Russia on The Huffington Post

Hitler's Mercedes Bought By Russian Billionaire

2009-11-23T11:32:35Z

BERLIN — A German newspaper is reporting that Adolf Hitler's original Mercedes has been sold to an unidentified Russian billionaire for several million euros.

Express daily wrote Monday that a middleman for the billionaire approached Duesseldorf-based vintage car dealer Michael Froehlich and asked him to track down the dictator's dark-blue 770 K model.

Mikhail Gorbachev Considers Comeback, Gives Speech Knocking Kremlin

2009-11-20T12:50:06Z

MOSCOW — Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev criticized Kremlin policies Friday and toyed with the ambitious idea of attempting a political comeback.

Gorbachev said that corruption and overdependence on oil exports have aggravated the impact of the global economic crisis on Russia. He urged President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to restructure the economy, cut down government spending and ensure political freedoms.

Robert Amsterdam: The Murder of Russian Rule of Law

2009-11-19T10:26:57Z

According to reports, late on Monday night the 37-year-old Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky suffered a fatal rupture of the abdominal membrane causing heart failure and death. He was being held in pre-trial detention in Moscow for almost a year, where he was subjected harsh conditions and refused proper medical treatment; allegedly pressured to give false testimony in exchange for improved conditions.

His death was not an accident, nor simply an event of natural causes, but rather a state sanctioned murder, coming just one day after U.S. President Barack Obama declared the "reset" of relations with Russia was working. The murder fits into a pattern of government hostility toward lawyers, including the harassment of Boris Kuznetsov, the jailing of Mikhail Trepashkin, the medical blackmail of Vasily Alexanyan (who was alsopressured to fake testimony against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a political prisoner I defend), and even the shooting of Stanislav Markelov.

How the assassin's bullets which took Markelov's life are parallel to the denial of medical care to Magnitsky may be a topic for debate, but both cases have involved systematic processes common to a legal environment which lacks rule of law. The powerful flaunt the law, manufacture false verdicts against opponents and competitors, and embed the profits of their graft into the odious politics which make it possible. As a result, impunity rules the day. When state thefts as large as Yukos and Hermitage are possible, we have a situation in which there are so many officials in on the take that there are practically no incentives to reform, no matter how many well intentioned speeches President Dmitry Medvedev may give.

Magnitsky had committed no crime other than blowing the whistle on a massive tax fraud scheme perpetrated by parties related to the Russian government. As a lawyer at the law firm Firestone Duncan, Magnistky served as counsel to the American investor William Browder and the Hermitage Capital Management group -- formerly the largest foreign investor in the country.

Though once recognized as the success story of foreign investment in Russia, Hermitage has become another victim of the nightmare of corruption, state theft, and legal nihilism familiar to observers of the country. It all began when police and officials from the Interior Ministry raided their offices, forged documents to steal away the ownership of subsidiary companies, followed by a $232 million tax rebate -- stolen not from the foreigners but from the Russian taxpayers themselves.

Magnitsky was later arrested as part of a brutal campaign of retaliation after Hermitage went public, filing various complaints and suits. Unlike many, he showed tremendous courage in giving key witness testimony to the authorities identifying individuals within the police who had perpetrated the Hermitage theft. However instead of acting on all the evidence of real crimes, the prosecutors turned around and accused the accusers of the very corruption they seek to cover up.

The most heartbreaking document I have read since his death is the 40-page filing which Magnitsky had sent to Chief Prosecutor Yuri Chaika to denounce the abysmal conditions and specifically plead for medicine and treatment to save his life. Reading like a cry from the grave, the document includes the following:

"Since approximately June 2009, while I was staying in Matrosskayua Tishina, my health has deteriorated. Medical examination carried out at the end of June - beginning of July 2009 revealed gallbladder stones and pancreatitis and calculous cholecystitis were diagnosed. (...)

On August 24, 2009 the pain became so acute that I was not even able to lie down. Then my cellmate started to knock on the door demanding for me to be taken to a doctor. This was approximately at 16:00. The warder promised to ask a doctor to come but he didn't appear despite the recurrent demands of my cellmate. I was only taken to a doctor 5 hours later.

In informed the doctor about my illness and complained that during my confinement in BP I had never been examined by a doctor. The doctor was very displeased; while browsing through my medical record she kept saying: "What medical examination, what medical treatment are you talking about? It is written here that you have already been given medical care. Do you think we are going to treat you every month?"

Magnitsky's complaint goes on to detail a litany of other injustices and cruelties, including denial of the right, guaranteed under Russian law, to meet with his wife and his mother. It is apparent that he suffered cruel and unusual punishment under many standards by the Russian government, and that he was singled out for this abusive treatment above and beyond the rest of the pre-detention center's population for his involvement in the Hermitage affair.

It has become something of a journalistic cliché to take these shocking Kafkaesque legal sagas in Russia and call them "a litmus test" for the country to demonstrate its rule of law and potential for judicial independence. But we do ourselves a disservice if we continue to be surprised but a movie we have seen over and over again. The process of medical blackmail against Magnitsky is identical to what they did to Alexanyan. The ominous warning signal of what happens to whistleblowers serves the same purpose as what Anna Politkovskaya's murder did for freedom of press.

Let the tragic death of Magnitsky not stand as another litmus test for rule of law, but rather a reverse test which measures our commitment to human rights. How many more dead Russians will it take before the world stands up and takes notice? Given the fluid willingness of so many presidents (Obama included) to seek accommodation and compromise to extract any improvement in relations with Russia, it is unlikely that this death will impact anyone's deal. Next week if the media reports on the next business stolen by the government, the next activist shot, or the next journalist thrown in jail, will we pretend to be surprised again?

Russia long ago failed its litmus test for rule of law, but the international community must not fail its own.

Russia To Designers: Make Fashionable Swine Flu Masks!

2009-11-18T09:49:52Z

If you're going to prevent swine flu, you might as well do it in style, says Russia's top health official Gennady Onishchenko. Reuters reports that Onishchenko suggested either Slava Zaitsev or Valentin Yudashkin for the job, explaining, "They could design them as clothing... it would be absolutely amazing!" Approximately 5,600 cases of H1N1 have been confirmed in the country.

Get HuffPost Style on Twitter and Facebook!

Countries Prepping For "Cyber Cold War," According To McAfee Report

2009-11-17T14:35:18Z

Major countries and nation-states are engaged in a "Cyber Cold War," amassing cyberweapons, conducting espionage, and testing networks in preparation for using the Internet to conduct war, according to a new report to be released on Tuesday by McAfee.

Obama: US, Russia Will Have New Nuclear Pact By Year's End

2009-11-15T10:04:45Z

SHANGHAI — President Barack Obama sought a political balance Monday on his first trip to China, seeking help on urgent global problems while weighing if and when to raise concerns over human rights.

Obama's agenda began with talks with local politicians and, in one of the marquee events of his weeklong Asian trip, he was to conduct an American-style town hall with Chinese university students.

Obama Pushing Arms Control With Russians On Asia Trip

2009-11-14T15:41:01Z

SINGAPORE — President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed Sunday that next month's much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.

The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty. Hopes for that have dimmed lately. But comments by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to put the final nail in any remaining expectations for the December summit.

William Bradley: Obama In Flux

2009-11-13T16:25:20Z

As he embarks on his first big trip to Asia, President Barack Obama's strategies are in flux in many areas.

His first stop, Japan, is acting more independently of America after the long reign of the relatively conservative Liberal Democratic Party.

His next stop, Singapore, host of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, holds a host of trade challenges, as well as a sideline meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

Afghanistan is following President Barack Obama to Asia.

The stop after that, China, is the increasingly assertive great power on the cusp of superpower status, locked in a symbiotic economic relationship with America.

His final stop, South Korea, is friendly but embroiled in an endless stand-off with North Korea, another aspiring nuclear power.

It's no surprise that Obama is being followed on his Asian trip by other crises. Because so much in his geopolitics is so fundamentally unresolved, making that Nobel Peace Prize more than a bit premature.

He still doesn't have his newest strategy for Afghanistan. Pakistan is embroiled in its latest offensive against the Taliban.

Obama on Thursday began a week-long trip to Asia, touring a complex region where a newly assertive China and a more independent Japan are challenging America's traditional dominance.

Iran has refused to sign the nuclear agreement its representatives negotiated in Vienna.

