Category Archives: Regions

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

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

* * *

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

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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”.

* * *

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.

______

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.

* * *

. . . 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.

______

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?

______

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.

* * *

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

* * *

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.

# # #

Despotism | ? Ukraine ? | Democracy

15 Sunday Dec 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

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

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

* * *

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

* * *

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.

* * *

“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.

* * *

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

* * *

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.

______

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.

* * *

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?

______

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

______

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

* * *

“. . . 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.

______

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.

* * *

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.

# # #

Putin’s Leverage Over Dependent and Indebted Ukraine Stirs Protests

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Fast News Share, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukrain

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

▶ Protesters clash with police in Ukraine – YouTube – Posted 12/13/2013.

* * *

▶ Ukraine: opposition leaders attend talks with president – YouTube – Posted 12/13/2013.

______

European officials are in discussion with the IMF, the World Bank and other major financial bodies on ways of helping the ex-Soviet republic should it decide to sign the free-trade agreement with the EU after all.

Putin had threatened to respond to such a deal with economic sanctions against Ukraine, which has huge debts and unpaid gas bills outstanding with Moscow. Ukraine’s ultimate decision could be decisive to Putin’s Eurasian Union plan.

Kiev protesters gather, EU and Putin joust | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT – 12/13/2013.

* * *

Putin’s comments made clear his continued designs on Ukraine and that “by hook or by crook” he will seek to try and drag it into the so-called Eurasian Union, his long-cherished idea “of reincarnating some semblance of the Soviet Union,” said Boris Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s ex-foreign minister.

Putin speaks on Ukraine; protesters rebuild barricades – latimes.com – 12/13/2013.

* * *

The agreement could have clinched a tumultuous shift by the strategic former Soviet republic in the past decade toward embracing Western economic and political values. Mr. Yanukovych’s sudden decision to turn his back on the deal late last month infuriated the nation’s opposition parties and sent millions of pro-Western, pro-democracy demonstrators into the streets of Kiev.

Echoes of Cold War in Ukraine as Russia tries to rein in former Soviet satellites – Washington Times – 12/13/2013.

______

Cultural, political, and social values matter.

Of course, energy supply and security matter too.

Ukrainians today find themselves in a bind between alliance with the developing pseudo-democratic, post-Soviet, Putinist state developing in Russia, or radiating from Moscow as much of Russia has been left to suffer as well, and their humanist drift toward the compassionate and inclusive values of the open democracies of the European Union.

In rhetoric on the Russian side, readers here will recognize an instance of the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation.”  Although Russian spokesmen score “the west” on its struggles within the Islamic Small Wars (never mind what President Kadyrov has been up to in Chechnya as regards shepherding Islamic or barbarous values — in some places, it’s hard separating the two — within his sphere), the political outsiders in Russia’s intelligentsia and in the satellites have a fair sense of what’s what in Russia’s “power-of-vertical” state revolving around President Putin.

* * *

President Vladimir Putin has declared that Russia has a morally superior worldview to that of the West.

Vladimir Putin: Russia is Morally Superior to the West – IBTimes UK – 12/12/2013.

* * *

Stefan Meister, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr Putin had lost room for political maneourve as he entered his presidential third term since 2000. “He has isolated himself from the proactive part of society and the elite,” he said. “He has surrounded himself with hardliners from the security service who promote Russia’s “modernisation” through the country’s military-industrial complex.”

Vladimir Putin claims Russia is moral compass of the world – Telegraph – 12/12/2013.

* * *

“The EU offers a token package, which is not of any interest to the Ukrainian government,” Alexei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s Parliament, told CNN’s Hala Gorani, who was sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.

“That’s why Mister Yanukovych has initially rejected it,” he said. “Then all these demonstrations started with the participation of the European ministers…who were speaking on the Maidan [Kiev’s Independence Square], joining the protesters, and so on.”

Russia: EU, not Moscow, is bullying Ukraine – Amanpour – CNN.com Blogs – CNN video plus accompanying article – 12/12/2013.

______

No state in the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence needs reminding who has the energy supply plus a massive and vulgar army (presented in the video at the base of this post and represented by memories of its appearance in Georgia a few years ago).

The challenge in the post-Soviet era for former Soviet satellites uncomfortable with Moscow is how to navigate with and around what The Guardian‘s journalist Luke Harding has called the “mafia state”.

In Russia, power hasn’t to do with the liberation of independent spirits and the productive energies of a people: as with its superficially mirror opposite in Islam’s mix of military and theocratic dictatorships, “political power” refers to absolute control.

In essence, the causes and the talk may be wildly different, but similar personalities construct their societies in response to their own internal needs.

Putin’s claim to moral superiority as regards the west would seem well demonstrated by Russia’s continuing and supportive relationships with both the Bashar Assad’s bomb-happy reign of terror in Syria and Ayatollah Khamenei’s iron grip (not to mention about $90 billion in personal accumulation) on Iran.  Those three plus President Kadyrov would seem to be “in it” — the money, at least — together.

As much may be known to educated and web-enabled and still recently politically liberated Ukrainians who have taken to the streets braving bone-chilling cold and potentially bone-breaking state paramilitary to make their views count.

Related Reference

Podcast: ‘EuroMaidan’ And The Russian Street – 12/13/2013.

BBC News – Ukraine protesters rebuild barricades in centre of Kiev – 12/12/2013.

Best pictures from the past 24 hours – The Globe and Mail – 12/12/2013.

Ukrainian riot police surround Kiev protesters | World news | theguardian.com – 12/10/2013.

Ukraine Opposition: No Talks Unless Govt Fired – ABC News – 12/7/2013.

Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich meets with Putin to map out partnership – World – CBC News – 12/6/2013.

How Ukraine can someday join the EU – CSMonitor.com – 12/3/2013.

Ukraine halts Russian gas imports; transit to Europe intact – sources | Reuters – 11/11/2013.

New Eastern Europe – Russians Love Georgia, But They Don’t Love Independent Georgia – 10/08/2013.

The Putin Doctrine – Los Angeles Times – 9/12/2013.

Wikipedia

Arseniy Yatsenyuk – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Russia–Georgia war – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008 Georgia–Russia crisis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Putinism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Georgia

A day after a face-to-face meeting with President George W. Bush in Beijing who expressed ‘grave concern’, Mr Putin accused the U.S. of siding with Georgia by ferrying Georgian troops from Iraq to the battle zone.

‘It is a shame that some of our partners are not helping us but, essentially, are hindering us,’ said Mr Putin. ‘The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing.’

Georgia ‘overrun’ by Russian troops as full-scale ground invasion begins | Mail Online – n.d.

They have frequently shifted the boundary south of the previously accepted course – Mr Makhachashvili says Russian troops around Dvani were using maps dated 1921 – in effect grabbing hectares of extra land.

Moscow has said South Ossetian authorities were merely demarcating its true boundary, using Soviet-era maps.

Tbilisi nervously eyes Russia’s border barricade of South Ossetia – FT.com – 11/6/2013.

______

Russian Army Soldiers in South Ossetia(Georgia) Burn American Flag – YouTube – Posted 8/5/2013.

______

Live Streaming the Ukrainian Revolt: http://www.vice.com/read/live-streaming-the-ukrainian-revolt – encountered 12/13/2013.

# # #

The Great Leader’s Grandiose Delusion

10 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, North America, Politics, Psychology, Regions, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

The event in the year 1358 was a counterattack. Our courageous and religious youth attacked the U.S. embassy and discovered the truth and identity of this embassy, which was the Den of Espionage, and presented this fact to people throughout the world.

In those days, our youth called the U.S. embassy the “Den of Espionage”. Today, after the passage of 30-plus years since that day, the name of U.S. embassies in countries which have the closest relationship with America – that is to say, European countries – has become the den of espionage. This means that our youth are 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. This event was related to America as well. These three events were related, in different ways, to the government of the United States of America and its relations with Iran. Therefore, the 13th of Aban – which is tomorrow – was named “Day of Fighting Against Arrogance”.

The Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei – 11/3/2013

* * *

This same regime supplies its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with thousands of rockets, rockets that are aimed at Israeli civilians, rockets that are precision-guided munitions that are increasingly lethal and deadly. This is a regime committed to our destruction. And I believe there must be an unequivocal demand alongside the negotiations in Geneva for a change in Iranian policy. This must be part and parcel of the negotiations. In other words, I’m saying that what is required is not merely a shift and a diminution of Iran’s capability and elimination of its capability to produce nuclear weapons, but also a demand to change its genocidal policy. That is the minimal thing that the international community must do when it’s negotiating with Iran.

PM Netanyahu’s address to the Saban Forum 8 ec 2013

For once, the bold section is a part of the copy at the source — i.e., not mine.

This form in conflict isn’t about wealth or resources: it’s about the character of the next generation’s humanity.

