November 2005 Archives

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Slava Ukraina!

November 22, 2005 11:54 AM

Drop everything. This column from MosNews today is by far the best analysis I have seen of the current situation in Ukraine, one year to the day after the Orange Revolution.

I will have my own thoughts to share tomorrow, after I have thawed out and arrived back in the States -- NYC, specifically -- for the Thanksgiving holiday. Do not hesitate to complain that I have failed to provide timely reporting on a matter of grave importance.

Let me offer a brief sidenote, though, before signing off. Some have accused me in the past of deriving too much pleasure from episodes that strip the veneer of moral seriousness from U.S. Senators and reveal them for the bumbling, hapless mediocrities they mostly are. In fact, I take no pleasure at all from this. That a country as great as America should produce and elevate such triflers and dilettantes is something that wounds me greatly. Yet every now and again the Senate surprises me with a spasm of competence that makes me believe, if only for an instant, that an election has occurred and they have all been replaced. Today is just such a time. The Senate has brought great credit upon the U.S. government by voting to release Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik, the Soviet-era law intended to penalize countries with poor human rights records. While the U.S. government routinely waives the application of the law to Ukraine, the fact that it had not been repealed has enabled Russia and its lackeys in Ukraine to question the West's commitment to Ukraine's assimilation. And that has only helped those who argue that Ukraine should be rebuilding ties with Russia instead of looking West. How important is this for Ukraine's reformers? Here's the headline in today's Youth of Ukraine news: "America's Gift on the Orange Revolution Anniversary." Now the House should follow suit.

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That's Why They Call it Pravda (Truth)!

November 18, 2005 06:20 AM

The Ukrainian media continue to be a rather uncooperative ally for Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), which has sought recently to depict serious threats to press freedom in Ukraine. Ukrayinska Pravda, one of the supposed targets of severe repression, has now issued a statement rebuking RSF's leader, Robert Menard, for attributing some of his allegations to the paper. An excerpt from the release (the opening quote is from Menard):

"This is not the first time that the President's son issues threats to journalists. He similarily threatened the reporters of the online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, with no reaction from his father. This situation is worrysome," the release concludes.

We state that the above paragraph is a lie. No journalists of Ukrayinska Pravda, including the author of the articles regarding the president's son, have ever in their life spoken to Andriy Yushchenko.

All his commentaries we received through an intermediary - the president's press-secretary Iryna Herashchenko - and then published them on the website. Likewise, we received no indirect threats which we may consider as coming from the President's son.

Furthermore, we have not been contacted by any representative of "Reporters sans frontières", and therefore none of them could warn us of these non-existent threats by Andriy Yushchenko....[snip] [Emphasis added]

Clearly, the editors of Ukrayinska Pravda have not learned the first rule of political journalism: When such charges are made on your behalf, the appropriate reaction is always to acknowledge your victimization and squeal like a stuck pig about it.

But there's more!:

At the same time we are firmly against utilizing the name of Ukrayinska Pravda in the scenario which becomes increasingly clearer - and which we ourselves have recently discussed in the article "The dirt of Yushchenko", in which a leaked memo reads:

"*****, as well as trusted sources, claim that in the near future it is planned to use several notable French lawyers and political leaders against Viktor Yushchenko, including Robert Menard, the head of the international organization "Reporters without Borders", through the Harfouch brothers who financially support him."...[snip]

Wait, you've forgotten the Harfouch brothers? Here's a quick refresher. You see, this whole business started when Walid and Omar coaxed Menard into a Kiev appearance where he denounced the fire-bombing of Walid's Bentley -- a putative act of intimidation that most of the press here suspects Walid carried out himself as a publicity stunt for his new magazine. Got it?

Anyway, by this point Pravda is clearly in too deep to quit with the conspiracies. The entire plot must be revealed.

Similarily, it is surprising for us to read in the statement by "Reporters sans frontières", that they view the current state of the freedom of press "a worsening of the climate, dispite the fact that the Orange Revolution initiated a big increase of hope in the country."

We do not remember such opinions being expressed by RSF when their general secretary Robert Menard paid a visit to Viktor Yanukovych two weeks before the Orange Revolution, a day before unprecedented ballot stuffing of the first round of elections. The same one who called on the then-President Kuchma to "use measures" to halt last fall's events.

