Agrégateur de flux

HONG KONG — The People’s Commune resides not on a utopian farm in the Chinese heartland, but on the second floor of a shabby building in Causeway Bay, one of Hong Kong’s busiest and most neon-packed shopping areas. Wedged between two watch stores offering timepieces costing tens of thousands of dollars and a money exchange joint, the narrow entryway leading up to the shop is plastered with adverts for its top offerings: coffee, baby formula, and banned books.

It’s an unlikely combination, but one logical for its appeal to the store’s patrons, mostly mainland tourists on shopping sprees. 19.1 million mainlanders, or more than 2.5 times Hong Kong’s resident population of seven million, visited the former British colony as tourists in 2014. Many are looking for things they can’t get at home, or at least not as cheaply. Gucci handbags, cosmetics, and safe baby food make the list, but so does something more risqué: books that Chinese authorities have deemed ideologically unfit.

On the day I visited in early May the little shop was mostly deserted. Two clerks chatted behind the cashier, while a lone customer, an African man, pecked away on his laptop in a corner. The place was not much of a coffee shop — three tiny tables cramped behind a book display case was the extent of its ambitions. The room felt so tight it wasn’t clear where an espresso machine would fit. In its entirety, the store was at most 1,000 square feet, but it was filled to the brim with books.

To browse the wares on offer in People’s Commune is to wade into the unpredictable swamp of political rumors about top-level Chinese politics. All kinds of colorful critters flourish outside the control of the Communist Party. Much of it is bunk; even an adventurous reader would be well-advised to keep careful mental distance from titles like Hu Jintao’s Unsuccessful Suicide, Li Keqiang’s Imminent Resignation, or The Conspiracy to Overthrow Xi Jinping in Five Years. (Hu is China’s former president; Li is its current premier, Xi its current president.)

The sordid and salacious seem to sell particularly well. When I asked the clerk about the types of book favored by the store’s clientele, she pointed to a bestsellers list near the door. Among this month’s leaders was the purported autobiography of Shen Bing, a beautiful presenter at China Central Television (CCTV), who is thought to be a mistress of Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar now being prosecuted for corruption. The account is probably not authentic — it would be virtually impossible for Shen to have written it in 2014, while she was under investigation for the Zhou case. But the combination of sex, fame, and power evidently proved irresistible to many mainland Chinese buyers, whose exposure to an accounting of Zhou’s misdeeds is mostly limited to terse, carefully vetted state media releases.

Hong Kong publishing houses are only too happy to fill the information void that mainland state control creates, churning out a steady supply of books and magazines about the Chinese leadership that usually make no attempt to substantiate any claims beyond throwaway references to “well-placed sources in Beijing.” Street newsstands often peddle the political drama pieces as well, jamming the glum faces of somewhat sinister-looking Chinese men in suits next to porn and Japanese anime.

But I’d not come in search of steamy liaisons and failed coups; I was looking for a memoir by Li Rui, a 98-year old retired Communist Party official now known as one of the party’s harshest internal critics. Li’s book represents a slice of the Hong Kong banned-book genre that offers real value: memoirs by bona fide eyewitnesses to history. One of the best-known examples is Prisoner of the State, a memoir by late, deposed Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The reformist Zhao was once among China’s most powerful men, but he made the mistake of openly sympathizing with student protesters amassed in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and spent almost two decades under house arrest. Prisoner of the State is based on tapes of his conversations with friends that had been smuggled out of China. Similarly, Li’s book, Li Rui’s Oral Account of Past Events, is based on a series of interviews and conversations from the early 2000s.

Li’s life is the stuff of legend. Born in 1917 to a merchant family, the still-idealistic Li landed in Yan’an, the “red capital” of China, in the 1940s. The communists had caught a breather in Yan’an after their epic Long March to escape from the ruling Nationalists, who launched a series of “encirclement campaigns” to exterminate the fledgling party. At Yan’an, Li became a newspaper editor and grew close to many of the communist leaders who would go on to govern China, but also had his first taste of the party’s wrath when he spent a year in detention over suspicion of being a Nationalist spy.

After the Communist Party won the Chinese civil war in 1949, Li was charged with directing the country’s (then non-existent) hydroelectric projects, and also served as Mao Zedong’s secretary for a few brief months in 1958. In 1959, Li was purged and sent to labor camp, and spent almost two decades in political wilderness, including six years in solitary confinement at the infamous Qincheng prison, which has held many Chinese notables. In 1978, after Deng Xiaoping came to power, Li was rehabilitated and tapped to be the deputy head of central organization department, the organ that is, essentially, the human resources branch for the party, which now has over 85 million members. Li was tasked with building a pipeline of younger cadres, and the men who would later take top posts in the party, like former President Jiang Zemin, Hu, and Xi all had personal contacts with Li while he evaluated party members for promotion.

Mao was “ruthless,” according to Li, who Li claims did not care about the death of millions during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, which amounted to a “mistake that Communist party made that was unprecedented in human history.” Li also painted Jiang in a negative light; after Li recommended Jiang for posts at key junctures of Jiang’s career, Jiang repeatedly sought Li’s advice and support throughout the 1980’s, but “acted like a stranger” after he becaming party secretary. Li had similar experiences with Hu, who ignored Li’s letters and advice after he ascended the throne. Li had woefully little to say about Xi, probably partly because Xi’s father was a close friend of his, but Li has continued to call for the party to institute democratic process to “save itself.”

As a bona fide party elder, Li has also emerged as a leading voice for political reform. After being sidelined once again after 1989 for criticizing the decision to use force against student protesters on Tiananmen Square, Li began to write extensively on his personal brushes with power, dealings with powerful men, and his having borne witness to the corruptive nature of power. His ripe old age, Yan’an credentials and past contributions to the party have protected him from anything worse than gentle warnings. Li gripes in the closing words to his memoir that his figurative “sons and grandsons in the party are now trying to rein me in.”

Li’s book made international news when his daughter, Li Nanyang, sued Chinese customs for confiscating 50 copies of the book when she tried to cross the border from Hong Kong into mainland China. In an opinion piece about the case, the staunch party-advocate Global Times dismissed Ms. Li’s actions as “divorced from China’s reality,” but acknowledged that bringing one or two banned books into China for one’s own enjoyment is a common, albeit “controversial,” practice. There is little chance that Ms. Li will have her day in court, and she probably does not expect to. If her goal was to call further attention to the informational wall China has built around its citizens, then she has already succeeded.

Since banned books are widely available in Hong Kong at bookstores and newsstands, probability dictates that a fair number of them must have seeped through the porous customs check into China. But a valuable and weighty memoir like Li’s is apparently rarer contraband than the frivolity and smut that’s mostly on offer in Hong Kong. For mainland Chinese readers, flipping through banned books is like peering through a looking glass to a strange world. But what they see seldom takes them any closer to the truth.

Image via Flickr/credit: I’m Goldfish

• Tweet Widget
• Facebook Like
• Email

Mathieu Ngudjolo, the first defendant to be acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), was deported to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on May 11, 2015.

(Kinshasa) Mathieu Ngudjolo, the first defendant to be acquitted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), was deported to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on May 11, 2015, his lawyers said.

read more

Durchbruch in Sachen Griechenland gab es beim Treffen der Euro-Finanzminister in Brüssel wie erwartet keinen, dafür einige kleine Schritte.…

In 1962, in the depth of the Cold War, the Vatican excommunicated communist-revolutionary-turned-Cuban-president Fidel Castro after he banned religious celebrations and the building of new churches in Cuba, which would later declare itself an officially atheist state. But half a century later — two decades after the Cold War’s end — Fidel’s brother Raúl, Cuba’s current president, says he’s so impressed by Pope Francis that he’s considering going back to church.

After a very friendly visit with Francis at the Vatican, Castro told reporters on Sunday, “I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I’m not joking.”

Castro visited Francis on his way back from Moscow, where he was reportedly the only Western Hemisphere leader to attend celebrations marking the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism. The Moscow stop was a reminder that Cold War ties — and divisions — run deep. But they’re not immutable: Francis will reciprocate Castro’s gesture later this year and become the third pope of the last three to have held the office who have visited Cuba since the Cold War ended.

“When the pope goes to Cuba in September,” Castro said, “I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction.” He added that he had “always studied at Jesuit schools” — an allusion to the time before the revolution that brought his brother to power in 1959.

Warming relations between Havana and the Vatican demonstrate a broader trend of reconciliation between the once-hostile ideologies, which has accelerated under social welfare-minded Francis.

The basic principles behind Communism and Catholicism have been fundamentally at odds ever since Karl Marx famously wrote that religion is “the opiate of the masses.” Antipathy arguably reached its height with the Vatican’s 1949 “Decree against Communism,” which excommunicated all Catholics involved with communist groups. It continued with Pope John XXIII’s endorsement of democracy over other forms of government in 1963, and Pope Paul VI’s condemnation of “atheistic communism” as chief among “such ideologies as deny God and oppress the Church.” Later, many credited Pope John Paul II with helping speed the fall of communism in his native Poland, where Catholic churches served as centers of political opposition.

More recently, and particularly with Francis’s emphasis on egalitarianism and fighting poverty, the two ideologies’ goals, at least as preached by Francis and the Castros, have started to sound more similar. After the Cold War ended, Cuba  lifted restrictions on Catholic practice, allowed Catholics to join the Communist Party, and removed its constitution’s declaration of atheism. Catholics – nominally about 60 percent of Cuba’s population — no longer have to practice in secret, although many who’ve been baptized don’t practice regularly.

Fidel Castro visited the Vatican in 1996, paving the way for Pope John Paul to become the first pope to visit Cuba in 1998. Pope Benedict met Fidel and Raúl, both of whom were baptized and have showed some religious tendencies in the past, in Havana in 2012. Last year, the BBC reported that building was underway on the first new church since a freeze on construction after the Cuban Revolution.

Now, as a 2013 Atlantic article titled “The Vatican’s Journey from Anti-Communism to Anti-Capitalism” points out, Francis has declared “a new enemy for the Catholic Church: modern capitalism.” According to Francis, “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories, which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.” But “this opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

With the Cold War long over and communism soundly defeated as an ideology in all but a handful of countries – Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and (nominally) China — Francis argues that for the welfare of mankind, states need to exercise more, not less, control over financial markets.

