Site of the day - Playbomzh

Looking away from the political developments of the day for a minute, here is an internet project that is worth checking out: Playbomzh.

Astute readers will have figured out that this is a combination of "Playboy" with the Russian word "bomzh" (actually an abbreviation of Soviet-era origin which stands for "without a definite place of residence"), meaning "homeless person." This photo essay manages to be light-hearted but depressing at the same time. Photographer Zhenia Evgrafov clearly was able to get close to his subjects, Moscow's homeless. The site includes a poignant but still humorous section revealing the dreams of some of Evgrafov's subjects.

Hat tip to Jonas Luster, who was spot-on in describing Playbomzh as "strangely appealing and thought provoking at the same time."

More on Nashi

NEWSru.com has an interesting article on the developing and increasingly violent conflict between newly formed Kremlin puppet movement "Nashi" and the only truly activist political opposition in Russia today, Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party (unlikely heroes, to be sure). I've translated it for all of y'all non-Russian-speakers who might be interested:

The NBP has asked the Prosecutor General's office to open a criminal case against the leader of "Walking Together" and "Nashi" Vasily Yakemenko
Published on 14 April 2005, 21:20

Members of the National Bolshevik Party have filed a formal request with the Prosecutor General's office demanding that a criminal case be opened against Vasily Yakemenko, leader of the "Walking Together" and "Nashi" movements. NBP leader Eduard Limonov made this statement to journalists on Thursday at a press conference at the Rosbalt news agency.

According to him, the reasons for this demand were Yakemenko's numerous statements in the press about the start of a battle with Limonov's National Bolsheviks and the subsequent аttacks on the NBP office in Moscow and on party members. "16 Nashisti [members of 'Nashi'] have already been arrested after these attacks, and we have succeeded in getting criminal charges filed," said Limonov.

NBP lawyer Vitaliy Varivoda explained that the NBP is demanding that the Prosecutor General's office file charges under Article 282 of the Criminal Code (organization of an extremist society). "It is obvious to us that the attackers all used similar methods, that all of the attacks on the NBP were organized and used instruments such as hacksaws and gas," said Varivoda. According to the lawyer, if a court eventually declares "Nashi" to be extremists, that would lead to a ban on the organization.

In an interview with Echo of Moscow [radio station], Limonov admitted that he is more interested in the role of the Kremlin, which has created all of these movements, than in Mr. Yakemenko himself. That said, the National Bolsheviks are not planning to respond to "Nashi" in kind.

Meanwhile, 46 National Bolsheviks are currently in jail, according to Eduard Limonov. This includes the NatsBols who have been charged with seizing the Health Ministry and the reception area of the presidential administration.

NPB members suspect "Nashi" of organizing at least three large-scale attacks. On January 29 at 10:00 the NBP headquarters was attacked. There were roughly 40 attackers. They arrived in a minivan; in addition there were two automobiles with tinted windows near the building which had not been seen parking there previously and which vanished right after the attack took place.

The attackers shouted nazi slogans and were armed with wooden clubs - shovel handles which had been sawed in half, from which the price tags hadn't even been removed. Two NBP members were beaten, but the attackers were unable to gain access to the headquarters, thanks to a well-organized defense. The NatsBols were able to detain five of the attackers. The militia, which arrived a bit later, took all five to the Lomonosovskoe precinct. Charges were filed against those detained under Article 213 ("hooliganism").

On March 5, a group of unidentified young people using a saw broke into the NBP's heаdquarters on Maria Ul'ianova Street. The National Bolsheviks barricaded themselves in the building, and the attackers poisoned them with gas. According to the NBP, the attackers were accompanied on this occasion by a cameraman from [state-owned] Channel One. The militia was informed of the attack, however officers did not arrive at the scene until two hours after they were called.

According to NBP press secretary Aleksandr Averin, law enforcement detained nine of the participants in the attack on the NBP's bunker. The rest of the attackers were able to escape. Also seized were six baseball bats, two crowbars, and gas cannisters.

The NBP claims that the marauders were diligently videotaping a dozen syringes and twenty bottles of vodka that they brought with them. In addition, they beat the NatsBol who was guarding the bunker, Chechen War veteran Yakov Gorbunov, with a baseball bat. He suffered a broken jaw and an injury to one of his eyes.

