SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1423 (87), Friday, November 7, 2008
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TITLE: Telegram For Obama, No Mention
In Speech
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev appeared in no hurry Wednesday to congratulate Barack Obama on his victory in the U.S. presidential election, sending the senator a telegram after eschewing an opportunity to acknowledge the win in his state-of-the-nation address.
“I hope for a constructive dialogue with you, based on trust and consideration of each other’s interests,” Medvedev said in a plainly worded note sent to Obama and posted on the Kremlin’s web site late Wednesday afternoon.
Despite several references to the new U.S. administration, Medvedev refrained from mentioning Obama in his speech at 12 p.m. — long after it was clear that the Illinois Democrat had won.
The apparent hesitance came despite the fact that Medvedev has said he would prefer that Obama, 47, become the next U.S. president instead of his rival, Arizona’s Republican Senator John McCain, 72.
“It would be easier to work with people with a modern outlook, rather than those whose eyes are turned back to the past,” Medvedev said in February, before he was elected president himself.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday refrained altogether from commenting on Obama’s victory.
Other top Russian officials and politicians were cautious in their predictions of how an Obama administration would affect U.S.-Russian relations, with many predicting changes to U.S. foreign policy but no consensus on their direction or depth.
Still, officials in the Cabinet’s economic bloc welcomed Obama’s win, saying his presidency would be better for the global economy than that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
“The U.S. elections will have a positive effect on the global economy because of the new expectations,” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters Wednesday.
“Now these expectations are tied to absolutely new principles in politics, which will be directed toward stabilizing the global financial system,” Kudrin said.
Obama’s team of economists will reconsider and refresh the bailout measures being implemented by the Bush administration, he said.
Both Medvedev and Putin have repeatedly blamed the United States for the financial crisis, which has knocked about two-thirds of the value from the country’s stock markets since this summer.
Independent economists have argued that Russian stocks suffered worse than those in other emerging markets because the effects of the global crisis were combined with Putin’s heavy-handedness in the economy and major capital flight after the August war with Georgia.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov tied Obama’s victory to a global increase in stock prices Wednesday. “The first reaction of the stock market says that there is hope,” he said.
Russian stocks also jumped in early trading, with the MICEX Index rising more than 13 percent before falling back to close up 1.1 percent (Story, Page 7.)
Medvedev’s top economic adviser, Arkady Dvorkovich, said that under Obama, the United States would engage in a closer dialogue with Europe, Asia and Russia to find a way out of the financial crisis.
“This dialogue will begin in the near future in Washington. We will look for solutions together,” Dvorkovich said, Interfax reported.
Medvedev will travel to Washington on Nov. 15 to attend a summit on the financial crisis. It was not clear Wednesday whether he would meet with Obama during the visit. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said a meeting was possible.
Obama, he said, must “find courage” to abandon the United States’ unilateral approach to its foreign policy and embrace the idea of collective action.
Kosachyov warned, however, that any change would come slowly because the new president will be influenced by advisers whose vision of Russia differs little from that of the current White House.
The Bush administration has managed to strain ties with Russia more than with any other major country, and Obama’s election “instills hope that a dramatic page in the relations of the two countries will be turned,” Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said.
Obama’s win will also help soften ties between NATO and Russia, strained by the conflict with Georgia and U.S. plans to build a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Interfax reported.
He said Obama’s arrival would also lessen pressure imposed by Washington on its European NATO partners to limit cooperation with Russia.
Alexander Khramchikhin, a defense analyst with the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, said that with Democrats in control of the presidency and Congress, the United States is likely to cut defense spending and will probably lose interest in the planned anti-missile system.
Still, Khramchikhin called for patience to see who Obama picks for key appointments before jumping to any conclusions. The senator has said he would also invite Republicans to work in his White House.
TITLE: President Calls For Extension Of Term
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev called Wednesday for the extension of presidential terms to six years and for the stationing of short-range missile systems in Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania, in his first state-of-the-nation address.
Medvedev also used the 85-minute address to defend Russia’s actions in its August war with Georgia, which he said was the result of the “arrogant course of the American administration.” He also accused the U.S. administration of following a “selfish” foreign policy and of mistaken economic policies, which he said were behind the global financial crisis.
He said the country would overcome the effects of the crisis to emerge stronger than before and expressed hope that the administration of U.S. president-elect Barack Obama would work to improve relations with Russia. He congratulated Obama on his victory in Tuesday’s election in a telegram Wednesday, a statement on the Kremlin web site said.
The proposals to change the constitution to extend presidential terms from four to six years and the gap between State Duma elections from four to five years were the biggest surprises in the speech.
“I propose increasing the constitutional terms of the president and State Duma to six and five years, respectively,” Medvedev said. “We are not talking about constitutional reform but about a correction to the constitution; about important, but refining amendments that do not touch the political and legal essence of the existing institutes.”
Speaking in front of about 1,000 State Duma and Federation Council deputies, top government officials, religious leaders and journalists, Medvedev said the extension was necessary to enable the government to implement reforms more effectively.
The greatest beneficiary of such a change could be Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is still the country’s most popular politician and a possible candidate for his former presidential post when Medvedev’s first term ends in 2012.
Putin left office in May after having served the two consecutive terms to which he was limited by the Constitution and refusing numerous calls from federal and regional legislatures to change the rules to allow him to remain in the Kremlin.
Medvedev did not stipulate when the proposed changes would take effect, but Larisa Brychyova, head of the Kremlin’s legal department, said they “would not apply to the current president and the current State Duma.”
Taking a more combative stance, which was a standard element of Putin’s addresses, Medvedev indicated that he would defend Russia’s interests assertively, saying his administration was scrapping plans to decommission three Cold War-era nuclear missile regiments, along with the deployment of the missiles in Kaliningrad.
Military officials have floated such a deployment as one possible response to U.S. plans to deploy anti-missile system elements in Central Europe.
“Earlier, we had planned to decommission three missile regiments of a missile division deployed in Kozelsk [in the Kaluga region] and to disband it by 2010,” Medvedev said during the address, which was broadcast live on national television and radio. “I have decided to desist from these plans, and we won’t reform anything.”
