Gazans Fall Victim to Tunnel Scam

As if the military campaign last January that destroyed thousands of homes and the ongoing economic blockade of their homeland by Israel don't make life hard enough in Gaza, The Guardian reports that thousands of Gazans have another problem - they've lost their life savings to scam artists.

The scam centered on the hundreds of smuggling tunnels running under the sealed Gaza/Egypt border. Because of the Israeli blockade, the tunnels have become the life-blood of the Gazan economy - just about everything is brought through them: food, building materials, luxury items and creature comforts. The amount of commerce flowing through these tunnels has made some of their operators rich, and there's the hook for the scam: that investors could turn a quick profit by helping to fund the construction of more tunnels (tunnel construction can cost upwards of $100,000).

In a land with epidemic levels of unemployment, the offers seemed too good to pass up. Problem was that these tunnels people invested in didn’t, and never would, exist; scammers took investors money and disappeared. According to officials in Gaza, the tunnel scam has already netted $100 million from duped investors, though other estimates put the loss total much higher. Meanwhile, Gaza's Hamas-led government doesn't seem to be too willing to investigate the tunnel scam because of their own involvement in the smuggling industry and because some of the lead scammers likely have ties to the organization themselves.

Economy in Russia - Hunger Strikes, Putin Slams

A couple of weeks ago I posted this story about a group of Siberian stewardesses who went on a hunger strike to try and shame their now-bankrupt former employer, the airline KrasAir, into paying them up to eight months of back wages. Apparently this isn't the only work-related hunger strike going on in Russia at the moment.

Workers at the Baikal Pulp Mill are well into their own hunger strike to protest not receiving all the wages owed to them when their plant shut down last year. This week 21 former employees joined a group of 42 already on a hunger strike. In total some 2,000 former workers say they're owed 100 million rubles ($3.25 million). Actually it's a good thing the Pulp Mill closed, because for decades it dumped its waste straight into Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake and one of its most unique ecosystems - but the workers were promised new jobs at a new facility, which like their back wages, has failed to materialize.

Another group of workers in the town of Pikalyovo (near St. Petersburg) could have resorted to a hunger strike of their own when the three major factories in their town were shut down (taking with them the town's supply of hot water as well as their jobs), but why do that when you have Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in your corner?

Putin visited Pikalyovo to check on the situation personally. But officials thought they could pull a fast one on the Prime Minister by suggesting he visit other factories in the region. According to Pravda.ru, they quickly learned that pissing off the most powerful man in Russia isn't a good idea.

Putin used his visit to Pikalyovo as an opportunity to bitch-slap the local authorities - first asking them: "why did you make everything look like a dump here?" during a tour of the shuttered factories, then asking them "why was everyone running about like cockroaches here before my arrival?" Putin sat down with the owner of Pikalyovo's main industries, Oleg Deripaska - who until the economic crisis last year was Russia's richest man. Putin ordered that the 41 million rubles in back wages be paid to the workers, the next day. He then told Deripaska to reopen the factories - when Deripaska forgot to sign a the documents authorizing the plants' restart, Putin was said to have thrown a pen at him, then demanded it back when Deripaska tried to walk away with it.

How much of this tale is true is anyone's guess, since it does sound a little too much like a propaganda piece, casting Putin as hero of the working man, but it sure makes for a great read - and seems like a great blueprint for dealing with any future Wall Street bailout requests.

As US media markets shrink, ethnic ones grow

By now you've read stories about how American newspapers are dying, and how even viewership among cable news channels is down, but there is one sector of the media that is seeing strong and steady growth - ethnically-themed outlets.

Publications, radio and cable TV stations aimed at specific ethnic groups in America, usually in their native language, are nothing new, but a poll released this week finds that nearly 60 million Americans - basically one in five - are regular consumers of ethnic media, a jump of 16% from a poll conducted just four years ago in 2005. The strongest growth was seen among African-American newspapers and magazines, which grew by 42% since 2005, and Spanish-language radio, which is becoming a fixture in markets - like North Carolina and Washington - places not usually noted for their large Hispanic populations.

And the number of Americans tuned into ethnic media could even be higher. The poll, released at the annual Ethnic Media Expo and Awards, was conducted only in eight languages - Cantonese, English, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, which left many ethnic groups out of the poll.

Officials at the Expo said that the poll's results should be a message to advertisers and politicians alike not to ignore this vibrant sector of the media.

Update #1 - Cuban invitation

Yesterday, I wrote this post about how most members of the Organization of American States - except for the US - wanted to reverse the nearly four decades-long ban on Cuba. Well, the OAS went ahead today and did in fact vote to lift the ban.

