Give W Credit where it is due

George W Bush was evidently way smarter than he looked. It was a truly prophetic gesture to refuse to ratify the Rome Statute in 2002 which established the International Criminal Court in Hague, an international tribunal for persecuting war criminals. The USA is in great company here - other countries who refused to join the treaty were Israel, Russia and China. As a result, it turns out that Tony Blair can be tried as a war criminal for the act of aggression against Iraq (a violation of the international law), and W can't!

The movement to have Tony Blair tried as a war criminal is gaining steam in the UK - you can read more here.

Also today read a new article - brilliant and thought provocative as usual - by Paul Craig Roberts "Americans Are Hell-Bent of Tyranny."

Tell Me Who Your Friend is

The USA is squarely on the side of the "young Georgian democracy" in its conflicts with Russia. Here is what I - surprise, surprise! - do not see reported in our American propaganda - eh-h-h - news. The democratic republic of Georgia decided to blow up a WWII memorial. Let me remind you that the Soviet Union was the decisive force in the victory over the Nazi Germany having lost 27 million lives of its own citizens. Among those killed were 300,000 Georgians. Not to worry. The monument was to be demolished to make way for the construction of the new Georgian parliament building (curiously being moved outside of the Georgian capital Tbilisi). Mr. Saakashvili timed the demolition so that it would coincide with his birthday on December 21 (incidentally, that day is also the birthday of another famous Georgian, Stalin). Georgian opposition voiced their protests against the demolition which were, naturally, ignored in the best traditions of the Georgian democracy. Anyway, the blast was eventually held 2 days ahead of the schedule for reasons unexplained to the press. During the explosion a woman and her 8-year-old daughter were killed by a piece of debris which accidentally hit them.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Saakashvili! Hope you get a particularly tasteful tie as a present.

Great friends we have, really! Blowing up monuments to people who defeated fascism (blowing up their own citizens as a collateral damage, too). Huge portraits of Stalin can still be seen on the streets of Georgian cities. What do friendships like that say about us? Oh, wait. I remember that at some point Osama bin Laden was our friend. Never mind!

The news has been reported by Reuters, and some other Western media - but not the US. Oh, no, not the US. We do not report unpleasant news about our dear friends. We are all Georgians here, remember? Count me out.

The Real Size of the US Deficit in 2009 is $9 Trillion

I already mentioned the site http://www.shadowstats.com/ on my blog as a source of information about the economy which does not tweak the economic data to make it more palatable for the general public consumption, and does not put a positive spin on the numbers. The problem is that the site is not free. Well, I stumbled across a source which reports the recent information off that site in the open Internet. And what they are reporting is shocking.

It turns out that the release of an annual US deficit report by the US Treasury will be delayed by two months till at least February 2010. This deficit calculation uses the Generally Accepted Accounting (GAAP) principles, the same which are required of all of the US corporations. And according to the shadowstats website, it is going to show a deficit of $9 trillion in 2009 ALONE.

"The reason why the “official” deficit numbers are so radically different from the real budget numbers for the United States is that with GAAP accounting, the government is not allowed to hide its “unfunded liabilities” off of its balance sheet." You can read more on the story here.

So as a corporation, the US is almost bankrupt: with a $14-trillion-a-year GDP we can't be running annual deficits of $9-trillion for long.

So let us wait till February and see how much of this information we will be able to read in the - what some of my friends consider to be - American news.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

A Bit of the Professional Humor

The Year of My Discontent

I have been wondering why I am so at odds with the world around me lately. Why am I so upset by the realities around me? Why do I feel so disappointed in this country, so betrayed by it? After all, it is not even truly my country to begin with. What do I care if it turned out to be sold out to special interests, and that it lacks freedom of speech, and offers propaganda in place of the news, and substitutes moral values with money and religion?

This is not simply a mid-life crisis, although I concede that my sentiments may be particularly painful because of that, too. I realized after a while that what I am living through is the fall of my belief system, of a certain ideal I had in my mind, a crisis of consciousness. Many people experienced the same in Russia with the advent of perestroika which all of a sudden made it clear that people who had been glamorized throughout the history of the Soviet State were some of the worst and most savage criminals in history, that the society's value system was all based on a myth, that the very idea on which the country was built was stripped of its worth, flogged and spat at in front of our eyes. As a result, a huge void formed in the Russian society in the place where the soviet value system once stood. And that system was an exact equivalent of a religion with its iconostasis, Lives of the Saints, its own Bible and the religious texts. The iconoclasm of the 1990's did not bring in new values to the society, and the gaping hole is being filled with a mix of Orthodox Christianity, cynicism, cult of money and material success, and the emerging nationalism.

Anyway, I did not live through a crisis of consciousness back then because I was raised in an anti-communist household. It was clandestine anti-communism, and I knew from the early age not to repeat elsewhere what I heard at home. My Dad grew up in a village in the Russian North where many political exiles were sent to live. While growing up, he heard them tell stories about Stalin's atrocities, he imbibed the atmosphere critical of the current regime and its ideology. And he generously shared it with me. So I definitely did not partake of the culture of communist brainwashing, and thus the crash of that culture did not affect me as anything but liberation.

What I did believe in were the ideals of a free world. Of capitalist entrepreneurship, reward for hard work, talent, persistence. Freedom of speech, freedom of beliefs. Justice free from ideology. I thought that America was the country that lived and breathed those ideals. We came here in good faith, we worked hard, and without any public assistance ever we made a very good living for ourselves. I did not pay much attention to George Bush the 1st - we were too busy building our life in America back then. I was horrified and disgusted by the immoral rule of Bill Clinton with an orgy of materialistic excesses and consumerism we saw around us. The fact that the sleazy Bill could get away with anything did not sit well with us. We voted for George Bush both times thinking that his Republican ideas will usher in the era of personal responsibility, human decency, hard work. Instead he busied himself with enriching a few people at the top and completely pillaging the country destroying its manufacturing base, unleashing unnecessary wars under false pretenses and brainwashing, brainwashing, brainwashing us.

And then as a final blow and an eye-opener came Georgia. That is Georgian attack on Ossetia which historically has never been a part of Georgia as a country, and which declared its own independence of Georgia at the time when Georgia became a separate state after the fall of the Soviet Union. Georgian tanks rolled into the streets of the sleeping town on Tskhinval in the dead of the night on August 8, 2008 when the world was busy watching the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. From the antiquity wars were stopped for the duration of the Olympics, so to start a war at the opening of the Olympic Games certainly was a new low in the international relations. And those tanks were shelling residential buildings killing peaceful population, as well as Russian peace keepers who were on the territory of Ossetia by the international mandate. As a response, Russia brought in its own troops, quickly overturned the "brave" US-trained Georgian forces and advanced into Georgia. It was VERY clear who was in the right, and who was in the wrong. But ALL AMERICAN NEWS SOURCES CHOSE to represent the story as a insidious attack of Russians against peaceful pro-Western Georgians. There were more balanced accounts in European mass media, but in the US there was no place for any other view of the situation except the officially endorsed one. That is when the last curtain fell from my eyes, and I realized that our mass media are not interested in reporting news to us, they are not interested in informing us, they are interested in indoctrinating us and carrying out orders coming from some masters invisible to us.

(Of course, in the time which has elapsed since the Georgian attack, an official European report has found Georgia as an aggressor, but that information, too, which made headlines in Europe, was printed in small print in the mid-sections of our newspapers and with the headers like "The report blames the war on both, Russia and Georgia." Lies, lies, lies. Seriously, no better than what the communists printed in Russia.)

Then I saw how our newly elected President is interested in solely saving his Wall-Street puppeteers, how he continues to escalate the wars which we cannot afford, and I realized that this country is not at all ruled by a democratically elected President and Congress, but rather by a few special interest groups behind the screens. And that those groups do not hold anything sacred - not their country, not God, not justice, not morals - except the Almighty Dollar. And this is when my internal crisis hit me.

Now I experience a void of values to believe in. Capitalism has disgraced itself in my eyes. Religion holds next to no appeal to me - I see it as an unverifiable tale employed by a religious establishment to provide a fairly good living for themselves. I do not see a change I can believe in. I am lost. I am disgusted. I am coming to realization that the only thing in life worth worshiping and admiring is art and human thought. I am preparing for the internal immigration. Good-bye, America! I believed in you. I was wrong.

