Ugly Russian Nouveaux Rags-To-Riches

A British man I know who works in luxury hotel management once asked me: "Why are rich Russians such a pain in the ass? They are by far the most annoying, hard to please bunch of ego-tripping divas."

I am quite used to receiving soul-searching kind of questions about my compatriots as if I were their spokesman, so more often than not I am prepared to provide comprehensive answers.

Up to 95% of modern Russian adults were brought up in more or less equal economic conditions. Excesses of the Soviet elite were a far cry from the post-Communist extravaganza of golden toilet bowls and custom Maybachs. Most of time a nomenklatura boss's idea of wild time was limited to screwing a self-styled loose woman after a bottle of imported cognac in the sauna. Domestic servants, class and income bracket differences, high-and-mighty lifestyles were unheard of. Conspicuous consuming was not just frowned upon but universally discouraged.

So, basically, our only idea about how rich people should behave and what they should do comes from trashy Mexican soap operas that inundated Russian broadcasting in the late 80s and well into the 90s. The vile servant-abusing thick-moustached Don Manuels and hysterical foot-stomping coiffured Doña Maria's from those tedious cheaply produced telenovelas are the only role models that new rich Russians know of.

Science Don't Live Here Any More

While the Russian powers that be are busy advertising their proposed investment into nano-technologies, Professors Andre Geim and Doctors Kostya Novoselov and Leonid Ponomarenko - all Russian-born - from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester have built the world's smallest transistor - one atom thick and 10 atoms wide - out of a material that could one day replace silicon.

Once world's leader in fundamental and applied science, nowadays Russia is an "energy superpower". Translated from the Kremlin's beaurocratic newspeak, that stands for something like Saudi Arabia - happy to buy diamond-encrusted limos and golden toilet bowls off the oil riches while investing nothing in modernizing society, research or technological base.

Shame On Mbeki, Kudos To South African Dockers

While South African leaders are just too happy to share the spoils of being in power so they do not bother to intervene in the Zimbabwean messy elections, a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe has left a South African port after workers would not unload it.

The An Yue Jiang（安岳江）, owned by the para-statal Chinese Ocean Shipping Company, was forced to move after a South African court refused to allow the weapons on board to be transported across the country.

Dock workers had refused to unload the weapons shipment from the vessel, which had been anchored off the port of Durban for four days.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union had said it did "not agree with the position of the [South African] government not to intervene". Reports say the An Yue Jiang is carrying three million rounds of ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and 2,500 mortar rounds.

This truly beautiful sentiment should really put to shame people like President Thabo Mbeki and the ilk for their blatant disregard for democracy. Like the Forbes rightly noted, a peaceful transfer of power in Zimbabwe "will not be because of [Mbeki], but in spite of him."

France - Balm For My Soul

France is balm for my soul. The very word France makes me feel so good inside I well up. One of my biggest pleasures is to roll down the window when crossing the French border and take a long deep breath - l'air de la France!

Le pays de la raison et de la beauté. There's nothing I would need to add to that.

Or may be just this: thank God, there's France.

Life Is A Treasure Cave

People come to this world, grow up, make choices, get tested, learn or not learn from their mistakes, many don't pass the tests, succumb to temptations, break down (mostly because of self-pity - the most destructive feeling ever!), go, and then come back again to do the unfinished lessons and tasks - and so over and over again, until they fulfil what is destined for them. There's nothing sad about it, you just need to understand what it's all for.

Life is a fairytale treasure cave, not for nothing a very ancient myth archetype. On the way to the treasure, you will come across monsters, guardians, crossroads, doors with puzzles, temptations and so on - you need to overcome everything, never give up, never give in, always keep the goal in mind. Like Aladdin you have to walk through monsters guarding the treasure cave to look back and realise they were made of fog. In the end you will find the treasure that is the most valuable and important thing there is - for you. Everything else is either tools for reaching it or obstacles on the way to it.

