Tag Archives: politics

Ukraine – Boobies and Spinmeisters – Femen, Pussy Riot, and Ketchum and Crew

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine

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On Ukraine and Crimea, on democracy and human rights in Russia, forget about Ketchum and company and what they do for money: go with the girls, Femen and Pussy Riot, for integrity.

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Ukraine action des Femen devant le Parlement – YouTube

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Obama said Thursday that the referendum would violate both the Ukrainian constitution and international law. He called on Russia to help reduce tensions on the Crimean Peninsula, as he ordered sanctions on Russians involved in Russia’s military intervention and Ukrainians who have jeopardized democracy and looted national assets. Obama later spoke by phone with Putin for more than hour.

Crimea solidifies ties with Russia ahead of referendum on leaving Ukraine – The Washington Post

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Putin also claims that “there is every reason to believe” chemical weapons were “used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists,” despite a forthcoming U.N. report that will reportedly finger the Assad regime as the culprit.

Ketchum Placed Controversial Putin Op-Ed – 9/12/2013.

Related: Who’s on Putin’s American payroll? – 3/5/2014.

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Now: which superpower leader do you trust?

I’m going with Femen — those gals put their boots on the ground and boobies in the air every time out, never mind catching cold.

One might wish one could say as much of Russians standing off to the side of Russian nationalists whom Putin means to portray as majority Russians, the only Russians, the Russians who are represented, at least by himself, not by the pestered Alexy Navalny (three hours ago: “Navalny Fined for Participation in Unsanctioned Public Gathering,” RFE — it’s got to be back in business big time with Russia’s rush backwards to despotism) or the now absent-from-Russia-until-Putin-leaves Gary Kasparov:

Mr. Putin belongs to an exclusive club, along with Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Miloševic, as one of the very few leaders to invade a neighboring nation in the nuclear age. Such raw expansionist aggression has been out of fashion since the time of Adolf Hitler, who eventually failed, and Joseph Stalin, who succeeded. Stalin’s Red Army had its share of battlefield glory, but his real triumph came at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, three months before the end of the war in Europe. There Stalin bullied a feeble Franklin Roosevelt and a powerless Winston Churchill, redrawing the Polish borders and promising elections in Poland when he knew that the Communist government the Soviets were installing was there to stay.

Garry Kasparov: Cut Off the Russian Oligarchs and They’ll Dump Putin – WSJ.com

Well said.

In Washington, D.C., Ketchum represents Vladimir Putin and Putin’s Russia.  One may trust it was well paid for the September placement denying Assad’s use, well investigated, of chemical warheads in the Syria’s civil war.

At least one might consider Ketchum in the best of like company:

In May 2009, Waldman filed paperwork with the DOJ indicating he would be working with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to provide “legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions.”

Deripaska had his U.S. visa revoked in 2006 due to longstanding concerns about his links to organized crime and because the State Department was concerned he lied to American investigators who were looking into his business.

American Executives Working For Putin – Business Insider – 3/5/2014, on Adam Waldman representing Oleg Deripaska.  Others included in the Business Insider story by Hunter Walker include Ketchum Inc.; Robert C. Jones, an attorney “ultimately responsible to Ketchum, Inc. (the money involved: about $535,000 in contracts devoted to working for Russia); William Nordwind,  partner in a consultancy serving both Gazprom and Ketchum (I don’t want to relay the earnings — the story is larger than this paragraph and the curious reader may click to it.

Related: Vladimir Putin Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – Business Insider – 3/6/2014.

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One more thing about Russia’s apparent politics and perhaps the thugs who make it work:

Pussy Riot attacked in Nizhny Novgorod McDonalds – YouTube – 3/5/2014.

Caption: “On the mourning of March 6 2014 Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, along with Peter Verzilov and members of their prisoners rights NGO “Zone of the Rights” arrived in the city of Nizhny Novgorod to inspect a local prison. At 7.20 am an organized group barged into the McDonalds where members of Pussy Riot with their crew were having breakfast and attacked them with pepper spray, green antiseptic and other weapons.”

