WhirledView

Little Pomp and Less Circumstance

By Patricia H Kushlis

Normally – at least since WWI – an official US Presidential visit to London takes on the trappings of a festive occasion, a time to spread good cheer and camaraderie across the Pond.  Or in more troubled times, for the representatives of the two countries to discuss difficult and complex issues that affect them both:  To shore up the British-American alliance and present a united front to the world.

Not this time.  Just days before the Trumps descent upon the Royals, he was taken off balance by a nine minute very public made-for-television recap of the Mueller report by its chief author.  Mueller’s words did not clear Trump of obstruction of justice and did not state that he and/or his nearest and dearest advisors had not conspired with Moscow to rig the 2016 elections.  What it said was that there were numerous accounts of likely obstruction but that because of a Department of Justice ruling, Mueller could or would not indict him. That was Congress’ job.

What it also said was that simply because the investigation could not connect the conspiracy dots it did not mean that the dots do and did not exist.  Instead, that Mueller had been refused interviews with chief witnesses and that the written statement from Trump – likely written by his lawyers – was inadequate.  Mueller’s recap concluded with a strong warning to the US that the Russian 2016 elections interference was real and substantial and that this country needed to be preparing to better defend against worse foreign (aka Russian) cyberattacks in the future. 

Then less than a day later, a story broke about a planned coverup by US government officials of the USS John McCain at the Yokosuka Naval Base near Tokyo to spare Trump the vision of the destroyer’s name during his visit to the port.  The story, broken in the Wall Street Journal indicated the coverup had, in fact,  happened, but the Journal had jumped the gun.  The Navy brass in Japan and at Indo-Pacific Headquarters in Honolulu had nixed the hair-brained camouflage idea just in time. Trump’s visit occurred but the sailors from the McCain were prevented from attending his talk which took place way below deck of another ship in port.  This decision, in effect, spared the world from having to endure a much-videoed on deck Trump publicity stunt aka George W Bush after the supposed end of hostilities in Iraq, with the US military used as a backdrop.   

What the Navy missed scotching was the fake MAGA patches with Trump’s face on them sported by a contingent of Marines who did take part in the ceremony below deck.  This is not, repeat, not kosher regardless and the Navy needs to deal with this bit of over enthusiasm if it hasn’t already. 

After the USS McCain story had been circulating widely on the Internet and in the media, another East Asia one broke which reported that North Korean diplomats who had earlier been negotiating with Pompeo over a potential nuclear deal – or non-proliferation deal as it were – had been executed by Kim Jong Un, its fearless despot with whom Trump considers or considered his BFF, or best friend.  The reason for the four dead seems to have been their failure to deliver a Summit to Kim on his terms.  Apparently, the chief negotiator originally reported dead has now resurfaced.

With friends like this who needs enemies.

By the time Trump had returned to his golf game in the US and to pick up a change of clothes and maybe a new wig in preparation for his European swing, the advance media reporting had already focused on his London visit which actually began this morning.  This gives the reporters from Asia a bit of a respite.

Yet before his Heathrow arrival, Trump had already hurled insults at the UK’s newest princess and the newest royal baby still less than a month old, the popular Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and even the beleaguered Theresa May who had issued the invitation in 2017.  Mistake.  But then she didn’t ask me.

At about the same time as his latest round of insults, Trump blundered into British internal politics by strongly backing his buddies Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage for leadership positions and loudly supported Brexit despite its divisive effect on UK politics not to mention the standard admonition that representatives of foreign governments should keep out of another country’s domestic politics especially in the public square. 

Meanwhile, it’s clear that the British government despite its chaotic state, has done its utmost to minimize the Trump family visit whether for security or other reasons.  Trump may think that a helicopter ride from Heathrow to Buckingham Palace is a classy way to go, but in reality, it does three things: 

• it minimizes the visibility of hostile demonstrators –  on camera and as well as to himself – after all his approval rating among the Brits stands at a meager 21% as opposed to that of the far more popular Obama’s 72% when he was president;
• it protects Trump from a terrorist or other kind of less lethal attack - like milkshakes or fish guts - which might mess up his hair;
• and it minimizes the amount of steps required. Of obvious consideration in Trump world.

Smart move.

Tomorrow, of course, is another day. It is one devoted to government niceties, social events and a meeting as well as huge anti-Trump protests scheduled in various cities throughout the country including London, Manchester and Belfast complete with Baby Trump gracing the London skies.

