Human Rights Suffer Worldwide

According to the Budapest Times, Persident Bush's crusade for democracy may paradoxically hurt the cause of human rights:

Instead of former communist countries picking up the good habits of the West, there are hints that western democracies have adopted the bad legacies of former totalitarian states, Ferenc Kõszeg, chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, stated. He referred to the US-led war on terrorism by way of illustration.

Whereas many of the most flagrant human rights violations of former Communist countries have been largely resolved, new and acute problems have emerged, often in the name of state security, concurred Jeri Laber, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch.

“I am embarrassed and sad that my country America, which 20 years ago represented freedom to the world, is condoning torture,” said Laber. She said she had very different perceptions of the US in 1985, when she helped to bring the Alternative Cultural Forum to Budapest.

Mubarak: Only Sharon Can Make Peace

I remember when Sharon was called a "butcher" and "war criminal." Why have some people changed their minds about him? Could it be that those charges were just anti-crude Israel propaganda? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's recent statements about the Israeli leader would seem to indicate just that:

"Sharon, of all the Israeli politicians, is the only one capable of achieving peace with the Palestinians," Mubarak said in an interview with Spain's ABC newspaper.

"He has the ability to take difficult decisions, commit to what he says and carry it out," he said.

Karzai Blasts Afghan NGOs

President Hamid Karzai sounds a little bit like Vladimir Putin or Islam Karimov talking about Non-Governmental Organizations:

On the eve of the Afghanistan Development Forum, Karzai issued a stinging rebuke to non-government organizations (NGOs) “for squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid from the international community.”

Ann Althouse Still Doesn't Like Pajamas Media

Al Jazeera's "Don't Bomb Us Blog"

(ht LGF)

More Miguel Osuna

Westmoreland

Just got a nice email from artist Miguel Osuna, thanking me for mentioning his artwork in the Mexican Cultural Center here in DC. So I took a look at his website, and there's plenty more where "Maelstrom" came from. I think it might be worth a look . . .

Iraqi Shi'ite Leader: US Too Weak Against Terrorists

Big news from Iraq:

His repeated assertion that the United States was being too weak against Iraq's insurgency, allowing attacks to mushroom, appeared to suggest that any future Iraqi government that included him would share his view. With Iraqis scheduled to vote Dec. 15 for the country's first full-term government since the U.S. invasion in 2003, some analysts predict that Hakim will come from behind the scenes into direct political contention.

Abdul Aziz Hakim is chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim religious party.

Russia to Buy Alaska?

I read the original Washington Post column by Steven Pealstein that proposed selling Alaska as a solution to America's financial problems. (It also said that Alaska had a Soviet-style economy because of federal spending obtained by Senator Ted Stevens [R-AK])It seems like a funny joke at the time--but apparently in Russia,according to RIA-Novosti, people are now discussing the idea seriously:

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

Alaska buyback: not for another 10 years - Russian expert

Russian experts are commenting on the proposal by Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein that only Alaska's sale to Russia for $1 trillion would recoup U.S. costs.

Mikhail Delyagin, director of the Institute for Globalization Problems: "Russia should create a civilized state in the first place before buying Alaska. I think in about 10 years' time we will cope with the consequences of our national catastrophe, and the American problems will reach their peak. It is not before that we can speak of a buyback. Incidentally, Alaska may have a lower price tag by that time."

Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies: "Why buy an almost deserted territory, snow and ice, when our people suffer suffocating poverty, and the health, education and other services are in ruins? Russia has vast tracts of land that it is unable to develop, for example Siberia, where there is the threat that it may be populated by other nations. Adding a new province will not make matters easier."

Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Merkator research group: "It all sounds like a joke, although the patriots will be pleased. They will shout that it is a restoration of historical justice. They think along 19th century or Stalin-era lines when the perceived wisdom was that a state's territory is its might. Meanwhile, Holland, which is equal to Moscow and the surrounding area in size, is economically more influential than Russia with its 17 million square kilometers. It is a hare-brained plan. What Russia does not need is new territories. We are living in an era when infrastructure, rather than territory, is important."