So sad to see these two so less wild after gulag time, but they were peacefully doing their new NGO thing, and by that I mean doing what human rights NGOs do, i.e., looking into matters involving the victimization of others.

More on the latest Pussy Riot story: Russia: Violent attack on former Pussy Riot members must not be tolerated | Amnesty International – 3/6/2014; Pussy Riot members assaulted by gang who threw paint on them | Mail Online – 3/6/2014; ‘Pussy Riot’ Band Members Attacked, Left With Burns (VIDEO) – today.

Related: Pussy Riot Unveil Plans for Human Rights Organization | Music News | Rolling Stone – 12/27/2013.

On Ukraine and Crimea, on democracy and human rights in Russia, forget about Ketchum and company and what they do for money: go with the girls, Femen and Pussy Riot, for integrity.

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Ukraine-Crimea; Crimea-Ukraine – Putin’s Uncertain Arcs of Power

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Europe, Hungary, Politics, Regions, Ukraine

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RT America’s Liz Wahl resigns live on air – YouTube – 3/5/2014.

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Ukrainian television was switched off in Crimea on Thursday and replaced with Russian state channels.

Putin rebuffs Obama as Ukraine crisis escalates | Reuters

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Putin’s “vertical of power” brand has well established the arc that is Putin-Assad-Khamenei, without which Syria’s initial revolution may have taken a turn toward the moderate.

Of course, it may be as useless second-guessing yesterday as trying to outwit tomorrow.

Nonetheless, one tries.

🙂

Along The Bear’s southern flank in eastern Europe, the potential arc “Putin-Orbán-Yanukovych” would seem to be enjoying significantly less success.  Suddenly stateless Viktor Yanukovych appears to have leaped into Mother Bear’s arms (or off a roof somewhere — who knows?  He’s missing in action); Viktor Orbán appears to have chosen an energy-based stance founded on a nuclear power development agreement with Russia (that may in time transform Hungary into an energy exporting state) while nonetheless hewing to NATO and European interests and values, clearly rebuffing interest Putin may have in recovering or retaining Soviet-era buffer and client states in eastern Europe.

Simply put, Orban has successfully noted the difference between doing business with a Great Power and kissing its ass at the same time.

Not everyone sees Orban as standing strong for European democratic and open society values:

According to LMP politician Katalin Ertsey, who also serves as a deputy chairman of the committee, the Hungarian position in the Ukraine-Russian conflict is “as invisible as Vladimir Putin would like it to be”.

Viktor Orban breaks silence over Ukraine – The Budapest Beacon – 3/3/2014.

However, Orban’s national security arrangement with NATO and his greater constituency’s pro-European stance better fit a cool-tough trade relationship with Moscow than a warm fuzzy between autocrats with the “vertical of power” at its center.

If the rightness doesn’t make the argument, the wrongness most certainly does: along with the rest of the world, Orban saw what has happened to Yanukovych (and his estates, which have been seized as “frozen assets”).

Related: EU names 18 Ukrainians whose assets will be frozen including Viktor Yanukovych | Mail Online – 3/6/2014.

Additional Reference

Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk rejects referendum on Crimea split – CNN.com

Putin rebuffs Obama as Ukraine crisis escalates | Reuters

OSCE observers barred from entering Crimea:Polish minister | Reuters – 3/6/2014.

Crimea votes to join Russia, Obama orders sanctions | Reuters – 3/6/2014.

Ukraine Premier: Crimea Will Remain in Ukraine – ABC News – 3/5/2014.

Hungary Not Part of Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Premier Orban Says – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ – 3/3/2014.

Ukraine says its 10 ships in Crimean port stay loyal | Reuters – 3/2/2014.

Russian forces try to seize anti-aircraft missile base in Ukraine’s Crimea – Interfax | Reuters – 3/1/2014.