On Catching Rats and other Captivating Political Stories

By Patricia H Kushlis

“Sometimes you need a rat to catch a rat” is the concluding shot fired in Drew Magary’s GQ article on January 5, 2017 in which he argues that if Trump refuses to abide by the standard (and now useless) “norms” of the presidency. . . why should anyone in the press adhere to needless norms of their own.”  Magary also argues that Michael Wolff was one of very few people to grasp that reality.

Well yes.  Wolff was also one of the few people to realize that the Trump and his White House staff failed to recognize a basic rule of journalism that when talking to a journalist be sure the ground rules are set beforehand.  Even if the rules are clear, be careful what you say. And for heaven’s sake, vet the journalist’s reputation beforehand.

Wolff got around all that because of Trump’s naivety and narcissism as well his staff’s gross inexperience and infighting.  Furthermore, from Trump’s perspective no press is bad press – because it keeps him in the limelight which seems to be his primary goal in life although that may be being supplanted by his desire to avoid jail with the key thrown away.  He’s not the only leader to have that happen to him – but he would be the first American president to find himself in the dock.   

Nevertheless, look at the quality of Trump’s own media shop such as it is. Even if one of them had warned him about Wolff’s questionable journalistic reputation, Trump would likely have ignored the warning.  Instead, they seem to have been focused on which right wing journalists would receive press credentials to attend the White House briefings and how best to denigrate reporters from the mainstream  media – especially CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who just might ask those embarrassing questions and whose publications don't necessarily print or air the most flattering of articles.   

Meanwhile, Wolff entered through a backdoor – apparently with the aid of Steve Bannon - set himself up in a corridor of the West Wing for nine months, where he had ready access to the in-house gossip just by being a fly on the sofa as well as obtaining more formal interviews with principals and their staffs.  He tells us his book is based on over 200 interviews many captured on audio tapes.  His first story is of a dinner party conversation between Steve Bannon and the now deceased Roger Ailes.   It’s been reported elsewhere that the party was held in New York and Wolff himself was the host.   

Trump and his right wing acolytes argue – among other things - that Fire and Fury had no editor so therefore Wolff could, and did, produce a fantasy volume of lies, fake news and, at best, distortions. 

There are multiple problems with those accusations, however.  The overall picture the author paints is of a president who was, is and remains unfit for the job – a picture extensively reported elsewhere in most media since at least summer 2016.

Moreover, the publisher, Henry Holt & Co. is a well-established New York based US publishing company – now a subsidiary of McMillan, with a strong and lengthy track record as a book publisher that dates back to 1866 and includes multiple Pulitzer Prize winners and award winning authors - so it has its own reputation to protect.

Henry Holt and Co. and McMillan were obviously concerned that Trump would try to stop publication once he got wind of the book’s explosive contents as soon as they had been printed in various prepublication reviews.  The first of these reviews broke in The Guardian on January 3, 2018 a week ahead of the book’s planned publication. This, I presume is why the publishers rushed to distribute the book a few days earlier than planned and made sure it was available for immediate downloading, hardback and paperback editions through Amazon and hardback via Barnes and Noble.

I decided to download the book on Saturday because I wanted to read this firestorm of a work for myself – and not depend on secondary sources.

An aside: it is also interesting to note that as of Sunday, the book does not appear on Henry Holt’s website.  So either the rush to publish decision did not catch up with the company’s Internet site postings or the publishers decided to keep it under wraps until the very last minute and therefore did not provide the requisite information to its own Internet editors.

 A last minute cease and desist letter demanding that publication be stopped which Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder sent to Henry Holt president Steve Rubin and author Michael Wolff is, I understand, a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment. So the publishers were on strong grounds in ignoring it.

More than anything, it seems to me that this again demonstrates Trump’s litigious character in combination with the weakness of his legal counsel.  My question is whether Trump’s lawyers recommended against such action and whether Trump personally overrode their advice – to send anyway.  Trump seems to have backed away from trying to stop publication (that the book’s contents are readily available through multiple sources) and instead is resorting to lamenting this country’s “weak libel rules” while circling the wagons with his ever true loyalists in a retreat at Camp David this weekend.

There are other takeaways from Magary’s GQ observations, but another in particular rang an all too familiar bell:  the White House press corps is traditionally all too polite and subservient as a way of preserving their access to official briefings not to mention just being there when the next shoe drops.  So the reporters too often don’t get the full story, report only a small portion or don’t report it at all.  Then their editors may also sit on it. This practice has gone on for years.  It’s often too cozy a relationship regardless of administration. 