The missile system in Kaliningrad “to neutralize — if necessary” anti-missile system elements would be supplemented by naval-launched weapons, and electronic jamming facilities would be built in the exclave to interfere with the operations of the facilities in question — in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Speaking confidently, Medvedev drew a parallel between the military conflict in Georgia and the troubled economy in the United States and accused Washington of using the conflict in Georgia as a pretext for advancing NATO to Russia’s borders.
“The world financial crisis also began as a local emergency — on the U.S. domestic market,” he said. “Being closely connected with the markets of all developed countries and, at the same time, being the most powerful of these countries, the U.S. economy caused a decline on the financial markets worldwide, and this crisis also became global.”
“The conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending NATO warships to the Black Sea and then for the forceful imposition on Europe of American anti-missile systems, which in turn will require retaliatory measures by Russia,” Medvedev said, describing the war as the “consequence of a policy from the U.S. administration that is selfish and cannot tolerate criticism.”
He did temper the anti-U.S. rhetoric in mentioning the impending changing of the guard in Washington.
“I stress that we have no problem with the American people, no innate anti-Americanism,” Medvedev said. “We hope that our partners, the U.S. administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia.”
In support of the assertion that the country’s economy would emerge stronger from the crisis, Medvedev stressed the government’s action plan to minimize its consequences, revive the banking sector and support individual sectors of the economy.
He said “each ruble should be spent effectively” and repeated earlier calls for it to become an international reserve currency and to be used in pricing for commodities like oil and gas.
The tone for the domestic policy section of the address was softer, with Medvedev calling for changes to election laws to make life easier for political parties. He said that he doesn’t believe the 7 percent barrier that parties must surmount in order to get into the Duma should be lowered, but that parties polling between five and seven percent should be guaranteed “one or two seats.”
He also called for doing away with the monetary deposit that parties not already in the Duma are required to pay in order to take part in elections.
“Not money but people’s opinions, a party’s reputation and the voters’ confidence in its program have to determine whether it can run in elections or not,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev also announced that 2010 will be the year of the teacher, and called for material measures to help keep good teachers in their jobs.
TITLE: Police Sued Over Insufficient Grounds for Stop and Search
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Igat Fialkovsky, a human rights activist who has campaigned to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people, is in court this week to sue the local police for allegedly publicly humiliating and insulting him.
Fialkovsky was stopped at Prospekt Veteranov metro station around 6 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2008. His large bag caught the attention of the police who approached him and asked to check his documents and search his belongings.
“No reason whatsoever was offered to me apart from them noting that my bag was rather big and the country faces an increased risk of terrorist attacks,” Fialkovsky said. “The connection between the size of my bag and the danger I would present as a potential terrorist seems way too far-fetched to me.”
The activist said it took him more than 6 months to establish the identities of the policemen who searched him.
“This incident is pretty standard: it happens every day with many people. But I was able to file a suit because in my case everything was recorded on a dictaphone — I happened to be giving an interview to a journalist from Ekho Moskvy radio,” Fialkovsky said.
Fialkovsky is asking for compensation of 1000 rubles and a verdict that would oblige the police to conduct searches only in cases of real threat.
“The trick is that a big bag is not a threat and they really have to stop stressing people out like that,” he said.
According to Article 11 of the Law on Police, document checks are only possible when there is sufficient reason to suspect a citizen of being involved in a crime or be on a missing persons list. A search of belongings is allowed “when there is a reason to believe that the citizen is carrying a gun, explosive materials, narcotic substances or psychotropic drugs.”
“Instead, the police stop people at random, simply because they have to produce daily reports and show they have done something,” Fialkovsky said. “I would like to set a legal precedent that would reduce the number of such events.”
Law enforcement campaigns advertized as crime prevention efforts, a crusades against pickpockets or the fight against terrorism often cause an outcry among human rights groups.
In a notorious case in June 2006, a few weeks before the G8 heads of government summit in St. Petersburg, members of both left- and right-wing opposition groups were summoned to police offices en masse for “informal talks as part of an anti-terrorist campaign” and in at least one case even an elderly relative of an activist was questioned by the police.
Seventy-eight-year-old Iosif Abramson, a veteran anti-fascist campaigner and one of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Marxist Association, had to undergo a face-to-face discussion with Ilya Galchuk, an investigator with the Moskovsky District police, in which the elderly man had to convince the investigator that he was not a terrorist threat.
Vladimir Soloveichik, a left-wing St. Petersburg politician, said that in cases like this the police do not send official summons as they know very well that it is against the law for the police to question people about their political beliefs.
TITLE: EU Commission Backs Start of Talks
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Wednesday backed restarting talks with Russia on a partnership deal that were frozen after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August.
The EU executive said in a report that EU foreign ministers should agree to resume the talks at a meeting on Monday, and such a step could be finalized at an EU-Russia summit in Nice, France, on Nov. 14.
“These negotiations should continue, first because this would allow the EU to pursue its own interests with Russia,” the commission report said.
At a summit meeting last month, leaders of the EU’s 27 nations were divided over whether to restart the talks. They ordered the commission to draw up a review of the bloc’s relations with Russia before a decision on the way forward.
“It remains clear that ... the EU does not accept the status quo in Georgia,” the commission report added, noting that EU-Russia ties should be under continual review in light of efforts to resolve the dispute over separatist Georgian regions.
The commission reaffirmed the EU’s support for an early entry of Russia into the World Trade Organization and stressed what it called the economic “interdependence” between the EU and Russia, a key energy supplier to the bloc.
It also cited concern in the bloc about a “growing gap” between the human rights situation in Russia and commitments made to bodies such as the Council of Europe human rights watchdog and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
A Russia-EU partnership agreement signed in 1997 still stands but has lost much of its relevance because of Russia’s energy wealth and its increasingly assertive foreign policy.
The EU has been pushing Russia to accept its terms on energy policy, security and rights. Russia has resisted.
Reuters, AP
TITLE: Explosion Kills 11 In Troubled Caucasus
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ — A suspected bomb blast killed 11 people outside a Russian market on Thursday, prosecutors said, in one of the worst attacks in months to hit Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus region.
