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Poll: Ukrainians support neutrality, disagree on war - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...24620853

ukraine

shared by qkirkpatrick on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • L, Ukraine — Several residents in this city in far eastern Ukraine said they want a united country, but they're split on the use of force to solve Ukraine's war with Russian-backed separatists.
  • The survey authors did not define neutrality other than to point out that European countries have urged Ukraine to move closer to the EU, while Russia wants Ukraine aligned with former Soviet republics.
  • The results show that 63% of Ukrainians would find neutrality tolerable, while 31% find it unacceptable. Support for the idea was least strong in Ukraine's west, where 48% said they could tolerate the notion, and the same percentage said neutrality would be unacceptable.
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  • It comes as more of President Obama's advisers have voiced support for providing military aid to Ukraine's military. A slight 52% majority of Ukrainians support this move, with three-quarters of respondents supportive in the west, and three-fifths supportive in the north. In the east 62% opposed U.S. military support, and the South is evenly divided.
  • Carrying flowers and portraits, tens of thousands of people somberly marched Sunday in Moscow to mourn opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, whose slaying on the streets of the capital has shaken Russia's beleaguered opposition. (Mar. 1) A
qkirkpatrick

Snowden Says He Can't Get Guarantee of a 'Fair Trial' - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...tee-of-a-fair-trial-1425663946

politics Snowden obama

shared by qkirkpatrick on 09 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked secrets about American spying, said the U.S. government won’t guarantee him a “fair trial,” frustrating his
qkirkpatrick

Poland's Central Bank Slashes Rates to Combat Deflation Risk - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...mbat-deflation-risk-1425474535

poland economics

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  • Poland’s central bank slashed its main interest rate by 50 basis points to 1.50%, the lowest on record, in response to persistent declines in consumer prices.
  • The Polish rate cut is the latest in a series of easing measures by central banks across Europe, following the European Central Bank’s decision in late January to launch a program of quantitative easing, under which it will buy more than €1 trillion ($1.12 trillion) of mostly government bonds by September 2016.
  • . The central bank’s target is an inflation rate of 2.5%.
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  • The Polish currency’s weakness after the rate cut is likely to be temporary, said Piotr Matys, emerging markets strategist at Rabobank in London
qkirkpatrick

Putin's net-worth is $200 billion says Russia's once largest foreigner investor - CNN P... - 0 views

cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/...nce-largest-foreigner-investor

putin politics russia

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  • He also describes the dynamics between power and wealth in Russia, claiming that during “the first eight or 10 years of Putin's reign over Russia, it was about stealing as much money as he could.
  • “I believe that it's $200 billion. After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on, all that money is in property, bank - Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.”
  • The power is very simple in Russia - whoever has the power to arrest people is the person in power.
  • qkirkpatrick on 09 Mar 15
     
    There is major corruption in Russia's government.
qkirkpatrick

Putin cuts salaries, including his own - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Russia Inflation economics

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  • As cheap oil and Western sanctions continue to batter Russia's economy, President Vladimir Putin slashed Kremlin salaries -- including his own -- by 10% Friday, according to state news service Tass.
  • Government documents released in 2014 put Putin's annual salary at nearly 3.7 million rubles -- worth about $61,000 today thanks to soaring inflation.
  • "President Putin also reduced the wages of Kremlin administration, government staff and the Chamber of Accounts by 10% as well," according to Tas
qkirkpatrick

TV station wins fight to air interview with terror plot suspect - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

terror ISIS US obama

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  • In an unusual turn of events last week, a terror plot suspect's desire to talk to local media put him at odds with his attorneys and landed a Cincinnati television station in federal court.
  • Cornell is accused of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. The 20-year-old -- who claims in the interview that he is affiliated with ISIS -- was arrested on January 14, months after his social media habits and talk of jihad put him on the FBI's radar, according to court documents obtained by CNN at the time of his arrest.
  • "I would have took my gun," he said. "I would have put it to Obama's head. I would have pulled the trigger. Then I would unleash more bullets on the Senate and House of Representative members. And I would have attacked the Israeli Embassy and various other buildings full of Kafir who want to wage war against us Muslims."
qkirkpatrick

