USAID Funded Iraqi Insurgents, Too...

Recent reports of USAID funding for Afghan Taliban reminded of this earlier story from Bill Easterly's AIDWatch blog:

...namely a 2008 audit that found evidence of fraud, phantom workers, and money being diverted to insurgents through trash collection contracts.

Steve Jobs, Live and In Person...

Federal Reserve Policies Corrupted Economics Profession

So says Ryan Grim in today's Huffington Post:

Galbraith, a Fed critic, has seen the Fed's influence on academia first hand. He and co-authors Olivier Giovannoni and Ann Russo found that in the year before a presidential election, there is a significantly tighter monetary policy coming from the Fed if a Democrat is in office and a significantly looser policy if a Republican is in office. The effects are both statistically significant, allowing for controls, and economically important.

They submitted a paper with their findings to the Review of Economics and Statistics in 2008, but the paper was rejected. "The editor assigned to it turned out to be a fellow at the Fed and that was after I requested that it not be assigned to someone affiliated with the Fed," Galbraith says.

Publishing in top journals is, like in any discipline, the key to getting tenure. Indeed, pursuing tenure ironically requires a kind of fealty to the dominant economic ideology that is the precise opposite of the purpose of tenure, which is to protect academics who present oppositional perspectives.

And while most academic disciplines and top-tier journals are controlled by some defining paradigm, in an academic field like poetry, that situation can do no harm other than to, perhaps, a forest of trees. Economics, unfortunately, collides with reality -- as it did with the Fed's incorrect reading of the housing bubble and failure to regulate financial institutions. Neither was a matter of incompetence, but both resulted from the Fed's unchallenged assumptions about the way the market worked.

Even the late Milton Friedman, whose monetary economic theories heavily influenced Greenspan, was concerned about the stifled nature of the debate. Friedman, in a 1993 letter to Auerbach that the author quotes in his book, argued that the Fed practice was harming objectivity: "I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results," Friedman wrote.

Afghanistan 2009 v Chicago 2008

Someone I know suggested that I take a look at US 2008 Presidential election results, precinct-by-precinct, when considering the Obama Administration's reported objections to recent polling in Afghanistan--since New York Times "journalists" Mark Landler and Helene Cooper had not bothered to do their homework. It's not hard. Here's a link to the Chicago Elections website. It shows, for example, that in Wards 3 to 9, President Obama and Vice-President Biden received over 95 percent of the votes cast:

Ward 3--97.05%
Ward 4--97.07%
Ward 5--97.13%
Ward 6--99.25%
Ward 7--98.69%
Ward 8--99.19%
Ward 9--98.80%

There was a similar pattern In my hometown of Washington, DC.:

Precinct 20--96.58%
Precinct 114--99.45%
Precinct 115--99.33%
Precinct 116--99.09%
Precinct 120--98.79%

So, I don't think that the Obama administration would ever choose to set aside votes in the United States in the way US Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry has advocated doing in Afghanistan...

All the College Courses You Can Take For $99/Month

A teaching colleague sent me a link to this article by Kevin Carey from the Washington Monthly:

StraighterLine is the brainchild of a man named Burck Smith, an Internet entrepreneur bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and—most importantly—fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge.

In recent years, Americans have grown accustomed to living amid the smoking wreckage of various once-proud industries—automakers bankrupt, brand-name Wall Street banks in ruins, newspapers dying by the dozen. It’s tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come. But this is an illusion. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

In combination, these two trends threaten to shake the foundation of the modern university, in much the same way that other seemingly impregnable institutions have been torn apart. In some ways, the upheaval will be a welcome one. Students will benefit enormously from radically lower prices—particularly people like Solvig who lack disposable income and need higher learning to compete in an ever-more treacherous economy. But these huge changes will also seriously threaten the ability of universities to provide all the things beyond teaching on which society depends: science, culture, the transmission of our civilization from one generation to the next.

Whether this transformation is a good or a bad thing is something of a moot point—it’s coming, and sooner than you think...

