The Moscow Times: Choosing a City Name Can Be a Major Offense
|
posted by circassiankama on January, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Choosing a City Name Can Be a Major Offense
18 January 2010
By Matthew Collin
The other day I tried to phone someone in Shusha, a small town in the disputed Caucasus region of Nagorno-
Karabakh. Or at least I thought that I did. But an Armenian friend
insisted that I’d made a mistake: “You got it wrong,” he declared
indignantly. “Shusha is what the Azeris call it. But it’s an Armenian
town. It’s called Shushi.”
Shusha or Shushi — depending on your point of view — was one of the
most hard-fought battlegrounds during the war between Armenian and
Azeri forces for control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s. The
Armenians won, and the entire Azeri population fled, hence road signs
in the area now refer to the town as Shushi. On the ground, at least,
the winners get to choose. But because Nagorno-Karabakh is still
internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, many foreign maps
continue to ... >> full
comments (0)
Documentary: ABSENCE OF WILL, Documentary by Mamuka Kuparadze
|
posted by circassiankama on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
ABSENCE OF WILL
Documentary by Mamuka Kuparadze
Conciliation Resources, Heinrich Boell Foundation and Studio Re
Vakho and Teo are twenty-something university graduates
from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Born as the Soviet Union
collapsed, they've grown up in the shadow of the wars that tore their
country apart in the early nineteen nineties. They're too young to
remember the fighting, but like everyone from their generation, their
lives have been shaped by the legacy of the violence.
In
the summer of 2008 Vakho and Teo set out to try to understand for
themselves what caused the war in Abkhazia, and why after fifteen years
of peace talks the sides are still no nearer to resolving their
differences. Halfway through filming, fighting broke out again
over South Ossetia. For a few brief days in August, war suddenly became
a reality for Vakho and Teo, and as they experienced its
horrors first hand, their search for ... >> full
comments (0)
Republic of Abkhazia: Interview with Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
|
posted by circassiankama on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Interview with Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
|
Wednesday, 20 January 2010 06:58 |
|
The following Issues Points interview
was conducted by Steven Ellis of Saylor Company with Doug
Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
Doug Bandow
is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign
policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President
Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes
regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine and speaks
frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to
business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS,
NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford
University. |
|
 |
IP: What is your assessment of the current situation in the Caucasus?
Bandow: The
situation remains relatively unstable with relations between Georgia
and ... |
>> full
comments (0)
Window On Eurasia: One-Third Of Russian Militiamen Psychopaths Or Alcoholics, Expert Says
|
posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 18 – Nearly one in every three militiamen in Russia is likely a psychopath or an alcoholic, the result, a leading specialist says, of the attraction militia service has for such people, the end of psychological screening of applicants, and the sense among many in the service that, as militiamen, they are beyond the reach of the law.
In an interview published in today’s “Novyye izvestiya,” Mikhail Vinogradov, the director of the Moscow Center for Legal and Psychological Assistance in Extreme Situations, says that as a result of this combination, many unhealthy and even dangerous people are to be found in militia ranks (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-01-18/120138/).
Screening applicants is extremely critical, Vinogradov says, and he dismisses the concerns of those who say that if such testing were to be introduced, Russia would have a hard time attracting enough people. That is simply not the case, he continues, because Russia “has significantly more ...
comments (0)
Window On Eurasia: In Russia, Debates About Alphabets Are About More Than Letters
|
posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, January 18 – Eighty years ago this month, Stalin and the Politburo put an end to plans backed by Lenin and other Bolsheviks to change the alphabet in which Russian is written from Cyrillic to a Latin script, an indication, a Moscow commentator says, that whatever system Russia attempts to build, it ends by being an empire.
In an essay in the current issue of “Kommersant-Vlast’,” Yevgeny Zhirnov traces the history of debates over the Latin script not only for Russian but for the other languages of the country, debates that continue to flare up to this day not only inside the Russian Federation but in the former Soviet republics (www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1301421).
Ever since Peter I introduced a special secular alphabet in place of the one used by the Russian Orthodox Church, the issue of alphabets has been a politically sensitive one, Zhirnov points out. On the one hand, this change led some Russians ... >> full
comments (0)
|
