Year: 2008

August 28, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Aug 28, 2008

The Russian government is to spend an extra $4.1 billion supporting agriculture through 2012 and is considering slashing meat imports. “Russia’s agriculture minister said Moscow could cut poultry and pork import quotas by hundreds of thousan...
August 28, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Aug 28, 2008

TODAY: Medvedev seeks eastern support over Georgia; seven of G8 members issue strong condemnation of Russia’s actions in Georgia; extraordinary EU summit to be held next week. Russia warns Turkey over US ships, hints at “direct confrontation”. Rus...
August 27, 2008

Ringing In a New Thiefdom

The former wrestler and South Ossetian separatist Eduard Kokoity is quite a character. I’m not sure what his first act of state was as president of the newly “independent” South Ossetia – drinking three liters of wine, orga...
August 27, 2008

Rogozin and the 9/11 Comparison to South Ossetia

Apparently Russia’s Ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin seems to believe that terrorist murder of thousands on U.S. soil is comparable to Georgia’s attempt to reign in its own separatists. I believe this is offensive and incredulous, and...
August 27, 2008

Kouchner Accuses Russia of Violating International Law

It seems abundantly clear that no one in Moscow is particularly concerned by these kind of pronouncements or feeble diplomacy, but here goes what French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is saying: “We cannot accept these violations of inter...
August 27, 2008

The Steep Decline of Courage in the West

French political philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has a very passionate article of conclusions about the war in today’s Wall Street Journal: – Western public opinion fell with disconcerting facility for the thesis advanced — from t...
August 27, 2008

Individual Sovereignty and the Olympics

Events in the month of August have certainly placed our modern notions of nationalism, identity, sovereignty, and the Westphalian concept of the nation state under close scrutiny. This bit from Alvaro Vargas Llosa on individual sovereignty and the...