SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1413 (77), Friday, October 3, 2008
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TITLE: Medvedev, Merkel Meet For Talks in City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As relations between Russia and Germany have cooled as a result of the conflict in South Ossetia, President Dmitry Medvedev and Chancellor Angela Merkel made conciliatory statements at an international conference in St. Petersburg this week.
The talks in St. Petersburg where the two leaders attended the annual Peterburgsky Dialog political forum was their fourth meeting since Medvedev took office in May.
The previous meeting between the politicians took place in August in Sochi at the height of the rapidly escalating crisis in South Ossetia
The conflict in South Ossetia took center stage at this week’s conference and subsequent talks between Medvedev and Merkel. While not refraining from discussing their disagreements, both leaders made it clear the priority is to develop a mutually acceptable approach to resolving the crisis in the Caucasus.
“Russian-German relations are beyond political time-serving; they have become a key factor ensuring political stability in the Euro-Atlanic region,” Medvedev said at the forum on Thursday.
“Both countries have been actively demonstrating the constructive character of our relations; despite occasional differences of opinion we never fail to show mutual understanding and respect for the other country’s interests,” Medvedev said.
Speaking at the forum on Wednesday, Valery Gergiev, the artistic director of the world-renowned Mariinsky Theater — and a native Ossetian — compared the situation in the region with the plot of Wagner’s epic “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
“The scenario of one ambitious politician ascending to the throne and grabbing all the gold should be inconceivable in the Caucasus these days,” the maestro said.
The speeches revealed an awareness of the mutual dependence between a Russia that needs German technology and innovation and a Germany interested in Russian oil, gas and other natural resources. They also revealed a political will to use economic bonds to build political bridges between Russia and the European Union.
“After trust was damaged during the crisis in Georgia, the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan is meant to repair the [relationship],” Merkel said referring to a peace plan put forward by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the days after the war. “It is essential that ‘a preventive dialog’ continues between Russia and the West about a string of other potentially explosive issues.”
The German chancellor stressed that there is a strong need for a series of efficient new mechanisms for international security.
“The global architecture of security does not exist in the shape and the scope that it is needed,” Merkel said. “The role of the United Nations must increase, while new rules are perhaps needed to regulate the financial markets.”
The politicians also discussed specific issues, including the multi-billion Nord Stream gas project, a key theme of previous talks.
Calling the project a useful and profitable initiative, Medvedev invited “the countries outside the region that have been opposing the project” to end their campaign.
TITLE: Zenit May Go to Court Over Mob Claims
AUTHOR: By Tariq Panja
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Zenit St. Petersburg, the soccer team that won last season’s UEFA Cup, may take legal action after Spanish media reported that a judge is investigating whether a Russian gang bribed one of its rivals to lose.
“The originals of the news reels and news reports have been passed to the legal department and they will see if a lawsuit is necessary,” Zenit spokesman Vladimir Malgin said in an interview today.
The El Pais newspaper reported yesterday that Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon unearthed recorded conversations in which the leader of the “Tambov” gang said 50 million of an unspecified currency had been paid to Bayern Munich. The German team lost 4- 0 at Zenit on May 1 in the second match of a two-game semifinal, after the first match was drawn 1-1. Zenit went on to beat the Glasgow-based Rangers 2-0 in the May 14 final.
The report said Garzon had sent the information to prosecutors in Germany. Bayern is “waiting for information” about the case, said Martin Haegele, the team’s head of international affairs.
An official at Spain’s National Court, where Garzon is an investigating magistrate, said she had no knowledge of an investigation. Calls to Garzon’s cell phone were “restricted,” according to a phone-company message.
Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sports minister, dismissed the newspaper reports. “In top-flight soccer, it’s impossible to buy anything,” he said in comments broadcast on state television.
“Great players were on the field,” Mutko said. “Try to imagine how they could be bought off. These accusations aren’t just an attempt to humiliate Russian soccer; above all, they’re a blow to Bavaria, and it will respond,” he said. “The lawyers will sort it out.”
Zenit yesterday said the match-fixing allegations “are an insult to all of the clubs mentioned.” The club’s performances against Bayern Munich and Rangers “are the best proof that the Petersburgers achieved their victory in an honest, uncompromising battle,” the club said on its Web site.
European soccer’s governing body UEFA said its disciplinary department had yet to receive any information regarding the allegations.
“We are interested — anything that threatens integrity is our top priority,” said William Gaillard, an adviser to UEFA President Michel Platini.
The Russian Football Premier League announced its “total support” for Zenit and said the club won the UEFA Cup “in an honest and fair fight.” The league called on Russian media “not to use publications by foreign journalists to undermine the authority of Russian soccer.”
Garzon previously ordered the arrests of 20 members of the St. Petersburg-based Tambov gang, which is accused of money laundering, contract killings and arms and drug trafficking, media reports said in June.
Zenit is owned by OAO Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural- gas exporter. Its victory over Rangers made it the second Russian team to be crowned champion of Europe’s second-tier competition.
Garzon is Spain’s best known magistrate after leading high- profile cases including an attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from the U.K. on genocide charges. He is currently leading the biggest investigation of killings by General Francisco Franco‘s supporters during Spain’s civil war.
TITLE: St. Petersburg Honors Peter the Great’s Scottish Doctor
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A memorial plaque in honor of Scottish natural scientist Robert Erskine (1677-1718), the founder of the legendary Kunstkamera, the city’s first museum renowned for its unique collection of curiosities, was opened Thursday at the Lazarevsky burial-vault of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
The ceremony was attended by the Edinburgh’s Lord Provost George Grubb, who is currently on an official visit to St. Petersburg
Erskine, who left Great Britain to move to St. Petersburg in 1704, more than 300 years go, was originally invited to treat Peter the Great and shortly went on to become one of the most influential and sought after foreign doctors ever to serve at the Russian court. The medic, who served as Peter the Great’s principal physician, who ran the Kunstkamera and its vast library and chaired the imperial Apothecary, played a crucial role in the formation of Russian medicine and natural sciences.
The first-ever memorial to Erskine was unveiled on Sept. 8, 2006, in his hometown of Alva, Scotland.
The Kunstkamera (also known as the Anthropology and Ethnography Museum) was founded in 1714 on the orders of Peter the Great. It is the oldest purpose-built museum in Russia, now housing over one million exhibits.
