This scares me shitless.
Methane gas oozing up from Siberian seabed: Swedish researcher
1 hour ago
STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.
“The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated [...]

At this week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russian president Medvedev was reportedly seeking support for his country’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. If that’s true, he can’t be the mastermind he’s sometimes alleged to be in the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
Surely he knows that “territorial integrity” is [...]

There’s a Greek deli in central Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
It’s hard to overstate how odd this is. Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world. Bujumbura, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, is… basic. The roads are mostly unpaved. Much of it has no electricity; the parts that [...]

With all attention on Georgia it’s easy to forget that the European Union remains mired in the institutional crisis created by the Irish No on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon. With Irish ministers drifting back from their holidays, the issue will be getting more attention. Today’s Irish Times reports on what [...]

There are a lot of bad things about the Georgia-Russia conflict, but this is just foolish: Nearly all Russia-based web sites seem to be blocked from Georgia, and by the Georgian side. Trying to surf to the Moscow Times gets me a domain-parking site, while Izvestiya.ru, just for example, yields a four-line message in Georgian. [...]

At their meeting in Sochi — planned home of the 2014 Winter Olympics and just a hop, skip and APC ride from Abkhazia — Russia’s president Dmitri Medvedev warned Moldova’s president not to repeat the “Georgian mistake.”
Moldova, of course, claims Transnistria as part of its internationally recognized territory, but has never exercised actual control since [...]

It’s no surprise that George Bush is sending Dick Cheney to the Black Sea region next week.  If media accounts are to be believed, and they are plausible, the Cheney faction in the administration had long pushed for a much harder anti-Russian line and may still be advocating more aggressive moves in the coming weeks.  [...]

So now I’m in Burundi for a couple of weeks, on business.
I’ll probably do most of my Burundi-blogging over at my home blog. But here’s a thing: Burundi is part of La Francophonie and, yup, everyone here speaks French.
Okay, not everybody. French is introduced in primary school, but it’s not taught intensively until [...]

Something other than Georgia for a change. Via the 8th Circle, here’s a recent article in the Economist about a possible economic downturn in Eastern Europe:
The party is nearly over
After a good run, Eastern Europe faces an economic slowdown
IT HAS gone on splendidly for years, and the party isn’t quite finished yet. For [...]

Not many, but some.
One is Armenia. The Armenians are annoyed at the Georgians for their generally shoddy treatment of the Armenian minority in Georgia. More to the point, Armenians generally look down their magnificent noses at Georgians, considering them self-indulgent, emotional, shrill, slovenly, unreliable, and just generally second-rate. Georgians don’t love [...]