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TIVOLI, Texas ? For decades, farmers and fishermen along the Gulf of Mexico watched as their sensitive ecosystem's waters slowly got dirtier and islands eroded, all while the country largely ignored the destruction.
It took BP PLC's well blowing out in the Gulf ? and the resulting environmental catastrophe when millions of gallons of oil spewed into the ocean and washed ashore ? for the nation to turn its attention to the slow, methodical ruin of an ecosystem vital to the U.S. economy. Last month, more than a year and a half after the spill began, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a three-year, $50 million initiative designed to improve water quality along the coast.
"I'm not going to say that it's the silver lining," Will Blackwell, a district conservationist with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Services, said of the oil spill. Blackwell is one of many regional officials who have long worked with farmers and ranchers to fence cattle, reseed native grasses and take on other seemingly inane projects that go a long way toward preventing pollution and coastal erosion.
"I'm going to say that it will help get recognition down here that we have this vital ecosystem that needs to be taken care of," he said. "This will keep it at the forefront."
NRCS administrators struggled for years to divide a few million dollars among farmers and ranchers in the five Gulf states. Now, they are getting an eleven-fold increase in funding, money that will allow them to build on low-profile programs that already have had modest success in cleaning crucial waterways by working with farmers and ranchers to improve land use practices.
The nation's focus turned sharply to the Gulf when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up in April 2010. Images of oil-coated birds and wetlands were splashed across newspapers and cable news networks. Coastal wetlands that are habitat to all sorts of wildlife were soiled and oyster beds were wiped out, underscoring the Gulf's ecological and economic importance.
The project is called the Gulf of Mexico Initiative, the first concrete step from a year's worth of meetings, studies and talking by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, a committee formed by President Barack Obama in the spill's wake.
Sometimes, the money is spent on simple projects, such as building fences and installing troughs to keep cattle away from rivers and creeks that flow into the Gulf. The minerals in cow manure can pollute those upstream waters and then flow into the ocean. Those minerals can deplete oxygen in the Gulf, creating "dead zones" where wildlife can't thrive.
Other times, the program pays for expensive farming equipment that turns soil more effectively and creates straighter rows. That helps keep fertilizers on the farm ? where it helps crops ? and out of the Gulf, where the nutrients choke oxygen from the water. This equipment also decreases erosion, which has eaten up hundreds of miles of Gulf Coast habitat in the past century.
Until now, most counties in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas got right around $100,000 apiece to spend annually on these programs. The demand was far greater in many areas, but money was hard to come by, Blackwell said, highlighting the popularity of the program in Refugio County, Texas ? the rural area of Southeast Texas he oversees.
The influx of money has many farmers and ranchers ? especially those who have reaped the program's benefits in the past ? eager for more opportunities to improve the environment they rely upon for their livelihood.
Now, they are hurriedly filling out applications and waiting for officials to rank the paperwork ? those considered to have the greatest possible impact are the most likely to be approved.
"Fifty million dollars sounds like a lot. But when you consider ? Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and Texas, it's not going to be enough," said Glen Wiggins, a Florida farmer applying for help buying new farming equipment.
"But it'll help."
Dallas Ford, owner of the 171-acre Smoky Creek Ranch in Tivoli, Texas, first worked with the NRCS to build fences and strategically located troughs. The fences keep cattle in separate fields and allow him to rotate the cows between the fields, a practice that helps keep grass longer and better able to recover when it rains. The troughs ensure the cattle remain in the area and keep away from Stony Creek ? a bountiful tributary of the Gulf's Hynes Bay.
Ford estimates he has between $15,000 and $20,000 worth of additional work to do on his ranch ? all of which will ultimately improve water quality in Stony Creek ? but he will be able to do it only if he can get another contract with NRCS, which would cover about half the costs.
The cash infusion reminded him of a mentor who once said you could cook anything with time and temperature. In this project, Ford said, time is plentiful ? the temperature is money and manpower.
"We might be able to cook something a little faster," Ford said. "Now, maybe I can get you a nice steak."
About 685 miles away, Wiggins has been buying new tilling equipment to use on his 800-acre peanut and cotton farm that straddles the Alabama-Florida line. The high-tech farming equipment helps him better turn the soil and plant straighter rows, which ultimately prevent erosion and keep nutrients in the soil rather than allowing them to flow downstream and into the Gulf.
