Free Republic

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001 Having to pay back a $400,000 fee for work on questionable presidential pardons isn't the ex–first brother-in-law's first scrape BILL WISSER/LIAISON Hugh Rodham during his 1994 run for one of the U.S. Senate seats from Florida Hillary Rodham Clinton's jowly brother Hugh faced a nation of raised eyebrows Thursday for his part in two successful pardon pleas. The sartorially impaired sometime golfing partner of the ex-president is taking heat for pocketing $400,000 in legal fees after two of his clients, Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell, were granted last-minute pardons. Hugh's salad days were short;...

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. --Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability...Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords...Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand. What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense?...

Former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has died aged 86, media reports say. Mr Shevardnadze became foreign minister of the Soviet Union in 1985. In 1992, he was appointed head of state of the newly independent republic of Georgia. He led the country out of instability and civil war but in November 2003 was toppled in the "Rose Revolution" sparked by opposition allegations of irregularities in parliamentary polls.

The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland. Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power. Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book...

President Bush urged Moscow to abandon two Soviet-era military bases in Georgia as he met on Wednesday with the newly elected leader of the strategically placed Caucasus state. Sitting with President Mikhail Saakashvili in the Oval Office, Bush told reporters he would help build good relations between Georgia and Russia. He said Russia should honor a promise to remove the bases, which it made during the 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "The Istanbul commitment made it very clear that Russia would leave those bases," Bush said after a closed-door meeting with Saakashvili, whose...

President takes over in Georgia Mr Zhvania played a prominent role in the Rose Revolution Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has said he is taking charge of the government following the death of his prime minister on Thursday. Zurab Zhvania, 41, was found dead in an apartment in Tbilisi, apparently poisoned by gas from a faulty heater. Officials say security guards found his body after breaking into a flat owned by friends early on Thursday. Mr Saakashvili told a crowd in Tbilisi that he was "taking responsibility for leading the executive". "I am ordering the government to return to work," he...

...Vladimir Putin... has again exhibited his contempt for democratic rule and his tin ear for the angry opposition in the world's democracies.... Ukraine was starved into submission by Stalin 72 years ago, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was not, however, an independence willingly accepted by Russian hardliners.... The massive outpouring of demonstrators in what they call the "Orange Revolution" is an attempt to replicate the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia... Serbia... the Berlin Wall, the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity victory in Poland. There was one significant failure too,...

Anti-communist analyst note: [As the presidential candidate John Kerry already twice stated in his "honest" responses during the presidential debates he wants our nuclear research stopped and he wants to send money to Russia to "protect the 'former' Soviet era nuclear weapons" from being 'lost' or 'stolen' by Russian Mafia. Please consider the following article in that light of the fact even though it has been written 10 years ago - it was as important then as it is today.Published with permission given by Inside Story Communications. HM note]. The Plot To Hijack the CIA Is nuclear terrorism about to...

Georgia's top prosecutor suggested on Wednesday ousted president Eduard Shevardnadze was not immune from prosecution for corruption despite assurances given by the leaders who toppled him. Mikhail Saakashvili, who ousted the Soviet-era veteran in a bloodless coup in November, promised Shevardnadze personal immunity from prosecution as a condition for his resignation. In televised remarks, Prosecutor General Irakly Okruashvili refused to rule out moving against Shevardnadze in an anti-corruption campaign in the Caucasus state that elected Saakashvili president by a landslide last month. A day after acting Transport Minister Merab Adeishvili's arrest on charges of financial wrongdoing and abuse of power,...

TBILISI, Georgia - Two months after the bloodless ouster of Georgia's longtime leader, newly elected President Mikhail Saakashvili vowed to lift the troubled country out of its post-Soviet malaise and set it on a westward course. Mikhail Saakashvili took the helm of the troubled Caucasus Mountain nation Sunday in an inauguration ceremony packed with symbolism, raising a European Union flag alongside Georgia's new banner and saluting soldiers he said will help strengthen and unify the fractured country. "Georgia is not just a European country, but one of the most ancient European countries," Saakashvili said in a speech after taking the...