The Iranian nuclear situation becomes more convoluted every day. Now the head of the Iranian military has stated that he favors the plan Iran agreed to last month in Vienna, only to stall on ratification, then say no, and then say it wanted to re-negotiate on "details."

There is either a power struggle under way in Tehran or Iran is trying to buy time against harsher sanctions and a possible Israeli attack.

The Obama Administration moved yesterday to seize a New York skyscraper and four mosques around the country -- including one in California, in the sleepy Sacramento suburb of Carmichael -- that it says are secretly controlled by Iran, serving as conduits of cash for the regime.

Then there is the endless question of Israel and Palestine. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set off a firestorm in the Arab world when she said that Israel had done enough on its program of settlements on the West Bank. Which it is continuing. That was walked back by the administration. But there is little progress in this possibly intractable situation, with neither side willing to compromise much.

With regard to Russia, whose president Obama is again about to meet, it may be shifting away from Iran. This may be part of a complex series of political changes in Moscow which sees power apparently flowing away from the siloviki, or core group of security/intel types. Relations with Russia have also been in flux, with kinder words and some better cooperation on Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation, but no clear agreement on Russia's preferred sphere of influence in its "near abroad."

Tony Blair's farewell speech to the British Labour Party conference in 2006, the beginning of his long goodbye tour.

And then there is the matter of Tony Blair. (I know, he's not a country. Though an old friend joked that when he listens to the Beatles' "Sun King" he thinks of Blair.) His bid to be the first president of the European Union is still alive, though heavily opposed. In part because of Iraq, in part because he is in other respects out of step with Europe's mostly center-right leaders, and in part because he is a superstar who would overshadow smaller countries and the aspirational leaders of larger countries.

European leaders will gather in Brussels next Thursday to make the decision. Blair is a longtime American ally, to put it mildly, so his election would be mostly welcomed in Washington.

While almost all of America slept, Obama held summit meetings with new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

Hatoyama's party swept the long-ruling LDP from power earlier this year. Amidst promises of a more independent relationship with America. But Hatoyama is no radical. Actually, he is part of the long-ruling elite of his island nation.

His father was the foreign minister in an LDP government. His paternal grandfather was prime minister and head of the LDP. His maternal grandfather was the founder of Bridgestone, one of the world's largest tire companies.

It's likely, in the Japanese way, that he will pursue a moderated course of independence.

And Obama, with his Nobel Peace Prize and global celebrity, is the president to work that through, while retaining America's longtime fundamental interests in the region.

Japan still wants protection from North Korea, and a place under America's nuclear umbrella with regard to China. America still wants bases. Both want favorable trade arrangements and free-flowing capital and technology.

But it's Afghanistan that looms over Obama's shoulder as he makes his way through a series of geopolitical minefields in Asia.

Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country

As Obama works his way toward his newest strategy on Afghanistan, a new Gallup Poll finds the nation split down the middle, with only pluralities for any position.

35% of Americans say he should follow the recommendation of the commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan and increase troop levels by about 40,000. Another 7% support a smaller troop increase, meaning a total of 42% of Americans support a troop increase of some size. However, nearly the same percentage, 44%, would like to see the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan reduced.

With 44% of Americans in the Nov. 5-8 poll favoring a troop reduction and 7% wanting to keep troop levels where they are, a slim majority appears to oppose a troop increase. Last month, using a different question wording, Gallup also found the public largely divided on sending more troops to Afghanistan.

If Obama decides to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, he will be going against the wishes of the vast majority of rank-and-file Democrats. In fact, 60% of Democrats would like the president to begin to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, while 26% support a troop increase of about 40,000 (18%) or less than that number (8%).

On the other hand, the majority of Republicans side with Gen. McChrystal's recommendation and support an increase of about 40,000 U.S. troops, with an additional 6% of Republicans favoring a smaller troop increase.

Independents are evenly divided between favoring a troop increase of any size (36% would like Obama to follow McChrystal's recommended increase and 7% favor a smaller increase) and supporting a reduction in U.S. troops (43%).

This is a pretty slender reed on which to base an escalation.

There is also a big gender gap on Afghanistan.

Men are much more likely than women to favor expanding the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan. A majority of men favor a troop increase (including 45% who believe Obama should follow McChrystal's recommendation) while only 32% of women agree. A majority of women would like to see the U.S. reduce its troop presence in Afghanistan.

Obama took part in the memorial service at Fort Hood and also delivered an address, one of his best, on the enduring nature and value of military service in the changing world of the early 21st century.

In the midst of all that, Obama has wildly diverging advice from his new commander and his new ambassador in Afghanistan, a retired general himself.

Obama apparently now wants additional options beyond those presented by General Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan. And an exit plan. As well he might.

The new US ambassador to Afghanistan, retired General Karl Eikenberry, sent several cables late last week to the president opposing an escalation in Afghanistan, saying that President Hamid Karzai is incompetent and corrupt and that a surge will only make Afghanistan more dependent on America.

The only reasonable mission for America in Afghanistan is to ensure that Al Qaeda can no longer use it as a base for its training and operations. That doesn't require the sort of nation-building as counter-insurgency that McChrystal is advocating. Advocating, that is, with no guarantee of success.

That there is so much unsettled doesn't mean that Obama isn't doing his job. It means that it's a complicated world not given to bumper sticker "solutions."

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: "Qum" Buy Ya

2009-11-13T16:20:59Z

On October 25th, inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were granted access to the secret and recently outed nuclear facility under construction in a secluded mountain inside an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base near the holy city of Qum.

We now have definitive confirmation from IAEA and European diplomats that the nuclear installation was too small for peaceful nuclear enrichment, but large enough to hold enough centrifuges to convert low grade enriched uranium into enough weapons-grade uranium needed to make nuclear warheads.

In other words, the Qum nuclear facility appears to be the smoking gun in Iran's secret nuclear weapons construction program. If the neutral IAEA has come to that conclusion, I can't wait to hear from those who would love to spin it as nothing more than an innocent doughnut factory.

So much for the value of the once vaunted November 2007 U.S. intelligence agencies' National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that proffered Iran was not engaged in any weapons-oriented uranium enrichment enterprise. Even before his inspectors finished their inspection of Qum, IAEA chief Mohamad ElBaradei directly accused Iran of violating its international legal obligations by failing to disclose the Qum facility to the IAEA.

Now what?

While the technical revelations regarding the Qum nuclear enrichment facility filter out as the IAEA prepares its final report to the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. is at a crossroads regarding Iran's nuclear program.

Cautious optimism that an Obama administration-orchestrated Geneva proposal whereby Iran would agree to ship 1200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to a third country for further enrichment under international supervision has evaporated. Living up to everyone's worst expectations of Iranian negotiating duplicity, the deal is now so bogged down with Iranian preconditions and qualifications to make further Western concessions to revive the tentative deal pointless, unless of course, Iran reverses course.

To make matters worse, Obama's engagement entreaties to Iran keep getting a "return to sender" response. And just yesterday Iran's state prosecutor signaled his intent to bring espionage charges against three detained American hikers -- making them pawns in this high stakes showdown. Moreover, Ayatollah Khamenei has gone out of his way in recent days to make pointed accusations against President Obama.

Even in the face of these Iranian retorts engagement efforts remain justified. But Iran's continued rejection of the Geneva plan, coupled with the IAEA's revelations regarding the illicit Qum nuclear facility are severely narrowing the Obama Administration's engagement policy options. All this coming at the worst possible moment for an administration trying to cope with other major foreign policy challenges. The president has stated he would give Iran until December to abide by its international obligations. Then, there will an effort to increase economic sanctions on Iran.

The atomic ayatollahs appear indifferent to any carrot or stick. Let's hope that is another Iranian negotiating ploy. Perhaps with its hands caught red-handed in the nuclear cookie jar the Iranians may reconsider and seek a face-saving way to avoid a showdown with the West and Israel. Unfortunately, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest Iran's leaders wish to meet Obama's outstretched hand half way.

2 Dead As Blasts Rock Russian Ammunition Depot

2009-11-13T14:54:54Z

MOSCOW — Huge explosions and flames ripped through a Russian military arsenal for hours on Friday, killing two firefighters and sending personnel fleeing to a bomb shelter to wait out the worst of the firestorm, officials said.

The dozens who took refuge in the shelter were at first feared trapped in the conflagration, but later emerged safe – dispelling initial worries of a high death toll. But a subsequent report said 11 others were unaccounted for.

