What happened in Nalchik? And what does it mean?

I can't presume to answer these questions from so far away. But luckily the Institute for War and Peace Reporting has people on the scene who have provided what seem to me to be comprehensive and informative accounts. I haven't had time to scan the English-language mainstream media for Nalchik coverage, so I might be wrong about this, but I would guess these pieces are better than most of what you'll find there. See below.

Counting the Cost of Nalchik's 24-Hour War

Soul-Searching After Kabardino-Balkaria Violence

"The Television is Broken"

I saw a great article in yesterday's Johnson's Russia List. Johnson had it headlined, "Commentator Sees Declining Influence of Russian Television on Public Opinion." I wasn't able to find the English-language version or the original in Russian anywhere online, but I liked the article so much (Panyushkin's comment about "idiot housewives" notwithstanding) that I'm posting the full text here. He says it all better than I possibly could:

Commentary by Valeriy Panyushkin: "The Television Is Broken"
Gazeta.ru, October 11, 2005

They have lost us. They are the government. And we are the people. They are pulling on the bridle that used to hold us, but the bridle no longer leads to an iron bit, and the bit no longer bites into our mouths. They still turn the screw the way they used to, but the screw has slipped from its threads and turning it no longer causes it to tighten. They have lost us. No one knows how we live or who we listen to, and no one knows what we will be up to tomorrow.

Television was the bridle and the screw. Do you recall how in 1999 Vladimir Putin was able to use television to go from being an unknown prime minister with a 2% popularity rating to a universally beloved president with a rating above 50%? Back then you could persuade us with television, intimidate us with television, mobilize us with television. Television was a powerful political weapon. Naturally the government took control of that weapon and sharpened it for its own ends. Recall how undesirable television hosts disappeared, how live broadcasts were taken off the air, how opposition politicians disappeared from our screens.

The only problem was that television is only a powerful political weapon on one condition. We can only be persuaded, intimidated or mobilized by television on one condition, namely that we watch it and believe it. But we do not watch it or believe it anymore.

The television ratings that five years ago were led by news and political analysis shows are now filled with series. People are not watching the news, and they are not watching political analysis. Television has come to be viewed purely as entertainment. That is to say, it has lost it propaganda role, because no one would ever think of agitating the people using the merry-go-rounds in a recreational park.

Television's audience has changed. If you take a look at the sociological research you can instantly see that working men and working women have stopped watching television. The only ones still watching are idiot housewives and children. Children do not vote. Idiot housewives are told by their husbands for whom to vote. True, old people still watch television, but everyone know they vote for the communists.

People who make decisions, even people who make decisions at the family level, even simply heads of households, are not watching television. The government can no longer influence the way they think.

Indirect confirmation of this comes in the form of the latest television hero: the sorcerer Grabovoy. No serious person is going to watch Grabovoy. A working man or a working woman, even if they do not have higher education, is going to turn off that junk immediately, because a serious person has no desire to fill his or her head with that junk. And if Grabovoy is getting ratings, that means that it is idiots who are watching television these days. The last time sorcerers, mediums and gods appeared on television was 15 years ago, before the country fell apart, when no one believed television except for idiots. And if there are sorcerers on the screen now, and idiots in front of the screen, then that means that television has once again ceased to be a propaganda weapon, just like it did back then, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

You may have noticed that in recent weeks television has suddenly started showing people who for the longest time had no access to the TV screen. Now it is none other than members of the opposition who are getting on television. Boris Nemtsov, Irina Khakamada and sometimes even communists are appearing and saying things. When was the last time that Khakamada was invited to appear on television? You may recall that two years ago she was even forbidden to appear on the game show "Chto? Gde? Kogda?" (What? Where? When?). Do you know what has happened?

They, the government, are trying to rectify the disastrous state of the television audience. They are bringing opposition politicians back to television just a little bit, and they are letting television do just a little bit of live broadcasting. And if you have not noticed these changes, that means that you do not watch television, which fact only serves to confirm what I have said about the declining role of this most important of the arts.

