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anonymous

Feds: Capitol mob aimed to 'assassinate' elected officials - 0 views

  • Prosecutors say that after Chansley climbed up to the dais where Vice President Mike Pence had been presiding moments earlier, Chansley wrote a threatening note to Pence that said: “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”
  • “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States Government,” prosecutors wrote in their memo urging the judge to keep Chansley behind bars.
  • The FBI has been investigating whether any of the rioters had plots to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage, focusing particularly on the men seen carrying plastic zip tie handcuffs and pepper spray.
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  • Chansley, who calls himself the “QAnon Shaman” and has long been a fixture at Trump rallies, surrendered to the FBI field office in Phoenix on Saturday.
  • More than 80 people are facing charges stemming from the violence, including more than 40 people in federal court. The federal charges brought so far are primarily for crimes such as illegal entry but prosecutors have said they are weighing more serious charges against at least some of the rioters.
  • During a hearing in Texas on Thursday, a prosecutor urged a judge to keep Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. locked up, saying the man meant to “take hostages.”
  • “He means to kidnap, restrain, perhaps try, perhaps execute members of the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Weimer, without providing specifics.
Javier E

Jim Webb: The Iran crisis isn?t a failure of the executive branch alone - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence?
  • what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?
  • In 2007, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution calling on the George W. Bush administration to categorize Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as an international terrorist organization. I opposed this proposal based on the irrefutable fact that the organization was an inseparable arm of the Iranian government.
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  • It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire government.
  • The Revolutionary Guards are a part of the Iranian government. If they are attacking us, they are not a terrorist organization. They’re an attacking army.
  • last April the State Department unilaterally designated the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist entity.
  • the designation was by many accounts made despite the opposition of the CIA and the Defense Department.
  • No thinking American would support Soleimani’s conduct. But it is also indisputable that his activities were carried out as part of his military duties. His harm to American military units was through his role as an enabler and adviser to third-country forces. This, frankly, is a reality of war.
  • I fought as a Marine in Vietnam. We had similar problems throughout the Vietnam War because of Vietnam’s propinquity to China, which along with the Soviet Union provided continuous support to the North Vietnamese, including most of the weapons used against us on the battlefield
  • China was then a rogue state with nuclear weapons. Its leaders continually spouted anti-U.S. rhetoric. Yet we did not assassinate its military leaders for rendering tactical advice or logistical assistance. We fought the war that was in front of us, and we created the conditions in which we engaged China aggressively through diplomatic, economic and other means.
  • the United States desperately needs common-sense leadership in its foreign policy. This is not a failure of the executive branch alone; it is the result of a breakdown in our entire foreign policy establishment, from the executive branch to the legislative branch and even to many of our once-revered think tanks.
brickol

Iran ends nuclear deal commitments as fallout from Suleimani killing spreads | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Iran has announced that it will no longer abide by any of the limits imposed by the unravelling 2015 nuclear deal, and Iraq’s parliament urged its leaders to expel troops from the US-led coalition, as the aftershocks of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani reverberated through the Middle East.
  • the Iranian government said the country would no longer observe limitations on uranium enrichment, stockpiles of enriched uranium or nuclear research and development. But the statement noted that the steps could be reversed if Washington lifted its sanctions on Tehran.
  • The Iraqi parliament’s call to expel US troops was another clear sign of blowback from the assassination – and was quickly hailed by Suleimani’s supporters as a major step towards one of his main goals.
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  • Though the Iraqi debate that called for the US exit is not binding, and would require a one-year notice period, the fact that the move was led by a prime minister regarded as a US ally showed just how divisive the killing has become, and how quickly US interests in the region could unravel as a result.
  • Shortly after Abdul Mahdi’s statement, the US announced that it was suspending operations against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and a five-year-old training mission to equip local forces. A US statement claimed the suspension was a reaction to rocket attacks on US bases, carried out in recent weeks by Shia militia members.
  • Suleimani was the second most powerful person in Iran and the most influential Iranian outside the country, travelling the region like a Persian viceroy as he directed conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and as far away as Yemen. The extraordinary scenes of mourners thronging Iranian cities were a powerful testament to his popularity at home and the anger directed at the US for his killing a figure so central to Iran’s presence on the regional stage.
  • “The US army has killed these people,” Nasrallah said, referring to Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an ally of Suleimani also hit in the airstrike in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday. “We do not at all mean the American people and citizens across our region … It is up to anyone from the axis of resistance to deliver a fair punishment after Soleimani’s assassination.”
  • Withdrawing US forces from Iraq would be damaging to Washington’s interests in a region still recovering from the invasion of Iraq 17 years ago and the rampage of Isis, which forced millions of people from their homes and led to widespread destruction across the country. While Isis has been defeated on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, it remains a residual insurgent threat and there are growing signs that the terror group is reorganising, despite being on its knees in its former heartland.
  • In Iraq’s parliament, the resolution urging a US exit was passed by 170 votes to nil.
brookegoodman

