Dan O'Huiginn

Oh, now this is getting silly…
Russian hosting company Garanthost is [closing down the accounts](http://blog.garanthost.ru/?p=12) (RUS) of Georgian customers, and refusing to serve Georgians.
Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, [Hostovik](http://www.hostovik.ru/gruzin.htm) is offering discount hosting for anybody who will display an “I am Georgian” logo on their site.
[via [webplanet](http://webplanet.ru/news/life/2006/10/09/gruzin.html) and [kbke](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kbke/)]

Warning: cynicism ahead…
It seems that now Saakashvili has won his elections, he knows he can stop ratcheting up the rhetoric, and grovelingly [offer](http://izvestia.ru/politic/article3097366/) (RUS) to meet Putin anywhere for talks.
Back home, the Industry will save Georgia party are making a pretty futile shot at copying the imagery of the colour revolutions. Roses in hands, they held a march in protest at alleged election fraud last week – and would doubtless have been totally ignored, except that somebody decided to [take some potshots at them](http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=19604)

You know what would be useful and doesn’t exist? An rss feed (or similar) for UN Security Council resolutions. Anybody found one hiding somewhere in a corner of the internet?

From the comments of an Abu Aardvark post: “_Subjectively speaking, I think we (the US) had a lot more respect for the Soviet Union than we do for Islamists and their allies_”
This rings true. I can’t work out what it proves, but I’d love to be able to. I would have expected al-Qaeda to get a lot of respect, through being caricatured as an comic-book evil genius. Instead, it seems the stereotype has stuck to evil, without any of the genius.
Why? Do the powers that be have less respect for non-state actors? Is it because nobody reads Arabic, so we can’t understand their cunning plans? Have we got so hung up on the ‘they hate us because we’re free’ angle that we’re blind to the Cunning Plans they do have? Is it objectively true that the leaders of al-Qaeda are less cunning than the old men in the Kremlin?
And what are the consequences of this different stereotype on how the USA (and Britain, by extension) behave?
Also: yes, I know I’m posting a ridiculous amount today. I had one of those moments where I did a word count on my ‘notes too shoddy to put anywhere’, and decided that 400,000 words of notes kept to myself is utterly useless. I apologise to my lone reader for inflicting all this on you – I still have a vague hope that one day I’ll find the right balance between hoarding information and inflicting all my crap on people.

Quick news from Hungary: the Prime Minister is keeping his job. There are protests going on outside Parliament at the moment: I’ll waddle over in an hour or two, but judging by Sunday it’s unlikely to amount to much.
The next date for things to happen is Revolution Day in a fortnight’s time.

Just as al-Qaeda (*) love prolonging the war in Iraq, so they must be overjoyed every time Blair or (usually) Bush go on some belligerent, over the top rant about Iraq. Then, it becomes so much easier for them to paint as evil megalomaniacs.
So, whenever Bush ramps up the rhetoric about Iraq, what he’s doing is putting domestic party politics above the fight against al-Qaeda(*). In other words, helping his country’s enemies to score a few political points.
Yes, this point has doubtless been made better elsewhere. But obviously it still hasn’t got through.
* no, I’m not happy boiling ‘The Enemy’ down to one sinister cartoon organization. Nor do I much like world politics being a ‘fight’ against anybody – but it’ll do.

How can you develop a service without sharing a language with your users?
Holed up in Budapest, my head too messed up to do any proper work (eep! the doom she is a-coming!), I’ve been listening to danah Boyd‘s keynote at the blogtalk conference that’s just winding up in Vienna.
She touches on the fact that the creators of Orkut don’t have the faintest idea what their Portugese or Hindi-speaking users are doing. I’d always vaguely assumed that there would be a fair few Portugese-speakers within the Orkut development team, for instance. But obviously not.
It’d be a nice little project for a journalist or an anthropologist, to work out how much the developers of these sites know about their users.

Karachi politics:it’s all about town planning. This time, riots over the power supplies. More usually, riots over minibus accidents.
Why is it that I hear so much more about rioting in Karachi than in [other giant cities](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_most_populous_cities_in_the_world)? Could be just me paying uneven attention, but I get the impression that Karachi is creaking more than most under the strain of its growth.
In any case, it holds some kind of gotham-like fascination – and wouldn’t you want to be mayor of a city like Karachi?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting “all but closed down” Shanghai. Huh? This is a [city of 10 million people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai) – surely it’s crazy to interrupt all that for five days?