The Ascent (1977)

The other night, someone I know and this blogger watched Laura Shepitko's 1977 Russian classic, The Ascent, which we had ordered from Netflix. It is a harrowing film, a WWII horror picture set in what seems to be the Ukraine or Belarus, full of Russian Orthodox religious symbolism, including shots that look like icons painted by Andrey Rublev, set in landscapes by Levitan (although in Black & White). Shepitko died at age 40, in a car accident, shortly after making this film. She was married to Elim Klimov, whose Come and See explored similar themes, in a less religious way....

From Our "Told You So" Department: USAID Funded Taliban in Afghanistan

From Jean MacKenzie's story on GlobalPost.com (ht The Newshour With Jim Lehrer):

KABUL — The United States Agency for International Development has opened an investigation into allegations that its funds for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of the Taliban, through a protection racket for contractors.

And House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) vowed to hold hearings on the issue in the fall, saying: "The idea that American taxpayer dollars are ending up with the Taliban is a case for grave concern."

U.S. officials confirmed that the preliminary investigation and the proposed hearings were sparked by a GlobalPost special report on the funding of the Taliban last month that uncovered a process that has been an open secret in Afghanistan for years among those in international aid organizations.

The report exposed that the Taliban takes a percentage of the billions of dollars in aid from U.S. and other international coalition members that goes to large organizations and their subcontractors for development projects, in exchange for protection in remote areas controlled by the insurgency.

I wrote about a different aspect of this problem in a February 2007 ORBIS article, NGOs: A ‘New Class’ in International Relations:

Nongovernmental organizations have attempted to take control of civil society, displacing traditional governing institutions. This serves the interests of the terrorists, warlords, and mafia dons, who benefit from weak central government, and hinders the West's ability to mobilize allies to participate in the war on terror. NGO leaders who are hostile to the nation-state itself seek to transform a voluntary system of participation in international organizations by sovereign member-states via a “power shift” to an unholy alliance of multinational corporations and NGOs. Since they do not possess the traditional sources of legitimacy enjoyed by nation-states, they seek to impose their will by financial or forceful means—for example, “sanctions” or “humanitarian intervention.” A new class of NGOs has thus emerged that is essentially opposed to the diplomatic, legal, and military measures required for dealing with civilizational conflict.

Minister Confesses UK Traded Pan Am Bomber for BP-Libya Oil Deal

In an item from the Press Association (UK), Justice Minister Jack Straw takes a fall for Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

But Mr Straw said the issue of trade played "a very big part" in his decision to include Megrahi in a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) struck with Libya in 2007, citing a lucrative deal which was being sought by British oil giant BP at the time.

Documents released earlier this week showed Mr Straw assured the Scottish Government in 2007 that Megrahi would be excluded from any PTA agreed with the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as part of the normalisation of relations between the UK and Libya. But just weeks later, he informed Edinburgh that he had not been able to secure an exemption for Megrahi and had decided to go ahead with the PTA as it stands "in view of the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom".

Asked whether trade was a factor in his decision, Mr Straw told the Daily Telegraph: "Yes... a very big part of that. I'm unapologetic about that. Libya was a rogue state... We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."

Mr Straw said Mr Brown was not involved in the decision to press ahead with the PTA, saying: "I certainly didn't talk to the PM. There is no paper trail to suggest he was involved at all."

In January 2008, just weeks after the PTA was sealed, Libya ratified a £550 million oil deal with BP.

New Jersey Senator Demands US Investigate UK-Libya Pan Am Bomber Deal

According to UPI:

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for a formal investigation into the allegations.

"In particular, I ask that the committee examine whether Mr. Megrahi's release was influenced by oil contracts between U.K.-based BP Plc. and the government of Libya," he writes.

Lautenberg said a formal investigation should look into whether oil and commercial interests played a role in the decision.

London, meanwhile, faces an uncertain energy future as deposits in the North Sea run dry. Ukraine and other European nations have lobbied for access to Libyan reserves as well.

Regardless, Lautenberg says the bombing of Pan Am 103 was a "brutal act of terrorism" that should not be linked to commercial interests.

"I urge the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a hearing and investigation to uncover whether justice took a back seat to commercial interests," he said.

