Tag Archives: Revolution

Ukraine – Crimea – Design by Putin – Whitewash by Potemkin – Plus Obama’s Sanctions Announcement

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Ukraine

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THE outcome of the “referendum” in Crimea was never in doubt. With Russian troops occupying the peninsula and anyone who does not want to join Russia staying away from the bogus procedure, the 97% vote in favour of becoming part of Russia is not a surprise.

Crimea votes to secede: Ukraine’s amputation | The Economist

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The government in Kiev has accused Moscow of deliberately stirring up tensions in the east by bringing in professional activists and provocateurs from across the border. In a series of ominous statements, Russia’s foreign ministry has said it may be forced to act to “protect” ethnic Russians – an expression that appears to provide a rationale for future military incursions.

Crimea votes to secede from Ukraine in ‘illegal’ poll | World news | The Guardian – 3/16/2014.

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The Kremlin describes last month’s uprising in next-door Ukraine as an illegitimate fascist coup. It says dark rightwing forces have taken over the government, forcing Moscow to “protect” Ukraine’s ethnic Russian minority . . . With Ukraine on the brink of invasion and division, most people in Kiev blame the country’s troubles on the former president. “This is Yanukovych’s fault,” Zhenia, a pensioner, said, surveying the battleground in Institutska Street, where many were gunned down. She was crying.

Kiev’s protesters: Ukraine uprising was no neo-Nazi power-grab | World news | The Guardian – 3/13/2014.

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Links between Yanukovych, the Party of Regions and crime have been long known to policymakers as seen in U.S. cables from Kiev available through WikiLeaks.

At least 18 Party of Regions deputies have criminal ties, according to Hennadiy Moskal, deputy head of Parliament’s Committee on Organized Crime and Corruption.

Viktor Yanukovych: From partner to violent kleptocrat – UPI.com – 2/14/2014.

Related: Yanukovych Leaks

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Criminals lie.

When one wants something one shouldn’t have, when one wishes to hide something with which one doesn’t wish to be associated, one may resort to lying but not always, much less inevitably, erase the trail.

In fact, the trail follows in the kept anger of those wronged by criminal behavior, in the bent verdicts and forged documents attending sophisticated theft, or, in Yanukovych’s case, which journal keeping may be likened to the records of plunder and murder maintained by benumbed Nazi officials, the diary of bribes and of breathtaking sums acquired and spent across multiple estates and headier symbols of wealth.

A liberal socialist myself, somewhat, I’d nonetheless offer the problem of whether men shouldn’t be wealthy, filthy rich, swimming in moolah — I think private wealth is great but legally obtained, earned or inherited for a generation or two.

The truth is simple: I’d rather the rich man were the audited owner of a Fortune 500 company than a dumb mafia boss or vicious — and equally vacuous — pirate.

Stalin engineered the famine to rid himself of a stubborn enemy. Ukrainians had fought for their independence during the Russian Revolution, and for a short time, they had beaten back the Reds. What’s more, Ukraine, being the “bread basket of Europe,” had a rich and ancient culture of farmers, who wanted to hold on to their language, their land and their identity. As a civilization, Ukraine is a thousand years older than Moscow. For Stalin, as for Putin today, this would be a very hard back to break.

How to Explain What’s Happening in Ukraine | TIME.com – 12/17/2013.

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The combination of military adventurism and domestic crackdown is not a well-advised recipe for stabilizing the regime. This Saturday’s planned march in downtown Moscow against the war on Ukraine will now be joined by people outraged at the imposition of censorship. Putin’s Kremlin, not opposition leaders, remains the best recruiter for the Russian protest movement.

Moscow Braces for Protests Against Ukraine Aggression | World Affairs Journal – 3/14/2014.

Related: Thousands In Moscow Protest Crimea Military Action – 3/15/2014.

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Obama says U.S. will “stand firm” in support of Ukraine, expands sanctions on Russia – YouTube – (today).

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Guest Post by Amil Imani – Obama: Expect No Respect from the Islamic Revolution in Iran

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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What we should envision is a secular Iran which will allow the seeds of our ancient wisdom and goodness to grow and flourish again through our art, music, poetry and social dynamics. The U.S. has, in secular Iranians, its best friends in the entire Islamic world. It is imperative for the U.S. to help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

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My Fellow Traveler,

We no longer have any choice. We no longer can engage in the same old practices to deal with the massive and debilitating threats that face humanity. We must band together and pool our resources to meet the challenges. Our planet’s problems are no longer local problems that a parochial thinking and practices can address successfully. We cannot squander even an ounce of our sorely needed energy in petty squabbles and personal fights.

