Stalin: One degree of separation between Russia and Tamil Nadu!

The world remembers Adolf Hitler as a German, though he was born in Austria.  And we think of Beethoven as an Austrian, when he was a German by birth.  And we think that Stalin was one of the worst Russians ever, despite the fact that he was from Georgia. Not Jimmy Carter's Georgia but that other one!

It is now sixty years since Stalin's death, which has triggered a bunch of commentaries.  In a NY Times op-ed, the author, "a Danish journalist based in Washington, was born in Siberia, where his family lived in exile for 16 years," notes:

In 1941, my parents and two siblings were among thousands of Lithuanian citizens deported to the remotest regions of Siberia. After two years, more than 40 percent of the deportees had perished.
Still, the exile offered my parents a better chance of survival than the alternative. Shortly after they were deported the Nazis crossed into Lithuania and all the Jewish families in their town perished. So, paradoxically, my family could say: “Thank you, comrade Stalin for deporting us."

Why would any sane person want to remember Stalin as anything but prominent poster in the lineup of historical monsters?  

Although Russians know more about Stalin’s crimes than they did ever before, many politicians and historians want to pull him out of the shadows and celebrate him for his role in the industrialization of the young Soviet state and the victory over Nazi Germany.
Communists have collected 100,000 signatures on a petition to give Volgograd back the name Stalingrad; others are seeking a referendum to this end. If there is a Metro station in Paris called Stalingrad, they argue, why should the name be banned in Russia?

Are you thinking what I am thinking? Paris has a Metro station called Stalingrad? 

The Russians--that is right, the Russians, and not the Georgians--who so badly want to resurrect Stalin's image have so conveniently forgotten the millions killed by Stalin and banished by him to Gulags?  What the hell is wrong with people!

Caption at the source:
A communist supporter holds a portrait of Stalin as she marks the 60th anniversary
of his death near Red square, Moscow, March 5, 2013.

Not all the Gulag prisoners are dead and gone either for that dark chapter of Russian history to be airbrushed off:

 VORKUTA, Russia -- Anna Krikun can barely read the yellowing papers that show she was sentenced as a young woman to hard labor in one of Stalin's cruelest Gulag camps.
At 90, her eyesight is fading. But she remembers everything as if it happened yesterday. She recalls the name of the investigator who tortured her with a sleep-deprivation technique known as the "conveyor" until she confessed to betraying the motherland and agitating against the Soviet Union.
It was 1946, the throes of the Stalinist terror, and Krikun was sent to Vorkuta - a labor camp-cum-city built from nothing on an icebound wasteland by political prisoners from 1931 to 1957.
Today, the city is still a byword for the suffering of the ill-equipped labor brigades that were effectively sent to their death as Stalin used his enemies - both real and imagined -- to tap into vast natural resources in the uninhabited Far North.
And yet here, in this inhospitable outpost, Krikun has remained all these years. 

Reading about the Gulags in Solzhenitsyn's writings was a transformative experience for me, who had until then surrounded himself with readings and people who were uber-sympathetic towards anything Communist.  It is simply bizarre that instead of tossing out forever the ghost of Stalin, more than a few in Russia continue to venerate him. Years ago, I watched quite a funny, satirical, Australian movie about Stalin's son.  I wonder if that movie was banned, and continues to be banned in Putin's Russia.

So, what is the connection with Tamil Nadu?  Stalin is the name of one of the most prominent--notorious--politicians there.  Yes, it was politically fashionable those days to name kids after such Communist "heroes":

The leader of the Dravidian movement Periyar E.V.Ramaswamy was greatly fascinated by the communist ideals after his visit to the Soviet Union. It soon caught on in Tamil Nadu and people started naming their children after the great leaders of the Soviet Union. The most popular were Lenin and Stalin and the communism wave even led to children, being named after Moscow and Russia. Consequently, the leader of the DMK party Dr.Kalaignar bestowed the name Stalin

I suppose this is also one of those only-in-India stories; there aren't very many places on this planet where middle-aged men named Stalin can not only proudly walk around but even contest in democratic elections!

Caption at the source:
DMK leader M.K. Stalin being arrested during a protest
against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Chennai on Tuesday. Photo: M. Vedhan 

This Stalin from Tamil Nadu was born on March 1, 1953.  The original Stalin died on March 5, 1953.  What a devotion to a mass killer it must have been in order to name a kid after that dying monster in a land far, far away :(

Oh those Tamils, er, Russians!

        

Al Franken heading to ...?

The Georgia senate election is finally over. The result shouldn't surprise anyone who watched the Daily Show :-) That leaves Al Franken in Minnesota as the only remaining Democratic contender still waiting for the results. I am going to leave it up to Jon Stewart to predict the outcome ....

