Archive - 2012

1
Susan Rice Didn't Deserve State Post, Let Alone Her U.N. Role
2
Joining The Peace Corps? Don't Get Sick, Whatever You Do From Mother Jones Magazine
3
RPCVs Write: U.S. Must Step Forward To Stabilize Congo
4
An African Market in Grand Central Station, NYC
5
Susan Rice's Personality Disorder
6
Susan Rice and Africa's Despots
7
The Problem With Susan Rice and Manufactured Outrage
8
Susan Rice and Double Standards From The Washington Post
9
More About Susan Rice's History, This Time From The WSJ
10
Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) on the Diane Rehm Show Tuesday at 11 a.m.
11
Peace Corps Porn
12
RPCV Contributing Editors
13
Peace Corps Directors to Attend the RPCV/W Holiday Party in D.C. on December 14. Aaron Williams Receives Peace Corps Champion Award
14
Third Goal for Peru, The Chijnaya Foundation
15
Puta Caballo

Susan Rice Didn't Deserve State Post, Let Alone Her U.N. Role

From the Daily Beast by Jacob Heilbrunn Dec 14, 2012 The ambassador built her career on catering to authority, even some of Africa’s most loathsome dictators. Why the Libya fiasco had nothing to do with the Beltway insider’s demise.   With her decision to withdraw from consideraion as secretary of state, Susan Rice-and her greatest champion, President Obama-is finally bowing to the inevitable. Her supporters concocted any number of reasons to promote her ascension to the top floor of Foggy Bottom. She was, they said, being demonized by the right. She was being subjected to racism. She was just trying to please her superiors. And so on. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice speaks during a Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria in August in New York. (Stephen Chernin/AFP/Getty Images) Don’t believe a word of it. The real problem is not that she bungled Libya. It’s that . . .

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Joining The Peace Corps? Don't Get Sick, Whatever You Do From Mother Jones Magazine

[This article appeared on December 13, 2012 in Mother Jones Magazine. It was originally on www.FairWarning.com. I know that in conversations with the new Acting Director of the Peace Corps that she has been working on solving this problem with the Department of Labor and is dealing with it in ways that previous Peace Corps Directors haven’t. Carrie has spent her life in nonprofit organizations working on health issues, and she has taken major steps to resolve these issues that PCVs and RPCVs have. Years ago, I suggested to the NPCA that they make this their central issue to help RPCVs, but ALL the NPCA Presidents and CEO (and whatever other grand titles they call themselves) were only interested in advancing their own positions with overseas trips, congressional appearances, visits to the Peace Corps office, and fund raising to pay their salaries. This issue for the Peace Corps and all . . .

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RPCVs Write: U.S. Must Step Forward To Stabilize Congo

By: Michael O’Hanlon and Tony Gambino December 11, 2012 [Tony Gambino and Michael O’Hanlon were PCVs in the Congo in the 1970s and ’80s; Tony was also the  USAID mission director there from 2001-04. Today he teaches at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Michael O’Hanlon is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This article appeared on December 12, 2012 in Politico. It was entitled “U.S. Must Step Forward in Effort to Stabilize Congo.” Larry Lesser, a PCV in Nigeria, 1963-65, and later served at the Embassy in Kigali 1977-79 drew my attention to it. Larry also commented, “Personally I found the article somewhat idealistic but not persuasive.  I don’t think it is within the power of the U.S. to stabilize Congo — not even in concert with other African nations or other nations globally.  I don’t think Congo can be stabilized.  It isn’t a viable nation-state and eastern Congo historically has . . .

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An African Market in Grand Central Station, NYC

Years ago someone I worked with in D.C. said that RPCVs were like retired FBI agents, and when I asked him why, he remarked, “they take care of their own.” True enough. We especially ‘take care of those PCVs we served with” so let me do that now, and also do you a favor by recommending Bamboula, a craft store that is  owned and operated and everything else by Jasperdean Kobes (Ethiopia 1962-64). Jasperdean is an importer and wholesaler of contemporary gifts handcrafted from six African countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda). The company’s mission is to create work and income for African artisans by selling handcrafted products to retailers in the US. Customers include independent gift shops, national mail order catalogs, museums and zoos, and other specialty retailers. In recent years, Jasperdean has also consulted for the West Africa Trade Hub, the East and Central Africa . . .

