Category Archives: Fast News Share

Netanyahu to Harper – “You Stood Up Unabashedly.”

20 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Religion

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▶ Harper and Netanyahu deliver remarks in Israel – YouTube – 1/20/2014.

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The Jewish approach to ethics, culled from a rich heritage of over 3000 years of Jewish existence, has been tried and tested with an astonishing degree of continuity and coherence, enabling it to remain steadfast in the face of the transient whims of society. Judaism’s ascription to the commitments, obligations, and duties of each individual, rather than individual rights, and its lack of distinction between law and ethics, ensures that Jewish ethics does not deal with armchair philosophy, but with real, practical cases while proposing unyielding, yet realistic ethical standards. This comprehensive systematic approach of Jewish ethics has universal validity in the societal debate over public policy involving medical, legal and corporate issues.

Jewish Ethics Institute | Jewish Exponent

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In Wikipedia: Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Jewish medical ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Feminist Jewish ethics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Elsewhere: Jewish Ethics Institute; THE JEWISH ETHICIST; Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir, Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem; Judaism and Ethics.

Four seminal figures: Hillel the Elder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Maimonides – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Felix Adler (professor) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; L. F. L. Oppenheim – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Not to be overlooked: Jesus is a Jew

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Judaism inspires two great conversations: man with God; man with man.

The conversation begins in a garden with God, a snake, a woman, and a man, and the outcome may be (we could argue about it) a statement about the onset of human awareness, self-awareness, and, most of all, conscience.

There’s commentary on language too in Genesis 2 and 3, but it’s subtle and left to the reader to catch two trees in one chapter and only one in the next (hiding something by omission, but rightly omitting from Eve’s human perception what has been hidden, i.e., the Tree of Life; Eve gets to taste of the fruit of the other tree).

And there’s also the comment on decency, which is not tied to shame (as Christians may have it): more likely than shame, our two humans cover what should be in deference to one another, out of consideration, but it’s God, actually, who sews skins for clothes — clothes strong and fit for living — as he sends them as much into human life as out of the garden.

It may be the development of an extensive and millenial ethical argument in language and language behavior that provides Stephan Harper today with motivation to stand with Israel in defense of western ethics, laws, and values.

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“There are more votes, a lot more, in being anti-israeli than taking a stand, but as long as I am Prime Minister, whether it is at the United Nations, the Francophone, or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand whatever the cost.”

▶ Canadian PM: I Will Defend Israel ‘whatever the cost’ – YouTube – 11/8/2010.

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FNS – Colombia vs FARC – Perhaps Grown Old

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, South America

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There are signs that South America’s oldest and mightiest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC), is undertaking a tactical pivot toward ending more than half a century of armed struggle, raising hopes for a lasting cease-fire, eventually a full demobilization and possibly peace.

Colombia’s Battered Rebels Seek Peace | Consortiumnews – 1/7/2014.

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My correspondent in South America notes, “Colombia have oil, gas and mineral field in the jungle that remain under the control of the FARC Army, this is like a defeat of Colombia, but this is like a defeat of the FARC Army also… like a death point to both sides…”

Indeed, long-running guerrilla conflicts consume the living whose lives have been attached to “the struggle” or its suppression.

Continuous and largely unresolvable issues, more defined by dreaming than by plain dealing but often also provoked by the abuse of the powerful, remain so toward the end, as puzzling to the best of minds and souls as they were when first “discovered” or “encountered” or developed in some narcissistic outrage inflamed by a messianic will.

Evolution in ethics and law in the greater world — and there is always a greater world surrounding comparatively specific ones — then bear down on the policies and practices of place and may do so with a self-concept altering vengeance.

While the idealism informing a youthful revolutionary fervor may sink with age into corrupt arrangements and crime, the powerful too may have the muck to scrape from their boots.  The once young and strident nationalist may look in the mirror and find himself surprised with the fat pig looking back at him: good soul that he may have once been, or egotistical and heroic peacock with clean hands and a clean uniform, may have in memory the haunt of an angry hardness and force that wasn’t necessary and that cannot be easily repaired.

I make up characters — here, caricatures — in a short package.

I point to no one with them.