The ethnographical section includes sections on peoples from around the world including Inuit tribes, Pueblo Indians, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan, Africa and Australia.
In the central rotunda, which was originally an anatomy theater, there is a collection of fetuses pickled in jars.
The museum’s blue and white Baroque building also once contained an observatory with an early planetarium created by the scientist and poet Mikhail Lomonosov.
TITLE: Gay Festival Hit By Fire Inspection
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two popular local nightclubs are facing closure after they agreed to hold a gay and lesbian film festival on their premises. The Place and Sochi, two venues popular with students, the art crowd and expats, were targets of unscheduled fire safety inspections on the eve of the festival’s opening and were in the process shut down for breaking the fire code.
Side by Side, the first LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) film festival in St. Petersburg, featuring an international schedule of 17 feature films and five short film programs as well as personal appearances by a number of international filmmakers, was due to open at The Place and Sochi, on Thursday.
“We are indignant, upset and distressed,” said Irina Sergeyeva, one of the three organizers of the festival that features films from the U.S., Europe and Moscow.
“We have had the festival opening scheduled for tonight at two venues, and it became known earlier today that by the order of the fire inspectors, who paid visits to the both clubs yesterday, the clubs are closed, so the film festival will not be held at these venues,” she said speaking by telephone on Thursday.
Guests at the four-day festival which was due to end Sunday included John Cameron Mitchell, whose 2006 film “Shortbus” garnered many awards at such festivals as the Athens International Film Festival, Gijon International Film Festival and the Zurich Film Festival.
The festival, the motto of which is “Look Broader, Be Kinder,” was originally scheduled to be held at Pik film center, but was moved into The Place and Sochi after Pik’s management terminated the contract with the festival’s organizers last month.
“It was virtually the same situation at Pik; after the contract was signed and tickets went on sale, in a week’s time the contract was terminated ‘for technical reasons,’ but there was information in Moi Rayon newspaper that it was done under the pressure from the city and district administrations,” Sergeyeva said.
According to Sergeyeva, LGBT film festivals have taken place in the city before, but they were closed events.
“This is the first open event,” she said. “It represents cultured, quality films, and it’s very sad [because it could be] an event that St. Petersburg could be proud of.”
Sergeyeva did not say that the festival was deliberately suppressed by the authorities, but she implied that pressure seems to come from the top.
“I can’t give the exact information, I only know the two instances,” she said. “First, the contract with Pik was terminated and representatives of Pik referred to the city and district administrations, and, secondly, the contract [with The Place and Sochi] was terminated today because of the fire inspectorate’s orders. These are the facts that I have.”
Sergeyeva said tickets will be refunded by the venues. She added that the organizers will be looking for alternative venues for the festival.
As this newspaper went to press, the future of the clubs was not clear as the legal procedures initiated by the fire inspectorate were under way.
The Place was reported to be sealed, and closed for at least ten days, on Thursday. The future of Sochi remained unclear.
Both clubs’ managements declined to comment.
TITLE: Official Clamps Down on Anti-Draft Event
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The youth wing of the democratic party Yabloko said it will pursue legal action against a district administration official for stopping its members from displaying the party’s flags at a protest on Wednesday against military conscription.
To coincide with the autumn draft that began in Russia on Wednesday, Youth Yabloko staged a protest by erecting a temporary “anti-recruiting station” near Vasileostrovskaya metro station.
Hinting at the infamous practice of avoiding conscription by bribing military commissariat officers, activists distributed “anti-bribes” which were envelopes with materials on how to avoid being enlisted on legal grounds. “Anti-war” military ID cards (paper strips with a peace sign and the word “Free” on them) and “anti-puttees” (turned out to be ordinary black socks) were also distributed.
But as activists erected a temporary stand and covered it with Yabloko flags, an official from district administration who was monitoring the protest, sanctioned by the authorities, approached the protesters and demanded that the flags be taken down.
Nikolai Nerchuk, the head of the law, order and security department of the administration of the Vasileostrovsky District, said that the permit only mentioned a tent and leaflets, but not party flags, and warned the protesters would have to deal with the police if the flags were not taken away.
“We are not making any illegal demands, we are acting strictly within the law,” Nerchuk said.
Several police officers watched the protest from a distance, but did not interfere.
After a brief argument, the protesters took the flags from the stand and wrapped them around their shoulders. Nerchuk did not object to this.
However, Alexander Gudimov, deputy chairman of the local branch of Youth Yabloko, said the use of flags does not demand a special sanction according to Russian law, and in fact the flags have been used at many Youth Yabloko demonstrations without any objection from the authorities.
“They could stop our demonstration only if there were a threat to the life or health of people or if we committed some unlawful acts; [Nerchuk] had no right to threat us with detainment,” Gudimov said. According to Gudimov, Youth Yabloko is currently consulting lawyers to decide whether it will sue Nerchuk or file a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Youth Yabloko has regularly protested against conscription, describing it as “conscription slavery” and drawing attention to multiple non-combat losses in the Russian army.
“Young men die in our army every day,” the group said in a statement released for this week’s rally. “Twice as many conscripts as usual are planned for enlistment in the next three months. It means twice as many potential victims!”
During conscription campaigns police officers routinely check the passports of young people at metro stations to find draft dodgers. If suspicion arises that a young person is illegally avoiding his service he can be detained and handed to the military.
Gudimov described the Russian conscription army a “vestige of the past.”
“We don’t need such a big army that is unprofessional and will not be able to do much. This country needs a small, qualified army which can move promptly and perform combat missions effectively,” he said.
“A conscript army does not make much sense; it robs young people of years of their lives at best, while at worst it cripples them both morally and physically.”
Russian leaders have talked about the military reform and abolishing the conscript army since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 but the country’s 1 million-strong army continues to rely on conscripts for 60 percent of its manpower (600,000 men). The proportion of volunteers (kontraktniki) has been reportedly growing slowly and now is estimated at 99,000 men.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: City Center Power Cut
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 20,000 locals in two districts in central St. Petersburg were left without electricity after a short circuit at the station at 48 Moika Embankment on Thursday afternoon.
At least 60 apartment buildings in the Admiralteisky district and 30 residential buildings in Tselntralny district were affected by the accident.
Cash machines and business centers were paralyzed for several hours, and salespeople greeted visitors in semi-darkness in shops along Malaya Morskaya and the nearby area.
Squads of the local branch of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations worked to restore the electricity.