Nothing here that you couldn’t better read elsewhere; summary for my own amusement under the cut

» Read the rest of this entry «

I’d like to point you all towards a few blogs with real content, written by people who know what they’re talking about. I’m biased about all three: I’m a contributor to the first (and member of the group running it), I was taught by the author of the second, and the driving force behind the third is a close friend who I spent a year sharing a house with. Despite that, they’re all great!
First, the [Iraq Analysis Group](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/) have just launched their new [blog](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog/). This is one of the most awesome groups of people I’ve ever worked with. They’ve been campaigning and thinking about Iraq since the 1990s, first as the [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog/), and then as this group after sanctions were lifted. They (OK, we) have accumulated a large [collection of resources to learn about Iraq](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/). It isn’t yet comprehensive, but it’s probably the best listing of it’s kind on the web. I strongly recommend this site: of the project I’ve been involved in, this is one of the few that I believe in 100%, and I’m continually impressed by all the people involved.
Then there’s [sarasvatam cakshuh](http://sarasvatam.blogspot.com/), a blog about Sanskrit written by Somadevah Vasudeva. The focus is on primary texts, so this probably won’t be your thing unless you read Sanskrit. That that doesn’t stop me squeeing about it, I’m afraid. There’s a good amount of [snarkiness](http://sarasvatam.blogspot.com/2006/03/skmadhynam-part-1.html) aimed at people who write about Sanskrit based on translations and small selections of original texts. Totally justified snarkiness: Somadevah is one of the few who has read immense amounts of Sanskrit literature. Some of it he’s committed to memory, and the rest is stored on his Mac, with copious annotations and some weird geek-fu that lets him instantly find any reference. Reading this blog makes me very aware of how little I know, but it also spurs me on to look at more Sanskrit texts.
Finally, another [blog](http://armstrade.blogspot.com/) on the borderline between research and campaigning. This one is from the [Campaign Against the Arms Trade](http://www.caat.org.uk/), which has been pluggin away at its issue for some 30 years, has kept going through thick and thin, and has a great body of expertise on the basty bits of British foreign policy and corporate nastiness. As with anything focussed on content rather than memes, this might be heavy going if you don’t care about the issues.

Next stop is a country I can’t help thinking of as Czechoslovakia – and yes, I understand I deserve a slap for that.
The [blogs](http://prague.tv/city-beat/?p=196) and the [wires](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aFjpqJHkzB2w&refer=europe) are talking about floods, floods and more floods. No doubt if Prague floods again we’ll see it on British TV. There’s plenty about bird flu as well; again something that gets international attention wherever it happens. News I would otherwise have missed is the [legalization of same-sex marriages](http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=178051)
There are a few English-language Czech blogs around, [mostly](http://prague-spot.com/blog/) [personal](http://www.thediary.org/smz) [diaries](http://kolokolo.blogspot.com/) [of](http://zbarnes.blogspot.com/) [Prague residents](http://jenandderrick.blogspot.com/) – with all the holiday snaps and personal trivia that implies. [Gazing into the Abyss](http://gazingabyss.blogspot.com) at least has a useful list of East European blogs, categorised by country.
[This blog](http://prague.tv/city-beat/) is apparently part of a Prague city-guide website. It has frequent news updates, and [this charming excursion](http://prague.tv/city-beat/?p=188) into exports of Czech children’s TV. Cartoon characters “Pat and Mat” have gained htemselves fansites in [Switzerland](http://www.schaeppi.tv/patandmat/) and [Japan](http://www.krtek.jp/)
Hmm….that country turned out a lot less interesting than Mongolia and South Korea, but nonetheless I think now is a good time to move my spodding somewhere else. Who knows, maybe I’ll return to stories from Prague some other day.

