CANADA, EH

Why Men Might Start Getting Their Own Sperm From 3D-Printed Testicles

FILL IN THE BLANKS

A groundbreaking new experiment opens the door for a future solution to male infertility.


Miriam Fauzia
Innovation Reporter
Published Mar. 25, 2022

Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

Much of the woes and struggles of starting a family center around women and their fertility issues. But for a third of all heterosexual couples grappling with infertility, the problem lies squarely with the man. Faulty sperm tends to be the No. 1 culprit. Around 10 percent of infertile men (and 1 percent of all men) suffer from azoospermia, a condition in which sperm is completely absent in the semen. While there are treatment options available, like medication or surgery, these methods aren’t an option for some men who can’t make sperm at all. So some scientists are instead turning to the world of 3D printing to solve azoospermia.

In a new study published March 16 in the journal Fertility and Sterility Science, Canadian researchers 3D-printed live and functional human testicular cells for the first time ever. This accomplishment likely lays the groundwork for solving sperm-associated forms of male infertility in the future.

Azoospermia comes in two forms—obstructive and non-obstructive. The former has a simple fix: Surgeons unblock or create the tubes that carry sperm from the testes out to the rest of the male reproductive system.

But with non-obstructive azoospermia—the most severe form of the condition—men aren't making sperm at all, and that could be due to many different reasons, some of which can be genetic like Klinefelter syndrome (where less testosterone is made because there’s an extra X chromosome) or hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (where puberty is delayed or completely absent). Solving this problem first required understanding what was happening deep down at the cellular level.

“We needed something as close to the nature within a testicle as possible to be able to study this as a functional unit,” Dr. Ryan Flannigan, a urologist at the University of British Columbia who led the new study, told The Daily Beast.

The new study started with Flannigan and his team growing testicular tissue in the lab and observing how this community of cells organized itself, communicated with each other, and responded to different growth hormones. They began to ask: Why not try regenerating a whole testicle, or at least a clump of testicular cells, with 3D printing?

To do that, they biopsied stem cells from the testicles of a 31-year-old man with non-obstructive azoospermia and grew as many new stem cells as they could in the lab. They then used these cells to 3D-print a structure similar to the seminiferous tubules, structures within the testes where sperm are born.

The researchers kept the seminiferous tubules nourished with the hormones, nutrients, and other chemicals they needed to stay happy and grow. After about two weeks, the cells flourished, much to Flannigan and his team’s surprise. While they didn't form single-and-ready-to-mingle sperm, they were able to advance into stages that are nearly partway through the multi-stepped creation process.

The next step, of course, is to get these 3D-printed testicular cells to make sperm. Once achieved, Flannigan is hopeful they can be used to help provide insight into treating male infertility. Doctors might even use them directly during assisted reproductive procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Ryan Flannigan and Meghan Robinson in front of the testicular cell 3D printer.
Courtesy University of British Columbia

These 3D printed cells might also be able to help male cancer patients preserve their fertility before undergoing aggressive treatment.

“Pediatric cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy undergo that before they hit puberty,” said Flannigan. “Some of them will regenerate sperm if they recover from treatment and their testes recover. But a big proportion of them won't recover and won’t have any opportunities to have biological children of their own.”

While there’s no technology available yet to develop stem cells into fully mature, functional sperm, Flannigan said harvesting and freezing a cancer patient’s stem cells before treatment will at least give them a fighting chance for the future.

“The field of regenerative medicine and using approaches like this is probably going to have a bigger presence in the future,” he said. “It’s all fairly early on in development and there’s a lot of people doing parallel research in other organ and disease systems [but] it’s an exciting field to watch out for.”

Kremlin TV Descends Into Screaming Match Over Putin’s War Failures

CHAOS

There’s no hiding the cracks that have formed on Russian airwaves over the war in Ukraine any longer.


Julia Davis
Updated Mar. 25, 2022

ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP via Getty Images

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its second month, the grim picture of destruction and suffering is breaking through on state-controlled television. Before the invasion, military experts predicted a rapid takeover of Russia’s peaceful neighbor in a matter of minutes. Now that the reality is starting to set in, they’re grimly surmising that it will take several decades to subdue freedom-loving Ukraine.

State TV’s talking heads have tried in vain to paint a rosy picture of the Kremlin’s invasion, but the cracks are starting to show. On Thursday, with screens depicting dramatic images of demolished Mariupol flashing behind them, hosts of the state television show 60 Minutes, Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov, tried to point out the “positives.” They noted that Russia promised to pay compensation to some Ukrainians from the “affected” territories—10,000 rubles each, amounting to a mere $100 dollars.

“What do we do now? What’s our plan? Everything is bad, nothing is working out?”

To make matters worse, Ukrainians forcefully deported to Russia might end up in places like the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, with freezing cold temperatures and stark landscapes. After discussing news reports about ongoing relocations, Evgeny Popov helpfully pointed out: “But in Sakhalin, the salaries are the highest in the country!”

The chorus of concerned voices in Russian state media blamed their country’s information war failures on the fact that the Kremlin’s propaganda channels have been banished in Ukraine. State TV pundit Nikolai Starikov proposed: “When we talk about the organizers of the info-war, I’m convinced that their place is on the same bench where Nazi criminals will be tried.” The hosts, who for years agitated for war against Ukraine under false pretenses, nervously looked on without commenting.


State Duma Deputy Gen. Vladimir Shamanov—who is the former commander of the Russian Airborne Troops—accused the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “war criminal” for not surrendering to Russia. Shamanov argued: “He has the right to say, “Stop this war,” lay down the arms and save all the people.” This bizarre upside-down narrative is meant to hide the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen by the civilized world as a war criminal, is solely responsible for starting and continuing his unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country.


Russian Troops Are Now Turning on Each Other
MADHOUSE
Allison Quinn


Political analyst Vitaly Tretyakov concluded: “The situation is serious... We have to admit that there was no psychological breakthrough in our operation, where the opposing side would lose their will to resist... The resistance from the Ukrainian side is neither stopping nor weakening.” Tretyakov pointed out that despite the Russian media’s attempted depictions of Zelensky as a drug addict, he is being perceived by the West as a leader of a country that has been attacked. He also questioned the wisdom of “liberating” Ukrainians who don’t seem to want to be “liberated” and vehemently hate seeing the Russian troops on their territory. Tretyakov noted the unwavering determination of Western leaders to “squeeze” the Russian economy by imposing punishing sanctions.

Host Olga Skabeeva was visibly rattled by the depressing realities brought to the forefront by Tretyakov’s comments. She sniped, “So you sprinkled the ashes all over your head, but what do we do now? What’s our plan? Everything is bad, nothing is working out?” Skabeeva angrily questioned whether Tretyakov had anything to offer aside from criticism. After he pointed out that societies tend to get tired of any military campaigns rather quickly, Skabeeva argued, “If you’re tired, that doesn't mean that everyone else is tired.” Visibly angered, she repeatedly shouted at Tretyakov, questioning his support for the Russian military and telling the pundit that his commentary “has a smell of something untoward.”

“It can be clearly predicted that we will have to remain in Ukraine for 30-40 years.”

If Skabeeva was counting on other pundits to lighten the mood in the studio, she was sorely mistaken. Military experts proceeded to hammer additional nails into the coffin of popular delusions about the anticipated outcome of Putin’s war against Ukraine. On Thursday, military expert Igor Korotchenko called for any protests to be stopped by military force and any vocal opponents of the Russian armed forces to be “interned.” Korotchenko called for all Ukrainian flags and symbols to be destroyed, replaced by Russian and Soviet flags. He also demanded that Ukrainians who fled to NATO countries be denied the possibility of returning to their country.

In January, experts on the same show estimated that Russia could overtake the entire neighboring country in a matter of 11 minutes. Their current predictions have shifted from minutes to decades for the Russian armed forces to achieve Putin’s goals in his senseless war against Ukraine.

Korotchenko surmised, “It’s obvious that the process of denazification of Ukraine will take the minimum of 15-20 years.” He predicted that the Russian troops would have to remain on Ukrainian territory, with the Russian military in charge of the entire country for the foreseeable future: “Whether this will take 15, 20 years or more, time will tell.”

General Shamanov was even more pessimistic, as he grimly anticipated that it would take the “re-education” of at least two generations of Ukrainians before they would welcome or tolerate Russia’s dominance. He also noted that Russia’s one-million-man armed forces aren’t enough to meet such a challenge, calling for massive increases to the country’s military might. Shamalov concluded: “Today, it can be clearly predicted that we will have to remain in Ukraine for 30-40 years.”

Won't someone stand up to protest Putin's biggest fanboy?
Kirk Swearingen, Salon
March 21, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: Screen capture)

Recently, the world watched with a mixture of astonishment, delight and concern as an employee of Russian state television Channel One interrupted the evening news program by coming onto the set, shouting "Stop the war! No to war!" while holding up a large handmade sign that said: Don't believe the propaganda. They're lying to you here.

News editor and producer Marina Ovsyannikova rushed out behind a female anchor (reportedly a Putin favorite), who was presenting the national state-sanctioned "news," with a sign decrying the lies being told there about Putin's war against Ukraine.

She also released a pre-recorded video, in which she opens by saying, "What is happening right now in Ukraine is a crime, and Russia is the aggressor. And the responsibility for this aggression lies on the conscience of only one person. This man is Vladimir Putin." She then notes that her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Russian and calls what Putin is doing a "fratricidal war."

She movingly calls on her fellow Russians to follow her, to stand up for what is right. Many have already been doing just that.

For her courageous act, Ovsyannikova said she was interrogated for 14 hours and has been fined. She faces an unknown fate — conceivably years in a Putin prison.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised her for the brave act of defiance, for telling the truth in the face of Putin's demand that his war against Ukraine be called a "special military operation" in support of Ukraine.

My question is, who will stand up for journalistic integrity here at home behind Tucker Carlson, the most vocal Putin cheerleader on Fox News? It immediately became a meme, but who will actually do it?

You know, Master Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, pretend populist, who grew up rich because members of the actual proletariat were eating his stepmother's TV dinners; Tucker-of-the-Inevitable-Bowtie Carlson, who somehow manages to get U.S. males whipped up by strategically fretting about men being emasculated; Tucker of the Perpetually Confused Expression, who happily weaponizes stupidity; the Fox News "host" who, with a lot of competition among his colleagues, has stepped up as Putin's No. 1 apologist in the United States — so much so, that the Kremlin has noted how important it is for their propaganda efforts to showcase Carlson's work as often as possible.

I planned to give some examples of Carlson's fawning for Putin, but where does one begin? So many times has Tucker lavished praise on Putin or attempted to undermine Putin's critics that he is being called the "TuckyoRose" of his generation, and some call for him to be investigated by the Department of Justice.

A recent personal favorite of mine was his whining, dexterous double-pandering of "Has Putin ever called me a racist?" (Hm. That he was whining may mean that it was actually a triple pander. Let's enumerate: one, to his main man, Vlad; two, to white supremacists in his viewership; three, to the generally aggrieved viewership of Fox nation, for whom whining — especially by white men — elicits a Pavlovian response.)

