Syndicated 2007-12-07 03:39:27 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

I forgot my passport and was late for the Russian elections in Toronto last Sunday. I was going to vote for Yabloko. According to the "official", state-propaganda-affected data, Yabloko scored between 1 and 2%. I can't believe the government party scored 70% in the poll stations abroad, higher than in Russia itself. The 99% scored by it in the raped and killed Chechnya is also appalling.

When I talked and communicated with few friends and acquaintances in the last 24 hours, it was a pleasure to find common grounds and share some plans with them.

Syndicated 2007-12-03 07:07:03 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

I am worried about the sale of LiveJournal to SUP. Here is a picture worth many words I copied from someone else. It is a Stalin's portrait in the social realism style, with a question, "'sup?" ("What's up?") flying off his mouth.



In the good news, I found it important that Wikimedia and Advogato are officially not-for-profit, unlike LiveJournal.

Syndicated 2007-12-03 06:22:36 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

Vladimir Mukusev, one of the glasnost pioneers in Russian TV, says he was turned away from working as a journalist and lost his colleagues who battled against corruption.

"It is horrible that I had three friends. One friend's name was Yuri Schekochihin, the other's was Artyom Borovik, the third one's was Anna Politkovskaya. All of them have been doing journalist investigations. And they used this very freedom of speech not to enshrine their names but rather to stop the powers putting on fat. I think this is why these people were killed. And not only the journalists. One can place my other friend into the same row, Galya [Galina] Starovoitova. Because she also used any opportunity of freedom of speech. But today the freedom of speech is shrinking and dying... And it will not be able to appear from nowhere by itself!"

"Ужас в том, что у меня было три друга. Одного звали Юрий Щекочихин, другого — Артем Боровик, третьего — Анна Политковская. Все они занимались журналистскими расследованиями. И все эту самую свободу слова использовали не для того, чтобы свое имя увековечить в памяти, а не дать власти жиреть. Думаю, что поэтому этих людей уничтожили. И не только журналистов. В этот же ряд можно поставить и еще одного моего друга — Галю Старовойтову. Она ведь тоже использовала любую возможность свободы слова. Но сегодня, как шагреневая кожа, свобода слова умирает… И появиться ниоткуда, сама по себе, она не может!"

http://www.lenizdat.ru/a0/ru/pm1/c-1056380-0.html

Syndicated 2007-11-29 01:41:00 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov