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Tag Archives: demonstrations

Iran: Happy Bloody New Year!

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2017, against dictatorship, anti-totalitarianism, democracy, demonstrations, Iran, Iranian, Iranian freedom, Khamenei, kleptocracy, modern v medieval, popular revolution, protests, revolution 2017






 

Be born.

–33–

Despotism | ? Ukraine ? | Democracy

15 Sunday Dec 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

demonstrations, Kasparaov, protests, Putin, Putinism, Russia, Tyahnybok, Ukraine, Yanukovich

▶ 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.

# # #

Egypt – SloganTweeting From Both Sides

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Fast News Share, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

demonstrations, Egypt, journalism, June 30, media, politics

Tweeted about 12 minutes ago:

Ahmed Nader (@ANaderGretly): “Egyptians, no matter what happens today, we shall be one hand, one voice, and one spirit. Don’t let the beards get you down.”

Aysha (@aysha_nur): “Dear international media! Move your dirty hands from #Egypt! Protesters won’t achieve their goal by creating anarchy!!”

Our total common web communications toolkit would seem to me to have bumped up a big notch today.  A few minutes before catching the above on Twitter, I / we — if we were watching live streaming — saw a brief Tahrir Square flyover by helicopters while the crowd cheered beneath them.

What I’m hearing from the live feed: hypnotic in techno disco peak experience rhythm.

We know this crowd is going to move, and watching the live feed (Ustream), the Twitter feed, our Facebook walls, and all of that, whatever world is watching is going to move with it.

The “Second Row Seat to History” has just morphed into its own front-row position, albeit yet removed from the heat and sweat, the smell of the crowd, and, later — because it would have to be a miracle if shouting and stamping and making noise would suffice for the outer boundary of the energy of the event — the running, the battle, the blood, and the tears.

# # #

Egypt – “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — It Will Be Live Streamed, Facebooked, Tweeted, Blogged . . . .

30 Sunday Jun 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

demonstrations, Egypt, journalism, June 30

Update: At the moment — 6/30/2013/0850EDT — Ustream’s “Tahrir-sq-live” is dead, off the air, silent.

With photography, one always knows where the photographer stood; with what I saw this morning, one stands where the photographer stands.

Already, I miss being there, in it, from six hours away in the west.

*****

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tahrir-sq-live

And there we are — split screen: on the left side of my screen, a live camera broadcasting live from the demonstration — no edits, cutaways, voice overs (well, not much) . . . pure data; and on the right side, my blog’s composing tile.

Chanting, horns, whistles . . . waving tricolors . . . a milling crowd  . . . a littered location —

Oh crap.

Thirty-second commercials . . . .

Inline pop-ups.

😦

I would really rather see advertising in blocks around the main tile — annoying but not invasive.

My grousing aside, the appearance and adaptation of new technologies would seem a part of every conflict: look what we can do!

Now.

# # #

Where the Writer Engages Egypt’s Long Day

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Middle East, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

demonstrations, Egypt, journalism, June 30, unrest

AP’s caption:  “Thousands of opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and outside the presidential palace on Sunday morning ahead of planned mass protests aimed at forcing the president out of office. (June 30)”

The previous post remains “live” — I’m updating it as I get around the web with various hash tags and search terms, a most up-to-date experience this one, considering how revolutionary watching Vietnam footage on television’s evening news was about 50 years ago (gasp!  I cannot be that old).

# # #

FNS – Egypt — Watching It With You

29 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by commart in BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2013, demonstrations, Egypt, June

Most newspaper editors refrained from mockery of Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, during his thirty-year reign, but in the new Egypt, things are different. A law against “insulting” the President remains in the penal code, but illustrators unabashedly lampoon Morsi on a daily basis.

Guyer, Jonathan.  “A Year of Drawing Morsi.”  The New Yorker, June 29, 2013.

I’ll be asking what I’m doing “watching it with you”, but, for a while, I’ll be watching for videos and tweets on what would seem to be shaping up as a bloody day in Egypt.

As the world turns, Cairo’s about six hours ahead of New York City, so no “all nighter” seems necessary here, and, part of answering my own question, I’m not scoopin’ nobody!

If I’ve two cents to add, it’s going to have to do with analysis and reflection.

Themes

Petition to remove President Morsi from office: “Egypt group: 22 million signatures against Morsi”

General violence: “American Killed in Egypt Taught English to Children.”

A friend called a couple of hours ago to commiserate over reports of another gang-type rape of a journalist in association with Egypt’s violence, but one would expect that to play at the top of reports, and an attempt to access a referenced video link sent by the same party seemed only to block my web connection in general.

Reduced street-to-world time in reporting: “Egypt protests set for showdown, violence feared.”  The URL is about two hours old — I think CNN and Reuters are going to “own my eyeballs” as other outfits start begging subscriptions when they really haven’t any monopoly on a large story nor, if narrow casting, all that unique a perspective (but that brings up my motivation too, and it nags me that I might fare better working on much narrowed research by contract).

Lessons yet to be learned:

At 0:32, Hamada Moharram says, “He can’t even rule a village.  This isn’t fair.  The Muslim Brotherhood as a whole is an organization full of corruption.”

Somehow, I just don’t want to play The Who’s “Won’t Fooled Again” again in this spot.

It gets old.

Kind of like the web.

Be that as it may, good luck today, Egypt.

The whole world will be watching.

Try not to horrify it too much.

FNS – Erdogan and Demonstrations – Update

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by commart in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Politics, Regions, Turkey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

demonstrations, Erdogan, Turkey

After night fell, his security forces put these words into force. They used bulldozers to clear out Gezi Park, which had become a symbol of the resistance in recent days. They chased protesters and beat them down with clubs, and they shot tear gas into cafes and hotels as the people fled. Doctors who treated the wounded were arrested.

Popp, Maximilian and Mirjam Schmitt.  “‘Hateful’ Speech in Istanbul: Erdogan Throws Fuel on Flames.  Spiegel Online, June 17, 2013.

President Erdogan may mount pro-government demonstrations, but he has a way to go with regard to quelling anti-government unrest, and to judge both by the article in Spiegal Online and the balanced footage above, he’s inclined to do it with the heavy hand of a dictator.

The orchestration of his own AKP pro-government demonstration, which included busing fans to the location, while at the same time suppressing Taksim Square activity by clearing the streets with force and closing routes into the city reflects well the autocrat’s want to control without a lot of back and forth in the conference room or negotiating table.

Add:

  • Deflection of responsibility for his state’s spontaneous demonstrations to foreign influence (of some kind) and the international press;
  • Detention of lawyers sympathetic with demonstrators and the alleged arrests of doctors — that detail seems to be in the news today — attending those injured by government forces.

If preventing attention to the injured is a part of the governing ethic “over there”, that too speaks of the barbarian within and a reigning mentality not much different than that which has made a mess of Damascus.  The process doesn’t change: the greater and more extensive the repression, the more amplified the resentments and, when those surface, the response.

Describing Erdogan’s government as “despotic,” two main union blocs say they plan to march to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which has been at the heart of more than two weeks of protests. It is the second time unions have called a strike to support the protest movement.

Penhaul, Karl, Ian Lee, Gul Tuysuz.  “Turkish unions call strike after weekend of street clashes.”  CNN, June 17, 2013.

Al Jazeera reports, “Labour groups representing doctors, engineers and dentists are also said to have joined the strike on Monday. The striking groups represent about 800,000 workers” (“Turkey threatens to deploy army to end unrest.”  June 17, 2013).

Reuters reports today 441 persons detained in Istanbul on Sunday, 56 in Ankara, and 5,000 injured and four dead over the span of the unrest.

Additional Reference

Burch, Jonathan and Daren Butler.  “Striking workers face off with police in Turkish capital.”  Reuters, June 17, 2013.

Letsch, Constanze and Ian Traynor.  “Turkey unrest: violent clashes in Istanbul as Erdoğan holds rally.”  The Guardian, June 16, 2013:

Erdogan inveighed against the international media, blaming the BBC and CNN for distorting the drama of the past three weeks in what he repeatedly alleged was an international plot to divide and diminish Turkey.

“You will make your voice heard so anyone conspiring against Turkey will shiver,” he told the crowd. “Turkey is not a country that international media can play games on.”

Waldman, Simon A. and Emre Caliskan.  “Erdogan’s aim: Suffocate the right to protest in Turkey.”  Haaretz, June 5, 2013.

CNN.  “Demonstrations in Turkey.”  Retrospective slideshow.  June 16, 2013.

Michaels, Sean.  “Turkish police confiscate piano used to serenade Taksim Square protesters.”  The Guardian, June 17, 2013.

Peterson, Scott.  “Erdogan’s supporters rally, dismissing Turkish protests as a ‘big game’ (+video).”  The Christian Science Monitor, June 16, 2013:

Using language that belittled the protesters as disrespectful and irrelevant, Erdogan appeared to point the finger of blame at everyone except himself and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), citing instead the party’s economic triumphs and democratic reforms.

While the title includes the term “video”, when I viewed the piece at about 9:17 a.m. EDT, there was none.

Reuters.  “Hundreds of thousands rally in Turkey for Erdogan.”  June 16 2013.

Sky News.  “Turkey: Erdogan Supporters Rally in Istanbul.”  June 17, 2013.

The Guardian.  “Taksim square: riot police evict protesters in Istanbul – video.”  June 16, 2013.

Reflection

Political cartooning has gotten an update in recent years (or days, considering the pace of media technology development and its broad distribution.  I thought this piece catchy (yes, I am chatyping like the old man I’ve become here) and while it doesn’t reflect my thoughts, which are so much more sober, the presentation would seem part of the zeitgeist of a dawning political era.

Referral

Al Jazeera’s running a “live blog” — sure glad it’s not a dead one — on Turkey’s unrest: http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/topic/turkey-protests-20176

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"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."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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