Russia bans grain exports for rest of year because of fire and drought, sending prices soaring

Wash Post:

Russia announced Thursday that it will ban all grain exports for the rest of the year, sending wheat prices soaring to a two-year high and raising the possibility of inflated food prices that could throw an already fitful global economy recovery off track.

A severe drought and wildfires have destroyed one-fifth of Russia's crop and forced the country to draw from emergency reserves.

Internationally, wheat prices have increased nearly 50 percent since June, fueling worries about a repeat of the food crisis in 2008 that triggered riots from Bangladesh to Haiti to Mozambique. Wheat prices in the United States are less likely to remain high, experts said, and a bumper crop could put American farmers in a position to benefit from the low supplies elsewhere.

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Could Russian submarine help stop Gulf leak?

Considering the current state of the effort it's hard not to take a serious look at the Russian solution. There's always a bit of ego and history involved in the US-Russian relationship but scientists are scientists and if they say they want to help, they probably really want to help. BBC:

Standing on a barge that transports the two subs after their submersion, the Mir-2 captain underlined that the subs were probably the only deep-sea vessels in the world capable of stopping the leak.

"Our subs are unique. There are two of them and they can submerge and work simultaneously. Also, they are powerful enough to work with any other additional equipment.

"There are only four vessels in the world that can go down to 6,000m - the Mirs, French Nautile and Japanese Shinkai. The Mirs are known to be the best, and we have a very experienced team of specialists," he said.

But Mr Chernyaev added that such an operation would have a chance of succeeding only if BP or the US government asked the Russian government to join efforts to stop the leak.

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The Kremlin is trying to rehabilitate Stalin, just like conservatives are doing with McCarthy

It's interesting to read that the Russian government is trying to polish Stalin's image. For the past several years, some conservatives have been trying to rewrite the history of Joe McCarthy's anti-communism, in order to suggest that he wasn't all that bad of a guy either. Kind of ironic that the rewriting is happening on both ends of the political spectrum, from the communists to the anti-communists. What do they hope to achieve? it is troubling that either side feels that the black mark somehow hampers their efforts, as though they'd like to be more like Stalin, or McCarthy, if the public were just more amenable. Read More......

Russian judge who targeted extreme right murdered

Fighting crime in Russia has to be a tough, thankless job. It's amazing that they can find anyone who wants to take jobs like this and be serious about their work.

A leading Russian judge who received death threats after handing out long prison sentences to nationalist and neo-Nazi groups was shot dead yesterday in Moscow.

Eduard Chuvashov was shot three times in the stairwell outside his second-floor apartment, just before 9am as he was leaving for work. Sources in Russian law-enforcement said that nationalist groups could have been behind the attack. Mr Chuvashov, 47, had handled several high-profile cases involving racist killings, and death threats were posted along with his photograph on extremist online forums.

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Russia: pilot error and president's desire to arrive in Smolensk may have caused crash

How easy could it have been for the pilot to ignore the president's demand to land, if that was in fact the situation? The Independent:

Alexander Alyoshin, deputy chief of the Russian Air Force's general staff, said the pilot had ignored several orders from air-traffic control not to land at Smolensk because of thick fog. "The head of the air-traffic control group gave a command to the crew to put the aircraft into the horizontal position, and when the crew did not implement this order, several times gave orders to divert to an alternative airport.

"Despite this, the crew continued the descent. Unfortunately this ended in tragedy."

The airport is a small, military facility that does not usually accept civilian craft. Aviation experts speculated that the pilots may have been ordered to land by the Polish President. "It's a clear case of VIP-passenger syndrome," flight safety expert Viktor Timoshkin told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "Air-traffic control told him to take the plane to Moscow or Minsk. I'm certain that the pilot will have told the President about this, and got a firm reply that the plane must land in Smolensk."

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Obama to take middle course in new nuclear policy

This isn't really a surprise.

The President's MO is to make a promise, then find a compromise (sometimes before the negotiation begins). Progressive advocacy groups need to recognize this fact and respond accordingly. If you want the President to keep his promise, you need to push him. The GOP has already learned this trick, as have conservative Democrats and the military.

Note that in the article below, the very reason the President is compromising is to appease the GOP and the military, i.e., conservative pressure groups. Progressive causes need to simply parrot the conservatives - if you apply pressure to the President, he is far more likely to keep his promises, and at the very least, will look to appease you rather than undercut his promises to you.

A year after his groundbreaking pledge to move toward a "world without nuclear weapons," President Obama on Tuesday will unveil a policy that constrains the weapons' role but appears more cautious than what many supporters had hoped, with the president opting for a middle course in many key areas.

Under the new policy, the administration will foreswear the use of the deadly weapons against nonnuclear countries, officials said, in contrast to previous administrations, which indicated they might use nuclear arms against nonnuclear states in retaliation for a biological or chemical attack.

But officials and analysts said the policy's cautious tone reflected a desire to not upset the military or Republicans in Congress at a time when Obama hopes to get several nuclear treaties ratified.