The explosion detonated as a minibus taxi pulled up outside the main market in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, killing passengers and ripping the doors off one side of the vehicle. Prosecutors said they suspected a terrorist attack.
The attack was fresh evidence that despite largely quelling a separatist rebellion in nearby Chechnya, Russia is still struggling to contain violence in its southern regions that has fueled instability and killed thousands of people.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered police and state security agencies to tighten security and to keep him informed about the investigation into the blast, the Kremlin press service said.
Vladikavkaz is in Russia’s North Ossetia region, the site of the Beslan siege in 2004 in which more than 300 people were killed after their school was taken hostage by gunmen linked to a separatist rebellion in Chechnya.
“Today in the center of Vladikavkaz an explosion occurred as a result of which 11 people were killed,” the investigative unit of the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement. “A criminal case has been opened ... [for] murder and terrorism.”
North Ossetian leader Taimuraz Mamsurov, quoted by Interfax news agency, had conflicting figures for casualties, saying his initial information was that eight people were killed.
Regional health minister Vladimir Lekoyev said more than 30 people were injured in the explosion, including one child, Itar-Tass news agency reported. He said of the injured, 10 were in a serious condition.
Russian news agencies quoted law enforcement agencies as saying the cause of the blast was a bomb.
Footage recorded at the scene of the blast by a Reuters cameramen showed the mangled white minibus, with several disfigured corpses lying on the tarmac around it.
The body of one woman was covered with a pink sheet and her handbag laid on top. Pieces of fruit lay scattered around the minibus and windows were shattered in a building about 30 yards from the scene.
Moscow’s forces have been struggling to contain an insurgency in the North Caucasus, a patchwork of mainly Muslim regions which are among the poorest in Russia.
Chechnya is now firmly under the control of the Kremlin and its local allies, but in the past few years the violence has shifted to neighboring regions.
Analysts say the insurgency is driven by a mix of clan rivalry, frustration at widespread poverty and militant Islamist groups who want to overthrow Moscow’s rule.
North Ossetia has tense relations with the neighboring Russian region of Ingushetia that stem from an outbreak of sectarian violence in 1992 in which hundreds were killed.
TITLE: State Officials Lay Claim To Prime Positions at Norilsk
AUTHOR: By Nadia Popova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A squad of state officials will join the management and board of Norilsk Nickel to “ensure the interests” of Vneshekonombank, after the lender took a stake in the mining company as collateral for a loan, United Company RusAl said Wednesday.
One government representative will be elected to the board, while two others will be given posts in Norilsk’s management, RusAl said in an e-mailed statement, although it didn’t indicate who would be appointed to the specific positions.
A company spokeswoman said candidates had not yet been chosen.
RusAl, which holds 25 percent of Norilsk, also confirmed on Wednesday that it had used the stake to secure a $4.5 billion loan from VEB, also known as the Development Bank, to refinance a loan it received from a syndicate of foreign banks to buy the Norilsk shares in April.
“In order to ensure the interests of the creditor who is acting as the agent of the government ... a representative of the Russian government will become part of an enlarged board of directors at Norilsk Nickel,” RusAl said.
An extraordinary shareholders meeting on Dec. 26 will vote on the new board, which will be increased to 13 members from the current nine.
“Each shareholder with more than 2 percent has a right to file its list of candidates to the board before Nov. 26,” a Norilsk representative said, adding that none of the shareholders had filed a list so far.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Litvinenkos Home
LONDON (AP) — Relatives of former security services officer Alexander Litvinenko have been allowed to return to their decontaminated London home two years after Litvinenko’s death from radiation poisoning.
The house was contaminated after Litvinenko drank tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium-210.
British authorities have accused former security services officer Andrei Lugovoi of killing Litvinenko in November 2006, but Russian authorities have refused to extradite him.
Aliyev Backs Plan
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Wednesday that he backed a Turkish initiative to establish a regional cooperation group to stabilize the Caucasus.
Aliyev said after meeting President Abdullah Gul that he applauds Turkey’s efforts in the region.
Turkey proposed setting up a Caucasian Cooperation and Stability Platform after a brief war broke out in August between Russia and Georgia.
TITLE: Obama to Name Appointees
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHICAGO — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who will inherit the worst financial crisis in decades when he takes office, was expected to announce his picks for some key economic jobs soon and he may reveal his Treasury Secretary selection as early as Thursday.
President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker are among those being considered for the Treasury post.
After an election victory on Tuesday that will make him the first black U.S. president, Obama also appeared to be getting close to announcing his chief of staff.
U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a Democratic lawmaker known for this hard-charging style, has been offered the job of leading Obama’s White House staff, according to Democratic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 48-year-old congressman has close ties to Obama’s inner circle and is a fellow Chicagoan. He is expected to accept the job, which would make him the gatekeeper to the Oval Office.
Obama has already launched a transition team that is working fast to fill the next administration’s economic and homeland security teams, according to one of the Democratic sources.
Heading up that team are Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of Obama’s, Pete Rouse, his U.S. Senate chief of staff and John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton.
Amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Obama wants to move quickly to be prepared to handle a probable recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama’s office is maintaining secrecy on the transition, which is occurring in the 11 weeks before January 20, when he will be sworn in as successor to President George W. Bush.
For secretary of state, Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry, former diplomat Richard Holbrooke, outgoing Republican Senator Chuck Hagel and former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn are among the names in the mix. James Steinberg, a former Clinton adviser, is a top contender for national security adviser.
TITLE: Same-Sex Marriage Rights Struck Down in California
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Actor George Takei and longtime partner Brad Altman were the first to receive a marriage license in West Hollywood when a court cleared the way for gay marriage earlier this year.
Best known for his role as Mr. Sulu on “Star Trek,” Takei on Wednesday was disappointed but philosophical about California voters’ decision to yank that right by passing a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.
“There are going to be heartbreaks, setbacks and sacrifices to be made,” he said, “but we will soldier on.”
The passage of Proposition 8 stirred anger, protests, lawsuits and a deep sense of loss among gays in California. At least three legal challenges were filed by Wednesday night and others were being prepared, opponents of the ban said.
More than 1,000 people took to the streets against the ban in Los Angeles and West Hollywood, blocking traffic. Police said at least four people were detained.
