Nice watch, honey.

Would someone please tell Clinton she isn’t winning?

“It’s really a rare occurrence, maybe the first time in history, that the person who’s running No. 2 would offer the person who’s running No. 1 the No. 2 position,” Daschle said.

Thank you, Tom Daschle.

Here’s the text of a letter written by Arkhangelsk’s mayor Aleksandr Donskoy to Russian President Vladimir Putin … from Donskoy’s prison cell.

Mr. President,

Although I was not given the opportunity to be a candidate for the post you currently occupy, I intend to participate as a candidate in the 2012 presidential elections. I am certain that the opposition forces will support me, and that Aleksandr Donskoy’s “Novaya Partiya” [trans.: "New Party"] will become a real political force in the country.

In connection with which I would like to point out that even in Myanmar, the military junta which is friendly to us places presidential candidates from the opposition under house arrest, and not in prison. We are not in a state of emergency yet, so it would be appropriate if the following articles could be included in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation:

• Making negative assessments of the activity of the President of the Russian Federation and his successor.

• Criticism of Putin’s Plan.

• Desire to be on the ballot for the post of President of the Russian Federation without an agreement with federal officials.

All of these articles can be applied to me, on the basis of which I can then be prosecuted. It would be more honest that way.

Happy New Year!

Aleksandr Donskoy, Mayor of Arkhangelsk
December 27, 2007

Russian journalist Anastasia Samorotova was fired from the RBC Daily for running a story on Nov. 28, 2007 titled “From the Buffet Table to the Toilet” in which she described the new restrictions on lower- and mid-level government officials from speaking to the press. (The title isn’t about the quality of the food served in the state press service building, by the way. Journalists can eat and use the bathroom in the state press service building, i.e., they can’t actually talk to anyone.)

The manner of her firing was ingenious and so Russian. She was given a series of impossible tasks, like getting quotes from high government officials at night (i.e., while they’re asleep). After she failed to perform a certain number of tasks, she was told she could quit or get fired, as per her contract. She quit. She seems pretty bummed in her recent blog entries, but least she’s alive.

Just for fun, I’m appending the entirety of the article for which she got fired. You never know how long it will stay online.

Премьеру PR не нужен

The New York Times is running a story on the OSCE’s decision not to send observers to the upcoming presidential elections in Russia, and, specifically, Putin’s remark that he has evidence that this decision was taken at the behest of the US State Department.

The OSCE flatly denies this, stating that the reason for the decision was the Russian government’s unwillingness to provide any visas to the organization.

I predict that this is as far as the discussion will go. In other words, statement, counter-statement, end.

Why won’t Putin counter the OSCE’s reason regarding the visas? Because Putin’s statement is exclusively for internal consumption within the Russian media, where the OSCE’s explanation will not be given any air time. To someone inside Russia, then, the matter is closed. Putin spoke, the media reported. Without some kind of statement from Putin, the media can’t act, since it’s not allowed to think on its own.

For the rest of us, of course, it looks ham-fisted, but that shouldn’t be surprising.

A piece of lukewarm reporting from KPRC in Houston on an unmanned aircraft test supposedly done with NO MEDIA ALLOWED. The newshounds were on the scene, however, although the questions raised were no more serious than whether this technology will be used for speeding tickets, and will these things crash in our schools?!

Questions I’m not entirely uninterested in, but still, the possibilities are a lot scarier than speeding tickets. With the ability to monitor the population comes the likelihood of that ability being abused.

Bin Laden - 3 USA - 0

A response (Steven Rose) to a response (Christopher Hitchens) to the ongoing Amis drama. Hitchens provides a back-handed defense of Amis, stating, as the title of his piece imaginatively puts it, that Amis is not a racist. Leave out the digressions and the article does little more than quibble over definitions.

Bravo. Very courageous of you, Mr. Hitchens, as always.

What Hitchens ignores, however, is what is really intellectually offensive about what Amis said: collective punishment. It’s always been the Fascists that think collective punishment works. During WWII, the Japanese government instituted a system in which families were grouped by neighborhood block. If one person in the block were found to be a spy/traitor/enemy-sympathizer/etc., punishment would be meted out to all members of the block. This incentive to self-monitor and self-regulate was, as can be imagined, fairly successful. Similar methods of collective punishment were used by the Nazis, with similar short-term success.

Therefore, I suggest to Mr. Amis and Mr. Hitchens that they make a proposal to the governing authorities in the UK to institute a similar plan. Messrs. Amis and Hitchens can find details of the German and Japanese systems in their own copious brains, or if that fails, on the internet. That the kind of collective punishment envisioned by Mr. Amis, defended by Mr. Hitchens, is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention is, well, irrelevant, isn’t it? The Geneva Conventions are so September 10th.

So, Mr. Amis, put your money where you mouth is, and let’s do this thing!

A long piece by Ronan Bennett on modern anti-Muslim racism, specifically in the mouth of Martin Amis. I missed the brouhaha with Terry Eagleton, but I’m glad someone stood up to Amis, although, as Bennett, points out, it isn’t enough. That Amis has not been ostracized by his peers is an indication of a hardening of views vis-a-vis Muslims throughout the west today.