Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Yanukovych In The Wall Street Journal

Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian presidential candidate favored to win the election, was featured in the Wall Street Journal yesterday: Ex-Ukraine Leader Angles for a Return.

Ukrainian presidential front-runner Viktor Yanukovych says that after five years under a pro-Western leader, his country needs to rebuild strong ties with Russia and ease up on pursuit of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"I have never denied the influence of the Russian factor in Ukrainian politics. We should always have taken it into account," said Mr. Yanukovych in his first interview with Western media since he kicked off his campaign a month ago.

In an October survey by the Razumkov Center in Kiev, Mr. Yanukovych lead with 29% support for the Jan. 17 vote. President Viktor Yushchenko trails in low single digits, while his rival and former Orange Revolution ally, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, is polling in second place at 20%. No candidate is expected to gain the 50% needed to triumph in the first round, and Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Yanukovych are expected to proceed to a February runoff.

In the 2004 election, Mr. Yanukovych, backed by Moscow, was initially declared the winner, until the so-called Orange Revolution, which brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in Kiev to protest alleged vote-rigging. Mr. Yushchenko, who won the revote ordered by the Supreme Court, has had a strained relationship with Ukraine's eastern neighbor.

Mr. Yanukovych's resurgence comes on the back of the government's failure to push through promised overhauls, in part a consequence of infighting between the president and prime minister, who have failed to agree on an anticrisis program.

Ukraine's gross domestic product contracted 18% in the first half of the year, damaging the rating of Ms. Tymoshenko, who as prime minister is responsible for the economy. Ms. Tymoshenko's campaign emphasizes her industriousness in fighting the crisis, in spite of what she claims are blocking tactics by Mr. Yanukovych and Mr. Yushchenko. Her main campaign message reads, "She is working."

[...]

Mr. Yanukovych made clear that he would seek to improve ties with Russia, calling for "well-balanced" relations with the European Union and Russia, given Ukraine's strong economic ties with both neighbors.

He also said he wants to build "beneficial" relations with NATO, but not seek membership until the majority of Ukrainians are in favor. Surveys show that currently isn't the case....

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

First International Flight In Years Takes Off From Chechnya

And guess where it's going? We shall see how many of you know Chechnya well. Choose one of the following:

a) Russia
b) Ukraine
c) United States
d) Saudi Arabia
e) England
f) China

The answer, the article, and my various comments are below the jump.

Proud To Be An Infidel

Check it out, dear readers: I have received my first comments informing me that I ought to convert to Islam. Apparently, the dear person commenting says that "Islam will triumph in the end" so I ought to "join its ranks".

Um, no. Not happening. I have never had, and will never have, the desire to convert to Islam. I am quite happy to remain an infidel.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

ICTY Won't Pay Karadzic's Lawyers

Update, November 15:

I have bumped this post because I have received confirmation from a member of Dr. Karadzic's legal team that this story is indeed true. The ICTY is trying to subvert justice by not paying Dr. Karadzic's legal team, despite what they may say to the contrary. What will happen next is up in the air--the trial may have to be postponed again.

I have said previously that I don't like the ICTY. Well, I have found yet another reason to dislike them. The Croatian news source Javno has the following story: Karadzic legal advisors go on strike.

Legal advisors to Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic have gone on strike over unpaid fees, officials said Wednesday as Karadzic looked to appeal a UN court's decision to impose a defence lawyer on him.

While 64-year-old Karadzic insists on representing himself at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), the genocide and war crimes suspect has eight legal advisors helping him to prepare his defence.

Court papers filed by Karadzic on Wednesday claim his legal team is owed some 70,000 euros (100,000 dollars) in unpaid bills.

Marko Sladojevic, one of Karadzic's eight advisors, said the team stopped work on Tuesday. - Mr Karadzic has been completely on his own since yesterday - he told AFP.

The whole team suspended work because they have not yet been paid. We cannot continue working for free - he added.

Defendants' legal bills are normally paid for by the court. The ICTY declined to comment.

In the filing, Karadzic claims to need 7,500 hours of paid pre-trial preparation time, of which he has been granted only 4,500....

Now, I have not seen reference to this anywhere else. But if it is true, it is very serious. The ICTY is afraid of Karadzic because they know that they do not have a good case against him. He is also trying to mount a formidable defense that will call into question all the commonly held allegations about the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. He represents a danger to them and they are doing their best to sabotage all his efforts to have a fair trial. That's my take, at least.

