Hard News, Inc.

Leaving Colombia

Our training sessions are finally done, we got great reviews from all the newspapers we visited, and we've learned tons about Colombia and all the changes that have taken place here.  The last six years have seen a sea change in the security situation - and the fact that you can now actually drive between cities, that you can go out at night without worrying about having a burlap sack stuffed over your head - has meant that business and society here have managed to rebuild. 

Yesterday, talking with our driver, he told us stories about the 500 cabdrivers/informants that Pablo Escobar used to have roaming the streets of Medellin, the Hiroshima-like mushroom cloud that hovered over the chief of police's house after 1,000 pounds of dynamite went off, the solid gold chess set given to a favored underling, and on and on ... I'll write more about those sad subjects later.  But the point is that The Bad Old Days are something that people take great pains to point out are far, far in the past.

So here is a photo from the Minas de Colombia, a kind of wholesale emerald, art and golden artifacts store.  I'd like to write something about how my joking around with the fuse to the dynamite is symbolic of the changes that we tried to make down here with the newspapers, of the way that we went around trying to tell them to blow up their old business models - but that might be abusing a metaphor too much even for me. 

Medellin-go-Round

The video below is of small children playing on the spinning benches in the play area (I hesitate to call it a park) next to the Planetarium, which is itself next to the Botanical Gardens.  We wanted to go to the gardens, because it supposedly had an "orchidareum" of all kinds of rare and hard-to-find orchids.

Fun fact about Medellin that you probably didn't know: Every year they have a huge "Festival de los Flores" - a testament to the fact that the climate and rich volcanic soil allow them to grow mass quantities of flowers for export.  And yeah, I know where your head just went, and sure, they probably do still grow all manner of other valuable plants in & around this area, but let's not dwell on that right now.

The botanical gardens were a disappointment, because the air there was awful - about 2 carbon-monoxide points shy of locking yourself in the garage with a running car.  Really.  I swearta Christ, it was a real throwback to my days in Caracas, when just walking down the street was an assault on the sinus cavities, and it was common to see people standing on the streetcorners, waiting for the bus, eyes as red as tomatoes, weeping muddy tracks from all the soot and diesel particles.  So yeah, the gardens were not exactly the peaceful, verdant refuge I had hoped for - although there were some wacked-out beauty queens getting their pictures shot standing next to fanged sacrificial goddess statutes.  There's something symbolic in all that, but I don't have time to get into that just yet.

I wish that I had an entire afternoon to write about all the wonderful people we've met down here, the great places we've stayed, but the schedule here has been completely insane - I have tomorrow as a full day yet at El Tiempo - the most advanced paper in the country, and one that could teach most American papers a thing or two about convergence.  And then after that, I have to sweat out a huge article about Schibsted for the NAA, and right after that, I've scheduled a slight nervous breakdown on the plane back to the U.S. - probably about the time that the Homeland Security goons at Miami airport take a gander at my passport, note that I've spent a month in Colombia, after several trips to Russia and some time in Amsterdam, and hit the red call button for the heavyset matron with the surgical gloves...

Blazing into Cartagena Harbor

This is video shot from a speedboat entering Cartagena Harbor. It's calmed down a lot, but only a couple of years ago, the narcotraficantes and the Colombian Navy were playing a deadly game of tag here.

The video is extremely bumpy because of the high rate of speed; the boat captain was still a little nervous about going through some of the narrow channels, and past some of the small islands.  If the video isn't too jerky, you can see the remains of some of the fortifications that have been thrown up over the years.  The harbor at Cartagena has been fought in, over and around for nearly 500 years now, since the Spanish used it as their main loading area for all the melted-down Inca gold and Sir Francis Drake made a bold attack on the big fort (see the pix up at my Flickr site) by marching his men down the peninsula. 

The island we went diving off of is called "Isla de las Piratas" or pirate's island; there are allegedly sunken hulks of Spanish Galleons littering the coast here. 

The Road to Barranquilla

...and no, this is not some forgotten Hope & Crosby "Road" movie, co-starring Ginger Rogers & Betty Grable.

This is a "Guest Post" by Janine, and I'm running it here because it's well-written and also because I'm so frickin' burned out right now that I would have great difficulty stringing together an account half as coherent as this about some of the surprises we've encountered here during our "World Tour 2007-8" of Colombia for Andiaros and the government agency SENA.  Earlier today, I was able to show the roomful of very young journalists here just how easy it is to use the TypePad software to post something to a blog (BTW - the pic that appears there was take about 2 months ago, in Moscow, at a restraurant located on "Clean Lake" across from the Moscow offices of OLMA.)

Anyway, here's Janine:

This picture was taken by Dave through the window of a military checkpoint that we hit on the way to  Baranquilla, a medium-sized city about an hour's drive from
Cartagena.  W e hit a nasty rainstorm on the way here so it took us
nearly two hours. As we drove, our driver told us about how the road was
impassible only a few years ago because of the Guerillas/Narcotraffickers.
Now there are Colombian military stations every several kilometers along
the way that protect the road and have made it possible for people to make
the drive without fear.

To help us appreciate how things have changed, he told a personal story
about a bus trip he took to Bogota a few years ago. Part way there, the
bus was stopped by guerrillas who boarded the bus and demanded everyone's
Cedulas (the national ID). They then consulted the laptop they carried
with them, looking up each person's name in a database to see if they were
related to anyone rich enough or powerful enough to make them worth
kidnapping.(Dave and I noted this was an impressive use technology, albeit
for all the wrong reasons.)

As the Guerrillas checked IDs, they had one of the children on the bus go
around and collect everyone's shoes, which he explained they did routinely
to make it harder for anyone to run away, especially when they are being
led through the jungle at night and stepping off a path in the dark could
cause serious damage to bare feet.

But what really amazed us about the story, was that apparently the
guerrilla's radio discussion about the bus was picked up by the
US-supported Colombian army, which then called for a Black Hawk helicopter
to be sent to help them. That radio message was in turn intercepted by the
guerrillas, who took off once they realized they'd been discovered and
that the helicopter was on the way. (An interesting case of spy vs. spy,
and a moment that I think represents well the turning point that led to
these roads being so much safer.)

Unfortunately for the passengers on the bus, the guerrillas had already
poured gasoline all over the inside of the bus, which they planned to set
on fire before they left. They didn't take the time to burn the bus. but
the passengers had to  ride to the next town in a bus full of gas fumes so
strong it made most people sick. Still, I'm sure they all agreed it was
better than being kidnapped and walking barefoot through the jungle.

Today, he said he drives down these roads without fear, happy to see the
Colombian military on the side of the road. And I have to admit, Dave and
I both appreciated the soldiers a bit more after his story.

For my part, I've been amazed by how much more peaceful things are here
than they were just 6 years ago the first time I came to Colombia.
Everyone we've talked to about security has commented on the improvements,
how President Uribe has made such a difference by cracking down on
corruption and guerrilla activities, and how great it is that they can now
go out at night and travel the roads around the country without fear.

Blurred view of the Kremlin

Back in Moscow again, and as usual, I asked for a non-smoking room with a decent view out the window.  Unfortunately, I wound up in a smoking room with this view out through first a scuffed plastic sheet and then a green net.  The net has been up since April, but I haven't seen any work being done on the building.  There are all manner of concrete smears all over it, though. 

I actually kind of like this shot, although the feeling of being wrapped in plastic was making me claustrophobic.  It almost looks like I'm looking through an dirty aquarium at a very elaborate tropical fish castle.

Estonia in Putin's Crosshairs - DDos Attack and Counterattack

The Future is Here: Russia and Estonia are living up to the fantasies of hack sci-fi authors and computer security salesmen.  They are engaging in a virtual war.  

The reasons for this war are pretty thin - most political insiders in Moscow dismiss this as a shallow and meaningless concoction on the part of Putin, designed mainly to distract the Russian electorate in an election year.  It's old and time-worn tactic, but one that still finds favor with politicians that want to play the old magician "nothing up my sleeve" distraction game.   

My friend Dave Mitchell devoted the latter part of a column on his blog to this issue, and I've had a front-row seat to some of the events as they have unfolded. In a nutshell, the Estonians took down a gaudy bronze statue of a Soviet soldier a couple weeks before the big May 9 V-E Day celebrations.  Putin seized on the action (the Estonians were apparently not getting rid of the statue, just moving it to another place) and branded the Estonians as a bunch of pro-Nazi ingrates who were persecuting the ethnic Russians, yada yada blah blah.

I particularly liked the pictures of the forlorn pro-Russia protesters chasing after the Estonian ambassador's car, as it pulled away from the embassy, on its way to a vacation.  The "youth groups" that are making the most noise are widely known to be paid by the Kremlin to feign outrage and generate flashy TV images.

No big deal.  But in the last couple of weeks, the conflict has moved to a whole new arena - cyberspace.  Estonia's economy is apparently quite web-dependent.  Russian hackers have pretty much taken down the Estonian web presence through waves of DDoS attacks.  (Quick explanation: DoS is "Denial of Service" which is what happens when a whole bunch of zombie robot slave computers under the control of a hacker all try to access your webservers at the same time.  In real-world traffic terms, it's like sending a million cars to jam the drive-thru windows of Mickey D's.)

Check out the front page of the Moscow Times, scanned here for your convenience:

This is the story from a couple of weeks ago, when Putin gave a fiery speech during the May 9 parades, denouncing the Estonians. 

The latest update from Moscow says that the tactic is starting to spread in the provocation/response pattern so familiar to anyone who's paid attention to, well, just about any of the wars in the last century or so.  Viz:

Hackers this year have also attacked the sites of groups as politically disparate as the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration; the pro-Kremlin youth groups Nashi, Young Russia and Mestniye; and The Other Russia, the opposition coalition that has organized a series of Dissenters' Marches this year.

Alexander Kalugin, a spokesman for Young Russia, said a six-hour DDoS attack on his group's web site in March was likely the work of Estonian nationalists angered over its protests outside the Estonian Embassy over plans to relocate a Soviet World War II monument in central Tallinn that sparked a recent diplomatic dispute.

"We were burning Estonian banners and trampling an effigy of the Estonian president," Kalugin said.

The Movement Against Illegal Immigration had 40 of its regional web sites struck by DDoS attacks from early February to early April, said Alexander Belov, the organization's leader.

Belov blamed the security services for carrying out the attacks under the pretext of battling extremism.

I'm tempted to say that any kind of warfare that doesn't involve streets choked with bodies and rubble is an improvement - but I am uneasy.  The fact that more and more people are getting hip to the idea that there are cheap and easy ways to hit below the belt; the fact that the web is still very vulnerable to this kind of thing - all that is definitely a blinking red light.

The Parade So Good You're Not Allowed to See It

In Russia, they threw a Victory in Europe celebration, and barred the public from attending

From time to time, all the shops full of the latest European fashions and giant blazing neon signs trick me into forgetting that Moscow and Russia have some serious and profound differences. And then along comes something like Wednesday, and I find myself utterly puzzled, back at Square One, trying to figure out the rationale behind what I've seen.

Here's the deal.  For the last two weeks, the streets and buildings in Moscow have been growing giant red-orange banners and signs and decorations in preparation for the big May 9 Victory Day festivities.  At stoplights all over Moscow, the government hired street people to hand out gaily-color ribbons to motorists and commuters, to be tied around car aerials, pinned to jackets or tied around children's arms. I shot pictures of these giant Stalin-era 50-story apartment blocks, each with a letter spelling out 9 MAY. The papers were full of stories about whether or not there were going to be tanks and missiles launchers in the streets (how cool is THAT) along with rank after rank of grim-faced goose-stepping Red Army soldiers, and limping, medal-festooned veterans of the march to Berlin and the siege of Leningrad...

The day arrived and the streets were utterly deserted. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning.  Richard the IT Wizard, Olga and I set off to find the best place to see all the neat stuff go by.  We walked to Tverskaya Street, which is a broad avenue, best described as "The Rodeo Drive of Moscow" that leads downhill to Ground Zero and the main gate into Red Square. As we approached the street, we noticed a big crowd crammed into the alley mouth. 

It turned out that the Red Army was keeping the public off the sidewalks.

WTF?

Usually when you have a parade, you want the people all lined up on each side of the street, cheering, holding the little kids up to see, waving flags, tossing flowers, etc.  I mean, the concept of a victory parade is one that has been around pretty much since Ceasar rode his chariot down the Appian Way and through the throngs of screeching Roman citizens with a slave next to him whispering "Remember, you are still mortal" in his ear...

I must have missed something.  The Red Army soldiers were adamant. Nobody was allowed out on the street.  The view we got from the alley mouth was approximately the same as you would get trying to watch TV from under the old athletic equipment crammed into the hall closet. 

So we set off walking, hoping that we'd find some better vantage point.  At every turn, we encountered the same thing.  Streets blocked off, tense Red Army security saying "Nyet."

We got a great tour of the back alleys of all the old, neo-classical buildings north of the Kremlin.  Some of them are quite spectacular.  Some of them have curious steel and glass pyramids built in their courtyards.

We finally wound up on a slight hill, under the massive bronze statue of Dostoevsky, with a pretty good view (albeit from about 1/2 mile away) of the parade route.  I figured this was as good a place as any to hang out.  Then the wind kicked up and it started to rain.  From far off, we heard thousands of men shouting - apparently the WWII veterans, when they entered Red Square.  And of course, at this point, yet another Red Army officer appeared and gave us the bumrush.

I refused to give up. Richard's feet were sore from an hour and 1/2's walking, but I was on a mission.  So we walked up to Pushkin Park, and over to Tverskaya again.  There were all kinds of big colorful balloons bobbing in the chill breeze, but once again, the barricades were up and the guards were only letting people out, not in.  A rather surly mob was starting to collect around the barricades, and people were passing bottles back and forth.  I could see where this one was going, so I beat feet back to the hotel, but not before a squadron on MiG-29s and Su-27s flew over at about 300 ft. elevation and 600 mph. Man, that is LOUD.  And impressive. Those are some big planes.

Anyway, it turns out that the only place to see the parade is to either be invited to Red Square (i.e. to be a veteran, a dignitary, or a current Army officer), or to watch it on TV.  Which was a shame, because the soldiers were flawless in their close-order drill and they had all manner of cool equipment.  Of course, in St. Petersburg, things were a little more relaxed, and they had video of all the old veterans allowing regular citizens to shoot their old machine guns and throw grenades.

The one saving grace is what you can see in the photos here (I will post more that I shot with the big Canon later) of the fireworks display that I got to watch from out my 7th floor window.  They really did it up - from horizon to horizon, there were fireworks for at least 1/2 an hour over the Kremlin and the city center.  Most of the shots that I got were somewhat blurry, but I managed to get the mini-tripod in place so that I got a couple of time exposures showing some of the lights over the domes and peaked roofs.

Arriving in Moscow - and It Looks Like Everywhere Else

There is something both sad and comforting to drive down the streets of Moscow and see a Sbarro sIgn in Cyrillic

First impressions – there are a lot of signs in English here – almost as many as there were in Amsterdam. Despite the old-world concrete frowning feeling of the Passport Control Center in the basement of the airport, you can’t feel too intimidated if, while standing in line, you can look up to see two brand-new Panasonic HDTV plasma screens playing an endless loop of ads for expensive consumer products.

Apparently, it’s a big deal here to have dirty keys on your piano – luckily, they have special attachments to the vacuums (courtesy of some Russian company) designed expressly to clean the keys on your piano.

There were lots of Mercedes and BMWs in the airport parking lot – alongside a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator with oversize chrome rims. Someone here has been watching MTV.

There are a lot of big car dealerships on the outskirts of Moscow – it looks a little like Tony Soprano-area New Jersey that way. And the people scurrying around these environs look a little like extras from the Sopranos as well.  Near the airport, the highway is smooth and new. Closer to Moscow, the streets are rutted, jammed and potholed & patched.

The radio stations in English play a very eclectic mix – from The Bangles doing “Eternal Love” to Beyonce and Eminem.

I can’t get over how many international brands there are lining the big highway into town. Pioneer car stereos, Samsung computer monitors, DHL couriers, even a Sbarro (although that was the one sign that was in Cyrillic – I just knew it was Sbarro cheapass pizza from the color and typography of the sign. Now there’s a case study in branding, if anyone wants to tackle it.)

The river (Volga? Home of the storied Volga Boatmen? I think I faintly heard their signature dirgelike chanting…) is sluggish with ice still – I didn’t want to look too much like a tourist, and take a picture on the way in. I later overcame my reticence in this area – only to find that I had neglected to pack the cable to scarf the pix off my camera – luckily, the Vaio has a nice little slot in the front where you can click in the fragile little wafer. It kinda clicks in like the glass doors on stereo cabinets – you know, you push once and it goes “cli-CLICK” and is kinda recessed, and to remove it you push on it and it goes “CLI-clunk” and pops out. And the damn thing was only $14 at Circuit City? 

Anyway, back to the ride into Moscow. There are still the big high-density apartment buildings lining the roads – but not as many nor as dense as I had been led to believe. Which is no big deal, really.

It’s weird to see these fearsome Red Army soldiers in full battle rattle on the street, getting yelled at for knocking over a ladder.

I can quite connect what I’m seeing on the streets to the world I saw in the movies or on TV. Can any of these be the snow-choked streets that the Bolsheviks marched down in 1917?

This city just sprawls – block after block of frowning brick buildings, with Westernized ads and signs; some in the process of being spruced up. How much blood and history took place on these streets? Is history ever done with us? Or are we all making history right now, every second of the day, without really being cognizant of it? Freaking out and thinking all the while that we’re desperately improvising and that at any minute the whole house of cards is going to collapse on us. Meanwhile, the past seems to have so much clarity. There's a lesson here for those wondering about what to do about the digital revoiution...

Off to Moscow

In about 12 hours, I get on a KLM jet for 15 hours of confinement (broken up by one short layover - just enough to get the blood clots in the femoral arteries moving) on my way to Moscow to start the new consulting gig for Innovation.  I'll be experimenting with posting to this blog from there - it has been way, way too busy these last two weeks to post the way that I've wanted to ... and the failures of TypePad in South America are the subject of an "Open Ticket" with my beloved bloghosts.

In the meanwhile, here are a couple of pics from Chile and Argentina to take up some space on this blog and make it look lively.

This first shot is of a canyon that I did the zipline/canopy tour down, zig-zagging back and forth, whilst trying to take some kind of video.  In fact, I do have a short video of this, which I will also try to post in the next week or so.  God willing and the creek don't rise...

Back in the U.S.A.

After 15 hours of agony on the American Airlines flights back from Buenos Aires, I am back in L.A., and working hard already on trying to arrange for the next big international webmedia trip - this one to Moscow. The forms that the Russian Consulate requires travelers to fill out to get a visa are absolutely amazing in the amount of detail that they demand.  It's worse than filling out a job application - at least there, you don't have to mail them your passport, and hope to Christ that they send it back to you before your flight takes off...

Anyway, I have tons of postings and photos that I have to put up in this space, along with links to pages that I'm putting up at the main Hard News site - my PowerPoint presentation is already up there at www.hardnewsinc.com/chile if you want to take a look at it.  I will also be posting my list of sites that I think are interesting, and the reasons I think so, along with a list of all the tech toys that I use/recommend.

Tops on my list of new fave technologies has to be Skype. Folks, Skype saved my ass.  Free calls of whatever length to anyone else with a Skype account?  Man, you just can't beat it. If you haven't gotten a Skype account yet, go to www.skype.com and sign up.

Me? I gotta go back to applying for travel health insurance (apparently, the Rooskies won't let you in the country unless you have some sort of health policy).