Ukraine – Orphan?

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Posted to YouTube June 30, 2015.


The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has prepared a dossier laying out evidence for what it calls “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

The report alleges there are some 9,000 Russian troops deployed in Ukraine, forming 15 battalion tactical groups. The force includes about 200 tanks, more than 500 armored fighting vehicles, and some 150 artillery systems, according to the dossier.

Coalson, Robert.  “Who Are The Russian Generals That Ukraine Says Are Fighting In The Donbas?”  Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, July 3, 2015.


In today’s Washington Post, Jackson Diehl notes Russia’s suspension of gas deliveries to Ukraine and the west’s distractions with Greece and Iran, asking at the end of his piece “Will this be remembered as the summer when the West let Ukraine die?”

I won’t give away his answer.

My hope: I hope not.

Remember Yanukovych Leaks and the state-borne internal piracy that drove Ukrainians to give Putin’s stooge the boot.

Remember Putin’s $52 billion Sochi Winter Olympics, which obscene spending ignored and masked off the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria and the nearly 10 million displace while Putin-Assad-Khamenei fairly cultivated “The Terrorists” for Assad’s Big Political Theater and Khamenei’s teleological commitment to bringing forth the Great Shiite vs Sunni Battle.

Remember Yulia Marushveska — says Anna Nemtsova recently, “She’s a Beautiful, Passionate Voice for Ukraine, But That’s Not Enough” (The Daily Beast, June 28, 2015):

“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets,” she said to the global audience, her voice full of feeling. “There is only one reason: They want to be free from a dictatorship. … We are civilized people but our government are barbarians. This is not a Soviet Union.” The video has since been seen by more than 8.3 million people.

Remember “Syndicate Red Brown Green” and the smaller feudal and mafia-style relationships: Putin-Assad-Khamenei; Putin-Khamenei; Jobbik-Iran; Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan, which looks shaky today.

Remember how Assad nurtured Syria’s al-Qaeda Typicals.

Remember Milan Kundera’s famous statement about remembering: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”


The main purpose of keeping the Donbas conflict in a smoldering state is to let Putin remain in power. The Donbas war will distract the Russians and help Putin stay in power, the ex-FSB officer said.

Zik.  “Ex-FSB officer throws light on Putin’s games around Donbas.”  July 6, 2015.


The BackChannel’s term for what Putin (and Putin and Khamenei together) represent in contemporary political possibility: “21st Century Neo-Feudalism”.


Dzerzhinsky may be a Communist saint, but the symbolism of the prince’s statue is inescapable. It will celebrate the new Vladimir, not just the old one. This may be obvious, but the subject is avoided in polite conversation.

There are other topics — rising prices, the fighting in Ukraine, the shape of things to come — that people don’t like to think about, even though these subjects are at times unavoidable. The economy is entering “a full-fledged crisis,” former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Parliament recently. He warned that Russia’s gross domestic product is forecast to be 4 percent lower this year than it was in 2014. Meanwhile, food prices are rising. Official figures indicate a 23 percent jump for the year ending in March, but an informal survey of grocers in my neighborhood suggests a 30 percent jump is more realistic.

Trudolyubov, Maxim.  “Russia’s Virtual Universe.”  The New York Times, July 5, 2015.


But Vyrypaev’s wider summing-up was admirably succinct: “This means that [the state] has the right to intervene, to control, direct, grow, regulate, monitor, and finally to develop the cultural process. It means that the state assumes the role of a kind of spiritual and educational shepherd for the people.”

Birchenough, Tom.  “theartsdesk in Moscow: Free thought vs cultural politics
How heavy is the official hand bearing down on Russian culture today?”  The Arts Desk, July 5, 2015.


While Obama has for the public paired Putin with Soviet revanche, it’s not the Soviet that Putin (and the KGB cum FSB organization) have brought to Russia: “feudalism”, “state capitalism”, “neo-feudalism” better describe what Putin has done — is doing —  to the Russians.

Related Reference

AP. “Land mine explosion in eastern Ukraine kills 5 soldiers, wounds 3 as fighting grinds on.”  Fox News, July 5, 2015.

