by Maia Gemmill | 25 September, 2007 |
Source: Mandalay GazetteThe revolution may not be televised, but you can rest assured that it will be blogged. The large scale protests continue, despite yesterday's threats. The ruling military junta has banned foreign journalists, but the locals are snapping photos and emailing them to the western press. There is a great collection at Mandalay Gazette, a Burmese language paper based in California. Photos continue below the fold.
by Maia Gemmill | 24 September, 2007 |
I've been trying to follow what's going on right now in Myanmar. I know pretty much next to nothing about Myanmar, other than it used to be Burma, but it certainly looks like a people-power revolution is in progress. Thousands of Buddhist monks have taken to the streets and the government has been reluctant to crack down, perhaps hoping that if they just ignore them, the demonstrations will lose steam. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening: momentum appears to be gathering and the crowds are growing larger by the day. The protests are also spreading to cities besides Yangon (Rangoon)....
by Maia Gemmill | 24 September, 2007 |
There's a brick building at the corner of P and 18th Streets near Dupont Circle that used to be an overgrown wreck. I first noticed it in the fall of 2003. The grass was tall and unmowed, and there was a bare, dead tree inside the fence. It seemed abandoned. For various reasons I was rarely in the Dupont Circle area between spring 2004 and fall 2006. But one day in fall 2006, I was waiting for a bus to arrive at the bus shelter immediately in front of the building. The building had been spruced up and the exterior was neatly groomed. It also bustled with activity.As I waited endlessly for...
by Maia Gemmill | 21 September, 2007 |
I swear I'm not making this up.According to the Jamestown Foundation's excellent Eurasia Daily Monitor, the Russian Department of Defense's 12th Directorate, which is responsible for Russia's nuclear weapons, has been assigned a patron saint by the Russian Orthodox Church: St. Seraphim of Sarov.St. Seraphim seems an appropriate choice for several reasons. First, he was a favorite saint of the last tsar, Nicholas II; his association with one of the primary continuing symbols of Russian claims to great power status is eminently sensible in climate in which the tsarist past and ideology of...
by Maia Gemmill | 21 September, 2007 |
A friend forwarded me this interesting article by Dennis Ross in the New Republic on why we should be paying more attention to Russia. I have to say, that I certainly agree that we should be paying more attention to Russia. And I think that he gets some stuff very right: (continued below the fold)Russia tends to pale in comparison to these other concerns [unrest in the Middle East, the rise of China, climate change, etc.], and the tendency will be to pay it little heed. That would be a mistake. The less attention we pay to Russia, the more incentive we give Vladimir Putin and his successors...
by Maia Gemmill | 14 September, 2007 |
No, I don't know what to make of this either:In a meeting with the Valdai Discussion Group, a group of academics and journalists, in the Black Sea town of Sochi (now best known for its successful Olympic bid), Vladimir Putin commented, "Now, at least five people are named who can really stake their claim to be elected president in March 2008. Well, if another real candidate appears, then the Russian people will be able to choose among several people." The only person (other than opposition candidates without a prayer) who has explicitly expressed interest in running is Viktor Zubkov (who, as...
by Maia Gemmill | 13 September, 2007 |
The Duma hasn't even confirmed Viktor Zubkov as Russia's new prime minister, and already he's raising eyebrows. Early commentary on Zubkov pegged him as a quietly competent bureaucrat who was unlikely to make waves or alter the balance of the intra-Kremlin jockeying over succession.But it's so much fun to confound the pundits: today Zubkov told reporters that a run for the presidency is not off the table. So who is this mysterious fellow?Here's a summary from the various bios floating around the media. Like former president Yeltsin, he's originally from the Sverdlovsk region in the southern...
by Maia Gemmill | 13 September, 2007 |
I like Foreign Policy's Passport blog. I really do. But this kind of thing BUGS the living daylights out of me. They have a perfectly good post on a bizarre attempt by a Russian regional governor to increase the local birthrate. And it's illustrated with a stock photo of a rather bizarre postage stamp commemorating the "Week of the Child". At least, I'm pretty sure that's what it says. The reason I'm not totally positive?The stamp is from Yugoslavia. It's in Serbian, which is written in Cyrillic, and, of course, has much similarity to Russian, but isn't Russian. The bottom of the stamp reads...
by Maia Gemmill | 12 September, 2007 |
Update below the fold--Ivanov is not the new PM.Reuters is reporting that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has stepped down. No replacement has yet been named, though Vedomosti is reporting that First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov is the most likely candidate.Prime ministers may come and go, but this is big news because of the open question: who will be the next president of Russia. While I wouldn't be entirely shocked if there was a sudden domestic crisis that necessitated a third term from Vladimir Putin, most Russia watchers believe that he wants to hand off the open reins of...
by Maia Gemmill | 7 September, 2007 |
Can you imagine if the FBI were confiscating computers in local Democratic party offices, merely three months before the Congressional elections?Selective enforcement of the rules has long been a way of controlling political opponents in post-Soviet space. Everyone breaks the rules, but only those who represent a threat to the authorities get a visit from the tax authorities, or the building inspector, or the like. Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine, had this kompromat down to a science--and it was ultimately a major factor in his downfall.The Moscow Times reports a new twist on this...