Wiggins' land sits on three watersheds ? Canoe Creek and Pine Barren Creek that are part of Sandy Hollow Creek, and Little Pine Barren Creek. With the work he's already done, Wiggins estimates he has reduced erosion by at least 50 percent. Now, he wants to further reduce it, mostly through the use of new equipment that will decrease conventional, and more destructive, tillage of his land.
"I'd like to get it down to zero, but if I could get it to 10 percent conventional tillage, I would be tickled to death," Wiggins said.
He estimated the new equipment will cost about $70,000. The only way he can make that purchase is with NRCS' help ? and now it may be within reach.
"The oil spill has been a powerful force to get people's attention," Wiggins said.
___
Ramit Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com//RamitMastiAP
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BEIJING ? Clouds of smoke from Lunar New Year fireworks sent air pollution in Beijing soaring under a new more sensitive measurement system.
Readings of fine particulate matter called PM2.5 were about 100 times worse on the Jan. 22 eve of the holiday than the amount considered good for 24-hour exposure, the city's environmental bureau said.
The reading drew wide publicity in the local media on Sunday. Concern has grown over air pollution from automobiles and other sources, prompting the city this month to begin measuring PM2.5 ? particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size. That's about 1/30th the width of an average human hair.
Because of their small size, the particles can lodge deeply in the lungs and are believed to pose the greatest risk to health.
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In this Jan. 5, 2012 file photo, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks at the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
DNA sequencing has identified difficult-to-diagnose diseases in humans ? the first time the technology has been used in a clinic.
The technique, which decodes thousands of genes simultaneously, has been used in laboratories to uncover genes related to diseases since 2009.
Now it has successfully moved to the clinic, where patients do not know what is wrong with them and may not know their family history of disease, and clinicians have few clues about which genes might be causing the problem.
Mitochondrial diseases, which affect the way the body produces energy, are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Found in at least one in every 5000 people, the diseases often involve many genes, and symptoms vary across organs. For example, common manifestations can include blindness, seizures, slow digestion and muscle pain.
Currently, diagnosing such disorders can take months or even years, and involves an invasive muscle biopsy. DNA sequencing technology may help to speed things up.
Elena Tucker and colleagues from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, along with Vamsi Mootha from Harvard Medical School, sequenced the genomes of 42 children who had traits that suggested they carry a mitochondrial disorder. To work out exactly which disorder each child carries, the team looked both at the DNA in their mitochondria and at the 100 or so genes within their nuclear DNA that have already been linked to mitochondrial diseases. They also looked at a further 1000 nuclear genes that play a part in mitochondrial biology.
To distinguish between harmless genetic variations and those that might cause a disease, the team compared the patients' genomes with databases of genetic variation recorded in the general population.
Ten of the children had mutations in genes previously linked to mitochondrial diseases, and so could be given a precise diagnosis. Mutations not previously associated with any disease were found in another 13 children. Tucker says that these patients can expect a full diagnosis once studies confirm the function of these genes.
"We are quite excited," says Tucker. "Most of these diagnoses were in children whose [illnesses] could not easily be diagnosed using traditional methods."
Michael Ryan, a biochemist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, who was not involved in the work, says the diagnosis rate "will improve" within the next couple of years as the list of genes known to be linked to mitochondrial diseases grows, and it becomes clearer how mutations combine to cause diseases.
"It's a fantastic study," says Matthew McKenzie at Monash University in Melbourne. Finding genetic mutations in mitochondrial patients is "like searching for a needle in a haystack", he says. "I think it was a very good result to transfer to a clinical setting."
Journal reference: Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003310
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For the second time I'm off to attend the World Economic Forum at Davos, and again, looking at my schedule, I have over-extended myself... on top of that it seems to be extremely cold and coming from the nice comfortable South East Asian weather, I am certain to end up in a state of hypothermia...
However, frozen or not, this Forum promises to be of extreme interest to me and my organization Friends-International for two main reasons.
Firstly, the World Economic Forum has just published its Global Risks report, stating main risks as youth unemployment and the income gap: exactly what we at Friends-International have been tackling for the past 17 years. It is our strong belief that there can be no development and no good business if an increasing number of children and youth are relentlessly pushed on the margins of their societies. In the current model with the existing responses, their numbers just keep increasing with clear social consequences across the globe.
We believe that we need to invent a new way, that takes the best of the NGO world and mixes it with the best of the business world, and that mix presents tremendous opportunities as our various social businesses prove.
