Clinton Calls for Joint Missile-Defense System on Russia Trip
Clinton Calls for Joint Missile-Defense System on Russia Trip
By Janine Zacharia
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrapping up a three-day trip to Russia, said the U.S. and Russia should work toward creating a joint missile-defense system to combat common threats.
In remarks to students at Moscow State University, Clinton rebuked those in the U.S. and in Russia who remain locked in a Cold War mentality that precludes the trust necessary for such cooperation.
“We have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past,” she said. “They don’t believe that the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent. They do not trust each other. And we have to prove them wrong. That is our goal.”
If the U.S. and Russia were one day to announce a joint plan on missile defense, this would be a “very positive outcome,” she said in a gilded auditorium on a stage flanked by carved images of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
Missile defense is among the issues that have divided the U.S. and Russia in recent years. President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush administration plan to station radars and missile interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland was welcomed in Russia.
During Clinton’s meetings in Moscow, Russian officials showed interest in cooperation on missile defense, U.S. officials said.
‘Unpopular Positions’
Clinton’s trip was aimed at outlining opportunities for collaboration with Russia on a wide range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Afghanistan. She made gentle jabs at Russia’s record on free speech.
“People must be free to take unpopular positions,” she said. “Attacks on journalists and human rights defenders here in Russia” are “a threat to progress.”
On Oct. 7, Clinton issued a statement marking the third anniversary of the killing of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, whose murderers have never been brought to justice.
During her visit, Clinton renewed U.S. support for Georgia, which fought a war with Russia last year, acknowledging that the U.S. and Russia “won’t see eye to eye” on the issue.
Georgia’s U.S.-trained army was routed by Russia in the five-day war in August 2008 over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. Russia later recognized South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia, as independent countries in the face of criticism from the U.S. and many European countries. Russia has deployed 1,700 soldiers in both regions.
Georgia Monitors
Obama defended Georgia’s territorial integrity during a visit to Moscow in July.
Clinton said monitors should be permanently deployed in Georgia to prevent further outbreaks of violence.
“We believe that it’s important to have a constant presence of observers and peacekeepers so that there’s no basis, no room, for something that would lead to further bloodshed,” Clinton said at Moscow State University.
Students at the university, founded in 1755, asked Clinton about U.S. priorities in Russia, differences over Georgia, what Clinton thought about the global economic crisis and what book had inspired her. With a nod to her audience, she selected Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.
During her visit, Clinton repeatedly invoked the Obama administration’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia.
At a dedication of a statue of American poet Walt Whitman, sculpted by the same artist who created a statue of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Clinton said: “Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry, we are now resetting our relationship in the 21st century.”
From Moscow, Clinton flew to Kazan, capital of the oil-rich Tatarstan region. Clinton was greeted by women dressed in traditional costumes who presented her with a mound of chak- chak, a local dessert. She later met with regional leader Mintimer Shaimiyev and visited the province’s most famous mosque, Kul Sharif.
To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Kazan at jzacharia@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 14, 2009 08:31 EDT
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Letter from Moscow: Russia torn between past and future
Posted on Wed, Oct. 14, 2009
Letter from Moscow: Russia torn between past and future
By TOM LASSETER
McClatchy Newspapers
Standing before a massive mosaic of red Soviet flags and flanked by engraved quotations from Marx and Lenin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gazed out at more than a thousand Russian university students and implored them to look to the future.
Clinton, however, spoke not in a fancy rented conference space full of mostly pro-Western graduate business students, as President Barack Obama did in July, but at Moscow State University, in a house that Josef Stalin built as a monument to Russia's Communist glory.
Moscow State's main hall is in a towering castle-meets-skyscraper landmark of Soviet gothic architecture. It reportedly was constructed by gulag labor as part of Stalin's ruthless quest to remake his capital into a 20th century socialist metropolis.
Eighteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 21st century Russia is still trying to find itself, stomping and stammering its way between hubris and disaster, dictatorship and democracy, and more than anything, between its past and its future.
Clinton's remarks and the students' questions and reactions Wednesday revealed more about the nation's unsettled identity and its ambivalent relations with the West than do the latest Kremlin invective or U.S. analysts opining about the post-Soviet landscape.
People in both the American and Russian governments remain stuck in the suspicion and threats of the Cold War, Clinton said, but it's time to "be smarter than our past."
"They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent," Clinton said. "They do not trust each other, and we have to prove them wrong."
Freshman Pavel Yankovsky was among the first to take the microphone: Nervously, he inquired about the financial crisis and why it started in the U.S. Like all the students who spoke, his English was good and his question seemed well rehearsed.
Clinton walked the audience through an abbreviated history of bad mortgages, derivatives and the false notion that free markets are infallible.
"It all seemed like a great idea at the time," she said, launching into an explanation of how the need for more checks and balances in the economy reminds one of the balance of power in the American government.
Afterward, Yankovsky, a thoughtful 17-year-old in a dark suit, with a bushy haircut threatening to go wild, didn't talk about the details of Clinton's response so much as the feeling he got listening to her. "It was brilliant," he said.
