http://www.mappedup.com/html/ Real-time, geographical RSS for your site and desktop. en-us 51.45 5.467 Tue, 21 May 2013 19:29:39 +0000 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:59:59 +0000 40.8019 -72.8414 Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:59:59 +0000 32.0667 34.7667 Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:34:43 +0000 42.7325 -84.5556 Wed, 27 May 2009 13:53:21 +0000 Super sub
Cazorla (68) fired across Athletic goalkeeper Gorka Iraizoz after Giuseppe Rossi's meandering run across the edge of the penalty area drew several Athletic defenders out of position. The visitors were then reduced to ten men when Markel Susaeta was dismissed eleven minutes from time and after the hosts had squandered chances to make the points safe, substitute Mati Fernández secured victory in added time with low shot after a weaving run inside the area.
Kanouté treble
The three points strengthen the Yellow Submarine's position in fourth, five points ahead of fifth-placed Club Atlético de Madrid, although they trail Sevilla in third by six thanks, in part, to Kanouté. Although the Mali striker's eighth-minute opener was cancelled out by Henok Goitom's header, Kanouté restored the Andalusian club's lead two minutes before the break. Luis Fabiano (57) then rounded goalkeeper Justo Villar and 19 minutes from time Kanouté completed his hat-trick by heading in Fernando Navarro's cross for his tenth goal in seven league matches.
http://www.uefa.com/footballeurope/news/kind=16/newsid=811688.html]]> 51.45 5.46667 Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:36:15 +0000 59.3295 18.0626 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:15:47 +0000 42.3667 13.3667 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:47:23 +0000 48.8667 2.33333 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:13:25 +0000 51.5 -0.116667 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:13:25 +0000 40.7142 -74.0064 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:18:14 +0000 13.75 100.517 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:26:00 +0000
]]> 28.6 77.2 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:49:03 +0000 42.3667 13.3667 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:57:26 +0000 40.4 -3.68333 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:41:24 +0000 50.4333 30.5167 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:56:40 +0000 55.6667 12.5833 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:51:53 +0000 48.2 16.3667 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:49:00 +0000 52.35 4.91667 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:47:03 +0000 6.45306 3.39583 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:39:15 +0000 38.8339 -104.821 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:31:23 +0000 Helyszín: Nyíregyháza, Kossuth tér
Időpont: 2009.07.09., csütörtök, 18:00 óra
Minden érdeklődőt szíve [...]]]> 33.5092 -111.898 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:30:18 +0000


]]> 41.85 -87.65 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:19:00 +0000 40.4 -3.68333 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:34:17 +0000 3.16667 101.7 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:20:00 +0000 -34.5875 -58.6725 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:07:51 +0000 40.7142 -74.0064 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:34:31 +0000

La Generalitat aprueba un nuevo plan de seguridad y salud laboral


S. DEL A. - Barcelona - 08/07/2009
Los historiales clínicos de los pacientes catalanes incorporarán, dentro de poco, los riesgos laborales a que están expuestos, para que sea más fácil para el médico establecer un vínculo entre la patología del paciente y su posible origen laboral. [...]]]> 40.4 -3.68333 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:35:23 +0000
Thursday, July 02 2009 @ 08:22 PM CDT

Contributed by: laozi

Alternative MediaI’d recommend this text to people who aren’t sold on “insurrection” as it’s currently being advanced, who are working at different time scales, and who (like the authors of The Coming Insurrection), aren’t expecting a climactic street fight against the cops to end state and capitalism for good.

While translations of various quality have been floating around for a while now, it’s deeply satisfying to have a polished, real-life, honest-to-god book version of The Coming Insurrection available. Authored by the anonymous collective “The Invisible Committee,” the book has gained notoriety for being introduced by the state as one of the primary pieces of evidence in the trial for “criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity” of the Tarnac 9 – think the French version of the Green Scare here and you’ve got the idea.

So at least one state of this world thinks this is a dangerous book, and they might be right. The Coming Insurrection reads like a Situationist manifesto, and borrows from some of the same sources as Guy Debord and co. did (Henri Lefebvre’s urbanism, for instance), but these kids have had the luxury of a few more decades of radical thought to draw on, so motifs drawn from Deleuze and Guattari, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and others surface throughout the text, which also distills down some of the conceptual work done in the (largely still untranslated) two issues of the journal Tiqqun.

And above all, it takes this whole theoretical war machine and deploys it in the current context, with rigor and consistency, aimed at green capitalism, electronic isolation, state terror, and crisis, in a kind of Minima Moralia meets Crimethinc full-bore assault on miserabilism, exploitation, control and cooptation, along with some hints of the possibilities of an insurrectionary politics and a communism worthy of the name.

