"YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS ARE AS DAZZLING AS YOUR SUBJECTS"

Monday, January 30, 2012

THE BIG HOUSE AT THE KENNEDY COMPOUND TO GO TO THE EDWARD M. KENNEDY INSTITUTE FOR THE UNITED STATES SENATE


MAN OF THE SENATE


EDWARD "TED" KENNEDY

On behalf of her late husband, Victoria Kennedy has donated the main house in the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, it was announced today (here and here).

Friday, January 27, 2012

GRIGORY YAVLINSKY IS COUNTED OUT


THE RUSSIAN
CENTRAL ELECTION COMMISSION
REJECTS GRIGORY YAVLINSKY'S
TWO-MILLION VOTER LIST
January 27, 2012


GRIGORY YAVLINSKY IN THE AFTERMATH
OF HIS FIRST RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA

In 1996, Boris Yeltsin won; Yavlinsky came in fourth. As I wrote (here) in the run-up to the end of Yeltsin's time in office:
Grigory Yavlinsky is trying to capitalize on an anti-corruption crusade as well, but from the side of the clean democrat. He has never met an offer from the Yeltsin administration that he thought worthy of bringing him from opposition to active participation in running the country. He did come in fourth in the last presidential election, and his Yabloko party is one of only four to break the five percent barrier and win a place in the Duma. The party is said to be increasing its organizational base in the country, and Yavlinsky himself is the top-ranking democrat/reformer in the polls, former Nizhny-Novgorod governor Boris Nemtsov having dropped precipitously after his service in the national government.
In 2000, Yavlinsky ran again. It was the first time Vladimir Putin stood for president (and won); Yavlinsky came in third.

At best, in this 2012 contest, Yavlinsky was polling in the low single digits. Why shut him out of the running? There seem to be two main plausible hypotheses: Putin needs every vote he can get to make it up to 50% in the first round; Yavlinsky's candidacy would entitle him to an army of observers to help keep the election results "free" and "fair."

Yavlinsky today said he would file suit against the Central Electoral Commission.

The election is March 4.

Some interesting additional reading can be found here and here and here.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

TWO DECADES OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (ADA)

THE AMERICANS WITH 
DISABILITIES ACT OF 1990 (ADA) 
GOES INTO EFFECT 
January 26, 1992 


A WORKING CANE 
January 26, 2012 

ADA Home Page here 

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

MOSCOW UNIVERSITY (MGU) IS 257 YEARS OLD


MOSCOW UNIVERSITY
FOUNDED BY
EMPRESS ELIZABETH
(TSARINA ELIZAVETA)
January 25, 1755


MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY (MGU), 1984
One of Stalin's Skyscrapers
The Seven высотки (vysotkyi)

Official website here

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

ST. PETERSBURG BECOMES LENINGRAD, January 24, 1924

ST. PETERSBURG
IS RE-NAMED IN HONOR OF
VLADIMIR LENIN
January 24, 1924
(Three days after the Soviet leader's death)

KAZAN CATHEDRAL
LENINGRAD, RUSSIA, USSR, 1984

Sixty years after the former capital's name was changed from St. Petersburg
&
seven years before it was changed back to St. Petersburg

Monday, January 23, 2012

A RAINY DAY IN LENINGRAD (1984)

DOM KNIGI
THE HOUSE OF BOOKS


THE FORMER SINGER BUILDING

LENINGRAD (ST. PETERSBURG)
RUSSIA, USSR, 1984

Sunday, January 22, 2012

JAMES CARROLL, BORN THREE DAYS AFTER JANIS JOPLIN, TURNS SIXTY-NINE

JAMES CARROLL
b. January 22, 1943


JAMES CARROLL

WINNER, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION (1996)
for
AMERICAN REQUIEM: GOD, MY FATHER,
AND THE WAR THAT CAME BETWEEN US

HIS MOST RECENT BOOK
is
JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM:
HOW THE ANCIENT CITY IGNITED OUR WORLD

OTHERS INCLUDE
HOUSE OF WAR: THE PENTAGON AND
THE DISASTROUS RISE OF AMERICAN POWER
&
SECRET FATHER
(interesting review here & long interview-cum-review here)

CARROLL'S OWN WEBSITE is here

Saturday, January 21, 2012

VLADIMIR LENIN dies, January 21, 1924


VLADIMIR LENIN
April 22, 1870-January 21, 1924


THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
AT THE LENIN MAUSOLEUM
MOSCOW, 1984

Another view of the Mausoleum, here
More Lenin, here and here and here and here and here and here and here

Friday, January 20, 2012

Thursday, January 19, 2012

JANIS JOPLIN b. January 19, 1943

JANIS JOPLIN
January 19, 1943-October 4, 1970


"SIXTY-NINE!