The United States has, not surprisingly, slammed the decision, saying that Cuba's Communist system doesn't fit in with the mission of the OAS. Robert Menendez, a Democratic Senator from New Jersey and himself a Cuban-American, has gone so far as to suggest that Congress cut American funding to the OAS, which gets 60% of its budget from the US.

But all the bluster is likely for nothing since Cuba is saying that while they're happy the OAS lifted their suspension, so far they have no intention of rejoining the organization

Update #2 - Hope for Demoracy in Russia?

Here we go back to April to revisit the case of Anton Chumachenko, who at that time was a newly-elected member of the St. Petersburg legislative council. Like many recent elections in Russia - from last year's presidential vote to April's high-profile mayoral race in Russia's Olympic city (in 2014 that is), Sochi - Chumachenko's was also marred by accusations of vote rigging in favor of the dominant United Russia party.

This worked out well for Chumachenko since he ran on the United Party ticket. But the 23-year old Chumachenko decided that wasn't the way he wanted to start his political career, so he challenged his own victory. Now Radio Free Europe is reporting that the court ruled in Chumachenko's favor - which in this case means his election was fraudulent - and gave the seat to his primary challenger, the Yabloko Party's Boris Vishnevsky (Yabloko was one of the two main liberal parties in Russia that flourished in the 1990s and still has solid support in fairly liberal St. Petersburg).

RFE reports that while the Chumachenko case is rare, it's not unique, citing several other cases across Russia where charges of vote fraud are being investigated, or where the public is pushing for the recall of a candidate they feel won their seat improperly. Whether it is a reliable sign of some of the reforms promised by President Dmitry Medvedev taking root though remains to be seen.

Obama apology tour (really?)

Right now I'm watching MSNBC's rebroadcast of President Obama's speech early this morning in Egypt (click here for the full text). So far, it's an excellent, wide-ranging, but ultimately balanced speech hitting on all the hot topics in the Mid-East and wider Muslim world - Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, extremism, etc.

One thing I haven't heard though is Obama apologizing for America, or America's role in the world. This has become the default charge of Obama's foreign policy critics that he is running around the world "apologizing" for America.

Frankly, that's utter nonsense (I'd prefer to use another word, but I try to keep my posts PG). Obama has been stressing the need for America to do crazy things like actually listen to and respect other nations - a break from the Bushite/Neoconservative unilateral foreign policy of "shut up and do what your told."

But to the neocons, this equals both apology and surrender, making Obama the Neville Chamberlain of our time. Case in point: this anti-Obama screed published by Nile Gardiner on Tuesday. Nile is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.

I don't care if Gardiner, the Heritage Foundation and London's Telegraph newspaper want to slam Pres. Obama, they just shouldn't offer up such intellectually lazy arguments as the one Nile puts forward (really, if you have a title like Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom you should be able to put together a decent argument). Just three paragraphs into his screed, Nile says this: "the Obama doctrine is now lying in tatters after North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Il and Iranian demagogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Obama’s recent overtures with missile tests and even a nuclear blast from Pyongyang." The implication being that this wouldn't have happened on George Dubya's watch.

But, in fact, it did. North Korea's first nuclear test happened in 2006, six years into the reign of Bush II; Iran's ballistic missile program also progressed by leaps and bounds during the Bush regime, so has (if we believe the most dire estimates) Iran's nuclear program.

These regimes weren't slowed by the Bush's unilateral foreign policy - it could be argued (successfully I think) that the belligerent tone and lack of diplomatic engagement actually encouraged their weapons programs, making the world not more safe, but less. Just as Bush's policy of "my way or the highway" damaged our relations with wide swaths of the globe: Latin America, Russia and Western Europe especially. Gardiner and the rest of the 'apology' critics ignore these facts, shouting that the tough Bush/Neocon foreign policy enhanced America's position in the world, when in reality it did the opposite.

There's certainly room to criticize Obama's foreign policy, but that criticism needs to be more than some lame charges that he's an apologist.

US, LA at odds again over Cuba

Cuba is once again dominating relations between the United States and Latin America.

The forum this time is the annual meeting of the Organization of American States. Cuba was kicked out of the OAS back in 1962 after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Now most of the members of the OAS think it's time for the ban to end, the one member that doesn't is of course the United States. The United States is saying that Cuba first would need to make democratic and human rights reforms before the US would back a Cuban membership bid.

So far this argument has taken up a day of the OAS meeting. And according to the BBC report, it's pointless - Cuba has said they have no intention of rejoining the OAS now even if invited. So in other words, the United States is picking a fight over an issue that, in reality, doesn't exist; and it's causing more friction between the United States and Latin America at a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been arguing about the need for the US to rebuild ties with our neighbors to the South.

