On Nov. 15, the Russian Interior Ministry and Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, announced three new senior appointments. Oleg Safonov was named a deputy head of the ministry. Yevgeny Shkolov became head of its economic security department. And Valery Golubev was appointed a deputy chief executive at Gazprom.

All three men had something important in common beyond the timing of their promotions: backgrounds as KGB officers and experience working directly with President Vladimir Putin when he was a KGB operative himself in Germany or later, when he was a rising presence in the local government of St. Petersburg, his home town.
...
"According to persistent reports, the FSB is responsible for running the computerized system that processes and reports elections results," wrote Mikhail Tsypkin, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, in the July issue of the Journal of Democracy. Control of the computerized election system had been a FAPSI function.

the tale of the boiling frog episode xx

In Russia, A Secretive Force Widens - washingtonpost.com

“It seems almost certain that the modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries was,” notes an important article about trafficking in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. It adds, “Just as the British government (after much prodding by its subjects) once used the Royal Navy to stamp out the problem, today’s great powers must bring their economic and military might to bear on this most crucial of undertakings.”

A Cambodian Girl’s Tragedy: Being Young and Pretty - New York Times

Islamic militants are using a recent peace deal with the government to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan, vastly expanding their training of suicide bombers and other recruits and fortifying alliances with Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, diplomats and intelligence officials from several nations say. The result, they say, is virtually a Taliban mini-state.

Taliban and Allies Tighten Grip in North of Pakistan - New York Times

Our main concern is that the political proponents of the Moon-Mars adventure will not provide money commensurate with the task. NASA's crowning scientific achievements have come from its unmanned probes to distant worlds and its orbiting observatories. It would be a shame if an underfinanced program to return to the Moon on a permanent basis and then venture on to Mars forced reductions in research programs of higher scientific value.

but surely setting up a permanent base on the moon isn't about science but another baby step towards the deep long term goal of colonising the solar system. This is about learning to live in space. Other programs may have greater value in terms of hard science but we need to break our dependance on one fragile home and open up the physical resources of the solar system. There is abundant energy to be tapped and minerals to be mined.

Back to the Moon - Opinion - International Herald Tribune

noteworthy wrote:
This is a neat site.

What is LibraryThing?

Enter what you're reading or your whole library—it's an easy, library-quality catalog. LibraryThing also connects you with people who read the same things.

What's good?

* Searches Amazon, the Library of Congress and 60 other world libraries.
* Get recommendations. Connect to people with similar libraries.
* Tag your books as on Del.icio.us and Flickr.
* Put your books on your blog.
* Export your data. Import from almost anywhere too.

If you want to explore the site, try the zeitgeist and the BookSuggester. For example: enter From Dawn to Decadence and you'll get a recommendation for The Metaphysical Club.

it's weird how people have similiar ideas
i've spent the last couple of months learning bits of PHP and mySQL in part because I want to build a database of my books.
i figured that whenever i go around to someone's house i like to scan through the titles of their books and since i have a personal site i could stick a list of all my books and music on a database for people to browse
ahh convergent evolution
i still intend to go ahead with that if only for the intellectual exercise but it is fasinating to see this site and i'm tempted but i'm not sure i want to do the data entry twice
it would be nice if once i've done the database i could create an xml file and send it to them

RE: LibraryThing | Catalog your books online

Jello wrote:

Russian democracy ended completely several years ago. Is there any doubt that Putin is El Presidente for life, and that the FSB will continue to take over more and more of the economy? The path has been clear for many years, and he has never strayed from it.

i am not sure u could say when Russian democracy ceased to exist or even whether it has as yet completely disappeared. It is like watching freedom slowly wither away -- the boiling frog -- i just have this image of a giant amoeba (like in the Blob) or a slime mould devouring the country in my head.
When Putin announces that he's changing the law so he's not obliged to step down, as he does at the moment, it will be interesting to see if more than a few people risk protesting. I know what I suspect will happen but I don't own a crystal ball. I remember in June 1989 sitting a politics exam and writing about the nationalist movements in Eastern Europe as an interesting political force but even a few months before the Berlin Wall came down I didn't seriously expect it to happen.
If people decide to protest on mass then the big question is will the army start shooting. My guess would be that if the people do stand up then the army won't shoot but i'm not gambling my life so it's easy to say comfortably from here.

RE: Masha Lipman - Russia's Hidden Power Struggle - washingtonpost.com

Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon and Harding at the bottom in the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonymous with failure to respond to the Great Depression. When the stock market collapsed, Hoover, for ideological reasons, did too little. When 9/11 happened, Bush did too much, attacking the wrong country at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.

Move Over, Hoover - washingtonpost.com

If Nyerere was Tanzania's headmaster and Mkapa was its management guru, Kikwete is its font of youthful energy - but a thoughtful one. He is Africa's Bill Clinton - driven by ideas, charismatic, clear minded, a communicator who likes nothing more than to step into a crowd and parley with it. A moderate Muslim in a dangerous neighborhood, he has become a favorite of President George W. Bush who has granted him the kind of access once reserved solely for Africa's big economic powers, Nigeria and South Africa.
...
I have been covering Africa for 40 years. I have never been so impressed.

A new lodestar for Africa? - Opinion - International Herald Tribune

Russia is undergoing yet another round of election-rule tightening -- as usual, a product of the country's rubber-stamp legislature. The protesters see it as marking the "virtual elimination of the system of free elections" in Russia, as they said in their statement. Over the past two years, election rules have been repeatedly refashioned and readjusted so that no undesired forces or figures can slip through the process.

...

One of the innovations of the new election bill is a ban on creating a "negative image" of political opponents. This is one way of depriving a campaign of any meaning whatsoever, as just challenging the policies of the incumbent authorities can now be interpreted as a violation of the law.

So while there is always a constituency that dutifully turns out on Election Day to vote "as the bosses say," a great many others will choose to stay home, since they assume their vote will make no difference.

Of course, a low turnout might call into question the legitimacy of the representative branch, but apparently the Kremlin thinks it can live with this image problem. Another provision of the new bill eliminates the minimum percentage turnout requirement for an election to be valid. The ruling elite thus largely reduces its power base to the core of Soviet-style voters who accept a no-choice vote -- while alienating the more advanced and entrepreneurial elements of the population.

Masha Lipman - Russia's Hidden Power Struggle - washingtonpost.com

Italian Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, has tested positive for polonium-210.

BBC NEWS | UK | Contact in positive polonium test