Hundreds also gathered on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall. Some held candles and carried signs that read, “We all deserve the freedom to marry.”
It was unclear what would happen to the estimated 18,000 gay and lesbian couples — many from other states — who married after same-sex marriage was legalized in California in June.
On the other side of the issue, supporters of the ban hailed the outcome of the vote.
“Government did not create marriage, and neither politicians nor legislators have the right to redefine its basic meaning,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage California.
“Common sense and concern for the common good, trumped ideology, bigotry and power politics here in California,” he said in a statement.
Andrew Pugno, attorney for the coalition of religious and social conservative groups that sponsored the proposition, said they plan to defend the measure, saying the legal action is “an insult to California voters and an attack on the initiative process itself.”
Among those voting for the ban was Denise Fernandez, 57, of Sacramento. “I believe a Christian is held accountable, and we have to make a difference.”
Many gay marriage supporters had hoped that a strong Democratic turnout for presidential winner Barack Obama would cement the right to marry extended by the state Supreme Court in May.
But the success of Obama, who does not support same-sex marriage but had opposed the gay marriage ban, did not translate into a win for gay marriage. Amendments to ban gay marriage also were approved in Arizona and Florida.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday night, 52 percent of those voting in California favored the ban versus 48 percent against.
In the Castro, San Francisco’s gay neighborhood, the marriage ban’s success squelched what had been a boisterous celebration Tuesday night.
A crowd swarmed from the neighborhood’s many bars into the streets immediately after Obama was declared the presidential winner. Police cordoned off a block in the heart of the district as disco music coursed through giant speakers.
But the party was over a few hours later.
TITLE: McCain to Resume Senate Duties After Grueling Race
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX, Arizona — Before resting from the grueling presidential race, John McCain began discussing with senior aides what role he will play in the Senate now that he has promised to work with the man who defeated him for president. One obvious focus will be the war in Iraq. Having spent the majority of the past two years on the campaign, McCain will return to the Senate as the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
That will put the four-term Arizona senator in a position to influence Democrat Barack Obama’s plan to set a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from combat in Iraq.
During the campaign, McCain staunchly opposed setting such a time frame, even as the Iraqi government began working with the Bush administration to do so.
But in conceding the presidency to Obama on Tuesday night at a Phoenix hotel, McCain pledged “to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.”
He allowed that defeat was disappointing but said that, starting Wednesday, “we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.”
The day after Election Day quickly brought McCain back to something much closer to normal life. After months of travel on his campaign bus or plane, McCain and his wife, Cindy, drove themselves to Starbucks for coffee near their Phoenix condominium.
McCain and his family planned to spend a few days at their vacation compound near Sedona, Arizona, in order to rest following the long contest.
TITLE: Newborn Given ‘Funny Name’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HOLLYWOOD, Florida — Barack Obama may have a “funny name,” as he once said — but it might just catch on among the nation’s newborns.
A Florida couple became among the country’s first to bestow the name on their child, even before most had declared the Illinois senator the president-elect.
Sanjae Obama Fisher was born at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday at Hollywood’s Memorial Regional Hospital to Patrick and Sasha Hall Fisher.
A hospital spokeswoman says it was the father’s idea. But mom still got to watch the election, after 14 hours at the hospital.
Sanjae has two siblings, 8-year-old sister Shaniah and 4-year-old brother Shane.
TITLE: Friendlier Relations or Mean Streets
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: Ironically, the U.S. presidential elections have proven one of the Kremlin’s basic propaganda points: that its foreign policy has become completely impervious to outside influences. Barack Obama’s victory had not the slightest influence on the Kremlin, where demonstrative anti-Americanism has become something of an official creed.
This was on display in President Dmitry Medvedev’s state-of-the-nation address on Wednesday.
Predictions about the future of relations between the two countries can be best summed up in the joke about the optimist and the pessimist.
The pessimist says, “Everything is horrible.” The optimist responds, “Don’t worry, things are bound to get worse.”
The Kremlin’s reactions have not just been the result of plans for U.S. missile-defense bases in Central Europe, military bases in Bulgaria and Romania or the push for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.
U.S. President George W. Bush has played a vital, if not decisive, role in forming the Kremlin’s perception of how the world works. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was central here, leading the Kremlin to conclude that the rule of law was nothing more than a screen to hide a country’s real intentions. Only a fool would be taken in by talk of international law by an administration acting like that in Washington.
The country’s leaders see the world as operating according to the principles understood by St. Petersburg street thugs. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seems to believe sincerely in a world order in which one must continually prove one’s strength by beating up on the weak. Politics is a constant turf war against thugs from “outside the hood,” and no mercy is shown to anybody who shows their face after dark on the wrong side of the street.
The only way to dominate in this kind of world is to form the strongest gang while trying to avoid a direct confrontation. This is how Putin sees the world.
The description of such an order as “multipolar” favored by Russian diplomats is a simple matter of political correctness. The Kremlin has no interest in equal rights and responsibilities for other states. Instead, the world should belong to the big boys on the block, who can swallow their enemies and divide the neighborhood into “zones of interest.” Hence, the idea of a European Security Council with permanent members with vetoes.
The question is: What course should a new U.S. presidential administration pursue in response to such a “street gang” mentality?
First, it should dump the condescension toward Russian democracy and stop drawing distinctions between its own “proper” form and that of other states. Trying to convince members of Congress and other officials to tone down their rhetoric would also help.
Second, the new president should stop pushing NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Russia will probably have to be governed “manually” for the next 20 years, as democratic institutions are not developed enough to function on their own as they do in the West. But Tbilisi and Kiev still parade around proclaiming that their democratic institutions have matured enough to meet the membership requirements for Euro-Atlantic organizations.
Third, the new administration should treat the relationship with Russia as one would with a military superpower — the only country capable of threatening the destruction of the United States — but without letting things get to the point of direct confrontation or a new Cold War.
The question is whether Obama’s character and experience provide him with any chance of understanding Putin’s streetwise approach to the world. The answer is probably no, which means that we cannot expect any significant improvement in relations. Even if Obama follows through on the promise to freeze the deployment of U.S. missile-defense batteries in Europe, it would not improve relations with Moscow. The Kremlin would find another reason for continuing the farcical Cold War.