* * *

And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.

Exodus 12:38.

______

The Jews and all who would travel with them have been defying the “malignant narcissist” from the first pages.

Even before Exodus, God himself in Genesis arranges for Eve to partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, share it with Adam, and become the two of them — this I regard as the most important part — aware, self-aware, and possessed of conscience.

Whatever animals may be left to do, the First Couple have ascended from that base existence, covered and signaled consideration for the other, and been prepared — read carefully: God himself sews the first protective clothing — to live like human beings.

* * *

In contemporary political life there seem to be a thousand pharaohs holding captive and suffocating millions of souls.  In their own heads, the lives of others pale before their own, and the control of others in the cause of their own adoration takes precedence over every other consideration.

______

▶ Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Khamenei : Israeli regime shaky, doomed to collapse – YouTube – Posted by PressTV 11/20/2013.

Related from this blog: Paranoid Delusional Narcissist Reflection of Motivation

* * *

▶ Mordechai Kedar: Rouhani threat? Is Obama setting-up Israel to confront Iran on nukes? [46] – YouTube – Posted 10/3/2013.

* * *

In the next breath, however, the ayatollah spoke harshly of France’s stand with the United States in opposition of much of the nuclear deal being forged in Geneva, vowing that Iran would “slap aggressors in the face in such a way they will never forget it,” Ynet News reported.

The militia members, in response, chanted “Death to America.”

 Iran’s ayatollah: Israel’s ‘doomed to extinction’ – Washington Times – 11/20/2013.

* * *

“Iran’s policy of constructive interaction with the world states has forced the world to see the realities of Iran’s capabilities,” Rouhani said during a meeting with Bushehr’s MPs on Monday.

“You see that those powers which were thinking of destroying Iran’s enrichment capability, have now admitted that they cannot stop Iran’s industrial progress and enrichment due to the indigenization of this industry and its expansion,” he added.

President Rouhani: World powers admit failure in stopping Iran’s N. progress – 12/9/2013.

* * *

“In our region there’s been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Quds (Jerusalem),” Rouhani said, according to a translation by the Reuters news agency.

The earlier quote, which came from ISNA, was most notable for its inclusion of the call for the “wound” to be “removed”:

“The Zionist regime has been a wound on the body of the Islamic world for years and the wound should be removed,” ISNA quoted Rouhani as saying.

New Iran president Hasan Rouhani calls Israel an “old wound” – CBS News – 8/2/2013.

______

In the Iranian regime’s relationship with the greater world, the encouragement of trust by way of sweet words would seem matched by an idée fixe — Islamic succession, perhaps — accompanied by a reputation for treachery.

As with others of similar mien, what the public knows and is told leaves the swallowing black shadow of things less divulged or not divulged at all.

* * *

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion (£59 billion) – a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation’s current annual petroleum exports, a six-month Reuters investigation shows.

The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader’s enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.

Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei revealed to run £60 BILLION business empire covering everything from oil to ostrich farming | Mail Online – 11/11/2013; first source: Exclusive: Reuters investigates business empire of Iran’s supreme leader | Reuters – 11/11/2013.

* * *

The 82-year-old Iranian woman keeps the documents that upended her life in an old suitcase near her bed. She removes them carefully and peers at the tiny Persian script.

There’s the court order authorizing the takeover of her children’s three Tehran apartments in a multi-story building the family had owned for years. There’s the letter announcing the sale of one of the units. And there’s the notice demanding she pay rent on her own apartment on the top floor

Reuters Investigates – Assets of the Ayatollah: “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures“:  – 11/11/2013.

There is an old saw regarding the mentality of the power behind a medieval narrative: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law!”

The malignant create laws to exclude, persecute, and thieve from others, and oh my the things that may be taken from any person subject to a monster: family, identity, labor, property, reputation, and wealth.

And life.

If Ayatollah Khamenei’s ambition and methods as an empire builder seem grandiose and rife with injustice to outsiders, there is nothing delusional about them: what you have read, what you have seen, what you have heard in relation to the aims of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, all of that is true as well.

# # #

Zoom Zoom Zuma! Hail the Presence of Another African “Aristocommicrat”

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Africa, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, South Africa, Zimbabwe

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Zuma is an economic leftist, who has described himself as a socialist.[32] He has received support from trade unions and from the South African Communist Party as well as the Women’s League and the Youth League of the ANC.[32] According to The Guardian and The New York Times, Zuma supports redistribution of wealth and has allied himself with socialists and communists that seek to redistribute wealth.[32][33] However, The Guardian (UK) has also reported that Zuma has tried “to reassure foreign investors their interests will be protected.”