We the people have stopped watching television as if breaking a chain, losing the bridle or stripping the threads on the turned screw. Does that mean that we have become free? No. A dog that slips his chain or a horse that slips his bridle do not become free, they tumble headfirst. And if the threads of a screw are stripped, the mechanism held in place by the screw does not become freer, it runs out of control.

A discouraging picture: they, the government, can no longer control us in any way except by force of arms, and now we are running out of control.

More on Nal'chik

Gateway Pundit has an exhaustive post with lots of breathless headlines about what happened in Nal'chik and links to many articles.

The most important outcome of today's events, if the story proves to be true, will be the death of Russia's current public enemy number one - Mosnews is running a story claiming that Shamil Basaev was killed today in Nal'chik, which could certainly change the tone of the discussion about what happened there, again, if it turns out to be true. Of course, Mosnews' sole source appears to be the "Chechen Society" newspaper, whose sole source was an anonymous FSB agent in Nal'chik.

Breaking news from Nal'chik

Today there appears to have been another instance of the Russian government failing to keep its people safe from military (some might say terrorist) attack on their own soil - according to various reports, some 60 militants - though other sources say there were as many as 300 - did battle with law enforcement and Russian military units in the southern town of Nal'chik and blew up or attacked several offices housing police, FSB, and other security agencies. Here's the story from CNN; you can also read about this in English on RIA Novosti's website and in Russian on Regnum and Lenta.

The reports right now seem a bit confused, like no one knows what exactly happened and why, although I did see reports of as many as 60 civilian deaths (in this BBC story). Apparently some of the fighters have been captured, although only time will tell if their justice will take the form of a public trial or death by torture in a concealed location. Mosnews (in English) reports 50 militants and 12 locals (unclear whether they were civilians or local law enforcement) dead, and puts the number of militants at 150.

What is disturbing about this is that it shows the Chechen fighters are ranging farther into Russia than they have in the recent past, and this time they've taken on a relatively large city and a regional capital. Nal'chik is much farther from Chechnya's border with the rest of Russia than Beslan was, and at 275,000 its population is about 8 times larger than Beslan's - although Nal'chik may not be as far into Russian territory as Budyonnovsk was, I don't think anyone wants to use the lawlessness of the First Chechen War as a benchmark. Nal'chik is rather close to the Georgian border - I wonder how long it is before the Russian government starts making accusations and excuses about Georgian collaboration with the Chechens? It wouldn't be the first time.

As always, one hopes for a minimum of deaths among the innocent civilians caught in between the Chechens' barbarous audacity and the Russian government's incompetence.

Khodorkovsky's lawyer - "Taking on the State"

From page 1 of the October 10-16 issue of the Georgetown Law Weekly ("The Student Newspaper of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C."):

Amsterdam is "Taking on the State"
by Lyndon Allin, 1L
Guest Writer

Last Thursday, the Georgetown community was treated to a first-hand account of the most controversial legal case in Russia today. Robert Amsterdam addressed over 100 people in Copley Formal Lounge on the main campus in a presentation about the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the Yukos oil company. The remarks by Mr. Amsterdam, the lead western lawyer on Khodorkovsky’s defense team, were no less provocative and far-ranging than the title of his presentation, “Taking on the State.”

Amsterdam’s appearance, sponsored by the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, was initially scheduled to take place in a smaller venue but was moved to Copley to accommodate the unexpectedly large turnout.

Amsterdam began by mentioning his recent deportation from Russia and observed that in this situation, “I managed to do more for my client by getting myself kicked out of the country than I could by whatever representation I could make within the country.”

Khodorkovsky, who has been imprisoned since late 2003, recently lost an appeal of his conviction this May on charges of fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement, for which he was sentenced to a nine-year prison term. Many Russia observers believe that the case against Khodorkovsky, at one time the richest man in Russia, was motivated by the businessman’s involvement in Russian domestic politics and sponsorship of civil society initiatives, coupled with the Russian government’s desire to take control of the assets of his company, Yukos. Khodorkovsky’s prosecution was accompanied by tax evasion charges against Yukos that eventually led to the forced sale of the company’s main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, which is now under the control of the state-owned oil company Rosneft.

Last week, Russian prosecutors initiated a new series of raids on companies affiliated with Yukos, and the story continues to garner international attention. Mr. Amsterdam described the charges against Khodorkovsky and Yukos as a manipulation of the legal system, and said that the charges against his client reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of modern business practices on the part of prosecutors. “In many ways,” he said, “it was the old Russia putting the new Russia on trial.”

Khodorkovsky’s prosecution has been popular among a large segment of the Russian population left impoverished by the economic and social transitions of the 1990s who watched the emergence of a small class of wealthy elites, the very richest of whom, like Khodorkovsky, came to be known as “oligarchs.”

Denying his client’s guilt, Mr. Amsterdam stated, “it is the [Russian] government that is conducting itself criminally, and it is the American government that is closing its eyes to what is going on in the name of oil.” This was one of several points during his remarks at which Amsterdam suggested the US government, and President Bush specifically, should be more active in criticizing the Russian government’s handling of the case against Khodorkovsky.

Speaking more broadly about the legal climate in Russia, Amsterdam noted that many positive reforms were enacted during President Vladimir Putin’s first term in office, citing the new tax, criminal and procedural codes introduced during that period. However, according to Amsterdam, during Putin’s second term, the president “has been meticulous in his destruction of even the very roots of judicial independence.”

“The rule of law has been under attack consistently from the government now for essentially three years,” he said. Amsterdam remarked on the authorities’ use of “Soviet-style tactics” in the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, and he observed that “lawyers are in [the authorities’] sights,” citing several recent cases where prosecutorial abuses have been alleged and attorneys have been jailed under questionable circumstances.

After his remarks, Amsterdam took many questions from the audience. Robert Alter, an MSFS candidate who is also a lawyer, asked how it was possible for attorneys to stay sufficiently motivated to diligently prepare for trial proceedings if they view the trial process itself as corrupt. Amsterdam responded, “I believe this is an entirely political case, and I think the only resolution will be political ultimately, and that essentially it is critical as his lawyers to try to keep his light alive and to have people remember that he exists, and to shout and scream when you see crimes being committed by states.”

Amsterdam went on to say that the Russian lawyers on Khodorkovsky’s defense team are conducting their side of the case diligently in hopes that their client’s case will eventually reach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He expressed his admiration for his Russian colleagues, calling them “incredibly heroic in incredibly difficult circumstances.” One of Khodorkovsky’s Russian attorneys, Olga Artyukhova, was disbarred last week by the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers, and other members of his defense team are facing disbarment proceedings on charges that they unethically attempted to drag out the appeal process.

Several people in the audience felt that the presentation was one-sided. Irina Papkova, a PhD candidate in the government department, observed that Amsterdam “got a little carried away.” “For all of Khodorkovsky’s subsequent good civic behavior, I doubt he got where he was without any illegal activity,” said Ms. Papkova, “but I don’t think the punishment befits the crime in this case.” At least one individual from the Russian Embassy in Washington was in attendance at the event but did not address Amsterdam directly with questions or comments.

Of Amsterdam’s remarks, CERES MA candidate Jonathan Hayes said, “He definitely shed light on the specifics with his own bias.” CERES Associate Director Jennifer Long observed that “Mr. Amsterdam’s views clearly are based on his experiences working with his famous client and add to an often heated debate about the conduct of economic and political reforms and the establishment of the rule of law in post-Soviet Russia.”

Overall, Mr. Amsterdam’s remarks were highly critical of the Russian government. He expressed dismay at the state’s reassertion of control over Russia’s oil and gas industry, saying that this was already leading to a decline in oil production because “this is a state that can’t manage its way out of a paper bag.” However, in his final comment, Amsterdam expressed optimism about Russia’s future, because, according to him, the “taste for reform” still exists, and the controversy surrounding Khodorkovsky continues to be the subject of much public discussion. “I am hopeful for Russia because it is amazing to me that Khodorkovsky still gets the level of attention that he gets.”

I guess since I haven't had time to post original content here lately, I can at least post the fruits of my other labors. I went to this interesting talk last week and had the chance to cover it for GULC's weekly newspaper (their web presence is a bit weak at the moment).

Amsterdam actually said some things that were much more incendiary than the sound bites I ended up using. To explain the context around some of the things he said would have required much more writing than the 800-1000 words that the editors wanted.

You can listen to the whole talk if you have a fast connection - the "webcast" is posted here. I have to add a most sincere thanks to everyone at CERES - they were kind enough to get me the webcast ahead of time, which was very helpful since my deadline for the story was 18 hours after the event ended. A piece of cake for a real journalist, but it's been years since I did anything like this, so I found myself feeling pressed for time.

To be honest, it was difficult for me to try to seem objective on this (and maybe my article didn't end up seeming objective after all), because I agreed with a lot of the things Amsterdam said. He was very compelling, speaking with conviction that you don't always see in hired advocates.

If you want to see more, the full text of Amsterdam's talk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here in DC is available on their website, and he said many of the same things in that presentation. He also did an interview with RFE/RL recently - getting kicked out of Russia was something of a publicity coup for him.

Here are some of the high points of Amsterdam's remarks that I didn't use in my article (If you listen to the webcast, you'll probably hear that the individual quotations were not necessarily said in order I've listed them, but I can assure you that nothing is out of context):

"We’re back to the USSR. You can’t have independent sources of power, or enlightenment, or civil society. It’s a no-no, it’s a danger, it’s the Orange Revolution. Putin sees the Orange Revolution behind every rock."

"I have worked in many hellholes [earlier Amsterdam mentioned his work in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala], and...there’s nothing comparable to working in Moscow in a political trial...In Russia, when it comes to suppression, they lose their incompetence; they’re pretty damn good at it."

"...I can only tell you bluntly that technology and the ability to control the media represent grievous threats to those fighting the state.”

"The war on terror is a war of terror in Russia. Mr. Putin is not a partner of the war on terror; he is part of the problem when it comes to terror, because he has used the war on terror to declare war on his own people. You declare war on your own people when you destroy their political space, when you destroy the press, when you insure that the first eight minutes of every television program involving news covers your picture, when you destroy federalism after a terrible incident involving the incompetence of your own security staff, and when you lie and lie and lie again to your people."

At several times during his remarks, Amsterdam ranged past the narrow topic of the Khodorkovsky case and into his take on the role in this case of German and US policy toward Russia:

"We are living in an age where foreign policy is defined by opportunism. And people like to cloak it in realpolitik, but it’s just bald-faced, bare-assed opportunism, and it is important that the world changes, and that people understand that human rights where they’re under attack really mean something."

"When you are fighting the state, recognize that those who act for the state know no limits. They know no limits because their leader is given a free pass, and he is given a free pass because he has energy galore, and because other countries have State Departments that can focus on only one war at a time. And in this country if it isn’t Iraq, it doesn’t exist. And what is sad and tragic is that the peoples of Latin America and Eastern Europe and Russia see this void, and the damage and destruction that has been done by Abu Ghraib is incalculable."

"I cannot define for you America’s loss of face in the world, I cannot express to you how incalculable the damage has been. I can only tell you that it will take a generation to repair, and I can only tell you that it is a tremendous loss for those of us who work internationally...to see the bright light of America so dim, to see the incredible lack of moral leadership that emanates from this country, to know the world is so much the poorer for it..."