Unlike anything encountered in recent memory, the formidably complex and unique situation present in today’s world poses an enormous challenge. It defies any conventional solution, and simply resorting to civil disobedience is the equivalent of fighting off a pack of hungry and blood-thirsty wolves with tooth-picks!

The Western leaders and, in particular, President Obama, must know that Hassan Rouhani and his ilk are not interested in any substantial negotiation, any compromise or live-and-let-live policy. President Obama should reconsider his good faith gesture of opening dialogue with this brutal, inhumane and illegitimate Islamic government. The Islamic Republic has no respect for the olive branches being extended to it by the Obama administration; it still continues with full-speed ahead in its quest for nuclear weaponry — and the power to intimidate the region as well as the entire world.

The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been at the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing and treachery.

The Western world must rid themselves of the “happy talk” as we tranquilize ourselves by reasoning that these doddering old-world religious fools may be mischievous, but they could never do real harm. Oh, sure, they might be arming some Iraqi Shiites, killing a few .U.S soldiers, providing a little support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas terrorists in Palestine, building several bases in South America and Africa, murdering Iranian people and calling for the eradication of Israel—but they have no global destructive capacity. After all, we pacify ourselves that we’re not exactly talking about criminal masterminds like Hitler, or are we?

I do not claim to have all the answers, but have a fair idea of where to begin. It is high time to realize that we are not dealing with the same social factors or even the same people of three decades ago. We need to collaborate on this effort and invite others who can contribute to this cause without placing personal fame and secondary gains ahead of the ultimate goal of reeducating, rebuilding and liberating Iran.

What we should envision is a secular Iran which will allow the seeds of our ancient wisdom and goodness to grow and flourish again through our art, music, poetry and social dynamics. The U.S. has, in secular Iranians, its best friends in the entire Islamic world. It is imperative for the U.S. to help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

Amil Imani

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Author Amil Imani writes on this web site, “My mission is to raise the clarion call about the imminent and present danger of expansionist theocratic Islam. Having witnessed first-hand the horrors and indignity that Islamofascism visits on people it subjugates, I have taken it upon myself to do my part in defeating this ideology of oppression, hate and violence.”  Amil Imani 

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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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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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Ukraine – “Russia and The Jews” – Dueling Attitudes

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Ukraine

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It was a country where the late actor Bogdan Stupka could move audiences by playing Tevye the Dairyman—in Ukrainian. In 2004, during the Orange Revolution—triggered by protests against a fraudulent election “won” by Viktor Yanukovych—my Ukrainian friends demonstrated alongside Boris Naumovich, an octogenarian veteran of the Red Army with whom I practiced speaking Yiddish. Now, a decade later, an equally diverse coalition has turned out for the past three months again to protest Yanukovych, who over the weekend was ousted from the presidency he took over in 2010, and who appears to have fled to the Crimea.

Jews Join Maidan To Preserve an Independent, and Safe, Ukraine – Tablet Magazine – 2/25/2014.

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It takes as much or more time to compile quotations and reference as it may to reflect and speak, so for this scraping post, I may say very little: Ukraine has come to the new dawn riven with internal conflicts about being Ukrainian with but one exception: being modern.

In the modern ethos, and would that I would have influence in it, those five bulwarks to the left-and-top count: Compassion • Empathy • Humility • Inclusion • Integrity.

Notably, if quite accidentally, my web surf took me first to “Ukraine, revolution, anti-Semitism” and then to “Ukraine, revolution, Jewish”, which somehow brought up another how-did-I-ever-miss-this encounter with a proper noun: “Viktor Pinchuk”.

Never heard of him.

(Quick: name Putin’s top ten oligarchs)!

I didn’t think so (but am nonetheless prepared to be surprised by the odd persnickety personality).

Pinchuk and the Jewish community of about 200,000 in Ukraine are not “Ukraine”, but they are certainly a fine and legitimate part of it, and Ukraine, rather like Hungary, hasn’t a soul more pure than any other of the world’s states, but then too, it has its language and languages are distinct and matched to culture, so whether Christian or Jewish or Muslim, capitalist or communist, far left or far right or somewhere between, Ukrainians have a common investment in land and language, a true meta-ethnicity adorned by differences.

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On the one hand, one of the three long-ago gates of Kiev was known as Judaic. On the other hand, there was Khmelnitsky.

He is the Ukrainian national hero, who led the Cossacks to power and whose massacres of the Jews were some of the bloodiest in our history.

