Monday, October 11, 2010 

It's been a relaxing weekend here at the Borderlands Lodge. I've been staying at home, for the most part, trying to get caught up with things. The weather has been pretty, but not so gorgeous as to absolutely irresistible as has been the case in previous weeks. Nevertheless, I still I got of bike riding in, if only to run a few errands.

The big story this weekend, of course, was the amazing triumph of the seemingly unstoppable Detroit Lions, who slayed the fearsome Rams of St. Louis at the Lions Den in Motown. The Rams, considered by football experts to be one of the top four teams in the NFC West, rolled over for the Lions to the tune of 44-6 . This was the largest margin of victory for the Lions in 15 years, and marks only the fourth time in 45 games that the Lions have won. Their last victory had come in November of 2009.


Can Shaun Hill and company lead the Lion faithful to the promised land of 4-12? Hill, yes!

The lesson, as always: never underestimate the 'pride' of the Lions!

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Well, now that that's off my chest I'll leave you to your N & P:

Turkey and SE Europe

Armenia resentful one year after signing accords with Turkey. No big surprise here. It's tough to impose peace on folks with completely different views and concerns. Nobody wants to sell out the oil and gas-rich Azeris entirely, but Armenia won't stand for Nagorno-Karabakh's return to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan won't accept anything else.

It's too bad a country just called "Caucasia" couldn't house Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Ossetians, Abkhaz and whomever else wished to join. Nobody would, of course, but would Caucasia be so much worse than what's happened in that region in this rejuvenated era of nation-state proliferation?

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Still more authors on trial for Ergenekon book: “They are opening an investigation into every written or visual communication featuring the word Ergenekon."

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Emir Kustarica chased from film festival in Turkey Filmmaker Emir Kustarica, who has often sounded like an apologist for Serbian aggression in the 1990s, has left the Antalya Film Festival in a huff. Kustarica's films, especially Underground, were immensely popular in Istanbul when I was living there during the time of the Yugoslav wars.

It's easy, of course, to denigrate the Serbs and the genocide of the Bosnian Muslims is without question a black mark on Serbian history. But when foreign countries—especially Germany, and then much of the rest of the West—got involved in the business of recognizing Yugoslav republics as independent states, these countries seriously destabilized the region and played a big role in bringing on the wars that followed.

The Serbs are responsible for what they did, and both the government of Serbia and its citizens have paid a high price.

When will the EU and US own up to their share of the  responsibility for what happened?

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Israelis executed dual US-Turkish citizen on Mavi Marmara. Say what you want about Tayyip Erdogan, he's less afraid of Israel than Obama is.

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AKP cheerleaders Zaman celebrate Armenian language education in Turkey. One thing I've noticed about the AKP's "initiatives" towards Kurds and Armenians has been the extent to which they have involved a reinforcement of the AKP's more general efforts to increase the public profile of religion in Turkey. Sometimes this approach blows up in their faces, such as when the government began having second thoughts about putting a cross on top of that church in the middle of Lake Van, but everyone knows they'll back down in matters like this (as they did re Lake Van). The last thing the AKP wants is to appear anti-Christian.

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Taraf reports—with some irony, given Erdogan's opposition to Kurdish education in Turkey—that Erdogan demanded education "in the mother tongue" for Turks living in Germany.

This came up, apparently, during the course of talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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Hungarians evacuate 5000 people from sludge monster. This doesn't look good at all.


'Mildly radioactive' sludge leaks into Danube in Hungary

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Russia and ex-USSR

Can't they get her on reality TV? Anna Chapman sees off Russian space crew. Refuses to answer questions.


Spybabe Anna Chapman arriving at Russian launch site in Kazakhstan

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Flag flap. Azeri delegation at UN in NYC po'd because Armenian delegation flew both Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh flags the other day.

“It has been revealed and properly documented that on September 27… the mission of the Republic of Armenia … installed two flags on its premises.., namely the national flag of the Republic of Armenia and a piece of colored stuff or rag purported to be a ‘flag’ of the ethnically constructed subordinate separatist entity, the so-called ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,’” Azerbaijan’s UN envoy Agshyn Mehtyev wrote in a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

I guess it's tempting to find the language of the Azeri official quoted in the piece to be a bit over the top. Then again, it's hard to not understand why this issue would be such an emotional one for them. Nearly 15 percent of the population of Azerbaijan today is a refugee, and approximately 20 percent of internationally recognized Azeri territory is currently being occupied by a foreign state.

Wouldn't that drive you a little crazy?

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Remember Kyrgyzstan? Lots of people died there earlier this year in fighting between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks? Voting took place in a reportedly orderly fashion in Kyrgyzstan on Sunday.

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Ukrainian journal writes about Yanukovych's "power boost," to gain "unilateral control over law enforcement agencies in Ukraine."

Sounds pretty scary, huh? At the KievUkraine News Blog there is a slightly more nuanced and less alarmist perspective.

I'm not optimistic, but it is true that Western coverage of the former USSR tends to associate power grabs by pro-western governments as necessary and similar grabs by pro-Kremlin (or 'anti-western') movements as 'dictatorial.'

We were all cool with Russian TV not reporting on Yeltsin's heart attack just days before a very close presidential election in 1996, because Yeltsin's opponent was a communist and we were afraid Yeltsin would lose.

But while government-television relations under Yeltsin elicited relatively scant criticism in the US, such crimes are suddenly considered unforgivable when committed by Vladimir Putin, who began appearing to be a harder nut to crack fairly early on in his presidency.

Anyway, my sense is that Yanukovych, like the leaders of just about all of the countries I discuss on this blog, will use this opportunity to strengthen his personal power. But I also agree that it's foolish to uncritically read the ravings of die-hard anti-Kremlinists like the Jamestown Spooks or the Washington Post.

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Okay folks, that is your N & P for today! I can N & P no more for now! Please, I beg you! Let me rest!
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