Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Monday, October 17, 2016

Russian Embassy: Grozny Is the ‘Solution’ for Aleppo

Russian Embassy: Grozny Is the ‘Solution’ for Aleppo

BY KAVITHA SURANA-OCTOBER 17, 2016 

As the United States and Britain announced that they are considering new sanctions against Moscow for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the brutal aerial bombardment of rebel-held Aleppo, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry worried Sunday that Russian fighter jets were harkening back to a similar strategy used by the Kremlin during its war in Chechnya.

“There are still deep beliefs in a lot of people that Russia is simply pursuing a Grozny solution in Aleppo and is not prepared to truly engage in any way,” Kerry said at a press briefing with U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, referring to Moscow’s vicious scorched earth campaign during the Second Chechen War that decimated the breakaway republic’s capital city.

The comments were clearly noticed by the Kremlin and soon made their way onto the Twittersphere. On Monday, the social-media-adept Russian embassy in Washington clapped back with a tweet taking aim at Kerry and Johnson’s comments.
The tweet, which featured photos of the completely rebuilt downtown core of Grozny, dismissed international outrage over Russia’s tactics in Aleppo. Instead, it sent the message that the Chechen capital bounced back from destruction just fine.Of course, the embassy didn’t see any reason to dwell on the at least 160,000 casualties during the Chechen Wars, a brutal conflict from 1999-2000 that had allegations of atrocities on both sides.

In any case, the reconstruction of Grozny doesn’t bode well for those who hope to see Russia out of Syria any time soon. In the years following the war, billions of dollars of investment from Moscow and Gulf countries have flooded into the city, helping support Chechnya’s strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to keep a lid on unrest with repressive tactics. Putin may hope to use a similar strategy in Aleppo.

In Syria, Russia’s support for Assad has led to an even greater level of humanitarian devastation. Every day that Russian-assisted bombing continues in Aleppo, the last stronghold of Syria’s opposition rebels, more buildings are flattened and the death toll – already estimated at more than 400,000 in Syria since the start of the war – rises.

Western countries have shown increasing frustration with Russia’s involvement as multiple ceasefire efforts fell apart in past months. On Oct. 7, Kerry called for initiating a war crimes investigation of Russia and Syria, admonishing the two countries for bombing civilian targets like hospitals and obstructing humanitarian aid relief efforts.

Russia’s brutal strategy in Chechnya may have won it the war, but at a great human cost. It hardly looks like a promising template for a “solution” to Aleppo’s brutal nightmare.

Photo credit: KARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images

Yemen president agrees to 72-hour truce


The United States, Britain and UN urged the warring parties on Sunday to declare a ceasefire

The conflict in Yemen has killed almost 6,900 people (AFP)
Monday 17 October 2016 19:55 UTC
Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi has agreed to an extendable 72-hour ceasefire, the war-torn country's foreign minister said on Monday, a day after international calls for a truce.
Abdulmalek al-Mekhlafi wrote on Twitter that Hadi agreed to the halt in fighting if Houthi rebels adhere to it, activate a UN-backed committee to watch the truce, and lift the siege on the encircled city of Taiz.
UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed called for "an immediate cessation of hostilities, which will be declared in the next few hours."
The envoy said he had been in contact with the Houthis’ lead negotiator and with Hadi's government.
But he warned that he hoped for "clearer plans" for a ceasefire in coming days.
The announcement comes after the United States, Britain and Cheikh Ahmed urged the warring parties on Sunday to declare a ceasefire, which they said could start within days.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said if Yemen's opposing sides accepted the ceasefire, the UN envoy would work through the details and announce when and how it would take effect.
"This is the time to implement a ceasefire unconditionally and then move to the negotiating table," Kerry said.
The conflict in Yemen has killed almost 6,900 people, wounded more than 35,000 and displaced at least three million since March last year, according to the United Nations.

Arsen Pavlov, who goes by the nom de guerre"Motorola," salutes atop of an armored personnel carrier during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, in Donetsk, Ukraine, May 9, 2016. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

 

MOSCOW — He bragged about being a cold-blooded killer, and videotaped battles with his helmet cam.
And along the way, this former car wash worker became an unlikely, pro-Kremlin media star in rebel-held Ukraine – where he met his end late Sunday in a mysterious explosion that roared up the elevator shaft in his apartment building.

The death of Arsen Pavlov, 33, better known by his nom de guerre "Motorola," brought blame-trading on both sides of the conflict between Ukraine's Western-allied government and rebel factions with ties to Russia.

Many believed the blast was just the lasted in a series of killings that may be linked to a bitter internal purge of rebel leaders. Separatist officials, in turn claimed Ukraine's government in Kiev was behind the attack in Donetsk, the largest rebel-held city.

"I understand that [Ukrainian President] Petro Poroshenko has violated the ceasefire and declared war against us," said Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the separatists in Donetsk. "Now wait for it."

A video surfaced Monday on social media purportedly from anti-rebel factions showing a self-proclaimed fighter saying he was in Donetsk and claiming they “just liquidated the famous terrorist Motorola." He then lists two other pro-Moscow leaders as “next” on the hit list, and ends with a Nazi salute. The authenticity of the video could be independently verified, but separatists insisted it proved Kiev's hand in the attack.

Pavlov, a native of the northern Russian Komi Republic and former car wash employee, arrived in Kiev during the 2013-2014 pro-European protests, and later joined anti-Western street demonstrations in Kharkiv and Donetsk. Reported to be a veteran of Russia's Second Chechen War, he led teams of separatist fighters in the extended battles for the Ukrainian city of Slavyansk and at the Donetsk Airport.

Kiev has called Pavlov a war criminal. Asked by the Kyiv Post last April about allegations that he had executed a Ukrainian defender of the airport, Pavlov responded: “I don’t give a f*** about what I am accused of, believe it or not. I shot 15 prisoners dead. I don’t give a f***. No comment. I kill if I want to. I don’t if I don’t.”

Pavlov first became known for strapping a GoPro camera to his helmet and then passing the footage to pro-Kremlin media outlets including LifeNews and Komsomolskaya Pravda. He granted generous access to friendly journalists, producing some of the best-known, and most infamous, videotaped scenes from the war.

One showed his fighters capturing Ukrainian soldiers at the airport in Donetsk. The men were later paraded through Donetsk, where locals threw stones and beat them, which Kiev called a violation of the Geneva Convention. A longer cut of the video, which we won't link to here, shows Pavlov dragging the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers out of the trunk of a car as another soldier covers his face in the background.

After the battle, he also brought captives to the airport to gather the bodies of their fallen comrades. According to a report by the Reuters news agency, he said they had been assigned the task because "it's not our job to recover dead bodies, it's our job to make them."


He "was one of the first to understand that the information component of this war was perhaps just as important as the combat," wrote Alexander Kots, a war reporter for the pro-government daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, adding that Pavlov liked "Russian rap and joking around" and that his friends called him "Motik."

In July 2014, he arranged one of the most bizarre events of the war up to that point: His own wedding, attended by members of Russian and Western media, that highlighted the manic, tragicomic (and highly media-sensitive) atmosphere of Donetsk in early 2014.



One week later, a Malaysian airliner carrying 298 passengers and crew was shot from the sky. A two-year, Dutch-led investigation last month said that the missile-launcher "came from Russia" and was fired from territory held by the separatists.

On Monday, an 11-second video appeared in which men who said they are members of the neo-Nazi "Misanthropic Division," claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim could not immediately be verified.



On Monday, Russian state television aired glowing obituaries to Pavlov and his role in the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic, or DNR. Others responded with gallows humor.

"The DNR fighter has changed his codename from "Motorola" to Samsung Galaxy Note 7," joked one anti-Kremlin account, in reference to the Samsung's exploding telephones.
Боец ДНР сменил позывной с "Моторола" на "Самсунг гэлекси ноут севен".

The Elite “Have No Idea” – Society is Near the Breaking Point

socities

Societies are not, on average, stable and safe. Thomas Hobbes knew that quite well, as evidenced in his most famous quote. Humanity is likely on the verge of returning to the mean, and the mean is exactly that: mean. In case some have forgotten their Hobbes: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

by Chindit13

Courtesy: Zero Hedge

( October 16, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) What I find most surprising today is that the insiders and the elite have no idea what is percolating just beneath the surface. Okay, maybe their arrogance actually produces its own fog, so it should not come as a surprise that they are blinded. They do not look at the calendar, which, if one really looks, says “1788” on it. Something is close. Very close. Society is near the breaking point.

My own experience is that Hillary’s so-called Deplorables are actually the most reserved, most polite, and most honest demographic in the country. They are more informed, more self-reliant, and among other things, better armed. Regarding their arms, they are incredibly responsible, and not the source of the violence for which the implement, and not the person, is too often blamed. The Deplorables have the longest fuse. It is, however, a fuse.

Alt Left, on the other hand, are the Neo Fascists and Neo Neocons. It is Alt Left that thinks Free Speech means THEIR speech only. It is Alt Left that needs ‘safe spaces’ and wants to enforce thought crime.
It is Alt Left, and its media lapdog sites, that is heavily into censorship of ideas that diverge from their approved ideology. It is Alt Left that champions regime change and ratcheting up the rhetoric against Russia. It is Alt Left that believes it has an inherent right, even an obligation, to lie and obfuscate if it serves their greater purpose.

Perhaps most significant is that it is Alt Left who so quickly resorts to violence and vandalism when confronted with people and ideas with which it takes exception. Never has that been as clear as in this election cycle.

The Deplorables, however, are not possessed of infinite patience. Like a capacitor, there is a charge building, and at some point it will be released into the circuitry of society.

The media and other insiders believe themselves to be immune. That thought no doubt results from being immersed inside a cocoon where dissonant voices are not allowed. When the levee breaks, or the capacitor releases its charge, they are going to be gob smacked.

Precious few of them are anywhere near as immune as they believe themselves to be. Additionally, what they might think, or hope, is their support, their security, their safe space, doesn’t really exist.

Most of society’s guardians, whether they are law enforcement or military, are card-carrying members of the Deplorables.

France was similarly constructed in the late 1780s. The elite were isolated only in thought, not in reality. 
Their protection was of a Potemkin Village nature: not actually there, but merely a facade that gave them false comfort.

They paid dearly for their arrogance and ignorance.

History may not repeat, but it does rhyme. The calendar really does seem to say 1788, so 1789—and 1792–are not as far off as some would like to believe.

This is not a call to arms, but it is a call to reality. Ignore it at your own peril.

Some may see these words as a threat. They are not. They are, however, a warning, and a warning from someone who is a student of history.

Every society eventually reaches a breaking point. Ours is nearly there. Some of those who might feel threatened, the so-called elite and insiders, think that they can buy protection as easily as they can buy a Gulfstream. How naïve! Who are the private security contractors? Who are the various SOGs? Like law enforcement and the rest of the military, they are the Deplorables. The Deplorables will take your money, but you will not take their lives. Better said, they won’t give up their lives for you or your family. The security you believe you have purchased is an illusion. Make that delusion. Best to get that out front here and now.

Some who feel threatened, or nervous, might fall back on the tired adage of ‘We gave them (the Deplorables) everything; what do they think they will do without us?’ Well, the use of ‘we’ is arrogant, because those who have actually produced something of value are few and far between. Industrialists, for lack of a better term, are those who produced for society things of lasting value. There are few true industrialists today, and many who still remain have shipped their production overseas, jacking up the compensation of bonus-based execs, but contributing to the hollowing out of America. The true industrialists did produce the cars, trucks, machine tools, generators, servers and even computers. They produced lifesaving medicines and treatments. They made steel plants and built railroads.

They produced jobs. They even produced the guns that the Deplorables have by the hundreds of millions. The Deplorables recognize that entire contribution.

Mark Zuckerberg, however, is not Henry Ford. Jack Dorsey is not Andrew Carnegie. Mark Benioff is not John Rockefeller. Lloyd Blankfein is not John Pierpont Morgan. (Elon Musk might turn out to be someone of significance, if he is allowed to fail and is forgiven for it. Time will tell.) The old Robber Barons, despite their faults, did produce things of lasting value.

What did these new ‘titans of industry’ give us? Facebook? Snapchat?

Twitter? They gave us banality and pabulum. Some embraced it, despite its triteness, perhaps because all other meaning had already been lost, like America’s exported jobs. These new titans, Neo Titans, did little more than help dumb down society. They made America less productive, less curious, more pedestrian. 

Maybe they think they gave us the internet, but credit for that goes to DARPA, which is to say the military, which is to say the Deplorables. The Neo Titans gave America nothing, at least nothing positive. Social networking? Gaming? Selfies?

The Deplorables can live without the silly oxymoron called social networking, which, as anyone who looks at it objectively knows, is anything but social. We don’t care what two thousand of our fake friends had for breakfast, or what Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks of the latest Presidential debate. He probably thinks we do. 

After all, he has ‘Twitter Followers’, whom he assumes live and die by his every Tweet. We can live without that. I wonder if his ego can? He, and those of his ilk, are merely Kim Kardashians without knowing it. They are the talentless dishing out white bread to the emotionally and spiritually starved.

Some might think this is all Trump’s fault. Again, that shows a degree of ignorance and naïveté which characterizes the elite. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. He might even be a salve, as the changes he could bring might defuse some of the current anger.

On the other hand, Hillary is a lit match in a room of dynamite. She, like many of the self-important, thinks her very existence is a favor to the rest of us. She epitomizes the absolute worst of what America has become. Above the law, wealthy not through accomplishment, but through influence peddling only, and a bull in a china shop in terms of her effect on both the country and the world—and I apologize to bulls for that analogy. The world is more unstable because of her.

America is less safe because of her. Russia and the US—the two largest nuclear powers—are more at odds because of her. With her in power, we will reach the breaking point at home and internationally, perhaps leading to ‘accidental’ nuclear war, as the heightened rhetoric impacts clear thinking. Society is more stratified because of her. Race relations have deteriorated because of her (and Obama).

There are few current ills in society and in geopolitics that cannot be laid at her feet, at least to some extent. The Great Deceiver to many, who exhibits an astonishing aversion to truth telling, is enough to make even an agnostic wonder if the anti-Christ hasn’t finally arrived for its three and a half years of rule.

A recently hacked email of John Podesta finds him saying “she (Hillary) has begun to hate everyday Americans”. No doubt the same feelings were voiced by Nicolas Ceaucescu. It turned out the feeling was mutual.

Elect Hillary, and continue with business as usual, and it is likely this warning will become an epitaph for the America we know. Society may collapse regardless, because the rot is already very great, but she will hasten the day of reckoning.

The Deplorables have already considered what is coming. They are as prepared as they can be. Years of decline have enabled many to build their survival skills, to make due with less, to build real communities where one man can trust another, to discover what is truly important and what can and should be salvaged from this society.

Outside of that demographic, however, people are stark naked. They are vulnerable in ways they simply cannot imagine. They are unprepared and unskilled for what will matter most. They are cannon fodder living on borrowed time.

History is full of examples of this sort of collapse. We humans have always rolled along a sine wave of progress and decline, of civility and social unrest. We think we have outgrown the sort of mayhem with which the history books are full, but that thought stems from recency bias. Most of history—the vast majority—is not peaceful.

Societies are not, on average, stable and safe. Thomas Hobbes knew that quite well, as evidenced in his most famous quote. Humanity is likely on the verge of returning to the mean, and the mean is exactly that: 
mean. In case some have forgotten their Hobbes: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Have a nice day.

Hitler house in Austria to be demolished after long row


A memorial stone outside the house where Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau Am Inn
The Austrian government is looking to pass a law to allow it to tear down Hitler's birthplace (pictured)
BBC17 October 2016

The house in Austria where Adolf Hitler was born is set to be demolished to stop it becoming a focal point for neo-Nazis.
The future of the former guesthouse has been widely debated, with opinion torn between razing it or changing its use.
The argument was further complicated after its owner refused to sell.
But Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said a committee of experts had decided that the house should be demolished, reported Austrian newspaper Die Presse.
A new building put in its place will be used for administrative or for charitable purposes, the paper added (in German).
"The Hitler house will be torn down. The foundations can remain but a new building will be erected. It will be be used by either a charity or the local authorities," Mr Sobotka told Die Presse.
The house has been the subject of years of legal wrangling between the owner Gerlinde Pommer and the government, which has been renting it since 1972 to prevent any misuse.
It currently pays about €4,800 ($5,300; £4,336) a month for the building in Braunau am Inn .


Bethany Bell visits the house where Adolf Hitler was born

Ms Pommer who is now retired, has repeatedly refused to sell the three-storey building to the government.
For the last five years it has also stood empty, as she refused to allow renovation work to be done.
The building had previously been used as a centre for people with disabilities.
An interior ministry spokesman told AFP a legal amendment proposed earlier this year which would allow them to seize the property was still "under way", meaning parliament has yet to approve the demolition.
However, the decision will likely upset some in the community, some who wanted it to become a refugee centre, others a museum dedicated to Austria's liberation from Nazi rule.
A number of cultural organisations previously opposed the building's demolition because it is part of the historic city centre and therefore under heritage protection.

Hitler shakes hands with a member of the Hitler Youth in the last official photograph of the Nazi leader, 1945
GETTY IMAGESImage caption-There are fears Nazi sympathisers may make it a focal point
Hitler was born in a rented room on the top floor of the building, near the Austro-German border, on 20 April 1889.
During Nazi rule, the house was transformed into a shrine to Hitler as the town drew in a wave of tourists.
But as the Nazis began to lose control in 1944, it was shut up.
Yet despite the efforts of successive governments to stop it drawing neo-Nazis sympathisers to Braunau am Inn, locals say it still does.
"I've even witnessed people from Italy or from France coming here… for adoration purposes," Josef Kogler, a teacher in Braunau, told the BBC.
"One Frenchman, a history teacher I think it was, came and asked me for Hitler's birthplace… It's hard to understand."

Indonesia: Nine dead after bridge collapses during religious Hindu celebration


The suspension bridge in Bali, Indonesia, before it collapsed on Sunday, killing nine locals. Image via 
@qayyumsunawan

17th October 2016

AT least nine people were killed and 30 others injured after a suspension bridge collapsed near the resort island of Bali, Indonesian officials said.

A spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, says the bridge, linking the small islands of Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan off of Bali, collapsed Sunday evening.

Nugroho says eight of the victims who died have been identified. They include three children aged from 3 to 9. He says two of the injured were in serious condition, while the others suffered minor injuries.
He said the bridge collapsed as locals were celebrating a religious Hindu festival.

“Many people pass through the bridge During Hari Nyepi Segara (Day of Silence) when not much activities are carried out at sea. The bridge was seen rocking before it collapsed. Several motorcycle riders were among those who fell into the sea during a low tide,” Nugroho said, as quoted by Detik.

He says initial reports indicate that there were no foreigners among the victims.


The head of the subdistrict of Nusa Penida, Gusti Ngurah Agung Mahajaya, said authorities were still trying to determine the number of people still missing, the Associated Press reported.

Mahajaya said the bridge — which was about 100 meters (yards) long and 1.5 meters (5 feet) wide and used only by pedestrians and motorcyclists — collapsed as many people were crossing it while returning from praying at a temple on Ceningan island.
Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) spokesperson, Wayan Aryawan, said the collapse of the Yellow Bridge connecting Lembongan Island and Ceningan was likely due to pre-existing ruptures on the supporting slings of the bridge.

He said the bridge collapsed due to the excessive burden of accommodating a large crowd.
“The bridge gave way because the (supporting) slings snapped,” Aryawan told Detik.

This bridge, which collapsed at around 6pm Sunday, had renovated several times due to damage to the foundation prior to the incident.

Additional reporting from the Associated Press