A solid, but wary, ‘l’chaim’ to the Ukrainian revolution – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz – 2/25/2014.

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Among the events reporte, Rabbi Margolin lists: a fire bomb thrown at a synagogue in Zhprozha, a message telling the rabbi of Krivoy Rog that he must leave the city within 72 hours, a graffito on the home of the rabbi of Blitzkorov saying “we are already near you,” another graffito near a Jewish building in Kiev saying “you are next,” and other anti-Semitic graffiti.

‘Israel, Protect Us!’ – Jewish World – News – Israel National News – 2/25/2014.

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Protest coverage focused on the call for European integration and the struggle against the Yanukovich regime has largely glossed over the rise in nationalist rhetoric, often chauvinist, that has led to violence not just against police, but also against left-wing activists.

The Ukrainian Nationalism at the Heart of ‘Euromaidan’ | The Nation – 2/21/2014.

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“Germans, Kikes and other scum” want to “take away our Ukrainian state”.

Neo-Nazis and far-right protesters in Ukraine – Imgur

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He called upon his supporters saying: “[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most.”

It was an apparent reference to a Moscow-leaning political leadership, and the strong presence of ethnic Jewish billionaires in Ukraine’s business elite.

Tyahnybok: Nationalist, fearful of Russia, favors NATO – 10/29/2008.

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A number of young Jews are involved in the protests, which have drawn together a diverse coalition of liberal youth and opposition party leaders, including members of the ultranationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, whose leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, has freely trafficked anti-Semitic stereotypes.

“If the nationalists are in favor of a regime change in the country, and I am also, then they won’t prevent me from going out into the Maidan with everyone and expressing my opinions,” Evgenia Talinovskaya told JTA. “The EuroMaidan movement is primarily identified with the educated youth. And Jewish youth in Ukraine primarily fall under that description.”

In Ukraine protests, young Jews are marching with ultranationalists | Jewish Telegraphic Agency – 12/8/2014.

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He has spent the years since the Orange Revolution working to build a profile as a philanthropist. He recently pledged half his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $3.8 billion, to charity and has underwritten large-scale AIDS campaigns, opened up a free museum of contemporary art in central Kiev, and teamed up with Steven Spielberg to produce a documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine. As pro-European reforms have stalled, Pinchuk has emerged as his country’s top advocate in the West, using his annual Yalta summits to push for Ukraine’s closer integration with the European Union.

In Ukraine, a Jewish Oligarch Is a Bridge to the West – Tablet Magazine – on Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk – 12/13/2013.

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KYIV, UKRAINE FEB 18, 2014

Statement of Victor Pinchuk

Victor Pinchuk said: “A peaceful solution must be found, it is imperative to refrain from the use of force and find a compromise. Ukraine since its independence has avoided bloodshed. We must return to this tradition immediately. From this minute, this is the responsibility of everyone – those in power, the opposition, civil society, business. It is time for all sides to take courageous steps towards compromise that they may not yet have been ready to take even this morning. For each of us, love for Ukraine must be immeasurably more important than any other feelings and interests.”

Press-office

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation

Victor Pinchuk Foundation – Facebook – 2/18/2014

The first respondent on the organization’s Facebook post: “Put your money where your mouth is.”

🙂

From the looks of his foundation, plus the company he keeps — Branson and Gates, for starters — Pinchuk has been putting his money behind his words.

Pinchuk’s February 18 call for peace is repeated on his foundation’s web site (as viewed today).

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We never had in our newest history even one drop of blood on the streets, but today we already have four or five people who were killed. I’ve never been so worried about my country, about the future of my country. I don’t want to bring politics in here but I want to ask you to share …here are hundreds of people from more than 50 countries from 5 continents, I want to ask you to share silence for 60 seconds in which we send our thoughts to Ukrainian people and we pray for peace, reason, compromise and reconciliation.

Minute of Silence During the 7th Philanthropic Roundtable of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Davos – YouTube – 1/23/2014

Additional Reference

Oleh Tyahnybok – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ukraine’s Forever Revolution – David Stern – The Atlantic – 2/5/2014.

Victor Pinchuk Foundation

Svoboda (political party) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Update

Micics, David.  “The Head of the Jewish Community of Ukraine Speaks Out Against Putin.”  Tablet.  April 29, 2014.

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Ukraine – The Money – Like Versailles – Several

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

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UKRAINE REVOLUTION – Look Inside The Luxury Mansion of President Yanukovych – YouTube – 2/23/2014.