The NBP claims that members of the new pro-Kremlin movement "Nashi," created under the aegis of the presidential administration, were behind these incidents. Sources in the NBP told NEWSru.com that the attack itself was carried out by football hooligans from the Moscow "Gladiators" gang, hired with funds provided by "Nashi."

Recall that at one of his press conferences Vasily Yakemenko proclaimed that the main task pf "Nashi" would be to battle the "nazis," which according to him includes the NBP.

NBP member Yakov Gorbunov, a victim of the attempted storm of the NBP bunker on March 5, was attacked on April 10 in Moscow. Near Maria Ul'ianova Street, unknown persons jumped him from behind and beat him about the head with metal bars, after which they got into a nearby car
and drove off.

NBP sources believe that this was "Nashi" taking revenge for the fact that Chechen War veteran Yakov Gorbunov had testified against them regarding the recent attack on the NatsBols' bunker. As a result of his testimony, charges were filed against the participants in the March 5 attack.

This article is suspiciously one-sided, but maybe that's just because Yakemenko couldn't be bothered to comment, what with the "Nashi" launch festivities today and all. The report is worth checking out even if you can't read the Russian, as it has a great photo of Yakemenko looking rather pathetic.

Story of the day - Nashi are here

One of the top stories on Segodnia at 22:00 (NTV's nightly news show) tonight - right after the story about the secrecy-cloaked, large-scale special forces raid today in Grozny - was the official launch of the much-discussed "Nashi" ("Ours") youth movement. Recycled Kremlin toady Vasily Yakemenko - leader of the apparently mothballed "Idushchie Vmeste" ("Walking Together") movement - appeared on the presidium as one of the organization's five "komissars" (yes, that's the name they are using for the organization's leadership).

The festivities were disrupted when Olga Shanina, a member of Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party, ran onstage and tried to douse the "Nashi" leadership with water . According to NTV's report, Yakemenko later, uh, tastefully joked that the protester had "already been shot." Charming.

Here is a somewhat stale but still relevant report on the early development of "Nashi":

RFE/RL, March 2, 2005 Analysis: Walking With Putin By Julie A. Corwin

The pro-Putin youth movement Walking Together announced on 1 March that it has created a new youth movement called Nashi (Ours). According to a press release published on pravda.ru, which quotes Walking Together founder Vasilii Yakemenko, the goal of the new "anti-fascist" movement is to put an end to the "anti-Fatherland union of oligarchs, anti-Semites, Nazis, and liberals." Several Moscow-based newspapers reported the goal of the new group is actually a bit more specific: to eventually replace the party of power, Unified Russia.

The movement's rallying cry is preventing the introduction of foreign control in Russia. Moskovskii komsomolets" on 24 February reported that it obtained documents outlining a "grandiose plan for the creation of a new youth movement" whose goal is to save the motherland from colonization by the United States. The daily quotes Walking Together leader Yakemenko as saying that "organizations in Russia are growing, on the basis of which the U.S. will create groups analogous to Serbia's Otpor, Georgia's Kmara, or Ukraine's Pora. These groups are Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party and Avant Garde Red Youth."

Yakemenko, 33, initially denied in interviews with Ekho Moskvy and "Kommersant-Daily" on 21 February that a new youth movement was in the works. However, later reports detailed Yakemenko's speeches at meetings in cities across Russia, such as Kursk, Orel, and St. Petersburg. According to "Moskovskii komsomolets," Yakemenko told students in Kursk that "Europe long ago asked itself the question: Who will be working at European gas stations, Turks or Ukrainians? This question now has been decided in favor of the Ukrainians. In the final analysis, for practically its entire history, Ukraine has been a colony. It's just that previously it was a Russian colony and now it is an American colony."

[...]In an interview with "Vremya novostei" on 1 March, [leader of Yabloko's youth movement Ilya] Yashin suggested that "one of the tasks of the 'Nashisti' is to intimidate the opposition youth so that they are afraid to attend public meetings. He said that in the last couple of months there have been several clashes between the members of the political opposition and unaffiliated people. Yashin told gazeta.ru that former members of Walking Together along with skinheads in athletic clothing were the main attendees at the Nashi congress. [...]