Charlotte Corday assassinates French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most outspoken leaders of the French Revolution, is stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a Royalist sympathizer.
  • With the arrest of the king in August of that year, Marat was elected as a deputy of Paris to the Convention.
  • By 1793, Charlotte Corday, the daughter of an impoverished aristocrat and an ally of the Girondists in Normandy, came to regard Marat as the unholy enemy of France and plotted his assassination.
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  • Marat, who had a persistent skin disease, was working as usual in his bath when Corday pulled a knife from her bodice and stabbed him in his chest.
  • Corday waited calmly for the police to come and arrest her. She was guillotined four days later.
yehbru

Opinion: It's time to treat Putin's Russia like the rogue regime it is - CNN - 0 views

  • Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was nearly killed with a rare nerve agent before he recovered from a coma and went on to trick one of his apparent assassins into confessing to the details of the plot on tape.
  • Russia, under strongman Vladimir Putin's watch, has become a rogue regime apparently responsible, despite its loud denials, for a growing list of egregious crimes.
  • assassinations of political targets at home and abroad -- some with banned chemical weapons -- to Russia's ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine and a hacking campaign of unprecedented scope against the United States, and it's clear that Putin has become bolder and more dangerous than ever.
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  • "I remember the first time (Kasparov) was in jail, he didn't eat a thing because he was afraid that they'd poison him. And we all laughed at him! We thought he was paranoid. He is the only person I know who took any security measures."
  • Navalny's brilliant sting operation won't lead to an arrest and may only increase the chances he'll be targeted again with a less subtle method
  • Putin, who worked as a KGB officer before his political ascendance, once said himself that "there's no such thing as former KGB man." While he has always prioritized the security services during his two decades in power, the decay within Russia's intelligence agency is obvious as the country stagnates under dictatorship
  • But you don't have to be a master assassin when you can keep trying with impunity, even after being caught red-handed.
  • I don't fly with the state-owned airline Aeroflot, and I don't travel to countries where Putin might be able to put pressure on local authorities to do him a favor. But no one is untouchable in a world where criminals go unpunished.
  • The Kremlin has doubled down on its lies and denials, spreading a flood of contradictory stories by officials and in the state-run media. Putin himself was dismissive as usual, refusing to even mention Navalny by name when asked about the case. He denied the poisoning, saying, "If (FSB agents) wanted to, they would've probably finished it."
  • Even in the face of one of the worst cyberattacks in US history, Trump has refused to call out Russia as the culprit, even when his own secretary of state said, "We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."
  • Putin's henchmen are sloppy because they can afford to be. Just like their boss, they don't fear any repercussions
  • Meanwhile, the Trump administration is sending a clear message to all despots as it considers granting legal immunity for Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who ordered the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to the CIA
  • Yet, there is always talk about the need for more international engagement with these despots and thugs, not less. The dubious theory that globalization and closer economic ties will inevitably liberalize dictatorships has been refuted many times over. We see this with China's Xi Jinping, who has become more authoritarian and aggressive since the US welcomed China into the World Trade Organization. Instead, engagement -- or appeasement by another name -- reinforces their sense of impunity
  • Russia and some of Putin's oligarchs have already been under piecemeal sanctions since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. But these sanctions are merely a slap on the wrist, and it's clear they do not go far or high enough.
criscimagnael

