The Evil Kingdom

Colombo, Sri Lanka, 8 July 2011 (Photo: Eranga Jayawardena/AP)

[update below]

That’s how a friend—who travels frequently to the Middle East for work—referred to Saudi Arabia to me in an email the other day, after reading about the judicial murder there of Rizana Nafeek, the young Sri Lankan woman who worked as a domestic slave servant in that benighted country. I responded with something I’ve been saying since early in the last decade, which is that the creation of Saudi Arabia in the 1920s—of the conquest of the Hijaz (civilized) by the Wahhabi tribes of the Najd (uncivilized)—was one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. Now I’m not one to essentialize countries but there are two in this world that I consider to be particularly depraved and malevolent, and in almost every respect—politically, geopolitically, culturally, morally, you name it—, one being Russia, the other Saudi Arabia. And insofar as both countries are able to project power and influence beyond their borders, they are also dangerous, particularly in their respective regions. It is hardly a surprise that most of the peoples and nations that border Russia fear and loathe that country. Just to go to Warsaw and ask around (for the anecdote, some eight years ago a Russian student of mine—from a Vladimir Putin-supporting family and who was not particularly politicized herself—told me that Russia’s neighbors had good reason to fear her country). As for Saudi Arabia, just ask a few dozen people at random in Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, Tunis, Casablanca, or anywhere else in the Arab world what they think of Saudis (not just the royal family but also as people). Answer: a significant majority will tell you that they’re barbarians (as the Muslim Sri Lankans in the photos here manifestly deem them to be). It may not be nice to essentialize a whole people in such terms—and it is certainly not reputable intellectually—but that’s the reality of how Saudis are viewed by those—mostly other Arabs and Muslims—who’ve had to deal with them.

I’m thinking about this at the present moment, having just read Indian-Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer’s commentary in The New Yorker on Rizana Nafeek’s beheading. Read it and fume. And if you want to fume some more, see the links in my post of 18 months ago on this same subject. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if Saudi Arabia could be broken into three parts?: an independent Hijaz restored to the Hashemites (and with Jordan becoming a Palestinian state—including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, of course); the oil-rich, Shi’ite-majority Gulf coast area a United Nations protectorate (and with the oil revenues used to fund the UN and its specialized agencies, the World Bank, and IMF); and the Saudis in the Najd left to fend for themselves, bereft of oil and the holy places. Just dreaming…

UPDATE: The web site Migrant Rights has an informative post on “Who failed Rizana Nafeek?,” which is severely critical of the Sri Lankan government’s handling of the affair.

(Photo: AFP)

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Is it racist to call Russians racist?

[N.B. This post has been revised since its initial publication]

The English edition of Pravda published an op-ed last week entitled “Obama’s Soviet Mistake,” by one Xavier Lerma (who is identified only with a link to his blog, which is where Pravda got it—high journalistic standards they have there in Russia—, but which contains no biographical information). The op-ed is a doozy, which has to be read to be believed. I posted it on FB, which led to an exchange on Russia with a couple of FB friends and with me declaring that

I have no hesitation in saying that I find Russia a dangerous and frightening country. Any country where neo-Nazi gangs can roam the streets in the heart of the capital city and murder dark-skinned people with impunity, with the tacit approval of the citizenry and the police looking the other way, has serious mental problems. And then there’s Vladimir Putin, so hugely popular until only recently.

I have written as much in recent months on AWAV (go to the Russia/ex-USSR category and see the ‘Elena’ and ‘Russia: Mafia state’ posts). This reminded me of an op-ed in Haaretz from earlier this month, on Russians in Israel and racism, which I kept. Here it is. Notable passages are highlighted in bold. The author is a historian at Hebrew University. Given his name, one would assume he has intimate, personal knowledge of the phenomenon, i.e. that he knows of what he speaks.

Since Barack Obama was elected president, one of the most popular jokes in Putin’s Russia is: “Obama’s election as president – the black humor of Americans.” Would it be racist to argue that a cultural group which embraces such a joke is a group characterized by clear racist tendencies?

By Dmitry Shumsky | Nov.05, 2012

Since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008, one of the most popular jokes in Putin’s Russia – and its cultural diaspora around the world, including in Israel – is: “Obama’s election as president – the black humor of Americans.” The question is: Would it be racist to argue that a cultural group which embraces such a joke is a group characterized by clear racist tendencies or would such an argument in fact be anti-racist, since it diagnoses a worrying trend of racism among a population with a shared past of sorts?

Such a question could also be asked of Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On’s comparison between Yisrael Beiteinu’s leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Russia’s leader, President Vladimir Putin. Would it be racist to postulate that there is some common denominator between two politicians who come from a single country that no longer exists, who rose to greatness thanks in no small part to the former citizens of that country, and who have both demonstrated loyalty to that country’s tradition of suppressing civil rights? Or perhaps the opposite is the case; maybe such a theory demonstrates the post-Soviet phenomenon of racism in a broad context.

The Soviet state carried out an unprecedented human experiment. On the one hand, the concepts of enlightenment and equality, morality, human dignity and human freedom flooded the public space ad nauseam. On the other hand, in the absence of an open society and without any possibility of public oversight, the most despicable of human drives were awakened and ran wild.

All you need to do is see the tormentors in the somewhat subversive Soviet movies from the end of the Soviet era to get an impression of the extent of the social Darwinism, the deification of belligerence in relations between groups and individuals, and the contempt for the different and the weak – categories that included many Soviet citizens in the 1970s and ’80s. Those who did not live in the Soviet Union of that era, or have not researched it thoroughly, will find it difficult to imagine the low point to which the ethics governing civil and political life plummeted as the result of that experimentation.

The inconceivable gap between the rhetoric of civil and national equality and the reality of social Darwinism gone crazy and institutional discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin caused many Soviet citizens to see the concepts of enlightenment, humanism and equality as the culprits. They thought the ideas themselves, rather than those who corrupted them, were inherently false and hypocritical.

And so the average native Israeli is wrong to say, as Ari Shavit did in his opinion piece last week, that “the immigrants from Russia sought to escape a tyrannical political culture and not replicate it.” Most Lieberman voters, like most Putin voters in Russia, want to live in a country that will not make use of the corrupted version of equality and humanism and that will not, even for the sake of appearances, futilely fight discrimination among various groups, since they see such discrimination as the legitimate expression of human nature.

Putin voters in today’s Russia have, in large part, succeeded in fulfilling this political and social vision. Lieberman voters in Israel are likely to do so in the near future. As such, a comparison between Putin and Lieberman is not racist. On the contrary, it is an expression of the protest against a wave of post-Soviet racism, on the part of those who do not want a joke like “Obama’s election as president – the black humor of Americans” to take root in Israel as well.

On the subject of Russia, there is a lengthy review by Amy Knight in the Nov. 22nd New York Review of Books on John B. Dunlop’s The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule. It begins

In 2000 Sergei Kovalev, then the widely respected head of the Russian organization Memorial, observed in these pages that the apartment bombings in Russia in September 1999, which killed three hundred people and wounded hundreds of others, “were a crucial moment in the unfolding of our current history. After the first shock passed, it turned out that we were living in an entirely different country….”

The bombings, it will be recalled, were blamed on Chechen rebels and used as a pretext for Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin to launch a bloody second war against Chechnya, a republic in the Russian Federation. They also were crucial events in promoting Vladimir Putin’s takeover of the Russian presidency as Yeltsin’s anointed successor in 2000 and in ensuring his dominance over the Russian political scene ever since.

As John Dunlop points out in The Moscow Bombings of September 1999, the attacks were the equivalent for Russians of September 11, 2001, for Americans. They aroused a fear of terrorism—along with a desire for revenge against the Chechens—that Russians had not known since Stalin used the supposed terrorist threat as a pretext to launch his bloody purges of the 1930s. Yet unlike in the American case, Russian authorities have stonewalled all efforts to investigate who was behind these acts of terror and why they happened. In the words of Russian journalist Yuliya Kalinina: “The Americans several months after 11 September 2001 already knew everything—who the terrorists were and where they come from…. We in general know nothing.”

Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, seeks in his book to provide the “spade work” for an official Russian inquiry, if it ever were to be initiated (a highly doubtful proposition as long as Putin remains in power). He draws on investigative reporting by Russian journalists, accounts of Russian officials in law enforcement agencies, eyewitness testimony, and the analyses of Western journalists and academics. The evidence he provides makes an overwhelming case that Russian authorities were complicit in these horrific attacks.