Georgianne Nienaber: Ashley Judd: Please, Population Control is Not the Answer for Congo

2009-11-11T15:08:54Z

Ashley Judd's op-ed in USATODAY drove me to the Tao Te Ching before my head exploded. In another example of celebrity naiveté falling prey to the obfuscations of non-governmental organizations in Congo, Judd wrote: "In Congo, 600,000 babies a year are born only to suffer and die." She added, "My husband and I despondently call these precious little ones 'the born to dies.'" Judd's solution, a parroting of the NGO Population Services International, is that family planning is the answer, since fewer babies means less babies will die and society as a whole will benefit.

Image: Ashley Judd

This is a naïve analysis, since the population in Congo is barely sustainable with a life expectancy at birth of 54.15 years, and it is far less in remote areas. The statistics Judd uses are hardly compelling when she says that 20 percent of Congolese men and women approached in 2007 said they did not wish to have more children. I am sure Ashley Judd is a nice person with good intentions, but she is another example of NGO's using the bully pulpit of celebrity to line their coffers, while they operate with a western sensibility, forcing western values on tribal populations.

Let's do a reality check.

Judd profiles a home in Kinshasa, the capitol of DR Congo, and bemoans the lack of amenities in the home she visited. Let's remember that Kinshasa is one of the safest places to be in Congo these days. She describes a family with two toothbrushes, some furniture and bad drinking water. The conditions are horrible, but this family has a roof over its head and is not living in the open-air, plastic tents and volcanic rock environment of eastern Congo. Travel in eastern Congo and you will learn that the women there are fighting to have their children and keep them alive. New life equals hope and Judd has completely missed the tenacity and resolve of poor Congolese women. Judd says, " In my work around the world with PSI and our many partners, I have seen irrefutable evidence that unregulated fertility undermines every other effort to improve health, living standards, the economy and the environment."

Image © Nienaber: Home in the IDP Camps Where Children are Cherished

Is this true? Hardly.

Congo's economy is not undermined by "unregulated fertility" rates. Why do these NGO's feel they have the right to regulate birth rates? Civil society has been destroyed by decades of war and over a hundred years of exploitation of Congo's wealth by international interests. Congo is not a country. It is a place on the map where the tribal population struggles to survive. Local populations are fed up with western interests meddling in their lives.

Consider this report from the November 4 Weekly Threat Assessment issued by the UN mission in Congo, MONUC. It is a window into the anger the Congolese feel regarding conservation and medical NGO's.

Human rights abuses by men in uniform are widely reported all over the province and the FDLR continue to pose a threat to peace and security.

During the weekend, the civil society of Lubero demonstrated violently against the deterioration of the security situation in Lubero Territory since the beginning of the Kimia II operations. They presented several grievances, including urgent action to be taken against perpetrators of human rights abuses, the extrication of the FARDC from Lubero town, a stronger MONUC presence in the backing of the FARDC operations and the removal of all NGOs (claiming they want security instead of food).

"Security instead of food," and one might argue life and liberty instead of "family planning."

The statistics are heartbreaking. 83.11 deaths per 1,000 live births. Since the outbreak of fighting in August 1998, at least 5.4 million people have died. Although only 19 percent of the population consists of children, children and infants account for 47 percent of the deaths in DR Congo. How can Ashley Judd maintain that the solution for the Congolese is having fewer children?

Image © Nienaber: The camps. Are they better off not being born?

In villages around Goma, 70% to 80% of delivery cases are performed at home and only 20% to 30% are performed at medical centers. Volunteer midwives brave rape and shootings to visit these villages to assist fragile new life as babies and mothers struggle to survive. The family is the heart-center of village life. Who are American celebrities to deny women the right to bear children?

In January of this year we met with Josephine K. who has been a witness to war and brutality for most of her 86 years. She is also a founding member of a midwife grass roots organization operating out of Goma. Josephine told us that when she was a child there were hardly any white men. With the coming of "the whites," the wars became worse. "There are so many wars, what do you want me to say?"

Image © Nienaber : Midwife

Now, the white western world wants to tell these poor black women not to have so many children. When will it stop? I would invite Judd to accompany me to the IDP camps in Kivu and meet the midwives who risk all to save babies and offer mothers nourishment in order to swell shriveled breasts.

In a separate arena, conservation groups, in some cases, are using community health initiatives and birth control as a smokescreen for land grabs and fundraising. In 2007 I visited an area in the Graueri Landscape of eastern Congo as part of an investigation into NGO abuses. American mainstream press organizations, celebrities, and television shows tout wildlife conservation and community health in this region as progress. What we found was something else. Congolese doctors and nurses in these conservation arenas explained that NGO's are paying their salaries and at the same time requiring that health professionals convince the local women--the poorest woman in the world--that they should not be having babies, because having babies is "dangerous to their health." Resist chemical sterilization and you cannot use the clinic.

But the women know that three out of five babies will die, and they resist the "required" shots of Depo-Provera which line the shelves of these remote "clinics." How do conservation organizations conserve primates in the wild? They stop hungry people from trying to keep their children alive or even having children. Meanwhile the diamonds, gold, coltan, uranium and niobium flow out of these areas and into the profits of the mining cartels in America, England, Russia and China.

Based on projections made by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau, the American population is projected to increase to 392 million by 2050 -- more than a 50 percent increase from the 1990 population size.

Amazing. We look to be worse off than Africa, but no one is shoving Depo-Provera down our collective throats like the conservation and family planning organizations are doing in Africa. I hate to source myself, but no sense reinventing the blog here.

Joint operations between Congo and Rwanda since January 2009, have exacted a terrible toll on the civilian population and human rights groups have accused the United Nations of complicity. Most of the estimated 1200 deaths per day in eastern Congo are due to the ravages of war and preventable disease.

I have yet to see a major op-ed on United State's Special Envoy Howard Wolpe's call for the arrest of Bosco Ntaganda in conjunction with the failed operation Kimia II. This is something celebrities could really sink their teeth into if they would do some research on their own and not regurgitate the agenda's of NGO's. Congo unfortunately is the cause "du jour" on the cocktail circuit now that Sudan has exhausted its turn in the news cycle.

Former rebel general Jean Bosco Ntaganda, also known as "the Terminator", is a deputy commander of an anti-rebel offensive (the regular Congolese army, FARDC) that is being supported by the U.N. mission in Congo, MONUC. But the UN keeps denying it is supplying Ntaganda, despite repeated proof offered by human rights organizations.

Speaking like the diplomat he is, Wolpe offered a weak condemnation, but at least it was something coming from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's turf.

We just feel that anybody who has committed war crimes should not participate in military operations of this sort at the moment and he needs to be held accountable. We're trying now to work with (MONUC) and others to manage that situation in a way that will allow continued pressure on the FDLR but hopefully minimize the risk to civilians.

I addition, there is an un-reported and under-investigated story that the International Crimes Tribunal in the Hague is about to indict the former governor of North Kivu, Eugene Serufuli, for collusion with Ntaganda, who is already wanted by the Hague for war crimes in Ituri-Bunia, as Wolpe noted. Sources tell us it is assumed that General James Kabarebe of Rwanda financed both men and their militias.

Given the real stories coming out of Congo, it is a terrible thing to see USA Today giving op-ed space to "family planning" as a solution to the tragedy known as Congo. Judd termed the death of 8 million children worldwide "genocide," a bastardization of the term.

Judd should take some time and visit with the wise woman midwives who risk all for new life. The solution to the suffering of children is not the removal of children from the equation. I am not a religious person but the phrase, "suffer the children to come unto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," has some meaning here.

Ashley Judd is recipient of USA TODAY's Hollywood Hero Award and is also on the board of director's of Population Services International.

Alexei Dymovsky, Russia's Whistleblower Cop, Becomes Youtube Sensation

2009-11-11T12:39:07Z

MOSCOW, Russia -- Alexei Dymovsky sits in full uniform and stares at the camera with tired eyes.

