Rice on Echo Moscow Radio

The transcript of her interview is online at MOSNEWS.COM. Here's an interesting question and answer about American support for democratic revolutions in the former USSR:

ECHO MOSKVY: What is better, the export of democracy, or the export of socialist revolutions? You probably know that at the beginning of the last century there was a concept of exporting revolutions from the USSR. Now is the United States exporting democracy?

RICE: No, there are very serious differences, historical differences, and from the practical point of view there is no necessity to export democracy. The people themselves feel that they want to have those freedoms that you get from democratic development. If you ask people whether they want to be able to say what they want to say, whether they want to practice whatever religion they chose, whether they want the freedom to educate their children, girls and boys, whether they want to be free from that knock on the door from the secret police, the people will say, yes, of course we want this. And that is why there is no need to export democracy or to implement democracy from above. People must be given the opportunity to freely express their wishes. And they will choose democracy, and so here I think the old terminology about exporting democracy has gotten old.

ECHO MOSKVY:Then what is the role that the U.S. plays in the processes we witness now on the former Soviet territories, I mean the so-called velvet revolutions in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine? Did the U.S. play any role there? What was it?

RICE: The U.S. role only involved us saying that people have a right to control their future, that democracy should develop worldwide and that the U.S. and the EU supported civil society and NGO’s in those places. But the people of these countries took steps towards freedom deliberately, this is important, and I hope the Russian people will see that the U.S. does not want to restrict Russian influence in these countries. We actually see the situation not as a game where someone loses and someone wins, but as a game where everybody can win, when flourishing and economically developed countries evolve around Russia. I think this is a game with no losers.

ECHO MOSKVY:There is an opinion that Ukraine, Georgia and now Azerbaijan, where you are for some reason establishing military bases, have become areas where Russian and U.S. interests collide. The U.S. have arrived where the USSR, Russia, the Russian Empire used to have its interests. This is seen as a challenge.

RICE: I’d like to point out what I see as a difference between a 19th and 21st century view of these regions. We know about your historic, cultural, economic contacts of the Soviet period and earlier that of the Russian Empire. But a modern pattern of interaction is based on mutually beneficial contacts — in trade, economy, politics. There is no reason for Russian influence in these regions to diminish, if it’s based on transparent and beneficial contacts. What’s more, we do not regard ourselves as a country that wants, as you said, to take Russia’s place. We are not trying to overtake a zone of Russian influence, what we want is a free economic and trade development zone. Both the U.S. and Russia should maintain good relationships with these countries. And considering the geographical factor, Russia is bound to maintain a very close relationship with them.

Ann Coulter's Family Album

You can't read the article without paying Time, but a slide show of Ann Coulter's family album is available to the public at TIME: Right From the Start Photo Essay. It's pretty interesting to look at family photos from New Canaan, Connecticut as well as high school and college portraits. It shows that Ann is really a nice girl--but she is too thin, and now it's time for her to settle down, get married and raise some kids (look at the expression her eyes in the snapshot of Ann with her mother Nell).

More on Putin's New Cossacks

...correcting an earlier post here, from The Russian Dilettante's Weblog:

Not only did Bolsheviks abolish the Cossack estate, which was natural as the old, antiquated estate system had to be put to rest. They literally abolished -- killed that is -- a large number of Cossacks (with help from the poorer Red Cossacks); many others were resettled. This policy was known as 'De-Cossackization' (raskazachivanie); it peaked during the Civil War and the Collectivization.

'Cossacks' once described communities of those who had moved out or escaped from Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania to live a life of robbing and farming in the huge steppe area in-between the sedentary agricultural Ruthenia and its various neighbors, including the unpleasant steppe nomads. Russians slowly but surely colonized the steppe and closed in on their troublesome neighbors in the South and the South-East, leaving less space for the Cossacks' highwaymanship. The Russian Cossacks then stroke a bargain with Moscow, promising to perform military service, as frontier guards in particular, in return for a degree of self-government. Turns out I have written about them before. But keeping in mind the Civil War of 1918--1922 and the Collectivization, I doubt if many of the inhabitants of Russia's traditionally Cossack areas are descended from pre-1917 Cossacks. Are we going to see a new Cossack estate emerge when Russian rebels and misfits stream down south and all the way to the Far East, Russian borders in need of protection more than ever since 1700?

In any case, I still think Putin's New Cossacks might present a p.r. problem for a country that is supposed to be moving forward into the modern, democratic, era. Sounds like a throwback to the days of the Tsar...

