Tom's Thumb

Croatia and the EU- We don't know what we don't want

2012-02-08T09:40:00.001Z

There were about a hundred people gathered in Zagreb’scentral square, placards waving, slogans being chanted. Suddenly the crowdstarted surging around a point of commotion, baying with indignation. As Irushed forward with the other journalists I saw around a dozen police officersin riot gear hauling a struggling man into the back of police van.

These were Croatian nationalists intent on stopping theircountry joining the EU. The next day, the 22^nd of January 2012, areferendum was due to be held to vote on accession to the 27 member bloc inJuly 2013. These people screamed into the cameras and at the police that thiswas giving away Croatian sovereignty to Brussels, and shame on Croatia’sleaders for doing so. The police remained steely faced and carted away about adozen of the most intransigent demonstrators.

Before the referendum there was a marked divide betweenCroatia’s political class, who were almost unanimously in favour of EUaccession, and the populace where opinion polls done only a week before had putthe split as low as 50:50. People, I was told, were under-informed, misinformedand frightened. Fishermen on Croatia’s Adriatic coast thought, not withoutjustification, that fleets of Italian trawlers would come and hoover up alltheir fish while their small family boats would be relegated under EU rules tomere pleasure craft for personal use. Farmers along the same coast, this timewithout justification, thought they would have to tear up their olive groves ifCroatia joined. People said that the southern tourist towns would be bought upby foreigners and that Croatia would be made to bail out the likes of Greece,ruining its industry.

But once you talked to pro-EU Croatians, who were not inshort supply, you heard a different story. “The economy is f****d,” one taxidriver put it bluntly, “destroy our industry? We have no industry left! Wealready sold it all. Our coast owned by foreigners? It’s already owned by richRussians!” He has a point. Croatia’s credit rating is hovering just above junkstatus. It desperately needs investment.

“Without the confidence to investors of joining,” saysCroatia’s cosmopolitan Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic, “our budget is in serioustrouble.” She’s out on the streets trying to explain to people the benefits ofjoining. Croatians aren’t used to seeing their politicians out on the street.As one local puts it, “we’re used to having our leaders up there on the hill(the parliament is perched above the rest of Zagreb) for us to either adore orhate. We’ve not actually had to meet them.”

Both the pro and anti EU Croatian public share a generaldistrust of politicians. Perhaps it’s healthy. Both Vesna Pusic and heropponent, nationalist party leader Ruzhia Tomasic share their own generalfeeling too. They both say the debate has been held in an atmosphere of generalignorance. Both though seem resigned to the vote taking place now. In fact themore I thought about it, the strident pro and anti EU voices were perhaps evena distraction. The vast majority of people seemed to have better things to do.

In the end 66% of the Croatians who voted chose join the EU,33% were against. The turnout was just 43%. After all the hubbub thenationalists didn’t even show up on the square on the day of the vote. Neitherdid the pro-camp celebrate. You would hardly have noticed it.

On the way out of the hotel I thanked the receptionist withan unconventional, “welcome.”

“Welcome?” she cocked her head.

“Welcome to the EU.”

“Oh that! Thankyou,” she replied, then pausing for thought,“I didn’t much bother with it. Well at least it’ll be easier for you to comeback.”

It was pretty easy to get into Croatia anyway, but I’m surethe nationalists and europhiles who care so much, and the rest who don’t, willstill be there when I do return.

Romania's Revolution- It's not a party like 1989

2012-01-26T18:51:00.000Z

It was about 8pm when Iarrived. My taxi driver pulled up on the far side of a hotel and said hewould go no further. He said it was just round the other side of the building.I paid and stepped out into night air thumping with the sounds of protest.

I saw the police lorriesbelching exhaust fumes and the Jandarmeria, Romania’s police for civil orderhuddled round in groups. As I rounded the side of the hotel onto Universitysquare in the middle of Bucharest I saw the crowd spread out across it.Romanian flags were waving as protesters young and old were gathered around. “Getout you filthy dog!” came the roar. Then they switched to hoarse, boo-likeyells of , “Resign! Resign!”

As I entered the crowd moredetailed grievances emerged, usually written on plaques; from a few words todetailed essays. The themes were similar. Economic- They’ve taken our money, stifledour chances of earning it and denied prospects to the young. And Political-They don’t care about democracy, all our politicians are corrupt, Basescubullies around a puppet government.

Much of the anger in Romania’santi-government protests is being directed at President Traian Basescu. He’s beenin the post for seven years and was originally popular. The problems reallystarted since the financial crisis hit in 2008. Romania’s economy is weak, oneof the weakest in the European Union. In 2009 Basescu and his governmentarranged a 20 billion euro loan with the International Monetary Fund, EuropeanUnion and World Bank.

It helped pay salaries andpensions but came with stringent conditions. Unlike Greece, the Romaniangovernment has tried to be financially responsible. But what might pleaseinternational financiers is unlikely to please the people on the receiving endof the austerity. In 2010 sales tax was ramped straight up from 19% to 24%.Public sector salaries were slashed by a quarter. Pensions were frozen. Livingstandards have taken a battering.

He was getting ready to joina protest expected to bring 10,000 out onto the streets when I managed to catchhim. Adrian Vasile is a University assistant doctor. He and his wife can hardlyafford to pay their mortgage because of the pay cuts. “They’re happy to cut ourpay, but they don’t cut the mortgage repayments even though the banks are theones who got the IMF loan,” he says.

Adrian Vasile says he's being squeezed by the government's austerity measures.

He’s just one among countlessothers; a woman who has to pay her social security out of her frozen pensionmoney; a 56 year old engineer who’s been fired after 35 years work but with nopension until he’s 65 because the law changed. Until then he’s trapped becauseno one will hire him. Tudor Gheorghe, 58, who won a medal from PresidentBasescu for designing a scanner which can detect illegal cargo inside lorries.He’s handing his medal back because the government revoked the money that camewith the medal to save costs.

There are many economic grievancesagainst the Romanian government. But they’re rarely far away from politicalones. Government corruption and contempt for democracy here are cited as muchas austerity by people fed up with having their voices ignored. The PrimeMinister Emil Boc is frequently accused of being President Basescu’s poodle.The Romanian constitution holds the president as a national arbitrator, a conciliatorypolitical figure, not an executive one. Boc was chosen and pushed by Basescu ashis candidate for Prime Minister despite widespread opposition. When parliamentrejected him for the job, Basescu used his prerogative to put him forward againand he was chosen by a brow beaten parliament.

Not that the parliament is abastion of hope either. Many highly contentious laws pass without debate andmany see both government and opposition as riddled with corrupt cronyism. Whenvarious opposition politicians tried to join the protests in university squarethey were bundled out by angry crowds.

Many people are comparing Basescuto former Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who was shot after a popularrevolution in 1989. The main protests then were held in university square. Holesare now being cut out of Romanian flags just as they were then. And cartoonshave emerged with Basescu’s and his wife’s face pasted onto pictures of thehated Ceausescus.

The protests in 1989 thoughwere much bigger than this. The protest that Adrian the assistant doctor wentto gathered maybe seven thousand people. In 1989 there were hundreds ofthousands. The whole country was in revolt. Today the demonstrations seem likepolitical trouble, but not a revolution. When fighting broke out with police atthe end of what had been a peaceful if rowdy protest on my third day inBucharest it was a hard core of young men and football fans who caused thetrouble.

Things can get rather blownout of proportion when you’re surrounded by like-minded and outraged fellowprotesters. Basescu knows that. He has come on television to say he has nointention of stepping down. He is not a dictator he says. And he adds that hisausterity measures, while tough, have saved the country from recession. The IMFdoes confirm that it expects the Romanian economy to grow 2% this year. Basescusaid that reforms under his leadership have helped reform the criminal justiceand education systems. He says that he knows what must be done. “We mustcontinue the fight against corruption and tax evasion,” and he wants to createjobs.

Mr Basescu has said nothing aboutthe protests since they started. Now he has says a lot that sounds good. Butthe protesters say a lot and sound convincing too. At the moment it seems thatneither of the sides seem to particularly impress the other. The protesters seeMr Basescu’s record as saying it all and his words now are to them so much hotair. For Mr Basescu the protests are simply not big enough to make himseriously worried. For the moment it’s the government that still holds thecards in Romania. If people start seeing things turn round the protests couldwell melt away with the spring. If they don’t though, Mr Basescu may not beable to be so blithe sitting in his presidential office.

Police examine a protester who claims he had been affected by tear gas and beaten. He put up a hell of a fight when they tried to take him to the police van though, so they called an ambulance instead.

Protesting in peace

2011-12-11T10:01:00.001Z

They came in their tens of thousands. On Bolotnaya square,just across the river from the Kremlin walls protesters gathered to vent theiranger at United Russia and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Their message wassimple. We don’t want a revolution. We want a re-run.

Russia’s parliamentary elections in early December werewidely seen as rigged. All over the country stories and video phone footage aboundedof voters bullied or bribed and opposition parties refused the chance to competeon trumped up technicalities. When it came to polling day, even if it was hardto verify, there seemed to be even more evidence of massive electoral fraud. Inpolling stations across Russia’s vast territory there surfaced videos andaccounts of ballot boxes stuffed with fake ballot papers and bogus voterscasting multiple and even mass votes at one or many locations. Once the votecounting started, the stream of revelations pushed the outrage to boilingpoint. In one video which quickly became a youtube sensation an electoralofficial is filmed secretly filling in extra ballot papers.

All of the accusations centre round the ruling United Russiaparty. Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, who intends to runfor a third term as president next year, are closely connected to the party.United Russia and Putin may have brought some stability and order to Russia inthe last decade. But as harassed and oppressed opposition groups point out,it’s come at the cost of real democracy. In yet another embarrassing exposure Medvedev,astonishingly on national TV, thanked the head of the now hated electoralcommission saying, “you’re a magician,.” “Oh, I’m just learning,” was the wryanswer.

"Guys! Vacate the area!" a call for Putin and Medvedev to go.

While the pixies of the polling station might have found thevote rigging funny, many others did not. They took to the streets in a seriesof demonstrations. The response was all too predictable from Putin and Medvedev’sgovernment. Police went in with the batons against the noisy but peacefully protestingcrowds. Busloads of clueless school kids were brought in from surrounding townsand in return for some money or a Macdonalds held a counter rally hailing Putinas a great leader and ‘celebrating’, yes this was the term used, ‘celebrating’ thesuccessful conclusion of the elections. What joyful little democrats. Exceptthey weren’t. Independent journalists went and asked the school kids what madeUnited Russia was so great. They forgot their prepared answers and justshrugged amidst the whirling litter of big mac boxes.

Meanwhile state TV channels invoked disgust in theiraudience by patently ignoring the protests and lying through their teeth thatthe ‘celebrations’ were all that was going on. The internet was awash withimages of pariah newsreaders and slogans (they’re more pithy in Russian) suchas ‘in Russia we have this profession, to lie every evening’ (on the eveningnews).

Not all the opponents of the protesters abandoned theirfanaticism so easily. The pro-Putin youth movement ‘Nashi’ (which means ‘ours’in Russian) and who are often derisively (but justifiably) referred to asNashists, were behaving in their usual vicious manner. Attacking the protestersor provoking them they then walked away while the police dragged the strugglingopposition supporters into armoured trucks and carted them to prison. Most ofthe time though the police acted unaided. It was their provocateurs, says theprotesters who were hiding amongst the crowd and it was the police who were alltoo ready to wade in batons flailing. Hundreds were sent to prison for termsranging up to fifteen days for the very public disorder the police andpro-Putin fanatics had stirred up. A famous opposition blogger, called Alexey Navalnywas one of those detained. He told reporters on the street through his cellwindow that he was being treated well. The protesters maintain he and hisfellow ‘political prisoners’ should never have been put there in the firstplace and should be immediately released.

The black and orange sign reads, "Putin, leave of your own will!" In one of those weird ironies of Russian politics, Putin is not actually and official member of United Russia, but the point is purely academic. Everyone knows the party is his creature.

Which is why everyone was so surprised when, at the biggestprotest rally in Moscow for perhaps a decade on December the 10^ththere was not a single arrest or disturbance. Even state TV decided, or wastold, this is too big to ignore and finally decided to show the demonstration.The crowd yelled their outrage and chanted slogans like, ‘re-election’, ‘Russiawithout Putin’ and ‘shame on you’. They shared with the politicians, poets andjournalists on the small stage the realism that they couldn’t change thecountry drastically overnight. But they also had answers for United Russia and forPutin. This rally came just days after the first and violent ones. Navalny andmany others were still in prison. Some had dubbed this the ‘white revolution’.Many carried white ribbons to symbolise a desire for clean and fair electionsand to wash away the dirty malpractice which had infected their country. Daysbefore Putin had seized on the word ‘revolution’. He said these people were amenace and tried to raise that old fall back spectre, foreign interference. Theprotesters, he said, were acting on a signal from the USA. Hillary Clinton hadsaid, as had millions of others Russian and otherwise, that the elections werenot free and not fair. Putin painted that as a signal to the protesters to thetry and cause mayhem in Russia. Nonsense replied the protesters.

But Putin’s nationalist talk didn’t stop the huge rally. Thepolice, to their credit, behaved moderately and with civility. Most observerswere surprised and delighted (not a word usually associated with Russianpolitics) that a noisy rally with a very major and serious anti-governmentmessage was full of politics, passion, and peacefulness. All went home with asense that something of lasting importance had been achieved. It’s unlikely,all agreed, that they will achieve their primary demand, a re-run of theelection. As the speakers reminded the crowd though, even without that theywon’t have long to wait until the white movement has some confirmation ofwhether they have been heard. There’s a presidential election in spring 2012.Before this week most had begrudgingly shrugged and concluded that Putin’svictory was all but inevitable. For the moment it still seems likely Putin willbe president once more. But after this, just maybe he’ll have to try and winwithout using any ‘magic tricks’.

"We demand a re-check of our voices!" That's the literal translation. But Russian is a creative language too. It's really a call for a re-run of the election, and a shout of outrage that democracy has been too long absent from Russia.

Russia Belarus- Half your sovereignty for half price gas

2011-11-23T17:03:00.001Z

This is the deal reportedly being done between Belarus andRussia as President Alexander Lukashenko visits Moscow.

Belarus gives complete control of its state gas transitmonopoly Beltranzgaz to Russian Gas monopoly Gazprom for $2.5 billion. Gazpromalready owns half of Beltranzgaz.

In return Russia halves its gas price for Belarus. It pegsit close to its own domestic Russian tariff. That’s probably going to be a dropfrom $300 per thousand cubic metres down to around $150. Customers in Europe have topay the market rate of well over $400 per thousand cubic metres.

So how much political influence can energy buy you over anothersupposedly sovereign state? There a lot more than just gas flowing around here.

Belarus is in big trouble. It’s been poor and alienated forsome time. Alexander Lukashenko was ‘elected’ for a fourth term last Decemberamid riots which he brutally put down. He’s been in power since 1994. His only internationalfriend with any clout is Russia. But friendship might be rather a generousword. Belarus’ economic situation has gone from bad to worse. It mostly exportsagricultural products and tractors, mostly to Russia. Its economy is in direstraits, facing its own economic crisis and rampant inflation.

Russia wants political influence over Belarus and for therenot to be an anti-Russian revolution there. Lukashenko is pro-Russian, so forthe time Moscow is content to subsidize him. But many think they want more.Russia has Belarus over a gas barrel so to speak.

Belarus has joined a Customs Union along with Kazakhstan andRussia. As part of membership both Astana and Minsk have agreed to give up manygovernment powers to the control of the customs union. Most will be administeredin Russia. It could even see Belarus abandoning its own rouble in favour of theRussian rouble.

All of this might make sense when Belarus is desperate tostabilise its currency and increase trade. But giving away the entire gasmonopoly, government controls and potentially even the currency? These maybecome deals the Belarusian people come to seriously regret, with theadditional cruel irony that they have no say in the matter while they’re being struck.

500 days to Mars and back, all without leaving earth

2011-11-04T04:49:00.000Z

The six 'crew' enter isolation in their mock space ship on June 3rd 2010.

The Russian hypesters say we've virtually already travelled to Mars. Russia's most famous cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov and others say it's a waste of time. It's certainly achieved little more than as an isolation experiment, but Mars 500 has been quite a feat.

The six 'crew' of the mock spacecraft have managed to stay locked in for 520 days, over 17 months. I suspect submarine crews may have managed longer, but it's still a very long time to be stuck with five other men with only routine to keep you company.

Of course that is just what a Mars mission would entail, just with varying amounts of gravity and possible death in the icy vacuum of space also thrown in. NASA is vaguely aiming for such a mission in the 2030's. Russia and it's agency ROSCOSMOS will likely be a major partner as long as the two don't do something silly and fall out. They work very closely together at the moment and both will be watching the results of this experiment with some interest.

For one of the questions the Mars 500 experiement is trying to answer is, how will us homo sapiens cope in such isolation for such a long time?

The fear is of 'social narrowing'. A human stuck in the same narrow company with nothing much to do for such a long time is thought to experience a deadening of social interaction. Scientists at antartic research stations withdrew into themselves, stopped eating together, and wore a vacant expression.

Back in orbit there have even been reports of 'space madness', with crew freaking out when they dwelled too much on the fact they were in a metal box floating in the void.

Luckily, none of that happened in this experiment. Despite many bookies predicting one or other of the participants would leave, that fights would break out and that some of them would even go insane, they've got along relatively well and no one has quit.

All six were carefully psychologically selected. They were all from scientific and engineering backgrounds, happy to bury their head in a problem or work together on one. None of them were given to childish attempts to gain power or attention. They were also well attended to from the outside world.

There were some notable moments such as when they made a cardboard christmas tree or all clubbed together to perform a guitar hero rendition of blur's song 2. But the scientists were amazed to see how much the six men came to believe in their world. When halfway through the trip a mock mars landing took place the crew took it deadly seriously. One observer noted how their heartbeats were 160 a minute. Yury Gagarin's when he became the first man in space was only 152!

Controversially the organisers at Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems did decide to withhold potentially depressing news from the outside world. But the six men were allowed free communication with their families (albeit with a realistic 20 minute time delay) and had regular communication with the control room.

They'll have a full debrief and the researchers will make sure they're all sound now it's over. But they can be proud of themselves for enduring and undoubtedly contributing to the day when a real mars mission takes humanity that bit further into the exploration of space.

Russia's town in the Arctic- Cold Logic?

2011-11-02T18:48:00.000Z

Valery Rzhevsky- Very confident his model will become a northen
Russian outpost.

He calls it Umka. A town in Russia's frozen northern arctic coast. Or at least it will be according to architect Valery Rzhevsky who designed it. He says it will be a base for engineers working to extract oil and gas from under the arctic sea bed.

"It will also be a port on the northern sea route," he enthuses. Russia has long dreamt of opening a route along it's northern coast for ships from the Atlantic and North Sea to the Pacific. "This would put a port on that route for ships and their attendant ice breakers to stop at." Valery goes on to describe how the town of 5000 people would be enclosed from the elements by giant insulated metal walls. Inside would be a gym, a park, a swimming centre and even an orthodox church.

But Valery also freely admits it's part of an unashamed grab for territory in the arctic. While the UN convention on the law of the sea tries to assess various claims to the arctic seabed, Russia especially has not been waiting for the process to finish. In 2007 the famous Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov used a special mini submarine to plant the Russian flag on the arctic seabed. He and other Russians claim a huge area of seabed including the north pole is a geological extension of the Russian continental shelf under Russian territorial waters. That would give Russia control over potentially vast natural reserves of gas and oil. The arctic is estimated to hold up to 13% of the world's undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered gas.

Many fear an arms race gearing up in the region with Russian, Canada, Denmark and Norway and the U.S. among those building and training new arctic military and naval forces. But as for the $6.4 billion arctic town, Chilingarov is sceptical, telling Rzhevsky when he saw the plans, "it's not yet forbidden to dream in Russia." It will take a long time to see if this project really does materialize, or is just a Russian white dream.

A model of 'Umka', the arctic town. The church is in the foreground,
the port in the distance.

Sleuthing at speed- Encounter with Encounter

2011-09-15T20:41:00.000+01:00

In dark, abandoned houses round Moscow you can see them gather nearly every week. Groups of lights about the rubble flit about for an hour or so then leave. They gather at abandoned factories, in woodland, by lakesides and in car parks. Always at night, always flitting around in small clusters then leaving.

Move closer and the initial mystery will be revealed. These are not, in fact, fairies. They are the players of the action mystery game, Encounter.

Started back in the 90s by the Belorussian Ivan Masliukov the game is rather like a supercharged car treasure hunt. Each team needs a vehicle and a laptop (as well as torches and perhaps an array of other useful artefacts or gadgets). Clues are delivered by logging on to the military looking encounter system. Then the competition is on as anything from a handful to hundreds of teams race throughout the night to various checkpoints throughout the city solving riddles and collection codes. Pictures of long dead artists, words plays on the name of local parks or sites, passwords given by talking to fake ‘strangers’, even announcements on the car radio. They can all be the source of codes. Each code unlocks the next clue.