The OAS could vote to extend the invitation to Cuba without the United States' support.

Israel tries to pass the buck on Palestine

Politicians in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, have come up with an idea on how to solve their Palestinian problem - ship ‘em all to Jordan.

That's the gist of a proposal put forward earlier this week that would name an official Palestinian homeland. The only problem is that the homeland would be Jordan (and no one asked the Jordanians what they thought of this idea before proposing it).

The proposal’s supporters argue that it just makes sense since more than half of the folks in Jordan can trace their roots back to Palestine. But critics say that the proposal is just a thinly-veiled attempt to expel all of the Palestinians from the West Bank, and the proposal has already caused an uproar in Jordan, putting more stress on an already strained relationship between the Israeli and Jordanian governments.

The proposal was put forward by the National Union party, which holds only four seats in the Knesset. Some are saying that the National Union only put the idea forward to cause problems for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he didn't include their party in his governing coalition. Netanyahu slammed the Jordan proposal. But members of Jordan's parliament respond by pointing out that the proposal then received 53 votes in the 120-member Knesset, an indication, they say, of broader support for the idea.

Expect a lot more on this topic in the next few days as Barack Obama conducts his whirlwind tour of the Middle East.

Border squabble (over hockey)

Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion (the BlackBerry people) really, really wants to own an NHL team. The Phoenix Coyotes are a bankrupt NHL team. Balsillie wants to buy the team and move it to Hamilton, Ontario, an idea endorsed by people like Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Problem is that one person not on board is NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who has taken Balsillie to court to block his efforts (again). And here a little back-story is required. Hockey has always trailed in the US in popularity to pro baseball, basketball and football - when Bettman took over as NHL commish, the league (in America) was largely based in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Bettman wanted the NHL to join the ranks of the NBA, NFL and MLB as an elite pro sports league; one way to do that was with a major television deal. But for that, the league needed more of a national presence, so Bettman pushed for teams to be located in the American South and Southwest, to broaden the NHL’s base.

Most recently though Bettman balked at a TV deal with ESPN and opted to give the NHL's television contract to the Outdoor Life Network (now rebranded "Versus"), a channel usually only included on super-premium cable packages. The result is that the NHL's national presence has evaporated, while the league is stuck with financially-shaky teams - like Phoenix - playing in markets across the South in front of half-full arenas.

Worse, from the Canadian point-of-view at least, is that some of these teams were plucked from hockey-crazed Canadian cities like Winnipeg and Quebec City and dumped in the American South. Balsillie is looking to change that, but the NHL is now trying to block him for a third time (he also previously tried to buy the Pittsburgh and Nashville teams).

Meanwhile, the folks in Hamilton so wanted an NHL team, they went and built an arena on the hope that they would one day get one. That was 25 years ago. I'd say it's long overdue for the folks in Hamilton to see a return on their investment.

Meet Comrade Kim!

Indications out of North Korea are that Kim Jong-il has finally settled on a successor - his youngest son Kim Jong-un.

The choice of Kim Jong-un goes against North Korean tradition that would have dictated that Kim's eldest son Kim Jong-nam follow in the family business of running the world's most secretive state. But Jong-nam fellow out of favor with his dad after being caught trying to sneak into Japan to go to Disneyland Tokyo, so Kim Jong-un became the chosen one (Kim Jong-il skipped over his middle son Kim Jon-chul, who defectors say the elder Kim though was "too effeminate" to run the country).

Kim Jong-un is said to have been educated at a Swiss boarding school, he also, according to the Associated Press, is said to be overweight, diabetic and a heavy drinker. Trying to figure out what kind of leader Kim Jong-un may become is hard to figure out (though the AP’s info doesn’t inspire confidence), since in a nation of secrets, Kim's number-three son is one of the biggest: MSNBC ran a childhood picture of Jong-un since there is none known of him as an adult; no one is even sure how old he is, his year of birth is given as either 1983 or 84.

And North Korea hasn't 'officially' announced the anointing of Kim Jong-un either; though North Korean diplomats around the world have apparently been ordered to pledge their loyalty to Kim Jong-un and North Koreans have been ordered to learn the lyrics of a new song praising Jong-un, who is alternately being called 'Comrade Kim' or 'the Young Leader' - following in the tradition of 'the Great Leader' and 'the Dear Leader', the honorifics for his grandfather and father respectively (of course if Kim Jong-un rules into his late 60's like his dad, 'Young Leader' is going to sound really silly).

It also remains to be seen if now that the Young Leader has been tapped as the successor to Kim Jong-il if North Korea will stop their weapons testing - some analysts thought North Korea's recent nuclear and missile tests were an outward sign of a political power struggle within Pyongyang.