Wolff was not part of the credentialed White House press corps.  Furthermore, nobody who talked with him seems to have set any ground rules – if they did, he ignored them - but that in itself doesn’t make his account wrong.  This takes me back to my last sentence in paragraph 2 above.    

Meanwhile, back to my copy of Fire and Fury while I wait for the next shoe to drop.

 

Russian cyber warfare: The message, the method and the medium

By Patricia H Kushlis

At long last the US – albeit thanks to a few NGOs – has begun to make public the unabated Russian disinformation campaign which engulfed last year’s American elections and continues today.  The Kremlin’s helpers primarily boosted and continue to bolster the pro-Trump message aimed at the largely under-educated American political far right. But more insidiously the Russian campaign has been designed to challenge democratic governance in the eyes of the world including and not unimportantly among Russia’s own domestic audience in the run up to the Russian Federation's own presidential election on March 18, 2018.

The Kremlin’s American campaign is a mix of propaganda and disinformation and it is part and parcel of Russia’s cyber warfare against the West – its goal is to upend Europe and the US and thereby eliminate the economic sanctions against Moscow which were enacted after Russia illegally invaded Crimea and then Eastern Ukraine in 2014.  The US Congress voted just last spring to strengthen the sanctions not, as Moscow had hoped with Trump’s ascension to the White House in January, to weaken or better yet eliminate them.

Potemkin Villages Live On

Some of the Russian stories being propagated are total fabrications- pure Potemkin Villages - but the most insidious are laced with tinges of the truth – enough to hoodwink the unwitting.  They take their cues from America’s own alt-right, neo-Nazi messages which reinforce racism and economic inequalities.

Regardless, these messages are amplified through multiple bots and cyberborgs and are targeted at the aggrieved far right Trump voters. Their goals are to undercut the veracity of the reporting in the established US media.  The stories are designed to tear a multiethnic society apart.

The Russian information warfare campaign also targets America’s far left especially those enamored by conspiracy theories but its activities against the left are far weaker than the high decibel volume aimed at the right. This campaign often echoes and amplifies Trump’s worst and most fallacious charges against the veracity of the western major media, his enemies, his fake news claims against the Mueller investigation and anyone else he perceives to be thwarting his efforts as well as promoting and encouraging his racist views.  The Kremlin goal:  to destabilize and hence weaken the US, its greatest nemesis, and Europe. 

Last January, the Obama administration publicly released an unclassified version of the DNI report.  The final quarter of the report was devoted to an analysis of the propaganda and disinformation aspects of Russian cyber warfare against the US electoral system, a campaign which inundated specific voters in swing states.  The Russian message – which succeeded – was anti-Hillary and pro-Trump.  Whether this was the deciding factor in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is still questioned but the barrage of Internet delivered messages via Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social media aimed at these vulnerable voters in certain districts was relentless and appears to have paid off.

Donald Trump – who profited from the Russian assistance - still claims the DNI report - signed off on by the heads of the most important US intelligence agencies - is “fake news.”  He is even more disparaging of the Steele Dossier. 

Nevertheless, the Russian cyber warfare campaign against the US continues. 

Ben Nimmo, Obama’s chief advisor on cyber warfare now heads a research unit on Russian disinformation at the Atlantic Council and as importantly for the media, the German Marshall Fund of the US has recently launched a crucial public website named Hamilton-68 which continually tracks Russian disinformation and propaganda activities aimed at Internet users in the US.  This website has identified 600 different bots which magnify the Russian messages via Twitter.       

The good news is that Hamilton-68 is functioning as it should. Just in the past month, I have seen information used in various reputable US media accounts that cite its data base.  This gives the reporters, researchers, and academics for the first time, access to accurate and on time data that graphically depicts how Russian cyber warfare operates in the US through substantial, near real time data which shows which stories are being promoted and by whom.  Hamilton-68 does not claim to refute them – it just makes it very clear to anyone who can read its simple graphs - the sources of stories which somehow climb to the top of the charts in now not so mysterious ways.

The fact that Facebook has finally owned up to the fact that it sold over $100,000 worth of ads despite months of denials no questions asked - which were traced back to the Internet Research Agency, an organization controlled by the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency) during the 2016 US presidential campaign and that those ads were designed to smear Hillary and promote Trump is a piece of the puzzle.   Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reluctantly agreed to turn over 3,000 of these ads to a Senate investigating committee.  Twitter and Google have also finally admitted that they too had published IRA ads during the 2016 campaign. These tech titans are far from alone.

Meanwhile, the investigations into the Trump campaign’s likely connections with the Kremlin grind on.  The interrelationships are complex and those under investigation are engaged in cover ups that make Nixon’s Watergate read like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The Mueller investigation has divided its work into 13 areas of inquiry.  One is looking at the potential relationships between Trump’s own campaign cyber operation run by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Russian intelligence, and Facebook ad buys – albeit a small amount in overall campaign spending on advertisements.  This investigation may hold a key to unraveling the connections.

Microtargeted campaign ads

We know that campaign ads were microtargeted at potential voters in swing districts in swing states.  Could these districts also be ones where the voting machines were antiquated and did not provide possibility of a recount?  Is there a correlation between the hacking of 21 states electoral systems and these same districts?  Did these campaign ads include Russian government buys?  Were the voting machines and the voter registration lists in these same states the targets of Russian government hacking?   If so how did they gain the electoral data upon which to base those buys?    From whom?  Or was this just coincidental?  What was the content or contents of those ads?  What role, if any, did the data mining company Cambridge Analytica play in guiding all of this?  Or did Russian intelligence just rely on readily available audience profile data on Facebook? Or what about the relationship with Jared Kushner who oversaw the Trump cyber campaign? And where did the internet security firm Kaspersky come in?

American voters, at the very least, are owed truthful answers.

A Post Script:  Last week even I received a gmail from a Russian internet source – a London based company named Quizzically Idiosyncratic TM - advertising a sweatshirt with photos of the American flag, Putin and the logo “I wish he were my president.”  Huh?  Don’t think so.  But why was I a target via gmail for that particular Russian internet campaign?

Just because I’ve made it clear publicly that I think Donald Trump is unfit for the US Presidency does not make me long for the country to be run by an autocratic Russian.  I just think the Congressional Republicans should do their duty and get rid of Messrs Trump and Mr. Pence, clean up our antiquated electoral system which the Russians have taken advantage of and apparently continue to use, reign in the Russian influence campaign itself and restore the vestige of dignity and power the US deserves.   

 

David Brooks' Romanticized Dream that Never Was

By Patricia H Kushlis

New York Times columnist David Brooks must have read James Billington’s Icon and the Ax: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture during summer vacation.  The book was a classic in its field and remained so for years after it was first published in 1966.

In his column “The Russia I Miss” on September 11, 2015, Brooks decries the loss of a Russian counterculture based on the vision of the Russian soul with its roots in the visuality of Russian Orthodoxy and the simple, monotonous lifestyle and superstitious mentality of the Russian peasant.

Brooks argues that although Russia has become a more normal country since 1991 it has lost this unique vantage point so integral to the vibrant intellectual and cultural life that began with its largely French speaking aristocracy as depicted by Leon Tolstoy in his mid-19th century novels and ended with Alexandr Solzhenitsyn who fled to a Vermont farm in the late 1970s to escape the final years of the Communist system with his portrayals of the Gulag.

But there are serious fallacies with Brooks’ romanticized dream of a time that never existed. 

Much of Russia’s literary and cultural brilliance came in reaction to a lengthy history of authoritarianism and at its peak lasted for a matter of decades not centuries. It originated in response to the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, the subsequent rise of nationalisms throughout Eastern Europe and the spread of Czarist government-financed industrialization which only came to Russia in the late nineteenth century - as the Czar’s response to the rise of the German economic juggernaut.  At its height, this Russian counterculture corresponded to a brief period of history that occurred prior to and during the country’s late economic development concentrated around Moscow and St. Petersburg, the political revolts of 1905 and 1917 and tardy exploration and penetration of the empire's vast hinterlands.  (Photo left:  Marc Chagall's Gates to the Jewish Cemetery, 1917 by PH Kushlis 2003.)

Yes, this cultural renaissance was unique because it blended East and West in ways not seen or experienced before.  But it was also the product of the influence of European thought on Russia’s tiny aristocratic class and its small but growing urban population that had unleashed the driving force of nationalism throughout the continent.