I was lucky enough to travel around a game with Masha Bardashun, one of the organisers who had come from Minsk to supervise a game in Moscow. When I asked her what attracted people to the game, she said it was about an escape from the drudgery of everyday life. “Even so called entertainment in everyday life can become dull,” she said. “Going to the cinema six times a week, going to restaurants after work, encounter is for people who want a thrill and to spend their night totally differently.”

Since its inception Masliukov’s game has taken off around the world and spawned many versions like it. Andrey Naumov, another of this game’s organisers told me about the possibilities going international has brought. “Now we can set a challenge to find a code say, in, New York. You would have to ring a player there and ask them to help you. Of course they would be wise to help because they might need your help in the future!”

Of course it doesn’t always go according to plan. As Masha explains, reality can sometimes intrude into their fantasy world. “We once put many codes on a cow shed near Minsk the day before the game. When the players arrived there we started getting confused phone calls saying there was no shed. When I arrived I realised the shed had been knocked down that day! Woops!”

As the small hours crept on we sped from one checkpoint to the next. It’s this speed that’s caused controversy for the game. Putting teams of young drivers on the road at night to compete chasing after objectives is certainly a risk. More than once it has resulted in crashes and even deaths. Organisers say that safety is down to individual teams and no point scoring is worth irresponsible driving. But a question mark still hangs over the safety record of the game.

For many though, the danger is just what they crave. One team member I spoke to only wanted to do the driving. He’s helped organise a few games but his real passion was the chance to drive to the limit when the roads were nearly empty. Certainly, if youngsters want to do these games, trying to stop them is virtually impossible.

As the night hours ticked by I thought we were doing well. But as I was to discover, we were nowhere near the lead. In the end we emerged at the finish point, a café where all the teams met, to find the winners already on their main course!

So much for our sleuthing, but I have to say my encounter with encounter was a thrilling way to spend the night!

Volgograd voyage- Day Six- Steel Coffins

2011-08-21T07:25:00.001+01:00

We travelled out west to a tiny village west of Volgograd called Kisilyov. There archaeologists had found an old soviet tank buried in the mud next to a pond. We arrived to see them dragging the nearly 70 year old hulk out of the mud and water. Crowds of locals gathered around.

A digger and a bulldozer heaved in turns on two long cables as the men around shouted and waved their arms. Eventually we saw the metal emerging from the mire. Once it was pulled out a team moved in to hose the tank off and peer inside it. There wasn’t much left except the chassis.

We found out from the local battle archaeologists that it was from the 20th division and, like the bodies of infantrymen we had seen excavated some days before was lost in a desperate battle trying to stop the Germans closing in on Stalingrad. The archives marked the vehicle as lost and most battle excavators thought they would never find it. But they literally stumbled upon it when they dug a trench through an old pond here. They found four T-34s, the famous and ubiquitous war winning tank, and this one, called a T-60, in this small rural valley. All were made in Stalingrad.

Thousands of T-60s were built between 1941 and 1942. It’s a tank that’s been largely forgotten since the war, but in 1942 there simply wasn’t time to switch round the machines that built them to producing more useful T-34s or other hardware. ‘Build something, anything,’ was the ethos as so many factories had been captured or evacuated east with the resulting disruption to output. However even before 1942 the T-60 had quickly become known as ‘the mass grave’ by its crews. It was a light tank, and even by the outbreak of war was dangerously inadequate for fighting against its Wehrmacht foes. Even some of the more powerful small arms rounds could penetrate its armour. The resulting tactics were to rush as many T-60s as possible forward, to try and swamp enemy defences. This in turn ended in the ‘mass grave’. Production was stopped in 1942.

I tried to picture the scene sixty nine years ago as the storm of war arrived at this peaceful corner of Russia. I couldn’t see any bodies in the tank, but I knew there would be many around. This was just a machine that we’d brought to the surface, but the evident chaos of its final moments gave us a stark window back into that maelstrom. The scars left by the grinding behemoths that are industrial systems at war, are not easily removed.

Portrait of a Russian- Lyubov Komar- Grief and democracy

2011-08-13T12:54:00.002+01:00

Lyubov Komary, with some of her pictures behind her, including the black and white photo of her son Dima.

As we enter Lyubov’s flat she comes to greet us with smiling informality and launches straight away into chatting. Incense is hanging in the air and a cat scurries about from room to room. One room has a large cabinet all across one wall stacked with books of all kinds. In the main room, on two tables are laid out photos from August 1991. Larger prints are propped up against the wall too. Most show Lyubov’s son, Dmitry.

Dmitry seemed from the photos to have been a happy boy. Later the photos changed to ones of a handsome young soldier, who served over two years in Afghanistan. Then comes the drama of the coup attempt of August 18th-21st 1991. But Dima (a diminutive form of Dmitry) isn’t in these photos.

When it became clear on the 19th of August that some members of the communist party were trying to sideline Gorbachev and take power (the reason for all the tanks and police on the streets) Dmitry had told his mother that he was going to stay with a friend in Moscow. In actual fact he had answered the call of Aleksandr Rutskoi, an anti-coup politician and close ally of Boris Yeltsin (at this time) who hailed all former Afghan veterans to come and defend the white house (the site of the Russian Supreme Soviet, basically the national parliament and by this point a symbol of the democracy crowds of people had gathered to protect). Even though she didn’t know what he was doing, Lyubov says she knew something was happening. “I felt uneasy and there was a ringing in my ears.” Then, on August the 21st, just as the turning point came and the coup began to collapse, the ringing in her ears suddenly stopped. “I knew he was dead, “ says Lyubov. Soon after came the phone call she was dreading.

Also in the flat was another man and friend of Lyubov’s, Gennady Veritilny. He had been near the white house and had seen exactly what had happened. We asked him outside later. “He was on top of a pro-coup armoured personnel carrier, trying to open the hatch to pull the crew out. He was shot but not killed. His body fell in front of the armoured car but it carried on and ran him over, killing him.”

Dmitry was one of three people killed during the coup attempt. The other two were shot. Thousands flooded to their funeral on the 24th of August 1991. At the centre of it was Lyubov. “I was like a zombie for three years afterwards, “ she says, “my other son and daughter had to help me not to commit suicide.”

Now Lyubov can put Dmitry’s sacrifice into context, but she doesn’t come to a very happy conclusion. “At the time he was defending democracy. The coup plotters were simply power crazed.” However, when I asked if she thought Dmitry’s death had been in vain or not, she replied, “Now with all the corruption in Russia and the people we have in power, that’s not the Russia all those people fought for and my son died for.” Lyubov also thinks the coup plotters from the ‘Gang of Eight’ as it was called, were let off. “The putschists (‘putsch’ is another word for coup) aren’t in prison nowadays, they have high positions, money and power again. So in the end, they won.”

Dimtry Komar did help stop armoured personnel carriers gathering into position for an attack on the white house. That may have helped save the white house, and Russia’s fledgling democracy. Given his perspective at the time, few would say that Dmitry died in vain. It’s what’s happened to Russia’s democracy since, darkly ironic seeing as fear of a chaotic aftermath of the Soviet Union was one of the coup plotters' main motivations, that has, in Lyubov’s mind, inexcusably cheapened the sacrifices made back on that fateful night in August 1991.

Volgograd voyage- Day 5- Uryupinsk

2011-08-13T10:51:00.000+01:00

Rural Russia has its own beauty as the sun rises over it, a kind of vast, relaxed embrace. Even at the roadside shacks selling shashlik (kebabs on a skewer), honey and snacks there was a practical, unglamorous friendliness that is hard to find elsewhere. Uryupinsk is the town we were heading for. In Russian it’s spelt Урю́пинск, but I’ve spelt it close to the sound of the word which is pronounced rather like this, Uriyu(the ‘u’ in both places is pronounced like you would say the double ‘o’ in ‘book’)pinsk.

If you ask a Russian about Uryupinsk they will probably laugh and say, in their own charming way, that it’s ‘in the ass’. This is the way Russians say it’s a s**thole. Russia has its fair share of those, but Uryupinsk has become the symbol for all things and places backward and rural. It’s populated in these stereotypes with idiot bumpkins. One local related to me an apocryphal but entertaining tale of an Uryupinsk school child who was asked by his teacher who the photograph of the famous socialist thinker was. The boy thought for a while, then said that sorry, he couldn’t tell because the man had too much beard on his face. Any guesses? Answer at the bottom if you’re like the child.*

But having been there, I would say the Russians are rather harsh on poor Uryupinsk and it’s people. It’s a poor place and looks very ex-soviet but that makes it alike most other Russian towns. A small café served us nothing very much at all except some greasy chips and tea. Then we went to see the lady we had come here to meet. She is without doubt a remarkable woman, and you will without doubt not have heard of her.

Pelegea keeps about ten goats, a flock a chickens, a gaggle of around ten noisy geese, some cats and a noisy dog. Every day she tends to them and feeds them. She collects the eggs from the chickens and sells them. She combs the soft haired goats and spins their wool by hand on a rickety wheel. She then makes shawls and clothes from the wool and sells them too. She does all this herself. Pelegea is ninety years old.

Her husband died when he was fifty. Even all these years later Pelegea says she feels lonely without him. She strikes up a song as she spins her wool. The tune warbles and dances along with her weathered voice. Her song doesn’t sound sad, but Pelegea informs us after that it’s a lament for him. Having said that Pelegea isn’t a melancholy woman. Lively and motivated, she keeps a vegetable garden on the outskirts of town as well. She says she just can’t sit down. As I see her wrestling with them I’m afraid that some of more delinquent goats may knock her over as they struggle to avoid a combing. But she always stays up with the help of her stick, which she affectionately refers to as her ‘grandfather’.

Actually Pelegea’s goat keeping isn’t that unique round here. Although Uryupinsk may be famous to most Russians as the back of beyond, any of the residents will proudly point you to their goat statue, their wool spinner’s statue or their goat museum. Yes, Uryupinsk prides itself on its goats.

And life goes on in Uryupinsk just as it does anywhere else. Pelegea isn’t just the proud head of her livestock. She had three grandchildren, though as she tells us one was killed in a car crash many years ago. She has five grandchildren and now seven great grandchildren. Some of their pictures adorn the walls, smiling from somewhere in the countryside, or standing proudly in their army uniform.

If they have a spirit as tough as Pelegea, they’ll do Uryupinsk proud.

* Karl Marx

Portrait of a Russian- Oleg Baklanov- The Engineer from the Gang of Eight

2011-08-10T13:44:00.000+01:00

When Oleg Baklanov sat down at the press conference of the newly formed State Committee on the State of Emergency on the 19th of August 1991, he was First Deputy Chairman of the Defence Council of the USSR. He was also, in this moment, one of those who sought to save the country, as they put it, from Gorbachev’s reforms. In particular they wanted to stop his Union treaty which would have given more power to the Soviet republics and, so they thought, would mean the end of the Soviet Union.

Oleg doesn’t like the word ‘putsch’. He told us not to use it before our interview because he says it’s an overly negative word coined by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He directed us to an article written by a Russian academic more recently defending their actions. ‘The Patriotism of Duty’ it’s titled. This is more how Oleg likes to think of what he and his fellow plotters did.

But for most of his life Oleg Baklanov wasn’t centrally involved in Soviet politics. He was a prestigious engineer and rocket scientist, helping to design and oversee huge improvements in Soviet rocket and space technology.

However, as the crisis of the Soviet Union developed throughout 1991 Baklanov became one of those convinced something had to be done to stop the breakup of the USSR. In March a plebiscite had found the majority of people wanted the Soviet Union to remain intact. It is this plebiscite that Oleg referred to as justification for the opposing the union treaty. Like others involved in the coup attempt he is very negative towards Gorbachev. “The Union treaty was against the will of the people,” he told me.

As a result tanks went into the streets of Moscow on the 18th of August 1991. When people found out what was happening on the 19th, and that Gorbachev was not, as the coup members had said, ill, they barricaded the Russian parliament which became the symbol of Russian hopes of democracy. When the President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin (not president of the Soviet Union, that was Gorbachev, yes two presidents, Russian politics at this time contains too many name changes too fast, a sure sign of trouble) stood on a tank whose crew was sympathetic and rallied the people to defend democracy and Gorbachev, Oleg says he knew the Emergency Committee, or coup plotters if you prefer, had to back down or open fire. Neither he nor his fellow coup members were prepared to kill civilians.

Oleg does maintain that the current tale of the August coup is a pack of lies spun by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. For example, it’s widely accepted that Gorbachev was shut up inside his Crimean villa where he had been on holiday, and his phones cut off so he couldn’t have contact with the outside world. Both Baklanov and Vasily Starodubtsev who I interviewed in another post say that’s not true. “We didn’t block Gorbachev,” protests Oleg, “we didn’t want to seize power either. We were already in power, we didn’t need to do that. We wanted to save the Soviet Union.”

The coup had failed by the 21st of August and the plotters were arrested, apart from the interior minister who shot himself. Most were given amnesties after light punishment. Oleg Baklanov returned to the space industry and is still a director of the Russian space technology agency.

But he does allow himself a little wistfulness, perhaps justifiably, at what could have been. “If the Soviet Union could have been maintained we could have avoided the state of modern slavery that exists in Russia now. So many people from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics come to Russia looking for work and end up working for nothing as modern slaves. This is terrible when they could have worked where they lived in the Soviet Union,” Oleg says.

Oleg himself is a child of the Soviet Union. He was born in Kharkov in the Ukraine. He's nearly eighty now but doesn’t want there to be only negative memories of the USSR. He’s chairman of the society of friendship and cooperation between the peoples of Ukraine and Russia. His list of scientific and engineering achievements in the cosmonautics field is vast. He most probably wouldn’t have achieved all he has if it weren’t for the Soviet Union. So although one might not excuse the methods of Baklanov and his fellow conspirators in those fateful August days, we can perhaps sympathise with the genuine respect he felt for the system he was trying to save.

Volgograd voyage- Day 4- Waterways

2011-08-09T19:48:00.001+01:00

Ship 'Volga-Don 101' enters the first lock of the canal.

As we emerged onto the bridge we saw it. The Volga-Don Shipping Canal. What struck me first was how picturesque it was. Smart grass banks ran down to the lock. Above it, on a hill up stone steps was the manager’s office. It was like a minor noble’s house. We first entered the plotting room, and there the picturesque gave way to planning.

It was built in the 1950’s, but apart from the Russian it looked much like I would expect such a facility anywhere in Europe. Charts showed which ships were entering and leaving locks right across the 100km channel linking the Volga and Don rivers. A cross section also showed the lock system, nine locks lifting ships up 88metres from the Volga and another four lowering them 44 metres down to the Don on the other side. Three powerful pumping stations bring water up from the Don to maintain the water level. Phones kept ringing for the ‘dispatchers’. They would give permission for ships to enter and leave locks and for the water levels to be changed.

When we went down to the lock itself though, the communist engineering pride couldn’t be hidden among the trees on the banks. The arch above the lock entrance was topped an each side by a metal statue of a collection of Soviet banners. The project was finished in 1952, the year before Stalin died. It was a typically Stalin like project. The first plans to join the two rivers date back to the Turks who owned most of the region in 1569. Many others tried, most notably Peter the Great, but none of them had access to the vast number of slave labourers created by the Gulag prison camp system. Stalin did, and by the year of its completion there were 100,000 of them toiling and dying to finish it. As with projects across the Soviet Union, it’s a monument to engineering ambition, built on the misery of a totalitarian system using slave labour.

The controls may be modernised, but the lock systems are the same as they
were in the fifties.

The lock doors opened with a call from the dispatcher. In floated the ship slowly. Then up it went when the pumps were switched on and out the other end. The system is in the process of going digital so we saw a mixture of fifties style working and modern computer technology. It was an impressive sight. They reckon the canal has shifted numbers approaching half a million vessels since it was built and 12 million tonnes of cargo passes through every year.

However the canal isn’t without its problems, as its manager Alkensandr Naumov, told us. “The water level gets harder to support, with less and less melt water each year because of less snow.” There have also been problems caused by the Volga hydroelectric station upstream, he adds, “The hydroelectric plant sometimes starves us of water so that we can only let in smaller ships, or half full ones.”

Alkensandr Naumov says they have problems these days with one of the things
you need most in a canal, water.

If you can put aside the cost, this is at least an engineering achievement the Soviets and now the Russians can be proud of. All they need now is the water to run it.

Volgograd voyage- Day 3- Empty Acres

2011-08-08T14:26:00.000+01:00

We drove north from Volgograd along a bumpy road, turning in to the yard of a former cooperative farm. This was the farm office, now the local centre for the company ‘Krasnodonsky’ that succeeded its Soviet ancestor. The company has pigs, chickens and arable crops in land parcels spread out across a vast area. Despite being the main office many pig sheds were also located here and the air was rich with the scent of them. The boss of the operation, like the operation itself was typical of many across the former Soviet Union. He wore a suit, had a very high opinion of himself and liked to think that his importance meant he could tell us how to go about our job. When we politely told him what we needed to film, he was initially hostile to any access at all (funny, I thought we’d surmounted that hurdle when we arranged to come all this way) but to his credit he eventually gave in and even let us see something rather unconventional on a Russian farm.

We followed one of his managers out into the open semi-steppe, the sun was bright and the grass and scrub stretched to the horizon and beyond. This is what you think of when you think of Russian agriculture. There were crops here and there, but it hardly seemed as if there was much urgency about planting much of it. Eventually we pulled into a yard next to what looked rather like chicken sheds. But as we got out of the cars a strange sound greeted our ears, a sort of bass thump, as if delivered by one of those beat box musicians who do all the sounds without instruments. There it was again, and again. Ah! I thought, so this is where all those beat boxers come from. They’re training regiments of them in Russia to flood the shopping malls of Europe! Not quite, round the corner of the sheds I saw them, hundreds of emus. The farm housed 460 in total, used mainly for their meat.

Emus, in Russia. Who would have thought?

But he's not wearing a mortar board as emu professor, it's the top of the shed.

We asked their keeper, Nina Markina, what she thought of her wards. “They have a strong temperament,” she said, “at first I hated them because they’re very aggressive, especially when they have young, but after a couple of seasons I learnt their personalities and I can control them more easily now.” The bass thumps are a form of communication, not a form of bird a cappella. The eggs are hatched in incubators and for their first few weeks the young birds are kept in a special pen. But what brought Nina out here to the beautiful but very isolated countryside and kept her here? There were a few wooden houses nearby but that was it. Of course, it was all about money. Her daughter was in university, her son approaching his school leaving exams. And would they come back to help her when they were educated? “No,” she said, “I don’t want them to come back here. There’s no opportunity here.”

Nina Markina had grown used to working with the big birds,
but didn't want her children following her.

That is a refrain I’ve heard much from Russians. They look down on ‘the village’ as they call it. Of course many young Russians still come from the countryside. But few want to go back there from university or their first jobs in a town or city. The countryside, once such an inspiration for Russian musicians, painters and writers is now largely derided. In many places in the world being a farmer is seen as carrying with it a good, wholesome upbringing, even sometimes aristocratic qualities. Not here. Perhaps it was the Soviets’ love of the cities, but all those living in the countryside are, on a stereotypical level, seen as a bit backward. This is proving an increasing problem for Russia as its countryside, and agricultural sector, are being speedily depopulated.

Anastasia Ivanova thought working on a farm wasn't bad,

but there aren't so many like her in Russia.

We arrived next to a chicken farm about an hour’s drive away. It looked and worked much like its European counterparts. Rows of chicken sheds housed thousands of birds at different stages of growth running around on the floors of the specially environmentally controlled spaces. But as well as the modern set up, it was also here that we met some of the young Russians who are bucking the trend of leaving the countryside. Anastasia Ivanova was twenty four. But as she explained, working for Krasnodonsky’s chicken farm seemed a sensible option. “They train us in vetinary science and pay us a reasonable wage,” she said. “I trained as a vet for this kind of work, there would be no use for me in the city.” Anastasia also had her complaints though. She wanted more government support for Russian farm staff. “They could give us some subsidy for rural housing for a start. It’s very difficult to live here otherwise.” President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have often talked about agriculture as one the Russian government’s big priorities. But despite the rhetoric and considerable flows of money, Russia’s agricultural storage facilities and transport networks are falling apart, and there still aren’t the incentives to create enough Anastasias to run the sector in the future.

Our third visit of the day was 150km away. Narrow streams cut gullies into shallow rolling grassland. Only one low line of chalk hillocks stood out and aside from small copses, there were few trees. This terrain ran up to fields, cultivated where the soil wasn't too thin and rocky to prohibit it. We turned off the road onto a dusty dirt track. The small villages of wooden huts we passed seemed abandoned, until locals emerged going about their business. Then looming over the horizon in this very poor and barren landscape we saw them, three huge, state of the art John Deere tractors stood with their planting rigs behind them, filling up with wheat seed for planting. Krasnodonsky was not only a local concern. It was owned by a holding group somewhere in a big city office. The capital they had invested was what enabled them to buy five of these huge tractor and planting rigs. Just as well. They were planting a field 264 hectares in size (a field this size is nearly unheard of in the UK). The five rigs had 30,000 hectares to plant in total and were working 24 hours a day to do it. Now the potential of modern technology, applied to Russia’s vast land mass was plain for me to see.

