by Jules Evans | Apr 14, 2007 | Europe and Central Asia
As I write this, insipid pop music is being blared out from speakers about 100 metres from my flat. There’s a big stage being constructed there, with expensive lights and monitors, and a giant pile of white balloons.
This is democracy, Russian-style.
Up the road, a slightly less-well-funded protest by the ‘Other Russia’ movement, which is what passes for an opposition movement in Putin’s Russia, is underway. About 4,000 protestors, led by the unlikely figure of chess champion Garry Kasparov, are marching for the right to hold free elections, while around 9,000 cops, riot cops and soldiers circle them and go in to drag out the ring-leaders.
Actually, looks like Kasparov just got arrested. Best thing that ever happened to his campaign.
Whenever the opposition holds a rally, the Kremlin always tries to trump it, to show how happy the people are and how little they give a crap about the opposition (which is basically true). Last December, the Other Russia held a rally attended by about 3000 people. The next day, the Kremlin-funded youth group Nashi held a rally attended by about 150,000 students, all of them dressed as Santa Claus, clutching sacks of goodies to give out to WWII veterans. You can read an account of that surreal weekend here.
This time, the Kremlin seems content to put on a rock show on Tverskaya, right outside my flat, the swines.
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by Alex Evans | Apr 13, 2007 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
In case Jules and David‘s outraged posts on the handling of the hostage crisis in Iran have left you still wanting more, let’s give the last word on the subject to William Lind:
The failure of HMS Cornwall to foresee such an event and be in a position to protect her people; the cowardice—there is no other word for it—of the boarding party (including two officers) once captured; their kissing the Iranian’s backsides in return for their release; and perhaps most un-British, their selling their disgraceful stories to the British press for money on their return — all this departs from Royal Navy traditions in ways that would have appalled the tars who fought at Trafalgar.
So far, so similar to most of the coverage this week. But wait; a solution is at hand!
In 1756, at the beginning of the Seven Year’s War, the French took the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean from the British. Admiral Byng was sent out from London to relieve the island’s garrison, then under siege. He arrived, fought a mismanaged battle with the attending French squadron, then retired to Gibraltar. Deprived of naval support, the garrison surrendered. Byng was court-martialed for his failure, found guilty, and shot.
The capital charge was “not doing his utmost” in the presence of the enemy. In other words, Byng was executed not for what he did, but for what he did not do. Nothing could have done more to spur initiative in the navy. As Voltaire famously wrote, “Sometimes the British shoot an admiral to encourage the others”.
by Alex Evans | Apr 13, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
ForeignPolicy.com is running a list of predictions that didn’t come true, including free atomic energy for all, global cooling, Japan ruling the world, another 9/11, and too many people on earth. What actually happened on the last of these, they ask?
Birthrates leveled off, food production drastically expanded, and technology improved. The 6.5 billion people alive today are far more than most imagined could possibly be supported a few decades ago. Limited resources and widespread poverty remain challenges for billions, but in nothing like the apocalyptic form that the alarmists predicted. The United Nations now predicts that the world’s population will level off at 9 billion by 2300.
Well, birthrates may have levelled off relatively, but global population certainly ain’t level just yet. (Might be an idea to check those figures, too – the UN’s prediction is actually 9 billion people by 2045, not 2300.) But more generally, here are a few reasons why reports of Malthus’s demise – well, his reputation’s demise, at any rate – may be premature:
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by Alex Evans | Apr 13, 2007 | Economics and development
It looks pretty bad for Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. The Guardian reports the reaction yesterday when he tried to address Bank staff in their headquarters atrium:
Attempting to address around 200 World Bank employees gathered in the atrium of the bank’s plush Washington headquarters yesterday afternoon, Mr Wolfowitz quickly left after a knot of staff began chanting “resign, resign” while others also hissed and booed.
One staff member who was in the atrium said: “To see the bank’s president being heckled by his own staff was amazing. He looked shocked, very shocked, by the reaction and the anger.”
And the FT has a strongly worded editorial calling on him to resign too:
What then do we see here? The answer is: an apparent violation of Bank rules; favouritism that borders on nepotism; and a possible cover-up. It is true Mr Wolfowitz and Ms Riza were put in a difficult position. Even so, what has come out would be bad in any institution. In an institution that spear-heads the cause of good governance in the developing world, it is lethal.
The World Bank has moved from being a self-proclaimed exemplar of best practice in corporate governance to an example of shoddiness. As long as Mr Wolfowitz stays, this can be neither repaired nor forgotten, be it outside the Bank or inside it. In the interests of the Bank itself, he should resign. If he does not, the board must ask him to go.
One day to go until the Bank’s spring meetings. The drama…
by Jules Evans | Apr 11, 2007 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
I’m glad the government is finally realizing how badly it has played the Iran hostage crisis. It reacted in a typical New Labour way, just like Tony Blair reacted to Diana’s death – get them out there, talking to the press about how difficult the experience was for the poor fellows. There was no sense that this was a major national embarrassment, that they’d given up without any sort of resistance, that it made us look weak to the rest of the world. There was no sense of the Stoicism once associated with British military strength. Instead it was all touchy-feely sentimentalism. I’m not saying I wouldn’t crumple like a box of corn flakes at the first hint of torture, but if I was a soldier, I wouldn’t then sell the story of how I crumpled to the international media.
This is an example of how the rest of the world sees the episode. It’s an opinion piece by Yulia Latinya, a leading Russian journalist (as well as classicist) who hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio:
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