Putin's Double?

Konstantin's Russian Blog calls this photo: Vladimir Vladimirovitch.

Hirsi Ali to Complete Van Gogh Film

Theo Van Gogh's collaborator plans to continue the late filmmaker's work, helming a film they had planned about Islam's attitude towards homosexuality, according to the BBC (ht LGF).

Cossacks Return to Russia

We noticed this when we lived in Moscow, and even mentioned it in a blog post. Today, the Washington Post has more on a revival of the Russian Cossacks, who just sent Meskhetian Turks from Krasnodar fleeing to the USA.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the chief rabbi has met with that nation's Cossack leader to strengthen tolerance and mutual understanding . . .

Ajami on Jordan's Terrorists

Something good from the Wall Street Journal:

In truth, the tranquility of Jordan was deceptive, secured by a monarchy that has always been more moderate in its temperament than the population it ruled. "Iraqi Insurgent Blamed for Bombings in Jordan" was a headline on the front page of the New York Times of Nov. 13: Not quite! For Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as his nom de guerre specifies, is a man from the town of Zarqa, a stone's throw from Amman. The four Iraqis who brought calamity to Jordan were in the nature of a return visit, blowback from a campaign of terror and incitement, and a traffic of jihadists that had sent deadly warriors of the faith from Jordan to Iraq. Even as they mourned their loss, the Jordanians could not see or acknowledge the darkness with which they viewed the world around them. "Zionist terror in Palestine = American terror in Iraq = Terror in Amman," read a banner held aloft by the leaders of the Engineers' Syndicate of Jordan who had come together to protest the hotel bombings.

In the drawn-out struggle over Iraq, Jordan is no innocent bystander. It was in Jordan, more than in any other Arab land, that Saddam Hussein was hailed as avenger and hero, a financial benefactor who practically starved the people in southern Iraq as he enriched sycophants and supporters in Amman. From the very beginning of his bid for regional primacy, Saddam had supporters aplenty in Jordan. He had rujula (manhood), he had money to throw around, and he held out the promise that the oil dynasties would be brought down and those borders that worked to Jordan's disadvantage would be erased in pursuit of a pan-Arab dream. A generation ago, it shall be recalled, the currents of Arab political revisionism--the envy of the poorer lands toward the oil states, the bitter sense that history had dealt the Arabs a terrible hand--converged in Jordan. It was that radicalism that forced King Hussein, in the course of the first American war against Saddam in 1990-91, to stay a step ahead of the crowd, breaking with the princes and the monarchs of the Peninsula and the Gulf, and with the United States, to side with Iraq.

Jordan never reconciled itself to the verdict of that war, and never took to the cause of the new Iraq. Sectarianism played its part--the animus against the Shiites of Iraq coming into their share of their country's power runs deep in Jordan's political class. So did pan-Arab nationalism, long ascendant in Jordan, the glue that bonded Jordan's native population with the Palestinians in the realm. From its inception as the unlikeliest of nation-states, Jordan has been the thing and its opposite--a realm ruled by a merciful dynasty and a population bristling under the controls, threatening to overrun the political limits and then pulling back from the brink out of a grudging recognition that the soft authoritarianism of the place was safer than the prospects of calamity. A stranger who encounters Jordan is always struck by that juxtaposition of stability and barely hidden rage. Waves of refugees have washed upon the kingdom: Palestinians who fled the wars of 1948 and 1967; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their cocoon in Kuwait in 1990-91, when their rage at the Kuwaitis and the immoderation of Palestinian leaders put them on the side of Saddam's project of conquest and plunder; and then, of late, a huge influx of Iraqis. It is a wonder the dynasty, and the military-intelligence apparatus that forms the regime's backbone, has maintained the stability of the realm.

Methinks the Wall Street Journal Doth Protest Too Much...

About their deal with the Corporation Public Broadcasting for a PBS show. They have a long and rambling "explanation" of their dealings with the disgraced and departed former CPB chairman, Ken Tomlinson, here. And they've posted their copies of the emails in question here.

The result:

Some weeks ago, we made a business decision not to seek a third season of our show on PBS. We informed PBS about this on November 1, before we knew what the Inspector General was doing or even when he'd file his report. When we called Ms. Mitchell to let her know, she expressed regret, and she acknowledged that PBS had failed to deliver the national carriage that she had thought she could obtain. She also repeated the truth that "it was my decision" to invite us to do a program.

Some of our friends think it was a mistake to attempt a show on PBS given our opposition to its funding over the years. And let's be clear: We haven't changed our minds. If there ever was a need for PBS, there isn't now in a world of hundreds of TV channels. But as long as PBS exists, we don't see any reason that its prime time public-affairs programming should be a satrapy of Bill Moyers and a single point of view. If Mr. Tomlinson made a mistake, it was in believing that "public broadcasting" is supposed to represent all of the public.

Of course I admit that my views of the Ken Tomlinson-Wall Street Journal scandal are colored by the fact that Journal editors used to solicit my articles and even chat with me on the phone--before the paper got its own PBS show....

Joe Wilson: Get Bob Woodward!

Will Bob Woodward go the way of Judith Miller?

Well, I guess he can start a blog, too...

Bruce Bawer on Islamism in Europe

Thanks to a tip from Andrew Sullivan, I found this interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about the riots in France:

What they've reaped, alas, is a generation of Muslims, many of whom view their neighborhoods as colonies amid enemy territory - and who demand this autonomy be recognized. In Britain, imams have pressed the government to designate part of Bradford as being under Muslim law. In Belgium, Muslims in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek consider it to be under Islamic jurisdiction. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought similar control over parts of Copenhagen. In France, an official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix's Muslim district out of respect for his declaration that it was Islamic territory. In many cities, police have stopped patrolling certain enclaves, the authorities having effectively ceded control to local religious leaders.

No surprise, then, that a Muslim rioter in Århus, Denmark, the other day cried out: "This area belongs to us!" Amir Taheri, editor of Politique Internationale, noted that the main reason for the French riots is not that two youths died hiding from cops in a transformer station; it's that the state responded to the initial unrest by sending police into an area that many locals saw as their own inviolate domain. These riots, in short, are early battles in a continent-wide turf war.

It's a war authorities can't afford to lose. By accepting separatism, Europe is becoming a house divided against itself. Governments must take a firm, aggressive, integration- oriented line - must, among other things, end separate treatment in schools and turn welfare recipients into workers. Above all, they must stand alongside Muslims who wish to integrate - not those who seek to colonize. And they must hope - and pray - that it isn't already too late.

Roger L. Simon on Open Source Media

Fair play says Roger L. Simon deserves a chance, too...

This is going to be an inchoate post from one exhausted blogger who found himself an accidental CEO of a media company that launched today. If you had told me two years ago I would be hosting such an incredible line-up of people at the Rainbow Room today, I would have thought you were the reincarnation of Timothy Leary.

But to begin with, let me say that Jeff Goldstein's keynote address was brillant. We decided to use Jeff as a last minute replacement for Judith Miller when so may advocates of "free speech" attacked us for offering her a platform. (BTW, OSM will be offering plenty of people platforms with all sorts of views. Get used to it.)

Seriously, I thought Judith did a terrific job and her speech will be posted over at OSM as soon as we can get it transcribed (but not by me, because martini-fueled transcriptions tend to be...er... erratic). The general subject matter of a possible Federal Shield Law and what that will mean to bloggers and journalists (and those who go both ways) will be the subject of an on-going series of Blogjams on OSM. Many people have expressed interest in participating, among them Jay Rosen and attorney Andrew Deutsch (a specialist in this area). I even asked the Daily Kos to participate (everybody who blogs should be concerned with this issue) but received no reply. So it goes.

I also thought Sen. Cornyn, who joined our lunch via satellite from Washington, was surprisingly blog-friendly in his remarks.

As they say at Fox: "We report, you decide."

Exit America, Enter Russia

Vladimir Socor's analysis of the post-Andijan situation in Central Asia for the Jamestown Foundation is surprisingly realistic. Socor describes how the Bush administration has evicted itself from Uzbekistan--a self-inflicted defeat in the Global War on Terror:

The relationship began unraveling in 2004 when political Washington allowed itself to be caught in a dilemma, strategic security versus democracy, regarding Uzbekistan, and began to single out that country for a one-sided resolution of that false dilemma. Tashkent's counterproductive reaction was the signing of a "strategic partnership" treaty with Moscow in June 2004, as well as changing its official discourse to characterize the United States and Russia equally as Uzbekistan's strategic partners.

Washington's mishandling of a "color-revolution" experiment in Kyrgyzstan earlier this year further damaged relations with Tashkent. Finally, the bloodshed in Andijan in May exacerbated the lack of balance in U.S. political assessments, which strongly emphasized the authorities' crackdown while downplaying the well-organized, surprise terrorist assault that triggered those brutal reprisals. Instead of offering professional intelligence assistance to elucidate this third major terrorist assault on Uzbekistan in the space of five years and help prevent recurrences, the State Department called for a purely political exercise in the form of an international investigation (over the Pentagon's objections), and made it a non-negotiable demand. Yet it was only in late July – early August that Tashkent asked the United States to vacate the K-2 base, after Washington had pressured a reluctant Kyrgyzstan to allow hundreds of Andijan refugees, including escaped convicts and suspect rebels, to be flown to third-country destinations.

A last possible chance to retrieve K-2 was missed when a U.S. delegation visited Tashkent in October, three months before the expiry of the base evacuation deadline. The base can be crucial to U.S. anti-terrorist, anti-WMD missions in a wide range of contingencies in Eurasia. Yet strategic security interests and democracy-promotion had fallen out of proper correlation in U.S. policy. The United States has forfeited an irreplaceable long-term military presence, and Russia gained the promise of one.

Washington Post Outs Bush's Anti-Terror Guru

He's Michael Doran, a former Princeton professor and author of Somebody Else's Civil War:

Extremist Salafis, therefore, regard modern Western civilisation as a font of evil, spreading idolatry around the globe in the form of secularism. Since the United States is the strongest Western nation, the main purveyor of pop culture, and the power most involved in the political and economic affairs of the Islamic world, it receives particularly harsh criticism. Only the apostate Middle Eastern regimes themselves fall under harsher condemnation.

It is worth remembering, in this regard, that the rise of Islam represents a miraculous case of the triumph of human will. With little more than their beliefs to gird them, the Prophet Muhammad and a small number of devoted followers started a movement that brought the most powerful empires of their day crashing to the ground. On September 11, the attackers undoubtedly imagined themselves to be retracing the Prophet's steps. As they boarded the planes with the intention of destroying the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, they recited battle prayers that contained the line "All of their equipment, and gates, and technology will not prevent [you from achieving your aim], nor harm [you] except by God's will." The hijackers' imaginations certainly needed nothing more than this sparse line to remind them that, as they attacked America, they rode right behind Muhammad, who in his day had unleashed forces that, shortly after his death, destroyed the Persian Empire and crippled Byzantium - the two superpowers of the age. . .

. . . Bin Laden's "Declaration of War" uses the logic of Ibn Taymiyya to persuade others in the Salafiyya to abandon old tactics for new ones. The first reference to him arises in connection with a discussion of the "Zionist-Crusader alliance," which according to bin Laden has been jailing and killing radical preachers - men such as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in prison for plotting a series of bombings in New York City following the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Bin Laden argues that the "iniquitous Crusader movement under the leadership of the USA "fears these preachers because they will successfully rally the Islamic community against the West, just as Ibn Taymiyya did against the Mongols in his day. Having identified the United States as a threat to Islam equivalent to the Mongols, bin Laden then discusses what to do about it. Ibn Taymiyya provides the answer: "To fight in the defence of religion and belief is a collective duty; there is no other duty after belief than fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion." The next most important thing after accepting the word of God, in other words, is fighting for it.

By calling on the umma to fight the Americans as if they were the Mongols, bin Laden and his Egyptian lieutenants have taken the extremist Salafiyya down a radically new path. Militants have long identified the West as a pernicious evil on a par with the Mongols, but they have traditionally targeted the internal enemy, the Hypocrites and apostates, rather than Hubal itself. Aware that he is shifting the focus considerably, bin Laden quotes Ibn Taymiyya at length to establish the basic point that "people of Islam should join forces and support each other to get rid of the main infidel," even if that means that the true believers will be forced to fight alongside Muslims of dubious piety. In the grand scheme of things, he argues, God often uses the base motives of impious Muslims as a means of advancing the cause of religion. In effect, bin Laden calls upon his fellow Islamist radicals to postpone the Islamic revolution, to stop fighting Hypocrites and apostates: "An internal war is a great mistake, no matter what reasons there are for it," because discord among Muslims will only serve the United States and its goal of destroying Islam.

The shift of focus from the domestic enemy to the foreign power is all the more striking given the merger of al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The latter's decision to kill Sadat in 1981 arose directly from the principle that the cause of Islam would be served by targeting lax Muslim leaders rather than by fighting foreigners, and here, too, Ibn Taymiyya provided the key doctrine. In his day Muslims often found themselves living under Mongol rulers who had absorbed Islam in one form or another. Ibn Taymiyya argued that such rulers - who outwardly pretended to be Muslims but who secretly followed non-Islamic, Mongol practices - must be considered infidels. Moreover, he claimed, by having accepted Islam but having also failed to observe key precepts of the religion, they had in effect committed apostasy and thereby written their own death sentences. In general, Islam prohibits fighting fellow Muslims and strongly restricts the right to rebel against the ruler; Ibn Taymiyya's doctrines, therefore, were crucial in the development of a modern Sunni Islamic revolutionary theory.