Power Line on the Bolton Controversy

Thanks to Roger L. Simon's interesting discussion of the Bolton affair, where he compares the pathetic charges against Bolton--getting big play in major media--with serious charges against the UN--being downplayed in major media--I clicked on Powerline's analysis, called Senate Slanderfest to Continue.

Yes, it is like Clarence Thomas, and yes, for Bolton to be confirmed the Republicans will need to stop trying to rush the nomination through and instead make time their ally. Each charge certainly can be fully discussed--and each witness against Bolton fully discredited. What I've seen so far is only lukewarm support from Republicans on the committee, while Democrats have been in attack-dog mode. The Republicans employ a disgruntled former staffer for Bolton on the Senate Foreign Relations committee--which may indicate something. Lugar simply has been offering weak support, not strong support. Why? We don't know. He may have some problems with Bolton himself.

The point is, Bolton may or may not be a jerk, but many effective trial lawyers are jerks, and if they are good in the courtroom, nobody cares if they scream at people or throw things.

BTW, Bill Clinton and Hilary are both notoriously difficult to work for. Henry Kissinger was a notorious "serial abuser" of his employees (to use lobbyist Carl Ford's term). Dick Armitage himself has a reputation for being high-strung.

Perhaps the Senate Foreign Relations Committee might take a look at the entire corporate culture at the State Department--and read all the grievance reports filed in the last year into the Congressional testimony, to put the charges in Bolton's office into some perspective.

Finally, I hope we hear the whole story about the USAID grant dispute which got Bolton into the Kyrygyzstan fray. How does it come about that a "Republican" political consulting firm like Black, Manafort hires the head of the Dallas chapter of "Mothers Against Bush" on a project? Let's open up the USAID grant process in democracy-building (obviously a failure in Kyrygzstan, given recent events) to public scrutiny--in the interests of transparency and good government. It might prove embarrassing to the Republicans who got the USAID contracts in question, but such a fresh look might prove useful in fixing some of the very serious problems the US is facing with public diplomacy around the world.

We're in a Global War Against Terror, aren't we?

Jewish Leaders Untroubled by Pope Benedict XVIth's Nazi Past

According to Haaretz : "[Rabbi David] Rosen believes that Ratzinger's German background has shaped his attitude toward Israel and the Jews. "It is a significant factor in his understanding of the evil and danger of anti-Semitism," he says. "It is certainly a factor in his positive commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations. He is conscious of the burden of history."

[World Jewish Congress chairmain Israel] Singer, who is also chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), dismisses fears that have been expressed in some quarters - in Israel and in the Jewish world - over Ratzinger's membership, as a boy, in the Hitler Youth. 'At that time, every child was forced to be a member of the Hitler Youth,' says Singer, who recently met Ratzinger at the funeral for Pope John Paul II."

Rice to Keep an Eye on Khodorkovsky

Reuters reports on the Putin-Rice meeting: "Rice, on her first visit to Moscow as Washington's top diplomat, also said the United States would be watching the outcome of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial 'to see what (it) says about the rule of law in Russia'. A Moscow court is to hand down a verdict in Khodorkovsky's fraud trial on April 27."

Kyrgyzstan Story Delays Bolton Confirmation

From CTV.ca:

Democrats on the committee said they were continuing to receive fresh allegations of Bolton behavior that was imperious or worse.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the panel, read from what he said was a letter from a U.S. Agency for International Development worker in Kyrgyzstan who alleged Bolton harassed her - not sexually - while he was in private practice representing a company.

'She's prepared to provide an affidavit. The letter she sent in, and I'm going to just take a second here, it says, `When I was dispatching a letter to AID, my hell began. Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and genuinely behaving like a madman. I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton then routinely visited me to pound on the door and shout threats.''

The committee's delay was a surprise, coming after the White House expressed fresh support for Bolton and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded the nomination would be cleared for a floor vote.

Handicapping Bolton's chances of confirmation in advance, Reid said it was possible Democrats would try to block it if Republicans pushed ahead with their plans.
The committee's decision left the timetable unclear, but a two-week delay seemed to be the minimum that could be expected.

Well, let's get this out in the open and have some hearings of the "He said, she said," kind--Kyrgyzstan in the news again. From the letter, I'd say it doesn't really look like Bolton did anything terribly bad--but who knows? The hearings might be the "Tulip Revolution" meets "Anita Hill." I hope that at the hearing we'll find out exactly what the alleged crime Bolton's accuser allegedly might have gone to prison for, relating to USAID contracts, really was...