More from PolitickerNJ.com

· Whether oil and commercial interests led to the U.K's. authorization to include al-Megrahi in the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) when it had previously sought to exclude him;

· If the negotiated PTA and/or the August 20 release of al-Megrahi violated the international agreement between the U.S. and the U.K.;

· Whether oil contracts played a role in the U.K. government's actions leading up to the release of al-Megrahi, including the U.K.'s failure to object to al-Megrahi's release; and

· Whether commercial interests played a role in the decision to release al-Megrahi.

Scotland's The Herald has still more:

Sir Christopher [Meyer], speaking about his time as ambassador in Washington during the 1998 negotiations over Megrahi’s trial, said: “One thing I do remember very, very clearly was that it was very important to them [the US] to get a commitment out of us that if Megrahi and the other guy were found guilty, they would serve the full term of their sentence in a UK jail.

“That was a vital selling point for the relatives and friends of the Americans who died in the blowing up of the Pan Am flight.” He added that this was the “clear political and diplomatic understanding” the US had.

Washington Examiner: Bin Laden a Whitney Houston Fan...

He reportedly also reads The Star:

Whitney Houston has a fan in bin Laden
By: KIKI RYAN
09/04/09 12:05 AM EDT

Whitney Houston — Bin Laden’s ‘Greatest Love of All?’

According to a new novel [a memoir entitled Diary Of A Lost Girl] by Sudanese author Kola Boof, Osama bin Laden is obsessed with singer Whitney Houston.

Boof claims that when she was held as a sex slave for the terrorist for four months in a Moroccan hotel room, he couldn’t stop talking about the legendary singer.

“He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he’d seen,” she writes in “Diary of a Lost Girl,” excerpted in next month’s Harpers’ Bazaar. Boof adds that he constantly spoke of “how beautiful she was, what a nice smile she has, and how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband.”

Allegedly, Bin Laden sought to have Houston’s ex-husband Bobby Brown killed.

And although the totalitarian government of Afghanistan considers listening to music sinful, she writes Bin Laden “spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar.”

If that’s not bizarre enough, other American pop culture she cites as him enjoying were watching episodes of “The Wonder Years,” “Miami Vice” and “MacGyver” and reading Star Magazine and Playboy.

(more at PerezHilton.com.

Washington's New African-American History Museum Expands Collection

An interesting account today from the Washington Post's Jacqueline Trescott:

The discoveries can come through late-night e-mails, conversations with elderly black women over weak tea, or at a community center where someone brings in their great-grandfather's diploma.

Such is life at the moment for Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, who is working diligently to bring essential documents and artifacts of the black American story to the public. So far he has a Selmer trumpet once owned by jazz innovator Louis Armstrong, a Jim Crow railroad car from outside Chattanooga, Tenn., a sign from a Nashville bus that reads "This part of bus for colored race," an 1850 slave badge from Charleston, S.C., and a porcelain drinking fountain labeled "colored."

The museum also has a house built about 1874 in Poolesville by the Jones family, freed slaves who founded an all-black community in Montgomery County, as well as a letter signed by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of a successful slave revolt in Haiti, not to mention a cape and jumpsuit from the late soul superstar James Brown, and the 700 garments and 300 accessories from the Black Fashion Museum, which closed in 2007.

BP Pressurized British Government to Hand Over Pan Am Bomber

According to this London Times article:

Jack Straw was personally lobbied by BP over Britain’s prisoner transfer agreement with Libya just before he abandoned efforts to exclude the Lockerbie bomber from the deal.

The Times has learnt that the Justice Secretary took two telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former M16 agent, who was by then working for BP as a consultant, on October 15 and November 9, 2007.

Having signed a $900million oil exploration deal with Libya earlier that year, BP feared that its commercial interests could be damaged if Britain delayed the prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) through which the Gaddafi regime hoped to secure the return home of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.

Baltimore Sun: Human Rights Watch Shills for Saudis

From Israel obsession leads HRW astray by Gerald Steinberg and Dan Kosky:

The likes of HRW benefit from a halo effect that persuades journalists to accept their every claim as gospel, without first checking the "evidence" provided.