Some who don’t see many similarities between the two -isms have raised alarms that Francis is abandoning one for the other. Rush Limbaugh, for example, has accused Francis of practicing “pure Marxism” in place of Catholicism. Francis has graciously responded that “Marxist ideology is wrong, but I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people.”

Still, Communism and Catholicism now have more to talk about than they have for the past several decades. As the Atlantic’s Emma Green pointed out, Argentina-born Francis’s message seems to be crafted less for North America and Europe — the epicenters both of recent church scandals and of what Francis sees as individualistic capitalism’s corrupting influence — and more for Latin America and Africa, where economic development has left many behind.

On Sunday, Castro and Francis spoke in their native Spanish, building on a dialog that Castro has credited with helping thaw relations with the United States under President Barack Obama and move toward a lifting of sanctions that – along with communist rule itself — have helped impoverish the country.

During Castro’s visit with the Pope, the Associated Press reported, “Francis gave Castro a medal depicting St. Martin of Tours, known for caring for the destitute. ‘With his mantle he covers the poor,’ Francis told Castro, saying more efforts on behalf of the poor are needed.”

That’s definitely one thing both leaders can agree on.

GREGORIO BORGIA/AFP/Getty Images

VIENNA, 11 May 2015 – Growing interdependence arising from accelerating globalization and the increasingly transnational character of security threats confer a new role to regional organizations, said the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation José Manuel GarcÍa-Margallo in his address to the OSCE Permanent Council today. He added that Spain believes that the OSCE is a key instrument in consolidating peace and foster prosperity in the Euro-Atlantic, Euro-Asian and Euro-Mediterranean regions. 

He said that the crisis in and around Ukraine has opened a deep rift that has put in question the very foundations of our common security architecture. “We believe that the OSCE must now help redefine the European security architecture and re-establish trust,” said GarcÍa-Margallo. “Political dialogue can produce results only if there is conviction that the Helsinki Final Act principles are respected and compromises fulfilled. There are no exceptions to the respect of the rule of law and territorial integrity, the independence and sovereignty of States. Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity must be respected.” “At the same time, we must think of the Russian Federation as a strategic ally and explore ways to normalize relations between Europe and Russia” he emphasized.

Referring to this year’s 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, a key founding document of what is now the OSCE, GarcÍa-Margallo said this is an opportunity to reflect on the role of the OSCE and to define the common challenges and threats we face.

GarcÍa-Margallo noted that some of the greatest threats that affect the OSCe región originate on the southern borders of our organization, stressing that Spain is fully conscious of this reality and therefore actively supports a climate of dialogue, understanding and cooperation with the countries of the souther Mediterranean shore.  “It is important that the OSCE includes migration and the fight against terrorism in its discussions since they are among the greatest threats of our time.”

GarcÍa-Margallo welcomed the heightened efforts of the OSCE in mediation, and called for strengthening the organization’s Human Dimension, stressing the strong link between security and respect of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

“We can come out of this crisis stronger.  Security and prosperity are the result of unity, not division,” he concluded. “Confrontation and disunity weaken us.  All of us, as members of the OSCE are called upon to become true strategic allies in a dynamic world which demands co-operation in order to face multiple global threats.”

Related Stories

• Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation José Manuel GarcÍa-Margallo to address OSCE Permanent Council on Monday, 11 May 2015
• Chairperson Dačić condemns violence in Kumanovo, announces visit by OSCE officials to Skopje
• Chairperson Dačić calls on all sides to send the message of peace during World War II commemoration events

As President Barack Obama and the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) sit down at Camp David this week, the White House’s goal is clear: reassure America’s Middle Eastern partners that it remains committed to their security. But the summit is clearly not off to a good start, with only two of the six GCC monarchs planning to attend — and King Salman of Saudi Arabia waiting until the last moment to announce he is not coming.

According to media reports, the Obama administration is preparing to assuage skepticism toward the potential nuclear agreement with Iran by focusing on new security arrangements and billions of dollars in weapons that the United States may offer to sell to the Gulf states. Arms sales and security guarantees may be a piece of the equation — but they won’t be enough. The most effective way for the Obama administration to make headway with the Gulf is by signaling a more comprehensive approach to countering Iranian influence in the Middle East.

What the Gulf states fear most is that in the aftermath of a nuclear agreement, the United States will cut a deal with Tehran to divide the region and abandon its Arab partners. Saudi Arabia has been the most vocal in expressing concerns that the United States is so interested in achieving an agreement on the nuclear question that it is willing to tolerate Iran’s unchecked influence throughout the region. To many of America’s partners, Iranian nuclear ambitions are inextricably linked to Tehran’s aggressive support of its proxies through the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which provides training, funding, and support for Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among other groups.

So far, America’s allies have a poor record of responding to Iranian interventionism in the Arab world. In Syria, where the IRGC is operating overtly and covertly, the response of U.S. Gulf partners has been reactive — favoring support for militant Sunni Islamist forces to counter Iranian influence. Fighting the fire of Iranian proxies with the fire of radical Sunni fighters may be expedient, but it is unhelpful in realizing the longer-term goal of greater regional stability.

