Russia
McCain, Obama and the Caucasus Test
The satirist Ambrose Bierce memorably described war as God’s way of teaching geography. And so when Russian tanks rolled first into the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia over the weekend and then into Georgia proper, it marked the first time many Americans had heard anything at all about the people, places and politics of this particular corner of the Caucasus.
For now, the conflict between Russia and Georgia, a country with five million fewer residents than the U.S. state of the same name, isn’t likely to play a major, direct role in the race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Few Americans live in the area (and those who do are being evacuated as this is being written), no American troops are on the ground, and there are no significant ethnic or emotional bonds between most U. read more »
Writer Puts the 'I!' in Russia!
Media Mob just received the Summer 2008 issue of Russia!, the premier glossy for hip, young people of Russian descent. The cover features a striking drawing of newly installed Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, whose eyes seem to follow you across the room. Russia! editor Michael Idov penned the accompanying story, Meet the New Boss.
For the subset of people still fascinated by the personal life of former Gawker editor Emily Gould, her story on young Russian novelists—including, as her former website gleefully pointed out her ex-boyfriend, novelist Keith Gessen—is given a seven-page spread and the great headline, The Beet Generation. read more »
How the Jewish Lobby Helped Save My Family
Some day someone should make a Schindler's List-like movie of the guy who helped bring us out. It was Jacob Henry Schiff (1847-1920). Schiff was a great Jewish hero, there should be statues to this guy. He was the head of Kuhn, Loeb, and rivaled J.P. Morgan, and Lord Rothschild, and Bleichroder, as the most powerful banker in the world.
I'm reading a great book, To Free a People (1982), by Gary Dean Best, a professor of history emeritus at University of Hawai'i. It's about the efforts by American Jewish leaders to stop the pogroms in Europe and to ease the situation of Jews there. It's about the birth of the Jewish lobby. "In the quarter century between 1890 and 1914 the American Jewish leaders forged the foundation for a strong American Jewish lobby which significantly influenced American foreign policy toward eastern Europe...and served as the basis for the powerful present-day American Jewish lobby," Best writes.
The lobby then comprised Schiff and a few other bankers, who gained access to the president whenever they wanted it, and also Simon Wolf, of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. These bankers were warned early on that it was better to operate "diplomatically," i.e. behind closed doors, than for Jews to have mass meetings—rallies, which would piss off the Russians and Roumanians who were persecuting my ancestors. So that's what they did generally, they had private meetings. (Though rallies would play a role over the years.)
Best shows that while American Jews were able to influence American policy, American statements, they were only moderately successful in actually influencing Russia. Though, yes, they kept up the flow of emigration. At one point, Simon Wolf made the following boast, to a Russian diplomat:
Russia at this juncture needs two important elements to inspire its future prosperity and happiness: money and friends. The Jews of the world, as citizens of their respective countries, control much of the first and would make a magnificent army of the latter. There is no use disguising the fact that in the United States especially the Jews form an important factor in the formation of public opinion and in the control of finances... By virtue of their mercantile and financial standing in this country they are exercising an all potent and powerful influence...
This was not an idle boast. Best says that in the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-05, Schiff played a powerful role in defeating the Russian forces by acting to block their access to capital in Europe and America, and meantime floating bond after bond, into the hundreds of millions, for the Japanese.
All because of Russian persecution of Jews. I love this guy.
Obviously I am bringing this up to talk about the present day. Schiff waffled on Zionism, as so many German Jews did. Ultimately he helped out. Today the Israel lobby is devoted not to stopping the persecution of the Jews but to the militarization of the Jewish state and defense of the occupation. Toughdove and other Peace Now Jews are against that lobby, and good for them. They know better than I do the horrors of the occupation, and are trying to end it. Where we differ is that I think the Israel lobby has profoundly influenced American foreign policy, and hurt it. They say that's preposterous, Jews don't have that kind of power. Gary Dean Best, a scholar, says that we do.
Antisemites have scorched the earth for any intellectual discussion of this—that is the belief of the toughdoves. I take their point. I don't want more Jewish persecution to emerge from what Albert Lindemann, another fine scholar, calls the "rise of the Jews." But I'm betting that we can have that conversation in America without persecution, and we need to. Undeceiving ourselves about our rise, undeceiving ourselves about our influence on policy seem to me essential elements of an essential conversation: Why Are We In Iraq?
Martin Amis’ Gulag: Accurate, Harrowing, Not Quite Plausible
Stoppard’s History Lesson: Russian Revolutionaries 101
Revolutionary Romance: Lefties Look for Love
Timber From Russia, With Love... Blame Canada!
Instead of yet another bleak housing market report, we would like to share some wonderful post-Cold War news: American home builders visiting St. Petersburg have offered to share their top-secret technology, in exchange for... softwood lumber.
Why the cross-continental bargaining? Because as of next month, our very own Canadian neighbors will be starting "a complex system of border taxes and quotas that will artificially raise lumber prices."
In short, those damn Canadians have forced us to share our precious housing secrets with those damn Russians. Can't a patriarchic global superpower ever catch a break? read more »
Our first press release from SAINT-PETERSBURG is after the jump.
- Max AbelsonTireless on the Left, The Great I.F. Stone
The Big Ugly Story of Our Time: Corruption Threatens the Dollar
The Big Ugly Story of Our Time: Corruption Threatens the Dollar
Monday: Russian Fairytales, Nick Lachey
- Russia's capital faces a battle for its landmark sites too. Except, unlike New York, Moscow's mayor is knocking down the avant garde to build the "fairy-tale version of Russia." (The New York Times)
- Bloomberg this week said that immigrants are essential to the US economy because they take on the jobs that Americans won't, many associated with construction and building or property maintenance. But if those jobs came with salaries and benefits, mightn't there might be more takers? (The New York Times)
- New York 's guide to the rest of the world, all six cities.
- The new residential trend: living in cars. (The New York Times)
- Who doesn't want a Batmobile? What if your home could do that? (We Make Money Not Art)
- An anonymous donor pledged $4 million to Judson College so that the school could finish building an "environmentally friendly architecture designed to allow the building to heat and cool itself without mechanical intervention six months out of the year." Who is this donor ... Brad Pitt? (Daily Herald)
- Every week New York magazine offers a designers an outlet in the back of the book's "High Priority" illustration. (Design Observer)
- The most expensive states to insure a home suffer from mold. (Forbes)
- Nick Lachey licked MTV VJ, and Derek Jeter's girlfriend, Vanessa Minnillo at the W Union Square, a Starwood hotel. Joke overload... (Hotel Chatter)
- Grassroots street reimagination comes by way of George S., a graffiti scenester who drops homemade clay figurines around town and Mark Gorton, who rallies officials for wider sidewalks. (Metropolis)
- Exit, the mega nightclub of choice for many high schoolers, was closed down by police for the illegal sale of alcohol, possession of marijuana and allowing minors to enter. (Page Six)
- Rogers Marvel Architects and Ken Smith Workshop will receive a MASterwork award from The Municipal Arts Society of New York this week for their design of the park at 55 Water Street. (Tropolism)
- Someone is building Noah's Ark. That is all. (BBC)
- The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts will open in downtown Brooklyn by mid-May at 80 Hansen Place and S. Portland Avenue in the same eight-story building as Creative Outlet Dance Theatre, Cool Culture and Fulton Area Business Association. (Crain's)
Guggenheim's Russia! Show Gets Fascinating After Five Centuries
Guggenheim’s Russia! Show Gets Fascinating After Five Centuries
