Stephen Boykewich

Via MemriTV (the Middle East Media Research Institute), a mesmerizing and unbelievably funny video purporting to be an Iranian Intelligence Ministry broadcast about foreign conspiracies against Iran.

It reveals the secret truth about how John McCain, George Soros, velvet revolution theorist Gene Sharp and CIA Iran expert “Bill Smith” plot in the basement of the White House how to overthrow the Islamic regime — then dramatizes how a heroic young woman informs on her brother after he starts running with the wrong crowd.

Animated George Soros looks about 40 years old…he’d probably be pleased.

A bit of unintentional humor from a recent NYTimes story, “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus,” based on accidentally leaked poll findings and messaging recommendations from ecoAmerica, nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm.

Granted, ecoAmerica has its work cut out for it: a Pew Foundation poll released in January put global warming dead last in a list of voter 20 concerns, including “addressing moral decline.”

The answer, [ecoAmerica president Robert] Perkowitz said in his presentation to the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language.

Reminds me of Krusty the Clown’s reaction when his monkey tries to cheer him up with a banana: “That’s your answer to everything!”

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’… Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use ‘cap and cash back’ or ‘pollution reduction refund.’

I’m all for the transformative power of language, but us trading the phrase “cap and trade” for “cap and cash back” really what’s going to save the planet?

(Cross-posted at www.prescient-media.com)

Alhurra's "Inside Washington"

I hope there was a time we were better at propaganda than this.

Via ProPublica, the results of a U. Maryland/Zogby poll show that the ratings for the U.S. Arabic-language satellite TV channel Alhurra, which began broadcasting in 2004, are down to 0.5 percent in target countries.

This from a project that has cost the U.S. over half a billion dollars:

Obama’s predecessor pumped more than $500 million into Alhurra, which has been plagued [1] by serious staff problems, financial mismanagement and long-standing concerns inside the U.S. government and Congress regarding its content.

The key stat and quote from the ProPublica article:

The 2008 poll showed Alhurra with about a 2 percent audience share across the Muslim world’s largest and most-influential countries. That share fell in this year’s poll to 0.5 percent. Shibley Telhami [3], a leading Middle East expert at the University of Maryland and The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said Alhurra’s rating was so low that for the first time, it fell below the poll’s margin of error.

Vladislav Surkov

Via Johnson’s Russian List and Politcom.ru:

On May 12, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev created a working group to make good on his promise in April to local NGOs to “soften” the current draconian laws on NGO registration.

The head of the organization? The Deep Purple loving, Noam Chomsky-quoting, ever enigmatic Vladislav Surkov, first deputy head of the presidential staff.

Surkov’s role as chief domestic policy strategist during Putin’s second term, and as the purported architect of “sovereign democracy,” made him an fascinating figure to me, all the more so because of his virtual invisibility in public.

His surprise briefing for foreign journalists on a sweltering day in June 2006 was a tour-de-force. One highlight was his two-word prescription for how Western nations ought to learn from Russia:

“Read Dostoevsky.”

From the BBC:

Lugovoi poised to run for mayor

Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, is set to run for mayor of the southern Russian city of Sochi.

The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is backing Mr Lugovoi as its candidate, although it has not yet registered him.

British police want to question Mr Lugovoi, who is already an MP, about Mr Litvinenko’s death by radioactive poisoning in London in November 2006.

Today’s NYT online has an interesting forum on the future of journalism in an age of expiring print dailies. Amid a handful of confused suggestions — mostly based on the idea that people can be made to pay for content they’ve been getting free for years — there’s some good historical context and refreshingly clear thinking from Columbia School of Journalism dean Nicholas Lemann:

In many cities, newspaper readers are already seeing a much thinner, less complete paper than the one they used to read a few years ago. On the future-of-journalism conference circuit, one often hears that this situation fundamentally imperils the Founders’ vision of how American democracy ought to work. This is too facile. For one thing, in the days when the First Amendment was drafted there wasn’t much journalistic reporting (according to most historians of journalism, the first modern reporter’s interview didn’t take place until 1859).

What’s essential right now is that we be precise about the social function we need to strengthen, and creative and non-doctrinaire about how to strengthen it. Reporting does not happen automatically — it takes time, money, and training. It needs a support system. The best local newspapers have been a pretty good one for a generation or two. They may not be any longer.

Also notable how frequently participators mentioned non-profit models as a way forward at least for investigative journalism. ProPublica started this in a big way last year, and its early success has been awfully impressive.

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Sudanese men can now get a haircut and a shave at a tiny barber shop named Barack Obama in tribute to the man being sworn in as US president on Tuesday, despite strained ties between Khartoum and Washington.

A huge portrait of Obama with his name written in Arabic has been propped up outside the barber shop in north Khartoum’s Markizi, or central, market.

“I opened the shop just before the US presidential election in November but I waited for Obama’s victory before naming it after the president-elect,” barber shop owner Muntasser Jacob told AFP.

“If the Republican John McCain had won the election I would not have named my shop after him,” Jacob said.