However once again we were back to old problems. I noticed all of the men driving, loading, controlling and maintaining these machines were old. When I asked why there were no younger men here the answer was depressing. These machines are too valuable, I was told. We wouldn’t trust younger men with them. It’s this kind of attitude that is holding Russian agriculture back. Fair enough the men had a point, but not even a single young apprentice was there learning how to run these machines for the future. As the three tractors drove off down the field, looking like a scene from an old Soviet propaganda reel, I was impressed at how far some of Russia’s agriculture has come. But I was also worried. For when these men grew old, who would there be to man those 30,000 hectares then?

Portrait of a Russian- The Peasant Leader from the Gang of Eight

2011-08-06T17:17:00.001+01:00

His hero Lenin behind him, Vasily says they only stopped the coup to avoid killing civilians.

Well that's a small improvement on Lenin then.

It was mid morning by the time we had bumped our way to Spaskaya, a village 175km south of Moscow. I’ve been on worse roads, but it always makes watching the sunrise that little bit more difficult. We turned off the main road, and there it was, the ‘Central Administrative Building’. No village hall or local council here. Most old Soviet districts have their pillar saying their name, complete with rusting hammer and sickle, their statue of Lenin, and their central administrative building.

A central administrative building is usually block shaped, concrete with some attempt at stone façade (usually brown), and half empty. We were not disappointed. This one conformed to shape and style, but had sprouted an impressive thatch of ivy which had gone uncut for many years. Inside we passed through the dusty lobby, up a dusty staircase onto a dusty landing. To our left was the only room on the long corridor where we could see activity, to our right, six or seven faded red soviet banners in a cabinet, their metal hammer and sickle clad spear tips still looking ferociously defiant. In some places the USSR has clung on more obstinately than others.

Which is precisely why we were here. I haven’t usually found you can tell an awful lot from a man’s business card. But when Vasily Starodubtsev emerged from his door just to the right of the flags, his card described the man in triumphant terms. It reads-

The Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, The State Duma (fair enough, he is a serving member of parliament)

Committee of Agriculture, Deputy

The Hero of Socialist Work (An impressive achievement, but perhaps better on a CV, and with a spellcheck)

Corresponding member USSR State prize laureate (well done comrade)

Russian Academy of Agriculture Science (fair enough again, he chooses the priorities on his own business card)

To be fair this was the English side of his business card so it would be pretty rich of me not to forgive the grammar. But after a few minutes talking I soon realised the reason for the parade of Soviet achievements. He started by putting up a stout defence of Lenin, saying many people disparaged him, but that he had created a new civilization. I tried to find common ground with this former head of a successful ‘Kolkhoz’ (collective farm), by revealing that my family are farmers back in England. Nods of approval, followed by the words, “he who provides bread, provides truth.” I was starting to feel like a hero of the Soviet Union myself.

Vasily Starodubtsev has rare views for these days and ones getting rarer in Russia. He wants the Soviet Union back. He firmly believes that if the Soviet Union had survived Russia would not have some of the major problems it does today. The huge gap between rich and poor, the declining population and the general weakness he perceives in its world position. He was prepared, as others were on August 18th 1991, to try and launch a coup to make sure the Soviet Union wasn’t broken up. Goodness knows, he might be right and Russia may have been a better place today if they had succeeded. We shall never know.

Mr Starodubtsev was Chairman of the peasants Union of the USSR back in August 1991. He and seven others formed what has become known as the ‘gang of eight’, high ranking figures in the communist party who are widely believed to have imprisoned Mikhail Gorbachev in his Black sea holiday home and tried to take control of the country.

Vasily strenuously denies they ‘imprisoned’ Gorbachev. The story commonly told is that border guards operating for the plotters closed off his compound, called ‘Foros’ after the village it was near. His telephone lines were cut and he was told he must stay there. “No telephone lines were cut!” Insists Starodubtsev, “Gorbachev could have left whenever he wanted, he was just too scared to come back to Moscow.” This is certainly another version of the story. Fellow conspirator Vladimir Kryuchkov, the chairman of the KGB is on video admitting they put guards around Foros and cut off the phones. I couldn’t work out why Mr Starodubtsev was so convinced of the righteousness of his version of the story, a version that clashes with the one so widely told, so strikingly. Perhaps he has convinced himself of his own version events. Perhaps he knows the truth but will cover it up until the day he dies. Perhaps, he’s right. He wasn’t at all unsure though, and as sure as his story was his opinions of his opponents.

Everyone that gathered to defend the White House, Russia’s parliament building (yes the U.S. doesn’t have exclusive rights to that name!) was drunk, crazy or had been hired, according to Mr Starodubtsev. The crowds that gathered there on the 19th of August were immense. They wanted democracy, they didn’t believe what they had been told about Gorbachev being ‘ill’, and they wanted to protect their chance of a democratic Russia. Vasily says also that their self appointed leader, the dynamic, rabble rousing, and at this time sober Boris Yeltsin, was also out of control and didn’t give a hoot about the Russian people. In the end Starodubtsev’s view would coincide with the Russian public’s about Yeltsin. But at this moment he was hailed as the defender of democracy.

But Vasily’s harshest criticism was reserved for Gorbachev himself. “ I feel the worst kind of things about him, the worst. He’s a traitor, pure and simple. He always talked, he never actually did anything to help the people.” This was just a fragment of his tirade. In fact, on this Starodubtsev too now has many people on his side. Never mind what world leaders think of Gorbachev. The people he was supposed to serve, the Russian people, largely hate him. They blame him for ruining the Soviet Union and squandering its and Russia’s territory.

But on August 19th, when tanks were on the streets, all the protesters cared about was the supposed deposition of their president. The day before they had switched on their television sets to see Tchaikovsky’s swan lake playing instead of the news. The first statement from the so called ‘State Committee on the State of Emergency’ followed, saying that Gorbachev was ill and that they had taken over the running of the country in this crisis. Few people believed them. Everyone in the press conference who watched Vice President Gennady Yanayev deliver the statement could see his hands shaking. It seemed he didn’t even believe it himself. When then 24 year old journalist Elena Markina stood up and called it a coup, Yanaev’s official words were blown out of the water.

But that didn’t mean the coup was doomed. Not until the night of the 19th August, when three protesters were killed in clashes with troops loyal to the coup, did it really begin to fall apart, says Starodubtsev. The next day, when a group of the plotters tried to convince Gorbachev to resign and to stop his Union treaty which was designed to give more power to the Soviet republics (but which really kicked off the coup because the plotters thought it would destroy the Soviet Union) he flatly refused. They crumbled and that was it. Their moment of destiny had passed. By the end of 1991 the Soviet Union had gone.

Interior minister Pugo shot himself before they arrested him. The rest, including Starodubtsev admitted their guilt in return for light or no punishment. Does Vasily feel guilty at what he did. No he says. But he didn’t want to be responsible for killing innocent civilians (the three that were killed he says, weren’t innocent, again at odds with the commonly acknowledged story).

Vasily is nearly ninety now. He had been the chairman of a successful cooperative farm and had worked hard all his life to try and do the best for it and its members. He still serves Russia as a politician and cares deeply about its future. He is, by all account a decent man and certainly one with strongly held beliefs. As Churchill said, “you have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime on your life.” Vasily has certainly done that. He and his fellow coup members didn’t succeed in preserving the Soviet Union. You could try and tell him that’s because they went about it the wrong way, and that they were on the wrong side of history. But with the self belief or obstinacy of all those who did, or nearly did change history, like Churchill, or Starodubtsev’s own hero Lenin, he wouldn’t listen to you.

Volgograd Voyage- Day 2- Water and Earth

2011-08-04T16:33:00.001+01:00

The Volga Hydroelectric station strectching across the river.

We arrived at one of Soviet Russia’s great flagship symbols. What could demonstrate the irresistible march of Soviet power better than the taming of the mighty Volga river itself. Finished in 1961 the GES hydroelectric power station outside Volgograd is the largest in Europe. Its dam spans the Volga, allowing trains and trucks to cross on its back. Its twenty two generators kick out 12.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year (leaving a 60 watt light bulb on for an hour would use 0.06 kilowatt hours).

The Turbine hall, showing the tops of the huge cylinders rotating beneath.

This is all very impressive. But it isn’t as simple as Lenin’s declaration that, “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.” This was Soviet progress writ large. But it wasn’t really the Soviets providing the muscle. It was the Volga. It still does it today, and at great cost.

The Volgograd hydroelectric station is only the most visible example of the damage industrialisation has done to the Volga. The river’s basin contains forty five percent of Russia’s industry and fifty percent of its agriculture. As a result it’s littered with industrial waste. Oil slicks, sunken ships and chemicals scatter its 3500km course. The resulting death of plant and fish species and the vast algal blooms that spring up have led some action groups to label some of the Volga’s tributary rivers ‘dead’.

There are eight hydroelectric stations along the Volga, each providing valuable power but also disrupting the river’s natural flow. Artificially holding back or suddenly releasing water has led to rapid erosion of the banks. Perhaps most famously of all the hallowed sturgeon, the source of black caviar was stopped from swimming upstream to breed, its course blocked by the dams, causing its numbers to plummet.

Within a year all of these houses will have fallen into the Volga.

When I asked the local ecologist Natalia Loponsova if she thought the Volga itself was dying, she shuddered. But, quickly gathering herself again, she refused to accept such a gloomy conclusion. She admitted the damage is extensive, but added, “the Volga is too important, I simply can’t believe she is dying.”

There are in fact new projects to try and regulate how often the hydroelectric plant ‘dumps’ water downstream. There are also studies trying to analyse the mess that needs to be cleared up along the river. But the schemes are woefully short of cash and their recommendations are frequently ignored by industry and the authorities. It seems belief alone won’t stop the banks collapsing, or the fish dying.

We next travelled out into the countryside around Volgograd, returning to the theme of the fight for the city’s survival when it used to be called Stalingrad back in World War Two.

In August 1942, as German troops approached the city the Red Army which had been retreating scrambled to try and create a defensive line. We arrived at the scene of one such attempt. It was a windswept farmer’s field, but around twenty volunteers were digging holes in it. As we drew closer we saw fifteen skeletons in the small clutch of holes they had dug along just a thirty metre stretch. It was a sombre and moving sight.

Sergei Kochetov one of the volunteers who explained the massive task ahead of them.

One of the excavation volunteers, Sergei Kochetov, explained to us that through painstaking research they had identified this as the place where, in 1942, part of the 120th division from Tatarstan to the North had been hurried into position. Hopelessly outgunned against German tanks and without time to create a proper defence they had lost 70% of their men to the Wehrmacht onslaught. We saw just a fragment of that loss, three of four feet under the sandy soil. They weren’t buried but lay twisted and crumpled where they fell. Sergei identified some of them as younger soldiers because their skulls, not yet fully set by age, had crumbled down over the years.

Among the bones we found the paraphernalia of war. Gas masks, helmets, shells, bullets, mines, mortar bombs, magazines full of bullets and grenades. The rubber soles of their boots were still intact on their feet. The belt buckles still rested on their waists and their spoons for their rations lay around them. As the bigger rounds of ammunition were found the projectiles were removed from their casings and the old cordite propellant lit, burning away with a hiss and an orange yellow flame.

With a rare whole boot still attached, a female volunteer removes the leg of a fallen soldier.

“For decades these bodies have lay here,” Sergei explained. “When they were killed there was no time to bury them. Every available pair of hands was fighting. There was a war to win.” But in more recent years teams have been steadily excavating the sites of the Stalingrad battlefront which could have claimed as many as two million lives. Sergei told me he thinks his children will still have hundreds of thousands of bodies to dig up, such is the long shadow of this horror story. Especially poignant are some of the personal mementos they come across. “Sometimes we find a bullet case with a body. Inside is usually a letter to be delivered to loved ones in the case of their death. It’s very moving.”

Some years ago one of their excavations was shown on local TV. The TV station received a call from a man who thought he recognised one of the fallen soldiers referred to. He came to see the group, and found it was his father whose body he had been searching for for years. He was finally able to give him a proper burial.

As Sergei says, that was a one off. But the volunteers, ranging from their teens to their sixties are trying also to give these soldiers some dignity in death at last. They’re also able to read something of each battle in what they find. We found two Russian soldiers collapsed on top of some German 88mm artillery shells, still potentially explosive all these years later. Bomb disposal would have to deal with them, but the excavators agreed that it was probable these men had captured a German gun position before being killed themselves.

At the end of each day the teams wrap up the remains and take them to a room where they lay them out and light a candle for each one. They call it the last post, after the famous bugle call. With a folklore similar to the soldiers’ own all those years ago, they say that the longer each candle burns, the longer that soldier fought on. Well the soldiers themselves wouldn’t have known it, but every second of each candle wasn’t burnt in vain.

Volgograd voyage - Day 1 - The Lady with the Sword

2011-05-26T11:14:00.001+01:00

The view from the Mother Russia statue's head.

It looked around us like we were deep in the bowels of a nuclear bunker. Stark metal and concrete were all we could see. Up we wound our way on rough grey steps and steel ladders, the room for manoeuvre becoming less and less. Eventually we reached the last ladder, with a hatch at the top. "Careful here," said our guide, Vitally Shumliansky, one of the keepers of this site, "this is the most dangerous part."

We poked our heads out of the hatch to dazzling sunlight and a panoramic view of Volgograd, one of southern Russia's big cities. The vast, sparkling Volga River cruised along beyond the foot of the hill we were on. In front of me was an enormous grey sword, connected to an enormous arm, connected the gigantic statue of Mother Russia which towers above the city. She weighs 8000 tonnes and stands 85 metres tall, and I had just popped out of her head.

The plaques at her feet commemorate particular heroes in the battle.

You might be more familiar with Volgograd's pre 1961 name, Stalingrad. Here, in 1942, was fought the largest battle the world had ever seen. It is estimated the dead from the battle could number as many as two million. It was the defeat for Nazi Germany that destroyed Hitler's largest army and proved the turning point of the fight to the death between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Mother Russia, standing on a hill called Mamayev Kurgan which was taken and re-taken by the Wehrmacht and Red Army many times, is one of Russia's most famous memorials to that war. The vast statue of a raging Russian heroine holding her sword aloft represents the strength of spirit and the wrath of the Russian and (when it was built) the Soviet people.

She was built in sections with huge steel pipes inside her back and shoulders for strength. At her feet is the hall of memory. With a daily honour guard of soldiers and a sad lament playing amidst golden mosaic walls and an eternal flame, this is the tragedy that sits at the foot of Stalingrad's triumph. Signs of the battle and its cost are littered throughout the city.

The guard of honour in the hall of memory.

Next to the museum dedicated to the battle is an old grain mill. Ironically it was built by German settlers in the 19th century. There were many 'Volga Germans' who moved out to this region of Russia. It stands today blasted and battered, deliberately maintained just as it was during the battle. Huge chunks have been blown out from the brick work by shells and bullets. It’s located about 100 metres from the river bank. This shows how close the Germans came to taking the city and how desperate this last defence was.

A burnt out tank track still lies next to the old mill which saw such ferocious fighting.

Our last memorial was another house, also left as it was. But this was further out from the centre, and had been completely ignored. It had only a few walls left standing, and was overgrown with bushes and weeds. As a local history student explained to me, this had been the makeshift headquarters of the Red Army's 138th division. This part of land, even though it wasn't in the river, was known in the battle as the 'fire island'. Outgunned and totally surrounded, the Soviet soldiers here were battered and blasted by German artillery and subjected to attack after attack. It's not precisely known how many survived or how many managed to escape. But the fire island, like Stalingrad itself, was like hell on earth.

Just as we were about to leave the site, we heard singing. We made our way to the bank of the Volga, only fifty metres away. There stood a ten year old boy, dressed by his beaming mother in the style of an old Red Army soldier, singing beautifully that most famous of Red Army songs, Katyusha. It tells of a Russian girl longing for her beloved who is away fighting at the front. It is a tender, moving song but nevertheless with a lively and catchy tune. Who knows how many times its sound drifted through the battle scarred buildings and across the tiny strips of no mans land to the Germans all those years ago. Every Russian knows the song, every Russian knows the battle, every Russian can picture that vast and terrible figure wielding her sword on the hill. The young boy was a living memorial to this city that had once seen so much death.

A young modern Russian sings a song of his grandfathers, next to the mighty Volga.

The Cosmonauts Return

2011-04-14T16:15:00.000+01:00

Children with U.S and Russian flags wait to cheer the returning space men.

It was a damp spring day, but warmer than last time I was reporting on returning cosmonauts back in the depths of winter. The three returning crew Aleksandr Kaleri, Scott Kelly and Oleg Skripochka walked up and laid flowers at the base of the statue of Yury Gagarin. It’s an almost hallowed place here at Star City, the cosmonauts training centre north of Moscow. It was just two days before on the 12th April, fifty years ago, that Yury Gagarin became the first man in space.

Yury Gagarin's statue

The three had landed from in a special pod in March after their stint on the International Space Station. After some weeks of acclimatisation this was their official welcome home. In the Hall of Cosmonauts came the showers of flowers, salutatory speeches and applause for six months of orbit, maintenance and experiments.

When I covered the launch of these three men last October it was with Scott Kelly’s brother Mark watching with me. He too is an astronaut and was due to meet his brother in space when Scott was commanding the ISS and Mark was leading the discovery space shuttle's last mission. They would have been the first brothers in space. Unfortunately the discovery's mission was delayed until after Scott came back.

It was also a moment of technical improvement back in October 2010. The Soyuz rocket they were flying was the first of a new generation with a new flight control computer. It did its job well, bringing them to the ISS and back again safely.

For their time circling earth the three helped to measure the effect of radiation on models of the human body and its tissue. The mannequins 'Mr Rando' and 'Matryushka' were stuck out into space to sample radiation levels which scientists rate as the biggest threat to cosmonauts, being twice the level of that on earth.

In the 'Expose-R' experiment organic material from plants, bacteria and insects was subjected to the same treatment to see what organisms might have survived millions of years ago and gain some insight into the mystery of life's origin on earth.

They also received space vehicles from Russia, the U.S, Europe and Japan.

It had been a busy six months, conducted smoothly. This celebration was thanks from star city, from Russia and from the wider world.

When I talked to Scott after the presentation we reflected on the fifty years since Gagarin’s first historic flight. “What do you think will happen in the next fifty years of space exploration,” I asked. “Maybe Mars?”

“Maybe,” replied Scott with a smile, “I’d certainly want to live to see that.”

With space pioneers like Kaleri, Scott and Skripochka, he just might.

Left to right- Scott Kelly, Aleksandr Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka
lay flowers at the base of Gagarin's statue.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 8- Makhachkala

2011-04-13T17:07:00.000+01:00

Sevil Novruzova, her brother was radicalised and died in
a gun battle with Russian security forces.

We finished our journey through the north Caucasus with an interview in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, with Sevil Novruzova. Her brother Ramil became a militant and was killed in a gun battle with police in 2008. She noted, with tears in her eyes how he became radicalised at university while he was supposed to be studying law. One day after he left university some of his friends left. As people across the North Caucasus say, they ‘went to the forest’. Ramil started to bring them food. Sevil confronted him and told him if he didn’t stop she would force him to. He left home the next day without a word to anyone of even packing a bag. She never saw him again.

Police told her that Ramil and a group of militants were surrounded in the woods soon after. They said they tried to make the militants give up, and thought they were about to surrender. However their leader wanted death and glory and started shooting, dragging them into a gun battle in which Ramil and all the others were killed.

Sevil curses the extremists who brainwashed him and forced him to give up his life. It’s an example of the worst kind damage that the North Caucasus insurgency really does. It tears apart families and communities. Sevil blames the militants.

But others differ in their opinions. Rasul Magomedov, the father of Miriam Shirpova who blew herself up at Moscow's Lubyanka metro station in March 2010, massacring twenty six innocent bystanders, blames the police. He says it was there brutality that forced his daughter, a sharia wife of a militant who had been killed in a shootout, into her actions by making her an outcast of society. His views are controversial in Russia, some even see them as siding with the terrorists, but they are held by many see that at the very least Russia's police in the North Caucasus are corrupt (true, we had bribes extracted from us three times and resisted other attempts), at worst they are thugs who themselves terrorize the local population. All of this argument doesn't help Sevil or Rasul who have lost loved ones.

We spent nearly two weeks in the North Caucasus. I’ve included just the interesting days and parts, and interesting they were indeed. We've met people affected in all sorts of ways by the region's troubling insurgency. We discovered some of the complexities the conflict forces on people, and the anger and hurt it causes. But we've also seen great generosity, rich culture and religion that don't have time for any of the region's ideological excesses. There’s a sense of getting on with daily life here despite its frustrations and risks. But like so many things here in the North Caucasus a solution will not come quickly, and like the ethnic, religious, cultural and political mix here, it will not be simple either.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 7- Makhachkala to Kizilyurt

2011-04-09T20:57:00.001+01:00

A car bomb had ripped into the local FSB building two days before.

We turned up at the Dagestan police headquarters on a sunny morning and went to meet a couple of the officers there. The sea breeze wafting in from the Caspian makes Makhachkala's air fresher than Grozny's. My colleague remarked that I may be have been the first Brit ever to enter the police HQ. The secretary of some apparently important policeman spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make us feel they were doing us a huge favour and listing how little they would let us see. In that Caucasus bureaucrat way she was reasonable but infuriatingly useless at the same time. We expected the usual pattern, a lot of promises leading to a long wait and no filming or interview at the end of it.