Quotas to Double
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The government will double the quota for foreigners allowed to work in the country in 2009 to as many as 3.9 million, RIA-Novosti cited Deputy Health and Social Development Minister Maxim Topilin as saying Wednesday.
The quota for migrant labor allowed in the country for 2008 was set at 1.8 million people at the beginning of the year, Topilin said, RIA-Novosti reported.
This was raised to 3.2 million this week at the request of regional authorities, Topilin said.
TITLE: 1st Stage of Underground Mall Complete
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Rozhkov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The first underground level of the 190,000-square-meter Galeria shopping center underneath Ploshchad Vosstaniya has been completed. By the time the center is opened in 2010, it will claim to rank among the largest retail projects in Europe, like Birmingham’s Bullring, Barcelona’s Diagonal Mar and Warsaw’s Arkadia.
Galeria’s central location within walking distance of three subway stations — Ploshchad Vosstaniya, Ligovsky Prospekt and Mayakovskaya — means the centre’s catchment area will encompass more than three million people and draw both residents and foreign tourists and visitors to the mall.
The project’s designers say that the elegance of its facades, the richness of its interior design and the comfort of its panoramic-view elevators will make Galeria a hallmark of the northern capital and a symbol of retail real estate not only in St. Petersburg, but across Russia as a whole. The project’s architects, the British firm Chapman Taylor with the architectural workshop Grigoryev and Partners, LLC, have already completed a thorough investigation of extensive written data on the geological issues related to the site. Additional research is due to be undertaken in November.
“Small land plots are to be selected for excavation of the soil and research,” said Danat Bulavko, CEO of Aditum, a sub-contractor of the project. “This is a short-term exploration which is going to be completed in a few months.”
“When we were selected to carry out experiments on the underground construction, a series of tests took place on a similar pit of the same measurements. The obtained results were included in the project’s documentation,” said Vladimir Ulitsky, head of the Foundations Department at St. Petersburg State Railroad University.
According to real estate analysts, Galeria’s location makes it a unique retail project in St. Petersburg, and the only superregional project being built in the center of the city.
“All operators on the market who have so far only been eyeing St. Petersburg to open their stores understand this advantage. We are seeing talks in the final stages with five new international retailers who are looking to open their flagman stores in Russia in Galeria,” said Stanislava Bilen, Senior Consultant at the retail department of Jones Lang LaSalle, the leasing and marketing consultant for the project.
Over 200 shops including both international and domestic brands will be situated on five floors of the mall, which will also have an entertainment complex including a multiplex theater, bowling alley and family entertainment center. As well as a food court, several restaurants serving international cuisine will offer views of Ploshchad Vosstaniya.
Galeria will also include one of the largest fitness clubs in the city center, as well as two levels of underground parking.
The project is being developed by Briz Construction Company LLC with the Turkish company Renaissance Construction as the general contractor.
“We can guarantee that construction will be completed on schedule and that in early 2010 St. Petersburg will host one of the largest shopping centers in Europe,” said Bulent Sarikaya, managing director at Briz, who also added that Galeria will become a popular leisure venue offering “a myriad of ways for visitors to enjoy themselves.”
The shopping center is currently being actively leased out to prospective tenants. To meet the deadline and minimize costs, the construction company will build the underground and overground parts of Galeria simultaneously.
The volume of investment into the project is valued at $470 million.
TITLE: Bank Unveils Measures
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Central Bank on Wednesday announced a series of measures aimed at shoring up liquidity and helping to cope with the effects of the ongoing financial crisis.
Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said the turmoil in the country’s financial markets had been localized but that liquidity problems created in its wake could last for another 15 months.
Speaking at a conference on capital markets, Ulyukayev said the $50 billion that the Central Bank is to make available to the state-owned Vneshekonmbank, also known as the Development Bank, to help refinance the debt of Russian banks and companies would be released by the end of next year.
He said Russian banks and companies would need to pay back up to $40 billion to foreign creditors before the end of 2008 and another $80 billion in 2009.
The Central Bank may also ease requirements on loan collateral by one percentage point to stimulate domestic banks, Ulyukayev said.
A draft bill is also being prepared that would allow the Central Bank to offer unsecured loans to rated banks for up to six months to supplement the regular banking auction organized by the Finance Ministry, he said.
TITLE: Analysts Fear Government’s Bailout Solution Not Enough
AUTHOR: By Maria Levina
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Despite the bank bailout package swiftly introduced by the government, many Russian banks will face liquidity pressures and falling profitability as access to credit stays limited and rising rates lead to fewer loans and more defaults, banking analysts said Wednesday.
Big state banks such as Sberbank and VTB appear poised to become the industry winners in the short to medium term, although both have lost about 60 percent of their stock value since January.
They are the primary beneficiaries of the emergency loan extended last week to 28 banks by the Finance Ministry, pocketing $41 billion of the $60 billion aid package. They are also expected to see an increase in deposits as individuals and companies shift their money from other banks into safer, state-backed havens.
“We certainly expect more bank failures and a stronger role played by state banks,” said Olga Naidenova, a banking analyst at Alfa Bank, one of the 28 banks.
Ruble deposits in Russian banks totaled 5 trillion rubles on Aug. 1, up 33 percent from a year earlier, the State Statistics Service said on its web site Wednesday. Sberbank held 47 percent of deposits by individuals, down from 49 percent last August, in an indication that the bank was losing market share prior to this month’s banking turmoil but may now benefit from an unfolding crisis of confidence in the banking sector.
Sberbank’s and VTB’s key risks include exposure to dicey sectors such as real estate, retail and agriculture via their loan portfolios, but these risks are reduced by the fact that they are relatively well-diversified and have become the main conduits for state funds into the economy, UralSib said in a report.
Meanwhile, smaller banks will continue to face funding bottlenecks because the large and state banks are hesitant to take on smaller counterparty risk and are waiting for government guarantees before releasing liquidity to a wider group of banks, Renaissance Capital said in a report.
Banks with significant exposure to risky sectors and aggressive securities trading are likely to face additional pressure, becoming attractive targets for rivals with strong balance sheets, as the buyouts of KIT Finance and Renaissance Capital last week suggest.
The number of banks that will lose their licenses in the coming months will be in part a political decision because letting even a few small banks fail may cause a new crisis of confidence that will affect the whole banking system, Naidenova said.
