by Alexander Mercouris
As everyone by now knows I have been a week in Moscow.
It was an extraordinary, wonderful visit packed with productive work and meetings with good friends. There is so much to say and I will try to say it when I can. But first a quick general impression about the economic and security situation unrelated to specific political news or to the Nemtsov murder (of which more soon).
Briefly, there is no doubt the inflation is hurting. I saw more beggars – overwhelmingly old and poor people – precisely the sort of people on low fixed incomes who get hurt most when inflation takes off. Their numbers are still far below those in London and compared to Athens there is simply no comparison.
In all other respects there were none of the visible signs of distress that I am familiar with from London and Athens during periods of economic crisis: no boarded up shops, no empty shelves in food stores (claims to that effect in the British press at least in relation to central Moscow are entirely untrue), no visible slack in business in bars, restaurants or cafes, no sale signs on shop windows, no litter in the streets, which compared to London and of course Athens are exceptionally clean.
Until news came through of the Nemtsov murder, which shocked everyone of every political persuasion including both supporters and opponents of the government (I know because I spoke with both) the situation in the city appeared entirely calm. The police were not tense until news of the Nemtsov murder came through and there was none of the palpable sense of tension I always now feel when I am in Athens and which I have also at various times felt in London, Paris and New York.
In the days following the Nemtsov murder security was significantly tightened up but the police never appeared as threatening as they do in comparable situations in London and Athens. The police became far more visible including on the metro but they never openly brandished firearms in the extravagant way they do in London or Paris or Athens. On Sunday (the day of the protest) my belongings were carefully checked by the police when I was travelling on the metro and I was also asked to pass through an X ray machine but I was treated with courtesy and the policemen afterwards apologised for putting me to the trouble – something I have never known the police to do in any comparable situation in any other city.
There was no obvious sign of a country at war: no profusion of flags, patriotic posters, martial music etc as I have experienced in Athens and (surprisingly) in New York.
Overall the strong impression was of a city at peace. Certainly Moscow did not appear anything like as tense and edgy as I remember it from my first visit in 1998 or when I visited it again in 2004. It is also much, much richer than it was at the time of either of those visits in a way that the statistics do not fully capture.
Let me stress, this was a strictly surface impression. No doubt all sorts of things – some no doubt very ugly – are happening below the surface that as a non-Russian speaker on a brief visit I could not be aware of. The very fact of Nemtsov’s murder shows that this is so. However surface impressions can be a guide to important truths and for what they are worth I pass mine on.
Best Wishes,
Alexander
Moscow SitRep: It’s doing fine. Poor, old, marginal folks hurt by sanctions, ruble, inflation.
Saved the airfare.
Note to editor;
“…and the policemen afterwards apologised for putting me to the trouble.” [5th paragraph]
“…and the policemen afterwards apologised for putting me through the trouble.”
Attention: Daniel Rich
The policemen apologized for putting Mr. Mercouris to the trouble of passing through an X-ray machine.
Mr. Mercouris’s grammar is correct.
Leave DR to his scrutinies. He’s harmless, though overbearing at times.
@ Public Defender
Q: Leave DR to his scrutinies. He’s harmless, though overbearing at times.
R: And what has your psychoanalytic gibberish of my personality to do with my attempt to try and improve the article?
Please don’t act like you know me, because when I put up that sign in the local deli “Wanted, Clairvoyant. You know where to find me…’ you never rang.
@ the pendantic one,
Where I come from “I’m sorry to trouble you” would be for a minor inconvenience ahead of the time, whereas “ to put you through a lot of trouble” would be used after a major inconvenience [as in this case].
However, technically both can be used, so let’s agree on that, and set semantics aside, OK?
picky picky picky
@ Ann,
Q: picky picky picky
R: ‘Note to editor.’
I didn’t know it was you. My apologies.
@ Alexander Mercouris,
Q: …something I have never known the police to do in any comparable situation in any other city.
R: I’ve stood at the Russian border, but never set foot on her soil. However, I did get a taste of Eastern European hospitality [in general].
You must pay a visit to Japan though, for the cops here are of another world too [I was used to very aggressive cops all over the planet as well, except in Germany, where they acted very professional – and I must admit, much to my amazement].
Dear Alexander,
Thanks for the update. It was good to hear.
Rgds,
Veritas
agreed.
Just have read it and feel obliged to share it with You good people ,
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/to-solve-ukraine-crisis-europe-breaks-from-the-us.html
“… Europe breaks from the US …”
:-)
I’ll believe it when it happens…
Like a junkie from his fix. Never happen.
