Monthly Archives: January 2008

News 31 Jan

By AK | Published: January 31, 2008
The Western media has begun to whine about the Russian presidential elections five weeks in advance. Their beef is that Kasyanov was barred from running, ostensibly because above 5% of his required signatures were rigged, but actually to undercut the last independent candidate – Russia’s last and only hope of salvation from the ’slippery slope [...]
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News 25 Jan

By AK | Published: January 25, 2008
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Russia, due to its strong macroeconomic fundamentals and relative isolation from the world economy, will weather the oncoming credit crisis well. In fact, Kudrin (the Finance Minister) suggested ‘Russia and other countries with large gold and currency reserves can…can support the global economy by flexing the financial might [...]
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Editorial: Annals of Demographic Doubleback – You Live How You Eat

By AK | Published: January 25, 2008
I have recently stumbled across Kurzweil’s The 10% Solution For a Healthy Life. According to the book (which is meticulously sourced), the ‘typical American diet gets 35 to 40 percent of its calories from fat’, in contrast to traditional east Asian diets where the figure is just 10%. This translates into excess cholesterol in the [...]
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Editorial: Annals of Resurgent Russia – CIA World Factbook 2008

By AK | Published: January 23, 2008
The 2008 version of the CIA World Factbook has been published. While the demographic data has not been updated, new economic estimates have been published for 2007. Firstly, let’s take a look at the basics. Russia’s GDP is now estimated at 2076bn $ in 2007, up from 1723bn $ in 2006. This is not just because [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Hiatus/Plans

By AK | Published: January 18, 2008
Dear readers, (of whom there are 160 now) Unfortunately, we have some pressing commitments at the moment, which will last up to January 27th. This means that there will be few, if any, posts until then. Nonetheless, we certainly don’t plan to stop blogging, and here’s a look at some of the topics that are going to come [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Tagged | 3 Comments

News 16 Jan

By AK | Published: January 16, 2008
Freedom House publishes its 2008 report on Freedom in the World – below is a map of how much freedom they think there is in each country. (Green is Free, Yellow is Partly Free, Purple is Not Free). Russia scored a 6 for Political Rights and and 5 for Civil Rights (1 is best, 7 is [...]
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Core Article: What We Believe

By AK | Published: January 15, 2008
In the first 5 days of its existence, this blog has been priveleged to receive more than more than 200 page views from more than 100 visitors from 18 different countries. We have also been linked to by the Winthrop88 blog and Marginalia (probably the leading English-language blog about Latvia) – of those that we’re [...]
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News 14 Jan

By AK | Published: January 14, 2008
President Putin’s visit to Bulgaria to bring pipeline deal, NPP contract A new company is being created, in which Russia will own a 51% stake, to build a pipeline to carry Russian oil via the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Burgas and Greece’s Alexandroupolis on the Aegean, so as to bypass the congested Bosporus. It will [...]
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