“Big state banks are best positioned to acquire weaker players,” she said. “But the question is whether they have interest in doing so now, when the quality of bank portfolios may not become clear until a round of real estate re-pricing.”
The Central Bank is prepared to help the banking industry consolidate amid the liquidity squeeze, said the bank’s first deputy head Alexei Ulyukayev told a conference Wednesday.
Mergers are a “rational and effective way of proceeding for shareholders,” he said, Bloomberg reported. “We expect it and are ready to help this.”
TITLE: Taking the Elephant Out of the Room
AUTHOR: By Chris Weafer
TEXT: Using the country’s financial reserves to boost liquidity in the financial system is a very sensible use of money in this period of extreme uncertainty and risk. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s announcement earlier this week that $50 billion of additional funding will be made available through the Development Bank, also known as Vneshekonombank, to help banks and other companies refinance their foreign debt obligations, adds to the sizeable amount of cash already made available to the banking system in recent weeks. Although the Development Bank’s support runs contrary to its original mission — to substantially increase investment spending in infrastructure and new industries — this emergency funding is necessary to help mitigate a crisis that, if left unchecked, could completely destroy the economy.
The latest commitment of $50 billion may bring the total value of state support for the financial system to $135.5 billion, or almost one-quarter of the value of the country’s total reserves. In addition to the Development Bank support, $44 billion was made available two weeks ago to three state banks, Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank; an additional $16 billion was made available to the next biggest 25 banks via money market auctions; the formula for calculating the export tariff for oil was lowered by $5.5 billion; and $20 billion was earmarked to support the stock market — state company shares in particular — if required.
Given that the total value of debt owed by the country’s banks and industrial corporations is around $440 billion and that the total amount to be repaid or refinanced over the next four month is between $27.5 billion (my estimate) and $39 billion (Central Bank estimate), the amount committed by the government is very substantial. More than that, it is significantly in excess of the amount that could conceivably be required to support the country’s banks and major corporations over the next few months.
In that context, the total support package of roughly $135.5 billion is designed to send a very clear message to investors and to all participants in the economy: Russia has more than enough money to avoid bankruptcies among the country’s largest financial institutions and that it will not face the same difficulties that have crippled the United States or many European Union countries.
In addition, by diversifying the mechanisms for making the money available, the government is looking to avoid restricting access to debt finance only to the very biggest institutions. It is also a public confidence-building exercise. By putting these measures in place well in advance of any refinancing risk, the hope is to avoid any rumors of fiscal problems or other events that might destabilize the markets and delay investment or spending plans.
Inevitably, such a big response to the potential problem raises fears of “What do they know that we don’t know?” Many investors already sense an elephant in the room. That elephant is the fear that the debt problems in certain banks and corporations are so serious that they could result in their bankruptcies. But the message from the government is that no institution that plays an important role in stabilizing the country’s financial system or to the economy will be allowed to fail. Essentially that means that any bank with a significant deposit base or a high public profile will not be allowed to fail. The state will likely broker deals in which financially strong institutions will acquire any problem banks — similar to the recent buyouts of KIT Finance and Svyaz Bank.
Banks and industrial companies facing difficulty in securing a foreign debt rollover deal will be able to apply to the Development Bank for funding. There will be failures of course. Many of the more than 1,000 licensed banks may not be in business within six months. Some of these smaller banks will fail because of their inability to secure new financing. Others will have their licenses withdrawn if the Central Bank toughens capital requirements in the sector as expected. In theory, none of these lost banks should have any impact on the economy or the integrity of the financial system. But the government is taking no chances and is showcasing the massive liquidity support available in order to avoid any bank closure having a disproportionate effect. For the Central Bank, the current events allow it to finally make some significant progress in reducing the number of bank licenses, having progressed only slowly over the past five years.
Diverting such a huge amount of cash to ensure continued stability in the economy will inevitably slow the pace of investment elsewhere and most likely lead to a lengthening of the timeline set out by President Dmitry Medvedev to develop infrastructure projects and create greater diversity in the economy. But it is by far the lesser of two evils. Without this large financial support from the government, the entire banking system will be put at risk. Those that have money will keep it under their mattresses, and the resulting credit starvation will lead to a much slower pace of economic growth. With memories of the banking defaults in the 1990s still relatively fresh in the mind of the public, the government knows full well that any accident, or badly handled problem, in a well-known bank or corporation could easily lead to panic among depositors and huge lines at banks to withdraw money. The escalation would be hard to stop and quite quickly the country would join the ranks of those heading toward recession. At that point, it would be too late to make cash available.
In the end, the government has done the correct thing by taking fast, pre-emptive moves to avert a larger crisis.
Chris Weafer is chief strategist at UralSib Capital.
TITLE: A Blood Feud Made to Order
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Like many others, I was shocked when news agencies first announced last Wednesday that Sulim Yamadayev, the former commander of Chechnya’s Vostok Battalion, had been murdered in Moscow. After all, he fought brilliantly alongside Russian troops in South Ossetia during the recent war with Georgia. The Kremlin was indebted to him not only for his role in the victory, but also for saving Georgians. Yamadayev personally facilitated the evacuation of a Georgian enclave that had been trapped between Dzhava and Tskhinvali. Were it not for his intervention, the Georgians living in this area would have surely been killed.
So when I heard the news of his death, my first thought was, “How could this be? How could Moscow betray someone who had recently done so much for Russia?”
But two hours after the attack, we learned that it wasn’t Sulim Yamadayev who had been killed after all, but his older brother, Ruslan. That immediately made me wonder something else. Who had planted the rumor that Sulim was the victim? I don’t believe for a second that Interior Ministry officials couldn’t identify the body.
The Yamadayevs and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov are embroiled in a deadly feud. Before Ruslan’s death, several other enemies of Kadyrov were targeted in Moscow. For example, Chechen police officers from Grozny killed Chechen commander Movladi Baisarov in November 2006 as they were trying to arrest him in southwest Moscow.
Thus, it would seem logical to link Kadyrov to Ruslan Yamadayev’s death. But a few things don’t add up.
First, Ruslan was killed and not Sulim, the person who is a much greater military threat to Kadyrov. Now, Sulim will surely seek blood revenge against Kadyrov, whom he blames for his brother’s murder. Was it a case of mistaken identity? I don’t think so. It is highly unlikely that a professional assassin charged with gunning down a prominent figure just five minutes from the White House would kill the wrong target.
Another interesting twist is that Colonel General Sergei Kizyun, the former military commander in Chechnya who was sitting next to Ruslan in the car, was not killed in the attack, although he was seriously injured. Was it only a fluke that his life was spared?
In all likelihood, Moscow’s machinations, not Chechen feuds, were behind this brazen killing in the heart of the capital. I believe that the feud was deliberately encouraged by the Kremlin siloviki. Among other things, the siloviki leaked rumors that Ruslan Yamadayev might soon replace Kadyrov as the president of Chechnya.
It was clear that one of two things would happen. Either the siloviki who hate Kadyrov would go beyond rumor-mongering and kill one of the Yamadayevs, knowing that the surviving brother would exact his revenge on Kadyrov. Or Kadyrov, having decided that the risk of Chechnya’s destabilization from such rumors outweighed the risk of escalating a bloody feud, would have Ruslan removed from the picture.
Although it is still uncertain who shot Ruslan Yamadayev, it looks more like a Moscow hit than a Chechen feud. The killing was an example of the Kremlin’s animosity toward the Caucasus. This enmity made the rivalry between Kadyrov and the Yamadayevs inevitable.
The next victim in this blood feud will be either Sulim Yamadayev or Kadyrov.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Gone, and mostly forgotten
AUTHOR: By Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hindsight — especially historical — is twenty-twenty. Knowing what we do today, we can easily forget the glittering promise that communism held out to a world gripped by poverty and high unemployment in the 1930s: food for all, a worker’s paradise.
In “The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia,” documentary filmmaker Tim Tzouliadis takes us on the sorrowful but engaging journey of the thousands of Americans who were first let down by the American dream, only to perish in the Soviet nightmare. Adding to the tragedy, not all of the Americans who came to the Soviet Union in the 1930s were political fanatics.
“Few paused to distinguish whether they were being pulled by an ideology or pushed by their need,” Tzouliadis writes. “Theirs was a reaction to the actuality and future threat of poverty, and to understand them we must place ourselves momentarily in a similar position of unknowing: when the idea of the Soviet Revolution was still filled with hope, and only the most perspicacious could discern the truth that lay beneath that promise.”
In the early 1930s, Stalin was rapidly industrializing the Soviet Union, largely according to an American design. Upon arrival, most of the Americans — among them, African-Americans accustomed to being treated as second-class citizens in their homeland — were given jobs in factories.
They settled not only in Moscow, but also in places as far-flung as Gorky, where the Ford Motor Company had built a giant auto plant, or Stalingrad, where the Detroit architect Albert Kahn had built a mammoth tractor factory.
Set apart by their accents, novelty and the quality of their clothing, most Americans enjoyed quasi-celebrity status.
Whereas back home they had been “regular assembly-line Joes,” they were now welcomed as “experts” to fledgling Russian industries, and gave lectures on the United States — usually the evils of American unemployment — to Soviet factory clubs.
They also pursued familiar expatriate activities — reading their own English-language paper, the Moscow Daily News, sending their children to English-language schools, singing in the Anglo-American chorus and playing baseball.
But any change of heart about coming to the Soviet Union brought a realization of how difficult it was for them to leave.
Tzouliadis tells of one group of American factory workers who were told upon their arrival in December 1931 to hand over their passports for registration, given registration forms to fill out, and then “abruptly informed that they had all become Soviet citizens.”
Others accepted working contracts in the Soviet Union only to be accused of espionage and required to take up Soviet citizenship to clear their names.
Before November 1933, the United States had no diplomatic presence in Russia, and the main recourse for “captured Americans” was the power and pressure of the foreign press.
But the revocation of U.S. passports was a touchy subject among journalists facing censors and expulsion, and this issue was among many that were under-reported.
Even the existence of Ukraine’s mass famine, which killed millions in the early 1930s, was in question for such reporters as Walter Duranty, the longtime New York Times Moscow bureau chief who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his reporting.
The U.S. Embassy opened in 1933 to a deluge of requests by Americans desperate to leave.
But many of the would-be emigrants no longer held U.S. passports, or had become Soviet citizens, forcing diplomats to turn to the labyrinthine Soviet bureaucracy for answers that never came.
Through extensive archival research, including internal embassy memorandums, correspondences and files, Tzouliadis shows how hundreds of Americans were essentially forsaken by a government unable to protect them.
Although the State Department had information concerning the theft of U.S. passports for the fraudulent entry of communists into the United States, and was aware of numerous reports that the Soviet authorities were issuing residency permits for ever shorter periods to force Americans to accept Soviet citizenship, Tzouliadis writes that its staff did little to negotiate with the Soviet Foreign Ministry even in the “honeymoon” years.
By 1938, many Americans were simply being picked up by secret police officials just outside the embassy gates. A young officer by the name of George Kennan, later the architect of the U.S. policy of “containment” of Soviet communism, attached the following note in 1938 to the file of an American stuck in the camps. His ideas fell on deaf ears:
“The Soviet Government has the administrative power to arrest and hold incommunicado indefinitely any American citizen in the Soviet Union ...
“Should this person have at the time of his arrest only American nationality the Soviet authorities apparently have only to notify us that he has been admitted to Soviet citizenship in order to create a situation in which under our usual practice we would not press further representations in his behalf ...
“The upshot is that in reality no American citizen resident in the Soviet Union has any assurance that we will be able to help him in case the Soviet authorities should take repressive action again him. The situation is such that these people are virtually at the mercy of the Soviet authorities ...
“Logically we should refuse to recognize the naturalization of Americans in the Soviet Union as voluntary and valid in the absence of confirmation of the voluntary character of the act on the part of the person concerned ...
“An alternative would be to give publicity to the real situation, with a view to relieving the Department and the Embassy at Moscow of further responsibility for the protection of our citizens resident in the Soviet Union.”
Reading “The Forsaken,” I was reminded of a comment that a Russian girlfriend of mine once made about the “naivety” of Americans, who “have values and think they can live by them.”
Oftentimes, history is more powerful than the people caught up in it. Perhaps Thomas Sgovio, who survived 16 years of imprisonment, most of them spent in Kolyma, relays this idea best when quoted at the end of Tzouliadis’ book.
Having learned from his newly-released file that his American sweetheart in Moscow had informed on him, Sgovio said, “She was not a very courageous person. It was a frightening time for everyone.”