The Czar’s belated attempts at reformation in order to rescue a weak, pre-industrial multinational empire from encroachment by an economically strong Germany had produced a radicalized labor force concentrated in Russia’s two major cities, a small westernized bourgeoisie with, ironically, Old Believer roots whose factories and impressive collections of impressionist art had tremendous impact on the Russian cultural scene at the time. 

Russian culture then burrowed underground or fled abroad after Stalin’s ascent to the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and his clamp down on dissent and artistic expression thereafter.

The scarcities of the Communist era - foremost imposed by a utopian and unworkable economic system - turned everyone into criminals.  Life revolved around transactions of the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” variety.  The spirit of the Russian soul which Brooks so longs for had no part of it. 

Meanwhile, Russian composers - like their European counterparts - were mining melodies, harmonies, rhythms and story lines - from the folk songs and peasant cultures that stretched across the vast empire which ethnographers and ethno-musicologists uncovered on field trips throughout the countryside.   These often formed the bases for Russia’s greatest music just as they did Finland’s, Norway’s, Poland’s, and Hungary’s among others.

As for Russia’s lack today of not having a single university among the world’s top 100 today, when did it ever have a university with such stature?  Or did I miss something?    Certainly specific departments and individual professors - like Moscow State University’s theoretical mathematics department - did have stellar reputations and world class scholars. But even during Soviet and Czarist times, Russian tertiary education from the arts through the military was conducted in specialized institutes and academies - not universities - that normally led to professions or skilled jobs as apportioned and decided upon by the state.

Or today, as occurred in pre-Revolutionary Russia, some children of the elite went to Europe for advanced education as did the scions of other Europeanized and Asian elites from around the world.   They now also study in the US because, well, that's where more than a few of the world's 100 best universities are located.  They may or may not return home depending on how they are treated. 

So please, Mr. Brooks, let’s not get carried away by what never was. Much less what never will be.

   

Je Suis Charlie

By Patricia Lee Shape

By all accounts the next edition of Charlie Hebdo is coming out on schedule.  That's the best reply to those who don't understand satire or the need for the full exercise of free speech, even when it hurts.  

The People’s Right to Know

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The U.S. government just embarked upon its newest international media adventure.  No, I don’t mean via Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, You-Tube, webpages or other bits of the social media.  That’s old news. The State Department, Embassies abroad and our international radios have used the social media - more and less - effectively for the past several years.  What I’m referring to is making it legal for American citizens living in the US to access US government broadcasts and web-based electronic materials directed at foreigners for the first time.

The recently amended Smith-Mundt Act was enacted in the 1950s supposedly to protect pristine American eyes and ears from US government propaganda (a word made pejorative by Hitler and Stalin) but in reality the ear-plugs and blinders came into force more to protect the interests of the Associated Press which feared government competition to its then fledgling foreign news business.

By the 1990s, Internet and satellite transmissions had obviated the Smith-Mundt ban.  Long before that, short-wave radio hams throughout the US regularly accessed Voice of America broadcasts and even on dark winter nights when I was a teenager, I could hear the VOA signal and its Yankee Doodle Dandy fife and drum corps theme song in California on my small transistor radio when the antenna pointed towards the northeast.  The station came in just as loud and clear then – if not clearer - than VOA did in my Moscow apartment in 1980. 

How harmful is access to national public radio stations designed to sell US foreign policies abroad to American citizens?  It’s not as if the US government monopolizes the airwaves in this country.  Or that the vast majority of Americans are going to switch the dial from the infotainment programs or worse that they’ve become addicted to US government newscasts or editorials aimed at explaining the US to foreigners.   Fat chance.

Or that our huge commercial media conglomerates will suddenly become divorced from their all too cozy relationships with the government and/or opposition media handlers and report unbiased news for a change as opposed to airing verbatim contents of the latest media blurbs from their favorite sources that regularly scroll across reporters’ computer screens or clog the Inbox.

Smith-Mundt the least of the problems

Nevertheless, I’ve never been convinced that a repeal or revision of this outdated law was worth the effort.  I’m not opposed to the revision but there are far more serious questions about the dysfunctional way these radio stations are currently governed and administered, the contents of their broadcasts, and the languages in which they broadcast.

Why, for instance, does the US need an unwieldy conglomeration of publicly funded separately operated surrogate radio stations like Radio Marti or Radio Free anything - except to appease specific Congressional constituencies and play to their biases?  This especially when the US government can’t even muster the political will to appoint a handful of people – let alone qualified ones – to the overarching, bipartisan Board of International Broadcasting that supposedly sets the rules for and tone.