I will hopefully have an update in the near future about the veracity of this news story from a very credible source.

Update: Thursday, November 12:

Both BalkanInsight and The Age have stories confirming what was said in the Croatian media story. The ICTY, of course, denies the entire thing. This whole trial is turning into such a nightmare.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

A Plethora Of Spam

In the past few days, I have received a plethora of spam comments on this blog, so I have enabled word verification for comments. I've always thought that those can be kind of a pain, so I do apologize to my readers. But the spam comments were getting kind of ridiculous...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Karadzic To Appeal Court Appointed Lawyer

As I expected, Dr. Karadzic is to appeal last week's decision by the ICTY concerning a court-appointed lawyer. From Reuters:

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic asked the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal on Wednesday to hear his appeal against the court's decision to appoint legal counsel after he boycotted proceedings.

Judges ordered last week that legal counsel be appointed to Karadzic and adjourned his trial until March 2010 to give new defence lawyers time to prepare.

Karadzic, who has denied his 11 war crimes charges from the war, had been representing himself but boycotted the first three days of trial proceedings, arguing that he needed more time to prepare for a "case of this magnitude and complexity".

Karadzic argued in Wednesday's filing that he should be allowed to appeal against the court's decision because counsel was appointed despite his objections.

Procedural rules at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia require court approval for appeals before they can be considered.

The ruling last week allows for Karadzic to continue representing himself, but he will have to work with an appointed lawyer. If he continues to boycott the trial, then Karadzic will forfeit his right to self-representation and the appointed lawyer will take over, the court said....

Good luck to him getting this appeal. I do not think that the court will be very open to considering to it.

Yushchenko To Back Yanukovych?

There is speculation in Ukraine that current president Viktor Yushchenko will back Viktor Yanukovych in the runoffs. From the Ukrainian website Zik:

Serhy Lutsenko, the deputy head of the People’s Self-Defense NGO [PSD faction is in the NUNS bloc with Our Ukraine] believes Pres Yushchenko will throw his weight behind Viktor Yanukovych in the runoffs, PSD press service quotes him as saying.

“Looking at Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign track record, we can see that he has never criticized his former opponent Viktor Yanukovych over the past 6 months, something to indicate certain deals between them. Since Viktor Yushchenko’s chances to be reelected are definitely ephemeral, he will back up Yanukovych, believing the latter will stick to the bargain and make Yushchenko premier,” Lutsenko says.

PSD is convinced there are two major contestants for the highest office, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych....

In all honesty, I do not see this happening. There is a lot of rivalry between Yushchenko and Yanukovych. But hey, anything's possible.

I'll also have to visit this website Zik more often. In the sidebar of the news story I just mentioned was this amusing headline: Yushchenko compares Tymoshenko to a hobo. And indeed, if you read the article in question, Yushchenko does do just that. I seriously love Ukrainian politics--it's priceless.

Happy Veterans Day

I have been quite busy recently, but I could not let Veterans Day go without a post. So I'd like to thank all the veterans who have helped defend this great country in wars both past and present. Thank you for your service.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

ICTY Forces Lawyer On Karadzic

I hate the ICTY. I really, really hate them. I opened up my internet browser this morning and was greeted by this headline from the BBC: Court imposes lawyer on Karadzic.

The UN's Yugoslav war crimes court has appointed a lawyer for ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and adjourned his genocide trial to 1 March....

That was the first paragraph of the story as it appeared this morning at about 10:00 eastern time. Here's a screenshot, if you're interested:


Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Karadzic Appears At Procedural Hearing

The BBC does not deserve to call itself a news service. They are patently dishonest and do not report what happens but rather what they think should have happened. They blatantly falsify information and distort facts.

I base those accusations on the following story, whose headline I read with shock and disbelief: Karadzic defiant at Hague hearing.

Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has insisted he needs more time to prepare his defence, during his first appearance at his war crimes trial.

Mr Karadzic told a procedural hearing in The Hague that he had not been given the opportunity to go through vast amounts of prosecution documents.

He is representing himself and last week boycotted the start of his trial....

I am indignant because that headline is so blatantly untrue. I watched part of the hearing this morning and Dr. Karadzic was anything but defiant. He was actually extremely respectful, polite, and reasonable.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Karadzic Will Be In Court Tuesday

So, as far as I can tell, Dr. Karadzic was not in court today but will be appearing in court tomorrow for a procedural hearing. From the BBC: Karadzic 'will appear at trial'.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic says he will appear at his trial in The Hague on genocide and war crimes charges.