The problem is that there is always the risk that it could lapse into real confrontation.
In his latest speech, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called for speeding up the signing of a new strategic nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, giving the impression that it is finally acceding to something Moscow has been suggesting for the past six years.
This means, in practice, that the United States is returning to the principle of mutual deterrence — an approach that carries its own threats, even if there is no direct conflict involved. There is no guarantee Washington will show restraint indefinitely if the Kremlin confronts it with such a Cold War — a war so far limited to rhetoric and stunts like sending warships to Venezuela. If it degenerates into direct conflict, the world will look far different from what the Kremlin’s street sense would suggest.
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.
TITLE: A Guarded Liberalism
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: The timing of Dmitry Medvedev’s first state-of-the-nation address left something to be desired since he could not compete with Barack Obama’s victory, which was the main news around the world. From the perspective of domestic politics and the Russian public, however, it was probably logical that Medvedev decided to offer up his own topic for discussion on Wednesday — and it wasn’t the U.S. election.
The war with Georgia has changed much in Russia’s relations with the West, and Medvedev began his speech with the brief conflict in August. This immediately imbued his address with an anti-American tone. Medvedev was intractable, declaring, “We will not leave the Caucasus.”
Moments later, Medvedev criticized the “unilateral” conduct of the United States during the global financial crisis. He then proposed a series of measures to counter U.S. plans to place elements of a missile-defense shield in Europe, including the deployment of short-range Iskander missiles in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Medvedev’s intractability discussing international affairs became a counterweight to his proposals to liberalize political life. Medvedev spoke about democratic values that would unite Russians. He returned to themes uttered before the Georgia war, such as rhetoric along the lines of “freedom is better than non-freedom.” He offered traditional presidential guarantees to respect the Constitution, and he harshly warned law enforcement agencies not to abuse their powers.
Medvedev assaulted the bureaucracy on several fronts: Bureaucracy “does not believe in an individual’s ability and right to act on his own;” it “scares the hell out of business;” it imposes tight control over the mass media and elections; and it exerts pressure on the courts.
Medvedev offered a startling program to liberalize the political system.
Marking his territory, Medvedev turned the power vertical upside down, saying, “First the citizen, then civic construction.” From the mouth of a Russian leader, pronouncements about the individual’s priority over the state sound revolutionary — especially if they are followed by practical actions.
Acknowledging that Russian democratic institutions had been established “on orders from above,” he called for their strengthening from below.
Medvedev spoke on behalf of “the major involvement of citizens in political life” and “for an enlargement in the representation of various political forces in elected bodies.”
Medvedev supported the idea of a compulsory rotation in the leaders of political parties. He did not, however, mention rotations relating to the heads of regions or executive and municipal authorities. In regard to municipalities, he supported a contested United Russia rule that gives the right to nominate one’s candidates both to parties and to social institutions.
A proposal to include the Public Chamber and nongovernmental organizations in the drafting of legislation also looks progressive. However, it’s not clear how this might be institutionalized and to what extent it might undermine United Russia’s monopoly in the Duma.
Medvedev’s words that new information technologies such as the Internet would become “technological guarantees” of freedom of expression in Russia sounded forward-thinking. However, nothing was said about legal safeguards, evidently because they are deemed insufficient.
The main sensation, however, was created by his proposal to increase the presidential term to six years and that of Duma deputies to five years. The new terms wouldn’t take effect immediately, but would concern Medvedev if he runs again in 2012. Will he? The answer to this question will depend on how successful he will be in forming a new style of political leadership. He seemed to take a step in this direction Wednesday. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who sat in the first row, applauded frequently.
Georgy Bovt is a political analyst and hosts a radio program on City-FM.
TITLE: Protest songs
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian rock music, which was in cultural opposition to the Soviet regime before its fall in the early 90s, has tended lately to compromise with the increasingly authoritarian Kremlin rather than challenge it.
Some leading Russian rock figures, for instance, entertained Kremlin-backed youth movement Nashi at its summer camp on Lake Seliger in 2005 and 2006 as well as performed on Red Square to celebrate the transfer of the presidency from Vladimir Putin to Dmitry Medvedev on March 2 this year.
But “Dissenters March” (Marsh Nesoglasnykh) Internet compilations — the second of which came out last month — prove that rock music’s original subversive spirit has not expired. Subtitled “A Collection of Protest Songs,” the albums feature dozens of bands, old and new, and have been downloaded by thousands in Russia since the first compilation came out last year.
Andrei Skovorodnikov, the frontman of the Krasnoyarsk punk band Paranoiya i Angedoniya and a member of Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), came up with the idea of collecting protest songs and putting them on the web during discussions on namarsh_ru, the livejournal.com Internet community for the members and supporters of pro-democracy coalition The Other Russia.
Formed in 2006, The Other Russia features NBP and Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front as well as several other oppositional groups and movements. However, Skovorodnikov said he was inspired by Russian Breakthrough, a movement that united nationalists and radical communists launched by Yegor Letov, the frontman of Grazhdanskaya Oborona, and several other Siberian punk groups in 1994.
Letov, who died in February, was an early member of NBP before it subscribed to some democratic values during then President Vladimir Putin’s clampdown on democracy in recent years.
Skovorodnikov’s party’s, the NBP, was banned by the Moscow City Court in April 2007 on the grounds that it is “extremist.”
“We were discussing what could be done that would be interesting and attract people, and I said, ‘Let’s do a music compilation that expresses our ideas and that would be inspiring’ and suggested that the members of the community select the songs themselves,” said Skovorodnikov, speaking by phone from Krasnoyarsk recently.
“When one person selects one song, it’s one thing; it only would reflect my music taste, so I suggested that everybody take part.”
Skovorodnikov said he originally came up with a list of 20 songs, which was expanded in the course of discussions to include almost 50. He added that he learned about a few of the bands for the first time from the members of the community and the bands themselves.
“For instance, Jack Pot, they are known in their own circle, but many more people than it was usual for them could hear their tracks because of the compilation,” he said.