An Open Letter to President Obama About Afghanistan From William R. Polk

2009-11-11T02:38:34Z

I was an early supporter of yours. So I hope you will accept the following analysis and proposals as being from a friend as well as a person with considerable experience on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In recent events I see an opportunity to accomplish American objectives while avoiding a course of action that could derail plans for your presidency, just as the Vietnam War ruined the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

Julia Gorin: My Letter Published in the Wall Street Journal : Bob Dole's Corrupted Opinion on Bosnia

2009-11-10T19:21:30Z

Below is the original version of my letter that the Wall Street Journal published today. Because of space considerations, there was no room for the whole story on Dole's sordid machinations in the Balkans, which the version below details:

It was a perverse Orwellianism to see Bob Dole opining on Bosnia in the Wall Street Journal ("Bosnia and American Exceptionalism," Oct. 23). He was criticizing President Obama for not demonstrating the traditional U.S. "leadership" in the region -- that is, urging greater centralization of government in the 44% Muslim country, and strong-arming those "recalcitrant" Serbs in the direction that the country's Muslim leadership wants to go.

For a snapshot of the Bosnia Mr. Dole hopes American leadership has created, he should look at Sarajevo, where the long tradition of Grandfather Frost -- a non-denominational Santa -- was recently banned from schools and exclusively Islamic education introduced, while Sharia police crack down on hand-holding couples and pig-shaped toys in malls. Such is the "democratic development" that Mr. Dole worries will be impeded by a more loosely organized system among the Croats, Serbs and Muslims.

He goes on to lament that "The current [U.S. and EU-sponsored] reform package will vindicate Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in his years-long, nationalist campaign to weaken and undermine the state of Bosnia..."

It's interesting to see how Milorad Dodik went from being a Western favorite to being -- what else -- a Serbian "nationalist." We saw the same labeling arch with Milosevic's pro-Western, U.S.-backed successor Vojislav Kostunica. When this Constitutional scholar didn't bend to our will on the illegal Kosovo secession, by 2005 he too was a "nationalist" according to our bureaucrats. Indeed, the man whom Bill Clinton declared a partner for peace at the 1995 Dayton Accords was none other than Slobodan Milosevic. But by 1999 we needed this multiculti socialist trying to keep the union together to become a virulent "nationalist" so that we could label as "ethnic cleansing" his belated crackdown targeting the cop-killing, civilian-dismembering, Albanian terrorists known as our friends the KLA.

Specifically, the "ethnic cleansing" was what we called the Yugoslav Army's temporarily clearing out civilians from areas where they'd get caught in the crossfire, and then it's what we called the Albanians, Serbs and everyone else running from our bombs.

If there is one place on earth where the opposite of "American exceptionalism" is on display it's the Balkans. The Dayton Accords that Bob Dole, like every other politician, cites as American leadership that "ended the war" and "brought peace" in fact achieved the same result that the 1992 Lisbon Agreement -- signed by Bosnia's Serbs, Muslims and Croats -- was about to achieve without bloodshed. But our ambassador Warren Zimmermann flew to Sarajevo with a wink and a nod to the fundamentalist Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic by essentially telling him, "You know, you don't have to settle for that; you can get more." Confident that he had Western backing, Izetbegovic promptly removed his signature and the war was on. This is well known among diplomatic circles from that time.

There is perhaps no harder realization or admission for any patriotic American to make than to understand that U.S. leadership is what ensured the horrific Bosnian war. America simply wasn't America in the 1990s, when we stoked and joined an aggressive war against a natural post-Cold War ally -- indeed our ally from two world wars -- with one goal being to win over a new global enemy, and reassure the Muslim world after Desert Storm. Yugoslavia had been the most Western-facing, Hollywood-devouring country in the Communist Bloc next to Poland, and it was useful to us against Soviet Russia -- while it was useful to us. Afterwards, it went on the chopping block.

If there is one place that calls for "multilateralism" and "dialogue" -- which Mr. Dole urges Obama against -- it's the Balkans. And if there is one thing Obama is doing right, despite his VP's violent Balkans record which Mr. Dole hails ( "All Serbs should be placed in Nazi-style concentration camps," and "Serbs are illiterate degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists" -- "Larry King", Aug 1, 1993), it's that an American president is finally listening to the very real concerns of Serbs sharing power with a Muslim majority -- rather than consistently spitting into Serbian faces the way Mr. Dole is used to America operating in the Balkans. Naturally, Mr. Dole calls this unusual non-hostility "empowering the Serb entity."

About that entity, he should try talking to a true Muslim reformer in Bosnia rather than the closet radicals we like to back. His name is Dzevad Galijasevic and in Sept. 2008 he said, "[The] Serb Republic is the better half of Bosnia...That is how it has to stay, because that is the only way that at least half of Bosnia remains unwelcoming for operatives, terrorists and al-Qaeda criminal[s]." This is because, as Galijasevic has been screaming from the rooftops, the Bosnian-Muslim third of the presidency, Haris Silajdzic, nurtures Wahhabists and harbors terrorists. Had Mr. Dole been following the Balkans at all, he would also know that increasing numbers of Serb-loathing Croatians are scampering out of Sarajevo and moving to the Serb Republic. Indeed, the Croatians are calling for a separation from Bosnia's Croat-Muslim Federation, to have an entity of their own like the Serb Republic. But it's understandable that Mr. Dole, like the other architects of our "successes" in Bosnia, doesn't want to see the charade fall apart.

Mr. Dole writes that in Bosnia "a country and its people were under attack," perpetuating the popular mythology that Bosnian Muslims, like Catholic Croatians, were responding to some kind of aggression by Yugoslavia. Aside from underscoring that our foreign policy elite is unable to grasp the basic concept that you can't "invade" your own country, the easily followable chronology shows that the multi-ethnic Yugoslav Army responded to illegal secessions and border usurpations by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia -- entities that wanted to have their own countries, where their race or religion would reign supreme. That is not an assessment -- it is documented fact, and was stated by the then leaders of those republics, by their publics, and by the discriminatory laws on their books.

In both Croatia and Bosnia, regions of Serbs who had been there for generations suddenly found themselves no longer in Yugoslavia, but at the mercy of the Croatians and Bosnians who exterminated their families in Croatia's Jasenovac camp, the third-largest and conspicuously never mentioned concentration camp system of WWII. Naturally, these Serbian populations wanted to remain part of multi-ethnic UN member Yugoslavia. Survival dictated that they secede from the secessionists. Hence, war.

The US actively aided the supremacist designs of our old WWII Croatian and Albanian enemies -- with weapons, military strategists, money and mujahedeen --alongside Iran and bin Laden himself, as the record shows, available even at the time. We then cleverly inverted the roles of aggressor and responder. It worked brilliantly every time. Because us exceptional Americans just can't be bothered with figuring out the Balkans, and so our bureaucrats and "leaders" like Bob Dole have the continued luxury of operating in the shadows.

Very much like the Dole-praised Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, who called Serbs "murderous a**holes," Mr. Dole's own blind hatred for the Serbs was on display via his wife, who as president of the American Red Cross refused to leave any supplies for Serbian babies at the sanctions-starved Serbian hospitals as her convoys made their Serb-approved way through Serbia to the Bosnian Muslims.

More directly, and more disturbingly, Mr. Dole's own anti-Serbism was bought and paid for going back to the 1970s and culminating in his unsuccessful 1986 Senate Resolution No. 150 decrying Yugoslavian repression of Kosovo Albanians -- which is what we called the boycott of Yugoslav institutions by the Albanians building up a parallel system in preparation for a turf war of their own. In these parallel institutions, the Serbian language was banned, Serbian books burned and Serbian workers fired. Our major newspapers reported on the oft-declared nationalist goal to secede and create a Greater Albania, and on the violent intimidation -- which included rape as a tool -- that was causing an exodus of Serbs and others from Kosovo. This was while the province still enjoyed autonomous status and Slobodan Milosevic hadn't even consolidated power to make a bid for presidency.

In 1987 Mr. Dole received $1.2 million from Albanian-Americans for his unsuccessful 1988 campaign against George Bush Sr. Albanian PAC money helped carry him and his wife through their 1996 and 2000 campaigns, respectively. In a July 1999 article, a researcher and Vietnam vet named Benjamin Works noted that "most of the Congressmen speaking loudest against Serbia and Serbs are those receiving money from [Joe] DioGuardi's PAC," referring to the Republican former Congressman (and father of "Idol" judge Kara DioGuardi), who after his congressional defeat discovered his Albanian roots and became Albanian for a living.

