US invokes holocaust in Syria aid spat with Russia
Penny for you thoughts | January 28, 2014
How low can you go?
When the hand you hold is a loser. The holocaust card can always be played.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has called on Russia to use its influence with the Syrian regime to help get humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Homs.
Tense negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition entered their fifth day Tuesday, focusing on the transfer of power and helping besieged parts of Homs.
The emphasis on Homs and release of detainees are meant as confidence-building measures. A tentative agreement was reached in Geneva over the weekend for the evacuation of women and children trapped in Homs before aid convoys go in. Central Homs has been under siege for nearly two years.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, in a speech during international Holocaust commemoration day on Monday, said that just as Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz in 1945, “the world again needs Russia to use its influence, this time to ensure that food reaches the desperate and starving people imprisoned in besieged Homs, Yarmouk, the Damascus suburbs and elsewhere.”
“The horrors of the Holocaust have no parallel but the world continues to confront crimes that shock the conscience,” Power said during an event where film director Steven Spielberg gave a keynote address and a survivor of the Nazi genocide also spoke. “In October, the Security Council spoke with a united voice about the need for action to address the humanitarian devastation in Syria. There are people who are imprisoned in their own neighborhoods.” “They need food desperately and yet food cannot reach them because the regime will not allow it.”
Oh, I can think of plenty of parallels, but, let’s pretend the Holocaust (TM) is the only one that counts.
So valued for so many reasons:
Crushing free speech
Playing the victim card
Guilt
And let’s not forget- Used to traumatize young Israeli’s- I saved this one knowing the time would be right to use it!
‘Holocaust journeys’ can cause mental health problems
Think of the value in traumatizing the populace. Fear and trauma allows for mass manipulation and ease of control.
Back to the invocation of the high holy holocaust meme
Russia’s mission to the UN criticized Power for bringing the Holocaust into the Syria issue.
“We regard such analogies as entirely inappropriate,” said Alexei Zaitsev, a spokesman for the mission, in an e-mail.
And these are inappropriate analogies. But, Samantha Power has always shown herself to be willing to stoop to the way down low level.
Sick. Considering the US and Israeli involvement in the ruin of Syria. Absolutely sick!
The Three-Legged Monster
By Gilad Atzmon • May 25th, 2009
Unlike her cosmopolitan brothers and sisters who spread Zionism and tribal racism using a liberal and progressive disguise, Melanie Philips is open about it all. The other day she defined what Zionism is in a very clear manner:
“Zionism,” writes Philips, “is simply the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people. And its significance is greater than any other movement of national liberation because Judaism itself rests upon three legs — the people, the religion and the land. If one is lopped off by having its legitimacy denied, the whole thing collapses. That is why anti-Zionism is far more than an unpleasant political position. It is a direct attack on Judaism itself.”
Philips doesn’t leave much room for speculation. For her, not only is Zionism a legitimate national movement, ‘its significance is greater than any other movement’ because it rests upon ‘three legs’. Thinking about it for a second, it is indeed significant for something to rest upon three legs, I myself rest upon just two legs and a bit. Occasionally when I stand naked in front of the mirror I wish I were Zionism.
As Philips maintains, Zionism is indeed an amalgam of three Jewish ingredients: the people, the land and the religion. It is this very composition that makes Zionism into an epic victorious narrative. It is this very mixture that made Zionism into the 20th century collective symbolic identifier of the Jewish people. It is Zionism that has managed to reinvent the Jewish people as a nation with a lucid ideological, spiritual and geographical aspiration. Yet, as much as Zionism makes a lot of sense to very many Jews around the world, it makes less and less sense for those who fail to be chosen i.e., the rest of humanity. The reason is simple, Jews may be welcomed to celebrate their symptoms collectively but they are not exactly entitled to do so at the expense of anyone else.
Zionism has managed to interpret Judaism as a brutal license to plunder and kill. It transformed a spiritual text into a land registry. It primarily invented the Jews as nation. It then set for the newly born nation a task of immoral geographical aspiration with some devastating racist colonial implications.
One may wonder, how did Zionism manage to be so successful, how did it manage to get away with murder, and how has it done so for so long? At the end of the day, the lethal mixture of ‘land’-‘religion’-‘people’ stands in complete opposition to the post-war Western cultural and political narrative (cosmopolitan / multi-cultural / multi-faith / open borders).
I tend to believe that Philips’ equation Zionism = Judaism is the most effective Zionist tactic of them all. It leads towards a severe paralysis of most humanist opposition of Zionism. The reason is obvious, ordinary ethical beings do not know how to comb the knots out of this shattering formula that leads them to criticism of a religious belief system.
In fact one way around it is to dispute Philips’ equation. Zionism doesn’t equal Judaism. Zionism is a mere radical narrow interpretation of Judaism. It takes the biblical plunderous narrative and turns it into a daily practice. It takes the Judaic moral notion of chosenness and turns it into crude supremacist agenda. Rather than Judaism, Zionism is in fact the true genuine face of Jewish ideology. It is racist, it is chauvinist, it is seeking power; but it is different from Judaism, for Judaism is centred around the fear of God and Zionism is totally fearless. Accordingly, It will be right to argue that to oppose Zionism is to oppose Jewish ideology or what I myself define as ‘Jewishness’.
It must be said that Zionism regards itself as an enlightened rational movement. To a certain extent, as an ideology and praxis, it tries to understand itself, it seeks explanations or at least justifications in rational and historical terms (rather than ethical ones). Melanie Philips, it must be said, is offering a coherent argument. She says, ‘this is what we are’, taking this from us is a dismissal of our right to be.
I believe that Philips framework is correct, it is her terminology that is slightly confusing. It is not Zionism = religion but rather Zionism and Jewishness that are intrinsically connected. If we want to oppose Zionism for real, we set ourselves into an inevitable conflict with Jewish ideology. To oppose Zionism is to admit that we have a serious issue with Jewish nationalism, with Jewish tribalism, with Jewish racist ideology, with Jewish supremacy and Jewish collectivism. To oppose Zionism is to admit that we have a problem with the ‘Jewish thing’.
However, it may be noted that if Zionists such as Philips are entitled to suggest the equation between Zionism and Judaism, the opponent of Zionism should not be reluctant to do the same and to extend the critique of Zionism to Jewish ideology and beyond.
I mentioned numerous times in the past. As it happened, it is actually Zionists and Israeli dissidents who seem to push the anti-Zionist discourse ahead. The reason is pretty simple.
Israeli dissidents are far from being reluctant to expose or reflect on their collective past. Unlike the tribal Diaspora Jewish left activists that are quick to dismiss any complicity in Israeli crimes by shouting “not in my name,” some Israeli dissident voices tend to take direct responsibility. They understand the notion of guilt and they turn it into responsibility.
A month ago Haaretz published an article by Uri Avnery in its ‘Israeli Independence Day Special Edition. ‘Living With The Contradiction’ was an attempt of an Israeli humanist to face his own original sin within an historical perspective.
Avnery is an astonishing writer. Though I tend to disagree with him on various issues, the man is no doubt a leading voice of reason in that doomed state. Unlike Melanie Philips who supports Zionism from afar, Avnery was a commando soldier in 1948. He was himself personally involved in the creation of Israel. “We knew that if we won the war, there would be a state and that if we were defeated there would be no state – and that we would not be around, either.”
Unlike Melanie Philips who speaks about ‘a land’, Avnery was one of those who invaded the land and expelled its habitants.
“We left no Arabs behind our front line, and the Arabs did likewise,” and yet, Avnery, unlike Philips, realises that the Zionist amalgam People / Land / Religion leads towards disaster. Israel’s original sin is not is not exactly a recipe for peace.
“How then is it possible,” asks Avnery, “to reconcile the contradiction between our intentions and feelings at the time, when we established the state and paid for it with our blood, pure and simple, and the historic injustice we inflicted on the other side?”
He continues, “It is necessary for our mental health as a nation and as human beings, and it is the first step toward future reconciliation. We must admit and recognize the consequences of our actions and repair what can be repaired, without disavowing our past and youthful innocence.” Avnery goes out of his way to explain rather than justify the 1948 sin, yet he is searching for reconciliation. He understands that the Jewish state will be doomed unless it faces its past.
I wish that those who contribute to the Palestinian solidarity discourse would have the courage exhibited by Philips and Avnery. I wish that like Philips, we would have the courage to equate Zionism with Judaism yet to use it as a critical shift. I wish we could look at the Nakba like Avnery with fear and yet to draw the necessary conclusion, to demand the right of return.
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Obama and Friends Discover Inequality
By Jack Rasmus | January 28, 2014
Today, January 28, 2014, President Obama will address the nation in his State of the Union (SOTU) speech to Congress. A major theme of the address will be the growing income inequality in the US.
His speech represents an echo of similar themes and talks that have been presented this past week at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. That’s where every January the big capitalists of the world gather to discuss amongst themselves the major issues of the past year and what to do about them—in between being entertained by various cultural celebrities and performers who have been allowed into their club as junior partners in wealth. The annual Davos cultural events are not unlike the small venue side-shows held in the big Las Vegas casinos: the entertainers strut and sing while the real betting and dice-rolling discussions involving future capitalist policy initiatives go on behind ‘invitation-only’ doors requiring tickets for entry costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend ( the typical ticket price of entry for a Corporate CEO and his entourage at Davos, for example, exceeds $500,000).
This year the WEF and global capitalists have ‘discovered’ income inequality, now accelerating and intensifying worldwide to a dangerous degree, and especially in the US. The dimensions of the inequality problem have grown so severe in recent years it may, they themselves are now warning, result in unwanted ‘social unrest’ in the near future.
Now that it has become an ‘acceptable’ discussion theme, Obama and Democrat party politicians (and a few clever Republicans) have also discovered income inequality. Together they plan to raise the rhetoric on the topic in upcoming midterm and 2016 national elections. Therefore, in Obama’s SOTU speech today we’ll hear some basic facts about the problem, some vague proposals that are never intended get to the earliest legislative stages, and a lot of general talk about how improving ‘opportunity’ is the only answer to reducing inequality—all of which means let’s not do anything significant in the short run but instead focus on very long run solutions like improving childhood education, creating long run opportunities, and other very long term solutions.
The politicians’ new discovery of inequality follows liberal academics discovery of the same in recent years. Well known fellows like Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Joe Stiglitz, James Galbraith and others have all written their books on the topic in recent years. But they too, like the politicians they support, have been very careful about recommendations for resolving the problem, mostly repeating time-worn, mushy old liberal proposals involving ‘education and opportunity’ once again.
The growing income inequality in the US goes back at least to the late 1970s, accelerating during the 1980s and early 1990s, and then again after 2000 under George W. Bush. It’s grown the worst under Barack Obama, with latest figures showing the wealthiest 1% households accruing for themselves since 2009 nearly all (more than 90%) of all the income gains during the so-called ‘recovery’.
More recent, damning revelations about the extent of growing inequality go back to 2002 at least—long before the politicians and the more well known liberal economists acknowledged it. In 2002 University of California, Berkeley economist, Emmanuel Saez, began publishing his analyses of IRS income data, since all pre-existing sources of income inequality by the government and business more or less obfuscated the true picture. Saez has updated his ground-breaking results periodically ever since. Most of what is reported and published about the income gains of the wealthiest 1% are from his researches.
This writer relied heavily on Saez’s data in his 2004 book, ‘The War At Home: The Corporate Offensive From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush’, which attempted to identify the various policies since the late 1970s that have been largely responsible for the inequality shift that Saez so well documented in 2002. Saez’s hard data—then and ever since—is irrefutable. However, the political implications behind Saez’s data were not spelled out, except for some suggestions concerning the tax structure.
But Income inequality in the US is no accident. It has conscious, deliberate origins, to be found in the policy initiatives of corporate America since the late 1970s, and the willingness of the politicians Corporate America elects in Congress, Presidents, and at State levels—Democrat and Republican alike—to implement those policy initiatives.
There’s the tax restructuring in favor of the rich and their businesses, the free trade and offshoring, the atrophying of the real minimum wage, the dismantling of real pensions and employer contributions to healthcare, the shift from full time permanent jobs to part time and temp work, the destruction of unions and higher paying union jobs, the displacing of higher paid jobs with technology, substitution of credit for lack of wage growth, failure to invest in the US by corporate America, so on and so on. That’s why jobs, real wages, and incomes for the vast majority of American households has stagnated at best, and declined in real terms for most. That’s why wage earners’ income of the bottom 80% households have contributed to income inequality.
But all that’s still only half the story of income inequality. The other ‘half’ of the story is why the incomes of the 1% have risen so sharply as well. Both their rise, and the stagnation-decline of the bottom 80%, are jointly responsible for the income inequality.
Corporate America and their politicians, and the policies they’ve initiated and implemented, are responsible for the accelerating capital incomes of the rich (1%), very rich (0.1%), and mega-rich (0.01%). And much of that has to do with the enabling of financial asset speculation and financial securities inflation that has been the defining characteristic of the US (and global) economy since at least the 1980s. Reagan unlocked that door. Clinton opened it. And George W. kicked it in. And Obama has done nothing to repair the entry.
Real solutions to income inequality would have to include proposals not only to enable the recovery of incomes of the middle working class, and the working and non-working poor, but would have to include proposals to reign in the runaway income accumulation of the very rich, the mega-rich and their friends. But you won’t hear the latter even suggested in Obama’s SOTU speech. What you’ll hear are token long run proposals to slow the decline in income growth for the working poor perhaps, and a lot of vague suggestions about the middle class.
What the middle class needs is decent jobs and tens of millions of them, just to restore what has been lost in the past 15 years. There are still 20 million unemployed in the US, and more than 5 million more have left the labor force. 60% of the jobs that have been created since 2009 have been low paid, while 58% lost have been high paid. Retirement systems are broken and retirees income for tens of millions are in freefall. Obamacare has meant those with insurance now have to pay more for less. Tens of millions of students are effectively indentured and can’t find jobs. If Obama and his politicians want to do something about income inequality, let’s hear concrete legislative proposals to address these issues now, immediately, in the short run.
It took the Krugmans, Reichs, and Stiglitzes only a decade to ‘discover’ their academic colleague, Saez’s, significant work. Better late than never, I suppose. However none of the liberal economists bother to point the finger at the politicians responsible, especially their Democratic party friends, for the inequality trends. But if anything serious is going to be done about income inequality in the US, it will have to include not only real, short term solutions to raise the incomes of the many but also serious, real measures to take back the excessive income gains of the rich and super-rich as well. For the latter will be necessary to fund and restore decent jobs and wages, to revitalize a crumbling retirement system, to save a collapsing healthcare system, and, yes, even to provide affordable education opportunities for all.
Western coverage distorts Argentina’s media law
By Ramiro Funez | NACLA | January 28, 2014
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is currently battling allegations of corruption, and when Argentina’s Supreme Court upheld in October a media law that takes on press monopolies while promoting diversity in media ownership, journalists in the English-speaking North covered it as a blow to press freedom.
The Audiovisual Services Act, originally introduced by Kirchner in 2009, replaced the Radio Broadcasting Law of 1980, put in place by the military regime that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983. The junta used the 1980 law, which promoted the corporatization of news information, to speed up the privatization and monopolization of media in Argentina after independently reported stories undermined military rule, according to the Argentine Information Secretariat’s 1981 report, Argentine Radio: Over 60 Years on the Air
Although the return of constitutional rule in 1983 granted journalists more political freedoms, it largely ignored economic ones. Even after the collapse of the military dictatorship, the 1980 law allowed wealthy business owners, many of whom had been sympathetic to the regime and its pro-market stance, to dominate journalism in Argentina.
Clarín, founded in 1945 and today one of Argentina’s most recognized daily newspapers, fared well throughout the junta’s administration, eventually surpassing the sales of its main competitor, Papel Prensa. In 1999, the newspaper’s publisher reorganized itself as Grupo Clarín, managing to acquire over 200 newspapers and several cable systems across the country to become Argentina’s largest corporate media organization (Reuters, 10/32912). The organization currently has a market share of 47 percent and holds 158 licenses (Financial Times, 10/29/2013).
The Kirchner-backed media law places limits on the size of media conglomerates in an attempt to diversify ownership of news distribution: media companies will now be limited to a maximum of 35 percent of overall market share. The new law also imposes a national limit of 24 broadcast licenses per company, meaning the group will have to sell off dozens of operating licenses or have them auctioned by the state (Christian Science Monitor, 10/30/13).
Many Western reporters covering Argentina, however, dismiss the danger of concentrated corporate control of journalism, instead focusing on the perceived danger that government regulation of media could silence political opposition—echoing claims made by Grupo Clarín and other private conservative organizations.
U.S. news stories covering the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the media law tended to read like press releases for Grupo Clarín, leading with the consequences it will have on the monolithic media conglomerate. That angle was an easy sell to corporate news outlets that have an interest in focusing on governmental limits on journalism without discussing the problems of a privatized, highly concentrated news market.
The Washington Post (11/1/13), for example, headlined its editorial on the topic “In Argentina, a Newspaper Under Siege,” presenting Grupo Clarín as the victim of a governmental attempt to silence opposition. “Sadly, however, Ms. Fernández and her cronies still pose a threat to the country’s democratic institutions,” the Post wrote:
That became clear Tuesday, when the Argentine Supreme Court, under heavy pressure from the president’s office, upheld a law aimed at destroying one of South America’s most important media firms, Grupo Clarín.
The company operates one of Argentina’s biggest newspapers, called Clarín, which has been one of the few media outlets to challenge Ms. Fernández’s policies. The law would force the company to auction off cable television and Internet businesses that provide most of its revenue, thus reducing potential funding for Clarín’s newsroom.
The article victimizes Grupo Clarín, giving readers the impression the Argentine government established the limits with the intentions of “destroying” the group. Yet the Post fails to mention that the United States also has a history of issuing similar outlet restrictions, like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that placed a 35 percent limit on market ownership. Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) raised that limit to 45 percent in 2003 during a private reevaluation, the agency still has the power to regulate media ownership.
The Post editorial board also linked the media law to Kirchner’s attempts to nationalize major companies in other industries, including travel and energy, saying that she and her late husband, whom she succeeded as president, have sought to “concentrate power in their own hands.”
The Wall Street Journal (11/5/13) chimed in:
In the past few years, the government has shifted nearly all its public advertising money to media outlets that provide it with positive coverage—a move the Supreme Court has condemned, to little effect… Leading newspapers like Clarín and La Nación also say they are suffering from an ad boycott orchestrated by the government—an allegation the government denies.
The Journal ignores the fact that the Kirchner administration continues to direct public advertising to smaller conservative media groups within the Association of Argentine Journalism (CITE); diversified media ownership, rather than ideology or partisan affiliation, is the criterion for government subsidy. Despite the fact that there is an alleged “ad boycott orchestrated by the government,” both Grupo Clarín and La Nación continue to receive more revenue from private advertisers than any other media outlet in Argentina, according to a 2011 report published by the Comisión Nacional de Comunicaciones.
The Associated Press (11/4/13), reporting on Grupo Clarín’s recent decision to break itself up into six parts in order to comply with the law, presented the legislation as little more than a politically motivated attack on one corporation:
The licenses are essential to Clarin’s cable television networks, and synergy between the finances and news content of the group’s TV and radio stations, websites and newspaper are key to its power. Many government supporters want nothing less than Clarín’s defenestration as a viable opponent.
The Associated Press’s framing in the aforementioned article takes the side of Grupo Clarín: They write that Clarín’s unregulated licenses are “key to its power” without airing arguments against the corporate consolidation of public news information. They also make the assumption that Kirchner constituents “want nothing less than Clarín’s defenestration” without providing quotes from pro-media regulation activists in Argentina aside from government officials.
And the Miami Herald (10/23/13) published a column by Roger Noriega of the American Enterprise Institute, formerly of the George W. Bush State Department. Noriega argued that the law was aimed at “silencing the independent media” and that nothing less than “the fate of the free press” was at issue. “Of course, it is all too predictable that these divested media licenses will fall into the hands of compliant Kirchner cronies,” wrote Noriega. “This transparent tactic is lifted from the playbook of leftist caudillos in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere.”
A quick sift through Noriega’s column reveals that his definition of “independent media” elides the dependency that media organizations like Grupo Clarín and La Nación have on funding from private corporations that have personal profit-making agendas—a dependency that forces both groups to embrace the political ideologies of their sponsors in order to maintain steady revenue. A truly “independent media” would be free of both government and corporate domination. It is also evident that his notions of a “free press” are founded upon free-market, neoliberal principles, championing corporate domination of political news coverage. His tactic of utilizing the term “free press” in correlation with unregulated, monopolized, and corporatized news media seems to hail straight from the playbook of McCarthyist lexicon, to borrow a few words from his comparison.
Overall, corporate journalistic monopolization and the concentration of news media is more of a threat to press freedom in Argentina than government regulation is. The domination of public discourse by media groups with private, corporate interests is dangerous to readers who are oftentimes unaware of the advertising revenue models of organizations like Grupo Clarín; in its obligations to maximize profits, it has strategic incentive to promote the interests of its commerical sponsors rather than the people of Argentina searching for objective news coverage.
Many Western journalists have painted Kirchner as an authoritarian leader desperate for control over news coverage in order to maintain a positive image, without realizing that in modern times, media ownership is just as influential as government suppression of speech. While many conservative Argentines have blindly sided with groups like Grupo Clarín in criticizing the government’s large advertising presence in news organizations that are friendly with the incumbent administration, they have failed to recognize that there is a difference in advertising intentions and content between the Kirchner administration and private corporations: the former publicizes information about social welfare programs available to citizens, while the latter promotes products whose profits benefit the small percentage of Argentines who have seemingly little at stake in quality social programming.
The Supreme Court of Argentina and the Kirchner administration have recognized that progressive interpretations of freedom of speech include democratic and popular control over mass information and national discourse. They have also recognized the need for public diversity in media ownership that fosters economic freedoms within journalism, allowing any citizen, regardless of ideology and economic background, to have just as amplified of an opinion as a corporate news organization does—all without violating political rights.
Organizations that have claimed otherwise, or that echo the cries of victimization made by Grupo Clarín, fail to analyze alternative qualities of freedom of speech.
Ramiro S. Fúnez is a Honduran-American political journalist and activist earning his master’s degree in politics at New York University. Follow him on Twitter at @RamiroSFunez.
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The Story of the Individual is Testimony to the Story of the Public
Here, right to freedom of movement is relative. (Photo: Tamar Fleishman)
Palestine Chronicle | January 27, 2014
We usually prefer to exit Palestine using Hizme checkpoint, where unlike other exit checkpoints, there are no long lines of cars, we aren’t detained and there is no need for identification or getting out of the vehicle to open and present the content of the trunk. You merely slow down by the soldier and answer a generic question like “how is it going?” with an “OK”. Sometimes even that isn’t required, just nod your head and that’s it, you can drive on.
But it’s different for us than for those who don’t pass the test examining the visage and accent of the driver. They, Palestinians from east Jerusalem, in spite of being permanent residents who have the right for freedom of movement (unlike their brothers who reside in the West Bank), are forced to stop, park their vehicle by the soldier’s post on the side of the road, identify themselves, exit the car and open the trunk so the solider can see inside.
Their right to freedom of movement is relative and they are subjected to the mercy and whims of the men in uniform.
The individual’s story is testimony to the story of the general public. The individual in this case was A who after visiting his family intended to drive through Hizme on his way back, with him were his wife, his baby son and someone he knew that said to him: “could you do me a favor, I need to get to Jerusalem, could I ride with you?”- So he did. A didn’t give him a thorough inspection, and had no idea what color his ID was and what was his address. He was just doing someone a favor. But the soldier at the checkpoint did perform an inspection and found out that A was giving a lift to someone who wasn’t permitted to pass through a checkpoint intended only for settlers, like Hizme checkpoint.
The man was arrested and taken away.
A was told to turn his engine off and to stay in the vehicle, in addition they took his car keys.
A, his wife and their child sat and waited. But the baby, who had yet to learn that a soldier’s order must be obeyed, began crying and wailing. The minutes that passed were long and the crying only grew stronger. But they couldn’t step out of the car, they couldn’t take the baby out of his booster, and he couldn’t be cradled in his mother’s arms. A tried getting out to reason with them, but was told to: “stay in the car!” and so he got back in.
After an hour his car keys were handed back to him and his wife and child were sent back home, while A was taken to the police station. There he waited for another hour, until he was given a summons to return on the next day.
Ever since he has been going back and forth to the police station, each day he waits for his name to be called, then he is taken into a room, the piece of paper he was handed on the previous day is taken from him and in return he is given a new paper summoning him to come back on the next day.
The time, the agitation, not to mention the money- all these are of no importance and are not taken into account.
Once he dared to ask why they weren’t handling his case and a policeman said to him: “I don’t have time for you, I’ve got lots of work”- “But my case is part of your work”, replied A, but instead of an answer he got a piece of paper in exchange for the one given to him on the previous day.
Yes, he will be back tomorrow, and perhaps even on the day after that.
This is how the representatives of the authority, who have unlimited power in their hands, handle people, whose rights are conditioned by circumstances.
(Translated by Ruth Fleishman)
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Ukraine PM Azarov submits resignation to ease tensions
Press TV – January 28, 2014
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has tendered his resignation in an attempt to help resolve a two-month political crisis in the country.
“I have taken a personal decision to ask the president of Ukraine to accept my resignation from the post of prime minister with the aim of creating an additional possibility for a political compromise to peacefully resolve the conflict,” he said.
World boxing champion and opposition leader Vitali Klitschko said Azarov’s announced resignation was only “a step to victory”.
Moments ahead of the news, Ukraine’s parliamentarians began holding a special session over a controversial anti-protest law, which has sparked a wave of clashes between protesters and police forces over the past weeks.
In a televised statement, Justice Minister Olena Lukash said the lawmakers would discuss the government’s responsibility in the crisis, signaling that a cabinet reshuffle could be imminent.
Earlier on Monday, in a meeting between the government and the opposition, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition agreed to scrap the anti-protest law.
Yanukovych also pledged an amnesty for detained demonstrators if the barricades set up by them on the streets are taken down.
In a bid to resolve the crisis, the Ukrainian president also offered to bring the opposition into the government. Leaders of the opposition, however, have rejected the offer.
Ukraine has been rocked by anti-government protests since Yanukovych refrained from signing the Association Agreement with the European Union at the third Eastern Partnership Summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on November 29, 2013.
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US Congress secretly approves sending small arms to ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels
RT | January 28, 2014
Congressional lawmakers have quietly authorized sending small arms, an assorted variety of rockets, and financial backing to so-called “moderate” rebels fighting in Syria’s civil war, according to a new report.
American and European security officials told Reuters that the US will provide anti-tank rockets, but nothing as deadly as shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (known as MANPADs), which can be used to bring down military or civilian aircraft.
Legislators voted in closed-door meetings to fund the opposition forces through September 30, the end of the US government’s fiscal year. The decision is an about-face from congressional debates last year, in which the same committees were reluctant to supply arms over concerns that American weapons would wind up in the hands of radical Islamists fighting in the region, the Al-Qaeda-backed Al-Nusra being the most well known.
Now, though, those concerns appear to have lessened. Exactly when Congress approved the funding is not known, yet the sources speculated that it was signed in a classified section of a defense appropriations bill that was approved in December.
“The Syrian war is a stalemate,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and current foreign policy advisor to US President Obama with the Brookings Institution. “The rebels lack the organization and weapons to defeat Assad; the regime lacks to loyal manpower to suppress the rebellion. Both sides’ external allies…are ready to supply enough money and arms to fuel the stalemate for the foreseeable future.”
Despite the uncertainty remaining around the conflict, Western officials have asserted in recent weeks that “moderate” rebels have strengthened their positions in the south of Syria and have begun excluding Al-Qaeda sympathizers. Extremists are known to be in control of rebel forces in the north and east, however.
US and British officials temporarily suspended “non-lethal aid” (a category that includes communications equipment and transportation vehicles) in December, although officials now say they hope to resume providing assistance to the Supreme Military Council (SMC), which oversees rebel forces favored by the West.
“We hope to be able to resume assistance to the SMC shortly, pending security and logistics considerations,” one source told Reuters. “But we have no announcement at this time.”
News of the funding comes as the Syrian government and the external opposition in Geneva have reached an agreement that would see humanitarian aid enter the besieged city of Homs, and would allow women and children to leave its war-ravaged areas.
What makes the deal dubious, however, is that it’s not yet clear how it will be implemented on the ground. Currently, the Syrian government is promising – voiced on Sunday by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad – that women and children can leave Homs safely. Another question is how rebels inside the city besieged by the army will react.
“If the armed terrorists in Homs allow women and children to leave the old city of Homs, we will allow them every access. Not only that, we will provide them with shelter, medicines and all that is needed,” he said, as cited by Reuters. “We are ready to allow any humanitarian aid to enter into the city through the arrangements made with the UN.”
US State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said that an evacuation is not a legitimate option because of how dire the need for aid is.
“We firmly believe that the Syrian regime must approve the convoys to deliver badly needed humanitarian assistance into the Old City of Homs now,” Vasquez said. “The situation is desperate and the people are starving.”
The results of a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland – where government officials sat across the negotiating table from representatives of the opposition on Monday – is so far unclear. Each side pledged its willingness to continue discussions, though progress so far has been nearly nonexistent.
United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters after the meeting Monday that even though the talks “haven’t produced much,” another session was scheduled for Tuesday.
“Once again, I tell you we never expected any miracle, there are no miracles here,” he said in a news conference. “My expectation from this conference is that the unjust war will stop. But I know this is not going to happen today or tomorrow or next week.”
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