Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia

Journalist Sam Quinones in his book, Dreamland, challenged me to think about where we get the news of the world that we tell our children. He wrote, "Mexican media rarely covered the stories of anyone outside the upper classes...." A few days later, I read in Time magazine (March 16, 2015) that RT (Russia Today) beams President Vladimir Putin's view of the world to 700 million people in at least 100 countries. Mikhail Lesin, who was credited with inspiring the creation of RT, was found dead in a Washington, DC hotel on November 5, 2015. Although the Russian embassy claimed Lesin died of a heart attack, in March, 2016, DC's chief medical examiner said the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to the head. His body also showed injuries to his arms, legs, neck, and torso. When the US imposed financial sanctions on Putin's closest associates after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Lesin failed to comply with an order to bring home his foreign assets and those of his children.

     Quinones tells the story of the well-mannered farm boys from Xalisco, in the Mexican state of Nayarit, who are much different from the imagined image of heroin dealers. Instead of cold, conniving cartel killers or thugs; they don't use drugs; and they crave all things American: cars, action heroes, McDonald's, and girls.

     The stories Quinones finds among U.S. immigrant communities would make for an illuminating family dinner table conversation about U.S. immigration legislation and executive orders. A question like, "Did you know Cambodians don't know what doughnuts are?" could lead to the story of the Cambodian refugee, Ted Ngoy, who now runs an empire of doughnut shops in the Los Angeles area. Ngoy brought his nephew to the U.S. only after the young man escaped from a Cambodian re-education camp, walked through the jungle while being stalked by panthers, feared ambush by Khmer Rouge gunmen every step of the way, and spent a year in a Thai refugee camp.

     Russia as victim and the West as villain is an ongoing theme on RT. Protests led by Zoran Zaev in Skopje, Macedonia, were blamed on the West. Albanians who make up nearly a quarter of Macedonia's population, demanded greater rights, and Zaev's opposition demands the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevaki. His administration is being charged with wiretapping the press, judiciary, elected officials, and religious leaders. When these recordings were released, they appeared to show vote rigging and a murder cover-up.

     In February, 2015, RT viewers heard that the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov, while he was walking near Red Square, was the work of enemies determined to discredit the Russian government. In later developments, TIME magazine (June 28, 2015) reported a Russian deputy commander of an elite Chechen battalion was charged with Nemtsov's murder. (Chechen hit men also were accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya. See the earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future.) A re-education campaign once changed Russia's Chechnya rebels into fighters willing to follow orders from President Putin. Chechen forces took over part of Ukraine as volunteers acting for Putin, By tattooing his name and address on his arm, Lesin had avoided a similar deployment in Angola in an unmarked uniform. If his dead body were found there, Russia's clandestine involvement in this 1970s Cold War proxy conflict would have been exposed. Currently, Ramzan Kadyrow seems free to act on his own agenda in Chechnya. After Nemtsov's murder, dissidents in Russia realized they have to fear both Chechen assassins and Putin's security forces.

     Apparently Moscow also fears some of the returning volunteers, who went to Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians, consider Putin's government ineffective and corrupt. (See mention of Putin's corruption in regard to Litvinenko's assassination in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.") Realizing these troops are combat trained and capable of leading protests, they are being closely monitored and any weapons they are trying to smuggle home are being confiscated at the border. In a reaction to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the U.S. has plans to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania.

     At the time of Nemtsov's assassination, Russian TV viewers did not see the Moscow march protesting Nemtsov's murder, because RT showed a documentary about U.S. racial abuses. Reports of Nemtsov's murder failed to mention he was compiling information to challenge President Putin's claim that Russia was not supplying military equipment and regular Russian army troops to support separatists in Ukraine. Although 80% of older Russians receive their news from state-television, where anti-Putin activists and journalists are not allowed to appear, during Putin's 17 years in power, the younger generation has slipped away to watch YouTube and other social media outlets that show authorities with millions in assets and Russian troops seizing Crimea. Technically, we now know some of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were volunteers who had temporarily resigned from Chechen's regular army. Coffins returned to Russia following battles at a strategic rail hub in Ilovaisk and at Debaltseve in Ukraine. Some of Nemtsov's information came from relatives of dead Russian soldiers who had not received the compensation that they had been promised.

    Using online video to inform scattered dissidents of opposition protests is an aim of Open Russia, a foundation founded by exiled oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom Putin issued an arrest warrant for in December, 2015. Just as Putin, in his annual question-and-answer session on TV, was claiming that Russia's oil and gas based economy, which has shrunk 4.6%, would recover in two years and downplaying the conflict in Ukraine, security forces from the anti-extremism office of the Interior Ministry raided the Moscow offices of Open Russia. On May 26, 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the coordinator of Open Russia and an adviser to Nemtsov, had collapsed in his office as a result of being poisoned by a toxin that shuts down a whole body in six hours. That attempt failed as did another in early 2017. Kara-Murza, who holds dual UK-Russian citizenship, believes he is targeted due to his successful effort to pass the Magnitsky Act in both the US and UK. The Act, which is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax expert, sometimes characterized as a lawyer, who died in a Russian prison in 2009, prevents powerful Russians who abuse human rights at home from keeping their wealth in Western banks. Kara-Murza also believes athletes should attend competitions, such as the 2018 World Cup, in Russia but western democracies should not honor Putin by sending their leaders to such games.

     Russia, which planned  to deliver S-300 surface-to-air defense missiles to Tehran, along with  the United States, China, France, the UK, Germany and the European Union, negotiated what Iran calls the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. Once Putin determined ISIS brought down Russian Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula in October, 2015, Russia agreed to join the US and French bombing ISIS positions in Syria. But  Russian bombers also operated against forces fighting Syria's dictator rather than ISIS. In March, 2016, Putin announced Russian troops would leave Syria before the cost escalates, but Russia would keep a naval base, air base, and air-defense systems there. In April, 2017, Syrian civilians died from chemical poison dropped on them from a Russian-made airplane which may or may not have been piloted by a Russian.

     Voices abound in this age of apps, the Internet, broadcast and cable TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, and movies. The more we see, hear, and read, the better we are able to help children form an accurate view of their world and ours.