Warning against the creation of "mono-ethnic conclaves," Mr. Dole writes that "preserving and defending our values at home and promoting them abroad are essential to protecting our national interests." This, after leading the way in creating an all but mono-ethnic second Albanian state, where after our intervention even the most basic of American values -- rule of law -- doesn't exist. Instead, the Americans and other internationals operating there are being corrupted or blackmailed into falling in line with the thugocracy that we bolstered.

It's also worth mentioning that a Dole staffer advising the then congressman on foreign policy was a Croatian woman named Mira Baratta, granddaughter of an officer of the Ustasha regime (the Nazis' Croatian incarnation) and daughter of Petar Radielovic, who called Croatian Fuehrer Ante Pavelic "the greatest man in Croatian history" -- and who in 1985 defended Andrija Artukovic, "the Himmler of the Balkans" at his L.A. trial. Artukovic had said, "Kill all Serbs and Jews including children so that not even the seeds of the beasts are left." Baratta helped frame a 1995 Senate bill lifting the U.S. arms embargo against Croatia and Bosnia, and even advocated for the Albanian cause against the Serbs. To quote Richard Perle, "Other than Richard Holbrooke, Baratta has been the most influential individual in shaping U.S. policy" in the Balkans.

But again, money played a role. A March 1993 issue of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy quoted a congressional investigator saying that Croatian lobbies spent more than $50 million on Capitol Hill in two years. He added, "Elected officials are being told to either support the Croatian line or face either a removal of funding or are told that funding will be given to their opponents. Or they are literally bribed into supporting the Croatian line. This was going on long before Croatia even made its open bid for recognition as an independent state."

This sheds light on what former Senate Republican Foreign Policy Committee analyst James Jatras once told me about how when he would schedule meetings on Capitol Hill in the early 90s, to call attention to documented evidence and photos of some of the suffering in Yugoslavia, he would get the meetings easily enough. But when he would reveal that the victims of the slaughter and rape were Bosnian or Croatian Serbs, the doors would shut in his face:

Near the early stages of the Bosnia war -- this would have been in late 1992 or early 1993 -- Bishop Atanasije of Trebinje (in Herzegovina), whose diocese includes Mostar, visited me at my Senate office. He came with massive documentation of atrocities committed against his people by a militia under the command of [Croatian] Dobroslav Paraga, whose movement openly patterns itself on the WWII Ustashe. These included murders, arson, torture and rape in concentration camps. I phoned a number of Congressional offices (don't remember which ones) and media (I do remember Washington Times), telling them I had a bishop from Bosnia with information about war crimes and human rights abuses. Their response was one of positive interest until it became clear we were talking about Serbian victims. At that point the tone of conversation changed to one of hesitancy, coupled with some lame excuse why a meeting would not be possible.

Italian General Mauro Del Vecchio told Italy's "Panorama" publication earlier this year about the same phenomenon in Kosovo:

[D]uring the first three weeks of the [Kosovo] mandate "reports on the found bodies of killed Serbs and Romas arrived on his table each morning", but that was a taboo topic they were not allowed to speak about with journalists..."The killing continued later but not so frequently. Those that have not fled Kosovo were under permanent risk to be killed or raped. Deserted Serbian houses were leveled to the ground or set on fire. Albanians were attacking the churches and monasteries, too. Their goal was to erase every trace of the Serbian presence in Kosovo," Del Vecchio said...

As Mr. Works summarized, "All along it has been the ethnic nationalist fascist losers of World War II in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo who have been exploiting the political process in Germany and the United States. Their goal has been to effect the division of Yugoslavia and the cleansing of Serbian populations from their territories, while purporting that 'Greater Serbia' was the menace to European security and not the post-fascist 'Greater Croatia' and 'Greater Albania.'"

Given that Mr. Dole fought in WWII, he should be familiar with the Serbian name Draza Mihailovic, the anti-Nazi and anti-Communist Serbian guerilla commander whose men saved 513 downed American pilots in 1944 and who graced the cover of Time magazine in 1942. Shame on Bob Dole for allowing himself to be co-opted to the other side by Nazi dollars and descendants.

Mr. Dole quotes Madeleine Albright about America being "the indispensable nation," but it's thanks to their ilk that America won't remain such for long. He can thank himself for helping knock America down from exceptionalism to a for-sale thug like the rest.

As for the Journal, might it have been relevant to mention in Mr. Dole's bio that he gets a paycheck from a law firm whose senior policy advisor worked for the Bosnian-Muslims and Kosovo Albanians -- and has been Dole's foreign policy advisor since 1999? See Marshall F. Harris, of Alston & Bird LLP.

Chris Weigant: Cold War's End -- The Wall Comes Down

2009-11-09T20:17:44Z

It must be a little hard to understand, for anyone reading this under the age of about 30 or so, the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. Because one event has become historical shorthand for an immense change in the dynamics of not just our country, but the entire world. We've all seen the pictures of an exuberant crowd at the Brandenburg Gate (or "Checkpoint Charlie"), seemingly tearing The Wall down with their bare hands. But it wasn't just one wall, or one city, or even one country that the events in Berlin were changing -- it was the entire political makeup of the planet. Because the fall of The Wall signified the fall of the Soviet Union, and an end to the Cold War. And while this was of enormous historical import, I fear that future generations won't really pay much attention to it. Truth be told, I can already feel it slipping away in the American consciousness. Which, while I understand the impulse, I still think is a shame. Because as the Cold War is forgotten, passing into the dusty pages of children's history books, we run the risk of forgetting some of its lessons.

The Cold War was a war of shadows. It only erupted into outright (or "hot") wars in limited ways and limited areas (Korea, Vietnam, various Central American and African skirmishes). The history books do a fine job of marking these flareups (since they have concrete facts like battles and dates), distilling them into a couple of paragraphs for bored schoolchildren to read. But these are mere trees; the forest left unseen was the national fear which every sane man, woman, and child felt for almost half a century -- the fear of instant and total annihilation from a massive nuclear strike. And that is the lesson which is in danger of being forgotten, at least in my humble opinion.

The single-most stunning political prophecy which has even been written in American history was written by a Frenchman. In the 1830s -- when the United States of America was barely a half-century old itself, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, as the final words to the first volume of Democracy In America (it sold so well, he went back and wrote a sequel later; at the urging of his publisher, no doubt) a fairly accurate description of the Cold War -- over one hundred years before it happened. What Tocqueville wrote, in the time of Andrew Jackson:

There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.

Both have grown in obscurity, and while the world's attention was occupied elsewhere, they have suddenly taken their place among the leading nations, making the world take note of their birth and of their greatness almost at the same instant.

All other peoples seem to have nearly reached their natural limits and to need nothing but to preserve them; but these two are growing. All the others have halted or advanced only through great exertions; they alone march easily and quickly forward along a path whose end no eye can yet see.

The American fights against natural obstacles; the Russian is at grips with men. The former combats the wilderness and barbarism; the latter, civilization with all its arms. America's conquests are made with the plowshare, Russia's with the sword.

To attain their aims, the former relies on personal interest and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.

The latter in a sense concentrates the whole power of society in one man.

One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude.

Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

As you can see, this is a fairly accurate description of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, given the limitations Tocqueville faced in making such a prediction (he did not, you'll notice, foresee the rise of communism and overthrow of the czars). But his last sentence stands as the absolute gold standard of political prediction, for this country's history at least.

Because that was what the Cold War was all about. It was seen as a global struggle for territory, and for hearts and minds, between two "super" powers. Democracy and Communism were in the mightiest struggle this planet has ever seen, each competing to gain enough strength to destroy the other. And each side had nuclear weapons. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of them. Thousands and thousands of A-bombs and H-bombs. Back then the term "ground zero" held only one meaning -- the point directly under a nuclear explosion. Not to be disrespectful, but it never would have entered our minds back then to cheapen this frightening term by applying it to anything less, no matter how horrifying.

All of America (and, one assumes without having too much data, all of the Soviet Union as well) lived with the constant fear that these bombs could drop at any time. The college I attended had, just to remind you (in those anti-nuke-movement days), little arrows painted here and there stating "9.2 miles to ground zero," since we had an Air Force base nearby. But virtually nowhere in America (where anybody actually lived) was truly deemed safe. Everywhere was a potential target for an atom bomb, for one reason or another. And, again, the bombs could have dropped any day during that time.