Speaking of which, suffice it to say that when it comes to all things Vladimir, Tucker — much like our former president — is like that squirmy little dog that rolls onto its back (occasionally going so far as to pee itself) to show the dominant dog due obeisance. (Imagine that dog wearing a spiffy bow tie.)

No one feels animosity for such a dog, only pity. In the human realm? Well, the feelings may vary.

The question of the moment is this: How can democracies defend themselves against all the weapons utilized by authoritarians? Weapons like relentless propaganda and disinformation campaigns, attacks on journalists and the free press in general, and lawless oligarchs laundering their money in London, Amsterdam and New York while cozying up to officials with charitable giving and political donations.

Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum, author of "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism," who also wrote "The Autocrats Are Winning" last December, will testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what must the world's democracies must do to fight back against what she calls "Autocracy Inc," the loose but potent affiliation of autocrats who want to stay in power. What is needed, she writes, is a complete rethinking of our approach.

First among Applebaum's suggestions is to do a much better job of fighting disinformation. Which naturally brings us back around to the case of Tucker Carlson and his ever-growing ilk.

The founders of our republic knew that democracy had to have an informed citizenry to survive. How can it survive the massive dose of misinformation, disinformation, outright propaganda and bizarre conspiracy theories spewed by Fox News, Newsmax and OAN every day?

Should the First Amendment protect those who constantly muddy the waters — and steal the very possibility of citizens becoming better informed — with blatant lies?

The difference between a real journalistic enterprise and a faux journalistic enterprise, such as the channel perfectly named for a furtive mammal known for its cunning, its whining vocalizations and for pouncing on its prey, is that a misstatement of fact by a real journalistic enterprise is typically inadvertent and will be rectified. Misstatement of facts by Fox News hosts is a fundamental part of the business plan.

And, yes, Fox does have real journalists in its employ — veteran video journalist Pierre Zakrzewski, who was working for Fox, and freelance journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were recently killed covering Putin's war in Ukraine, while British reporter Benjamin Hall was seriously injured — but the journalism practiced at Fox provides cover for the network's provide cover for their true work, that of Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo, who, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte recently noted, launder conspiracy theories in the Fox News­–QAnon feedback loop, through seemingly innocently bringing the theories up, trusting their viewers will then go online to dig in the garbage.

It is all so over-the-top treasonous that SNL recently cold-opened with a "Fox News Ukrainian Invasion Celebration Spectacular, from Mar-a-Lago," hosted by cast members playing Carlson, Ingraham and Donald Trump.

Comedians, including the truly heroic Zelenskyy, are doing their utmost to save democracy. Can our leaders do as much? And who will step up to be America's Ovsyannikova before the cameras at Fox News?

Bombed out: Why we keep on making war, and tolerating it

War is brand new every time it happens, and it's one of our oldest ideas. We claim to hate it, but it's part of us

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2022

A man walks amid debris in front of a residential apartment complex that was heavily damaged by a Russian attack on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes - and pieces of intercepted missiles - have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv's population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. 

(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The hardest thing I do as a writer is trying to find words to describe the indescribable. It doesn't matter what it is — beauty or bliss or sadness or tragedy or dullness or despair or horror or ecstasy or the ordinary — it's the writer's job. I remember as a young man having a dream that someday I might come up with one great idea. Just one would do it, but that was my goal. Now I realize what I've been doing for more than 50 years is excavating old ideas and finding new ways to express them.

We are witnessing one of man's very oldest ideas in Ukraine. Call it the will to power or the urge to take what is not yours or the wrath of ignorance and pride, every time war is waged it is the same. War is man's inhumanity to man on a mass scale.

Perhaps that is why we become so readily inured to images of war. We have seen them all before — the anguished, bleeding faces of the wounded, the bleakly inert limbs of the dead, the angry fire of explosions, the darkness and sameness of destruction — to borrow Hannah Arendt's term, the sheer banality of it all.
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RELATED: Ukraine and the dark lessons of war: What does it mean to "take" a country or a city?

War is brand new when it first happens, yet after only a day it is already old to us because it has been headlined on the front pages of newspapers, featured on the covers of magazines, flickered across our televisions, splashed on the big screen of movies in Technicolor, engraved in the text of great novels and first-person reports from the front. The most extraordinary scene in the 1970 movie "Patton," the one that I believe gives it staying power, comes when Gen. George S. Patton is on a bluff in North Africa or Sicily seeming to reminisce about having been at that exact spot before during ancient battles. He ends his oration by saying this about war: "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."

I don't know if Patton ever said the lines from the movie in real life, but I do know that after I took my grandmother, Sara Randolph Truscott, to see "Patton" the week it came out, I asked her what she thought, and she turned to me and answered with a little smile, "Why, it was just like being in the room with Georgie," calling him by a nickname only his family and close friends used.

Her late husband and my grandfather, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., knew Patton and served on the same cavalry posts with him between the wars. It's safe to assume she would have known what the man was like, so that's probably as good an assessment we'll ever get of the movie's essence. In Patton's rumination on war, he is saying the unsayable out loud. It makes him seem like a monster, but we are all monsters, we humans who love war, or at least tolerate it such that we keep waging it over and over and over again.

It chills the soul to think that he might be right, but here we are again, 52 years after "Patton" was released, bearing witness to yet another war being fought over the same ground, in the same cities, for largely the same reasons as the war against the Nazis that Ukraine (and Russia) fought 81 years ago. It's tempting to ask why nothing is ever new, but I'm afraid we know the answer all too well.

