The ex-KGB spy Litvinenko's story still intrigues the news audience.

CNN has a report that a friend of Litvinenko's, another Russian ex spy in exile, says that he knows who killed him. Yuri Shvets, who lives in the US, says that he has told the police the identities of the people responsible for Litvinenko's death.



I have a hard time believing this latest revelation. It all seems to be too obvious. The allegations are that the killers are the Russian secret services. The key word in here is 'secret'. But when every Tom, Dick and Harry ex spy knows all the details then there is not much secret, is there? True, the public eventually learns the dirty tricks of the secret services of different countries but usually these deeds are revealed late. And usually, the names of the agents involved are never revealed.



I have to give a little bit of consideration to the Russian government's explanation of all this. It does seem that there is a conspiracy to discredit the Russians. I mean, they are not angels by any means, but I don't think they are as stupid as to kill someone with such a highly visible method in order to silence him. If Litvinenko had slipped in the London underground and fallen under a train, he would have been silenced and his death would have been deemed as an accident.

The Armenian Soldier Wounded in Iraq Is Recovering.

The Armenian lieutenant Georgi Nalbandian, who was injured in Iraq on November 10, 2006, is now able to move around in a wheelchair. He had been a victim of a roadside bomb and lost his leg. His doctor tells us that he has gone through 2 surgeries since the injury and is still being treated in Germany. The treatment may last additional 2-4 weeks before he is able to be discharged.

Haypost Trust Management - who are they?

Azg has a news item about the Armenian Postal Service management being handed over to a private entity from Holland. According to Azg, 'Haypost Trust Management' is a subsidiary of a company called 'PostFinance'. The deal is for a period of 5 years during which the Europeans promise to make capital investments and improve the services while not cutting down the number of the branches around Armenia. There are 900 postal branches in Armenia.



It would make little sense for a foreign company to make such promises - after all, Armenia only has some 2.5 million people, and serving these peoples' postal needs is not a very lucrative business. Another surprising detail was that the chief of the Central Bank of Armenia, Tigran Sargsian, was among the people signing the deal.



Well, it turns out that there is a plan to open a 'HayPostBank' as well. There is not much mentioned in the article about this but here is what I think the deal is all about.



PostFinance is a Swiss money transfer company. It is not a big secret that the reason that the Armenian economy stays afloat is the relatively large amount of money being wired to Armenia by the Armenian citizens working abroad. The estimated amount ranges from 4 to 6 billion USD annually. Right now there a a few ways of transferring this money - banks using SWIFT, small Armenian businesses accepting deposits abroad and delivering the money to the recipient in Armenia, and individuals visiting Armenia.



It seems like a lucrative business that PostFinance should be in. It would be difficult for it to enter this market without a local representation. So they have decided to take over HayPost. HayPost's finances are not made public but since it's a state operated business, it is bound to have quite a lot of inefficiences. Throughout the world, state owned enterprises are full of incompetent people. Armenia is not an exception - the whole governance structure is based on nepotism, not skill.



My guess is that PostFinance will trim a lot of the fat if they have received a 'license to kill' from the Armenian government. They will probably break even, or even make a little profit. But the real goal is to get a piece of the money transfer market which they will and that's where they'll make their return on investment.

Justify your existence.

CNN reports that the US government is working on a 'luxury' items embargo on North Korea with the UN. The said 'luxury' items are things that the Dear Leader, North Korean 'president' Kim Jong Il, loves and cherishes such as French cognac, Segway scooters, iPods or plasma television sets.



These items may not seem to be luxury items in the West but believe me, in communist countries these things are unheard of. I've grown up in the USSR and a Wrigley's chewing gum was a luxurious item.



All is fine and dandy until you realize that such a ban is practically unenforceable. The Soviet Union was a closed system, and yet the Western items somehow managed to get through. And that was for the ordinary citizens against the wishes of the tight control by the authorities. Kim Jong Il is the authority in this case. He is going to buy these things from the private markets - there is not much of a difficulty to buy these things in China and then transport them in a boat across the river to North Korea.



So why now?



It all boils down to not having anything else to do. We are stuck in the corner because of our policies during the last few years, and any major initiative is doomed to failure as we lack credibility on the international scene. So we are reduced to coming up with silly things like this.

Human trafficking operation busted in Denver, Colorado.

Blogian reports that a prostitution ring specializing in trafficking women from South Korea has been busted in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately, the authorities are far more concerned about the prostitution aspect of it rather than the trafficking of these women.



The sole purpose of trafficking people is to exploit them - the males are put to work in near slavery conditions in sweatshops or farms, and women are usually put to work as prostitutes. Usually, the victims are lured by promises of high paying jobs abroad working in bars as waiters/waitresses, nannies, baby sitters, etc. They may pay a small sum to the trafficker for the 'visa, passport and other document' expenses. That way they will be less inclined to back off the deal.