When our two officers walked in, both besuited and admittedly looking like experienced professionals on the outside, we could tell instantly they had not thought for a second about our coming. One left to check whether they could even let us go anywhere interesting at all while the other and the secretary smoked and relaxed. A policewoman sauntered in, and sauntered out again when she saw the secretary was busy. "My friend," remarked the secretary to the policeman leant against the wall behind her chair. We waited. He left. We waited more. Eventually a man came and showed out the cameraman and assistant to film the police building. At least we'd have their Romanesque pillared turquoise HQ on tape.

They said they would take us to Kizilyurt, a town to the west whose police station was attacked two days before, wounding seven police officers. More waiting. Then suddenly we were off, trotting out onto the noisy, hectic streets of Makhachkala. We passed a checkpoint to the police HQ, attacked regularly with automatic weapons, even once by a man on a bicycle with an rocket propelled grenade in his backpack. Police work here is certainly dangerous. Though many accuse the police here of brutality, they take it as well as dish it out.

The two plain clothes officers drove us out in a typical lada, busily speaking a mixture of one of the local dialects and Russian. There is no real Dagestani language, like there is Chechen or Ingush. This territory mixes a lot of different ethnicities, their customs and their languages. All the signs are in Russian, but the gabble on the streets is a patchwork of convenience.

The Sunday before there had been local elections here. Unsurprisingly Putin's party, United Russia won 66% of the vote. 40% of people supposedly voted, reflecting people’s response to the official encouragement to place one's ballot. Many people here are disenchanted with what they see as a sham of an electoral process. Who knows whether this vote was rigged or only United Russia supporters were pressured to vote. But the next opposition party was far behind.

After an hour’s drive we arrived at the town of Kizilyurt. In one of the central streets we saw the aftermath of the attack. Huge chucks have been gauged from the walls of the local FSB (Federal Security Service) building and the roof so badly damaged it was having to be replaced. Around it a police building, a house and a shop had had their windows blasted out and were blackened by fire. Pieces of glass and metal still littered the pavement.

One of the bullets had passed straight through the front door,
whizzed past the face of a policeman behind and hit the far wall
behind.

The commander of the local police came to greet us. Askhabali Zairbekov was a busy man with a grey crew cut and sharp eyes. He spoke fast and shouted a lot, but smiled and laughed equally quickly. "It’s virtually a partisan war here," he said. I could see what he meant stood in front of the bomb blast. We left a crane in the street lifting concrete blocks to reinforce the approaches to the building and went inside. In his office we watched the CCTV footage of the attack. A bomb in a second car left behind was deliberately timed to explode five minutes after the policemen ran out in response to the gunfire from the first car which sped off. Mr Zairbekov was keen to point out that his men ran straight out even though they were running into the path of the bullets. He emphasised, “they’re not cowards.”

Local police commander Askhabali Zairbekov surveys the damage and
shouts at police and workers to reinforce the station.

Speaking to locals we heard of their anger at the disruption of everyday life. At the local train station one policeman, Akhmed Magomedov, told us the town was ringed with villages whose inhabitants support the hardline Wahhabi form of Islam, and those who wanted to launch attacks. "They proclaim they are doing the work of Allah but most of our policemen are Muslims too,” he adds.

He joined the police at 21. Then it was just a job. Now, eight years later, he's more thoughtful. He says that someone with brains would set off on a secular track, making money for themselves and their family. Those who are idiots do nothing with their talents and fall for the promise of religion which offers them paradise. "How do you fight people who don't value their own lives?" he says with a shrug.

Akhmed Magomedov talking to local taxi drivers in the market.

As the sun set over Kizilyurt, it didn't seem a hopeless or brooding place. It felt like a town trying to bustle and busy its way along, all the time pestered by vicious and hurtful setbacks. The people here are in a difficult situation. Their response is summed nicely by Akhmed himself. "What to do," he says, "if I didn't do it who would?"

Outside the station they were reinforcing the barricades
so the same thing couldn't happen again.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 6- Grozny

2011-04-07T08:21:00.000+01:00

Kadyrov's brats. Why not let the poor old ladies hold
the guns and you do some work for a change?

Today we went to the stadium of Chechnya’s biggest football team Terek Grozny to interview Chechnya's sports minister, who's also happens to be the club's vice president, conflict of interest anyone?

The experience was one of the more frustrating instances of gaining an interview. We were sent right round the stadium from entrance to entrance, each time waved on by one of the gun toting jobsworths I call Kadyrov's brats (the security/militia/all-round hooligans Kadyrov armed and uses to keep his iron grip on the power).

Stopped by one of Kadyrov's brats.
Our previous permission to film meant nothing to him.

Outside Kadyrov's chosen objects of investment (mosques and palaces mostly) Grozny is still a shell. Many streets, even outside the centre have a reasonably smart facade but they are still ruined underneath. For example our hotel (stuffed in above a furniture shop, only had running water for an hour or two a day. The cafe across the road advertised that it was ‘open for breakfast' but served just tea or coffee’. In another telling indication we were here to interview the vice president of a football team who don't even train here, they train 400km away in Kislavodsk, a much safer town. Good to see the team has the same confidence in Chechnya's safety everyone else is told to have.

However it hardly seems the team need to be worried. For once inside the Terek stadium we entered plush, modern European surroundings. Some British clubs would give their front teeth for facilities like this! And this is the old stadium. A new one is due to be completed in May to hold 35,000 fans (pics). The reason behind this? Well perhaps it’s somewhere to put the piles of cash being thrown to Kadyrov by the Kremlin. But it’s also a way, reason the authorities, to distract the large, young male population of Chechnya from shooting and blowing up people.

Terek's new stadium under construction.
Maybe they'll feel safe enough in it to actually train in Grozny.

The sports minister was late, really late. Apparently he had a government meeting, but I don't know what the sports minister of Chechnya could have been talking about for so long. After a couple of minutes of typical bland ministerial platitudes (worth a dramatic delay of 4 hours, no), we finally set off, delayed, for Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

They yellow sign in the stadium says,
"We are against Facism, Extremism and Nationalism."

The journey was, as we had become used to, cramped and uncomfortable, but we were stopped only twice and had no bribes taken. We arrived late at night to a hotel that was a lot more comfortable than the Grozny dump, and went promptly to sleep. I noticed again how many mosques were built or being built, mostly in Chechnya but also in Dagestan. There almost seemed no room for houses to fit in around them. I wondered, is this a sign of these republics’ semi-autonomy, granted them by Moscow, or perhaps a plan for an Islamic emirate by the long, subtle route. Either way, they should get their watches fixed first.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 5- Nalchik back to Grozny

2011-04-04T20:13:00.002+01:00

Today the FSB finally let us film a checkpoint and sent someone with us to make sure they let us. As a result, rather than the torrent of abuse we received last time we tried, we managed to film some good shots of the police at work. We then set off back for Grozny to talk to some of the leading figures at the local football club Terek Grozny. They recently hired Ruud Gullit as their coach. A nearby Dagestani team has signed Roberto Carlos. The rationale being pursued by local administrations, funded and supported by the Kremlin is to distract the region’s angry young men into sport. To a degree it might be working. As a local official said, when the team first went for training in a nearby town people stood and stared on the roadside. They didn’t even know Chechnya had a football team. When they saw it, people realised the decade of bloody war the territory had been through must over. Well, open fighting at least.

On our way back to Grozny we were shafted by the Ingush police again, 200 roubles this time. No car check; they just wanted the money. What a way to fight terrorism.

When we arrived in Grozny again it was a hazy and busy afternoon. Looming up through it all was the city's central mosque, one of the largest in Europe, built under Ramzan Kadyrov’s reign. It’s a strange symbol for a territory supposedly resisting the creation of a Caucasus emirate. It might be a supremely cunning long term plan of Ramzan's to bring about a Muslim state subtly. But one thing that is striking is the sheer number of mosques springing up all over Chechnya. The future of the region will be intimately linked to the type of Islam being imbibed in them.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 4- Back to the mountains

2011-04-01T15:24:00.000+01:00

Usually there are 5-7000 tourists here. Today there were twenty.

It was our second attempt to reach the Elbrus ski resort in the mountains. We had a different driver, but crammed into the same style of yellow soviet ‘Volga’ taxi. We were stopped in the Elbrus district capital, Turnaus. The policeman demanded 100 roubles (£2) from the driver or said he would do a more detailed check and we would have to take the car's panels off. This time he paid the money. The policeman didn't even do his job and check the car properly.

Again the sun was bright and the mountains stunning. Today there weren't even clouds to mask their peaks. We managed to pass all the other checkpoints. The Elbrus tourist region, I noted, is surprisingly developed, at least on the outside. There are alpine style stone and wooden hotels and chalets. There aren’t so many lift systems but what there are are modern. Again the pistes were few but they looked smooth and well kept. The trouble was it was a ghost resort. The lifts were stopped. The pistes were empty.

On February the 18th this year three tourists had been shot inside their minibus on the their way to the resort by islamic militants. Later the same day they had blown up on the resorts cable car runs. Attacks here are usually on the police or on vocal critics of the militants. These were tourists from Moscow which made the attack unusual and frightening to that industry most vulnerable to securty panics.

They told us there are usually 5-7000 people here in high season. Now there was only 20. Most local stores hadn’t bothered to open. Skiers and ski instructors said it was embarrassing. Not only had the militants managed to bring the entire season to a crashing halt. The army was scaring everyone away and had summarily announced, without a word of warning or consultation that the season was over because of that favourite Russian security service phrase, ‘an anti-terror operation’. Some businessmen had taken out credit to build new hotels of shops. They were likely going to go bankrupt, I was told. The Russian government wants to put money into the Caucasus resorts to help develop the old soviet holiday infrastructure there. But by far its greatest ambitions lie to the west in the black sea city of Sochi and the mountains outside it which will host the 2014 winter Olympics. The aim is make the region an international ski centre, and also to encourage people to get into business instead of joining the militants. For the moment, their local tourism plans are in tatters and everyone is worrying that Sochi is now a prime target in 2014.

Welcome to Elbrus! Locals and the government have had a bad setback in developing what is a beautiful resort.

On the way back we tried to film an army checkpoint but were met with a hail of abuse, apparently the official permissions we had meant nothing here. Local officers had given the order, no photos. When we got talking with one of the soldiers we found he was a good guy. He was bored and cold waiting day after day in the middle of this valley. However he shared the local jealousy that Sochi, hundreds of miles away to the west, was being given all the money and attention for tourism development.

He agreed that the security presence was counterproductive. It may make the resort safer but it just scares people away, strangling local tourist businesses. That night we spoke an FSB officer, trying to gain that elusive permission for photographing the checkpoints. He, not surprisingly, was more upbeat. But even he thought the republic was being held back. He estimated that around 40% of Kabardino-Balkaria was involved in tourism. But it could be 90% if the industry was allowed to grow properly. The risk is that the longer it takes to make the mountains safe, the less tourism industry there will be left for tourists at the end of it.

It seemed the only tourists enjoying the peace and quiet were the cows.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 3- Nalchik to Elbrus

2011-03-31T16:27:00.000+01:00

We wended our way up into Kabardino-Balkaria's mountains, aiming for a ski resort near Mount Elbrus (Europe's highest peak). Along the way we passed seven checkpoints with armoured cars, trucks and troops. The mountains towered up on either side of the valley, bright with sunlight, skinny clouds wreathing their peaks. Pylons and gas pipes snaked along beside bright, narrow river lines. The landscape looked somewhere between green Switzerland and brown Pakistan. Only the shells of ruined ore extraction plants reminded us were in ex-soviet territory.

We were stopped at our eighth checkpoint. Our driver had to sit in a police car for 10 minutes shuffling documents. Two checkpoints later we were stopped again and this time no pictures were allowed, I managed to snap one before they stopped us, here.

They were a lot more heavily armed this time. Three soldiers stood around two trucks. Bullets had cracked their thick windows. After a thorough document check we were sent back to a previous checkpoint to gain permission to continue. A policeman explained that a counter-terrorist operation was underway up ahead. They were searching for militants in the mountains. This is the area where on February 18th this year three Russian tourists were gunned down inside their minibus on the way to a skiing holiday. We would have to get a special permit which meant coming back another day. Looking at the sun flooded mountains and the happy village girls giggling by on the footpath, I realised it's sometimes hard to tell there's trouble in such an idyll. We wended our way back to Nalchik.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 2- Pyatigorsk to Nalchik

2011-03-30T17:52:00.000+01:00

The central square of the Kabardino-Balkaria's capital Nalchik, the scene of a huge militant raid in 2005.

Now we were heading from the relatively calm administrative capital of the North Caucasus to a much more troubled place. Kabardino-Balkaria lies to the west of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Recent incidents there include the murder of the republic's mufti (an Islamic leader) two months before, attacks on Federal Security Service (FSB) buildings and police and the emergence of a new, an Islamist vigilante group, the Black Hawks.

We travelled a snowy road into Kabardino-Balkaria's capital, Nalchik. An army convoy was waiting outside the town. There was a very heavy police presence. We arrived as the 12.30pm call to prayer rang out across a city that had recently found itself dragged once again into the region's ugly insurgency.

The majority religion here is a traditional form of Sunni Islam much tempered by local Caucasian culture.

We headed to the city's, and the republic's biggest mosque. The ethnic Russians here, at around 25% of the population call it a cathedral mosque. Before and after the prayers security guards scanned the approaches on the roads around and searched the mosque's grounds.

There we talked to the deputy head of the region's Islamic department. He is an imam and was a deputy to that murdered mufti, Anas Pshikhachev. He told us that Muslim extremists had threatened Anas Pshikhachev repeatedly that he wasn't preaching the right sermons. He ignored their threats. They arrived at his house one December night and when he opened his door to them, as he did to all visitors, they shot him four times. "They lost a lot of sympathy that day when they killed such a moderate figure," our imam said, adding that their reading of Islam is twisted. He was firm that to commit suicide is a sin in Islam too. "To commit suicide and murder innocents in the process will not lead to paradise," he said.

Nalchik has seen an increase in militant attacks in the past few months, breaking a calm that has lasted some years. One of my colleagues remembers the carnage of the central square in 2005 when over 150 militants attacked points across the city. There is calm here on this day, but it is fragile.

The majority of the population are Muslims, including the militant's victims.

North Caucasus Journal- Day 1- Grozny to Pyatigorsk

2011-03-29T19:12:00.000+01:00

It had been a cold night and I kept my sheets wrapped tight to keep the warmth in. Up at 6.30am, I looked out on a snowy Grozny. It had fallen the day before and was busily turning to brown mush everywhere except on roofs and verges.

We set out, four of us packed into a lada priora, (a less than salubrious Russian saloon) crossing the thin wedge of territory that is Ingushetia and into North Ossetia, passing through check points, all staffed by heavily armed police. A man wearing a balaclava checked our documents and tried to ‘fine’ one of us for not having his documents in order. Only about £5, a little extra cream I’m sure he feels he deserves. Our guy dug his heels in and we didn’t end up paying. We drove on.

Although there are hills in the distance the land around here is wide and flat, not dissimilar to Lincolnshire, though snow still covers most of the fields. Next we passed through Beslan, the site of the infamous 2004 hostage taking of over a thousand children and teachers in the town’s School No1. The botched rescue raid turned into a bloodbath with the Islamist terrorists from neighbouring Ingushetia and Chechnya butchering most of the 330 casualties, over half of them children. The town is busy today with some new building amidst the heathland and half derelict apartment blocks and a lot of cars and vans passing past the packs of scrapping dogs.

After another 30 minutes we entered the foothills of the Caucasus. When we stopped to stretch our legs the air was rich with the scent of sheep dung (not helped by me treading in it) and the soil was loose and moist. It probably looked richer and thicker than it was. We arrived in Pyatigorsk to a lot of snow but not too much cold. The town is part of Russia’s Stavropol region but is an administrative centre for the North Caucasus.

Our first interview was with the head of a local university. Two students from Pyatigorsk recently brought home the threat of radical Islam in a shocking way. The first, Zeynab Suyunova, was arrested on suspicion of being involved with the group that accidentally blew one of its female members up in Kuzminki park on New year's eve 2010/11. The group was later thought to have carried out January's Moscow airport bombing as a contingency plan. Suyunova was arrested in Volgograd.

Also linked to the group was Maria Khorosheva, another student from Pyatigorsk. She was an ethnic Russian who fell in love with and was converted to Islam by another Russian student, Vitaly Razdobuko. They became more extreme in their views, and joined the group planning the attack on Moscow. When it went wrong they fled back to the Caucasus. But they knew the net was now closing in. On Valentines day they both blew themselves up in Gubdan in Dagestan, taking two policemen with them and wounding twenty five others. It was a terrifying end to a tragic tale.

The rector of Pyatigorsk Linguistic University laments what happened and notes how unusual it was for ethnic Russians to have been radicalised as well. "It starts with people who are believers anyway," he says, then extremist groups prowl mosque attendees looking for those they can control. "Of course it requires more detailed psychological research," he adds, "but those doing the indoctrinating probably have a good grasp of psychological techniques for controlling potential suicide bombers.”

The answer, at least on the university's part is to encourage students to have strong personalities, and to engage with society and other cultures, including Islam. Cultural and language centres have been set up to help students learn more of other cultures, including ones from the Arab world and the North Caucasus. As he points out Islam has its own local identity in these regions. In the north Caucasus, it’s a traditional form of Islam tied up with local customs. This is important, as Sharia law or Wahhabism is not the norm here.

When we leave the main entrance, with flocks of students milling about, we see it, a MacDonalds, sat just across the road. Is that a symbol of tolerance and free choice, or of moral decay and selfish individualism? I wonder how many students here see it as a threat rather than a treat.

Portrait of a Russian- A Sweeping Tale

2011-03-29T19:08:00.000+01:00

She's Moscow's only female chimneysweep. A chemistry graduate from the ecological faculty of the Moscow Chemical Technical Institute in 1981, Galina Yuryevna now runs 'Art of the Chimney sweep', a chimney cleaning business in Moscow.

She says she started out in her dream job as a fashion designer. Gradually though she made more contacts amongst people who worked with fireplaces, and when she learnt there was no company dedicated to maintaining Moscow's fireplaces, she saw a gap in the market and hasn't looked back.

Whilst showing me round her company's workshop Galina tells me about some of the more interesting chimneys they've cleaned in their time. Some years ago she was phoned by the Russian army. They had seen an article in a Russian tabloid which had made fun of her 'cleaning Putin's chimney', (they have, in fact, cleaned the Kremlin's chimneys). But when the officers saw the article they invited her to clean the flues of the old Red Army's wartime headquarters, and the one in Stalin's bedroom!

When she heard I was from England she related to me a story about her invite to a wedding. As folklore has it William the Conqueror was saved from being trampled by a wild horse when a chimney sweep stopped it. As a reward the sweep was invited to his daughter's wedding. Ever since it was deemed good luck to have a chimney sweep at one's wedding, and even in far away Russia Galina and her crew were invted to a colonel's wedding, 'in the English tradition'.

In another odd call out a man explained to Galina down the phone that they needed her and her team's expertise to extract a bag from the inside of a chimney flue. When they arrived they saw that their clients had already tried to get the bag, and as they worked with long poles and a remote camera they realeased the bag was full of money! They never retrieved the bag, she adds with a rye smile.

What is it like being the only woman in the chimney sweep business and boss of a team of men? Galina takes it in her stride. 'They can be difficult', she muses, 'but they're easier to control than a team of women!'

When we asked Yevgeny, one of her workers, what she was like as a boss he said he has the deepest respect for her. 'Clients are sometimes scpetical when they hear she's in charge,' he adds, 'but they soon change their mind after five minutes on the phone.'

We finished our tour on top of an old roof in central Moscow. She and her team spend much time up here, in a space above most people's heads which is seldom tread. She says the job really is quite romantic, with every roof in Moscow, even on buildings designed exactly the same, turning out to be unique. She says she never gets bored of the varying challenges.

Which is good because it must take some kind of motivation to stay up here in the snow and wind!

Russian Police Reform- What's in a name?

2011-03-01T14:16:00.002Z

As of the 1^st March the Russian ‘militsia’ have a new name, the ‘politsia’ or police. According to the government this change, and the reforms behind it will transform the country’s widely feared and mistrusted police into a shining force of honest bobbies.

The reforms behind the name change include evaluation of all personnel with up to twenty percent expected to be fired. A strict code of conduct will be introduced and salaries will be tripled to help discourage the need for bribe extraction.

Most Russians however view the reforms with scorn. One Russian radical art group has taken it a step further. Watch this hilarious video released on youtube on the day on the day of the name change.

Many consider the militsia in Russia to be one of the biggest things holding the country back. Violent, drunken and riddled with corruption one member of parliament described them as ‘waging a war against their own people’.

For a specific example lets look go back to October 2009.

Two Russian traffic policemen are dead, police Lieutenant Ayap Pavlov has shot himself and Viktor Lesnik has lost his job. What happened?

Polive Lieutenant Ayap Pavlov failed to show up for training on Saturday. Two hours later, he was pulled over by two traffic police whilst driving. They found their colleague, a policeman, was driving drunk. They made Pavlov get into their car to take him to hospital where they could record the state he was in. The causes of what happened next are unknown, like the causes of Pavlov’s absence from training or his drink driving. He shot one of his fellow policemen in the back of the head and wounded the police inspector driving. He then shot himself.

Tragic, certainly. And for the moment baffling. Dmitry Medvedev sacked the regional interior affairs minister, Viktor Lesnik and the Russian Interior Affairs minister, Rashid Nurgaliev will report will report back to Medvedev on the findings.

However this is not an isolated incident.

On the 22nd of October 2009 a drunken policeman went on a shooting rampage in a Moscow supermarket. He shot one man at point blank range in the head in front of the man’s girlfriend then frog marched her round the supermarket shooting at other shoppers. When police arrived they refused to arrest him saying they understood he was drunk and had family problems. Police General Vladimir Poronin later apologised for the comments and was reportedly sacked.

On the 21^st of that month two senior policemen had criminal charges filed against them for going on a shooting spree in the Eastern city of Samara wounding three people.

On the 20^th the Eastern Republic of Buryatia’s Interior Minister (in charge of Police) Viktor Sosyura was suspended pending investigations. He has since been charged with 44 episodes of contraband. He is suspected of taking bribes to allow a gang to import large quantities of the precious stone nephrite into Russia whilst ensuring his own department didn’t discover the crime. Nephrite generates huge income in Russia and the money made from the crime could amount to 50 million roubles.

These were, even back then, the tip of a truly horrifying iceberg. As of October 22^nd 2009 Russian authorities were, according to the prosecutor general’s office, investigating 16,000 cases of corruption within the establishment. 12,000 cases have been opened this year. The cases include:

842 ‘persons of special status’

500 people’s deputies and local government officials

15 deputies of regional legislatures

19 judges

33 prosecutors

86 lawyers

Over 100 police and drugs investigators

On 6^th November 2009 Alexey Dymovsky, a senior detective from Novorossisk send a youtube appeal to Prime Minister Putin asking him to intervene to stop widespread fraud in his force. He said crimes were frequently invented in order to fulfill quotas for their solving. He was fired from the police and arrested the next January, on suspicion of fraud. In 2010 it was no better. Even by the police’s own records its officers broke the law or violated their code of conducted 125,000 times last year.

For business owners in Russia it’s common practice to pay some policemen a fee to provide a ‘roof’, or protection in case of a dispute with competitors. They can then be called in to arrest the other owner, beat them up or even kill them. Many Russians are more afraid of the police than they are of criminals or thugs on the streets.

This law sees the right sentiments written down but critics say such a corrupt system is incapable of reforming itself. The ones doing the interviews for the new police jobs are current top policemen. To imagine they don’t have cliques and favourites they know will maintain their rackets is naïve.

Hopes are, as so often in Russia, high. But lets not forget, the reason Lenin changed their name to the militia the first time round was because the Tsarist police were so hated.

Russian Army Reform- Roubles don’t count as Reinforcements

2011-02-25T11:39:00.006Z

Russian Army Reform- Roubles don’t count as Reinforcements

Russia has ‘unveiled new army reform plans’, for the next ten years, according to a few news sources.

The story hasn’t caused much of a ripple this time, because it’s been heard so many times before.

What do the ‘reforms’ amount to now?

-600 new planes

-1000 new helicopters

-100 warships

-20 submarines

-a new model of ICBM to be revealed later this year, with 10 warheads to the current Topol’s three.

-10 brigades worth more Iskander tactical missiles over the next decade

-limited amounts of foreign hardware such as French ‘Mistral’ helicopter carrying ships will also be purchased where Russia can’t make the equipment itself.

Lots more buying of equipment, 650 billion dollars worth in fact. It’s not army reform though.

The legendarily opaque and labyrinthine Russian government structure does a good job of hiding the fact that armed forces reform seems to be going at a snail’s pace, if at all. And Russian commentators are some of those least amused.

Far from trying to paint it in rosy colours, a Pravda article of the 17^th February slammed what it sees as a regression in the Russian armed forces.

It looked at a report by NATO experts made public by WikiLeaks. The experts concluded that Russia’s armed forces could only sustain ‘small or medium scale’ conflicts, had an inflexible officer corps and showed poor inter-branch coordination. Inability to cope with the weather was also identified.

However the conclusions of NATO experts were positively timid compared to those of home grown analysts. Russian military expert Vladimir Shurygin looked at some specific examples of actual attempts at military reform rather than just spending sprees-

Cadre divisions were replaced with ‘cadre brigades’. This was supposed to improve staffing levels but proved a mere name change, not improving combat readiness at all.

One of the most pressing needs for the Russian army is for a much smaller, much more professional officer corps. The response, perhaps from a petulantly resisting officer corps, has been the mass closure of military schools. The result is, in Shurygin’s own words, is ‘a virtual suspension of officer training’. So perhaps the numbers of new officers coming in will decrease, but all that’s left will be a shrinking, stagnated rump.

That’s far from all though. One of the biggest problems is the shameful treatment by officers and non-commissioned officers of their own men.

"It's already so bad, you wonder how much worse it can get… We'll continue to see thousands of people running away from their units every year. We'll continue to see the killings, the suicides, the physical injuries, the psychological damage."

A quote about Abu Ghraib prison perhaps? About Guantanamo Bay or a Taliban torture camp? Sadly not. This was taken from a report written in 2004 about conditions inside the Russian armed forces. That’s what’s done to new conscripts by others from their own side.

By 2007 the problem had become so horrific and ruinous to morale the Russian government lowered the term of service from 2 years to 1.5. Then in 2008 to 1 year. It’s hoped that although more conscripts may have to be rounded up as a result, the problem of systematic bullying may be alleviated. Partly for this reason, the Russian public is flatly opposed to conscription and wants to see it ended.

Militaries all over the world have experienced internal violence ever since war was around. But since the creation of truly industrial age, mass armies in the twentieth century, the nature of such violence has changed. In other armies oppression from seniors to juniors is called hazing, or a variety of other names. But specifics of time and place seem to give rise to particularly brutal manifestations of it.

In the Soviet/Russian armed forces it became known as Dedovshchina, or ‘rule of the granddads’. It may have started in World War Two when the Red Army started putting prisoners in uniform as ‘penal battalions’ and sent them to clear minefields by walking over them, amongst other things. Or some say it started in 1967 when a new law in the Soviet Army meant some conscripts were serving two years at the same time as others were serving three. The ‘granddads’ were the conscripts in their final year and it came to operate like systems of bullying everywhere. The older conscripts viewed meeting out humiliating and vicious punishment to newcomers as ‘revenge’ for what they had suffered. Whereas there had most likely been oppression in the past in the Russian armed forces, this pushed it into bullying and on into outright torture.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the forces’ budget evapourated. The command structure was left as a shell and self respect amongst what remained of the chain of command disappeared. In place of the once strict rules governing military behaviour there grew an anarchic terror which destroyed the army from within. The level of violence which developed is truly staggering.

Soldiers are made to beg to superiors and are forced to give them money and cigarettes sent from home. They are made to do all manner of humiliating and degrading tasks. Any infractions of a whimsical set of rules results in horrendous punishments. The ‘dried crocodile’ means a conscript has to hang with hands and feet against his bed’s boards. They are burnt with cigarettes or hit with wet towels wrapped around fists so it leaves no bruises. Some older conscripts decide to dispense with subtlety. Outright beatings have left soldiers with broken bones, chronic headaches and spinal injuries. Many of these injuries mean soldiers can’t even do their job any more. One soldier who had the telltale signs of a childhood limp could run with the others. But once the ‘deds’ (Dedushkas, Granddads) found out they beat him so relentlessly doctors said he would never have that ability again. Another had his jaw broken in a particularly vicious beating because he hadn’t left his ‘ded’ enough mashed potato at dinner.

One case which shocked the world as to how far standards had fallen was that of Andrey Sychyov. In December 2005 Sychyov and seven other soldiers were beaten for three hours by their seniors. Sychyov was then forced to squat for four hours with his hands tied behind his back while a sergeant continued to beat him. Only a few days later was Andrey transferred to a local hospital were doctors found he had numerous broken bones, trauma to his genitals and gangrene in his legs. As a result of his injuries, doctors had to amputate his legs, genitalia and a finger. There were allegations the army tried to cover up the story and keep doctors silent. However one of them told the Committee of Soldier’s Mothers, a charity campaigning for soldiers’ rights, and they told Andrey’s mother. She was told she couldn’t see Andrey until January 10^th but on January 7^th another doctor told her to come quickly as Andrey might not last the night. As it was he survived, but was crippled by the brutality of his fellow soldiers. In response to the case, one conscript was given a mere four years in prison. Andrey was nineteen years old.

In 2006 the New York Times reported that at least 292 Russian soldiers were murdered whilst undergoing Dedovshchina (officially the figure is 16, still a national outrage in most countries), and that there had been 3500 reports of abuse up until August that year. The brutality also has huge knock on effects. Hundreds of soldiers, terrified of when their next (and possibly last beating) is coming commit suicide. Hundreds more try it, contemplate it, or are reduced to nervous wrecks by the experience. Thousands desert the army, some armed and having shot other soldiers in revenge or shoot others sent to bring them back. Some trek months across Russia to try and get back to their families or to charities.

It’s hoped the reduction in terms of service will help to reduce the problem. But many agree that only major reforms, namely the creation of professional, experienced sergeants (they are currently chosen from amongst the men and serve no longer than them), and ultimately a professional, volunteer army will stop a situation were the average soldier is more at risk from his own side, than the supposed enemy. Counts in 2010 revealed that as many as three thousand soldiers die because of bullying in the Russian armed forces every year.

The only way armies can truly tell if they are effective is, regrettably, by fighting wars. The last war the Russian army fought was against Georgia in 2008. As Shurygin warns, “we should not brag that we defeated Georgia in less than a week. If the opponent was a little more serious it could have ended differently.” Specific examples of incompetence were incidents of friendly fire. Shurgyin points out that two out of the seven Russia aircraft shot down in the war were done so by their own anti-aircraft batteries.

If those officers and their men were trained better, and cooperated better there might not be the need to buy so many new planes.

Pakistan's Agony

2009-07-14T09:21:00.006+01:00

It is a tragedy that, as of writing, 184 British soldiers have died since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. But the focus is increasingly on Pakistan as well as Afghanistan when it comes to defeating the Taliban and Al Qaida.

There has been much criticism from Britain and America that Pakistan and its army are not doing enough to combat militants in Pakistan. This is unfair criticism.

Pakistan also joined the war on terror in 2001. Since then 1400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed and 3400 wounded (again, as of writing). Just imagine if those were Britain’s casualty figures.

It’s the Pakistanis who are suffering the most from this war, a war for the democratic rule of their country.

Its summed up nicely in part of a programme called, Pakistan’s War: The Battle Within, produced by Midwinter Productions and with Rageh Omar reporting, for Al Jazeera television.

In one short exchange, the reporter speaks to a Pakistani general, “When American and British forces in Afghanistan explain the problems they have in tackling the Taliban question, the world accepts it. But when Pakistan says exactly the same thing, people don’t trust it.”

The general replies, “As a soldier general, I cannot explain how frustrating it is that when we make the sacrifices, people thanklessly look towards the other side. There’s a concept of half brother, but there’s no concept of half friend. We are in a coalition and we are collectively fighting against the global phenomenon of terrorism. We are suffering the maximum, we are contributing the maximum, we have arrested the maximum, we have killed the maximum, more than anyone else and we are sacrificing for the sake of the world.”

This short exchange demonstrates something of how Pakistani soldiers and those loyal to the democratic government and moderate Islam feel. They aren’t fighting in a foreign field. They are fighting in their own country. Terrible as foreign wars are, any country’s records will reveal that wars on home turf are far more traumatic. People are forced to take sides, family and friends are torn apart and turned against one another. And notions of national loyalty, and fighting for ones country are confused and torn. It hurts the Pakistani army to kill their own civilians far more than it hurts the operators of American unmanned air drones.

Pakistan is a former British colony. The army there has evolved out of British military institutions. Now it is fighting against the same kind of guerilla enemy that British troops faced over a hundred years ago, and in the same terrain that the British army was defeated in. If any country and army could sympathise with the problems faced by Pakistani troops, it should be the British. Britain has a special historical link to that place and those people, and to democracy there. And Britain should be proud of helping to stabilize its post imperial legacy.

The Taliban knows there is some sympathy for some of the things it says, especially when it criticizes what it sees as pervasive modern western culture. It’s clerics, brainwashers and suicide instructors aren’t stupid. They are furiously exploiting local and national divisions and prejudices to gain more recruits and power. And a challenge like that, in your own country is rarely seen as black and white like it is by foreigners. Pakistanis all over the country are having to ask themselves very difficult questions about what they really believe in, what price they are willing to pay for it and where their country should be going. Change the religion, change the time and place and remove the specifics. These traumas and divided loyalties can be found in the English and American Civil wars and countless other national crises that have proved so heartbreaking and brutal to end.

Many Pakistanis, like the proverbial common man throughout history, can accept some arguments from both sides when they are allowed to answer dispassionately. They just want to get on with their lives, to love and laugh and grow, like we all do. But it's hard to keep your perspective when faced by such extreme and costly polarization. Bear this in mind next time your hear Pakistan criticized for ‘not doing enough’. It has no choice. The battle is already in its heart and soul.

The Ambivalence of Victory Day

2009-05-09T17:24:00.005+01:00

On Victory Day in Moscow, they roll out the tanks. At the same time thousands of Veterans weep as they remember the twenty seven million dead of Russia’s Great Patriotic War from 1941-1945. Meanwhile the young express a mixture of reflection on horrors they can scarce imagine, and modern nationalism and pride in their nation’s military.

This year young United Russia supporters lay on the ground to spell out an enormous ‘THANKYOU’ in Russian to those who sacrificed comfort or life in the war. In the same day they also cheered on tank and infantry regiments made up of conscripts their own age.

Many of those conscripts will be bullied and beaten, and sent to the attack poorly trained in Soviet style mass charges as part of Russia’s archaic strategic and tactical doctrine (or if they are unlucky) in wars around Russia’s periphery. But embarrassment at Russia’s performance in the recent Chechen and South Ossetian Wars, or at the woeful state of its armed forces, is not a sentiment featured on Victory Day.

Victory day reflects great ambiguity in attitudes to Russia’s mighty but also heartbreaking military history. The tanks are at the heart of it. For most (hopefully), they are a grim and sober reminder of the nature of the international system. Any country that trusts another is foolish. Soviet Russia was outrageously unprepared for the Nazi invasion. This was Stalin and the Communist party’s fault. Throughout the war the Red Army fought as much against the brutalities and ineptitude of their own political system as the Nazis. But they did fight, and despite the titanic bungling of Stalin, those who did know what to do won, learning how to beat the Nazis even as the darkness closed around each city and village. The lesson from this bloodbath, never trust to hope. Never trust to diplomacy. Never trust your neighbours and never trust in goodwill. Always be prepared for the worst. After 1953 in which year Soviet Russia gained the hydrogen bomb, it meant being prepared for full scale thermonuclear war and nothing less. In a realization tinged with sadness, people see the tanks are there because Russia has to have them.

More dangerously, some youths in Russia, America and around the world are forgetting, or choosing to forget the cautionary lessons of militarism and nationalism. The lure of ‘might is right’, ‘our country needs respect’, ‘this is our sphere of influence’, and concepts like national destiny, social Darwinism and pride in military values is an old one. These calls to militarization have been re-branded many times, but they still illicit the same effect among populations swept up in media hysteria. Martial values can have a positive side, and as many agree some form of national service can engender feelings of social responsibility, self respect and discipline. But many also agree that armed forces can’t escape reflecting the society they fight for. When the young start to forget how awful war is, and start idealizing it, they enter one of societies oldest traps.

Some things are different. Nuclear weapons now force sober headed thinking on leaders who, before their arrival, could and did act like playground despots. But sub-nuclear wars, or those carried out under a ‘nuclear umbrella’ have, since the start of the cold war, not proved to make the world a safer place. From America’s point of view the experience of a fledgling Iraqi democracy will prove a great lesson in the utility of force for America’s great project. Russia and others, while interested, will probably draw other conclusions. Even Iraq itself, through all its turmoil, will never have forgotten the necessity of the defence of its sovereignty, now that it will soon be restored.

On Victory day, President Medvedev made veiled threats to Georgia, NATO and others not to engage in military ‘adventurism.’ Soon after Russia contemplated its own tragic history of betrayal, repeated invasion, and the excruciating sacrifices this made necessary, in a tearful and humbling minute’s silence.

As all of Russia’s television and radio stations stopped broadcasting, the words stood clear on the screen, “In memory of those who died in the fight against Fascism.”

Let us not now allow militarism, nationalism, xenophobia and an enthusiastic attitude to war creep back to poison this century as well.

Uugh! What a Boar!

2009-04-16T11:41:00.005+01:00

Wild Boars are successful omnivores, perhaps too successful. As their populations expand they encroach onto agricultural land, rooting up crops, competing with grazing herds and other species and spreading disease. Their habit for sniffling and grubbing around in undergrowth can cause soil erosion that in Northern Australia for example causes soil to be washed down into the Great Barrier Reef where it smothers the coral. The Wild Boar is not native to Australia which has suffered so much from other invasive species like rabbits, cane toads and feral camels.

They are also aggressive. On the 14th April 2009 a Swedish woman was sent running from a Gothenburg cemetery when she came face to face with one. Just a week before a 70 kilogram brute jumped over a fence in Hong Kong and charged at a man playing cards with his friends. It knocked him over, pinned him to the ground and sank its teeth into his groin. In both Sweden and Hong there have been increased calls to control the populations of boar pressing into urban areas.

The U.S. Department of Wildlife wants wild boar hunted and the State of Ohio is just one that imposes no restrictions on how many can be shot. Its because of the destruction they cause to American agricultural crops and wildlife habitat. Wild Boar is not native to the U.S. Its estimated there are around 2 million ‘feral hogs’ in the United States, all of which are in the south and 50% of which are in Texas.

The trouble is that in an increasing number of countries the wild boars are thriving too fast for hunters to control them. A female typically has between two and four litters a year, each averaging ten piglets. Within six months each litter will themselves be breeding.

Australia’s plight is one of the most tragic. Its over 2 million square kilometers smaller than the U.S. and yet it has not 2 million wild boars, but 23 million. They occupy forty percent of the land and have completely overwhelmed the efforts of farmers, hunters and the government to control them. Many pigs over the world, but especially in Australia can’t be eaten when shot because they are so badly infested with worms and other diseases.

Its farmers that suffer most from the invasion of the pigs. With no natural predators except the odd crocodile, and tough enough to trundle through electric fences, they munch their way into sugar cane and fruit plantations. In 2007 the agricultural damage caused by wild boar in Australia was estimated at $100 million.

The trappers in Australia realize they’re drowning under the onslaught of wild pigs, and many have a grim air about the work they do. The ones that do operate see themselves as barely holding the line around the most important native and endangered habits, such as the Daintree rainforest in the north east.

Most government agencies there and around the world accept that where wild boars have established a reasonable population, they will never be able to eradicate them. But in man’s struggle with rapidly breeding and adaptive species that have leapt on the back of man’s own success, hunters deserve the highest respect. They are our front line, and protecting native ecosystems, mankind’s food supply, and human health itself.

So when it comes to shooting, trapping and hunting wild boar, even if we can’t eat them, lets pig out.

Loud Words, Soft Signs

2009-02-20T12:03:00.005Z

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited South Korea today. Her key message was directed north of the border,

"We are calling on the government of North Korea to refrain from being provocative and unhelpful in a war of words that it has been engaged in because that is not very fruitful."

North Korea’s rhetoric has been particularly nasty of late. Just yesterday a North Korean statement said its army is, "fully ready for an all-out confrontation" with South Korea. She was also keen to stress (and nobly in my humble opinion) that,

"If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, the Obama administration will be willing to normalise bilateral relations."

There have been a number of South Korean intelligence reports that the North is preparing to test fire a long range missile which may be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead (though this is uncertain). If the missile was fired it would breach UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which was passed after Pyongyang detonated a nuclear device in 2006. This would most probably lead to sanctions. North Korea denies this, and says the South is using made up missile threats as a pretext for invasion. In that past few months Kim Jong-Il has appointed hard line generals to key posts in his administration. The South says it will respond to any aggression. The atmosphere on the Korean peninsula is tense.

General Walter Sharp commands thirty seven thousand U.S. troops in South Korea. Anti-US protesters gathered outside the US military base in Yongsan, showing the feeling of some South Koreans that the U.S. is only making the situation worse there by its presence. Whatever the protesters chant, and whatever heartfelt sincerities are trotted out by the U.S. and the South, actions speak louder than words. Neither America nor South Korea trusts the North, and they are as ready for war with it as they were on July 27th 1953, the day of the ceasefire.

Hillary Clinton has named Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, as America’s special envoy to the North, praising him as, “a capable and experienced diplomat.” But ultimately it doesn’t depend on him. It depends on what North Korea wants.

So if neither South Korea nor America trust North Korea, and North Korean rhetoric is positively ferocious, what hope is there of ending the deadlock without the destruction of one side’s armed forces. Well, the ball definitely lies with North Korea at the moment, and more specifically in Kim-Jong-Il’s hospital bed.