We might remember that Clarence Thomas was confirmed after far more embarrassing charges had been levelled.

New Pope's Books Now Bestsellers

Book sales soar for new pope reads the headline in the San Diego Union. You can click on the link for some of his titles...

10 Years After Oklahoma City

A decade later, the bombing of the Oklahoma CIty Federal Building seems a trial-run for the terrorist attacks that were to strike New York and Washington a few years later. At the time, those who sought to connect Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols's actions to Middle Eastern terrorists were dismissed as fantasists--although one of these individuals was one of McVeigh's lawyers. (Here's the preface from Stephen Jones' book, OTHERS UNKNOWN: TIMOTHY MCVEIGH AND THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING CONSPIRACY.)

Over time, eyewitnesses to "John Doe Number 2" were discredited, links between Elohim City and Arab terrorism were ignored, and President Clinton went so far, at the time, to blame talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh for a "climate of hate" that motivated McVeigh and Terry Nichols--even though McVeigh declared the proximate cause of his attack was Clinton's own seige of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, as well as his sympathy for Iraqi victims of American bombing during the Gulf War.

One thing is perfectly clear, as President Richard M. Nixon used to say: Timothy McVeigh did not become a terrorist because of a lack of democracy in the United States. Those who argue that Bush's democracy revolution will stop terrorism might ask themselves--why didn't American democracy stop McVeigh and Nichols?

They could have written letters to their congressmen. Instead, they blew up innocent men, women, and children. That's why the events of April 19, 1995 might be seen as a dress rehearsal for the dreadful terror attacks of September 11, 2001...

Who Was Pope Benedict XV?

Why did the new Pope choose the name Benedict? Perhaps because he wanted to link himself with this predecessor. You can find some information about Pople Benedict XV, who led the Vatican during WWI, at this website. As a German, from Bavaria, Ratzinger is no doubt well-aware of the after-effects of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire due to the Great War...

Victor Davis Hanson on the Papacy

From VDH's Private Papers::A Pope for All Seasons: "A strong pope--as in the case of John Paul II, who boldly opposed Soviet totalitarianism--can provide a bulwark for an agnostic European culture at large increasingly adrift. A caretaker pontiff will only worsen the continent's disturbing lack of confidence in its own origins and once hallowed values.Apart from his political skills, language fluency and vitality, the pope was a man of letters who still believed in what he could not prove by physical evidence. Thus he reminded all of us that reason and faith are not incompatible but are symbiotic and were always at the heart of our very culture. So John Paul II was a powerful reminder that intellectuals can pray, while churchgoers should cultivate the mind. And at this late age, at this troubled time, he was thus a rare gift out of the long past to a now increasingly uncertain West.

"Atque in perpetuum, pater, ave atque vale."

Rice in Russia

According to this story by Peter Lavelle, Rice will be conciliatory towards Russia during her visit to Moscow this week. That's bad news for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Americanizing businessman who faces 10 more years in jail -- unless Bush pressures Putin to release him.

Lavelle says Rice is a "dove" when it comes to Russia, while Bush is a "hawk." On the other hand, he says Bush will defer to Rice's experience when it comes to Russian policy.

Based on my Moscow experience, it sounds like a fair description of what's going on. Though, according to Mosnews.com, Rice has already raised issues of press freedom and democracy:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed concern over press freedom in Russia.

En route to Moscow for negotiations with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, she said the Kremlin’s tightening grip on power and Russia’s pliant media are “very worrying,” Reuters reported.

“Trends have not been positive on the democratic side,” Rice told reporters. “The centralization of state power in the presidency at the expense of countervailing institutions like the Duma (parliament lower house) or an independent judiciary is clearly very worrying. The absence of an independent media on the electronic side is clearly very worrying.”

Earlier, Reporters Without Borders asked Rice to raise the question of press freedom in Russia during her negotiations. In an open letter to Rice, the organization noted serious threats to press freedom in Russia. Journalists in Russia are being subjected to a rising spiral of violence with many suffering brutal attacks, the letter said.

So maybe she'll remember to say something about letting Khodorkovsky go... My real hope for improved relations depends on whether the Russians manage to persuade the Secretary of State to play some Tchaikovsky piano concerti for Putin.

Bad News on Afghan Radio

Also in The Moscow Times, this Reuters report: "KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas launched a clandestine radio station on Monday, broadcasting anti-government commentaries and Islamic hymns from a mobile transmitter. Called 'Shariat Shagh,' or Voice of Shariat, after the station the Taliban ran while in power, the broadcast can be heard in five southern provinces, including the former regime's old power base of Kandahar. 'We launched the broadcast today through a mobile facility,' said Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi, speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location."