Putin 'wanted to hang Saakashvili by the balls'

What a day for the headline writers at the Times (of London, not NY!)

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah —
you have scored a point there.”

Not only is this funny and bizarre and horrible all at the same time, it is a really telling statement when Vlad "the impaler" Putin thinks that Bush is the ultimate yardstick for how low a world leader can go! What a bunch of global leaders we have now.

I am hoping that I won't be nabbed by an extra-terrestrial who might direct me to "take me to your leader" :-)

Latest football rankings

I am continuing with the football rankings from my earlier posts where I re-ranked the pre-season favorites according to their respective academic rankings in the world. The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has released its latest rankings, which I have used here. So, if you want the eventual champion to have at least a little bit of an academic standing in the world, then root for a school with high academic ranking in the world. (Full disclosure: I went to USC!)

Click here for my previous post comparing salaries of coaches at these same universities.

Alabama, knocked the lights out of Georgia--I watched the first half with sheer amazement. Strictly as a football game, the best one I have watched thus far this season.

Preseason Rank	University	Academic Rank--US	World Rank	Academic-Based Rank	AP Rank Sep 28
1	Georgia	Group 55-70	Group 102-150	10	11
2	USC	37	50	6	9
3	Ohio State	41	61	8	14
4	Oklahoma	Group 118-140	Group 305-402	19	1
5	Florida	38	51	7	12
6	LSU	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	3
7	Missouri	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	4
8	West Virginia	Group 141-166	Group 403-510*	24	Not ranked
9	Clemson	Group 118-140	Group 305-402	19	Not ranked
10	Texas	29	38	4	5
11	Auburn	Group 118-140	Group 305-402	19	13
12	Wisconsin	15	17	1	18
13	Kansas	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	16
14	Texas Tech	Group 118-140	Group 305-402	19	7
15	Virginia Tech	Group 71-88	Group 151-202	11	20
16	Arizona State	53	96	9	Not ranked
17	BYU	Group 118-140	Group 305-402	19	8
18	Tennessee	Group 71-88	Group 151-202	11	Not ranked
19	Illinois	19	26	3	Not ranked
20	Oregon	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	23
21	South Florida	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	10
22	Penn State	32	43	5	6
23	Wake Forest	Group 89-117	Group 203-304	13	25
24	Michigan	18	21	2	Not ranked
25	Fresno State	Unranked	Unranked	???	22

US Advises Allies Not To Border Russia

Following Russia's controversial military excursions into neighboring Georgia, the Bush administration made its most direct commitment to the U.S.'s Eastern European allies to date by "strongly advising" those countries not to border Russia under any circumstance. "The United States stands by its allies, but will not be able to defend our friends in the region if they continue to share geographical lines with Russia," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a Monday press conference. "We also recommend that those nations who may not border Russia but were once a part of the USSR immediately cease and desist from having had that history with the Soviet Union." Rice later pledged financial aid to the victims of devastating flooding in the West African nation of Togo, effective upon the country first meeting the stipulation of removing itself from under water.

Yes, that is from the Onion :-)

Hey Medvedev, you are no Tom Joad!

It is amazing how politicians can spin anything. In the Russia/Georgia conflict, Putin and Medvedev talk as if they are defenders of liberty, and the yearning of independence that people have. (Conveniently forgetting Chechnya, of course!) I mean, in a recent FT piece, Medvedev writes as if he is the Russian reincarnation of the Tom Joad character in The Grapes of Wrath: Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . .

You ought to read that piece. Here is an excerpt:

The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living “under one roof” need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

After the collapse of communism, Russia reconciled itself to the “loss” of 14 former Soviet republics, which became states in their own right, even though some 25m Russians were left stranded in countries no longer their own. Some of those nations were un­able to treat their own minorities with the respect they deserved. Georgia immediately stripped its “autonomous regions” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy.

Can you imagine what it was like for the Abkhaz people to have their university in Sukhumi closed down by the Tbilisi government on the grounds that they allegedly had no proper language or history or culture and so did not need a university? The newly independent Georgia inflicted a vicious war on its minority nations, displacing thousands of people and sowing seeds of discontent that could only grow. These were tinderboxes, right on Russia’s doorstep, which Russian peacekeepers strove to keep from igniting.