It’s an easy, pocket size text, a quick read, but one I’d encourage be re-read – it’s all too easy to come away from the text with a limited picture of what the idea of insurrection they’re advancing demands, to slip into thinking insurrection as what they uncompromising distance themselves from (an activist mileu). It’s for this reason, too, that I’d recommend this text to people who aren’t sold on “insurrection” as it’s currently being advanced, who are working at different time scales, and who (like the authors of The Coming Insurrection), aren’t expecting a climactic street fight against the cops to end state and capitalism for good. In fact, I’d say the most productive reading – if not the easiest one – of this little text is to try and think through what the revolutionary consistency it demands means for other subjects of (anti-)politics, than, say, a New School student. It’d be a shame to read this book lightly, to dismiss it as posturing or adventurism – to do so would be to miss the seriousness of the ethical project it proposes, much of which remains to be elaborated, in theory and in practice.

And incidentally, thanks to Semiotext(e) for putting this out! Great to see them getting back to putting out exciting translations of stuff before most people realize it’s relevant – not that we haven’t been overjoyed by the flood of recent Guattari texts….

Reviewed by: John

The Coming Insurrection PDF

Written By deaner]]> 40.7142 -74.0064 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:44:31 +0000 -35.2833 149.217 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:35:46 +0000 40.4406 -79.9961 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:45:41 +0000 13.75 100.517 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:55:42 +0000 Os pesquisadores acreditam que, eventualmente, seu trabalho poderia ajudar homens com problemas de fertilidade.
Outros especialistas, no entanto, não se convenceram com os resultados.
Leia mais (08/07/2009 - 01h53)]]> -22.9 -43.2333 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:09:00 +0000 Акции участников "народного IPO" будут размыты примерно в два с половиной раза.]]> 55.7522 37.6156 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:02:00 +0000 38.8542 -77.5722 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:40:22 +0000 Might this be considered circumstantial evidence in response to the claim that bombs could not have been planted unnoticed in the WTC?
GAO: Major Security Flaws at Federal Buildings
The police agency in charge of protecting thousands of federal buildings nationwide has failed to keep bomb-making materials out of several high-security facilities in the past year, according to Congressional testimony provided by Senate aides. In the past year, investigators successfully smuggled bomb-making materials into ten high-security federal buildings, constructed bombs and walked around the buildings undetected, exposing weaknesses in security provided by the Federal Protective Service.
More than one million government employees work in 9,000 facilities guarded by FPS around the country, including at least 350,000 in the Washington region. The revelations come as the Obama administration prepares to reorganize the agency in the coming weeks.

read more]]> 41.85 -87.65 Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:35:43 +0000 48.15 11.5833 Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:15:48 +0000 51.8333 5.86667 Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0000 hogy a blog közönsége - bár semmi köze hozzá - értesüljön mit is tettünk valójában
a Best Western Janus Atrium Boutique Hotel **** vendégszeretetével visszaélve
azon a bizonyos októberi kurta hétvégén. (Tovább)]]> 47.5 19.0833 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:26:11 +0000 Peter Mansbridge is hosting tonight.

This lineup is subject to change.

NEWS

COMOROS CRASH
At least one survivor has been found amongst the wreckage of a plane after it crashed into the Indian Ocean off the island of Comoros. The Yemenia Aiways flight had 153 people on board, including one Canadian. The plane was flying the last leg of a flight from Paris and Marseille to Comoros. It's the second time in a month that France has had to deal with an air crash crisis. The CBC's David Common has our lead story from Paris. And from Ottawa, Rosemary Barton reports on the lone Canadian victim.

ORGANIC RULES
New mandatory standards for 'organic' foods come into effect today. This new labeling standard includes a new federal logo and restricts the use of the word 'organic 'to products made from at least 95 per cent organic content. The CBC's Ron Charles reports on what it means to Canadian consumers.

RUG COURT
A New Brunswick man could soon be spending a lot of time in a U.S. jail. Dwight Hickey is facing extradition to the U.S. for selling a polar bear rug when he previously lived in the state of Georgia. But it appears the proper paperwork wasn't filed so police came knocking on his door in New Brunswick. Darrow MacIntyre has that story.