There is one image of war we haven't yet seen in the coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine. We've seen people sheltering in subway stations and basements and people traveling by train or by car to get to western Ukraine or Poland to escape the bombing and shelling. But we haven't seen the people left behind who don't have the wherewithal or money or even the energy to escape the cities and towns being bombed, and who end up stuck trying to survive in the ruins. I saw an interview with an expert on Ukraine this week who said that 10 percent of the population already lived below the poverty line of about $5 or $6 a day, even before the war began. It won't take long for as many as 90 percent of Ukrainians to be in the same position, he said.

I am certain that there are already people in Ukraine living in the bombed-out ruins of rural homes and urban apartment buildings with no electricity, heat, source of food or water — just existing on nothing. Because I haven't traveled to Ukraine to cover this war, and because all wars are essentially the same, I'll tell you what I saw in Afghanistan in March of 2004 in the ruins of some old apartment complexes and office buildings on the edge of Kabul.

It was like a landscape out of a near-future movie about the world after the Big Bomb, but it was real: Families had fashioned shelters out of the rubble of the buildings, using scrap wood and metal for roofs and more wood scraps and piles of rubble and cheap carpets and blankets for walls, and they were living in the midst of this horrific destruction without electricity or water and only small cooking fires for heat. Here and there, I could see pits that had been dug out of the dirt and sealed with mud walls to make bread ovens, where they could bake flatbread by slapping dough on the curved walls of the pits. But none of the ovens had fires going, because the families didn't have any flour and water to make dough.

I had stopped at a small bakery next door to the Mustafa Hotel, where I was staying in Kabul, and picked up a bag of sugar cookies that I planned on eating as snacks later in my room. I had the bag stashed in a kilim shoulder bag I was carrying, but almost immediately upon entering the ruins, I was surrounded by a crowd of starving children. Their faces were dirty from having not been washed in weeks, and many of them had open infections oozing pus on their legs and arms. They were pawing at me and chattering in Dari and my translator told me they were asking for food and water, so I took out the bag of cookies and began handing them out. It was like being set upon by a pack of wolves, their fingers were tugging and scratching at my pant legs and arms as I tried to spread the cookies evenly between the children. Within a minute or two, they were all gone and the children disappeared into gaps in the rubble and behind the thin rugs where their mothers huddled in the cold.

With my translator, I tried to talk to a few of the women to get their stories: How they had ended up in these ruins in Kabul, how long they had been there, the usual questions a reporter asks in a war. Their husbands, the fathers of the children, had all been killed in fighting between Afghan factions or by the Taliban or by U.S. soldiers, so there were no men in the ruins. My translator explained that widowed women with children were undesirable and were shunned in their villages, which was why they had traveled from distant areas looking for shelter and work and aid from NGOs in Kabul. They had noplace else to go; that's why they were living in the ruins among the detritus of war.

I went back to the ruins once more before I left Afghanistan and handed out flatbread and some bottled water this time. The scene was the same. The children clawed at me desperately. It was all I could do not to throw down the bag of bread and the water bottles and run.

When I returned to L.A. a week or so later, there was a sore on my left forefinger that wouldn't heal. I went to my GP. He examined my finger and took a swab and asked me to wait while he had it tested. A couple of hours later the test came back. It was an MRSA infection. He asked me what I had come in contact with in Afghanistan that might have caused it, and I thought immediately of the children in Kabul with their open sores and cracked lips and desperate eyes. I had touched them repeatedly while handing out cookies and bread in the ruins.

The doctor gave me a big shot of antibiotics and put me on the only pill known to knock down MRSA infections. The sore got worse for a couple of days and then began to heal. The doctor told me that if I had waited to get it treated for even a day longer, I would probably have lost my finger. If I had neglected the infection longer, I could have lost my hand.

This is one of the very old ideas about war I have excavated: After the bombs have fallen and the artillery shells have exploded and the missiles have found their targets, what is left are women and children with no money, no food, no water, living in bombed-out ruins with no place else to go. That was what happened in Afghanistan, and it happened in Sicily and Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Aleppo and Rome and Jerusalem and Cairo and Mogadishu, and now it is happening in Ukraine. History becomes present becomes future and nothing changes. The thing that is forever is war.


LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. You can read his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Read more on the Ukraine war and its consequences:
Endless war is back — as the merchants of death waltz us toward Armageddon
Putin's invasion of Ukraine exposes the Fox News-QAnon feedback loop
Why I'm going to Ukraine: We deserve the truth — and that's my job

How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin

March 22, 2022
GREG ROSALSKY

NPR

PLANET MONEY

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich (on the left, in the center) in 2010.Alexei Nikolsky/AP

It's been a rough few weeks for Roman Abramovich.

The British government blocked him from entering the country and froze his assets, depriving him of a glittering collection of sports cars, his 15-bedroom mansion in central London, his penthouse overlooking the River Thames, and the Chelsea soccer club.

The European Union is also messing with his finances and banning him from traveling into its 27 member states. No more summering in Saint-Tropez or wintering in Chamonix.

In the United States, members of Congress are now calling on President Biden to sanction Abramovich, threatening his megamansion on the Upper East Side.

It's not just governments. Last week, a Pro-Ukraine activist in Spain chartered a boat and attempted to graffiti Abramovich's 458-foot superyacht, Solaris, which was docked in a Barcelona marina. Although the activist failed, Abramovich directed his two superyachts (he has another one) to head east for safety.

Abramovich, himself, has fled east for safety, back home to Russia, which seems to be one of the few nations where he's welcome these days.

All of this is a lot of unwanted publicity for a man with a reputation for shunning the spotlight. An orphan who grew up in the frozen tundra of Siberia, Abramovich rose from nothing to become a tycoon worth an estimated $13 billion. Younger than most in the first generation of Russian "oligarchs" — as the Russians would come to disparagingly call them — the boyish Abramovich became known as "the stealth oligarch" because, unlike many of his plutocratic contemporaries, he kept his head down.