"I think that is the main thing our countries should work on, moving from the past, Cold War era," he said. What about the Soviet propaganda on the stage behind him? Yankovsky flicked his hand in that direction without looking and said: "I think that the past we should leave as the past."
Much of Russia, however, is torn between past and present.
On one hand, there's a push for an open economy, and President Dmitry Medvedev talks of fighting corruption and, perhaps, ensuring greater protection of civil liberties.
On the other, Russia remains an authoritarian state where there's little rule of law, human rights workers are assassinated, and the bloody Soviet history has undergone renewed revisions. One telling example: A committee set up earlier this year to "counter attempts to falsify history" - often meaning efforts to document the terror unleashed by Stalin - will include intelligence representatives from Russia's domestic and foreign spy services.
The country "is still in the process of searching for its own identity," said Yuri Rogulyov, a professor at Moscow State University who teaches, among other things, American history. "Russia is changing, and it's a very contradictory process."
On Wednesday, the autumn sun glinted off the hammers and sickles that still adorn the university building's facade, and, of course, the Soviet star shining on top.
Inside, Yvgenia Kuzminova, a sophomore in global studies, asked whether the U.S. is focused more on economic or military affairs in its relationship with Russia.
Clinton said that while important, those sorts of topics had for years too narrowly defined the U.S.-Russian conversation.
Asked what she thought of Clinton's remarks, Kuzminova later said that while they were interesting, they were "full of general issues" and lacking any surprises. And the idea of revamping ties between her country and Clinton's?
"There are deep-seated and bad memories of the Cold War, and it's not an easy thing to move beyond," Kuzminova said. "There will be psychological barriers."
Before Clinton walked into the hall, she'd helped unveil a statue of Walt Whitman on the university campus. At its base is a plaque quoting a letter from Whitman about Russians and Americans seeming to be different, but also being alike in many ways. Most students ignored it, instead clustering in groups between classes.
Alex Lazutkin, an economics instructor, stopped to peer at the new addition and chat.
Americans think they won the Cold War, he said, while Russians remember not defeat, but throwing off the yoke of Communism.
Lazutkin cricked his neck a bit and looked at the statue again.
"It might be that most people don't understand the connection between Walt Whitman and Moscow State University," he said, in a slightly puzzled tone. "I'm afraid that the message might have been lost."
© 2009 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
Underground rice paddies in Otemachi
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20091015wh.html
Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009
SO, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?
Underground rice paddies in Otemachi
By ALICE GORDENKER
Dear Alice,
Please settle a bet. I met this guy in a bar who swore up and down that there are secret subterranean rice paddies all over Tokyo, part of a hush-hush government program to feed the national body in the event of nuclear war. In fact, he insisted a paddy was planted deep underground wherever it was we were drinking that night. Otemachi, I think. Can you check out what the heck he was talking about? I've got ¥5,000 riding on this.
Jake D., Tokyo
Dear Jake,
Please allow me to share a bit of wisdom I learned long ago, the hard way: Never believe everything you hear, especially from men in bars. So to be honest, I was just a wee bit tempted to give your letter a pass. But having done this column for almost five years, I've come to trust my readers' instincts for a good story. At worst, I'd waste a few hours. At best, we'd win a Pulitzer.
Like a lot of outlandish stories, there was a whole load of chaff in your friend's tale. But there was also a grain of truth. There is, or rather was, rice growing deep beneath Tokyo's financial district. But it wasn't a secret government project and it would never have fed the national body.
Until April, there was a small plot of rice sequestered away in a former bank vault in the second-floor basement of the Otemachi Nomura Building, a decidedly upscale downtown office building. Calling the planting a paddy would be a stretch, since the whole space, including walkways, was only about 50 sq. meters. And the plants were being cultivated in commercial growing medium rather than proper mud.
Yield wasn't anything to write home about either. In its very best 12-month period, even with three plantings compared to the usual single harvest, the subterranean space produced just 60 kg of rice, which is not quite enough to fill the rice bowl of one average Japanese consumer for a year. The cost, meanwhile, including rent and artificial lighting, was astronomical compared to conventional outdoor paddies. So, what the heck was the point?
Jobs! And not just any jobs, but jobs in agriculture, according to Pasona Group, the organization behind the plot. Pasona, a staffing services company, set up the tiny indoor farm in 2005 to bring agriculture closer to city people and draw attention to their new employment programs in the agricultural sector. Called Pasona O2 (pronounced "oh-tsoo"), the underground installation featured hydroponic plantings of fruits, vegetables and flowers, too.
But the rice got the most attention, according to Pasona spokesman Satoshi Fujimaki, because it was such a surprising idea. "There had been indoor rice plantings before for research purposes, but this was the first time rice had been grown without natural lighting in a setting that was open to the public."
The farm-in-an-office building was so successful in attracting visitors, and the press, that the company is now constructing a larger version in a building somewhere near Tokyo Station. I pressed for a location, but that, it seems, is a secret.