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Female suicide bombers kill dozens in Moscow subway

It's not common to have one, let alone two female suicide bombers. MSNBC.com:

At least 37 people were killed Monday when suicide bombers detonated explosives on two packed Moscow metro trains during rush hour, the worst attack in the Russian capital for six years, officials said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts but suspicion was likely to fall on groups from Russia's North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.

"Two female terrorist suicide bombers carried out these bombings," Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told reporters.

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Report: Russian secret service eyed for climate change email hacks

If true, this would hardly be much of a surprise. Considering how critical petroleum is to the Russian economy, any substantial change would not be viewed very kindly by the regime. The Independent:

The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.

The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behindhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

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Putin delivers US-style town hall meeting

Then again, did the US borrow from Putin or was it the other way around? All he needed was his very own Jeff Gannon to blast the opposition and it would have been complete. It's so hard when you start mixing former Soviet KGB people and George Bush. There's nothing quite as heart warming as a staged event with friendly questions. Bothering to ask real questions is so old fashioned. Oh, and Putin delivered a real shocker, suggesting that he may come back to reclaim his old job. Who could have guessed?

Ever since he made way for Dmitry Medvedev to take over the presidency in 2008 after eight years in office, there has been speculation that he is planning to return at the next presidential election in 2012. Today Putin did nothing to dispel the impression that he is Russia's most accomplished and popular politician – and that it is he who actually runs the country. Most of his questioners apparently agreed. They reverentially addressed the prime minister as "Vladimir Vladimirovich".

Putin's eighth annual phone-in was screened live on Russian TV and entitled A Conversation with Vladimir Putin: The Sequel. The event is an opportunity for Putin to demonstrate his stamina, charm and mastery of local detail. Hostile questions are weeded out – with pre-selected factory workers and studio guests "spontaneously" picked instead.

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Does anyone really ever trust kebab shops?

A few years ago over here there were cats involved but thankfully not this. Since there's no comment yet on whether or not it was served, you have to wonder:

Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.

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Soviets, I mean Russians, try to blackmail US diplomat with faked sex tape

This really is troubling. It's very Soviet. (Then again, the Republican party has gotten very Soviet of late as well.) But Russia really is slipping back if they're trying this kind of heavy-handed tactic. From ABC:

American officials say the Russian intelligence agency that replaced the KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), produced the video in an attempt to either recruit or discredit the diplomat, Brendan Kyle Hatcher, a 34-year-old married State Department employee who serves as a liaison with religious and human rights groups in Russia.

When Hatcher rejected the Russian blackmail approach, officials said, the tape was posted last month on a supposed Russian internet news site that has no known reporters and that many Russian journalists believe is closely tied to the FSB.

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Putin planning 2012 return

As if he really went away the last time. The Guardian:

Vladimir Putin dropped the heaviest hint so far that he aims to return to his former post as president in 2012, a move that could see him still in the Kremlin in 2024 – aged 72. Speaking to a group of international scholars and journalists at his country residence, the Russian prime minister refused to quash rumours that he would return as president when Dmitry Medvedev finished his first term.

He said the process of deciding who would be president would follow the same pattern as in the run-up to the last election, when Putin effectively called all the shots and picked Medvedev as his successor. An election took place, but the result was a foregone conclusion.

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Putin ignites new anger during WWII cermony

What else is he really going to do after spinning about the glory of Josef Stalin for the past decade? Completely classless but then again, we already knew that about Putin. What a way to ruin an opportunity to bringing old enemies together, even if only for a day.

The Kremlin and its spin doctors have accused Poland of plotting with the Nazis to invade Russia and of gleefully joining in Germany's carve-up of Czechoslovakia.

Moscow's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, warned today of a new showdown between Russia and Europe over the rewriting of history, highlighting the deep gulf in perceptions of the causes and effects of the war 70 years later.

"Freedom came from the east," said Lavrov. "Russia, once again, fulfilled its historic mission to save Europe from forced unification and its own madness.

"Victory was achieved at too great a price for us to simply let it be taken away from us. That is where we draw the line. If someone wants to have a new ideological confrontation with Europe, then historical revisionism and attempts to turn history into a practical political instrument is a direct path toward this confrontation."

So freedom was installing a brutal dictatorship? Who would have known? Read More......

Russian human rights activist murdered

More troubling news from Russia. It reminds me of one summer (winter) when I was doing an internship in Argentina for the US embassy there. I was having dinner with an Argentine woman who worked with us. It was 1988 or so, just a few years after the military dictatorship fell. She lost several friends to the death squads who would arrest and summarily execute human and civil rights advocates, and any other political agitators they didn't agree with. Some were reportedly drugged and dropped from helicopters into the ocean to drown. I remember that night, at dinner, going into a heated rant about the military dictatorship and the killings, and the Argentine woman suddenly stopped, looked at me, and said: "You know, if you were Argentine, they'd have killed you." Never forget how fortunate we are to live in this country, regardless of its shortfalls. Read More......