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Susan Rice's Personality Disorder

by Lloyd Grove The Daily Beast Dec 12, 2012 7:45 AM EST Brusque. Aggressive. Undiplomatic. The adjectives used to describe the ambassador aren’t kind. Lloyd Grove on Susan Rice’s polarizing temperament-and why that may matter more than Benghazi. Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations and President Obama’s most visible candidate to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, is being subjected to an immutable law of the Washington power grid: In the rough and tumble of political combat, personality trumps policy. Government policy, especially foreign policy, is rife with nuance and complication. But personality is easier to grasp and harder to shed. Recent critiques of Rice’s influence on U.S. diplomacy in Rwanda, Sudan, and Eritrea over the past two decades are endlessly debatable among think-tank elites. Republican Sen. John McCain’s threat to block her (hypothetical) confirmation because she relied on faulty intelligence to mischaracterize the Sept. . . .

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Susan Rice and Africa's Despots

December 9, 2012 Susan Rice and Africa’s Despots By SALEM SOLOMON–The New York Times Tampa, Fla. ON Sept. 2, Ambassador Susan E. Rice delivered a eulogy for a man she called “a true friend to me.” Before thousands of mourners and more than 20 African heads of state in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ms. Rice, the United States’ representative to the United Nations, lauded the country’s late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. She called him “brilliant” – “a son of Ethiopia and a father to its rebirth.” Few eulogies give a nuanced account of the decedent’s life, but the speech was part of a disturbing pattern for an official who could become President Obama’s next secretary of state. During her career, she has shown a surprising and unsettling sympathy for Africa’s despots. This record dates from Ms. Rice’s service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Bill Clinton, who . . .

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The Problem With Susan Rice and Manufactured Outrage

[James Bruno was a Foreign Service officer for 23 years, having worked previously in military intelligence and journalism. He is a member of the Diplomatic Readiness Reserve, subject to worldwide duty on short notice. He holds a M.A. degrees from the U.S. Naval War College & Columbia University, and a B.A from George Washington U. He has served in SE Asia, Cuba, Guantanamo, Pakistan/Afghanistan. He also spent time at the White House and have worked with the Secret Service in a presidential protection detail overseas. He knows the Pentagon, CIA and other foreign affairs agencies well. He have been featured on NBC’s Today Show, Washington Post, Huffington Post & NPR. His political thrillers Permanent Interests and Chasme have simultaneously been on three Amazon Kindle Bestseller lists, including #1 in Political Fiction. His recently released Afghanistan thriller, Tribe, is also a bestseller. Here is what he has to say about Susan Rice.] The Problem With Susan Rice and . . .

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Susan Rice and Double Standards From The Washington Post

 By Ruth Marcus, Published: November 29 Does gender – or the supercharged combination of gender and race – play a role in the preemptive strikes on not-yet-secretary of state nominee Susan Rice? For perspective on this complex question, it helps to return to 1974 and the nomination of another woman, Alice Rivlin, to head the Congressional Budget Office. As Rivlin tells the story, the office had just been created, she was selected by a search committee – and the House Budget Committee chairman made clear his adamant, gender-based opposition. “Over his dead body was a woman going to run this organization,” Rivlin recalled at an Atlantic magazine “Women of Washington” lecture last year. No one would say that today. No one, I’d venture, would even think it. A woman, after all, has been secretary of state for all but four of the last 16 years; during the interregnum, the job was held . . .

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More About Susan Rice's History, This Time From The WSJ

Updated December 3, 2012, 7:23 p.m. ET Stephens: Failing Up With Susan Rice Benghazi was not her first African fiasco. By BRET STEPHENS in the Wall Street Journal Long before Susan Rice became a household name thanks to her part in the Benghazi fiasco, she was building a career from the ruins of other African fiascoes. To some of these she merely contributed. Others were of her own making. Ms. Rice’s misadventures in Africa began nearly two decades ago when, as a 28 year-old McKinsey consultant with an Oxford Ph.D. (her dissertation was on Zimbabwe), she joined Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. The president, who had been badly burned by the Black Hawk Down episode in October 1993, was eager to avoid further African entanglements. So when a genocide began in Rwanda the following April, the administration went to great lengths to avoid any involvement-beginning with the refusal to use . . .

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Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) on the Diane Rehm Show Tuesday at 11 a.m.

Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) Director of Creative Writing at West Virginia University will appear (Tuesday) December 11, 2012 at 11 a.m. on the Diane Rehm Show to discuss his short story collection The Incurables. Broadcast from Washington, D.C., the Diane Rehm Show has been called “the gold standard of civic, civil discourse” and reaches more than 2.2 million listeners. Past guests have included Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Julie Andrews, and Toni Morrison. The Diane Rehm Show is produced at WAMU 88.5 in Washington, D.C., and distributed by National Public Radio, NPR Worldwide, and SIRIUS satellite radio. “I’m thrilled to talk about my book, and about how the themes of my book connect to the work I’ve been doing at WVU-my teaching, my work with the Appalachian Prison Book Project, and my talks at the Health Sciences Center on the importance of listening to and understanding patients,” Brazaitis said. For more, see: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-12-11/mark-brazaitis-incurables . . .

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Peace Corps Porn

Well, I knew that would get your attention! How ’bout a paperback porn novel entitled Passion Delights by Frances Sibley published in 1985 that has for a jacket cover the rather overwhelming bare breasts of a young PCV woman beckoning you to buy the paperback for $3.50 and find out what really happens to PCV women in Senegal? The story, as far as I read (and I’ve only read enough to write this blog, I promise!) is about a newly married couple, Doug and Penny, just out of college with degrees in anthropology who are assigned to “Corps-sponsored Mgoro Techical School” and are deeply and newly in love. That is until Penny realizes what is wanting for her in West Africa! It doesn’t take long. By page 26, Penny is having a hard time ‘adjusting’ to the sight of her naked houseboy, Ojike, and his “omnipresent erections” (I didn’t write this, I just copied . . .

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RPCV Contributing Editors

Killing time this morning as I had my car serviced for winter, I picked up and leafed through dozens of mainstream magazines left in the waiting room and was delighted to find a number of RPCVs listed on the mastheads of some serious publications. For example, National Geographic Traveler has P.F. Kluge (Micronesia 1967-69) as a Contributing Editor. Outside Magazine has both  Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) and  Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) listed as Contributing Editors. (The publication also lists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a Contributing Editor, but, I guess, we can’t count him.) So, what about the rest of you?

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Peace Corps Directors to Attend the RPCV/W Holiday Party in D.C. on December 14. Aaron Williams Receives Peace Corps Champion Award

RPCV/W will honor RPCV Aaron Williams, the agency’s recent director, with its “Peace Corps Champion Award” at the group’s 2012 Holiday Party & Silent Auction. This is taking place on the evening of December 14, 2012, at 2020 O Street N.W. Tickets are $45 for members;  $60 for Non-Members. It will cost you $70 at the door. According to the RPCV/W e-mail blast, ” The guest list is growing and tickets are going fast. Get yours before its too late!” Each year, RPCV/W awards its Peace Corps Champion Award to an individual whose work has made a great impact on the Peace Corps and its community. This year they selected Aaron S. Williams who served as Director from 2009 to 2012. Acting Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet will also be at the party, as will the former Senator Harris Wofford, who, as we know, was one of the original Mad Men of the agency and also the . . .

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Third Goal for Peru, The Chijnaya Foundation

I am continually amazed and humbled by the work that RPCVs continue to do in the countries where they once served as PCVs. Recently I received word about another amazing project, this time in Peru, carried on by a handful of former Peru Volunteers. These RPCVs have established the Chijnaya Foundation and they work directly with villages in hard to access, under-served areas of the Peruvian Andes. Among the RPCVs on this foundation board are Ralph Bolton (Peru 1962-65) who contacted me, Peggy Slater (Peru 1966-68),  John Rouse (Peru 1966-68), Connie Jaquith (Bolivia and Peru, not sure of her dates). Other former RPCVs who were early organizers are Andrew Hoffman (Peru 1966-68), Raymond Rifenburg (Peru 1966-68), and Paul Doughty, a Peace Corps trainer in Peru in the early ’60s, Rolly Thompson,  a consultant to the foundation, and Judith Haden, who was a PCV in Central America.  As I said, the The Chijnaya Foundation works directly with . . .

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Puta Caballo

Puta Caballo by Miguel Lanigan (Colombia 1961–63) About horses, I knew not much. The few I had ridden back in the States were beaten down robots one finds in rental stables — the giddy-up-go plodders that get you from A to B and back again. The horse the Colombian stable hands were leading up from the stalls below was a trembling, brown, mass of quivering  muscle.  The beast I was to ride furiously jerked his head from side to side; the whites of his eyes showed he did not want to be ridden — earlier riders had done him too much harm. How, I lamented to myself, had I gotten myself into this unhappy and dangerous situation I was facing. . . . Back in 1961, I had it made in Washington, D.C.: I was twenty-two, driving a black MGA sports car, was a co-chairman of the debutante committee, had . . .

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