Window On Eurasia: By Blocking New Mosques, Moscow Is Driving Muslims Underground And Losing Control Over Them
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posted by eagle on November, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: By Blocking New Mosques, Moscow is Driving Muslims Underground and Losing Control over ThemPaul Goble
Staunton, November 27 – Some Muslims in the Russian capital have decided to organize their own prayer rooms given that Moscow officials are responding to ethnic Russian objections to mosques by banning their construction, a step that -- if the Muslims carry through with it -- will have negative consequences for both officials and the Muslim community.
On the one hand, officials will lose one of their best means of regulating religious life among Muslims by driving the faithful underground. And on the other, and because of that, Muslims are likely to be subject to even more persecution than now by the siloviki who will view such underground activity as inherently threatening.
And as a result, tensions between the ethnic Russian and Orthodox communities, on the one hand, and the increasingly large Muslim community, on the other, seem to be moving to the point of explosion, a ...
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Window On Eurasia: Invoking Sakharov, Yabloko Leader Backs Tbilisi’s Call For Boycotting Sochi Games
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Invoking Sakharov, Yabloko Leader Backs Tbilisi’s Call for Boycotting Sochi GamesPaul Goble
Staunton, November 23 – Most Russian commentary on Georgian calls for a boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympics has been hostile, but Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko Party board in St. Petersburg, not only backs Tbilisi’s appeal but invokes the memory of Academician Andrey Sakharov in support of that step.
In a blog post today, Vishnevsky says that one can only be pleased that 65 percent of those who took part in an Ekho Moskvy poll (www.echo.msk.ru/polls/728217-echo/) believe that "Georgia has the right to call on the international community to boycott the Olympics in Sochi in 2014 (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/728484-echo/).
While Vishnevsky implicitly recognizes that this poll was not based on a representative sample of the Russian population, he argues that "the international community will be correct if it responds positively. And the International Olympic Committee will be correct if it changes the venue of the Olympiad.”
"Putin lovers” and "state-thinking ...
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Financial Sense: THE FUTURE OF EUROPE
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
THE FUTURE OF EUROPESubmitted by JR Nyquist on Fri, 19 Nov 2010Earlier this week I spoke at length with former KGB Lt. Col. Victor Kalashnikov, who has been traveling in Germany. Kalashnikov wanted to talk about British Gen. Sir David Richards, who was interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph. Here was the British Chief of Staff explaining that "you can't defeat the Taliban or al Qaeda militarily." In fact, clear-cut victory is unnecessary, said Richards. All we have to do is contain Islamic militants, so our lives won't be disrupted. Upon reading this, Kalashnikov wondered about a shift from offensive strategy to defensive. Under George W. Bush the West was on the offensive. American and British troops, together with NATO forces in Afghanistan, were taking the war to the enemy. But this has apparently changed. After following Bush's strategy for a spell, President Obama wants to pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Europe is not going to fill the gap. One might ask what is going on. ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Russia’s Regional Heads Increasingly Resemble Soviet Prefects Of The Past, Expert Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Russia’s Regional Heads Increasingly Resemble Soviet Prefects of the Past, Expert SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, November 22 – Russia’s regional leaders today increasingly occupy a niche and play a role like "the Soviet prefects” US scholar Jerry Hough described in that they form part of a system in which a controlling state bureaucracy and a centralized party nonetheless allows for the development of local political machines, according to a St. Petersburg scholar.
In a September lecture posted online last week, Vladimir Gelman, a professor of political science and sociology at the European University in the northern capital, says that the current arrangements reflect a restoration in many but not all respects of those of Soviet regional leaders 30 to 40 years (www.polit.ru/lectures/2010/11/17/avtoritarism.html).
And he argues that what is worrisome in this situation is that even if democracy should by some miracle come to the Russian political system at the national level, that development would have little impact on these sub-national authoritarian systems absent ...
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CK: Film About Gataev Family And Chechen War To Be Presented At Amsterdam Festival
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Film about Gataev family and Chechen war to be presented at Amsterdam festivalThis year, at the international documentary film festival in the Netherlands, the right to present her best ten films was granted to Finnish film director Pirjo Khonkassalo. She brought to the festival a film about the war in Chechnya, where heroes are members of the Gataev Chechen family. "The film festival is held on November 17-28 in Amsterdam. This is the 23rd annual international film festival of documentary films. According to its tradition, every year to one of film directors is given the right to present his or her ten best films. This year this honour was awarded to Ms Khonkassalo. Her choice includes the 'Three Rooms of Melancholia' - about the war in Chechnya and the fate of the Gataev family, who saved children during the war," Oksana Chelysheva, Deputy Head of the Finnish Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship and friend of the Gataevs and Khonkassalo, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. In 1997, the Gataev ...
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