Avedissian, Karena.  “The power of Electric Yerevan.”  Open Democracy, July 6, 2015: “The corruption and mismanagement of ENA reflect wider problems of governance and the political environment in Russia. When Russian state-owned companies (in which theft is not the exception but the norm) take over infrastructure in neighbouring countries, this is, in effect, ‘exporting corruption’.”

Batchelor, John.  “Obama’s ultimatums to Putin fall on deaf ears.”  Al Jazeera, July 3, 2015.

BBC.  “Nemtsov daughter condemns Russian media ‘propaganda’.”  June 9, 2015.

Castner, Jennifer.  “In Putin’s Russia, Environmentalists Face Stiff Repression.”  Earth Island Journal, June 30, 2015.

Center for Transatlantic Relations.  “This Week in Ukraine” (viewed as compiled July 2, 2015).

Connolly, Kate.  “Obama lambasts Putin: you’re wrecking Russia to recreate Soviet empire.”  The Guardian, June 8, 2015.

Gray, Rosie.  “Pro-Putin Think Tank Based in New York Shuts Down.”  BuzzFeed News, June 30 2015.

Gutterman, Steve.  “Russia blocks internet sites of Putin critics.”  Reuters, March 13, 2014.

Horvath, Ani.  “Hungary’s Viktor Orban antagonizes European Union with border fence, Russia embrace.”  The Washington Times, July 2, 2015.

Isachenkov, Vladimir.  “Putin: Russia is going to spend $400 billion upgrading its military.”  AP via Business Insider, June 26, 2015.

Popova, Polina.  “Freedom of speech under fire in Ukraine.”  The Hill, June 16, 2015.  (The story becomes convoluted as official Ukraine responds to the assault of Russian propaganda: writes Popova, “Some journalists fear that the ministry was actually created to muffle internal opposition, rather than tackling Russian propaganda. It’s not surprising that it has earned the Orwellian nickname “the Ministry of Truth”).


Not a few Russian intellectuals, depressed by the Orwellian state of Russian public discourse, have come to see Ukrainian cities as the hope for the future of Russian culture. In this light, the Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect freedom of speech in the Russian language is perhaps better compared to America invading Canada to save the welfare state or North Korea invading South Korea to protect capitalism.

Snyder, Timothy.  “Ukraine’s easy, misunderstood Babel.”  Politico, July 2-3, 2015.


The Chosunilbo.  “Russia Bans Internet Database Archive.”  July 6, 2015.  (The story concerns the “Wayback Machine” and, indeed, the suppression of questionable material).

Vasilyeva, Nataliya.  “Russian opposition star campaigns against apathy, but Kremlin media drowns him out.”  U.S. News & World Report, July 1, 2015.

Weiss, Michael.  “The Kremlin’s $220 Million Man: Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, is supposed to have the cleanest hands in the Kremlin. So where’d he get a quarter of a billion dollars?”  Foreign Policy, October 29, 2014.

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Links – From Defense One – Pakistan’s Potemkin War

With increasing annoyance, I exclaimed “Who would want their celestial virgins cleaning their clothes and doing their laundry? Is it their mothers they want in heaven, or vixens?” Clearly these women were not painted on these walls to lure the young men to the gates of paradise. Other paintings suggested a more plausible explanation: this partially bombed out building had probably been a guesthouse.

Fair, C. Christine.  “I Play Make-Believe With the Pakistani Military.”  Defense One, July 2, 2015.

In the above cited article, far more provocative paragraphs await!


The French government will continue to fund a militantly anti-Israel NGO, despite its involvement in last month’s flotilla to break the Israeli army’s blockade on Hamas-controlled Gaza, France’s Embassy in Israel as well as the French Foreign Ministry told Arutz Sheva.

As revealed by an Arutz Sheva investigation in June, one of the leading sponsors of the Freedom Flotilla III – the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine (Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine) – has received more than half a million euros in grants from the French government since 2010.

Soffer, Ari.  “French Gov’t Will Continue Funding Radical Gaza Flotilla, NGO.”  Israel National News, July 5, 2015.

Oy vey!


“They have high tech; they have drones; they have so many things,” said Jama. “We are really benefiting.”