Putin $14 Billion Nuclear Deal Wins Orban Alliance – Bloomberg – 1/15/2014: “For Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who as opposition leader in 2007 railed against turning his country into the “happiest barrack of Gazprom,” the persuasion took the shape of an offer to lend the country as much as $14 billion. Orban trekked to Moscow yesterday to hand Rosatom Corp., Russia’s state nuclear holding company, a deal to expand Hungary’s lone nuclear power plant using that loan.”

Related: The Putin-Orbán nuclear deal: a short assessment | Heinrich Böll Foundation – 1/27/2014: “A resource-poor country with shaky economic fundaments would make major investments in order to become an energy exporter, and subsidies provided by Hungarian taxpayers would be redistributed among foreign consumers. Around 55-65% of the country’s electricity production would be based on Russian technology, operating at a single location (Paks). This is a project with an obscure past and a murky future.”

Wikipedia Section: Viktor Orbán – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – “At the age of 14 and 15, he was a secretary of the communist youth organisation (KISZ) of his secondary grammar school.[8][9] In 1988, Orbán was one of the founding members of Fidesz (an acronym for Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, English: Alliance of Young Democrats). The first members were mostly students who opposed the Communist regime.”;

BackChannels Section: Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation | BackChannels – I’ve include this reference to concept predicting that Putin will accuse Ukrainian nationalists of fomenting conflict over Crimea while enjoying the services of Russian nationalist militia in Crimea to help him wrest it from Ukraine. Moreover, the manner in which Putin has presented to Russians (via RT and other state media)  the Syrian Civil War may not be so easily repeated in eastern Europe.  Word on Crimea gets around in English, Ukrainian, and Russian, and Russians in Crimea and Russia may demand and expect a complete, accurate, and clear explanation for a separatism devolving back to Putin’s own penchant for inexhaustible self-aggrandizement, rather well illustrated by that $52 billion price tag for Sochi (while in the same period Russia pledged $10 million to ease the suffering of Syria’s displaced population).

Updates

BBC News – Ukraine crisis: Crimea vote ‘will not be recognised’

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Link

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/saudi-arabia-foreignrelations.html

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

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http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/saudi-arabia-foreignrelations.html

The discovery of oil would transform the geopolitical role of Saudi Arabia. It was an American firm, later called Aramco — not a British firm — that succeeded in getting the rights for prospection in 1938. Aramco sought assistance from the U.S. government to exploit the fields.

One consequence of Aramco’s interest combined with President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision of the geopolitical future of the United States was a now famous, then little noticed, meeting of Roosevelt and the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, on Feb. 14, 1945 aboard a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea. 

FTAC – About Culture, Empathy, and Language – Syria as Example

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Syria

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Empathy with an emphasis on compassion, and here with that as related to casualties and displaced from Syria’s agonizing civil war, signals something good in the general humanity, but it’s not going to be enough to promote band-aids when the war is sustained on the absence of an armed force of a middle and perhaps now modern temperament.

It’s notable also that Russia pledged $10 million to refugee relief in Syria while spending $52 billion, the largest amount ever, for the winter Olympics at Sochi.
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My partner in the short conversation then said, “Humanity in the true sense has lost all its values.”
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Not really although it sometimes seems to. We’re a wild species suspended in about, oh, 6,900 living languages, each of which represents a cultural invention and technology and conveys from one generation to the next a behavioral program fit to the character of the language community in a given circumstance in place and time.

I believe the variance in that language-driven and language-derived behavior shapes consciousness and conscience and with regard to empathy, may emphasize the cultivation of that ability to meld emotion and imagination on behalf of someone else, or it may harden the heart against the same.

Other qualities may obtain similar support and the tapestry of whole cultures, whether that of, say, a living sun king or that of a god remote and separate from the mortal, becomes made of such threads. With the aforementioned 6,900 differences in cultural cognitive style wrapped in language, it’s amazing we don’t have more conflict on our plates than we do, but, ever optimistic here, if we drift toward a moderate middle together, we can clean up and forestall a lot of this kind of mess.