This is where the second reason for my special interest in this Forum kicks in: it is about Shaping New Models. I am especially interested in the topic of Shared Values and will actually lead some discussions on that topic. This idea has the promise of a different model of development ("reinventing capitalism"), stressing the connections between societal and economic progress. In addition, it is clearly an effort that needs to be carried out not only by businesses and Governments, but also by civil society and communities. As such it is entirely in line with how we conceive our work; our tagline says it all: "Together, Building Futures" a good summary for this very essential discussion.
I really hope to build some solid partnerships during this Forum based on the principles of shared values, so we can build a model that brings growth for everyone, everywhere... Together, Building Futures!
?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sebastien-marot/going-to-davos_b_1228521.html
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![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 24-Jan-2012
Share ] Contact: Aleta Todd Delaplane
aleta9@vbi.vt.edu
540-231-6966
Virginia Tech
As scientific researchers become evermore competitive for scarce funding, scientific journals are increasing efforts to identify submissions that plagiarize the work of others. Still, it may take years to identify and retract the plagiarized papers and give credit to the actual researchers.
"We need a better system," said Harold Garner, executive director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. Garner discussed the problem and solution in a Comment in the January 4, 2012 issue of Nature and in a January 19, 2012 radio interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate.
Garner, creator of eTBLAST plagiarism detection software, identified numerous instances of wholesale plagiarism among citations in MEDLINE. "When my colleagues and I introduced an automated process to spot similar citations in MEDLINE, we uncovered more than 150 suspected cases of plagiarism in March, 2009.
"Subsequent ethics investigations resulted in 56 retractions within a few months. However, as of November 2011, 12 (20 percent) of those "retracted" papers are still not so tagged in PubMed. Another two were labeled with errata that point to a website warning the papers are "duplicate" -- but more than 95 percent of the text was identical, with no similar co-authors."
But even when plagiarism is uncovered, it does not guarantee that the plagiarized articles will be retracted. In Garner's study, as noted in his Nature commentary, "Three of the 56 retracted papers are cited in books, including one citation after the retraction. Another eight were cited in other PubMed Central archived articles before retraction, and seven were cited after retraction."
Some researchers say plagiarism has become a pandemic in many large institutions and schools, and that there is an entire industry built on the business of copying the work of others for the purpose of developing theses content and technical papers.
Quelling the proliferation of scientific plagiarism by identifying and retracting plagiarized articles is not the only issue. Publication editors and researchers must agree on the definition of plagiarism as noted in Nature.
Said Garner, "Ultimately, plagiarism comes down to human judgment, similar to other questionable practices -- you know it when you see it."
###
The Comment in Nature appears here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7379/full/481021a.html#/harold-garner-flag-plagiarized-studies
Watch Garner here: http://youtu.be/cuAjUqNF-R8
Garner also was featured in an interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate of WNYC, January 19, 2012. Lopate investigated with Garner the prevalence and problems presented by plagiarism of scientific and medical literature, and discussed ways that new detection software can help to identify plagiarized materials and encourage publication editors to retract these articles.
Listen to the interview: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jan/
About the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech is a premier bioinformatics, computational biology, and systems biology research facility that uses transdisciplinary approaches to science, combining information technology, biology, and medicine. These approaches are used to interpret and apply vast amounts of biological data generated from basic research to some of today's key challenges in the biomedical, environmental, and agricultural sciences.
With more than 320 highly trained multidisciplinary, international personnel, research at the institute involves collaboration in diverse disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, biology, plant pathology, biochemistry, systems biology, statistics, economics, synthetic biology, and medicine. The large amounts of data generated by this approach are analyzed and interpreted to create new knowledge that is disseminated to the world's scientific, governmental, and wider communities.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 24-Jan-2012 Share ] Contact: Aleta Todd Delaplane
aleta9@vbi.vt.edu
540-231-6966
Virginia Tech
As scientific researchers become evermore competitive for scarce funding, scientific journals are increasing efforts to identify submissions that plagiarize the work of others. Still, it may take years to identify and retract the plagiarized papers and give credit to the actual researchers.
"We need a better system," said Harold Garner, executive director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. Garner discussed the problem and solution in a Comment in the January 4, 2012 issue of Nature and in a January 19, 2012 radio interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate.
Garner, creator of eTBLAST plagiarism detection software, identified numerous instances of wholesale plagiarism among citations in MEDLINE. "When my colleagues and I introduced an automated process to spot similar citations in MEDLINE, we uncovered more than 150 suspected cases of plagiarism in March, 2009.