This might have something to do with it :
http://intelnews.org/2015/03/06/01-1653/
Plus of course the previous Der Spiegel one referenced by PCR:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/03/09/breedloves-bellicosity-berlin-alarmed-aggressive-nato-stance-ukraine/
I’m like Johan, I’ll believe it when it happens.
That article is from February 11th
Mike Whitney: Splitting the Atlantic Alliance: NATO Lies and Provocations
And in other related news from the British Propaganda Corporation:
You thought, having been told by NATO, that there were only 1,000 Russian troops in Ukraine? Right?
Wrong!
90,000 Russian troops on the border to rotate in the fighting in Eastern Ukraine. (I thought there was some kind of ceasefire in effect?)
Dr Igor Sutyagin, of the Royal United Services Institute says so, so it must be true. After all, the RUSI is a British defence and security think tank and therefore could not possibly be biased.
e.g. “large-scale escalation, during August 2014, when several Russian regular army battalion tactical groups (numbering up to 1,000 each) were sent in to save the separatists from defeat by the Ukrainian military”
“highlights problems the Russian command has with the morale of both its own troops and the rebels.”
How many Russians are fighting in Ukraine?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31794523
https://www.rusi.org/publications/other/ref:O54FDBCF478D8B/
Much detail here:
https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/201503_BP_Russian_Forces_in_Ukraine_FINAL.pdf
Even more interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sutyagin
British Propaganda Corporation => British Broadcasting propaganda Corporation
;-)
Why’s everybody so picky picky picky today :-)
The RUSI – that’s the same place that warmonger, the Foreign Secretary hammond, spoke: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2987923/Russia-greatest-threat-Britain.html
He’s the same idiot who last July, wanted the Donbass people to lay down their arms; he obviously cares NOTHING about the deaths of innocent civilians.
Interesting about the cops and checkpoints. Russian cops get a lot of bad press in both the Russian media, and in the western zio-media, but when compared to most of the ZPC/NWO colonies, and especially the Israeli and American ones, they are not nearly as aggressive or corrupt.
Example:
Crazy Russian Woman Driver
I cant imagine pindo cops keeping their cool like that.
@ BOT TAK,
A hand inside the vehicle? She’d be shot in the face, no questions asked.
Here is a refection of the thinking of our enemy in Ukraine.A Ukrainian TV interview with an Azov nazi.They didn’t air it because it was to over the top even for them.Here is a small section:
Ukrainian trooper:
– I am a member of “Patriot of Ukraine” organization since 2007. Our goal is the purification of the nation and turning of Ukraine into a powerful state. We know how to build a strong state. First of all, we should oust, and if they do not wish to leave, then to cut the throats of all the Muscovites, or kikes – we will exterminate all of them.
Our principle is “One God, one country, one nation”. As far at the current government is concerned, can you see that they are the same scum? Poroshenko is a kike, Yatsenyuk is a beast, and scoundrel Turchinov gave up the Crimea to the Muscovites. Perhaps, he even sold it, I do not know. He is still there in the Supreme Council. And we are doing nothing. They all should be shot to death.
We should build a country similar to Germany of 1930s. That was a great country! Never mind, we will liberate the Crimea, and the rest of Ukraie, and march on Moscow, we will return Kuban and the Kursk region, and Voronezh, and Polish Galicia and Polissya. We will do it eventually.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3d9_1420028340#BpGzy3LuDyOS6ZsB.99
I’d recommend a one on one “talk” with him by Givi or Motorola.
There was no obvious sign of a country at war: no profusion of flags, patriotic posters, martial music etc as I have experienced in Athens and (surprisingly) in New York.
Why surprisingly for New York? America is pretty much always at war and even when it’s in between wars, the flags and martial color guards are always out.
As an expat who occasionally returns to Murka I notice far fewer yellow ribbons and jingoistic bumperstickers assailing my eyes the last couple of years than ten years ago. It’s almost as if people sense something amiss even if they don’t want to admit it themselves. The willful ignorance of what’s done in their name has a different timbre to it now, more sombre than belligerent.
OT: more ZPC/NWO bio-warfare?
US to Deploy Chemical Brigade to Liberia to Combat Ebola – Pentagon
hmmm
Probably been posted many times previously – in case not:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/u-s-government-patented-ebola/#kX2GqRXW6S2qAm9y.97
“Please, look up U.S. patent number 20120251502, and then read the rest of this article—if you dare.”