The U.S. and Iran Move Closer to a Nuclear Deal - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Iran and the United States have recently engaged in a spiraling escalation of threats and warnings
  • On Saturday, Iran’s Parliament placed largely symbolic sanctions on 51 Americans, many of them prominent political and military officials, for “terrorism” and “human rights violations,” in retaliation for the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, two years ago.
  • Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, then warned that Iran would “face severe consequences” if it attacked any Americans, including any of the 51 people hit with the sanctions.
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  • Symbolic acts of sanctioning individuals and issuing sharply worded statements are nothing new in the long and troubled relationship between Tehran and Washington.
  • The Biden administration needs a foreign policy success, particularly after the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, and has said it prefers a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear standoff over military confrontation.
  • The Biden administration initially wanted to return to the original deal while following the Trump blueprint on missiles and foreign policies, but has now indicated it would accept a return to the 2015 accord without those strings attached.
  • initially demanded the lifting of all sanctions imposed by Mr. Trump and guarantees that a future American president would not withdraw from the deal. But Tehran has softened those demands as the negotiations have progressed in Vienna.
  • Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed tough economic sanctions cutting off most of Iran’s oil revenues and international financial transactions. Mr. Trump’s goal was to pressure Iran into a deal that reached beyond its nuclear program, restricting its ballistic missiles and regional political and military activities.
  • “We will facilitate revenge on Americans in any place, even their own homes and by people close to them, even if we are not present,” he said in a video of the speech.
  • Yet neither side wants to seem too eager to compromise, which would risk appearing weak.
  • The recent jousting between Tehran and Washington is linked to Iran’s commemoration on Jan. 3 of the two-year anniversary of the U.S. assassination of General Suleimani. In speech after speech during the ceremonies, Iranian officials threatened revenge against American officials — even though Iran had retaliated five days after the assassination with a ballistic missile strike on an American military facility in Iraq.
  • Ebrahim Raisi, the newly elected hard-line Iranian president, said that former President Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, should stand trial in an impartial court and face “ghesas,” a term that in Islamic jurisprudence means an “eye for an eye.” Otherwise, he warned, people would take their own revenge.
  • Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, signaled an indirect endorsement of talks with the U.S. in a speech on Monday when he said the Islamic Republic “holding talks and negotiating with the enemy at certain junctures does not mean surrendering.”
  • Over a four-day period, they unleashed a series of rocket and drone attacks on a U.S. military base in western Iraq and on the living quarters of State Department employees at the Baghdad airport, according to the Iraqi military and an official with the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition based in Baghdad, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
  • In northeastern Syria, artillery rounds were fired at a Syrian-Kurdish-led base with U.S. advisers, according to the U.S.-led coalition, which issued a statement blaming the attacks on “Iran-supported malign actors.”
  • Tehran’s proxies were launching the attacks, Iranian officials were expressing a surprisingly optimistic view of the talks in Vienna, now in their eighth round, while the State Department was offering a more measured assessment.
  • An adviser to Iran’s Foreign Ministry said he believed a deal could be reached before mid-February, which would coincide with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
  • made an important concession to get things rolling by agreeing to work from a draft agreement worked out with Mr. Rouhani’s team,
  • Under that agreement, the U.S. would lift all sanctions related to the nuclear deal (while keeping those for human rights and other issues) and Iran would return to its technical commitments regarding its nuclear program under the old treaty.
  • Washington’s outlook has been more cautious than Tehran’s.
  • “I’m not going to put a time limit on it or give you the number of meters remaining on the runway, except to say, ‘Yes, it is getting very, very, very short,’”
  • Iran may have softened its initial demand for the removal of all sanctions imposed after Mr. Trump exited the deal, including those related to human rights.
  • Iran was pursuing “the removal of sanctions” related only to the original nuclear deal and looking to complete sanctions removal sometime in the future.
  • Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But if the talks fail, he said, its efforts at enriching uranium since the U.S. exited the nuclear deal have put it in a position to move toward weaponization very quickly.
Javier E