My Favorite Poems

I just want to announce that I started a new blog project - completely in Russian - where I hope to collect all of my favorite poems one poem per day. I called it iPoemPod. In case you read in Russian and would like to visit it, here is the link.

Cultural Baggage Filled with Political Correctness

MSNBC today is reprinting an article from CondeNast Traveler with important tips on taboo topics in 12 different countries. The article is placed under a header "Where you should think before you speak" which gives a nice prelude of what will follow. The title is quite idiotic, of course. Uh-h-h-g, the answer to that question would be obviously, EVERYWHERE. The author claims that some topics are to be avoided at all costs in various countries (in fact he labels them as absolutely verboten). Examples are: do not discuss Israel and all things Jewish in Egypt, do not talk about the US and Canadian health care in Canada, do not talk about human rights in China, etc. Amidst the topics encouraged by the author are gastronomic delights and possibly cultural and sports achievement of those countries. In other words, when meeting people from other countries, try to learn as little as possible about how they view really relevant issues, and keep the conversation strictly within the range of small talk pleasantries. Speaking food and sports is probably the least enlightening of all conversations known to men. The author is advising us to do just that.

It is easy to see why he makes this bizarre and, really, stupid, recommendation. He proceeds from the premise that Americans have preconceived notions about those issues, and they may not be possibly interested in what other people have to say about them. There can only be a clash of opinions. He even admits it. Don't mention Jews in Egypt because you may hear conspiracy theories. So what??? Where else will I hear the conspiracy theories? What if I want to make my own judgement about them? Don't discuss Canadian health care with Canadians because they are fiercely protective of it. So what??? What if I want to hear that despite all the perceived drawbacks people are actually quite satisfied to wait for their elective surgeries for a year or more as long as they are free? The recommendation not to discuss the atrocities in Chechnya and Georgia with Russians betrays the author's lack of familiarity with the issue and effectiveness of brainwashing by American propaganda machine. The only atrocities committed in Georgia were those committed by the Georgians against peacefully sleeping Ossetians whose houses Georgian troops were shelling in the middle of the night. Atrocities in Chechnya were committed by Chechen fighters against hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians who used to live in that area - and who were essentially killed or completely driven out of there. Russians would gladly talk with you about those facts.

My feeling is that the author is not trying to prevent us from committing a faux pas, he wants to prevent us from learning stuff which runs contrary to our comfortable cultural stereotypes.

What I absolutely detest about America is our political correctness. No! It is NOT good that we avoid conflicts in our discussions. Because we either never find out that our preconceived notions are incorrect, or our biases and anger settle deeper in our consciousness. I am a firm believer in talking things over, and arguing about them openly, rather than sweeping them under the mat, smiling politely and keeping the conversation down to small talk.

Plastic conversations, plastic people, plastic relationships. If this is the stereotype of an American traveler you want to perpetuate in the world, go ahead and follow the "safe" and patronizing recommendations. Stick to discussing hockey with Canadians. Does anybody else see how condescending and humiliating this advice is to both, Americans and Canadians/Egyptians/Russians, etc.?

What an ugly and barren animal this cross between political correctness and cultural baggage produces!

In Memoriam

Three most handsome male actors of the Russian cinema died this year:

Oleg Yankovskii

Igor Starygin

and Viacheslav Tikhonov.

And then there were none...

Common Sense Helps Smell Corruption

How can you tell when officials have accepted bribes? Easily, actually. You just need to use the power of observation and some common sense. Just like my favorite Agatha Christie's character, Miss Marple, who has spent all of her life in a tiny English village, yet by drawing analogies between the most mundane observable human behaviors, she is capable of solving very intricate crimes.

Say, if you know that your neighbor did not inherit any family wealth, has a home-maker wife, works as a city building inspector, and yet drives a new Lexus and takes 3 vacations abroad every year, you can safely suspect that he takes bribes. Or if a city zoning commission which gives you a lot of grief and denies your petition to extend your deck by ONE FOOT because it will then be encroaching on the 3 yards easement around a sewer line, quickly approves a commercial development despite protests from neighbors, environmental groups, violation of existing zoning restrictions and exorbitant costs involved in moving roads and other infrastructure items - you can be reasonably sure that members of the zoning commission were ECONOMICALLY ENCOURAGED to make the decision in favor of this big developer.

Consider a couple more cases from our recent history as a country. BHG (bovine growth hormone) was approved by the FDA in 1993 as safe for cows after just THREE MONTHS of conducting studies. The BHG is passed to cow milk and milk products which we in turn consume. There have been studies linking this hormone to increased rates of human cancer. The hormone is BANNED EVERYWHERE in the developed world: Europe, Canada, New Zealand - you name it. Is it reasonable to assume that our own FDA was - mmm- economically encouraged to find it safe to use? You decide. I have stuck with hormone free milk products ever since, and I suspect that the FDA authorities have done the same in their personal life.

But maybe FDA is always quick to approve new and questionable treatments and additives? Let me think... Say, a chicken pox vaccine had been developed and administered in Japan for 14 years with an excellent record of safety, yet our own FDA refused to allow it on our market as being "unsafe" and "unproven" till 1996. Could it possibly be that manufacturers of the vaccine just stubbornly refused to grease the palm? Or that there were no special interest groups behind the vaccine to encourage the FDA to even study the issue (patients obviously are not a special itnerest group, or a group of interest to the FDA). Now the unanimous consensus is that there is a considerable economic impact from administering this vaccine, not to mention lives saved, and days of agony for parents and children.

Other "knee-jerk" quickly adopted policies with disastrous consequences for the country in general were, without a doubt, the Clinton-pushed NAFTA and Bush-pushed Free Trade with China. The speed of passing those sweeping changes speak loud and clear of corruption. The result of those policies were millions of US jobs lost, the almost total destruction of many American manufacturing in many areas, but multi-billion profits for corporations. If you are interested in details on how Bush willingly sold out his fellow Americans to special interest groups in his deal with China, read this summary. Incidentally, I am not sure that the Wall Street bailout was really a case of corruption. Well, in a way it was, but I don't think there was a financial payback to the architects of the bailout. I think their reward is that they are still alive.

What I am saying is that we don't even need to know the details of the shenanigans going on to KNOW that corruption is taking place. Common sense and power of observation is all it takes. If it looks like corruption, smells like corruption, and feels like corruption - in most cases, it IS corruption.

So what are our choices when we smell corrution? Just like the picture at the top of the post says, you can say nothing and hold your breath, or you can pray silently. I would say, prayer is our best strategy now.

The Exodus

America is not a promised land any longer. We still have a large influx of immigrants who may not know better, but some of those who just came - even from refugee camps - are begging to go back home. Professionals who came from other countries are leaving in large numbers. New holders of green cards have no intention of living here. That is the empirical data I see around myself.

In our small Southern US city with its only daily newspaper, two articles appeared in the past two weeks about recent immigrants. One was about the lost boys of Sudan, some of whom are now choosing to go back to their country. Another one - yesterday - was about refugees from Iraq who are BEGGING to go back home. For those who do not read the news: today a blast in Baghdad killed over 110 people. In the mind of these immigrants, it is still preferable to what life in America holds for them. They live in a basement apartment in the "hood" with no heat for a week (the landlord is promising to fix the faulty system, meanwhile the temperatures are below freezing every night). Despite his best efforts, the father was only able to find a job for one day delivering pizza out of the three months they have lived here, and the housing complex is ridden with crime. These immigrants who do not strike me as freeloaders simply see no future here for themselves and their children. They say that America turned out to be the OPPOSITE of what they imagined. These people had been supporters of the American troops back in Iraq, and that fact can potentially pose threat to them upon their return. Before they experienced America first hand, they used to be believers in our values, and our way of life. I can only imagine what kind of message they will be spreading if they ever succeed in returning back to their country.