Jacob Zuma – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/9/2013.

&

It is a nation racked by poverty, where 13 million people survive on less than £1 a day, and two million have no access to a toilet.

Yet as his people struggle in squalor, South African president Jacob Zuma has sparked outrage by spending £17.5 million to upgrade his rural family home.

Lavish works – which include the construction of 31 new houses, an underground bunker accessed by lifts and a helipad – will cost almost as much as the £19 million British taxpayers send to South Africa in annual aid.

UK gives £19million aid to South Africa – its president spends £17.5million on his palace | Mail Online – 11/24/2012

&

When Jacob Zuma was facing corruption charges while still deputy president of the country, he scaled the length and breadth of the country to tell all and sundry that he wanted his day in court. The implication, was that he was a victim of a political conspiracy. When his bluff was called, and moves were made to satisfy his urge to grace the country’s courts with his morally upright presence, he did everything in the book to ensure that he didn’t appear in court. It was at that time that we first heard of the existence of the so-called spy tapes which would prove that the corruption case against him was politically motivated and manipulated.

After some nifty footwork by his legal team, the National Prosecuting Authority dropped the charges against Zuma. The public was assured that excerpts from these supposed spy tapes were then in the possession of the NPA. This cleared the path for Zuma to sing his way to the office of the president without having to answer to the charges of corruption. Now, Zuma is not only fighting attempts to have the tapes released to the DA, he is now on record as having said that he has never listened to the tapes, and therefore was not aware what the tapes contained. Fell me down with a feather already! If Zuma, the supposed victim of a political conspiracy who used these tapes as his weapon against the NPA, has not heard the contents of the tapes on what basis did he engage his lawyers to work on the so-called excerpts from the tapes?

A new trademark for the rainbow nation – hypocrisy | eNCA – 9/11/2013.

______

As regards criticism, much less examination by an independent court, our beloved and charming malignant narcissists enjoy (by dealing it unto themselves) a free pass.

They will do the investigations, the scrutinizing, the nitpicking, the moralizing, and the talking — oh my, how Qaddafi use to talk — but grant them immunity.

Or else!

* * *

These former communist cum autocratic aristocrats — coin: aristocommicrats — flow down from the big mamma of sweet talking while thieving states: Mother Russia in her Soviet phase: to work goes the worker; to the gulag the dissenting intelligentsia; and to the palatial dacha on the Black Sea go the ruling party elite . . . not unlike China’s elites, come to think of it, purchasing mansions in Melbourne.  On that:

A new global breed of private investors has emerged as competitors to institutional investors for prime real estate priced at US$500 million and above.

The trend is being felt in Australia, where ultra-high net worth individuals (defined as those with a personal wealth of over $30 million) or family groups are successfully outbidding institutional investors for property.

Property provides rich pickings for Asia’s elite | Business Spectator – 12/4/2013.

* * *

A cousin of Robert Mugabe accumulated assets worth an estimated 180 million ($360 million), according to a divorce case in Zimbabwe that has thrown a spotlight on the vast wealth acquired by the regime’s inner circle.

Details of Phillip Chiyangwa’s assets were placed before the Harare high court by his wife, Elizabeth, who is seeking 85 per cent of her husband’s assets and maintenance of 53,000 a month for 10 years.

‘God’s Gift’ on the block in divorce – World – NZ Herald News – 12/6/2013.

Mugabe’s regime has been systematically nationalizing enterprises and redistributing them to his supporters. The more nationalization and redistribution Mugabe’s regime does, the more Zimbabwe’s economy disintegrates.

Blog: Mugabe Regime Demands More Socialism – 9/10/2011.

______

Ah, family!

May we imagine that Jacob Zuma is today no Nelson Mandela?

“They Only Care About Power, Not People”

All of this became painfully obvious in August last year when militarized police forces violently cracked down on a wildcat miners’ strike in the platinum town of Marikana. In the ensuing bloodbath, the most serious bout of state violence since the Sharpville massacre of 1960 and the end of apartheid in 1994, 34 workers were killed after being peppered with machine gun fire at close range. Needless to say, the Marikana massacre brought back painful memories of police brutality under white minoritarian rule. This time, however, the policemen and politicians responsible for the massacre were mostly black and represented the same party that had once led the struggle against racial oppression: the ruling ANC of President Jacob Zuma and the iconic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. The Marikana massacre was the most powerful expression yet that little had changed below the surface. The violence of the state simply reasserted itself anew under the ANC.