“Thus, this compilation also gave exposure to some young groups so that they could be heard by a broader public. There were several goals to this compilation and it fulfilled all of them.”
Several months of discussions followed until the first, 38-track compilation came out in October 2007, and which was called “Dissenters’ March” after The Other Russia’s peaceful protest rallies which were frequently banned by authorities and brutally dispersed by the OMON special forces riot police.
“It was said from the start that this is music that we, the dissenters, like. It’s not bands that are members of The Other Russia, or belong to the NBP or The United Civil Front. But the songs they perform express our views and feelings about what’s happening in Russia today.”
Apart from recent songs such as “When Oil Runs Out” by DDT, a massively popular Russian rock band based in St. Petersburg, and “Living in a Police State” by Adaptatsiya, a Russian-language punk band from Kazakhstan, the compilations also pay tribute to classic protest songs from the 1980s, featuring Kino’s “(We’re Waiting for) Changes” and Televizor’s “Fed Up.”
Skovorodnikov said that the project is non-commercial and was originally available for download only. Krasnoyarsk oppositionists made some CD copies to give away at The Other Russia’s conferences in Moscow, though, and pirate editions of it were even seen in Moscow and St. Petersburg record shops last spring, he said.
Skovorodnikov said he approached many of the bands on the compilations and received permission to use the tracks. Somewhat reminiscent of samizdat, the underground publishing system under the Soviets, the number of downloads and copies made are impossible to calculate.
Skovorodnikov said “many thousands” of the albums uploaded on various file-exchange sites and then passed on CDRs from friend to friend have been distributed. “Considering that the album has been heard and known in distant corners of Russia, a great number of copies spread,” he said.
The first “Dissenters’ March” compilation caused a lot of discussion on the Internet and drew criticism from Young Guard, the Kremlin-backed United Russia party’s youth wing.
“When the wave started, we decided that there should be a follow-up, but it took a year to make because we didn’t want to do it in a hurry, lest we should put people off,” said Skovorodnikov, adding that some bands wrote songs specifically for the compilation.
He drew a parallel between the bands on the compilations, many of whom are not political, and The Other Russia.
“The Other Russia is not a purely political movement, but a movement of civic protest, civic consciousness. Apart from politicians, there are ordinary people in it, who don’t really need politics; they need a normal, good, decent life,” he said.
“These are not political demands; they are the usual civic demands of a self-respecting citizen. That’s why it became a vibrant, vital and versatile structure – because it happened to be in the right proportions in one place.”
Even though Skovorodnikov belongs to the NBP, the compilations were made in the coalition spirit of The Other Russia, featuring protest songs that do not necessarily comply with his party line.
“I didn’t reject a song called ‘Freedom to M.B.Kh.’ [the initials of imprisoned former Yukos owner and Kremlin’s opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky] by Jack Pot just because it’s liberal. It shouldn’t be that way, once we all have joined The Other Russia and stand for freedom of speech and equality. If we’d start dividing between ourselves, we would be lying, saying one thing and doing the other.
“We must start with ourselves, and we can always find a common ground. If compliations had been cut artificially, they wouldn’t be that interesting to people, because they would detect falseness. And there shouldn’t be anything false if it’s real music.”
Mikhail Borzykin, the frontman of Televizor whose songs were included on both editions of “Dissenters March,” has had mixed feelings about the compilations.
“It’s very good that such compilations come out,” said Borzykin in a recent phone interview. “But I’d like more strict criteria to be applied, because some bands just use the word ‘Putin’ in a chorus, but don’t have a profound, well-considered oppositional stance and then even can be seen performing at pro-Kremlin events.
“The songs also should be good quality, musically and poetically. Compilations would then be shorter and more people would listen to them in full.”
Dissenters March compilations are available for free downloads from the following Internet sites: http://community.livejournal.com/namarsh_ru/602054.html (Vol. 1), http://skovorodnikov.livejournal.com (Vol. 2) .
TITLE: Yes we did!
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Leaving aside its tasteless glorification of a genocidal maniac, Lenin@Zhiv Pub and Restaurant offered a warm welcome to a group of Americans and interested observers very early on Wednesday morning, as they gathered to watch CNN’s coverage of the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election.
The election broadcast breakfast needed special permission from CNN as well as a technician to fix the satellite system at the restaurant to enable it to screen the big event.
Senator John McCain’s concession speech, delivered from Arizona at just after 7 a.m. St. Petersburg time, was accompanied by hot coffee.
By the time Senator Barack Obama concluded his acceptance speech an hour or so later, specially prepared pancakes and omelets had been consumed.
As the pundits weighed in and the morning wore on, it was time to celebrate history with beer.
A television reporter and cameraman from Channel 5 turned up to capture the admittedly strange scene: Lenin@Zhiv is an ironic location at which to celebrate the culmination of the American democratic process.
The basement bar and restaurant has red-stained chunky wooden chairs and tables and walls covered with Lenin-era Soviet memorabilia.
Red volumes of Lenin’s works line shelves attached to the walls with huge bolts at Lenin@Zhiv, which is a play on the Soviet slogan “Lenin zhiv!” (“Lenin lives!”). Maybe in the future bars will be called “Yes we can!”
Lenin@Zhiv used to have the more comprehensible name Propaganda, but the change came about a couple of years back with the management’s ambition to turn the place into an Internet hangout.
But the chief attraction of the place, which is located on the Fontanka river just off Nevsky Prospekt near the Anglia English-language bookshop, is not its rather obvious “Russian-European” menu but its range of tasty tap beers. These include Guinness, Kilkenny, Bowman and Bombardier for 230 rubles ($8.50) for half-a-liter and a house lager, Leninskoe, for 170 rubles ($6.30) for half-a-liter.
The election party broke up to cries of “yes we did” and big thanks to organizer Jennifer Gaspar.
TITLE: Scientists Fear Wave of Animal Extinctions
AUTHOR: By Alister Doyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSLO — The Yangtze River dolphin, the Christmas Island shrew and the Venezuelan skunk frog are all victims in an alarming flood of extinctions, but how do scientists decide when such “possibly extinct” creatures no longer exist?
The United Nations says the world faces the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, with man-made threats such as rising populations, felling of forests, hunting, pollution and climate change.