McCormick, Ty.  “Exclusive: U.S. Operates Drones From Secret Bases in Somalia
Two decades after “Black Hawk Down,” U.S. special operations forces are back in East Africa’s most troubled nation. FP provides a rare window into their shadowy operations.”  Foreign Policy (blog), July 2, 2015.


Ukraine says it is not as reliant on Russian gas as it once was. Its representatives at the Vienna talks said it has imported no more than one-third of its gas from Gazprom so far this year because it has found less expensive gas from other countries in Europe.

That gas, in fact, was originally supplied to these nations by Russia, and the customers were reselling it to Ukraine. Moscow, however, says it is illegal for its customers to sell these “reverse supplies,” as they are called.

Tully, Andy.  “EU Pushes Russia and Ukraine to Resolve Gas Dispute.”  Oil Price, July 5, 2015.


Posted to YouTube 6/30/2015.

Related: Wiser, Daniel.  “Drone Captures Video of Russian Base Inside Ukraine.”  Washington Free Beacon, July 1, 2015.


There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it’s not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army.

Fraser, Giles.  “Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners.”  The Guardian, July 3, 2015.

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FTAC – On the Opposition of the Lawless to the Influence of Israel

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The world is the world as found, X., and we’re a wild species in it. The AQ-Typicals and the Hezbollahvirus may be part of a larger mix of lawless souls represented by Russia’s Emperor De Facto and his “New Nobility” and assorted New Nationalists and National Socialists, and that is what has the UN going after Israel and the inheritors in whole and part of the legacy of Moses the Lawgiver.


The more familiar the message, the more distilled and telegraphed it becomes.

In political shorthand, the “West” becomes “Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian”; the arrangement of the most significant and virulent forces opposed: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“.

Elaboration seems no longer needed.

Additional concepts and data may be helpful as regards challenges inherent in the governance of states opposed to the western democracies and their true allies worldwide: Egypt failed in its first foray as a democracy, proving itself unprepared for the aggressive fascism of the Muslim Botherhood — and it chose to advance to the rule of a military pursuing business for itself and the state while promoting for all Egyptians a moderating classical liberalism.  For sheer expanse and numbers, China too would seem imprudent were it to rapidly transfer the powers of the ruling elite now invested in the west — and proud to own some mansions in Melbourne and elsewhere — across a democratized but perhaps also disorganized sea of humanity.

For the greater part, possibly, our international competitions may be also naturally adjusting, but there are bloodied fringes too: Russian hybrid warfare in Ukraine has made a dismal space of Crimea, and one that on the Russo-nationalist track has no durable, ennobled, or happy future, so mired has Putin’s revanche neo-feudal Russia become in political crime (a visit to “The Russian Section” may help clarify that assertion).

The Green Fringe (however it may “Shimmer“) promotes its horror show in both a compelling and relentless fashion.  Call it “Black Flag Friday” — my notes remind: “Lyon – beheading“; “Kuwait – Shiite mosque“; “Tunisia – tourism, 38 dead“; “Somalia – African Union base – Leego – 30 killed“; “Thursday – Kobane – Kurdistan – massacre“.

And the Brown?

Today’s “Brown” (for “Brown Shirts”, Nazis, National Socialists, Nationalists of the want of a stripe of ethnic, racial, or religious purity — in that last aspect, everyone, Jews included, may have someone among the “the pure” bearing in common affection for the fascist’s favored color in work shirts) wears camouflage:

In a recent interview with Reuters, Mr Vona claimed: “With time, the [extremist] elements of Jobbik you may see as prevalent will fade because they no longer find their calling here.”

This attempt at detoxification, à la National Front in France, has convinced few observers, however. Political analyst Peter Kreko says: “The hardcore antisemitism, the hardcore anti-Roma sentiments, are still present in Jobbik, they simply display it less prominently.”

Fabriczki, Franciska.  “Jobbik is doing a bad makeover job.”  The JC – The Jewish Chronicle Online, June 9, 2015.

