Soviet Smokes Set To Return

According to the folks over at Pravda.ru, some brands of cigarettes popular in Russia during Soviet times are set for a comeback. The cigarette manufacturer BAT Russia relaunched the brand "The Golden Fleece" (or Zolotoye Runo in the original Russian) back in April. Other former Soviet brands: Arktika, Troika and Leningad have all recently seen a spike in their sales. Part of the reason is price - all are 'bargain' brands - but nostalgia is also a factor.

This, actually, is nothing new. After the markets opened up in formerly Communist nations across Europe in the 1990's, people flocked to Western brands that were previously banned in their countries. But an odd thing happened, after awhile, people started missing the more humble, state-run goods they grew up with and started seeking them out (the ones that were still in business at least). In fact there's a term for it: 'Ostalgie', the term comes from the German nickname 'Ossie' for people from formerly Communist East Germany. Now, apparently ostalgia is spreading to Soviet cigarettes as well.

And if you're interested in the whole 'ostalgie' idea, check out the wonderful German film Good Bye Lenin!

It's Gore vs. Gorby for the Ecology

The former Vice-President of the United States, Al Gore, and the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, are battling it out for control of the ecology. Well, not the ecology, but the new 'green' Internet domain, ".eco".

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the folks that bring order to the Internet, have created the domain ".eco" for environmentally-focused companies and organizations who want a pro-green presence on the 'Net. The ".eco" domain is set to go live in early 2010, and ICANN wants to sell the operation of it to a private firm. That's where the Gore/Gorby fight begins.

Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection wants to run ".eco", but so to does Gorbachev's Green Cross International, which has a partnership agreement with a Canadian web company, Big Room. And both are saying they'll do a better job as the Web's green guardians - each say they'll let the public decide who's green and who's not (and thus deserving of the ".eco" at the end of their web address) and will donate a portion of their revenues to environmental causes. The price tag for ".eco" is $100,000, but it could be worth billions as companies and organizations pay to register their sites in the ".eco" domain, thinking it will be a quick and very public way to broadcast their pro-environment status.

Pirates of the Atlantic?

On Sunday I posted a link to this story about the Arctic Sea, a Russian-crewed cargo ship that suddenly went missing off the coast of Portugal last week. Now officials are thinking that the Arctic Sea has been the first big ship to fall victim to pirates off the coast of Europe in, well, as long as anyone can remember.

That, at least, is the leading theory in what happened to the Arctic Sea. The ship was due to arrive in Algeria with a cargo of lumber (nothing particularly valuable there) on August 4, but never did, nor was it seen sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, meaning it's likely still somewhere in the Atlantic. Analysts say that the Arctic Sea may wind up being repainted - basically given a ship face-lift, to turn it into a 'new' vessel that would then be used to haul illicit cargoes (drugs, weapons, you name it). Another possibility is that the ship was grabbed as part of a business dispute - there have been some 'aggressive' tactics used to settle Russian business disputes in the past (like bombings), that was especially true during the 1990s.

Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is taking the whole Arctic Sea incident seriously enough to order ships from Russia's Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleets to head to the Atlantic to search for the missing ship and its crew of 13.

Arctic Ice Vanishes in State-Sized Chunks

During July of this year, a patch of the Arctic ice cap the size of Indiana melted every day, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. That's a rate of shrinkage equal to 2007, when the ice cap retreated to the smallest size ever recorded. In Canada's Arctic Sea outpost of Tuktoyaktuk (which should be familiar to viewers of History's Ice Road Truckers), the edge of the ice pack is now 80 miles away from the coast, double the summertime distance from a few decades ago, and the water is so warm (that being a relative term of course), that kids have gone swimming in the ocean this summer.

Scientists said that while global temperatures, on average, have risen by a degree during the past century, that rate of increase has been double in the Arctic. They are also seeing the thick, permanent ice of the cap being replaced by a thinner ice sheet that melts each summer before refreezing as winter sets in. What this will mean to the environment in the long-term remains to be seen, but it's affect on polar bears is already becoming evident (they're getting thinner and having to spend more time swimming to get to the ice packs that they use for hunting seals).

Meanwhile on the other side of the globe a Russian-Swedish expedition is setting off from the Russian port of Murmansk on a cruise of the North East Passage around Russia's northern coastline to highlight the effects of global warming on that part of the world. Normally portions of the Passage are only open for about eight weeks a year, but this year - thanks to the retreat of the ice pack - the crew of the sailboat "Explorer of Sweden" expect to be able to sail through passages usually sealed off by ice.