Guys do yourselves a favour and stop panicking over nonsense.
Don’t read stuff written by people with no idea what they’re talking about, just writing to panic you. At the very least don’t take their word for it, but go check the “source” they’re basing their scare-stories on.
The patent supplication above is related to a VACCINE against Ebola. There is nothing sinister about it at all.
The Defence Department brigade is for defence against biological and nuclear etc etc weaponless or their effects, not for causing them. If they were up to no good they’d not be telling you about them, or would give them some innocent name.
THINK: what would be the purpose of bio-warfare? should it not be killing people in quantity? what fort of stupid “warfare” is something that manages to kill fewer people than die from the ordinary flu every year? (or from simple starvation every month if we’re talking of Africa).
If DoD takes a patent on a new style of baseball bat, would you call that “weaponising”????
“There is nothing sinister about it at all.”
how do you know?
Some evidence, for the least malignant case:
http://www.channel4.com/news/flu-influenza-vaccine-ineffective-health-winter-deaths
“The flu vaccine given to millions of Britons turns out to be almost entirely ineffective, with only 3 per cent of cases showing any useful effect.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11395085/Flu-vaccine-health-officials-knew-of-dangerous-new-strain-last-March.html
“Ministers may have known almost a year ago there was a strain of influenza circulating which the flu vaccine would not protect against, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman has suggested.
The spokesman said Government officials “work closely” with the World Health Organisation (WHO), which on Friday said the newly emerged virus was first detected in “late-March 2014”.
It raises serious questions about why millions of elderly Britons who took the flu jab over the winter were not warned that they remained unprotected to certain strains.”
Somebody is making lots of money.
A highly malignant case – conjecture:
http://www.libertynews.com/2014/10/exclusive-was-ebola-designed-as-bioterrorism-weapon-and-is-already-airborne-texas-nurse-provides-terrifying-report-breaking-exclusive-report/
Comments section:
“Texsheva • 5 months ago
Also, Bill Gates, who has espoused the benefits of population reduction, has now donated $50 Million to Ebola research. A businessman to the end, I’d say once that vaccine is developed, that’s going to be a good return on his money, since everyone will want that vaccine!
Cybel Doe Texsheva • 5 months ago
Bill gates also owns a Biochemical Research Lab in Sierra Leone Africa. Where this all started.
Joe Moss Texsheva • 5 months ago
That’s interesting. 50 million is no chump change. To me, that speaks volume for where this is going to go, more than any other “speculation”.
Joe Hollinger Texsheva • 5 months ago
Are you sure he wants to do research to help with a vaccine? His record indicates to me that he is more on the side of population reduction. Those that want to see the World’s population reduced to just over two billion people have been looking for a method of killing off people in excess of that number that would be faster and more efficient than mass murder and the ovens. Ebola could be the tool they are using to exact their plan.
Black Beans and Rice • 5 months ago
Before anyone comes on this site demonizing people for being conspiracy theorists, consider that the government has not be forthcoming, transparent, and in many cases honest about much of anything regarding this disease…”
The linked story referred to a patent relating to Ebola and a scare story that it was being weaponized. The patent in fact relates to creating a VACCINE against Ebola. Therefore, nothing sinister about the story, okay??
Flu vaccines never cover for every possible type. They usually have the 5 or 6 most common current ones. When new strains are found they take a few months to make the vaccine against them. The old vaccine is still good for the other types, which also continue to circulate simultaneously.
True someone makes a lot of money out of these vaccines. But they do save a fair few lives every year, among more vulnerable people (very old or very young). Nothing really sinister there either.
“The patent in fact relates to creating a VACCINE against Ebola. Therefore, nothing sinister about the story, okay??”
Are you omnipotent?
https://www.intellihub.com/u-s-government-patent-ebola-virus-2009/
“Hongky…. The patent has every strain listed in a table for every genome they have tried to collect for the Ebola virus btw. It also includes the Marburg virus.
“The entire genome sequence of this virus was completed using a classic primer walking sequencing approach on RNA. The complete genome of the Ebebolavirus was not available, so it too was derived by a similar combination of random primed pyrosequencing and primer walking approaches. Acquisition of these sequences allowed for the first time the phylogenetic analysis of the complete genomes of representatives of all known species of Ebola and Marburg viruses.”
This patent does say it is primarily for the purpose of curing the disease and creating vaccines, also to study the virus…. but I never trust the government either. Sorry. This was patented how long ago, 2009, and it’s almost 2015. They can make vaccines so much faster than this.“
So it says “it is primarily for the purpose of curing the disease and creating vaccines”
So what.
okay??