“Brown” also shimmers, but since the defeat of nationalist fascism in Europe and even with the development and morphing of similar movements in Russia like Pamyat and Russian National Unity, it has a deeply fragmented and riven aspect to it.  There is no unifying “internationalist nationalist” framework for belligerence.  Perhaps ironically, BackChannels encouragement of “ethnolinguistic cultural integrity” and responsive geospatial arrangements in troubled regions addresses exactly the kernel that anchors the idea of “The Jewish State” — or that of those who dream of an independent Balochistan or a unified Kurdistan.  Nonetheless, when Hungary’s Jobbik Party has associated itself with the regime in Iran, the “Brown-Green” portion of “Red Brown Green” would seem apt.


No Moses?

No Muhammad.

However, with Moses and Muhammad and Jesus between — and so many other personalities of historic note, including the the BC to CE-bridging Hillel the Elder — the world may boast of including about seven billion “Abrahamic” monotheists, however fractious.  Faced with the onslaughts of the Islamists and the plain thieving promoted by the Feudalists, most might prefer the “rule of law” to the bloody enslavement and exploitation of the lawless.

With the introduction of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” and Eve’s predictable transgression, the Torah introduces three aspects of humanity that are to accompany its journey through time: human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience.

Ah, to be burdened by conscience!

Says Hillel the Elder to an as yet unconvinced prospective convert: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.  That is the whole of Torah.  The rest is commentary.  Now go and study.”

Awareness of others . . . conscience . . . some justice inherent in the phrase that anchors a good portion of the law and empirical legal methods: “Because it could happen to you” — whatever it is.

Rule of law.

As opposed to the rule of men who have made themselves into unbridled, unconscionable, unredeemable monsters.

Anti-Semitic expression involves lying, sometimes grossly so as with the medieval “blood libel“, but often also with subtlety by way of obfuscations and omissions easily overlooked by lazy minds short on curiosity or time and long, perhaps, on culturally transmitted and enforced bad feeling (about someone — could be anyone — outside their own known group).

As hatreds go, one might find the signals of anti-Semitic thought inherently criminal for being plainly disingenuous.

There’s nothing more to it.

What makes anti-Semitic cant more interesting is who embraces it and exploits the same in the interest of developing or furthering their own powers of abuse.

Update – On the Web

Amier, Justin.  “I don’t like Jews because . . .”  The Blogs, The Times of Israel, August 11, 2014.

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The Big Fade – Or Not? Where Goes the Phantom of the Cold War?

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Yesterday left off with “Putin, Erdogan meet face to face, but don’t see eye to eye” (Al-Monitor, June 19, 2015).

Trouble in “Hellidise” for the world’s most fabulous feudal lords?

Hmm.

Should some friction not attend Syria’s fragmenting implosion brought about by the implied bloody script this blog has referred to as “Assad vs The Terrorists”?

Sanctions have been up for a while; oil prices have been down for a while: such broad conditions brought about by large maneuvers, like “North American energy independence“, may have effects.

As a trading partner, Erdogan may have a little more edge with Putin these days; as a Sunni Muslim looking over the border and watching Daesh and other al-Qaeda-type groups continuing to rough up and tear apart Syria’s landscape, he has cause to let the scouring continue.  The teleology on which he has campaigned pits him against Putin-Assad-Khamenei’s interests on the Hezbollahian (militant Shiite) side of the great divide most immediately applicable to the continuing Great Struggle of Evil Against Evil in Syria, the modern and moderate, whoever they may be (ye shall know them one still distant day by their pro-Semitic / pro-Zionist lingo), having been killed, dispersed, rendered irrelevant, or otherwise sidelined for some years now.

This day appears to be closing (for me) with tomorrow’s news (gotta love the International Dateline): “US to deploy heavy weapons on NATO’s eastern flank” (AFP, Yahoo, June 24, 2015).


From my portion of The Awesome Conversation:

While generally attaching Erdogan to Putin-Khamenei as another medieval-minded autocrat with strong interest in sustaining feudal models of power against the democratic west, there may be some unraveling within this drift as depressed oil revenues (for Russia), other punitive measures (like sanctions), and some military repositioning take place in response to Russia’s aggression in Crimea. For Erdogan, whether he likes it or not (I’m starting to appreciate that phrase), Turkey remains a NATO member with a significant modern constituency. While Erdogan wants his White Palace — I think he’s moved in, I’m not sure — the whole world is watching in an open and robust global information environment. For that, both leaders may have a little less operating room as despots than they may have had 25 years ago.

