STEPANAKERT, NAGORNO-KARABAKH — It took my taxi driver and me an hour to get out of Yerevan. Most of it was spent waiting in line to fill up his gas tank. Not with gasoline. No, it was the kind of fuel you’d pump into your gas powered BBQ. Ruslan, like most other Armenians living off gypsy cabbing, didn’t have a drop of petrol in his tank when I first got into his Volga. He’d modified it to run on natural gas stored in a large canister in the trunk of his car. (more…)
Editorial pages on both sides of the Atlantic have been calling more and more aggressively for the expulsion of a former superpower from the G8 group of leading industrial democracies. For once, we here at the eXile couldn’t agree with them more! Only problem is, they’re fixated on the wrong former superpower. Which former-superpower do we mean? Britain, of course! (more…)
The Europeans have turned against America in the War On Terror. They believe that Americans don’t understand a thing about the world. That Americans are ignorant, shallow and drunk with military might. In such a people’s hands, all that weaponry and the willingness to use it poses a greater danger to the world, or more specifically to Europe, than even Osama bin Laden.
America’s handling of Iraq is a perfect example. “We Europeans have a profound understanding of the local people,” they say. “You Americans don’t even know where Iraq is located on a map.”Thus think the Europeans.
Should America, and the rest of the world, listen? What is Europe’s lesson to humanity? What example have they set for the rest of us? (more…)
Whenever they travel overseas, most Americans are aware that the locals hate them, but few know why. Usually Americans ascribe bad blood to jealousy. Iranian flag-burning mobs? Uneducated, unfortunate and misguided people, afraid of progress. Okinawans? Sore losers, still mad that we invented the bomb first. Russians? A gang of layabouts, too used to the security of communism, afraid of the hard work and responsibility necessary in the free enterprise system. (more…)
We at the eXile were on the phone last week when a funny thing happened. We were hard at work at the time, researching an in-depth story on what spring in Moscow was really all about. Unlike other newspapers and magazines, we’d decided to go straight to the source-the people-to get our story. Our first call was to the KGB Veterans’ Club. Surely, we thought, they of all people must know what spring is all about.
“What?” a voice answered. “I don’t understand your question.” (more…)
It’s happened to all of us at least once; out late at night, drunk, carrying a hundred bucks or so, and suddenly stopped by a couple of hulking cops and asked for documents. You don’t have them with you, so you make a deal, pay a “fine,” and move on. No matter how often it happens, that’s as far as it goes-right?
No. What most foreigners don’t know is that there is always another variable in the equation of these encounters, and that variable is a place called the Center for Social Rehabilitation #1, or TsSR. It’s a real building that exists in a place where you can easily find it, on the 24th kilometer of the Dmitrovskoye Shosse- and what it is, in effect, is a secret prison for foreigners with visa problems.
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