Origins of C.I.A.'s Not-So-Secret Drone War in Pakistan - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • As the negotiations were taking place, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the C.I.A.’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.
  • Mr. Helgerson raised questions about whether C.I.A. officers might face criminal prosecution for the interrogations carried out in the secret prisons, and he suggested that interrogation methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the exploiting of the phobias of prisoners — like confining them in a small box with live bugs — violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
  • The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation. Targeted killings were cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, and using drones flown by pilots who were stationed thousands of miles away made the whole strategy seem risk-free.
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  • Not long before, the agency had been deeply ambivalent about drone warfare. The Predator had been considered a blunt and unsophisticated killing tool, and many at the C.I.A. were glad that the agency had gotten out of the assassination business long ago. Three years before Mr. Muhammad’s death, and one year before the C.I.A. carried out its first targeted killing outside a war zone — in Yemen in 2002 — a debate raged over the legality and morality of using drones to kill suspected terrorists.
  • A new generation of C.I.A. officers had ascended to leadership positions, having joined the agency after the 1975 Congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, which revealed extensive C.I.A. plots to kill foreign leaders, and President Gerald Ford’s subsequent ban on assassinations. The rise to power of this post-Church generation had a direct impact on the type of clandestine operations the C.I.A. chose to conduct.
  • John E. McLaughlin, then the C.I.A.’s deputy director, who the 9/11 commission reported had raised concerns about the C.I.A.’s being in charge of the Predator, said: “You can’t underestimate the cultural change that comes with gaining lethal authority. “When people say to me, ‘It’s not a big deal,’ ” he said, “I say to them, ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ “It is a big deal. You start thinking about things differently,” he added. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, these concerns about the use of the C.I.A. to kill were quickly swept side.
sarahbalick

Leading Hezbollah commander and key Israel target killed in Syria | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Leading
  • Hezbollah
  • commander and key Israel target killed in Syria
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  • edia reports in Lebanon and Israel quickly suggested the blast had been caused by an Israeli airstrike, a suggestion to which Hezbollah gave weight, announcing it was investigating whether a “missile or artillery strike” had been responsible.
  • Badreddine was the most senior member of the organisation to have been killed since the
  • death
  • of his predecessor and brother-in-law, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by a joint Mossad/CIA operation in the Syrian capital in February 2008.
  • Announcing Badreddine’s death, Hezbollah said: “He said months ago that he would not return from Syria except as a martyr or carrying the flag of victory. He is the great jihadi leader Mustafa Badreddine, and he has returned today a martyr.”
  • The investigation will work to determine the nature of the explosion and its causes, whether it was due to an air or missile or artillery strike, and we will announce the results of the investigation soon.”
  • Hezbollah said he had been involved in nearly all the group’s operations since its inception in the early 1980s. Most had targeted Israel, which occupied Lebanon from 1982-2000. However, Badreddine had also been accused of leading a cell that was allegedly responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri on the Beirut waterfront in February 2005.
  • Despite Israeli protests, Russia has recently proceeded with a long-delayed sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 weapons system, which can shoot down most modern fighter jets. Israeli officials have said they would prioritise tracking the whereabouts of the systems, the position of which in southern Lebanon would pose a potent threat to their air force.
  • Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to pay their respects at a shrine site for Hezbollah dead, which includes the graves of Imad and Jihad Mughniyah. Nasrallah is also expected to make a public statement – his second within a week. More news Topics Hezbollah Lebanon Iran Israel Middle East and North Africa Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Save for later Article saved <
Javier E