Hillary in Africa, Shakes Fist at Eritrea

During her Kenyan stopover during her African tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took some time out to threaten Eritrea over their support for Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia. The US has long accused the government of Eritrea of supporting al-Shabab ("The Youth") in their ongoing battle with the Somali transitional government for control of the capital, Mogadishu. The two sides have been slugging it out for weeks now, displacing tens of thousands of civilians in the process.

Clinton said that "it is long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support for al-Shabab", adding that Eritrea's actions were "unacceptable" and that the US would "take action" if they didn't cut their support of al-Shabab. The US position is that if al-Shabab were to take over Somalia, it would become al-Qaeda's new base of operations.
This isn't the first time that the US has threatened Eritrea, the tough talk with the East African nation goes back to the Bush administration, as do the fears of Somalia becoming a terrorist state, though so far the US hasn't done much in the way of action besides occasionally calling out the Eritrean government like Clinton just did again.

Of course maybe it would be a good idea to first wrap up one of the existing battlefields of the Global War on Terror, before looking to open a new one. The US still has more than 100,000 troops in Iraq, mostly sitting around on bases since the agreement with the Iraqi government pulling US troops back from the cities went into effect this summer, meanwhile we are sending more troops into Afghanistan, even though top commanders admit that al-Qaeda has largely left the country and the government of Hamid Karzai (our man in Kabul) is hopelessly corrupt and inept. I think that the case for the US staying in either place in large numbers is getting pretty weak.

Meanwhile Ahmed Egal, a founding member of the Somali National Movement (SNM) is putting forward his own radical idea for bringing peace to the region - recognize the area of Somaliland as an independent nation. No, it's not some East African theme park, Somaliland is the northernmost part of Somalia, a region that broke away from Somalia in 1991 and set up its own state, one that so far no other country on Earth has recognized as an independent nation.

But unlike Somalia, which in the nearly 20 years since 1991 has been a battleground for dueling warlords and Islamic militants as well as a pirate hideout, Somaliland (a land of 3.5 million) has been at peace and relatively prosperous. Egal says that for this exact reason, the world should recognize Somaliland as a state, then use Somaliland as a base of operations to help reestablish Somalia as a fully functioning country.

Sure, Egal's suggestion is self-serving (getting the world to recognize his erstwhile country in the process), but it makes more sense than the current strategy of supporting pathetically weak "transitional governments" in Mogadishu. Ethiopia backed the last transitional government for two years before deciding that they were tired of constantly fighting against local Islamic militias and called their troops home. Hillary Clinton while in Kenya, pledged more military equipment to the current Somali government - that may help them fight off al-Shabab for now, but it's not going restore Somalia as a real, functioning country.

Russian Mystery At Sea

I came across this odd story this morning about a ship disappearance that can't be blamed on our ol' friends the Somali pirates. RIA Novosti is reporting that a Maltese-owned, Russian-crewed cargo ship, the Arctic Sea, has gone missing in the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal. The ship was due in the port of Bejaia, Algeria last Wednesday, but no one has heard from them since July 28 - the ship has apparently disappeared.

What makes this story even stranger is that while sailing in the Baltic Sea a few days earlier, the Arctic Sea was boarded by a group of men claiming to be the police, who tied up the crew and searched the ship for 12 hours before releasing them.

We'll keep following this pretty weird story...

Clinton's Visit - An African Perspective

Quick link here to a story on AllAfrica.com about Sec. Clinton's tour of the continent. The big takeaway from the article, besides some details on her visit to South Africa, is that the Obama Administration's attitude towards Africa is to work with local leaders to come up with solutions to problems like corruption and disease, rather than to dictate to them how they should run their affairs.

The Cultural Implications of Vladimir Beefcake, er, Putin

It's summer in Russia, which means it's time for Vladimir Putin's annual Siberian get-away, and thus time for the Kremlin to release a photo album of the boss' vacation snaps, which this year include a bare-chested Putin swimming in a Siberian river, a bare-chested Putin horseback riding, and just to show his sensitive side, a bare-chested Putin feeding his horse.