"Subsequent ethics investigations resulted in 56 retractions within a few months. However, as of November 2011, 12 (20 percent) of those "retracted" papers are still not so tagged in PubMed. Another two were labeled with errata that point to a website warning the papers are "duplicate" -- but more than 95 percent of the text was identical, with no similar co-authors."
But even when plagiarism is uncovered, it does not guarantee that the plagiarized articles will be retracted. In Garner's study, as noted in his Nature commentary, "Three of the 56 retracted papers are cited in books, including one citation after the retraction. Another eight were cited in other PubMed Central archived articles before retraction, and seven were cited after retraction."
Some researchers say plagiarism has become a pandemic in many large institutions and schools, and that there is an entire industry built on the business of copying the work of others for the purpose of developing theses content and technical papers.
Quelling the proliferation of scientific plagiarism by identifying and retracting plagiarized articles is not the only issue. Publication editors and researchers must agree on the definition of plagiarism as noted in Nature.
Said Garner, "Ultimately, plagiarism comes down to human judgment, similar to other questionable practices -- you know it when you see it."
###
The Comment in Nature appears here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7379/full/481021a.html#/harold-garner-flag-plagiarized-studies
Watch Garner here: http://youtu.be/cuAjUqNF-R8
Garner also was featured in an interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate of WNYC, January 19, 2012. Lopate investigated with Garner the prevalence and problems presented by plagiarism of scientific and medical literature, and discussed ways that new detection software can help to identify plagiarized materials and encourage publication editors to retract these articles.
Listen to the interview: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jan/
About the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech is a premier bioinformatics, computational biology, and systems biology research facility that uses transdisciplinary approaches to science, combining information technology, biology, and medicine. These approaches are used to interpret and apply vast amounts of biological data generated from basic research to some of today's key challenges in the biomedical, environmental, and agricultural sciences.
With more than 320 highly trained multidisciplinary, international personnel, research at the institute involves collaboration in diverse disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, biology, plant pathology, biochemistry, systems biology, statistics, economics, synthetic biology, and medicine. The large amounts of data generated by this approach are analyzed and interpreted to create new knowledge that is disseminated to the world's scientific, governmental, and wider communities.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/vt-spa012412.php
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TEHRAN, Iran ? Seventeen people have died after a storm capsized a passenger boat off of Iran's southern coast, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.
The boat sank Saturday evening while sailing between Hormuz Island and the port city of Bandar Abbas on the mainland, the report said. Rescue teams saved five passengers.
The report says the boat began its 11-mile (18-kilometer) journey despite a travel ban on light boats by shipping authorities, due to a storm with winds of 50 mph (80 kph).
An eyewitness told The Associated Press that most of the dead were senior citizens, members of a visiting tour to the island.
Every day dozens of passenger boats travel between Bandar Abbas and nearby islands near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, some 670 miles (1070 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran.
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Switzerland's Didier Cuche speeds down the course on his way to set the fastest time during the second training session for Saturday's alpine ski, men's World Cup downhill, in Kitzbuehel, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)
Switzerland's Didier Cuche speeds down the course on his way to set the fastest time during the second training session for Saturday's alpine ski, men's World Cup downhill, in Kitzbuehel, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)
Switzerland's Didier Cuche speeds down the course on his way to set the fastest time during the second training session for Saturday's alpine ski, men's World Cup downhill, in Kitzbuehel, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Shinichiro Tanaka)
Switzerland's Didier Cuche speeds down the course on his way to set the fastest time during the second training session for Saturday's alpine ski, men's World Cup downhill, in Kitzbuehel, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Shinichiro Tanaka)
KITZBUEHEL, Austria (AP) ? Swiss ski star Dider Cuche will retire after the season despite being in contention for a record-equaling fifth World Cup downhill title.
The unexpected announcement Thursday by the 37-year-old former butcher skier came at a news conference leading to Saturday's classic race on the Streif course, where he is a four-time winner.
"Kitzbuehel represents something for me and I decided to make my decision here," Cuche said. "It's not a decision that I took last night or today."
Cuche captured the downhill title four of the past five seasons. He won a race in Lake Louise, Alberta, in November.
"I'm in top form and I can still aspire to win races. It's in this condition that I wish to retire from the World Cup," he said.
"Today marks a very emotional moment for me," Cuche added while fighting tears. "An important milestone in my career and in my life. .. I am convinced this is the right moment to retire."
Cuche said the announcement was a relief.
"Now that I am freed from other thoughts, I can give them full throttle," he said about Friday's super-G and Saturday's downhill in Kitzbuehel. "I would like to leave my mark one way or another."
Cuche became the oldest men's world champion in 2009 when he won the super-G in Val d'Isere, France, at 34. He was a silver medalist in the super-G at the 1998 Nagano Games, but he never won an Olympic gold medal.
"Of course, that's a race I would have loved to win," Cuche said. "But being runner-up to someone like Hermann Maier made it bearable."
Cuche also is the oldest racer to win a men's World Cup race since his victory at the 2011 Kitzbuehel downhill at 36, beating Liechtenstein great Marco Buechel's record by 85 days.
Cuche is beloved in Switzerland, and on Saturday was elected the country's top personality of 2011. Hours earlier, he failed in his 13th ? and final ? attempt to win Switzerland's biggest sports event, the Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen. He was runner-up three times, twice to Bode Miller (2007, 2008).
Swiss ski federation president Urs Lehmann called Cuche "a fantastic sportsman, a wonderful person, and a superb role model."
"He has done great things for Switzerland as a skiing nation," Lehmann said. "We hope Didier will remain part of the Swiss ski sport one way or the other. That would be great."
Cuche made his first appearance in the World Cup at a downhill in Bormio, Italy, on Dec. 29, 1993. He was 57th.
After his Nagano medal, when he was beaten by Maier, Cuche's career was interrupted by injuries, including a broken leg and ruptured knee ligaments.
Cuche came back even stronger to win his first crystal globe when he was 32 as downhill World Cup champion in the 2006-07 season. Now, with four downhill trophies, Cuche trails only another Austrian great, Franz Klammer, whose five season-long titles leads the list.
Cuche also won the giant slalom World Cup title in 2009 and the super-G title last season.
In the overall standings, Cuche finished in the top three six times. His best finish was second last season behind runaway winner Ivica Kostelic of Croatia. He has four career world championship medals, with back-to-back downhill silvers in 2009 and 2011 and a giant slalom bronze in 2007.
Buechel, who retired two years ago, understood Cuche's reasoning.
"He is a great athlete and a great person," Buechel said. "I know Didier would rather go on until he is 60, but someday you feel your time has come. You have to respect such a decision."
___
Willemsen reported from Kitzbuehel, Dunbar from Geneva.
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Of all of Russia's opposition leaders, none have posed a bigger threat to the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin than the blogger and activist Alexei Navalny. A lawyer by training and a nationalist by conviction, Navalny, 35, has been at the forefront of the demonstrations that shook awake the Russian body politic last month, bringing tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of Moscow for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. A few days after the third and biggest demonstration on Dec. 24, when Navalny addressed a crowd of 100,000 people in Moscow, TIME's Simon Shuster caught up with him at a courthouse, where he was arguing a case for greater transparency at Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft. He drove back to his office afterward, where he runs a small legal firm, to continue discussing his plans for toppling Putin's government.
Before the recent wave of opposition protests, you were best known as an activist against corruption. But you've said that you had your eye on politics the whole time. How are these two aspects of your work connected?
I've always seen my campaigns against corruption as political work of a purer form than what opposition leaders usually do. All they do is hold roundtables and release political statements, which is all well and good. But there are concrete things that need to get done in order to achieve the basic goal of every opposition politician. That goal is to replace the people in power by putting pressure on the regime. One way to do that is to release political statements and appear on the radio. Another way is to file lawsuits against corrupt state corporations. I take the second approach. And it's very important to carry this through to the end, because my political work needs to always have new substance to it. Everyone needs to understand that my work addresses existing problems, and one of the crucial problems in Russia today is corruption. (See photos of massive protests in Moscow.)
Many observers have been quick to compare last month's demonstrations to the Arab Spring. Is this the way you envision it? Will Moscow have a revolution like the one on Kiev's Maidan Square in 2004? The one on Tahrir Square in Cairo last year? Or something else?
What we need is a peaceful scenario. Both Maidan and Tahrir were peaceful. Maidan was absolutely peaceful, Tahrir saw some unrest but was still peaceful on the whole. At this point, the authorities need to understand that they can prevent a Maidan by meeting our demands. If they don't, then we will continue to see peaceful protests in the streets. This is nothing new. Gandhi did it in his day, as did Martin Luther King. It's a time-tested method. The people come out onto the streets. They don't go fighting anyone or burning cars. They just stand there. Humanity has this historical experience of fighting injustice and tyranny. The way to proceed is by using this experience.