Old Poland, New Nationalism - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In July 2011, a government inquiry found that the causes of the crash were complex but mundane: organizational negligence, poor pilot training, bad weather and the shoddy state of the airport at Smolensk. In short, the presidential plane should never have taken off that day.
  • The assassination theory has collapsed like a house of cards, as its pseudo-experts have been exposed as frauds or fools. And rational, liberal Poland despises “Smolensk folk.” If life went on only in the realm of ideas, you might say rightly so. But neither “Smolensk folk” nor Poland’s hard-line nationalists can so easily be wished away.
  • Poland’s liberal intelligentsia coined a phrase for this overheated paranoia: the “Smolensk religion.” Its doctrine was a singular, explosive mixture of Polish messianism and religious fundamentalism, xenophobia and a love of martyrdom. For followers of the faith, any rational argument about the crash was instantly transubstantiated into further proof of the assassins’ cunning.
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  • Yet wild theories abounded: The Russians had produced the fog; a “vacuum bomb” had been set off; the plane had been dragged to the ground by magnets; several passengers had survived the crash but been finished off on the ground.
  • people lack jobs and prospects: One-third of young Poles are jobless. What unites them is anger. They hate the establishment, and they channel their rage through attacks on others: immigrants, gays or Russians.
  • The prevalence of the “Smolensk religion” has emboldened the ultranationalists. For successive years since 2011, mobs have set fire to immigrant apartment blocks in Bialystok, eastern Poland. In June, at a conference in Wroclaw, a lecture by the veteran leftist intellectual Zygmunt Bauman was disrupted by hecklers shouting anti-communist slogans. At the Independence Day marches, the extreme right is not just permitted but encouraged:
  • The great dilemma facing Poland, with an election coming in 2015, is how to halt the rise of the ultranationalists without resorting to illiberal, authoritarian measures like preventive detention, and restrictions on free speech.
Javier E

Politicians Seeing Evil, Hearing Evil, Speaking Evil - The New York Times - 0 views

  • There is a movie I’m looking forward to seeing when it comes to Washington. It seems quite relevant to America today
  • It’s about what can happen in a democratic society when politicians go too far, when they not only stand mute when hateful words that cross civilized redlines suddenly become part of the public discourse, but, worse, start to wink at and dabble in this hate speech for their advantage.
  • Later, they all say that they never heard the words, never saw the signs, or claim that their own words were misunderstood. But they heard and they saw and they meant.
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  • “Rabin: The Last Day.” Agence France-Presse said the movie, by the renowned Israeli director Amos Gitai, is about “the incitement campaign before the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin” and “revisits a form of Jewish radicalism that still poses major risks.”
  • Sure, the official investigating commission focused on the breakdowns in Rabin’s security detail, but, Gitai added, “They didn’t investigate what were the underlying forces that wanted to kill Rabin. His murder came at the end of a hate campaign led by hallucinating rabbis, settlers who were against the withdrawal from territories and the parliamentary right, led by the Likud (party), already then headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted to destabilize Rabin’s Labor government.”
  • I hope a lot of Americans see this film — for the warning it offers to those who ignore or rationalize the divisive, bigoted campaigns of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and how they’re dragging their whole party across civic redlines, with candidates saying, rationalizing or ignoring more and more crazy, ill-informed stuff each week.
  • Last week another redline was crossed. At a Trump town hall event, the first questioner began: “We got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. But anyway. We have training camps brewing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?”Trump responded: “A lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking into that and plenty of other things.”
  • Trump could have let the man ask his question and then correct his racist nonsense, without blocking his free speech, which is exactly what McCain did in a similar situation
  • Instead he tweeted: “Christians need support in our country (and around the world), their religious liberty is at stake! Obama has been horrible, I will be great.”
  • And then, like clockwork, Ben Carson saw Trump blurring another civic redline and leapfrogged him. Carson stated, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”
  • So a whole faith community gets delegitimized and another opportunity for someone to courageously stand up for what’s decent is squandered. But it will play well with certain voters. And that is all that matters — until something really bad happens. And then, all of it — the words, tweets, signs and boasts — will be footage for another documentary that ends badly.
qkirkpatrick

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

  • 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&nbsp;percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States,
  • Nemtsov’s assassination, the highest-profile political killing during Vladi­mir Putin’s 15&nbsp;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.
  •  
    Russians having negative views of Western Powers. Even some places are refusing to serve Americans.
qkirkpatrick

Bosnian Serbs erect statue to nationalist who ignited World War I - LA Times - 0 views

  • Bosnian Serbs&nbsp;unveiled a bronze statue Friday in Sarajevo of&nbsp;Gavrilo Princip, the nationalist who assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand a century ago and set in motion the First World War, which took 10 million lives and shattered empires
  • Princip was a 19-year-old radical whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian royal in line for the Hapsburg&nbsp;throne is considered by most historians to have been an act of terrorism, although he is revered by Serb nationalists who credit him with freeing Bosnia and Serbia from respective occupation by the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires
  • Jovan Mojsilovic, the actor who played Princip in the theatrical presentation during&nbsp;the statue-unveiling ceremony, called the Vienna orchestra's visit to Sarajevo a "pure provocation," the Reuters news agency reported.
alexdeltufo

Militarism and Humiliation Cast Shadow on Germany - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Might, militarism and humiliation: These are the memories that make Germans today reluctant to project their clout as, once again, Europe’s economic powerhouse. One hundred years on from World War I, German leadership in Europe is both desired and resented, a historically rooted ambivalence that is keenly felt by the Germans and by their wary neighbors.
  • Today, with nationalism and populism on the rise in Europe, Ms. Merkel is central in trying to untangle a tussle over European leadership that may hasten a British exit from the European Union, and she faces demands from two other major partners, France and Italy, to relax stringent budgetary demands.
  • under Otto von Bismarck and then the kaiser. Numbers alone tell a story: In 1870, as Bismarck unified Germany, Kiel had around 30,000 inhabitants.
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  • Paradoxically, it was development on land that helped bolster the importance of this natural deep-sea port.
  • Always calm, she brooked little criticism and brushed aside anti-German sentiment as she pushed to impose austerity on supposedly profligate European neighbors.
  • When he learned of the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Hapsburg Empire, he hastened to Berlin.
  • Wilhelm poured torrents of money into the German Navy. In 1906, Britain’s Royal Navy took delivery of H.M.S. Dreadnought, with its groundbreaking armament of big guns. Wilhelm
  • Britain and France were alarmed by Wilhelm’s ambition. Britain’s determination to keep its navy supreme only heightened German anxieties, already running high because the kaiser felt beleaguered on two fronts.
  • Naval historians, however, tend to accord more significance to Germany’s U-boats, which were responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, for instance, eventually helping to draw the United States into Europe’s Great War.
  • Wilhelm’s proud Naval Academy, for instance, is now the parliamentary seat of Schleswig-Holstein, the state of which Kiel is the capital.
  • The other is the Flandernbunker, or Flanders bunker, built outside the main surviving military base here. Its name stems from a Nazi campaign to
  • The location was the memorial built for the World War I sailors. It is a tower and flamelike structure of reinforced concrete with an outer layer of north German brick, soaring nearly 300 feet above the coast at Laboe, where
  • there are 200,000 a year — confront a 1936 glass tableau of sailors’ lives on ship and shore, in which a still-discernible swastika has replaced the sun.
  • Mr. Witt and his associates believe that the memorial can carry a message of peace. Standing in a hall that shows every German ship lost in the two world wars, the 35,000 German sailors lost in World War I a
  •  
    Alison Smale
anonymous

JFK assassination: Questions that won't go away - BBC News - 0 views

  • John F Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot dead on 22 November 1963. He was travelling in an open-topped limousine.
  • A week after Kennedy was killed, President Lyndon B Johnson set up a commission to investigate the case.
  • Around 88% of the records are open in full; 11% are open but with "sensitive portions" removed; and 1% are withheld in full.According to the 1992 law, all records must be published in full within 25 years, unless the president says otherwise.The deadline is Thursday.
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  • Some people believe the "other" gunman fired from the "grassy knoll", which the president's limousine passed.
g-dragon