Yevgeny Yasin, head of research at the Higher School of Economics: "If we are concerned with the problem of sterilization (excessive finances), we should first eliminate all obstacles to free entrepreneurship. In our case it is the very opposite: we are continuing to nationalize, and so the question has cropped up: should we not buy Alaska back?"

When I lived in Russia, my students would always say that Alaska should be returned to Russia, so Pearlstein may have started something here--resurrection of an irredentist territorial claim . . .

Control Room

Just finished watching Control Room on DVD. Given the recent news story about President Bush maybe joking with Prime Minister Blair about bombing Al Jazeera, the cinema-verite style documentary seemed quite relevant.

Yes, it's biased. Yes, the director is obviously leaving something out--and luckily, on the DVD, she put some of it back in. The outtakes consisting of deleted interview snippets are almost the best part. Because in those snippets the interview subjects--charming, educated, sophisticated, Westernized Arabs--admit that they don't believe that what Osama bin Laden does is terrorism (or, if it is, then Bush and America are also terrorists). Yet, one of the protagonists admits that he wants his children to study in the USA--and then stay to live...

The paradoxes and complexities of the Arab mind are on full display. On view as well are the shortcomings of the current American way of war confronting the realities of the Middle East. Lieutenant Josh Rushing, a Marine Corps press attache, is simply outclassed by the media types. He can only repeat talking points, denying that there is a US occupation because America didn't raise a flag. Hassan Ibrahim tells him, "But you are occupying Iraq." Josh won't admit it, till the end. It's pathetic, and evidence of the screw-ups coming from the top. Since Americans are "liberators" they can't be "occupiers"--ridiculous on its face, especially since in Germany and Japan the US occupied the countries for many years.

The killing of an Al Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad would make a good plot for a mystery film. It is unclear what happened, even though much of it was broadcast on TV. Was he doing something he shouldn't have been? From his look at the camera right before he was bombed, one gets the sense that he didn't want to be in the midst of the battle, that he didn't want the cameras to turn to cover the battlefield, and that perhaps there had been an agreement between the TV network and the military to that effect. Or, maybe not. Certainly, his last look had a haunted quality.

Or maybe that's reading too much into it, after the fact. Maybe somebody just heard Bush's joke--and went to work calling in air strikes?

Jehane Noujaim has made a propaganda film, but a very good propaganda film (unlike Michael Moore's crude agitprop). It comes from a Pan-Arabist perspective. It is not reality. It is not truth. And it is certainly not the whole truth, but it may very well be a true account of how many Arabs saw the Iraq war.

For that, we should be grateful.

"Bulls***t Rising"

Here's an extract from Mark Ames' savage--though interesting--review in Exile.ru of Washington Post reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser's recent book about Russia, mentioned by Konstantin:

The sheer enormity of their sleaze and deceit is too much even for a lead article. A chapter-by-chapter survey of the duo's book is a good way to become acquainted with their agenda.

Chapter 1, "Fifty-two Hours in Beslan." The brutality and incompetence described in this account of Beslan are shocking and, admittedly, well written. But without some perspective -- namely, the Yeltsin regime's response to the hostage crisis in Budyannovsk in June, 1995, when special forces shot and killed dozens of hostages in bungled attempts to storm the hospital, and again the brutality and incompetence of the Pervomaisk hostage crisis a year later, with similar bloody results. Beslan may have had a higher and more grisly kill-count, but it differed little in substance. By omitting the fact that the Chechen Wars, both 1 and 2, were Boris Yeltsin projects designed to keep him in power and protect his interests, Baker-Glasser manipulate history and throw the entire blame on the bad guys -- Putin, the KGB, and anyone not sufficiently pro-American (Yelstin was our tool, so therefore, the authors do their best to simply leave his name out.).

Another interesting omission is the eerie similarity between Putin's m.o. and Bush's. For example, they take him to task for linking the war in Chechnya to Al Qaeda and international terrorism, observing, "at its root, the Chechnya conflict had little to do with Al Qaeda." With Bush linking the war in Iraq to Al Qaeda, and Blair blaming the London Underground bombings on Al Qaeda, you'd think that Baker-Glasser, whose newspaper was one of the strongest cheerleaders for war in Iraq, would be a little more humble. Wrong. "Rather than resolve the underlying political grievances and remove the popular mandate for the rebels, [Putin] had demonized, victimized, and consequently radicalized an entire people." What's grossly wrong here is that the Chechens were already pretty damn radicalized after Yeltsin's war, having kidnapped (and in some cases beheaded on video camera) some 3,000 Russians during their period of independence from 1996-9, introduced Wahabbi-style Sharia law, and finally they invaded Russia in the summer of 1999. I repeat: they invaded Russia! These facts are given little play, however, making their account of the Chechen war as duplicitous as if someone were to report on the rampant terrorism in Iraq today without mentioning that it first arose with the American occupation.

