amanda rivkin, photographer

“Cordoba had the edge in dissent,” begins Pakistani writer and commentator Tariq Ali in a section devoted to the one-time intellectual capitol of Al-Andalus, the once Muslim southern half of contemporary Spain that is home to one of the most spectacular works of Islamic architecture, The Mezquita, in his larger post-September 11 work, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. Much has happened in the ever-complicated relationship between mine and Ali’s country in the last week since U.S. Navy Seals raided, killed and then buried at sea Osama bin Laden, who it turns out has spent several of the past fugitive years in an elaborate compound just off Kakul Road, the drive leading to Pakistan’s elite military academy equivalent to Sandhurst in the U.K. or West Point here in the U.S. The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was just 40 kilometers from the capital Islamabad. Not even former President and Head of the Pakistani Army Pervez Musharraf received such treatment, although he did assert he had gone jogging in the area in the past. The diplomatic dance has begun with as much precision as the diplomatic duel, much of it not resembling the relationship of cooperation and mutual satisfaction embodied by Cordoba’s golden age, depicted in the center of the National Geographic illustration above of Alexandria, Cordoba, and New York, three cities at the crossroads of the world in their time, from “Tale of Three Cities” published in the magazine around the time of the millennium.

In an intelligence coup, the U.S. Department of Defense has released excerpts without audio of video captured during the raid. One of the video stills shows that the formerly most feared terrorist/heralded Islamic jihadist in the world “looks like a schnook” with a dyed beard during a rehearsal, in the words of one internet commenter on the Bag News Notes site dedicated to analyzing contemporary imagery in mass culture. For those outside New York unacquainted with the Yiddishism, a shnook is someone to be pitied more than feared whose mistaken self-conception, often of grandeur, diverges from the greater reality.

Not sure it fits Osama entirely, although he looks silly – but as Bag News Notes chief writer Michael Shaw points out, so did Obama earlier in the week as he performed a redo of his May Day address to the nation, the effect of which was to say, “We got him!” if not quite in those words. Shaw leans into the Department of Defense (although the Obama press operations would fall on the White House) for not seeing such a strikingly obvious parallel in their image making and image operations:

Let me just be clear. I’m not ripping the DoD for propaganda, I get that’s a big part of their business. What I’m ripping them for is weak propaganda, each failed effort having the effect of undermining the effective stuff.

The effective stuff falling somewhere between this and puppies. In any event, after several failed efforts (including former President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003), taking down Osama bin Laden on May Day means President Barack Obama took down two enemies with one stone: the communists and the terrorists. May Day is once again safe for democracy, or at the very least the Democrats. It also means that for this year at least, I can no longer refer to the Eurovision Song Contest as “the most important geopolitical event of our time“.

When people took to the streets in celebration in Lafayette Square outside the White House, and Ground Zero formerly the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, many different media outlets showed up to dutifully record the fervor as true USA! patriots shouted their three favorite letters: U-S-A! U-S-A! and some clever people had the good idea to play one of my favorite songs, the kitschy jingoistic “Party in the USA!” by an extraordinarily scantily clad and underage Miley Cyrus. In the music video, she appears wearing just a little more than very little in an outfit replete with booty shorts, push up bra, cowboy boots and a big American flag in the backdrop. Yeah, it’s a party in the USA!

Despite most media portrayals of victorious Americans fist pumping with the flag and a Miley Cyrus soundtrack, most Americans my guess is are pretty detached at this point, almost 10 years on from where we started, as was the case when I past through this southern New Jersey rest stop the following day:

Patrons at the food court at the Walt Whitman rest stop along Interstate-95 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey react to news of Osama bin Laden’s death the morning after American President Barack Obama announced his death at the hands of US Navy Seals in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, less than 1,000 meters from a prominent Pakistani military academy on May 2, 2011.

