Of Time Travel and Politics

Pushkinskaya Ulitsa, Kharkov, Ukraine

I just got back from a ten-day trip to Ukraine, and the second I got off in Borispol Airport in Kiev, all I could ask myself was whether it was a plane that I had taken there, or perhaps a time machine:

...it takes me a good two hours to stop shaking when I step out in Borispol Airport in Kiev.  Perhaps it’s the drab colors of the place, the fur hats, the archaic trolleybuses, the same Slavic features and grim expressions: why, it’s exactly as I had imagined. 

But it seems like little has changed in politics as well as the streets of the former Soviet Union.  Yesterday the Guardian reported that its Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, has been expelled from Russia, for writing that Russia under Putin has become a "virtual mafia state".

Little has changed:
Lenin still stands tall above Freedom Square
in the center of Kharkov.

After spending 45 minutes in an airport cell, [Harding] was sent back to the UK on the first available plane – with his visa annulled and his passport only returned to him after taking his seat. Harding was given no specific reason for the decision, although an airport security official working for the Federal Border Service, an arm of the FSB intelligence agency, told him: "For you Russia is closed."

Bravo, Putin. You've only further confirmed the accusations hurled against you.


~plain Lipton black~ 

AOL buying The Huffington Post?

For $315 million, at that. 


Talk about an "unlikely pairing of two online media giants".


NYTimes reports.


~blueberry~ 

Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen...Next up, Iran.

Iran's opposition leaders, Moussavi and Karroubi, called for a peaceful rally today in support of the fight for democracy ensuing throughout the Arab world:

“In order to declare support for the popular movements in the region, in particular, the freedom-seeking movements of the people of Egypt and Tunisia, we request a permit to invite the people for a rally."

Their Facebook page now has over 13,000 fans: an all-too low number for the type of rally they wish to hold.
The NYTimes quotes a young opposition supporter asking why the Arabs could stand firm, "while we [Iranians] got scared and ran away". 
Perhaps because Mubarak, no matter how corrupt and unjust a leader, is no Ahmadinejad, and his young soldiers, unlike the army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, support the people and not a regime.





~written with the help of a cup of blueberry tea~