The modern dictator’s values — any side (one chessboard – same player on both sides, lol) — build on heroic myth to develop power over others for the purpose of obtaining continuous and inexhaustible “narcissistic supply” — the adoration and adulation of the realm: and they often sail themselves and their own to disaster on the wings of a grandiose messianic delusion.

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The inspiration for the above portion of threaded conversation appears to be a contrivance but quite pointed:

Most Shocking Second a Day Video – YouTube – 3/5/2014 – by Save the ChildrenUK.

Posted yesterday, it has already achieved 5.5 million views.  The venue in which I first saw it: In These 93 Seconds, You Will See How War Can Turn a Child’s World Upside Down — Independent Journal Review (IJR) – 3/6/2014 (four hours ago, and on that site it has picked up 432 shares and 4,309 views).

The best way to save the children is, alas, to save the adults, get enough on to about the same page in their attitudes, ethics, ideals, and values with regard to others, and then get them to challenge, eject, or evolve the kind of deeply narcissistic and lost personalities who have attempted to paint reality for others through what they do in the pursuit of war.

Of the Assad regime and the al-Nusra et al. counterpoints, I’ve remarked “different talk: same walk”: each will use the lives of noncombatants for political chips.  Perhaps nowhere in the whole sorry tragedy has that been made more clear than in the approach of each side to the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp, where one side laid siege as part became a rebel base, and the rebels, true to form, used the helpless and unarmed residents as their own human shields.

Is there anyone reading this post that might want to see that obscenity again?

Attitudes and beliefs, including beliefs about Jews, about loyalty, about the west, about the Baath Party and the Soviet Union (or its ghost from 22 years ago) play a role in impeding the development of an effective and true Syrian people’s army.  Moreover, but along similar lines, the three sides — Assad; more secular revolutionary forces; and, of course, the al-Qaeda types — have found themselves trapped in the immense shadows cast by the glorious wars of yesteryear, which for each is different: Bashar al-Assad has been trying to fight his father’s war, an armed insurrection against the state; the battles in mind, perhaps literally, for the al-Qaeda affiliates need little introduction and would seem to be expressed in battlefield and political behavior; and the moderates who seem to be carrying around the load of combined internationalist and Islamist hate for Israel, Jews, and  “The West” just haven’t found their way to daylight.

I don’t know where to change that “Jew hate” that signals so much else about the three parties sewing Syria with destruction, and I’m not sure it’s my job alone to locate those cognitive switches in the languages alive on the fields of battle, but finding that would be a good place to start.

Syrians needs Syria — I know of no culture free of a relationship with its land and landscape — and they need to own it for themselves in peace.

To obtain that ownership and peace, the defense Syrians may need most of all, the defense most absent in the three years of continuous and brutal fighting, is not defense from Israel, which is treating Syrian wounded today, but defense from those among themselves who would seek their own excessive aggrandizement at the costs now well displayed in death, displacement, and suffering.

Updates

Related: If Britain were Syria: charity releases ‘brutally powerful’ ad – Al Arabiya News – 3/5/2014.

Related (updated 3/18/2014) from The Torah, Exodus 31-32:

31The LORD did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of insects from Pharaoh, from his servants and from his people; not one remained. 32But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and he did not let the people go.

Exodus 8:32 But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.

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Guest Post – Asad Khan – When “FATA” Came Calling To Islamabad

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Pakistan, Politics, Regions

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FATA has been in the eye of the storm for the past 10 years and other than drones, bombs and shells, what pacification measures have the government taken, other than to be scared witless of the terror merchants and their cronies?

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The news to which the commentary responds:Suicide attack on Pakistan court leaves 11 people dead days after Taliban announced month-long ceasefire | Mail Online – 3/3/2014.

On that horrific and too familiar a kind of story, one of my friends in Islamabad, Asad Khan, who states on his Facebook page, “every human has the right to communicate with the creator, in the manner s/he thinks best . . . “, provided me permission to relay his thoughts here.