NO WAY!"

LOTS more Joplin: here and via the "JANIS JOPLIN" label below.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

LIMA, PERU, FOUNDED BY FRANCISCO PIZARRO 477 YEARS AGO

LIMA, PERU 
FOUNDED 
January 18, 1535 


FRANCISCO PIZARRO 
FOUNDER OF LIMA, PERU 
AS DEPICTED IN THE 
LIMA CATHEDRAL BASILICA OF 
ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE & EVANGELIST 

An account of this year's celebration of the anniversary, the FIESTA de LIMA (The Lima Fest) can be found here

Monday, January 16, 2012

Sunday, January 15, 2012

STUART EIZENSTAT IS SIXTY-NINE

STUART E. EIZENSTAT
b. January 15, 1943

STUART EIZENSTAT
AS CHIEF DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER
TO PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER
Published in BUSINESS WEEK, August 25, 1980 (p. 29)

A lawyer by training, Eizenstat went on to be Ambassador to the European Union and then hold various trade and economic posts under President Bill Clinton, culminating as Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs and then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury (details here). He is currently partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling (details here).

Saturday, January 14, 2012

TAIWAN HOLDS AN ELECTION; WANG DAN IS IN THE NEWS


MA YING-JEOU
RE-ELECTED
PRESIDENT OF TAIWAN


WANG DAN AT HARVARD
A.M., 2001, Ph.D, 2008

STUDENT LEADER IN BEIJING IN 1989
("TIANANMEN," "JUNE 4")
SEVEN YEARS IN CHINESE JAILS
NOW TEACHING AT
NATIONAL TSING HUA UNIVERSITY
HSINCHU, TAIWAN

As a sidebar on the Taiwan elections held today, the Washington Post ran a piece by Andrew Higgins featuring a lecture by Wang Dan on "why China, too, needs elections." What made this deemed newsworthy was apparently the presence in the audience of students from the mainland, some of whom "rushed to pose for a souvenir photograph with the man reviled by Beijing as a 'counter-revolutionary' agitator."

In the end, Beijing's preferred candidate in the Taiwanese presidential race, the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou, won handily enough, though with a smaller margin than last time. The details and some of the context can be found here.

The L.A. Times article quotes a People's Daily editorial which says, seemingly without any sense of irony, "Ma Ying-jeou's victory was the choice made by Taiwan's people."

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

RHP (RANK HATH PRIVILEGE): THE CHINESE RULING ELITE & THEIR CARS


THE ELITE FLEET

CARS AWAITING THEIR OFFICIALS
IN THE INTERIOR COURTYARD OF
THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE
DURING THE 17th CONGRESS OF
THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
BEIJING, OCTOBER 2007

The Audi A6 is identified as the "semiofficial car of the Chinese Communist Party" by Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times this week (here). Above is a flock of Audis waiting for delegates to the 17th Congress of the CC to be disgorged from the Great Hall of the People in October 2007. Cars for the privileged in the People's Republic of China are not new, and popular anger against the abuses of this system has been noted before, for example, in a 2006 Edward Cody piece in the Washington Post (here). What is perhaps new is the posting of cellphone photographs of offending vehicles online, reported by Demick.

An earlier example of this well-worked-out system of RHP (Rank Hath Privilege) can be seen here, in a photograph taken three decades ago in Nanjing.

Monday, January 9, 2012

ONE LEG AT A TIME: KOIZUMI II, NAZARBAYEV II, & PUTIN & BUSH TOO MANY TIMES TO COUNT


GET READY
SET
FIND YOUR MARK

JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI
KAZAKHSTAN PRESIDENT NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN &
AMERICAN PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (L-R)
find their marks for the Expanded Family Photograph
at the St. Petersburg, Russia, G-8 Summit (July 2006)

Only Nazarbayev is still in the same office, although Putin is running to reclaim his old post in fifty-five days' time (March 4, 2012). Another Koizumi is here (yesterday's post); another Nazarbayev here. For a sampling of the many Putin and Bush posts, see here and here (for more, please see the labels below). For one of the two of them, "Alone Together," see here.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

KOIZUMI HITS SEVENTY

JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI
b. January 8, 1941


JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER
JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI

PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE G-8
SUMMIT IN ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
July 2006

Shortly before Koizumi resigned as the third-longest-serving
postwar Prime Minister (five years, five months, 2001-2006)

Since then there have been six new prime ministers in five years. Some details and discussion of why this is and whether it is bad for Japan or not, can be found here.