Here is Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) in The Grapes of Wrath

Beyond Iraq and Iran: global hotspots are even hotter

Tunnel vision can be worse than no vision at all. Yes, we ought to focus on our Iraq problem. But, here is a listing--not complete by any means--of other globally important and urgent issues:

• Pakistan: I have blogged a lot about this. The country is getting more and more unstable. Latest reports are that the coalition government, which forced Musharraf out, is on the brink of collapsing--not good news by any measure. Zardari, the candidate to replace Musharraf, says that the Taliban has the upper hand in the war, and that Pakistan and the world are losing the war on terror. Duh! Like this was not obvious all along?
• Afghanistan: Karzai is losing even the little bit of control he had over the country's security. Not only are American (101 this year alone) and foreign troops dying in large numbers because of the Taliban, the US is making things worse by accidentally killing civilians--the latest one involved 76 civilians according to one report. "The U.S. is now losing the war against the Taliban," Anthony Cordesman, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a report Thursday (AP)
• Georgia: Need I write about this? Really?
• Zimbabwe: The discussions to share power are at an impasse. Meanwhile, inflation is at a never-before-in-history 11.2 million percent. To give us a perspective, we in America are concerned that prices rose by 0.7 percent last month!
• Sudan/Darfur: I agree with comments that this is the only case of well-documented genocide, and yet the rest of the world cannot mobilize for any action. In fact, we continue to ask questions such as "Is Darfur Genocide? It's not yet clear"
• Israel/Palestine: Need I write about this? Really?
• Lebanon: Despite all the Israeli and American attempts to rid Hizbollah, and Iran's influence there, well, Lebanon is pretty much Hizbollah country now. According to AFP, "The moment the Lebanese government confers legitimacy on Hezbollah, it must understand that the entire Lebanese state will be a target in the same way that all of Israel is a target for Hezbollah," Environment Minister Gideon Ezra said on Wednesday. To which, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Sunday to destroy Israel if it carries out threats to hit Lebanon should the government give greater legitimacy to the Shiite militant group.
• Sri Lanka: This AFP report says it all: Strife-torn Sri Lanka is bracing for intense and bloody battles as security forces close in on the political capital of the Tamil Tiger rebels, according to military analysts.
• Burma: George Packer's article on Burma is a must read to understand the horrible state the country and the people have been reduced to by the cold and heartless military junta.
• Tibet, and minorities in China: Need I write about this? Really?

More later

The worst is yet to come?

I blogged about how the US economy is set to rebound while the rest of the world slows down. And then Vlad "the impaler" Putin goes after Georgia. Bombs the life out of half of Georgia, and the situation becomes a security threat for Caspian Sea oil: "BP shut down its Baku-Supsa oil pipeline — which runs through the center of Georgia from Baku in Azerbaijan to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast". Almost as a response, even if not worded that way, Bush and Rice then rush into signing the missile shield agreement with Poland, thus escalating the tension with Putin. Result: "Crude oil rose more than $6 after the signing yesterday of a missile-shield agreement between the US and Poland bolstered concern that Russia may disrupt the flow of oil".

Yes, it is not all about economics. But, the economic impact is immediate. We can easily make sure that Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini is right after all--the worst is yet to come. BTW, want to know what a former chief economist of the IMF said? In a shot heard around the world, Ken Rogoff loudly proclaimed that "the worst is to come", and even predicted that a big bank will soon go belly up!

Ok, back to Georgia. A Guardian commentator is worried that American interest in Georgia is because of its interest to attack Iran.

Meanwhile, the developments in Pakistan are making that entire Pakistan/Afghanistan area even more explosive than it even was. The Taliban is pretty pumped up with all this. I am thinking we are only weeks away from a military coup in Pakistan. I bet Musharraf is chuckling at these developments. The guy is off the hook, and does not have to answer anybody's questions on the country's nuclear program, how much he oversaw the proliferation of it, .... Meanwhile the Daily Times says that Musharraf is heading to New Mexico until it will be safe for him to return to Pakistan. WTF!

All we need is a suicide bomber succeeding in the attempt against Afghanistan's Karzai, who has lucked out thus far--it will be September 11th all over again. Kiss goodbye to any economic or political recovery anywhere on the planet.

BTW, Mugabe continues on in Zimbabwe, where inflation was 11.2 million percent in June. North Korea vows to build up its military. Violence and protests continues in Kashmir, and violations of ceasefire agreements across the Line of Control.

I feel like I should go into hibernation, and wake up in 2011!

Gorbachev is ticked off--at America!

In the NY Times opinion piece, Mikhail Gorbachev writes that Russia did not have any choice, and that Putin and Medvedev acted appropriately and wisely. Gorbachev writes,
For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?
Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

And, Thomas Friedman offers a different take. He does agree with Gorbachev that expanding NATO--supported by Clinton and Bush--was stupid. That Georgia was reckless with the military incursion. But, Friedman writes that Putin takes the gold:
That is why the gold medal for brutishness goes to Putin. Yes, NATO expansion was foolish. Putin exploited it to choke Russian democracy. But now, petro-power-grabbing has gone to his head — whether it's invading Georgia, bullying Western financiers and oil companies working in Russia, or using Russia’s gas supplies to intimidate its neighbors....
Russia would be wise to reconsider Putin’s Georgia gambit. If it does, we would be wise to reconsider where our NATO/Russia policy is taking us — and whether we really want to spend the 21st century containing Russia the same way we spent much of the 20th containing the Soviet Union.

