The Russian judge was unimpressed by both the technical merits and the artistic program of the UN resolution to extend the observation mission in Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 0.0 all around, or Géorgie, nul point.
Since 1993, UN observers had worked both sides of the lines to keep tabs on troop movements [...]

What’s Chinese for cultural destruction?
Over the next few years, [Kashgar] city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of [the city's Old Town, a] warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.

I have just been reading Misha Glenny’s McMafia. It is excellent; an intelligent tour through the criminal landscape that emerged since the late 1980s, driven by a combination of globalisation, un-globalisation, technical change, and the usual things that fertilise big crime. We hear about the early history of the modern Russian mafia, how the UN [...]

Macedonia will hold Presidential elections this weekend. No news there. But here’s the interesting thing: recent polls suggest that an ethnic Albanian candidate, Imer Selmani, has a decent chance of making it past the first round. If so, he’d become the first ethnic Albanian to enter the runoff for Macedonia’s Presidency.
Why [...]

Interesting when two hobbies cross-connect. One: that odd, isolated episode at the end of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, when a Russian unit based in Bosnia suddenly rushed through Serbia and occupied Prishtina airport just ahead of the advancing NATO troops. — It ended up being an empty gesture, but only just; [...]

The Amsterdan Court of Appeal has ordered the criminal prosecution of Dutch MP Geert Wilders (you know, the Fitna guy). I do not have time to elaborate on this right now, but I thought the Court’s argumentation (see first link) makes for some nice debating material. Two snippets:
The Court of Appeal has considered that the [...]

“They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do. … You have done what America can do in [...]

He should have turned 80 last week.

On the other hand, he came within a sneeze of dying after being stabbed in 1961, and he achieved a thing or two in those seven years.

It is good to know that in these times of economic crisis our spiritual leaders care for our well-being. From the International Herald Tribune:
Pope Benedict said Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
Too bad the article does not elaborate on just how pope [...]

An important story, very badly told.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

Before and, more crucially, immediately after the American Civil War, African-Americans were widely dispersed throughout the country. By the 1940s, however, blacks living [...]