As the people in the picture above certainly know and know well, these are the times we live in and nobody has to like the modern world, only live in it. Despite the detachment from the events of September 11, the events of that day remain as relevant as ever as one question is carefully avoided both in the American media and among the political and diplomatic elite: did anyone in the Pakistani Army or the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have any foreknowledge of events that transpired on September 11? No one in the American media has said the word Kargil, perhaps in deference to the fact that most Americans would likely not recall the 1999 India-Pakistani nuclear standoff over Kashmir. What role might the resolution at the Blair House Summit [PDF] between Clinton and former Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif (subsequently overthrown by Army Chief Pervez Musharraf after Sharif returned home) have had in the shaming of Pakistan and the desire for a humiliating form of revenge? This is not a question that can or necessarily ever will be answered; in part, the diplomatic dance begs that it not be, but out of such ambiguity lay the future patterns of deception and interpretation. Sometimes asking the question alone is the best one can accept for the moment.

In the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden, the diplomatic contortionist’s act between the U.S. and Pakistan has evolved. In the words of one Pakistani analyst, Mosharraf Zaidi:

It is even less likely that, as U.S. counterterrorism czar John Brennan claimed in a press conference today, Pakistani authorities did not know about the military operation that killed bin Laden until it was over. Abbottabad’s Bilal Town neighborhood where bin Laden lived and died was virtually around the corner from the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul — Pakistan’s West Point, where future General Kayanis and General Pashas are learning to be officers. It doesn’t take 40 minutes to start to scramble planes, or get troops to Abbottabad, and there is no getting into the town by land or air without the expressed consent of Pakistan’s security establishment. This may not have been an official joint operation, but it was almost certainly a collective effort.

Maintaining these two fictions requires a great deal of creativity from both parties involved. In the first instance, Pakistan has to lie to enable the U.S. government to avoid looking like a first-timer in Las Vegas, getting hustled by a pro. In the second, the United States has to lie, to avoid implicating its chief partner in the dishonoring of Pakistani pride and the violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

I do not think this is what the legacy of Cordoba in our time, National Geographic or Tariq Ali had in mind with regard to “the edge in dissent” at the crossroads of the world; preserving an ideal or the very image of utopian peace in our mind requires that we contemplate other possibilities. We must remind ourselves rather of what was, of encounters tinged with idealism and intellectualism. Such historical reflection not only serves to bolster our moral appetite for “The Lies They Tell Us,” as Zaidi’s piece is titled, but courage to continue because thanks to the memory of these earlier civilizations, we can remember that “Islam had always prospered through contact with other traditions,” (except of course when it did not, such as during the Crusades or in the last century after the decline of the Ottoman Empire or Sultan Abdulhamid II forward) in the words of Tariq Ali, as “Its origins lay in close contact with Judaism and Christianity.” From Cordoba, some images:

The exterior of the Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain on July 28, 2007. Cordoba is often cited as a historical model of peaceful coexistence among Christians, Jews and Muslims when the city was the capital of Moorish southern Spain and the Umayyad caliphate for nearly 500 years. Today Cordoba attracts tourists from around the Middle East and North Africa as well as the West because of the city’s shared cultural patrimony.

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Inside the courtyard of the Mezquita in the heart of the old city in Cordoba, Spain on July 28, 2007. The Mezquita (“mosque” in Spanish) took nearly 200 years to build and was the centerpiece of the capital of Al Andalus, as the region was known during nearly 700 years of Arab rule under the Umayyad caliphate when Jews, Christians and Arabs peacefully coexisted. When Christians seized the city in 1236, the mosque was converted into a cathedral and remains a popular tourist attraction among all three communities.

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Belen, a Catalan belly dancer who trained in the southern Spanish city of Granada, performs for an audience of mostly tourists at the Arab-themed Hammam Restaurant in the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba, Spain on July 28, 2007.

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Locals at the Hammam shisha cafe and Arab-themed restaurant in the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba, the one-time capital of Moorish southern Spain and the Umayyad caliphate, on July 28, 2007.

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The hot tub at the Arab-themed Hammam Restaurant and Spa in the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba, Spain on July 28, 2007.

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The Mezquita in Cordoba, the one-time capital of Moorish southern Spain and the Umayyad caliphate, on the evening of July 28, 2007.

The Year in Pictures 2010 by Amanda Rivkin available on PhotoShelter Archive.