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang is the author of the memoir “Bound Feet & Western Dress.” She is currently writing a book on expats in China and Russia.
TITLE: Boris Yefimov (1900-2008)
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Boris Yefimov, an eminent Soviet political cartoonist who once personally took Josef Stalin’s orders on how to depict U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower, died in Moscow on Wednesday, just two days after President Dmitry Medvedev congratulated him on his 108th birthday.
Yefimov, born Fridland in Kiev in 1900, published his first cartoon, a caricature mocking the White Army General Anton Denikin in 1918, after his elder brother, journalist Mikhail Koltsov, suggested that he start drawing.
From 1922, Yefimov regularly published his cartoons in Pravda and Izvestia newspapers and in the satirical magazine Krokodil. Curiously, Yefimov’s latest job was with Izvestia: On his 107th birthday, he was appointed the newspaper’s chief artist.
Yefimov succeeded in drawing enemies of the Soviet state — first, the top German Nazi officials and particularly Adolf Hitler, whom he drew with a swastika under a sharp nose, and then, during the Cold War, portraying American and British politicians as plump villains with sagging cheeks.
The Soviet government sent him as a special war correspondent to the Nuremberg trials, where Yefimov sketched the Nazi leaders while standing in front of their cages.
In several interviews given in recent years, Yefimov expressed admiration for Stalin as a political genius unmatched by any of the modern Russian leaders but said he dreaded him as the tyrant who ordered the prosecution of his brother Mikhail, who was shot in prison in 1940 for Trotskyism.
Yefimov — who said he used to walk Moscow’s streets at night to avoid arrest by Stalin’s agents, who usually came for people after dark — often recalled a phone call from Stalin in 1947 that left him in a cold sweat.
Stalin asked him to draw Eisenhower arriving at the North Pole with a large army and saying Russians were threatening the United States. Yefimov kept this sketch, on which Stalin left his remarks written in red pencil.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yefimov lamented that “political cartooning doesn’t exist anymore.”
“You always honestly and steadfastly defended the interests of our country and its citizens,” Medvedev said in a telegram congratulating Yefimov on his 108th birthday on Sept. 28.
TITLE: Art attack
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Entering Daria Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture before its opening late last month was like entering a vault. A security guard with a walkie-talkie at the gate alerted the others at the entrance, just 10 meters away, that a visitor was approaching. Inside, more burly men stood beside the doors at either end of the gallery.
Despite their monstrous numbers, the security guards go almost unnoticed in the lofty foyer of the former Bakhmetyevsky Bus Garage, where visitors’ eyes are instantly drawn upward to take in the vast space.
“When I saw the place it was like love at first sight,” Zhukova said in an interview a few days before the opening. “It looked incredible from the outside, and luckily I had a chance to go in.”
Zhukova was heavily made up with tight jeans, a gray blazer with military details, and black knee-high boots. She spoke with a heavy American accent, and refused to comment on anything other than the Garage and its present condition.
Zhukova took over the lease of Konstantin Melnikov’s constructivist landmark from the Federation of Jewish Communities just six months ago. She came up with the idea of transforming it into the Garage Center For Contemporary Culture.
The gallery was described as a non-profit exhibition space that would be open to everyone. But in June it had a glitzy opening ceremony which was invitation-only. Amy Winehouse performed and invited guests viewed a small exhibition dedicated to Melnikov and a light installation by Mexican-born artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
Now the 8,500-square-meter space has opened to the public with an exhibition from two of the most prominent figures in Russian contemporary art, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The Kabakovs are visiting Russia for only the second time since they emigrated to the United States in the 1980s.
Their work is being displayed simultaneously at three exhibitions in central Moscow. The largest exhibition is at the Garage, while Winzavod and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art are hosting smaller shows.
Ilya Kabakov was born in Soviet Ukraine in 1933 and studied art in Moscow. He worked as an official artist, illustrating children’s books, but became involved in the underground art scene. In the 1970s, he co-formed an art group called The Moscow Conceptualists. In the late ‘80s he emigrated to New York and continued to work with his wife, Emilia.
“Ilya never officially emigrated. He just came over here to see an exhibition and never came back,” Emilia Kabakov said, laughing.
She is the spokesperson for the couple. Talking to journalists “makes Ilya nervous,” she said.
By the time the couple came back to Russia to exhibit in the State Hermitage Museum in 2004 they were known worldwide for their installations, which gave a glimpse into life in the Soviet Union.
One of these works, “Red Wagon,” sits in the foyer of the Garage. It is a railway car painted inside with a mural of idyllic Communist life. A sound system plays nostalgic Soviet music. But the entrance is blocked by a pile of rubbish, and a ladder on the roof leads to nowhere.
The ladder is trying to reach the bright future promised by the Soviet authorities, Emilia Kabakov explained. She said the rubbish is a symbol for perestroika, when everything was broken, while the music inside the wagon represents dreams, hopes and memories.
In 2006, when the Bakhmetyevsky garage was under the lease to the Federation of Jewish Communities, the Kabakovs arranged to use the space for their exhibition.
“We had everything ready and planned for over a year, then all of a sudden there was an announcement that Dasha would be creating a center of contemporary art. We thought, ‘This will be a disaster,’” Emilia Kabakov said. “She approached us with plans, and what was amazing was that all her plans were drawn around our plans.”
“What you’re seeing now, is not finished,” Zhukova said of Garage. “I just knew about the Kabakov retrospective, and I had a deadline to work toward.”
The Kabakov exhibition was funded by Roman Abramovich through Zhukova’s Iris Foundation. The complex project involved the construction of a 23-room enclosed gallery inside Garage. The rooms have sombrely painted walls and suspended plasterboard ceilings.
The gallery within a gallery houses a fake retrospective of Russian art titled “Alternative History of Art.” On display is the work of three artists who have been invented by the Kabakovs. The paintings, a blend of impressionism and Socialist Realism, were clearly drawn by the same hand.
“This exhibition is a work of fiction; it’s a ‘what if?’” Emilia Kabakov said. “What if instead of Kandinsky and Malevich, you had the artists Kabakov, Rosenthal and Spivak?”
Just like in a real gallery, the artists’ life stories are printed on the walls. Charles Rosenthal died prematurely in the early 20th century, while Rosenthal’s work came chronologically after Kazimir Malevich. His paintings were optimistic, and he believed in the idea of a Soviet utopia. Kabakov (an alter-ego of Ilya Kabakov) adhered to the principles of Rosenthal but became disillusioned by Soviet ideals, and his work is often obscured by geometrical shapes and surrounded by murky colors.