It's tough for younger readers who were not exposed to this mindset to understand what this meant in terms of daily life. I came of age in the later parts of the Cold War, and didn't even see the craziness of the early parts (the McCarthy era, the backyard bomb shelter craze, the Civil Defense air raid drills, and all the rest of it). By the time I came on the scene, most of these had faded. But the background anxiety remained. The Emergency Broadcast System was just beginning to be used for natural disasters, when I was growing up. It was created, of course, to warn us all that the bombs were coming. And it was tested frequently ("bee-eee-eee-eee-eep"), so you'd remember it was there. Likewise, the first of the month at noon the local neighborhood air raid sirens would be tested. And the knowledge that everything around you could be incinerated in a flash was always present.

Children today, thankfully, grow up largely without this awareness (even though the danger still does indeed exist, America and Russia have largely buried the hatchet -- at least for now -- so the danger is not viewed as imminent). They don't do "duck and cover" drills in elementary schools anymore, in other words. Truth be told, by the time I was in school, people had mostly figured out the ludicrousness of hiding under your desk when the whole building was likely to be vaporized in an attack, so I never experienced such drills myself.

America has so rarely been directly attacked on our own territory that such overreaction is understandable. There was 9/11, of course. There was Pearl Harbor and a few Aleutian islands during World War II -- back when Hawai'i and Alaska weren't even states, merely territories. And there was the War of 1812, when the British burned the original White House. But that's about it, not counting the Civil War (since it didn't directly involve foreigners). During World War II, both the East and West Coasts of America prepared for attacks and invasions, but thankfully they never came. We simply didn't have to go through anything akin to the Blitz in London.

Americans, to put it bluntly, are not used to having bombs dropped on us. And with the arms race which took place during the Cold War, all of a sudden one bomb could obliterate an entire city. And thousands of those bombs were in the hands of people we considered downright unstable, if not outright insane. The threat of a "first strike" was the biggest fear, because we, as a nation, demonized the Soviets until they were barely recognizable as human beings. This happens in any war, I should mention -- cold or hot. But these "evil monsters" were capable of such widespread and massive destruction that it literally changed the psychology of our entire country for almost 50 years.

And when the Berlin Wall came down, it symbolized the end of that era. The Soviet Union's disintegration meant America could finally take a deep breath and heave an enormous sigh of relief. We had won the long battle of wits. The Cold War was over.

That is what The Wall coming down meant. That is why it was important, beyond the boundaries of one city in Europe. It was the end of an era for the entire planet.

My personal Berlin Wall story, such as it is: I was in Berlin about eleven months after The Wall came down, in 1990. I visited Brandenburg Gate, but didn't see the statue of the horses on top, because they had taken them down to be cleaned. Oh, well. But on the site was an open-air bazaar of East Germans selling anything they thought the tourists would buy. You could buy as big -- and as graffitied -- a chuck of The Wall as you could afford. You could also buy all sorts of other things. The military mementos were simply stunning. I could have, for a hundred bucks or so, bought a full East German general's dress uniform -- although the medals would have run me a little extra. Because I couldn't really see a use for such a thing for myself, I took a pass. But I did buy one of those fuzzy Russian hats with the ear flaps, which were standard issue for their militaries. It had a big metal star on it (red, of course), with a hammer-and-sickle icon in the middle. Being a Californian, I don't have a lot of use for such a hat, but I did wear it recently (minus the big red star, I wasn't making any sort of political statement, just keeping my ears from freezing off) to Barack Obama's inauguration.

But back to Berlin. Being eleven months late for the party, we found no Wall at Brandenburg Gate. We got some advice, headed off on the U-bahn, and got off were we had been directed. It was a very strange place. Imagine, if you will, a city park. This park is long, but rather narrow, as it stretches and curves off into the distance. It seems like a grassy place where soccer fields should be, until you notice the oddity of the enormous light poles dotting the landscape. The Wall was gone -- but its ghost remained. You could easily see where it had been, and which side had wanted to keep an eye on it (in West Berlin, it ran right up to buildings and streets, because nobody cared how close to it you got in the West -- the dogs, the mines, the snipers, the floodlights and all the rest were all on the East side). We followed a line of other tourists, to a section of the Wall which hadn't been torn down yet. When we got there, we paid a few marks to some enterprising Ossies (who were much better at the whole capitalism game than the sad former soldiers at Brandenburg, selling off their former glory). They had little hammers and chisels, which they would rent to you (until you got tired), for a few marks.

So not only did I get to see the actual Wall, I got to chip off my own little chunks and flakes of it. I brought enough back from my trip to give one out to all the members of my extended family who were younger than I. All the cousins and nieces and nephews opened their holiday presents from me that December... and were likely profoundly disappointed in what they saw. A little flake of concrete, with a dash of paint on it. "This is what Chris is giving out this year?" I could almost hear them collectively say. I don't even know if any of them kept them, truth be told. But I wanted them to own a little piece of history, so they might understand a little bit of what all the kids who grew up before them had to live through. At the very least, I hope they got some "show and tell" points at school with them.

I did keep one chunk for myself, though. I have it here on my desk. I was extremely late to the party, as I said, but I like to think that I did my own tiny, tiny bit -- with a little rock collector's hammer and chisel, rented from a former communist -- striking my own little blow for freedom.

[Note: I couldn't really find a way to work this in to the story, as it would have been a distraction, but if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend Roger Waters' live performance of Pink Floyd's The Wall, which was staged and filmed at the Brandenburg Gate site the same year I was there (no, I didn't get to see it). It is the most surreal overlap of art and reality (which is imitating which?) I have ever seen, complete with East German military displays (as part of the staging), as well as cameos from a seriously eclectic group of artists (the only time, I would warrant, that Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, and Tim Curry ever shared a stage -- to name but three). If you've heard the album before, but never seen this "concert flick," I would urge you to do so as soon as possible.]

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

NEW! Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Chechen human rights activist abducted in Moscow

2009-11-05T12:31:52Z

MOSCOW — A Russian rights group said Chechen authorities on Thursday abducted a human rights advocate in Moscow who has been critical of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader.

Arbi Khachukayev was detained by Chechen security officers and was flown to the Chechen capital of Grozny against his will, the Memorial group said. It said it learned about his abduction when he was being taken to the Vnukovo airport outside Moscow.

Harut Sassounian: Internal Documents Reveal UK Officials Misled Parliament on Armenian Genocide

2009-11-04T18:46:40Z

A prominent legal expert, Mr. Geoffrey Robertson, exposed this week the false and inaccurate statements on the Armenian Genocide made by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The international jurist revealed that for many years the FCO (Foreign Ministry) had misled the British Parliament on the facts of the Armenian Genocide in order to curry favor with the Turkish government.

The 40-page meticulously researched report, commissioned by the Armenian Centre of London, is based on hitherto secret documents obtained from the Foreign Office through the Freedom of Information Act. Mr. Robertson, the author of a report titled, "Was there an Armenian Genocide?" served as first President of the UN War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Robertson had to make repeated requests over several months to the British government in order to obtain internal documents that the Foreign Office was legally obligated to release. According to the FCO, some of the documents were not released at all, while those eventually made public were partially blacked out, in order not to damage Britain's relations with Turkey.

In his report, Mr. Robertson explains that he was given the task "to consider the attitude of the British government in refusing to accept that the massacres of Armenians in 1915-16 amounted to genocide, and whether its reasons for taking this position are valid and sustainable in international law."

Regrettably, today's British officials have forgotten their government's declaration, issued jointly with France and Russia on May 28, 1915, warning that "in view of the crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization," the three great powers would hold responsible "all members of the Ottoman government" who are implicated in the Armenian massacres.

The recently obtained internal documents reveal the Foreign Office's misleading, false and sinister intent. In a 1999 memorandum, addressed to Minister of State for Europe Joyce Quin and others, the FCO stated that it is not the British government's obligation to decide what constitutes genocide: "Investigating, analyzing and interpreting history is a matter for historians." In contrast, Attorney Robertson points out the government's "basic error" in relying "on historians to decide a legal issue." He explains that "deciding what amounts to genocide is a matter for judgment according to international law, and not at all is a matter for historians. Historians establish facts: lawyers must judge whether those facts amount to a breach of international law."

In the same memorandum, the Foreign Office states that there is no documentary evidence proving that the mass killings of Armenians were a result of deliberate state policy. Mr. Robertson calls this statement "another canard -- that appears routinely and repeatedly" in internal FCO communications -- "the notion that there must be some written document that records a government or leadership decision to exterminate the Armenian people." Mr. Robertson points out that "no such document, of course, exists in relation to the Nazi Holocaust."