I have to second Amsterdam on that last observation - it's never been harder than it is today to defend US policy to foreign audiences, not necessarily because of the substance of the policy but because we seem to be setting such a bad example for the rest of the world.

SEO Spam Sucks

For some reason, there was a slew of spam comments on this blog tonight - 16 in the past 9 hours, more than I've ever experienced before and far more irritating than the "new post = 1 spam comment" that I've been experiencing for the past month or so. The sites being promoted deal with a dizzying array of topics - everything from the unsurprising "mens male enhancement reviews" and "MAKE MONEY NOW" to "how to play guitar" and "cold sore," and the inscrutable "day from green holiday lyric." Some of them were posted to very old posts, and I have no idea how the spammers' software selects which blogs and posts are to be victimized. One of the "commenters" identifies him/herself as "unrepentant resources" - that sounds about right, I guess.

I'm hoping this is just an anomalous spike (although two more have rolled in as I've been writing this), or that the good people at Blogger will get their act together and fix this somehow, so that I don't have to disable comments. Trolling around the Russian-language internet, I've seen advertisements for "search engine optimization" (SEO) services. I wouldn't want to cast undue aspersions on Russian netizens (although Russians themselves are often the first to proudly proclaim that their hackers are the best in the world), but it makes me sad to think that some or all of these might have been generated in an internet cafe in Ekaterinburg or some other spam factory. I'm going to take the time to delete all of tonight's spam comments, but I think it's sort of like painting over graffiti - it might make you feel like you're fighting the bad guys, but when you come back the next day there will just be more to fight.

[Update at 5:03] The last two spam comments were by some jackass identifying himself as "Bud Wiser." It is unusual to be spammed by a registered Blogger user; this guy's profile (find it yourself if you're interested; I'm not going to pay him the favor of a link) claims that he's "been involved in marketing and sales for 25 years. Web publishing since 1994." All I can say is that if he's really been involved in marketing and sales for 25 years, it's pretty pathetic that all he's learned to do in that time is post comment spam to relatively low-traffic blogs like this one. As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Wiser can go straight to hell and take his "free mobile ringtones" with him. He also identifies himself as the "Son of Spam" - will no one stop this madman?

Sorry for the rant.

Saturday night in DC - "Chaos"

I just got back to DC from a friend's wedding in New York City - I drove up during the afternoon and drove back through the night, about 9 hours of driving in all. I've been thinking recently that it might be interesting to live in New York someday, so it was interesting to check the city out, although I only had about 90 minutes to do so before the wedding. I did get to see Ground Zero (the former site of the World Trade Center) and the view of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, but that was about it.

The only time I've spent more than a day in NYC was when my family visited there for a couple of days, probably between 15 and20 years ago, and the only thing I remembered from that visit was that our car got broken into. Probably because of that, I've never had positive thoughts about living in the Big Apple. But after living in Moscow for such a long time, I grew to like the feeling of living in a big city, which Washington certainly is not, and I feel like we could perhaps handle another metropolis - and that it might be an interesting challenge. I did find getting around Manhattan by car a bit difficult today - although probably no more difficult than getting around by car in Moscow - and in general the idea of living in New York still seems a bit intimidating.

Anyway, the drive home was uneventful, and I was surprisingly awake in spite of the late hour. I had almost made it home when I found my route along 18th Street blocked by a huge assemblage of police cars and other emergency vehicles. I stopped to ask one of the officers on the scene what had happened, and his short answer was, "Chaos." He elaborated: "Two people got stabbed, and then people wanted to fight the police when they showed up." I parked the car and strolled down 18th Street to take in the mayhem - there were lots of gawkers and club-goers who had just been kicked out of the various bars and clubs at closing time, and, as always, a huge crowd in front of the jumbo pizza slice joint. And I thought to myself, if this is the kind of thing that still happens in Mayor Tony Williams' "gentrified" DC, maybe New York isn't so intimidating by comparison.