Konstantin's Russian Blog

I just found Konstantin's Russian Blog, and it's pretty interesting, too...

He explains the history of Potemkin villages--and the Potemkin fleet. He explains how Western-style consultants and lawyers have raised the average price of Russian bribes. And he shares a current Russian jokes. Here's one explaining the difference between the American space program and the Russian one: "When Russia decided to use disposable descent vehicles, America decided to use disposable astronauts."

And here's one about BBC editorial standards:

New BBC vocabulary:
Person who bombs people - a bombist
Person who shoots people - a gunman
Person who runs people over - a driver
Person who eats people - a gourmet

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Weblog

I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's oped in today's Wall Street Journal, Unfree Under Islam, thanks to a link at Roger L. Simon's blog. Then I took a look at her website. It's interesting.

You can view a clip from Submission, here

British Airways Catering Strike Hits Washington

The British Airways catering strike hit Washington, DC yesterday, as we found out when we took a friend to Dulles Airport for a flight to London. While waiting on the check-in line, a BA representative announced that there would not be any food served on the plane. Instead, $20 vouchers were handed out. They could be used to buy food in the departure terminal, to take on the flight. Take-away instead of a served meal.

I thought to myself afterwards, if those vouchers could only be cashed in, I would rather have had money than food. I wonder how long before an airline economist runs the numbers on offering cash rebates, instead of meals, on long-distance flights?

What Can Russia Do?

The Washington Times is running this AP photo of Vladimir Putin at the controls of a Russian bomber
This story about Russia's opposition to the use of force in Iran raises the question I first heard in Moscow, from an American diplomat, when I told him that my students weren't very happy about American actions in the Ukraine during the Orange revolution, which they saw as anti-Russian.

"What can Russia do?" he asked, rhetorically. "Their military is tied down in Chechnya, they don't have the troops."

Now Russia is objecting to another American initiative--this time military rather than political--while our troops are tied down in Iraq. Russia basically supplied the Iranians with their nuclear capability. And I think the outcome in Iran may hinge on the answer to the same question: "What can Russia do?"

Boris Akunin on Renewed Russian Authoritarianism

Ian MacKenzie's conversation with the Russian mystery writer contains this observation:

"We are more or less at the same crossroads, like during the reign of Czar Alexander II," Akunin added in an interview, referring to the Czar who was assassinated in 1881. "And the stories are repeating themselves, like after the liberal times of Alexander II came the reactionary times of Alexander III. So it is like Yeltsin and Putin."

Boris Yeltsin was Russia's first post-Soviet leader who was succeeded by current President Vladimir Putin.

"We have to live through this period. It is logical, it is inevitable, it's going to go on for five or 10 years. But because it is five or 10 years of my life I cannot be very happy about it. Now in Russia it is not the best time for people working in the mass media in general who have to do something with freedom of speech."

Hi-Tech v. Islamism

The Religious Policeman has an interesting discussion of how Saudis use mobile phones and Bluetooth to get around Fundamentalist barriers to romance . . .

W's Parallels to LBJ

The Bull Moose recently visited the LBJ Library in Austin, and found some similarities between the two Texan Presidents.

... it is not clear that W, has any better notion of a victory strategy in Iraq than LBJ did in Vietnam. Conservative supporters of this President should cease their cheerleading and begin realizing that the war is being lost by a gang of incompetents who thought that they could liberate Iraq on the cheap with sacrifice limited to the brave troops and tax cuts for the wealthy. If a Democratic President was presiding over such a mess, a Republican Congress would be in a full throated fury.

And Rumsfeld bears a striking moral resemblance to McNamara...

The Stiff Upper Lip Really Exists

This 'n' That was in London before and after the July bombings, and reports that the stories of British pluck were not exaggerated...

Sharon Explains Israel's Gaza Pullout

Maybe Sharon is wrong, but I wouldn't want to second-guess the strategic choices of the Israeli general, who not so long ago was vilified as a war criminal, indirectly responsible for Palestinian massacres in Lebanon's Sabra and Chatila camps. Now he's being vilified as an appeaser and a coward. The truth probably lies somewhere in-between. Here's an excerpt of his speech on Israeli television:

It is out of strength and not weakness that we are taking this step. We tried to reach agreements with the Palestinians which would move the two peoples towards the path of peace. These were crushed against a wall of hatred and fanaticism.