Who or what finally brought Russians out onto the streets after years of political apathy?
The mood of defiance brought them out. This is impossible to organize or orchestrate. I can't organize it because the people don't listen to me. When I worked at Yabloko [a liberal political party, where Navalny was an activist between 2002 and '07], we would try to organize a rally and 500 people showed up. But now there is a wave rising. Some people can claim to stand at the cusp of this wave, and yes, they can stand at the podium and address the crowds. But they didn't make this wave. Putin was the one who made this revolution. By falsifying the elections [on Dec. 4], Putin brought these people onto the streets. If he hadn't rigged the [parliamentary vote on Dec. 4] in Moscow, nothing would have happened. But no, they tried to bust through at the joint and ended up insulting so many people that there was a backlash. The people went into the streets. This is a natural reaction for any person. This has been happening for hundreds and thousands of years. They came out and said, 'That's it. No. We don't want this anymore. We want to do things differently.'
See photos of protests and counterprotests in Russia.
The Kremlin has started offering concessions in response to the protests. For one, it has proposed a law making it easier to register political parties. You've said that you want to create a party of your own. What will be the structure of this party and its political priorities?
Our goal is to make a party that is massive, effective and cheap. The last point is not the least important. We just don't have any money. We need to use new technologies, first of all the Internet, for the practical functions of the party, like a reconstituted Facebook. Many people call it Democracy 2.0. I'm a lobbyist and fanatic of this system. It should allow people to register online and verify their identities through a bank card or by some other means, and then let them take part in [the party's] decisionmaking, voting and so on. This gives a guarantee that everyone votes, that there is no vote rigging, that everything is open and there is legitimacy. This does not mean that the party is virtual and not real. In the present day, the split between the virtual and real worlds is irrelevant. The protest on Bolotnaya Square [on Dec. 10], was it real or virtual? Yes, it was organized by virtual means, on Facebook. But I think it was more than real enough. (Read "Occupy the Kremlin: Russia's Election Lets Loose Public Rage.")
But half of the Russian population does not have Internet access. Would your party just ignore them?
Every party looks for its own constituency. I can rely on people in big cities, where there is plenty of Internet penetration. Of course, I would like to attract people from villages, but I don't have money for that. What we do have already is a pool of millions of people we can reach through the Internet. We can reach them efficiently and on a daily basis. Sure, I would love to go talk to every grandma who lives in some village in the Ryazam region, but I don't have that possibility. You can only reach such people through television, but we don't control the television channels. So it's pointless to even talk about.
Nationalism has always been at the core of your politics. You have called for tight control of immigration, for the right to bear arms, and you have said that the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, a group banned last year for extremism and hate speech, is "as harmless as the girl scouts." Will your party represent these values? Will it be a nationalist party?
Consistency for me is everything. I am not ready to back away from my views. With age, everyone forms certain core principles, and I have a basic stand on the main issues. I only see one problem with my views. Maybe I didn't explain them clearly enough. That means I will keep explaining them, because people aren't afraid of my views. They are afraid of the word nationalism. (Read "Russia: The Revolution Will Be Tweeted and Facebooked and YouTubed.")
By necessity, we have no other way to refer to these views but as nationalism. The problem is that people associate this word with some abstract nationalist menace. But when people talk about the nationalism of Navalny, we're talking about very simple things. I support limits on illegal immigration, including through visa requirements for visitors from Central Asia. When you enter the U.S., you need to give fingerprints. Yes? Yes. Did the U.S. build a wall on the border with Mexico? Yes, it did. And Obama voted for that wall. So how is my position on immigration more nationalistic than even the Democrats in the U.S.? Few American politicians would step out in support of visa-free travel with all of Latin America. But we have a visa-free system with Central Asia. And when it comes to arms control, yes, I think that arms should be more accessible to our citizens. At home I have two rifles, and do I go shooting people out my window? No. We have hundreds of thousands of hunting weapons in circulation, and the number of crimes committed with legally registered guns is minimal, microscopic.