The Secstate Visits Delhi: Some PD Perspectives

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I checked out the webpage of the U.S. embassy in New Delhi just after Secretary of State John Kerry had completed his two-day visit to India's capital.  Scrolling down the home page, I found  a gallery of predictable VIP visitor photos: lots of namastes with folded hands; a few handshakes; podium shots; conference table shots; many pictures with photogenic “young Indian leaders,” the disproportionate quantity of which leads me to ask how much time was spent with people in power and how much on  PR meant to showcase how this administration digs youth.  I also got access to critical texts equally available on State's website.  Remarks.  Dialogues.  Joint statements.  The works. 

But on the Embassy site I found nothing to guide Indians to portions of text that might resonate more strongly from this or that point of view.  PD people at post may have chosen to do it this way.  Or it may be that the Embassy isn't allowed to be more than a passive pass-through for official texts, which would be a shame.  Eyes glaze over quickly when exposed to oral material that's been printed, even the most sympathetic America watchers may need a little guidance and bashers can sometimes be softened by intelligent spin. A "Letter" from Ambassador Powell might have been a nice touch.

Floods and Other Distractions

John Kerry's days seem to have been packed with events, and cameras obviously were always at work.  Embassy visit schedulers are probably feeling pretty good.  But the visit has received little local coverage: some inconsequential clips on Indian newscasts,  but not much in Delhi's all-important print press.  There may be an unrelated reason for the relative invisibility.  Other matters were competing for attention.

First of all, the weather in the mountains all but buried the Kerry visit.  A once-in-a- century rainfall aggravated by poorly-planned development and deforestation generated horrendous floods and devastating  avalanches in the pilgrimage centers of Uttarakhand.  Next, the picaresque adventures of traitor-or-savior NSA document-leaker Edward Snowden continued to capture the world’s imagination, Delhi’s included.  And, finally, Indian foreign policy buffs have been deeply worried about what the U.S. is up to vis-à-vis the Doha talks with the Taliban.  Kerry’s “Strategic Partnership” address was mined mainly for references to this.

Although the Kerry agenda included useful discussions on critical issues pertaining to business and trade, no exciting reports have turned up yet, and the response to some interesting agreements on the education front has been startling by its paucity.  I found a mere six inches buried well inside today’s (6/27) Times of India.  Put this trifle in the context of Indian dailies' (and news magazines') frequent multi-page education supplements catering to the anxieties of Indian parents eager to get their kids into the right institute, university or college.  Did the press receive any Embassy-generated releases highlighting the education aspects of the visit?  I don't know.  I was unsuccessful when I tried, on WhirledView's behalf, to get on the recipient list for any such releases.  (See below.) 

It's hard not to conclude that the Indian press was underwhelmed by the Kerry visit.  Was that purely because of rotten luck on timing?  Or could the public diplomacy people here in Delhi have done a better job of designing and carrying out a PD campaign for this visit? This blogger's experience may be instructive.

WV Gets Short Srift

Assuming that the Embassy’s  PD section would be doing what I always did when dealing with a high level visit, not only circulating those official texts, but also issuing releases highlighting issues in a way that would be sure to grab local journalists' attention, I decided to visit the American Center in central Delhi.  I wanted to be put on the recipient list for any locally-generated emailed releases re the Kerry visit.  It was a gamble.  I didn't and don't know exactly how Delhi's PD staff are distributed between the Embassy itself and the marginally more accessible American Center, but this is the 21st century. Email exists.  Mama and daughter are in constant touch with one another.  The PAO didn’t need to handle my simple request in person.

Eventually, because I am stubborn, and after dealing with half a dozen English-impaired, locally-hired Indian security officers, I got  to talk with (but not meet face-to-face) an American at the American Center. I will not publish initials or use gender-identified pronouns because this person is clearly a victim of a system that hasn't worked well since U.S.I.S was folded into the State Department. 

All in all, it was a very odd conversation.  He/she had no interest in my claim that people who matter read WhirledView.  Nor did he/she get any friendlier when I mentioned that I was an old PD hand and thus, really, a well-informed colleague.  When, reluctantly, he/she checked out WV, to see if it was for real, he/she still wasn't put on alert by Pat K’s recent piece on John Kerry or my own a few days ago about the implications for America of an India-Japan nexus.  His/her tone throughout was grudging.  It was sneering.  It was snippy. Probably only to get rid of me, he/she requested my email address, but I never received any material about the Kerry visit.    Whether supplementary PD material was not available or whether it was just not available to the likes of me I never learned.  Even so, I might have been ever so slightly mollified had I opened my email and found a brief polite acknowledgment of the conversation.  