In the 1990s, Abramovich became the protégé of Boris Berezovsky, who was probably the least stealthy oligarch. Berezovsky had a big mouth. In 2000, he made the mistake of openly challenging a new president by the name of Vladimir Putin, someone Berezovsky had played a big role in helping to get elected president. When Putin threw down the hammer, Berezovsky was forced to flee Russia — and Abramovich, a staunch (and tight-lipped) Putin loyalist, took over much of Berezovsky's oil and media empires. Berezovsky remained a vocal Putin critic after moving to London. He was found dead there in 2013, hanging from a noose in his bathroom. Investigators are divided on whether it was suicide or murder.

With the exception of Abramovich and a few other notables, the cast of characters comprising Russia's oligarchy has been largely replaced since the 1990s, after Putin began purging oligarchs and anointing his own oligarchs in an effort to fortify his reign. However, the power structure remains the same. It's a symbiotic relationship in which the oligarchs' economic power buttresses the political power of the Russian president, and the president's power buttresses the economic power of the oligarchs — like a medieval king getting tribute from his aristocracy in exchange for his protection. It's an arrangement that the West is now fighting to disrupt.

It's impossible to know what would have happened to Russia in an alternate universe, where the nation's transition to capitalism was handled more gradually and fairly, and the oligarchs had never taken the helm of Russia's economy. We do know, however, that their story is crucial to understanding the rise of Putin.

The Rise Of The Oligarchy

The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.

There were many economists — including even Gaidar and Chubais themselves before they became government officials — who believed that the transition to capitalism would best be handled gradually. They knew the transition would be complex and painful, and it made sense for Russia to first create the institutions that healthy, competitive markets need to flourish — like independent courts, functioning capital markets, and strong regulatory bodies.

But Yeltsin and his allies believed that time was not on their side. An attempted coup in August 1991 by Soviet hardliners against the reformers almost derailed the whole project. Entrenched Soviet industrialists and party insiders wanted a return to the old order. The Yeltsin administration decided that a program known as "shock therapy" — rapidly unleashing market forces — was the way to electrocute the old Soviet system and jolt Russia into embracing capitalism.

American advisors and global creditors, especially the International Monetary Fund, played a notable role advocating for shock therapy. But some influential shock therapists, like the economist Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard, believed such a radical program needed support. He proposed the United States and multilateral development agencies help Russian reformers succeed with a $30 billion aid package, akin to what America had provided Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Sachs also called for the cancellation of Russia's debts. But these ideas were rejected by American leaders.

President Yeltsin delivered the first big shock to the Russian economy when he lifted price controls in December 1991. As the Soviet economy collapsed, however, the policy ended up unleashing hyperinflation. By 1994, consumer prices in Russia would skyrocket to almost 2000 times what they had been in 1990. That candy bar that had cost $1 now cost $2000. Hyperinflation devastated ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Chubais was tasked with overseeing mass privatization. That entailed transforming a nation whose almost entire economy consisted of state-controlled industries — manufacturing plants, oil refineries, mines, media outlets, biscuit factories, you name it — into private enterprises. It was, to date, surely the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history.

Privatization was conducted in two waves. The first wave, which began in October 1992, had at least the veneer of being a fair and open process. Russia issued 148 million "privatization checks," or vouchers, to Russian citizens. These vouchers could be freely sold or traded. They could then be used to buy shares of state enterprises going private at public auctions around the nation. It was like the former Soviet Union was holding the world's largest garage sale and vouchers were the tickets to shop.

The people on their way to becoming Russia's first class of oligarchs scoured the nation, trying to buy as many vouchers as they could. Many of the oligarchs had come from nothing. They had initially gotten rich — but not quite buy-superyachts rich just yet — by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses when the Soviet Union first allowed private entrepreneurship in the late 1980s. For example, Roman Abramovich made his first pot of money selling rubber ducks and other random objects to Russians out of his Moscow apartment (seriously). He was also a mechanic. By the time privatization began, many soon-to-be oligarchs owned banks and had enough money to buy lots of vouchers.

The oligarchs went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of vouchers, each of which were worth 10,000 rubles, or about $40 or less back in the 1990s. Average Russians, who were struggling during hyperinflation, were often eager to sell. After amassing vouchers, the oligarchs — both come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders — used them at auctions to buy up stocks in newly private companies. By all accounts, many of these enterprises were shockingly undervalued — and those who were able to get large chunks of lucrative enterprises became fabulously wealthy in a very short period of time. Between 1992 and 1994, about 15,000 state-run enterprises went private under the program.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, around 70 percent of the Russian economy had been privatized. But some of the biggest, most valuable industries remained in the government's hands. Chubais had plans to privatize these state enterprises and raise much needed funds for the government by selling them off for cash to the highest bidder in legitimate auctions. However, politics got in the way of the increasingly unpopular privatization drive — and even threatened to reverse it. That's when the Yeltsin administration resorted to a much shadier form of privatization.
The "Loans For Shares" Scheme

By 1995, Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular. Hyperinflation. The decline of law and order. The rise of the mafia and execution-style killings on the streets of Moscow. Russia's inability to pay government salaries and pensions. The sense that unscrupulous men in suits were the only ones winning in the new economy. Plus, Yeltsin was a notorious drunk with serious health problems. Just a year away from reelection, Yeltsin's approval rating fell to the low single digits, and he faced the specter of an increasingly popular Communist challenger who looked like he could win the 1996 presidential elections.