Sudan has been on Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1993 and subject to US economic sanctions since 1997.

But Khartoum welcomed Obama’s election saying it hoped his tenure would inject “real change” into the largely strained relations with Washington.

Obama, the first black president in the history of the United States, enjoys huge popularity in Sudan, Africa’s largest nation.

“Sudan’s Obama barber shop open for business”

Russian Orthodox Epiphany in Rostov. Photo by Sergey Ponomarev/AP.

From “Russians Strengthen Their Faith and a Tradition With an Icy Water Plunge” in today’s NYT:

Galina Burasvetova, a 50-year-old hairdresser in a red bikini, said she had first taken part in the ritual during an agonizing period in her life, when she was raising three children on a vanishing income. Afterward, she felt she had the moral strength to go on.

“It is a way to overmaster yourself,” she said, as three young men wearing crosses whooped behind her - “It’s warm! It’s hot! It’s like steamed milk!” - and two construction workers, on their lunch break, laid down their tools and stripped naked. Vladislav Komarov, his heart-patterned boxers still sopping wet, gazed out at them all with the smile of a saint. Asked how he felt, he answered “hot.”

“We are pagans in our souls,” said Mr. Komarov, 45, an advertising manager. “I have a fire burning inside me. I could say it is a pure fire. But who knows?”

From the indomitable Chris Weafer, a.k.a., “The Weaf,” former Alfa Bank strategist, current UralSib chief strategist, former and current heavyweight champion commentator to Western journalists on the nexus of oil and gas business and politics in Russia and the CIS, a clean, sober analysis of the winners and losers of the most recent Russian-Ukrainian gas war.

The short version:

Clear winners

• Central Asia gas producers
• Nord Stream pipeline consortium

Probable winners

• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko
• South Stream pipeline
• Azerbaijan

Clear losers

• Ukrainian economy
• Rosukrenergo
• Kyrgyzstan

Probable losers

• Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
• Others

Gazprom

• Nabucco pipeline
• Russia - EU relationship
• Central Asia

He concludes with a drumbeat he’s sounded many times during calls with journalists looking for a “new Cold War angle”:

Has the relationship been strained as a result of the gas dispute? Certainly. Has it been seriously damaged? No. Russia and the EU need each other too much. There have been, and will continue to be, many dips and rallies in the relationship and while it will never likely be considered a close relationship, it should never stay “cool” for too long either. It is a pragmatic relationship based on mutual need.

The EU needs imported energy and will need a lot more of it over the next couple of decades. Realistically, Russia is the only major source of that extra energy. The EU’s major problem is that it needs more energy import corridors to reduce the vulnerability to any one. Russia needs the revenue from sales to Europe. It also needs increased trade access and a substantial amount of investment from the region to boost both its gas sector and to achieve its long term goal of creating a more diversified economy. Being the major energy supplier to Europe is also one of those factors that sustain Russia’s geo-political clout.

I read it first in ITAR-TASS, where is seemed almost charming:

Shoes Thrown At Member Of Ukraine-NATO Committee In Odessa

ODESSA, December 19 (Itar-Tass) — A ceremony of the opening of the Euroatlantic Cooperation Centre on the basis of the South Ukrainian Pedagogical University ended with a scandal on Friday. A young journalist threw shoes at Oleg Soskin, one of the heads of the coordinating council of the Ukraine-NATO Civic League. Some 100 students, who were allowed not to attend classes and to go to the ceremony, watched it.

Oleg Soskin said in his report: “Seventy three per cent of the population of Southern Ukraine are against Ukraine joining NATO. This is why the new centre will work hard for changing this situation, and young people are the main audience for that work.” A journalist from one of the local TV channels interrupted his speech with the words: “Students, you are young promising people. Why should you listen to those old, dim-witted fools?” He took off his both shoes and threw them at Soskin.

Later on the journalist, standing with his shoes off, told his colleagues “the problem of shoes is topical in the world these days. Just remember the shoe thrown at President George W. Bush in Iraq. In our case a shoe is the most effective instrument for opposing NATO’s advance to Ukraine.”

Turn to the outlet that actually reported the incident, the Odessa site Revizor (named for Gogol’s Government Inspector), and the story gets noticeably less charming. Speaking to the largely female audience that from the photos seems to number closer to 25 than 100, Soskin says:

NATO is a security system, and women are more vulnerable and sensitive to matters of security. Young women are the first to feel the importance of the matter, they feel things more on intuition and can distinguish certain important things more quickly.

As the video shows, an artfully unshaven tough identified as local TV journalist Igor Dmitriyev swaggers to the front of the room, interrupting Soskin’s speech, and says:

I see charming young women here. Is this really what you need, to come here and listen old, bald, stupid homosexuals? Now I’ll show you what needs to be done with these clowns.

As Soskin comes down to confront Dmitriyev, the young man pulls off a shoe and whips it at Soskin with incredible force, leaving a nasty welt on his head.

Soskin said afterward: “Very well orchestrated, an excellently orchestrated provocation. That is, if someone needs this, that’s his right.”