Jacob Zuma | Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism – 12/8/2013.

* * *

South Africa’s press have defied warnings from the country’s president and printed pictures of his lavish home revamped with some $18 million of taxpayers money.

The media had been warned not to use the images of Jacob Zuma’s private rural home — complete with swimming pool, helipad and even a soccer field — claiming it would contravene the country’s security laws, South African press reported.

South Africa press defies warnings: Shows photos of President Jacob Zuma’s $18M mansion – NY Daily News – 11/24/2013.

Anyone want to see the house?

This might work: https://www.google.com/search?q=Jacob+Zuma’s+mansion&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS523US523&espv=210&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=x-WlUqvLJIS7kQeLk4DQBg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=1084

# # #

FTAC – A Note on the Death of a Migrating Soul Detained

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Afghanistan, Australia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I’m all set up and am having real issues navigating next steps in one of the most modern societies in the world: I may only imagine what it’s like to be anonymous on the streets of a passive and teaming nation like Pakistan or a somewhat bureaucratized and Orwellian culture that erupts at the interface of person and government in the west. Without family or stable and helpful community-based networks, we have and sometimes number among a legion of nearly unaccounted and uncomfortably roaming persons. Some part of that may contribute to freedom and “rugged individualism” and some part, plainly, to horror.

The inspiration for the above thought: Eulogy for Ahmad Ali Jafari | Overland literary journal – 8/13/2013.

With a soul like Jafarai, the person may be less lost than the state of origin and so many unwittingly receiving and subsequent and temporarily hosting nations as compelled migration — especially migration compelled by famine or war — and illegal immigration are a matched pair.

There’s plenty of trending news for cyberchat and cybergossip, but as I do here and others do in the various communities and forums that comprise the still emerging “Facebook civilization”, people reach back to make or suggest points or draw parallels between discrete or separated but analogous circumstances.

Community detention centers, tent camps, semi-permanent refugee camps correspond to reactions to disasters.  We see so many of them each year — earthquakes and tsnunami, hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes volcanoes, sometimes, these days, damaged nuclear reactors, and then ever present conflict as well as community- or state-wide financial stress and disaster — that one wonders how far ahead of a bad circumstance the world less affected by a given emergency may make itself.

With the World Wide Web well established and robust, the suffering of distant people are no longer that distant in either common perception or space.

Ahmad Ali Jafari needed a place to land, or even if returned to Afghanistan, some program in which he was accounted and helpfully reoriented, integrated, and included.

# # #

 

Iraq Returns (?) to Sectarian Violence

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Religion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

A wave of violence Friday killed 52 people in Iraq, most of whom were kidnapped and shot dead with their corpses abandoned, in scenes harking back to Iraq’s sectarian war . . .  More than 6,000 people have been killed this year, forcing Baghdad to appeal for international help in battling militancy just months before a general election, as official concern focuses on a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the war in neighbouring Syria.

52 dead in throwback to Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed | Bangkok Post: news – 11/30/2013.

* * *

Oh my!

Will that do?  Or should we take it up a notch?

Those bastards!

Raise the volume all you like, talk is talk and that’s all it is: in coming days, so one may suspect with reason, it will become near impossible for the morally pissed off and remote to be heard over or through the bodies piling up as they do when the cause has become nothing short of madness itself.

* * *

STERLING HEIGHTS, MICH. — The Iraqi government is negotiating with the US government and BAE Systems to purchase 200 Bradley Fighting Vehicles sometime during the next 15 months, according to BAE officials.

The potential deal is expected sometime in 2014 and could come just before another expected agreement is reached with Saudi Arabia to buy Bradleys in 2015. The Iraq contract would provide recently upgraded M2A2 ODS (Operation Desert Storm) variants to the Baghdad government, the same vehicles that the US Army National Guard uses.

Iraq Requests 200 Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Saudi Deal in the Works | Defense News | defensenews.com – 8/28/2013.

Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

Related: Iraq’s Months of Sectarian Violence May Lead to a Civil War | TIME.com – 10/1/2013; Iraq suffers ‘accelerated surge’ in sectarian violence – CNN.com 10/6/2013; from this place: Iraq – Back to the Dark Ages Today | BackChannels – 11/8/2013.