With privatization stalling, the government desperate for money, and a growing fear that Russia was about to slide back into communism, Chubais and the Yeltsin administration turned to a shady scheme known as "Loans For Shares." The secret plot basically worked like this: the richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares of Russia's most valuable state enterprises. When the government defaulted on paying back the loans, as the schemers expected they would, the oligarchs would walk away with the keys to Russia's most profitable corporations. In exchange, the government would get the money it needed to pay its bills, privatization would keep moving forward — and, most importantly, the oligarchs would do everything in their power to ensure Yeltsin was reelected.

Between November and December 1995, twelve of Russia's most profitable industrial enterprises were auctioned off to the oligarchs, including a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The auctions were a complete farce. Chubais and his team had predetermined with the oligarchs who would get what and for roughly how much. And the prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal — almost literally. For example, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, now well beyond his days of selling rubber ducks, got a large stake in the oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2009, when Putin renationalized the company, Abramovich sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Talk about a payday.

"Chubais never advertised it publicly — he attempted to keep the goal obscure so as not to alarm the opposition— but loans for shares should really have been called 'tycoons for Yeltsin,'" writes David Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, in his book The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia. "Chubais was willing to hand over the property without competition, without openness, and, as it turned out, for a bargain price, but in a way that would keep the businessmen at Yeltsin's side in the 1996 reelection campaign."

Yeltsin Is Reelected With Oligarch Money

Holding up their end of the bargain, the oligarchs, who often fought with each other, united forces behind Yeltsin's reelection campaign. They donated millions of dollars to the effort. They hired the best political operatives they knew. They laundered government money with their banks, and fed it into the Yeltsin campaign machine. Two of the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, controlled two of the three major Russian television networks — and they blanketed the airwaves with pro-Yeltsin propaganda. Fueled by the immense power of the oligarchs, Yeltsin conducted Russia's first American-style presidential campaign.

As the election approached, Yeltsin made a cynical move to placate critics of his privatization scheme, publicly firing his super unpopular privatization czar Chubais. "He sold off a big industry for next to nothing," Yeltsin told the press. "We cannot forgive this."

Despite waving the banner of free markets and democracy, the reformers of the 1990s — perhaps ironically — did much of their reforms undemocratically, often by presidential decrees that were hammered out through backroom deals with the rich and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the oligarchic beneficiaries of these deals, Yeltsin beat the odds and won reelection. Russian-style crony capitalism was here to stay.

Weeks after the victory, Boris Berezovsky bragged to The Financial Times that he and six other Russian oligarchs controlled half of Russia's economy. That number seems to have been significantly inflated. Nonetheless, by 1996, the world could see that Russia had a new class of industrialists and bankers who wielded enormous power. A class that made their fortunes not through society-improving ideas, consumer-pleasing products, or technological innovations — but rather through corruption, skullduggery, and the plunder of Russia's raw materials. Many Russians would come to resent the oligarchs and the liberal reformers who empowered them.

As Yeltsin's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1990s, the oligarchs began to worry about who would be his successor. The natural heir to Yeltsin would be whoever occupied the post of prime minister. If Yeltsin stepped down, the prime minister automatically became acting president and would have the advantage of incumbency during election time.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin and his oligarchic allies agreed that an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was the man to become Yeltsin's prime minister, and soon Russia's next president. He was a nobody, barely a public figure, but he had a reputation for loyalty. They trusted that, once in power, he would look after their interests. Little did they know that they were unleashing a monster they soon would be unable to control.

Russia TV's Paris correspondent slams 'propaganda' after quitting

Agence France-Presse
March 22, 2022

Zhanna Agalakova she could no longer be involved in the 'lies' and 'manipulation' of Russian state TV Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP

A Russian journalist who for years was senior foreign correspondent for state-run television on Tuesday lashed out at the propaganda broadcast by pro-Kremlin media after dramatically quitting over the invasion of Ukraine.

Zhanna Agalakova, a familiar face in Russian households from two decades work as a correspondent from postings including New York and Paris, had earlier this month announced she was leaving Pervy Kanal (Channel One) due to the invasion.

Speaking in public for the first time since she quit, Agalakova told reporters at a news conference in Paris organised by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that she could no longer be involved in the "lies" and "manipulation" of Russian state TV.

"I want the people of Russia to hear me and learn what propaganda is and stop being zombified," she said.

With tears in her eyes, Agalakova said she had hesitated a lot before speaking out in public but then decided "there was no other choice".

Agalakoa, who most recently worked as Paris-based Europe correspondent for Pervy Kanal, admitted that she had "made many compromises in my career" but she described the invasion of Ukraine as a "red line".

There has been intense focus on Russian TV since an editor on the Pervy Kanal barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news last week, holding a poster reading "No War."

Marina Ovsyannikova was detained and a Moscow court rapidly fined her 30,000 rubles (260 euros). But despite being freed she could face further prosecution, risking years in prison under draconian new laws.

Ovsyannikova said she was quitting her job but not accepting an offer from President Emmanuel Macron of asylum in France, saying she wanted to stay in Russia.
'Huge lie'

Agalakova announced she was leaving her channel in an Instagram video posted last week, symbolically cutting a Pervy Kanal band around her wrist and saying she had already written her resignation letter on March 3.

She described a media system that "just gives the point of view of the Kremlin".

Agalakova pointed to how state television covers President Vladimir Putin with exhaustive coverage of his macho holiday activities but with no scrutiny of his private life which is an absolute taboo.

"Our news does not show the country, we do not see Russia," she said.

"We only see the first man of the country, what he ate, who he shook hands with, we even saw him shirtless. But we don't know if he's married, if he has children," she said.

She lambasted the state media for its repeated description of Russia's opponents in Ukraine as "Nazis", a term that touches a particular nerve in a country still scarred by the sacrifices of World War II.

