Prague Property

The annual release of state papers can turn up some fascinating pieces of information. Today’s Irish Independent reports that Lord Mountbatten wished for a united Ireland. In 1972 he is said to have told Donal O’Sullivan, the then Irish Ambassador to London, in 1972 that he would he would be happy to help with efforts to secure a lasting peace.

Mountbatten was hopeful that political developments under the Heath government would lead to reunification. According to O’Sullivan “Lord Mountbatten said he wished me to know that he and many of his friends have been deeply impressed by the positive Dublin reaction to the Heath initiative…They hope that this can be developed into a ‘major advance towards the final solution’. Reunification is the only eventual solution. If there is anything he can do to help he will be most happy to co-operate.”

In addition O’ Sullivan claimed that Terence ‘Neill, the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, also believed a united Ireland was inevitable. He paraphrased Lord O’Neill words: “What we in the South must realise is that there are no Wolfe Tones among the Northern Protestants and we should, therefore, do everything we can to discourage any idea that there is a speedy path towards reunification. It will come but in its own time.”

Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979.

Often buried under the more sexy foreign policy issues such as terrorism, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and imported steroids for baseball players, U.S. politicians only rarely speak up about what they believe should be done vis-à-vis Russia. Now, probably thanks to TIME Magazine’s selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year, the Kremlin problem is finally getting its due among the field of candidates for the U.S. presidency.

The sudden realization of some of these politicians that there could be some good political mileage to be had by squawking on about Russia has not always produced fruitful proposals or new ideas. Nevertheless, today the Council on Foreign Relations has provided a helpful rundown of each candidate’s foreign policy position on Russia. Russia policy was stated as “unknown” for candidates Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo.

Matador

Incubus Succubus II

Qual

In a recent column by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times about the torture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah by the U.S. Government, an interesting question is posed: if this cover-up of a war crime is finally unraveled, will it eventually lead to accountability at the highest levels of the Oval Office?

Sullivan writes, “Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.”

In making the case for George Bush as a war criminal, Sullivan has raised a very important point – when a high profile prisoner is severely mistreated by the authorities and threatened with death, the responsibility goes to the highest levels of executive power which authorized these actions.

We can now observe a parallel example in Russia, which although lacking the dramatic headline-grabbing stories of terrorist plots, waterboarding, and destroyed videotapes, features the same repugnant cruelty as the former Yukos general counsel Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan is systematically being denied access to emergency life-saving medical care and chemotherapy treatments.

[The following is the final installment of Grigory Pasko's reporting on punitive psychiatry and interviews with journalist Andrei Novikov. See Part 1 and Part 2.]

“Psychiatry for the state is a supplementary element of the police system, convenient when it isn’t possible to prove somebody’s guilt, but when the person is just really getting in the way of the state.” – from I. Girich’s foreword to V. Nekipelov’s 2005 book «Institut durakov» [Institute of Fools]

“You can’t understand Russia with the mind…”

By Grigory Pasko, journalist

Some men were sitting next to me in the train back home from Yaroslavl, drinking beer. One was reading a book about chekists (you can’t even imagine how many of them are being published in contemporary Russia!), the other was talking incessantly: about railroads, about perestroika (which had “destroyed the USSR”), about how the toilet was perpetually closed…

I recalled a phrase from Anton Chekhov’s tale «Ward No. 6»: “‘Which one of us two is insane?’, he thought with aggravation. ‘Is it I, who an trying not to trouble the passengers in any way, or is it this egoist, who thinks he’s smarter and more interesting than everybody here, and therefore isn’t giving anybody any peace?’”

Main building of the psychiatric hospital in Rybinsk (photo by Grigory Pasko)

This question was posed by Russia Profile to Ethan S. Burger, Eric Kraus, Ira Straus, Andrei Tsygankov, and Stephen Blank. The latter is the only one to really question some of the fundamental assumptions about Russia’s resurgence: “The deliberate stoking of nationalist, chauvinistic rhetoric warning of enemies at the gates, generated for domestic purposes, is now exacting its cost.”

Yesterday we blogged about Russia’s need to keep Iran in the lurch with regard to delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. Also, the unexpected announcement by the Iranians appeared to have caught the Russians off guard, and led many to conclude that it was a preemptive bargaining tactic to force Moscow’s hand (Gazprom has perfected this method of premature announcements of deals).

True to form, today the Russians are denying the delivery of this missile system, and even denying that talks are taking place: “The question of deliveries of S-300 systems to Iran, which has now arisen in the mass media, is not currently taking place, is not being considered and is not being discussed at this time with the Iranian side,” said a representative from the Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service (FSVTS).

I wonder what the response from Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and the Iranians will be to this news? Perhaps silence, or perhaps more Nabucco and gas export talk…

As is well known by now, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday when leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi. A gunman shot her in the neck and set off a bomb killing about 20 other people. Ms Bhutto, who had previously served had served as prime minister from 1988-1990 and 1993-1996, had been campaigning as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), ahead of elections on 8 January.

Her death was murder was a senseless act and will almost certainly be huge setback for stability in Pakistan. With Bhutto’s death can next month’s elections go ahead? Even if they do will they achieve anything now? Even though Al Qaeda has claimed that it was responsible for the attack, Musharraf will be the main target of anger – Bhutto’s murder took place in a secure garrison. If she was to be safe campaigning anywhere she should have been safe in Rawalpindi. It is likely to spur on anti-Musharraf campaigners. Musharraf may counter by re-imposing a state of emergency but this is likely to fan the flames of opposition. His goose looks like it is well and truly cooked whatever happens

The PPP is likely to be a major loser. Benazir Bhutto had large grass root support. Without her the PPP must surely be thrown into severe disarray, splitting into factions and thus becoming a far less potent political force.

Sadly it looks as if the only winners from this will be the Islamic extremists.

Today: Russia denies sale of anti-aircraft missile to Iran, delivers second shipment of nuclear fuel; contraband caviar; British-Russian relations - “Cold War lite”.

At the cabinet’s final session for the year, Vladimir Putin said that Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov’s job for the new year would be “to ensure work of such intensity that even my possible arrival at the White House would seem like a holiday to everyone.” A poll by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Studies found that inflation was the key event of the year for Russians. Putin has topped business daily Kommersant’s annual rankings of Russia’s elite for the seventh consecutive time.

Gazprom took control of Shell’s Sakhalin-2 project last year, and now appears to want a stake in ExxonMobil’s Sakhalin-1 venture as well, according to new reports alleging that Gazprom held talks to join the oil and gas project earlier this year.

Russia’s state-controlled Rosneft says it will raise oil output by 11% in 2008.

The Middle East’s share of Japan’s crude imports fell to 84.3% in November from 89.4% a year ago, partly due to a surge in crude imports from Russia and Vietnam.