Sorry about the last clip.  I had brief cause to check back on this post and found it totally gone — but other clips remain available (update: 3/3/2014).

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Related: Up to speed: Uncertainty reigns in a divided Ukraine – CNN.com – with video – 2/24/2014.

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The CNN footage: great (and in English).  “The luxury never seemed to end,” says Nick Paton Walsh.

What kind of a world has Putin in mind that laces together so much wealth beneath private hands sustained on state treasuries and armies?

“Putin-Assad-Khamenei” has become a trope on this blog.

“Putin-Yanukovych” may have too, but he is gone and the people of the Ukraine have, probably, a new museum and park — and, also possibly, a new brand of vodka with a pirate’s cachet.

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Ukraine – “We Want To Be Free From Dictatorship”

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

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Note, February 19, 223: I’ve tried to repair link-rot on two videos (so done) on this post, but the condition (when objects and references disappear down the memory hole) is impossible to address in all cases. Thought assembled and published in this way decays in mechanics as well as relevance. –jso

Fires burning on Independence Square, Kiev – YouTube – 2/19/2014.

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This copy posted to YouTube on February 20, 2014. 0:25:

We want to be free from dictatorship.  We want to be free from the politicians who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money, just for saving their houses, just for saving their power.

I want these people who are here, who have dignity, who are brave: I want them to lead a normal life.  We are civilized people but our government are barbarians.

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Deadly clashes between protesters and police in Kiev on Tuesday led to a fire-lit nighttime assault by Interior Ministry troops on the main protest encampment at Independence Square, in what may be a dramatic and irreversible turn in Ukraine’s months-long political crisis.

In violent turn, Ukraine fighting kills at least 25 – The Washington Post – 2/18-19/2014.

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Kiev Ukraine Protest 2014 LIVE Explosions | Protesters Clashes With Police | 14 People Dead – YouTube – 2/18/2014.

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EU foreign ministers have called an emergency meeting on Ukraine for Thursday.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: “We have … made it clear that the EU will respond to any deterioration on the ground. We therefore expect that targeted measures against those responsible for violence and use of excessive force can be agreed by our member states as a matter of urgency.”

Posted to YouTube, February 25, 2014.

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In the middle east: Putin-Assad-Khamenei.

In eastern Europe: hard to say.

As the late Barry Rubin has pointed out in regard to the middle east, the revolution goes with the military.  Mubarak had a good run, but come time to set up dynasty, Egypt’s military countenanced the revolution (and a year later rescued the latent democracy from a fascist Islamic organization that maintained the Mubarak-era torture chambers, jailed progressive journalists, altered the constitution to consolidate power in what may well have been another “president for life”.

No dice.

With Assad’s unforgivable assaults on Syrian noncombatant constituents in mind, this news unfolding from Ukraine may well signal the end of an age of dictatorship.  It may turn out a second fall of the Soviet Union, a post-Soviet challenge to the continuance of state oligarchies forged in the shadows of the Cold War.

One hopes that it is not also the start of a new era of autocratic repression, but with armed state organizations brought to the barricades, one never knows.  Who is in those military and paramilitary forces?  Are their senior and junior officers dissenting from the projection of state power and the arrangement of regional power?

The people have themselves: what else do they have?  Who else do they have on board with them?

As Nero fiddled, so I’ve heard, Putin as host of the most expensive winter games in history, has been in his glory in Sochi.

Kiev, Ukraine Protests Are Vladimir Putin’s Worst Nightmare | New Republic – 2/18/2014.

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Echoing Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Peskov told reporters that Russia saw the protests, during which deadly clashes erupted on Tuesday, as an attempted coup.

Putin, Ukraine’s Yanukovich spoke by telephone: Kremlin – Yahoo News – 2/19/2014.

“An attempted coup” seems the predictable spin.

We shall soon find out, I am sure, what Ukraine’s armed forces think about that, for protest in the streets is by itself a strong signal — ask Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan about that — but it is not a coup; it is, however, revolutionary.

Additional Reference

Washington Post: Ukraine rejects repression – 2/2/2014; Seizure of police stations in Lviv continues – 2/19/2014; Payatt: Yanukovych responsible for everything that happens in Ukraine – 2/19/2014; IM: Police probing 40 cases on mass riots in Ukraine – 2/19/2014; At least 25 reported dead, more than 1,000 injured in Feb. 18 clashes (VIDEO)

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FTAC – Syria for Syrians

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

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

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Syria’s victimized needs must understand that the civil war is their war, not Assad’s war, not al-Qaeda’s war, not Iran’s war or Saudi Arabia’s war, not Russia’s war, not America’s war. Their war.