Igor Spivak, the third artist, created his works in the 1990s in a mood of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. “He believes that all the good things are behind him,” Emilia Kabakov said, describing him as “a drunk who has only finished 17 works.”
Most of Spivak’s works are painted in patriotic red. Some are unfinished with pencil lines that dictate where the paint is to be applied. One large canvas, dedicated to a metro theme, depicts two small red rectangular images floating in white space. One is of a crowd standing on the escalators wearing their winter clothes, they have serene expressions.
Unfortunately, the gallery installation within Garage disguises rather than accentuates the evocative space. The enclosed rooms block the light coming through Melnikov’s circular windows and hide original architectural details such as the helix-shaped staircases and the dramatic roof.
In a month, the exhibition will be dismantled and architect Jamie Forbert will complete the transformation of Garage. Next to the exhibition space there will be a bookstore, cafe, lecture hall, a library and a small cinema.
When Garage reopens in February next year, Zhukova plans to hold a series of workshops for adults and children. French billionaire Francois Pinault, whose holding company owns Christie’s auction house, will exhibit some of his collection. Molly Dent-Brocklehurst, a former dealer at the Gagosian Gallery will be overseeing the center.
“Alternative History of Art” and “Red Wagon” runs to Oct. 19 at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture located at 19a Ulitsa Obraztsova in Moscow. Metro Mendeleyevskaya.
TITLE: Sunny delights
AUTHOR: By Magdalena Georgieva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mango Cafe // 50 Furshtatskaya Ulitsa // Tel.: 272 5329 // Open 9 a.m. through 10 p.m. // Dinner for two: 1,220 rubles ($50)
Gray umbrellas on the wet streets of St. Petersburg makes the orange sun of Africa seem a distant dream. However, it secretly sneaks through the woven blinds of Mango Cafe during rainy afternoons to warm the cafe’s visitors up. Decorated in all shades of beige with wooden furniture and bamboo ornaments, Mango Cafe celebrates African culture with its variety of coffee flavors, mango desserts and freshly squeezed tropical fruit juices.
Although Mango Cafe’s advertising sign at the entrance lists goryachiy bluda (hot meals) along with coffee, tea and desserts, don’t count on getting a satisfying dinner here. Be prepared to receive a small and overpriced portion if you are lucky enough to have the meal actually available at the day of your visit. If, however, you’d like to try the other three specialties listed in the advertising sign, then step right in. It is easy to sink into the softness of the cafe’s wheat color and lounge music while enjoying, for instance, a coffee with 13 ingredients including orange rind, almond mint, cloves, ginger and cinnamon.
The waitress, wearing an orange apron and a matching red African necklace, can provide an English menu and her supervisor will speak to you in English if needed. The first couple of pages are devoted to African-named coffees, teas and other drinks but there are also short salad and sandwich sections. Listed are five traditional sandwich options and the most complex of which — sandwich with white chicken, cucumbers and Teriyaki sauce (140 rubles, $5.50) — was not available. The waitress suggested an alternative (and usually a secure choice) in the blini (pancakes) with mushrooms (130 rubles, $5). Although served well, they tasted below the average even for a Russian fast-food restaurant.
The main courses carry not only authentic African names such as Akuka Chukula (chicken filled with a salad of vegetables and potato baked with sheep’s cheese), but also — as warned by the waitress — a waiting period of 20-25 minutes. It wasn’t worth the wait or its price at 340 rubles ($13) because Akuka Chukula consists only of four small chicken pieces in sauce, half a potato and some fresh tomato and cucumber salad.
With this modest dish one can order a more filling drink like a tropical fruit smoothie, fresh juice of berries, or a mango milkshake (120 rubles, $4.60) served with a matching yellow straw. Although the waitress was quick to take the order, she ignored the empty glasses lying on the table and left them during dessert.
It was a relief to finish with the meal but an adventure to start with the coffee and tea drinks and desserts. Even though the waitress got the order wrong, serving Embe Kahawa (coffee with mango sauce, 180 rubles, $7) instead of BiBi Kahawa (wedding coffee with strawberry sauce, 180 rubles, $7), the mistake was soon forgotten.
Embe Kahawa consists of whipped cream on top of the mango puree that slightly sweetens the coffee on the bottom. If you are more of a tea drinker, order 400 milliliters (120 rubles, $4.60) or 800 milliliters (220 rubles, $8.50) of Rooibush Chocolatier that carries the sweet aroma of whisky and cocoa blended with rooibush. Sip the hot drinks slowly to fully enjoy the cozy atmosphere of leopard-print wall lamps, bamboo lanterns and mellow female vocals reminiscent of the relaxing album compilation “Cafe Del Mar.”
When the music stops for a second one can hear the gentle sound of the mirrored waterfall next to the wooden bar. The bar offers fruit delights and cakes such as the mango mousse (150 rubles, $5.80) and chocolate cake “Africa” (120 rubles, $4.60) with two almonds on top. The taste of these desserts surely complements the aroma of Moroccan tea, the warm melodies lingering in the air and the dream of Africa’s orange sun.
TITLE: Bomber Kills 4 in Pakistan, UN Raises Security Level
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The UN ordered children of its international staff to leave the Pakistani capital and other areas it considered unsafe, raising its security level following the bombing of the Marriott Hotel, officials said Thursday.
The move, which came a day after Britain decided to repatriate diplomats’ children, underlines the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, which is under intense U.S. pressure to combat Islamic militants responsible for rising attacks at home and in neighboring Afghanistan.
In the latest incident, a suicide bomber blew himself up near the house of a leading secular politician in Pakistan’s restive northwest, killing at least four people, police said.
Pakistan has suffered a surge in attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants on government, military and Western targets over the last two years that has fanned fears about the nuclear-armed nation’s stability.
Thursday’s attack occurred as the politician, Asfandyar Wali Khan, was receiving guests to mark the end of the Islamic fasting month at his home in Charsadda.
Earlier this week, Pakistan’s military reported that suicide attacks have killed nearly 1,200 people — most of them civilians — since the July 2007 army assault on militants holed up in Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque.