I meant – are you omniscient?
If so, i’d really like to know who killed Netsov…
Some of these countries are shameless, utterly beyond redemption. Qatar was one of the countries that reduced Iraq to the dark ages and now they come out and say oh wow look what saddam did.
The tragic decline in Iraqi women’s status is the result of 30 years of war and occupation.
The nation produced the first female judge, ambassador, and government minister in the Arab world. Iraqi women benefited from state subsidised childcare and education; they once formed about half the public sector workforce and 50 percent of the country’s doctors.
With a 3,000 percent devaluation of the dinar, mothers, many of whom like today were war widow heads of households, were forced to sell off their living room furniture to pay for basics like food and medicine. Girls were pulled out of school for early marriages or to work to help support their families. And many women, even those with PhDs, were forced into prostitution.
Still, there were some basic foundations left in place. When I first arrived in 1997, I befriended Ahlam, a war widow mother of two who supported her family by working in a hair salon. She was a proud member of both the Iraqi Hairdressers Union and the Iraqi Women’s Union – a state run institution that would often intervene in cases of domestic abuse and divorce settlements.“
This was a time when Sister Marie, a tough Iraqi francophone nun who ran a private hospital in Baghdad, would have to negotiate with black marketeers to buy penicillin. But it was also still a time when women could have state subsidised abortions performed at this Catholic hospital.
she had to pull her 13-year-old daughter out of school as a security precaution; and kidnappings and rapes were at an all time high.
As the country – and its old civil code – went from secular to sectarian, churches were fire bombed for the first time ever, and life became even more of a struggle for survival.
While Ahlam has joined millions of compatriots who are now refugees, her salon goes on. I took tea there a few years ago with the Christian owners and their customers of many faiths; women who all agree that things were so much better “before”.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/iraqi-women-150308055143624.html
I have often wondered when Putin became possessed by Hitler and Stalin and Mao all on the same night. Guess it was Feb 10, 2007…
Get Vlad! How Putin Blocked the U.S. Pivot to Asia
On February 10, 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the 43rd Munich Security Conference that created a rift between Washington and Moscow that has only deepened over time. The Russian President’s blistering hour-long critique of US foreign policy provided a rational, point-by-point indictment of US interventions around the world and their devastating effect on global security. Putin probably didn’t realize the impact his candid observations would have on the assembly in Munich or the reaction of powerbrokers in the US who saw the presentation as a turning point in US-Russian relations. But, the fact is, Washington’s hostility towards Russia can be traced back to this particular incident, a speech in which Putin publicly committed himself to a multipolar global system, thus, repudiating the NWO pretensions of US elites. Here’s what he said:
“I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue.”
With that one formulation, Putin rejected the United States assumed role as the world’s only superpower and steward of global security, a privileged position which Washington feels it earned by prevailing in the Cold War and which entitles the US to unilaterally intervene whenever it sees fit. Putin’s announcement ended years of bickering and deliberation among think tank analysts as to whether Russia could be integrated into the US-led system or not. Now they knew that Putin would never dance to Washington’s tune.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/06/how-putin-blocked-the-u-s-pivot-to-asia/
(Vladimir Putin’s legendary speech at Munich Security Conference)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlY5aZfOgPA
While Putin is making this statement, the camera pans to John McCain and Joe Lieberman who are sitting stone-faced in the front row seething at every word uttered by the Russian president. If you look close enough, you can see the steam emerging from McCain’s ears.
Back in the USSR! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHD5nd3QLTg
The Beatles were/are always lightyears of everyone and everything!!!
The original plan stipulated that the fighter be built in India, with the first deliveries taking place 94 months after the contract was signed. The total cost of the contract is reported to be over $25 billion for 127 new fighters.
But now New Delhi has told Russia it is willing to drop demands for localized production of the new aircraft, known as the PAK FA, if they can promise deliveries beginning 36 months after the contract is signed, according to unidentified Indian military sources quoted by the Times of India.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/india-accelerates-russian-fighter-deal-as-french-rival-argues-over-price/517180.html
Things may be heating up inside the Empire.According to several public reports,47 Republican Senators (the leaders of that party,including several Presidential hopefuls).Wrote and sent an open letter to Iranian leaders.Saying that no matter what nuclear deal that the US State Department under Obama makes with them.It can be overturned and thrown out by the Senate after Obama leaves office.So that means,no country on earth can be confident in any agreement made by the US government.Any agreement Russia might hope to make to end the crisis in Ukraine involving the US has just been shown as a futile move.Internal politics in the US,is as,if not more, toxic than that in Russia.And this just goes to show it even more.Hopefully Russia,and most especially Iran,have grasped that fact from that letter.