"There are some real challenges facing Japanese agriculture," Fujimaki told me in a recent interview. "A growing percentage of farmland lies fallow because there is no one to work it. Sixty percent of Japanese farmers are over the age of 65, and rural areas are desperate to attract young people willing to farm.
"Meanwhile," he continued, "there are a growing number of skilled urban workers who see business opportunities in agriculture." A perfect fit, I conjectured. "Not so," he countered: "There are significant barriers to entering agriculture. It's really difficult to acquire farmland in Japan, and few people who would like to start farming have the savings to tide them over until they have a harvest to sell."
But Pasona has made a business out of bridging that kind of disconnect between labor supply and demand. "Our company got its start in 1976 by linking mothers who wanted to re-enter the workforce, on a part-time basis, with companies who needed workers but were hesitant to hire full-time, salaried employees during the economic uncertainties of the oil crisis," Fujimaki explained. "This was a new kind of employment at the time. Now we are doing the same sort of thing with agriculture, creating an infrastructure that will make it easier for skilled workers to switch into jobs in agriculture."
Programs now in place include internships, educational seminars and even a model farm on Awajishima in Hyogo Prefecture, where six new farmers draw a salary as they learn the business.
Getting back to what your bar-fly friend was saying, I found out that the Japanese government does, in fact, have a plan to protect the food supply from international uncertainties. But it's hardly a secret — I found it on YouTube, of all places. The Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) is so concerned about Japan's dependence on imported food that it commissioned a four-minute animated video titled "Ensuring the Future of Food" and put it up, with English subtitles, on YouTube. With more than 110,000 hits when I watched it just now, it's been a surprising success, at least by the standards of the ministry's "maffchannel," which otherwise consists mostly of press conference footage.
The video states that Japan's shokuryo jikyuritsu (rate of self-sufficiency in food production) has fallen to 40 percent, the lowest of any major developed country. To reverse that decline, it suggests, serious problems in Japanese agriculture must be addressed, including the aging of the farming population.
So growing rice in subterranean vaults could, in fact, help boost Japan's self-sufficiency in food production and feed the national body. Who won the bet? It's a tough call.
Watch this space for an announcement on the reopening of Pasona's O2 Room, probably early next year. Puzzled by something you've seen? Send a description, or better yet a photo, to whattheheckjt@yahoo.co.jp or A&E Dept., The Japan Times, 5-4, Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8071.
Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009
SO, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?
Underground rice paddies in Otemachi
By ALICE GORDENKER
Dear Alice,
Please settle a bet. I met this guy in a bar who swore up and down that there are secret subterranean rice paddies all over Tokyo, part of a hush-hush government program to feed the national body in the event of nuclear war. In fact, he insisted a paddy was planted deep underground wherever it was we were drinking that night. Otemachi, I think. Can you check out what the heck he was talking about? I've got ¥5,000 riding on this.
Jake D., Tokyo
Dear Jake,
Please allow me to share a bit of wisdom I learned long ago, the hard way: Never believe everything you hear, especially from men in bars. So to be honest, I was just a wee bit tempted to give your letter a pass. But having done this column for almost five years, I've come to trust my readers' instincts for a good story. At worst, I'd waste a few hours. At best, we'd win a Pulitzer.
Like a lot of outlandish stories, there was a whole load of chaff in your friend's tale. But there was also a grain of truth. There is, or rather was, rice growing deep beneath Tokyo's financial district. But it wasn't a secret government project and it would never have fed the national body.
Until April, there was a small plot of rice sequestered away in a former bank vault in the second-floor basement of the Otemachi Nomura Building, a decidedly upscale downtown office building. Calling the planting a paddy would be a stretch, since the whole space, including walkways, was only about 50 sq. meters. And the plants were being cultivated in commercial growing medium rather than proper mud.
Yield wasn't anything to write home about either. In its very best 12-month period, even with three plantings compared to the usual single harvest, the subterranean space produced just 60 kg of rice, which is not quite enough to fill the rice bowl of one average Japanese consumer for a year. The cost, meanwhile, including rent and artificial lighting, was astronomical compared to conventional outdoor paddies. So, what the heck was the point?
Jobs! And not just any jobs, but jobs in agriculture, according to Pasona Group, the organization behind the plot. Pasona, a staffing services company, set up the tiny indoor farm in 2005 to bring agriculture closer to city people and draw attention to their new employment programs in the agricultural sector. Called Pasona O2 (pronounced "oh-tsoo"), the underground installation featured hydroponic plantings of fruits, vegetables and flowers, too.
But the rice got the most attention, according to Pasona spokesman Satoshi Fujimaki, because it was such a surprising idea. "There had been indoor rice plantings before for research purposes, but this was the first time rice had been grown without natural lighting in a setting that was open to the public."
The farm-in-an-office building was so successful in attracting visitors, and the press, that the company is now constructing a larger version in a building somewhere near Tokyo Station. I pressed for a location, but that, it seems, is a secret.
