- US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, who said that America had never had any plans to dismember the USSR and Russia, was not sincere in his statements. As a matter of fact, the USA harbors plans to split Ukraine too. The whole politics...
2008-11-12 16:08:25
- The tense co-existence of poverty and wealth constitutes an embarrassing human drama that unfolds in different forms in different societies...
2008-11-08 20:18:13
- 01/18/2007 - By John C.K. Daly from Terrorism Monitor, January 18 - The collapse of communism in the USSR in 1991 and the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States...
2008-10-26 12:22:25
- INT12International/Diplomacy/CultureKazakh, but proud to be called IndiraBy Sarwar KashaniAlmaty Kazakhstan, Oct 24 IANS People in Kazakhstan admire three Indian heroes - film legend Raj Kapoor, former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru - though not necessarily in that order.Despite the huge popularity they enjoy in this Central Asian country, Raj and Jawaharlal are not common Kazakh names. But many girls here are named after Indira Gandhi and the legacy continues."Indira", read the name tag of a receptionist at a luxurious hotel here. Asked if she was from India, though she didn't look Indian, her reply was an obvious "no". She smiled and looked at the badge."Yeah. This is your prime minister name," she said in broken English."My parents have named me after Indira, an Indian empress who won millions of hearts in Russia during her visit in the 1950s," the 25-year-old said in the Kazakh language, as translated by an interpreter.A 20 something waitress at a restaurant was also named Indira. "My parents named me after Indira Gandhi. I couldn't be like her but even the name is enough," she told this visiting IANS correspondent smilingly."Who knows," she wondered, "may be I will name my daughter after Sonia Gandhi - the most powerful woman in your country now!"Their "pride" is shared by many young and middle aged women in this country of around 130 ethnic groups and 46 faiths with a predominant Muslim population."We don't know if Indira is a Muslim or Hindu name. I have read and known about Indira's charisma. She is an example of women's empowerment for the entire world," said Aiman, 30, an executive at a money exchange bureau in this picturesque city of Kazakhstan, a country that emphasises gender equality."Indian culture and politics have had an impeccable influence on Soviet people," said Temir Zhamankulov, a cultural expert here.Indira Gandhi first visited the erstwhile USSR with her father, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1955 during which she stayed in Almaty almost for half a day."But during her brief stay here she became so popular that people even now have not forgotten and that is why you find many Kazakh girls named Indira," Zhamankulov said.The Nehru-Gandhi family's love for Russia is well known and it has been reciprocated deservingly in many former Soviet republics. Moscow has Indira Gandhi's statue. A square in the Russian capital is named after Nehru.Central Asian political and cultural relations with India are age-old, the expert noted, recalling that Russia's first contact with India began with Afanasy Nikitin, a merchant from Tver on the banks of the Volga river who faced many odds before reaching India in 1469 and lived there for three years."Not only at the people level, many poets and writers in entire Central Asia have written poems and literary pieces dedicated to India, and modern Indian literature has been published in millions of copies in many languages of the former Soviet republics," he said.Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at s.kashani@ians.in--Indo-Asian News Servicesk/pg551 Words**24100744
2008-10-24 03:00:00
- INT42International/Religion'Equating Islam with terrorism is dangerous' LeadBy Sarwar KashaniAstana, Oct 17 IANS The widening gulf between different religions was leading to dangerous global instability, said leaders of Western and Islamic countries here Friday, and warned against equating Islam with terrorism.At an international summit in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, foreign ministers and other participants from 65 countries and international organisations said reconciliatory measures and dialogue between Muslims and Christians were a must for global peace and stability."It is a great pity that we see incessant attempts to authenticate and unify Islam and terrorism. The doctrinal substance of Islam is distorted. This repulses a big chunk of Muslims who cannot help but be offended by such treatment of the Quran," said Kazakhstan Foreign Minister M. Tazhin, addressing the conference, Common World - Progress Through Diversity.Muslim belief, he said, "is declared as extremism, which erodes the principles of tolerance"."Anti-Islamism is a danger with negative consequences not only for the Muslim community but also for Western countries themselves," Tahzin warned.The Kazakhstan foreign minister suggested that the world leaders should not argue on what he referred to as "grammatical subtleties of our life and time and instead address mundane problems affronting the world today".The summit is being held in the backdrop of the perceived widening gap between Islam and the Western world. The venue was a pyramid shaped architectural masterpiece, called the Palace of Peace and Concord in Astana - the hi-tech city in the north-central Kazakhstan.Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev stressed the need to jointly stave off threats to world security due to terrorism and the apparent discord between Muslims and Christians.He said it was "imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity".Kazakhstan - a former USSR state that became independent in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union - is home to nearly 16 million people of 130 ethnic groups practising 46 faiths with a pre-dominant Muslim population. The world's largest landlocked country is bordered by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Caspian Sea towards the west.The central Asian country, rich in mineral and fossil fuel resources, is a presidential republic. Nazarbayev, a popular leader with strong secular leanings, was re-elected as the head of the state in the 2005 elections with a thumping majority, with over 90 percent votes. Kazakhs generally are highly appreciative of President Nazarbayev's social and economic reforms even though some international organisations doubted that the 2005 elections weren't held in accordance with global standards.Condemning what he described as "mass media outrages" against feelings of followers of other religions, Nazarbayev warned that "journalists involved in these practices will face outrages against their own faith"."That is why, it is imperative to stave off the division of the world along civilisational, cultural and religious lines and unite in the face of common threats to humanity."OIC General Secretary Ekrneleddin Ihsanogiu said diversity was one of the fundamental principles of Islamic teachings that vouch for peaceful coexistence of different civilisations."Islam is the religion of peace, moderation and compassion and celebrates diversity and even recognises Christianity and Judaism," Ihsanogiu said.Echoing the same sentiments, foreign ministers and participants from, Pakistan, Russia, Belgium European Union, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Poland and other nations unanimously rejected any form of "tensions based on religious beliefs, cultural and civilisational differences and their use for fuelling hatred, xenophobia and confrontation".They also stressed the need to encourage permanent contacts and dialogue within and between Muslim and Western societies at political and social level.They stressed that international relations should be guided by fundamental principles that underpin at corpus of human rights, democracy and equity. --Indo-Asian News Servicesk/rn/jg674 Words*17101803
2008-10-17 09:01:12
- It was the perfect car for a camping trip to the USSR
2008-10-11 12:16:10
- Israeli intel can't confirm report, but says Zagreb did obtain anti-aircraft platform after fall of USSR.