Yet proving that any individual species has gone the way of the dodo necessarily demands long, fruitless searching.
“If there’s one thing in my career I’d like to be proved wrong about, it’s the baiji,” said Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society of London, using another name for the Yangtze River dolphin.
Turvey spent almost 3 months this year interviewing Chinese fishermen in vain for sightings of the long-snouted dolphin, which has not been seen since 2002. Some colleagues in China are still looking.
The baiji was almost declared extinct in 2006 after an acoustic and visual survey of the river turned up nothing. Then, a blurry video gave experts pause, and it was rated “possibly extinct.”
About 300 plant and animal species, including the Christmas Island shrew and the Venezuelan skunk frog are also “possibly extinct,” the worst category short of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List.
If Turvey’s study turns up no firm evidence, it will likely push the Yangtze River dolphin into the “extinct” column, said Mike Hoffmann, who manages a global project to assess species for the IUCN and Conservation International.
It would be the first “megafauna” mammal — one weighing more than 100 kilograms — to die out since the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.
“To say something is extinct requires quite a lot of proof, of negative evidence, and may take many years to collect,” said Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages Red List.
Scientists working on the “possibly extinct” list rummage in the undergrowth for rare plants, frogs or rats, set up night-time traps for bats or moths, or scour the seabed for corals.
Some experts liken the difficulties to “proving” that the mythical Loch Ness Monster does not exist.
The Christmas Island shrew has not been seen on its Australian island since 1985. The Venezuelan skunk frog, known from a cloud forest habitat of 10 sqare kilometers, has not been spotted despite repeated searches.
Despite the difficulties of proof, scientists say species are disappearing at an ever faster rate.
Some 76 mammals have gone extinct since 1500, a much faster rate than in previous centuries, and 29 are “possibly extinct” on the 2008 Red List.
BACK FROM THE DEAD
Extinct species have often unknown economic value, such as the Australian gastric brooding frog, which incubated its young in its stomach and might have pointed to ways to treat ulcers. Or South Africa’s bluebuck antelope, which could have boosted tourism.
While most news is bleak, a few “Lazarus” species give cause for celebration — last year, a lizard presumed extinct turned up on La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands after no sightings in 500 years.
Australian scientists were even delighted to find two dead night parrots in 2006 and 1990, taken as signs the reclusive species has survived.
A few years ago the fabulous green sphinx moth, known from one Hawaiian island, was written off as extinct but then experts on another island were flabbergasted to catch one in a net.
Nevertheless, Hoffmann said Red List’s demands for evidence meant that it probably underestimated the pace of extinctions. Searches have to be rigorous, at the right seasons, in nearby habitats, and with the correct equipment.
“Scientists want to be cautious” because of the finality of extinction, Hoffman said.
“Possibly extinct” is a category so bleak that it does not even include the critically endangered ivory-billed woodpecker — subject of speculation about a U.S. comeback after reported sightings in Arkansas in 2004.
“It has never been listed as ‘possibly extinct’ because there were sightings 20 to 30 years ago in Cuba,” Hilton-Taylor said. “There is still good habitat there.”
One result of declaring a species extinct is that it inevitably ends cash for conservation — lending agencies such as the Global Environment Facility use Red List data.
And, when one species goes extinct, new ones become endangered, as is happening on the Yangtze River, where the finless porpoise and the Chinese paddlefish, reported to grow up to 7 meters, are also in danger.
“The problem with the Yangtze is that the threats are still there and they are escalating,” Turvey said.
And there are wider threats. The UN Climate Panel said in 2007 that up to 30 percent of species will face increasing risks of extinction if temperatures rise by another 1 degree Celsius.
The panel, which says temperatures rose 0.7 C in the 20th century, also forecasts more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas linked to human emissions of greenhouse gases spurred mainly by burning fossil fuels.
In a 2006 report, Birdlife expert Stuart Butchart wrote that 150 bird species had gone extinct since 1500, or 0.3 a year. That was 30-300 times the background rate of extinctions — a natural process deduced from fossil records.
And no one knows the number of species on earth — one UN-backed study estimated 5-30 million against about 2 million documented so far. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity estimates they may be vanishing faster than they are found, at a rate of three per hour, the fastest in millions of years.
TITLE: Bryant Scores 27 Points to Help Lakers Beat Clippers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — The winless Los Angeles Clippers were giving the unbeaten Los Angeles Lakers all they could handle until they took a fourth-quarter lead.
Suddenly, the game turned.
Kobe Bryant scored 27 points, and the Lakers used a late 22-0 run to beat the Clippers 106-88 Wednesday night, giving them six straight wins over their crosstown rivals.
“When you don’t shoot the ball well, you’ve got to defend,” Bryant said. “That’s what we did.
Cuttino Mobley scored five straight points to give the Clippers an 81-79 lead with 8:16 remaining. That’s when the Lakers took over. Bryant and Lamar Odom each scored six points and Jordan Farmar added four during the decisive run.
Al Thornton ended the spurt by making a 3-pointer with 1:04 remaining—the Clippers’ first points in more than 7 minutes. By that time, the outcome had been decided.
Neither team led by more than seven points before the Lakers’ late surge.
As Bryant noted, the Lakers didn’t shoot well, hitting 38.8 percent from the floor. Odom and Trevor Ariza both shot 4-of-8, with none of their teammates making half their shots.
The Lakers shot 7-of-16 in the fourth quarter, but went 17-of-22 from the foul line in outscoring the Clippers 34-20. The Clippers were 8-of-23 in the final 12 minutes and shot 38.9 percent overall.
“The mantra is that defense wins ballgames, your offense comes and goes,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. “If you just rely on your offense all the time, it’s going to disappoint you at some level.
“Big finish, good finish, and defense was much better the second half. I think there’s been talk about the Clippers having trouble finishing games and I don’t think it’s all about us. I think some of it is about them.”
Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy didn’t disagree.
“We played at a pretty high level (for 40 minutes),” he said. “Once we get our guys conditioned and begin to tough it out, then we will win games. Our guys stopped taking the ball to the basket. We just have to keep working, we cannot go through rough patches like we have.”
