OCTOBER 2006

From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/23/2006 6:08 AM
September 19th 2006 · Prague Watchdog     
    
    
Fourth issue of the monthly Chechen Society Today released

Prague, September 19 - The fourth issue of the monthly Chechenskoye obshchestvo segodnya (Chechen Society Today) has been released. Visit this page to see the latest issue of the journal (3/2006).

This issue appears with a delay of several months. We apologize to our readers for it. We believe that the next issues will be published according to schedule, also thanks to the appointment of the new editor-in-chief of the magazine.

The black-and-white Russian-language publication is a joint project of Prague Watchdog and the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, which is being implemented thanks to support from the US-based National Endowment for Democracy. The journal’s aim is to strengthen Chechen civil society, promote independent media in Chechnya, and provide objective information to Chechens living in Russia and Europe.

A thousand copies are published in Moscow; additional copies are printed and distributed ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/24/2006 6:47 AM
Russians Die Out
Publication time: Today at 09:44 Djokhar time
In an effort to boost their perennially low birthrate, Russia is debating a parliamentary act to introduce penalties to childless families.

Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, demanded that a 6 percent tax on the income of childless families should be reinstatement, which was in effect during the Soviet era.

The childless tax, which was levied in 1941 by Stalin, aimed to ensure a rapid increase in the Russian population.

According to the law, men between ages of 20 and 50 and women between ages of 20 and 45 had to pay a tax equal to 6 percent of their income if they had no children.

The upper chamber of the Russian parliament, objected to the Duma proposal, claiming a reinstatement of a childless tax would not contribute to the demographic problem of the country.

Low salaries of young households and the fact that they did not own their houses act as the ...
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July 6, 2006
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Diary: Anna Neistat

By Anna Neistat, Senior Researcher, published in London Review of Books

Wherever you look in Grozny there are gaping shell-holes in the walls, crumbling balconies, empty window frames, and doors so pockmarked by bullets that you can see right through them. When I went back this spring, however, the central avenue in the city, called Prospect Pobedy, looked strikingly different. The pavement had been mended, the buildings were freshly painted and new windows had been put in. Here at last was tangible backing for Russia’s claim that the situation in Chechnya is returning to normal, and that reconstruction is underway.  
Only when I got closer did it become clear that these buildings were uninhabitable. There was nothing behind the painted façades: no roofs or floors, no internal walls, just piles of rubble and broken steel supports. A ‘Potemkin village’ is usually no more than a metaphor. In Grozny, the Potemkin villages are real, but it’s not clear who they’re meant ...
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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/1/2006 5:52 AM
Third Reich epic sparks bidding war

Former aid worker's fascination with 'banality of evil' takes him to the top of French bestseller list

Jason Burke in Paris
Sunday October 1, 2006
The Observer

It is 900 pages of closely typed text, in French, with harrowing details of torture, mass executions, the bureaucratic battles at the heart of the Third Reich, incest, matricide and homosexual encounters - and now it has sparked an international publishing feeding frenzy.

Tomorrow, the bar of Frankfurt's Hessicher Hof, the period hotel that is the favoured luxury hangout of the publishing elite, will be packed on the eve of the city's annual book fair - and there will be only one topic of conversation.



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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/2/2006 3:29 PM
Limited Opportunities and the Rise of Islamic Extremism in the North Caucasus, Balkans and Turkey
10/1/2006 (Balkanalysis.com)

By Alisa Voznaya

The tenets of Islamic radicalism, often associated with Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, are slowly penetrating the previously secular populations in the Balkans and the North Caucasus. In Turkey, where 99 percent of the population identify themselves as Muslim, the unique sense of secularism is also beginning to disintegrate in the face of the resurgence of violence from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and rising national discontent, as illuminated by the most recent terrorist attacks in Marmaris, Antalya, and Istanbul.

The suppression of any kind of religion during the Soviet communist regime, the forced amalgamation of religions and nationalities in Yugoslavia, and the ascent in the dawning 21st century of politically, rather than religiously, motivated leaders in Turkey have secured what now appears to have been temporary secular rule. Today, secular politics face an internal threat ...
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