MOSCOW, December 30, 2007 -- Russian elections don’t need to be “fair,” a senior member of Russia’s parliament, or Duma,” instructed the chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) last week.
Furthermore, Russians don’t expect them to be.
The Council’s own election code of good practices says nothing about fairness, Konstantin Kosachkyov declared at a joint press conference here, according to the Moscow Times.
“The very first paragraph of this document lists five principles of democratic elections,” he told assembled journalists, holding up the election code.
“Elections must be universal, equal, free, secret, and direct,” he continued.
“And let me note that it doesn’t say here that elections must be fair. The word ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ are not used.”
So no matter that to the exclusion of all the competing parties, Putin and his United Russia Party completely dominated – if not saturated –TV time in the weeks before the duma election.
And we can’t expect the presidential election in March to be any different. The five announced opponents of Putin will get no TV coverage except to be the subject of ridicule. “Universal, equal, free, secret, and direct” the election may prove to be. “Fair,” it will not.
On New Year’s Eve I will be flying to Madrid, and barring unforeseen catastrophes, will welcome in 2008 in Madrid’s Sun Plaza with other revelers.
As usual, there are lots of New Year’s predictions pouring in from everywhere. One of the most provocative is from the Danish Saxo Bank, which in a set of admittedly “Outrageous Predictions” for 2008 sees oil hitting $ 175 a barrel, the S&P Index dropping 25% to 1182, and three out of every ten American home builders going bankrupt.
The Chinese stock market will plunge by 40%, says the forex trader, which recently headlined a new world partnership with Citibank.
Okay, so far everything their cards are seeing is within the realm of possibility. However, after reading their prediction for next November’s elections, you might want to discount a good part of the rest: “Ron Paul will be elected the 44th president of the United States,” they say – and apparently with a straight face.
Be forewarned, however. Saxo admits the purpose of its predictions is not accuracy, but “an attempt to provoke thought.”
But even if you discount Saxo, a host of other observers from diverse economic and political schools forewarn that in the year we are about to enter, the American economy is headed for the shoals.
In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece on Dec. 9, for instance, Steve Fraser, author of the forthcoming (Yale Press) Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, sees the American economy “entering a state of free fall” precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage debacle, home foreclosures, construction industry slowdowns, a credit drought for consumers and businesses, oil price shocks and “the open-ended devaluation of the dollar.”
And all this comes, he notes on top of “the debacle in Iraq and the political implosion of the Republican Party,” not to mention the U.S. balance-of-payments deficits, peak oil, a looming global water shortage and planet-threatening planetary warming.
So once again, I think Russia remains a pretty good place to weather the U.S. financial tsunami if the political winds here don’t blow me out of the water.
I just wonder if there’ll be anything left of my social security pension.
Happy 2008! I hope we all survive it!
Zhorik is jealous of li’l ole moi! The day after Christmas, he and I were having repeated problems SMS’ing each other because when he was free, I wasn’t; and vice-versa. Finally, he wrote: “Excuse me, Dane, it seems to me you’ve been playing with somebody else.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. I showed it to Sergei. He was puzzled, too. “I don’t know what it means.”
Then it dawned on me. “Playing.” Our code word. He thinks I’m two-timing him!
How could he think that? Unless you count sucking Igor’s and Sergei’s dicks or plotting to get Sasha’s larcenous cock down my throat as being unfaithful!
“Honey,” I wrote back. “Do you mean you think I’ve got another boyfriend?”
“Yes,” he wrote back, “Okay, it’s not important. Don’t write such words in the future, okay?”
“Okay, honey, I won’t write them again. But sweetheart, I’m waiting impatiently for you, and only you. You have no idea how I miss you. I dream of when you will come back and we will be living together, just you and me. I’m also a little jealous of your girlfriends, but I understand that you have to have sex.”
“We don’t have long to wait,” he wrote back.
“Not long, but still too long,” I replied.
I can’t decide if I should be happy or alarmed that he’s jealous. On the one hand, it’s ego-boosting to think my little 20-year-old Russian soldier boy is jealous of his 75-year-old lover; on the other hand, people do irrational and stupid things out of jealousy. Our long-distance relationship isn’t going to be helped any by the fact that I’ll be even longer distance and virtually incommunicado in Spain for the next week!
I did send him $ 200 for New Year’s to buy an MP3 player and celebrate the occasion – if his CO will let him. He said the colonel has been taking his mobile phone during the day time and returning it only at night – which has further enormously complicated our attempts to stay in touch.