Althouse Doesn't Like Open Source Media, Either...

STILL MORE: I'm told Jeff Goldstein wasn't even at the OSM launch, which surprises me, because I began reading it on the OSM home page under their heading "live-blogging." That's an awfully strange way to introduce people to their service. Aren't ordinary people being asked to trust the OSM portal?
Also, Charles Johnson linked to this post to note my bad taste -- the "fluids" wisecrack -- and this set off his commenters who just started wildly insulting me -- hilariously assuming I'm a big lefty and using lots of bad taste insults against me. How does that make sense? If they are outraged at my bad taste, as Charles suggests they be, then why aren't the comments primly proper? They must be insulting me because they assume I'm a lefty. Ha, ha. Somebody tell Armando! Anyway, Charles's fans end up hurting him on the day when he is trying to make an impression as an elder statesman of blogging, by making his site look all trashy. And the irony is priceless: he is complaining about my bad taste. Yet "semen" and "pus" are both perfectly sound English words, not slang at all, and pointing out literary images is quite high tone.
AND NOW THIS: Wonkette links, and it's not to the semen-pus thing.
THURSDAY MORNING: One day after the launch, Jeff Goldstein's fake-live-blogging is still the only blog post quoted on the home page, under the heading "BEST OF THE BLOGS." In all this time, that's all they've found? The highlighted post ends with this line: "Or as my friend Bill Bixby once said to a French prostitute (god rest his soul), 'bonjour, you plump little tart!'" How they can think it's a good idea to open the site with such writing? Who does that appeal to? And if it didn't appeal to you yesterday morning, but you kept going back to give them another chance, what would you think? The site is stupefyingly inactive and as yet devoid of sharp commentary. There is only this obscure insider humor about the founders of the site getting drunk and talking about a prostitute.

Unicorn-Lynx's Opinions

I found this blog by looking up Pelagiya for my Russian class. It's a treasure trove.

ADL Leader Vows to Fight Evangelicals

According to The Jewish Week, ADL chief Abe Foxman thinks that American Jews are in danger from American Christians who support Israel and struggle against Islamism. He wants to make a big fuss--like he did over Mel Gibson's "The Passion." That really worked (not!).

Earth to Mars! Maybe it's time to beam Foxman up? Surely there is someone else out there who might help ADL become relevant to the real issues of the 21st century?

I don't think Gary Bauer blew up the World Trade Center, for example.

The ADL might better focus its efforts on fighting Islamism until the Global War on Terrorism is over. Anything else is a distraction at best...

East-West

The only good anti-communist is a FRENCH anti-Communist...

That's something I've believed since first reading Raymond Aron. This Gallic tradition has continued through Bernard Henry-Levy and now I'm adding French director Regis Wagnier to my list, and my Netflix queue: "Indochine" comes next.

The film stars Sandrine Bonnaire and Catherine Deneuve. It's about idealistic Communists who return from Paris to the USSR in 1946 to help build up socialism in the wake of WWII. What they find, instead, is suffering they never imagined.

The film has a certain French quality, especially in the relationships; and yet, there is something Russian there, too. Filmed in Kiev, it really looks Russian, even when the faces seem French. The fear, paranoia, suspicion--even the dancing men of the Red Army Chorus--all very Russian. What's missing is a little bit of Russian warmth, which is somehow found in even the most shocking Russian films. The French are a bit more cerebral and rational, I guess. But the picture packs a wallop, all the same.

I won't spoil it by revealing the plot. At least it has a happy ending (in a really Russian movie, the hero would be shot, I would think).

It is really, really good. And I recommend it. Add it to your own Netflix queue.

Pajamas Media--Not!

Roger L. Simon and his comrades are in NYC to open their new business--which they call Open Source Media.

It started out as Pyjamas Media, which was irreverent, funny, and something I was interested in -- for a while. It became clear pretty quickly that some compromises were being made, I didn't know the reasons, and I decided not to participate. I'd been down that road before in an internet venture with someone I knew, and although it had a happy ending, there were too many problems in the middle. Never again.

Even so, I'd been following the venture with interest. And what I've seen so far doesn't look good. The personal and snappy sites belonging to people like Simon and Charles Johnson now have the dullest and most corporate looking portal since "Tech Central Station" and perhaps the second worst name.

Anonymous, technical, and impersonal. In other words--a good, gray, Republican site. The life has been wrung out of it, perhaps by their funders, who knows?

Will it succeed? I dunno. But remember, Google and Yahoo! pride themselves on quirky and creative interfaces. So far, Open Source Media looks like the web design may have been contracted out to someone from the Republican National Committee. Oh, I forgot, they actually have someone on their board who used to run the press operation for the RNC under Jim Nicholson...his name is Cliff May.

Go back to the drawing board guys: take off your suits and get back in those PJs!

B. Raman: Hizb-ut-Tahrir Involved in Paris Riots

Writing in OutlookIndia, the former Indian government official names Hizb-ut-Tahrir

The outbreak initially was spontaneous following the electrocution of two Muslim youth as they were fleeing away from a random identity papers check by the Police. The violence continued to be spontaneous, with no external instigation, for three days. In the meanwhile, it is reported by reliable sources, the headquarters of the HT in London saw the agitprop potential of the developments in Paris and sent some of their experts, who had participated in instigating the violence earlier this year in Afghanistan over the alleged desecration of the Holy Koran by the US guards at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, and in Uzbekistan over the allegedly autocratic ways of the local Government, to Paris to stoke the anger of the youth and exploit it for their purpose.

With the help of the sleeper cells, which the HT has already established in Paris and other parts of France for some months, they drew up plans for keeping the violence sustained in order to further radicalise and mobilise the youth against the French government. For this purpose, they exploited the already prevalent anger in the Muslim community of France over the ban on the wearing of head scarves by Muslim girls in public schools and over the ruthless action taken by the Police in the past against suspected radicals. The intemperate and insensitive language used by the French Interior Minister, which is perceived as an insult to Islam and the Muslim youth, facilitated the task of the HT.

Interesting that Raman mentions connections to Uzbekistan and the US in his article about Paris...

What Really Happened in Andijan?

According to the BBC, Andrea Berg of Human Rights Watch was among those who called the conviction and sentencing of 15 people involved in the Andijan violence a "show trial." But condemnation was not limited to NGOs and the European Union (which has now blacklisted Uzbek officials). The US State Department issued a condemnation as well:

"We believe that these convictions are based on evidence that isn't credible and a trial that isn't fair," Adam Ereli, the State Department's deputy spokesman, said.

Show trial it may have been, but I'm still interested to know what happened, and don't think we need an "international investigation" to find out (that's just another layer of bureaucracy and opportunity for buck-passing and coverup). There were plenty of US NGOs active in Uzbekistan, as well as RFE/RL "independent journalists" paid by the US taxpayers-- and some were in touch with the suspected attackers and their leaders. Parpiev was interviewed by RFE/RL shortly after the attack. The US government also aided the escape of some 400 refugees wanted by the Uzbeks in connection with Andijan, and no doubt has information from their debriefings and interviews. And on the other side, there were American organizations in touch with the police and security services as part of the Uzbek-American cooperation in the war on terror. So the US government has sources on both sides of the Andijan tragedy, and is perfectly capable of issuing its own report based on US-funded people, organizations, and information sources. As Fred Starr said, the CIA must have satellite photos, as well. Yet, the US has not released its own account of Andijan: Why not?

Curious about America's role, I recently emailed Dr. Andrea Berg of Human Righs Watch to remind her that when we met in Washington, she promised me she would look into Uzbekistan's allegations that the US Government and/or NGOs may have been supportive of the Akriyama guerrilla attacks in Andijan.

However, so far Dr. Berg has not answered my email. Likewise, no Western reporters in Tashkent--at least none that I know of--have explored the Uzbek government's allegations.

There is at least some evidence that the Uzbek government may not be lying about everything in their show trial. Specifically, the Islamist connection in the Andijan attacks. After the Paris riots, such connections would be even more important to explore. Is creating civil disorder a new tactic for Islamists in their war on "Crusaders and Jews?" It seems worth looking into. And Andijan is a good test case.

For example,
Monica Whitlock's recent BBC report on Andijan contained this possible evidence of a link between Islamism and Andijan:

There is a recording we made from Andijan so chilling that people cannot speak while it is playing.

It is an open line to the mobile phone of one of the demonstrators. You can
hear a wall of automatic gunfire, like siege fire, and among it people muttering their last prayers: "Allah-u Akbar, Allah-u Akbar - God is great."

