Blogs & Ecology

LJ user romanemo comments on [RUS] Russia's plans to turn Moscow into an international financial centre.

LJ user Zhurnal Cheloveka reports on [RUS] the murder of Vitaly Karaev, mayor of the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz.

Beaten in Armenia and imprisoned in Azerbaijan, journalists in the ex-Soviet South Caucasus know the price of freedom. Some of them are even fighting from prison cells, wrestling state persecution and challenging societal intolerance for dissent. Bloggers tell the story of free speech in the South Caucasus.

Mark Grigorian [RU], an Armenian journalist in exile, blogs from England. Writing in Russian, he comments on the 17 November attack on prominent investigative journalist Edik Baghdasaryan.

Только что узнал: в Ереване трое неизвестных напали на журналиста Эдика Багдасаряна.

[…]

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Source: Global Voices Online

“To me, a different family means people living on the edge of society. These people may have no home, no jobs. They may be doing drugs, their neighbors may hate them, and they may be banned from entering a theater because of their inappropriate looks. But within such families, love and caring relationship still reign […].”

This is how Irina Popova, a Russian photographer, describes (RUS) the subjects of her “Different Family” project, currently on exhibit in St. Petersburg - and also available online here (23 photos) and on PhotoPolygon.com portal (15 photos).

Olive harvesting in Albania, John Paul II monuments in Poland, a Soviet military hardware “cemetery” in Moscow, and more: Central and Eastern Europe-based bloggers share their recent travel observations and photos.

Albania

- Stepping Stones has posted photos of two elderly Albanian village women: the first one is harvesting olives in “the old-fashioned way”; the second one has her black apron filled with “tiny daisies,” which she is picking for a local company and gets paid less than $1 per kilo.

This story (RUS) of bureaucracy, human suffering and online activism in St. Petersburg began when LJ user lassi_'s mother hurt her leg in February 2006:

[…] She was taken by an ambulance to Kostyushko Hospital, where she spent all the time in the hallway. A room cost 2,500 rubles a day [roughly $100] then. Almost all hallways were packed with people. […]

By March 2008, LJ user lassi_'s mother was bedridden - and in need of a costly surgery.

[…] As of now, there's a two-year waiting list for this surgery. The only chance for a pensioner is to get a “quota” from the state. […]

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Source: Global Voices Online

Ukrainiana writes about Russian cartoonist Sergei Elkin and his cartoons on the U.S. presidential race.

Several dozen Russian LJ blogs - including quite a few top-ranking ones - got suspended for no obvious reason tonight, causing a massive LJ outcry. LJ user tarlith-history compiled a list of suspended blogs (RUS), calling the incident a “Blogocaust Night.” LJ user oleg-kozyrev called (RUS) what happened a “blogocide.” LJ user dolboeb wrote (RUS) that this could have happened as a result of a hacker attack on LiveJournal's admin console. The suspended blogs were restored within a few hours.

LJ user drugoi's post with beautiful photos from Manhattan (RUS) is currently listed as the Russian blogosphere's most popular one at Yandex Blogs portal. There are over 400 comments so far to this item by one of the most popular and prolific Russian bloggers, and here's a quick, almost random selection of just a couple of them:

lamirka:

How cool! Too bad I don't have photos like these ones ( I looked at yours and recalled the feeling of [being inside] an anthill and of freedom at the same time. Thank you.

***

tutushka:

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Source: Global Voices Online

IZO cites a post by LJ.Rossia.org user mrparker (RUS) about a somewhat panicky mistranslation of a Reuters news item on the financial situation by a Russian news agency. Also, a few notes on the banks, real estate and contemporary art in Ukraine.

In Moscow, you can buy a bus/trolleybus/tram ticket from the driver and it'll cost you 25 rubles, which is roughly $1. If you buy your tickets at special kiosks, you get a discount. But some people prefer to cheat and ride for free. A ticketless passenger is known as zayats in Russian: a hare. Moscow-based LJ user kozenko described (RUS) a recent encounter with one representative of this species:

I really don't understand people who can ride for free on public transportation. Those who climb over turnstiles, hiding from conductors. And when they consider it heroism, that's totally beyond me. And if they are also older than 12, this, excuse me, is [absolutely obnoxious].

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Source: Global Voices Online

On Oct. 8, president Victor Yushchenko announced the dissolution of the Ukrainian parliament. The snap election - the third parliamentary vote in Ukraine since the 2004 Orange Revolution - has been scheduled for Dec. 7.

Here is what some Ukrainian bloggers think of the political situation in their country.

LJ user tapirr (RUS) compares illustrations in the original Alice in Wonderland to those in a Swahili-language edition.

Over 30,000 Muslims reportedly came to the Moscow Cathedral Mosque for a communal prayer on Sept. 30, the first day of Eid ul-Fitr, a Muslim holiday known in Russia as Uraza Bayram, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan.

See Global Voices special coverage page on the South Ossetia crisis.

Firsthand reports from the conflict zone in the Caucasus continue to appear here and there in the Russophone blogosphere. On Sept. 8, one month since the beginning of the war in South Ossetia and Georgia, Russian photojournalist Oleg Klimov posted his musings (RUS) on what the war looks like and what it smells like, on the media and propaganda, and on what seems like a universal nature of wartime looting.

[Oleg Klimov's photo of peacekeepers “between Tskhinvali and Gori”]

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Source: Global Voices Online