"When, in Russia, we hear the word 'Nazi', we only have one reaction -- destroy. It's a manipulation, a huge lie."

Justifying her long career as correspondent in New York and Paris, she said: "I thought that by reporting on life in Europe -- and in particular in Paris -- I could avoid being propagandistic."

"I didn't lie, every fact was real. But take real facts, mix them up and you'll end up with a big lie," she said.

'Hostages of situation'

Press freedom activists outside Russia accuse its state television of painting a severely distorted picture of the war in a bid to maintain support for what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved legislation imposing jail terms of up to three years for the publication of false information about Russia's actions abroad.

Agalakova is not the only prominent Russian TV journalist to have quit over the invasion of Ukraine, but so far there has been no mass exodus.

NTV channel news anchor Lilya Gildeeva, who has worked for the channel now owned by energy giant Gazprom, since 2006, said she had left Russia and resigned from her job.

The longstanding Brussels correspondent of NTV, Vadim Glukser, has also said he had handed in his notice.

"Many journalists, producers or people who work in the media think like me," Agalakova said.

"It's easy to accuse them, to ask why they don't resign, don't protest. But those who stay have families, elderly parents, children, houses to pay for. They are hostages of the situation."

© 2022 AFP

Franklin Graham, Russia and the ‘Moralist International’

The war in Ukraine has made strange bedfellows of the international religious right.

Franklin Graham, right, meets with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on March 5, 2019. Photo courtesy of the Moscow Patriarchate

March 21, 2022

By 

Mark Silk

(RNS) — Four days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Franklin Graham tweeted, “Pray for  President (Vladimir) Putin today. This may sound like a strange request, but we need to pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.”

I think we can mark that prayer down as unanswered. The Holy One’s response, assuming there was one, seems to have been more along the lines of what happened when Moses put the pinch on Pharoah to let the Hebrews go free. According to the Book of Exodus: “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.” 

Since Putin’s heart to date shows no sign of softening — last week he likened his opponents to a plague of gnats — Graham might assume the righteous prophet’s voice. As he did in 2015, for example, when he railed that then-President Barack Obama “has stood defiantly against God. And against his teaching. And the teachings of the Scriptures.”

I’ll go out on a limb and say that to invade a country without provocation and promiscuously kill its civilians is to stand against Graham’s God and Scriptures.

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RELATED: Samaritan’s Purse, Israelis will treat wounded Ukrainians in Lviv field hospitals

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To his credit, Graham has committed Samaritan’s Purse, the relief organization he heads, to providing relief to the victims of Russian war-making. But as for his issuing a prophetic denunciation of Russia, I’m not holding my breath. It would mean disavowing an alliance he has been involved in for years. 

That alliance is the subject of “The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars,” a book by University of Innsbrück sociologist Kristina Stoeckl and Russian scholar Dmitry Uzlaner, forthcoming this fall from Fordham University Press. Stoeckl and Uzlaner show in fascinating detail how the Russian Orthodox Church turned itself into a leading promoter of “traditional family values” inside Russia and on the world stage as part of a “Moralist International” led by the American religious right.

Central to the story is Kirill, the current patriarch of Moscow, who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, seized on family values as a means by which his church could restore its traditional place in Russian society and realize an age-old ambition to supplant Constantinople as the “Third Rome” — the headquarters of Eastern Orthodoxy, if not of world Christendom.

In 2000, then-Metropolitan Kirill wrote a widely read article explaining how Russian Orthodoxy could become a public religion capable of “defining the future face of human civilization.” That meant not only standing against the morally corrupt values of secular liberalism but breaking out of a narrow Orthodox shell that eschewed alliances with conservatives in other faith communities.

Although culture warfare is alien to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Kirill succeeded in having the Russian church embrace it after becoming Moscow patriarch in 2009. Thus, under his leadership Russians began to play an important part in the World Congress of Families, an American organization designed to spread a Christian-right agenda internationally. 

Franklin Graham tweets a photo of meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2017.

It was after Putin was elected president of Russia for the third time in 2012 that he himself signed on to Kirill’s agenda, signing laws that established penalties for offending religious feelings and for displaying LGBT symbols. Putin’s goal of reestablishing the Russian empire dovetailed perfectly with Kirill’s messianic ambition for his church.

Along the way, Graham has been there to facilitate the cause, meeting with Putin in 2015 and with Kirill in 2019, tweeting after the latter encounter, “I’ve been in Moscow this week & had the privilege of meeting w/Patriarch Kirill of Moscow & All Russia. It was also a blessing to meet w/evangelical leaders & other officials while there. Pray for them & for more opportunities to share the truth, hope, & life found only in Jesus.”

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RELATED: How Putin’s invasion became a holy war for Russia

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It seems obvious that, however the war in Ukraine turns out, Putin will have turned himself into an international pariah. The same is likely true for Kirill, who has thus far served as the war’s foremost religious apologist.

At a conference hosted by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center last week, Stoeckl said she expected that, because of the war, the Russians would be dropping out of the global family values movement — the Moralist International. “They were on the rise to become the leading moral voice,” she said.

As for Franklin Graham, who knows?

'Best enemies list since Nixon': Author basks in pride after Ted Cruz attacks his book during confirmation hearing

Brad Reed
March 22, 2022


During his questioning of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz tried to get her on the record about several books that were on the recommended reading list at the Georgetown Day School, where Jackson serves as a member of the board of trustees.

In addition to attacking the school for recommending the "Anti-Racist Baby" book, Cruz also singled out a book called "The End of Policing," a book that argues for reducing the amount of policing Americans are subjected to by decriminalizing drugs and sex work, among other things.