Personal Diplomacy in St. Petersburg

The Moscow Times reports that the American Consul in St. Petersburg has donated his collection of African art to a Russian museum,

...saying that he wanted to give treasures from his days in Cameroon and Burundi to a city where he had experienced his happiest professional moments.

U.S. Consul General Morris Hughes, 59, who is set to retire and leave his post Tuesday, delivered his African collection to the city's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, or Kunstkamera. 'These things are a part of my life in diplomacy,' he said at a ceremony marking the donation. 'And I'm glad that this part of my home will belong to the museum.'

Hughes gave the museum about 50 objects of everyday African life, such as a drum, a vessel for beer and a mask. He said he had collected the objects during his six years of diplomatic service in Cameroon and Burundi.

Michael Rubin on Iraq

Writing in Middle East Forum, Michael Rubin says the US Government is turning the Iraqi government--and people--against us; continuing to occupy Saddam Hussein's palaces, taking sides in local political disputes, as well as turning a blind eye to stealing by Allawi's cronies...

Putin's Challenge for Russia

Leon Aron analyzes the Russian leader's strategy for his nation:

Whatever else history's verdict on the Putin presidency may be, his regime has proved an important diagnostic tool for uncovering, or confirming, several systemic illnesses of Russia's body politic--as well as its healthy segments capable of withstanding the centripetal pressures.

Some of the institutional deficiencies and vulnerabilities that provided targets of opportunity for the authoritarian project stem from constitutional ambiguities and incomplete or absent laws, including those governing elections to both chambers of the federal assembly and regional governorships. In other cases, such as the post-Soviet legal system, the laws are explicit and adequate, yet they are ignored and subverted because of society's indifference or the absence of effective mechanisms of societal control over implementation.

At the same, although often weakened, restricted, and subverted by the authorities, a number of institutions bequeathed by the 1991 revolution have proved resilient. They include relative freedom of speech, press, and demonstrations, and a general tolerance of opposition and dissent--all of which have proved indispensable in the last sixteen months for the victorious pro-democracy mobilizations in the proto-authoritarian societies of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. In Russia's case, these liberties are rooted in the 1993 constitution, which, although in obvious need of clarifying amendments, is nevertheless far from outliving its usefulness.

In the end, an institutional analysis of Russian politics reveals a contradictory system engaged in a dangerous balancing act. Such incoherence cannot be sustained for long. Either the regime must evolve toward full-blown 'classic' authoritarianism that succeeds in dismantling all the key democratic structures--or there will be a reaffirmation and renewal of the revolutionary legacy of the division of powers, freedom of all media, judicial independence, and the separation of power and property.

Will Bolton's Kyrgyzstan Past Bring Him Down?

A former USAID worker, Melody Townsel, knows Bolton from Kyrygyzstan--and doesn't like him, either. Here's her letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as found on the Daily Kos.:

I'm writing to urge you to consider blocking in committee the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

In the late summer of 1994, I worked as the subcontracted leader of a US AID project in Kyrgyzstan officially awarded to a HUB primary contractor. My own employer was Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, and I reported directly to Republican leader Charlie Black.

After months of incompetence, poor contract performance, inadequate in-country funding, and a general lack of interest or support in our work from the prime contractor, I was forced to make US AID officials aware of the prime contractor's poor performance.

I flew from Kyrgyzstan to Moscow to meet with other Black Manafort employees who were leading or subcontracted to other US AID projects. While there, I met with US AID officials and expressed my concerns about the project -- chief among them, the prime contractor's inability to keep enough cash in country to allow us to pay bills, which directly resulted in armed threats by Kyrgyz contractors to me and my staff.

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.

He indicated to key employees of or contractors to State that, based on his discussions with investigatory officials, I was headed for federal prison and, if they refused to cooperate with either him or the prime contractor's replacement team leader, they, too, would find themselves the subjects of federal investigation. As a further aside, he made unconscionable comments about my weight, my wardrobe and, with a couple of team leaders, my sexuality, hinting that I was a lesbian (for the record, I'm not).

When I resurfaced in Kyrgyzstan, I learned that he had done such a convincing job of smearing me that it took me weeks -- with the direct intervention of US AID officials -- to limit the damage. In fact, it was only US AID's appoinment of me as a project leader in Almaty, Kazakstan that largely put paid to the rumors Mr. Bolton maliciously circulated.

As a maligned whistleblower, I've learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.

John Bolton put me through hell -- and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological.

I cannot believe that this is a man being seriously considered for any diplomatic position, let alone such a critical posting to the UN. Others you may call before your committee will be able to speak better to his stated dislike for and objection to stated UN goals. I write you to speak about the very character of the man.

It took me years to get over Mr. Bolton's actions in that Moscow hotel in 1994, his intensely personal attacks and his shocking attempts to malign my character.

I urge you from the bottom of my heart to use your ability to block Mr. Bolton's nomination in committee.

Respectfully yours,

Melody Townsel
Dallas, TX 75208

The atmosphere of the USAID project sounds right, but it's not clear who's to blame, either. Apparently, from her own account, Townsel got another job in Kazakhstan, in a "leadership position," so her career doesn't seem to have suffered from the confrontation. But still, any time Central Asia is in the news, it's interesting. I wonder why Bolton reportedly said Townsel was headed to prison and then nothing happened? From this and other stories it is beginning to look like Bolton's bark may be worse than his bite...

Who is Bolton's accuser? I googled "Melody Townsel" and came up with this from KERA, the PBS station in Dallas: "Melody Townsel is a single mother of a four-year-old girl, and an entrepreneur who runs Townsel Communications, an independent communications consulting firm. Townsel is a native Texan who has lived and worked as a journalist and a public relations executive in 22 countries." (Why does there always seem to be a PBS connections?)

Here's The NY Times account of Towel's charges:

Ms. Townsel, identified as active in a group opposed to President Bush, was interviewed by the committee last week, but it was not clear how much the committee would try to make of her charges. Responding to her accusation, Edwin Hullander, who was executive vice president of International Business and Technical Consultants Inc., the firm that employed Mr. Bolton as counsel, said he had not heard of any such incident happening until Ms. Townsel's recent accusation. He said he had checked with two people who were there at the time who were also unaware of it, and who said they believed they would have heard about a confrontation if it had occurred.

And here's The New York Sun version :

The latest accusations of abuse aimed at the president's nominee to be America's ambassador to the United Nations come from a self-described "liberal Democrat" who in 2004 helped organize the Dallas chapter of "Mothers Opposing Bush."

BTW, take a look at this long list of IBTCI's current projects around the world. It still seems to be a big USAID contractor.

New Plays from Ancient Greece

The Independent reports that Oxford scientists using infra-red technology have opened up the "Oxyrhynchus Papyri," a collection of ancient Greek plays, previously unreadable. They've already translated four scripts, and more are in the pipeline. Authors include Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod, Lucian, Archilochos.

Some serious competition for Tony Kushner and his kind, just in time, IMHO. The Independent wonders if this discovery might lead to "a second renaissance." More here and here. (Thanks to Artsjournal.com for the tip)

Mark Steyn on John Bolton's "Disloyalty to His Subordinates"

In The Chicago Sun-Times: "If the Senate poseurs and the media wanted to mount a trenchant critique of Bolton's geopolitical philosophy, that would be reasonable enough. But there's not even a pretense of any of that. Instead, his opponents have seized on one episode -- an intelligence analyst in a critical position with whom Bolton and others were dissatisfied -- and used it to advance the bizarre proposition that every junior official should be beyond reproach, and certainly beyond such aggressive ''body language'' as putting one's hands on hips. Or as Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic, complained to the BBC the other night: Bolton was ''disloyal to his subordinates.''
It's been obvious for three years now that the torpid federal bureaucracies -- the agencies that so comprehensively failed America on 9/11 -- are resistant to meaningful reform, but Beinart, in demanding that the executive branch swear fealty to the most incompetent underling, distills the ''reform'' charade to its essence: We'll talk reform, we'll pass reform bills, we'll merge and de-merge and re-merge every so often, we'll change three-letter acronyms (INS) to four-letter acronyms (BCIS) just to show how serious we are, and a year or four down the line we may well get real tough and require five-letter acronyms.
But in the end we believe underperforming bureaucrats in key roles should be allowed to go on underperforming until retirement age. And, if you happen to show you're just the teensy-weensiest bit upset with one of them, we'll blow it up into a month of hearings on TV." (Thanks to Roger L. Simon for the link...)

Safe Driving Tip: Buy a Silver Car

The New Scientist reports that studies show silver cars are twice as safe as the average automobile, while black, brown or green vehicles have twice the number of accidents.