But it’s going to take more than ever-larger arms sales to convince the Gulf states that Iran isn’t on the march in the Middle East. In 2014, U.S. allies in the GCC outspent the Iranians by a margin of more than seven-to-one, investing over $113.7 billion in their militaries compared to Iran’s $15.7 billion. The United States has long given its Gulf allies some of its most advanced military equipment, such as the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets that it sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Riyadh alone spent more than $80 billion on defense in 2014. And Saudi air defenses — bolstered by advanced F-15 fighters, top-of-the-line intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and missile defense capabilities — are more than capable of defending the kingdom from Iran’s conventional military attacks. Yet, anxiety in the region is still high.

There are a number of steps Obama can take this week beyond arms sales to reassure his Gulf partners. He can start by putting the regional challenges caused by Iran at the top of the agenda at Camp David: If the president and his team start the discussion with a focus on what the Gulf states view as their top priority, instead of focusing on the Iranian nuclear challenge, it would send a strong message that the United States is listening to its partners’ concerns.

As part of this effort, the United States might also consider increasing interdictions of Iranian weapons shipments, improving intelligence cooperation, pursuing more aggressive joint covert actions against Iranian-supported terrorism, and finding ways to expose Iranian operatives and embarrass Iran when it pursues irresponsible destabilizing policies in the Middle East. The United States has already started to increase its support for such efforts by providing intelligence for the Saudi military operations against the Houthis in Yemen, and increasing its naval presence to deter Iranian arms shipments in the Gulf. The United States also sent a strong signal in the aftermath of the Iranian seizure of the container ship Maersk Tigris, beginning military escorts of U.S. and British commercial vessels throughout the Gulf, which likely played a role in the ship’s release.

The Obama administration should also embark on a long-term effort to train these U.S. allies how to more effectively counter Iran. There is already a potential model in Jordan, which is particularly focused on building the capacity of partners on the ground to defeat jihadists such as the Islamic State. The Jordanians are set to take the lead in a mission to train Iraqi Sunni Arab National Guard units, and Amman is expressing public intent to recruit and train Syrian fighters from tribal groups that live in Islamic State-controlled areas of eastern Syria. Other U.S. allies — including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey — are scheduled to provide training sites and support for the U.S.-led program to train and equip Syrian rebels, which has already reportedly begun in Jordan.

The United States can also send a message to both its partners and to Iran that it is not abandoning the region by enhancing the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East. Obama should tell his GCC allies that the approximately 40,000 U.S. military personnel, and the robust U.S. naval and air capabilities, are not only in the Middle East to stay but will be enhanced. Forward stationing more advanced manned and unmanned aircraft and missile defense assets in the region, for instance, would help assure America’s wary partners.

Of course, all of these steps do not preclude increased arms sales to the Gulf States. But ideally, those should focus on defensive capabilities such as minesweepers and ballistic missile defense. They should also include the types of capabilities that would make our Arab partners more effective at countering the unconventional Iranian challenge, such as tactical tools like night vision goggles and weapons optics, and also more strategic capabilities such as advanced unmanned aerial vehicles and the networking architecture to enhance air and maritime domain awareness.

In the end, it will not be possible for President Obama to fully reassure America’s regional allies in the aftermath of a nuclear deal with Iran. Their concerns about a “Persian pivot” will remain, and their distrust of the president will make U.S. relations with the Gulf states difficult. But if Obama is able to begin to implement an effective reassurance strategy, he can hand off a better situation to his successor — who will have to do the bulk of the work in repairing some of America’s relations with the Gulf states in the aftermath of a nuclear deal with Iran.

Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

Ex-CIA officer Joe Weisberg debuted his TV show The Americans in January 2013, chronicling the lives of two “illegals”—deep-undercover Russian spies seemingly living a normal American existence. Weisberg’s series was partly inspired by 10 illegals who had been apprehended on U.S. soil three years earlier. That event also revealed something far more dramatic, according to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov: Russian intelligence appeared desperate to relive the glory days of the long-defunct Communist International (Comintern), a Soviet-era organization that recruited party sympathizers from around the world, while strengthening state security in the meantime. Weisberg, whose show recently aired its third-season finale, and Soldatov, whose book on Russian surveillance, The Red Web, will be published in September, recently debated the merits of illegals, trusting agents, and the world according to Edward Snowden.

Joe Weisberg: I have a dual perspective on the use of illegals. What is the point of continuing to run them? On the one hand, I see no purpose in it whatsoever—of putting all this effort into training these people and giving them these deep covers when they really have nothing to do, very little access, and no way to produce useful intelligence. On the other hand, I feel the same way really about all espionage; it’s all useless. Even the SVR [the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service] officers in the embassies, it’s the same for them. I don’t think they have access, and I don’t think they produce useful intelligence either. But, if you look at it differently, the illegals at least really have much better cover. Unless there’s a traitor who gives them up, they are generally impossible for the intelligence services to discover. So in a certain sense, it makes more sense to use illegals.