Ukrainian soldiers ill-prepared for psychological toll of war - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-9dfb-03366e719af8_story.html

ukrainian war history

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  • In a military training class north of Kiev late last month, volunteer ­instructor Viktor Mosgovoi led 30 would-be officers through hours of jumps, breathing exercises and group massages — Ukraine’s first mandatory psychological training for recruits
  • Most of them followed along with blank looks or smirks on their faces. A few erupted into giggles. “Sing a song about what you see,” Mosgovoi suggested as a way to beat the battlefield blues. “And don’t drink.”
  • In nearly a quarter-century of independence, Ukraine’s military has seen so little combat that the country’s defense minister estimated the nation had only 6,000 battle-ready troops a year ago. Over the past 10 months, the Ukrainian army has drafted almost 70,000 soldiers in a war against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.
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  • And most of the fighting has been carried out by recruits and volunteers with no prior combat experience.
  • “We lack the military specialists. We lack experience in this field.”
  • But with no post-Soviet combat experience, and a military structure that officials say was intentionally wizened under years of pro-Russian leadership, very few people had any practical experience with war trauma.
  • We practically do not have military psychology in this country,”
  • Before the war, few Ukrainian men had ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological shock or mental trauma — or would openly discuss such afflictions.
  • qkirkpatrick on 09 Mar 15
     
    Ukrainian soldiers do not know how to deal with war. Most of them have never been in fighting, and many of them are volunteers or were drafted recently
qkirkpatrick

Russia: ramifications of capitalist restoration - 0 views

www.dailytimes.com.pk/...ions-of-capitalist-restoration

russia capitalism marx communism history Soviet Union

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  • Economic and social turbulence in Russia are the ramifications of the breakup of the planned economy and capitalist restoration
  • s the last decade of the 20th century was about to begin, gigantic events shook the so-called ‘socialist world’.
  • Economic and social turbulence in Russia are the ramifications of the breakup of the planned economy and capitalist restoration.
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  • The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union were not only mammoth earthquakes politically, but also provided the imperialists, capitalists and their toady journalists, politicians and intelligentsia ammunition to launch a ferocious ideological crusade against socialism, communism and Marxism across the planet.
  • The Russian masses have suffered enormously. However, the propaganda of the western media against Putin of human rights violations and suppression of the right to expression is as hypocritical as it is biased. The incumbent ruling elite in Russia, or the ‘oligarchy’, is in constant fights over the plunder of the country’s resources.
  • he painful experience of despotism and the excruciating blows of free market economics in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union has been a retrogressive process, pushing the consciousness of the workers and the youth backwards.
qkirkpatrick

Russia's anti-U.S. sentiment now is even worse than it was in Soviet Union - The Washin... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html

politics history culture

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  • Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today’s Russia.
  • After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.
  • The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions.
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  • More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States,
  • Nemtsov’s assassination, the highest-profile political killing during Vladi­mir Putin’s 15 years in power, was yet another brutal strike against pro-Western forces in Russia.
  • Anti-American measures quickly suffused the nation, ranging from the symbolic to the truly significant. Some coffee shops in Crimea stopped serving Americanos.
  • Many Russians tapped into a deep-rooted resentment that after modeling themselves on the West following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had experienced only hardship and humiliation in return.
  • qkirkpatrick on 09 Mar 15
     
    Russians having negative views of Western Powers. Even some places are refusing to serve Americans.
qkirkpatrick

Terrorism With a Human Face - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...387163

ISIS Evil crisis politics Middle-East

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  • It’s all in the face, apparently. Just check out that terrifying mug shot of Mohammad Atta, the so-called “ringleader” of the 19 hijackers who staged the 9/11 attacks. His face, wrote the novelist Martin Amis in a short story about Atta, was “gangrenous” and “almost comically malevolent.”
  • The idea that human evil is inscribed into the body and face of the criminal offender has deep rootsThe idea that human evil is inscribed into the body and face of the criminal offender has deep roots, and is in fact the animating throb behind modern scientific criminology and its founding document, Cesare Lombroso’s The Criminal Man, published in 1876
  • It is also an underlying assumption in much of the news coverage of the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi, who was exposed recently as the ISIS executioner “Jihadi John.”
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  • Emwazi challenges the social and moral order. To put it mildly. Far more than, say, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the reportedly Iraqi-born ISIS leader challenges the social and moral order.
  • This is because Emwazi spent most of his life in Britain, in the secular West. Despite his Kuwaiti background and heritage, he was socialized or “acculturated” here, not over there. He went to school here, played football here, went to university here, talked London-street tough here, and wore baseball caps here.
  • Killers, too, can act in decent and humane ways. It is just that we rarely like to admit it—unless of course they kill in defense of the good, as we subjectively define it.
qkirkpatrick