But any crook in the country knows where to buy a gun. You go to Chechnya and buy an automatic for 3,000 rubles. This agenda is not even part of the radical right. It is a standard position, often held for instance in the U.S. mainstream. I wouldn't say this is a populist position at all. More likely the majority of citizens would not support it. And when it comes to the [Movement Against Illegal Immigration], I'm not saying they're sweet guys. I'm saying they are all different. They are marginals because they have been pushed underground. But if they are the ones talking about illegal immigration, our goal is to make sure illegal immigration is not only discussed in the radical underground, but in the political mainstream. Our goal is to bring this discussion out of the context of beating the crap out of the all the immigrants and into the framework of imposing visas, ensuring that [immigrants] have insurance, ensuring they are paid a minimum wage, and everything else that exist in other countries.
See TIME's Russia covers.
The movement you are helping to lead poses a serious threat to the people in power. Moreover, you have said that you want to put Putin and his circle on trial if they are deposed. If push comes to shove, they could respond with force to defend their authority. Are you ready for bloodshed if that's the direction it goes?
Do I want bloodshed? No, I don't. But am I ready for the possibility that force will be used against us? Yes, I am ready. Any politician who fights with our corrupt regime needs to be ready for that. If he's not ready, he's got no place here. The battle here has certain terms. [The state] opened a criminal case against me a year and a half ago. I knew this would happen, and it happened. I knew they could arrest me for 15 days at a protest, and they did [on Dec. 5]. But that's part of life. We are in a political situation where a person can be put in jail for nothing. So that's what we're fighting against. And the fact is, you shouldn't go walking in the woods if you're afraid of the wolves. (See how corruption and abuse of power are threatening Russia's economy.)
But in your speeches to the crowds last month, you took a very provocative tone, as if to goad the authorities. You said from the podium that you would "chew through the throats of those animals," referring to Putin's United Russia party, which you call "the party of crooks and thieves." You said that the protesters are ready to "take the Kremlin now." Why do you say this if you want a peaceful scenario?
I say this because it's true -- we can take the Kremlin now. But we're not going to because we're a peaceful people. We simply have to demonstrate our strength. Everything we're doing amounts to nothing without posing a potential threat. These people who gathered are totally peaceful, they don't want a fight. But potentially, if their rights are ignored, they can do a lot. And that threat is the driving force of reform. If [the authorities] understand that people are gathering just to make political demands, to take part in flash mobs and take pictures with each other, they'll say, 'Big deal. So a few thousand of them got together and took pictures arm-in-arm.' But who's afraid of them? Nobody. So we need to make clear that these people came out because the government doesn't work anymore. They demand change and they will continue to demand it. We need to make clear that there is a palpable threat. It exists. We can take the Kremlin now.
Your favorite political weapon has always been the Internet. Why did you choose this approach?
Well, this all came out of necessity. It wasn't that we were so tricky that we came up with the Internet. It's that the Internet is all we have. The only difference is some politicians were inclined to evolution, and others weren't. Those [others] couldn't adapt to the Internet. They kept saying, 'We demand access to television. Give us one hour of airtime, and we'll change everything.' But anything less than television wasn't good enough for them. I had a different approach. I understood that I'll never be on television. Nobody will give me airtime. I have no money. I have no oligarch friends, and don't have any particular desire to make oligarch friends. So the only thing I had to count on were my concrete abilities, like the North Korean motto: Rely only on yourself. And I developed my own methods. I did what I could. I started filing lawsuits [against state corporations] and telling people about it online. This all looked marginal and funny. But with time my audience grew. And now my blog has more readers than most newspapers have. There are 1.5 million unique views on my blog per month. It just grew over time. And it grew mostly because of the fact that there is no freedom of information. People don't get free and objective information. So they go to find it on the Internet. If the things I write in my blog were to be said on television and written about in the broadsheets, then nobody would need me or the Internet. But you can't say these things on television, so when I began saying them on the Internet, I had a sort of exclusive. And when people went online to find some information, they came to hear my exclusive. This was the only free place for discussion and information available. (See the top 10 Twitter controversies.)
Still, this online community has stayed online until only the past month or so, when they started attending street protests en masse. You have explained this shift as something called the 76-82 effect, referring to the Russians born, like yourself, between 1976 and 1982. Can you explain this theory?
This is the Moscow baby boom. And it has come of age. Actually, the name 76-82 comes from an insanely popular community on Livejournal [Russia's most popular blogging site], called 76-82, where people write about memories that they share with people from this generation. Things like, I don't know, chewing gum, movies, the Communist youth camps of a very particular sort, at the end of the Soviet Union, in the late '70s and '80s, where the kids were still technically [Communist Young] Pioneers, but nobody really believed in the [Soviet] system anymore. There are tons of these people. They are the biggest generation of working-age Russians, and they got stuck somewhere between the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia.