The unilateral Disengagement Plan, which I announced approximately two years ago, is the Israeli answer to this reality. This Plan is good for Israel in any future scenario. We are reducing the day-to-day friction and its victims on both sides. The IDF will redeploy on defensive lines behind the Security Fence. Those who continue to fight us will meet the full force of the IDF and the security forces.

Now the Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terror organizations, dismantle its infrastructure and show sincere intentions of peace in order to sit with us at the negotiating table.

The world awaits the Palestinian response - a hand offered in peace or continued terrorist fire. To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they chose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever.

Today is the 60th Anniversary of V-J Day

Not too much press in the USA though. Found this interesting article from the San Diego paper, maybe it means more because San Diego is a Navy town, with resident retired servicepeople and families who still remember WWII...

Remembering Maurice Rosenblatt

Sometimes The Washington Post misses something very important. Today's obituary of Washington lobbyist Maurice Rosenblatt, who died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 90, is a case in point. Rosenblatt one of the chief strategists of the political movement headed by Eleanor Roosevelt that ended Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt, the National Committee for an Effective Congress. The Post obituary contains a couple of sins of omission that cry out to be corrected.

In a very nasty aside for an obituary, Matt Schudel questions the reality of Rosenblatt's memoirs:

Mr. Rosenblatt wrote occasional articles for newspapers, including The Washington Post, and often claimed to be at work on his memoirs, which were never completed, if they exist at all.

Rosenblatt's memoirs do exist. In fact, they are cataloged in the Maurice Rosenblatt papers collection, at the Library of Congress, boxes 77-80.

But there is a more significant omission. There is no mention of Rosenblatt's role in the American League for a Free Palestine, founded by Peter Bergson, Samuel Merlin , Ben Hecht, and other supporters of the Irgun. The organization, which evolved from the Committee for a Jewish Army and the Emergency Committee to Rescue the Jewish People of Europe, was instrumental in building American support for Israeli independence (for those too young to remember,Israel is in fact Palestine, and Israelis are the original Palestinians. They were called that until the establishment of the state of Israel, because Palestine was a colonial name). In that capacity, Rosenblatt helped produce Ben Hecht's pageant, produced by Billy Rose, starring Paul Muni and Marlon Brando, A Flag Is Born. The lead character was called "Tevye."

I came to know Rosenblatt through my film, Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?. Although by 1981 Rosenblatt was a rich and powerful lobbyist, who could have made a great deal of money doing other things, he took time and trouble to arrange a Washington, DC screening in the United States Senate. The event was bi-partisan, sponsored by Senators Claiborne Pell (D-RI)--later chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (who appeared in the film)--and Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN). He invited newspaper reporters, so the film showing was covered by a Washington correspondent from the New York Times, Bernard Weinraub (later Hollywood bureau chief), and a Style reporter from the Washington Post, Felicity Barringer (now a New York Times Editor) who wrote a biography of Rosenblatt's long-time compantion, Tamara Wall (also not mentioned in the Post).

Later, Rosenblatt became a friend, inviting me to drinks and dinner when he stayed at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, regaling me with stories, and introducing me to Mrs. Walter Bishop, then-head of the United Nations Association, with the idea that I would make a film about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Maybe I should have done it, but I demurred, since at the age of 25, felt inadequate to the task. He also introduced me to some potential backers for a film about the history of Israel. Again, I backed out. He introduced me to the author Lawrence Leamer, to do a film about Ronald Reagan, sort of Michael Moore type thing. It got as far as drinks with Gore Vidal at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The point is, no one before or since had been as helpful or supportive to a total stranger. It wasn't because he liked me--it was because he felt very proud of his associaton with Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht. He had defeated Joe McCarthy, but he was prouder still of his work to build the state of Israel, and he liked that I had made a film about a man he had admired, and a cause he admired, trying to save the Jews during WWII and build up a Jewish state afterwards.

That the State of Israel exists today is in some way due to the efforts of Maurice Rosenblatt and the American League for a Free Palestine. That is an accomplishment worth remembering.

Ivan Really Was Terrible...