Chapter 2: "Project Putin." The description of Chubais, a man hairline-deep in the largest corruption scandals in human history: "a tall, red-haired reformer who had orchestrated the largest sell-off of state assets in world history..." Wildly deceitful description #2: "With Yeltsin's permission, Putin dispatched troops to [Chechnya]." That would be like saying, "With Hitler's permission, General Walther von Brauchitsch dispatched troops to the Soviet Union for Operation Barbarossa." The whole purpose of the Second Chechen War was to create popularity for Putin, thereby securing the Yeltsin clan's power, loot and immunity. Stepashin was fired by Yeltsin because he didn't have the balls to launch the second war on behalf of the Yeltsin clan; Putin was brought in specifically to head that war. Saying Yeltsin "approved it" is about as bone-white a whitewash as you can get. Omitting this is incredibly sleazy, yet it is necessary in order to create the Kremlin Villain which is central to Baker-Glasser's pitch.

Chapter 4: "The Takeover Will Be Televised." Here the omissions and whitewashings reach fever pitch, and the revisionism turns to outright lies. Commenting on Putin's takeover of NTV in 2000/2001, they write, "The showdown at Ostankino had been building ever since [NTV's] Igor Malashenko had refused to help the Kremlin install Vladimir Putin as the next Russian president in the summer of 1999, saying he could not trust a KGB man." He sounds like a good guy, right? Except that the real reason Malashenko didn't support Putin was because his boss at NTV, oligarch Vladimir Gusinksy, backed a rival senior KGB operator, Yevgeny Primakov, who, had he won, would have shut down ORT, the TV station that backed Putin. Meanwhile, Gusinsky's rise to power is whitewashed this way: "One venture led to another until finally he was able to put together a bank in 1989." This kind of explanation-by-omission is so cheap, it recalls Ash's attempt to take the Book of the Dead: "Klatu...Veratu...one-[cough]-venture-[cough]-another... Okay, then, we described it. Everything's cool." In one of the most violent, corrupt countries, one wonders what this "one venture led to another" business was all about -- but if explained, it might seriously undermine the dichotomy setup that is crucial to this book. Later in the chapter, Mikhail Kasyonov is described as "pro-market" and "respected in the West as a formidable international-debt negotiator and seen as a reliable promoter of capitalism -- so much so that some had questioned whether he was profiting personally on the side." Note how they slyly avoid mentioning what everyone in Russia associates with Kasyanov -- his nickname, "Misha Two-Percent," supposedly the fee he charged on every single corrupt international debt deal he oversaw -- by arguing that he was so darned good at being a pro-Western capitalist that certain unnamed enemies (and we can all guess who they are) jealously smeared him. No halfway professional journalist could possibly spend four years in Moscow during Kasyonov's reign, and fail to mention his nickname, or how he earned it -- not unless it's part of an agenda. Which of course it is. Kasyanov is a good guy; therefore, any bad news about him is both omitted and dismissed as mere jealousy. Lastly, in this chapter, Baker and Glasser's larger hatred of Russia spews into the open: "While the intelligentsia was outraged at the loss of NTV, the vast majority of the public was not, so long as they continued to get foreign movies and other high-quality entertainment they had come to expect from the channel." To prove their point about the innate savagery of the Russian masses, they compare their reaction to that of America's most reliable lickspittles, the Czechs: "By coincidence, around the same time, more than one hundred thousand people protested in the much smaller Czech Republic against the appointment of a new state television director they considered insufficiently independent." Gee, why not just compare Russian apathy to America?...

