Life in Iraq has not been easy for civilians by any means since the beginning of the American invasion and, even though many electronic media outlets, such as Al Jazeera on Creative commons and McClatchy’s excellent blog have been tracking life in Iraq, it’s hard to gauge the exact quality of life in the country.

The data is from Brookings, which has also created the Iraq index to track security and reconstruction in Iraq.

John Lipsky, IMF’s managing director, says that the global economy will need more support as the Greek financial crisis has shown considerable downsides to the economy.

“Together with strong implementation by euro area countries, notably through actions to put public finances on a sustainable path, they will help sustain the global recovery,” he told the seminar.

However,  some economists, such as Nouriel Roubini, and Dani Rodrik, agree that short-term fiscal aid will not be enough to stabilize the economy for the long run.

“It’s not over,” Roubini said in an interview with BBC radio broadcast today. “What we’re facing right now in the eurozone is a second stage of a typical financial crisis.”

The European Union’s 750 billion-euro ($931 billion) rescue package to stop contagion from Greece hasn’t calmed the markets while questions remain about whether governments are strong enough to implement the austerity measures required, Roubini said. The European Union said today it has transferred the first instalment of emergency loans to Greece, one day before 8.5 billion euros of bonds come due.

Source.

From the great literary tradition that exists in Russia comes disappointing news:

I would say today’s situation is the bottom line: about 60% of Russians do not buy books on a regular basis and do not borrow them, 70% of households do not have more than a few books. Over the decades, the infrastructure of reading has changed completely: in the 1970s two thirds of books came from libraries, today 81% of Russians do not use libraries at all-Boris Dubin, Russian sociologist

The problem has even reached the desk of the President.

President Dmitry Medvedev admitted two weeks ago that his son found books less interesting than the Internet, recounting how they found a version of Mikhail Lermontov’s classic novel A Hero of Our Time on the web.

“We searched for A Hero of Our Time on the Internet, a well-known book, a classic,” Medvedev told a meeting of the state science and culture councils on April 22. “We found it, no problem, downloaded it, and then the young man got the desire to have a look. But the book lies there, untouched.”

The connotations of suicide bombing are such that we often think of bombers as poor, desperate men from  untoward backgrounds.  As the recent discovery of  “Jihadi Jane” and Nigerian  has shown us, this is not the case.  Often, suicide bombers are men from middle-class families. The evidence remains mixed, however.

In a recent paper presentation at the Brookings Institute, in line with others he’d given previously,  Dr. Edward Sayer explored the connection between labor market conditions and Palestinian suicide bombers from Gaza and the West Bank. He finds that there is indeed some correlation between economic conditions and terrorism:

Contrary to the previous literature, this paper  finds that economic conditions are correlated with suicide terrorism. Specifically, deteriorating  local labor market conditions during the al-Aqsa Intifada account for nearly half of the increase in suicide bombings during that time.

As Israel continues instituting road blocks in the West Bank, it has increased its security situation, with suicide bombings falling to zero over the past several years.  However, as the paper points out, with a broken economy, it is not viable for the West Bank and could result in a new crop of suicide bombers.

source.

Recently, the Russian Orthodox church, which has been experiencing a great revival in post-Soviet Russia, has set its sites on the ex-Soviet republics.  On January 16th, the Patriarch of the church, Kiril Frolov,aimed to visit Astana, Kazakhstan.  However, due to fog blocking the airplane, he was rerouted to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial center.

Whether it was the deliberate intention of Patriarch Kirill, the visit assumed a clearly political connotation and culminated in extensive talks with President Nursultan Nazarbayev who received from the hands of the guest the Glory and Honor Order, the highest mark of distinction in the ROC, previously granted to the former Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former Patriarch Alexey II, and the pro-Moscow Head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Caucasus Allahshukur Pashazade.

The visit, meant to mark the opening of Uspensk Cathedral, the largest in Central Asia, took on political undertones of a church concerned with the rise of religious Muslim observance not only in Russia but surrounding states.

Addressing an audience in Astana, Patriarch Kirill stressed the existence of “inter-ethnic, religious tolerance, and mutual respect” in Kazakhstan, condemning at the same time “the spread of extremism and terrorism,” while praising the Kazakh leader for his “approach to these problems,” which helped to avoid conflict.

An additional reason for the visit had economic undertones,

Patriarch Kirill’s trip to Astana was also synchronized with the creation of the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which was welcomed by Kirill as an important step towards integration.

source.

Headlines like this, “In a City of Over Ten Million, Only Five-Star Hotels Are a Near-Safe Bet “ point to Moscow’s dismal position as a tourist town.