According to the Moscow-based newspapers, the real architect of Nashi is not Yakemenko but deputy presidential-administration head Vladislav Surkov. Surkov reportedly met with some 35-40 youths in St. Petersburg along with Yakemenko on 17 February to talk about setting up Nashi, according to "Kommersant-Daily" on 21 February. RosBalt confirmed that Surkov was indeed in St. Petersburg on 17 February; however, Yakemenko denied everything. Surkov was widely credited with masterminding Unified Russia's victory in the 2003 State Duma elections. He has now reportedly become disillusioned with his old creation as well as with Motherland [Rodina], which was originally created to take votes away from the Communist Party.

If Surkov is indeed seeking an alternative to Unified Russia, then that might explain the secrecy surrounding Nashi's creation. The presidential administration still needs obedience from Unified Russia members in the State Duma and elsewhere, which may be less forthcoming if they realize that their political careers are about to be cut short. In an interview with kreml.org on 1 March, Viktor Militarev, vice president of the National Strategy Institute, said that he thinks that Walking Together faltered as an organization because it was held together only by money and not by an ideology. Similarly, Unified Russia could have been a "powerful pro-presidential party that served as a repository of the people's hopes for the president and hostility for the thieves, oligarchs, and corrupt bureaucrats. Instead of this, we have a parody," he concluded.

However, with Nashi, Yakemenko has recently been taking a smarter approach, according to Militarev. "For example, Yakemenko has given lectures to youth activists in which he described the American authorities as our geopolitical opponent and said that Russia needs to defend itself." According to Militarev, this is a more effective doctrine than "Putin is our president and he is always right." Writing in politcom.ru on 22 February, Tatyana Stanovaya suggests that the Kremlin's presidential campaign in 2008 may assume the features of Yeltsin's 1996 race when Yeltsin managed to come from behind because of the "Red threat."

"In 2008, the Kremlin might also motivate citizens to vote not 'for' (an unpopular president) but 'against' (this time against the Orange threat) and the 'geopolitical appetites of the West' and 'the powerful subversive network within the country.'" However, if INDEM foundation analyst Yurii Korgunyuk is correct, then Nashi proponents are not pursuing a cynical election ploy. He told "The Moscow Times" on 25 February that the "Kremlin has a paranoid fear of what happened in Ukraine happening here."

Hmmm. Cynical or paranoid. Take your pick. Either way, it's hard to see a positive side to the rise of this latest Kremlin-created movement. An excellent article by Masha Gessen on Nashi from last month is also worth reading:

Moscow Times, February 28, 2005
Kremlin Youth Encourage 'Us' to Get 'Them'
By Masha Gessen

Imagine for a minute that in some country other than Russia -- say, in the United States, or in Britain -- there appeared a political organization that called itself "Us." Not U.S. as in the United States, not Us as in Us Magazine, but Us as in "us vs. them." Imagine further that this is an organization that supports, and is evidently supported by, the country's current government.

Now imagine the hue and cry, the outrage of all the righteous people who argue that an organization that openly divides its own country into those who are "us" and those who are "them" is despicable -- and a government that supports and even inspires the use of the rhetoric of war against its own citizens is criminal. [...]

Unfortunately, it today's Russia, we no longer have to imagine it. Except that the "outrage of all the righteous people" seems a bit muted - after all, they're not the ones in charge of the TV stations.

Yakemenko, though, has some outrage of his own; talking about a brochure to be published shortly by "Nashi," he proclaimed, "Definitely, Khakamada, Ryzhkov, and Kasparov - that is to say, all those who consider it possible to march with fascists - all of them will definitely be named in the brochure." I can't wait.

Mexistan

An intriguing op-ed from yesterday's Washington Post:

Greetings From Mexistan
By Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, Wednesday, April 13, 2005; Page A17

It may be just about the most inspiring sight imaginable: hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the main square of some capital city, demanding democratic self-rule. "They're doing it in many different corners of the world," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week, "places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon, and rumblings in other parts of the world as well. And so this is a hopeful time."

