Tag Archives: pro-democracy

Erdogan’s Security Assaults American Protesters and Involves Local and Federal Officers

18 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs

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VOA – 5/17/2017

VOA – 5/17/2017

Turkish President Erdogan lies to his loyal subjects in Turkey — why should his subalterns not do the same here?

CNN’s coverage of Tuesday’s melee notes Turkish embassy claims that groups affiliated with the PKK, a once militant organization much changed from its Soviet communist aligned heyday in the late 1970s, provoked Turkish Americans eager to greet President Erdogan, but then it goes on to state, ” . . . that account differs greatly from the sequence of events described by protesters and video captured by the Voice of America Turkish service . . . .”

Among those assaulted were two American Secret Service agents and a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan police officers, who was injured.

From Mother Jones‘s coverage:

As the violence broke out, videos from the confrontation quickly emerged on social media appearing to show Erdogan’s security detail using force on protesters, even kicking multiple people in the face, while DC police officials attempted to intervene. NBC confirmed on Wednesday that Erdogan’s bodyguards were the ones beating protesters.

The Turkish embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/bodyguards-turkish-president-violently-clash-protesters-dc

The thugs in suits retreated to Turkish Embassy grounds, which by convention and law is treated as sovereign and therefore safe from invasive pursuit.

A State Department official said the Turkish security that was involved appears to be a mix of Embassy and President Erdogan’s security.

vvvvhttp://www.cnn.com/2017/05/17/politics/turkey-erdogan-incident/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/bodyguards-turkish-president-violently-clash-protesters-dc – 5/17/2017

Casting aside his predecessor’s concerns about human rights abuses and the suppression of free speech in another nation, Donald Trump lavished praise on another autocratic foreign leader on Tuesday, calling it “a great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.”

Just hours after Trump focused his remarks on “the exemplary valor of the Turkish soldier,” however, Erdogan’s presidential bodyguards were caught on video punching and kicking protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/17/trump-praises-erdogan-whose-bodyguards-assault-protesters-washington/ – 5/17/2017.

The footage shows local police shoving not only demonstrators but several men in suits. One of the men in suits can be seen kicking a woman who had already been knocked to the ground. Witnesses reportedly said that the protesters were demanding that a pro-Kurdish lawmaker, Selahattin Demirtas, be released from prison in Turkey.

http://www.snopes.com/2017/05/17/protesters-attacked-erdogan/ – 5/17/2017.  Link added by BackChannels.

Posted to YouTube 5/16/2017

U.S. officials strongly criticized the Turkish government Wednesday as video appeared to show its president’s security forces pushing past police and violently breaking up a protest outside their diplomatic residence in Washington.

Attacking the small group of protesters with their fists and feet, men in dark suits and others were recorded repeatedly kicking one woman as she lay curled on a sidewalk. Another wrenches a woman’s neck and throws her to the ground. A man with a bullhorn is repeatedly kicked in the face. In all, nine people were hurt.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hurt-arrested-altercation-turkish-embassy-dc-47460260 – 5/17/2017.

The jihadist dictator Erdoğan is bent on expanding his powers both inside and outside Turkey. Erdoğan’s temper recently flared against Europe when several European governments refused “to allow his ministers to rally Turkish expatriates.” He also declared that “Europe is collapsing…Europe will pay for what they have done in humiliating and oppressing Turks”; and in response to a European headscarf ban in the workplace, he accused Europe of starting “a clash between the cross and the crescent.”

Now he is so bold as to allow his thugs to behave violently on American soil.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/nine-injured-as-erdogans-bodyguards-violently-attack-kurdish-protesters-in-dc – 5/18/2017.

Updates: Related Links

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/20170803/calling-erdogan-to-account – 8/3/2017

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/14/breaking-us-marshals-arrest-two-in-turkish-embassy-brawl/ – 6/14/2017.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39979879/erdogan-watches-as-turkish-security-guards-attack-protesters – 5/19/2017.

http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/39979879/erdogan-watches-as-turkish-security-guards-attack-protesters – 5/19/2017.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/on-air/Protester-Says-Turkish-President_s-Bodyguard-Choked-Her_Washington-DC-423266384.html – 5/19-20/2017.

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PSA: Ukrainian Freedom Marches, May 20, 2017

15 Monday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ukraine

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It’s been 3 years and over 10,000 people dead, 23,000 wounded and over 1.5 million displaced people in Donbas region. We all know that this bloody conflict is a covert Russian war against Ukraine, and its objective is to destabilize Ukraine and to prevent it from ever having a chance to be a part of Europe and exist independently from Russian influence.