Russia Profile reports that Russia, unlike Paris or London, has an over-demand for hotel rooms and not enough hotels to satisfy tourism:

Many travelers, both foreign and non-foreign, find Moscow to be an unwelcoming place for tourists. So why are hotel prices here so exorbitant? The answer is obvious: demand is still outnumbering supply. There are only about 270 hotels in the Russian capital that are able to accommodate 85,000 tourists – a very limited number compared to London, for example, where some 1,700 hotels are available to travelers, or Paris, which boasts 1,500 hotels.

And, although five-star hotels are plentiful in Moscow, lower price points are few and far between,

Finding moderately priced accommodation in the city is like playing Russian roulette – the experience may end up being positive, but the chances of it turning your trip into a nightmare are still high. Americans and Europeans visiting Moscow often complain about rude personnel, a lack of information in English and extra charges for services such as using the Internet or calling a taxi.

This is not good news as Russian hotel prices continue to climb despite the shaky collapse of the oil-based economy in light of the global melt-down and tourism to Moscow continues to decrease.

Back in the 1970s when the Soviet Union was interested in expanding its sphere of influence in African countries, in addition to backing African freedom movements, it brought many African students to study at Russian universities, most notably Patrice Lumumba.

Shubin emphasises the wide spectrum of Soviet support of liberation
movements in Southern Africa, ranging from financial assistance, medical aid, food
and other civilian supplies, to academic education, military and political training in
the USSR and in African countries, the supply of weapons and other war materials,
and the provision of military advisors and specialists and political/diplomatic aid, all
according to the call of circumstance.

As many black students stayed in the Soviet Union because of marriage, they had children on their own or with Russians.  Some American blacks also immigrated to the Soviet Union because they saw it as more equal than the United States before civil rights.

Yelena Khanga is one of Russia’s best-known black citizens. The popular host of a top-rated 1990s chat show about sex — “Pro Eto,” (About That) — she became one of the few black faces regularly seen on Russian television.

Khanga’s grandparents came to the Soviet Union in the 1920s to escape the racism they had endured in the United States as a mixed-race couple.

Despite the official words of both the Soviet and Russian government, blacks and mixed-race citizens of Russia have experienced tremendous amounts of hostility and racism partially because Africans in Russia are so extremely rare and often seen as exotica:

But black skin remains extremely rare in Russia. One estimate says that there are between 40,000 and 70,000 Russians of full or mixed-African heritage.   That distinction has singled many black Russians out for treatment that they say swings between curiosity, at best, and open hostility, at worst.

Grigory Siyatinda, an actor at the Sovremennik Theater in Moscow, grew up as the only black man in his hometown of Tyumen in the 1970s. His experience was that of an object of fascination in an isolated Soviet society where foreigners, and especially black foreigners, were exotic.  “How to put it? It wasn’t racism, what I experienced during my childhood in Tyumen,” Siyatinda says. “I was the only black person in Tyumen — Tyumen is a Siberian city and there were no black-skinned people at all. No one had ever seen one. That’s why there was simply this heightened curiosity toward me. It was heightened so much at times that it crossed over the borders of tact.

Now, with Obama as America’s first black president, some are hopeful within the community that things will change, although the increased rate of attacks on Africans are a dismal sign:

While much of the violence seems to be purely racist, some believe Africans are also targeted as scapegoats for Russian society’s ills and the media is often accused of fostering an image of African students as drug-dealers.

The attacks have turned murderous in recent years. In St Petersburg, three Africans have been killed in suspected race attacks since September.

Sites like Asylum in Bardak report frequent attacks against Africans in Russia and it seems that, with economic hardships from the crash of the oil economy settling in in 2010,racism and attacks will only increase.

I reported this story for NewEurasia (complete with pics and video here.)

The Foreign Policy association reports,

In order to return the biblical species of deer now known as the Persian Fallow Deer to Israel an espionage mission was set up by an Israeli general who was also a zealous conservationist.

Israel had struck a deal with the Shah of Iran and his son to capture two of the deer and bring them to Israel. However, they were not able to coordinate the conservation effort in time. One day before the revolution broke out a Dutch zoologist living in Israel was able to cross the border at the behest of General Avraham Yaffi, present false papers and capture the deer and safely bring them back to Israel. The deer have been well taken care of and have multiplied at the Bar- Hai Reserve. Four deer were released into the wild recently by Israeli zoologists.

This is interesting because it highlights that, before the revolution, Israel and Iran used to be very close and have stellar diplomatic relations.  For example, Wikipedia notes,

After the Six Day War, Iran supplied Israel with a significant portion of its oil needs and Iranian oil was shipped to European markets via the joint Israeli-Iranian Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline. Brisk trade between the countries continued until 1979. Israeli construction firms and engineers were active in Iran. Iranian-Israeli military links and projects were kept secret, but they are believed to have been wide-ranging, for example the joint military project Project Flower (1977-’79), an Iranian-Israeli attempt to develop a new missile.

Via.