While living in Moscow, and coming to grips with his legacy, we realized that Ivan the Terrible's moniker was accurate. Isabel de Madariaga's new biography goes into the gory details, and The Moscow Times seems to like her account.

Victor Davis Hanson on Islamism

He says there's no secret about the real goals...

So as we try to assess the causes of Islamists’ venom toward the West, it seems wiser to listen to what they say rather than what we say they say.

If we would do that, we would conclude that the hatred of radical Islam is fed by envy, frustration, and pride — and thus existential: They despise Americans for who we are.

That’s why al Qaeda must constantly find new grievances, whether the West Bank, Israel itself, Jews, oil prices, troops in Saudi Arabia, Oil-for-Food, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

Indeed, the latest two-hour training video is little more than cut-and-paste from the Michael Moore Left and hand-me-downs from Euro anti-globalist radicals. Thus America, al Qaeda assures us, “seeks to ravage the entire globe for the interest…of corporate companies,” and so kills the sons of Islam “in Palestine, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Indonesia, the Caucuses, and elsewhere.”

Apparently about three billion Europeans, Asians, Russians, and Indians have been picking on poor suicide bombers and terrorists, who, in fact, are incognito environmentalists bent on stopping corporate exploitation of Mother Earth.

Yet there is one and only one legitimate objection of the crackpot radical Islamists that rings true: We in the West don’t listen to them when they promise us our deaths.

We should. They are yelling as loud as they can to tell us something that we don’t really want to hear.

Britain Celebrates 60th V-J Day Anniversary

You can read BBC coverage of British V-J Day commemorations here.

John LeBoutillier on Iraq

Iraq: General John Abizaid recently told a reporter off the record that we can not win in Iraq by militarily defeating the Insurgency; the best we can do is to keep things at a standstill until the Iraqi political situation settles down.

That is not what the General, the head of Centcomm, has told the Congress or the American people. In rosy testimony aimed at keeping up public support for the war, these military leaders follow the Vietnam War model: tell the public all is going well and tell the President what he wants to hear.

This, of course, is a prescription for disaster.

Military leaders who brown-nose the politicians - instead of telling the cold hard truth no matter how unattractive it may be - are a disgrace to their uniform.

The plain facts of the Iraq venture are becoming clearer by the minute: the fundamentalist Muslims, with whom we are at war and have been since November 4, 1979 when they overran our Embassy in Iran and seized the hostages, are taking over the government in Iraq and are under the thumb of Tehran. In fact, the new Iraqi draft Constitution reduces women’s rights and mandates that the Sharia, the Islamic Law, become the law of the land.

So our entire Iraq adventure may end up resulting in the removal of Saddam (a decidedly good thing) and the imposition of a Fundamentalist Islam state in alliance with our arch enemies and charter member of the Axis of Evil, Iran (a very, very bad thing).

Inside the Kirov Ballet

Robert Kaiser has a wonderful article in today's Washington Post , about his return visit to the Vaganova Academy of ballet after 33 years.

ST. PETERSBURG In February 1972, as the Moscow correspondent of this newspaper, I visited the Vaganova Ballet Academy, principal training ground for the renowned Kirov/Maryinski Ballet, in its historic home in Leningrad -- then the name of this exotic city on the Neva River. I was a young reporter trying to solve the mysteries of the U.S.S.R. Unexpectedly, that visit provided something close to revelation.

The Vaganova Academy, where Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov all learned to dance, first taught me how the Soviet Union accomplished its most important objectives. The secret was to limit the number of goals, and then to lavish resources on them. This was how the first Sputnik was launched, and then how the Soviets conducted their side of the nuclear arms race. It was also the method for training Olympic athletes. My visit to the Vaganova Academy was my first direct exposure to this method -- which was the way the school produced world-class ballet dancers. This was an important moment in my Soviet education.

In June, I revisited the academy to see how the passage of 33 years and the collapse of the Soviet Union had changed this famous school. I had no idea what to expect but eagerly anticipated new revelations. In a surprising way, I found them -- more about that in a moment.

My Father, the Spy . . .

I'm not usually a big fan of NPR's Diane Rehm show, but the other day I heard a good interview with John Richardson, author of My Father, The Spy: An Investigative Memoir. Most striking was Richardson's discussion of his father's confrontation over Vietnam with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1960s.