As an editor in this process, I’ve added paragraph breaks to help ease the reading, question marks to the interrogative statements, and applied rote grammatical corrections (“has” to “have” for example) where needed.

“MPAs” refers to members of the Provincial Assembly; “MNAs” to members of the National Assembly.  There are a few other acronyms sprinkled about (“FC” refers to “Frontier Corps”), but the reader is online too and look-up works fast.

Guest Post by Asad Khan

The Police Service is the most vilified, most underfunded, most politically manipulated, probably most demoralized, and most undertrained of all government services.

With this background of our own home grown “keystone cops”, should we be surprised that the terrorists came calling to the courts and turned it into a shooting gallery, shooting innocent people as if they were sitting ducks.

I think what has happened in Islamabad should not come as a surprise to anyone, least of all to the current political leadership. I have always expounded the view that we should have job descriptions and selection criteria for ministers and other leaders and policy makers. For example what are the qualifications of the interior minister, other than the fact that a whole bunch of nincompoops have voted him to the national assembly on false promises?

The same holds true for the rest of that galaxy of greats and near greats that adorn the corridors of power in Islamabad.

First of all I would like to ask the interior minister to define the roles of the police departments/service, the FC and various other “law enforcement” agencies that he lords over?

Probably he will not know the answers to this/these question(s).

Next what is the internal security policy for the nation as whole, not just Raiwind, Lahore, and Punjab in that order, and not just security for the star spangled generals, judges, ministers and MPAS or MNAS?

Does the interior minister know the shelf life of a cartridge in the bandolier of a Police Constable, or when it was purchased, and to how many rain falls and sun shines that cartridge has been exposed to?

Probably it is beneath the dignity of that snotty, arrogant minister to know such trivia.

Why must the Police Constable die in the line of duty protecting a judge who does not value his (police constable’s) life?

What has the government done for Malakand, post 2009 conflict other than some nicely written fraudulent reports?

FATA has been in the eye of the storm for the past 10 years and other than drones, bombs and shells, what pacification measures have the government taken, other than to be scared witless of the terror merchants and their cronies?

We are adopting the line of appeasement not because of our love for the Taliban, but because we are scared blue of them.

Has the Interior Minister, or the PM or the CM ever been to the funeral of a police constable or an FC jawan killed in the line of duty in KPK?

I don’t think so.

Has a survey ever been conducted to know the views of the police or the FC?

I don’t think so.

If I were a Police constable or an FC jawan I would not throw my life away for the protection of some judge or politician.

Have the powers that be ever stood in the shoes of a police constable and thought of these things?

The post-event inquiries ordered by the Head Judge, the PM, CM and what not make me laugh.

It is a joke on the nation.

Pakistan can only get out of the morass it is in if we have honest, decent men and women at the helm of affairs, but unfortunately this will never be. The West is rooting for parliamentary democracy because they know that this sham “democracy” is our nemesis and will be the cause of our eventual downfall. Robber barons will keep on replacing one another and this game of musical chairs will keep on going, and we will keep on sinking deeper and deeper until the sands of time will cover us and there will be no trace left, and the freebooters will take their loot and head West, to out their miserable lives there.

For the present, this country is being run by mafias and unless their hold is broken, and they are made accountable for their actions, we can bid sayonara to any hope for the better.

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West Papua – Indonesian Child Trafficking for Islam – Mass Graves

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Papua New Guinea, Politics, Regions, Religion, South Pacific

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Their story is more evidence that Christian children are being taken from West Papua and converted to Islam – a practice officially denied after being revealed in Fairfax Media’s Good Weekend magazine last year. It also makes clear for the first time that knowledge of the practice reaches high into the upper echelons of Indonesia’s political elite.

The religious conversion of any young child is illegal in Indonesia, and the United Nations deems any transfer of a minor, even for education, as trafficking.

Papuan children taken to Jakarta to be converted to Islam – 3/2/2014.