Images from the year include:

Gitmo USA – the prison site designated for Guantanamo Bay detainees after the prison’s closure in rural Illinois that never quite opened because the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has not yet closed.
Portrait of William Fiedler, Owner of the Gallery Bookstore, Chicago – My former boss at one of the North Side’s finest used book stores.

Injured Veteran – Portrait of Michael Jernigan, injured in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004; photographed at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Baltasar Garzon – Former examining magistrate of Spain’s Criminal Court, extraordinarily controversial for execution of the practice of universal justice and far-reaching indictments of foreign leaders and terrorist organizations; photographed at the Instituto Cervantes in Chicago.

Afghan Bowling Tournament (3 images) – Afghan-American bowling tournament in Annandale, Virginia.

Cuba (8 images) – The Second Age of Castro, published on ForeignPolicy.com and The New York Times “Week in Review”.

Spectacular Slovakia (13 images) – Weddings, floods, world cup, trains, planes, castles, even nuclear power plants; images from a 40 day odyssey across Slovakia for English-language newspaper The Slovak Spectator’s annual magazine-length feature travel guide publication’s 15th edition.

Azerbaijan (3 images) – Early impressions of the oil rich land include a peak inside the women’s section of the largest Shia mosque in the Old City, a meeting with satirical blogger Emin Milli on prison leave for his father’s funeral, and a visit to a polluted beach.

An Encounter with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan – And a book gets thrown at my head in Erzurum, Turkey in the country’s conservative northeast.

Hungary’s Greatest Ecological Disaster (4 images) – the aftermath and the survivors of the October 4, 2010 industrial accident caused by a rupture in a reservoir containing toxic alumina industrial waste.

On the campaign trail with Rahm Emanuel for mayor of Chicago (4 images) – running with Rahmbo as he opens a field office in the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side and fields questions from attorney Burt Odelson challenging his residency and therefore eligibility to run.

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Thank you Mikko and Photojournalism Links for the mention of “The Year in Pictures” in the December 19, 2010 links.

Accessing the WikiLeaks site has gotten difficult, if not impossible now despite mirror sites and domain names registered at last check in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. However, those that visit the site undoubtedly receive a malware infection pretty fast. Similar tactics took down The Guardian’s website yesterday when it attempted to host a live, online chat with WikiLeaks founder, Interpol fugitive, and known loon, Julian Assange.

I hate to ask an obvious question of Mr. Assange, but how does he expect a nation-state, a superpower notably to react? If he gets away with it, so can anyone and the United States of America cannot have that. Joking aside, there is a serious, massive question of what to do with Mr. Assange, how to prosecute him, all the while keeping in mind he may have made himself into a willing martyr of the data revolution and that the U.S. arsenal includes everything from drones to nuclear weapons, neither of which will be used in this case given the strategic predicament. To date, there has been much fodder for the gossip pages, a sort of Washington Life Magazine on steroids if you will, but little that is truly revelatory. Much of the information has confirmed things attentive observers of geopolitics could have guessed or surmised – the distinction being that know we know. Even comedian Jon Stewart has suggested Assange read up on the things Americans know about their government already.

But as usual with such “dumps,” the devil is in the details: Berlusconi helping himself with Putin’s assistance to skim off the top of Gazprom deals, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar telling the U.S. Ambassador in 2007 that he will return to Spanish politics if the situation in the country gets desperate (something he has so far neglected to do). Much has also left open questions: how much did the U.S. protect Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and discourage Indian retalliation for the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks? For in the end, the cables only offer fragments to a much larger puzzle and do a great amount to keep the Great Man Theory of History alive as well as shutdown this sort of information sharing in government, which considering what has come of it, might be beneficial and teach some discretion.

When The Guardian site did return live, Assange promised UFO sightings in a cable to be released in the future, which would be an unlikely turn of course given the fact that most of the cables released to date have proven the savvy of the U.S. foreign service officer.