A Short History of Violent Buddhism - 0 views

  • Buddhism is probably the most pacifistic of the major world religions.
  • His teachings stand in stark contrast to those of the other major religions, which advocate execution and warfare against people who fail to adhere to the religions' tenets.
  • To an outsider with a perhaps stereotypical view of Buddhism as introspective and serene, it is more surprising to learn that Buddhist monks have also participated in and even instigated violence over the years.
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  • For most of their history, the monks who invented kung fu (wushu) used their martial skills mainly in self-defense; however, at certain points, they actively sought out warfare, as in the mid-16th century when they answered the central government's call for aid in the fight against Japanese pirates.
  • Speaking of Japan, the Japanese also have a long tradition of "warrior-monks" or yamabushi.
  • In 1932, for example, an unordained Buddhist preacher called Nissho Inoue hatched a plot to assassinate major liberal or westernizing political and business figures in Japan so as to restore full political power to Emperor Hirohito.
  • Called the "League of Blood Incident," this scheme targeted 20 people and managed to assassinate two of them before the League's members were arrested.
  • various Zen Buddhist organizations in Japan carried out funding drives to buy war material and even weapons.
  • One example is in Sri Lanka, where radical Buddhist monks formed a group called the Buddhist Power Force, or B.B.S., which provoked violence against the Hindu Tamil population of northern Sri Lanka, against Muslim immigrants, and also against moderate Buddhists who spoke up about the violence
  • Another very disturbing example of Buddhist monks inciting and committing violence is the situation in Myanmar (Burma), where hard-line monks have been leading the persecution of a Muslim minority group called the Rohingya.
  • Perhaps, if Prince Siddhartha was alive today, he would remind them that they should not nurture such an attachment to the idea of the nation.
manhefnawi

A Monarch and his Mignons: Henry III's Court | History Today - 0 views

  • France was then sharply divided by religion. Thousands of Protestants, or Huguenots, had been massacred in Paris and other cities in 1572, but they remained strong in the south and west, while Paris was fiercely Catholic. Though a Catholic himself, Henry III lacked the means to take on the Huguenots in an all-out war.
  • accused the mignons of destroying Henry III’s virility
  • Monarchs were used to distributing special favours to certain members of their entourage in return for their loyalty and services. The first French king to do so was Philip III, ‘the Bold’ (1270-85). A long line of favourites can be traced through the succeeding reigns until that of Louis XIV, who had none. Henry III seems to have had more than any other French king. They can be divided into two groups: the first, formed in the 1570s, comprised some 20 young men, roughly of the same age as Henry. They belonged to families of the provincial nobility (or noblesse seconde), which had served the crown for generations. The second group was formed in the 1580s. It consisted of only two men, Anne de Joyeuse, baron d’Arques and Jean-Louis de La Valette. They became far more powerful than their predecessors and were known as the archimignons
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  • It was during the reign of Charles IX (1559-74), while Henry was still duc d’Anjou
  • Anjou’s election to the Polish throne, which gave him a credible excuse for lifting the siege, also provided his companions with another opportunity of gaining his friendship
  • This called for considerable courage, for Poland was a distant country full of unknown dangers. Duly grateful to his companions, Henry rewarded them following his accession to the French throne in 1574
  • The mignons were rewarded with posts of secondary importance, close to the king’s person but not crucial to the realm’s administration
  • Unlike his predecessors, he was a private man, who disliked crowds and believed that his authority would be enhanced by distancing himself from the general mass of courtiers
  • The nature of Henry’s relations with his mignons has aroused much speculation
  • nothing could appease the Parisians, who soon rebelled. As they erected barricades, he fled from the capital, never to return. He sealed his fate by ordering the assassination of the duc de Guise, who had become their hero
  • In the summer of 1587 the religious wars entered a new phase as German troops invaded western France. The king decided to deploy three armies. He sent Joyeuse at the head of his best troops to fight Henry of Navarre in Guyenne, the duc de Guise with inadequate troops to harass the Germans
  • He hoped to destroy both Guise and Navarre, but fate dictated otherwise
  • If I could have made him my son I would have done so, but I am making him my brother … I love him so much that I cannot love myself more
  • Hatred of the king was fuelled by an avalanche of pamphlets: 237 were printed in Paris in the first six months of 1589
  • Henry, meanwhile, allied with the Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre. Jointly, they laid siege to Paris.
  • On August 1st, 1589 a Jacobin friar, Jacques Clément, who had claimed to be the bearer of an important message for the king, was admitted to his presence, even though Henry was sitting on his close-stool
  • The king ordered his attendants to withdraw as the friar drew closer to whisper in his ear. As he did so, he drew a knife from his sleeve and plunged it into the king’s abdomen. Henry died a few days later
  • Ten years later, he was sitting next to Henry IV in his carriage when he, too, was assassinated. Two regicides in one lifetime must be a record, even for an archimignon
manhefnawi