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West_Papua_Mass_Grave

Posted on Facebook by the Free West Papua Campaign, March 3, 2014: “Indonesian police and plainclothes police can be seen taking sickening “trophy photos” of the corpses of West Papuan people they have just stripped and murdered and thrown into a drainage ditch used as a makeshift mass grave in the middle of a highlands village.
According to sources, this is in the Central Highlands of West Papua, possibly the Puncak Jaya region and was taken relatively recently.
What appears to be the National flag of West Papua, the Morning Star can be seen raised behind the horror. The raising of this flag has been made illegal by Indonesia and carries a 15 year jail sentence.
As this photo has just emerged, we are currently finding out as much as possible about the details and cannot yet verify the exact date and location but what is for sure is that this photo, taken in the highlands of West Papua is 100% real and genuine, hard evidence of Indonesia’s 21st century apartheid and genocide in West Papua.”

I have yet to download a conflict photo loaded with EXIF/IPTC verbal data identifying the camera used, the photographer, and photographer’s title and caption.  Most often too, these incendiary images come out of the special interest press representing religious denominations and organizations that repeat their use or transpose images taken in one place to captions representing another event.  The Free West Papua Campaign, however, insists itself on locating the specific photographer who took it, when, and where.  It believes in the veracity of the image enough to question its exact provenance, and therefore I believe in its accuracy too.

UPDATE, OCTOBER 16, 2017: for those coming off third-party sites using the above photograph — one has actually disinformed its public by putting “Rohingya Muslims” in place of West Papuans in its headline — I’m no longer certain of the forensic quality of the photograph: the bodies look related in hands-behind-head security postures; the police could just be checking ID in a most humiliating manner; or there could be some mix of dead and living.  One had to be there, of course, and the one who was there to take the picture has not apparently distributed the same with captioning data intact. 

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How BackChannels views the West Papua Conflict: on the border between the Muslim and Christian worlds, the indigenous of West Papua struggle to keep their culture and land intact, refusing forced conversion and assimilation to the Muslim-majority state whose international boundary has overrun their property.

As is common and familiar to Muslim-majority states worldwide, the tack pursued with regard to West Papuans has been than of cultural annihilation and political suppression.

Coming from an American of European descent, this layout of the story would seem hypocritical, for as West Papuans may be to Indonesia, so Native Americans would seem to have been to European colonizing forces.  However, these days, the Native Americans of the United States have title to reservation as well private properties, the freedom to arrange themselves and worship as they see fit, and in all other aspects to own businesses and enjoy or hate the American tapestry as they see fit within the bounds of the common law, which codes revolve most around the freedom and security of all persons.

America’s Native Americans are not getting their continent back, of course, but they are supported in their endeavors related to the defense of culture, family, property, and religion, the same as any, and every, American.

Coming from a Jewish background that includes lending attention to Israel as the unique cultural, political, and religious homeland of the Jews, the bond between the true indigenous of a land and indigenous elsewhere might apply, albeit in the progressive Jewish manner with adaptation toward modernity — some things will stay with the people forever in freedom, and some (like cannibalism) may recede into history.

In the larger scheme, our planet supports 6,900+ living languages, and it loses a few each month: it should be sustaining those few and perhaps working to encourage separable language evolution or new language development although natural language behavior is not like biology: we’re just not going to ship a healthy population of humans to an island, cut them off from social commerce, and visit them again in a thousand years (if they have survived their own company).

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JONAH WENDA (voiceover): They were picked from different places like school, gardens, on the road and even taken from their home and kill them and throw them in the bush.

PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013

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In May, Indonesia’s human rights record was assessed under the UN Universal Periodic Review. The government rejected key recommendations to review specific laws and decrees which restrict the rights to freedom of expression and thought, conscience and religion. In July, Indonesia reported to the CEDAW Committee. In November, Indonesia adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, despite serious concerns that it fell short of international standards.

Amnesty International | Working to Protect Human Rights, n.d.

Additional Reference

Alleged mass killings in West Papua – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013: “Shootings have become so frequent that locals have taken to calling it the ‘Gaza Strip’.” / Indonesian counter-terrorist unit accused of mass killing in disputed Papua province – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/24/2013.