Knight’s review, which is entitled “Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings,” is a must read for those wishing to understand the workings of power in Russia, of the us et coutumes of the men who run that country—and always have—, not to mention their level of morality and consideration for human life. One consequence of the 1999 bombings that Knight does not get into, as it is outside the scope of her essay, was the upsurge in violent racist attacks against Chechens—and against Caucasians and Central Asians more generally—across Russia. Not that virulent racism against the large migrant communities from the ex-Soviet periphery hadn’t existed before, but it became that much more so. Apart from a few isolated incidents there was no such reaction to Arabs in the US after 9/11. Knight’s essay is available to NYRB subscribers only but may be read in full here.

Slide mouse over the photo for explanation. It is taken from a 2006 piece, “Russia: Racism ‘Out Of Control,’ Says Amnesty.”

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Russia in the Islamic world

Interesting commentary—with a somewhat misleading title—by Sergey Markedonov on the veritable reasons behind Russia’s support of the Ba’athist regime in the civil war in Syria. It’s linked, among other factors, to Russia’s history—past and present—in the North Caucasus. It tends to be overlooked that the greatest European colonial empire in the lands of Islam was Russia, and that this historical legacy would have at least some impact on Russian foreign policy today.

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Barbara

I want to spread the word about this excellent German film I saw recently—an absolute must see—, which is set in the GDR in 1980. The story, in a nutshell, is about a mid-30ish medical doctor by the name of Barbara (played by Nina Hoss), who is exiled from East Berlin to an underequipped hospital in a small town near the Baltic Sea for a political transgression—requesting to emigrate to West Germany to join the man she loves there—and who is kept under surveillance by the Stasi and its local informers—and whom she assumes include her new colleagues at the hospital. It’s one of the best cinematic treatments I’ve seen of the reality of communism in the former Eastern bloc, ranking up there with ‘The Lives of Others‘ and ‘4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days‘. It’s also a complex film in the way it develops Barbara’s character, the dilemmas she faces, and how her sentiments evolve. Reviews in the Hollywood press were tops (here, here, and here)—though critics wondered if the film’s slow pacing and subtlety would limit its appeal to the art house crowd (pour l’info, there was a long line at my local cinema, signifying strong word-of-mouth)—and in the Paris press too (here). (On East Germany’s notorious juvenile prison from which the teenage runaway in the film had escaped, see here). The director, Christian Petzold, won the Silver Bear for best director at this year’s Berlinale. No release date so far for the US, though the pic will eventually get there. It opens in the UK in September.

I’ve seen a couple of other films over the past three months on Eastern bloc countries during and immediately after the Cold War. One was the black-and-white animated Czech film, ‘Alois Nebel’, based on a Czech graphic novel series of the same title. It’s a complicated story whose central character is the dispatcher in a rural train station near the Polish border in 1989, before and after the Velvet Revolution. The area was part of the former Sudetenland, whose German population was expelled at the end of WWII. One of the themes in the film is the repressed historical memory of this event, which is one reason I went to see it, as I have an interest in this general subject—and having just attended a fascinating three-day conference at the German Historical Institute in Paris on German expellees (Vertriebene) from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union in 1945, and 1962 Algerian Pieds-Noirs rapatriés in comparative perspective. It’s not a gay film nor is its story easy to follow. I will neither recommend nor not recommend it. Read the reviews here, here, and here—et en français ici—and decide for yourself.

The other film was ‘Land of Oblivion’ (in France: ‘La Terre outragée’), by Tel Aviv and Paris-based Israeli director Michale Boganim, which is set in the Ukraine, the first half in 1986—at the time of the Chernobyl disaster—and the second half ten years later. The first part reenacts what happened in the vicinity of the nuclear plant at the time of the explosion, focusing on the main character Anya, played by Olga Kurylenko—who I learned was one of James Bond’s girls in ‘Quantum of Solace’, a film I have not seen, needless to say—and her husband, who worked at the plant (and who was evacuated to Moscow, where he died of radiation sickness). This part of the film I thought was pretty good, of the crisis management of the Soviet state—of the lack of any information as to what was happening and then the delayed evacuation—and the depiction of the near Third World conditions of life there. Of the countless counts of indictment against the criminal Soviet system, the manner in which it handled the Chernobyl catastrophe—indeed the entire design of its nuclear power plants—ranks high. The second half of the film jumps ahead ten years, with Anya now a tour guide, taking foreigners to see the area around the plant, all while dealing with her personal états d’âme (going to live in Paris with her French lover vs. staying with the local boy who also loves her). I thought this part of the film dragged, a sentiment that was also shared by two reviewers (here and here), though one reviewer (here) felt that the film came alive in the second half. I did, however, find the scene of the Tajik refugees occupying abandoned houses in the contaminated exclusion zone to be quite powerful. French reviews were good (here). It’s not a major film but may be seen if one is interested in its subject.

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Elena

Earlier this month I had a post entitled ‘Russia: Mafia state’, where I wrote, among other things, that I found Russia to be a “terrifying place.” This led to a spirited exchange with one of my regular readers, who took exception to my take on that country. As Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s latest film, ‘Elena’—which won an award at Cannes last year—had just opened in Paris, I decided to see it illico. It’s good, indeed very good. And it did not cause me to modify my sentiment on Russia being terrifying. Zvyagintsev, in the words of Variety’s critic,

retaining his fascination with the moral impact of individual choices within a fragile family unit…spins a taut, engrossing yarn about a coveted inheritance, cruel class differences and quietly monstrous misdeeds.

He makes Russia out to be a brutal society, sans foi ni loi, where there is little solidarity beyond the immediate family unit. Reviews in the Hollywood press have been stellar—it hasn’t opened in the US yet—, with critics gushing over the pic, e.g. here, here, here, here. French reviews have also been tops.

A few days after seeing ‘Elena’, I ran out to see ‘Khodorkovsky’, the documentary by German director Cyril Tuschi on the rise and fall of the billionaire oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who’s been in prison for the past eight years on what are manifestly politically motivated charges. Not that Khodorkovsky was exactly clean himself when it came to corruption and other dubious practices, but that’s not why Vladimir Putin decided that he didn’t like him and wanted him out of the way. The documentary is quite good and informative. The review in Variety thus begins

Thoroughly researched and highly entertaining, “Khodorkovsky” recounts the strange story of its eponymous subject, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the famous oligarch who’s been languishing in a Siberian prison since 2003 on trumped up tax-evasion charges. Helmer Cyril Tuschi doesn’t disguise his admiration for the tycoon who defied Putin, but the docu never descends into hagiography, and along the way it delivers a pungent portrait of contempo Russia.

The “portrait of contempo Russia” is pungent indeed, in the malodorous sense. US and UK reviews have been positive, e.g. here and here, and in France too. If one has an interest in Russia, do see it.

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Russia: Mafia state

[update below]

On the occasion of Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency, I highly recommend this article by the brilliant political scientist Stephen Holmes, from a recent issue of the London Review of Books. It’s a review essay in fact, on Luke Harding’s book Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia. I find Russia a terrifying place and Putin one of the world’s more disquieting leaders, to put it mildly.

On the general subject, Chrystia Freeland, an editor at Reuters, had an essay the other day on the new book by economists Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail, which paints a pessimistic portrait of Russia’s future.

UPDATE: The NYT Magazine has an article, “Why some countries go bust,” on Acemoğlu & Robinson’s book, Why Nations Fail. (March 18).

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Syria: what is to be done?

[update below] [2nd update below]

I have no idea. Something clearly has to be done, as the civilized world cannot sit by and passively watch a tyrannical regime massacre its people. But if doing something means military intervention or increasing the level of violence I say no. And loudly. On the subject I came across this pertinent analysis of a week ago, from the web site of the Brussels-based Centre for European Reform

Russia is not completely wrong about Syria

by Edward Burke

Russia has been roundly criticised for vetoing a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria and ousting President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow is reluctant to give up on the al-Assad regime for the moment: it has a direct interest in the survival of the regime, which buys its arms and provides a naval base; it is strongly opposed to Western-led interventions, on principle; it believes that Arab revolutions are likely to lead to takeovers by Islamic fundamentalists; and it is still fuming that, after it refrained from vetoing UN Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya – about the protection of civilians – the West abused the resolution by using it to justify regime change.

