Sandra Kalniete, a former Ambassador from Latvia to the UN, pens a strong op/ed on EU relations with Russia.

Russia acts with open hostility toward efforts by Central and Eastern European countries to find historical truth. Putin has emphasized on several occasions that Russia will not take responsibility for crimes committed by the Soviet Union in Central or Eastern Europe. At the same time, he has expressed his admiration for Stalin and his regret of "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century": the fall of the Soviet Union. More than one-fifth of the Russian population considers the NGO Memorial's documented proof regarding the scale of Stalinist terror as untrue. It is with great justification that the Sakharov Award, given every year by the European Parliament, went to Memorial for fighting to condemn Stalin's crimes and expose human rights violations in modern day Russia.

When assessing

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Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's plans to commission a vast series of street posters of Josef Stalin for the May V-Day parade has raised a lot of controversy, not least even statements from United Russia and the Public Chamber that he should cancel it.  In a new article posted on the MBK Center, Memorial announces their plans to do a counter campaign if the plans go through.MEMORIAL is currently organizing protests against the Stalin poster campaign planned by the Moscow city administration to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the "Great Victory". MEMORIAL regards this campaign as a further step towards the rehabilitation of Stalinism, which stands in blatant contrast to "what those who fell in this war did for the Fatherland". If these Stalin posters are indeed displayed in the streets of Moscow, MEMORIAL will do everything it can, to hang up posters in ...

Employees with patient care responsibilities at Abingdon (Pa.) Memorial Hospital could soon find themselves out of a job if they don’t follow hospital policy on hand-washing. This twist is the hospital’s latest salvo in a two-year campaign to address poor hand-washing among employees who are involved in patient care.

The hospital’s policy states that these employees must wash their hands before and after entering each patient’s room. Two years ago Abingdon Memorial tasked an infection-control nurse in epidemiology with forming a team of spies to determine how often doctors and nurses complied with the policy.

The spies document the number of times hospital staff wash with soap and water or use hand sanitizers, conducting between 800 and 1,400 observations per month. Staff members who wash their hands only entering or leaving a patient room (not both) are counted as noncompliant. In December 2007, hand-washing compliance stood at only 31 percent, with physicians

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TODAY: Memorial nominated for Nobel Peace Prize; Medvedev's think-tank releases report demanding political reform; Kasparov interview; Moscow home-razing to continue? Putin invites Polish PM to remembrance ceremony; RIA Novosti denies support of Russia Today. Eutelstat.Svetlana Gannushkina and her human rights group Memorial have been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize (along with the Internet).  The Institute of Contemporary Development, the Moscow-based think-tank headed by Dmitry Medvedev, has published its report on modernizing the country, calling for political reforms that would bring Russia in line with western-style democracy, including cutting the presidential term back to five years instead of seven, and abolishing the FSB. The BBC says the report reads 'like a catalogue of criticism'.  The ...

Yesterday, MATECH Corp. excitedly announced the completion of its Electrochemical Fatigue Sensor inspection fieldwork for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). MATECH worked on the John Harris Memorial Bridge in south central Pennsylvania, which carries Interstate 83 over the Susquehanna River. The John Harris Memorial Bridge is the busiest bridge in the area, with an average daily traffic of more than 123,000 vehicles.

MATECH has a long history of instituting cost effective improvements to bridge management and public safety systems due in part to its cutting edge technology, the EFS System. The FHWA has stated that 90% of cracks in bridge members are missed with visual inspection. MATECH’s EFS technology functions to combat subjectivity of inspections and helps to eliminate wasted funds by prioritizing repairs and providing immediate verification of their effectiveness.

Robert M. Bernstein, MATECH’s Co-CEO, commented, “A strong supporter of utilizing the most advanced technologies in order to ensure the

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As you may be aware, 2010 has been declared the Year of Russia in France and the Year of France in Russia, aimed at deepening bilateral relations through "150 cultural and communications events, 38 economic projects and over 70 events in science, education, sports and youth exchanges."  But apart from sending some wonderful museum exhibits back and forth between Moscow and Paris, what will the role be for the alleged participation of French and Russian civil society?  Feeling that they have been left out of the festivities, today in the leading French daily Le Monde, leaders of various human rights NGOs (including Amnesty, Reporters without Borders, and Memorial) authored an opinion article calling for an "Alternative" series of exchanges between ...

Who are some of Russia's greatest thinkers?  Whomever they may be, they got left off a long list by the magazine Foreign Policy.  Blogger poemless has a good long post running down some of the potential names from the Russian brain trust from across the ideological spectrum.  Check it out and put in your vote.What Russians could be on a list using FP's bizarro criteria? The other, far more interesting question, who are Russia's leading intellectuals? The answers are not obvious to me; I rely on journalists like those at Foreign Policy to tell me these things! Also, being an American, living in America, I can't pretend to have any special insight about the intellectual movers and shakers in a far away land. Although I suppose the fact gives me a clearer grasp of their global influence than their compatriots might have. I'll give it is ...

Celestine Bohlen has an op/ed in the New York Times on the latest murders in Chechnya:

Now, the bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Djabrailov, who worked with an organization that helped young people in Chechnya, have been discovered in the trunk of their car in Grozny, after the human rights group Memorial reported they had been kidnapped.

Why aren't Western governments doing more to hold Moscow accountable? Instead of letting the Kremlin off the hook, they could shame Russia into stopping the murders and jailing the killers. President Medvedev's outraged comments -- rare for a Kremlin leader -- may prove to be the crack in the omertà in the Putin-Kadyrov regime. He could be held to his promise of an uncompromising investigation into Ms. Estemirova's death.

In the past, the West has chosen to mute its criticism

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TODAY: Biden's comments on 'withering' Russia cause consternation; Clinton steps in to smooth over reset cracks.  Medvedev interview; 'bear' needs to appear more friendly.  Russia threatens sanctions on firms helping Georgia re-arm; acknowledges Black Sea violation.  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Joe Biden has suggested that pragmatism led Russia to accept better relations with the US, unreservedly citing the country's numerous problems (including its 'withering economy') as reason for the thaw.  Russia has voiced its perplexity at the criticisms, and awaits 'clarification', with a foreign policy adviser asking, 'who is shaping the U.S. foreign policy, the president or respectable members of his team?'  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has adopted a ...

There are some things that should be sacred.  A funeral, no matter who it is for, should not be disturbed like this.  Hasn't the Kremlin sent enough messages to their people that they should be afraid?  From the New York Times:

Police officers in Moscow broke up a memorial service for the human rights worker Natalya Estemirova on Thursday evening and detained the organizer of the event, according to Memorial, the organization where Ms. Estemirova worked. The service for Ms. Estemirova, who was abducted in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and shot to death last week, attracted about 200 people, exceeding the number allowed for the event, the police said. After the event, riot police officers pushed about 15 people into a bus. It was unclear on Friday whether they had been released.

From Reuters:

When all but 20 of the

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