Indonesia rejects Papua mass killing accusations – Australia Network News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – 5/27/2014.

PM – More details emerge on West Papua massacre allegation 28/05/2013: “The Indonesian Embassy in Canberra has issued a blanket denial, describing the reported violence as rumours and lies. / But the ABC has been provided further information that tells a different story, as Peter Lloyd reports.”

Related to the history of the West Papua Conflict: Searching for the truth about a massacre in West Papua – 16/12/2013

(3) Free West Papua Campaign (Facebook).

Free West Papua – Campaign for a free and independent West Papua

Wamena – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Communal conflict in Wamena kills four | The Jakarta Post – 5/31/2014 / Mako Tabuni – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / Approach on Papua slammed – 6/16/2012: “Meanwhile, Tabuni’s family collected the activist’s body from the Bhayangkara Police Hospital, ahead of the burial planned for Saturday in Wamena.” / Police urged to publicise the photo of Mako Tabuni’s bag | West Papua Media Alerts – 6/26/2012 /

A Message To The United Nations From The Family Of Opinus Tabuni – YouTube – 12/29/2012: “An estimated 100,000 Papuans having died since the Indonesian government took control of the disputed province in what is widely considered a sham 1969 United Nations observed referendum.”

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From Another Land of Information Control – China, Uyghurs, and Terrorism (or False Flag)

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Regions

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Knife-wielding attackers, dressed in black clothes, stormed the railway station of provincial capital Kunming shortly after 9 p.m. on March 1, slaughtering those who could not flee fast enough.

China: Deadly Terrorist Attack in Kunming Blamed on Uighurs | TIME.com – 3/1/2014.

Related: Chinese Communist System Rules! – Video – TIME.com — Narrator in regard to China’s political system: ” . . . notoriously opaque and mired, so far as we can tell, by corruption and a whole vast untold story of political intrigues . . . .”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkQH6UasUNQ – 10/8/2013.

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As an editor and writer, one might say of my own node on the web that it is itself a vast territory devoted to information control.

That would be true.

However, I don’t gate what others may have to say and, in fact, invite a fairly broad (but must be civil by my own mysterious standards) conversation.

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The “Islamists” are ruining Islam as may be Muslim apologists and others who bend and twist to make it come out okey dokey no matter what murders and persecution may take place in its name, but we have also intimations of “false flag” operations and thoroughly evil impression-making pacts, such as appears to exist between Assad and ISIS in Syria, that also are destroying those who have bought into them: they think they are getting away with something — they are not: all comes out in the sun when finally the sun again comes out.

China is dark.

Beijing glitters some today, and magnificent-dangerous projects like the Three Rivers Dam astonish those with more modest ambitions (I’ve no ambition myself to make the earth wobble on its axis), but at the top sit another national elite — another cloaked dictatorship defended by The Party and beyond the influence and reach of the common worker and starving child entrusted to the care of the monster that runs North Korea.

China will be dark — and so will Islam — if it cannot turn up all of its cards, leaving to the truly aberrant within its districts a much reduced channel for criminal pursuits, for in the information dark, one cannot separate sophisticated thieves from perhaps even the most compassionate and earnest of politicians.

One more thing in loose regard to some tribal societies and precepts: 90 percent charitable and 10 percent murderous and piratical does not work where the surrounding world desires, promotes, and demands from itself  a good ethics and morality.

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FNS – Ukraine – Get Ready

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Fast News Share, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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NATO calls on Russia to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine – YouTube

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Note: undated references are current within 24 hours.

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PEREVALNE, Ukraine (AP) — Warning that it was “on the brink of disaster,” Ukraine put its military on high alert Sunday and appealed for international help to avoid what it feared was the possibility of a wider invasion by Russia.

Outrage over Russia’s military moves mounted in world capitals, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling on President Vladimir Putin to pull back from “an incredible act of aggression.”