The search string “Iraq Sectarian Violence 2013” doesn’t produce news anymore: it produces a story line that starts with taking off the lid covering this simmering pot of scorpions, the seemingly unintended consequence of the 2003 invasion — ten years and eight months ago — and opens a long scene two or three (I don’t think three acts will do it for this part of the world) that is playing now and keeps cycling back to unconventional, sub-state, guerrilla style barbarism and sadism within the context of (yawn) Sunni-Shiite predispositions that have absolutely nothing to do — and they will have nothing to do — with tomorrow.

▶ Iraq 2013: Year of Carnage (Promo) – YouTube – 11/26/2013.

I’m sure my life in media’s fringe would be more exciting (and solvent) if I worked for RT!

However, it takes no genius to understand the astoundingly absurd structure of this portion of the Islamic Small Wars: Putin : cash / Assad : survival / Khamenei : ambition / Shiite : expansion and survival vs. Obama : Obama / Sunni Quasi-Democratic Kerfuffle (Syria) / Iraq : Sunni Reassertion with “gorious” Al Qaeda-type Edging.

Iraqis are suffering murder associated with or motivated by cultural and religious precepts that have absolutely nothing to do with the nature of God, humanity, or the universe — and for that, or just perhaps ignoring that, Iraq as a state is laying in large arms contracts.

Beware the next Gulf War.

All this other bloodletting: calisthenics.

Iraqis need an army of detectives, psychologists (cultural, ethnographic, linguistic, social), and wondrous poetic minds (preferably Jewish or, perhaps, Presbyterian — for the kindness thing), for every surprised and tortured corpse in this year’s Iraq body count, so far, of 6,000 (update that: 6010 or so as I type) was murdered by somebody else’s programming in the head, which programming always exists and persists as language foremost albeit molded by emotion best interpreted through the portal opened by the terms “civilizational narcissism” and “malignant narcissism”.

______

Gun battles between Iraqi security forces and armed attackers have left at least ten dead and more than 40 injured in Kirkuk.

Suicide bombers and gunmen initially launched an assault on police intelligence headquarters in the northern Iraqi city.

A two-hour exchange of fire followed.

Co-ordinated attack in Kirkuk leaves several dead as violence in Iraq escalates | euronews, world news – with video – 12/5/2013

▶ Iraq violence producing a ‘damaged generation’ NewsNews – YouTube – Posted 12/5/2013; however: BBC News – Iraq violence producing a ‘damaged generation’ – 11/1/2013; related: BBC News – Iraq army asks tribe leaders to help end violence – 10/29/2013; US, Iraq agree more equipment needed to fight al Qaeda in Iraq – World News – 11/1/2013 (if a dateline is absent, the date posted here comes from the Google search engine).

At the state level, state forces consistently engage Al Qaeda when apparent, much to their credit, but the sub-state, transnational character of that insult to humanity knows its way around tanks and patrols.  What’s needed would seem an extraordinary upgrade in intelligence concepts and methodology, including HUMINT.

* * *

It was the second month in a row that the overall death toll declined, but the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said he was “profoundly disturbed” by an uptick in “execution-style” killings. In three places around Baghdad last week, Iraqi police found bodies of 31 men, women and children who had been shot in the head.

World news digest: In Iraq, attacks raise fears of Sunni-Shiite violence – The Washington Post – 12/1/2013.

* * *

By April 2013, simmering sectarian tensions boiled over and the country experienced its deadliest month in half a decade. If a day goes by in Iraq without scores being maimed or killed in car bombings outside schools, mosques or crowded markets, that day is the exception rather than the rule. Hundreds continue to die each month in such grisly attacks. What follows is an account of the violence that has gripped the country over the past year. There are no coffins draped in Stars and Stripes, but the cameras are rolling and the world is watching.

Iraq 2013: a year of carnage — About – 2013 attack data, month-by-month, day by day, to the end of November.

*

RT: Score!

CNN: ?

*

Syria has emerged as the new “Jihadist cause célèbre” across the Arab world, energizing that movement and providing a melting pot for foreign fighters from across the region to create personal ties that will underpin future terrorist networks.

By the measures of manpower, weaponry and territory, it can now be argued that the broader al Qaeda network is stronger than at any time since the peak of the Iraq insurgency half a decade ago, and perhaps even than at any time since 9/11.

Resurgent al Qaeda: new concern about U.S. homeland – CNN Security Clearance – CNN.com Blogs – 12/2/2013.