2008-09-10 03:13:10
- <img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main4_t.jpg'>: <p>In the Cold War '60s, as the space race heated up, another race began: to the center of the earth. <p>Well, perhaps the Soviets and Americans couldn't drill quite that deep, but they could try to get to the so-called Moho, more formally the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, the theorized but much-disputed boundary between the mostly solid crust and the magma-filled mantle. <p>After the launch of an American drilling program to reach the boundary, the Russians joined the race to drill the deepest hole in the world. <p>"Between 1960 and 1962, the combination of economic interest and national pride during the Space Race period inspired scientists of the Soviet Union to plan drilling a "Russian Mohole" whose objective was to reach the Mohorovicic Discontinuity before the American drilling program," Dean Dunn writing in the book, <cite>Science of the Earth.<p>The original goal was soon subsumed by the desire to learn more about how valuable ores formed, so the hopes of the Russian effort eventually landed in the <A href="http://maps.google.com/mapsll=69.383333,30.6&spn=0.3,0.3&q=69.383333,30.6">middle-of-nowhere mining region, Pachenga. There, the Soviets drilled the deepest hole in the history of the world, more than 7 miles deep. <p>At <a href=" http://www.icdp-online.org/contenido/icdp/front_content.phpidcat=695"> the Kola Institute, pictured, the Russians drilled for more than 15 years to reach a crust depth of 40,226 feet, a record that's never been broken. But however successful the mission was as an exploration, the geological findings from the site remain murky and obscured by the way they emanated out of the fading Soviet scientific machine. <p>Stanford geologist and drilling expert, Mark Zoback, said that the Kola borehole was "an anomaly" even within the rather grandiose field of superdeep drilling projects. <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main2_t.jpg'>: <p>The process for drilling a borehole is conceptually simple. A rotary drill bit, like this one, is placed into a shaft. When it reaches the bottom, a powerful motor destroys the bottom of the hole and the hole grows deeper. Fluids are circulated into and out of the hole to cool the drill and maintain the stability of the borehole. When a bit is worn out, it's swapped out. <p>Though the basics are well-known, superdeep drilling is a difficult enterprise. The Soviets encountered a host of technical problems drilling so deep into the earth's surface. Foremost is the high heat that deep in the crust. The Kola engineers, working with limited resources, came up with cooling processes and dozens of special bits that could work at temperatures of over 600 degrees Fahrenheit. <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main_t.jpg'>: <p>The Soviet drilling program began in the early '60s and continued all the way through the slow dissolution of the USSR. But the geopolitical circumstances of the day have kept much of the work shrouded in mystery. Despite the publication of a now out-of-print and hard-to-obtain book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Superdeep-Peninsula-Exploration-Continental-Crust/dp/0387164162"><cite>The Superdeep Well of the Kola Peninsula, edited by Yevgeny Kozlovsky, a Soviet minister of geology, little of the project's data has ever made it out of Russia. <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main5_t.jpg'>: <p>The workers of Kola, like those pictured here with a piece of the drill, also had to live in the remote region. In fact, a sort of company town sprung up around the superdeep hole. As described in the Kozlovsky-edited tome:<p>"Sanitary facilities and shower rooms, a first-aid station, a canteen to cater for staff day and night, a meeting hall and rooms for preventative medical aid provide normal living conditions for the operating personnel of the rig."<p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main6_t.jpg'>: <p>Here we see the Kola Institute's technological control room. The computers you see were the hub for data coming up from miles below. As computer technology advanced and the drilling became more complex, the Soviets began to monitor dozens of data points ranging from simple depth measures to a variety of measures for how hard the drill was working.<p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main15_t.jpg'>: <p>While drilling programs were being conducted across the globe -- notably in Germany -- the Soviet team created their own custom tools, like these alloy drill pipes. Because they were literally boring to unseen depths, the method they usually employed was trial and error. That goes a long way toward explaining how unusually long the project took.