His exact condition is hard to ascertain, but it seems likely that he’s very unwell. He’s sixty seven, and South Korean and U.S. officials say he suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery in August 2008. If he dies or has to step down, Hillary Clinton has said (in a rare candid moment) that there could well be a leadership struggle in North Korea that could have big ramifications. At the very least it would complicate nuclear disarmament talks with the North. At the extremes of the scale it has the potential is to lead either to war with the South and the U.S., or at the other end to the collapse of North Korea’s authoritarian dictatorship, and even the country’s communist system as a whole.

In the current U.S. presidential term, both Stephen Bosworth and Hillary Clinton will have their work cut out. But what shape they’ll have to force their square peg through, it dependent on the political shape cutting that threatens to carve up North Korea’s leadership.

The Nuclear Numpty

2009-02-05T15:50:00.004Z

The British Labour government’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, today proposed talks between Britain, the USA, Russia, China and France to work towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Policy Information Paper, entitled, “Lifting the Nuclear Shadow: Creating the Conditions for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons,” Miliband called for, “three main sets of ….conditions and six specific steps to help create them (the conditions),” which are apparently, “potentially attainable within the next few years.”

What a load of nonsense. Either Mr Miliband is so naïve he doesn’t see the air headed implications of his words, or his ruthless ambition precludes realistic expectations in international relations.

Step 1 in his magic formula was, “tougher measures to prevent proliferation and tighten security.” That is already being done Mr Miliband. Thankyou for parroting the Non Proliferation Treaty.

Step 2 then goes on to undermine that very treaty. By helping states that want nuclear power stations whilst trying to minimize the risks of nuclear weapons technology and materials spreading, one would also be trespassing on the spirit of the NPT. More importantly, by using the International Atomic Energy Agency (a UN body) to do it, you are further undermining the solidly worded and firmly spirited NPT in a field were a soft touch is not the answer.

These two are in Mr Miliband’s first condition for a world in which, ding dong the nuke is dead. His second condition involves an, “international legal framework,” for constraints on nuclear weapons. What legal framework? You mean building on the fabulously robust body of international law that currently exists, and is never breached by any states such is their awe of its power. There is no such thing as international law, only international norms that are only adhered to when it suits the state or actor involved. Law requires an overarching body to enforce it. No such body exists. The UN, I hear you think. Come on, be serious! Wake up Sillyband.

Step 3 involves negotiations to reduce the size of nuclear arsenals. The document notes that, contrary to the UK and France’s behaviour, “China, India and Pakistan are believed to be expanding their nuclear weapons capabilities.” This is in their national interest. They are facing security challenges that arise as nations develop rapidly just as Britain and France did in the 19th century. If Britain and France had access to nuclear weapons back then they would not have hesitated to acquire them. Indeed, both were eager to after World War Two, if only to ‘give them a place at the top table’. Whatever the British government says, it will not change vertical proliferation in China, India and Pakistan.

Step 4 is noble but largely irrelevant. A Test Ban Treaty may actually be achieved. But again, if a country deems testing weapons important to its national interest, whether to improve its nuclear arsenal or intimidate others, it will do so regardless of a piece of paper.

Step 5 is a, “Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.” This would limit or reduce the amount of enriched uranium, plutonium (used in atomic and thermonuclear bombs) and hydrogen isotopes (used in thermonuclear bombs) available in world supply. This is very unlikely to get anywhere. Far from the problems of detecting and policing the movements of tennis ball sized pieces of fissile material, who would keep the stuff? The UN? No one trusts them to do anything security related that really matters. The USA? Ask a Russian or a Chinese person what they think of that. Russia? Ask an American what they think of that. The fact is that all major nuclear powers (including Britain outside Miliband's head) are committed maintaining their nuclear capabilities will continue to mine and enrich fissile material. Other countries that can’t do it in their own territory will pay others attractive sums to do it for them. Even if no new fissile material enters the world supply, there is plenty of the stuff that is unaccounted for. Even if that is found by the goodies instead of the baddies someone will have to keep it. And that will cause problems.

It is Condition 3, “finding solutions to the challenges of moving from small numbers of nuclear weapons to zero in ways which will enhance security,” which is a fantasy and will ultimately lead to the failure of the whole enterprise. Its naivety is infantile, and positively dangerous.

Step 6 articulates the dream of CND, ways to, “reduce and ultimately to eliminate their (the nuclear states’) arsenals securely and to prevent nuclear weapons from ever re-emerging.” This will never happen. And this is why.

It would lead to a horrendously violent world in which war would more often become the preferable means of pursuing political objectives. A modern world without the powerful deterrent effect of nuclear weapons would be one of unimaginable blood letting. For evidence supporting this look back at the millennia of human history and the cold logic of realpolitik. However Mr Miliband conveniently ignores this and instead comes up with a fairy story-

“improved political relationships between key states, building trust and understanding between these countries to the point that a nuclear exchange between them becomes unthinkable.”

Has Mr Miliband never heard of the credibility of deterrence! For a country to ensure a nuclear weapon will never be used is to invite attack. This may seem like paranoid logic between Russia and the USA, but not between India and Pakistan, or Iran and Israel. War is a political act, politics are the pursuit of power and power does not listen to Miss World wishes like the one above. Only solid deterrence or solid action can ensure the next sentence in the document, “long-standing disputes need to be resolved to remove key causes of conflict and terrorism.”

This is followed by a statement demanding that, “consideration (is) given to ways to ensure that limiting or banning nuclear weapons does not provoke arms races in other forms of weapons – chemical, biological or conventional.” For goodness sake. People far better informed and more adept at international politics (rather than personal politics) than him have been searching for the answer to this for centuries. The best they’ve come up with to ensure a stop to arms races and provocation is not the League of Nations, not some spurious body of ‘international law’, not the UN, but nuclear weapons! If we’re talking about states like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, of which there remains no short supply, then the best way to stop their chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programmes are military action. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq in 2003. But the evidence for weapons programmes and intent to create them was plentiful. Without nuclear weapons other forms of escalation are inevitable. So I’d love to hear these ‘ways’ Mr Miliband dreams of.

After the nuclear weapons are gone, Mr Miliband's answer to global wars breaking out (or rumbling on) is, wait for it, collective security! It failed with the League of Nations, it failed with the UN. When will we stop deluding ourselves? The only example of collective security that is proving any use at all is the African Union. This is a regional arrangement involving countries with far more (even vested) interests in ensuring their surrounding regions remain calm. This model should be duplicated and the UN wrapped up. We do NOT need more international institutions, we need less. All they bring to the world is more infuriating acronyms, they do not work. We also do NOT need international rules. They are a farce and waste everyone’s time. Whatever we do, a world without nuclear weapons would mean the certainty of a return to large scale conventional warfare and millions more deaths as a result.

There is a world of difference in reducing the number of nuclear weapons held by single countries, which makes sense by stabilising deterrence and avoiding astronomical costs, and in removing them altogether. When Robert Oppenheimer saw the results of the Manhattan project at the first atomic test in the Nevada desert, he said, “now I am become death (Shiva) the destroyer of worlds.” However, the destruction of the world ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, to end three decades of world war. War was then exported across the globe in a superpower conflict, but it was only nuclear weapons that stopped the major powers from descending into a third world war in Europe or Asia.

Politics works rather like markets, through greed and fear. With such political greed in the world, only the fear of nuclear weapons has proved capable of restraining us.

Composed in January

2009-02-04T20:25:00.000Z

I wake to sunrise, lazy and easy,
The cock forgets to crow,
The day’s first bee scuds by,
Busy England,

Axes clatter in the distant woods,
Mill wheels swill the streams,
And creak amidst golden billows,
Sails snap to the wind,
The wide sea glistening a welcome,
To cog and clinker,

A world ripening in the sun,
Of leather, willow, oak and cloth,
Dozing happy in the hay,
Sweating and sniffing in smoky stove perfume,
Giggling with girls in meadows milky,
And dancing with due,

To cider and sunset,
The sky oozes like butter,
As ducks dabble down,
Swallows spin a jig,
Feathered fireworks,
Tavern top and tankard,
Then stoop home bubbling.

Night falls, and star lanterns,
Warm our air and eyes,
Welcome to the hot, restless night,
And tap our fingers till dawn.

by Tom Barton

©Tom Barton 2009

Gold in the Cold-A story of Black and White

2009-01-25T15:07:00.005Z

In the coming decades there will be a snow rush, a gold rush for oil, gas and mineral deposits under the Arctic. The rock under the Arctic Ocean has the potential to contain as much as a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources. In the 19th century U.S. gold and oil rush brave (and obsessed) individuals poured blood, sweat and tears into the hills and scrubland of America in a romanticized quest for solid and liquid wealth.

The story of prospecting in the Arctic will be imbued with a suitably sympathetic background. The protagonists won't be individuals. Five nations lay claim to the riches under these icy wastes. Like icebergs steadily grinding together the contest will be defined along the borders of states. Like the frozen depths under the pack ice, the competition will be conducted with the cold ruthlessness of national interest.

Russia, the U.S.A, Canada, Denmark and Norway are the five contenders for the Arctic’s riches.

In 2007 a Russian submersible planted their White, Blue and Red flag on the ocean floor under the North Pole. In 2001 Russia submitted a claim to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which proposed that the Lomonosov ridge, which runs close to the North Pole, was an extension of the Siberian continental shelf. A continental shelf is the shallower seabed that runs out from a landmass before it drops off into the deep ocean beyond. Under the UN Law of the Sea Convention (ratified by four of the Arctic nations but not the USA in 1982) a state has the right to exploit resources up to 200 nautical miles from the edge of its continental shelf. Clearly the importance of these claims now becomes apparent. If the Commission agrees that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Russian continental shelf, Russia would have mineral extraction rights for 200 nautical miles around it, a huge area that includes the North Pole itself. This claim is disputed by the USA, which claims the ridge is a free standing promontory jutting out from the deep sea bed. The Commission has, as of early 2009, not made any decision. Denmark also claims the Lomonosov ridge is a submerged extension of Greenland. Greenland is widely recognized as Danish territory.

As well as this central issue there are other disputes that have the potential to get ugly. The Northwest Passage, a sea route packed with near impenetrable ice since records began, is thawing. In 2007 the ice was limited enough for it to be declared navigable. Canada has stated in no uncertain terms that the Northwest Passage is Canadian territorial waters. In 2007 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper summed up Canada’s outlook on the Arctic,

“Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this Government intends to use it. Because Canada’s Arctic is central to our national identity as a northern nation. It is part of our history. And it represents the tremendous potential of our future."

It is backing this up with action, expanding remote harbours in northern Canada and building artic patrol ships to cruise the passage and enforce its claims. The U.S.A disagrees. It and others say the Northwest Passage is international waters. It too is proposing to build arctic patrol vessels. Actions speak louder than words.

As Arctic rigs start drilling and sending oil ashore, it will have to be moved. The tankers will arrive and the Northwest Passage’s importance will become central. The port of Churchill in northern Canada is gearing up to try and catch what it hopes will be a new wave of inter-ocean shipping.

The Arctic Ocean is one of least travelled places on earth. Its name conjures spectres of unbearable loneliness and unremitting harshness. A place not made for Homo sapiens, a place that doesn't welcome us. Those who exist there need willpower as irresistible as a glacier, the muscles of a Polar bear, and the resourcefulness of an arctic fox.

The nations of the north understand this. It’s not the politics of the equator here, passionate and overcrowded. This untamed wilderness isn't a place to thrive, but survive. The wild north was one of the last places to be colonized by humans. Our battle up there is still as much with the elements as with each other.

But where men dare not go on their own, they take machines. Those driving the exploration and confrontation brewing around the Arctic are engineers, military and civilian. Its characters are already ploughing slowly on to the stage. Icebreakers, warships grey and white, hulking rigs and diamond tipped drills snaking their way into the polar seabed.

Of the Arctic nations the most pro-active and best equipped is currently Russia. With the world’s only fleet of nuclear powered ice breakers, and its northern naval fleet operating out of the world’s largest Arctic port, Murmansk, Russia plans to breathe life into frigid old shipping lanes. Murmansk is especially important. As Kier Giles says in an article on Russia and the Arctic-

“Murmansk – unlike the ports on the Baltic or those along the Black Sea – gives Russia direct access to three oceans. From Murmansk, there is no need to pass through straits that make Russian ships vulnerable. For the oil and gas industry, as well as for the Russian state, these geographical factors are seen as essential.”

For as well as Canada’s Northwest Passage, Russia has long dreamed of opening a ‘Northern Sea Route’ along Russia’s arctic coast, so connecting European shipping lanes with Asian ones. It could prove more of a complement to the Northwest Passage than a rival. Both would combine to take shipping away from the southern hemisphere, Mediterranean and Suez Canal, and send it north.

Russia also has some mysterious ports on the most remote reaches of its Arctic coastline. Dudinka is a Siberian river port accessible to sea going ships. Dikson on the Russian Arctic coast is one of the most isolated settlements on earth and is Russia’s most northern port, its few hundred residents call Dikson ‘the capital of the Arctic’. It is not just the winter darkness that shrouds these lonely frontier towns. Both of these are designated ‘closed’ settlements. Travel is restricted or denied to foreigners and even Russians need a travel permit to go there. Tiksi is a northern port with massively disproportionate runway space at its two military airfields for its size. Pevek is another Arctic port in eastern Siberia. Most of these settlements were kept alive by the industrial and military ambitions of communist Russia. From the cold war to a war in the cold, these outposts may find themselves on the front line in a race for the Arctic.

At the heart of this chilly heat is a victory of realpolitik and resource politics over environmental concerns. It was global warming, probably caused to a great extent by industrial age carbon emissions that caused this melting of Arctic ice. However in a strategic sense, resources are power. The quest for power has always been the underlying cause of war. Polar bears will tear each other to pieces over a seal carcass when seal carcasses are scarce. The metaphor carries.

Norway has arctic bases at Haakonsvern and Olavsvern on their arctic coast and in 2004 the Norwegian parliament received heavy criticism from its armed forces for pursuing a ‘High North’ strategy while simultaneously proposing the closure of the Olavsvern base. Norway has an ongoing issue involving territorial waters with Russia, and rightly sees Russia as its most problematic opponent in any Arctic exploitation.

Canada is at odds with Denmark over a tiny island, Hans Island, in between the Northern tip of Canada and Greenland. This could affect shipping through the Northwest Passage. Denmark has a special dog sled military patrol which ranges Greenland asserting Danish authority, while Danish F-16 jets have been flown straight up to Greenland from their home bases. Meanwhile Canada is not only re-equipping an old mining station at remote Nanisivik as a naval base, near to Greenland. It also has its own force of ‘rangers’ combining Inuit survival and hunting skills with global positioning and skidoo technology. Cold weather training for the Canadian army will take place at a base on Resolute Bay, similarly far north. Both nations are arming and upgrading forces for the purpose of asserting Arctic sovereignty.

The Arctic seas are currently little known and little traveled. The Barents Sea north of Russia and Norway is perhaps the best known, if as the freezing graveyard of many sailors in ill fated World War Two convoy ships. The Beaufort Sea off Alaska and Canada is host to oil rigs at the moment drilling what is still the world’s most northerly oil field. A lonely line of Russian arctic seas still betray little more than their names, the White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea. The Chukchi Sea stretches across the north of the bearing sea, and joins Russian waters to American and the Beaufort Sea. The Lincoln Sea starts where both Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Denmark’s Greenland end. The Greenland Sea, Wandel Sea, Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay all surround Greenland. And finally, out beyond the grey coasts of the Arctic nations, under the mass of Polar ice, lays the Arctic Ocean itself. For centuries explorers believed in a mythical ‘Open Polar Sea’ which would allow one to sail to the North pole or from Europe to the Pacific. Well the explorers are back. They have the might of state behind them, and this time they’ve found the Polar Sea. It’s under the ice and full of treasures. But no one’s kidding themselves that it’s open.

The UN- The Useless Nations

2009-01-25T14:29:00.004Z

In 1937 the League of Nations asked Japan to withdraw from Manchuria after months of investigation and deliberation into the invasion. The Japanese withdrew from the League and carried on their conquest of China.

The UN was set up in 1945 to build on the mistakes of the League of Nations.

In the cold war the UN was hamstrung by divisions between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies. It achieved little, but it also managed to dodge any serious test of its authority.

Fast forward to 1994, Rwanda. The UN manifestly failed to prevent the ethnic slaughter of half a million Tutsis by Hutu mobs.

In 1995 the UN failed to stop the massacre of around eight thousand Bosnian men and boys by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. This despite the area having been declared a UN protected ‘safe area’ and the presence of peacekeepers.

From 1998 to 2003 the UN failed to intervene or provide humanitarian aid during the second Congo war. Since August 2008 there has been a new war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. There are 17,000 UN peacekeeping troops there. They have been better at providing humanitarian aid, but have failed to make any impression on the combatants and have not stopped a mass exodus and widespread killings, rape and expulsion. Some of the dozens of armed groups in the region have decided to call a ceasefire, but it’s had nothing to do with the UN.

In the recent Gaza conflict, a UN ceasefire resolution was ignored. Both sides carried on pursuing their own interests regardless. Both sides eventually declared a ceasefire when it suited them. UN schools and other facilities were accidentally hit by careless Israeli fire (or deliberately if you believe other sources). All the UN can do is protest. But if conflict happens again, so will UN casualties.

The lesson from these small few examples is that national interest and political realism rule supreme. If the UN disagrees, it is merely ignored. The UN is ineffectual as an international body. It has run its course and should be wrapped up. The UN can’t get the necessary troops together to stop conflicts that don’t interest member states and the troops that are sent have such strict rules of engagement they are useless.

However the solution is not to rely on NATO. The case for calling time on NATO is even stronger than that of the UN. It doesn’t suffer from restrictions on its use of force, each nation choosing their own rules of engagement. But it’s a cold war dinosaur, charging in and raising Cold War spectres and getting other nations’ backs up (particularly Russia’s).

A far better model is one based on regional security bodies. Embryonic European Union defence and monitoring arrangements provide a good template. The OSCE does good work in monitoring regional tensions that all countries in the region care about. In Kosovo they have gone further and have actually taken over policing of the region. In the African Union goodwill binds states into regional responsibility. This should be replicated with:

A North American Union (mostly symbolic unless there are major security developments).

A South American Union, which could deal with land ownership wars. This would cut the conflict cake differently, almost along class lines as well as along state and ethnic ones, but still with vital regional stability at stake. It could also stop dictators or populist leaders starting interstate wars aimed at distracting populations from domestic and economic woes.

A Middle East Union, which would certainly have its work cut out, but may become more of a realistic prospect once a Palestinian state is created.

A South Asian Union embracing India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and others mostly defined by the mountain ranges that surround them. India and Pakistan have a fantastic opportunity to fight Islamic militants together.

An East Asian Union would have a lot of issues to consider including Korea’s future but might be able to avoid crises as long as trade volumes stay high.

However there are many issues surrounding the creation of these unions. It would be a mistake for these Unions to get involved in trade. Though some may want to take the example of the European Union too literally, the vast majority of its actions and structure are relevant only to the geopolitical realities of Europe. There will be some who raise the question as to weather an East Asian Union should be combined with Australasia in a Pacific Union or whether there should be a separate South Pacific Union. Also, should Russia join both the European Union and East Asian Union? That question could be extended to some other countries as well. Turkey in the EU and a Middle East Union? The U.S. and Mexico in a North American Union and a South American Union? Large players may have a positive role to contribute in geographically close spheres.

Having said all this the vested interests in existing international structures make the creation of this system unlikely. The U.S. will continue to ignore the UN when it takes an awkward line and will continue to push for the expansion of NATO. Its not just a lack of teeth that hampers the UN. The system of ‘international law’ it falls back on does not really exist. It is instead a system of international norms, and they are norms that don’t bind many of the world’s states, let alone its corporations, militants and terrorist organizations. If a particular group doesn’t like a particular point of ‘international law’, it can, like they do with the Un itself, just ignore it. There is no law, because there no overarching authority to enforce it. Nations would rather try their soldiers in their own courts, if they see any wrongdoing. In war the end nearly always justifies the means to some extent, whether it's torturing terrorists for information, laying land mines because of small budgets, or firing white phosphorous shells in urban environments.

The more tests of authority the UN is exposed to, the more it will fail. It is important that we close this noble, but doomed chapter in the story of international security, before the UN lets a particularly dangerous actor walk off its stage.

Time for a Change- Not Really

2009-01-19T15:39:00.007Z

Barack Obama is sworn in tomorrow as the 44th president of the United States. Many people have high expectations for his ‘time of change’. Domestically his situation is shaping up rather like Roosevelt’s. We’ll see what Obama’s new deal really holds in time.

But that’s not my primary concern. How will Obama’s foreign policy be different from Bush’s? That’s the question on millions of lips around the world. And expectations there verge on the fantastical.

Israel-Palestine and Iran- As of writing, a tense ceasefire has just been implemented, with UN warbling completely ignored by both sides. The coming days and weeks could be seen either as a key moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations, or as part of another depressing cycle of historical repetition.