Nonetheless, with a little bit of truth in the fiction that might be made real, one hopes for peace toward the end of a grim trail in dark space.

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FNS – NSA Senior Executives’ Memo to Obama

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Fast News Share, Political Spychology, Politics

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The sadder reality, Mr. President, is that NSA itself had enough information to prevent 9/11, but chose to sit on it rather than share it with the FBI or CIA. We know; we were there. We were witness to the many bureaucratic indignities that made NSA at least as culpable for pre-9/11 failures as are other U.S. intelligence agencies.

NSA Insiders Reveal What Went Wrong | Consortiumnews – 1/7/2014.

Unless and until better informed, I’m inclined to regard the source of this pass-along, Consortium News, as a struggling but credible and well grounded organization steeped in investigative journalism in Washington, D.C.

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The world was new in 2006 when I began reading the English-language editions of foreign newspapers.

Back then, I wanted to excoriate Greenpeace for failing to address clean-up of the littoral along the Somali coast.  🙂  Little did I know what lay in store by way of becoming caught in the whirlpool of conflict-related news that funnels down to the Islamic Small Wars.

The next stop: Pakistan, where I lingered awhile, virtually.

On the tour in which intellectual adventure and life collide, and another powerful magnet from which no Jew can or should escape: Israel, still virtually, and the middle east conflict.

These days, the majors have caught up with bloggers and news aggregation in general, but along the way some things may have failed to become a part of the the common knowledge base of the field of foreign correspondents who, after all, report the news generally more than analyze events along specialized lines.  Language and political psychology will remain a strong part of the interest here, would that I too could fund scholarship in the area, and, more recently, “political spychology” has become of interest as our “digital communicating” lends itself to computer-driven collection and analysis projects — see, for example, the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) program description for “Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT)”.

Technology may help us leave worlds behind, and we call that progress, but it may also bring us to worlds in which we may not wish to live and caution — and reportage — may be warranted in areas that may pit engineering prowess and vision against the humanity of humanity and the values we assign to the experience of a preferred natural humanity.

For the romantic, “electronic data processing” has been a nightmare from the first spinning magnetic paint disks and shuffling 80-column card deck (and fondly I recall being among the last to run such a database through a Univac at the University of Maryland); however, Rousseau’s “noble savage” hasn’t borne out well in reality: there’s nothing noble about throwing bakers into their own ovens as appears to have happened in Syria last month.

This blog may see fewer than 5,000 hits annually (as it does, so far), but it’s reach remains pretty good (it got look-sees from more than 100 nations in 2013), and it would seem there’s room on the margins of the news business for responsible reportage about wonky subjects and second looks at topics combed over by Big Media.

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I’ve listed Consortium News in the blog roll and may be watching it a bit.

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Buchanan Gets Putin in One Wrap

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics

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“He is seeking to redefine the ‘Us vs. Them’ world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West,” Buchanan said.

Pat Buchanan: Anti-LGBT Vladimir Putin is a true conservative hero | The Raw Story – 12/17/2013.

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Did you know that in Sweden, “early sex is the norm—from the age of nine?” Or that the pro-European protests rocking Ukraine are part of a Western plot to revenge 18th-century Tsarist military victories? And not only should gays be prohibited from donating organs, but their hearts, upon death, should be burnt or buried because they are “unsuitable for extending the life of another?”

Welcome to the world of Dmitry Kiselyov, now the most powerful man in Russian media.

Meet Dmitry Kiselyov, Putin’s New Shock Jock – The Daily Beast – 12/17/2013.

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“While preserving the secular nature of our state, and not allowing the over-involvement of the government in Church life, we need to get away from the vulgar, primitive understanding of secularism,” he said.

“The Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional religions should get every opportunity to fully serve in such important fields as the support of family and motherhood, the upbringing and education of children, youth, social development, and to strengthen the patriotic spirit of the armed forces.”

Church should have more control over Russian life: Putin | Reuters – 2/1/2013.

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Putin is a man with a plan: He wants to show the world — his fellow autocrats in particular — that Russia is a steadfast ally, in contrast to the U.S., which has the nasty habit of throwing allies under buses. He wants to reassert Russian influence in the Middle East. That Assad provides Russia with a Mediterranean port is icing on the babka.

