50 years ago today, a man in a gleaming white helmet and bright orange jumpsuit approached a peasant woman in a field of potatoes, and asked where he could find a phone. “Could it be that you’ve come from outer space” asked the woman, crossing herself? “As a matter of fact, I have”, replied Yuri Gagarin. […]
All of us Skype-addicts can breathe a sigh of relief: No, the FSB will no longer ban the free online phone service in Russia. But the (justified) outrage over the government’s bungled plan to outlaw Skype and GMAIL overlooks some important context: Electronic communications are already rountinely compromised by most of Russia’s neighbours and democratic counterparts. […]
Russia’s Most Wanted (and Indecisive!) man just keeps coming back! Last year, the Chechen rebel and self-proclaimed Emir of the Caucasus resigned on youtube before changing his mind and retaking control two days later. This time, the man behind Moscow’s airport bombing was reportedly killed in a March air raid before popping up on Radio […]
Are you ready for this? Brace yourself and hold on to your seats because the winner of the most competitive, unpredictable, and exciting election in the history of Kazakhstan (sarcasm intended) is….Nursultan Nazarbayev. Really?! Same guy that has been in power since the late ’80s? Yup! This reads like an article from the Onion, but […]
President Medvedev ‘outs’ Vladimir Putin’s sexuality before attacking the Prime Minister’s plane with a sub-machine gun, but it’s the more improbable sight of John Cusack savouring Putin’s rendition of Blueberry Hill that finally gives away the fictional nature of Russia’s most talked-about election video. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/PL1SQhnqgI4″ width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /] The spoof trailer, a hilarious tribute […]
Azerbaijan experienced the latest in a series of rallies on Saturday, with several hundred (or perhaps several thousand, depending on the source) people attempting to demonstrate against the government of President Ilham Aliyev in central Baku. Police arrested as many as two hundred protesters during what was billed as a “Day of Rage” or “Day of […]
Blame for the outrageous protests, terrible acts and needless, heedless deaths over the last few days in Afghanistan rest in at least three quarters. There’s the individual explanation, the sociological explanation, in short the mob mentality, spurred on by this partisan and that, and finally the political explanation, which I fear is the strongest one, […]
I recently watched two relatively old Soviet/Russian movies back to back, Taxi Blues and Luna Park, made by the famous Russian director Pavel Lungin, both produced in the early 1990s. Taxi Blues (1990) and Luna Park (1991) are critically acclaimed films from the late Soviet or early post-Soviet period, depending on how one chooses to […]
The violence that began in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan has spread to southern Afghanistan in Kandahar, the Taliban’s home base. The New York Times reports that 81 people have been injured while 9 more people have died of gunshot wounds, bringing the number of dead up to 21 people since Friday afternoon prayers when imams […]
Kazakhstan is gearing up for the snap presidential election that will take place on Sunday, April 3, 2011. No one doubts that the incumbent president Nursultan Nazarbayev will win, which will extend his presidency for another five years and give him a chance to consolidate his rule by grooming a successor (or so he hopes). Earlier […]
There’s little to do but quote Rod Nordland’s Times piece on this horrendous bit of breaking news: “Protesters angered by the burning of a Koran by a fringe American pastor in Florida mobbed offices of the United Nations in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing ten foreign staff members and beheading two of the victims, according to an […]
Police in Azerbaijan have arrested “several youth and opposition activists” ahead of a protest rally scheduled for 2 April in Baku, RFE/RL reports. Three of those arrested have been released, but at least three others have apparently been given “administrative sentences” of between five and ten days. However, an Azeri source tells me that more […]
Four months before the scheduled July 2011 drawdown, well into a term where international forces are redeploying to urban areas, a few weeks into peak fighting season, the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan remains in flux, troublingly fluid, radically unsettled. The Taliban have announced that they have taken over a district in North Eastern Afghanistan, signalling not […]
Abducted, bound, sedated, flown to an undisclosed location in siberia, detained in a cell for a week, nose broken, then released only to be continuosly monitored by Putin on his presidential iPad. No, we are not talking about an average Tuesday in the life of a Russian journalist: the Prime Minister’s latest target is an […]
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports that Russia has increased tariffs on oil and oil products exported to Tajikistan by as much as 5.3%. This will increase the price of gasoline from the current $232 per ton to more than $250 or even as high as $285 per ton, just in time to squeeze the […]