Nemtsov's Murder Defines Putin's Russia - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...-murder-defines-putin-s-russia

putin russia conspiracy history politics

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  • The thousands who marched in Moscow on Sunday in honor of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov did so because they recognize just how much has been lost with his death. Nemtsov had been brave enough to tell the truth in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
  • There is no evidence the Kremlin ordered Nemtsov's killing, and it would have as much to lose as to gain from such a public execution on one of the most closely surveilled sidewalks in Russia.
  • Nemtsov’s death may not change things in Russia; much of the population appears to be caught up in a nationalist fervor.
qkirkpatrick

Nemtsov's Murder Deepens Russia's Journey Down a Dark Path | Georgy Bovt - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...v-murder-russia_b_6780892.html

Nemtsov russia history

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  • His killing has once again shaken the world of Russian politics and has shown just how sick it is with hatred, mistrust and intolerance -- even toward a former senior Russian official.
  • Many different theories concerning his murder have already been put forward, including an increasing number that point to the moral degeneracy of the people. It is difficult to shake the feeling that those who maligned Nemtsov while he was alive by, for example, publishing transcripts of his telephone conversations, continue that perverted abuse after his death.
  • However, the motives for the murder were never clarified: Investigators chose not to delve into the wilds of the complex relations between politicians and the St. Petersburg mafia. One line of inquiry that drew particular attention -- the theory that Vladimir Barsukov, the "dark lord" of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, was linked to the killing -- quickly fizzled out.
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  • The only thing that is definitely clear about the Nemtsov case is that it takes Russian society yet one more step along its very dangerous evolutionary path. That evolution began in connection with the war in Ukraine, and the war will continue to drive the process further.
qkirkpatrick

Russian-Backed Rebels Claim To Capture Debaltseve, Key Ukrainian Town - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...bels-debaltseve_n_6697084.html

ukraine politics Russia rebels

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  • Under a near-constant barrage of artillery fire, Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels fought fierce street battles Tuesday for control of the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve, a battle impeding implementation of a peace plan.
  • Ukraine denied rebel claims to have taken control of the town but acknowledged the separatists had seized parts of it.
  • A key railroad junction between the separatist east's two main cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, Debaltseve has been the focus of fighting over the past two weeks and capturing it would be a prize for the Russia-backed rebels.
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  • On Tuesday, a deadline passed for both sides to begin pulling back heavy weapons from the front line.
qkirkpatrick

Ukraine Today: Putin arming Crimea; journalist says Kremlin seeking to create 'giant mi... - 0 views

www.kyivpost.com/...ilitary-base-video-382915.html

ukraine putin military politics history

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  • Russian military troops had taken control over Crime peninsula by blocking Ukrainian army and naval bases in March 2014. Now Russian efforts are underway to turn occupied Crimea into a 'giant military base'.
  • That's according to independent Crimean reporter Andriy Klymenko, who says the Kremlin soon plans to station 100,000 soldiers on the Black Sea peninsula, reports Unian
qkirkpatrick

'We Want a Voice': Women Fight for Their Rights in the Former USSR | EurasiaNet.org - 0 views