Maybe CNN will focus on Iraq a little more tomorrow.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

# # #

Gaza – No Justice – A Glimpse Into Kleptocracy

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Ironically, throughout all of the alleged Israeli siege on Gaza, Israel has consistently been providing Gazans water and power supplies, which Israel threatened to cut in 2011 if Palestinian Authority pursued reunification with Hamas — a threat which Israel never carried out.

Moreover, numbers speak for themselves: in March 2012, the same month when 300 Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli towns, 3,653 truckloads of goods were delivered from Israel to Gaza and 1,375 Gazan patients and companions entered or passed through Israel for medical treatments, followed by another 1,364 in April, 2012.

In August 2012, the Hamas prime minister’s brother in law was allowed to enter Israel for treatment in an Israeli hospital.

Who Is Really Besieging Gaza? :: Gatestone Institute – Mudar Zahran – 11/15/2012.

* * *

“there are 1,200 millionaires in Gaza since Hamas took power… these people took advantage of the tunnels and the commerce of fuel to Gaza and took advantage of the people in Gaza.”

Gaza Strip full of corrupt millionaires, says Palestinian official – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 11/16/2013.

* * *

WAFA reported that the wealth came from controlling the smuggling of good through the tunnels with Egypt, including “alcohol and drugs,” describing Hamas leaders as “Gaza’s drug lords”.

In addition, the prominent Egyptian newspaper, al-Mesryoon, quoted Egyptian writer and academic Abdul Munim Saeed as saying that Hamas was the main importer and exporter of drugs into Gaza.

The Jewish Press » » Hamas’ Drug Lords – 4/22/2013.

*

A campaign against drugs was launched by Gaza’s interior ministry last month targeting tramadol tablets which are widely used by youth in the Sector.

Tramadol is a drug prescribed by doctors as a pain killer; however it is widely misused by drug addicts as a replacement drug. Opium, marijuana and various other kinds of drugs are in short supply in Gaza as a result of the strict anti-drug campaigns carried out by the ministry of interior.

Gaza government fights ‘tramadol’ smuggling – 7/8/2013.

The quotations having to do with narcotics proceeds and trafficking in Gaza rather seem to contradict one another but are not necessarily irreconcilable: the soul of corruption and crime resides in the opaque qualities of a governance that enables some to many to engage in illicit activities without consequence to themselves.  In such atmospheres, tightening laws and initiating crackdowns may as well serve to remove one’s own competitors or enemies from the market, which is not to say that’s what’s happening, but who is to know — and how would they know it?  Independent accounting and audit would see unknown to governments — this is not about Hamas only — that rely too heavily on their own opacity, privacy, and security in doing what they do.

Results nonetheless come out in one form or another of cash input and output comparisons, and if cash seems in short supply where in fact it has been signaled as abundant, than one knows it has been disappearing down into very dark and bottomless pockets.

* * *

The tunnels that move goods into the Strip from Egypt have been linchpins of the economy, employing 12,000 to 15,000 and supplying as much as 75 percent of the products sold in the markets, according to Sameer Abumdallala, head of the economics department at Al Azhar University in Gaza. Now the smugglers say their importance is waning: Access to Israeli goods is improving, and the Gazan government has begun regulating the tunnels, sapping profits.

Twilight of Gaza’s Smuggling Tunnel Millionaires – Businessweek – 1/31/2013.

* * *

Palestine – Gaza City.

Septemper 4, 2013

palestinian man who lost his right foot (disabled)he has 10 children in Gaza City ( Alzayton area) suffers poverty and the family lives in just two rooms.

Five of the children they don’t going to school because of the bad economic situation in the family. — family also thay don’t have an sewerage network

Gerechtigkeit für Gaza – justicia para Gaza – justice pour Gaza – justice for Gaza: Ezz Al Zanoon – brilliant photographer from Gaza – 9/4/2013.

Whose constituents are they?

Readers who click on the above link will arrive at an almost too beautiful picture of an equally ugly circumstance made more so by the point of this post: enormous sums have channeled through the Gaza Strip, but evidence of fair and responsible distribution through local governance has been weak and, in fact, both Israeli and Palestinian presses seem to have turned up stories indicating interests opposite accountable and responsive area-wide governance.

______

Dictatorships and the “malignant narcissists” who manipulate and thieve from their areas of control often offer sweet words to their constituents but their wallets and their forces tend to serve mostly themselves.  For such, ideologies and religions would seem to serve mostly as cloaks and shields inscribed with the con artist’s favorite invocation: “Trust me.”

