"Youth in search of economic justice" by Lou Ureneck | February 22, 2014
Many of my students wore shells of cynicism that hid an inner core of hope and idealism. They had been hardened by life in a nation where government corruption is rampant, and power, both political and economic, is held by billionaire oligarchs who managed to gain control of the country’s principal assets....
The protests in New York are the consequences, mostly, of a nation beset by huge economic problems resulting in a chasm between the nation’s rich and poor. A middle class barely exists in the United States....
The reasons for the USA’s economic mess are many. An absence of the rule of law leads the list, and the lawlessness has created an environment of widespread corruption, including rigged elections.
Banks that are too big too jail.
Inefficient industry and the persistence of old attitudes in some quarters add to the economic problems. Americans see the ways in which their tax dollars are squandered by the government and the high and unaccountable life that many government officials lead, and the result is an unwillingness to pay taxes....
Nonetheless, the United States is a highly literate and well-educated society. Its IT skills, for better or worse, are notorious. Young people have access to a wide range of media. Some are able to travel....
They want that better life. And, as the diverse ages and backgrounds of the protestors in Dewey Square demonstrate, their parents and grandparents also want that better life — if not for themselves, then for their children and grandchildren.
Related: Globe Gets Dewey-Eyed Over Occupy Anniversary
Nary a sniffle on the second.
Also see: An Occupy to Remember
Cue the handkerchief.
A complicating factor for America is its ties to Israel....
The Ukrainians have also suffered from their neighbor’s power and dominance. The Holodomor — Stalin’s enforced famine that killed millions of Ukrainians — remains a vivid memory.
It's a Holocaust, but because it was committed by Jewish mass-murderers it is confined to the memory hole of history.
Today, Russian natural gas, which warms the homes and runs the factories of Ukraine, has emerged as Russia’s lever over Ukraine’s future.
And EU power supplies.
Many Ukrainian students know their painful history and understand the nation’s economic dilemma, but they see the embodiment of their personal ideals in Europe and America and not in contemporary Russia — at least not the Russia that is run by Vladimir Putin.
The events that we are witnessing now amount to scenes from a revolution....
You got that, Occupy Wall Street?
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"In Kiev, hard-fought accord shows signs of cracks" by Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times, February 22, 2014
KIEV — A deal aimed at ending a lethal spiral of violence in Ukraine began to show serious strains late Friday just hours after it had been signed, with angry protesters shouting down opposition members of Parliament who negotiated the accord and a militant leader threatening armed attacks if President Viktor Yanukovych did not step down by morning.
Russia, which joined France, Germany and Poland in mediating the settlement, introduced a further element of ominous uncertainty by declining to sign the accord, which reduces the power of Yanukovych, a firm ally of Moscow. This stirred fears that Moscow might now work to undo the deal through economic and other pressures, as it did last year to subvert a proposed trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union.
The propaganda spin is making me dizzy.
The developments cast a shadow over a hard-fought accord that mandates early presidential elections by December, a swift return to a 2004 constitution that sharply limited the president’s powers, and the establishment within 10 days of a “government of national trust.”
In votes that followed the accord and reflected Parliament’s determination to make it work, lawmakers moved to free Yanukovych’s imprisoned rival, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, grant blanket amnesty to antigovernment protesters, and provide financial aid to the wounded and the families of the dead.
Aside from a series of loud explosions Friday night and angry chants in the protest encampment, Kiev was generally quiet. Authorities, although previously divided about over how to handle the crisis, seemed eager to avoid more confrontations.
By late in the afternoon, all police had vacated the government district of the capital, leaving behind burned military trucks, mattresses, and heaps of garbage at the positions they had occupied for months.
You know, like those slob Occupy kids.
On Independence Square, the focal point of the protest movement, however, the mood was one of deep anger and determination, not triumph.
“Get out criminal! Death to the criminal!” the crowd chanted, reaffirming what, after a week of bloody violence, has become a nonnegotiable demand for many protesters: the immediate departure of Yanukovych.
When Vitali Klitschko, one of the three opposition leaders who signed the deal, spoke in its defense, people screamed “shame!” A coffin was hauled on the stage to remind him of the more than 70 people who died during violence Thursday, the most lethal day of political mayhem in Ukraine since independence from the Soviet Union more than 22 years ago.
The violence escalated the urgency of the crisis....
And who benefits?
It was difficult to know how much of the fury voiced Friday night in Independence Square was fiery bravado, a final cry of anger before the three-month-long protest movement winds down, or the harbinger of yet more violence to come.
I suspect the latter.
Vividly clear, however, was the gulf that had opened up between the opposition’s political leadership and a street movement that has radicalized and slipped far from the already tenuous control of politicians.
Klitschko was interrupted by an angry radical who did not give his name but said he was the leader of a group of fighters, known as “a hundred.”
Must be the Israeli ground troops.
“We gave chances to politicians to become future ministers, presidents, but they don’t want to fulfill one condition — that the criminal go away!” he said, vowing to lead an armed attack if Yanukovych had not announced his resignation by 10 a.m. local time Saturday.
Dmytro Yarosh, leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd.
“The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,” he said. “Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.”
He added that he and his supporters are “ready to take responsibility for the further development of the revolution.”
Previous settlements and truces have all broken down, engulfed by bursts of violence on the streets of Kiev and unrest in other parts of the country, particularly western regions where antigovernment sentiment has been strong.
Eric Fournier, France’s representative at the talks, cautioned that Friday’s deal was “a beginning, not an end.”
The pressure for a political settlement has been intense, coming not only from European governments but from a widespread fear among the population that this former Soviet republic of 46 million people was hurtling toward a possible civil war, particularly after the frenzied violence Thursday.
In a sign that the accord could yield concrete results, Parliament, long dominated by the president’s Party of Regions, passed a law that would allow the release from prison of Tymoshenko, an opposition leader who was incarcerated after she lost the 2010 presidential election to Yanukovych.
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Related:
For a moment, gold medal unites Ukraine
Threat of a failed Ukraine
"Ukraine crisis adds strain to US-Russia relations; Obama working on improving ties with Putin" by Peter Baker | New York Times, February 22, 2014
WASHINGTON — After putting the tense Russian-US relationship on “pause” last year, President Obama and his team have lately been working to get it back on track by quietly arranging a meeting this summer with President Vladimir Putin. The two sides have even begun discussing a trade agreement for the two to sign.
But the bloody political crisis in Ukraine has underscored just how hard it will be to restore constructive ties between Washington and Moscow. While the two sides were facing off this week over the future of the strategically located former Soviet republic, the prospect of renewed summitry appeared problematic. Now with a fragile deal in Kiev, US officials said, a meeting may yet come together.
Obama, who last summer became the first president in more than a half-century to cancel a meeting with his Russian or Soviet counterpart, called Putin on Friday, and they talked for an hour about Ukraine and other points of division like Syria and Iran. US officials characterized the call as surprisingly productive and took it as a sign that despite the friction of recent days, there might be a path forward.
The two leaders agreed to focus on carrying out the settlement in Kiev and not relitigate the origins of the political clash, according to administration officials who described the conversation on the condition of anonymity.
Obama “was pretty clear we’ll let those disagreements lie there,” said one official, adding that the call “actually was pretty positive.” Another official called it “completely constructive and workmanlike” and “clearly an important signal.”
Yeah, just forget we fomented all that chaos.
The future of US-Russia ties, however, has rarely been more uncertain or volatile. Ukraine is just the latest in a series of issues that have strained relations, including asylum for Edward J. Snowden, the civil war in Syria, differences over arms control, and Russia’s domestic crackdown on dissent.
With the end of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the spotlight that comes with it, some in Washington worry that Putin will feel free to further tighten the vise on critics at home. And if the Ukrainian deal falls apart again, as many fear it might, Obama and Putin could once again find themselves squaring off.
“The challenge we face is that even as Americans and Europeans believe we aren’t engaged in a zero-sum game with Russia, Russia unfortunately is playing a zero-sum game with us,” said Damon Wilson, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and now executive vice president of the Atlantic Council.
He noted that it was the prospect of Ukraine’s moving closer to the West that provoked Putin.
Indeed, the US government was deeply involved in the Ukrainian crisis. Vice President Joe Biden talked with President Viktor Yanukovych nine times in the past several months, including an hourlong telephone call Thursday as the government and opposition were negotiating their deal. US officials insisted their interest was in seeing the Ukrainian people make their own choices.
They were more deeply involved than that!
But the Kremlin did not see it that way and in general views US involvement in Russia’s backyard as interference.
As would we were they mucking around in Canada or Mexico.
That dynamic hangs over the White House even as it tries to pick a successor to Ambassador Michael A. McFaul, who is leaving his Moscow post.
See: Final Call For McFaul
One name that has been floated inside the West Wing is John F. Tefft, a recently retired career diplomat. But because he has served as ambassador in Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine, three former Soviet republics that have resisted Moscow’s regional dominance, Tefft is viewed warily by the Kremlin, and Obama will have to decide whether his selection would be constructive or provocative.
“I think the US is looking for an opportunity to keep the Russia relationship from deteriorating even further,” said Angela E. Stent, head of Russian studies at Georgetown University and author of “The Limits of Partnership,” a book on Russian-US relations since the end of the Cold War. “The Obama reset is over, and the question is: Is it worth trying something new for the next 2½ years?”
The White House has been exploring that very question for the past two months.
Russia will host the annual Group of 8 summit meeting in June in Sochi, the scene of what Putin sees as his Olympic triumph. Because Obama feels obliged to attend, he and aides began considering whether to have a separate one-on-one meeting with Putin, as is traditional at such events, restoring ties after canceling last September’s visit to Moscow.
Aides said Obama is not interested in a meeting that simply rehashes disagreements, so the two sides in December began talking about whether there were areas where they could make substantive progress.
I would just skip the thing then.
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The crackdown has already begun:
"8 guilty in protest tied to Vladimir Putin’s inauguration; Sentencing put off until after end of Olympics" by Kathy Lally | Washington Post, February 22, 2014
The crackdown has already begun:
"8 guilty in protest tied to Vladimir Putin’s inauguration; Sentencing put off until after end of Olympics" by Kathy Lally | Washington Post, February 22, 2014
A Moscow court found eight protesters guilty Friday of attacking police and inciting mass riots on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration nearly two years ago, charges widely viewed as putting the opposition on notice that dissent would not be tolerated.
Prosecutors have asked for up to six years imprisonment for the protesters, one of whom was accused of throwing a lemon-like object at a police officer. But sentencing was postponed until Monday, a day after the Olympics end in Sochi, Russia.
No black widows attacked.
Supporters of the accused in the matter — known as the Bolotnaya case for the location of the protest — said the delay was meant to deflect global attention by imposing the sentences when many journalists and officials would be on their way home.
Nearly 1,000 supporters gathered in the streets outside the court building, chanting ‘‘Freedom’’ and ‘‘No to dictatorship.’’ Riot police quickly began detaining people in the crowd, and opposition leaders said as many as 150 were taken away.
One of those detained, Andrei Mironov, said by cellphone from a police van that he had been standing quietly when he was plucked off the street. ‘‘They were just taking people one by one,’’ he said. ‘‘They took people for no reason.’’
Sounds like a CIA rendition.
Sergei Parkhomenko, a journalist for the Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy radio station, photographed what was apparently a security officer on a balcony making a video of the crowd. When he tweeted the photo, he was detained.
AmeriKan cops do the same.
Also detained was Maria Baronova, who had originally been among the accused. She was released in December as part of an amnesty....
About two dozen protesters were accused in all, but others are being tried in separate cases. In October, a mentally disabled man among the accused, Mikhail Kosenko, was sent to a psychiatric hospital for an indefinite period. Opposition leaders said it reminded them of Soviet times when dissenters were routinely confined to psychiatric hospitals.
Sergei Panchenko, a lawyer representing Stepan Zimin, told the crowd that the judge simply reread the charges filed by prosecutors, then pronounced the guilty verdict.
‘‘Today the atmosphere was very tense and nervous,’’ he said. ‘‘We do not have any hope for our so-called judicial system. Our hope is your moral support, that’s all.’’
I feel the same way about mine.
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Related: Bavarian pretzel has EU protection
Also see:
Mikaela Shiffrin, the future of US ski racing
US couldn’t get close to Canada
Viktor Ahn of Russia wins 2 short track golds
Olympic skating judges did not stack the deck
Reporter at Sochi sees some mixed results
Under Armour, US speedskating agree on eight-year deal
First-rate week for NBC’s viewership
Looks like some folks won some golds.