Vladimir Putin, the Neo-Soviet Man | National Review Online – 9/19/2013.

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In forests clear cut for timber, the second growth comes up thorny.  In that way, perhaps, nature protects her wild enterprise until the trees once again shut out the sun.

Pat Buchanan’s remarks, rather parallel to Putin’s, belie the Christian side of post-medieval cultural, nationalist, and religious fascism.

“Our kind” becomes its own enterprise.

“Your kind” stand in the way of “our kind” — or, simply, we find “your kind” offensive.

Post-Soviet Russia has developed some thorns and the 75-year-old son of the old south Pat Buchanan has perhaps recognized in Putin’s cant a part of his own proclivities and, unintentionally, sent a signal as to where such ideas may lead.

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On American Jews and the Pro-Israel Lobby (ADL archived remarks).

Pat Buchanan – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/17/2013.

Why MSNBC Dumped Pat Buchanan: His 10 Most Outrageous Statements | ThinkProgress – 2/17/2012.

Related: The New Blacklist – Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website – 2/17/2012.

Menachem Rosensaft: Patrick Buchanan: What Else Is New? – 5/25/2013.

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Putin doesn’t talk so much.

A fast glance at “state, nationalism” searches suggests to me that anti-Soviet sentiment in now post-Soviet clients has produced some anti-Russian drift, the facets of which seem tied up with relations to The Bear rather than The Jews.  Putin himself has been careful to navigate carefully as regards Russia’s multicultural modernity and the state’s relationship with Israel, which he seems to respect — not to mention by way, possibly, of his military’s purchase of second-tier military technology from Israel — and Russia’s need for revived validation in self-concept rooted in the historic tradition of the Great Imperial period.

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Putin narrates a similar decline of the West and caution at importing Western ideas, particularly liberalism, into Russia. His speech dwelled on the West’s rejection of Christian values and traditions and bemoaned its embrace of political correctness and homosexuality. To him these have placed the West on a path of “degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.”

Historical Lineages of Putin’s Russian National Identity | Russia – 9/26/2013.

Perhaps ironically, as “Buchanan gets Putin”, Putin gets Israel, relating Jewish ethnic nationalism to Slavic ethnic resurgence.  It’s not an unpleasant idea as one may note that language culture and cultural legacy are inseparable and of necessity must be valued but constrained, this with about 7,000 living languages extant, to state and region.

To what extent do hate and xenophobia integrate with ethnic pride and strength?  To be ourselves, whether in our homes or in the possession of a state, must we hate someone else who is not necessarily “out to get us”?

It’s a tough question.

Buchanan seems to have answered it for himself a long time ago.

Putin would seem to be answering with multicultural or secular state policy on one hand while encouraging traditional conservative Christian attitudes on the other, but he’s not so vocal as to lay himself out for definitive cultural and political dissection on the matter.

Perhaps the baseline is in fact the autocracy of the 19th Century accompanied by the desire to see a Russian way into the future rather than suffer co-option by the open societies of the west, but what comes marching behind that may look anti-Napoleonic and impossibly anachronistic, albeit grandiose, messianic, and armed to match.

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Amok in Syria – Unearthly Crimes

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

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Those hunting for war porn may find it on Live Leak.

The variety of insults to humanity evident in the Syrian theater have horrified and numbed this observer, albeit not in the action immediately — although throwing civilians into baking ovens would seem as bad as it gets: from there, the numbers subject to similarly depraved behavior may climb, God rest their souls, but the character of the crime could not be worse, well, perhaps with the exception of being boiled in exploding nuclear plasma — but in the consideration that this dive down into the criminal depths has been going on, and one may say this today with a straight face, for years.

While Putin and Obama may try to keep at their own arms length the depravity exhibited by the Assad regime (from the outset) and the Al Qaeda affiliates that have carried into the fray their own intellectual poisons as well as a demonstrated lack of self-restraint, the two remain visible at the outer boundary of the melee, would that either could untie themselves from what keeps them in an opposition fast losing its equilibrium.