Odom had 15 points and nine rebounds for the Lakers (4-0); Derek Fisher scored 13 points, Vladimir Radmanovic added 11, Ariza had 10, and Andrew Bynum had nine points, 17 rebounds to match a career high and four blocked shots.
Thornton led the Clippers (0-5) with 22 points. Tim Thomas added 18 points and 11 rebounds and Baron Davis had 17 points and seven assists.
“When Baron got his fifth foul, it seemed like we were real stagnant after that,” said Clippers center Chris Kaman, held to six points and 11 rebounds.
Davis picked up No. 5 with 7 1/2 minutes left and had to leave the game with the score tied at 81. When he returned with 6:11 to play, it was 87-81, and the Lakers had all the momentum.
“I think fouls were a factor,” Kaman said, and the numbers backed that up — the Clippers had 32 fouls to the Lakers’ 17, and shot 10-of-15 at the foul line to the Lakers’ 32-of-45.
The game was the second in eight days between the teams — the Lakers won a 117-79 decision Oct. 29. The Clippers have lost their five games by an average of 20.8 points per game. The Lakers have won their four games by an average of 20.7 points.
Clippers rookie Mike Taylor scored five points in a span of 15 seconds early in the fourth quarter to trim the Lakers’ lead to two at 75-73, and Mobley put the Clippers ahead shortly thereafter before the Lakers took over.
Neither team led by more than four points in the third quarter, which ended with the Lakers on top 72-68.
TITLE: Sarah Palin Tipped For 2012 Race
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASILLA, Alaska — Is Sarah Palin the answer for defeated Republicans? After a historic rebuke at the polls, the Republican Party is staggering into an uncertain tomorrow with the White House and Congress in Democratic hands, no certain leader in sight and its membership divided over what it means to be a Republican.
Ever since her selection as John McCain’s running mate in late August, Palin, the 44-year-old Alaska governor, was the star of the GOP ticket, though views of her vary wildly across the political spectrum. With the Republican brand corroded and the hunt on for the next Ronald Reagan, Palin could be one of many people competing to influence Republican ideas in the post-Bush era, maybe even as the party’s leader.
“Conservatives are still looking for Mr. Right. And maybe Mr. Right turns out to be Ms. Right,” said Bill Whalen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.
Palin “has built-in national stature and she’s beloved by conservative talk radio,” Whalen said. But “does she want to be a stay-at-home mom and a stay-at-home governor, or does she want to be a player on the national stage? She has to make a choice.”
She has done little to discourage speculation — begun even as McCain’s campaign faded — that she could return to the ballot four years from now.
In her hometown of Wasilla in the Anchorage suburbs, “Palin 2012” T-shirts are already for sale.
When she returned to Alaska on Wednesday night after losing the election, she was greeted at the Anchorage airport by chants of “2012! 2012!” Asked by reporters if she might run for president, Palin said, “We’ll see what happens then.”
Grover Norquist, a leading conservative and president of Americans for Tax Reform, called Palin “one of five or six people who is a plausible candidate for president in 2012,” along with familiar names like Mitt Romney, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
“She’s in the top tier, but she’s not next in line.” Norquist said. Running as vice president “puts you in contention.”
Any number of other Republicans may step forward. Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor who lost the nomination this year, has restarted his political action committee. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is heading to the leadoff caucus state of Iowa on Nov. 22 to deliver the keynote address to a conservative group.
For two intense months, Palin was the youthful foil to the old, sometimes cranky McCain. She was called everything from an empty skirt to the real deal. McCain, in defeat, called her “an impressive new voice in our party.”
“She’s somewhat of a diamond in the rough,” said former Republican National Committee member Barbara Alby, who credits Palin with energizing the ticket. “I expect she’ll grow from that.”
But any path toward 2012 is filled with obstacles, some of Palin’s own making.
Virtually unknown outside Alaska before her nomination, Palin revealed strong — even polarizing — views on religion, abortion and gay marriage.
She became a favorite among some social conservatives, but her cringe-worthy performances in TV interviews raised questions about her competence and provided fodder for late-night comedians.
TITLE: Mammoth Task Lies Ahead for Mouse Cloners
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species.
Mouse cloning expert Teruhiko Wakayama and colleagues at the Center for Developmental Biology, at Japan’s RIKEN research institute in Yokohama, managed to clone the mice even though their cells had burst.
“Thus, nuclear transfer techniques could be used to ‘resurrect’ animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation,” they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wakayama’s team used the classic nuclear transfer technique to make their mouse clones. This involves taking the nucleus out of an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus of an ordinary cell from the animal to be cloned.
When done with the right chemical or electric trigger, this starts the egg dividing as if it had been fertilized by a sperm.
“Cloning animals by nuclear transfer provides an opportunity to preserve endangered mammalian species,” they wrote.
“However, it has been suggested that the ‘resurrection’ of frozen extinct species (such as the woolly mammoth) is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded,” they said.
Wakayama’s team dug out some mice that had been kept frozen for years and whose cells were indisputably damaged. Freezing causes cells to burst and can damage the DNA inside. Chemicals called cryoprotectants can prevent this but they must be used before the cells are frozen.
They tried using cells from several places and discovered that the brains worked best. This is a bit of a mystery, as no one has yet cloned any living mouse from a brain cell.
Many animals have been cloned, starting with sheep, and including pigs, cattle, mice and dogs. Livestock breeders want to use cloning to start elite herds of desirable animals, and doctors want to use cloning technology in human medicine.
“There is hope in bringing Ted Williams back, after all,” cloning and stem cell expert John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania said in an e-mail. The family of Williams, the Boston Red Sox hitter, had his body frozen by cryogenics firm Alcor after he died in 2002.
Gearhart was only half-joking and said the study “may now stimulate the small industry of freezing parts of us before we die to bring us back in the future.”
Mammoths may be the extinct animals that scientists would be most likely to try to clone, as many of the animals have been found preserved in ice.
In July 2007 Russian scientists discovered the body of a baby mammoth frozen in the Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region for as long as 40,000 years.
“It remains to be shown whether nuclei can be collected from whole bodies frozen without cryoprotectants and whether they will be viable for use in generating offspring following nuclear transfer,” Wakayama’s team wrote.