It is a process in which the United States claims more than an observer's role. The business of America, says President Bush, is spreading democracy. "The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people, you must learn to trust them," Bush said in his inaugural address this January. "Start on this journey of progress and justice and America will walk at your side."

Unless, of course, you're Mexican.

Apparently, there are several kinds of capital city rallies. There are those in Kiev, where multitudes turned out to protest the subversion of a national election and the attempted murder of the opposition leader. There are those in Beirut, where people gathered to protest the murder of an opposition leader and to demand self-determination. These were outpourings that our government encouraged.

And there was the one last Thursday in Mexico City, where 300,000 protesters filled the Zocalo, the great plaza in the middle of the city, to show their outrage over the decision of their Chamber of Deputies to keep that nation's opposition leader from running for president next year.

The government had not murdered the opposition leader, Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; it merely proposed to imprison him -- and thereby disqualify him for the presidency -- because someone in his city government disregarded a court order to stop construction of a short access road leading to a hospital, over land that was acquired by Lopez Obrador's predecessor but whose ownership was still in dispute.

For this the congressional deputies from Mexico's two conservative parties -- President Vicente Fox's PAN and the PRI, which had governed Mexico for six decades before Fox was elected in 2000 -- voted almost unanimously last Thursday to strip Lopez Obrador of his official immunity, with the clear goal of imprisoning him and knocking him out of the 2006 presidential race.

Not coincidentally, all polls show Lopez Obrador -- standard-bearer of the left-leaning PRD -- to be the front-runner in that contest.

And what was the response of our government? Did we invoke the president's mighty line that leaders of government with long habits of control must learn to trust their people? Did we tell the crowds gathered in the Zocalo that America walks at their side?

Not quite. While Condi Rice waxes eloquent about our concern for democratic rights in Central Asia and the Middle East, the most the Bush administration has managed to say about democracy in the unimaginably faraway land of Mexico has been the comment of a State Department spokesman that this is an internal Mexican affair.

Democracy may be all well and good, but Lopez Obrador is just not Bush's kind of guy. As mayor of Mexico City, he's increased public pensions to the elderly and spent heavily on public works and the accompanying job creation. [...] He's opposed to Fox's plan to privatize Mexico's state-owned oil and gas industry -- a stance that probably doesn't endear him to the Texas oilmen currently employed as president and vice president of the United States.

Worse yet, Lopez Obrador's populist politics and smarts have made him the most popular political leader in Mexico today. The much touted "free-market" economics of President Fox have done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Mexicans. Lopez Obrador's victory in next year's election would mark a decisive repudiation of that neo-liberal model. Coming after the elections of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Hugo Chavez (repeatedly) in Venezuela, it would be one more indication, a huge one, that Latin America has rejected an economics of corporate autonomy, public austerity and no worker rights.

So, democracy in Ukraine? We'll be there. Lebanon? Count on us. Kyrgyzstan? With bells on. Mexico? Where's that? Maybe they should move to Central Asia, change their name to Mexistan and promise to privatize the oil. That's the kind of democracy the Bush guys really like.

That last paragraph is money. The portrayal in this column of the situation in Mexico is clearly one-sided, but it's not hard to convince me that the Bushies are being hypocritical. I have no problem with the US taking a pragmatic approach to deciding where you want to support democratic movements and where you would rather support "our S.O.B.", but unfortunately the current Administration seems to be trying to have it both ways. That doesn't always work when the world is watching.

Diversity

Following is a list of the last six search engine referrals to this site:

13 Apr, Wed, 13:24:38 Google: Politkovskaya grant
13 Apr, Wed, 15:57:44 Yahoo: moldova call girls
13 Apr, Wed, 19:31:32 Google: "Chechenization"
13 Apr, Wed, 20:30:44 Google: vekselberg philanthropy
13 Apr, Wed, 21:23:36 Google: Alla Pugachyova
13 Apr, Wed, 22:34:13 Google: Kyrgyzstan

Here at Scraps of Moscow, we pride ourselves on covering a wide range of topics, and this list would seem to confirm that this goal is being fulfilled. Looking back at some search terms that led people to this site earlier in the week shows that our visitors' diversity was not just a 13th-of-the-month kind of thing:

11 Apr, Mon, 21:34:19 Yahoo: metallica in moscow images
12 Apr, Tue, 06:30:43 Google: bliny
12 Apr, Tue, 11:52:04 Google: "US Foreign Aid Policy" PDF
12 Apr, Tue, 21:44:39 Google: Chorny Bumer
12 Apr, Tue, 21:56:28 Yahoo: "starbucks" and "moscow"

Yes, I know this is a sad excuse for a post - whenever weblogs resort to navel-gazing like this, I usually roll my eyes and navigate away. But I hope that my regular readers - all 5 of them - will indulge me just this once. Plus, I'm providing you with the chance to see the Yahoo search results for "moldova call girls" without having to key those words into your computer - just click on the link above. Incidentally, the high-class individual who found us using those search terms was searching from Georgia - the country, not the state. This Extreme Tracker thingy is amazing.

Change for the better

We landed in Moscow last night, and it wasn't like we were returning at all. It felt like we were arriving in a different city, one without below-freezing temperatures and several feet of snow on the ground. Amazingly, in the 6 days we were gone, most of the winter's snow melted clean away.

Hong Kong was a very interesting place to visit and might be a pretty enjoyable place to live. My main impressions were of the cleanliness and verticality of the city on the Hong Kong island side, where we spent most of our time. Clean does not mean 100% graffiti-free, so check out Moscow Graffiti in the next couple of days for some pictures of Hong Kong street art. As for the verticality, until we arrived I hadn't realized how mountainous the islands are that make up Hong Kong - this makes for lots of narrow, switchback roads. Since space is at a premium, everything on Hong Kong island seems to be trying to make the most of its footprint: I have never seen so many tall and skinny buildings, double-decker buses are in service, and, more uniquely, double-decker streetcars. In all, an interesting trip.

But we're back in Moscow now, where spring mercifully appears to have sprung us from winter's prison - the sun is shining, and 16 degrees (60 F) is the forecast high for today - so it's time for me to go out and enjoy the weather.

"Did you just photograph that building?"

Conversation between me and a traffic cop, April 23, on Lubyanka Square:

Cop: “Did you just photograph that building?”
Me: “Well...yes.”
Cop: “Delete your picture of the building and let me see you do it. You can't photograph that building.”
Me: “Why not?”
Cop: “It's not allowed.”

The conversation continued - I pointed out that the building is a landmark and a tourist attraction, but he just kept telling me that it was forbidden to photograph THAT BUILDING. He wasn't getting too hostile, though, because he saw that I really was moving to delete the photos I had taken of the building.

Who knows if there's really an official ban on photographing the Lubyanka (the former headquarters of the KGB and current headquarers of its successor organization, the FSB); the point is that this cop was willing to zealously go after an imagined threat - someone photographing Lubyanka - something which he imagined or had been told would displease his superiors.

Of course, it's easy to imagine something like this happening in the US these days, but then I am no big fan of the paranoia stirred up by the Bush administration, either.

What makes the whole story even more amusing is that I had really been photographing a guy selling pirated software and all kinds of law enforcement databases right in the shadow of Lubyanka. Here's a photo of some of what was available:



Note the presence, among relatively innocuous and unsurprising pirated Microsoft products, of government databases of registered drug addicts (“Narkomany”), felons ("Sudimosti"), and residential registration records ("Propiska"), as well as mobile phone subscriber databases, including addresses, and driver license records.

The availability of such databases is probably inevitable in a country with underpaid law enforcement officials and bureaucrats, extraordinary hackers, and lots of people who like to resolve problems without the involvement of the government and need this information to do so. But it never ceases to amaze me that such confidential information is sold so freely and openly. What I'm not putting up here - no need to antagonize law enforcement - are the photos I took of the same cop who harrassed me and his partner chatting with the guy selling the pirated disks. They were either asking him to pack it in or working out a deal with him to allow him to stay - my money's on the latter.

Greetings from Hong Kong

I can't resist the chance to post directly from atop Victoria Peak, an opportunity provided by the good people at Pacific Coffee Company. Hong Kong is as interesting as we expected, it's looking like 5 days here will not be nearly enough. My Blackberry tells me it's 8:30am on a Monday morning in Moscow - and weather.com tells me it's just below freezing there - I'm glad we're here, where it's sunny and 20-25C, on vacation and not there going to work.