Andrei Soldatov: I have to disagree with you. My opinion is that illegals are the most unofficial way to do intelligence because it means that you have your officers trained for years and years to pretend that they are, in this case, Americans. The illegals who were used for many years in the United States were put in a very dangerous situation: These people were not protected by diplomatic power. If they’d been exposed, they would have been in a position to provide all details to counterintelligence. Many years ago, I had a very interesting conversation with someone from the SVR who told me a fascinating story. He said that some of these illegals in the United States, as they retired, they asked as a special reward to stay in the country. And I thought, they want to live in this culture they spent their life trying to undermine. If the people that trained and spent their careers in the United States do spend the rest of their lives also in the United States, they’re very vulnerable to counterintelligence. I would be very cautious of these people if I were in charge of Russian foreign intelligence.

JW: There’s a very interesting memoir by a former Directorate S officer who claims that the illegals were never fully trusted—for exactly the reason you’re saying. He says they were sometimes given a drug that was undetectable and a sort of truth serum. They were then questioned under the influence, sometimes waking up and not necessarily realizing they had been drugged. That was the level at which the Soviet Union didn’t fully trust its own agents.

AS: That brings us to an interesting question: Why did Soviet and now Russian intelligence actually decide to use illegals? Why do we have this strange practice of sending Russian nationals to pretend that they are American or British or French? It’s a unique thing that nobody except Russia actually uses. Comintern might have had one of the most successful intelligence agencies because it actually consisted of nationals of many countries, including Americans, the British, and all kinds of Europeans, united by the idea of communism. All these guys were recruited not by Soviet intelligence but by Comintern officers. The problem with Comintern, though, was that in 1943, when Stalin decided to disband it completely, many of these people were actually sent to jail or killed. Not too long after, KGB intelligence started a special avenue for training illegals; they were pressured to find some sort of replacement to that success.

* * *

AS: The scandal of illegals in 2010 was portrayed in Russia as a huge victory for the SVR, despite the fact that these guys were all caught—a PR celebration to say that Russian intelligence is back. But in the United States, the perception was completely different. How can you explain this contradiction?

JW: Well, the very first response was the FBI saying, “These guys are so dangerous.” But very quickly the media caught on to the fact that even the FBI couldn’t present any proof that they had actually done anything. Soon the reporting turned to the idea that these guys had no value and weren’t a real risk. It took about half a year for the intelligence community to fight a kind of rear-guard action, to say, “Here’s what the illegals might have been doing that was really dangerous, so you should be scared of them.” For example, one of them was close to somebody who was close to Hillary Clinton. And also they may have been communicating with people in the NSA [National Security Agency]. It’s in the [U.S.] intelligence community’s interest for the illegals to have posed a major, serious threat. When it was time to do The Americans, I was less interested in the reality of what illegals did or didn’t do. I was interested in the perception, in the spies among us, and in the fear at that time—Ronald Reagan, the evil empire. Of course, the illegals were actually there to act in wartime, to go and blow things up, poison water supplies—things like that. They did have a fairly insidious mission; it just wasn’t really acted upon. So I wanted to put back together a fantasy of the worst possible things and make it more dramatic. There’s no question that in the show these guys are much more active and are doing much worse things than illegals ever did. There’s some conflict between that and the main purpose of the show, which is really to say, “Take a look at the enemy; the enemy is really just like you, so stop seeing them so much as your enemy.”

AS: Yes, I think that’s a very good point to look at the actions. That was always the commentary from the SVR guys. One point of the illegals was always to act in a “special period,” which actually means war—to have a special cache of weapons in times of war, that illegals might use to hide weapons and explosives. In the scandal in 2010, everybody tried to get comments from the SVR. Eventually, a general was dispatched. When he was asked, “Well this program is so expensive, we have left these guys for years, and what is the result?” he said the same speech: “Well, in ‘a special period,’ these guys might be useful.” So they developed this program when they had in mind a “period” when there might be a big war between Russia—or the Soviet Union—and the United States. They developed special procedures and they still work from these procedures. They still have the same principles. It’s fascinating, that so many years have passed, nobody thinks about the big war between the two super powers, but nevertheless, they still have these things.

JW: I’ll tell a favorite illegals story: They were also sent to Eastern Europe, interestingly enough—to the Soviet allies. For example, there was an illegal that was sent to Czechoslovakia in 1968; this person, like many of the illegals, had become somewhat westernized and he sent back to Russia these very honest accounts about what was going on and was really sort of pro-the forces of Czechoslovakia that were fighting for freedom and independence. This person was fearless and, to a certain degree, because of some of the politics of the illegals program, was able to send these reports and didn’t have any repercussions for it. Of course the general officers in the embassy were under great pressure to say what everybody wanted to hear. That was a problem with Soviet intelligence throughout the entire Soviet period—that you couldn’t really give accurate intelligence because you could lose your job over it. But this illegal was able to go into Czechoslovakia and say, “Look, these people are not so bad; they are kind of doing something decent”—and send these reports back to Moscow.

AS: That’s such an interesting story. There were at least some sort of results from this kind of program.

