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Russia

• 11.08.08
  Conspicuous domestic consumption
  Russia (0)

  People who think Sarah Palin isn't very bright ought to take a look at Representative Ellen Tauscher of California. From politico.com: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) dismissed recent comments by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev about redeploying missiles as primarily for his country’s “domestic consumption.” Of course Medvedev's remarks were meant for domestic consumption. Remember when the left was complaining (rightfully) that George Bush was taking us to war without having the country behind him? Every head of state throughout history, good or bad, has understood that you need to have the country behind you when you go ...
  
  
• 09.09.08
  Blow-by-blow in South Osetia
  Russia (1)

  Steve Sailer posted a link to an article that describes the Russian-Georgian war in military terms. It's a blow-by-blow chronology. I can't vouch for its accuracy any more than he can, but the details make it seem quite plausible. Here's Steve Sailer, and here's the article he linked to, at military-photos.net
  
  
• 08.22.08
  South Ossetia: The war coverage that Mark Ames doesn’t know
  Russia (0)

  Mark Ames at The Exiled sets himself up as a target of The Reticulator with his article, "South Ossetia: The War We Don't Know." Five days after Georgia invaded and seized the breakaway separatist region of South Ossetia, sparking a larger-scale Russian invasion to drive Georgian forces back and punish their leaders, Russia surprised its Western detractors by calling a halt to the country’s offensive. After all, the mainstream media, egged on by hawkish neocon pundits and their candidate John McCain, had everyone believing that Russia was hellbent on the full-scale annihilation and annexation of democratic Georgia. Actually, this is not true. ...
  
  
• 08.18.08
  Threatening Russian citizens
  Free press, Russia (0)

  News item: "Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has promised what he called a shattering blow to anyone threatening Russian citizens." It would have been nice if he had been around to offer those protections to Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya and a couple hundred other journalists who were Russian citizens.
  
  
• 08.15.08
  Bush’s Putinesque move?
  Russia (0)

  This ceasefire deal that Bush and Rice pushed on Saakashvili is beginning to stink. If in the Bush administration's mind, it got missiles and soldiers in Poland, sort of in exchange for allowing Russian troops to patrol on Georgian soil even outside of South Ossetia, that's a bad exchange. That sounds like a Putinesque betrayal. Having U.S. missiles in Poland cannot be a good thing long term. Whether Putin is a good guy or a bad guy (and there is no question in my mind as to which he is), no matter which direction those ...
  
  
• 08.14.08
  What Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have done
  Bash the Messenger, Russia (2)

  There is a point about the Russia-Georgia conflict that is huge, but which hasn't gotten much coverage in our media. It's the fact that leaders of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia all went to Georgia to show solidarity with that country and its president. It seems the U.S. media are too preoccupied about with what's happening in terms of the Bush administration and our own electoral politics in order to pay much attention to how this is going over among those countries. I understand that Russia can't be very happy with U.S. influence in ...
  
  
• 08.10.08
  An uncatastrophe in the making
  Energy policy, Russia (1)

  Vladimir Vladimirovich once said, "the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." That's what I think of when I see the buildup to events like those now taking place between Georgia and Russia. James Poulos at The Postmodern Conservative instead thinks about Putin statements about wanting a stable international system of sovereign states. When I watch the news and other programs on RTR Planeta I don't get that at all, but then I don't understand very much Russian, so I'm using a lot of non-verbal cues. Here ...
  
  
• 07.12.08
  Moving Russian Movies
  Languages, Movies, Russia (0)

  I'm moving my posts about Russian movies to a separate blog at kino.reticulator.com . It's something I had thought about doing anyway, but when Alexander Sedov brought up some interesting comments and questions about them, I decided it was time. Most of my comments about non-Russian movies and language-learning in general will be there, too. But since the movies I watch are mostly Russian ones, that will be the dominant topic.
  
  
• 07.04.08
  Clueless in Gulagland
  Gulags, Russia (0)

  This is amusing. I don't have a copy of Anne Applebaum's "Gulag" with me, so was googling about it for stuff I remembered reading. The amusing part is in this review by a William J. Dobosh, Jr., which complains that all the good historical information in the book risks being tarnished by her apparent political conservatism. It's so bad, he points out, that some conservative commentators like her book and defend it. Poor baby. I'm afraid those of us who tend toward conservative liberalism don't have much sympathy. If we ...
  
  
• 05.19.08
  Liza Knapp
  Russia (1)

  I don't often listen to audio books when I'm on a bike ride on roads where I've never been before, but yesterday on the way home from a two-day outing I was slogging into a stiff wind, and besides, some of the roads were already familiar to me. So I listened to more of Liza Knapp's lecture on Giants of Russian Literature. It's something I got on MP3 through my library's Netlibrary subscription. My hopes were not high when I learned that a book of hers had been selected by Oprah for her book club. But I ...
  
  

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