The Syrian Civil War as a furnace, in the larger sense, continues drawing fuel from Islamist ranks worldwide.  In fact, as we head into the New Year, Syria would seem the go-to place for fighting to establish the global caliphate, to chat freely about offing the Jews, once and for all, and for throwing innocents into baking ovens.

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Syria today is a country of blurred facts and wild rumors, but the abduction and in some cases murder of Christian clerics is real enough.

Forced Exodus: Christians in the Middle East | World Affairs Journal – 12/17/2013.

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It is believed that more than 30 journalists are currently being detained in Syria.

Many kidnappings have been downplayed in the hope of aiding negotiations.

On Tuesday the Spanish newspaper El Mundo decided to publicise the abduction of two journalists in Syria in September after indirect communications with their captors led to “no result”.

BBC News – Media urge Syrian rebels to stop journalist kidnappings – 12/12/2013.

Related: 2 Spanish journalists kidnapped in Syria, newspaper says – CNN.com – 12/10/2013.

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Rise of Islamic Front a disaster for Syria – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 12/15/2013.

Growing strength of Syria’s Islamist groups undermines hopes of ousting Assad | World news | The Observer – 12/14/2013.

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BBC News – Briton Ifthekar Jaman ‘killed fighting in Syria’, family says – 12/17/2013.

BBC News – The Chechen Jihadists fighting in Syria – 12/16/2013.

Syria: Islamists Find a New Way to Behead – Middle East – News – Israel National News – 12/8/2013.

Assad’s crimes pale in comparison to atrocities by Syrian radical groups – Today’s Zaman, your gateway to Turkish daily news – 11/3/2013.

Testing a US ’empathy deficit’ in Syria – CSMonitor.com – 12/16/2013.

Syria: ‘Unparalleled human suffering’ – Inside Syria – Al Jazeera English – 12/1/2013.

BBC News – Syria conflict: Women ‘targets of abuse and torture’ – 11/26/2013.

Related PDF: “Violence against Women, Bleeding Wound in the Syrian Conflict.”  Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, November 2013.

Human rights at war in Syria – Opinion – Al Jazeera English – 8/8/2012.

Syria turning into ‘World War II scenario’ | World | DW.DE | 04.12.2013

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▶ Syria: Executions, Hostage Taking by Rebels – YouTube – Posted 10/11/2013.

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To the Ovens! The Latest Atrocities Involving Syria’s Civilians

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Syria

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“The worst crime they committed was that they toasted people in ovens used to bake bread when those people came to buy it. They kidnapped and beat up many.”

Government claims Islamic rebels executed civilians in Adra [UPDATE] – UPI.com – 12/16/2013.

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“Civilians told us that the workers of an Adra bakery were all executed and burned during the first hours of the attack. Whole families were massacred. We do not have an exact estimation of the number because we are unable to get into the town, but the number is high,” Kinda Shimat, Syria’s Social Affairs Minister, told RT.

‘Slaughtered like sheep’: Eyewitnesses recount massacre in Adra, Syria — RT News – 12/17/2013.

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Clearly, the evildoers have lost their minds and souls and have exceeded limits.

What are they going to do with themselves?

The only thing worse — actually, there is nothing worse: they have drilled down to hell — is what some of my fellow writers seem to be doing with the information, which is conflating the barbarity of al-Qaeda affiliates with American policy while doing the look-away on the state-borne “death from above” that has dumped tens of thousands of pounds of bombs on Syrian noncombatants, conveniently also conflated with “the terrorists”, a now convenient catch-all for all the Assad regime (shall I conflate that with Putin?) finds adverse to its outright ownership of its subjugated people.

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A man who appears to be their commander admonishes his men, “Come on guys, we are here to carry out our duties not to seek revenge on our own. This is unacceptable.”

One of the paramilitaries smilingly replies, “But we are killing them in God’s cause, only in God’s cause.”

Opinion: Syrian war’s brutality isn’t going away – CNN.com – 10/11/2013.

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“The horrific things that each side has done to the other now gives license to this kind of behavior . . . as the rest of the world tries to understand what it can do in Syria, who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, it’s becoming harder and harder to make that judgment.”

