Wu Wei

Can Yushchenko dismiss Parliament?

More constitutional wranglings have started as to whether the President has the right to dismiss Parliament on 26 July.

According to the First Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Vasily Nemchenko, there are at least 3 reasons why Yushchenko cannot do this. Here he explains why, (in Russian):

Dismissal of the Verkhovna Rada is possible ( I hope my translation from the Russian is OK, it's off my usual field)

1. if there is no coalition formed a month after the election (in his view a coalition has now been formed).

2. if there is no working VR (in his view the old one is still working in a caretaker capacity)

3. if 30 days after the beginning of a working session (in our case 1 September) it is impossible to begin work in the VR. (in that case it is too early in July)

So in his view, we shouldn't expect any activity in the coming week by the President to dismiss the VR.

So what is Yulia expecting to happen?

And is the Constitutional Court sitting now? Is this an official verdict or just Nemchenko speaking to the press giving his own opinion, as it says in the article?

Pictures of lightning and other objects

This must be the best photo of a lightning flash that I have ever seen. It's borrowed from Lukira, a new kids website, which hopes to entertain them. Looks fun but shouldn't kids be outside in the summer not glued to their screens? Yeah, gotta getta life myself.

and what about this?

and lots of Youtube videos, for better or worse.

Bloggers wanted at Dixon Wilson

For those of you following the "petite anglaise" recent events.

It's hard to leave comments on the site at the moment, as it's so busy. So here is one with a trackback. Petite anglaise was sacked from her work for "gross misconduct", actually for having written a blog about her life in Paris as a single mum. No one knew who she worked for, before the sacking, as she was very careful what she wrote about work, not that it ever seemed that interesting compared with the rest of her life.

Now the whole world knows who these "so called" professional advisers are and how awful they are.

I just googled Dixon Wilson to see what came up. On the first page, there was an item for D-W and human resources management so I clicked through, thinking this must be tongue in cheek.

It seems they are listing the recruitment page of DW with an added banner flashing "bloggers wanted" "talk to other job hunters on the message board". Since the HR manager is listed, I think we should all apply the blogger job slot!

Hope whoever did that doesn't get the sack too.

Out in the open

Not much I can say about Ukrainian politics that hasn't been said already.

The only hopeful thing I can think of is that these days all the changing sides and bribery and "principled stands" are happening more or less under the eyes of the world and not completely in closed and smoke-filled rooms. It must be good for Ukrainians to really know what is going on.

Imagine if we had the same openness in Russia!

Kosovo policewoman bringing order to troublesome town

Fighting prejudices as much as crime, Captain Teuta Nimanaj is running the 90-strong police force in this troublesome town with a wide smile and iron fist.

In an area dubbed the "Wild West" by its own residents, this slim blonde has managed in just nine months to achieve results which proved beyond many of her predecessors.

"There has not been a single high-profile crime or incident since I took the post over," the 30-year-old Nimanaj told AFP in her tidy office in Decane, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the Kosovo capital Pristina.

"There have been ordinary crime cases, but nothing special," she added, smiling.

If you continue with the article, there is no mention of the "iron fist", just

Nimanaj -- the first woman police commander in Kosovo -- says her recipe for success is a "focus on citizens."

"We had to show to the citizens that, first and foremost, the police respect the rules and expect the citizens to do the same," she said.

"It was necessary to invest much effort and explanation to convince them to cooperate."

One of her initiatives was to introduce patrols in the area "talking to the people and listening to their concerns," with units covering troublespots 24 hours per day.

And

Police lieutenant Rasim Syla said his chief "very cleverly uses a new style towards the citizens."

"She comes to every possible dangerous site, talks directly to the people and listens to their concerns. And they have accepted her," Syla added.

Is it really news that talking rather than shooting works better?

Not everyone may agree?

Comment by Scythian Princess on Cybercossack

If there is another election I hope the people of Ukraine wake up and realize what a treasure they have in their current president.

People who claim to be “disillusioned” with the “slow pace” and his “indecision” need to give their heads a shake. Take a look at what he has accomplished — despite the distractions of clearing a deadly poison out of his bloodstream … and pulling knives out of his back.

What has he accomplished? Just imagine life under Yanukhovych et al … and what will be lost once he and his cronies get into power.

But like Yulia says, perhaps the people need to get back to the polls and decide again if they want a thug, a turncoat, an Evita Peron clone, or a visionary statesman to run their country.

If only there was a visionary statesman! Yulia may be using her image for all its worth, but she gets a lot of respect for her management abilities.

Letter from Beirut

Via 3 quarks daily

My Israeli friend Moshe Behar has forwarded this letter from his friend Rasha. She is in Beirut:

Dear All,

I am writing now from a cafe, in West Beirut's Hamra district. It is filled with people who are trying to escape the pull of 24 hour news reporting. Like me. The electricity has been cut off for a while now, and the city has been surviving on generators. The old system that was so familiar at the time of the war, where generators were allowed a lull to rest is back. The cafe is dark, hot and humid. Espresso machines and blenders are silenced. Conversations, rumors, frustrations waft through the room. I am better off here than at home, following the news, live, on the spot documentation of our plight in sound bites. The sound of Israeli warplanes overwhelms the air on occasion more

Connecting with people in six steps

According to Milgram's theory, anyone can reach anyone else through a chain of acquaintances no more than six people long.

This idea, known as "six degrees of separation", is a measure of our social networks.

Judith Kleinfeld, a professor psychology at Alaska Fairbanks University, went back to Milgram's original research notes and found something surprising.

It turned out, she told us, that 95% of the letters sent out had failed to reach the target.

Not only did they fail to get there in six steps, they failed to get there at all.

If 95 or 97 letters out of 100 never reached their target, would you say it was proof of six degrees of separation? So why do we want to believe this?"

"The pleasing idea that we live in a 'small world' where people are connected by 'six degrees of separation' may be the academic equivalent of an urban myth," she says. More

I for one, certainly want to believe it. It's a game I play over dinner in Kosovo whenever I meet a new international. We try and find an acquaintance in common, some place we have both worked usually does the trick. Usually we can find several people we have in common as acquaintances or even good friends, though we have never met before. OK it's a small world that we move in doing this work, but not that small.

But the article says that barriers of race and class (and I would think, nationality also) create stronger barriers than social networks. The only reason we have only one degree of separation from our colleagues is that we move internationally amongst groups of internationals, and so the work itself breaks down the barriers between nationalities and place of work.

Social networks are supposed to be unsustainable beyond around 150, a typical size for a village of several families.

But this was probably observed in less developed societies, certainly before telephones and internet. What is the size of a social network when there is a "telephone lady" in the village? This is a mobile phone effectively rented for use by the village, which can be used to contact distant relatives in towns, to find out the prices in nearby markets, or to find out when boats arrive at the coast.

Certainly 150 is a small number of contacts for anyone to keep in their contacts list, these days.

Moral dilemmas

Some interesting moral dilemmas tested past the thought experiment stage here. You can vote on whether you should kill one person to let 5 others live.

The comments are also interesting. And the practice applies to military and medical ethics. Thank God I never have to deal with these issues on a regular basis in my work, like they would.

Belarus Solidarity Day

A reminder from Ukraine:

Belarus Solidarity Day: Remind the G8 about human rights violations in Belarus, and Russia not to support this dictatorship. more here