I personally know several Europeans who recently chose to go back to their countries because life holds more promise there for them and their children. I personally know an international lawyer from China who works in the US as long as money is good, but knows for sure that she will live out her life somewhere in Asia. Her Mother came to visit from mainland China, and has no interest whatsoever in staying here. I personally know several Russian Jews who, after having received a refugee status in the US, have refused to come here where their children are (and have lost the status, by the way). A couple of weeks ago I met another Chinese woman from Shanghai who spoke to me in fluent and accent-free Russian which she learned as a student in Moscow State University 30 years ago - she was visiting her first grandchild born here. Again, she is not considering moving to the US to be with her children even though she would have this opportunity. There was such pride in her voice when she was telling me about how beautiful China now is, how much better they live, she was inviting me to come and see it for myself. Not a word about how imressed she was with the life her children have in the US. (Incidentally, a physican friend of ours who lives in Moscow, Russia, and had worked in the US for a number of months before, recently visited China, and he was so stcuck that he said that America is a backwards jungle village compared to modern Chinese cities.)

My classmate recently won a green card which gives his family an opportunity to move permanently to the US. Well, a US citizenship gives a clear advantage to somebody with a Russian passport because it allows that person to travel freely without asking most other countries for entry visas. So this friend fully intends to spend the required 188 days out of the year in the US to get his American passport in 5 years. But that same friend, who is very critical of the business climate in Russia, and is not a fan of Vladimir Putin and his economic policies, does not have plans to move his business to the US. I guess, as bad as it is in Moscow, it is still better than in the US. My own Mother-in-Law is coming here to get her green card for which we sponsored her, but she, like everybody else I mentioned, has NO INTEREST in moving here.

Asian students are returning to their countries after graduating from American graduate schools in masses. Even American graduates are now looking for Asia to get their jobs. I already wrote about it in one of my previous blogs. But here is a link to an article about this phenomenon again.

While America is waging wars which serve no practical purpose but enriching people financing them, while America is "bailing out" Rothchild's banks in the US, it has ruinined itself as a great country. Personally, I think we are already beyond the point of no return. Our youth has nothing to look forward to, and no great ideals to live for (if you don't seriously consider paying taxes a great patriotic ideal, but even for that you need a job).

Some may say, "Good riddance." If we get rid of some immigrants, there will be more jobs and natural resources for those left. (Incidentally, a former classmate of mine reported from Alberta, Canada where she has lived for the past 10 years that yesterday on a train while talking to her other friend in Russian, she was yelled at by a Canadian: "Shut up, f---g immigrants!")While this may be true, the phenomenon that I am describing is but a symptom that this country does not have appeal for a lot of people who have a choice where to live. And that is a change we better believe in.

What happened with Egypt after the Exodus? They have lived off showing their mummies and ancient ruins? Some future to look forward to.

To Club or Not to Club - that is the Question

OK, so Tiger Woods was having an alleged affair, and on the Thanksgiving Day his wife supposedly gave him a good beating with his own golf clubs. She also smashed the back window of his SUV as he tried to make his bare foot escape from the house. I am sure it felt good (to her). But what has she achieved?

If your husband is simply promiscuous and has affairs here and there every once in a while, that does not pose a big threat to the woman's status as a wife. Yes, she can send a message that it can hurt if he gets caught, and the husband may treat her with the same kind of love and tenderness we reserve for the law enforcement officers, especially state troopers who are out there to prevent us from speeding. So she gets to keep a prisoner, not a husband.

If your husband is truly in love with another woman, your status as a wife is really over. Nominally, he may still be coming home (and bringing some of his paycheck to you), say, for "the sake of the children," or out of guilt, or charity. My feeling is that clubbing in that case, even though emotionally satisfying for the duration of the fight, would only stimulate him to leave immediately notwithstanding the children, and dissipating his feeling of guilt. You would be seen forever as a sore looser and a sorry bitch. He would only be confirmed in his opinion that you are not worth living with. You can toughen it out and hope that the other woman would dump him (which she won't if he is a high earner - and incidentally, from my personal observation that is who younger women invariably "fall in love" with), or that he somehow would get over his love and come back to you. But the family is largely over. And I don't believe he will ever respect you for not setting him free.

Personally, I would let him go. In other words, Jenny Sanford, not Elin Woods. Oh, naturally, I would keep the money, but I would not want to touch his clubs.