We well remember the state of democracy in Ukraine back then. But, as is known, Menard did not meet any member of the opposition back then - his mission was rather to create an illusion of support for Yanukovych from the West. And we cannot view as a coincidence at all that Menard's 2004 visit was organized by the Harfouch brothers. Who, it is claimed, make financial contributions to "Reporters sans frontières". [Emphasis added]

You heard it first there, folks. Menard, along with the Harfouch brothers and The French (of course!) schemed to prop up a corrupt and quasi-authoritarian ruling order. Why? Who knows! But there was clearly a plot, hatched in France, involving, among others, Menard and Viktor Yanukovich, Yushchenko's opponent in last year's election. It's so nuanced, it could only be French!

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Waltz of the Ladas

November 17, 2005 08:39 AM

Where Man returns to the State of Nature

The balcony of my apartment looks out over one of the busiest intersections in Kiev (shown above), at the corner of Khmelnitskogo and Ivana Franko. There is no traffic light. Thus, pedestrians here -- much like the cars -- must nose into the traffic scrum in order to find an opening for passage. I have more than once found myself contemplating the real value of a purchase for which I'd have to cross the street. Each day, usually around dusk, the traffic snarls and motorists bang on their carhorns with all the restraint of chimps battering a new squeeze-toy. Ah, the sweet choir.

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Flight of the Orange Porcupine

November 16, 2005 07:28 PM

Smells like...fear

Why do I love Yulia Tymoshenko? She's a populist, a demagogue, a harpie who couldn't possibly do any good for Ukraine. In fact, she managed to derail the economy here in the eight months she was given control over it this year. And yet...my heart always flutters with joy when she re-appears on the scene. Yulia dares to be ridiculous. Her brazen one-upsmanship of Yushchenko at the Khryvorizhstal auction was great theater, and that sound you heard at the time was Ambition itself fleeing in terror of its android creation, set loose upon the land.

Not exactly the way to ingratiate oneself with the Yushchenko team. And yet, Yulia now is once again "in talks" with the president's people about re-forming their post-revolution alliance. The allure for Yushchenko is the prospect of heading off a government upheaval after the March parliamentary elections. Trouble is, Yulia's most basic demand is one that Yushchenko will never meet if he can help it: bringing Tymoshenko back as prime minister. For one thing, the president has publicly accused her of using her first stint in the PM job to further her business interests. It's hard to back-pedal from that one. For another, Tymoshenko's replacement, Yuriy Yekhanurov, has been just the tonic Ukraine needed to get back on track after the misadventures that brought on the collapse of Tymoshenko's government at the end of the summer. There's no way Yushchenko would trade out the steady Yekhanurov for another go-round with the Orange Princess.

Fact is, the only serious leverage Yulia ever had with Yushchenko was that an opposition bloc would re-install her as prime minister after the parliamentary elections in March. But now she is isolated. Surprisingly, this occurred in large part because of the much-reviled ad hoc alliance between Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovich in late September. The deal smoothed the way for Yekhanurov's approval in the Rada, and forced Yushchenko into some embarrassing concessions to the opposition in parliament. But it also returned Yanukovich to the center of Ukrainian politics, and set him up to be the opposition's choice for prime minister. Tymoshenko has thus been left with a choice between Yushchenko's bloc and Yanukovich's Bloc; but neither is going to make her prime minister. (Yushchenko's kowtowing to Yanukovich, which was thought to have done great damage to his presidency, is suddenly looking brilliant.) Yulia's plea for renewed unity with Yushchenko -- which rests heavily on Orange Revolution nostalgia -- is the only card left in her deck.

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Fight Night at the Rada

November 16, 2005 10:12 AM

We mobbin' Russia style fa real!

Another WTO vote, another brawl in the Ukrainian parliament. Ho hum. The parliament's Communists, reliable proxies for the Putin government in Moscow, seek to block debate on a group of reforms that Ukraine must adopt in order to join the WTO. They argue that the reforms would hurt the country's farmers, yada, yada. One wonders what the Communists will make of things when Russia wins accession to the WTO ahead of Ukraine, and uses its favorable standing to hobble Ukraine's agricultural sector. Was it Lenin who said something about "useful idiots"...?

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Laughter Sans Frontieres

November 14, 2005 10:54 AM

What, we worry?

You know you're in Ukraine when a visiting French journalist-advocate is heckled by the native press corps.