"There are some real challenges facing Japanese agriculture," Fujimaki told me in a recent interview. "A growing percentage of farmland lies fallow because there is no one to work it. Sixty percent of Japanese farmers are over the age of 65, and rural areas are desperate to attract young people willing to farm.
"Meanwhile," he continued, "there are a growing number of skilled urban workers who see business opportunities in agriculture." A perfect fit, I conjectured. "Not so," he countered: "There are significant barriers to entering agriculture. It's really difficult to acquire farmland in Japan, and few people who would like to start farming have the savings to tide them over until they have a harvest to sell."
But Pasona has made a business out of bridging that kind of disconnect between labor supply and demand. "Our company got its start in 1976 by linking mothers who wanted to re-enter the workforce, on a part-time basis, with companies who needed workers but were hesitant to hire full-time, salaried employees during the economic uncertainties of the oil crisis," Fujimaki explained. "This was a new kind of employment at the time. Now we are doing the same sort of thing with agriculture, creating an infrastructure that will make it easier for skilled workers to switch into jobs in agriculture."
Programs now in place include internships, educational seminars and even a model farm on Awajishima in Hyogo Prefecture, where six new farmers draw a salary as they learn the business.
Getting back to what your bar-fly friend was saying, I found out that the Japanese government does, in fact, have a plan to protect the food supply from international uncertainties. But it's hardly a secret — I found it on YouTube, of all places. The Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) is so concerned about Japan's dependence on imported food that it commissioned a four-minute animated video titled "Ensuring the Future of Food" and put it up, with English subtitles, on YouTube. With more than 110,000 hits when I watched it just now, it's been a surprising success, at least by the standards of the ministry's "maffchannel," which otherwise consists mostly of press conference footage.
The video states that Japan's shokuryo jikyuritsu (rate of self-sufficiency in food production) has fallen to 40 percent, the lowest of any major developed country. To reverse that decline, it suggests, serious problems in Japanese agriculture must be addressed, including the aging of the farming population.
So growing rice in subterranean vaults could, in fact, help boost Japan's self-sufficiency in food production and feed the national body. Who won the bet? It's a tough call.
Watch this space for an announcement on the reopening of Pasona's O2 Room, probably early next year. Puzzled by something you've seen? Send a description, or better yet a photo, to whattheheckjt@yahoo.co.jp or A&E Dept., The Japan Times, 5-4, Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8071.
In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System
October 15, 2009
In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System
By MARK LANDLER
KAZAN, Russia — On a day that took her from an elite Moscow university to this bustling city in Russia’s Muslim hinterland, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid tribute on Wednesday to religious tolerance, while also challenging Russia’s leaders to open their political system and allow more dissent.
In a speech to nearly 1,000 students at Moscow State University, Mrs. Clinton spoke far more forcefully about human rights and the rule of law than she did on a trip to China earlier this year. Russia, she said, could best fulfill its potential by protecting basic freedoms.
“That’s why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress,” she said. “The more open Russia will become, the more Russia will contribute.”
As if to illustrate that point, Mrs. Clinton then traveled from Moscow to Kazan, the 1,000-year-old capital of Tatarstan, a Russian republic where Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics live together peacefully, with none of the violent separatism that afflicts places like Chechnya.
Mrs. Clinton was met by Tatarstan’s longtime president, Mintimer S. Shaimiev, who showed her around a mosque and an Orthodox cathedral, both of which are within the walls of Kazan’s version of the Kremlin. Mr. Shaimiev is no democrat, but he played up his ecumenical credentials.
“This is a multiethnic place,” he told her as she gazed at a shimmering chandelier in the mosque. “There are plenty of mixed marriages.”
Mrs. Clinton praised Mr. Shaimiev for being “someone who is well known for fostering religious tolerance.”
The three-hour side trip to Tatarstan captured the ambitions and limitations of Mrs. Clinton’s approach to being secretary of state, nine months into her tenure. It was driven, her aides say, by her desire to get out of capital cities, to places where she could mingle with people.
But the stop in Kazan had a rushed feel to it, and Mrs. Clinton has little time these days for even brief forays. Minutes after her plane took off from Kazan, she holed up in her cabin to take part, by secure telephone link, in the White House’s latest meeting on Afghanistan.
Mrs. Clinton has managed to keep encounters with students on her schedule. Her talk in Moscow drew noisy applause, and she was asked questions about issues like the American role in the global economic crisis and the dispute between the United States and Russia over Georgia.
Asked to name the book that had made the biggest impact on her, she singled out “The Brothers Karamazov.” The parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s novel, she said, speaks to the dangers of certitude.
“For a lot of reasons, that was an important part of my thinking,” Mrs. Clinton said. “One of the greatest threats we face is from people who believe they are absolutely, certainly right about everything.”
From there, it was a short rhetorical leap for Mrs. Clinton to encourage Russia to open its political system.
She even struck an implicit blow for diversity when she cut the ribbon on a statue of the poet Walt Whitman at the university. Local gay activists protested because one of the Russian officials on hand to honor Whitman, a gay icon, was Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who has made hostile statements about homosexuals and banned gay pride parades in the city.