As the shooting grows louder and louder, the voices become thinner until, after more than an hour there is a click, and silence.

The man with the phone was killed.

Why is Whitlock's report significant? Because I heard an eyewitness give testimony to the CSCE in a US Capitol hearing that he never heard anyone say "Allah Akbar." I don't know if it was sworn, or not, but it was supposed to have been true.

On June 29, 2005, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Marcus Bensmann, identified as a corrrespondent for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting claimed in officialtestimony:

Thousands of people were unarmed, and they were not forced by rebels to stay on the place. Everybody, whom we speak to, came to the
square by own will, either only to look or to protest. It wasn't an Islamic uprising. I didn't hear any "Allahu Akbar" outcries or any demands to build Islamic state. People demanded justice, human rights, economical, and social, and political reforms. [emphasis mine]

Yet at the time Bensmann was misleading Congressmen and Senators, Whitlock obviously had a BBC recording of just such a chant of "Allahu Akbar."

It calls into question not only the testimony of Bensmann, the honesty of IWPR and the BBC (both supported by the British government), but also the truthfulness of American denials of Uzbek allegations of support for the Andijan guerillas.

If the Uzbek allegations are false, the US government and NGOs have an obligation to refute them with solid evidence, rather than vague denials. And Dr. Andrea Berg has an oustanding promise to answer this question.

Because genuine support for human rights cannot be based on a foundation of lies--whether from the Uzbek government, Western governments, or NGOs.

UPDATE: Human Rights Watch official Allison Gill told Ferghana.ru that her organization may be the only Western human rights group permitted to operate in Uzbekistan, which is threatening to close Freedom House (IMHO, since they forced out Mjusa Sever, I don't think there has been much freedom in Freedom House).

The Human Stain

Nicole Kidman is wrong for her part (Debra Winger would have seemed tougher, even Julia Roberts), but Anthony Hopkins does a great job as Coleman Silk, a professor of Classics at a New England college who quits his job rather than go through a racial harrassment hearing. His secret: he's an African-American passing for Jewish. He confronts redneck America--and dies.

Philip Roth's novel was recommended to me many years ago, by my college roommate, a Roth fan--but it sounded a little grim. Then, the film came out in 2003, while we were in Uzbekistan. So I missed it. Yet, somehow, it crossed my Netfilx list, and arrived in my mailbox. And since in the meantime I had taught a course in Greek Mythology, and could finally understand the Achilles references as a result of my cramming to stay a week ahead of my students. And so I had also read Black Athena by Martin Bernal. And since I had read the story of New Yorker literary critic Anatole Broyard--the film was very interesting.

Of course, I have no idea how accurate it was about African-American life, or the phenomenon of "passing." But the human stain, the original sin, the secret that cannot be told, somehow it seemed rather Philip Roth, rather Portnoy-esque, rather more about being Jewish among Gentiles than about being secretly black. That's the "Maguffin"--the real story is about the psycho redneck who kills Kidman and Silk. Ed Harris does a great job playing him. He's the flip side of the University faculty, staff and administration that persecuted Silk and drove him from his job.

A thought-provoking, if not completely successful film...

Russian Prosecutors Confirm Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner Arrest - MOSNEWS.COM

Kudayev was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Afghanistan and linked to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terror group with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

Apparently the US released Kudayev, rather than return him to Uzbekistan. He is accused of participation in the recent Nalchik attack on October 13th.

RIA Novosti : Tashkent makes its geopolitical choice

RIA Novosti - Opinion & analysis - Alliance with Moscow: Tashkent makes its geopolitical choice:

Such an 'advanced' treaty obviously has a special role to fulfill: it was adopted at a time when Tashkent has faced strong pressure from the West, which is increasingly stigmatizing the Karimov regime as another rogue state. A group of American Congressmen has demanded sanctions against Uzbekistan and for Islam Karimov to be brought to trial at the International Criminal Court. EU governments have prohibited arms supplies to Uzbekistan and clamped a one-year ban on visas to 12 members of the Uzbek authorities.

So the best option for Tashkent is to look for friendship with Moscow, which is vital for Karimov. Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can veto any resolution imposing sanctions against Uzbekistan. As for the West's negative reaction, Russia does not consider it a big problem. First, the time when the country depended on Western credits is gone never to return. Second, more substantial reasons exist for 'a showdown' (for example, a presidential ballot in Belarus next year). Finally (and most importantly), the Western philosophy is nothing if not pragmatic, and gas cooperation means to many European politicians more than events in Central Asia so far removed from Berlin or Paris.