* * *

JW: You speak and you write very freely about everything going on in Russia. Are you afraid of being arrested?

AS: Well, I was first interrogated by the FSB many years ago, in 2002. So I might say I got used to it. But three years ago, it was impossible to accuse journalists of state treason because they were special marked in the registration—you could not be accused of espionage if you had no access to classified information. But then this was changed by Russian legislators. Now it’s possible to accuse journalists or others of state treason even if they had no access to any kind of secrets. And of course this put the journalists in a special and very awkward situation. The Russian system of censorship is based mostly on instigating self-censorship. It’s not about real suppression. It’s based on intimidation. You are not actually told what to do; you need to guess. And I try to fight this hold of self-censorship, trying to think what might the reaction be of the American or British or French journalists in this situation.

But thanks to the Internet, we’re sometimes able to find a way to bypass the censorship. Something that’d be impossible to publish in Russian media, if you find a way to have your story published first on the web, after that, Russian publications might translate the story and publish it in Russian.

JW: When people do self-censor, are they afraid that, as some journalists have been, that they’re going to be beaten up on the street? Or is the primary fear that they’ll be arrested, tried in a court, and sent to prison?

AS: It’s about different things. First, you might very quickly lose your job if you publish something sensitive. The owners are mostly pro-Kremlin oligarchs, and these guys know the rules. They know how to put pressure on the editors and the editors might talk to the journalists and find out that everybody understands the rules. The last time I was able to work for a Russian publication full time was in 2009. So this is a reality. But also we have all kinds of personal friends and we have Russian investigative journalists who’ve been killed. The most famous is Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in 2006. And you know, just recently, Boris Nemtsov was killed very close to the Kremlin. So you might say what you want to say but everybody understands this as a message, that you should be very cautious. And this message is very well understood.

* * *

AS: The thing about Edward Snowden that is usually is not understood in the United States and the rest of the world is that Snowden is completely unavailable for Russian journalists and for foreign journalists based in Moscow. All of the interviews he’s done over the last year and a half were conducted by people coming from the United States, specifically to interview him. We don’t quite understand the reasons for the secrecy, because in December Snowden said that he doesn’t feel like he’s in danger, that he can walk freely, cross the streets, use the underground. Of course this lack of transparency doesn’t help because Snowden’s presence in Moscow coincides with a huge offensive sponsored by the Russian authorities on the Internet. And many of the oppressive measures are justified in Russian legislatures by his revelations. They’re now trying to force global companies like Google and Facebook to relocate their servers to Russia, arguing that we need to protect personal data of Russian citizens from NSA spying. But the goal is obvious: to provide back doors to these systems for Russian secret services.

JW: Do you think that had it not been for Snowden, the authorities would have simply found another excuse to do that?

AS: That might have been possible, but remember that before Snowden, Russia failed to make other changes to the Internet. But now they had an excuse. Part of the problem is that Snowden failed to really fight for Internet freedom in places outside the United States.

JW: He seems like someone who must be horrified by what the Russian government is doing with the Internet. It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that he’s not speaking out strongly because of his own personal interests. Is that eventually going to become too much of a conflict for him and he’ll have to speak out from his conscience? Or is he going to live out the rest of his days in Moscow swallowing his conscience?

Soldatov: courtesy photo; Weisberg: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

During a four-hour helicopter ride over the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara in early February, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz and Russia’s Gazprom boss, Alexey Miller, mapped out plans that could potentially rebuild the long-adversarial relationship between their two countries. The men scouted the likely path of “Turkish Stream,” Moscow’s latest grandiose pipeline proposal, which would channel natural gas from the Russian coastal town of Anapa all the way to Ipsala, on Turkey’s border with Greece.

But Yildiz and Miller also traced what could be the newest fault line in Europe’s geopolitical landscape. That helicopter ride, and the subsequent formal agreement signed in early May, suggest Turkey’s patience with Brussels is wearing thin—the EU, after all, has been slow-footing the country’s membership for decades now—and Ankara’s willingness to support Europe’s foreign-policy priorities, from diversifying energy resources to isolating Russia, is diminishing. Now, this one pipeline, which could deliver gas as early as next year, could have the power to embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin, endanger a critical alliance the West has spent decades cultivating, and upend Eurasia’s entire energy and security landscape.

In other words, Turkey would become a middleman for Europe’s energy buyers, and it would be precisely the linchpin Moscow needs to keep an energy hold on the continent.

To be sure, Turkey has long been at the center of global pipeline politics. Since the 1990s, Europe has fantasized that natural gas pipelines would someday push fuel from the Caucasus and Central Asia to Europe. And Turkey’s privileged geographical position would indeed allow for this, while there’s abundant gas in places such as Azerbaijan. Europe’s dreams finally seemed to be coming true in March 2015, when, after years of development, Turkey and Azerbaijan broke ground on a trans-Anatolian pipeline designed to shuttle gas from the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus and Turkey, and into Europe.

But here’s the rub: Europe doesn’t consume enough gas to justify two new massive pipelines. Put simply, the road goes through Turkey, and Turkey will decide whom Europe will deal with on energy.