For her part, Mrs. Clinton noted that in his writing Whitman celebrated the similarities between Russians and Americans.
Yet Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis was on the new rather than the old. She told the students that they symbolized a new Russia, one that produced innovators like Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow and helped to start the Internet search giant Google. And she praised President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia for charting a vision of the country’s future based on technological innovation rather than mineral wealth.
Mrs. Clinton’s visit underscores the Obama administration’s growing attachment to Mr. Medvedev, Vladimir V. Putin’s handpicked choice to succeed him as president. Last month, the White House made much of Mr. Medvedev’s support for its tough stance toward Iran.
After Mrs. Clinton’s meeting on Tuesday with the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which he ruled out threatening Iran with sanctions, she went to see Mr. Medvedev at his dacha outside Moscow. American officials said that Mr. Medvedev was unstinting in his support for the administration.
But on a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Mr. Putin told reporters that he believed that it was too early to consider tough sanctions against Iran, suggesting that threats would poison negotiations.
Back to Top Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
In Moscow, Clinton Urges Russia to Open Its Political System
By MARK LANDLER
KAZAN, Russia — On a day that took her from an elite Moscow university to this bustling city in Russia’s Muslim hinterland, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid tribute on Wednesday to religious tolerance, while also challenging Russia’s leaders to open their political system and allow more dissent.
In a speech to nearly 1,000 students at Moscow State University, Mrs. Clinton spoke far more forcefully about human rights and the rule of law than she did on a trip to China earlier this year. Russia, she said, could best fulfill its potential by protecting basic freedoms.
“That’s why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress,” she said. “The more open Russia will become, the more Russia will contribute.”
As if to illustrate that point, Mrs. Clinton then traveled from Moscow to Kazan, the 1,000-year-old capital of Tatarstan, a Russian republic where Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics live together peacefully, with none of the violent separatism that afflicts places like Chechnya.
Mrs. Clinton was met by Tatarstan’s longtime president, Mintimer S. Shaimiev, who showed her around a mosque and an Orthodox cathedral, both of which are within the walls of Kazan’s version of the Kremlin. Mr. Shaimiev is no democrat, but he played up his ecumenical credentials.
“This is a multiethnic place,” he told her as she gazed at a shimmering chandelier in the mosque. “There are plenty of mixed marriages.”
Mrs. Clinton praised Mr. Shaimiev for being “someone who is well known for fostering religious tolerance.”
The three-hour side trip to Tatarstan captured the ambitions and limitations of Mrs. Clinton’s approach to being secretary of state, nine months into her tenure. It was driven, her aides say, by her desire to get out of capital cities, to places where she could mingle with people.
But the stop in Kazan had a rushed feel to it, and Mrs. Clinton has little time these days for even brief forays. Minutes after her plane took off from Kazan, she holed up in her cabin to take part, by secure telephone link, in the White House’s latest meeting on Afghanistan.
Mrs. Clinton has managed to keep encounters with students on her schedule. Her talk in Moscow drew noisy applause, and she was asked questions about issues like the American role in the global economic crisis and the dispute between the United States and Russia over Georgia.
Asked to name the book that had made the biggest impact on her, she singled out “The Brothers Karamazov.” The parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s novel, she said, speaks to the dangers of certitude.
“For a lot of reasons, that was an important part of my thinking,” Mrs. Clinton said. “One of the greatest threats we face is from people who believe they are absolutely, certainly right about everything.”
From there, it was a short rhetorical leap for Mrs. Clinton to encourage Russia to open its political system.
She even struck an implicit blow for diversity when she cut the ribbon on a statue of the poet Walt Whitman at the university. Local gay activists protested because one of the Russian officials on hand to honor Whitman, a gay icon, was Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who has made hostile statements about homosexuals and banned gay pride parades in the city.
For her part, Mrs. Clinton noted that in his writing Whitman celebrated the similarities between Russians and Americans.
Yet Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis was on the new rather than the old. She told the students that they symbolized a new Russia, one that produced innovators like Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow and helped to start the Internet search giant Google. And she praised President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia for charting a vision of the country’s future based on technological innovation rather than mineral wealth.
Mrs. Clinton’s visit underscores the Obama administration’s growing attachment to Mr. Medvedev, Vladimir V. Putin’s handpicked choice to succeed him as president. Last month, the White House made much of Mr. Medvedev’s support for its tough stance toward Iran.
After Mrs. Clinton’s meeting on Tuesday with the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which he ruled out threatening Iran with sanctions, she went to see Mr. Medvedev at his dacha outside Moscow. American officials said that Mr. Medvedev was unstinting in his support for the administration.
But on a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Mr. Putin told reporters that he believed that it was too early to consider tough sanctions against Iran, suggesting that threats would poison negotiations.
Back to Top Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Russian gays express disappointment in Clinton
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gSshJTa_3zDCor-OUBvX1R2YgVjQD9BB3D8G0
Russian gays express disappointment in Clinton
By BEN JUDAH (AP) – 7 hours ago
MOSCOW — Russia's leading gay activist said Wednesday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day trip to Russia and did not decry homophobia in the country.