* * *

Every chapter of Kremlin Rising is thereafter packed with increasing numbers of glaring omissions and grotesque whitewashings combined with terrifying fear-mongering that would have made Tom Ridge proud. Meanwhile, they constantly fawn over anyone rich and pro-West, while either ignoring the horrible poverty, or blaming the Russians for their own wretchedness. They described the collapsed health care system, which worked better at least before "whiz-kid" Gaidar got his hands on the budget, as the fault of "a rigid system [that] refused to help itself" while making the astonishingly patronizing claim that "many Russians did not even realize hjust how poor the care they were receiving was." This is just a flat-out lie -- all you ever hear about is how poor their health care is, and how much worse it has gotten under Western-backed post-Soviet reforms.

The horrible truth about the Putin regime is that it is largely an extension of theYeltsin regime. It was under Yeltsin that all of the problems and evils described in this book -- from the wars in Chechnya to the destruction of democracy and free speech, the corruption, indifference and cruelty they describe -- began. It has clearly gotten worse under Putin, particularly on the things that matter most to Westerners when we judge other countries. But what matters most to most Russians is making enough money to eat, and hopefully staying alive a little longer than 57 years. This desire to get paid, eat and live a bit longer is of no interest to Baker-Glasser, however, not unless it can somehow bolster their argument that Putin is a scary guy. Of all the omissions in this book, the most glaring is the omission of the economic boom under Putin. Whether or not he hasanything to do with it, at least under his reign, workers get paid, something that often didn't happen under Yeltsin. Baker and Glasser aren't interested in this -- or about the destruction of the labor movement, for example -- because poor people just get in their way. Indeed they are the anti-Michael-Moore: fear-mongering, propagandizing while claiming objectivity, fighting on behalf of the plutocrats against the downtrodden masses.

Konstantin's Russian Blog Likes Washington Post "Russian Chronicles"

Lisa Dickey and David Hillegas did a great job with their Russian Chronicles project. I’m truly amazed. This is one of the most unbiased and honest report on life in Russia I ever read made by a journalist not by a casual tourist. Someone said, “If in Russia you find a dilapidated house in a god forgotten Siberian village. If there’s a dead drunk Russian wino lying in dirt near that house. If that drunk is shouting “Down with Putin”, then be sure to find a Washington Post reporter nearby interviewing the man.” The last book from Washington Post reporters “Kremlin Rising” is a true example of this kind of junk journalism. Here’s a very good review of the book by Mark Ames “Bullshit Rising”. Nice title.

Russian Chronicles is a quite different report although the blog is hosted by WP.

Uzbek Culture Comes to Washington

It may not be enough to undo the terrible public relations that Uzbekistan enjoys in the US capital, yet the Global Uzbek Council will sponsor some Uzbek culture at Washington, DC's American University on December 1st. (I hope the plov is not as fatty as in Uzbekistan--hold the cottonseed oil, please!)

LeBoutillier: Bush Must Dump Rumsfeld to Save Himself

An example: from January of this year until the summer, President Bush traveled the nation doing so-called Town Hall forums advocating Social Security Reform. He did over 70 of these events with massive local media attention. The result of this huge investment of Presidential Prestige? A total dismissal by the American people and the GOP Congress of the entire subject!

In other words, the more President Bush stuck with the same script, the more he killed off the very issue he was promoting.

Now the exact same thing is happening with his signature effort as President: the American people have tuned him out on his views of his war in Iraq. He has squandered his political capital and his credibility.

What a mess!

Now, how to fix it?

He needs to make some changes - in personnel and policy - and do it now.

1) Announce the ‘resignation’ of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

WSJ: Don't Bash Christians

You read it here first, and today the Wall Street Journal weighs in on Anti-Defamation Leader Abe Foxman's mishegass about Evangelical Christians.

Althouse on Kazakhstan v. Borat

Today, I saw that Ann Althouse. has some links to a discussion of the case of Kazakhstan v. Borat.

I hate to disagree with Ann Althouse, but IMHO Borat is wrong and Kazakhstan is right. I'm not a lawyer, soI don't see this is as a legal matter, rather one of good taste and consideration of people of other races and nationalities.

However funny viewers might find Da Ali G show, the jokes are at the expense of a country that just doesn't resemble what Cohen portrays. Would he make the same jokes about Israel? Palestine? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Poland? Italy? Ireland? South Africa? China? I'd like to see the reaction if he did...

