John Denham wants to give tougher sentences to the unemployed than to those in work. splutter
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John Denham wants to give tougher sentences to the unemployed than to those in work. splutter
Can't link to this enough; "Contentions" by Abdal-Hakim Murad (Timothy Winter)
Here's a rumour I hadn't heard: is kompromat,kz controlled by Rakhat Aliyev?
Kompromat.kz
A $5m prize for Africa's best head of state? Sounds like a good idea to me. The critics who say that corruption isn't about just one person are right, but this is better than nothing.
How to mangle a picture into looking like Lichtenstein. A good little project for a rainy day.
Photographs of female conscripts in the IDF. Very good photos, going heavy on the 'human trapped in a uniform' approach.
Georgia protests to the UN about Russia's treatment of ethnic georgians. This is only of value in terms of rounding up Western support for Georgia - the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights isn't much against Russia's position within the UN, but he might give people round these parts some nice lines to quote.
The Times on government calculations of the value of human life (£1.4m for road safety, £2.9m for carcinogenic risks, etc).
Anton Nossik has done a deal with Six Apart, meaning that he (through a company called 'Soup') is going to be running Livejournal for Russian users.
eXile on Russian livejournal.
Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of livejournal, is in Russia at the moment, and being interviewed on "Moscow Echo" radio this afternoon. Should be interesting...
Possible triggers for future escalation of the spying dispute: independence referendum in South Ossetia on 12 November, military exercises in Akbhazia on October 23-26. Also, any move on Kosovo.
RFE/RL agrees that the "unusually sharp" EU statement on Georgia-Russia is mostly worthless, says its main use is in guiding future statements by EU officials.
The EU isn't sure how strongly to criticise Russia over Georgia, reports Mosnews. France wants to be soft on Russia, Finland and Central Europe want to be tough. I'm wondering how big a difference it will make, in the end.
State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). I'm surprised at how short this list is; only 42 organizations.
A list of non-english chatbots. This might be an interesting way of picking up a foreign language.
How did I miss this profile of Jagex in the Wall Street Journal?
Moscow flash mob on Sunday - pity the report is all 'ooh, pretty girls' :(
The Georgian opposition New Rights Party is pressuring the government to unilaterally leave the CIS.
danah continues to write heartfelt, moving posts like this one (on how the world doesn't live up to our childhood expectations)
Crime coverage in the Russian media is biased against Georgians, according the Union of Russian journalists, to the extent that "one gets an impression that almost all the crimes perpetrated in Moscow are committed by people with Georgian surnames"(Novie Izvestia, via Media.ge)
Georgia blocks talks on Russian entry into the WTO. How much power does Georgia have to make it difficult for Russia to join? This feels like a massive bargaining chip.
Support Georgia: campaign and petition (in English). Looks like it predates the current kerfuffle
WTF? Blair agrees that the British army should leave Iraq "sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".
Zizek for Weddings: because nothing says 'I love you' like a line from the world's sweatiest theorist.
Registan: "Astana is trying to set itself up as the primary Hindu portal for the entire FSU"
Godwin's law triumphs in Georgia: at Georgia Online, a columnist collects a list of recent anti-Georgian Russian headlines and comments "Replace 'Georgian' with 'Jew', change the date 2006 to 1933, and we fall back to Nazi Germany.
Sean translates documents showing that Russian police really have been making lists of Georgian schoolchildren.
A CIS summit due to take place on Friday has been postponed at the request of Russia. Is Putin worried that a hot-headed Saakashvili might try to break away from the CIS? Or does he think other states will take Georgia's side?
This morning's Today programme coverage of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya was mostly worthless, but one decent line from Lord Judd (?): "Russia set out to isolate Chechnya, and they have largely succeeded"
Dana Milbank savages the Iraq Study Group, who are carefully refusing to say anything until after the midterms. But today's Times speculates that they're planning on cutting Iraq into three. Reidar Visser and Juan Cole know why that's a monumentally bad idea.
Similarly, here is a list of party-affiliated Russian LJ-users, by party.
Who's who in the Russophone livejournal world? Wikipedia has a list of links to 'notable' livejournals, and their sources list includes several Russian 'who's who' posts.
Putin turned 54 today. Zee News (India) snarkily describes him as "Russia's most popular head of state after Josef Stalin"
There are a million unexploded cluster-bomblets scattered around Lebanon [NYT]
Too many cooks: Adel Abdul Mahdi responds to Condi Rice's criticism about the lack of decision-making by the Iraqi government, by pointing out that the US military forms yet another independent decision-making centre. There needs to be some chain of command between them and the civilian government.
Sadr is losing popularity for not being radical enough.
I wonder if it's possible to do a quantitative analysis of this?
when Bush's popularity numbers go down, more stories start coming out about malfeasance in his administration, or the fact that his policies are not working out so great
Architectures of Control in Design - nice blog about reading capitalism from the material world. Not that it'd describe itself that way (nor would a sober Dan, to be honest), but it'll do.