Category: Uncategorised

Everything going on in Russia these past few days is making me want to hit things.

Most of you have probably noticed that Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on Saturday. There was no love lost between her and Putin (half the Russian conspiracy theorists think she was killed as a birthday present for Putin). Putin said nothing about her death until today, when he came out with this charming comment

“

There may have been any number of motives. Yes, this journalist was a sharp critic of the current Russian authorities. But I think that journalists should know, and experts perfectly understand, that her capacity to influence political life in Russia was extremely insignificant.

“She was well-known in journalist circles, in human rights circles, in the West. I repeat, her influence on the political life of the country was minimal.

”

Grr!

Meanwhile the persecution of Georgians in Russia is reaching tragicomin heights – now even the web hosts are getting involved. One,

Garanthost

. is closing down the accounts (RUS) of Georgian customers, and refusing to serve Georgians. And on the other side of the fence, Hostovik is offering discount hosting for anybody who will display an “I am Georgian” logo on their site.

No, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry either. I’m putting up more stuff about Russia and Georgia over at

the other place

.

Oh, now this is getting silly…

Russian hosting company Garanthost is [closing down the accounts](http://blog.garanthost.ru/?p=12) (RUS) of Georgian customers, and refusing to serve Georgians.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, [Hostovik](http://www.hostovik.ru/gruzin.htm) is offering discount hosting for anybody who will display an “I am Georgian” logo on their site.

[via [webplanet](http://webplanet.ru/news/life/2006/10/09/gruzin.html) and [kbke](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kbke/)]

Warning: cynicism ahead…

It seems that now Saakashvili has won his elections, he knows he can stop ratcheting up the rhetoric, and grovelingly [offer](http://izvestia.ru/politic/article3097366/) (RUS) to meet Putin anywhere for talks.

Back home, the

Industry will save Georgia

party are making a pretty futile shot at copying the imagery of the colour revolutions. Roses in hands, they held a march in protest at alleged election fraud last week – and would doubtless have been totally ignored, except that somebody decided to [take some potshots at them](http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=19604)

Eep! The US is beginning a ‘major operation’ in Kirkuk. Not the kind of place you want Americans blindly wading in.

In Kirkuk, a volatile mixed city in the north, Iraqi and U.S.-led forces launched a major security operation, dubbed “the key to peace,” to root out members of al-Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups. Authorities imposed a 6 p.m. curfew and announced the detention of 155 suspected insurgents. (Washington Post)

I hope they know what they’re doing; in particular I’d be worrying about the background of the Iraqi troops, the demographics of who they’re arresting, and generally how much they’re shaking things up

Ah, the joy of Babelfish. It has got over its old habit of turning _Putin_ into _Fishings_, but has a great new trick of interpreting _Первый канал_ (Channel One) as “Pervy Channel”

Wha? Russian blogs and media are reporting that Anna Politkovskaia has just been killed. She is – was – one of the most impressive campaigning journalists around, with some very brave investigations into Chechnya and into Russia under Putin.

Another quick note on the persecution of Georgians in Russia.

One thing making it easy for the authorities to go after ethnic Georgians is that, like everbody else in Russia, most of them break the law in one way or another. It seems that almost everything is slightly illegal there – not illegal enough that you expect to get arrested for it, but enough that the police can go after you if they want to. So for example, they can inspect Georgian restaurants and find they all fail to meet some health requirement. Or they can audit the taxes of prominent Georgians, and find that they’re bending the rules. Because that’s what everybody does.

It’s just another spin on the old truth that the more laws you pass, the more corruption you get.

Two scary things about the Saudi plan to building a 550-mile fence to shut out Iraq:

1. It’ll take 5-6 years for them to complete. They reckon things will be bad for a
   
   long
   
   time
2. The cost is some £13bn. I know this is a country rolling in money, but still: that’s an awful lot to pay just to keep Iraq’s rebels from getting out.

Now, maybe I’m overreacting. Building protection along a border is normal, and normally expensive. It’s only the Telegraph spin linking this so directly to Iraq. But still, it does suggest that the Saudis are working on an assumption that Iraq is going to end up in civil war within the next few years.

Looking through Brookings Iraq Index for something else entirely, I came across this baffling table. The amount of post sent each year in Iraq:

Year	Tons of mail
2001	148 tons sent (231 received)
2003	37 tons sent
2004	43 tons sent
2005	54 tons sent

Huh? Use of the postal system is a third of what it was under Saddam? Why on earth would that be the case?

Granted, dodgy statistics are the most likely culprit – the figures are sourced to an article in the New York Times, and its quite likely that the Baath figure is dodgy for some reason or other. Odder still: somehow the Times writer interprets the figures as “

evidence of recovery

“.

Still, it’d be nice to think there’s some mystery in those numbers, waiting to be uncovered.

Parties, and not the government, rule Iraq now

One line that tells you more than most articles, out of an excellent piece of journalism by Lara Logan. It’s also a perfect example of how compelling human interest journalism

can

be, when it’s done on the basis of a lot of facts, not just telling the story of the first native you meet.

Lara has framed what seem like two of the most important issues in Iraq. The first is the role of parties, mentioned above. The other is this picture of befuddled GIs surrounded by two conflicts they don’t understand:

…American soldiers are bearing the burden of a failed strategy and being forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, suddenly caught in the midst of two distinct wars: a counter-insurgency and a rapidly escalating sectarian conflict.

And their partners in the counter-insurgency war are participating in the sectarian conflict they’re being asked to stop.

I’d not heard of Lara Logan before, but from here on in I’m reading everything she writes.