John | duke of Burgundy | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • The son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy
  • he was the only one of the Valois rulers of Burgundy who knew how to handle an army
  • When John at last succeeded his father in 1404 as duke of Burgundy and count of Burgundy, Flanders, and Artois, he was 33 years old.
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  • John found himself involved in French affairs and was in part responsible for provoking a civil war in France with a rival house, headed by his first cousin, the King’s younger brother, Louis, duc d’Orléans. Each man sought control of the mad king Charles VI and his queen and of the capital Paris.
  • the notorious murder by Duke John of his cousin by hired assassins in 1407 enabled John to subdue Paris and the crown
  • During the five years between 1413 and 1418, in which the Armagnacs succeeded in driving the Burgundians out of Paris, the internal situation in France was further complicated by a new English invasion led by the ambitious king, Henry V.
  • John turned instead to the Armagnacs, in the hopes of arranging a truce or even making a firm peace settlement with their youthful leader, the dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII), in an alliance against the English.
  • John the Fearless was struck down and killed during a dispute started by the Armagnacs, a political assassination that contemporary evidence shows was almost certainly carefully premeditated.
cdavistinnell

Arkady Babchenko, 'murdered' Russian journalist, appears on Ukrainian TV - CNN - 0 views

  • Russian journalist and critic of the Kremlin, reported to have been shot dead in Ukraine, showed up alive at a press conference on Wednesday to declare that his murder was faked by Ukrainian security services in an effort to foil an assassination plot against him.
  • In a stunning development, Arkady Babchenko, 41, walked into a room of journalists in Kiev who had been expecting to get an update on his murder.
  • Ukrainian officials offered a jaw-dropping explanation for his so-called death -- to expose a Russian plot against him.
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  • He said Ukranian officials first told him about the threat against him -- and their elaborate plan to thwart it -- a month ago. He said he was told that $40,000 had already been transferred for the alleged assassination attempt.
  • Babchenko said he became convinced that Russian government agencies were involved in the alleged murder plot when he was shown his passport photo and personal documents that he said could have been accessed by Russian special services.
  • News of the apparent murder had stunned Kiev on Tuesday. Shortly after Babchenko's death was announced, Moscow and Kiev began blaming each other for the killing of the journalist, who is a vocal critic of the Kremlin and left Russia in 2017, saying he no longer felt safe.
  • Babchenko called Russia an aggressor, and accused the country of killing children in its air support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Javier E

Compromised encryption machines gave CIA window into major human rights abuses in South America - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • The U.S. spy agency was, in effect, supplying rigged communications gear to some of South America’s most brutal regimes and, as a result, in unique position to know the extent of their atrocities.
  • What the documents don’t show is any substantial effort by U.S. spy agencies, or senior officials privy to the intelligence, to expose or stop human rights violations unfolding in their view.
  • The countries’ initial target was a multinational rebel group operating in the southern part of the continent. But over time the operation morphed into a sprawling campaign involving mass killings in South America and assassinations of alleged rebel leaders and political exiles in Europe and the United States.
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  • the Crypto documents reinforce the perception among Latin Americans that U.S. officials did little to stop the bloodshed in previous decades. “They have always suspected U.S. participation, and knowledge is a form of participation,” Osorio said. “This is confirmation of those suspicions.”
  • The list of countries targeted in the Crypto operation suggests that U.S. spies would have had extensive insight into turbulent developments across multiple continents and decades — massacres in Indonesia, abuses under apartheid in South Africa and violent crackdowns against dissidents waged by Hosni Mubarak in Egypt after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat.
  • “Knowledge of atrocities creates legal obligations in extreme cases and moral obligations in all cases,” said John Sifton, a senior official at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy grou
  • “It would be interesting to go through all of the speeches and statements of the State Department — all the statements over the years where U.S. officials distanced themselves from allegations of atrocities, or professed ignorance,” Sifton said.
  • Former intelligence officials said such standards are unrealistic, and that the Crypto revelations reflect the ethical and moral compromises that espionage entails.
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