Russia's first political blog - www.demokrat.ru

I thought the text of Thursday morning's EchoNet radio program was worth translating:

Politicians of a liberal and democratic bent are well-disposed toward the internet and began to master it long before their conservative, as they've come to be known, opponents. The first websites maintained by politicians and parties, as well as political discussion clubs, appeared seven years ago, and internet denizens treated the liberals similarly: in every virtual election and internet survey, parties of this stripe were victorious, before later shocking their supporters by not making it into the Duma. [ad break]

Nowadays, the appearance of a democratically oriented website on the internet is a rare occurrence, but from time to time it does happen. Demokrat.ru, a site which states as its goal the unification of the extremely divided democratic movement, appeared relatively recently. Of course, the site does absolutely nothing to further this goal, and in general the only thing democratic about it is its name, but in this case that's not so important. The site is interesting for a different reason. What we have here is, in essence, the first political blog on the Russian-language internet [Runet, or рунет in Russian].

The site is maintained by one Vladimir Shmelev, the 25-year-old leader of a not-so-mass movement called "New Rightists." Politics is the only topic here, and not in the theoretical sense, but drawing on simple and comprehensible examples from political life. Shmelev relates an event, then asks himself a question, provides several possible answers and comments on them. Any visitor to the site who takes the time to register can leave responses or comments. [...]

Taking into account the increasing reach of the internet, and its correspondingly increasing role in political life, as well as the fashionability of blogs, it doesn't seem out of the question that we might soon see on-line journals by other, better known Russian politicians.

Spam on books

Of all the topics I'd rather be writing about, Andy has saddled me with the task of responding to some questions about books. Don't get me wrong, I love books. But we are leaving for a week's vacation in Hong Kong tomorrow morning, and I'm not even packed yet! So this will be quick:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Any volume in the Collected Works of Lenin, because then I wouldn't feel bad about burning - no one would be reading me nowadays anyway.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Not on any fictional character from a book, unless you count books that were made into movies.

The last book you bought is:

Don Quixote in Russian - the Academia publishing house edition from 1932 in 2 volumes - which I bought not to read but because I collect books published by Academia and could not resist buying this one when I saw it. 2000 rubles (about $70) for the 2-volume set with dust jackets intact - I just saw a similar set selling on-line for $450. That is why I prefer to shop at the Bukinist store at 53 Ostozhenka.

What are you currently reading?

I finished Sixpence House by Paul Collins a couple of weeks ago; since then I've been reading relatively recent issues of the New Yorker magazine thoughtfully mailed to me by my mother. I'm optimistically planning to try to tackle Techenie Vremeni (The Flow of Time), a collection of prose by Andrei Platonov, on the plane tomorrow, but I can't honestly say I'm reading it yet.

Five books you would take to a desert island.

1) The Bible (is a link really necessary?) - I've always said I want to read it someday.
2) Any collection of Pushkin's works (in one volume, of course) that included Eugene Onegin and the Tales of Belkin, preferably also some other poetry and short prose - plenty of time on the island to memorize Evgenii Onegin; for the time being all I've got down by rote is the first stanza and the "pedal digression."
3) A family photoalbum.
4) The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter Edition) - from Bradford's Plymouth Plantation to Fitzgerald & Hemingway (though not enough of the latter two), this book has it all. Plus, at 2800 pages, in a pinch it would provide a good supply of paper.
5) A blank journal - this isn't a way of getting around picking a 5th book, it's something I would definitely want to have (unless the island had broadband and I could blog instead).

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

This is the most difficult question of all. 3 people and they all have to be bloggers, otherwise it's no fun, right?

1) Bram of U Fanni Kaplan, because I think I know what some of his picks will be, and I want to see how predictable he is;
2) Veronica of Neeka's Backlog; and
3) Chris of Cyber-generation.

I was going to fob this off on Nathan of Registan.net, but he already did it.

I'm dumping this on Veronica and Chris because they seem like the sort of people who will enjoy the challenge and won't be too irritated - but if they are irritated by this, I encourage them to just blow it off. After all, there's no specific chain-letter-type threat. Now I need to go about emailing my victims...