Richardson's mention of the Diem assassination made me think. The US makes a mistake when it overthrows friendly governments to find more pliable partners. Diem clearly understood Vietnamese politics and society. But when he clashed with America's "arrogance of power," in the interests of his country, he got killed. He may have been a pain in the neck, but he was on our side. Richardson knew this, and it ruined his career.

Despite numerous American-sponsored elections after that, and a number of different presidents, Vietnam fell to the Communists--something Diem prevented.

As Richardson spoke, I thought about the fate of Cambodia, where the US sponsored the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk and his replacement by General Lon Nol. A basically neutral leader, protecting his country from war, Sihanouk was overthrown by an arrogant and impatient US that wanted more help in Vietnam. The result: Cambodia was destroyed, millions died, and the Khmer Rouge came to power. William Shawcross documented this in his book, Sideshow. Again, destabilizing a regime that was no threat to the US led to a geopolitical as well as moral defeat.

Richardson discussed American involvement in elections in Greece and Italy, defending America's right to support friendly candidates against the Communist menace.

He sounded reasonable. And Richardson's book certainly sounds worth reading, in the context of American foreign policy today...

Yes, The New Yorker

Just read the August 1st issue of The New Yorker, and it has a lot of interesting articles, including John Cassidy's profile of Republican activist Grover Norquist. Since I once rented office space from Grover, I couldn't stop reading the article.

The best reason to read this issue, however, is Philip Gourevitch's story on the Tamil Tiger movement in Sri Lanka--in the news today because of the state of emergency declared after yesterday's assassination of Sri Lanka's foreign minister. Gourevitch predicted a rise in violence, it seems due to fights over control of Tsunami aid money that the West insists go to the Tamils over objections of the Sri Lankan government. Gourevitch is more sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers than most people we met when we were tourists in Sri Lanka (it killed the beach resort and elephant orphanage businesss). He does point out that they used suicide bombers and other techniques now used by Al Qaeda, were trained in Lebanon, and supported by the Indian Government (ironically, Tamil Tigers killed Indira Gandhi). Gourevitch is too soft on the Tamil Tigers and their supporters.

Not gone into at length is the role of big powers in supporting terrorists, in this case. Gourevitch doesn't emphasize the fact that when India dropped support for the Tamil Tiger movement, things began to calm down--until now, as Western Tsunami aid (no doubt some from US taxpayers), funneled to the Tigers in Tiger controlled areas via NGOs, appears to be fueling Tamil Tiger terrorism once more.

IMHO A comprehensive approach to fighting terror may need to include a more effective policy to prevent humanitarian NGOs from supporting terrorists either directly or indirectly.

Russia Profile

Unwrapping the Mystery Wrapped in the Enigma.

Bull Moose Explains the Highway Bill

From Bull Moose:

...Roads rock. Roads are romantic. Simple, yes, but true. The Mooselings love roads. And if the Moosleings are right about this one, so do most Americans. They may not give voice to that love, but deep down, in their daily lives and genetic identity, they are inherently and soulfully connected to our nation's highways and byways. And, mundane as they may seem, those roads are one of the most regular and most tangible links that most people have to some sort of shared national experience -- talk about common ground. Any forward-thinking politician trying to position himself strategically for 2008, would be wise to court the asphalt voter.

For many people, new roads, like sprawl in general, are either good or bad. They ruin our way of life, some say, they are environmentally unsound, and cut away at our community. But, others respond, you can't stop progress, and you should stop hating on America. The Mooslings argue that highways, and the vehicles we love to drive on them, aren't that easy to pigeonhole, they're far more ambiguous, alluring, overwhelming, and complicated.

A long time ago, Robert Penn Warren captured that menacing power in the opening pages of All the King's Men, describing a southern Highway 58, in 'the country where the age of the internal combustion engine has come into its own,' a strange land:

Where the smell of gasoline and burning brake bands and red-eye is sweeter than myrrh. Where the eight-cylinder jobs come roaring around the curves in the red hills and scatter the gravel like spray, and when they ever get down in the flat country, and hit the slab God have mercy on the mariner.