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The week in Finnish politics (1-6 July)
This week in Finnish politics was dominated by the results of last week’s Euro summit in Brussels (26-29/06) and the appointment of a new defence minister.
The week in began with a visit of Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen to Parliament’s Grand Committee, which deals with European affairs. In contrast with the optimism the outcome of last week’s Euro ( Read more... ) -
Ограничение количества митингующих
Кто-нибудь знает, по какой статье законодательства РФ можно ограничивать количества участников в акциях протеста? Ведь бред какой-то - разрешить митинг и одновременно сказать, что туда может прийти лишь столько-то людей. -
Book review: "Sunset Park" by Paul Auster
While many critics have focused on this book as either a tale of the credit crunch or an analysis of loss, for me the most striking feature of this novel was its structure. (Therefore, I have not discussed the plot here, but included a brief summary of it separately below.) I feel that this novel’s composition held back the plot and kept the ( Read more... ) -
"You say you'll change the constitution..."
Many of you may by now have read Fintan O'Toole's article in Tuesday's Irish Times. In a nutshell, he writes that our system of government, the cabinet system, has been bypassed three times in the past three years (the blanket bank guarantee in 2008; the bailout of 2010; Budget 2012, 'leaked' to other EU states). That is, the body that should have ( Read more... ) -
Meanwhile, in Russia [Duma '11]
Communists in Samara allegedly try to hijack a Russian Post van. In the run-up to the State Duma elections on the 4th of next month some contenders are getting a little paranoid. According to the general director of RP, Aleksandr Kiselyov, writing to the Russian Director of Public Prosecutions Yuri Chaika, at 6.30pm on Sunday a group of Communist ( Read more... ) -
On listening to sean-nós
Listening to sean-nós singing forces you to do a lot of things differently. It’s a real re-education. First of all, if you really want to understand the words, you have to sit still and listen very hard, especially if you are not a native speaker of Irish. A few seconds of doing something else - like typing this blog post, for example - and not ( Read more... ) -
Мои твиты
- Вс, 02:04: Russian and political correctness http://t.co/Kusw80G5