Turkey’s games with Europe, while not a complete about-face, are nevertheless jarring. Ankara has been Western-leaning and secular since the end of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I—an allegiance that was cemented in 1952, when the country joined NATO. But that started to change at the turn of this century, when Ahmet Davutoglu, currently the prime minister and a longtime advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, began trying to forge much closer ties with nearby Muslim countries and crafting an increasingly independent stance toward Washington and NATO. (In 2003, for instance, Ankara notably refused permission for the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to cross Turkey to invade Iraq. More recently, Turkey has proved a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State and has taken an antagonistic approach to Israel after years of good relations.)

Turkish Stream, then, might be viewed as the culmination of Davutoglu’s vision: The country is moving to become a neo-Ottoman powerhouse and the center of Eurasia’s energy structure.

Such rebranding comes just in time for Russia, which, for nearly 10 years, has been looking for a way to keep a reluctant Europe hooked on its energy while sidestepping a problematic Ukraine. Starting in 2007, Putin began championing “South Stream,” a Russian-built pipeline meant to carry Russian gas across the Black Sea, through Turkish waters, into Bulgaria, and then into the rest of Europe. Moscow only grasped in 2014 that the plan didn’t comply with EU law: Brussels isn’t too keen on monopolies, especially ones that control both energy and the pipes that carry it.

Nonetheless, Russia was already well on its way to scheming a new way forward. In December, while in Ankara for a one-day trade and economic mission, Putin abruptly announced the death of South Stream in the middle of a news conference and debuted the new Turkish Stream. Russia and Turkey’s energy relations, Putin said, “have reached a truly strategic level.” Although the initial announcement came as a surprise to nearly everyone, including Russian energy officials and Turkish authorities, just two months later Yildiz and Miller were boarding that helicopter for their scouting mission.

What’s significant—and problematic—about Turkey’s apparent leap into Russia’s embrace is that Ankara has been both a bulwark of Western security architecture for more than 50 years and a key to Europe’s plot to reduce reliance on Russian energy, an even more urgent priority since the start of the Ukraine crisis. In one fell swoop, Erdogan’s Turkey seems to be abandoning its wilting dream of joining Europe and appears to be throwing in its lot with the one country most determined to undermine the global order in general, and European security in particular.

From Brussels’s point of view, Turkey would likely be a more reliable transit country for energy supplies than Ukraine, but it still lacks much of the physical infrastructure needed to serve that role, such as natural gas storage tanks. What’s more, unlike existing pipelines between Russia and Europe, Turkish Stream wouldn’t even deliver gas directly to the European Union; rather, the gas would be held in Brussels’s backyard in the hope that it would spend billions of dollars to go and fetch the gas at the Turkey-Greece border.

For Moscow, the upside of Turkish Stream is obvious: If it were built, Putin would finally succeed in isolating Ukraine, while still keeping big parts of Europe reliant on Russian fuel. And for Ankara, Turkish Stream could be the vehicle for finally achieving Davutoglu’s dream of reinventing Turkey. But for all his yearnings to resuscitate former glories, he seems to be overlooking the country’s complicated history with Russia.

For 400 years, from the middle of the 16th century through the height of the Cold War, Turks and Russians battled constantly for supremacy in the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and Crimea. And those issues haven’t been collecting dust in history books. After a couple of decades of peace, the hundreds of thousands of Turkic Tatars living in the Crimean peninsula are again dreading Russian reprisals reminiscent of the Stalin years; Russia is ramping up naval activities in the Black Sea; and Putin is eyeing a greater military presence near Turkey, including new basing agreements with Cyprus and Syria. This is all compounded by long-
standing differences over the conflict in Syria: Turkey wants to oust President Bashar al-Assad and has let Islamist groups run rampant, while Russia staunchly backs its Syrian ally.

Thus, Turkey’s part in the newest pipeline project and the cementing of a strategic relationship with Russia amount to a massive bet that centuries of historical rivalry and animosity can be erased with cheap gas, some spit in a palm, and a friendly handshake. That calls to mind the old Turkish proverb: “The sheep separated from the flock is soon eaten by the wolf.” Or, in this case, the bear.

Illustration by Matthew Hollister

Twenty years after his presidency ended, Harry Truman reflected on firing General Douglas MacArthur, noting in Time magazine that, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

It’s difficult to imagine a contemporary politician talking about the American military that way. And it wasn’t just in retirement that Truman was tartly critical: while president he complained that only Stalin had a more effective propaganda machine than the U.S. Marine Corps But Truman, like most men of his generation, had done military service in the war. So even if he considered it politic to apologize to the Marine Corps, he had standing to be critical. America also had a public much more familiar with its military because of conscription and recent large-scale wars.

Forty years after the end of conscription, America’s military needs are met by half of one percent of our population serving. Americans tend to like their military more and know it less. This has occurred simultaneously with the collapse of public trust in our elected officials, which may be affecting the civil-military relationship at its highest levels. Politicians covet military leaders’ support and retired military leaders’ endorsements in ways that may not be healthy for either the republic or its military.

Civil-military relations remain an unequal dialogue, the military subordinate to elected political leaders. No squawk was heard from the military when General Stanley McChrystal was relieved for disrespecting Vice President Biden — not even when General Jim Mattis was retired early for no stated reason. Our military knows its leaders serve at the pleasure of the president.