Addendum 12/5/2013

The streets of some Gaza neighborhoods are completely flooded with raw sewage, so that pedestrians have no way to go but through the muck. The Hamas government has been sinking Gaza into a quagmire of violence, blackouts, water shortages and now: a cholera epidemic waiting to happen.

The Jewish Press » » Israel Warns EU of Emerging Gaza Humanitarian Disaster – 12/3/2013.

* * *

In the past few years, the war-torn Gaza Strip relied on Egyptian fuel at 3.5 Israeli shekels (one dollar) per litre. Then in July, Egypt closed down all supply tunnels to Gaza in an attempt to crush the Hamas Islamic movement for being an ally to overthrown Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013). The municipality says that fuel coming through Israel is heavily taxed, forcing them to pay double, at 7.0 Israeli shekels per litre.

Gaza Returns to Donkey Days – Sabbah Report – 12/5/2013.

1. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sets out to establish a family dynasty in the last years of his tenure;

2. Egypt, en masse, decides to not let Mubarak get away with that, and he’s ousted from power;

3. The only political player on the block turns out the Muslim Brotherhood, which handily, ruthlessly, takes care of its competition, ascends to power, and sets about the business of consolidating everything, starting with the army, quickly advancing to the constitution, its way;

3b. Hamas, itself a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, cheers for the arrival of its new buddy;

4. Civil war breaks out in Syria, partially, initially, aligning Shiite against Sunni Islam, and Hamas, knowing what it’s really about (read the charter), knows what it’s about, which alienates the puppet master in Iran;

5. Meanwhile, in Egypt, President Morsi turns out so ham handed, venal, and on his economy just plain absent or stupid — you decide — Egyptian about half or three-quarters en masse demand his ouster and return to the comfort of the arms of the army;

6. Uh oh for Hamas — Egyptian, Israeli, and United States diplomatic and military interests discover common cause in heading off the fascist Brotherhood (while mouthing away for more genuine democratic process, one way or the other) — and it’s Hamas — the Hamas government and governance — that can no longer sustain an inscrutable presence in the lives of Gaza’s constituents;

6a. Hamas successfully stifles the launch of protests in its streets by way of pre-event arrests and detentions and the usual methods amounting to intimidation — and no one shows up: the by-Hamas-silenced continue suffering (related on this blog: “Hamas – Tamarod – 11/11 [You’re Going to Need a Cup of Coffee“]).

7. Israel, watching this meltdown in governance, the wholesale shirking of responsibility for basic services — keep in mind Gaza’s millionaires, their number, their sources of income, their comforts — alerts the European Union as regards the strips vulnerability to other human catastrophe, including the creation of conditions for cholera.

* * *

A STRING of regional developments over the past two years has left the Islamist Hamas government in Gaza in dire straits and opened up new opportunities for Israel and Palestinian moderates.

In backing the Sunni rebels in the Syrian civil war, Hamas forfeited its special ties with its biggest arms supplier, Iran; the military ouster of its Muslim Brotherhood allies in Cairo put serious strains on its relations with Egypt; and a change of leadership in Qatar left a big question mark over the extent of financial aid from the oil-rich Gulf state it can continue to count on.

ICT – Commentaries > Hamas in disarray – 11/26/2013.

* * *

“I can’t emphasise enough that Israel’s security in this negotiation (with Iran) is at the top of our agenda,” Kerry said at a joint news conference in Jerusalem.

“The United States will do everything in our power to make certain that Iran’s nuclear programme of weaponisation possibilities is terminated.”

Kerry stressed the two men had spent “a very significant amount of time” discussing the peace talks with the Palestinians.

“Israel’s security is fundamental to those negotiations,” he said.

Israel security key in talks on peace, Iran: Kerry – Yahoo!7 – 12/5/2013.

Hate may for a while drive the heart but it consumes it too and all it envelopes.

* * *

The charter states that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[1] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[2][3] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they do not block Hamas’s efforts.[4] The Charter adds that “renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion” of Islam.[5]

Hamas Covenant – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/5/2013.

Any who care to look ahead to how that story ends may well look beyond Gaza, Hamas, and Israel: a figure approaching 130,000 have died in neighboring Syria’s civil war, which effort to depose a dictators has been skewered by the forces of “Islamic Jihad” that would have it a war for Islam rather than for democracy, human rights, and inclusion in power; beside that figure stands the displacement of one-third of Syria’s population before the war.

I’ve seen no figure describing the suffering and trauma visited on Syrian innocents and noncombatants, but then I believe no such figure can ever exist.

# # #