CURRENT AFFAIRS

MAKING CANADA PROUD
On the eve of Canada Day, we bring you six stories of Canadians making a difference around the world: Michel Cormier meets a doctor in China being compared to a modern-day Norman Bethune; Margaret Evans looks at another Canadian's effort to instill hope among the people of Nablus in the occupied West Bank; Laurie Graham meets a Canadian who has set up an organization to donate bikes around the world; Terry Milewski profiles Dr. Chandra who lost his family in the 1983 Air India crash and has since contributed to charitable projects in India; David McGuffin introduces us to a Canadian doctor using cell phone networks to assist people with HIV and AIDS in Africa; and Reg Sherren reports on a former Noranda vice-president who works with an inner-city organization offering training in the construction field in Winnipeg.]]> 43.7001 -79.4163 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000 34.0522 -118.243 Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:48:57 +0000 38.895 -77.0367 Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:25:30 +0000 43.85 18.3833 Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:35:35 +0000 36.175 -115.136 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:35:44 +0000 37.6922 -97.3372 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:24:16 +0000 38.895 -77.0367 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:05:00 +0000 There were some beautiful moments in the public funeral for Michael Jackson Tuesday, and some grating ones. (Most of the latter courtesy of CNN's coverage, which was painful to watch. I assume the other cable networks were the same.) If you missed the whole thing, check out Mary Elizabeth Williams' live-blog here on Salon.
Of course, given the controversy over Jackson in the House, at some point politics had to become involved, and it did. The Rev. Al Sharpton actually gave one of the best speeches of the ceremony, but on the other end of the spectrum, there was Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who didn't acquit herself so well.
A short clip from Jackson Lee's remarks, in which she goes a little far in defending the late entertainer from child molestation allegations, is below. That clip, and her speech as a whole, really made me miss the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones all the more.








]]> 38.895 -77.0367 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:52:00 +0000 35.7719 -78.6389 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:51:00 +0000 32.7253 -97.3206 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:34:45 +0000 De mus is een standvogel. Dat betekent dat hij zomer en winter op dezelfde plek blijft wonen. Daarom heb ik besloten om onze eigen huismussen een naam te geven.

Ik noem de mannetjesmus Joop. Dat lijkt me wel een goede naam voor een mus. Het is tenslotte van oudsher echt een proletarische vogel. Die ga je geen Bernhard-Floris noemen of iets dergelijks.
Joop hipt stuiterend over mijn terras op zoek naar de kleinste kruimels die ik heb laten vallen. En dat zijn er meer dan ik zelf voor mogelijk hield.
Ik observeer hem. Ik verwonder mij over de hoeveelheid slimheid die er geprogrammeerd zit in dat hele kleine koppie. Toen Joop begin deze maand nog de verantwoordelijkheid droeg over een heel gezin, keek hij altijd nadrukkelijk rond voordat hij onder de dakpannen schoot. Nu is het kroost uitgevlogen, maar hij blijft nog steeds alert en kritisch.

Wanneer ik hem bijvoorbeeld een hoekje muesli-reep met yoghurtsmaak van Albert Heijn toewerp, pakt hij het op en vliegt standaard enkele meters verder. Je kunt het immers nooit weten met Albert Heijn, wat ze met de ene hand geven, pakken ze met de andere hand weer terug.
Vreemd genoeg seint Joop zijn echtgenote Truus niet in als hij iets gevonden heeft. Dit kon ik waarnemen toen ik een oude boterham had neergelegd. Truus vloog omslachtig een tuin verder, terwijl Joop als een gek de luttele meters heen en weer vloog tussen de boterham en het nest. Ik vond dit stom, maar best mogelijk dat Truus in haar wijsheid aldus zorgde voor een gevarieerde maaltijd. Of een strategie in de trant van: doe jij de boterham, doe ik het beleg.Toen ik vanavond op het bankje bij de sloot zat, kwam Joop de hoek om scheuren bij de knotwilg. Hij wist blijkbaar precies waar hij heen wilde.
Ik dacht daar over na. Is er bij een mus sprake van een zeker vermogen tot planning? Denkt hij: ik ga nu daar en daarheen vliegen? Een vluchtplan dus eigenlijk?

Het gaat minder goed dan vroeger met de mussenpopulatie. Misschien hang ik volgend jaar wel een nestkastje op voor Joop en Truus.
Toen ik kind was hing mijn vader ook een nestkastje op in de volkstuin die wij toen hadden. Maar daar mochten geen mussen in. Veel te ordinair, vond mijn vader. Nee, hij wilde koolmezen. Het vluchtgat in de nestkast werd daarom afgestemd op het slankere postuur van de koolmees. Eigenlijk was dat pure discriminatie. Dat komt er nou van. Nu zitten we met een mussentekort.

Ik probeer nu lessen te trekken uit het verleden. Zo doen we dat tegenwoordig. Dan hoeven we ons niet schuldig te voelen.
Ik ga het goedmaken met de mus. Ik laat bijvoorbeeld de ligusterheg staan en neem géén schutting van de Gamma. Zo'n heg schijnt namelijk ook musbevorderend te werken.
Ik deel mijn buiten genuttigde maaltijden met de mus. Ik zet een vogelhuisje in mijn tuin.

Zoals gezegd ga ik dat nestkastje doen. Gek eigenlijk dat in dit overgereguleerde Nederland daar helemaal geen vergunning voor nodig is. En dat daar geen precariobelasting over geheven wordt.
Maar laat ik onze immer ijverige bestuurders niet op ideeën brengen. Ambtenaren scheppen hun eigen werk door steeds meer regels te bedenken die zij dan weer kunnen handhaven.
Ik dwaal zoals gewoonlijk weer af.
Wat kan ik nog meer doen?
Ja, ik weet het: ik beloof Joop en Truus dat ik nooit meer blij zal zijn met een dooie mus!