First, the backstory. Lebanese-born Entrepreneurs Walid (l.) and Omar Harfouch (pictured above) are among the most visible -- and by far the most ridiculed -- ex-pats of Kiev. Omar... well, Omar is a sometimes-this, sometimes-that sort of fellow, whose latest incarnation is as a music producer and all-round bon vivant along the Kiev-Paris axis. He has a girlfriend called Musa ("muse"), in addition to his other girlfriend: his ego. (In interviews, he says things like, "Musa is facinated by me, and I have taught her so much about life." Musa is 19, last I checked.) He claims to own and to have preserved Maria Callas' hair. Walid, the older brother, is cut more in the businessman mold. Among his holdings is "Paparazzi," a new scandal sheet attempting to gain a foothold in Ukraine.

Anyhow, last month Walid revealed to the Kiev Post that his new magazine was going to run scandalous photos of President Yushchenko's son, Andriy, on vacation with his girlfriend in Turkey. The following week, Walid's Bentley was destroyed by a fire bomb. Walid and Omar both claim that the torching had been preceded by threats from "very high" in the Yushchenko government, and they believe the destruction of Walid's Bentley was intended as a warning to not run the photos. If it was any other two people in Ukraine, this whole ordeal might have caused a political firestorm (if you'll forgive the pun). But the press corps here is convinced, for reasons that are not entirely clear, that Walid torched his Bentley as a publicity stunt for the magazine. Enter Robert Menard of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. As reported by the AP:

KIEV, Ukraine -- The head of a reporters watchdog group warned on Nov. 11 that some Ukrainian media was coming under growing pressure, but was heckled by some journalists about his ties to a controversial tabloid editor.... [snip]

Menard, who was accompanied by Walid and Omar Harfouch at the Nov. 11 news conference, also criticized the government for making no progress in identifying the organizer of the 2000 slaying of an Internet journalist, and criticized Yushchenko for refusing to meet with him.

Ukrainian journalists at Menard's news conference heckled him and the Harfouch brothers over their objectivity, prompting Menard to fire back saying they must speak out against pressure on the media "even if is directed at people you don't agree with."

The journalists questioned Menard over his links with the brothers, and complained that the brothers weren't providing names of who they claimed had threatened them. Journalists laughed loudly when the Harfouch brothers called for an independent parliamentary commission to investigate their complaints. [Emphasis added]

That last sentence is priceless.

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Investigative Reporters Defined Out of Existence

November 13, 2005 07:45 AM

Jack Shafer in Slate:

Last night on Larry King Live, [Judy] Miller once again blamed "faulty intelligence" for her "handful" of flawed stories, neglecting to explain that real investigative reporters aren't passive conduits for intelligence but skeptical analysts of it. [Emphasis added]

This is patent nonsense. If this were in fact the case, we'd lose every investigative reporter who took Joe Wilson's word about what he "found" (but, alas, didn't find) in Africa. Skeptical analysts? Journalists such as The Nation's David Corn, in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, still covers the Wilson/Plame affair as if its protagonist has not been roundly discredited, and as if his wife was still some kind of top-secret foreign operative, rather than a CIA bureaucrat who did in fact recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. (Corn now wants to know whether VP Cheney "outed" her. Oy vey!) Given Corn's penchant for nitpickery in all other matters (witness this bit of pedantry), he's awfully generous with a source who has taken him for a fool.

Like it or not, the disclosure of raw intelligence is often both the sum and substance of investigative reporting in Washington. I don't recall there being much "skeptical analysis" after "United States intelligence officials" (hmmmm) revealed that Ahmad Chalabi had betrayed important intelligence to Iran. In spite of this apparent misdeed, Chalabi went to Washington last week to meet privately with top Bush administration officials, who evidently let the whole Iran thing slide. (Hey, what's one intelligence leak to a theocratic state with nuclear ambitions between friends?) If you're a betting man, would you wager that those initial Chalabi reports were accurate? I'll take that bet.

Yet there's a glaring logical absurdity to Shafer's argument, as well. Here's Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA man who was the Clinton administration's Iraq expert on the National Security Council:

US analysts were not alone in these views [that Iraq had WMD capabilities]. In the late spring of 2002 I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly 20 former inspectors from the UN Special Commission (Unscom), established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did.

Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with US views. Somewhat remarkably, given how adamantly Germany would oppose the war, the German Federal Intelligence Service held the bleakest view of all, arguing that Iraq might be able to build a nuclear weapon within three years. Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the US; Jacques Chirac told Time magazine last February: "There is a problem - the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq." No one doubted that Iraq had WMD. [Emphasis added]

So let's see. One investigative reporter at the New York Times is supposed to know more about Saddam's WMD capabilities than Pollack and Unscom, to say nothing of Jacques Chirac? Those suspicions were built on decades of accumulated context, including actual use of poison gas and rampant, repeated deceitfulness on WMD matters. On what basis, then, would Miller dispute the veracity of the reports? Better yet, suppose Miller had instead cast doubt on reports that Saddam's Iraq was pocked with mass graves and jails filled with children? CNN kept a reporter in Baghdad for years without even a whisper of atrocity. Last time I checked, Jane Arraf was still working.

My guess is that Miller believed she had cultivated sources who could -- and, to her mind, did -- get her inside the story that everyone in the world knew to be true: that Saddam had continued on with his WMD programs in spite of international sanctions. Anyhow, I suspect her real crime is being hated. She works at a job where jealousies are rich and egos are big, and where Miller has always, in one way or another, been despised by her colleagues. She made a perfect scapegoat for those who wish to believe that, but for this lone reporter, Saddam could still be on his throne, and we could still be wringing our hands in dismay over what to do about it. Now she's out of a job, and perhaps Shafer and her other pursuers are on their way to Reportopia. But the only people who are being truly dishonest in this matter are those who now suggest that evidence of Saddam's malfeasance -- with or without Judy Miller -- was not overwhelming.

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Ah, But We Can Dream, Can't We?

November 9, 2005 05:11 AM

Nope, I think you look better with the moustache

The photo above shows another of the roughly 10,000 Communist demonstrators who celebrated Revolution Day on Nov. 7. The crowd might have been larger, but for the fact that the man in the picture frame engineered a famine that killed as many as 10 million of her countrymen between 1932 and 1935.

Nostalgia for the Soviet period in Ukraine is puzzling yet in some respects perfectly understandable. One of the surrealities of living in Ukraine, for an American like myself, is discovering that everything I learned about the Soviet Union as a youngster from U.S. government propaganda was actually true. Ukrainian friends here tell me about growing up in tiny apartments shared with multiple families; about waiting in line to read a book at the library, or even to ask for one; about having to accept rations for even the most minor consumables; about fearing that the footsteps heard outside the window late at night could be the NKVD (the domestic "security" force) coming for you or a relative. Harrowing stuff. I can't help being reminded as I hear these things of the many people I encountered growing up who assured me all these stories were lies or exaggerations, their assertions based on nothing more, surely, than their personal disdain for the American government. So it became necessary for people the world over to suffer while my compatriots worked through their private political tantrums. As more recent debates suggest, it will be ever thus.

So whence this Communist resiliency in Ukraine? First, it's important to understand that modern Communism in Ukraine is largely a phenomenon of nostalgia, for a time when life was predictable, if difficult. People knew what to expect, even if it wasn't much. One older woman told me (through her daughter's translation) that people of her generation had a fairly clear idea of what was unattainable, and thus set their sights on far more modest goals that could nonetheless take many years to achieve. Like buying a car or a television set. The problem now for those people is the uncertainty that comes with transition to a new economic and political system. It is no accident that pensioners comprise the vast majority of Communists who turn up at the rallies. Among the younger folks who march with the Communists there's a perceptably thuggish element, similar to the skinheads: black-clad, combat-booted and tattooed. Among them there seems to be an equation of the old Communist Party with cultural assertiveness and pride. These folks are certainly not like the bookstore Marxists you might encounter in any American college town. Their demonstrations often wind up in rioting and clashes with police. In fact, the clashes are regarded as somewhat inevitable. At a weirdly joyless Communist youth rally I attended not long ago -- it featured an excellent live Cuban music act, with a massive silkscreen of "Che" serving as the backdrop -- the riot forces, in full gear, waited passively outside the perimeter of the event until it was winding up. Then they mobilized for action, ringing the area with shields up and batons out. It was all a bit provocative, in my judgment, but I suppose there was no sense betting on the goodwill of the party faithful. Some here are surely nostalgic for a time when that made sense.

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Adventures in Watchdogging

November 8, 2005 07:27 AM

I like David Sirota. I knew him back when he was the spokesman for the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. He was not particularly knowledgeable about, you know, appropriations. But he was a genuine political warrior, devoted to the cause, and raised important questions about the interests and ideology of the party's "moderates." Now I take it that he's a journalist -- or journalistic, anyway -- providing the Huffington Post with bilious, screechy blog postings exposing little-known facts about domestic political affairs, such as the right-wing "bias" of the mainstream media. (Best of luck, fella!) You might say his scribblings read like Susan Estrich sounds. (Today's is a classic of the genre: "In a breathless, frightening, foaming-at-the-mouth diatribe on the right-wing fringe site Newsmax....[snip]") Fair 'nuff. But if he wants to do the journalist thing, he might start by pointing out, in the course of lambasting critics of Bernie Sanders, that he was an aide to Sanders for several years. In fact, some of the resources Sirota links his readers to were written by Sirota himself. This is what's called "full disclosure," friend. You wouldn't want to deceive readers about your sources of information. Only the nasty right-wing media does that!

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Time for 'Never Again,' Again

November 8, 2005 06:01 AM

As ever, Hitch hits the nail on the head, in weighing the non-response of the feckless International Community to the genocide in Darfur.

Any critique of realism has to begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace. Everybody now wishes, or at least says they wish, that we had not made ourselves complicit spectators in Rwanda. But what if it had been decided to take action? Only one member state of the U.N. Security Council would have had the capacity to act with speed to deploy pre-emptive force (and that would have been very necessary, given the weight of the French state, and the French veto, on the side of the genocidaires). It is a certainty that at some stage, American troops would have had to open fire on the "Hutu Power" mobs and militias, actually killing people and very probably getting killed in return. Body bags would have been involved. It is not an absolute certainty that all detained members of those militias would have been treated with unfailing tenderness. It is probable that some of the military contractors would have overcharged, and that some locals would have engaged in profiteering and even in tribal politics. It is impossible that any child of any member of the Clinton administration would have been an enlisted soldier. But we never had to suffer any of these wrenching experiences, so that we can continue to wish, in some parallel Utopian universe, that we had done something instead of nothing.

Or not exactly nothing. The United States ended up supporting the French military intervention in Rwanda, which was mounted in an attempt not to remove the genocidaires but to save them. Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens. Our policy in Darfur has not just failed to rescue a stricken black African population: It has actually assisted the Sudanese Islamists in completing their policy of racist murder. Thank heaven that we are tough enough to bear the shame of this, and strong enough to forgive ourselves.

Thus ends another successful deployment for Brent Scowcroft's "realistic" approach to world crisis.

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Hi folks! Sorry about the famine and all! Long Live Lenin!

November 7, 2005 09:28 AM

"Ukraine is not a product for sale!"* This gent was one of an estimated 10,000 Communists and assorted sympaticos who marched today in Kiev to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the party's seizure of power in the Soviet Union. The photo was taken just before the man's back finally gave out.

*Slogan courtesy of Workers' Central Committee for the Efficient Development and Production of Very Effective Chants, Incitements and Epithets. Long Live Lenin!

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Sofiskiy's Choice

November 7, 2005 08:28 AM

Ukraine's history being what it is -- invasions, suppressions and the like -- appeals to national "unity" (extra-national forces implied) are as common a campaign trope as bussing babies. Which presents an unusual quandary for president Viktor Yushchenko ahead of March parliamentary elections. With Yushchenko as standard-bearer, the Our Ukraine party -- the most Western-oriented of the parliamentary factions -- claims about 17-20 percent in national polls. That might not sound like much, but it's probably enough to hold off major insurrections from rival parties led by ousted PM Yulia Tymoshenko and Russia's perennial favorite, Viktor Yanukovich. The problem is, Yushchenko has already said he will not lead the party into the elections. In standing apart, he hopes to reinforce his image as a unifying force in Ukrainian politics, while underscoring the factionalism of his opponents. However, without Yushchenko, Our Ukraine slips to about 10 percent in polls. If those numbers hold on election day, Yushchenko would remain as president, but with the power of the office significantly diminished through the gains made by other parties. Constitutional changes that go into effect Jan. 1 have already determined that the prime minister will have far greater power than he does now. Yushchenko's best bet is probably to lead the party into the elections, while weathering the loud criticism this would surely provoke among his political opponents and many journalists. The fact is, it could be the only way for him to retain his choice for prime minister, Yuriy Yekhanurov. And yet the political torment Yushchenko would be forced to endure could wipe away any advantages Our Ukraine might gain from his participation. Big risk.

My bet: Expect that pledge to be rescinded. The risk of inaction is too great.

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