But last night, Saturday night, after getting one SMS from him, his phone was again “either switched off or out of the coverage area.” So I’m further confused and dismayed. We need to talk before I head out for Spain. But will we be able to?
On another front, Igor still hasn’t shown up despite his promise to be here before I left for Spain, nor has he called. What am I to make of that? I hope he’s safe and not in trouble.
“I’m madder’n a clophus,” announced my teenaged sister-in-law-to-be when I first visited my future wife’s home in Ft. Myers, Fla., over half a century ago.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said: “What’s a clophus?”
“A clophus is a big mean animal with five mouths and no asshole. He can’t shit.”
Somehow, the vision of not being able to take a dump no matter how desperately you needed to has haunted me ever since.
That phobia became reality just after Christmas.
At the risk of waxing scatological, let me explain: I’ve had recurrent problems ever since I let Yegor -- against all my instincts for self-preservation and common sense -- butt-fuck me during the height of our relationship four years ago. Maybe it was also because I had a prostate infection at the time, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t been the same since.
The peristaltic action that keeps your – shall we for the sake of clinical good taste, say “stool”? – moving through your large intestine to its ignominious conclusion has been permanently stilled, causing me to have to strain harder, inducing the inevitable periodic “gemorois” that bring their own unhappy problems (Chapt. 267, Russian Sputnik launched 50 years ago).
And often I’ve had to force the formed -- what do you want to call it? Fecal matter? Human waste? Defecation? Excreta? Shit? -- out of the rectal vault (and all this time you thought it was your bung hole!) by manipulating it through the thin skin around the anal opening.
But on Thursday after Christmas, nothing worked. I was in pain. I had to take an dump. But it was physically impossible. All the accumulated Christmas crap just wouldn’t come out! For the first time, I even stuck my finger up my rectum and tried to pry the glued chunks apart, with scant success. I strained and pushed some more. I put some never-used-for-its-intended purpose lubricating oil on my finger and tried again. It was like trying to pry apart granite stones stuck with super glue.
(In fact, Russian slang for taking a dump is “tossing stones,” so I must not be the only one who’s had this experience.)
I was still feeling like a B52 with a bomb stuck halfway out of its bomb bay doors when I went to collect the rest of my pay from Potemkin U. at noon; and when the pressure got too great, I tried again in the toilet there – with no more success.
This could be serious!
What am I going to do? I don’t know even how to say “impacted colon” in Russian, if it got to the point of having to go to a polyclinic, which seemed increasingly likely as the afternoon wore on.
What if it’s still there next Monday when I’m supposed to fly to Spain? What if I’m in the hospital and can’t go anywhere – and all for a pile of worthless shit?
Why me, oh lord?
As I sat on the toilet contemplating my fate, it dawned on me what the problem was: Not enough fluids. Never enough fluids. Yes, I’ve known for 70 years you’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water day, but I don’t even like water! My aversion to all liquids not containing alcohol has given me two bouts with kidney stones already and I still don’t drink water.
I’m a slow learner.
But I practically sprang from the toilet seat and downed my first glass of water. Then I thought: When I had this problem as a teenager working in the corner grocery store, I downed a can of sauerkraut juice. Worked wonders! Could hardly finish my shift! No sauerkraut juice here, but lots of sauerkraut. I went to the market and bought two pounds of home made sauerkraut and downed a third of it. I bought tangerines and persimmons and apples and started munching furiously.
About 6 that evening, after students Max and Emil left, my efforts paid off! I could feel the internal explosive pressure building, and this time, a little help from my finger through the skin of the rectal vault was all that was needed. At last! Four days of accumulated body garbage held by a dam of intractable granite stone rocketed unceremoniously into the “unitas,” or toilet bowl.
Ah, life again is good. It brought to my attention once more that, more often than not, the only thing that stands between you and unremitting happiness is an intractible pile of shit!
And from now on, it’s eight glasses of water every day plus lots of sauerkraut, fruit, and vegetables!
Happy New Year! May no intractable pile of shit – no matter what his name -- come between you and unremitting happiness in the new year!
See also related pages:
Chapt. #275 - Spain offers new future – if I have one
Chapt. #267 - Russian Sputnik launched 50 years ago
This day years ago:
2004-12-30: Chapt. #99 - Year of the Cock: US Embassy sticks one up Sasha’s ass