But the president is more reliant on military leaders than civilians often acknowledge. At some point in nearly every presidency comes the moment when the Commander in Chief has to depend on our military: bad guys to be killed, hostages to be rescued, Embassies to be evacuated, countries to be liberated or defended. That is when sound military advice is essential. And in an age where the American public knows little about its military and distrusts its politicians, the public looks to the military to validate the political leaders’ choices.

The American military has disparate views on whether it is the professional responsibility of military leaders to advocate for the president’s policies. As a political matter, it is hugely injurious to the president for them not to. Which means trust is at a premium for the president in choosing his senior military advisors.

Unfortunately, that often results in civilians choosing military leaders they’re “comfortable with.” That’s the wrong criteria, if the president wants both good counsel and reliable shielding by his military leaders. Military culture is distinct from our broader popular culture, and the leaders who grow up in it are often not “comfortable.” Like politicians, military leaders also have constituents. When the best of them talk, they do not talk only to the American public, but also to and for soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen with their lives on the line — so they often cannot talk in ways comfortable to civilian leaders or come up with limber options to finesse political problems.

And when political leaders talk about the military, they very often talk piteously, instead of commending the post-traumatic growth many veterans are experiencing, the strong marriages that withstand extended and stressful separation, the resilient kids who excel in school despite frequent moves. President Obama often talks about the burden of visiting wounded veterans and writing letters to grieving families. He sometimes seems to talk more about social issues in the military than the wars we are fighting. But he has selected a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deeply respected for his war fighting skills rather than his views on gender integration or global warming or for being a “first.” Perhaps the president begins to get the feel of military culture. Or we could chalk it up to the beneficial influence of Ashton Carter as Defense Secretary. Either way, the Obama administration has made a good choice in General Joe Dunford.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

NATO set up a hotline with the Kremlin and Russia’s Defense Ministry in Moscow in order to avoid "misunderstandings", yet at the same time has begun removing Russian diplomats from the NATO headquarters.

Turkey must do more to fight corruption and enforce respect for media freedom, free expression and judicial independence, said Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Monday. In a resolution on the progress of reform in Turkey in 2014, MEPs also urge the EU to back Turkey’s efforts to build solid, democratic institutions and ensure respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights and the rule of law. Finally, it advocates stepping up EU/Turkey foreign policy cooperation.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Turkey must do more to fight corruption and enforce respect for media freedom, free expression and judicial independence, said Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Monday. In a resolution on the progress of reform in Turkey in 2014, MEPs also urge the EU to back Turkey’s efforts to build solid, democratic institutions and ensure respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights and the rule of law. Finally, it advocates stepping up EU/Turkey foreign policy cooperation.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Turkey must do more to fight corruption and enforce respect for media freedom, free expression and judicial independence, said Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Monday. In a resolution on the progress of reform in Turkey in 2014, MEPs also urge the EU to back Turkey’s efforts to build solid, democratic institutions and ensure respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights and the rule of law. Finally, it advocates stepping up EU/Turkey foreign policy cooperation.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Turkey must do more to fight corruption and enforce respect for media freedom, free expression and judicial independence, said Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Monday. In a resolution on the progress of reform in Turkey in 2014, MEPs also urge the EU to back Turkey’s efforts to build solid, democratic institutions and ensure respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights and the rule of law. Finally, it advocates stepping up EU/Turkey foreign policy cooperation.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Turkey must do more to fight corruption and enforce respect for media freedom, free expression and judicial independence, said Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Monday. In a resolution on the progress of reform in Turkey in 2014, MEPs also urge the EU to back Turkey’s efforts to build solid, democratic institutions and ensure respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights and the rule of law. Finally, it advocates stepping up EU/Turkey foreign policy cooperation.
Committee on Foreign Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

"Whistleblowers should receive protection when they reveal behaviour that goes against the public interest and not only when they reveal illegal activities. There should also be more openness about tax rulings and similar arrangements and countries which defraud other countries should be sanctioned", suggested Richard Brooks of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in a hearing with Parliament's Special Tax Rulings Committee on Monday.
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

"Whistleblowers should receive protection when they reveal behaviour that goes against the public interest and not only when they reveal illegal activities. There should also be more openness about tax rulings and similar arrangements and countries which defraud other countries should be sanctioned", suggested Richard Brooks of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in a hearing with Parliament's Special Tax Rulings Committee on Monday.
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

"Whistleblowers should receive protection when they reveal behaviour that goes against the public interest and not only when they reveal illegal activities. There should also be more openness about tax rulings and similar arrangements and countries which defraud other countries should be sanctioned", suggested Richard Brooks of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in a hearing with Parliament's Special Tax Rulings Committee on Monday.
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

"Whistleblowers should receive protection when they reveal behaviour that goes against the public interest and not only when they reveal illegal activities. There should also be more openness about tax rulings and similar arrangements and countries which defraud other countries should be sanctioned", suggested Richard Brooks of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in a hearing with Parliament's Special Tax Rulings Committee on Monday.
Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP