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How Russians justify their support for the war - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...en-russians-existential-choice support war russia putin paranoid suicide trauma survival
shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 22 - No Cached
  • whether it is “Biden’s war” or Putin’s, Russians have rallied around the flag, and most likely that’s because the Kremlin has led them to see the war as an existential choice: Either you win it, or your life is going to be destroyed.
  • The available evidence shows significant support for the war, as well as a surge in patriotism.
  • According to the Levada Center, a respected independent pollster, the number of Russians who thought the country was going in the right direction rose from 52 percent before the invasion to 69 percent after, and Putin’s personal approval rating soared to a whopping 83 percent
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  • As an experiment staged by researchers at the London School of Economics showed, support for the war goes down by 15 percentage points when people are encouraged to speak their mind.
  • In a joint project with the Ukrainian pollster KIIS, the Levada Center for years has asked Russians what kind of relations they envisioned between their country and Ukraine. In a poll conducted in December, only 18 percent of Russians said they wanted the two countries to become one, while 51 percent said they wanted Russia and Ukraine to be independent countries with an open border, and 24 percent said they wanted independent countries with a hard border.
  • In a Levada Center poll published on the day Putin launched the invasion, only 25 percent of Russians supported Russia’s expanding its borders to include the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics — Donbas, where much of the heaviest fighting is concentrated now — while 33 percent wanted the region to become independent and 26 percent wanted it to remain part of Ukraine.
  • It’s hard to deny that the war is fratricidal, however, and that would seem to make selling it to the public more difficult. How can you flatten Ukrainian cities where millions of Russians have relatives and friends?
  • The pattern of deeply intertwined relationships extends into broader Russian society. Having some kind of connection across the border is the norm, not the exception.
  • So how do Russians justify support of what so far has been a series of crimes against humanity committed against a people who are the transnational-relationship equivalent of next of kin?
  • The Kremlin employs two related narratives here. The first paints the enemy as the West, not Ukraine. This framing turns Russia into the smaller, weaker side in the conflict — a victim, not a perpetrator.
  • Medinsky the negotiator, who is better known in Russia as an architect of the historical narratives promoted by Putin’s regime, expresses the second framing best: “Russia’s very existence is at stake now,” he said last month. Russia, in this telling, is going through a period like the one that led to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, or the one when the Soviet system was falling apart in the early 1990s.
  • Messages aimed at triggering the survival instinct are extremely powerful in Russia, where various invasions from the West, including Adolf Hitler’s attempt at exterminating eastern Slavs as a race, define the historical experience
  • There is a mode of Russian collective behavior in the face of mortal danger: People forget their old grievances and rally behind the leader, even one hated by many. This is what happened in 1941, when the victims and perpetrators of communist genocide united under Joseph Stalin to repel the existential threat posed by the Nazis.
  • Russians are not facing an existential threat now, of course. Rather, it is their own country that’s posing an existential threat to a neighbor. But the human tendency is to grasp for comforting, rather than truthful, narratives.
  • It takes something along the lines of Germany’s defeat in World War II to accept reality. It also takes decades, rather than years or months.
  • Freed from its totalitarian prison in 1991, Russian society emerged badly traumatized by a century of outright genocide and bleak Soviet existence. It was re-traumatized by the turmoil of the 1990s
  • They remain oblivious to the fact that the more they deny reality, the worse will be the future trauma.
  • Unlike Ukrainians, Russians don’t even have the illusion of the West embracing and integrating them after this conflict. Pro-Putin Russians assume that all the West wants is to punish them, so they’ll try their best to postpone this punishment or prevent it altogether.
  • When Putin says Russians and Ukrainians are one people and then — in the next breath — begins slaughtering these people en masse, he is unleashing civil war, by his own logic. For now, that is confined to a neighboring country.
  • some pro-Kremlin commentators, including the editor of a key history journal and a well-known writer, have recently taken to branding members of the Russian opposition “internal Ukrainians.” The implication is that anti-Putin Russians should be treated with the same cruelty as Ukrainians, because they want to destroy Russia
  • Russians face few choices that don’t lead to self-destruction. The West might be thinking that by increasing economic and military pressure, it will achieve a behavioral change, and perhaps even a collapse of Putin’s regime, but it may just as well cause the opposite, uniting people in what they see as an apocalyptic battle for survival.
  • This war bought him a few more years in power. He paralyzed the resistance to his regime by turning his supporters into accomplices in war crimes and those who oppose him into enemies of the state. He doesn’t really need to occupy Ukraine; he needs the war per se.
  • without a clearly spelled-out vision of a post-Putin Russia fully integrated into the West — the kind of vision that inspires Ukrainians to fight against Putin — the vector of Russian society will remain fratricidal and, increasingly, suicidal. This is bad news for everyone on the planet, given that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is capable of destroying humanity. As Putin once put it: “Why do we need the world if there is no Russia in it?”
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Why Russia has never accepted Ukrainian independence | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...ccepted-ukrainian-independence politics history crisis
shared by woodlu on 26 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Yeltsin did not just want what Mr Kravchuk had achieved in Ukraine for economic reasons. Independence would, he felt, be crucial to consolidating his power and pursuing liberal democracy. And Ukraine—never, until the 19th century, a well-defined territory, and home to various ethnic enclaves and deep cultural divides—becoming an independent unitary state within its Soviet borders set a precedent for Russia to define itself the same way, and refuse independence to restive territories such as Chechnya.
  • That was why the Russian republic was one of the first three polities in the world to recognise it as an independent state.
  • if a world in which Ukraine, Russia and indeed Belarus were completely independent from the Soviet Union was attractive, one in which they were not tied to each other in some other way was very troubling to a Russian like Yeltsin.
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  • It was not just that Ukraine was the second-most-populous and economically powerful of the remaining republics, its industries tightly integrated with Russia’s. Nor was it the question of what was to happen to the nuclear forces stationed there but still notionally under the command of Soviet authorities in Moscow. It went deeper.
  • The need to let the Baltic states go was clear—and when they left the Soviet Union in 1990, Solzhenitsyn, Yeltsin and most of Russia rallied against revanchist attempts to keep them in. Much the same was true of Central Asia and the Caucasus; they were colonies. Belarus and Ukraine were part of the metropolitan core. The bonds which tied “Little Russians” (ie Ukrainians), “Great Russians” and Belarusians together, Solzhenitsyn argued, must be defended by all means short of war.
  • For centuries Ukraine had anchored Russia’s identity. As the centre of the storied medieval confederation known as Kyivan Rus, which stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, Kyiv was seen as the cradle of Russian and Belarusian culture and the font of their Orthodox faith.
  • Being united with Ukraine was fundamental to Russia’s feeling of itself as European.
  • Instead the shooting down of planes, along with the violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the seizure of Crimea, the reassertion that the legacy of Kyivian Rus meant the nations must be shackled together and the reversion of Belarus to dictatorship—that all came later, a sequence of events which led, 30 Decembers later, to 70,000 or more Russian troops on the border of Ukraine and, in a ghastly sideshow, thousands of Middle Eastern refugees stuck in the Belovezh forest itself. The once seemingly settled question of post-Soviet relations between the three nations has once again become an overriding geopolitical concern.
  • The agreement reached, in draft form, at 4am on Sunday morning achieved those aims with a rather neat piece of casuistry. For Russia simply to have followed Ukraine into independence would have left moot the question of the Soviet Union’s residual powers. So instead they abolished the union itself.
  • The Soviet Union had been formed, in 1922, through a joint declaration by four Soviet republics—the Transcaucasian republic and the three represented at Viskuli. With the Transcaucasian republic long since dismembered, the presidents dissolved by fiat what their forebears had bound together. In its place they put a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)—Mr Kravchuk would not allow any use of the word “union”—with few clearly defined powers which any post-Soviet state would be welcome to join. There was to be no special relationship between the Slavic three.
  • The importance of Ukraine was not an abstract matter to him. Like Solzhenitsyn, he was the child of a Ukrainian mother and a Russian father. He grew up singing Ukrainian songs and reading Gogol, who reimagined his native country’s folk magic as rich poetry after moving to St Petersburg. The Soviet Union had meant that Mr Gorbachev and others like him, whatever their parentage, could partake in both identities.
  • disassembling a multi-ethnic empire of 250m people was still a subject of huge trepidation. As Solzhenitsyn had written in “Rebuilding Russia”, “The clock of communism has stopped chiming. But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled. And we must take care not to be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty.” The fact that in that rubble, if rubble there was to be, there would be the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, spread between four separate countries (the three Slavic ones and Kazakhstan), frightened statesmen around the world.
  • “the Kyivan myth of origins…became the cornerstone of Muscovy’s ideology as the polity evolved from a Mongol dependency to a sovereign state and then an empire.” Russian empire required Ukraine; and Russia had no history other than one of empire. The idea of Kyiv as just the capital of a neighbouring country was unimaginable to Russians.
  • When, as the economy worsened, Mr Gorbachev went to President George Bush for $10bn-15bn, Bush’s top concern was the nuclear threat. The same worry had led him to oppose Ukraine’s secession in a speech given just before the August coup. “Do you realise what you’ve done?” Mr Gorbachev demanded of Mr Shushkevich. “Once Bush finds out about this, what then?”
  • Yeltsin was overcome by a sense of lightness and freedom. “In signing this agreement,” he later recalled, “Russia was choosing a different path, a path of internal development rather than an imperial one…She was throwing off the traditional image of ‘potentate of half the world’, of armed conflict with Western civilisation, and the role of policeman in the resolution of ethnic conflicts. The last hour of the Soviet empire was chiming.” Maybe the convoluted interdependency of Russia and Ukraine did not matter as much as people thought; maybe democratic nationhood was enough. Maybe the problem had been a failure of imagination.
  • His foreign supporters stood by him too, and the following year a security agreement saw America, Britain and Russia guarantee respect for Ukraine’s integrity within its existing borders—which is to say, including Crimea—in exchange for its giving up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union. Ukraine was grateful; the West saw further evidence of a transition towards a liberal, democratic Russian state.
  • Yeltsin’s unburdened moment among the trees had been that of a man who did not want to, and did not have to, rule an empire. He consciously rejected not just the Soviet Union’s ideology and central planning, but also the tools of statecraft that had held it together—repression and lies. To him, the market economy was a condition for freedom, not a substitute for it. His successor, Vladimir Putin, also embraced capitalism. But he saw no need for it to bring freedom with it, and had no problem with a state run through repression and lies. He thus reversed Yeltsin’s democratic project and, though not at first territorially imperialist himself, took the country down the other side of Brzezinski’s fork. It is that which puts Russia and its Slavic neighbours in such a parlous position today.
  • But when pollsters asked people what they expected of their incoming president, reducing this corruption was not their highest priority. The standing of the state was. Russians wanted a strong state and one respected abroad. As Mr Putin’s successful manifesto put it,
  • “A strong state is not an anomaly to fight against. Society desires the restoration of the guiding, organising role of the state.” When, shortly after his election, Mr Putin restored the Soviet anthem, it was not as a symbol of reverting to central planning or rebuilding an empire. It was a signal that the strong state was back. State power did not mean the rule of law or a climate of fairness. It did not have, or need, an ideology. But it did have to take on some of the “geopolitical reality” that the meeting in Viskuli had stripped from the Soviet Union.
  • The strong state which provided an effective cover for kleptocracy in Mr Putin’s Russia was not an option for Mr Kuchma’s similarly oligarchic Ukraine. It had no real history as a state, let alone a strong one. Its national myth was one of Cossacks riding free. So in Ukraine the stealing was instead dressed up in terms of growing into that distinctive national identity. The essence of the argument was simple. As Mr Kuchma put it in a book published in 2003, “Ukraine is not Russia”.
  • And the West, spooked by the increased belligerence Russia had shown in Georgia, was taking a keen interest in Ukraine. The EU offered the country an association agreement which would allow Ukrainians to enjoy the benefits of a deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement and free travel across Europe.
  • Mr Kuchma could have used force against them; Mr Putin encouraged him to do so. But various considerations, including Western opprobrium, argued against it.
  • Perhaps most fundamental was his sense that, as a Ukrainian president, he could not thus divide the Ukrainian nation. He stayed his hand and allowed a second vote. Viktor Yushchenko, pro-Western and Ukrainian-speaking, beat Viktor Yanukovych, a corrupt thug from Donbas (the easternmost part of the country and, save Crimea, the most ethnically Russian) who had claimed victory the first time round. The “Orange revolution”, as the protest came to be known, was a serious setback for Mr Putin—all the more so when a similar uprising in Georgia, the Rose revolution, put another pro-Western state on his borders.
  • Mr Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 came at a time when the global financial crisis had choked the Russian economy.
  • The degree to which Ukraine was not Russia became clearer, though, in 2004, when a rigged presidential election saw hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protesting in the streets.
  • A year earlier a group of economists had told Mr Putin that a customs union with Ukraine would be a smart move. What was more, such a deal would preclude Ukraine’s association with the EU. Pursuing it was thus a way for Mr Putin to achieve three things at once: push back against the West; give Russia a victory that would prove its importance; and help the economy.
  • Mr Yanukovych did not want to be Russia’s vassal. Nor did he share western Europe’s values—especially when applied to matters of anti-corruption. But eventually he had to choose a side. At a secret meeting in Moscow in November 2013, as European leaders were preparing to sign their agreement with Ukraine, he was promised a $15bn credit line with $3bn paid up front. He ditched the European deal. And at 4am on November 30th his goons bludgeoned a few dozen students protesting against his betrayal in Kyiv’s Independence Square, known as Maidan.
  • This was far worse, for Mr Putin, than the Orange revolution. Ukraine had made geopolitical reality, to coin a phrase, of the independence it had claimed two decades before. Its demands for dignity resonated with Russia’s middle class and some of its elite, making it a genuinely dangerous example. So Mr Putin annexed Crimea and started a war in Donbas.
  • According to Russian state media, Mr Putin was not undermining a revolution against a corrupt regime quite like his own; he was protecting the Russian people and language from extermination at the hands of western Ukrainian fascists. The relevance to Russia of the issues that had led to what was being called in Ukraine “the revolution of dignity” was thus obscured
  • the annexation was supported by nearly 90% of the Russian population.
  • tract published in both Russian, Ukrainian and English in July 2021, Mr Putin described how the inheritors of “Ancient Rus” had been torn apart by hostile powers and treacherous elites, and how Ukraine had been turned from being “not Russia” into an anti-Russia, an entity fundamentally incompatible with Russia’s goals.
  • All baloney. Mr Putin did not attack Ukraine in order to honour or recreate an empire, whether Russian or Soviet. He attacked it to protect his own rule; the history is window-dressing. At the same time, following Brzezinski, for Russia to be something other than a democracy it has to at least be able to think of itself as an empire. And in Russia, empire requires Ukraine—now more deeply opposed to union with Russia than ever before.
  • “The Russian state, with its severe and inflexible interior, survived exclusively because of its tireless expansion beyond its borders. It has long lost the knowledge [of]—how to survive otherwise.”
  • The only way Russia can escape chaos, he argued, is to export it to a neighbouring country.
  • What he did not say was that Mr Putin’s export of chaos, and violence, to that end has severed the ties between the Slavic nations and their peoples in a way which the collapse of the Soviet empire did not.
  • Ukraine is not a province, or a colony; it is a beleaguered nation in a messy, perilous process of self-realisation. Belarus, for its part, is a grim illustration of how “severe and inflexible” things have to get in order to stop such aspirations welling up. Mr Lukashenko has met a nationalist resurgence with ever more brutal and well-orchestrated repression—a bloody irony given that he helped start it.
  • Like Ukraine, Belarus had no real history of statehood; all that Mr Lukashenko had given it since 1994 was a rough approximation of its Soviet past, fascism with Stalinist trappings. But the idea of something better had taken hold.
  • But change is afoot; it can be seen in the way that demography increasingly trumps regional allegiance. Even in the east nearly 60% of those born since 1991 see their future as in the EU—countrywide, the figure is 75%. All told 90% want Ukraine to stay independent, and nearly 80% are optimistic about its future.
  • That is why Alexei Navalny was first poisoned and is now jailed. As the leader of the opposition to Mr Putin he has championed the idea of Russia not as an empire but as a civic nation: a state for the people. It is why Russia has recently become much more repressive. It is why Mr Putin cannot tolerate a true peace on his borders.
  • Unlike Ukrainians and Belarusians, Russians cannot separate themselves from Russia, so they have to change it from within. They cannot do that in a forest retreat, or with a few phone calls. But only through such change will they become truly independent of the Soviet Union.
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Taiwan reports new large-scale incursion by Chinese warplanes - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...on-chinese-warplanes-rcna13243 international politics government
shared by lucieperloff on 26 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for more than a year of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwestern part of its air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
  • Taiwan sent combat aircraft to warn away the Chinese aircraft, while missile systems were deployed to monitor them, the ministry said.
  • China has stepped up pressure on Taiwan to accept its sovereignty claims. Taiwan’s government says it wants peace but will defend itself if attacked.
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  • Taiwan has reported almost daily Chinese air force forays into the same airspace since then, but the number of planes on Sunday was the largest on a single day since the October incursions.
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Associated Press News - 0 views

apnews.com/...8421260675827b7e735729b90ff95f
shared by sidneybelleroche on 01 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.
  • Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 740,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.
  • The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Globally, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.
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  • the virus is pummeling Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, especially where rumors, misinformation and distrust in government have hobbled vaccination efforts. In Ukraine, only 17% of the adult population is fully vaccinated; in Armenia, only 7%.
  • Wealthier nations with longer life expectancies have larger proportions of older people, cancer survivors and nursing home residents, all of whom are especially vulnerable to COVID-19
  • Poorer countries tend to have larger shares of children, teens and young adults, who are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus.
  • India, despite its terrifying delta surge that peaked in early May, now has a much lower reported daily death rate than wealthier Russia, the U.S. or Britain, though there is uncertainty around its figures.
  • Wealth has also played a role in the global vaccination drive, with rich countries accused of locking up supplies.
  • 92% of Bergamo’s eligible population have had at least one shot, the highest vaccination rate in Italy.
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Learn Napoleon's Secret To Success: Stop Multitasking - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...t-to-success-stop-multitasking
shared by marvelgr on 13 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • What made Napoleon such an outstanding leader? His strong rapport with his troops, his organizational talents, and his creativity all played significant roles. However, the secret to Napoleon’s success was his ability to focus on a single objective.
  • t Austerlitz, he quickly recognized a critical high point needed to be taken. “One sharp blow and the war is over,” Napoleon remarked. He then unleashed a ferocious assault that seized the position and split the Russian and Austrian armies. With his enemies divided, he then turned his energy on their left wing, smashing it and sending them into headlong retreat. Within a few weeks, Austria sued for peace.
  • Modern science has validated Napoleon’s focused approach. At work, we face a variety of demands each day. We may believe we are expert multitaskers, but multitasking is a myth. A Stanford study showed that rather than multitasking, we merely switch back-and-forth between tasks, killing our performance and productivity. Focusing on one task seems daunting, but even five minutes of “monotasking” can significantly boost productivity.
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  • Highly effective people like Napoleon concentrate on one present task and one big goal. How often are we distracted at work? How often do we leave tasks incomplete? Successful people avoid these costly “switches.” You cannot be a world-class athlete in five sports. You cannot build five companies at once. You have limited resources, and they are most effective when concentrated.
  • A single-minded focus on your goal will make you more successful. Attempting to multitask only hurts your chances of success. As Napoleon said of war, “the art consists in concentrating very heavy fire on a particular point.” His words are as true in a boardroom as on a battlefield.
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Anwar Raslan Syria War Crimes Trial Verdict: Live Updates - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ria-war-crimes-germany-verdict
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  • The former officer, Anwar Raslan, was accused of overseeing a detention center where prosecutors said at least 4,000 people were tortured and nearly 60 were killed.
  • He fled Syria in 2012 after the government committed a massacre in his hometown, killing more than 100 people. He joined Syria’s exiled opposition and traveled with them to peace talks in Geneva in 2014.
  • Through nearly 11 years of civil war, the Syrian government bombed residential neighborhoods, used poison gas and tortured countless detainees in state lockups
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  • Mr. Raslan’s guilty verdict, they say, bolsters the ability of European courts to pursue similar cases while sending a message to war criminals around the world that they could one day face consequences.
  • This sends a clear message to the world that certain crimes will not go unpunished.
  • After more than a decade of war, Mr. al-Assad remains in power, and there appears little chance that he or his senior advisers or military commanders will stand trial soon.
  • Other potential avenues for justice have also been blocked. Syria is not party to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and Russia and China have used their vetoes on the United Nations Security Council to prevent Syria from being referred to the court.
  • Germany is among a few European countries that have sought to try former Syrian officials for war crimes based on universal jurisdiction,
  • German prosecutors argued that his position gave him oversight of torture that included beating, kicking, electric shocks and sexual assault. Witnesses in the trial said they were fed inedible food, denied medical care and kept in overcrowded cells.
  • He entered Germany on a visa in 2014 and lived there legally until the German authorities arrested him in 2019.
  • But his past caught up with him in Germany, where he was tried for crimes against humanity.
  • When the Syrian conflict broke out in 2011 with protests seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Raslan was the head of interrogation at a security office in the capital, Damascus.
  • Beatings were common, the food was inedible, the cells were so crowded that some prisoners had to stand so others could lie down. German prosecutors said at least 4,000 people were tortured and nearly 60 killed under his authority there.
  • The verdict marks a watershed moment for an international network of lawyers, human rights activists and Syrian war survivors who have struggled for years to bring officials who sanctioned or participated in the violence to justice.
  • He was arrested in 2019, and his trial began the next year. On Thursday, Mr. Raslan was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life in prison.
  • When Mahran Aoiun heard that a former Syrian intelligence officer had been sentenced on Thursday to life in prison for overseeing torture at a detention center, it brought back the joy he felt years ago when he was released from a brutal Syrian jail.
  • The verdict handed down by a court in Koblenz, Germany, against the former officer, Ansar Raslan, stirred complicated feelings among Syrians who were abused in Syrian prisons — some at the hands of Mr. Raslan himself.
  • Others hoped that Mr. Raslan’s conviction would draw attention to the many more crimes committed during the Syrian war that have not been prosecuted, and to the officials who committed them who are still free.
  • “Those who are torturing prisoners will think twice after the trial,” he said. “This is an achievement.”
  • New York Times photographers have covered Syria’s civil war and the humanitarian crisis it has unleashed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began nearly 11 years ago.
  • A Syrian doctor accused of torturing a detainee in a secret military prison will soon go on trial in Germany on charges of crimes against humanity and causing grievous bodily harm. The doctor, Alaa Mousa, was living in Germany as a refugee when he was arrested in 2020.
  • German prosecutors built their case with the help of hundreds of Syrian witnesses in Germany and beyond. They indicted Mr. Raslan using “universal jurisdiction,” a legal principle stipulating that in the case of crimes against humanity and genocide, normal territorial restraints on prosecutions do not apply.
  • The principle is not new. Israel used it during the 1960s trial of the former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, as did Spain in 1998 when demanding that Britain arrest Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. Previous universal jurisdiction cases in Germany have dealt with crimes committed in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, more recently, with the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq by former members of the Islamic State.
  • Germany has the legal basis to prosecute such crimes under the German Code of Crimes Against International Law, which came into effect in 2002, and it has been using it.
  • “For Germany, it’s also historically the continuation of what we learned from the Nazi period and what we learned about the importance of the Nuremberg trials and the Auschwitz trials for the way we dealt with our past and ultimately for who we are today,”
  • The Nuremberg trials went after the leading members of the Nazi regime, but also a range of individuals who played a role in Nazi repression, including doctors, business leaders, bureaucrats and propagandists, said Wolfgang Kaleck, a founder of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, which is representing victims in Mr. Raslan’s trial.
  • Raslan is the first ranking Syrian official to be convicted of war crimes, but he may not be the last.
  • But several other cases have already been tried or are pending.
  • Owing partly to its own history in World War II, Germany has become something of a go-to venue for prosecuting crimes against humanity, even if committed outside its own borders. It is also home to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, putting it at the center of efforts to hold the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria accountable for war crimes.
  • Human rights lawyers concede that so far, the trials have targeted low- and middle-ranking Syrian officials or soldiers.
  • “If you don’t start now, then in 10 years, you cannot get Assad or his chief of intelligence because you have no evidence,” Mr. Kaleck said. “These cases are a way of building a stock of documents, witness statements, of understanding interconnections and gathering knowledge on which you can build future cases.”
  • Since the Syrian uprising in 2011, Syrian victims, human rights activists and others have filed more than 20 legal complaints against Syrian regime officials for war crimes and other violations of international law, according to Mr. Kaleck’s center.
  • This body of evidence, which has been growing for over a decade, could be used in different cases.“More has to come, that is clear,” Mr. Kaleck said. “But this is an important step.”
  • But the decade-long conflict has left the country shattered, killing hundreds of thousands of people, forcing half of the population from their homes and reducing major cities to rubble. Most of those who remain have been left to live in poverty.
  • The rebellion that began in 2011 as an uprising against Syria’s autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad, escalated into a civil war, but the splinted rebel movement failed to topple the government.
  • But the war was gruesome. The government employed poison gas, barrel bombs and suffocating sieges on rebellious communities, and waged a ruthless assault on civilian opponents, throwing hundreds of thousands into filthy prisons where many were tortured and killed.
  • Some Arab countries have begun restoring ties with the government in an effort to move past the war, although strict sanctions by the United States and other Western countries have blocked most investment.
  • The United States initially provided covert military support to the rebels, but as the war splintered into multiple overlapping conflicts, America shifted its focus to fight the jihadists of the Islamic State, who at their peak controlled nearly a third of eastern Syria.
  • For Syrian civilians, there is less daily violence now than during the war’s earlier years, but the economy has been destroyed.
  • More than half of Syria’s prewar population fled their homes during the fighting, and most have not returned, including the 5.6 million refugees who largely live in destitution in neighboring Arab countries.
  • “Justice has not been fully accomplished,” he said. “This is a small slice of what we are talking about.”
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Blinken and Russia's Lavrov meet amid tensions over Ukraine - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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shared by sidneybelleroche on 02 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden, amid growing concern among Western powers that Russia is seeking to destabilize Ukraine.
  • Speaking during the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Stockholm, Lavrov warned that NATO's expansion into the East would affect "fundamental interests" of Russian security.
  • He stressed that although Russia does "not want any conflicts" with NATO over Ukraine, it maintains the "right to choose ways to ensure its legitimate security interests."
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  • The United States, meanwhile, warned again that there would be "serious consequences" if Russia engages to "pursue confrontation" with Ukraine.
  • Despite the accusations the two officials recognized the importance of dialogue
  • calling on Russia to abide by the Minsk peace agreements hammered out in 2015 between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany.
  • Blinken criticized Russia's adherence to the Helsinki Final Act, a multilateral agreement dating back to 1975, saying that the country "continues to violate the Helsinki principles and repeatedly obstructs the work of this organization."
  • Blinken told summit attendees that the US holds "deep concerns about Russia's plans for renewed aggression against Ukraine."
  • Blinken also held a bilateral meeting Thursday with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba, at which the top US diplomat reiterated Washington's "unwavering commitment to Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and its independence."
  • The OSCE summit comes on the heels of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Latvia that was dominated by concerns over recent events in Belarus and Russia's intentions in Ukraine.
  • The US and NATO say Russia is increasing the number of combat troops near its border with Ukraine.
  • The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russia plans to invade Ukraine
  • sees NATO support for the country as a threat on Russia's western border.
  • Putin said NATO military expansion close to Russian borders and deploying missile systems in Ukraine would be crossing a "red line" for Russia.
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32 Years After Civil War, Mundane Moments Trigger Awful Memories - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ebanon-civil-war-memories.html
shared by criscimagnael on 15 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • When you’re a child, how do you get through a war?A lot of Monopoly, Scrabble, card games, candles and windowless bathrooms turned into family bomb shelters, almost like a big sleepover — if you can ignore the hard tiles and loud shelling of some group trying to kill you for reasons you don’t quite understand.
  • We grew up during Lebanon’s civil war and are now adults trying to live normal lives, raising our own families as the country crashes and burns yet again.
  • For my generation, emotional minefields can surround the most mundane activities even 32 years since the war ended.
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  • “Candles give me anxiety. We spent so much time studying by candlelight after school.”
  • “It’s a collective trauma in Lebanon, and a complex trauma, because we aren’t talking about one thing, but many events that people have lived through,” said Ghida Husseini, my former therapist in Lebanon who specializes in trauma. “It’s the war, it’s the stress of losing your livelihood and not feeling secure.”
  • The war lasted for 15 years, until 1990. Tired of waiting, the nation accepted a blanket amnesty for a shaky peace. We watched as militia leaders traded in their blood-soaked fatigues for designer suits and started running the country.
  • Now we find ourselves waiting, again, as those war criminals-turned-politicians have mismanaged the country — an ongoing banking crisis has seen the currency shed over 90 percent of its value — and skirted responsibility for an explosion at Beirut’s seaport in the summer of 2020.
  • Reminders of a past war are now staples of the present decay.
  • “I remember sitting on a mattress as a kid, surrounded by candles. There’s a feeling of being trapped. There is no TV. No music. No electricity. You can’t go outside, it’s too dangerous. All there is — is cards.”
  • One night, as Raoul slept — his bedroom window had the dining table nailed to it, to protect against snipers — bombing started. His mother cried out for him, looking frantically until they found Raoul, then 5, crying while hugging a framed photo of the Virgin Mary that had fallen from the wall, praying for his life. He developed a stutter after that.
  • Yet every summer, no matter what happened — an Israeli invasion, the suicide bombing that killed hundred of U.S. Marines — we went back, to be with our family, to hold their hands and say: We have not abandoned you. It was the most twisted of survivor’s guilt
  • Many are left wondering how their adult lives would be better if their childhoods had been different.
  • Decades later, sunsets are one of the sources of trauma for him, still.
  • Because it meant night was coming. And nighttime meant shelling.
  • “I could have been a better person, a stronger person, maybe wiser, with less fear,” he said. “Especially the fear. Because fear is trauma. I’m a grown man and I'm afraid to walk in the dark. Because to me, the dark is war.”
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The U.S. and Iran Move Closer to a Nuclear Deal - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-iran-nuclear-deal.html
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  • 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.
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How the Kremlin Is Militarizing Russian Society - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ia-military-putin-kremlin.html
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  • Over the past eight years, the Russian government has promoted the idea that the motherland is surrounded by enemies, filtering the concept through national institutions like schools, the military, the news media and the Orthodox Church. It has even raised the possibility that the country might again have to defend itself as it did against the Nazis in World War II.
    • criscimagnael
      criscimagnael on 21 Dec 21
       
      Sounds like WWIII
  • And all are united by the near-sacred memory of Soviet victory in World War II — one that the state has seized upon to shape an identity of a triumphal Russia that must be ready to take up arms once more.
  • This year, the share of Russians saying they feared a world war hit the highest level recorded in surveys dating to 1994 — 62 percent.
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  • Celebration of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II — referred to as the Great Patriotic War in Russia — has played the most important role in that conditioning. Rather than promoting only a culture of remembrance of Soviet heroism and 27 million lives lost, the Kremlin applies the World War II narrative to the present day, positioning Russia as once again threatened by enemies bent on its destruction.
  • A popular World War II bumper sticker reads, “We can do it again.
  • “We’re doing a bit of propaganda, too,” the section leader quipped, declining to give his name.
  • no more than 4 percent — across all age groups — said Russia was at fault.
  • “Right now, the idea is being pushed that Russia is a peace-loving country permanently surrounded by enemies,” said Anton Dolin, a Russian film critic. “This is contradicted by some facts, but if you show it at the movies and translate that idea into the time of the Great Patriotic War, we all instantly get a scheme familiar to everyone from childhood.”
  • Polls show that young people have a more positive view of the West than older Russians, and the pro-Kremlin sentiment prompted by the Crimea annexation appears to have dissipated amid economic stagnation.
  • Veronika Osipova, 17, from the city of Rostov-on-Don near Ukraine’s border, won the award for best female student. For years, she played the harp, graduating with honors from an elite music school. But in 2015, she started learning how to shoot a machine gun and throw grenades. She resolved to join the Russian military to protect the country against its enemies.
  • “I follow the example of girls who, under bullets and grenades, went to fight during the Great Patriotic War,” Ms. Osipova said. “They had no choice, but we do have it, and I choose the army.”
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6 Scandals That Rocked the Winter Olympics - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...s-controversy-harding-kerrigan winter olympics history
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  • The Winter Olympics have been marked by controversy and scandal since the first Games in 1924. From cheating by East German lugers to the sordid Tonya Harding figure skating fiasco, here are six events that made headlines:
  • At the Games in Chamonix, France, Norwegians contended the 500-meter speedskating final had been mistimed in favor of American Charles Jewtraw, a heavy underdog who won the gold.
  • “A jury member acted immediately,” International Luge Federation president Bert Isatitsch said, according to UPI. "He went to the starting line and put his hands on the runners. They were warm."Isatitsch said East German officials used "foul language" when notified of the disqualification. “One waved his arms around, shouting and screaming," he told UPI. 
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  • Schranz’s supporters contended the mystery man had been a French policeman or soldier who had purposely interfered with the run to ensure Killy’s victory. The French hinted Schranz had made up the story."I was descending and I saw a dark shadow ahead of me," Schranz said at a news conference. "I wanted to avoid it, and I stopped. It was apparently a ski policeman."
  • The women's luge competition at the Grenoble Games was all but a lock for East Germany. Defending champ and gold-medal favorite Ortrun Enderlein stood in first; teammates Anna-Maria Müller and Angela Knösel were second and fourth. 
  • Jewtraw's win, by 1/5 of a second, stunned him. too. In a 1983 interview with Sports Illustrated, Jewtraw said he had never competed in the 500 prior to the gold-medal race and hadn't even trained for the Games.
  • A month before the 1994 Winter Games, a man wielding a metal baton attacked gold- medal favorite Kerrigan during a practice at the U.S. Nationals, paving the way for Harding to win the event and to qualify for the Olympics. Soon afterward, however, it was discovered that Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had planned the attack. With Kerrigan recovered—and Harding allowed to compete despite her not-yet-confirmed connection to the crime—the women’s figure skating competition became the hottest event at the Olympics. TV ratings soared.
  • Ice dancing got a dose of spy games in Nagano, Japan, when a Canadian judge secretly taped a conversation with another judge about picking winners before the competition.After her complaints to officials had been brushed aside, Jean Senft recorded Ukrainian judge Yuri Balkov discussing skater placements as proof of her accusations. During the call, Balkov said he would vote for Canadians if Senft voted for a Ukrainian pair."The athletes are not competing on a fair playing field," Senft later told CBC News. "This isn't sport. Somebody had to get proof."
  • were made. (Ice dancing was not removed from Olympic competition.) "If [cheating] happens at the world championships in some small town, nobody notices," Pound said, according to The New York Times. "But in the Olympics, hundreds of millions of people are watching."
  • The Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze edged Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier for the gold medal. But Marie-Reine Le Gougne, a French judge, came forward, saying she was pressured by the French ice sports federation to put the Russians first. “I knew very well who would vote in favor of the Russians and who would vote in favor of the Canadians," she told Reuters. "I was almost certain that I was the one who would award the Olympic title. What I feared would happen really did.”
  • Le Gougne was suspended from judging for three years and banned from the 2006 Winter Games. The scandal led to sweeping judging reforms in the sport. 
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King Philip's War - Definition, Cause & Significance - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...king-philips-war war history
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  • King Philip’s War—also known as the First Indian War, the Great Narragansett War or Metacom’s Rebellion—took place in southern New England from 1675 to 1676. It was the Native Americans' last-ditch effort to avoid recognizing English authority and stop English settlement on their native lands. The war is named after the Wampanoag chief Metacom, later known as Philip or King Philip, who led the fourteen-month bloody rebellion.
  • New England Confederation on May 19, 1643.
  • Metacom was the second son of Wampanoag chief Massasoit, who had negotiated a peace treaty with the colonists at Plymouth Plantation. But the agreement wasn’t enough to stop the colonist’s encroachment on Indian lands.
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  • After Massasoit's death in 1661, his eldest son Wamsutta, later named Alexander, succeeded him. In 1662, the English arrested Alexander on suspicion of plotting war. During questioning, he died, and Metacom—now known as Philip, as many Wampanoags took English names—came to power.
  • A jury made up of colonists and Indians found three Wampanoag men guilty for Sassamon’s murder and hanged them on June 8, 1675. Their execution incensed Philip, whom the English had accused of plotting Sassamon’s murder, and ignited tensions between the Wampanoag and the colonists, setting the stage for war.
  • Between June 20 and June 23, 1675, the Wampanoag carried out a series of raids against the Swansea colony of Massachusetts, killing many colonists and pillaging and destroying property. English officials responded by sending their military to destroy Philip’s home village of Mount Hope, Rhode Island.
  • A week later, around 700 Nipmuc Indians ambushed a militia group escorting a wagon train of colonists. Almost all colonists and militia were killed in the fighting, known as the Battle of Bloody Brook.
  • Hoping to prevent a spring Indian onslaught, Plymouth Colony’s Governor Josiah Winslow gathered the colonial militia and attacked a massive Narragansett and Wampanoag fortification near the Great Swamp in West Kingston, Rhode Island, on December 19, 1675.
  • under the leadership of Chief Canonchet. After the Great Swamp Fight, King Philip set up camp in New York, possibly to enlist the Mohawk’s assistance. But the Mohawk attacked the Wampanoag and forced them to retreat to New England, with the Mohawk in hot pursuit.
  • In an attack known as the “Nine Men's Misery" incident, Narragansett Indians ambushed around 60 colonists and 20 Christian Wampanoag Indians. The Indians killed almost all the colonists; however, nine men were captured and gruesomely tortured to death.
  • Throughout the spring of 1676, the tide began to turn for the English. In April, Chief Canonchet was captured, handed over to the Mohegans and shot, beheaded and quartered, leaving the Narragansett without a leader. In May, the militia attacked and killed up to 200 Narragansett at the Battle of Turner Falls at Peskeompscut near the Connecticut River.
  • The English-Indian soldier John Alderman shot and killed King Philip on August 20, 1676, at Mount Hope. King Philip was hung, beheaded, drawn and quartered. His head was placed on a spike and displayed at Plymouth colony for two decades.
  • Thousands of Indians were killed, wounded or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude. The war decimated the Narragansett, Wampanoag and many smaller tribes and mostly ended Indian resistance in southern New England, paving the way for additional English settlements.
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French and Indian War - Seven Years War - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...french-and-indian-war french indian war history
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  • Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France.
  • William Pitt, the British turned the tide with victories at Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac and the French-Canadian stronghold of Quebec. At the 1763 peace conference, the British received the territories of Canada from France and Florida from Spain, opening the Mississippi Valley to westward expansion.
  • In the early 1750s, France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought it into conflict with the claims of the British colonies, especially Virginia. In 1754, the French built Fort Duquesne where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers joined to form the Ohio River (in today’s Pittsburgh), making it a strategically important stronghold that the British repeatedly attacked. 
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  • During 1754 and 1755, the French won a string of victories, defeating in quick succession the young George Washington, Gen. Edward Braddock and Braddock’s successor, Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts. In 1755, Governor Shirley, fearing that the French settlers in Nova Scotia (Acadia) would side with France in any military confrontation, expelled hundreds of them to other British colonies; many of the exiles suffered cruelly. Throughout this period, the British military effort was hampered by lack of interest at home, rivalries among the American colonies and France’s greater success in winning the support of the Indians. 
  • The tide turned in 1757 because William Pitt, the new British leader, saw the colonial conflicts as the key to building a vast British empire. Borrowing heavily to finance the war, he paid Prussia to fight in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for raising troops in North America. 
  • In July 1758, the British won their first great victory at Louisbourg, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. A month later, they took Fort Frontenac at the western end of the river. 
  • The British then closed in on Quebec, where Gen. James Wolfe won a spectacular victory in the Battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham in September of 1759 (though both he and the French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, were fatally wounded). 
  • The arrangement strengthened the American colonies significantly by removing their European rivals to the
  • north and south and opening the Mississippi Valley to westward expansion.
  • The British crown borrowed heavily from British and Dutch bankers to bankroll the war, doubling British national debt. King George II argued that since the French and Indian War benefited the colonists by securing their borders, they should contribute to paying down the war debt.To defend his newly won territory from future attacks, King George II also decided to install permanent British army units in the Americas, which required additional sources of revenue.
  • Fifteen years after the Treaty of Paris, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention on the side of the colonists in the Revolutionary War.
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6 Times the Olympics Were Boycotted - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...olympic-boycotts olympics history
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  • Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)
  • The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.
  • ‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.
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  • The Details: China, North Korea and Indonesia chose to boycott the first Games held in an Asian country after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared it would disqualify athletes who competed in the 1963 Jakarta-held Games of the New Emerging Forces, created as an alternative multinational amateur competition. The boycotting countries sent many of their top athletes to the Jakarta games.
  • The Details: When New Zealand’s national rugby team defied an international sports embargo against South Africa and toured the apartheid nation earlier in the year, 28 African nations—comprising most of the continent—declared a boycott of the Olympics, which was allowing New Zealand to participate. Led by Tanzania, the boycott involved more than 400 athletes. In a separate action, Taiwan withdrew from the Games when Canada refused to let its team compete as the Republic of China. Of Note: The boycott led to hotel and ticket refunds totaling $1 million Canadian dollars. It especially affected several track and field events, where nations such as Kenya and Tanzania were frequent medal winners.
  • Afghani athletes, notably, competed in the Games. Some countries did not forbid athletes from competing as individuals under the Olympic flag, but American athletes attempting to compete faced losing their passports. A group of American athletes sued the U.S. Olympic Committee to participate but lost the case. The boycott resulted in just 80 countries competing in the Olympics, the fewest since 1956.
  • In retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years earlier, 14 nations, led by the Soviet Union and including East Germany, boycotted the Los Angeles-held Olympics. Joined by most of the Eastern Bloc nations, the Soviets said they feared physical attacks and protests on American soil. "Chauvinistic sentiments and anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in this country,” a government statement read.
  • and Joan Benoit, along with Mary Lou Retton, the first American gymnast to win the gold for all-around, became instant stars. And the Games were considered a huge financial success, with almost double the ticket sales of Montreal and earning the title as the most-seen event in TV history.
  • Angered over not being allowed to co-host the Games with South Korea, North Korea refused to attend the 1988 event in neighboring Seoul. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, accepted the IOC's invitation to compete, along with China and Eastern Bloc nations, leaving just Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua joining North Korea in the boycott. “To have the Olympics in Seoul would be like having them at the Guantanamo naval base occupied by the United States," Cuba President Fidel Castro told NBC News at the time. "I wonder that, if Socialist countries refused to go to (the 1984 Olympics in) Los Angeles for security reasons, if really there is more security in Seoul than in Los Angeles.”
  • candals tarnished the Seoul Games, including reports of residents being forced from their homes and homeless people being detained at facilities in preparation for the Games. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson made global headlines when he was stripped of his world-record-setting 100-meter victory after testing positive for steroids, and controversial boxing calls that went against South Korean athletes caused outrage.
  • North and South Korean leaders met following the events, and agreed to send a combined team to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games. However, North Korea announced in April 2021 that it would not participate because of the coronavirus pandemic. 
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The Stalinisation of Russia | The Economist - 1 views

www.economist.com/...the-stalinisation-of-russia politics crisis history
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  • He has ended up restoring the terror of Josef Stalin. That is not only because he has unleashed the most violent act of unprovoked aggression in Europe since 1939, but also because, as a result, he is turning himself into a dictator at home—a 21st-century Stalin, resorting as never before to lies, violence and paranoia.
  • Russia’s president thought Ukraine would rapidly collapse, so he did not prepare his people for the invasion or his soldiers for their mission—indeed, he assured the elites that it would not happen
  • he is still denying that he is waging what may become Europe’s biggest war since 1945.
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  • he has shut down almost the entire independent media, threatened journalists with up to 15 years in jail if they do not parrot official falsehoods, and had anti-war protesters arrested in their thousands.
  • Having failed to win a quick victory, Russia is trying to sow panic by starving Ukrainian cities and pounding them blindly.
  • If Mr Putin is committing war crimes against the fellow Slavs he eulogised in his writings, he is ready to inflict slaughter at home.
  • even if the war drags on for months, it is hard to see Mr Putin as the victor.
  • Mr Putin’s puppet could not rule without an occupation, but Russia does not have the money or the troops to garrison even half of Ukraine.
  • American army doctrine says that to face down an insurgency—in this case, one backed by NATO—occupiers need 20 to 25 soldiers per 1,000 people; Russia has a little over four.
  • Russia has lost mountains of equipment and endured thousands of casualties, almost as many in two weeks as America has suffered in Iraq since it invaded in 2003.
  • by attacking Ukraine, Mr Putin has committed a catastrophic error. He has wrecked the reputation of Russia’s supposedly formidable armed forces, which have proved tactically inept against a smaller, worse-armed but motivated opponent.
  • Western tech firms are wrong to shut their operations in Russia, because they are handing the regime total control over the flow of information.
  • Mr Putin will not impose a puppet government—because he cannot—then he will have to compromise with Ukraine in peace talks.
  • Western exporters are withholding vital components, leading to factory stoppages. Sanctions on energy—for now, limited—threaten to crimp the foreign exchange Russia needs to pay for its imports.
  • Mr Putin is destroying the bourgeoisie, the great motor of Russia’s modernisation. Instead of being sent to the gulag, they are fleeing to cities like Istanbul, in Turkey, and Yerevan, in Armenia.
  • Those who choose to stay are being muzzled by restrictions on free speech and free association.
  • In just two weeks, they have lost their country.
  • Stalin presided over a growing economy. However murderously, he drew on a real ideology.
  • Even as he committed outrages, he consolidated the Soviet empire. After being attacked by Nazi Germany, he was saved by the unbelievable sacrifice of his country, which did more than any other to win the war.
  • Not only is he failing to win a war of choice while impoverishing his people: his regime lacks an ideological core. “Putinism”, such as it is, blends nationalism and orthodox religion for a television audience.
  • Factions in the regime will turn on each other in a spiral of blame. Mr Putin, fearful of a coup, will trust nobody and may have to fight for power. He may also try to change the course of the war by terrifying his Ukrainian foes and driving off their Western backers with chemical weapons, or even a nuclear strike.
  • The central bank does not have access to the hard currency it needs to support the banking system and stabilise the rouble.
  • NATO should state that it will not shoot at Russian forces, so long as they do not attack first. It must not give Mr Putin a reason to draw Russia into a wider war by a declaring no-fly zone that would need enforcing militarily.
  • However much the West would like a new regime in Moscow, it must state that it will not directly engineer one. Liberation is a task for the Russian people.
  • Mr Putin is isolated and morally dead; Mr Zelensky is a brave Everyman who has rallied his people and the world. He is Mr Putin’s antithesis—and perhaps his nemesis.
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Niall Ferguson: Ukraine Invasion Struggles Could Be the End for Putin - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...les-could-be-the-end-for-putin ukraine situation crisis analysis consequences strategy russia
shared by Javier E on 10 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • What makes history so hard to predict — the reason there is no neat “cycle” of history enabling us to prophesy the future — is that most disasters come out of left field.
  • Unlike hurricanes and auto accidents, to which we can at least attach probabilities, the biggest disasters (pandemics and wars) follow power-law or random distributions. They belong in the realm of uncertainty, or what Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book “The Black Swan,” calls  “Extremistan.”
  • What’s more, as I argued in my book “Doom,” disasters don’t come in any predictable sequence.
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  • Ukraine is also receiving vital private-sector assistance, notably the delivery of Starlink internet terminals, which are helping maintain communications
  • All I can do is to apply history, as there is no model from political science or economics that can really help us here.
  • 1. Do the Russians manage to take Kyiv in a matter of two, three, four weeks or never?
  • At least one military analyst I respect said late last week that the Russian invasion force has around two weeks left before serious logistical and supply problems force Putin seriously to the negotiating table.
  • On the other hand, Western media seem over-eager to cover news of Russian reverses, and insufficiently attentive to the harsh fact that the invaders continue to advance on more than one front.
  • A better analogy than the Winter War with Finland may be the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began in December 1979.
  • Economic warfare between 1914 and 1918 was not a substitute for sending British armies to fight on the European continent, just as it had not been in the Napoleonic Wars against France.
  • What I cannot tell is whether or not these weapons and other equipment will suffice to sustain Ukrainian resistance over the coming weeks.
  • But the Ukrainians have no real answers to higher-altitude bombardment and missile attacks.
  • 2. Do the sanctions precipitate such a severe economic contraction in Russia that Putin cannot achieve victory?
  • I have heard it said that the breadth and depth of the sanctions imposed on Russia make them unprecedented. I disagree
  • recalls but does not quite match the sanctions that Britain and its allies imposed on Germany at the outbreak of World War
  • It seems there are seven distinct historical processes at work and it’s not clear which is going fastest.
  • Then, as now, it was possible for an increasingly authoritarian government to impose economic controls and divert resources away from civilian consumption to the war effort, while blaming the resulting deprivation on the enemy
  • We should remember that those measures did not defeat Germany, however, because — like Russia today — it had the resources to be self-sufficient
  • no one should forget that self-sufficiency is possible for Russia, albeit at the price of severe austerity, whether it is a choice or a consequence of war.
  • China is able to help Russia in ways that could mitigate the economic shock, just as for years it has helped Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by buying its oil.
  • Unlike Soviet citizens, who were accustomed to a state monopoly on communications, today’s Russians have come to rely as much as we do on Big Tech. Being cut off from the metaverse may prove a more psychologically painful deprivation than shortages of imported foods.
  • even a 35% quarterly decline in gross domestic product does not condemn a country to military defeat if its planes can still fly and its tanks still fire rounds.
  • 3. Does the combination of military and economic crisis precipitate a palace coup against Putin?
  • 4. Does the risk of downfall lead Putin to desperate measures (carrying out his nuclear threat)? 
  • The people with the power to arrest Putin are the people he counts on to execute his arrest orders: Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council and, like Putin, a long-serving KGB officer; Sergei Naryshkin, the head of foreign intelligence; and Alexander Bortnikov, who heads the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.
  • 6. Does the West’s attention deficit disorder kick in before any of this?
  • If Putin’s goal was to deter members of NATO from offering direct military assistance to Ukraine, it seemed to have some effect.
  • Russian casualties are being caused by Ukrainians using arms supplied by multiple NATO countries, including the U.S. and Turkey, but they are mostly crossing into Ukraine from Poland. Might Putin therefore strike a target in eastern Poland — Lublin, say, or Przemysl?
  • he is surely more likely to do so if believes the U.S. would not immediately retaliate in kind against a Russian target. A key lesson of this entire crisis has been that indications of weakness on the U.S. side, which I discussed here last week, have emboldened Putin.
  • 5. Do the Chinese keep Putin afloat but on the condition that he agrees to a compromise peace that they offer to broker?
  • My guess is that the Chinese make no serious diplomatic move until they are convinced Putin’s invasion is thoroughly bogged down in Ukraine’s spring mud.
  • I would not bet the fate of Ukraine on Russian internal politics.
  • Remarkably, one U.S. legislator told me last week that he “couldn’t recall an issue more obsessively followed and more unifying among” his constituents.
  • The only real significance of Western public outrage at Putin’s actions is the political pressure it exerts on Biden and other leaders to take a tougher line with Russia.
  • 7. What is the collateral damage?
  • History shows that wars (much more than pandemics) are the most common cause of jumps in inflation.
  • The best-known recent illustration is the way wars in 1973 (Yom Kippur) and 1979 (Iran-Iraq) contributed to the great inflation of the Seventies
  • these price spikes are not confined to oil and gas but involve a host of other commodities. The prospect of this year’s Ukrainian grain harvest being disrupted means a significant surge in food prices, with all kinds of consequences, especially in developing countries.
  • A tsunami of war has struck Ukraine. Whether the Russian tide flows or ebbs in the coming weeks will do much to determine the course of world history for the rest of our lives.
  • Nor can we ignore the risks that may be lurking within the international financial system.
  • This is the first big crisis of Cold War II, which is in many ways like a mirror image of Cold War I, with China the senior partner, Russia the junior, and a hot war in Eastern Europe rather than East Asia (it was Korea’s turn in 1950).
  • I do not know how the crisis will turn out, but I do know it will have profound consequences for the course of the superpower contest.
  • If the invasion of Ukraine ends in disaster for the heroic defenders of Kyiv and their comrades, another disaster may well follow — and it could occur as far away as Taiwan. Conversely, if there is justice in the world and the disaster befalls the architect of this war, that too will give birth to some fresh and unforeseeable event.
  • Add these seven imponderables together and you see how profoundly important the next few weeks will be.
  • The failure of the administration to signal that it would retaliate is of a piece with last year’s reports that Biden’s national security team was considering ruling out first use of nuclear weapons in its new national military strategy. Nuclear missiles cease to be a deterrent if one side is unwilling to use them.
  • Today, however, the boot is on the other foot. Not only is Putin intimidating NATO; he may have achieved something more, namely a tacit admission by the Biden administration that it would not necessarily retaliate with nuclear weapons if Russia used them.
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Former MI6 spy says Vladimir Putin has 'overreached' and made 'gross miscalculations' |... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ukraine-invasion-b2033568.html russia criticism war putin
shared by Javier E on 11 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Christopher Steele, who worked for MI6 for more than two decades and ran the Russia desk for the intelligence service between 2006 and 2009, said Mr Putin “can’t be resurrected in the international community” after declaring war more than two weeks ago.He told Sky News: “I don’t see him surviving this in the long term. I think we’ve gone over a watershed here. An operation on this scale is really beyond Russia... I think there are several gross miscalculations here by Putin.”Mr Steele added that we have “seen the high water-mark of Putinism” and that his “overreached adventure” into Ukraine will lead to the downfall of his regime.
  • The 57-year-old said: “As the Russian army becomes bogged down, more desperate, and clearly not realising its objectives militarily, you’re likely to see more indiscriminate killing and bombardment and possibly the use of a [chemical] weapon.”
  • He said that the impact of sanctions on Russia combined with Mr Putin’s method of governance could also accelerate his decline.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “As people’s living standards start to fall, they will be increased protests on the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. And I think that will play in to probably an elite attempt to remove Putin in due course.”
  • Chinese premier Li Keqiang said the Ukraine situation was “disconcerting”, adding that the country would support “all efforts that are conducive to a peaceful settlement of the crisis”.
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China cools links with Russia as it recognises war | The Times - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...as-it-recognises-war-6lmvpfh3d china russia war crisis policy
shared by Javier E on 11 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • China has acknowledged for the first time that a “war” is taking place in Ukraine and appears to be holding back aviation supplies from Russia in signs that Beijing may be seeking to put a little distance between itself and Moscow.
  • In another indication of a shift in attitude, China has been easing government exchange rate controls to allow the Russian rouble to fall faster in value against the yuan to help protect Beijing from economic sanctions on Moscow.
  • “We hope to see fighting and the war stop as soon as possible,” Wang Yi, the foreign minister, said in a call with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian. The remark, reported by state media, represents a shift in the party line, which had avoided the words “war” and “invasion”.
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  • According to the Interfax news agency Russia said that China had refused to supply its airlines with parts. Russian officials said that they would seek to source components from other countries, including Turkey and India. Russia’s aviation sector is being hit by sanctions and Boeing and Airbus have halted their supply of parts.
  • At the conclusion of peace talks in the Turkish resort of Antalya, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that Russia did not plan to attack other countries and claimed “we did not attack Ukraine”. Asked if the conflict could lead to nuclear war, he said: “I don’t want to believe, and I do not believe, that a nuclear war could start.”
  • Lavrov added: “We see how dangerously our Western colleagues, including in the European Union, are acting now, which, in violation of all their so-called principles and values, encourage the supply of deadly weapons to Ukraine. We believe these countries are creating a colossal danger for themselves.” Portable air defence systems could be used to create “risks for civil aviation”,
  • She said that she wanted China to follow through on its claims to respect sovereignty, adding: “China looms large over this debate. Beijing is increasing its assertiveness and expanding its armed forces at breakneck speed.”
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Putin's Challenge To The American Right - 0 views

andrewsullivan.substack.com/...tins-challenge-to-the-american putin right-wing authoritarian invasion nostalgia sullivan
shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • It’s not so much Putin’s trashing of international law, his unhinged rehashing of post-Soviet grievances, his next-level Covid paranoia, the foul murders of his opponents, or his brazen embrace of shelling hospitals that has so deepened the damage to the Putin brand among the West’s new Russophiles. These atrocities and madnesses they have long found ways to live with
  • No, it’s Putin’s failure — thus far — to actually win the war he started that’s so damning. It’s one thing for a dictator to be deemed cruel; and quite another — and far more dangerous — thing for him to be seen as incompetent.
  • “They’re gonna keep peace all right.” Think of the depth of the cynical callousness that has to lie behind such a smirk. Notice that for Trump, Putin is not just a thug but a smart one, and the possibility of his brutal incursion into a sovereign neighbor state was, in Trump’s mind, “wonderful.” And cheap: “He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.”
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  • With Trump, evil is always better when it’s also a bargain.
  • Until as recently as January this year, “62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents considered Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.” That’s the primrose path down which the GOP led its supporters — seeing Putin as a more legitimate president than Biden.
  • Steve Bannon summed it up: “Putin ain’t woke. He’s anti-woke.”
  • over the years, this drumbeat of love for the Russian dictator shifted the views of many grassroots Republicans. In the wake of Trump’s personal infatuation with Putin, the murderer’s favorability among Republicans jumped from 10 percent in 2014 to 37 percent by December 2016.
  • For besieged social conservatives and Christianists in America, Putin loomed like some phantasm of strange hope.
  • The last two weeks, to put it mildly, have pummeled this narrative. It’s happened in a couple of ways. The first is that there really is no legitimate defense — even at CPAC, the fetid armpit of the Trump right — of sending troops and tanks into a neighboring country to teach it a lesson in submission to Mother Russia
  • If you’re Bannon, you can still try and wing it, but the sheer sight of bombed hospitals, murdered children, homeless seniors, and mortar explosions in residential neighborhoods tends to shape public opinion overnight.
  • Secondly, and perhaps most important, Putin is failing. He looks weak. The visual of a vast, stalled, vulnerable convoy of trucks on its way — or not — to Kyiv is now a metaphor for Putin’s presidency.
  • Putin has also done something no US president has been able to do in decades: rally Europe around NATO, get NATO countries to re-arm (finally), and give them a new and pointed mission: the deterrence of Russia
  • Putin’s blunder has revealed, in fact, that the West has a unique new weapon in the history of global warfare that can end wars almost before they begin: an economic kill-switch. The vast and complex set of financial, economic, and travel sanctions that the West unveiled this past fortnight and is imposing on Russia — effectively removing it from international banking and most international trade — is something no country can survive for very long.
  • if the EU is able to ramp up nuclear power (as France and Britain are), allow more fracking, and keep its investment in renewables surging, Russia’s entire carbon-based economy will have an expiration date attached to it.
  • None of this was supposed to happen. The West wasn’t supposed to unite this expeditiously; the EU wasn’t expected to find a new and confident voice; Russia’s access to global finance wasn’t supposed to be severed overnight; and a senile American president wasn’t supposed to corral a massive coalition to marginalize and isolate Russia on the global stage.
  • “Everything the [far right] wanted to perceive as decadent and weak has proven strong and brave; everything they wanted to represent as fearsome and powerful has revealed itself as brutal and stupid
  • so a president recently celebrated as a mastermind on the world stage has allowed his ancient fantasies of imperial glory to kick-start his own country’s economic and social collapse. Putin emerges from this as neither smart nor strong; he is, in fact, dumb and increasingly weak.
  • That’s why he’s a useful insight into what reactionism actually is. It’s not really a politics; it’s a mood. It’s not really about the problems of the present; it’s about living in an imagined past, and believing that you alone can restore it by some mystical rhetorical magic.
  • It’s about “subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism.
  • Trump longs for the 1950s in America — just as Putin longs for the USSR of the same period
  • Wrapped up in nationalism, provoked by left-extremism, corralled by skillful demagogues, this longing can be a path to power. It can bring tyrants into office. But it cannot work in practice — because the world is different now. We live in 2022. America will never have the cultural and relative demographic homogeneity of the 1950s again. Never.
  • “White nationalism” in the most ethnically diverse democracy in human history is a kind of insanity — perpetuated by woke leftists and sad rightists. No wall, no president, no new immigration policy, no mass deportations, no book-bannings and no neo-Nazi rallies will bring it back. It’s gone.
  • globalization as a whole will not be undone. And because it will not be undone, exclusion from it will effectively remove any country from great power status in the foreseeable future. And so Putin has had his bluff called as well. If the sanctions hold, the danger from Russia henceforth will come from desperation, not ambition.
  • d this is often the risk of reactionary movements. The backlash they provoke can be lethal to their cause.
  • If Trudeau tried to freeze the bank accounts of political opponents, the West has chosen to cut an entire country off from global finance — to precipitate its collapse. The scale of this organized global cabal and the immensity of its power should alarm anyone. Putin’s hyper-nationalism has actually generated the most potent globalist power grab since the Cold War. And made it look reasonable.
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'Cynical, craven' Republicans out to bash Biden, not Putin, over gas prices | Joe Biden... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ns-joe-biden-russia-gas-prices gas biden gopm opportunism
shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The argument was amplified this week when gas prices hit at a record average of $4.17 per gallon and Biden announced a ban on US imports of Russian oil. He warned that while the move would hurt Vladimir Putin, “there will be a cost as well here in the United States”, and anticipated criticism by branding it “Putin’s price hike”.
  • the era when wars meant unity governments and a shared understanding that “politics stops at the water’s edge” is over. Republicans backed Biden’s ban on Russian oil imports but simultaneously went on an offensive that effectively absolved Putin of blame.
  • Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House, told a press conference: “These aren’t Putin prices. They’re President Biden’s prices.”
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  • Factcheckers have pointed out that the main cause of increasing gas prices over the past year is disruptions to global supply and demand following the coronavirus pandemic. Only a 10th of the Keystone XL pipeline was complete when Biden cancelled it and it was not likely to become operational until 2023 at the earliest.
  • He added that Republicans, in thrall to “big oil”, have spent the past two decades opposing the very measures that would have made America less dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general. Green technology would have shielded the US from the effects of the Ukraine crisis on global markets.
  • Bardella, a former senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “Republicans were so vocal about how the Biden administration needed to do sanctions on Russian oil and then they start attacking him. You can’t win because everything that they do is basically an illustration of how they operate in bad faith.”
  • Ed Rogers, a political consultant and veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush administrations, said: “‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Biden is going to own whatever the economy is come November. Republicans don’t have to do anything to make that happen. People feel it for themselves, they observe for themselves.
  • “You don’t have to remind people too much of gas prices and overall inflation is a big macro political issue. Doing well as an incumbent is all about peace and prosperity, and prosperity is being eroded by inflation, with gas prices being a focal point.”
  • Democratic strategists are aware that the issue could weigh heavily on midterm voters. Bob Shrum acknowledged: “The facts don’t matter much here. If gas prices are really high, that becomes a problem for Democrats in the midterms because they’re in office. It’s just a natural tendency to blame someone under those circumstances.”
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