Brush Offs: a Primer on When and How

The sad thing about my unnecessarily unpleasant experience at the American Center is this: the owner of the very offputting voice lacked the presence of mind (or the good PD training) to make me happy in less than five painless minutes.  He/she could have reassured me, oh so sweetly, that everything would be on the Embassy web page and at www.state.gov as well.  He/she might even have thanked me, equally sweetly, for introducing him/her to a blog he/she had no intention of looking at again. And then he/she could have wished me a pleasant stay in Delhi.  There are good and bad ways to brush off someone who may be a non-entity but is also a citizen and a blogger.   

Now, I’ve been a foreign service officer.  I know that you can’t give a red carpet reception to every American who walks in the door.  On the other hand, courtesy never hurts, especially if an unfamiliar writer or artist comes waltzing in.  During my own years as a PD officer, I found that  investing a few minutes with a promising stranger could yield dance performances that wowed local audiences and cost me practically nothing to put on.  As for the word people, I milked them for information I might not have gleaned on my own.  And those were the days when USIA officers were free to go most anywhere anytime.  Now, with mobility constrained and access to informal aspects of culture less easy to come by, I can’t help thinking that a few minutes with an old India hand might be even more valuable, even though security regs in India might not be as onerous as those in Pakistan next door.  In any event, courtesy is the bottom line.  Amercan citizens have a habit of complaining to Senators and Representatives. 

So Why the Poor Coverage?

A recent report reveals that the State Department’s romance with social media has yielded little benefit of a substantive nature.  My own experience in Delhi this week suggests that State has even less savvy when it comes to dealing with electronic journalists, which is not a good sign.  And then there’s this: would local coverage of the Kerry visit have been more expansive had it been packaged so as to appeal more explicitly to assorted local interests? I can't tell you.  But if there were some such efforts, shouldn't they have been highlighted on the Embassy web page?  Finally, I can't help wondering if Indian bloggers interested in the Kerry visit were treated as rudely as I was. 

 

The Flight and Implications of Edward J Snowden

By Patricia H. Kushlis

It’s not quite cucumber time in Russia.  That’s at its height in August.  The days are long; the nights are short but I suppose that doesn’t matter much for someone holed up in Sheremetyevo’s transit lounge unless of course there are no blackout curtains to block the incessant northern light pouring in at all hours just days after this year’s summer solstice.  That, in and of itself, could become a kind of mental torture chamber – as one waits for two great powers to decide one’s fate.  Just keep the lights on all night – wait a minute – just keep those curtains open. That’s enough.

Will Snowden or won’t Snowden be allowed out of this never-never land?  As importantly, what price are the Russians demanding for his release? And what is the US willing to pay to get him back?  Not in hard cash – but in some kind of quid-pro-quo to which the public may never be privy.

Someone we’re holding they want returned?  A Russian spy, for instance, quietly under detention in some US federal prison? Or upping the ante. . . A trade deal?  The suspension of the Magnitsky Act thereby allowing 18 high level Russian crooks, torturers and murderers to once again visit the US and stash their cash in our banks? Or on the lighter side, another Barbeque Anna Chapman?  What about assuaging Russia’s bugaboo with America’s nascent Missile Defense Shield?  A little slowing down perhaps of the construction? 

How much is Snowden worth?  Or maybe the US should just say to the Russians – he’s yours as long as you keep him quiet and never let him leave. Moscow’s such a wonderful place to live in winter when its 40 below. Not. You already know what he knows but keep his computer connection away from the Internet.

If the media’s reading of Putin’s remarks in Helsinki had been correct, then why is Snowden still lounging next to the tarmac and not sitting comfortably on a plane winging its way to somewhere else?  Or more likely be already somewhere else?  In fact, there are few places for Snowden to go where he would not be arrested and turned over to US authorities – as Elias Groll pointed out in FP  those locations are even more circumscribed by limited airline connections.   None of them look particularly appealing to me – and that includes a forever residency in Ecuador - but then few fugitives can be choosy. And who’s going to support him and his Internet connection?  Wikileaks or another country’s intelligence service?  Those options don’t look so good to me either.

Hello Congress - Diplomacy is an important part of National Security