&

The “big picture” — how the feudal world may change as the modern one moves around it — is easier (for me) to see today than was the case just a few years ago.

From an amateur’s perspective, the smaller pictures might require country specialization and language ability. It’s just easier following heads of state than the numerous personalities, agencies, and committees involved in producing the world’s political landscapes and their narratives.

The long diplomacy and now evident maneuvering have been dangerous, of course, but even portrayed as playing poker against Obama’s chess, Putin’s own programming has a predictable aspect to it.  Via the day’s e-mail feed, World Affairs promoted “Imperial Ambitions: Russia’s Military Buildup” (May/June 2015):

In September 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that he could, at will, occupy any Eastern European capital in two days. This apparently spontaneous utterance reveals, probably more than Russia’s new official defense doctrine, Moscow’s true assessment of NATO’s capabilities, cohesion, and will to resist. In an echo of Soviet tactics, it also reflects Putin’s reflexive recourse to intimidation—e.g., unwarranted boasting about Russian military capabilities and intentions—as a negotiating strategy. In 2014 alone, Moscow repeatedly threatened the Baltic and Nordic states and civilian airliners, heightened intelligence penetration, deployed unprecedented military forces against those states, intensified overflights and submarine reconnaissance, mobilized nuclear forces and threats, deployed nuclear-capable forces in Kaliningrad, menaced Moldova, and openly violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987.

Much of Putin’s tenure has been about a Russian feudal revanche complete with “New Nobility” and a $51 billion winter spectacle (Sochi, while Syria’s Assad was barrel bombing millions of Syrians out of their lives and homes to make way for The Terrorists by refraining from doing the same to them at the time).

As noted in passing, while Khamenei may be going gangbusters with wars by proxy, one may wonder today how much the same have cost him by way of the continuing faith and loyalty of those patronized.  The public talk-and-walk by Nasrallah may not change much, and, indeed, if the enemy nearby is Daesh or another of the type, the situation demands that he inspire and prepare his community for greater challenges to come, and that he keep his backers happy, but the same now take place in an atmosphere of stalemate over a wartorn landscape.

Such combat proves not a fast game but an agonizingly slow grind.

Where the finger-pointing takes place — how could it not be taking place offstage? — some portion must point back to Moscow and Tehran — Putin and Khamenei — for perverting a mild people’s revolution in Damascus to hold together the Ghosts of the Soviet and the maintenance of old and new privileged through time-honored and familiar but perfectly despicable feudal practices.

Sideways and Forward

Laub, Karin (AP).  “New think tank in Jordan watching Israel shows discreet, growing ties between countries.”  U.S. News & World Report, June 22, 2015.

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Oh Troubles Keep Away from My Ecuador

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“My Ecuador” is likely to remain virtual and experienced through Windows.

However, for my correspondent, Ecuador is home, and when he writes in relation to, ” . . . the soldiers try to occupy the strategic places, highways, bridges, airports, refineries, power generation stations, generating dams . . .” and says “we will close the office now and  . . . try to buy food in the supermarket, store, and black market . . . .” I’m inclined to believe him.

But he’s just one source.

The closest corroborations in the news:

Lee, Brianna.  “Ecuador’s Correa Withdraws Controversial Tax Bills After Days of Protests.”  International Business Times, June 16, 2015.

Morla, Rebeca.  “Down with Correa!  Ecuadorians Want Off the Socialist Train: Five Days of Street Protests, More to Come.”  The Canal: Blog of the Panama Post, June 15, 2015.

Scherffus, Liz.  “The opposition says they will continue protesting until the proposed inheritance tax is off the table.”  Telesur, June 17, 2015.

As has happened in other spaces in relation to the post-Soviet neo-feudalism, reliance on oil revenues and the tumble in wellhead rates has turned out a big kick in the seat of the pants.