He boycotted the trial's start last week saying he needed more time to prepare his defence.

In a letter to the presiding judge, Mr Karadzic says he will attend a procedural hearing at the court on Tuesday to discuss his defence.

[...]

When he again failed to appear on Tuesday, presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said he had chosen not to exercise his right to be present and "must therefore accept the consequences", announcing that the court would proceed in his absence.

He said the court would consider imposing a lawyer to represent Mr Karadzic if he continued to boycott proceedings.

The 64-year-old has decided to represent himself during the proceedings....

Concerning this letter he sent, the following is the full text of it. It is dated November 1.
Dear Judge Kwon,

I wanted to give you the courtesy of letting you know that I will not be attending the trial on Monday, 2 November 2009 as I have not had adequate time to prepare for it.

I will, however, be pleased to attend the status conference on Tuesday, 3 November 2009. I hope we will be able to find a solution which will lead to not only an expeditious trial, but a fair one.

I assure you that I am continuing to work hard to prepare for my trial and look forward to making my own opening statement as soon as I am in a position to do so.

Respectfully submitted,

Radovan Karadzic

And the best thing of all is that I may actually get to see Dr. Karadzic tomorrow. He will be in court at 2:15 Netherlands time, which is not a bad time for me at all.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Rush Limbaugh Is Brilliant

The man is absolutely amazing. He is one of the few people who truly gets Obama. He sees the narcissism, the inexperience, the lack of coherent strategy on Afghanistan, as well as much more. He also understands what a dire situation our country is in right now. He says that Joe Biden is a pompous windbag who's wrong about pretty much everything--I couldn't have said it better myself.



The man is absolutely brilliant. Here's an alternate place to watch the interview if the above video doesn't work. Watch the entire thing; it's amazing.

The Weirdness of English, Explained

A book review of John McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

I've always thought that English is a weird language. Seriously, nothing about it makes sense at all. As far as Indo-European languages go, it's just kind of odd. Verb conjugations are strange, lack of gender for nouns is strange, spelling is strange, and, as McWhorter points out, our use of the word do is strange.

McWhorter starts off his fascinating book focusing on what he calls the meaningless do. He points out how odd it is that we use the word do in phrasing questions or negative statements (such as Did you notice? or I did not listen).

Where is this odd usage come from? It's not present in any other Germanic languages or many languages in general, but is present in Celtic languages. And it is from Celtic languages that we have acquired this odd aspect of grammar, McWhorter argues. Linguists have often ignored the strong evidence that Celtic languages influenced English, attributing the similar usage of do in English and Celtic languages to pure chance. But there is strong evidence in this book that suggests just that it was not coincidence at all, but rather the intermingling of Celtic speakers with English speakers that caused this.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Life Without Memory

One of my random interests is psychology. I am currently taking an introductory psychology class at my university and it is very interesting. About a month ago, we started studying memory. We talked about a man named Clive Wearing and I did some more research on him a few weeks ago.

What I found out is rather depressing, actually. Wearing was an eminent musicologist who contracted a virus in 1985 that attacked his brain, causing sever retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Oliver Sacks wrote a beautiful essay in The New Yorker in 2007 about Clive Wearing:

In March of 1985, Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist in his mid-forties, was struck by a brain infection—a herpes encephalitis—affecting especially the parts of his brain concerned with memory. He was left with a memory span of only seconds—the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. New events and experiences were effaced almost instantly....

In addition to this inability to preserve new memories, Clive had a retrograde amnesia, a deletion of virtually his entire past.

When he was filmed in 1986 for Jonathan Miller’s extraordinary documentary “Prisoner of Consciousness,” Clive showed a desperate aloneness, fear, and bewilderment. He was acutely, continually, agonizingly conscious that something bizarre, something awful, was the matter. His constantly repeated complaint, however, was not of a faulty memory but of being deprived, in some uncanny and terrible way, of all experience, deprived of consciousness and life itself....


I'd highly recommend reading the entire article. It is extremely sad. Wearing has improved over the years--he is not depressed like he was when he first became amnesic. Luckily, he has a devoted and loving wife who has stayed with him all these years, and he also still remembers how to play the piano (this is procedural memory, and his procedural memory is intact).