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Underneath the media hysteria, [Ella-p](http://ella-p.livejournal.com/675361.html) links to a few polls suggesting Russians aren’t really all that passionate in their loathing for Georgians. All these figures predate the current scuffle. They also conflict with my own experience of Russia, which is of a pretty widespread loathing of anybody from the Caucasus.

Firstly, [two](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/tb040309) [polls](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/tb062413) on opinions of Georgia:

So opinions of Georgia have worsened over the time Saakashvili has been president, but not to any truly terrible levels.

[Another poll](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/gruz_abkhaz_russ/tb063010) concerns attitudes to Abkhazia. Throughout several questions, the same small majority are in favour of keeping Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia (51%), supporting independence for Abkhazia (53%), and welcoming Abkhazia as part of Russia, if requested (54%). The rest are divided between a good 20-30% who support the opposite position, and a large number who didn’t answer.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about polls, and my Russian is ropey enough that I’ve probably misunderstood some of them. If you’re interested, look at the “Public Opinion Foundation”: [other polling data on Georgia](http://bd.fom.ru/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/), or the English-language section.

You know what would be useful and doesn’t exist? An rss feed (or similar) for UN Security Council resolutions. Anybody found one hiding somewhere in a corner of the internet?

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

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.

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”

I’m entirely in love with the Russian section of my friendslist right now (*).

Russia is currently having a tiff with Georgia. The Georgian government arrested four alleged Russian spies (possibly as a way to look good before today’s local elections); Russia responded by cutting off air, rail, postal links with Georgia. Now Russia has moved into the overtly racist stage: Moscow police have been turning up at Georgian-owned businesses, looking for minor legal infringements that would justify closing them down. A Georgian arm-wrestling champion, of all people, has been murdered in Moscow. Georgian refugees are being ordered to report to the police, etc, etc, etc… In short, the anti-Georgian prejudice that has long existed in Russia is being fanned by the Russian government into something potentially far more dangerous.

With all this going on in the mainstream, I look at livejournal. What I see is Russians making a point of going to Georgian restaurants, making “I am Georgian” badges and “I love Georgia banners”, arranging an anti-racism protest on Sunday, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Makes me feel good.

Now, I’m going to head out and see what I can make of a Hungarian industrial/synthpop mix. But I’m going to do it a lot more happily having looked at Livejournal

Edit

: Neeka at Global Voices has a summary and translation of some of what’s going on. Bed now, since it’s 5am.

(*) This being essentially a few of the nicer (and some less nice) A-list Russian political bloggers, all of whom use Livejournal. In other words, I read them, they don’t read me, and it’s all a lot less like my English LJ and more like reading blogs.

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.