M is right again (or at last) :)

[brad]

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7211788%255E401,00.html

Kidneys taken from live patients
September 9, 2003

SURGEONS in Moscow hospitals are removing kidneys from patients who are not yet dead in order to supply the lucrative transplant market, according to a public television report.


...

They pay anaesthetists to turn a blind eye while the kidneys are removed.

[MMMMMM]

Thanks brad, I'll take the "again" please.

Additional stories you might want to search (if you've got the time;-)):

How the Russian Mafia tricked dozens (or hundreds) of Muscovites into signing over their nice apartments in exchange for a slightly lesser apartment plus a handsome sum of cash. What's the catch, you ask? Simple, really:

After the intended victim had signed over the apartment and accepted the nice fat check, he or she was promptly killed. This way the Russian Mafia could not only salvage the check, but also retain the apartment as bait for the next sucker in line. Deed in hand, they just won an apartment! This process was repeated many times, and the bodies were found dumped in roadside ditches all around Moscow.

Also, check out how Moscow storekeepers have to pay protection money.

Also, how the country's biggest industrialist (or second biggest) is, according at least to word on the street, in the Russian Mafia, not merely associated with it. This might also be the guy who is a politician, I forget.

I don't know how easy it will be to find these stories but I remember reading them in the news and magazines some years ago.

Heck the culture of corruption is so entrenched that a good friend of mine told me this true story. He lived in Brooklyn and played speed chess with the Russian immigrants in Washington Square Park. One day he played at their coffee club. Games were played 5 minute time limit usually for anywhere from $3 per game on up. Maybe $5 per game was most common. My friend turned away for a moment in the middle of the game, and when he looked back his opponent had subtly switched around the pieces.

A very clever people, forced to look for every angle (and create some angles that didn't even exist) just in order to survive. They had it very rough for most of the 20th century. If their economy wasn't so hopeless due to the inherent economic fallacy of Communism, we just might have ended up losing the Cold War to them somehow.

[Cyrus]

A good Krutchev biography should be out by now. I was reading reviews of it a few months ago. The man was born to some tenth-generation peasants. The Party have him the only chance he could ever have to become something else than a field laborer. (Capitalism would have, too.) He was a boor and a bully but also an incredibly cunning survivor.

The review reminds us of his love/hate fascination with America and its "gadgets", a relationship alternating between genuine desire for peace (if not co-ruling the planet) and promises to "bury you". It charmingly concluded by speculating that Krutchev would have been a natural Texas oil self-made tycoon and/or movie producer.

[brad]

just came across the article by chance /images/graemlins/smile.gif