Clearly, the Foreign Office is more concerned about the domestic and overseas ramifications of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide than the crime of genocide itself. Mr. Robertson points out: "the memorandum goes on rather cynically to consider the clout of the campaign to recognise the genocide and notes that 'the campaign does not appear at this stage to have enough support or direction to seriously embarrass HMG [Her Majesty's Government].'"

The Foreign Office also places a higher premium on appeasing Turkey than on the moral issues arising from the attempted extermination of an entire nation. "HMG is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimension," the FCO readily admits. "But given the importance of our relations (political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey, and that recognising the genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK or the few survivors of the killings still alive today, nor would it help a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey, the current line is the only feasible option." Mr. Robertson sarcastically, yet sadly, remarks: "This particular genocide could not be recognised -- not because it had not taken place, but because it was politically and commercially inconvenient to do so."

Another false argument advanced by the Foreign Office in several memoranda is the contention that the UN Genocide Convention of 1948 has no retroactive effect and therefore, does not apply to the Armenian Genocide. Mr. Robertson, a top expert in the field of international law, quickly quashes this "bad point," because "the rule against retroactivity applies to criminal charges, made against individuals, of offences which were not against the law at the time they were allegedly committed. Nobody is suggesting that criminal charges should be brought now against long dead individuals -- the question is whether the massacre of the Armenians is correctly described as 'genocide,' according to the definition adopted by the UN Convention in 1948."

British Minister of State for Europe, Joyce Quin, was so incensed by her government's extremism in "genocide denial," and its allegation that there was no evidence of a Turkish intent to commit genocide that, in an April 13, 1999 memorandum to the Foreign Office, she pointed out that the issue of intent had never been examined by government officials.

Mr. Robertson's report then relates the diplomatic scandal involving Thorda Abott-Watt, the British Ambassador to Armenia, who shamelessly questioned the veracity of the Armenian Genocide during a 2004 interview in Yerevan . She stated that the evidence regarding the Armenian Genocide "was not sufficiently unequivocal" to be categorized as genocide under the UN Genocide Convention. In response to several columns I wrote at that time, thousands of readers worldwide inundated the British Foreign Office and the Armenian Foreign Ministry with letters of complaint. The Armenian government finally delivered a "Note verbale" (protest note) to the British government. Mr. Robertson uncovered an internal FCO memorandum written during that controversy, suggesting that the British government maintain its denialist policy, since Turkey "devotes major diplomatic resources to heading off any possible recognition. Turkey would react very strongly indeed to any suggestion of recognition by the UK ."

In his examination of the hundreds of pages of recently released documents, Mr. Robertson came across "only one obscure and dismissive reference" by the Foreign Office to the "one credible international inquiry" that classified the Armenian mass killings as Genocide. This unique study was carried out in 1985 by the British Special Rapporteur, Benjamin Whitaker, at the request of the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. To his chagrin, Mr. Robertson found out that the Foreign Office had issued a memorandum advising government ministers to dismiss the UN 1985 report by stating that "since then, we are not aware of it being mentioned in any UN document or forum."

Even after several European countries had recognized the Armenian Genocide, the Foreign Office continued to stubbornly cling to its denialist policy by advising Minister of State for Europe, Geoff Hoon, that "Turkey is neuralgic and defensive about the charge of genocide despite the fact that the events occurred at the time of the Ottoman Empire as opposed to modern day Turkey. There were many Turks who lost their lives in the war and there may also be an element of concern over compensation claims should they accept the charge of genocide. This defensiveness has meant that Turkey has historically stifled debate at home and devoted considerable diplomatic effort to dissuading any further recognition."

Finally, in October 2007, when the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, the Foreign Office wrote an alarming memorandum, expressing concern that "the Armenian diaspora worldwide lobbying machine" would now "go into overdrive!"

Mr. Robertson, based on his examination of the released internal documents written over a 10-year period, concludes that the advice given by the British Foreign Office to government ministers "reflects neither the law of genocide nor the demonstrable facts of the massacres in 1915-16, and has been calculated to mislead parliament into believing that there has been an assessment of evidence and an exercise of judgment on that evidence."

Mr. Robertson further establishes that the "parliament has been routinely misinformed, by ministers who have recited FCO briefs without questioning their accuracy. HMG's [Her Majesty's Government] real and only policy has been to evade truthful answers to questions about the Armenian genocide, because the truth would discomfort the Turkish government!"

In view of revelations of such misconduct and misrepresentation, the British Parliament should hold formal hearings and investigate the conduct of all officials who provided false and misleading information to Parliament members for well over a decade. Those found to be either negligent in carrying out their duties or complicit in providing outright falsehoods, should have charges filed against them or dismissed from their governmental posts.

In addition, Mr. Robertson, a pre-eminent international jurist, should be asked to file legal action against the Turkish government in British courts, and more importantly, in the European Court of Human Rights.

Russ Wellen: When Will the U.S. and Russia Stop Acting Like It's Still the Cold War?

2009-11-04T10:52:04Z

Sometimes it seems as if neither the United States nor Russia got the message that the Cold War ended almost two decades ago. Last week I wrote about the Dooomsday Device, a back-up defense system that Russia developed in the 80's. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, it ensures that, even if no civilian and military leaders are still around to issue the command, a retaliatory nuclear attack will still be launched. Depending on your point of view, it's either the ultimate in deterrence or the most senseless act of revenge ever.

In fact, it was engineered in response to U.S. plans to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative (missile defense) at the height of the Cold War. The United States claimed that missile defense was just an innocuous defense from an initial attack. But the Soviet Union interpreted "Star Wars" as a shield behind which the United States could mount a nuclear attack, secure in the knowledge that Russia's retaliatory warheads would, in effect, be just rain falling on an umbrella.

Like missile defense, Dead Hand, as the Russians call their Doomsday Device, exists to this day. Except theirs actually works.

If Russia clings to a Cold War mentality in other ways as well, who can blame it? The era combined the best of both worlds:

Stability, for those who believed in the illusion of deterrence, and ...

Life on the edge, for those who knew the true extent to which the United States and the Soviet Union were actually at each other's throats during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan administrations.

Recently discussions were held in Moscow between Russian foreign ministry officials and representatives of Global Zero, the disarmament group that comprises former heads of state, foreign ministers, defense ministers, national security advisors, and military commanders. But it turns out Russia's not ready for a new round of disarmament talks (at least not with those out of power).

The AP reports:

[Ground Zero member Richard] Burt said Russian officials appear to be concerned that steep cuts in their nuclear arsenal will leave them vulnerable to military threats.

"There is I think a feeling in certain circles in the Russian defense establishment that their conventional forces are rundown and as a result they're going to have to rely more on their nuclear forces," Burt said.

Hasn't that rationale informed many of Russia's defense policies -- as well as those of the United States at times -- since the dawn of the nuclear age? According to a 2003 Nonproliferation Review article by Harold Feiveson and Ernst Jan Hogendoorn:

For Russia, the end of the Cold War did impact the country's no-first-use policy -- but in an unexpected direction. In 1993 -- facing a precipitous drop in conventional military strength -- Russia renounced the 1982 policy of no first use, and changed its declaratory policy to maintaining the option to use nuclear weapons against any nuclear armed aggressor, including non-nuclear states allied with a nuclear weapons state.

Today, not only is Russia dragging its feet on disarmament, but, as Simon Saradzhyan reports for Zurich's International Relations and Security Network: [Russia's] 2000 Military Doctrine asserts that Russia "reserves the right" to use nuclear weapons first "in response to large-scale aggression using conventional weapons in situations [such as] regional war."

Not only is Russia dragging its feet on disarmament by continuing to retain the right to first use -- in a regional war, no less -- but, "Changes in the [follow-up] to the 2000 document include [allowing] use of nuclear weapons when repelling an aggression [in] even a local war." Bear in mind that Russia's "pledge to use nuclear weapons to defend itself and its allies failed to deter Russia's foes" in the regional conflicts that it's faced thus far in Chechnya and South Ossetia (not to mention Georgia). [Emphasis added.]

In fact, Saradzhyan quotes a retired Russian general who "argued that the new doctrine looks 'detached from reality'." Worst of all, he writes, "The planned expansion of the use of nuclear weapons will raise a lot of questions on how it conforms with" President Medvedev's May 2009 commitment to Global Zero, which, five months later, looks like a passing fancy on his part.