However, Russian diplomats concede that change is inevitable if the violence in Syria is to be contained. Russia wants a managed transition that preserves its influence. The draft UNSC resolution called for the confinement of the Syrian army to barracks and endorsed the Arab League plan for al-Assad to hand over power to his vice president prior to the holding of elections. Russian diplomats are right to say that such a resolution would have been unenforceable and, if implemented, would have led to the sudden collapse of the Syrian government without a credible alternative to take its place. Anarchy could have ensued. The Kremlin may be playing realpolitik and taking pride in blocking the West, but it has a point.

Western leaders have been sincere in expressing revulsion at the continued crackdown by the Syrian military upon largely peaceful protestors. But their diplomacy has been ineffective. Preferring to issue ultimatums from afar, they have given up on dialogue with the Syrian regime when there is no other viable alternative.

A number of diplomatic rules have been ignored by Western governments in Syria. First, never rule out force publicly even if you have done so privately. The numbers killed in Syria are beginning to dwarf those murdered by the Gaddafi regime prior to the NATO intervention in Libya. The brave political decision by European leaders to come to the aid of the Libyan people should have reverberated throughout the region, sending a warning to Syria and other dictatorships in the region. The message should have been clear: nothing is off the table if you murder your own people. Instead, from almost the moment the protests in Syria began, Western leaders fell over themselves to tell Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that he had nothing to fear, since military intervention was simply unthinkable no matter what he did. Western diplomats say that this was necessary in order to secure Chinese and Russian support at the United Nations. That is correct, but such assurances could have been provided discreetly, while the regime in Damascus was left to guess about NATO’s real intentions.

Second, the main function of an embassy is to act as a liaison with a host government, even one as odious as that in Damascus. The closing of Western embassies has had little effect upon regime behaviour but has blocked channels of communication. Despite ruling out military intervention or the provision of assistance to defectors from Syria’s armed forces, Western diplomats have not managed to do much about Syria other than criticise the violence and call on President al-Assad to stand down.

Western leaders have painted themselves into a corner. They have misread the situation on two counts: firstly, they have assumed that the removal of al-Assad is critical towards ending the violence and issued ultimatums to that end. Secondly, they have also over-estimated the weakness of the Syrian regime and the willingness of the military to turn upon its leaders. The President of Syria is no Gaddafi – power is distributed more horizontally among the elite in Syria, and the President’s control over the security services is by no means absolute. The removal of al-Assad by itself would not solve much unless accompanied by a broader commitment to reform. Syrian military leaders have now gone too far to turn back. As in Spain at the end of the Franco dictatorship, they will want assurances that a transition will not mean prison or worse for them and their supporters. Moreover, they are not being defeated – on the contrary, defections have so far been minimal and they believe that they have groups such as the Syrian Free Army on the back foot.

Third, do not encourage regime change without any concept of how, and with what means, such a revolution might come about. The West should have learned this lesson after the slaughter of Iraqi Shia rebels who rose up against Saddam Hussein in 1991 – when the insurgents received nothing more than words of support despite expectations of financial aid and military equipment. Also, if political and economic sanctions are to be the exclusive means of weakening the Syrian regime, it is essential that neighbouring countries are on-side. Here the West has put too much faith in the Arab League. The Arab League may have become more vocal, supported by countries such as Saudi Arabia that have long resented Syria’s ties with Iran, but it remains incapable of enforcing its resolutions.

The Syrian government knows that Arab League resolutions are toothless, and that they have supporters in key neighbouring Arab countries, notably Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad and leading figures in the Lebanese government. Economic sanctions may yet prove to be fatal, but like Chinese water torture, they will need time to take effect. Iran is increasing its support while Turkey, after a brief period of sabre-rattling, has gone cool on the idea of military intervention. Damascus also knows that calls by the Qatari government for intervention by an Arab peacekeeping force will come to nothing.

The West should try to rein in efforts by Gulf countries to arm a range of insurgent groups, many of which are deeply mistrusted by important minority groups such as Syria’s Kurds and could do significant damage to the credibility of the opposition movement. Syria badly needs a credible shadow government to negotiate with external parties. Until one emerges, Western diplomats should discourage the distribution of weapons to disparate groups feuding for leadership.