Clinton attended a ceremony unveiling a statue of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Russian officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they "can be described in no other way than as satanic."
Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and U.S. gay activists have claimed him as symbol of their movement.
"Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry we are resetting our relations for the 21st century," Clinton said. A statue of the revered Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was erected at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., in 2000.
Luzhkov also compared Whitman to "our Alexander Pushkin" — but said he was quintessentially American.
"Whitman's poetry is imbued with the spirit of American optimism, the desire to create," Luzhkov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Whitman did not accept the standards of poetry — he was an innovator."
It was not clear whether Luzhkov was aware of Whitman's status as a gay icon, and sponsors of the statue said they were honoring Whitman strictly for his contributions to literature.
"Whitman transcended his sexuality in his art and I would like to thank Mayor Luzhkov for welcoming him in his city and have absolutely nothing to say about those things," said James W. Symington, a former four-time congressman for Missouri and representative of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation.
Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said Wednesday he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.
"Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing," he said.
Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia at a news conference Tuesday.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said the department was unaware of any request from the Russian gay community.
Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Russia in 1993 and homophobic attitudes remain widespread.
Activists have taken the struggle to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow to the European Court of Justice, which is scheduled to rule on the issue in early 2010.
The statue of Walt Whitman was placed in the gardens of Moscow State University, where in May more than 30 gay activists were arrested for attempting to hold a pride march.
The statue of Walt Whitman will complement a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin installed in Washington in 2000.
Whitman sculptor Alexander Bourganov remarked at a press conference Tuesday that the opening had been delayed and been politically difficult. He did not elaborate.
Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Russian gays express disappointment in Clinton
By BEN JUDAH (AP) – 7 hours ago
MOSCOW — Russia's leading gay activist said Wednesday that he was disappointed that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with an outspoken foe of gay rights during her two-day trip to Russia and did not decry homophobia in the country.
Clinton attended a ceremony unveiling a statue of Walt Whitman at Moscow State University with Russian officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov has blocked all attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow, once saying they "can be described in no other way than as satanic."
Clinton did not mention of the issue during the ceremony. Some biographers have described Whitman as homosexual and U.S. gay activists have claimed him as symbol of their movement.
"Just as Pushkin and Whitman reset poetry we are resetting our relations for the 21st century," Clinton said. A statue of the revered Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was erected at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., in 2000.
Luzhkov also compared Whitman to "our Alexander Pushkin" — but said he was quintessentially American.
"Whitman's poetry is imbued with the spirit of American optimism, the desire to create," Luzhkov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "Whitman did not accept the standards of poetry — he was an innovator."
It was not clear whether Luzhkov was aware of Whitman's status as a gay icon, and sponsors of the statue said they were honoring Whitman strictly for his contributions to literature.
"Whitman transcended his sexuality in his art and I would like to thank Mayor Luzhkov for welcoming him in his city and have absolutely nothing to say about those things," said James W. Symington, a former four-time congressman for Missouri and representative of the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation.
Gay activist Nikolai Alexeyev said Wednesday he was disappointed Clinton did not discuss discrimination against gays.
"Russia is supposed to be a democracy and she said nothing," he said.
Alexeyev had called on Clinton to denounce what he called entrenched and degrading homophobic attitudes in Russia at a news conference Tuesday.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said the department was unaware of any request from the Russian gay community.
Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Russia in 1993 and homophobic attitudes remain widespread.
Activists have taken the struggle to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow to the European Court of Justice, which is scheduled to rule on the issue in early 2010.
The statue of Walt Whitman was placed in the gardens of Moscow State University, where in May more than 30 gay activists were arrested for attempting to hold a pride march.
The statue of Walt Whitman will complement a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin installed in Washington in 2000.
Whitman sculptor Alexander Bourganov remarked at a press conference Tuesday that the opening had been delayed and been politically difficult. He did not elaborate.
Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Clinton leaves Russia with appeal for cooperation
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hA4-Et1W_QdvSvSKKOuX9MrvwBrwD9BB2CSG4
Clinton leaves Russia with appeal for cooperation
By MATTHEW LEE (AP) – 8 hours ago
KAZAN, Russia — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged Russians to open up their political system, embrace diversity and scorn Cold War-era thinking.
In Moscow and Kazan, the capital of Russia's religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Tatarstan, Clinton underscored to audiences at elite universities the Obama administration's desire to "reset" relations with Russia.
"We have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past," she told a crowd of about 2,000 students at Moscow State University. "They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent."
"They do not trust each other and we have to prove them wrong," she said.
Though she seemed to cast blame equally, Clinton took particular aim at Russian suspicions toward improved ties and the influence of U.S. policies and Western values.
"The more open that Russia can become, the more Russia will contribute," she said. "The more active and dynamic the political system you have, the more ... ideas will go into the mix and out of it will come even better answers to the problems that we all face."
