online.
I got a letter from Zhorik, but he still hadn’t received my letter, so he didn’t answer my burning questions: What did he do with the money I gave him to buy his way out of the army, and why did he lie to me about it?
He at least has realized what a horrible mistake he’s made. He’s stationed in Siberia, where winter lasts nine months a year and temperatures get down to -50 C! And he’s there for two years!
“Igor,” he implored in his letter, which was addressed both to Igor and to me, “don’t go into the army.” Of course, Igor left a week ago and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since. He was going to come back through Moscow on his way to Svetlograd from Pitr, but either he’s still in Pitr or he didn’t stop by.
So he won’t get the benefit of Zhorik’s advice, and would ignore it if he did, just as Zhorik did.
“How I regret coming into the army and not listening to what everybody told me,” he said.
“Tell Dane that I miss him, and after the army I will go to Moscow and look after him.” To Igor: “Take care of Dane, clean the apartment, and don’t be lazy. But I don’t have to tell you to do what Dane says.”
A little late, unfortunately.
He also asked Igor to send him a box of cookies, candy, Snickers bars, Marlboros, etc. “It’s been two months since I’ve drunk a Red Devil (cocktail) or eaten a shaurma (hero sandwich).”
On Friday he called and asked me to put some money on his cell phone. I SMS’d him telling him I had put the money on his cell phone and would send him a Care package, but that I was still waiting for an explanation and an apology.
When he called again Saturday to ask me to put $ 10 more on his phone, he asked, “why do I need to apologize?”
“You haven’t received the letter I sent you?”
“No.”
“I have company now, but I’ll call you back later.”
My gorgeous former IB student, 16-year-old Zhenya (aka Jack would-be-Kerouac – Chapt. 120) was here to show me pictures that he had taken on trips to Cambridge, England, and the Maldive Islands off India this summer. In England he had bought On the Road in English and two of Kerouac’s journals. He was ecstatic.
But I couldn’t go into any explanation while Jack was here, so I told Zhorik I’d phone him later.
Instead, I SMS’d him: “I’m upset and disappointed because I gave you money to bribe your way out of the army. What did you do with it, give it to Andrei? And why did you lie to me.”
This morning, Sunday, I sent another SMS: “I’m still waiting for an explanation.”
In the meantime, I’ve been re-reading earlier Red Queen chapters of our relationship and looking at his pictures, and realizing that I really do love the little turkey very, very much; and for the sake of our relationship, I’m hoping he will come up with a plausible, rational explanation of why he did this to me.
Otherwise, I’m going to have to dump him, as Volodya thinks I should in any case (Chapt. 213).
I’ve also decided that our unlikely teenage-septuagenarian love affair is worth a story on its own, which I’ve already started. I’m calling it, “When Do You Write Finis?”
I’m having fun with it, but it’s also bringing back some painful memories and wistful hopes.
And of course, I don’t know how it will end. When, after all, do you write finis?
My beautiful Peter fantasy was here when Zhorik called again Sunday afternoon. He came before 3:00 and stayed till after 8:00 – more than five hours! We looked at the photos he took in Belarus last week (which is why he didn’t respond to my SMS and phone call last Saturday night), including one with him in a bathing suit.
Without blowing my cover by staring and salivating, it looked like a wisp of pubic hair was curling up over the top of his bathing suit, but I’d be surprised if it really was. He has the classic milky white Slavic complexion and body, which usually means no hair on the chest or stomach and very little on the legs. And the pubic hair doesn’t usually extend above the belly button.
I have a feeling I’m going to find out.
I also showed him the photos I took in Dubrovnik. I also showed him the map on the Red Queen, about which he seemed very curious. But I didn’t tell him what RQ was. I also showed him a few photos of my childhood, which he wants copies of.
He brought me gifts – candy and vodka – from Belarus. I hugged him when he arrived, making sure that our cheeks caressed; I touched him often, even held and caressed his hand while we were lingering at the table after my super shrimp dinner, and then kissed him when he left. He returned my kiss and I kissed him again as we lingered outside my door.
We talked about doing many things together in the future, and he himself brought up again the idea of going somewhere where we’d have to stay in a hotel room together -- to Kiev or a city on Moscow’s “Golden Ring.”
“Has spending time with me improved your English?” I asked hopefully.
“Yes, it has, but that’s not why I spend time with you.”
Then why, exactly, pray tell? Do my hidden agenda and your hidden agenda hopefully meet somewhere?
We agreed to take a cruise on the Moscow River weekend after next, since I’m going to St. Pete to see Olen and can’t do it this weekend.
Still a little moonstruck after he left, I immediately SMS’d him:
My dearest Peter (first time I’ve used the superlative), thank you for brightening my day. What a wonderful afternoon and evening. I so look forward to seeing you again soon. Don’t work too hard tomorrow. Thinking of you, Dane
He Answered immediately:
Goodnight Dane! I had extremely pleasant and exciting time along with you! Thank you, see you in the nearest future! Have a remarkable time in St. Pete and come back to Moscow to enjoy ourselves!
I don’t think I’m reading too much into this when I conclude that something is percolating here besides casual friendship!
I’m already fantasizing about how the hotel room seduction will take place.
Her Russian organizers want Madonna to stay for a second performance. Tickets for the first one on Sept. 11 sold out in four days, despite -- or maybe because of – the condemnation by every major church “-ism.”
At the same time, the threat of Russian mafia to kidnap her and her two children reported by the British tabloid The Sun has been dismissed by her Russian manager Anton Atrashkin. Gangsters would have “no chance of causing the singer any problem,” he promised.
Russia’s population is still shrinking, according to statistics reported last week. The number of people in Russia was put at 142.4 million on July 1, a drop of 348,700 people over the first six months of the year, according to the State Statistics Service.
The first I heard about the bomb in a Moscow market last week was an e-mail from my friend Derek J. in Seattle. said in an e-mail last Tuesday. “Just wanted to check and make sure you're okay.”
“I just read about the bomb at Cherkizovsky market,” he said. “I just wanted to check and make sure you're okay.”
It’s a popular outdoor market here that I’ve been to several times for shirts, pants, belts, etc. But fortunately, I wasn’t there last Monday.
It’s a market run by Orientals, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese, so it was no surprise that all ten people killed when the bomb exploded in a Vietnamese café about 10:30 a.m. were either Chinese or Vietnamese.
Still the police didn’t label it a hate or racist crime. It was the work, they said, of “a criminal gang.”
There’s widespread – almost universal – hatred among the Russians of orientals, particularly Chinese. A couple of Chinese friends whom Hong Kong Harry has brought with him in the past were very uncomfortable here, and I for one would have discouraged them. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for their safety.
Russia’s not the only Eastern country experiencing a rise in hate crimes against gays and Lesbians, says an Associated Press (AP) analysis that ran in the Moscow Times last week.
“Rights activists say hate crimes against gays and ethnic minorities are on the rise in many of the former communist states that joined the European Union in 2004 – raising questions about whether the new members are prepared to accept the more liberal social values prevalent in Western Europe,” says the article by Timothy Jacobs.
“The other countries on this EU train have had 50 years of cooperation and have gone through these issues at relatively the same pace,” a Latvian lesbian organizer was quoted as saying. “And we expect these 10 new countries to catch up and to implement all these changes at once? It’s a lot to ask.”
A gay rights parade in Tallinn, Estonia, earlier this month was greeted with jeers and taunts. Riga, the capital of neighboring Latvia, banned a gay pride parade last month because it could not guarantee the safety of the participants, according to the article, adding that “gay rights activisits meeting for a smaller event were pelted with feces, eggs and insults as police stood idly by.”
A lithuanian legislator scarcely stirred a ripple when he proclaimed recently that “tolerating homosexuality could lead to tolerating bestiality.”
The new blatantly anti-gay Polish president, Lech Kacynski, who banned gay pride parades in 2004 and 2005 when he was mayor of Warsaw, has used his new podium to declare that “it would be dangerous for our civilization to put homosexual rights on equal footing.”
In order to become members of the EU, these former Soviet satellites had to draft legislation reflecting the EU’s stance on human rights and tolerance, “but that appears to have had little effect on changing attitudes.
“It’s easy to change legislation, but institutional and societal change takes much longer,” the article said, quoting Ilze Brands-Kehris, head of the Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies in Latvia.
So not only in Russia is the path of gay rights blocked by tradition and cultural hatred, but in many of its former member states as well. These countries have a long way to go before they accept the liberal social values of the European Union they have just become a part of.
Gay bashing and rejection of gays and gay rights will be around for a long time to come in this part of the globe.
This day years ago:
2005-8-28: Chapt. #161 - Red Queen’s global family; Russia’s energy non-crisis