Joop in actie!





Tags: mus, huismus, vogel, standvogel, populatie

]]> 52.35 4.91667 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:23:31 +0000 40.5853 -105.084 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:18:11 +0000 41.1897 -87.5261 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:36:08 +0000 40.3256 -124.286 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:36:00 +0000 37.5664 127 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:39:13 +0000
The news summaries are not any more cheerful: "a powerful cyclone with abundant snowfall has hit Sakhalin, which means the power is down in the centre of Yuzhnosakhalinsk and winter has returned to Sakhalin..."   Nothing seems to captivate the attention of our central media more than this. Sakhalin gets hit by a snowstorm and it's news on the national channels. But none of the local people are ever surprised by the fact that the TV screen always seems to show the same footage, filmed goodness knows where.


As a provincial journalist, it's interesting to look at the work of my colleagues from the mainland. I must admit that Moscow for me is like Sakhalin for them. They still call Sakhalin a peninsula, and then go on to say that the latest cyclone has cut all connections between Sakhalin and the mainland. My co-editor's mother lives in Belarus. As soon as she sees these kinds of alarming weather reports on TV or the internet, she calls her daughter to ask what is going on. And what can we say in reply? The island is just having its usual weather. 


Until recently, Sakhalin seldom made it into the federal news at all except for its weather. It did hit the headlines in August 2007, when an earthquake almost completely destroyed the coastal town of Nevelsk, following which the island's governor was sacked and a new one appointed. Many Sakhalin residents were amused and surprised by the reasons the federal channels gave for the governor's dismissal. It's as if we were saying, so that's how it is!  We didn't know - thank you for opening our eyes... But that's another conversation.


When details of funds from the federal centre being sent to rebuild Nevelsk were given on the news, Sakhalin, in many Muscovites' minds, went back to being a place where bears roam the streets and people travel by reindeer, catch fish and speak a strange language. One of my mainland acquaintances once asked me to send him a colourful photo to give him an idea of where it was he was being sent on business. I tried my best not to disappoint him, which is not hard seeing that I have plenty of bears and reindeer in my photo archives. I don't want to try to change the picture others have inside their heads. For some people, this exotic picture of a distant place is perhaps precisely what will attract them to actually make the journey there and see it all with their own eyes.   


I


It is entirely possible to run into bears on the outskirts of towns on Sakhalin 


In fact, there's a grain of truth in this image. It is entirely possible to run across bears on the outskirts of our towns, especially in spring and early summer, when they are hungry. People feed them, feeling sorry for them, as if they were stray dogs.  The bears lose their fear of people and start coming closer and closer to homes and yards. But this doesn't mean people stop being prey or bears hunters, so tragic incidents are unfortunately all too common.


When people ask me to say a few words about my island (rather than just saying I live on Sakhalin, I like to say that I live on an island - it has something magical about it, I think), I tell them I love Sakhalin. It sounds banal, but it's the absolute truth. I love it for banal reasons too: the people are good and the landscape is beautiful. At the weekend we went up to Chekhov Peak, which at 1048 metres is the highest mountain in the southern part of the island. It was the seventh time I had been up, but I still found the views wonderful.  Up there, far from the hot and dusty city, you can breathe so much more freely. The rounded hills spread out all around. We have a special word for these hills in the Far East - ‘sopki'. Say it to someone from elsewhere in Russia and they don't know what you're talking about. It's a local word. When you hear someone talking of ‘sopki' rather than hills and mountains, that's the mark of a true Sakhalin islander. Add to that things like ‘gathering water chestnuts, cooking with wild herbs, the ability to tie up winter fishing lines, tell a Korean from a Chinese or a Japanese, eat kuksu (Korean noodles), not wrinkle your nose at the smell of the Kamchatka bilberry, drive cars with the steering wheel on the right, use chopsticks, clean dried smelt and be able NOT to like red caviar.'  This last one is probably a joke: in Yuzhnosakhalinsk caviar is almost more expensive than in Moscow, but I digress.





Every year the whole town of Yuzhnosakhalinsk celebrates Victory Day by climbing Chekhov Peak, the highest mountain on the island 


This time, it was the whole town that set off for Chekhov Peak. In Yuzhnosakhalinsk, the capital of Sakhalin Region (not of Sakhalin, as my TV colleagues like to say), we have a tradition of climbing the peak in honour of Victory Day. The ascent this year was different in that students were entrusted with putting a replica of the Victory Banner at the top. This important mission was accomplished four hours after the ascent began. The whole trip up and down takes about eight hours. I like to climb the peak in spring. Everyone says it's not the best time because there is still a lot of snow. This is true. The snow remains on the slopes until mid-summer, but where the sun shines more strongly the snow has already melted and you can see the clearings where berries grow and the dense tangle of Siberian pine saplings. It looks like summer and winter all rolled into one. My friend says the landscapes are like those in the film ‘Lord of the Rings'. In short, it's beautiful.  