<p>Still, Kozlovksy bragged, "The complex scientific-technological experiment of the Kola superdeep drilling was accomplished solely by Soviet technology and technique." <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main8_t.jpg'>: <p>The deep drilling programs were part of a concerted effort by some geologists to get funding for the large-scale facilities, like Kola's Byzantine machinery, that were delivering such spectacular results for astronomers. As recorded in the book, <cite>Super-Deep Continental Drilling and Deep Geophysical Sounding, Karl Fuchs made the space analogy explicit in his opening remarks to a conference on Kola and superdeep drilling. <p>"Earth science have sic a telescope: deep drilling and deep geophysical probing!" Fuchs said. "Are we dedicated enough to use this telescope to go beyond our present limitations, to reach for new frontiers of the earth sciences." <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main10_t.jpg'>: <p>Kola's engineers could swap out drill bits depending on the type of rocks they were trying to move through. They describe a dozen types of core heads such as the KC-212.7/60 TKZ-NU, which "is designed for low rpm drilling in hard rock interbedded with extremely hard rocks." Most of the bits had four roller-cones, like this one, while some had six. <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main9_t.jpg'>: <p>Even though drilling deeper became impossible, the Kola well remains open and structurally intact. Rocks from the hole -- known as cores -- are even still stored at the institute. Instruments still take seismic and other measurements, but state resources have ebbed away from the institute to other geologists who have helped build Russia's oil and gas production. The country now produces about <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/49962.html">9.7 million barrels of oil a day, up from 6.1 million back in 1998. <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<img src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/08/gallery_kola_borehole/main13_t.jpg'>: <p>The Kola borehole produced a wealth of seismic measurements, cores from deep within the Earth, and intriguing results that there might be liquid water in the depths of the earth. <p>Yet for all the effort and years of drilling, modern American and European geologists don't often reference or use Kola data, preferring the more tightly regulated information generated by <a href="http://www.icdp-online.de/sites/ktb/">Germany's KTB deep-coring program. Findings from Kola were just never systematically presented enough for Western scientists. <p>It raises the question: Why put all that effort in to ultimately produce little of value to global science Zoback, the Stanford geologist, said Kola's goals weren't as defined as those of some other projects, perhaps because the project was more about the triumph of just doing than about a particular scientific objective. <p>"You have to acknowledge the fact that it may have been the sense of discovery, the idea that they might discover something that drove them," he said. <p>Or maybe, as the old minister of geology, Kozlovsky, explained in the introduction to the book on Kola, perhaps geology was just a Russian thing. <p>"The Soviet Union has always been more consistent in carrying out large-scale studies of the structure and regularities of the evolution of the continental crust than other countries," he wrote. "This is a deeply rooted tradition in our country, and it is still very much alive." <p><em>Photo: Kola Institute<br style="clear: both;"/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.phphfmm=v2:1e08418fce1f0befa3cb80922663f398:9VHfXGcjgXlJ/9D02H0HvM1f22Gl63ESpygaa1TmYwcPPkChCqGxUMB+OXI4AyaRSmFBYMs7JKIbg5g7XmXGxncqlMpTxvO0qRGnafRblIg='><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.phphfmm=v2:23e0e00589f00b423f388a17fbdd522e:dsM5tCjn8dNhe0uKyufrABJ7NpOO2MtChxnp7VSyumlcTCfgEosUFNv7UYTW/aiJWT58xWpPHdqML+IusWxNEibf+WKG2T2EemTwKSwxLUA='><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.phphfmm=v2:38c2521d4de74ee0b3f2c23bff530f99:Xact+TCjiXH6v/UJ4KpH62JwaDKNtmkYwrXOZkabHFKdVNoBjCZpeZ9gV1EVtsspZfj2gdGpoy8BNe0Qsxk3jVWrTubu4HXa6L6hzFqLvB8='><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'/> <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.phphfmm=v2:dc51c792b06cf247a63557a0b509a9bb:6yxdJbC7yOqU1SGJQkmItFe55Ysf1P3eIUxAiu2/8CFzPmUA1dAnBrdIPgLVcsViv+CPPvX8zcVMAg6BQVPd3e/Lf1he9/kN/AAUNWBPBnk='><img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'/><br style="clear: both;"/> <img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdoi=d6b9d1ce29afe3d853927128158068b3" height="1" /><img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.phpi=d6b9d1ce29afe3d853927128158068b3" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" alt=""/><p><a href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/indexa=cpj8Cp"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/indexi=cpj8Cp" border="0"><img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/373947070" height="1" />
2008-08-25 05:00:00
- Ukraine held an army parade yesterday to celebrate 17 years of independence from the USSR. The display of military might follows Russia's invasion of Georgia, a mutual...
2008-08-25 03:00:00
- Goodwill between Armenia and Russia has deep historical roots and is sustained by Russia's recent role as Armenia's...
2008-08-12 19:31:58
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