<p>Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Saturday Moscow believed the United States might have planned for Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's ouster weeks before a peaceful revolution toppled him.</p> <p>Ivanov also harshly criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for saying during a visit to Tbilisi Friday that Moscow was in breach of its obligation to withdraw forces from Georgia, and suggested Rumsfeld was ignorant of the essence of the deal he was speaking about.</p>

U.S. Eyed in Shevardnadze's Resignation Sat Dec 6, 5:53 PM ET By MARA D. BELLABY, Associated Press Writer MOSCOW - Russia's foreign minister has accused the United States of playing a role in the resignation of Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze last month, according to an interview published Saturday in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "I think there are enough facts proving that what happened in those days wasn't spontaneous, it didn't arise suddenly," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was quoted as saying. "Of course, there were preparations and the U.S. ambassador was involved, as Shevardnadze himself admitted." Ivanov also said that a...

<p>Emissaries from Washington will arrive in Tbilisi this week to a warm welcome. The U.S. policy of spreading democracy played an important role in toppling Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze 10 days ago. American, IMF and World Bank officials are on their way with aid offers for the new regime. No one is burning American flags.</p>

Nov. 30, 2003 Shevardnadze blames Soros for his downfall By ASSOCIATED PRESS Former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze accused multibillionaire philanthropist George Soros of donating millions of dollars to an uprising earlier this month that forced him to resign. Shevardnadze said in a newspaper interview that he could not point to specific countries that had backed the uprising. Instead, international groups, such as the Soros Foundation, had financed the opposition, he said. Three weeks of protests culminated in Shevardnadze's resignation on Nov. 23. Shevardnadze has previously accused U.S. ambassador Richard Miles of encouraging the opposition, an allegation U.S. officials denied. In...

Shevardnadze feels betrayed by the West By Julius Strauss in Tbilisi (Filed: 27/11/2003) Eduard Shevardnadze, the deposed Georgian president and an embittered, broken man, told The Telegraph yesterday that he had "rescued the world" from the brink of nuclear catastrophe by ending the Cold War, only to be betrayed by the West. Speaking at his official residence on a hill overlooking Tbilisi, the man who was once one of the world's most feted politicians said he had been let down. "If the Cold War had not stopped there would have been a Third World War," he said. "We rescued the...

 'We're supportive of what the Georgian opposition party did to restore the integrity of Georgian democracy, in terms of using peaceful demonstrations to overturn a fraudulent parliamentary election," said Clare Buchan, White House deputy press secretary, with all the eloquence of which the bureaucracy is capable. She clarified that, as President George W. Bush said last week, the U.S. is better and better disposed toward democratic revolutions.As if they were on top of things for a change, the U.S. State Department was first to recognize Nino Burjanadze, the acting president after that wily "grey fox," Eduard Shevardnadze, "resigned." New elections...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Colin Powell played a discreet off-stage role in the resignation of Georgia's president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, making a critical weekend telephone call to signal the longtime leader and U.S. favorite that his time was running out.</p>

<p>U.S. extends support to Georgian government WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States offered its support Sunday to the interim leadership of Georgia after a tumultuous weekend, during which the president of the former Soviet republic resigned as his opposition threatened to storm his residence. (Related item: Georgian leader resigns amid protests) Secretary of State Colin Powell called opposition figure Nino Burdzhanadze, who will lead an interim government until new elections can be held, "to offer our support and to encourage her and her colleagues to proceed in a manner consistent with Georgia's Constitution," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.</p>

Shevardnadze Quits in Georgia 'Velvet Revolution' Sun Nov 23, 3:07 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Elizabeth Piper TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze announced his resignation Sunday, bowing to opposition protesters who stormed parliament and declared a "velvet revolution" in the former Soviet republic. "I see that all this cannot simply go on. If I was forced tomorrow to use my authority it would lead to a lot of bloodshed. I have never betrayed my country and so it is better that the president resigns," Shevardnadze said on television. Shevardnadze's white-haired head was...

<p>TBILISI, Georgia (CNN) -- Georgian demonstrators are maintaining an all night vigil outside the nation's parliament after a state of emergency was declared by President Eduard Shevardnadze.</p> <p>Tens of thousands of Georgians are demanding Shevardnadze's resignation and parliamentary speaker and leading opposition figure Nino Burdzhanadze appeared on television to declare herself an interim leader.</p>