As for the people, provincials, especially distant ones like us, are always a bit different. I have no complexes about the fact that I'm 23 and for me the mainland is a big country, where I've never been.   It's not the same as saying, ‘you know, I haven't been to the Moon yet'.  I suppose because flying to the Moon is a dream, whereas going to the mainland is a real possibility.  I'll let you into a secret:  I plan to go to the mainland this summer, and not just for any old reason, but to go to a concert. The island's remoteness doesn't bother me. People say, ‘wow, cool!' when I tell them I live on Sakhalin. The only problem is that my favourite musicians don't come this far. If they've been here, it was before I became a fan. The ones who come now are all Russian pseudo pop stars, whose concerts are actually very popular. When the rock group ‘Nochniye snaipery' (Night snipers) came, their concert was not sold out, though rock music is quite popular here.  It's the music all my friends, and I have quite a lot of them, listen to. So, I've found a very good reason for my first trip to the mainland - a concert. Sometimes I look at what's playing in Moscow and St Petersburg and can't help but feel jealous.  


I almost forgot another event that got Sakhalin into the news. The president came out here in February. It had been a long time since any presidents visited Sakhalin, and in such distinguished company too.  With the president came the Japanese prime minister, the Duke of York, the Dutch minister of the economy and 100-odd other ministers, industrialists and businesspeople. Only Putin stayed behind. "Someone has to stay in the Kremlin, after all, to water the flowers".


The delegation was so large and important that the city's airport was closed to ordinary passenger traffic that day. The main streets were closed to traffic and glum-looking policeman stood on literally every corner. They had to stand a long time. Dmitry Medvedev spent almost 24 hours on Sakhalin. Some said that the president is afraid of his own people - even shops selling weapons were closed that day. Safety first.


The island had long since been expecting him. They tried to keep the date a secret, but it didn't work. People guessed that there had to be a reason for the abundance of snow-clearing equipment out on the city streets. The city authorities normally don't pay so much attention to clearing the streets. The city was literally buried under snow after the New Year holiday period. Even big cars had a hard time getting through the snowdrifts, not to mention pedestrians.


But as soon as word got round the HE was coming, the equipment and workers got busy. Hundreds of KAMAZ trucks worked around the clock to remove all the snow. But a new ‘powerful cyclone with abundant snowfall' hit the island just before the big day. People worried that the airport would be closed and the important guests unable to fly in. However, as visitors later noted on one well-known Sakhalin forum, "Dmitry Medvedev is an excellent president. Yesterday we had a snowstorm, but the sun was shining as his plane arrived. He leaves on the 19th, and on the 20th the snowstorm will resume. Good people are always lucky. So, we should give him his due".  





Angry islanders took to the streets to protest the Kremlin's decision to increase import duty on foreign cars. 


But this was about the only time people used the words "excellent president" during his visit. Just the opposite:  the islanders were unhappy with their president. It was just when Moscow was talking about raising import duties on second-hand imported cars. Like all people in the Far East, people on Sakhalin were in a state of complete shock over the decision. There are two cars for every one person on Sakhalin, and they are practically all Japanese. It's far from everyone who buys new foreign-made cars (there is a 24-fold income gap between the different layers of society on Sakhalin). Second hand cars make up the bulk of sales on the island. And then we suddenly get this news from Moscow. People on Sakhalin, as in Vladivostok, even took to the streets for an unauthorised meeting (not sanctioned by the authorities) calling for the duties to be abolished. We at Sakh.com were the only ones to cover the meeting, and ended up paying for our boldness. Other media contented themselves with the regional administration's terse press statement: "Far fewer people took part in the meeting than the organisers hoped for..." People joked that the President would arrive in a Russian-made car, but that was not to be. 


As for what brought the president all the way to Sakhalin, it was not a concert by his favourite musician of course, but an event for the whole country - the opening of Russia's first and only liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant.


I too managed to be at the opening ceremony, not that I was overjoyed at the chance. There is not much fun to be had in catching a glimpse of the president in the distance and then following the endless statements on a big screen in the press service's office. Others were envious. "Cool, you'll see the president", they said. I said it'd have been better if Shakhrin, the leader of the rock group Chaif, had come.





The best equipment and most advanced technology were used to build the gas installations in Aniva Bay. 


Sakhalin Natural Gas is a huge complex in Aniva Bay. It boasts the best specialists, the best equipment, and the most advanced technology and is the result of 10 years' work. The nature of my job means that I have been following the Sakhalin-2 project.  I am familiar with all the stages of its implementation and have visited various sites, as well as going on board oil and gas tankers. I had an idea then of what the people directly involved in the project felt at the launch. This is their baby after all, as Ian Craig, director of Sakhalin Energy, the operator company, likes to say.