Obama to do interview with Russian opposition newspaper

A step in the right direction.

Barack Obama is to give an interview to the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta before his trip to Moscow on Monday, in the clearest sign yet that his administration will take an unexpectedly tough approach in its dealings with the Kremlin. Obama will talk to the editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, and meet the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who co-owns the paper.

Novaya Gazeta is famous for its critical reporting of the Russian government. Its special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya is one of four reporters from the paper to have been murdered. A critic of the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, she was shot dead in Moscow in October 2006.

Formally, Obama is following in the footsteps of Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, who granted Novaya an interview in April. This week the paper published its own investigation into the origins of last summer's war between Russia and Georgia. The Kremlin blamed Georgia's pro-US leader, Mikheil Saakashvili. According to Novaya, however, the Kremlin planned its invasion of Georgia long in advance, sending columns of tanks.

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Russian government brutally breaks up gay pride parade, again

Two years ago, the Russian police sat back and watched as thugs violently beat gay marchers, including Members of the European Parliament. This year wasn't much different. It's really astonishing how backward Russia still is. Not in terms of its acceptance of gays. In terms of the fact that government violence is still tolerated, and sanctioned, when the party in charge disagrees with the politics of its people. It's another lesson in nation-building. Just because you throw out communism doesn't mean you get democracy in its stead.

(And just because you have nukes doesn't make you a man either.) Read More......

World Bank forecasts 4.5% contraction in Russian economy

Oil is still expensive enough but hardly at the bubble rates of last year. The latest Russian efforts to revive the glories of the past (also known as ego) were funded on high oil prices but this will have to be put back on the shelf for a few more years until the next oil bubble arrives. MarketWatch:

"With a much worse global financial outlook and oil prices in the $45 a barrel range, Russia's economy is likely to contract by 4.5% in 2009, with further downside risks," the World Bank said in a report released Monday.

The new forecast is a major downward adjustment from the World Bank's previous estimate of 3% growth. Russia, which has vast resources of oil, gas and metals, has been hit hard by the global economic crisis.

As a result of the expected macroeconomic contraction, Russia's fiscal surplus from last year will turn to a sizeable deficit, according to the bank.

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Calendar note: Martial law and total collapse next year

Is Rush Limbaugh now consulting for Russia? Igor Panarin would have been quite a hit at CPAC. The dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's diplomat school is now fine tuning his prediction for collapse. After years of predictions, 2010 is apparently the year when it's all going to happen and Sarah Palin's Alaska will beg for mercy and reconnect with Russia. It's difficult to see how Russia could be such a basket case with this kind of thinking at the top.

From the AP:

"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy — a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia's Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin.

Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany's Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy.

Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources.

He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now.

But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" — when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control.

Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.

Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington's bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed.

Thankfully Russia never sees violence and it's a nation of exclusively manly men like Putin. It's all very impressive. Just like the performance of the Russian stock market. Read More......

Russian billionaires lose billions in crisis

As dramatic as their gains were last year, the losses are even more dramatic. They still have healthy bank accountants though it would be interesting to see how these losses are impacting the rest of the Russian population.

Russia's super-rich are also super-losers in the financial crisis, according to the business magazine Finans, which said Monday the top 10 wealthiest Russians lost about two-thirds of their fortunes over the past year.

The magazine's annual list of Russia's richest shows them suffering breathtaking losses as the country faces its worst financial crisis in a decade. Oleg Deripaska, who had topped Finans' list in the previous two years, fell to eighth place after losing some 85 percent of his wealth -- down to $4.9 billion from $40 billion, Finans estimated.

Mikhail Prokhorov, the playboy metals and banking billionaire who sold his stake in mining company Norilsk Nickel early last year, moved up from seventh place to top the list with a fortune of $14.1 billion, down from $21.5 billion a year ago, the magazine said.

Roman Abramovich, owner of Britain's Chelsea Football Club and a stake in steelmaker Evraz, held on to second place. But his fortune, estimated last year at $23 billion, has shrunk to $13.9 billion.

Russia's stock markets lost 70 percent of their value last year, while the national currency has lost 35 percent since the summer. Aggressive geopolitical rhetoric and worsening corporate governance drove many investors away, while plunging prices for oil and metals underscored the fragility of Russia's eight-year oil-fueled boom.

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Russian legislation to label critics of government as traitors

Yet another step backwards for Russia. As the oil money is slashed it won't be a surprise to see more repressive actions by the government.

Rights activists Wednesday denounced new legislation backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that would allow Russian authorities to label any government critic a traitor, calling it a chilling throwback to times of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The bill, which is expected to become law, would expand the definition of treason to include damaging Russia's constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. That, activists said, would essentially let authorities interpret any act against the state as treason — a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Government supporters and Kremlin-allied lawmakers said the bill will tighten up current law. Supporters say prosecutors often have trouble gaining convictions because of ambiguities in the definition of state treason.

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