It appears that what has brought Ecuadorans out into the streets en masse is not primal hunger and resentment of the capitalist yankee running dog pig — China’s deep into the state these days — but the fearsome will to bequeath hard-earned private gains to progeny without fear of plundering by the state!

According to my source, some military appears to have mobilized, but the arguments and resolution of economic issues to come may play behind the increasingly pale phantom of the bankrupt Soviet, the revanche neo-feudalism in place in Moscow today, and the teetering of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.  Clearly, the authoritarian experiments dressed up in socialist talk have failed their states.

The shame is the same: some affected states, Ecuador among them, are simply rich in cultural charm, labor, and natural resources but burdened by leadership that fails to grow the kind of internal economy that might make short work of living comfortably on the land while producing the craft-for-export industries certain to at least help fill in the shortfalls from the gross export of mineral wealth.

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FTAC – Summation – Syria and Red Brown Green

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The schematics I feel I’ve observed over the years:

Post-Soviet –> neo-feudal Russia that has been quietly addressed (by sanctions; by a precipitous drop in oil prices and related revenues) as an extension of the former era.

“Putin-Assad-Khamenei” as an arc of power in the region and “Putin-Khamenei” as a hub for the greater development of political absolute power elsewhere.

“Syndicate Red Brown Green” — Putin’s Russia, KGB-to-FSB; new national socialist movements (Hungary); Islamists.

The cultivation of Daesh, self-generated but perhaps manipulated by Khamenei to serve as a Sunni foil for his regime’s Shiite expansion, serves narrative artifice that has been “Assad vs The Terrorists” — an horrific piece of political “theater of the real”.

All of that may be breaking up through the fragmenting of Syria, but nothing is near over, and, indeed, the anarchy and chaos developed in the space will have to be addressed on multiple levels, from combat and counterterrorism effort to some kind of refugee management and resettlement. Count out “Putin, Assad, Khamenei” as being of any help at all.


I had just seen a group of pictures featuring starved Syrian children, the latest in “war porn”, and it had featured an image of a starving adult man bearing a resemblance to President Obama.

Agitprop?

Not only agitprop, but propaganda from what appeared to me to be an anti-western, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist “news agency” promoting victimization on one hand while isolating itself on the other.

BackChannels has been to this evil place before: “It’s Hard Helping You When You’re Anti-Semitic, Among Other Things” (March 19, 2014).

Written about the “Obamastarvingman” and the more evidently starved youngsters:

I don’t like the top figure’s resemblance to Obama — it smacks of propaganda, an attempt at not quite subliminal suggestion.

While “Syndicate Red Brown Green” put together the political theater that may be titled, “Assad vs The Terrorists”, the children shown, and of course noncombatant adults as well, were the kind of Syrians killed or punished by, in essence, their own feudal lords.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights may have additional information on the casualties of the breathtaking disaster that has taken place in Syria in the post-Soviet and now feudal context managed by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei. Obama watched; NATO watched; we watched. However: the continuing promotion of anti-Semitism, anti-westernism — basically hateful and undemocratic rhetoric (because it’s dishonest and disingenuous speech) — leaves the Syrian victims of Assad’s grandiose play (“Assad vs The Terrorists”) disenfranchised, helpless, and isolated.

No surprise: no one has yet “Liked” the comment.

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The Speicher Massacre and Its Legacy in Iraq

1001iraqithoughts's avatar1001 Iraqi Thoughts

By Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) & Hassan Hadad (@Abufellah)

1001-Cover

On June 10 2014, the terrorist organization formerly known as ISIS (or ISIL), now known as the “Islamic State” or Da’ish, captured the northern city of Mosul and began a rapid advance south towards Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. Within 48 hours, the central city of Tikrit had fallen to the militants. Along with Tikrit, Da’ish militants captured a massive contingent of army recruits and air cadets totaling three to four thousand, most of them in their twenties.

While earlier reports simply stated that the recruits “attempted to flee” the Da’ish onslaught and were subsequently caught, it soon became clear that the events leading up to the savage massacre were much more sinister. The details remain murky to this date but according to survivors’ tales, a desperate sense of panic washed over troops and recruits based at Tikrit Air Academy…

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