The book's author, Alex Vitale, found himself surprised and honored to have his book held up by Cruz during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

NOW WATCH: 'Awkward’ Lindsey Graham has now become the ‘drama guy’ at confirmation hearings: former Dem senator

"So that just happened," a surprised Vitale wrote on Twitter after Cruz slammed his work.

Vitale went on to add that being called out by Cruz was akin to being on "the best enemies list since Nixon" and said Cruz's tirade against the book was "the best endorsement yet for The End of Policing."

 Utah's GOP governor explains why he vetoed anti-trans bill: 'Rarely has so much fear been directed at so few'

Bob Brigham
March 22, 2022

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox (Source: Twitter)

Utah's Republican governor on Tuesday urged those who disagreed with him to read why he vetoed an anti-transgender bill.

"Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a ban on transgender students playing girls' sports on Tuesday, becoming the second Republican governor this week to overrule state lawmakers taking on youth sports amid broader culture wars as LGBTQ visibility grows," the Associated Press reported Tuesday. "Cox joins Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, who vetoed a statewide ban on Monday. Holcomb said Indiana's Legislature had not demonstrated that transgender kids had undermined fairness in sports."

On social media, Cox posted a screenshot of his three-page veto message.

"I know most won’t read past a headline but please read my veto letter—especially if you disagree with me. The veto will be overridden on Friday and then we will have a special session to fix a few things. Trans sports is a terribly difficult issue. Please be kind to everyone," he urged.

Cox addressed his explanatory letter to Utah state Senate President Stuart Adams and Speaker Brad Wilson.

"I believe in fairness and protecting the integrity of women’s sports. I know both of you are committed to these same ideals and that we have worked very hard together to resolve the many issues surrounding transgender student participation in sports. Unfortunately, HB11 has several fundamental flaws and should be reconsidered," Cox wrote.

Cox warned the bill could bankrupt the Utah High School Athletic Association (UHSAA) and cited the five numbers that "most impacted" his veto.

"75,000 high school kids participating in high school sports in Utah. 4 transgender kids playing high school sports in Utah. 1 transgender student playing girls sports," he wrote. "86% of trans youth reporting suicidality. 56% of trans youth having attempted suicide."

"Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few," he wrote. "I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live. And all the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly. For that reason, as much as any other, I have taken this action in the hope that we can continue to work together and find a better way."

Nepal artist breathes life into sacred painting tradition

Agence France-Presse
March 24, 2022

Paubha remains a common painting method in Nepal but the austere religious observances once followed by its artists have fallen out of practice 

PRAKASH MATHEMA AFP

With a shaved head and an empty stomach, artist Ujay Bajracharya dips his brush to line the eyes of the deity Tara as a soothing Buddhist hymn warbles in the background.

The 40-year-old is applying the final strokes to his paubha painting, a devotional art form known for its minute detail, intense colours and the strict purification rituals traditionally required of its practitioners.

It took three months for Bajracharya to complete his rendition of the Green Tara, a goddess of compassion revered by Buddhists and Hindus in Nepal.

Before work began, he shaved off his hair and clipped his nails, while a Buddhist priest blessed his canvas and selected a day auspicious enough for the artist to commence his labors.

Bajracharya woke up early each morning and did not eat until his day's work was over, adopting a strict vegetarian diet that also excluded garlic, tomatoes and onion when he broke his fast.

"My body felt light and I felt more focused and motivated to paint," he told AFP.

"Changing my lifestyle was a bit difficult at first but I had the support of my family and friends, so that helped me stay disciplined."

Paubha remains a common painting method in Nepal but the austere religious observances once followed by its artists have fallen out of practice.

Bajracharya's adoption of these rituals began last year, when he approached a museum in the capital Kathmandu about painting another Buddhist deity while adhering to the forgotten traditions.

Rajan Shakya, founder of the Museum of Nepali Art, said that they immediately agreed to the idea of reviving the practice.

"It is part of what makes paubha art unique and valuable. The more people learn about it, the more demand there will be for Nepali artists. And then we know our art will survive, our culture will survive," Shakya said.

Bajracharya has committed to observing these rules for future paintings, beginning with his exacting work on the Green Tara, which he crafted for worship in a private prayer room at his home.

"I felt that we should preserve this method and the next generation should also be aware -- people should know about the spiritual aspect of these paintings," he said.

Paubha artworks use cotton or silk canvases, and colors were traditionally made by grinding minerals and plants into fine powder. Some works even used pure gold and silver.

The oldest preserved paubha painting dates to the 13th century, but scholars believe the tradition is much older, with earlier examples likely disappearing because of the fragile materials used.

Its artists are believed to have inspired trends in thangkas, a similar type of devotional painting in neighboring Tibet that has been recognised in UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

'A form of meditation'

Priest Dipak Bajracharya -- a member of Ujay's caste but of no relation to the painter -- said that in earlier times paubha artists would stay "pure" to ensure the sanctity of the images they produced.

"The process itself is considered a form of meditation," he said.

While the traditional religious value remains, paubha paintings are now commonly seen as decorative hangings in museums or the homes of collectors.

A growing international appreciation for the craft has proven lucrative for artists, with interested buyers in China, Japan and Western countries.

"Paubha paintings have now become a business, but their aim is not commercial -- they are actually objects of respect and worship," said the priest.


Dipak returned to Ujay's home once the latter's hair had grown back for a final religious ceremony, culminating in a ritual to "breathe life" into the finished painting.

The ceremonial practice invites the Green Tara to reside in the work as a vessel for worship.

"This is not art alone, the faith of Buddhists and Hindus is tied to it," said Ujay Bajracharya.


"If we don't preserve this art form, the faith will also slowly fade away."

© 2022 AFP