This thing got a lot of attention from US rightist blogs. I was rather puzzled why would do something like that, no credible explanations were advanced. Now, via Mark Kleiman, I learn it was apparently all wrong. Should have guessed.

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Well, well. The richest man in Russia got arrested yesterday. Rather unusually brutally too, FSB raid, as demonstartions. What’s going on?
Let’s turn to not mainstream media but rather The Moscow Times who of course are all over this.
First, some kremlinology:
Analysts have said the attack is an attempt to curb Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions. Not only has [...]

In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Franco-German friendship treaty, on January 22nd the French newspaper Liberation and the German Berliner Zeitung linguistically unified the two countries and created La Fran?allemagne. This Friday, the European Council will witness another day in this beautful country.
Both Chancellor Sch?der and Foriegn Minister Joschka Fischer have [...]

The Italian unions are threatening to strike against pension reform, while Berlusconi says government plans to reform Italy’s expensive welfare system are “necessary, fair and wise” (Silvio ‘el savio’?). The Unions say: “There is no pensions emergency. The government…is dramatizing the pensions problem. It doesn’t correspond to reality,” while Corriere della Sera finds a [...]

I just watched the press conference Gerhard Schroeder, Jaques Chirac, and Tony Blair gave after their talks regarding Iraq in Berlin today. The last question came from a British journalist whom I wasn’t able to identify so far. But her question was quite interesting.
She asked the British Prime Minister whether he wasn’t embarrassed talking to [...]

“That was a much more benign dictatorship ? Mussolini did not murder anyone.
Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them” - Silvio Berlusconi (Google News has a range of stories about it here)

Scott said in comments to the Anna Lindh post: “They also claim that Sweden has a fairly high murder rate by European standards. Considering how often reports on this murder have evoked how safe Sweden is, and how politicians hardly need bodyguards, I found this claim very surprising.”
It turns out we’re at the EU average, [...]

She passed away in the early morning.
The murderer is still not caught. They have the murder weapon though, so maybe this won’t be another giant screw-up like the Palme investigation.
Apparently they think it was premeditated. The murder may or may not have to do with politics, but the circumstances, especially using a knife rather [...]

Anna Lindh, our foreign minister (and G?ran Persson’s heir apparent) was repeatedly stabbed this afternoon in a exclusive department store in Stockholm. She’s seriously wounded. The assailant is unknown and still at large.
Palme all over again. God…..
Update: According to the latest report, “Her condition was serious but not life-threatening, police spokeswoman Stina Wessling told AFP [...]