But because I've been following the project closely, I also understand the local people's scepticism about offshore development, LNG production and royalties. They didn't build the plant, have seen it only in passing and, for most of them, LNG is something that gets sold for a lot of money to Japan, the USA and Korea. Oil and gas account for 95% of Sakhalin Region's exports. When Sakhalin-2 reaches full capacity it will provide 5% of the world's gas supplies. There are plans to deliver gas from Sakhalin throughout the neighbouring region of Vladivostok. Meanwhile, an old thermal electricity power station still chugs away in the south of our island, and there are plans to convert only one unit to gas by 2011.


In response to this situation people joke that Sakhalin residents are asked: ‘We've got gas in our flat.  Have you?'   'Do we have gas?' comes the reply,  'we've got the whole pipeline!"   


It's not surprising then that Yuzhnosakhalinsk residents are eager to get out of town, even if the weather is not very sunny. They're after a bit of fresh air, especially when you consider the two cars per resident as well... it's a good thing that there's nature just nearby.  And it's beautiful.


The old power plant is nothing when you consider that it took them until May 9 this year to find the gas to light the Eternal Flame - the sacred memorial to our victory in the war. In the past, they'd light the flame before the war veterans arrived at the monument, and then it'd go out until the next Victory Day came around. Now the local authorities promise that the Eternal Flame will be just that - eternal. Time will tell. 


The LNG plant was launched amidst big crowds and with much pomp and promise. Fireworks lit up the evening sky. There were endless banquets ‘in honour of' and ‘hosted by'. A month later, the first LNG deliveries from the plant began. Japan was the first country to receive supplies. Contracts for the plant's output have been signed for the next 20 years, and 60% of it will go to Japan.    


Japan is not just any old neighbour for Sakhalin. It's the closest foreign country to us. Some people on Sakhalin have never been to Moscow, but have already been to Japan, though not many. Planes and ferries go between Sakhalin and Hokkaido, but tours to Japan have not proved particularly popular, even though the two regions have good relations. Several towns on Sakhalin are twinned with towns on Hokkaido. Sakhalin businesspeople work closely with Japanese businesspeople in various sectors, though every year brings its inevitable share of complications and political incidents.  The Kuril islanders and Japanese organise visa-free exchanges, and the Friendship Ship travels between the islands.  


There were plans a decade ago to build the Russian-Japanese Friendship House on the main street of Yuzhnosakhalinsk as a symbol of friendship between Russia (Sakhalin Region) and Japan, but construction work stopped and the unfinished site graces the regional capital's main street to this day. During Dmitry Medvedev's visit a high fence was put up to hide the stone shell of the unfinished building, and it was said that the construction work would continue. But from my office I see that the president has left, the fence is still in place, and there is not the slightest sound of any construction equipment. The Russian-Japanese Friendship House is not about to open its doors anytime soon. "The right house for the friendship", people joke on the forum. If you look at things from the point of view of the territorial dispute with Japan, which dies down only to flare up again with renewed vigour, there may be some truth in this.  


Going back to an issue that has been dragging on for years is of course one way to avoid the issue on everyone's lips at the moment, namely the crisis. Most new and interesting things take a long time to reach the Far East and especially Sakhalin, but the crisis lost no time in coming. There was no panic, just the firm conviction that things would soon go downhill. Prices soared, especially for petrol and food. The cat litter I buy used to cost 300 roubles: it went up another 100 roubles overnight. When I asked the sales woman why the sharp increase, she said, "it's the crisis", without adding any further explanation. Medicines, nail varnish, ballpoint pens, all more expensive because of the crisis. Everyone knows this, but exactly what this crisis is all about, that they don't know.


Of course, those who've lost their jobs do know what it's all about. They get some explanation for their sorry predicament - optimising costs, staff cutbacks,  finance has dried up. People working at the Sakhalin offices of big companies have been particularly hard hit. These companies are reacting to the hard times by trying to maintain their head offices, and the regional offices get just enough funding so as not to close down entirely. It seems to me that this applies not only to companies, but also to support for the regions from the federal centre. People on Sakhalin are not expecting much federal money this year.


I haven't been personally affected by this crisis yet, except that it has become more expensive to keep a cat. So far, my wages have not been cut (touch wood!), and I've even acquired my first means of transport - a bicycle. 


The reason for my good fortune is that I work in the internet media. In their quest to optimise costs and so on, companies are looking for more profitable ways to advertise. In this respect, an internet portal with an active forum offers a well-developed interface.  


My friend Zhenya was not so lucky.  She worked in a non-profit environmental protection organisation involved in the conservation of Pacific Ocean salmon. The Sakhalin Salmon Initiative, as this organisation was called, received money from the Wild Salmon Centre in the USA. But with the crisis, they decided that six people were enough to protect salmon on Sakhalin and Zhenya, as the newest employee, was made redundant.


I recently ran into Sergei, a former fellow student, in the street. He was on his way to the job centre to register as unemployed and ‘spoil the statistics', as he put it (with a population of around 530,000, official unemployment on Sakhalin is 4%). Sergei was one of the victims of mass layoffs in the branches of one of Russia's biggest mobile phone operators. He had graduated as a journalist, but had been selling mobile phones.


There are even worse cases. One acquaintance of mine recently fired his secretary. The fifth. She had forgotten to submit the necessary documentation to take part in a construction tender - an unpardonable mistake in these tough times, of course. He placed a wanted ad to hire a new secretary and stipulated that applicants should be computer literate. 


Today he said that a young man sent his CV: a university graduate with top marks, fluent in English, good knowledge of French and basic knowledge of Spanish and Korean, experience as a deputy director, security specialist, translator and manager, and now he's ready to type documents, answer the phone and make coffee for 14,000 roubles a month. That's around $450 - in euros a sum too horrifically small to contemplate.


That's the crisis for you, Sakhalin style.


------------------------------------


Editor's note:


Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is the capital of Sakhalin Island.  It has a population of nearly200,000 and is the administrative centre of the Sakhalin Oblast, an area which includes the Kuril Islands.  It was founded in 1882 by convicts sent to the island by the Tsarist government to serve out their sentence in labour camps.  The southern half of the island was ceded to Japan after Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.  Soviet troops took it back in 1945, when it acquired its name, which means South Sakhalin City.  While remaining the administrative centre, the city shows many signs of the rush for oil and gas: the presence of foreign energy companies has contributed to infrastructure developments, including the building of new hotels and residential areas.


--------------------------------------


Russia is not only Moscow politics and St. Petersburg's monuments. Read other Letters from provincial Russia:


Khabarovsk: Far East is still far away, by Alexei Minin.


http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/Far-East-is-still-far-away


Saratov: Summer in Saratov, by Olga Bakutkina


http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/summer-in-saratov


Kirov: The Vyatlag Archipelago, by Ekaterina Lushnikova


http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/the-vyatlag-archipelago


Lipetsk:  You can get a life - in spite of everything! By Oksana Zagrebnyeva


http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/you-can-get-a-life-in-spite-of-everything


Izhevsk:  A Sunny Mayday in Izhevsk, by Nadezhda Gladysh


http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/letter-from-izhevsk

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]]> 51.5 -0.116667 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:01:10 +0000 51.5667 4.8 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:36:14 +0000 40.7142 -74.0064 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:33:20 +0000 51.5 -0.116667 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:08:00 +0000 Today is the ideal day to celebrate America's specialness, and America's paper of record inspirationally leads the ritual:
Clark Hoyt, New York Times Public Editor, April 26, 2009:

A LINGUISTIC shift took place in this newspaper as it reported the details of how the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to strip Al Qaeda prisoners naked, bash them against walls, keep them awake for up to 11 straight days, sometimes with their arms chained to the ceiling, confine them in dark boxes and make them feel as if they were drowning.
Until this month, what the Bush administration called "enhanced" interrogation techniques were "harsh" techniques in the news pages of The Times. Increasingly, they are "brutal". . . . .
The word had appeared a few times before in this context, most recently on April 10, when the Central Intelligence Agency said it was closing the network of secret overseas prisons where interrogations took place. Scott Shane, who covers national security, said he and his editor in the Washington bureau, Douglas Jehl, negotiated over the wording of the first paragraph. Shane wrote that methods used in the prisons were "widely denounced as illegal torture." Jehl changed that to the "harshest interrogation methods" since the Sept. 11 attacks. Shane said he felt that with more information coming to light, including a leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the words harsh and even harshest no longer sufficed. He proposed brutal, and Jehl agreed. . . .
And why not, then, go all the way to torture?  Jehl said that when the paper is discussing what is generally regarded as the most extreme interrogation method the C.I.A. used, waterboarding, "we’ve become more explicit in saying in a first reference that it’s a near-drowning technique" that Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other experts "have called torture." But he said: "I have resisted using torture without qualification or to describe all the techniques. Exactly what constitutes torture continues to be a matter of debate and hasn’t been resolved by a court. This president and this attorney general say waterboarding is torture, but the previous president and attorney general said it is not. On what basis should a newspaper render its own verdict, short of charges being filed or a legal judgment rendered?" Jehl argued for precision and caution. I agree.

The New York Times today:







Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares

CAIRO -- Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a "velvet" revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say. . . .
The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. . . .
In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.
"They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year," Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. "They eventually broke my resistance."

Virtually every tactic which the article describes the Iranians as using has been used by the U.S. during the War on Terror, while several tactics authorized by Bush officials (waterboarding, placing detainees in coffin-like boxes, hypothermia) aren't among those the article claims are used by the Iranians.  Nonetheless, "torture" appears to be a perfectly fine term for The New York Times to use to describe what the Iranians do, but one that is explicitly banned to describe what the U.S. did.  Despite its claimed policy, the NYT has also recently demonstrated its eagerness to use the word "torture" to describe these same tactics . . . when used by the Chinese against an American detainee.
Notably, the NYT article today seems to take particular offense that the Iranian Government is putting people on trial using confessions they obtained via torture ("the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted").  Just two days ago, The Washington Post reported:

The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation.


"The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention."The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.

Just read the details of what we did to this adolescent to marvel at what the NYT (and, of course, NPR) refuse to call "torture" when done by us.  Though the human rights abuses of the Iranian Government are well-documented and severe, there's also no mention in the NYT article of these interrogation tactics being applied by Iran to teenagers (such as Jawad) or resulting in numerous detainee deaths (as happened during the Bush era).
During the presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani was widely ridiculed for arguing that whether these tactics are "torture" depends, at least in part, on who uses them (it's torture if They do it, but not when We do it).  But he could take that definitive moral relativism to any leading American newspaper, become an Editor, and fit right in, since that's exactly the editorial policy of our leading media outlets.  What's most striking about all this media behavior is that people around the world -- outside of the U.S.  -- aren't fooled by these sorts of blatant double standards, whereby the U.S. even claims the power to change the meaning of words based on whether it or another country is doing something.   The target of this government and media behavior is purely domestic.
It's not particularly unusual for a government to permit itself to do something that it prohibits others from doing.  The U.S. is hardly the only country that does that.  But when that country's media collectively abets that government effort by molding its language to reflect that exceptionalism, it elevates the propaganda to a much different level.  When I documented the American media's obsession with journalists detained by other countries and its virtually complete blackout of much, much longer (and often more oppressive) detentions of foreign journalists by the U.S., that was the central point I tried to emphasize:

Pointing to other governments and highlighting their oppressive behavior can be cathartic, fun and gratifying in a self-justifying sort of way. Ask Fred Hiatt; it's virtually all he ever does.  But the first duty of the American media -- like the first duty of American citizens -- is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own government.  That's not as fun or as easy, but it is far more important.  Moreover, obsessively complaining about the rights-abridging behavior of other countries while ignoring the same behavior from our own government is worse than a mere failure of duty.  It is propagandistic and deceitful, as it paints a misleading picture that it is other governments -- but not our own -- which engage in such conduct.

Since the American Government has acted -- and continues to act -- overtly to protect and shield those who engaged in this conduct, will it condemn Iran for torturing detainees? As for The New York Times, at this point, they don't even seem interested in pretending that they make these editorial judgments independently or with a pretense of objectivity.  They're perfectly happy to have you know that when the U.S. Government does X, it is called one thing, but when foreign governments do X, it is called something else entirely.

]]> -9.45 -36.0333 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:11:37 +0000 51.3167 4.43333 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:27:13 +0000 6.93194 79.8478 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:58:43 +0000 51.5 -0.116667 Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:27:15 +0000 50.4333 30.5167 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:42:35 +0000 40.7142 -74.0064 Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:52:25 +0000 35.4419 -92.5264 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:09:17 +0000 55.7522 37.6156 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:36:56 +0000 47.2333 3.5 Sun, 28 Oct 2012 16:02:29 +0000 37.775 -122.418 Sun, 10 May 2009 17:24:12 +0000 50.4333 30.5167 Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:25:02 +0000 38.895 -77.0367 Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:46:00 +0000 50.8333 4.33333 Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:36:41 +0000 47.5 19.0833 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:55:48 +0000 41.3275 19.8189 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:43:59 +0000 Till att börja med kan jag inte anställa mig själv. Vad det handlar om är att Europaparlamentarikern får en påse med pengar att anställa [...]]]> 59.3295 18.0626 Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:00:00 +0000
http://www.news.gov.hk/rss/news/topstories_zh.xml，請更新訂閱資料。]]> 22.2833 114.15 Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:17:00 +0000
Diffusion, le samedi 27 mars 2010 à 19H 30.
Rediffusion, le lundi 29 mars 2010 à 19H 00.


Ecoutez :


Thème : Les enjeux des élections Irakiennes



Invités :



- Hasni Abidi, directeur du Cermam, le Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le monde arabe et méditerranéen, à Genève.



- Myriam Benraad, chercheur au CERI.



]]> 48.8667 2.33333 Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:00:30 +0000 48.8667 2.33333 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:53:54 +0000 With so much other big news in the world, must the media find the Ruby Dhalla story such an irresistible plot line? Rex wonders
]]> 43.7001 -79.4163 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:06:39 +0000 51.5 -0.116667 Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:44:07 +0000 59.9167 10.75 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000 45.2668 -75.7494 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:53:10 +0000 50.4333 30.5167