Moskovsky Komsomolets
The country is falling apart: a housewife’s verdict
The end-of-year results show a country in collapse. Structures that should keep the wheels of government turning are instead involved in something quite different. The police do not protect. Doctors do not heal. Teachers do not teach.
Nothing is reliable, high-quality or stable. No goods or services can be trusted completely. You eye everything with suspicion, presupposing that you you’re about to be conned and ripped off. They'll sell you boots that immediately come apart at the seams. Prescribe medicine that you do not need. Feed you rubbish that is long past its expiry date.
It has become so commonplace, this feeling of collapse, that it is not even seen as abnormal. We live among the ruins and yet we continue to live.
There's no justice in the courts. No investigation by the investigating officers. No oversight from the prosecutor.
You can do anything you want, any dirty trick, if you have enough money. Anyone who tries to speak out can be silenced, expelled, imprisoned.
There is no protection. No one upholds the law as part of their duty of service: only if an order to do so comes down from above or when slipped some cash.
Money has replaced everything that moves humanity forward – honesty, honor, intelligence, competence, professionalism, and common sense.
The country is falling apart. No one needs it, no one fights for it or mourns it. They fight for the money that can still be squeezed out of it. But not for the country itself.
The liberal opposition that spearheaded this downfall under Yeltsin has dreamed of returning to power, ever since Putin excluded them. Putin, continuing what he started, wants to stay in power.
All the state’s most vehement proponents, upon closer examination, are revealed to have their own materialistic goals and objectives. Only they mask them with such highly moral slogans that one does not dare call them on their lies. Though in fact they are lying. Brazenly and shamelessly.
Sometimes they say things that are so absurd that it makes you wonder. What planet are these people on? Somewhere in the Andromeda nebula?
Perhaps the nebula is right here, amid the ruins, where everything falls apart, and everything you touch crumbles in your hands?
Last time, our crumbling country disintegrated into republics. Now, perhaps, it will decay region by region.
Not right now, of course. Later. We still have time to live in it up in the ruins. We will host the Olympic Games and World Cup football. But that will not save our country.
Something else will save it. A change of course will save it. But who will make that change? Those ruling the country now will not. Nor will those trying to topple them. The probability that the fog will dissipate, leaving a clear picture of this inevitable collapse, and that this will spur someone into action, is practically nil.
Therefore, my conclusion this year: I pity our country.
Kommersant
Kazakh President gets ticket to rule
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will probably remain in office through 2020 without going to the polls in 2012. A group of activists proposes replacing elections with a national referendum asking the nation to extend his term.
This proposal was put forward at a regional forum convened by a group led by Yerlan Sydykov, rector of Semipalatinsk University. The 850 participants delegated a 320-person-strong group to lobby for the replacement of the 2012 vote and the extension of Nazarbayev’s term.
“The majority of the population is happy with Nazarbayev’s policies aimed at stability, national accord, market development and democratization,” Sydykov said adding that the Leader of the Nation would win anyway and the elections are not worth the trouble.
He expects the country’s electoral commission to give them the green light to begin collecting voter signatures backing the referendum. The activists do not believe this will be a problem. They do, however, agree that the final decision will be up to Nazarbayev himself.
Even more radical proposals have been voiced in Kazakhstan recently. Zagipa Baliyeva, member of the Kazakh parliament’s lower house, suggested extending Nazarbayev’s term in office to 2030. Incidentally, by then the leader will be 90 years old.
This is not the first time that Nazarbayev’s supporters have proposed extending his presidential tenure. In late October, Roman Kim, the leader of the local association of ethnic Koreans made just such a suggestion; Nazarbayev responded, saying he would only agree provided they give him the elixir of life and energy alongside his mandate.
Nazarbayev was elected president of Kazakhstan in 1991 with a sweeping 98.7% of the vote, and has been reelected twice since then, with 79.78% and 91.15% of the vote. In 1995, a national referendum extended his term in office to 2000.
In June 2010, a bill was submitted to the parliament granting Nazarbayev the official title “Leader of the Nation,” which significantly expanded his authority. Curiously, the president did not sign the bill into law; neither did he complete the formal procedure of sending the bill back to the parliament to be finalized. Nevertheless, under Kazakh law, the bill came into force automatically after 30 days.
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
Drugs kill over 100,000 Russians annually
Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, on Wednesday proposed seizing all property owned by convicted drug dealers. He was speaking at a news conference on the results achieved by his service during the year.
“We are drafting appropriate legislation and will submit it to the State Duma for consideration soon,” he said.
He is confident that its adoption will facilitate the elimination of the network of drug trafficking ringleaders.
“More often than not we jail the small fry addicts, leaving the drug barons at large, with all their dirty wealth. In addition to a criminal case, their failure to explain where all these cars, apartments, and townhouses came from, especially when their owner is registered as unemployed, would be considered grounds for their property to be seized,” he said.
Describing the global situation and the international aspect of the drug threat, Ivanov criticized his own agency’s cooperation with NATO in combating Afghan drug trafficking. Heroin production in Afghanistan has increased forty-fold since NATO introduced its troops into the country, the drug control head emphasized.
“In November, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization approved its strategy in Lisbon. But it mentions drugs only twice, in passing. This indicates that even such a key political document couldn’t find room for anti-drug measures. The effect of the NATO military contingent’s presence in Afghanistan is, therefore, nil, if not negative,” he stressed.
Things are looking more positive with Russia’s other Western partners.
“We have started working with the European Parliament. The other day it endorsed a four-part Afghan strategy. One section is entirely devoted to narcotics. It has taken all our proposals into account,” Ivanov said.
As far as domestic anti-drug efforts are concerned, we are seeing a gradual improvement here, although it is not as fast as the drugs police would like. This year, they have destroyed 20 clandestine synthetic drug laboratories, seized three tons of heroin, over three tons of hashish and hundreds of kilograms of synthetic drugs.
In mid-December, the police in St. Petersburg busted an underground laboratory producing amphetamine from nitroethane and benzaldehyde. These substances are not manufactured in Russia. They are produced and supplied by companies in Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Ivanov said that drug addiction in Russia is now on an apocalyptic scale. The data available to the Drug Control Service suggests that there are about five million drug addicts in Russia who consume up to 30 tons of drugs each year. Every single year these toxic substances kill about 130,000 Russians between the ages of 15 and 30. Most of them take Afghan-produced heroin that reaches Russia through its porous borders with Central Asian countries.
New desomorphine-based drugs have lately gained in popularity in Russia, alongside hashish, heroin and marijuana. They are derived from codeine-containing medication. The drug has a life-span of no more than four hours. But even within such a brief period it can kill dozens of people.
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