The Other Russia: Police Reform Bill Critisized As ‘Fagmentary And Unsystematic’
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posted by eagle on August, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
August 12th, 2010 • Related • Filed Under
Russia analyst Robert Coalsen at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has agood analysis of a controversial new bill concerning Russia’s police forces: There has been a lot of ink spilled in recent weeks evaluating the proposed new law on the police and, before that, the law on expanding the powers of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Good textual analyses of both bits of legislation can be found on the blog A Good Treaty here and here. However, to a large extent all the talk about various articles and subclauses strikes me as yet another act in the political theater that dominates Russia today. No one in authority seems to be addressing basic issues, not the least of which is that no one believes the abuses Russian law enforcement agencies have committed over the last decade and longer occurred because of bad laws. Earlier this year, the website of the Russian version of "Esquire” posted this damning calendar of police abuses – a day-by-day ...
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Window On Eurasia: Fires Highlight Growing Threat from Chernobyl Accident Radiation, Moscow Ecologist Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Staunton, August 13 – Fires in Bryansk oblast that were heavily contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident could spread radioactive particles to Moscow or even beyond, Russia’s leading ecologist says. But more important, he says, the fires show that the dangers from Chernobyl are increasing rather than declining and that Moscow is doing little to help.
In his Echo Moskvy blog today, Aleksey Yablokov, a candidate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a leader of the Green Russia fraction, says that as a result of natural processes, "the number of radioactive particles on the surface is not declining but has been growing since the mid-1990s” (echo.msk.ru/blog/yablokov/702969-echo/).
Moreover, he continues, that process will continue and the amount of the radiation on the surface, including from Strontium-137, will increase "for several more years,” in what he estimates are the 70 percent of the forests in the contaminated area. (His ...
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Window On Eurasia: No Hunger Ahead but Russia’s Poor Already Suffering, Gontmakher Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Staunton, August 13 – As a result of fires and drought, this year’s grain harvest in the Russian Federation will be much smaller than normal, a development that has prompted Moscow to impose an embargo on grain exports, pushed prices for bread upwards even in the Russian capital, and sparked fears that the country faces hunger.
Such fears have no objective basis, President Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday, suggesting that recent rises in prices for bread – up 10 to 15 percent in some stores – reflected the fact that "the market sometimes behaves according to its own laws” and "psychopathic scenarios arise” (svpressa.ru/economy/article/28951/).
In an interview published in "Svobodnaya pressa” today, Yevgeny Gontmakher, the deputy director of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, comments that "of course, there will not be hunger in Russia,” but he adds that that does not mean the current situation will not ...
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Window On Eurasia: Medvedev Has No Solution For North Caucasus, Moscow Editors Say
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Staunton, August 14 – As his meetings in the North Caucasus this week showed, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is seeking to find a system of administration for that region and others that is not based on either corruption or massive force, but the editors of two leading Moscow news outlets suggest that he has not found an alternative to what is taking there.
And as a result, the editors of "Nezavisimaya gazeta” and "Gazeta.ru” suggest, Medvedev for all his calls to create a law-based state in that region as well as in the rest of Russia has not yet shown that he can implement that program or even that, given conditions in that region and more generally, whether such a program could be implemented at all.
In a leading article published yesterday, the editors of "Nezavisimaya” say that the Sochi meeting earlier this week demonstrated that Medvedev is "dissatisfied with the ...
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Window On Eurasia: Fires Producing Chernobyl-Type Panic In Russia, Moscow Analyst Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Staunton, August 9 – The impact of smoke from Russia’s fires on the physically weakest members of society, the inability of the powers that be to deal with this consequence, and the efforts of some officials to impose "an information blockade” on what is going on is generating a Chernobyl-type panic in many parts of the Russian Federation.
Even more than the fires, Anton Razmakhnin writes in today’s "Svobodnaya pressa,” the way smoke is affecting people and official efforts to deny or play down the problem – the site of a blogger doctor who talked about it was shut down, for example, have left people with the sense that they are "waiting for the apocalypse” (svpressa.ru/society/article/28801/).
The current situation and especially the panic among Russians resembles "in many ways” the situation in the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl atomic power station accident in April 1986,” Razmakhnin says, citing a member of the ...
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