More on the Man at the Top:

“PM Has Betrayed Me: Assange,” The Age

A Must Read – Historian Misha Glenny in T: The New York Times Style Magazine on “The Gift of Information,” reminds us of “an old joke from Communist times,”: ‘’‘We cannot predict the future,’’ announces the newsreader of Soviet radio reporting on the Politburo’s deliberations, ‘’but the past is changing before our very eyes.’”

The Man Really at the Top:

“Cables Suggest Obama’s Wide Range of Engagement,” The New York Times

Rumors of a Reaction from State Akin to The System Is Watching:

“Talking About WikiLeaks’ Cablegate Can Hinder Job Placements,” The Tech Herald
“An email forwarded by a student enrolled at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia is making the rounds on the Internet this weekend. The email, which is said to have originated from the Columbia University’s Office of Career Services, warns anyone aspiring for a government job that WikiLeaks is off limits.”
As a Georgetown student in the School of Foreign Service, I can confirm that I have not received any such note of the sort. In any event, if this is in fact true, this position is unsustainable and bizarre given that the world is aware of the contents, why would you not want your prospective diplomatic corps to be aware of it as well?

Message to SIPA students confirmed:
“Don’t Mention the Cables, Future Diplomats,” The New York Times Lede Blog

Ever wondered how long it takes to suspend a PayPal account?
“PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account,” The New York Times
“The termination of PayPal’s relationship with WikiLeaks was described in a blog post on the official PayPal blog: PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity… Another service, Datacell, which claims on its Web site to be under ‘Swiss/Icelandic control,’ appears to continue to be accepting donations on behalf of WikiLeaks.”

On the Homeland:

“Rep. Ron Paul Makes Special Request Of Wikileaks on Fox’s Freedom Watch,” Mediaite
Republican Congressman Ron Paul goes to bat for WikiLeaks on Fox News and asks for information on the Federal Reserve: “What we need is more Wikileaks on the Federal Reserve. Can you imagine what it would be like if we have every conversation of the last 10 years with the Federal Reserve people and the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the other central bankers of the world, and every agreement and quid pro quo that they have? I mean, it would be massive. The people would be so outraged.”

“U.S. Weighs Prosecution of WikiLeaks Founder, but Legal Scholars Warn of Steep Hurdles,” The New York Times

The View From Britain:

“WikiLeaks Cables Are Dispatches From a Beleaguered America in Imperial Retreat,” The Guardian
“These diplomats who didn’t want us to know their thoughts are not mere cogs in an imperial machine. Many emerge as wise, courageous, patient, likeable men and women– especially the women, who lead so many US embassies. Their view of their host countries is not rosy. You begin to absorb their vision, in which America is the only adult in a world of grasping, corrupt, unreliable teenagers who cannot be abandoned to their own weakness.”

More European Politics:

“WikiLeaks Cables: Spanish PM Helped GE Beat Rolls-Royce to Helicopter Deal,” The Guardian

Efforts to Topple the WikiLeaks Site, the International Cabal, Etc:

“WikiLeaks Site’s Swiss Host Dismisses Pressure to Take it Offline,” The Guardian

Chicago – Passport to understanding the world:

“McCain: Southern Iraq like ‘Chicago in the ’20s,’” Foreign Policy WikiLeaked Blog
“Cameron asked McCain what he thought was happening in the south of Iraq. McCain said he was very worried. He said it was like ‘Chicago in the 20′s’ and ‘could go at any time.’”

World Watch – The Americas:

“Chávez compra lealtades en el seno del Ejército de Bolivia,” El Pais [in Spanish]
Chávez bought himself loyalties among Bolivia’s officer corps. And quite the kicker:

A menudo, los diplomáticos estadounidenses expresan a Washington su hartazgo ante las constantes acusaciones de conspiración que Morales y sus estrechos colaboradores dirigen contra su país “como si estuviera Chávez susurrando al oído”. “Es una pena que el Rey Juan Carlos de España no esté en Bolivia para decir ‘¿por qué no te callas?”, termina una comunicación.