Next stop, South Korea. An easier one this, because there’s so much going on in the country, and in many ways they’re way ahead of us.
Famously, there is [OhmyNews](http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp), which got the attention of the net pundits a couple of years ago and sparked the craze for ‘Citizen Journalism’.
Then there’s gaming – the world of Korean MMORPGs is so far ahead of ours that it’s embarassing. A top player like [Lee Yunyeol](http://rossignol.cream.org/?p=284) can earn $200,000 a year, and is on television daily. Gaming/Internet cafes called “[PC Bangs](http://www.driftreality.com/seoul/pcbang.html)” are gradually being replaced by playing at home over a broadband connection, and so the national addiction continues to grow.
South Korean pop culture is taking over East Asia, in a trend given the moniker ‘[Hallyu](http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=37127)’, or ‘Korean Wave’. The anti-Hallyu backlash in Taiwan and Japan has made governments there consider restricting Korean-origin broadcasts on national television, and some have even demanded that Korean television broadcast programs from other countries. Currently trendy Korean exports include the film [Oldboy](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050324/REVIEWS/50310001/1023) and the singer [Rain](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/27/news/rain.php?rss) ([Ji-Hoon Jung](http://www.asiafinest.com/korean/rain-bi.htm). But I wonder if the whole ‘Korean Wave’ is a storm in a teacup; in 2004 the revenues from foreign sales of Korean TV were only [$71.5m](http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200504/kt2005042117374410440.htm)
[Global Voices](http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/east-asia/south-korea/) doesn’t cover Korea as well as I’d expected, but it does at least point to [Asian pages](http://asiapages.typepad.com/), the diary of a foreign worker in South Korea.
Unlike with Mongolia, this has been all pop-culture and no politics. Korea is important enough that we get to hear about the bigger political stories anyway. Recently, the news has been how the [Prime minister forced to resign](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4804018.stm) because he was playing golf rather than dealing with a rail strike. He’s been replaced by [South Korea’s first female Prime Minister](http://en.ce.cn/World/Asia-Pacific/200603/24/t20060324_6483052.shtml). And we all heard about the [cloning scandal](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4824486.st), because that had sex and science and scandal, all rolled up together.
So, that’s enough of Korea. On to the next country…somewhere East European this time, I think.

Let’s start with one of those proverbially obscure, remote countries: Mongolia.
Did you notice the [political crisis](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4616050.stm) there earlier this month? No, neither did I. The BBC’s narrative is: Prime Minister starts anti-corruption drive. The main party, the MPRP, pulls out of his government. There are protests in favour of the Prime Minister and his party. By the time the dust settles, we’ve all lost interest.
For general political commentary, Nathan at Registan has been [churning out Mongolia posts](http://www.registan.net/index.php?cat=15), and his [del.icio.us linklist](http://del.icio.us/nathanhamm/mongolia) points to some of the more interesting news coverage of Mongolia. [East Asia Watch](http://www.eastasiawatch.com/category/mongolia/) has some posts about Mongolia, and [Shards of Mongolia](http://shardsofmongolia.blogspot.com/) has a lot more.
At NewEurasia, a [Mongolia blog](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/) got going in the past few days, and it’s going through the initial posting-splurge of any new blog. The author has the advantage of living in Mongolia, and he’s coming up with some interesting things.
Mongolia’s only non-government news TV station, Eagle TV, is [expanding broadcasting to 16 hours a day](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=24). The man behind Eagle TV, Tom Terry, has his own [blog](http://terrycom.net/blog/). From that site, it looks like Eagle TV has a strong Christian slant, as Terry tries to bring to Mongolia “Faith and Freedom”. In his [book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597817260/qid=1133994992/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-1959482-3403105?s=books%26v=glance%26n=283155) of the same title he argues, according to one Amazon reviewer, that “(Christian) faith and human freedom are so inextricably connected that no culture can for long have one without the other”. Well, I’d rather have missionary TV than no non-government media, and at least there are rumours of a second news station starting up in competition. Multiple news stations in a country with a population [under 3 million](http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/mg.html) isn’t bad!
On more cultural topics, he talks about [attempts to reintroduce the traditional Mongolian script](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=22), and about the [preservation of Buddhist artfacts](http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=20).
The [Mongolian Matters](http://www.mongolianmatters.com/) blog has a series of posts on th idolisation of Genghis Khan: a Japanese film, Ulan Bator’s airport being renamed Chinggis Khaan. [Plans are even afoot](http://www.mongolianmatters.com/2006/02/mongolias-genghis-khan-craze-1153.html) to create a 40-metre statue of Genghis Khan on horseback, with a golden whip.
Places to look for more: [global voices](http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/central-asia-caucasus/mongolia/) links to the blogs, (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/mongolia) collects pretty pictures. There is a [Mongolian State News Agency](http://www.montsame.mn/). Most of the [other](http://www.mongolianews.com/) [Mongolian](http://mongolianews.net/) [news websites](http://www.insidemongolia.com/) just reprint stories from the international press. [The UB Post](http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/) seems has substantially more original content.