Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

The first Embassy of the New World Order radio show after I returned from my trip to Russia. Naturally, most of the show was dedicated to my views and my assessment of what is current state of Russia. As always, this is not a transcript, this is just an outline of what went on during the show. Take a listen.

Resignation of Tony Blair and assessment of his legacy will wait, but for eight now I can safely state that the main factor in Blair's legacy will be transformation of the Labour Party decidedly to the right. Gone are Clause Four and most of the Socialist agenda of the British Labour in force since early 20th century. Whatever else Tony Blair did will be overshadowed by this departure from Socialism.

Elections of Nicolas Sarkozy will have to wait as well, although there is really not much to say here, other then very soon he will find himself in the same situation Margaret Thatcher and Jacques Chirac found themselves. The situation that Thatcher won and that victory led to what is now the UK, and the situation that Chirac lost and  thus wasted  a decade of his country's future.

As I said, most of the talk was about Russia, its social and moral state, its economic state. And I have to admit I am quite afraid for its future. Socially and morally the country is in trouble. Combination of the clannish society that is in the early stages of transformation from feudalism (socialism, communism being really just versions of feudalism) towards capitalism and unheard of speed of such transformation attribute to various problems. The society is very uncaring, it is in fact downright hostile. My experiences with medical system and subsequently with death and funeral arrangements for my mother were quite eye opening.

But there is an economic component to this as well that scares me. I am afraid for the future of Russia and if it can avoid mistakes and problems of early capitalist development I will be happy for it, but I seriously doubt it will avoid them. Russians discovered mortgages and debt and they are treat them as booze. They are drunk with debt. Mortgages are everywhere and rates are astronomical. Real estate prices in St Petersburg and Moscow are through the roof and mortgages. People are borrowing like crazy without ever hoping to pay back. Consumer credit reaches I was told 60 percent and more. The balance of good vs bad debt is going to be very unhealthy.

Combine this with resurgence of Russian Nationalism brewed together with Russian Orthodoxy. Some of my dear friends have succumbed to this obscurantist psychobabble of Orthodoxy offering the only spiritual opposition to inhuman Western imperialism.  And when an economic crash comes this poisonous brew might create something really ugly. Combine this with isolationist policy Mr. Putin is dragging Russia into. One of my friends commented that the worst thing Putin has ever achieved was this foreign policy fiasco - that Russia has no friends. Some might disagree that Warsaw Pact was hardly a friendship club, but still the country was not alone. Now it is. Even Lukashenka, the mad President of Belarus is no longer a friend.

The second hour was mostly dedicated to Russian - Estonian standoff around relocation of the Bronze monument to Soviet Army from a square in the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery. Leaving aside clumsiness of Estonian authorities in carrying out what they had an absolute right, legal and moral, to do, reaction in Russia was absolutely inadequate. The Speaker of the Duma called for severing diplomatic ties with Estonia. Jerks in the streets called to send tanks into Tallinn. Russia stopped passenger train service between St Petersburg and Tallinn, as well as deliveries of some energy resources. Parliamentarians and cabinet members called for boycott of Estonian goods - the PR frenzy machine was working 24/7. And in the mean time, there was nothing from Putin. Vilhelm Konnander (an incredibly astute observer and analyst of all things Eastern European) has some interesting explanations. According to Albatz at Echo Moskvy, there were no interruptions in almost tax free transit through Estonia to Russia - the Putin Inc. money making machine was working all along.

And amidst all this I am talking to a friend of mine and he just drops in passing "I don't like Estonians". Add this to the nationalistic obscurantism. It does not even occur to some that stating something like that is sick. Imagine someone here say something like I don't like Mexicans?!

On the way back from Russia I picked up an issue of The Wall Street Journal Europe and read an interesting column by Amir Taheri about economic isolationist policies of Ahmadinejad - the president of Iran. I always thought it is important to recognize philosophic similarities to understand who's company who keeps.That column by Taheri is a great illustration of how the isolationists in the US are quite close philosophically to Ahmadinejad, Chavez or Zhirinovsky  - fascists and socialists. While they purport to be pro-capitalists. Just a side note.

The ending of the show somehow turned to discussing Putin. Thanks to La Russophobe who does a great job of finding all kinds of writings about Russia, I came to a new (to me) blog called  Streetwise Professor with some hard hitting comments about Putin's V-Day speech. Other links of note for this show: Marginalia has a very interesting discussion of how decades of falsifying history of the USSR affect our current views and attitudes towards contemporary events like the standoff in Estonia. Vladimir Socor writes about standard catch words that reveal the mystic obscurantism of Russian Orthodox Nationalism.