The Iranian response was rather funny, schooling the Republicans in the niceties of International Law, http://www.sunherald.com/2015/03/10/6113658/iran-to-gop-us-laws-do-not-apply.html
Furthermore, the authors and signatories are in violation of US domestic law for sending the letter–The Logan Act–as this item details, http://news.antiwar.com/2015/03/10/gop-senators-iran-letter-raises-talk-of-treason/
Of course, as with Torture, Treason won’t be prosecuted–it’s the Outlaw Empire afterall.
Great article some down to earth non biased reporting. Tho someone at the Guardin didn’t like it, lasted about 10 hrs and I guess the U.S woke up and it was deleted.
Ps glory to the heroes lasted about 1hr on the guardin.
Haha. So you’re using Guardian to test the “alternative” nature of The Saker? even if something lasts only a few hours, it’s still been seen by some people. Bit by bit the message will get out. Don’t put anything very long there, as the average reader there won’t go past 2 screens.
Orban ‘DA man!
http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/the-next-years-will-be-about-hardworking-people
…”And as far as I see it, Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words, they have not yet lost their common sense. They are not interested in talk, but want facts and results; they are not interested in theories, but want jobs and affordable utility bills; and they do not swallow the nonsense that unemployment is a natural concomitant of modern economies. They want to free themselves from the modern-day debt slavery that they were driven into by foreign currency loans. They do not want to see their country thronging with people from different cultures, with different customs, who are unable to integrate; people who would pose a threat to public order, their jobs and livelihoods. Naturally, we should not be unfair on liberal notions, as during the period after 1990 they did bring a number of benefits to Hungary which we ourselves fought for; times have changed, however, and we cannot be blind to that fact. We learnt from György Bencze something which we now experience personally on a daily basis. He told us that liberals are extremely tolerant – they are only intolerant of fascists. But it is surely not their fault that everyone else – everyone except for them – is a fascist. Yes, we must understand that liberal politics only ever recognizes two kinds of opinion: its own and the wrong one. You yourselves may clearly remember this; this is how these considerations led to Hungary taking a new direction in 2010, and a new era of national politics began.”
I must admit I was pleased to read this report that life apparently goes on normally in Moscow and it is not as western MSM will try to have the world believe. However, I am also quite sure that under the surface there are events and situations that are not immediately obvious to the non-Russian visitor.
The point I make is that I have also personally experienced an extreme feeling of Russian resolve, against all the provocations of the west, and that the Russian people will not be moved from their hopes and ideals for the Russian Federation, regardless of who it is headed by.
I was also in Moscow for a week last summer visiting friends and family. Also I was in the Russian Far East on the Chinese border, with more friends and family, and I felt a sense of national identity throughout Russia that I had never felt so strongly on my previous visits. The feeling from Western Russia to the Far East of Russia was same. There is that overwhelming feeling of national pride and an integrity that I never feel in Europe or the UK and this feeling comes from virtually all the Russian people I have had contact with both inside and outside Russia since the start of these days of troubles.
I think most people who are following Saker are under no illusions who was responsible and I am of an age who well remembers the first Cold War and the propaganda that the west perpetrated. Although somewhat primitive to what can be achieved now it had the same effects. Fortunately alternative information systems are now available to a wider audience and more people understand that traditional information media is unashamedly manipulated by certain powers. Is it any surprise that the so called ‘freedom of speech’ is now denied so much in the west.
Following the recent events, murder of Nemtsov and, no doubt, future provocations by the west, I wish Russia, her patriots, and the rest of the world who opposes USA hegemony a success.
Keep the good work and keep the faith, whoever your god may be …..
Боги помогают. Удача друзьям свободы!!! Удача Донбасс!!! Удача Россия!!!
Tyke – Имя, данное людям от Йоркшира, Англия ;-)
Dear Alexander,
My question is not related to the subject of the article above and may well be outside your main domain, but I’ll here is the question nevertheless.
I cannot understand what makes the dollar lately so firm, considering that the rise in US National debt, the added QEs and in short their abundance, cannot but weaken it.
Is that the result of “natural” financial market events or does it hide more occult manipulations.
Best regards