Yet this façade is slipping under the weight of HRW's activities within Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most notorious human rights abusers. According to Arab News, HRW's senior Middle East professional Sarah Leah Whitson, along with board and Advisory Committee member Hassan Elmasry, attended a dinner where they asked "prominent members of Saudi society" to make up for the "shortage of funds" due to the global financial crisis "and the work on Israel and Gaza which depleted HRW's budget for the region." This tacit admission that HRW targeted Israel to the detriment of analyzing genuine human rights violations was accompanied by Ms. Whitson's odious invocation of "pro-Israel pressure groups."

HRW has failed to provide an alternative account of events, and its only defense has been an absurd attempt to cast a distinction between soliciting Saudi officials and prominent members of society who owe their very position to the regime.

Serious questions are rightly being asked of a human rights organization that sees fit to have its pockets lined with the gold of one of the world's most oppressive countries.

More from the Jerusalem Post:

HRW's Middle East division is run by Sarah Leah Whitson, who had organized protests against Israeli "brutality" at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee before she was hired by Roth. At HRW, Whitson continued to promote anti-Israel boycotts, and in May 2009, Whitson led HRW's fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia, where she denounced "pro-Israel pressure groups," which "tried to discredit" HRW's "work on Israel and Gaza," including its role in creating the Goldstone inquiry.

Furthermore, Joe Stork, Whitson's deputy in HRW, spent over 20 years as a founder and editor of MERIP, an anti-Zionist and anti-American organization. Following the Munich attack, Stork and his colleagues published an editorial headlined "Who are the real terrorists?" which denounced "Israeli terrorists, equipped with US-supplied jets and tanks" and "their policy of murder and destruction against the Palestinians." (The authors added a disclaimer that such acts were not "justification" for the Munich attack.) In 1996, Stork joined HRW.

The biases displayed by Whitson and Stork violate the basic principle of political objectivity for human rights fact-finding, as codified in the International Bar Association's "London-Lund" guidelines. Similarly, the appointments of Goldstone and Prof. Christine Chinkin to the UN's Gaza investigation are inconsistent with these common-sense rules. (UN Watch's call to disqualify Chinkin quotes a letter she signed declaring Israel the aggressor and perpetrator of war crimes, and "categorically rejecting" Israel's right to self-defense against rocket barrages.)

HRW's reports, like the NGO submissions to Goldstone, consistently reflect this bias and lack of professional standards. Behind the façade of "factual research," the work of the Middle East Division consists of multiple pages of carefully picked Palestinian "eyewitness testimony." These reports mix speculative, plausible Palestinian claims that are unverifiable, bad fiction and pages of irrelevant technical "facts" and contorted legal verbiage.

In HRW's latest publication, co-authored by Stork, which accused the IDF of the odious moral crime of deliberately killing civilians waving white flags, the first incident is based entirely on the claims of the Abed Rabbo family. However, Western and Arabic versions show that as the Palestinian "fixers" brought journalists and NGO officials, including HRW "researchers," for interviews, the story evolved with each telling.

In parallel, the videos and other evidence clearly showing Palestinian abuses, including routine use of "human shields" to protect terrorists and weapons, are omitted because they do not fit the desired conclusions. No serious court would accept this testimony as evidence, or the publications as "research." .

There are dozens of similar examples repeating Palestinian claims in HRW publications. Every phase of this long war is also opportunity for promoting this agenda through reports, press conferences, letters and e-mails. These indictments (Roth was trained as a prosecutor) routinely repeat the odious charges of "indiscriminate attacks against civilians," "war crimes" and collective punishment. (HRW's "White Flags" publication uses the term "war crimes" 15 times.) This anti-Israel obsession is part of the broader transformation of HRW from its original goal of battling for the freedom of political prisoners in repressive regimes, to an ideological power directing its guns ($42 million in 2008) against embattled democracies such as Israel.

Charles Crawford on Putin's Polish Speech

From the blogoir of the former British ambassador to Poland, among other places:

1st September 2009
As many senior international dignitaries gather in Gdansk today to commemorate the start of WW2, Russian Prime Minister Putin (one of the guests) has written an open letter to Poland to give a clear and (as of now) definitive Russian view on the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact.

Here is the Russian official version in English. The published Polish version is here. It is a well-turned and characteristically clever piece of work. And long - nearly 2200 words in the English version.

Let's go through it, looking at what it says - and what Messages it sends.

Invited by Donald Tusk, Polish Prime Minister, to take part in the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Second World War, I did not hesitate to accept the invitation, I could not do otherwise: because the war took a heavy toll of 27 million lives of my compatriots, and every Russian family keeps both the sorrow of loss and the honor of the Great Victory...

First message: Poland bangs on about the role of the Soviet Union in starting WW2. Attack is the best form of defence. Onward!

No judge can give a totally unbiased verdict on what was in the past. And no country can boast of having avoided tragedies, dramatic turning points or state decisions having nothing to do with high morals. If we are eager to have peaceful and happy future, we must draw lessons from history. However, exploiting memory, anatomizing history and seeking pretexts for mutual complaints and resentment causes a lot of harm and proves lack of responsibility.

Message: there's no real 'truth' in all this, so why talk about it so much? Let's all be ... responsible.

The canvas of history is not a third-rate copy which can be roughly retouched or, following customer's orders, modified by the addition of bright of dark tints. Unfortunately, such attempts to rehash the past are quite common today. We witness the efforts to tailor history to the immediate political needs. Some countries went even further, making the Nazi accomplices heroes, placing victims on a par with executioners, and liberators - with occupants.

Message: no 'equating' Nazism with Soviet Communism, you pathetic ungrateful Balts and others.

The situation in Europe prior to the Second World War is considered fragmentarily, regardless of the cause-and-effect relationship. It is indicative that history is often slanted by those who actually apply double standards in modern politics.

Message: any attempt to look at these events on the basis of clear standards is necessarily hypocritical and false, since there's no 'truth' anyway, plus those who assert such standards invariably fail to live by them, so what they say can not count.

One cannot help but wonder to what extend such myths-makers differ from the authors of the memorable "Brief Course of Russian History" published in the Stalin period, where all names or events uncomfortable to the "leader of all nations" would be erased and stereotyped and completely ideology-based versions of reality would be imposed.

Message: yes - you too are no better than Stalinists, so don't accuse me of being one.

Thus, today we are expected to admit without any hesitation that the only "trigger" of the Second World War was the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939.

However, those who advocate such a position neglect simple things - did not the Treaty of Versailles which drew the bottom line of the First World War leave a lot of "time bombs", the main of which was not only the registered defeat of Germany but also its humiliation. Did not the borders in Europe begin to crumble much earlier than 1 September 1939? What about the Anschluss of Austria and Czechoslovakia being torn to pieces, when not only Germany, but also Hungary and Poland in fact took part in the territorial repartition of Europe.

Message: Germany was 'humiliated' by the Versailles settlement which you wrote, so what did you expect? Plus things were falling apart anyway before we started taking our slice. That means you Poland (Note: Good Point.)

And is it possible to turn a blind eye to the backstage attempts of Western democracies to "buy off" Hitler and redirect his aggression "eastwards" and to the systematic and generally tolerated removal of security safeguards and arms restrictious system in Europe?

Finally, what was the military and political echo of the collusion that took place in Munich on 29 September 1938? Maybe it was then when Hitler finally decided that "everything was allowed". That neither France nor England would "lift a finger" to protect their allies.

Message: you Westerners were weak but crafty in dealing with Hitler - who are you to talk now?

There is no doubt that one (sic) can have all the reasons to condemn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact concluded in August of 1939. But a year before, in Munich, France and England signed a well-known treaty with Hitler and thus destroyed all the hope for a united front to fight fascism.

Message: the M/R Pact was the inevitable consequence of what others did. 'One' might condemn it - but I don't.

Today, we understand that any kind of collusion with the Nazi regime was morally unacceptable and had no prospects of practical implementation. However, in the context of the historical events of that time, the Soviet Union not only remained face to face with Germany (since the Western States had rejected the proposed system of collective security) but also faced the threat of waging war on two fronts, because precisely in August of 1939 the flame of the conflict with Japan on the Halkin-Gol river reached its highest.

Message: as I keep saying, Russia resists being encircled by its enemies. Events thousands of miles away left us simply no choice but to invade Poland. Strange but true.

The Soviet diplomacy was quite right at that time to consider it, at least, unwise to reject Germany's proposal to sign the Non-Aggression Pact when USSR's potential allies in the West had already made similar agreements with the German Reich and did not want to cooperate with the Soviet Union, as well as to be confronted with the Nazi allmighty military machine alone.

Message: we only did with Hitler what y'all did. And we were wise to do so. Right?

...the Munich Agreement that led to disunity among the natural allies in the fight against the Nazis and made them distrust and suspect each other. While looking back at the past, it is necessary for all of us, both in Western and Eastern Europe, to remember what tragedies can result from cowardice, behind-the-scenes and armchair politics, as well as from seeking to ensure security and national interests at the expense of others. There cannot be reasonable and responsible politics without a moral and legal framework.

Message: and, by the way, since there is no Truth we define the moral and legal framework as we like.

... the moral aspect of policies pursued is particularly important. In this regard, I would like to remind you that our country's parliament unambiguously assessed the immorality of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact. This has not been the case so far in some other States, though they also made very controversial decisions in the 1930s.

Message: NB this is very important. The M/R Pact was assessed as 'immoral' by the Russian Parliament back in 1989. I have mentioned that in this message. But I also have said that it would have been 'unwise' for the Soviet Union not to sign the Pact. What's immoral about being wise? So you stupid media people in the West need to say that I have condemned the Pact as 'immoral', even though I have not done so. Got that?

All experience of the prewar period - from the Versailles Peace Conference to the beginning of the Second World War - provides strong evidence that it is impossible to set up an efficient system of collective security without involvement of all countries of the continent, including Russia. You Americans - represented in Gdansk by some junior flunkey - can relax and stay at home.

Message: if we are not happy, look what we do. That's just the way it is.

Establishment of the Anti-Hitler Coalition is, without exaggeration, a turning point in the history of the 20th century, one of the most important and determining events of the previous century. The world saw that countries and peoples, despite all their differences, diverse national aspirations, tactical discords were able to stand united for the sake of the future, for the sake of countering the global evil...

Message: you Westerners got into bed with Stalin and Stalinism to defeat Hitler. And thereby gave Stalin a legitimacy which is not going away.

The historic post-war reconciliation of France and Germany opened the way to the establishment of the European Union. At the same time, the wisdom and generosity of Russian and German peoples, as well as the foresight of statesmen of the two countries, made it possible to take a determining step towards building the Big Europe. The partnership of Russia and Germany has become an example of moving towards each other and of aspiration for the future with care for the memory of the past.

Message: some things are for grown-ups.

I am sure that Russian-Polish relations will, sooner or later, come to such high level, to the level of genuine partners. It is in the interests of our peoples and of the whole European continent.

Message: sigh ... you Poles need to work on it, and get with the Russian-German Narrative. Remember 1939.

We are deeply grateful that Poland, the land where more than 600 thousand soldiers of the Red Army lie, those who gave their lives for its liberation, shows care and respect to our military burial places. Believe me, these words are not simply for the record, they are sincere and heartfelt.

The people of Russia, whose destiny was crippled by the totalitarian regime, fully understand the sensitiveness of Poles about Katyn where thousands of Polish servicemen lie. Together we must keep alive the memory of the victims of this crime.

Message: be very grateful, sensitive Poland, for our liberating you, even though we murdered and imprisoned thousands of Poles to do so. And let's remember the victims of the Katyn crime. But let's not talk about the criminals who committed it.

Katyn and Mednoye memorials, just as the tragic fate of the Russian soldiers taken prisoners in Poland during the 1920 war, should become symbols of common grief and mutual pardon.

Message: you have your massacre victims, Poland - we have ours. No double standards. OK?

Our obligation to the past and gone, to the very history, is to do everything in order to make the Polish-Russian relations free from the burden of mistrust and prepossession, which we have inherited. To turn over the page and start writing a new one...

Message: all this historical stuff is so tedious. We all know Poland and Europe just won't wear us down into apologising for the M/R Pact and all that. Why not look at some oil/gas deals instead?

* * * * *

Vladimir Putin has a weak hand to play here, on the merits. And plays it aggressively.

He basically turns the fact that Poland is making so much of this anniversary of Nazi/Soviet aggression to Russia's advantage. He knows that once the Poles have invited him they will be loath to be too critical of what he says, lest they come over as churlish, 'needlessly' generating a controversy when there should be a sense of reconciliation.

Hence this message. It deftly strikes a reasonable, fair-minded overall tone, while conceding precisely nothing at all on the hard-core post-Soviet view of WW2:

The Munich Agreement is presented as no different from the M/R Pact, even though France and UK struck a deal with Hitler to avoid war, not to launch it by invading and annexing great slabs of other countries.
The brutality the Soviets inflicted on millions of Poles as they invaded in 1939 and thereafter is not mentioned.
Nothing is conceded on Katyn, which is compared to the messy aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920 (another attempted land-grab) - did Poland's top leaders back then really sign papers ordering the cold-blooded murder of tens of thousands of Red Army prisoners?
Warsaw's 'courageous' resistance is mentioned, but nothing about Stalin's shameful refusal to intervene as the Nazis razed the city in 1944.
Nothing is said about post-WW2 Soviet crimes.
And Putin boldly puts all this in the context of Russian/German reconciliation. At the ceremonies today the UK is represented by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, whose recent speech in Poland did not even mention the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact and why the issues around it still matter. The USA is sending only a senior official.

Thus Poland as the first victim of the Nazi/Soviet Pact is left today commemorating it sandwiched between Big Germany and Big Russia, Angela Merkel and PM Putin, the former keen to achieve substantive reconciliation on modern European terms, the latter nodding stiffly in that direction but in practice offering only Russian terms.

Putin's Message?

You see, Poland and Europe, I will come to your so-called ceremony - and assert my view of history, not yours.

I'll make some nice noises but concede nothing. But your sissy leaders and idiotic media will feel obliged to portray my message as a positive conciliatory gesture and say that I have 'condemned' the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact as 'immoral' when - as we both know - I have done no such thing.

You will have no choice but to accept my view, thereby legitimising it for a long time to come.

In short?

I am strong. You are weak.

Понял?

Moral of the story?

Be careful which VIPs you invite to a party.

Some of them may show up.

And then it becomes their party.

I Like the Washington Monthly's College Guide...

Washington Monthly is taking on U.S. News and World Report with this list:

Below are the Washington Monthly's 2009 national university college rankings. We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).

Here's the top ten:

1 University of California, Berkeley
2 Univ. of California, San Diego
3 Univ. of California, Los Angeles
4 Stanford University (CA)
5 Texas A&M U., Col. Station
6 South Carolina State University
7 Pennsylvania State U., University Park
8 College of William and Mary (VA)*
9 University of Texas, Austin
10 University of California, Davis

Of course, I'm biased. My undergraduate degree is from UC Berkeley (where I transferred from Swarthmore, ranked 8 on the Washington Monthly's liberal arts list) and my doctorate is from UCLA...Go Bears! Go Bruins!

Charles Crawford on Britain's Libyan Lockerbie Bomber Deal

From the world's first diplomatic Blogoir:

It is always fascinating to read original official documents, in this case a selection of papers about the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted for the Lockerbie bombing.

So have a look here.

Yet it all seems ... incomplete.

Where are the letters and emails from/to the FCO and No 10, and associated FCO/No 10 internal minuting including the FCO Legal Advisers thoughts?

The key constitutional/legal issue after all is, basically, how far Scottish legal norms as decided in Edinburgh might be subject to (or have to take some sort of account of) UK foreign policy concerns (including the interplay between foreign policy principles and commercial possibilities) as decided in London.

The papers as released leave us none the wiser on how that question and all the issues swirling around it were hammered out behind the scenes. I just do not believe that not a single memo/email/minute/letter was sent to or issued from No 10 or the Foreign Secretary's office on these complex and sensitive subjects.

Nice try. But not good enough.

More please.

UPDATE--The Telegraph's (UK) Nile Gardiner reports:

David Rivkin, a highly respected former White House official, has told the BBC that the British government’s role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber “will damage US relations with Britain for years to come. I really can’t think about a more duplicitous act by Britain vis-à-vis the United States in the post-war period.”

Bob Dole's Advice to President Obama: Try, Try Again on Health Care

From yesterday's Washington Post:

Obama's approval numbers would jump 10 points if Americans knew he was fully in charge. A tactical move of introducing his own plan would also stir more Republicans to become active for reform in critical areas. Right now the president's biggest problem is with congressional Democrats, who are split and searching for a way out of the medical wilderness.

In short, the president, Congress and the public are choking on all this, and choking is not covered by the legislation.

When I served as Senate Republican leader, I recall President Ronald Reagan telling me after he'd sent a bill that I would introduce that he wanted it all -- but that if I could get 70 to 80 percent, to run with it, and he would try to get the rest later. Neither Reagan nor Obama has been considered a master of Congress, but both are known for their great popularity and for understanding the art of reaching for more than they could reasonably expect. Now, consider this: Members of Congress want to keep their jobs. They support their president, but they also want to be employed, with a good health plan (like the one they enjoy now), after this president or even the next has come and gone. So votes on this issue are not simply partisan. They are also about survival. Most lawmakers, Republican or Democratic, will think long and hard before casting this vote -- to avoid backing into a buzz saw.

Once the president has staked out his position, which will provide room for amendments, the debate will narrow, and bipartisan bargaining and other political maneuvering can begin.

New Jersey Beats Libya in Round One

Fox News reports:

MYFOXNY.COM - New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman says five-days of phone calls between his office and the Libyan government finally came to an end on Friday when Libya said its leader would not visit the town of Englewood.

Rothman told Good Day NY's Greg Kelly that the Libyan government told him it never intended to pitch a Bedouin tent in front of Libyan property in the northern New Jersey town.

Reports in the last few weeks indicated Moammar Qadaffi planned to stay in the tent while he attended the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September.

"Qadaffi is a financier of international terrorism. He has the blood of Americans on his hands," Rothman told Good Day NY.

According to Rothman, the State Department told him Qadaffi would not be allowed to stay in Englewood.

Back in the 1980s, Rothman worked to help change the rules governing residences of foreign nations in the United States. Rothman says those rules would not permit Qadaffi to stay at the house.

Sunday Times (UK): Britain Traded Pan Am Bomber for BP Libyan Oil Deal

Jason Allardyce published excerpts from official letters in yesterday's Sunday Times:

Two letters dated five months apart show that Straw initially intended to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, under which British and Libyan prisoners could serve out their sentences in their home country.

In a letter dated July 26, 2007, Straw said he favoured an option to leave out Megrahi by stipulating that any prisoners convicted before a specified date would not be considered for transfer.

Downing Street had also said Megrahi would not be included under the agreement.

Straw then switched his position as Libya used its deal with BP as a bargaining chip to insist the Lockerbie bomber was included.

The exploration deal for oil and gas, potentially worth up to £15 billion, was announced in May 2007. Six months later the agreement was still waiting to be ratified.

On December 19, 2007, Straw wrote to MacAskill announcing that the UK government was abandoning its attempt to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement, citing the national interest.

In a letter leaked by a Whitehall source, he wrote: “I had previously accepted the importance of the al-Megrahi issue to Scotland and said I would try to get an exclusion for him on the face of the agreement. I have not been able to secure an explicit exclusion.

“The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage and, in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom, I have agreed that in this instance the [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual.”

Within six weeks of the government climbdown, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalised in May this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.

Is It the Kennedy Coverage?

Or something else? This just in:

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