Given the enduring strength and resistance of the Syrian regime, and the lack of any immediate military means to weaken it, it is disappointing that Western countries have all but cut off diplomatic contacts with Damascus. The West should re-start diplomatic dialogue with Syria without pre-conditions. In the end an unsavoury deal such as that made with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen – granting him immunity from prosecution – may be appropriate for key members of the Syrian elite. Western leaders need to grapple with what an acceptable deal could look like. Issuing statements that condemn a regime is easy; but it is tough diplomatic negotiations with the government in Damascus that can best help the Syrian people.

However, there are limits to the role Western diplomacy can play. Although the West can embark on a supportive dialogue, it is now impossible for the West to play a leading role as an intermediary in the conflict. A trusted interlocutor is urgently required to negotiate a credible transition in Syria. Such leadership cannot come from Europe, the United States, the Arab League, or Russia – none of whom are trusted by all sides. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been content to sit on the side-lines, choosing not to deploy his ‘good offices’ in the manner of his more courageous predecessors. It is time to appoint a UN Special Representative to engage with the regime and opposition alike. Even if his or her proposals are ultimately rejected by Moscow or Washington, some options are better than none.

Edward Burke is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

After the catastrophic civil wars in Lebanon—which lasted 15 years—and Iraq—off and on for the past nine and counting—, any Western-led action that risks sending Syria down the path of those benighted lands must be strenuously opposed, even if it means prolonging the longevity of the Ba’athist regime. The experience of Lebanon and Iraq is instructive. Though riven by internecine contradictions, it was the interference of external actors that precipitated full-scale civil war and then sustained it; in Lebanon, the Palestinians, Israel, and Syria the principal ones; in Iraq, the US, followed by Al-Qa’ida and Iran, among others. The number of external actors and with contradictory interests who would  implicate themselves in Syria would be that much greater. For this reason, one should be wary of slippery-slope proposals such as the one advanced by Anne-Marie Slaughter—a liberal Iraq hawk in ’03—in today’s NYT. I have a certain sympathy with the moral concerns of the R2P crowd but, as David Rieff argued recently, they risk getting us into a lot of trouble.

UPDATE: Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group—a first-rate analyst of Syria who has lived there for most of the past decade—and Sarah Birke of The Economist have an excellent article on the MERIP web site entitled “Beyond the Fall of the Syrian Regime.” On the question of foreign intervention they have this to say

…as increasingly desperate protesters call for help, there is a danger that the outside world will make matters worse as it plays at being savior. Calls for aid are somewhat worse than a pact with the devil: They entail pacts with many devils that do not agree on much. The Gulf monarchies, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, the US, Iran and others all see geostrategic stakes in the fate of the Asad regime. The greater their involvement, the less Syrians will remain in control of their destiny. Crying out for foreign intervention of any kind, to bring this emergency to an end at any cost, is more than understandable coming from ordinary citizens subjected to extreme forms of regime violence. Exiled opposition figures who pose as national leaders have no excuse for behaving likewise, when what is needed is a cool-headed, careful calibration of what type of outside “help” would do the minimum of harm.

2nd UPDATE: Sadek Jalal al-Azm, Jane Mansbridge and Chibli Mallat have a must read tribune on Ahram Online (February 26), “Saving the nonviolent revolution in Syria: For a credible strategy.” I’m still wary of R2P in this particular case but Sadek al-Azm’s views here carry weight with me. (For those who don’t know him, Sadek al-Azm is Syria’s most brilliant intellectual of the past several decades.)

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The 9/11 Teardrop Monument

In Bayonne NJ. A gift from the people of Russia to America, in memory of those killed on 9/11 and “to the struggle against world terrorism.” It was dedicated on September 11, 2006. Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech and Vladimir Putin came for a groundbreaking ceremony four days later. This seems to have gone almost entirely unnoticed. I knew nothing about it myself. See here and here.

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Online Gulag museum

Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have jointly launched an online museum of Stalin’s Gulag archipelago. Great initiative. Voici le lien en français. (h/t Claire Berlinski)

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