From the sidelines – Iraq:

“US Tries to Keep US Troops in Iraq Away From WikiLeaks,” Agence France Presse

Caucuses Obscurantia:

A nice short course in the Aliyev/Corleone memo:
“Azerbaijan: President Aliyev Compared Unfavorably to Hot-Headed Monster in WikiLeaks Cable,” Babylon & Beyond Los Angeles Times Blog

“​Leaked U.S. Cable Alleges Russian Support For Armenian ‘Extremists’ In Georgia,” ArmeniaDiaspora.com

previous related posts:

“Lots of Traffic Today for WikiLeaks Coverage,” December 3, 2010.
Why irreverent is sometimes better than comprehensive. Thank you for reading.

“The Day in Cablegate: As the World Turns…” December 3, 2010.

“The Best in WikiLeaks Cablegate Coverage from News Sites Around the World,” December 2, 2010.

“Mafia Analogies for the Aliyev Family in Wikileaks/U.S. State Department Cablegate: Is He Michael or Sonny?” December 2, 2010.

“‘A Caucuses Wedding’: A Pictoral Accompaniment to the Cable of the Same Name,” November 30, 2010.

related:

“Shown Trial,” Fortnight Journal, November 26, 2010.

First page of Google for “Best of WikiLeaks.”

Top related searches: best of wikileaks, wikileaks azerbaijan, dagestan cablegate, best of cablegate, the best of wikileaks, a caucuses wedding.

The cache of news and events surrounding the WikiLeaks Cablegate affair for December 3, 2010:

WikiLeaks loses American domain server, wikileaks.org, moves to Swiss, wikileaks.ch, which also appears to be down at present:
“WikiLeaks Dropped by Domain Name Provider,” The Associated Press

“WikiLeaks Vanishes From Web As U.S. Company Removes DNS Support,” The Guardian

Update from Amazon in The Wall Street Journal on the fairly obvious reason why WikiLeaks got booted off its servers (violation of its Terms of Service):
“Amazon Says WikiLeaks Violated Terms of Service,” Wall Street Journal

8:37AM EST – The Guardian is holding a live webchat with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as soon as it can:
“WikiLeaks cables: Live Q&A with Julian Assange,” The Guardian

9:32AM EST – Crippling attacks continue, take down Guardian website during online Q&A with Assange:
“WikiLeaks fights to stay online amid attacks,” The Associated Press

“WikiLeaks’ Assange to Fight Any Extradition: Lawyer,” Reuters

“WikiLeaks Struggles to Stay Online After Cyberattacks,” The New York Times

“Julian Assange Answers Your Questions,” The Guardian

Afghanistan:

“Foreign Contractors Hired Afghan ‘Dancing Boys’, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals,” The Guardian
Courtesy Katherine Tiedemann of AfPak Channel Daily Brief, Foreign Policy, “international contractors employed by DynCorp training Afghan police forces allegedly took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” in Kunduz…”

India/Pakistan:

Radically different takes in the Indian and Pakistani press on revelations concerning U.S. protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the wake of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008 – first the Indians, who probably cut more to the bone while maintaining a defensive posture:
“U.S. Defended Pak, Shielded ISI Chief After 26/11 Strikes?” Times of India
“Diplomats Saw No ISI Link in Mumbai Attack,” Dawn

More – General Kayani tells General Petraeus Pakistan will respond if provoked in wake of Mumbai attacks:
“Kayani told U.S. that Pakistan will respond to Indian attack: WikiLeaks,” The Hindu

European Politics:

“WikiLeaks Cables: Gordon Brown An ‘Abysmal’ Prime Minister,” The Guardian
“…scathing assessment of the former prime minister…”

“Aznar al embajador, en 2007: ‘Si veo a España desesperada, quizá tendría que volver a la política’” El Pais [in Spanish]
Shows former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar would like to orchestrate his own return to power if Mariano Rajoy cannot hold the Partido Popular (PP) together and stand in the next general election.

“Mole in Germany’s FDP Party Comes Forward,” Der Spiegel Online International

More on the not-quite revelations about Berlusconi’s personal and political life and allegations that he and Putin are skimming off the top of Gazprom contracts in U.S. diplomatic cables has some fall out domestically for Berlusconi in Italy:
“Caustic U.S. Views of Berlusconi Churn Italy’s Politics,” The New York Times

Updates in Eurasia:

“WikiLeaks may galvanise Turkey on relations with Azerbaijan,” News.Az
An interview with Gareth Jenkins, a Turkey expert affiliated with the Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins.

previous related posts:
“The Moment: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan Throws a Book at My Head,” November 12, 2010.