The New Opium des Volkes

Barack Obama was right when he said that working class Americans turn to guns and religion for solace from economic hopelessness. But he underestimated just how hi-tech the modern-time US are, for they turn to the make-belief world of video games for escape from the grim reality.

US sales of video game consoles and software have grown 57% over the past year, defying the economic downturn. The three grands - Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft - can barely cope with the demand, and well, that does keep jobs for quite a few people so it's not entirely sad news after all.

9/11 - Yet Another False Flag Operation

It is beyond any reasonable doubt that the 9/11 downing of the World Trade Center towers was the result of a controlled demolition. One argument that I have heard from a very intelligent and enlightened American friend of mine, upon hearing out all the mounting evidence, was that "the US Government just couldn't have been possibly up to such an immoral act, they are above that". Now this is just shows how little we learn from history.

False flag terrorism is nothing new - it has been used to create causae belli by the powers that be since time immemorial. In America's own history there has been a long string of such incidents starting from the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 - of the Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain! fame - that precipitated the Spanish-American War to the Operation Northwoods when terrorist acts against civil targets in the US were planned by the CIA to spark anti-Cuban sentiment in the public. In 1939, WWII, world's deadliest conflict ever, was started on pretext of the German-staged "Polish attack".

Now you can watch the well researched documentary Loose Change Final Cut about the 9/11 yourself and form your own informed opinion, whether pro or con:

Trailer:

Full-length movie:

9/11 questioned in the European Parliament:

Why Kosovo OK, Ossetia & Abkhazia No Way?

It's an old story but in context with the recent declaration of independence by Kosovo, it sheds a very bright light on how double standards rule this world.

In November 2006 around 90% of the population of the tiny republic of South Ossetia, formally within Georgia, de facto a Russian protectorate, voted for independence. Same did the Republic of Abkhazia, Russia's biggest supplier of oranges and mandarins.

This year, shortly after the Kosovan fallout, those two appealed to the UN only to be duly ignored.

From the historical point of view those breakaway republics have just as much right for secession as the former Yugoslavian republics. They were made a part of Georgia through a series of enlargements made by Russian rulers from the Tsars to Stalin to reward Georgia for her long-standing loyalty. Now as the loyalties have switched, so the lose confederation of unrelated peoples of Georgia.

Georgia , however, enjoys an unconditional Western support as part of the Russia containment policy - the strategy of surrounding it with hostile states or conflict zone, very much like it is being done against China.

So after all, it's about holding each other by the balls, and not supporting tender fledgling nations for the sake of brotherly love and good will.

Vitamins 'may shorten your life'

Right, just what I always suspected: popping inordinate amounts of vitamin pills wont get you anywhere nice.

A review of 67 studies found "no convincing evidence" that antioxidant supplements cut the risk of dying. Trials involving 233,000 were conducted by scientists at Copenhagen University who said vitamins A and E could interfere with the body's natural defences.

"Even more, beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E seem to increase mortality," according to the review by the respected Cochrane Collaboration.

At the same time, the Health Supplements Information Service, which is funded by the association which represents those who sell supplements, said that "for the millions who are not able to to get everything they needed from their diet, vitamins can be a useful supplement and they should not stop taking them."

So now you know folks: you really don't need to eat properly, just keep popping those jolly-coloured pills, you'll be fine.

Handel - The Genius Of Spiritual Pop

George Frideric Handel is my favourite composer of all times, definitely one of the greatest who have ever walked on earth. I chime in here with such grands as Bach who apparently said "[Handel] is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach."; then Mozart who is reputed to have said of him "Handel understands effect better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt", and to Beethoven to whom he was "the master of us all".

In my eyes Handel's Messiah by far the pinnacle of human musical genius and I even happen to know the whole libretto by heart but his many most beautiful operas and oratorios also deserve more exposure then they get.

His music is an oddity, a sort of hybrid the way it stands one foot in Baroque and the other in the more modern Romantic tradition. Born German and later a naturalized British subject, his pensive, lofty philosophical Germanic streak is tempered by the Anglo-Saxon demand to be popular and profitable into the unrivalled ability to combine the sublimest heights of spiritual epiphanies with very catchy, almost pop melodies.

Quite poignantly, he wrote and produced The Messiah at a sort of breakpoint when when he was old, broke and physically sick, but it only seems to have made his spirit soar so high as to compose music that sounds exactly how angels should sing in Heaven praising Lord. They say something like "Talents need suffering to become geniuses", this may have been the case here.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the Anglo-Saxon tradition to stand up to full attention when listening to Hallelujah, how can you not? I have heard it on many on occasion from Bangkok to Amsterdam and it never fails to reduce me to cathartic tears.

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Ombra Mai Fu, his most famous operatic piece was written for a counter-tenor but I prefer it in Bryn Terfel's very cool and heartfelt baritone rendition.

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A mind-boggling modern glimpse into how Handel's secular arias were supposed to be sung by counter-tenors. Derek Lee Ragin will blow your mind off.

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In recent years there have cropped up a number of very interesting modern productions of Handel's Opera, you can sometimes catch those on Sunday evenings on the Mezzo Channel. I quite enjoy those because their understated post-modern mise-en-scène does not distract from the superb quality of singing performance. This is a bit of Giulio Cesare by Opus Arte:

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This awe-inspiring anthem, Zadok the Priest, will definitely send shivers down your spine. No wonder British royalty have used it for their coronation ceremonies since George II. I love the understated way that the introduction builds up to but still does not quite prepare you for the overwhelming regal assault of the mighty choir. The contrast is as close to orgasmic as you can ever expect from music.

Timoshenko and Blige - Soul Sisters?

Dude, if this is not uncanny, then what is?

Ukraine's flamboyant Prime Minister Yuliya Timoshenko and sweet-voiced soul diva Mary J. Blige must be related! Or, perhaps, they are just sharing the same stylist.

Totalitarianism In Europe's Own Backyard

There is a lot of sanctimonious caterwauling going on in the EU quarters about the state control of the Russian press. I won't stick up for those guys, they definitely have a lot of things to work on. I only get fascinated, time and time again, by the Eurocrats' total inability (or is it rather a consciously perfected craft) to see the log in their own eye.

Take Italy, one of the founding members of the European Unions and, as President Putin aptly noted, the original inventors of the Mafia. The situation in the Italian mass media uncannily resembles that in Russia.

A zip through Italian TV channels reveals a barrage of brainless quiz and talk shows full of scantily clad beauties, dubbed second-grade American dramas and scores of vaguely scripted programmes where spiffily dressed gentlemen ruminate on a variety of insipid subjects like countryside architecture or historic cuff links. In other words, about the most mindless and shallowest spectrum of broadcasting in Europe. That is, if you don't count Russia as a European nation. Modern Russian TV's multitudinous channels offers a good example of commercially highly viable mass idiotization, quite a turn from the Soviet "high culture to the masses" policy.

Nearly all media outlets in both countries are owned by the big brass of local capitalism. The orange-tanned Signor Berlusconi, world's 90th richest man who has been in and out of power for the second decade, controls 3 out of 7 national channels and the majority of newspapers. The only difference between the so-called free 90's and dubbed as semi-totalitarian present days in Russia is that the media changed ownership from one clique of oligarchs to another.

In both countries, a sinister string of unresolved killings of prominent journalists goes decades back, almost a national institution.

Unfortunately, both countries seem to have opted for the abortive concept of political system where the state, dreading any kind of change, aggressively rejects any kind of criticism for the sake of preserving the (quite cozy for those in power) status quo at all costs. This model of voluntary rigidity has proven fatal for scores of countries throughout the millennia of human history, for, as we should have learnt from history, the only permanent thing is the permanence of change.

To sum it all up, the EU has a simliar kind of totalitarian opinion control in their backyard but somehow prefers to find pleasure in slagging off those "barbarians from the East". The call it "projection" in psychology, don't they?

For an interesting read check out Mark Mardell's blog about the freedom of press in Italy.

Russian Argh (Review)

"Pretentious and meaningless" - that would be my two-word summary of this triumph of Russian Post-Modernism.

In more words: one hundred minutes of incoherent mono- and dialogues (at times, the actors repeat the same lines 3 or 4 times in a row), acting worth wooden marionettes, never-ending close-ups of famous paintings, shamefully clumsy or downright pointless allegories and a total absence of any plot line or script purpose except a tedious reiteration of the director's poorly hidden resentment for anything related to Soviet history.

It does achieve its 3 sole objectives though:

1) proving possible shooting a full movie in a single take;
2) proudly parading 2,000 extras in lavish period costumes;
3) showing off the best bits of the Hermitage's art collection.

Cleverly contrived to fool Western critics with Russian exoticism, it was released to a great acclaim - Rotten Tomatoes shows a staggering 88% approval rate. My guess is that the reviewers, half-expecting something really perversely artsy weird from a Russian director, must have fallen for the typical Post-Modern pretence at implying some far-fetched elitist message. Too ashamed that they didn't get it, they hasted to praise the flick and find sense in the nonsensical drivel that the actors spew, so that they, the critics, could come across progressive and elitist too.

Another factor that may also have played the role is the Americans' weakness for all things related to European royalty, which they invariably find quaint and endearing.

The film would be really best used as an MTV-style visual background for a pot-pourri of popular classical music. Having to watch it with the sound on would come in handy as a Guantanamo interrogation technique.

The Man Who Said The Truth

The Democrat Pecking Comedy continues on the Stateside. This time Barack was careless enough to say the truth. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," he said.

"And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he added.

When you see Michael Moore's documentaries about the depressing life of working class America, you understand that Barack really hits the nail on the head.

Barack's arch-rival Mrs Clinton, whose family earned 100 million dollars in the last 5 years, said her rival's comments had been condescending and suggested voters in Pennsylvania did not "need a president who looks down on them".

Don't make us laugh, bitch!

African Slave Beads & The Folly Of Art Nouveau

Last Saturday and Sunday was a Museum Weekend in Amsterdam. You can visit most museums free, some for a reduced fee and many historical monuments that normally are off-limits for visitors - office buildings or private houses - are open to all and sundry.

This year I went to the Allard Parson Museum (Egyptican, Greek, Roman, Etruscan etc. antiquities) and the Hermitage Amsterdam (our local branch of St. Petersburg's grand). Both are typically Amsterdam "klein maar fijn" - small but nice, although the Hermitage is slated to expand greatly in the near future.

The Allard Parson houses amongst other things an extensive collection of beads. Yawn? I thought so too. It turns out however that it was a vast and highly profitable industry until as late as shortly after WWII. You know why?

Also known as African money, trade or slave beads were produced so cheaply and in such huge quantities that they were used as ballast in slave/trade ships for the outbound trip. However, you could buy a human slave for a 3-inch string of white beads that, say, in Venice, a major bead-manufacturing centre, would cost 2 pennies to produce. Get where the catch is? Africans were duped to trade their land, men, gold, ivory and other valuable assets for next no nothing - and that lasted centuries and centuries.

They did eventually wise up, but so did the White folks - now they deal in finance, mostly currency futures accounting for 90% of the world international trade. Africa's share is the meagre 2% that however makes up the bulk of real commodity traded worldwide, including 70% of the world's strategic minerals. Any comment would be superfluous.

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The only exhibition now held by the Hermitage Amsterdam is of Art Nouveau (known in Russia as stil' modern) artefacts. In the late 19th century, the French freshly defeated by the Prussians were seeking allies for revenge and they saw a good candidate in the "gendarme of Europe". The strategic courtship included lavish gifts in the then cutting-edge and highly fashionable Art Nouveau made by the French Republic to the Russian Imperial Family.

While I always liked this style in architecture since my childhood fascination with Riga, it was the first time that I was confronted with such an extensive array of Art Nouveau objects and for the first time my eyes opened to the roots of modern kitsch.

Dutch art historian Henk Zantkuijl once very aptly remarked that the generally accepted idea of good taste in art was lost in the West some time in the 1870s. The overflow of information brought about by massive archaeological and ethnographic discoveries of the era including the influx of Chinoiserie and Japonaiserie, developments in technology and the sky-rocketed demand for mass production industrial design - all that in the aftermath of the Crisis of Representation - led to a broad confusion as to what is tasteful and what is not.

Art Nouveau is the style born in such a situation, a bridge between Neo-Classicism that fed on the (sometimes misinterpreted) Greek and Roman aesthetic ideas and Modernism, that just broke with any previous tradition (also with mixed results). In a sense, Art Nouveau was the odd fruit of a growing process, a growing pain even, an essential period for reflection, absorption and adaptation. It was a great time and art movement, however, even if not without some bizarre by-products. Quite a slew of those are now on show in the Hermitage Amsterdam.

World's Ugliest Cars In Amsterdam!

I have spotted both official world's ugliest cars in Amsterdam. As far as I know they are not even sold in the Netherlands, so their owners must have gone to some lengths to procure them. Both times I didn't have my camera, so I'll post pics gleaned from the net.

The obviously LSD-inspired Pontiac Aztec was designed by a committee of design gurus at GM. In 2007, two years after the Pontiac Aztek went out of production, the 25 vehicles that were sold were brand new from the dealership. Little wonder, innit?















Described by Top Gear Magazine as a car "that looks like it got bottled in a pub brawl and stitched back together by a blind man", the Ssangyong Rodius was designed by the former director of the London School of Design. I figure they must have fired him as unfit for the position and the Rodius was his revenge on the world.

Sa Dingding - The Chinese Wonder

This kind of Chinesey New Age music style is nothing new, Oliver Shanti has been doing it since the 80s but Sa Dingding's (薩頂頂) music is nevertheless lovely. Coupled with her striking looks and memorable imagery of her videos it makes a nice package. She is poised to be heavily promoted in the West in advance of the Olympics in Beijing. I am looking forward to her success here.



For those interested, here're the lyrics:

嗡, 班炸薩多沙嘛雅 嘛奴巴拉耶
別炸薩多爹奴巴的叉司左咩巴哇
蘇多卡欲咩巴哇 蘇浦卡玉咩巴哇
阿奴囉多咩巴哇 沙爾哇司地咩渣也叉

沙爾哇 噶爾麻 蘇渣咩即打司哩任
古魯吽 哈哈哈哈 呵巴噶問
沙爾哇 打他噶打 班炸嘛咩母渣
班至巴哇 嘛哈沙媽耶 薩多啊
吽呸。

It's the Mandarin transliteration of a Sanskrit mantra, a sort of Buddhist prayer.

The Social Politics Of A Shaven Head

Years ago my Thai cousin Jim who is doing now her Ph.D. in Social Studies introduced me to such a sub-discipline as the "language of body parts", how non-verbal communication takes place by what meaning we as a society ascribe to our body parts and how it differs culture to culture and so on.

Bizarrely enough, before too long I had the opportunity to see how it works across cultures. I had my head shaven when on vacation in Bulgaria - locals were teasing me by chanting Hare Krishna wherever I went. A while on, when I went to the Thai Embassy in Moscow, they all took me for a Buddhist novice monk. But next day when I lingered on near the Yaroslav Railway Station in Moscow looking to buy something to bite on, I nearly got arrested by Russian police because they seem to have assumed that I was a freshly released criminal.

That was the last time to date when I had my head shaven.

Why We Have To Sponsor The Realty Bonanza

I remember reading in Het Amsterdamse Dagblad (no link can be provided as they have no online edition) a few years ago that it costs about 25,000 Euros to build a new apartment in Amsterdam. Then they go on to be sold at a whopping 200 thousand plus. Without that shameless profit margin any family would be able to effortlessly afford their own place in just a few years. But then all the construction contractors, realtors and housing corporations bosses would have to suffer without their custom-made German cars, third homes on the Mediterranean and diamond trinketry for their bitches so, in all probability, we are going to have to keep financing their expensive habits for all the years to come.

Bush Backs Ukraine & Georgia On Nato Bid

It is bizarre that no major news service offered any analysis of why would US want NATO's eastward expansion so badly. The very learnt ladies and gentlemen would not have to go to great lengths to find out that since the times of Zbigniew Brezinsky's The Grand Chessboard became the handbook of American foreign policy it is a cornerstone of the US geopolitical strategy to see to it that "no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."

After the Soviet collapse the EU had become a major threat to this, so at least last 15 years everything has been done to sow dissent within Europe and create or sustain hot spots of conflict on the continent. Almost every part of US involvement in Europe pursues the goal of undermining any possible increase of the EU's political influence in its own backyard. Cleverly exploiting historical divisions and nationalist sentiments, American strategists manage to divide and rule the affairs across the ocean. What amazes me that Europeans (appear to) to stand powerless in face of such a blatant manipulation and basically swallow whatever the US feeds them.

Just a few examples: the manhandling of the Yugoslavian conflict and leaving so many festering conflict spots in its wake, the ongoing waging of anti-European influence via the "special relationship" with UK, creating a chasm within the Euro ranks by making pledge allegiance to the Iraq war, alienating Russia from the mainstream European politics in every possible way - and now backing the NATO's eastward expansion. I see how that last one serves American interests so well, but I am really in awe with the European leaders' stupidity (or the unwillingness to react in any meaningful way). Can it be that all capable strategists have left Europe for fatter American paychecks and there is no one to advise Euro bosses on their own best interests? Or does the Franko-German axis hope for the spoils from it all?

Best Selling Musical Artist Ever

I know what you are thinking: Madonna. Well no, it's Russia's Alla Pugacheva. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, she sold more records than Michael Jackson: over 250 million. She did have the advantage of performing in a tightly controlled market but even under Communists nobody was making Russians buy any particular artist's records, so the tally is fair.

Throughout her career spanning over 40 years she has reinvented herself on many an occasion and stayed immensely popular in the Russian-speaking world. Author of many of her songs, she's quite a Russian phenomenon and just like our greatest national poet Pushkin is untranslatable.

Desperate Production Of Desperate Housewives

It started off so well: created by the same producer as Sex And The City, Desperate Housewives promised to be original and captivating. However, the pressures of keeping the public titillated and excited about such a, let us admit it, boring and easily exhaustible subject as suburban married life, season in season out, finally proved too much. The Desperate Housewives went shark-jumping.

First, with the producers having to keep the ratings high and the writing team going through some major writer's blocks, they had to put Mike Delfino in coma. That was the beginning of the end, the show went down the daytime soap opera way. More trite gimmicks followed with hastily contrived and unnaturally ended sub-plots crammed into a very limited episode time frame.

While Sex And The City at least purported realism and natural kind of acting, the way the desperate housewives get lined up in a row to deliver punch lines reeks of As The World Turns and The Days Of Our Lives. Scores of relatives and old time friends conveniently popping out of nowhere and vanishing into nothingness again, story lines cropping up and abruptly getting cut (probably prompted by the actors' raise demands), stock facial expressions and mannerisms - all signs tell of how desperate the production team must be using all the oldest tricks of trade to sustain viewers' interest.

One thing missing from Desperate Housewives now is canned laughter.