Once the victim is taken out of their country, his/her passport is taken away. Women are sold into prostitution, and men are sold to do hard labor. The flow of people is from the poorer countries to the richer ones. You can come across the victims in Europe, the oil rich Arab states, and the US (see the State Department report). There was a '60 Minutes' report a year or so ago that researched the issue. It was disturbing to see the market in a Northern Mexican town where women were traded.



There was a US policy to fight trafficking internationally when Colin Powell was the State Secretary. I don't know how effective it was at the time because all we seemed to do was to accuse other countries. Our own misdeeds were not brought to light. I don't know whether it's a standard approach by the US to accuse other nations while doing the same things ourselves. It certainly seems like that.



The only solution I see is to not rely on governments to do anything about it and raise the people's awareness about it. It may seem strange, but the majority of the trafficked women do not know about the end result of the promised employment abroad.

Photo for November 27, 2006.

Reflections, originally uploaded by nazarian.

Reflections on the surface of a flooded river during a tranquil afternoon.

Police are trained to kill, not protect.

A year ago I was sitting outside a McDonald's and having a quick lunch. There are a lot of office buildings nearby and only one fast food restaurant (this McDonald's) in the nearby area. There is a lot of traffic - the restaurant does a brisk business. And in order to make things more manageable, they hire off-duty police officers to direct the traffic.



So while I was trying to enjoy my burger, I was also watching how the police officer was directing the cars. I have to admit, he was doing a better job than the Armenian cops in Yerevan who sit in their car and yell orders at the drivers making things worse.



Those who haven't been in the US may not know that the American drivers are not used to having cops direct traffic. I don't think learning standard gestures is part of the driver's education. So I think the cops improvise.



At one point there was a driver in a Civic that did not understand the directions and continued to drive after the cop gestured for the cars to stop. Immediately, the cop drew his gun. I was in shock - drawing a gun while directing traffic is not supposed to be your instinctive reaction.



Well, last night there was a shooting in New York where the police fired 50 rounds into a car full of unarmed people killing a guy and injuring 2 passengers outside a strip club after the dead guy's bachelor's party. The police were dressed as civilians. One of the cops emptied two magazines firing 31 times. Obviously, he was having fun.



A few days ago there was another shooting when three policemen dressed in civilian clothing burst into a 92 year old woman's house looking for drugs. The old lady greeted them with gun fire and the three shot her dead.



So what does this have to do with what I saw in McDonald's? To me, the morale of the story is that try not to cross paths with the police especially if you are black (both the dead groom and the 92 year old lady were black). Things become tricky when you encounter cops in civilian clothing because usually they are not much different than common redneck or ghetto thugs except that they are always armed and can kill you and the state, and the majority of people, will justify the kiling.

Is Azerbaijan becoming as authoritarian as Armenia?

It looks like Mr. Ilham Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan, is emulating what Mr. Robert Kocharian, the president of Armenia, has been doing for years.




BBC reports that the Azeri authorities have closed an independent TV station because it didn't renew its license, and have evicted a political party and a newspaper because they haven't paid their rent. Apparently, they do not have laws protecting the rights of the tenants :)




Well, the surprise for me in this report was that there actually are independent TV stations, newspapers and political parties in Azerbaijan. All the news we get out of that country is that the elections get falsified, and people opposing the current regime get beaten up and thrown in jail. Apparently, things are not as bad as that - well, maybe things were not as bad until this weekend.




Armenia, on the other hand, pretends to be a democratic country. And yet, there hasn't been an independent TV station there since Mr. Kocharian closed the A1+ TV a few years ago. Opposition political parties have been harassed a number of times in the past. Take the Jarangutyun party which got evicted for, I think, not paying rent a year or so ago. The Hanrapetutyun party's offices were raided and ransacked without warrant right after the police beat the opposition protesters after the crooked presidential elections in 2003.




Looks like Armenia is not any better than Azerbaijan.

Online shopping rant.

More than a week ago I purchased a USB TV tuner from newegg.com. I chose the 3 day delivery expecting since I was not in a hurry.



Well, they shipped it with UPS (I am sure most of us know that UPS sucks). They have the lousiest delivery service in the US. My package is still sitting in Ohio since November 21. That's 4 days already.



I'm also waiting for an MP3 player I got from Buy.com a week ago. They shipped it from Illinois. Well, the geniuses at UPS took it to Ohio - the destination of the package is Indiana. To take the package from Illinois to Ohio, they had to drive through Indiana. That one is still sitting in Ohio - it's been 3 days already. Buy.com packages shipped through FedEx arrive the next day - apparently, FedEx delivery routes are not designed by idiots like UPS.



Hopefully I'll get them by the end of next week.

And I thought this was a joke.

I came across this ridiculous "Why Mommy is a Democrat" page and thought it was a joke. It promotes a children's book about a squirrel family that's nicely illustrated and has pro-Democratic slogans such as "Democrats make sure we all share our toys, just like Mommy does".



My first reaction was to see if it was a satirical page like "The Onion". The endorsements cracked me up but I think they are serious.



Judge yourselves.