First Strike Culpability

If you believe that nuclear weapons provide a sound deterrent, it's likely you assume that first-strike capability is the backbone of deterrence. A policy of no-first-use would remove a weight from your pan of the scale that monitors nuclear balance and deposit it in that of your designated enemy's. In other words, if the United States declared no-first-use, its foe might jump to the conclusion that, should push come to shove, a red carpet has been laid out for it to strike first. Since U.S. nuclear installations are prime targets, the ability of the United States to retaliate would be severely compromised.

As Feiveson and Hogendoorn explain in their Nonproliferation Review article, it was the Eisenhower administration that first adopted first-use as national security policy. One of its directives read: "In the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be available for use as other munitions." [Emphasis added.]

Here we have as clear a depiction as one could want of how the military views nuclear weapons: There's no qualitative difference between them and conventional weapons. To the military, nuclear weapons don't constitute a fundamental break in the weapons continuum nor do they invoke visions of the apocalypse and evoke elemental ethical questions. They're just an inevitable development in the history of bombs. Of course, in recent years, because of the constraints on their use, the Pentagon has grown less enamored of nuclear weapons.

Forty years later, not much had changed. Of the Bush administration, the authors write: "... the United States was diplomatically disavowing the use of nuclear weapons except in certain extreme circumstances, and yet at the same time, hedging the disavowal to allow the greatest possible latitude for the use of nuclear weapons."

Despite what many think, hedging doesn't imply straddling two domains. Just the opposite in fact, it's defined as planting a barrier to protect your own. Either way, it's effect is to muddy the waters.

For example, does a state's first-use policy apply only to other nuclear states, or to non-nuclear states as well? What could possibly drive a nuclear state to attack a non-nuclear state with nuclear weapons?

The nuclear state might feel that the non-nuclear state is acting with impunity because it's protected by another nuclear state. More likely the nuclear state is operating under the assumption that the non-nuclear state is about to launch an attack with either the B or the C team of weapons of mass destruction -- Biological and Chemical weapons. Never mind that, a policy of first use against WMD runs the risk of watering down the concept of deterrence by diverting it into streams other than the nuclear.

Meanwhile, above the fray -- though not exactly occupying the moral high ground because it's got nuclear weapons, too -- stands China. Feiveson and Hogendoorn write:

China . .. remains the only declared nuclear weapons state that has maintained a largely unhedged no-first-use policy, and in 1995 reiterated its commitment that "China undertakes not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances."

During the U.N. Security Council meeting on disarmament that President Obama convened in September, as the Guardian reported ...

China pushed to have a clause included in today's resolution calling on weapons states to emulate its own "no first use" policy, but the US has long resisted such an undertaking, reserving the right to carry out a pre-emptive strike. But Obama is pressing the Pentagon to consider radical changes to US doctrine to downgrade the role of nuclear weapons.

One would hope that our next nuclear posture review disavows first use of nuclear weapons. Unless nuclear states can shed the Cold War mentality once and for all, it's hard to be optimistic about the long-terms prospects for disarmament.

Cross-posted at the Faster Times.

Think Tank's Advice To Europe: Stop 'Fetishizing' American Relationship

2009-11-03T17:20:53Z

The council released a study on Monday called "Toward a Post-American Europe," based on wide-ranging interviews and research conducted in the 27 EU member states. In it, the authors make a clear appeal to European leaders: This "fetishization" of the trans-Atlantic relationship must stop, write Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney. It is high time that Europe declare a new, "post-American" age and do away with old myths about the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Oleg Kozlovsky: Human Rights Protesters Arrested in Moscow for Demanding Freedom of Assembly

2009-11-03T12:40:52Z

Another protest rally was dispersed Saturday night by Moscow police. The action was a part of the so called Strategy 31 -- a campaign in support of freedom of assembly guaranteed by paragraph 31 of the Russian Constitution. This basic right to hold peaceful demonstrations is routinely violated by the authorities: Major opposition rallies are banned, often without any legal grounds, their participants get arrested and beaten by the police. The situation is particularly bad in Moscow where all government institutions are located and authorities are especially rigid (although legislation is the same in all regions).

As a part of this Strategy 31, several human rights and political activists (as different as prominent Soviet dissident and human rights defender Lyudmila Alexeeva and radical left-wing opposition leader Eduard Limonov, for example) decided to hold a demonstration at Triumfalnaya Square in downtown Moscow on October 31. The action was, as usual, banned; the authorities explained that some kind of a "military-patriotic celebration" was planned for the same time at the same place. In order not to provoke arrests, organizers told participants not to bring any flags or banners or chant slogans. "How long will the police stay there?" they asked, and suggested that people should wait until the police leave the square.

The government had different plans, however. In order to find a pretext to arrest participants of the action, members of Rossiya Molodaya (Young Russia), a Kremlin-aligned youth group (a part of the so-called Putin Youth), were used as provocateurs. They began lighting flares, chanting slogans and throwing leaflets (mocking the opposition) in the middle of the crowd. The police were ready: They arrested the Putin Youth and many regular participants around as well as Limonov. The provocateurs were soon released without any charge while Limonov himself may face up to 15 days imprisonment for "disobeying police orders."

This provocation was also a signal to start a crackdown on the protesters, most of whom were standing steadily and silently according to the general plan. About 70 people were arrested. Police officers simply pointed at certain activists and they were immediately dragged into police vans. Many others were arrested for just being too close to the scene. Although no resistance was offered, policemen and soldiers beat people while dragging them. According to Russian bloggers, the police even went so far as to try to arrest an American diplomat, Vice-Consul Robert Bond who was observing the rally. Photos of Mr Bond surrounded by the police and showing them his ID card have been posted in many blogs.

I was arrested while trying to tweet what I saw. Apparently, one of the officers recognized me. Along with some 20 more people in the bus I was taken to a police station where we were charged with ... lighting flares, chanting slogans and throwing leaflets -- the ones that the Putin Youth were throwing. As the police officers were filling in the papers with these fake charges, we looked at the walls of the police station's lecture hall. Portraits of proud police officers as well as of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev hung there next to Yagoda, Ezhov and Beriya, the three heads of Stalin's NKVD and Gulag.

As democracy and civil rights in Russia are diminishing with every year, the country is becoming more and more a police state. The voice of dissent is silenced by cynical and cruel country leadership. At the same time, Western public opinion and governments generally turn a blind eye to this trend in hope to buy the Kremlin's favour.

PS: Two days before the event, police SWAT had a drill in the nearby-Moscow city of Balashikha. They were trained, according to the script, to disperse "a group of senior citizens who demanded social support and blocked a federal highway." In order to do this, the whole arsenal was used by the police: water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas. The "pensioners" were blocked, many arrested. Bloggers called it ironically a "Russian welfare service."

Mikhail Gorbachev: 20 Years Later, Europe Must Address Divisions And Mistrust

2009-11-03T09:42:04Z

The year 1989 was a turning point for Europe and for the world, a time when history went into high gear. This acceleration was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the velvet revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes were exiting the stage of history.

Russia Tries To Kick The Vodka Habit

2009-11-02T17:34:41Z

MYTISHCHI, Russia It was late on a Monday afternoon at the drunk tank in this Moscow suburb, but it could have been any day, at any hour, at any similar facility across this land. People would come. They always do. Such is Russia's ruinous penchant for the bottle and the challenge facing a new government policy to curb it.

Shabattai Kalmanovich Dead: Former KGB Spy Killed In Moscow

2009-11-02T15:57:26Z

MOSCOW — A Russian businessman who had been convicted in Israel of being a KGB spy was shot dead in Moscow on Monday, police said.

Shabattai Kalmanovich, 60, a colorful figure with a passion for basketball, was gunned down near his apartment in central Moscow by unidentified gunmen who shot at his Mercedes from a passing car, firing at least 20 bullets, Moscow city police said.

Russia Infuriates Poland With "Simulated' Nuclear Attack

2009-11-02T09:58:26Z

Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

Best Places For Smokers Traveling Abroad: A Top-10 List

2009-11-01T20:57:25Z

With so many places around the world instituting smoking regulations, increasing taxes and, quite literally, kicking smokers to the curb, it's getting harder to find cigarette-friendly vacation spots.