When Idris defected from Assad’s military, he left an abused organizations — which I have read described as “coup proof” — for disorganized civilian and military energy, which latter he was then to organize. Maybe at the Pentagon and among historians, that should not have been such a big deal, but in the reality, loose bands and militia with many things on their minds do not a ready-made military form. And in waltz the “Islamists” . . . .

“Syria for Syrians” would be my slogan, but it seems we (okay: of “the west”, of sentimental and sympathetic feeling) don’t know how to help them.

Note: the Kurdish People of Syria threatened directly with annihilation by ISIS et al. have taken care of themselves and possibly taken a chunk of Syria with them. However, fighting on that overlooked front continues in the general spilling across borders that the AQ affiliates, even if revoked, lol, define in their own weird way.

Facebook for me has become an Everyman’s Conflict and Politics Roundtable (as well as provocateur and politico tipster heaven) as it has for others, and, of course, it’s not the only “board” (remember those days?) in cyberspace where a lively discussion on conflict and politics is to be had at will.

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It is simply a cutthroat struggle for power, between jihadist groups of similar ideology, distinct only in name and the identity of their backers, albeit with slightly differing methods of imposing their doctrines on the ground.

Islamic Front no answer for Syria conflict – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 1/13/2014.

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Britain also suspended deliveries some six weeks ago and Turkey shut its side of the border as fears over the growing strength of extremist jihadis crystallized in the takeover of the warehouses and bases by the Islamic Front, a new alliance of six of the most powerful Islamic rebel groups in Syria.

It was a stark demonstration of how Idris’ influence had diminished amid the rise of al-Qaida-affiliated militants flush with cash, weapons and battleground experience.

U.S. resumes non-lethal aid to Syrian opposition – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 1/27/2014.

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Scissors.  Paper.  Stone.

Army.  Militia.  Population.

* * *

Syrians have no army.

That is why the army they don’t have managed to bomb so many millions of them out of their businesses and homes without quelling The Revolution, not to mention failing also to impede for long the regressive progress made by the al-Qaeda affiliates.

However, in Syria, the direction of impedance changes daily with the battles under way.

Syrians could have an army IF the army they don’t have can find a totem for rallying other than a) Bashar al-Assad and family or b) themselves, which more frequently is how things go with coup and junta.

The Other Army Syrians don’t have doesn’t care about them either (or it wouldn’t dream of throwing bakers into their own ovens, much less do it).

General Salim Idris persists in the field, but it appears in news and political terms — or for drama-creating news and political purposes — he’s not sexy.

Militia go where the arms are.

Little French girls with jihadi boyfriends-cum-husbands are not lighting out to the Syrian territories to fight for an American-educated and religiously moderate Syrian military leader (oh, dad, get real!).

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Obama appears to want to tend to worries around his home, conceptually.

And Putin appears to be getting ready for a glorious Winter Olympics.

As mentioned in the top I-like-the-sound-of-my-own-voice section of this post, surrounding states and the UN haven’t more in their kits than humanitarian campground aid (and peacekeepers, when it’s safe to deploy them in defensive or tripwire positions).

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Syrians have no army.

In the middle east, armies, as has been pointed out by the recently departed conservative scholar Barry Rubin, may account for the failure and success of revolutions in the region: if the army’s with the revolutionaries, the revolution wins; if it stays with the regime, the regime wins.

Simple.

Like a seesaw, the balance shifts back and forth for a while, but the stronger in arms prevails.

Related:

Mubarak’s pedestal was shaken by the people, but he was pushed off it by the army and the establishment. The revolution in Egypt succeeded because the army did not want Mubarak any more. The turning point was not that the army would not shoot its own people–it has done so before–but that it would not do so in order to save Mubarak.

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN EGYPT – 10/27/2011.

Barry Rubin’s article inadvertently also provides a snapshot of Egypt and other of the Arab Spring-involves states just about two-and-one-half years ago.  The Egypt he wrote about then was to succumb only momentarily (even if it seemed a lifetime) to the prodigious talents of the Muslim Brotherhood for economic and social regress.

Additional Reference

Barry Rubin: Assessing Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood – YouTube – 29:38 – posted 8/29/2013, event recorded 7/12/2013.  “The elite would not protect the regime . . . they had lost confidence in Mubarak.”  Rubin also goes on to say at 15:22, “People in the middle east know they are on their own!  I mean whether I like them or not.”

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