U.S. domestic:

“The State Department Should Embrace Its New Wikileaks Cablegate Transparency,” Forbes
Argues the State Department looks great and this serves as a recruitment tool in the fashion that “Top Gun” did for the Air Force.

“Authors, Historians Debate the Leaks of WikiLeaks,” The Associated Press

“Jon Stewart: Is Sarah Palin Aware Julian Assange Can’t Be Charged With Treason?” Daily Show

previous posts on WikiLeaks “Cablegate”:

“The Best in WikiLeaks Cablegate Coverage from News Sites Around the World,” December 2, 2010.

“Mafia Analogies for the Aliyev Family in Wikileaks/U.S. State Department Cablegate: Is He Michael or Sonny?” December 2, 2010.

“‘A Caususes Wedding,’ A Pictoral Accompaniment to the Cable of the Same Name,” November 30, 2010.

December 2, 2010:

“El ‘antiamericano’ Garzón tuvo especial seguimiento,” El Pais [in Spanish]
Published under a headline on the homepage of the website, “El ‘antiamericano’ Baltasar Garzon”
- photographs of Baltasar Garzon on Amanda Rivkin PhotoShelter archive.

“Mafia Analogy for Aliyev Dynasty: Ilham Aliyev and Corleone Brothers (Wikileaks),” AzeriReport
” In US diplomatic cables newly released by Wikileaks, Aliyev clan’s rule over Azerbaijan is compared to mafia, specifically to the Corleones family in the famous ‘Godfather’ movie series. Ilham Aliyev himself ‘described alternately as a mix of “Michael” and “Sonny.”‘ Maintaining ‘a clever, realistic foreign policy’ that he inherited from his father, he reminds of the cold-calculated alliance builder Michael Corleone. But his domestic policies, with crude retaliation against even minor challenges to his authority and criticism, resemble the ‘brash, impulsive’ Sonny Corleone.”

related posts:
“Mafia Analogies for the Aliyev Family in WikiLeaks/U.S. State Department Cablegate: Is He Michael or Sonny?”
Includes links to relevant background articles and blog posts to understanding the Aliyev/Corleone cable:
“Donkey Video,” Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade/OL!
“Shown Trial,” Fortnight Journal, November 26, 2010.

“WikiLeaks Cables: Berlusconi ‘Profited From Secret Deals’ With Putin,” The Guardian

“Brazilian Defense Minister Knew FARC Was on Venezuelan Soil,” Foreign Policy WikiLeaked Blog

My friend Adrian Bleifuss Prados sends over a link where you can send a message to Interpol with a note, “Julian Assange is hiding at Harold’s Chicken Shack — tell Interpol.”

December 1, 2010:

“Jon Stewart to Julian Assange: ‘Stop the Drama!’” Gawker.tv
“Is she [U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] embarassed? Were you alive in the nineties? You do know she is married to this man [Bill Clinton].”
“Assange, you underestimate how cynical Americans are about their own government already. Maybe you should read up on the things we already know our government does.”

“EU Officials Envy Quality of US Diplomatic Cables,” EU Observer
Again singles out “A Caucuses Wedding” writing, “The contact singled out a US cable on a lavish party in Dagestan, Russia attended by Chechnya’s warlord-president Ramzan Kadyrov. Entitled ‘ A Caucasus Wedding,’ the 3,400-word-long cable by the US embassy in Moscow in 2006 speaks of Kadyrov dancing ‘clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down in the back of his jeans.’ It adds: ‘The cooks seemed to keep whole sheep and whole cows boiling in a cauldron somewhere day and night, dumping disjointed fragments of the carcass on the tables whenever someone entered the room.’”

November 30, 2010:

“A Caucuses Wedding” by Daniel Russell, Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy Moscow, August 31, 2006