But many Americans don’t realize that the war in Eastern Ukraine is far from being over.

This is why we will march and rally on May 20th to raise the awareness about an on going Russian aggression and to ask the US for support.

We demand that the Russian assisted militia immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine ASAP.

If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government sticking to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by all means necessary, in order to restore territorial integrity of the Ukrainian nation. American Government needs to be tough on Russia.

Above: BackChannels edited (re-paragraphed) excerpt from the San Francisco promotion for the May 20, 2017 march.

Primary Sources

http://zvamy.org/ (Calendar Section)
&
https://www.facebook.com/pg/ukrainianfreedommarch/events/

Individual Pages

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-in-naples-fl/?instance_id=12776301

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-washington-dc-may-20th/?instance_id=12776296 – https://www.facebook.com/events/1772468566416946/ –

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-phoenix/?instance_id=12776291

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/may-20th-san-diego-ukrainian-rally-in-solidarity-with-dc/?instance_id=12776294

https://www.facebook.com/events/293951561048912/ (San Francisco)

“Hot Russian Aggression”

Field Documentary, RFE/RL, 2/7/2017

For democracy, for classical liberalism, for dignity and freedom, for rule of law (as opposed to the rule of thugs), fight back.  Attend or publicize the above-listed marches.

BackChannels finds its unbelievable how so active a war as that taking place in Ukraine — and brought to Ukraine by invading Russian forces — has been so off the headlines in major media.  To catch up with events, BackChannels has a portal page, “Ukraine Conflict Resources – Short List“.

Choose your Ukrainian conflict reporting or news outlet and get acquainted.

Russia has launched an unprecedented active measures / disinformation campaign across the web in association with its feudal aggression in Ukraine, and if you have been well informed, you may take measure of that yourself by having a look at the “alternative media” and “alternative news” outlets or the propaganda listings appearing to the right of the videos displayed here.  You will find plenty evidence of “reflection in the mirror” or what BackChannels refers to as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” in Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s portion of the “information warfare space”.

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Belarus’s, Kazakhstan’s and Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances

 

Russia has deployed as many as 10,000 troops in eastern Ukraine for more than a year and has actively sought to hide the deaths of its soldiers, according to a new report that provides a comprehensive assessment of the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbor.

The report was published Thursday by the Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates Russian media and reports on Russian affairs, also detailed the Kremlin’s provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry and vehicles to separatists in Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict since April 2014.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/how-russia-invaded-ukraine/ – 9/18/2015.

As Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day today, Poroshenko said that more than 2,500 Ukrainian servicemen and 7,500 civilians had been killed since the outbreak of the war in the spring of 2014.

In an interview with Holos Ukrainy, the official journal of the Ukrainian parliament, the defense minister, Viktor Muzhenko, specified today that 3,064 members of the security forces had been killed in the east since the start of what the Ukrainian government calls the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in April, 2014.

Of this number, Muzhenko said, 2,636 were soldiers in the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the others presumably being volunteer fighters or servicemen in the National Guard, police or State Border Service. 2,148 of the VSU casualties were combat losses.

http://www.interpretermag.com/day-1023/ – 12/6/2016.

Related from 2015:

http://www.interpretermag.com/an-invasion-by-any-other-name-the-kremlins-dirty-war-in-ukraine/

8 December 2016 – A new United Nations report out today has confirmed that Ukrainians living close to the “contact line” – the area between Government-controlled and armed group-controlled territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – not only suffer due to fighting near their homes but also face the threat of landmines and unexploded ordinance as well as have to contend with severe restrictions on movement.

According to the Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine launched today by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between mid-August and mid-November, at least 32 civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents and another 132 injured. Between mid-April 2014 and 1 December this year, more than 2,000 civilians are estimated to have dined while an additional 298 were killed in the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17.

Conflict-related civilian injures are estimated between 6,000 and 7,000.

“It is of deep concern that Government forces and armed groups operating in civilian areas do not take all feasible precautions against the effects of fighting, resulting in damage to schools, kindergartens, and medical facilities,” noted the report.

It added that it was worrying that Ukrainian military forces and armed groups continued to be positioned in civilian homes and buildings in villages and towns adjacent to the contact line.

The report also raised concern that armed groups in the self-proclaimed “Donetsk people’s republic” and “Luhansk people’s republic” continue to deprive people of their fundamental rights as well as of effective mechanism for redress.

Hundreds of individuals also remain missing.

Excerpt – http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55750#.WRngwtQrJlY – 12/8/2016

Highlights

  • The total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Crimea and eastern Ukraine is 1,590,056 as of 3 April 2017, according to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.
  • IOM assisted over 137,000 vulnerable IDPs and conflict affected people in 24 regions of Ukraine.
  • Lack of funds made 40% of vulnerable IDPs IOM assisted with cash in Ukraine refuse medical treatment, according to the post-distribution monitoring of IOM’s project in 13 regions of Ukraine.

http://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/iom-s-assistance-conflict-afflicted-people-ukraine-march-2017 – 3/31/2017

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BackChannels News Day, March 4, 2017

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in BCND - BackChannels News Day, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Today’s compilation may be light – what am I even doing here at the computer, and so early?  Still, my eyes see a lot of political coverage from around the world having to do with the support of democracy and its liberal humanist values.

This kind of post has had its own category on BackChannels for years, but has not been a staple for the blog.  The writing by others and the reading is so good an spot-on it would be a shame not to share on one sheet.

The links may be dated variously but close to the day encountered (or not — I’ll have to make up my mind about that).

http://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/03/sen-coons-fbi-has-transcripts-showing-collusion-between-putin-trump-campaign/ – 3/3/2017.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/melik-kaylan/mysterious-circumstances-surrounding-russian-murders-deaths – 3/17/2017.

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/04/gop-media-strategist-reminds-trump-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-ties-russia.html – 3/4/2017.

Georgetown Prof: “Is Islam an Enemy of the West? It Does Seem Like Such a Ridiculous Question, Doesn’t It?”

MARCH 3, 2017 6:39 PM BY 48 COMMENTS

“Is Islam an enemy of the West? It does seem like such a ridiculous question, doesn’t it?” asked Georgetown University professor Tamara Sonn on February 22 at its Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). What seemed manifestly obvious to this Qatar-funded Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam at the ACMCU presentation of her new, eponymously-titled book, is not clear at all to skeptical observers. Thus, her work resembles that of many of her Middle East studies colleagues, who long ago replaced rigorous scholarship of Islam with a fawning approach that blames the West for the region’s systemic problems.

Sonn presented her “little, airport-size book” to an ACMCU conference room filled with about fifty listeners, included like-minded Georgetown colleagues Jonathan Brown, Jordan Denari Duffner, and Father Drew Christianson.

For the whole story:

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/03/georgetown-prof-is-islam-an-enemy-of-the-west-it-does-seem-like-such-a-ridiculous-question-doesnt-it – 3/3/2017

 

Earlier, on Friday, February 24, Head of the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) Natalia Korchak says her agency has received a request from Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk to probe into the finances of Ukrainian State Fiscal Service chief Roman Nasirov`s trip to attend the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

http://uaposition.com/latest-news/ukrainian-tax-services-head-detained-suspected-inflicting-uah-2-bln-damage-budget-including-money-trip-trump-oath/

Ukrainian state agencies sought to detain the head of the tax and customs service on Friday over the alleged embezzlement of around $75 million – a potentially landmark case after patchy anti-graft efforts from the Western-backed authorities.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-corruption-idUSKBN16A0NW

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/322330-the-memo-white-house-fails-to-fend-off-russia-questions – 3/4/2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/western-feminists-snub-an-iranian-heroine-1488413022 – 3/1/2017

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/buried-history-of-ukrainian-famine-finally-told-in-film-bitterharvest/article34183392/ – 3/2/2017

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/trumps-ties-to-russia-amount-to-treachery-to-the-republic.html – 3/3/2017

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Also in Media – PSA – “NORTH AMERICANS SUPPORT UKRAINE – ONCE IN A GENERATION FREEDOM MARCH” – May 20, 2017 – Link to Sign-Up

25 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Ukraine

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1 million people around the world in support of Ukraine’s fight for freedom

Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans come together from all corners of the continent to show their support for one common cause – support of the good people of Ukraine in their struggle for true independence and freedom from Russia’s all-too-long shadowy grasp.

We demand that Crimea be returned to Ukraine and that the Russian army immediately vacate the Donbas region.

If these demands are not met, we insist on the Canadian and American governments sticking to their promises made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide for the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by all means necessary, in order to restore the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian nation.

Appeasement is not the answer.

Now Ukraine is fighting for itself and for Europe, in the future this breach of international law may come even closer to our doorstep if not resolved.

Date: Sat., 05/20/2017
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm EST
Location: Washington, DC

Slava Ukraine!