The comments came a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov objected to the Obama administration's strategy of publicly threatening Iran with more sanctions to get it to come clean about its suspect nuclear program.
At a news conference with Clinton on Tuesday, Lavrov said that while more sanctions might eventually be needed, talking about them or other penalties now is "counterproductive." The U.S. believes Iran will respond only if confronted by a unified position.
Although Clinton and top aides maintained that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had assured them Russia would support sanctions if Iran did not comply, Lavrov's comment exposed a rift in tactics between the two countries that could be exploited by Iran.
She glossed over Iran in her Wednesday comments but aides said they remained surprised by Lavrov's remark, which came as the U.S. tries to rally international opinion in favor of sanctions against Iran if needed. Lavrov is closely associated with Russia's old guard.
Instead, standing in front of a monumental Soviet mosaic topped by a red hammer and sickle at Moscow State's main auditorium, Clinton made an appeal for a new U.S.-Russian partnership that would extend from the political to the personal.
"I choose partnership and I choose to put aside being a child of the Cold War," she intoned. "I choose to move beyond the rhetoric and the propaganda that came from my government and yours. I choose a different future and that's a choice every one of us can make every single day."
Clinton is the first secretary of state ever to visit Kazan, which bills itself as Russia's third capital, and Tatarstan, an oil-rich moderate Muslim-majority republic that is often hailed as a model of multicultural tolerance.
There, she visited a mosque and nearby Orthodox cathedral, before speaking to students at Kazan State University, where Lenin once studied. She urged them to carry on the republic's tradition of ethnic and religious inclusion and equality.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Clinton leaves Russia with appeal for cooperation
By MATTHEW LEE (AP) – 8 hours ago
KAZAN, Russia — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged Russians to open up their political system, embrace diversity and scorn Cold War-era thinking.
In Moscow and Kazan, the capital of Russia's religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Tatarstan, Clinton underscored to audiences at elite universities the Obama administration's desire to "reset" relations with Russia.
"We have people in our government and you have people in your government who are still living in the past," she told a crowd of about 2,000 students at Moscow State University. "They do not believe the United States and Russia can cooperate to this extent."
"They do not trust each other and we have to prove them wrong," she said.
Though she seemed to cast blame equally, Clinton took particular aim at Russian suspicions toward improved ties and the influence of U.S. policies and Western values.
"The more open that Russia can become, the more Russia will contribute," she said. "The more active and dynamic the political system you have, the more ... ideas will go into the mix and out of it will come even better answers to the problems that we all face."
The comments came a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov objected to the Obama administration's strategy of publicly threatening Iran with more sanctions to get it to come clean about its suspect nuclear program.
At a news conference with Clinton on Tuesday, Lavrov said that while more sanctions might eventually be needed, talking about them or other penalties now is "counterproductive." The U.S. believes Iran will respond only if confronted by a unified position.
Although Clinton and top aides maintained that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had assured them Russia would support sanctions if Iran did not comply, Lavrov's comment exposed a rift in tactics between the two countries that could be exploited by Iran.
She glossed over Iran in her Wednesday comments but aides said they remained surprised by Lavrov's remark, which came as the U.S. tries to rally international opinion in favor of sanctions against Iran if needed. Lavrov is closely associated with Russia's old guard.
Instead, standing in front of a monumental Soviet mosaic topped by a red hammer and sickle at Moscow State's main auditorium, Clinton made an appeal for a new U.S.-Russian partnership that would extend from the political to the personal.
"I choose partnership and I choose to put aside being a child of the Cold War," she intoned. "I choose to move beyond the rhetoric and the propaganda that came from my government and yours. I choose a different future and that's a choice every one of us can make every single day."
Clinton is the first secretary of state ever to visit Kazan, which bills itself as Russia's third capital, and Tatarstan, an oil-rich moderate Muslim-majority republic that is often hailed as a model of multicultural tolerance.
There, she visited a mosque and nearby Orthodox cathedral, before speaking to students at Kazan State University, where Lenin once studied. She urged them to carry on the republic's tradition of ethnic and religious inclusion and equality.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Governor of Japan's Okinawa backs US airbase accord
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/10/14/09/governor-japans-okinawa-backs-us-airbase-accord
Agence France-Presse 10/14/2009 3:42 PM
TOKYO - The governor of Japan's Okinawa prefecture said a US military base could stay on the island, officials said Wednesday -- the latest twist in a row weeks before President Barack Obama visits the country.
Japan's new centre-left government, which took power last month, has said it wants the air base moved off the island or even outside Japan, which would reverse a 2006 pact that a conservative government reached with Washington.
The renewed debate over where to move the controversial US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base -- now located in a densely-populated urban area of Okinawa -- has cast a cloud over a scheduled November 12-13 Tokyo visit by Obama.
Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima on Tuesday submitted a position paper to the central government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in which he said the priority now was to move the base away from its current urban setting.
"It's best to transfer the facility outside of the prefecture, but I would concede to a plan for the relocation within the prefecture in order to get rid of the danger (of its urban location) as soon as possible," Nakaima said in the statement, according to local government officials in Okinawa prefecture.
