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Russia: Moscow Half a Century Ago

Veronica Khokhlova · 04:39 · Eastern & Central Europe

LJ user fool_4_lifetime found a rare photo album in a Moscow dump - Im Flug nach Moskau, by Erich Einhorn, ARTIA, 1959 - and scanned and posted 60 spreads of Moscow photos from it in the moya_moskva (My Moscow) LJ community. (Warning: bandwidth intensive!)

Here is one of the photos:

And here are some comments from other bloggers:

[…]

angel_y: A golden dump you've got! Would you mind sharing the address? )))))

[…]

onair: We used to have an amazingly beautiful city. A huge thanks to you, you've done a great deed.

gr_s: We used to have a diverse city. The photos that were allowed to be included in the album are beautiful, yes.

[…]

psych_dima: Thank you! The [woman] with a cow is especially good (is that the area of Leninsky Prospekt?), it reminded me of my childhood, when the villages began almost next to the [subway station Leninsky Prospekt] (that used to be the edge of Moscow until 1960). =)))

[…]

bogantsev: It's incredible how everyone's [overexcited about the photos]. We have fountains, and the athletes, and the wonderful, smiling faces!

And it's true that if you need to and when you need to, you can turn Moscow into Paris. But [these are pure lies!] This is what propaganda is! So why are you [so credulous]? [At that time], we had just rolled our tanks out of Budapest, half the country had just been released from prison camps - and you're asking for the smiling Moscow.

And the most amazing thing about it is that if you got hold of the literature from those times and of similar content, you'd turn your noses and take [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn] instead. But with the photos, everyone's feeling nostalgic!

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China: Ping…ping…pfft

John Kennedy · 02:42 · East Asia

The earthquake near Taiwan last night which snapped six underwater internet cables, seems to have left a large part of Asia, particularly the Northeast, struggling for an internet fix.

Those with internet censorship circumvention tools (proxies) already installed on their computers seem to be doing a little better, but for Hong Kong and mainland China, access is now mostly limited to local sites, but even those have been affected as well. China's largest internet portal website Sina.com's blog site shows almost no mention of the earthquake or the blackout, and RSS feeds slowed to a trickle around lunch time today. MSN and Yahoo! Messenger have been affected as well, although QQ and GTalk are operating normally. Phone calls to other continents, some bloggers are saying, don't connect.

A post from independent blogger Wang Pei shows that not only are Chinese netizens stuck inside the region, but Chinese websites and users seem to have disappeared off the map as well:
(more…)

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Links for Wed, 2006-12

Central Asia & Caucasus

Alisher reports that the new governor of the Andijon province, the site of the 2005 protests and massacre, has imposed new restrictions on Islamic religious practice, including requirements that all restaurants serve alcohol and that children and teenagers not be admitted to mosques for public prayers.

South Asia

Pooja Malpani goes home to Kerala after a year and a half, and already, things are a little difference. “The whole scenario seems so chaotic with a 2 laner being used as a 1-5 laner and I’d feel really scared in a car when a bus was next to us ignoring the squeamish little car and headed straight on its way as though we ceased to exist.”

Central Asia & Caucasus

At neweurasia, Peter reports on constitutional amendments in Turkmenistan that both pave the way for acting President Berdymuhammedov to continue in the role and sweep aside any hope that Turkmenbashi's death would usher in openness and democracy.

South Asia

National Highway, who attended the Global Voices summit in Delhi, has some thoughts to share.

South Asia

Moju on what seems to be an absurd reason to differentiate between Sri Lankans and foreigners. “When they called they were told that since the President is visiting the area to inspect Tsunami relief activity that all guest houses have been instructed not to provide accommodation for Sri Lankans and only to foreigners.”

South Asia

Dr Yunus's speeches of late have been filled with a slightly neutral tone observes Drishtipat. “However, to me when I hear him stress on holding any election rather than a good, credible election, he seems to be trying too hard to keep the status quo.”