Please sign up below we are looking for 10,000 plus marchers!

Source: SignUpGenius – Mobile –

Syria – A Note on the Cast of Fighters in the Theater

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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But unfortunately for those who want to use the evils of the rebels as an excuse to walk away from the evils of the regime, a new study published by the respected Arab Reform Initiative in Paris makes a detailed and often compelling argument that, despite the odds, many “pro-democracy” forces remain in the field.

Pro-Democracy Forces Still Among Rebels Fighting Assad, Study Finds – The Daily Beast 9/9/2013

In his article, Christopher Dickey will go on to note that, “the Assad regime sought to portray all its opponents as crazed terrorists. It set about systematically eliminating moderate and secular opponents. French scholar Gilles Kepel, author of numerous books on radical jihad and revolution, believes the Syrians may also have taken a page from the Russians, who encouraged radicalism to divide the opposition and set the factions against each other in Chechnya.”

How’s that for dirty tricks?

Again, the three true wars evident in Syria and contributing to each conflict zone within the Islamic Small Wars are 1) a war about integrity borne out in truth telling as opposed to cant, deception, dogma, and propaganda; 2) a war about dictatorship, extremism, and malignant narcissism — i.e., death and suffering en masse because somebody, or many, lost their personal sense of boundary, containment, empathy, and ethics in the heady sway of grandiose and delusional ambitions or assumptions (as Hitler asked famously, “Who says I am not under the special protection of God?”); 3) a war about absent or decayed center-moderate forces in culture and politics, and with that disappeared or disappearing middle, a war in which death comes as ambush out of the shadows, whether involving state forces launching Sarin-laden warheads in the still of the night or guerrillas descending to subdue a Christian village.

So contested:

  1. Integrity
  2. Intensity and reach of a pathological egotism and vanity (malignant narcissism) apparently beyond channeling, checking, and modification.
  3. Center-moderate political ideas, processes, values, and virtues.

Additional Reference

YALLA SOURIYA | Syria Live Update News @YallaSouriya WordPress blog featuring rolling updates and statements from an anti-Assad group.

______

BBC News – Guide to the Syrian opposition 7/12/2013

Deciphering the Jihadist Presence in Syria: An Analysis of Martyrdom Notices | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 2/20/2013.  Excerpt:

Similar to the Iraqi jihad at its zenith, users on al-Qa`ida’s official and unofficial web forums began to post unofficial yet authentic martyrdom notices for individuals—both Syrian and foreign—who they perceived to have fought on behalf of the jihadist cause.[2]

This article looks quantitatively and qualitatively at these notices.[3] The data and biographical information collected is based on threads from jihadist web forums[4] dating from the start of the uprising through January 31, 2013. It is likely that some notices have been missed, but it is still useful to piece together each individual’s identity, from where they are from, with whom they fought, and where they died.

Empowering the democratic resistance in Syria | Arab Reform Initiative 9/2013. Excerpt from Executive Summary:

This paper examines the circumstances and conditions that shaped the Syrian armed opposition and surveys the groups that remain committed to a democratic political system and a pluralistic society in Syria. It describes the extreme fluidity within the armed resistance which reflects primarily the diverse but most often unstable, and therefore, unreliable sources of funding for the rebels. It suggests ways to empower the pro-democracy groups as the best means to reach the dual objective of ending the dictatorship of Assad and achieving a democratic outcome in Syria and argues that the former objective has no chance of succeeding if the latter is not pursued simultaneously.

With jihadists threatening to seize Syrian revolution, rebels beg West for more firepower | National Post 8/7/2013

National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Excerpt:

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (Arabic:الائتلاف الوطني لقوى الثورة والمعارضة السورية‎, French: Coalition nationale des forces de l’opposition et de la révolution), commonly named the Syrian National Coalition(Arabic: الائتلاف الوطني السوري‎, French: Coalition nationale syrienne) is a coalition ofopposition groups in the Syrian civil war that was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. Former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Moaz al-Khatib, considered a moderate, was elected the president of the coalition, and resigned on 21 April 2013.[3] Riad Seif and Suheir Atassi, both prominent democracy activists and the latter a secular feminist, were elected vice presidents. The post of a third vice president will remain vacant for a Kurdish figure to be elected.[4] Mustafa Sabbagh was elected as the coalition’s secretary-general.[5] The coalition has a council of 114 seats, though not all of them are filled.[2]

Syria: A Wicked Problem for All | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 8/27/2013

Syrian opposition – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On Christopher Dickey

Christopher Dickey

Christopher Dickey – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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