The Sept. 20 Marriott bombing was among the worst, killing at least 54 people, including three Americans and the Czech ambassador. Since then, foreign missions have been reviewing their security.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon approved the latest move after the world body’s agencies in Islamabad recommended it earlier this week, said spokeswoman Amena Kamaal.
The order also applied to the neighboring city of Rawalpindi and areas near the Afghan border.
Under the decision, UN international staff will no longer be allowed to live with their children in the capital, the neighboring city of Rawalpindi or in Quetta, on the Afghan frontier.
Much of the border region, including the city of Peshawar is already off-limits for UN families. Some of those affected can relocate to areas deemed safer, such as Lahore or Karachi.
But others are expected to leave Pakistan, which could disrupt to a limited degree UN operations in the country as it faces severe economic difficulties and a crumbling of basic public services in militancy-torn areas.
About 100 of the world body’s more than 2,000 staff in Pakistan are foreigners, and only 20 had children who would be affected, Kamaal said.
Luc Chauvin, deputy representative in Pakistan for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, said seven of its 33 international staff would have to relocate or send children away.
He said UNICEF was buying laptops and installing Internet connections in staffers’ homes to enable them to work without coming into the office — a potential target for attack.
“Of course there is a bit of an impact, but I think we can cope,” Chauvin said of the extra precautions.
Khalif Bile, country representative for the World Health Organization, said the effect on its activities would be “insignificant.” WHO works with the government on a campaign to eradicate polio that has been opposed by some Islamic hard-liners.
Britain announced Wednesday that about 60 children of its diplomats in Pakistan will return home. Pakistan has long been a non-family posting for U.S. and Canadian diplomatic staff.
Pakistani officials have blamed the Marriott blast on extremists holed up in tribal areas along the Afghan border who are suspected of mounting a wave of suicide attacks stretching back more than a year.
Several have taken place in the capital, including a suicide car bomb claimed by al-Qaida that killed six outside the Danish Embassy in June. A blast killed a Turkish aid worker and injured 12 people, including four FBI agents, at a restaurant in March.
Pakistani authorities have sought to reassure the expatriate community here by ramping up security in the capital, mounting extra checkpoints and posting paramilitary troops with machine guns at the entrance to the diplomatic quarter — apparently to little avail.
TITLE: House to Vote on Bailout Package
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — House members are getting another chance to vote on a financial bailout bill that has infuriated millions of voters after the Senate added tax cuts and other sweeteners and passed it handily.
Senators advanced the much-criticized measure in a 74-25 vote late Wednesday, sending it to the other side of the Capitol for a showdown vote expected Friday. The move was calculated to win over enough dissenting House members to get the bill through and reverse Monday’s stunning defeat in the House. Party leaders there planned to press rank-and-file members Thursday for the dozen converts they believe they need.
Meantime, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, urged people to remain calm.
“I think overall the banking system remains very sound so that’s why I think it’s so important for everybody to keep their head,” commission Chairman Sheila Bair said on C-SPAN. “What I don’t want is to see otherwise healthy institutions start to get into trouble just because of liquidity pressure ... Wall Street should be taking their cue from Main Street right now. Main Street deposits are staying there.”
The bailout package was never in danger in the Senate. Senators instead played catalysts for the House, adding tax provisions popular with the left and right in a bid that House leaders hope — but cannot guarantee — will persuade enough of the House rank-and-file to switch from “nay” to “aye” on a highly contentious bill a month before Election Day.
They were especially targeting the 133 House Republicans who voted against the package.
California’s David Dreier said Thursday morning that “I hated” the initial version of the bill but that he plans to vote for it this time around.
“I was very concerned with the proposal that came forward that would have allowed golden parachutes to go forward,” said Dreier, a Republican. But he said he likes the new version because “it puts into place growth-oriented tax cuts.”
“I will tell you, the American people are angy and frustrated,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” saying he’s been hearing messages like “the woman who said she was concerned about getting access to a student loan for her daughter.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, said on the same program that she plans to vote no.
“I will not support this legislation because it’s the wrong medicine,” she said.
Kaptur argued that the problem should be solved by the market itself, not through governmental intervention.
After the Senate vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, “We’ve sent a clear message to Americans all over that we will not let this economy fail. This is not a piece of legislation for lower Manhattan. This is legislation for all America.”
The rescue package would let the government spend billions of dollars to buy bad mortgage-related securities and other devalued assets held by troubled financial institutions. If successful, advocates say, that would allow frozen credit to begin flowing again and prevent a serious recession.
To some degree, at least, House GOP opposition appeared to be easing as the Senate added $100 billion in tax breaks for businesses and the middle class, plus a provision to raise, from $100,000 to $250,000, the cap on federal deposit insurance.
House Republicans also welcomed a decision Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission to ease rules that force companies to devalue assets on their balance sheets to reflect the price they can get on the market.
TITLE: 25 Killed in Iraq as Country Celebrates End of Ramadan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Suicide bombers targeted Shiite worshippers as they left morning prayers Thursday at two Baghdad mosques, killing 19 people and injuring 50 others, police said.
In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six people as they traveled in a minibus in Wajihiyah, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad in a mainly Shiite area.
The dead were all Sunnis heading to Baquoba to visit relatives. They included two children, three women and a man, police in Diyala province said. Another woman and her small child were injured.
The bombings in Baghdad occurred as Shiite worshippers celebrated the holiday of Eid-al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
No group claimed responsibility, but attacks on Shiite civilians are widely associated with Sunni extremists like al-Qaida in Iraq hoping to re-ignite the sectarian conflict that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war two years ago.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber in a white Mercedes Sedan detonated his explosives about 20 yards from a mosque in Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad. He set off the bomb when Iraqi soldiers tried to stop him from approaching the building, police said. That attack killed 14 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and injured 28, police said.
In the other attack, a suicide bomber who appeared to be in his teens detonated his explosive belt as worshippers were leaving the Rasoul mosque in the capital’s eastern New Baghdad district. Five people died and 22 were injured, police said.
The attacker approached the mosque and set off the explosion as a suspicious guard tried to keep him from entering. The guard was among those killed, police said.
The police officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
A witness to the Zafaraniyah attack said he saw a white car speed toward the mosque and then heard a huge explosion that sparked a fire and heavy smoke. Ammar Hashim, 25, who runs a car-parts shop nearby, rushed to the site and saw “a damaged and burned Humvee with dead and burned bodies and many injured people crying out in pain.”