One Photographer’s Witness to a Brutal Execution in Syria – LightBox – 9/12/2013.

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Syria – Refugee Relief – Bitter Conditions Today – Bitter Memories In the Making

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

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Amnesty International slams EU for approach toward Syrian refugees – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

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▶ Snow Worsens Misery for Syrian Refugees – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

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BAALBEK, Lebanon — Shivering in the snow, Syrian Aisha Mohammad looked at the last-minute charity that saved her children from freezing during the smack of a particularly tough Lebanese winter: a wood-burning stove complete with twigs and garbage to ignite in hopes of warming her drafty tent in an icy eastern plain.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon face bitter winter – The Washington Post – 12/15/2013.

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How to help Syrian refugees – CNN.com — The article lists more than a dozen major organizations involved in assistance and relief activities serving Syria’s refugee.

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Refuge | The Washington Post – features 18 refugee stories ranging from “a birth and a wedding” to a family mourning their own in a cemetery on what was to them “foreign soil”.

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Many refugees in Lebanon are living in unofficial makeshift camps, with shelters built from scavenged materials. The Lebanese government has refused to establish refugee camps for fear that they will become permanent homes for Syrians who have fled the civil war.

Images from the area showed refugees scraping snow off the roofs of tents, icicles hanging from ropes and wooden posts, and laundry frozen on washing lines.

Syrian refugees facing extreme hardship as blizzards hit region | World news | theguardian.com – 12/12/2013.

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Bulgaria: Syrian Refugees Face Appalling Conditions | Doctors Without Borders – 11/21/2013.

Syria Refugee Camps Filled With Child Deaths And Winter’s Cold – 12/16/2013.

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. . . hopes for a negotiated end (always a long shot due to Moscow’s strategic interests in Syria) are now even less likely due to the growing bad blood between the U.S. and Russia.

Why Obama vs. Putin Spells Doom For the Syrian Refugees – PolicyMic – 8/19/2013.

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Revolution?

Civil war?

Jihad front?

Cold War Extended?

Political anarchy?

To those who have fled the fighting, what the conflict in Syria is about may not matter or mean very much, if anything: they have found themselves out in the cold in numbers almost too vast to contemplate and with a distribution impossible to administer centrally through other than interstate cooperation in the matter, and that appears about as non-existent as peace or, perhaps, blankets may to those who have none.

One wonders what memories Syria’s refugees will carry with them, those who survive, for the rest of their lives?

How will they come to feel about the world that helped them?  That failed them?

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In a briefing published today, An international failure: The Syrian refugee crisis, the organization details how European Union (EU) member states have only offered to open their doors to around 12,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria: just 0.5 per cent of the 2.3 million people who have fled the country.

Fortress Europe: Syrian refugee shame exposed | Amnesty International – 12/13/2013.

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▶ Snow storm causes misery for Syrian refugees – YouTube – 12/11/2013.

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When she emerged from underneath her blanket, Ghusun, who is “more than 100 years old”, turned her deeply lined face from the wind and moaned in pain from the cold.

Her small group of seven included an 87-year-old woman, four other women and one man. Each clutching old blankets to shield themselves from the bitter wind, they explained they had left their homes in the Syrian city of Homs two months ago, making their slow way to Aleppo, then finally crossing the border into Turkey just before the snow fell.

Syrian refugees face new challenge – freezing weather – 12/13/2013.

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Despotism | ? Ukraine ? | Democracy

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, Fast News Share, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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▶ Rival rallies over Ukraine future | Journal – YouTube – 12/15/2013.

” . . . so that Moscow does not walk all over us.”

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EU halts deal talks: EU senior official suspends Ukraine trade talks – YouTube – Posted 12/15/2013.

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KIEV, Ukraine — The European Union on Sunday broke off talks with Ukraine on the far-reaching trade deal that protesters here have been demanding for weeks, and a top official issued a stinging, angry statement all but accusing Ukraine’s president of dissembling.

European Union Suspends Talks With Ukraine Over Trade Deal – NYTimes.com – 12/15/2013.

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“Words & deeds of President [Viktor Yanukovych] & government regarding the Association Agreement are further & further apart. Their arguments have no grounds in reality,” he twitted on Sunday.

EU suspending work with Ukrainian govt on Association Agreement – Fule – 12/15/2013.

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While the European Union insists that the door is still open for Ukraine to join the EU, President Viktor Yanukovych is walking the tightrope between appeasing the wishes of his people and keeping Russian President Vladimir Putin happy.

Yanukovych needs to hear pleas of his people | GulfNews.com – 12/15/2013

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Mr Yanukovych had already sent his skullcrackers in once to Independence Square in Kiev, centre of the protests that erupted in November after he rejected an association agreement with the European Union, in favour of an opaque economic deal with Russia. That needless brutality brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.

Crackdown in Ukraine: Goodbye, Putin | The Economist – 12/14/2013.

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All of the conflicts BackChannels has been watching have to do with the despotic versus the democratic.

In some instances, the despotic force is sufficient to repress and silence the latent organizations and personalities arrayed against it; in others, there’s yet opportunity to assert a popular will on behalf of human dignity and human rights against mafia-style state-based machinations and privilege.

Ukrainians, of course, have just found The Bear once again climbing aboard their own back.

The “new nobility” not only have their hands in the gushing revenue stream associated with Russia’s energy industry, but they may have also their hands on the spigot, and with winter yet to begin — hard to believe this year that ice and snow have arrived so early everywhere in the northern latitudes — the same could give them the cold treatment.

A glance at the reading tells me Ukrainians owe Moscow some money too for energy already consumed.  That will give Moscow some whining room in the coming negotiations.

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Joseph Stalin’s decision in 1928 to seize privately held agricultural land and transform it into collective farms caused massive hardship for all Soviet peasants. When authorities expropriated peasant grain stocks and farm animals, hunger broke out in much of the USSR. In Ukraine, where close to a million peasants actively rebelled against collectivization, such expropriations were especially severe, leading to widespread starvation that the state both refused to alleviate and purposely aggravated until millions had died and a massive crackdown on Ukrainian political, cultural, and religious elites had been completed. At the height of the Holodomor, 25,000 Ukrainians starved per day; cannibalism was rampant.

Remembering the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide | World Affairs Journal – 12/13/2013.

Ukrainians know well the Soviet part of the post-Soviet Russian story, and one would think it doubtful the same should now entertain a return to all of that, especially absent the cover of socialist concern that accompanied the theft.

Related: Oleh Tyahnybok – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most”[11] / and / “They were not afraid and we should not be afraid. They took their automatic guns on their necks and went into the woods, and fought against the Moskali, Germans, Kikes and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.”[10]

Next Ukrainian headache: resurgent anti-Semitic eastern European nationalism.

How is it that the potentially despotic engaging the established despotic cannot recognize in themselves the same idiotic malignant ambitions?

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BBC News – Kasparov: Stop calling Putin a democrat – 9/12/2013.

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BBC HARDtalk – Garry Kasparov (12/9/13) – YouTube – Posted 9/14/2013;  BBC News – Kasparov: Stop calling Putin a democrat – 9/12/2013.

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“. . . Putin is “powerful” abroad because West has been so weak confronting him. This influence is their gift & he takes it.”

Kasparov on Ukraine, Putin and EU (with tweets) · TeamKasparov · Storify – Tweeted 12/1/2013.

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Yanukovych backed off the agreement on the grounds that the EU was not providing adequate compensation to his economically struggling nation for potential trades losses with Russia. Russia, which for centuries controlled or exerted heavy influence on Ukraine, wants the country to join a customs union, analogous to the EU, which also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The opposition says that union would effectively reconstitute the Soviet Union and remain suspicious that Yanukovych might agree to it when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Ukrainian opposition presses with massive rally – 12/15/2013.

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Earlier this month:

Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said it agreed with Russian gas giant Gazprom to defer payments for winter gas supplies until early 2014. With Ukraine embroiled in protests, and Europe making headway on energy diversification strategies, the move signals a tilt by Kiev back to its former Kremlin patrons.

Amid Ukraine protests, energy sector tilts toward Russia – CSMonitor.com – 12/5/2013.

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