www.eurasianet.org/72426

Women USSR politics culture

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  • Women had stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the Russian Revolution of 1917, according to its leader Vladimir Lenin, and were said to be at the vanguard of the drive to build an equal society in the world’s first communist state; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
  • Today, almost 25 years after the fall of the USSR, many problems faced by women across the post-Soviet states have a familiar ring in the west.
  • Though each country has formally expressed its commitment to equal rights, campaigners say they face a particularly tough job in many of the conservative, patriarchal societies that dominate the region, especially in those countries where the Kremlin’s family values agenda holds sway.
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  • Latvia, where women make up 55% of the population, comes out top for women’s rights in the 13 post-Sov
  • Domestic violence is not recognised as a crime in Russia, leaving victims and the police with little recourse even as thousands of women die each year at the hands of violent partners.
  • Fighting domestic abuse is an uphill struggle even in former Soviet states which have adopted laws against it, like Georgia, where “alarming and intolerant opinions” prevail in a blame-the-victim culture, the Tbilisi-based Human Rights Centre says.  
  • “Today it’s very difficult to use the word ‘gender’ in Armenia,” says Aharonian. “It means an insult.”  
qkirkpatrick

Socialist History of International Women's Day | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...-international-womens-day.html

Women russia

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  • Rights groups worldwide celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on Sunday, as they commemorate women’s achievements and call for equality. But for an event championed by international nongovernment organizations and major global corporations, it may surprise some that IWD was borne out of the U.S. socialist movement in the early 20th century.
  • In 1917, Russian women went on strike for “bread and peace” in protest of the deaths of more than 2 million Russian soldiers in the war, according to the U.N. They demanded the end of czarism and Russian food shortages. After the Russian Revolution, the day was declared a holiday in the Soviet Union. From there, it was primarily celebrated in communist countries such as China.
qkirkpatrick

Ukraine's women rebels don evening gowns for glam night - Yahoo Maktoob News - 0 views

en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/owns-glam-night-175003593.html

ukraine Russia International Women's Day politics

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  • Yana Manuilova cuts an imposing figure in combat fatigues as a gun-toting rebel in eastern Ukraine.
  • ut to mark International Women's Day she took time out from the war to zip herself into an evening gown and compete in a beauty pageant in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk
  • "Even in my military fatigues I don't forget that I am a woman. Besides, my comrades often remind me of the fact," the 35-year-old joked.
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  • A rebel who gave her name only as Irina said she left her job at a kindergarten to join the fight in May 2014, soon after the start of the pro-Russian insurgency against the Ukrainian government, a conflict that has claimed more than 6,000 lives.
qkirkpatrick

BBC News - Ukraine crisis: Rebels 'pull heavy weapons' from front line - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-31779869

ukraine Russia politics crisis

shared by qkirkpatrick on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Pro-Russia rebels in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, say they have "fully removed" heavy weapons from the front line, as agreed in a ceasefire deal.
  • The claim was made by the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, who added that Ukraine had not reciprocated
  • So what is in the Minsk ceasefire plan?
qkirkpatrick

Kim Ki-jong Attacks American Ambassador Mark Lippert in South Korea - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...386953

Korea politics history

shared by qkirkpatrick on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • On Thursday morning, Mark Lippert, the American ambassador to South Korea, was viciously attacked by a razor-wielding assailant moments before Lippert was set to speak at a meeting in Seoul
  • “South and North Korea should be reunified," the attacker yelled as he gashed Lippert's face and wrist, causing wounds that would ultimately require two-and-a-half hours of surgery and some 80 stitches.
  • The U.S. State Department issued an initial statement in which it labeled the attack an "assault" and condemned it as an "act of violence."
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  • Meanwhile, North Korea praised the attack as a "knife shower of justice" and "just punishment" for military cooperation between the United States and South Korea.
  • An irony here is that Thursday's attack took place while Lippert was attending an event organized by the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation which, CNN notes, is a group that "advocates peaceful reunification between the two Koreas." Kim was apparently a member of the group.
qkirkpatrick

Boko Haram Generates Uncertainty With Pledge of Allegiance to Islamic State - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...legiance-to-islamic-state.html

ISIS Terrorism Middle East

shared by qkirkpatrick on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • With thousands of fighters and some parts of northeastern Nigeria under its control, Boko Haram is believed to be the largest jihadi group to pledge fidelity to the Islamic State
  • Some experts say that the pledge, or “bayat,” made by the leader of Boko Haram is a spiritually binding oath, which indicates that the Nigerian Islamist group has agreed to accept the authority of the Islamic State.
  • But as with similar pledges to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by other extremist groups, there are few details about how much direct control the Islamic State leaders have over their distant proxies.
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