They are now taking up more and more positions in society and have developed firm political views. A huge number of these people have now had the opportunity to travel, to go to the Czech Republic, to Germany, wherever, and to realize that we could live this way too. So they start asking themselves, Why can't we live like they do? What's the reason? There is no objective reason. On the contrary, there are reasons why we should live even better. But we don't. People don't like this. So for this generation, the anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric doesn't work nearly as well as for the rest. The main thing that Putin and his gang maniacally use to fight the opposition is that we are all some kind of American-funded monsters. But people understand that this is a load of crap. Sure, Americans have their interests. But the people of this generation, they understand that our existence is not defined as a conflict between East and West.
Read "Twenty Years After Independence, Russia Is in No Mood to Party."
Some pundits, supporters and even random people on the street have started calling you Russia's next President. How do you react to this kind of excitement around you? Is it justified?
When the opposition parties were voted out of the State Duma [Russia's lower house of parliament] in the 2003 elections, it created a situation where it was impossible to judge who is popular. This process of comparing pricks at the ballot box is usually done, in a healthy society, through elections. But we haven't had competitive elections in Russia in years. Since 2003 I've watched various attempts to choose some opposition leader who can pose a challenge to Putin. But they couldn't choose one, because there is no mechanism. They use subjective criteria. They say, 'Well, I used to be a minister. I used to be a Prime Minister. I'm loved by the intellectuals.' But this is pointless. I've long said that we need to hold some kind of primaries, where the opposition leaders can decide who among them really has the mandate of the people. At the same time, a lot of [other opposition leaders] don't like the Navalny cult of personality. There's a lot of buzz around me right now, mostly because the political playing field has been stomped flat over the past 10 years. I don't like that myself, because it's impossible to always be this Internet hero. Everyone loving you can change quickly into everyone demanding that you make miracles, and when you don't, their love quickly turns to hate. (See photos of a country house in the former Soviet Union.)
Your oratory style has not done a lot to ease the concerns of many in the liberal opposition that you are a right-wing fanatic. Why do you continue to speak that way every time you take the stage?
I don't know if I even have an oratory style. It's more like loud screaming into a microphone. I never studied it, and that's the only way I know how to do it. But it's true, suddenly [the pundit] Maxim Sokolov goes writing that this is how Hitler addressed the crowd. Well, what can I say? I know some people got scared. Sure, I screamed loud. I got too emotional, but what can I say? I really hate the people in power. I hate them with every fiber of my being. That's what drives me in almost everything I do. And I don't see any need to hide that. So I scream.
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Russell Brand is ready to be uplifted.
On Sunday, the British comic was back to work, and back on U.S. soil, to promote "Strangely Uplifting," his new FX series, at a TCA panel in Pasadena, Calif.
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As the Q&A session began, a reporter made a vague reference to Brand's headline-making Dec. 30 split from wife Katy Perry, asking Brand, 36, how he was doing.
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"I'm quite well, thank you. Are you asking because of recent events?" he chuckled. "Well, I suppose what you're doing is you're making the mistake as seeing time as linear."
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His goal for the still-developing series, Brand said, is fairly simple. "All I want is for people to feel better than they do now. That's all I want," he mused. "All I want is to make people laugh and to make people happy. And as long as I stay in alignment with that, then I'm served by great forces."
Story: Perry's father apologizes for remarks about JewsWill the series delve into his talked-about personal life? "I think there will be inevitable biographical elements because you can't speak from anyone's perspective but your own," he said. "Unless I was to bizarrely adapt some sort of avatar."
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Brand conceded that he's frequently misunderstood in the press. But, to correct that, he told reporters, "I listen to others. I accept that you must be humble. It's very important to have humility.... I have a tendency to fly off. I'm tangential and also I'm narcissistic. I have to be very careful."
Slideshow: Russell Brand (on this page)His estranged wife Perry, meanwhile, wasn't too far away from Pasadena on Sunday night ? but the "Firework" singer, 26, avoided the glitz and celeb crush of Golden Globes parties.
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A source tells Us Weekly that Perry watched the awards show from the comfort of her hotel room in the L.A. area.
"She has been very low key during her stay," a hotel source said, adding that Perry has been ordering room service and takeout food with pals.
Copyright 2012 Us Weekly
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