archives :: Asia
"send lawyers, guns, and vowels"
(Post title shamelessly lifted from Orrin Judd) In the months after 9/11 I often looked at maps of Central Asia, memorizing the names, locations, and geopolitical orientation of the various *stans: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and of course Afghanistan... [read more]
Gaia's hammer
Tim Blair is posting frequent news and blog roundups on the tsunami's aftermath. His latest is here. The death toll has now increased to 24,000. Earlier tonight, it hit 20,000; the number is growing by 9/11 amounts every few hours,... [read more]
Russia and Ukraine, II
Several days back, reader TomBombadil posted a few questions which led to an unplanned Russia Week here at andúnië.net. I all but exhausted my knowledge of the subject here. Master Bombadil then followed up with a veritable essay of his... [read more]
Russia and Ukraine
It's safe to assume that now, and for the forseeable future, Vladimir Putin is Russia. He remains wildly popular at home—even after a string of terror attacks that, had they occurred here, might well have gotten the Bush Administration voted out for incompetence. [read more]
drive-by rant
The Third Reich is the perennial poster child for murderous regimes, but the twentieth century gave us so many others: the USSR of Lenin and Stalin, China during the Cultural Revolution, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. And horrifying human rights abuses continue, from Saudi Arabia to Zimbabwe to Cuba to...well, China (still). [read more]
with friends like these
The planned US troop redeployment in South Korea can't happen quickly enough. It's about time the twentysomething ingrates took responsibility for defending their own damn country. [read more]
good news on the subcontinent
ISLAMABAD: Putting behind past rivalries and pledging to take forward the peace process between the two countries, India and Pakistan on Tuesday came out with a Joint Statement on the sidelines of the 12th SAARC Summit, agreeing to “commence”... [read more]