The governor urged the central government to "clarify its policy on the relocation of the air base and present specific proposals at an early date."
The Futenma base on the island, which hosts more than half of the 47,000 American troops stationed in Japan, has long angered residents because of aircraft noise and frictions between the community and US service personnel.
Hatoyama has said he wants to review a 2006 accord with Washington under which the current base would be closed, thousands of Marines moved to Guam, and others moved to a new US base to be built by 2014 in an Okinawa coastal area.
The premier -- who has said he wants a "more equal" relationship with the United States, Japan's traditional top ally, but also voiced admiration for Obama -- said he wanted to seek more local opinions on the divisive topic.
"We have to listen to the opinions not only of the governor but of all the people in Okinawa," Hatoyama told reporters on Tuesday.
"We cannot ignore the Japan-US accord, which includes some important parts," Hatoyama said, adding that he still wanted to consider various opinions.
Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, said during a visit to Japan last weekend that he hoped "real progress" would be made on the issue before Obama's visit.
But Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Tuesday that Tokyo does not expect to reach a breakthrough on the issue before Obama's visit.
Copyright © 2008 ABS-CBN Interactive All rights reserved.
Agence France-Presse 10/14/2009 3:42 PM
TOKYO - The governor of Japan's Okinawa prefecture said a US military base could stay on the island, officials said Wednesday -- the latest twist in a row weeks before President Barack Obama visits the country.
Japan's new centre-left government, which took power last month, has said it wants the air base moved off the island or even outside Japan, which would reverse a 2006 pact that a conservative government reached with Washington.
The renewed debate over where to move the controversial US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base -- now located in a densely-populated urban area of Okinawa -- has cast a cloud over a scheduled November 12-13 Tokyo visit by Obama.
Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima on Tuesday submitted a position paper to the central government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in which he said the priority now was to move the base away from its current urban setting.
"It's best to transfer the facility outside of the prefecture, but I would concede to a plan for the relocation within the prefecture in order to get rid of the danger (of its urban location) as soon as possible," Nakaima said in the statement, according to local government officials in Okinawa prefecture.
The governor urged the central government to "clarify its policy on the relocation of the air base and present specific proposals at an early date."
The Futenma base on the island, which hosts more than half of the 47,000 American troops stationed in Japan, has long angered residents because of aircraft noise and frictions between the community and US service personnel.
Hatoyama has said he wants to review a 2006 accord with Washington under which the current base would be closed, thousands of Marines moved to Guam, and others moved to a new US base to be built by 2014 in an Okinawa coastal area.
The premier -- who has said he wants a "more equal" relationship with the United States, Japan's traditional top ally, but also voiced admiration for Obama -- said he wanted to seek more local opinions on the divisive topic.
"We have to listen to the opinions not only of the governor but of all the people in Okinawa," Hatoyama told reporters on Tuesday.
"We cannot ignore the Japan-US accord, which includes some important parts," Hatoyama said, adding that he still wanted to consider various opinions.
Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, said during a visit to Japan last weekend that he hoped "real progress" would be made on the issue before Obama's visit.
But Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Tuesday that Tokyo does not expect to reach a breakthrough on the issue before Obama's visit.
Copyright © 2008 ABS-CBN Interactive All rights reserved.
Day in Photos
Photo 13: Oct. 13: A photograph of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin lies on a floor outside a courtroom in Moscow before a hearing in a libel suit brought by Stalin's grandson against a Russian newspaper he accuses of questioning the dictator's honor and dignity. The grandson is contesting the report that Stalin personally signed execution orders for thousands of Soviet and foreign citizens.
Photo 14: Oct. 13: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attends a bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Russia and China looked to steady their close but imbalanced relationship with Putin ushering through trade deals said to be worth $3.5 billion, including a framework agreement on the supply of Russian gas from state-run Gazprom to China.
Photo 24: Oct. 12: A worker waits to unload sacks of domestically grown corn at Beiliang Port in Dalian, China. China will continue to stockpile corn, soybean and rapeseed, according to a statement by China's State Council.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/10/13/GA2009101301375.html
Photo 14: Oct. 13: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attends a bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Russia and China looked to steady their close but imbalanced relationship with Putin ushering through trade deals said to be worth $3.5 billion, including a framework agreement on the supply of Russian gas from state-run Gazprom to China.
Photo 24: Oct. 12: A worker waits to unload sacks of domestically grown corn at Beiliang Port in Dalian, China. China will continue to stockpile corn, soybean and rapeseed, according to a statement by China's State Council.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/10/13/GA2009101301375.html
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
I’m home now from a visit to the following ports since 9/18:
- Anchorage, Alaska
- Muroran (Hokkaido), Japan
- Vladivostok, Russia
- Busan, S. Korea
- Qingdao, China
- Dalian, China
- Tianjin/Beijing, China
- Shanghai, China
- Okinawa, Japan
- Keelung/Taipei, Taiwan
I always look forward to my travels, but I'm also always glad to get home again.
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