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).

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.

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 

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

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

A RAINY DAY IN LENINGRAD (1984)

DOM KNIGI

THE HOUSE OF BOOKS

THE FORMER SINGER BUILDING

LENINGRAD (ST. PETERSBURG)

RUSSIA, USSR, 1984

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

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

LIMA, PERU, RED ON RED

RED ON RED

LIMA, PERU, CHURCH

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.

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. 

SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO CUT LOOSE AND HAVE A REALLY GOOD LAUGH

"THE BEST

MEDICINE"

LIMA, PERU

WISHING YOU JOY & YOUR VERY OWN HAPPY NEW YEAR

IN HONOR OF

JANUARY 16

&

ALLEN ROSS MONASMITH

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).

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."

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.

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.

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.