Asked in a recent interview whether he will be building on President Bush's policies toward the region or offering "a clean break," Obama responded: "I think that if you look not just at the Bush administration, but also what happened under the Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach. And I think that players in the region understand the compromises that are going to need to be made."

When asked about Iran, his outlook seemed to offer a carrot as well as a stick:"a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk, but also a clarity about what our bottom lines are."

However, contrast that with this comment, also on Iran: "Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges and as I said during the campaign we have a situation in which not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race."

I could make all sorts of equivocations but to be blunt these two comments sound contradictory to me. The crux of the issue is this. Whether a president is Democratic or Republican, US national interest comes first. It does with all nation states. Obama’s foreign policy will be no different from Bush’s, Clinton’s, Bush senior’s….

A 97,000 ton reminder of the lack of change in U.S. foreign policy is the aircraft carrier George H. W Bush, launched by his son George W. Bush on the 10th of January 2009. But it will be Obama that will use this towering monument of the Bushs’ physical legacy. Where might it be used? Somalia might be a good start. Nation states have long loved turning on pirates. Pirates are one enemy outside the international system they can turn on. With the UN voting on January the 16th to maybe send a timid and ineffectual force back to the crucible of hell that is modern day Somalia, it seems likely they’ll need the help of aircraft. Otherwise the role this leviathan can play looks questionable. Large, piloted aircraft are getting more vulnerable as anti-aircraft missiles become smaller and cheaper. Aircraft carriers may not have much of a future. But until then Obama has this Cold War colossus at his disposal, and hasn't cancelled the continued program to start building a whole new class of Gerald Ford aircraft carriers. It would be naive to assume he won't use them.

Russia- It seems unlikely that Obama will desist from pushing for Georgian and Ukrainian membership of NATO or for a missile shield in Poland and The Czech Republic. The American people and body politic quickly become hawkish and roused by out of date Cold War stereotypes and rhetoric. If the missiles are intended to stop rogue strikes by Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and the like then the U.S and Russia should cooperate in anti-missile defence. But they won’t, and it’s likely that will be as much the fault of Medvedev, Putin and their advisors fault as it will be of Obama and his advisers. If, as Russia asserts, the missile shield is really the latest move in an American bi-polar nuclear strategy then it may have to be scrapped because of cost reasons and because of the decades old logic that Anti Ballistic Missiles are simply answered by more offensive missiles on the other side. It is still questionable whether ABMs have become cheap enough or effective enough to give defence a cost advantage over offence. The reality that may bring sense to both leaders, is that they can ill afford to start ploughing money into Cold War style weapons programs. It would make far better sense for Russia and the U.S. to cooperate in regional and international security. They would realize so called ‘tensions’ between them are a mere phantom.

Iraq- Bush was going to pull out of Iraq anyway. The current security agreements were signed in December under Bush’s government. The media should remember, but will try to forget, that Obama has achieved nothing new when US troops pull out under his presidency. Admittedly Bush went to war, won it, but did a dubious and horrendously bloody job of winning the peace. But Iraq does now have a parliament and an independent police force and army, for the moment. If Iraqi security collapses as so many people fear and so many ill guided activists hope they can gloat over, it will be Bush’s fault. But if Iraq succeeds as a new democracy, it will equally be to Bush’s and his generals’ credit.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and India- Pakistan is the most dangerous place on earth at the moment. If Islamic fanatics cause massive social upheaval, or manage to infiltrate the security and intelligence services, the consequences could be stomach churning. The current strategy of a NATO-Pakistani hammer and anvil along the Afghan-Pakistan border is a difficult and frustrating one, but the right one. Combined with General Patreus’ knack for supporting and befriending local tribes to use against jihadists, it could yield the important political results necessary, that people turn their back on the Taleban and aren’t afraid to. Obama will stick to George Bush’s troop surge, and the accompanying U.S. and Afghan deaths in the fight to root out Islamic extremism in South Asia.

These four examples are only a few of the foreign policy challenges facing Barack Obama. But when it comes to foreign policy it rarely comes down to party politics. Presidents, diplomats, advisers and generals either do well for their country’s national interest, or badly.

Domestically Obama may wish to be different. But that doesn’t concern me here. As far as America’s actions as a nation state, nothing will change.

Babel- What a towering pile of sh*te

2009-01-07T08:07:00.004Z

The tower of Babel stopped us in our hubris building a rather arrogant monument. But it also did untold damage to human relations and made the world needlessly laborious for all of us. We don't want the tower anymore, but we need a single language back.

Cast your mind back to when you were young, and, whether you liked it or not, you were forced by the big people to embark on the traumatic campaign to learn your language. The trauma, the tears, the setbacks as you stumbled on every spurious hurdle the evil teachers had thrust in front of you. My particular language was English.

Here it was, in my own struggle, that I unknowingly broke one particular rule which brought down the wrath of my teachers on me. In English, in England, every child is taught the simple spelling rule, “i before e except after c.” So (and I apologise if I’m bringing back any nightmares here) if you were to spell the word ‘believe’ it contains no ‘c’. The ‘i’ comes before the ‘e’. Two vowels jammed together like that are unnatural, especially to a young learner who has learnt their sounds separately. They are, inexplicably pronounced ‘ee’. The rule follows that when one spells ‘receive’ the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ follow a ‘c’. So they swap places. Even so, they’re still pronounced ‘ee’. Try and get your head round that one as a five or six year old!

I managed to wrestle through it, the pant-wetting fear of the spelling tests, the condemnation and punishments for any mistake, the meals withheld until I had sweated and cried my way through homework learning this maze of pitfalls and traps. But then like a tiny lawyer I saw the inconsistency. The hypocrites! How dare they admonish me for a rule they didn’t even stick to!

This was the bombshell, and it means a lot to you when you’re forced to worry about language every waking minute. When the words ‘weigh’ and ‘reign’ were announced to us I viewed with dismay an ‘e’ shamelessly trumping an ‘i’ but without a shred of consent from a ‘c’. There are other words similarly flouting the 'i before e except after c' rule. I raised the point with all the indignant triumph I could muster. This is what I was told.

“It's just the way it is.”

What could I say? I was a Kafkaesque prisoner caught in their arbitrary nets. I crumbled and learnt to love the Ministry of the English language.

So here I am, years later, working in Moscow. And now I’m faced with another impenetrable tangle of rules and exceptions to rules. Of course there was French from eleven to sixteen, but that was more an exercise in survival with a language I didn’t perceive I needed to know, (how, like every rebellious French student, I regret it now). And here is why I feel so overwhelmed by the task of learning a language, of wanting to become a world citizen.

When you are young, you are most probably surrounded by your first language. Even though you hate it, you have no choice, you are so exposed to these frankly odd patterns of speech that you pick them up. At school it is drilled into children day after day, the most common method is years of wrote learning.

But when you’re an adult, especially an adult like me that takes pride in my knowledge of English and loves to use it, it comes as a humbling experience to be plucked out of your native language and dropped into a world of different sounds and symbols. And as I try and learn Russian as an adult, I realise that the same idiosyncrasies and historical hangovers exist in all languages. To my renewed dismay, I’m, hearing it again. “It's just the way it is.”

I have realised that I’m a layman when it comes to language, even English. I know that something is right in English, but I don’t know why. So, as a frustrated layman I find myself once again railing at the rules of languages. My bugbear in this case is gender. It's not a prominent feature of English but in many ‘Latinic’ languages (as my teacher puts it) it is of central importance to pronunciation, to intonation, to verb and adjective usage and sentence construction. In Russian a cupboard is masculine, a car is feminine and a window is neuter. An apple is neuter but when we talk of the plural ‘apples’ it is spelt and pronounced as if it were masculine, because it is an ‘exception’. Sometimes I’m not sure if the exceptions outnumber the rules.

As a frustrated layman, it makes me wish for a world language. It would make travel easier, it would improve relations between countries, it would allow academia to take off, it would make us all more worldly. Here’s my controversial bit, I think the advantages of a joined up world far outweigh the loss of linguistic culture that would come if all the myriad of languages were dropped in favour of one. In fact even with one world language we need not be scared of stiffling homogeneity. In tiny England, regional differences see a huge variety of local accents and loyalties cheerfully embraced under the common medium used to tease each other about those differences, English.

In the struggle for the spread of a world language, complex contenders do themselves no favours. The more simple the core of a language, like English (despite my complaints), the easier it is to understand and iron out the rough edges in any learner. Chinese and Russian have not done well outside their own borders. Even though their logic is strong it is not simple.

I’m not eager to be a cultural philistine, and like all humans I love talking to people, so as for myself I’m not trying to convert all Russians to English but am instead giving Russian my best shot. However human socialising and interaction would be so much easier if we all spoke and wrote the same. The punishment of Babel should be reversed.

Kaliningrad, Redzikowo, MADvedev and the Neo-Convicts

2008-11-05T20:03:00.011Z

What a tale. The US strides ahead with plans to plant Anti-Ballistic Missiles (see below) at Redzikowo in Poland and complementary radar equipment in the Czech republic. Russia responds by saying it may well have to place Ballistic Missiles in nearby Kaliningrad. Its a winning story. Such simplicity. Such rhetoric. Such bone-headed ignorance.

If one has to apportion more blame, it goes to the Neo-Conservatives. The Paul Wolfowitzs and Donald Rumsfelds of this world are convinced America needs uniting against a common enemy. Convicts imprisoned in their paradigm of the evil empire, these bored cold warriors are tired of the War on Terror which distracted them for a while. It's proving too hard to win. So why not pick on that familiar old bear again.

NOTE- For an analysis of who Neo-Conservatives (and Islamic extremists) are, where they came from and what they have done to the world, see The Power of Nightmares by brilliant documentary maker Adam Curtis. The link above is to the trailer, which demonstrates Curtis' insight. It is an astonishing work.

However Medvedev didn't help matters when he announced today that Russian missiles could be put into the Baltic port of Kaliningrad to neutralise any future threat from US anti-ballistic missiles. It's not full blown Mutually Assured Destruction. But you'd be MAD to think Medvedev wasn't thinking at least partly in terms of nuclear strategy.

NOTE- One of the major criticisms of Anti Ballisitc Missile defences is that they are highly ineffective. No advocate of them can provide conclusive proof that they could beat the tricks and the sheer numbers that a nuclear attacker or their weapons may have up their sleeves. Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles (cluster warheads), ship or submarine launched missiles, decoys and more are all unkown quantities (and lets hope they stay that way!). For a rather simplistic but nevertheless relevant rundown of the debate, follow this link.

Here's what makes me yawn-
1. The cold war is over. Medvedev and Putin are the first to admit that Communism doesn't work. Yes relations between Russia and America are a bit growly, but this time image is more important than reality. Lets hope it doesn't go beyond that.
2. When it comes to image vs reality, the world's media have a lot to answer for. Using inflammatory terms like 'A New Cold War' and 'The Russian Bear is Turning Nasty Again' carry such a huge weight of connotations they drag people back to an 'us or them' mentality.

There are some underlying causes, though they only have the transient force of words, not actions. In Russia it's a case of a resurgent bear, regained national pride, and some silly nationalism, little more than that. Russia has just held celebrations (4th November) for National Unity Day. The root of the celebrations is the defeat of a Polish-Lithuanian invasion force in 1612. Its more about the idea of a revitalised Russia. Russians are working steadily on the reality of one.

In America real antagonism has been displayed towards Russia in the expansion of NATO and the crooked rationale for an unproven missile defence shield. It is of key importance that Russia wanted to join NATO through the 1990s and into the 2000s. But NATO pushed it away.

Some calm headed home truths spoken between Obama and Medvedev would do a lot to dispel a row that is essentially an illusion, and stop it becoming a self-fullfilling prophecy.

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory.

2008-09-04T16:21:00.009+01:00

That was Winston Churchill. But how would that victory be won?

Arthur 'Bomber' Harris was once stopped for speeding on his way to the air ministry. He was warned by a policeman that he could kill somebody. 'Young man, I kill thousands of people every night', was his reply.

This is the grim reality of war. Just as fighter pilots desperately struggled to fend off German bomber streams heading to Britain, British bomber crews were part of the same doctrine of air warfare. Pioneered after the first world war by thinkers like the Italian General Giulio Douhet and in essay's like Liddell Hart's Paris (1925), the idea that one could bypass the enemy's fighting armies and smash their people's will to fight, became an attractive one to practitioners. As 1942 developed, the lesson that the Blitz had not smashed Britain's civilian morale was missed by air planners who pursued a bombing offensive on German cities as the most effective use of heavy and medium bombers.

To this day, the cold brutality of area bombing has caused huge debates over its morality. This comes after decades of peace in Europe. In the tradition of historicism, we must view the morality, effectiveness and rationale of area bombing in the context of the time. It was one of the only ways in which Britain could strike at mainland Europe after the collapse of their forces in northern France. Stalin was understandably desperate for a second front as Wehrmacht army groups plunged like knives into his country. For over three years this was all Britain, and later the USA could offer him. And its effectiveness was not yet proven. We know now that even after such brilliant developments as Oboe and H2S targeting, even within an 'area' was horrendously inaccurate. But at the time the Blitz was seen as a lesson not in the ineffectuality of bombing, but as a spur. If we can bomb Germany more extensively and with greater tonnage than the Blitz, the physical destruction created will hamstring the Third Reich's ability to wage war. Morality should be treated carefully. It has been questioned whether a democracy fighting for freedom and moral superiority should bomb German civilians. We are not Nazis. We should not lower ourselves to their level. Sadly these dynamics rarely come into decision making in war. One should forget the internal politics of states. Brutal calculations will are made, and should be considered. If civilian terror and destruction would shorten the war and make Germany's armed forces ineffective it was reasoned, then this was necessary.

With this in mind, and with the rallying example of the thousand plane raid masterminded by Air Marshal Arthur Harris in 1942, Britain became firmly committed to so called 'strategic' bombing.

The epitome of this strategy in the British psyche is the plane seen below, the Lancaster Bomber. This is one of the three remaining Lancaster's in the world. It never flew missions in anger as it was built to late in the war, but that was also one of the reasons for its survival to this day. It was earlier today that I watched this marvel of engineering taxi up and down its runway, at the Aviation Heritage Centre in Lincolnshire, the home of Britain's Bomber Command. As you hear the rumble of its merlin engines, and feel the ground pulsate under its raw mechanical force, you feel a shadow of the dark clouds and huge industrial forces that ground Europe and its peoples to ribbons over sixty years ago. The experience of flying in it and being bombed by it are summed nowhere better than in the radio dramatisation of Len Deighton's tragic tale of the ugliness of air combat, Bomber. The sight and sound of this plane inspires in me, both pride in Britain's engineering design and ability, awe at the industrial forces at work behind this embodiment of total war, fear to think of how small each person must have felt whilst caught up in the maelstrom of that war, and sadness at the burning ideas, the evil minds and accidents of providence that forced that war upon the world.

Apologies for the phone quality of the video. And the propellers of the Lancaster aren't rotating really slowly, they were going very fast. Its just the frame rate on the camera was wrong and it makes it look that way.

I will leave you with the words of Richard Overy, a truly exemplary historian and analyst of strategic bombing in his seminal work, 'Why the Allies Won.' He puts it better than me I'm sure as he explains how bombing contributed to the allies victory-

"There has always seemed something fundamentally implausible about the contention of bombing's critics that dropping almost 2.5 million tons of bombs on taughtly-stretched industrial systems and war-weary urban populations would not seriously weaken them.

Germany and Japan had no special immunity. Japan's military economy was devoured in the flames; her population desperately longed for escape from bombing. German forces lost half of the weapons needed at the front, millions of workers absented themselves from work, and the economy gradually creaked almost to a halt.

Bombing turned the whole of Germany, in Speer's words, into a 'gigantic front'. It was a front the Allies were determined to win; it absorbed huge resources on both sides. It was a battlefied in which only the infamtry were missing. The final victory of the bombers in 1944 was, Speer concluded, 'the greatest lost battle on the German side...'

For all the arguments over the morality or operational effectiveness of the bombing campaigns, the air offensive was one of the decisive elements in Allied victory."

Gorbachev's Warning on the 2008 Georgian War

2008-09-03T11:53:00.004+01:00

Now I couldn't have put it better than Gorbachev. Russia is supporting international law by protecting its citizens from attack, the US is railing against international law by condemning Russia. The US has already gone against the grain of international law (though for good reasons) through intervention in Kosovo and Iraq. Here is how the Moscow news and Gorbachev sum up the Georgian War of 2008-

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Russia had no choice but to launch a counterattack to Georgia's offensive in breakaway South Ossetia, but it is still possible to find a political solution to the crisis.

"What happened on the night of August 7 is beyond comprehension," Gorbachev said in an article in The Guardian published on Wednesday. "The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas."

"Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against ‘small, defenseless Georgia' is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity," he said in the article.

"Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle," Gorbachev, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said.

Gorbachev told the paper that the Georgian authorities could only undertake the offensive "with the perceived support" of a much more powerful force - an apparent reference to the United States, which has trained Georgian troops and backed the country's bid to join NATO.
Now that the military assault has been routed, Gorbachev said, "the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position."

Gorbachev said some Western nations' positions prevented the UN Security Council from acting effectively at the start of the conflict. He also said that by declaring the Caucasus region that is thousands of miles from the American continent a sphere of its "national interest," the U.S. made a serious blunder.

"Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone's interest. But it is simply common sense to recognize that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region," The Guardian reported him as saying.

Gorbachev said the international community should in the long term seek to create a sub-regional security system to make the possibility of crises impossible, which requires cooperation with regional countries and fair and unbiased stances of nations outside the region.

"A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus," he said. "Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all," Gorbachev said.

The Broadcast Industry

2008-05-05T19:02:00.004+01:00

If I have an idea for a documentary, I am useful to a production company. Anyone is. However I don't just want the production company to steal my idea. No one does. The thing is I've also just been through a gruelling postgraduate diploma in Broadcast jourmalism. I know how to use a DV Camera, write scripts, do research, edit footage. Then could someone please tell me how the blazes I actually get a job making documentaries?

I don't want to be used. I am clever and hard working. Is this industry so full of its own importance that it undervalues new applicants so cruelly? It's disgusting! The BBC are still not allowing applications for many of their positions because of 'union agreements'. That is shameful behaviour.

If I go and produce a documentary, I want a good rate for it. But I know that if I show my work or my plans to a commissioner I will have my creation stolen from me. That is no way to run an industry.

If people think the internet has opened broadcasting up, and made it more uncertain, I hope its just the beginning. The whole industry needs tearing open from the seams. Get some air into this stiffled mound of nepotism.

There is no good reason why production crews can't film 9-5 Monday-Friday for all but the most ambitious of shots. I've worked with them. Setting impossibly difficult work schedules and pointless levels of criticism for work is not designed to make things easy. It's just there to support the egos of producers and the faustian economics employed by production companies.

How quotes apply

2008-02-25T14:34:00.007Z

The genius of a good quote is in summing up a thought, a new perspective, an irony or suchlike in a very pithy way. But it is also in relating to the myriad of different circumstances we each find ourselves in.

"We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation."
~Francois De La Rochefoucauld

This applies to my broadcast journalism course as I pass through fire on my way to becoming a broadcast journalist. Even though every one of my twenty eight fellow students is fully aware that we're going to struggle to fit into the industry at the end of it, we all have to get along. Where the greatest tension comes is not through epic dramas of treachery and betrayal, Rochefoucauld's, "calculation." It is through the slip ups and frailties of being human and passing through this demanding course. A little laziness which means a piece of audio isn't in place on time, a little reluctance to ask a colleague for help which means production cues on a script don't match up to the pictures. These are the daily grind of annoyances that Rochefoucauld refers to. Be happy, keep calm, carry on. People don't mean to do this and bugger up your programme. That's what you have to keep telling yourself. For those superiors and subordinates that niggle and gnaw at you like tsetse flies, don't let the bastards grind you down.

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
~Andre Gide

This too relates to my course, and to the pained moral subject of journalism. Journalists will claim with bleeting regularity that they seek and speak the truth, but I find with increasing regularity that this is not, indeed cannot be so. As a result, dear reader, take what you read in the newspapers, hear on the radio, or see on the television with a bucket of salt. Do not rely on it as evidence in that heated pub discussion. There will probably be truth in there somewhere but if you really have to know something journalists are not the ones to listen to.

As a result of the advice I have just dispensed what do I have to say for myself. We journalists must do our best to tell the true story but make our limitations clear to our audience. One thing we can do is spot the salient feature of the story. When you read, listen to, or watch our stories bear this in mind. The journalist wants that salient point, that new development above all else. We sometimes forget why its called NEWS. We will even be forced by our editors and our journalistic indoctrination to twist the rest of the story to fit. So although the final quote below is pithy, and journalists are rarely ones to get distracted by shadows, you must ask yourself what the substance really is.

"Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. "
~Aesop

Double Edged Flames

2007-07-25T21:31:00.001+01:00

Spent yesterday burning wood rubbish out the back of the farmyard and moving branches from a fallen tree. No one wanted the fallen tree with its beautiful pine wood for firewood. We cut off the branches with a chainsaw, threw them back into the wood, then began on the main trunk. With a combination of chainsaw cuts and tugging from a chain attached to a Matbro telehandler we managed to wrench the monster apart then dumped the sections of trunk back into the wood.

While all this was going on a heap of waste was burning at the back of the yard. Consisting of old bales, smashed potato boxes, pallets and other debris it was wet and took some time to get going. Farms accumulate a lot waste, such are the health and safety rules (some worthwhile) and our customers’ demands for packaging. Sometimes even our crops are counted as waste, but they can’t be burnt.

Today I woke up to more rain. It appears the cause of all the rain we’ve been having is the jet stream across the North Atlantic, which usually hurries rainy weather north of Britain but apparently has moved south this year so we’ve been deluged by slow moving rain clouds. Neighbouring farmers are trying to buy dual wheels and tracks for their combines to reduce ground pressure on the sodden earth. A nearby farmer bought a new combine for £200,000. He tried to get into his oil seed rape to combine it as he was desperate not to see the rape seeds fall from the pods. His combine stuck fast. In the process of pulling it out with his biggest tractor, he has apparently “stretched” the combine and it now won’t run at all. I can sympathise with the chap’s situation. You leave a combine sitting in a shed for 11 months. The combining itself only takes about 10 days a year these days. And yet the problems that affect these cumbersome and massively complicated machines are myriad.

We had a combine of our own until two years ago. My brother was driving it one night when he smelled smoke. He and the tractor driver had failed to notice some wisping smoke from an electrical fault near the back. This is an easy enough mistake to make, especially at night, with the mechanism creating clouds of dust from the separation of the wheat plants. By the time they had jumped out and tried to douse it with their water bottles (they couldn’t see that it was an electrical fault yet) the flames had leapt onto the hot rubber drive belts and melted into the diesel tank. My brother had to drive the flaming behemoth across to the edge of the field to stop acres of wheat catching fire. We lost the combine, and haven’t bought a new one since. Wheat prices are looking fantastic for this year, that is if farmers can actually get their crops harvested. However the long term economics of British farmers growing combinable crops is still uncertain.

Hunting for sartorial elegance in the big smoke

2007-07-24T17:19:00.002+01:00

I have been away for some time, and have consequently been unable to post. I have been away in London location scouting for an upcoming ITV drama, to be filmed in October. My brief from my wonderful boss was to find 'gated communities' or mews. By their very nature these locations are hard to find and highly private, but they didn't prove as hard to gain entry to as I expected, especially when they confirmed my purpose and found I wasn't a salesman.

The level of wealth was mind boggling. In one of the developments, residents had bid against each other up to the value of £16,000.... for a parking space! However I cannot say I found them stuck up or snooty. Most were welcoming and were sympathetic to my lot. Location scouting in London involves scrambling round (usually driving, me in a hired car, scary!) trying to gain an audience and take pictures of prospective property, and document contact details.

Some jumped up director will then wave the candidate properties away or nod them through. I enjoyed my work, and then on Friday went to the GMTV centre on the South bank of the Thames to shadow John Stapleton the ITV newsreader. What an exciting morning (well, from 3.30am to 9.30am). The lot of the correspondents didn't seem too great, stood out in the rain since goodness knows what time. I wondered if they had partners and how often they saw them.

There is that very good allegory about your priorities in life. Here it is:

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—your family, your health, your children, your friends, your favorite passions—things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else—the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. "The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled and replied, "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers."

The ones you love, partner and family should always come first, no questions asked. How wise and simple.

Salesmen- Scum of the Earth

2007-07-13T08:40:00.001+01:00

Among the most annoying and undesirable wretches of our modern economy and society are salespeople. Their trade comprises spending all day wasting their life force bombarding good, honest hard working people with phone calls or house calls, trying to sell them things they do not need. Always things they do not need. Also things they do not want. This chore (it is not a job, certainly not a profession) is a pain for both parties, the salesperson and the victim.

If a random passer by lunged into most offices and tried to foist some half baked crap onto them for an extortionate price their feet wouldn't touch the ground until they hit the pavement again. And yet, we allow these parasites to come to our homes after we stumble in from an exhausting day at work, or to phone us up and break our line of concentration. For the good of the nation, they must be abolished.

Here's a joke to help illustrate my point of their pushiness, and make you smile:

Door-to-Door Sales Crap

An enthusiastic door-to-door vacuum salesman goes to the first house in his new territory. He knocks, a real mean and tough looking lady opens the door, and before she has a chance to say anything, he runs inside and dumps cow patties all over the carpet.

He says, "Lady, if this vacuum cleaner don't do wonders cleaning this up, I'll eat every chunk of it."

She turns to him with a smirk and says, "You want ketchup on that?"

The salesman says, "Why do you ask?"

She says, "We just moved in and we haven't got the electricity turned on yet."

We could far better use the manpower employing these peons as brick layers, maintenance people, farm workers! Their trade is built entirely on artificial need. When one looks below the surface it has no satisfying raison d'etre. They are not scum because of who they are, they are scum because of what they do. Their effort could be far better utilised elsewhere.

So next time, do the right thing. No matter who they are, no matter what they are peddling (and they are ALWAYS peddling something), no matter what lies they try and tell you in those first few seconds, hang up on them or shut the door. The more depressed we can make them and the more we can close their market off to them the faster they will quit their jobs and the whole rotten industry will collapse. Don't say anything nice to them. Don't say anything at all. Just slam down the phone or slam the door shut. The law seems to refuse to stop their invasions of our privacy. If we want to buy something we will go out and take our time deciding, we do not want to have to experience 'hard sell'.

Miller didn't know what he was onto. The death of the salesman cannot come too soon.

Couching Potatoes

2007-07-12T14:33:00.001+01:00

The wheel coming off the blue valve opens and shuts the valve. It follows directly from the impeller which gives the water all its force. The impeller is the large cylinder you can see left of centre. With the power of the pump engine this can generate up to 11 bar pressure, enough to run three irrigation guns each about a mile away!
Apologies for the sideways shot. On the bottom (left) of the picture is the control box. The two dials on it are all important pressure dials. The large one is linked to the engine accelerator and the revs increase as you turn the dial up. The smaller gauge is to indicate pressure, but two needles set either side of the indicator needle act as trip switches. If the pressure rises too high or falls too low (because an irrigator has stopped or a pipe has blown etc) they will cut the engine out and stop the pump. This saves water, fuel and damage to the pump and is a standard feature on most.

Here you can see the pump engine with a lay flat pipe (or hose) on the front. A lot of irrigation pumps use old, reconditioned combine harvester engines. They are powerful and well built because combines, like irrigation pumps have to run at high revs for many hours at a time. However even this, our biggest pump, proved just a drop in the ocean when trying to pump off the flooded river waters.

A busy day today. Many orders to take as we were very understaffed. But I must admit it kept me busy and was reasonably enjoyable. I wrote a kurt letter to a snotty little woman from the useless quango, "Natural England." They want us to specify in ridiculous detail how much land we have as rotational arable options, i.e over-wintered stubbles. I had already specified it on their form. So this jumped up official rings to say its 'not what she expected'. Oh, so I'm just making 100 hectares of fallow land up am I? It did give me some pleasure to finish the letter with, "We trust this clarifies the matter." I hope it does.

The pictures are of an irrigation pump of ours (above) and of our first foray into the potato harvest the other day (below), a rather wet one. We did extricate it later on with the help of twenty feet of tow chain and two more tractors, about 370 horse power (with an order of magnitude more torque than a sports car) in all. This field is the only one of four badly affected by the floods to have come out with anything to salvage. Amazingly it didn't get blight, seeing as it's been too wet to spray it for the past fortnight or so. No doubt that will come in time. Some of our other fields have got blight even though they have been sprayed, which shows how virulent the disease is.

The land near the Ancholme river in Lincolnshire is black sand. It is good growing land since the river was improved and straightened as this is its old flood plain. Yes that does mean it was partly our own fault to plant potatoes here, but the river only floods very rarely, and the huge ditches around it can usually cope. This year the volume of water was truly exceptional. The water saturated the very porous, sandy soil (not clay) for nearly two weeks. The soil is still so wet that the harvester sank like a brick.

So we got the spades out.

The spades failed so we went for the tractors and chains.

The first potatoes came out of the ground far better though than I personally had feared. There are many more rotten ones than usual, but it still only amounts to around 20% of the total. We can cope with that, seeing as we could have lost the lot in the quagmire. However when it came to washing them the brushes of the barrel washer have just shaved all the skins off. Potatoes usually have time to go through a period of senescence when their skins harden up to protect the starch storage cells inside. They are what we call in the industry 'skin set'. At the beginning of the season there are often 'non skin set' potatoes sold because there is no alternative, but they aren't very good for baking and don't keep very long, only maybe a few days. Ours were so waterlogged their skins didn't set. We don't know if ours will be good enough. But I'd like to see our customers try and get any better, certainly nationally and possibly internationally.

I'm feeling ambivalent about my career prospects. Maybe farming isn't so bad after all. The lifestyle has only a fraction of the mental stress and overcrowding a city job has. However the physical strain, technical frustration and sometimes the sheer loneliness can take their toll. I know the stress levels in the media are some of the worst of all. The hours, the problems that have to be fixed, the cruel deadlines. I find it quite laughable that it has to be this grinding at all. What are we all rushing towards so desperately? A rich death?

Agri-organisation

2007-07-09T11:11:00.001+01:00

Today we finally began the long overdue task of trying to clean up our machinery paddock. As you can see here we've flailed the grass and created areas for certain machinery types. I just hope we have the momentum to carry it through. Places with a lot of machinery in them naturally tend to slip into a metallic chaos. The machines secretly yearn for disorganisation. Only the most diligent of workmen factor in clearing up time for a job, although they all should. To run an efficient system of, "a place for everything, everything in its place," a lot of pedantry is required. But we are human, with our short concentration and interest spans, our easily distracted brains, and our hunger for human interaction over interaction with inanimate machines. My argument here is demonstrated again. Change the system to suit humans more, not to suit machines.

We also shifted some fly netting onto lorries today for moving to another site. The sheets are about 12 metres wide and 50, 100 or 200 metres long. In another agonising part of the modern industrial agri-business system there are no chemicals allowed in use to combat the voracious cabbage root fly which devours the root systems and burrows into the flesh of countless crops. As a result we must break our backs covering the crops in this fine polyester netting. It's heavy and awkward and you have to dig soil over the edges or the fanatical flies will get underneath it and the wind will blow it off. I'm very glad to see the back of it.

There's the constant grind of machinery faults on the grading lines in the yard. Machines must be stripped down, worn or broken parts taken off, replacements found and fitted again. It's a never ending struggle to keep metal turning and the potatoes rolling.

Some of our workers have gone to finally pull our pumps out of the flooded fields, now a brown and withered morass. The pumps, fuel tanks and pipes must be packed away and taken back to the yards. Another effort that I'm immensely glad is over.

Potato flowers and Angels

2007-07-08T19:49:00.001+01:00

The flower above is a potato flower. I took this in one of the fields that was less badly affected by the rain. But even in the fields that were flooded, made all the more poignant by their impending collapse, was a sea of white and yellow flowers as beautiful in there own understated, earthy way as any daffodil or snap dragon.

No matter what nature throws at them, and despite the strange beauty of monoculture, these plants shine on as best they can. The canopy buzzes with bees and sometimes a butterfly lollops from one plant to another. They grow and pollinate, put out fruit (small 'potato apples' that look like unripe cherry tomatoes) and then drop their tiny seeds on the ground. If it weren't for the demands of society for cheap food we might be able to indulge in letting this true seed begin the two year journey to becoming a luscious full grown potato plant itself.

Daze of Yore

2007-07-04T12:27:00.001+01:00

How unnatural to the human rhythm and how hard was it for the agricultural workers pictured above. The industrial structure was emerging. This field came after the enclosures acts and the agricultural revolution would probably now have been passing on to the industrial one with greater food production available for the cities. The communities that have existed (under various levels of stress to their fabric) since the beginning of mankind were still holding strong. This was because the tools and technology used here had not evolved much from the earliest farming in ancient Sumeria.

However the close cohesion and sharing spirit of hunter gathering homo sapiens has disappeared. The impetus to accumulate private property, and to hell with everyone else, was on the up. This land was not commonly owned, but probably by a landowner who had never even grasped a spade handle or a scythe. With the growth of technology farmers became more and more involved with the work itself. Just fifty years ago many workers would be needed to bring in a 500 acre cereal harvest. Nowadays it can be done with just two. This means that the farmer himself has been relegated by technology to being just a farm worker. Increasingly on smaller farms the only permanent worker the farm can afford to employ. What a lonely life compared to comradeship (admittedly in labouring adversity) shared by the workers seen above.

How much can air conditioned, stereo equipped tractors compensate for lack of human contact. Very little I think. We are social animals, we need each other. In the fields perhaps some good banter is worth the loss in technology. But with pressure from the biggest farming cost of all, labour, this trend seems unlikely to be reversed.

The Chemical Wasteland

2007-07-04T09:05:00.001+01:00

Every year farmers spray hundreds of litres of chemical solution onto their fields. The evidence for this being dangerous is minimal. The evidence for it being an effective way of controlling the myriad of pests, diseases and growth deficiencies that beset crops all over the world all the time is massive. Ask any agronomy firm. Look at the entire food supply and retail system of the western world. Its all based upon effective agribusiness and monoculture. If there are any problems with the system (and I believe there are massive problems), use of chemicals is not one of them. What would be evident if the effect of not using these chemicals. Imagine the uproar as consumers found potatoes tinged with scab and silver scurf (superficial skin diseases, but that do not effect taste or nutrition!). Imagine the complaints flooding in to supermarkets as insects were found under every cabbage leaf. All this outrage would be passed back down to the farmer.

The modern consumer bases their purchasing decisions on completely unrealistic assumptions. Only fifty years ago consumers wouldn't bat an eyelid and caterpillars on lettuce or undersized, oversized or misshapen fruit and veg. Nowadays, decades of political interference and quality decisions made by supermarket buyers with absolutely no appreciation of what can realistically be expected of producers have resulted in millions of tonnes of perfectly good food being thrown away each year. All the effort farmers put into growing potatoes. Anywhere between 10% and 50% of our crop (that is not rotten or unhealthy in any way) is nevertheless rejected by our customers each year. The largest potatoes of all (traditionally the proudest of all the field's potatoes) are, apparently too large to be attractive to the consumer. They are fed to cattle for around 4% of their usual price, which is a massive loss. The same goes for potatoes that are misshapen, too small, that have skin defects (unavoidable after so many months in refrigerated storage) like scab or silver scurf. The supermarkets decide what people like, not the consumers themselves. The food you see on the shelf is a far cry from the total output of produce that the farmers of the country work their guts out to grow.

Organic farmers have reject rates far higher than any conventional farmers. The waste they encounter is truly stomach churning. They are denied most of the chemicals that keep their crops free from disease and pests. They must send Polish workers (because English workers refuse to do it) to hand weed entire fields! That seems to me like a torture only the Nazis themselves could have invented! At the end of all of this reject rates for some root crops are way up above 50%. The arrogant brats from the supermarkets can pick and choose and beat the farmer down on price.

The reason that there is so little organic food as a percentage in supermarkets is because there is so little that they will accept. How do we ever hope to make any real difference to climate change if all that diesel, all those chemicals and all that manpower is expended on such wasteful production. The decadence of our food industry is one of greatest scandals of our age. We must accept a reduced superficial quality in our food if we are to make a difference to the environment and improve the lot of the embattled farmer around the world.

I have been spending most of the morning, and will spend more than one day to come, entering the chemicals and fertiliser we have put on our fields, into the computer on a program called farmplan. Even given my defence of farm chemicals, the list is bewildering. One example is a fungicide called Globe. Its active ingredients are Cymoxanil and Mancozeb. It is in fact a brilliant chemical which helps to prevent the scourge of all potato farmers, and a terrifying fear with this astonishingly wet weather, blight. It can wipe out entire crops of potatoes. And fungicides like Globe are farmers' only defence. I will go on entering these complex chemicals into the computer, with immensely little idea of how they work or where they come from. I am intensely inquisitive person so this bothers me.

The summer of my discontent

2007-07-03T12:30:00.001+01:00

It is not natural for homo sapiens to be subjected to work inside a modern agricultural, industrial or business system. Especially with the large mechanical tasks involved man is not the head of the system, nor an integral part of it. Man is squeezed in as an afterthought. We struggle day on day to operate and maintain machines that will never consider us, give us thanks, give us a break, or lighten our loads in any way. Industrial systems developed since the industrial revolution could work a man to his death and not bat a hydraulic steel eyelid. The engineers that developed the systems then had not even heard of ergonomics. The systems and machines we have today are the ancestors of that system. And the engineers and design boards that work today on future modifications, or even supposedly revolutions to this system have a woefully inadequate grasp of ergonomics in its wider sense.

Humans simply cannot compete in stamina or concentration with the machines that are supposed to make our lives easier. Like it or not we are humans. We have a very complex hierarchy of needs and a uniquely complex way of going about things in our daily schedule. We are not, as factory owners wanted to believe then and factory owners and office managers want to believe now, robots. It seems absurd to have to say this but that is exactly how the system is set up and the designers of it desire it to be refined in that direction, not a more humanistic one. We must slow down, be less productive, accept that we and the machines we try and run will be less productive and life slower in order to preserve ourselves as dignified creatures. We are not strong enough or lifeless enough to be cogs in a machine. We must have social interaction, we need rest and recreation time regularly. Many managers would call those flaws and laziness but why is the system like it is. They have been promoted to give them an easier life.

Try as we might we cannot compete with nature. If we continue ( as for the last 200 years) forcing ourselves into the straightjackets of the industrial system we will lose more than our free time. Broken backs, stagnated minds, juddering hands and the lack of social care in illness and old age (because everyone else is out working) will be our reward for a Faustian pact with the conveyor belt hell. Social systems are already damaged to such an extent that we are unsure whether groups such as 'communities' ever existed. We have employed a government secretary to look into this. One with a small nuclear family, living in a cramped city in which no one knows their neighbours names. We may have become more efficient since the industrial and agricultural revolutions, but have also become worse human beings.

Today I helped put up some refrigerated insulation boards in a grain store to convert it into a rudimentary cold potato store, even though with the floods we don't yet know whether we will have enough potatoes to need it. It is difficult and smelly work. As the boards are cut with an angle grinder the boards let off a pungent burning chemical odour. Dust masks and goggles are required to tackle the job. Once again, we must modify ourselves to fit in around industry and chemicals.

I then towed out our land rover that had got stuck in a waterlogged potato field. It was the idiots' fault driving it around rather than walking. But ordinarily it would have been fine. When it comes to farming, nature throws its hat into the ring as well, making for regularly infuriating and totally uncontrollable variables that can cost you dear. Its a poor industry in a real mess.

I also burnt some rotten old wooden pallets. The back of our farmyard is a hideous graveyard, cluttered with rotting wood and rusting metal from old purchases and implements for crops we no longer grow. We can hardly face the task of hauling these old relics and wrecks out and trying to sell them as machines or scrap. What a metaphor that is....

Flooding in the flatlands

2007-07-02T10:17:00.000+01:00

Hello all. My name is Tom Barton. I am a farmer's son and I am currently working on our family arable farm in Lincolnshire, England. I do not want to take over the farm (perhaps an unusual choice for an eldest son) but such is the state of UK farming (confirmed by my experiences every day) that I fancy the prospect of sharing a farm with my brother less and less. I have a BA in War studies from Kings College London and come September I will start training to be a journalist. Someday I will hopefully be able to shout to the world (other than through this blog) about what a deplorable state the UK's (and the world's) agricultural industry is in, and the conditions under which its farmers and farm workers labour.

We begin our story with what will go down in history as the appalling floods of June 2007. The human tragedies of Sheffield, Doncaster, Hull and other northern cities has been mirrored by rural devastation in the East Midlands and all over England's lower lying farmland. From Monday 25th June onwards I and our other workers worked our guts out digging trenches from the fields into the ditches to try and let the water off. We also hauled in pumps, a little sludge pump, and our irrigation pumps and sank holes in amongst the rotting potato tubers to put the suction pipes into. All of this has proved in vain. The river Ancholme filled up and overflowed its banks, the ditches piled up backwards and flowed back into the fields, hundreds of litres of diesel were expended to effect as we saw 30, then 60, then 100 acres of potato crop go under the muddy water. It has been, in short, heartbreaking to see all our efforts in chitting (encouraging stem growth under lights) the seed, planting, spreading fertiliser, spraying, irrigating and all the unseen efforts that go into growing baking potatoes, come to their end in a tide of darkened water and the loss of untold tens of thousands of pounds. This is agriculture in the 21st century, just a unpredictable and out of our hands as always has been.

Its now July the 2nd. The rains have (hopefully) stopped and the water is on the tipping point of beginning to flow away. This morning even my father, who sweated and shouted and worried the last week away finally acknowledged that CPR would no longer work and the patient he had refused to give up on is finally dead. Four fields full of smelling potato slush slumped at the bottom on shrivelled stalks and drowned roots. I'm sure the consumer will not even notice it though. Continuing one of the great ironies of 21st century food production, both the supermarkets (in order for some jumped up little potato buyer to get his bonus) and us (to keep our business afloat) will start buying potatoes from abroad. Shipping food hundreds or thousands of miles and so contributing to the same global climate change that brought us these floods in the first place. Maybe next year we can hope for a million or two litres more, and start growing rice.