There's a none-too-subtle message in these photos, which also include shots of him diving in a submarine to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, and at-sea petting a whale - that Putin is a strong leader for a strong country (though the BBC suggests that some of the photos are also reminiscent of the gay cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain).

But there's a second important message that Putin is trying to send to his countrymen. Putin is 56 years old, and obviously in excellent shape, the average life expectancy for Russian men though is just 59 years (life expectancy for Russian women is around 74 years, roughly comparable with life expectancies for women in Western Europe). The reason for the poor life expectancy of Russian men is due in large part to poor diets, lack of exercise, smoking and most of all, heavy drinking.

So instead of just dismissing Putin's beefcake shots with a giggle, think of them as an effort to combat the demographic crisis facing Russia (some projections have Russia's population falling to 100 million by mid-century). They are license for Russian wives to nag their husbands about not taking better care of themselves, imagine the conversation going on in living rooms across Russia: "look at Vladimir Vladimirovich, he swims! he rides horses! what are you doing but sitting on the couch with your cigarettes and vodka?"

Just a thought...

Media Fight Over The Georgian War

Today is the one-year anniversary of the five-day conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And a new battle is on, though thankfully this time it’s in the opinion pages.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili yesterday published an op-ed in the Washington Post, while Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, Presidents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia respectively, took to the UK's Guardian to make their case for their would-be countries. As you'd expect there's a fair amount of spin going on from both sides.

Saakashvili casts last year's events as nothing short of a Russian invasion of Georgia, conveniently ignoring the (now) fairly well-established fact that it was Georgia's shelling of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia that started the fighting in the first place. He also goes on to commit himself to democratic reforms - presumably the same reforms he's promised to deliver in 2003, 2007 and 2008. Not to be outdone, Bagapsh and Kokoity make the case that theirs are legitimate countries trying to escape Georgian oppression and welcome the world to take a look at what they've done so far (though they'd prefer you not ask any questions about the tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians driven from their homes, I presume).

That last part is why getting involved in affairs in the Caucasus region is such a tricky thing (hopefully you're reading this post Mr. Vice President). Georgia says they have thousands of refugees driven from their homes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Ask the other side though, and the Abkhaz and Ossetians will point to Georgian attempts at ethnic cleansing in the 1990s and 1920s when the Soviet Union grafted their territories onto the Georgian SSR. Keep talking and you're likely to get stories (like one BBC reporter did) of pogroms dating back to the 11th century, or earlier.

And, as I've stated in other posts, the United States comes off as fairly hypocritical supporting Georgia's 'territorial integrity' (keeping Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the fold) when we've argued so forcefully against Serbia's territorial integrity by recognizing the independence of their breakaway region, Kosovo.

But at least the leaders of the respective sides are doing their fighting this time with op-eds and not bullets. For now at least.

Twitter, Facebook Outages, Latest Battle in the Russia/Georgia War

So were you wondering why your Google, Twitter or (like me) Facebook account was acting strange yesterday? The trouble has been apparently traced to the account of a single blogger who goes by the screen name "CYXYMU".

More accurately, the problems were because of a series of cyber-attacks against CYXYMU's accounts on various blogging platforms. A little backstory - CYXYMU is the handle of a Georgian blogger, likely from the disputed Abkhazia region (CYXYMU is based on the Cyrillic-text name of Abkhazia’s capital, Sukhumi). He/she has been a vocal critic of the actions of the Georgian and Russian governments over last year's conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which is apparently what put CYXYMU in the cyber-attacker's crosshairs yesterday.

But as Evgeny Morozov points out on the blog Net Effect, CYXYMU isn't a crusading investigative journalist and, in Morozov's opinion (he has also followed CYXYMU's postings on LiveJournal, the most popular blogging site in Russia and where CYXYMU does a lot of their writing), not terribly interesting. So, Morozov suggests, that the coordinated cyber-attack was more an exercise in showing off on the part of the attackers than a real attempt to silence CYXYMU.

In his commentary, Morozov asks if CYXYMU could become the first, as he calls it, "digital refugee". A blogging platform (Twitter, Blogger, LiveJournal, take your pick) when faced with a problematic user, in this case CYXYMU, could just choose to shut down their account in order to keep the service operating smoothly. It's not censorship, per se, rather a business decision to not disrupt the habits of millions of other users, though the end effect is the same.

It is an interesting take on the future of free speech in the world of new media.