We are all Georgians if we are White Americans? :-)

For the longest time I have kidded around with friends and family that despite being from India, I qualify as a white guy in America because of my Caucasian connection--particularly because I was born in a brahmin family (though an atheist for quite some time now, after a long stint as an agnostic, who was hesitant to come out of the religious closet!). Well, the joke apparently needs to be killed because of Slate's explanation that brings on some serious Supreme Court decision:

Americans still use the word Caucasian to mean "white" despite the fact that they haven't always been synonyms in the eyes of the law. In U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme Court argued that although Asian Indians were technically Caucasian, they couldn't be U.S. citizens because they weren't "white."

Georgia understimated Russia. Russia "over-retaliated"

Gary Brecher at Exiled Online sums it up well:
The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

But, before concluding thus, Brecher writes:
Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did.

Bush's role in the Georgia-Russia Conflict

I noted earlier Brendan O'Neil's observations on how Bush's insane policies helped trigger this crisis. It will be a while before such analysis will be openly presented in the US--after all, people have been called unpatriotic for ordering "french fries" instead of "freedom fries" :-)

Here is Fred Kaplan, one of the best analysts around:
Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

Stalin in the Russia-Georgia war

Russia has now full control of the city of Gori in Georgia, according to reports. Gori's other notoriety comes from Stalin--"Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis Dzhugashvili in Gori, ", says Wikipedia.

So, where were some of the Soviet leaders born? (all from Wikipedia)
Lenin: (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) Born in Simbirsk (renamed Ulyanovsk after its most famous son), in the Russian Empire
Trotsky: born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (alternative English spelling: Bronshtein) on November 7, 1879, in Yanovka, Kherson Province of the Russian Empire (today's Ukraine)
Khrushchev: born in Kalinovka (Russia/Ukraine border)
Brezhnev: born in Kamenskoe (now Dniprodzerzhyns'k) in Ukraine
Andropov: born in Stavropol --way southwestern tip of Russia
Chernenko: born in the village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai).
Gorbachev: born in Stavropol. (hey, the same place as Andropov, or are these two different Stavropol?)
Yeltsin: born in the village of Butka, in Talitsky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia.
Putin: born in Leningrad (well, St. Petersburg now)

Now you know :-)

Putin arrives at the Georgia war front

So, Vlad "the impaler" Putin has arrived at the conflict area to personally supervise the massacre. The Australian reports that prime minister Kevin Rudd witnessed a heated discussion between Bush and Putin, as athletes paraded before them in the Opening Ceremony on Friday night.

When Bush looked into Putin and was "able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country", I suppose Georgia did not show up anywhere. All we have been doing since then is irritating the cold, calculating, shrewd, and highly political Putin.

Anne Applebaum writes in Slate that the time to deal with this conflict was two years ago or four years ago. That there was a security vacuum in the Caucuses; that this vacuum was dangerous; that war was likely; that Georgia, an eager ally of the United States, would not come out of it well; that a successful invasion of Georgia, a country with U.S. troops on its soil, would reflect badly on the West—all of that has been obvious for a long time. Cowardice, weakness, lack of ideas, and above all the distraction of other events prevented any deeper engagement.

If you are like me, you probably are wondering how much President Bush's bizarre policies contributed to this. Well, here is Brendan O'Neill of Spiked: The bloodshed that occurred over the weekend, as Georgian forces bombed the breakaway territory of South Ossetia and Russia responded by attacking Georgia, can be seen as the destructive outcome of Washington’s increasingly hungry and erratic foreign policy. .... From the Ukraine to Uzbekistan to Georgia, Washington has backed a string of dodgy ruling parties and dictatorial leaders as they have upped the ante with their former rulers in the Kremlin. ....
Georgia, like many of the former Soviet republics, is a state with no real reason to exist. Lacking a unified national elite or identity, it is another of those Caucasian and Central Asian states that were born by default when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is fragile, changeable, and has various ethnic or ‘national’ groups within its borders – not only in South Ossetia (which wants to join with North Ossetia) but also in Abkhazia, a Black Sea region that has largely run its own affairs since defeating Georgian forces in a war in 1992-1993.
Over the past decade, Washington’s foreign policy – increasingly patternless and self-defeating – has helped to make the unstable state of affairs in the former Soviet republics worse. America has sought to turn these republics into outposts in its ‘war on terror’.