Associated Press

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“This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in English. Yatsenuik heads a pro-Western government that took power when the country’s Russia-backed president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted last week.

Ukraine mobilizes after Putin’s ‘declaration of war’ | Reuters

Related: Ukraine mobilizes troops after Russia’s ‘declaration of war’ – CNN.com

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Of potentially even greater concern are eastern swathes of the country, where most of the ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native language. Those areas saw violent protests on Saturday, with pro-Moscow demonstrators hoisting flags at government buildings and calling for Russia to defend them.

Ukraine mobilizes for war, calls up reserves

Related (2/28/2014): Crimean crisis: Russia holds most of the power against Ukraine

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Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference that Russia should pull back its forces and refrain from interfering elsewhere in Ukraine, according to Reuters. NATO is urging the two countries to seek a peaceful resolution through dialogue.

Secretary of State John Kerry — who is heading to Kiev on March 4 to meet with representatives of Ukraine’s new government — has called Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine “an incredible act of aggression” and said Putin has made “a stunning, willful” choice to invade another country.

Putin defends Russia’s response to Ukraine crisis as gunmen surround military bases | Fox News

Related: Secretary of State John Kerry vows visit to Kiev as Russian forces surround Ukraine military base in Crimea – NY Daily News: “A second administration official indicated that the U.S. was not weighing military action to counter Russia’s advances, saying the Obama administration’s efforts were focused on political, economic and diplomatic options. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the situation and insisted on anonymity.”

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Ukraine, as a whole, is going to move fast.

The Bear regards the old system of buffers as its own, but it has a remarkable failure going in Syria.  That President Vladimir Putin pumped $52 billion into the Winter Olympics at Sochi while pledging $10 million for humanitarian relief in Syria has not gone unnoticed — nor have election shenanigans, the Night Wolves, allegations about “mafia state” and “fragile empire” — and all will reflect poorly on his sense of responsibility to Russians and to others.

However, Ukraine is also a borderland naturally spanning a cultural divide between Europe and Eurasia, between the politics of the now open democracies and their common currency and shared values and a stalwart attempting to build some kind of new Slavic society out of the 19th Century manners of aristocracy, now an energy-fueled oligarchy committed not only to its survival but the survival of Bashar al-Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei, a veritable arc of despotic displays of power.

While Syria has become a battleground squeezing out Syrians as casualties and refugees between despots, Ukraine’s democratic revolutionary opposition to despotism has its feet and spirit planted against the “vertical of power” in Moscow.

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As Russian forces seize key objects in Crimea, their objective is not just to create chaos in Ukraine but also to protect kleptocratic rule in Russia itself.

Russia and Ukraine under Yanukovych shared a single form of government – rule by a criminal oligarchy. This is why the anti-criminal revolution that overthrew Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych is a precedent that is perfectly applicable to Putin’s Russia. It is also the reason why, from the Russian regime’s point of view, the Ukrainian revolution must be stopped at all costs.

Ukraine’s Revolutionary Lesson for Russia – The Daily Beast

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Perhaps the last time the Russian intelligentsia watched the internal struggle in another country this intently was in 1968 during the Prague Spring, when they hoped the Czechs would succeed in building what they called “socialism with a human face”. They also believed it would hold out the promise of something better for life in the Soviet Union. In August 1968, the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, quashing the Prague Spring. In Moscow, seven people came out to protest against the invasion; they were arrested and the modern dissident movement was born.

Most Russians believe the Crimea is theirs – Putin has acted on his belief | Masha Gessen | Comment is free | The Observer – 2/1/2014.

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“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. Palin was resoundingly mocked by comedians like Tina Fey and eggheads for saying in 2008 that Alaska’s proximity to Russia forced her to deal with foreign policy issues just like George W. Bush said thatTexas’s proximity to Mexico compelled him to deal with Mexico when he was governor of Texas.

Sarah Palin on Ukraine: I Told You So – 2/28/2014.

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On Russian propaganda: StopFake | Fighting untruthful information regarding the events in Ukraine

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