IMHO, Borat is bullying the weak. That's not a funny thing to do. It is an ugly thing to do.

The reason that dialect and ethnic jokes went out of fashion in the US in the 1960s was that such humor is not funny to the butt of the joke. When he started his act, I'm sure Borat didn't know too much about Kazakhstan, hadn't met too many Kazakhs, and so thought it would be funny--and safe--to joke about them. Well, Kazakhs are not stupid, in spite of what Borat says. They may not know the ins and outs of the British legal system, but they have feelings that should be considered.

Comedians can learn from their mistakes. Jerry Lewis spent the major part of his career making amends to spastic children for exploiting physical disabilities in his early comedy act, raising millions for "Jerry's Kids" in the Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon. Lewis realized he had done something wrong, and sought to make it right.

If, on the other hand, Borat decides to tough it out, Kazakhstan has options other than international court. For example, they might decide to shut British oil and gas companies out of their country. If they do, let's see Borat and his fans laugh that joke off. Personally, I'd think it was hilarious . . .

UPDATE: More on Borat, including a link to his video reply to Kazakhstan's complaints, from Nathan at Registan.net.

FT: EU Report Bashes Israel

London's Financial Times is reporting that the EU attacks Israel in a new policy paper dealing with Jerusalem. It's not much of a surprise, but it might make Israel think twice about permitting EU monitors into Gaza--given the legacy of the UK, especially. Indeed, it may be a mistake for the US government to utilize the EU as a proxy in this matter, as we seem to be doing, given memories of the British "White Paper" period in Palestine.

Dennis the Peasant v Pajamas Media

After reading this post relating to the backstory behing Pajamas Media, I'd advise Roger L. Simon & Co. to settle with Dennis the Peasant. I'm no attorney, but based on a similar story with which I am rather familiar, it sounds like Dennis the Peasant has a plausible claim . . . (ht Ann Althouse)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Blogging will be light for a while. In the meantime, here's a link to a Thanksgiving website featuring recipes, history, and other turkey-day lore . . .

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali Faces Life in Prison

According to CNN, the father of President Bush's would-be killer worked in Saudia Arabia's embassy in Washington, DC as a computer specialist. The convicted assassin is an alumnus of the Islamic Saudi Academy in Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs.

After 9/11, I seem to remember that the Washington Post reported that "Death to America!" posters could be found on display in Saudi-funded schools.

Here's an article by Abu Ali's lawyer, arguing his side of the case (he did not testify on his own behalf).

Indochine

The possibility that Iraq really might become another Vietnam--and I hope not, but it is looking a little grim at the moment--was a sobering context in which to screen Regis Wargnier's 1992 epic Indochine, starring the icily beautiful Catherine Deneuve (for some reason she reminded me of a thinner version of Senator Hillary Clinton in this role) as the French doyenne of a Vietnamese rubber plantation.

Unfortunately, unlike East-West, which led me to getthe DVD from Netflix, Indochine left me a little cold.

Somehow, this film rang false. The plot, obviously symbolic, became shambolic as it headed into its third hour. Maybe each event really happened, but it just didn't make sense to a puritanical American. The menage-a-trois between Deneuve, her adopted Vietnamese daughter, and her French naval officer lover seemed preposterous. The chases and escapes seemed farfetched. And the enigmatic ending, in Geneva, peculiarly unsatisfying.

Somehow this Franco-Vietnamese romance seemed a little misguided, if not crazy-- l'amour fou. The French like this sort of thing, but it brought out too much of my own Ango-Saxon education and upbringing to enjoy. I couldn't understand why everyone was doing stupid and crazy things all the time.

Plus, the communists, who are the heroes of this picture (was East-West only anti-Stalinist?) come off as cardboard cutouts. Pure heroes, liberating their nation by torching the estates of the mandarins. Surely, the reality must have been more complex.

For a tragic story to work, all sides must have their human side--heroes are not all good, hence the "tragic flaw." Likewise, villians have their good side. But this was too unsubtle to enjoy fully.

Nevertheless, the photography was good. And it is always fun to see a big star like Deneuve in a leading role. But Casablanca it's not.