Headline August 2nd, 2012 / ''This Side Of Mid-Night!''

''This Side Of Mid-Night!'' 

Prof Wedel's critics charge that her judgement is too harsh, that shock therapy had in fact worked in Poland. Not in Russia, however!

''Don't give us any more economic advice,'' Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Moscow-based Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, said at a Harvard sponsored seminar shortly before Putin's election. And at a Carnegie Endowment lunch, arranged by Stanford Professor Michael Mcfaul, Chubais stirred, 'I know the common understanding here in the U.S. of what Russia is! Russia is corruption, bribes, oligarchs, Mafia, murder. I disagree with that completely.

This is an extremely superficial understanding of the forces of change which are fundamental to the revolution. If you go deeper, you need to see that the absolutely fundamental institutions, which never existed previously in my country, are now accepted.

Like Freedom of speech, division of power, democratic elections, private property, and the Russian Constitution. ''The fact that wages and pensions are being paid is a visible positive tendency to the Russian economy and political life.''

In Putin's pre-election manifesto, 'Russia at the turn of the Millennium, he said that if Russian economy grew at 8% a year -a fairly Utopian notion- for the next 15 years it would reach the per capital gross domestic product of Portugal. Two out of three Russian men die drunk.

It doesn't matter if they die of heart attack or an accident or as a murder victim or a suicide; they are drunk when they die, mostly on a Monday after a binge weekend. The life expectancy for Russian men is 58.8; for women it's 71.7.

In America, by the way it is 72.9 for men and 79.6 for women. Only 10 to 15% of Russian babies are born healthy. Approx two-thirds of pregnancies end in abortion; at least 75% of pregnant woman have serious pathologies.

''It's horrendous,'' said Murray Feshbach, Emeritus Professor at Georgetown University, a leading U.S. authority on Russian demography. ''Anemia during pregnancy has quintupled during the last decade. The syphilis rate among young females from 10 to 14 has gone up roughly 40 times since 90- that really means 10 to 14 years old who are doing drugs and having intercourse.


Among 15 to 17 year old males, only 10 to 30% are healthy. Feshbach also had shocking stats on environment in Russia today. In late 90s the ministry issued a warning for 13 cities, he said, ''It doesn't pay to go outside.''

And then, Heroin addiction had too exploded. Heroin from Afghanistan is cheaper than marijuana. As a result, Russia has one of the fastest growth rates of H.I.V infection in the world, up more than 350% between 98 and 99. An estimated 300,000 to 500,000 are infected with H.I.V.

''We are in danger of becoming a senile nation,'' Putin told the country in a forceful first State of the Nation address. ''It is difficult to live. Year by year, we the citizens of Russia, are getting fewer and fewer. If this continues, the very survival of the nation will be under threat''

The fact was some 800,000 more Russians are dying per year than are being born. The situation was and is apocalyptic!

Good night & God bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice of the Voiceless