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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jan 20, 2014 21:24:34 GMT -7
J.J. The USA is very highly diverisified in the manner of deployment global wide, for in this manner is an irritation to the Russian command. For as a residual effect, creates some issues to us. For the Americans have such nine commands, one on our land of Stuttgart of: Kelly Barracks. Whilst the remainder are on USA soil. This would be the United States Africa Command. Or more correctly: USAFRICOM www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42077.pdfIt would be quite nice to relocate this one {Stuttgart} to Poland for them to deal with. It is enough for the Americans to have their nuclear weapons based upon our soil. For in this manner, in time of conflict, we are targeted, in this manner, is simply unacceptable to our security and safety. Please, Americans,,get the hell off our land and create your own island of devestiation...The war has long been past and all that was, is no more.. Karl Amen to that Karl, Amen !!!
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jan 21, 2014 6:52:14 GMT -7
- The Daily Caller - dailycaller.com - EPA overrides Congress, hands over town to Indian tribesPosted By Michael Bastasch On 12:27 PM 01/08/2014 In | No Comments Have you heard the story of the residents of Riverton, Wyo.? One day they were Wyomingans, the next they were members of the Wind River tribes — after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the town part of the Wind River Indian Reservation, undoing a 1905 law passed by Congress and angering state officials. The surprise decision was made by officials of the EPA, the Department of Interior, and Department of Justice early last month, and has invoked the ire of Gov. Matt Mead, who has vowed not to honor the agency’s decision and is preparing to fight in court. “My deep concern is about an administrative agency of the federal government altering a state’s boundary and going against over 100 years of history and law,” Mead said in a statement. “This should be a concern to all citizens because, if the EPA can unilaterally take land away from a state, where will it stop?” The EPA declared that Riverton was part of the Wind River Indian Reservation after granting a “Treatment as a State” application from the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. The tribes submit such applications to get funding for air quality monitoring under the Clean Air Act. However, this seemingly innocuous application ended up undoing the tribal boundaries set by a 1905 congressional act. The EPA granted the tribes’ claim that the Wind River reservation extended over one million acres of land beyond what the 1905 Congressional Act established. By doing this, the agency effectively overruled an act of Congress, state officials charge. The worry by state officials is that turning Riverton, a town of over 10,000 people, over to the tribes will come with a slew of tax and law enforcement complications. Since Riverton is now part of the Wind River reservation, it is technically no longer eligible for state services and no longer falls under local law enforcement. Mead, however, has ordered that state agencies conduct “business as usual” in regards to Riverton, meaning state services, law enforcement and regulations will continue. “This is an alarming action when you have a federal agency step in and start to undo congressional acts that has really been our history for 108 years … with the stroke of a pen without talking to the biggest groups impacted,” state Sen. Leland Christensen told The Daily Caller News Foundation, “and that would be the city of Riverton and the state of Wyoming.” According to the Mead’s office, the EPA’s decision came as a surprise to him, and he only found about it from the media — not the EPA itself. This comes after Mead wrote to EPA administrator Gina McCarthy last August detailing his concerns about the implications of granting the tribes’ request to effectively override the 1905 act. The tribes remain adamant that Riverton and the one million acres of land is theirs, arguing that state officials once supported such a conclusion. Tribal officials have criticized tthe governor’s office for changing its tune on Riverton and the reservation’s boundaries. “Now that the [Interior Department] and EPA have issued their determinations, state officials have changed their tune, claiming to be outraged by the decision and suggesting that the federal government has no say in such matters,” the Northern Arapaho Business Council wrote in a letter to Mead, adding that the state’s shift in rhetoric could hurt tribe-state relations. The dispute has received little national attention as of yet, but the Wyoming congressional delegation has written the EPA on the issue. “The EPA’s decision has in effect overturned a law that has been governing land and relationships for more than 100 years,” wrote Wyoming Sens Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, along with Rep. Cynthia Lummis. “We are also very concerned about the political ramifications this decision could have for the tribes and the state of Wyoming.” The boundary dispute between Wyoming and the tribes has been going on for some time now. It arose from a 2009 tax case that the state urged the courts not to drop because of the “implications of ruling on a boundary without the federal government and Eastern Shoshone being involved in the case,” reports the Casper Star-Tribune. “We don’t have a fully binding decision,” Deputy Attorney General Marty Hardsocg in 2009. “We do in the state, but the state is then put in a position of having to rely on the federal government’s view for its direction.” “At the end, of the day state lawyers acknowledge that this determination is a federal question and must be determined to a final point in the federal courts,” Mark Howell, the lobbyist for the Northern Arapaho tribe, told the Star-Tribune. “That’s what this EPA decision will allow all parties to do.” State courts have heard at least two cases on the boundary in the last three decades — one 1980s Wyoming Supreme Court case found that Riverton was part of the reservation, and another state high court case in 2008, which found that the town was in Wyoming. The only problem is that the state court decisions don’t set a solid precedent, since neither case involves both tribes living on the reservation, nor the state and the federal government all at once, Howell told the Star-Tribune. The EPA did not immediately respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment. Something very sinister is evolving here. Our duly elected officials and our laws passed are being negated. The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Warnings From NAFTAPosted: 01/20/2014 6:00 pm With the New Year the corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are stepping up their drive for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade deal being negotiated in secret by the United States and eleven countries in the Pacific region. The key at the moment is Congressional approval of fast-track authority. This would give any agreement a straight up or down vote on an accelerated timetable. Fast-track authority would virtually guarantee passage since members would face intense pressure from corporate contributors and the media, in both the news and opinion sections, to support the deal. Failure to support a deal would mean that a member would be labeled a protectionist Neanderthal (name-calling is standard fare in Washington when pushing for trade deals) in addition to being badly under-funded in their re-election campaign. As has frequently been noted, the TPP is not really about trade. The tariff barriers and quotas between the TPP countries are already low in most cases. Rather the point of the deal is to put in place a structure of regulations that will be more friendly to the large corporations who are in many cases directly part of the negotiating process. The provisions in the agreement will overrule measures passed by national, state, and local legislative bodies, in effect stripping democratically elected officials of much of their authority. Since most of the text is still secret we can only speculate on what the final agreement will include. The leaked chapter on intellectual property indicated that it would likely mean sharply higher drug prices in many countries since the TPP would strengthen patents and related restrictions on selling drugs. The final agreement may limit the ability of governments to regulate fracking. In the United States, federal law prohibits state and local governments from requiring disclosure of the chemicals used in the fracking process. This makes it far more difficult to detect pollution of ground water and drinking water. The TPP may include a similar provision. It may also include restrictions on the ability of governments to regulate the financial sector. This could allow banks to skirt rules in Dodd-Frank or comparable financial reform bills approved by other countries. It is likely that many of the provisions in the final agreement would be highly unpopular if they were put up for a vote, but the whole point of getting the deal as a fast-tracked take it or leave it deal is to prevent individual provisions from ever being considered. And there will be enormous pressure to take it. That is what we saw with the full court press used to pass NAFTA. And twenty years later the media and the economics profession are still covering up on the impact of NAFTA in order to avoid embarrassment to the deal's supporters. For example, The Washington Post recently wrote about Mexico's growing middle class which it attributed in part to NAFTA. This is in spite of the fact that Mexico had the second slowest growth on any country in Latin America since the passage of NAFTA. The Washington Post also bizarrely asserted in a 2007 editorial attacking presidential candidates for criticizing NAFTA that Mexico's GDP had quadrupled since 1988. In fact, its growth was just 83 percent. The economics profession, or at least pillars such as the World Bank, has also been prepared to make up numbers to make it appear NAFTA was a success. On the tenth anniversary of NAFTA the World Bank published a report touting the benefits of NAFTA to both the United States and Mexico. One of the key claims in this report was that NAFTA had produced faster growth in Mexico, leading to a convergence in living standards between Mexico and the United States. It is easy to see that this was not true. According to IMF data, Mexico's per capita GDP rose by 29.1 percent from 1993 to 2002, the last year in the study. By contrast, per capita GDP had risen by 44.2 percent in the United States over the same period. Typically we would expect that a developing country would have more rapid growth than a rich country like the United States, so it would not be clear whether any convergence was due to NAFTA or would have happened regardless. However since growth in the U.S. outpaced growth in Mexico there was no convergence to argue over, the gap in incomes became larger. Nonetheless, the World Bank's report trumpeted the success of NAFTA, showing how it led to greater prosperity for Mexico. They used a mistaken analysis to get this result, which the Bank has refused to correct to this day. This is what the opponents of the TPP can expect to encounter. All the rules of objectivity that the media claim to respect will be thrown in the dustbin. The same applies to any norms of professional integrity in economics. Big money is at stake here and the big boys intend to get a win with TPP. Logic, numbers, and evidence face an uphill battle. Follow Dean Baker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeanBaker13
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Post by kaima on Jan 21, 2014 10:14:55 GMT -7
Something very sinister is evolving here. Our duly elected officials and our laws passed are being negated.Yea, If we aren't careful, we might stumble into honoring one of our Indian Treaties!PS> I would love to see large tracts of Massachusetts and New Jersey given back to the Indians. That would be sweet revenge for Easterners mucking up self governance and treaties in the West!
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Jan 31, 2014 22:21:31 GMT -7
Yea, If we aren't careful, we might stumble into honoring one of our Indian Treaties!PS> I would love to see large tracts of Massachusetts and New Jersey given back to the Indians. That would be sweet revenge for Easterners mucking up self governance and treaties in the West! Holy Smokes - - - I would have to live in a teepee ? Maybe my wife can join a tribe as she has Indian blood in her.
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Post by pieter on Feb 1, 2014 5:11:38 GMT -7
The ghost of the Indian chiefs wonder over the American landApache chief geronimoChief Quanah ParkerSioux Chiefs on HorsebackFlag of the Eastern Shoshone tribeThe Wind River at the Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Feb 2, 2014 7:04:27 GMT -7
This comes across my desk this AM. I think it is very well done!!!
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Feb 8, 2014 11:40:24 GMT -7
Returning to the Sochi area - - -Did the Age of Genocide Begin in Sochi?
By Joshua Keating "The Mountaineers Leave the Aul," by P.N. Gruzinsky, 1872.Via Wikipedia Of the myriad controversies surrounding the upcoming Olympics, one that’s gotten relatively little attention—at least outside Russia—is the ongoing campaign against the games by the global Circassian community. The choice of Sochi as a venue has highlighted a tragic but largely forgotten chapter in the region’s history. The Circassian Genocide, book published last year by Occidental College historian Walter Richmond, makes a compelling case that Sochi was the site of modern Europe’s first genocide, a crime against humanity that presaged many of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. The Circassians, who also self-identify as the Adyghe, were once one of the predominant ethnic groups of the North Caucasus, predominantly Sunni Muslim and speaking a distinctive group of languages. They also had the unfortunate historical luck to have lived between two expansionist empires—Czarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey—at the worst possible time. Russia had gradually pushed southward into the Caucasus from the 16th through the 19th centuries, making efforts to “pacify” the local inhabitants, forcing them out of their traditional homes in the mountains to more accessible and controllable areas along the coast. This often involved giving Cossack groups the right to settle in the region. Neither empire had much infrastructure in the region, but in 1829, Russia and Turkey—after a two-year war—signed the Treaty of Adrianople, which formally recognized the czar as the ruler of Circassian territory along the Black Sea, which accelerated Russia’s efforts to consolidate its control over the areas. As one Russian general put it at the time, Alexander II thought that the Circassians “were nothing more than rebellious Russian subjects, ceded to Russia by their legal sovereign 50 the Sultan,” when in fact they were “dealing with one and a half million valiant, militaristic mountain dwellers who had never recognized any authority over them.” Clashes between Circassians and Cossacks were frequent, and often resulted in punitive raids by Russian forces. St. Petersburg also began a policy of strongly encouraging the Circassians to move to Turkey. The plight of the Circassians became a cause célèbre in Britain during the era of the “Great Game,” often accompanied with exotified portrayals of their traditional life. (The beautiful Circassian woman was a popular trope used in European advertising and pop culture in the 19th century.) During the 1853–1856 Crimean War, British agents encouraged the Circassians to rebel, and the locals anticipated a military intervention in the Caucasus that never arrived (a fate that would repeat itself for other victims of mass atrocities in the decades to follow). As Richmond writes, the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, had “declared Circassia a part of Russia but did not accord the Circassians the same rights as Russian Subjects. The Russians could deal with them as they wished, and St. Peterburg chose to treat them as an enemy population occupying Russian land.” The Circassians were, in effect, stateless people. After the war ended, Alexander decided that rather than attempting to pacify the Circassians, they should be forcibly relocated to Turkey. And in 1859 the military began a campaign of destroying Circassian villages and massacring their inhabitants to drive them to the coast. With the fairly cynical encouragement of the Ottomans, many Circassians resisted, but the “Caucasus War” was a one-sided affair and Russia declared victory after a last stand by the Circassians at Sochi in 1864, after which the formal evacuation of the group by ship from the Black Sea coast to Turkey began. Despite a horrific humanitarian catastrophe taking place along the coast, with those waiting for boats to take them away dying in massive numbers from typhus and smallpox amid a brutal winter, Russian troops continued their campaign of destroying Circassian villages in the mountains, creating thousands more refugees. Turkish ship owners did not help the situation by overcrowding their boats and charging exorbinant fees to the refugees. Richmond quotes a Russian officer describing the scene around Sochi as the Russians were celebrating their victory: “On the road our eyes were met with a staggering image: corpses of women, children, elderly persons, torn to pieces and half-eaten by dogs ; deportees emaciated by hunger and disease, almost too weak to move their legs, collapsing from exhaustion and becoming prey to 4 dogs while still alive.” Nikolai Evdokimov, the general in charge of the operation, wrote annoyedly, of a subordinate, “I wrote to Count Sumarokov as to why he keeps reminding me in every report concerning the frozen bodies which cover the roads.” According to Richmond’s estimates, about 625,000 Circassians died during the operation. And somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people were deported. Did the deportation of the Circassians constitute a genocide? Richmond argues that under the modern international legal definition, which refers to acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” it does. It also featured a number of eerie portents of crimes to come. Evdokimov used the Russian word “ochishcnenie,” which means “cleansing,” to describe the forced migration of the Circassians, more than a century before a similar Serbian word gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing." The fortunes of the Circassians were not improved much in the subsequent years. The language and religion of the few who managed to remain in the Caucasus were suppressed by the Soviets, though they were spared the fate of the Chechens, who were deported en masse under Stalin. Most were dispersed across the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, and in a cruel twist of fate, some were once again the victims of an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. About 1,500 Circassians returned to the Caucasus after the collapse of the Soviet Union, including 200 repatriated after they were attacked by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war. More recently the Circassians have been in the news when hundreds of them fled their longtime homes in Syria back to Russia to escape the civil war. A number of them are currently applying for permanent residence in their ancestral homeland. Israeli Circassians have also held protests over what they believe is discriminatory treatment in recent years. Today there are about 3 million to 5 million Circassians living abroad and about 700,000 in the Caucasus. The post-Soviet Russian government has been slow to recognize the extent of what happened to the group and has strongly resisted attempts to label it as genocide—the anti-Russian government of nearby Georgia did so in 2011— portraying Circassian nationalism as merely an outgrowth of the region’s Islamic radicalism. The global community commemorates Circassian Genocide Memorial Day every May 21. However, the decision to hold the games in the symbolically important city of Sochi has focused new attention on the issue, with Circassian activists in New Jersey launching an international campaign against the “genocide Olympics.” The group has been protesting since Vancouver, and one of its pamphlets informs athletes that they’ll be “skiing on mass graves.” It’s possible that local activists may attempt to stage some sort of opposition at the games themselves, though the authorities have been coming down hard on protests of all kinds. Top CommentIn one small but significant development, the governor of Krasnodar province, where the games will take place, acknowledged that "This land has not belonged to the Russian Empire, it belonged to Caucasus nations, to Circassians." Given the painful memories associated with Sochi, it’s understandable that Circassians have reacted with outrage to the choice of venue. But it also may be the only thing that could have reminded the world of a largely forgotten tragedy.
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Feb 9, 2014 8:54:29 GMT -7
The Lost Tribe Of Sochi: Russia’s Circassian DiasporaIn the 1860s, the Circassian people were driven out of Sochi by the Tzar’s armies to settle in Syria, Israel and Jordan. Now, displaced again by Assad’s war, they want the world to recognize them—and to return home. Winter sports don’t command much of a following in a Middle East more familiar with sand than snow, but one of the region’s lesser-known minorities will be glued to its TV screens when the Olympics kick off this weekend. The Circassian people were ruthlessly expunged from the Sochi area by the Russian czar’s armies in the 1860s, and the selection of the Black Sea city to host the Winter Games has aroused strong feelings in a diaspora mostly dotted across Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Israel. Some Circassians feel these Olympics have been almost stage-managed to provoke maximum offense. “This is like having the Olympics in Auschwitz,” tweeted one young Circassian activist. The KrasnayaPolyana ski complex is purportedly built on the site of the Circassians’ legendary last battle, while the glitzy new Sochi seafront stands where the survivors of the Russians’ scorched-earth campaign sailed off into exile in the Ottoman Empire. Most infuriatingly of all for a people fearful of being overlooked by history, it’s the Cossacks, who assumed a prominent role in hounding the Circassians out of their ancestral homeland, who are presiding over the Games’ ceremonial functions instead of the native inhabitants. “We are the indigenous people, but we are not part of these Olympics in any shape or form,” said Tamara Barsik of the ‘No Sochi’ campaign, which has sought to raise awareness of Circassian grievances fromits base in suburban New Jersey. The current trials of the community in the diaspora have only fuelled Circassian fury and energized those clamoring to return home. Syrian Circassians have fled their adopted country en masse since the war started, and some now languish in refugee camps almost 150 years to the day since they were first made stateless. They’re not blind to the harsh symmetry of it all. “I believe [the war] is even harder for Syrian Circassians [than other Syrians] because we were displaced before. We’ve lost our two homelands: the one we grew up and lived in and the original,” said Lina Shagouj, who fled to Turkey from Aleppo in late 2012 after soldiers killed and mutilated a young man in front of her small clothing business. But even before the war, life for Syrian Circassians was something of a challenge. Most infuriatingly of all for a people fearful of being overlooked by history, it’s the Cossacks, who assumed a prominent role in hounding the Circassians out of their ancestral homeland, who are presiding over the Games’ ceremonial functions instead of the native inhabitants. The Ottomans settled many of the hardy Caucasus mountain people in the Golan Heights, and when war with Israel came in 1967, most Circassian villages were obliterated in the fighting, with the remnants evacuated to form a UN-patrolled demilitarized zone. Circassians are all Sunni Muslim, but as a minority of a little over 100,000 people, some Syrian opposition Islamist groups have suspected them of siding with Assad’s government along with most Alawite Muslims, Christians and Druze. There’s little evidence of Circassian support for either side, though a number of the community’s young men have been drafted into the army, and hundreds of Circassians are thought to be among the war’s 130,000 dead. Several thousand Syrian Circassians have applied for Russian visas and residency, but Moscow is deeply wary of their intent to resettle the Sochi area and documents haven’t been forthcoming. Cemal Ishak, who previously worked in human resources in Damascus before escaping to Istanbul when the violence intensified in early 2012, wouldn’t want to go anyway. “What’s the difference between Assad’s regime and Putin’s regime?” he said. “We need some kind of liberal regime that respects all people. Besides, Putin is still controlling the land.” Circassian activists claim Russia perpetrated a genocide against its people in 1864, and while many academics are slightly uncomfortable using the ‘G’ word, the personal correspondence of the Russian field commanders in Georgia’s archives tells the tale of systematic killing on a massive scale. “The Circassians—like Chechens, Ingush, and Dagestanis—have a legitimate set of historical grievances that, unfortunately, very few Russians have begun to recognize,” said Charles King, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. Roughly 10 percent of the Circassian population, which is usually estimated at around seven million, resides in three semi-autonomous Russian republics, but in all of these Circassians are a small minority unable to exercise any power. The abuse of Circassians who’ve remained in Russia continues to this day, according to Human Rights Watch. At least 40 Circassians were detained in a pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent, including about 30 arrested while flying ‘Sochi—The Land of Genocide’ banners in a North Caucasus city. 140207-schwartzstein-circassian-embedCircassians living in Turkey gather in front of the Russian Consulate to protest against the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Istanbul on February 2, 2014. (Osman Orsal/Reuters)But Russian Circassians are probably still better off than their Middle Eastern kin, many of whom are reeling from the side-effects of Syria’s implosion. Turkey is home to much the largest Circassian community in the world at around two million to five million people, but, as in Jordan, it’s struggling to contend with the massive influx of refugees, many of whom arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs. Families are quick to absorb distant cousins, and those with spare apartments are keen to surrender them to strangers, including Cemal Ishak, but there was no planning for the size of the Syrian exodus. Until recently, however, it was Turkish Circassians who were reeling from state-sponsored persecution. “We were not allowed to use our traditional names, because they’re not Turkic names and that didn’t fit with the Turkish idea. Not even [Circassian] first names were acceptable,” said Istanbul-native Sencer Shumaf, whose family was forced to change its name to Busun. It was a similar story in Syria: Lina Shagouj’s surname was replaced with Zakaria. For much of the 20th century, schoolchildren were banned from learning their native Circassian language, and badly beaten if they disobeyed. Communities were spilt into smaller and smaller units, while signs in villages warned against speaking Circassian in public areas. “They were meant to forget their Circassian culture and just become Turks,” said Walter Richmond, an authority on the Caucasus region at Occidential College. Jordanian Circassians were historically the best positioned in the region. They forged a strong bond with the Hashemite monarchy in its fledgling early days, and subsequently enjoyed decades of royal favor and patronage. As a measure of their loyalty, Circassians still form the King’s personal palace guard. Nowadays, though, some Circassians feel their position is slipping, and with it the protection their status afforded them. Several thousand Syrian Circassians have applied for Russian visas and residency, but Moscow is deeply wary of their intent to resettle the Sochi area and documents haven’t been forthcoming. “We are happy, we like Jordan, but life is becoming more difficult for us here and people are always thinking to get back to the motherland,” said Emad Shubsagh, who like many Circassians works for the royal family, and who was expelled from Russia in 1993 after moving there to study. Suspicion of Circassians is fired in part by their association with Israel. 5000 Circassians live in two villages in the north of the country near the Sea of Galilee, and their trusted status and the relatively unencumbered passage some of them enjoy when crossing the border raises eyebrows among many Jordanians. It’s their appearance and traditions that really set them apart though. SomeCircassians have very white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes and consequently stand out in mostly Arab Jordan. Many drink alcohol, mingle easily with members of the opposite sex and consume large quantities of highly calorific foods cooked to sustain Caucasus mountain herdsmen—including tea made with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. “This is all we have. We don’t have a country,” Emad said, as we watched a bevy of young Circassians perform a traditional dance, which is best described as a completely captivating balletic romp across a stage, in an auditorium steps away from the King’s office in the capital of Amman. Circassians are desperately fearful of losing their traditions, and already many Circassian women wear hijabs, “which is something you never would have seen before,” said Merissa Khurma, who previously worked in the royal household and now organizes a football league in Zaatari refugee camp on the Syrian border. This fear of excessive assimilation has persuaded much of the community to live in Circassian-only neighborhoods, which fuels anti-Circassian sentiment and breeds resentment of their seemingly insular traditions. “But we have to do it this way or our culture will go away,” Emad said, gesturing at a row of shops catering to the community in Amman’s leafy Western outskirts. “Either this or we go back to Sochi and that is very difficult.”
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Mar 5, 2014 5:38:46 GMT -7
The latest survey shows that three out of four people make up 75% of the population
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Apr 22, 2014 4:40:01 GMT -7
Eugene LazowskiEugeniusz Łazowski, PolandDr. Eugene Lazowski born Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski (1913, Częstochowa, Poland – December 16, 2006, Eugene, Oregon, United States) was a Polish medical doctor who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust by creating a fake epidemic which played on German phobias about hygiene.[citation needed] By doing this, he risked the German death penalty, which was applied to Poles who helped Jews in the Holocaust. During World War II Łazowski served as a Polish Army Second Lieutenant on a Red Cross train, then as a military doctor of the Polish resistance Home Army. Thanks to a medical discovery by his friend, Dr Stanisław Matulewicz, Łazowski created a fake outbreak of Epidemic Typhus, a dangerous infectious disease. He spread it in and around the town of Rozwadów (now a district of Stalowa Wola), which the Germans then quarantined. This saved an estimated 8,000 Polish Jews from certain death in German concentration camps during the Holocaust. Łazowski did this in utmost secrecy because he, like all Poles, were under the threat of execution by the Germans if they helped Jews. In 1958, Lazowski emigrated to the United States on a scholarship from Rockefeller Foundation and in 1976 became professor of Pediatrics at the State University of Illinois. He wrote a memoir entitled Prywatna wojna (My Private War) reprinted several times, as well as over a hundred scientific dissertations.[1] See also: Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust The Polish Schindler Before the onset of World War II Eugeniusz Łazowski obtained a medical degree at the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw. During the German occupation Łazowski resided in Rozwadów with his wife and young daughter. Łazowski spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp prior to his arrival in the town, where he reunited with his family and began practising medicine with his medical-school friend Dr Stanisław Matulewicz. Matulewicz discovered that by injecting a healthy person with a "vaccine" of killed bacteria, that person would test positive for Epidemic Typhus without experiencing the symptoms. The two doctors hatched a secret plan to save about a dozen villages in the vicinity of Rozwadów and Zbydniów not only from forced labor exploitation, but also Nazi extermination. Łazowski, the Polish 'Schindler', created a fake typhus epidemic in the town of Rozwadow and its vicinity and spared 8,000 Jews from Nazi persecution. He used medical science to deceive the Germans and save both Jews and Poles from deportation to the Nazi concentration camps.[1][2] Germans were terrified of the disease because the disease was highly contagious. Those infected with typhus were not sent to concentration camps. Instead, when a sufficient number of people were infected, the Germans would quarantine the entire area. However, the Germans would not enter the FLECKFIEBER zone, fearing the disease would spread to them also. In this way, while Dr. Lazowski and Dr. Matulewicz did not hide Jewish families in their homes, they were able to spare 8,000 people from 12 ghettos from summary executions and inevitable deportations to concentration camps. Jews who tested positive for typhus were summarily massacred by the Nazis, so doctors injected the non-Jewish population in neighborhoods surrounding the ghettos, knowing that a possibility of widespread outbreak inside would cause Germans to abandon the area and thus spare local Jews in the process. A documentary about Dr. Eugene Lazowski entitled "A Private War" was made by a television producer Ryan Bank who followed Lazowski back to Poland and recorded testimonies of people whose families were saved by the fake epidemic.[3] Lazowski retired from practice in the late 1980s. He died in 2006 in Eugene, Oregon, where he had been living with his daughter.[2]
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 2, 2014 4:41:58 GMT -7
Yea, If we aren't careful, we might stumble into honoring one of our Indian Treaties!PS> I would love to see large tracts of Massachusetts and New Jersey given back to the Indians. That would be sweet revenge for Easterners mucking up self governance and treaties in the West! Feds consider taking Alaska tribal land into trustAssociated Press 16 hours ago ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Department of Interior announced this week that it will consider taking Alaska tribal land into trust. The move could lead to pockets of "Indian country," where tribal courts and governments would have authority to create their own laws and justice systems, the Anchorage Daily News reported (http://is.gd/bUHu9y). Currently, the only Indian country community with a reservation in the state is Metlakatla, in southeast Alaska. The state opposes the move. A judge in Washington, D.C., last year agreed with Alaska Native tribes, supported by nonprofit law firms, which sued in federal court saying the Interior Department should have been taking land into trust years ago. The state has appealed the decision, but the Interior Department acted on the U.S. district court judge's decision. The department is opening a 60-day comment period on the subject. Attorney Matthew Newman with the Native American Rights Fund said he expects the state, Alaska Federation of Natives, tribes and Native corporations to submit comments. He said it's possible the proposed rule won't be adopted, based on comments. "I would not be bold enough to say it's a sure thing," Newman said. If the regulation is adopted, it would only authorize the Interior Department to accept applications for trust status, he said. Acceptance of Indian country in Alaska was among recommendations last year from the Indian Law and Order Commission, which was born from a 2010 federal law. The bipartisan commission attributed high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence in rural Alaska to the state's centralized judicial systems and law enforcement. The commission recommended that tribes get increased authority to enforce in tribal courts laws they for themselves. "The basic thrust of the Indian Law and Order Commission's recommendation is that the state of public safety for Alaska Natives, especially for Native women who suffer high rates of domestic abuse, sexual violence and other offenses, is unacceptable; providing trust lands in Alaska in appropriate circumstances would provide additional authority for Native governments to be better partners with the State of Alaska to address these problems," the Interior Department said in announcing the proposed rule Wednesday. The rule barring the department from taking Alaska tribal land into trust dates back to 1980. That's when the program was created for lower 48 Native Americans. It is among "Alaska exceptions" denying Alaska Natives the same rights as lower 48 Indians and it is partly the legacy of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The president of the National Congress of American Indians said he was "greatly encouraged" by the proposed rule change. "The trust relationship between the federal government and tribal governments is the foundation of all policies affecting Indian Country," Brian Cladoosby said in a statement released Thursday. "That Alaska Native peoples have been cut out of this critical arrangement is unacceptable and has created myriad problems for those tribes." ___ Information from: Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News, www.adn.com
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 11, 2014 4:30:24 GMT -7
Victorian Strangeness: The ship taken over by animalsBy Magazine Monitor A collection of cultural artefacts Take one ship. Add a consignment of ferocious beasts in flimsy containers. Send it in to a stormy ocean and stand well back. Author Jeremy Clay tells the extraordinary story of horror on the high seas.She was so late, they had given her up as lost. Another ship swallowed whole by the ocean on the perilous crossing to America. Then one day in January 1890, with all hope gone, the British barque Margaret limped in to the harbour at Boston, her captain and crew wearing the haunted expressions of men who would never need to be told that worse things happen at sea. Their story was a singular mix of Noah's ark and the mutiny on the Bounty. To Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper it was "the most remarkable voyage that has been chronicled outside the realms of fiction for a long time". Captain Sargent, an expert in understatement, simply said it was an experience he didn't wish to repeat. The Margaret had slipped out of port on the west coast of Africa with a full cargo and a couple of stowaways, who quickly found themselves wishing they'd crept on to a different boat. In the hold was a consignment of live animals being shipped from Durban to a museum in the States: 400 cockatoos and parrots, 12 snakes, some monkeys, a gorilla, an orangutan and two crocodiles. Uh-oh. First to die were the birds, starved when the ship's swarming rats scoffed all the corn that had been provided as feed. The raging storm the Margaret ran in to set in motion the chain of events that accounted for most of the rest of this floating menagerie. As the ship was tossed about on wind-whipped waves, the snakes and crocodiles broke free of their crates and invaded the crew's quarters, forcing the sailors to seek shelter in the cabin for days on end. "These reptiles, along with the rats, kept up a continual warfare until the surviving crocodile killed the last snake," said the paper, "and completed the chain of vengeance by being killed by some of the cargo shifting and falling on it". As the snakes and crocodiles battled for supremacy, the monkeys also broke free and took to the rigging, where all efforts to dislodge or shoo them proved fruitless, until the crashing sea did the job, sweeping most of them away, along with sections of the masts. The most troublesome passenger of all was the gorilla - 5ft (142cm) tall and understandably dismayed at his changing circumstances. He'd been secured in a stout wooden box, until he forced off the lid and clambered out. "Having obtained possession of an iron bar, he commanded all objects within 10 feet of where he was chained," reported the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette. "With this formidable truncheon he threatened to brain every sailor who came within range. The cook one day unwarily approaching heard the bar whistling through the air and ducked, but not in time to save his head, which was half scalped." Stunned by the blow, the cook was then seized by the gorilla which "would doubtless have throttled him had not a sailor come up with a hatchet and stunned the monster". When the ship and its weary crew finally docked, the museum staff arrived to collect their cargo. Whatever space they had allocated for their display of African wildlife, it was far too much. All that was left to hand over was the gorilla, three monkeys and four parrots.
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 18, 2014 4:24:02 GMT -7
BBC News Magazine
17 May 2014 Last updated at 19:03 ET
The Caribbean colony that brought down Scotland
By Allan Little BBC News, Darien, Panama
As Scotland prepares for an independence referendum I decided to look back at the late 1690s when an independent Scotland launched an ambitious but ultimately doomed plan to create a colony in what is now Panama.
We landed near the border with Colombia, close to where the Isthmus of Panama is at its narrowest, on a little airstrip wedged between the blue sparkle of the Caribbean and the green intensity of an impenetrable forest, and boarded a little fibreglass boat with a single outboard motor.
We made our way west, parallel to the coast, bouncing roughly in the surging surf, until we came to the island that is still called Caledonia.
"In the time of our forefathers," a village elder told us, "white people came here - Scottish and Spanish people. We liked the Scottish more than the Spanish, for the Spanish attacked us and drove us inland away from the coast and the Scots did not. But there were battles and many ships were sunk".
The story of the ill-fated Scots colony at Darien survives in the oral history of the Kuna Indians, who are the only people who have ever settled successfully in this inhospitable place.
In 1698, a fleet of five ships sailed from Leith docks near Edinburgh carrying 1,200 settlers to found a colony in Panama.
It was a place where the poet John Keats would later locate "stout Cortez" gazing at the Pacific for the first time, "and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien".
The Scots found a large sheltered harbour with a supply of fresh water. They went ashore and built a fort they called Fort St Andrew.
Three centuries on, we hacked our way through the forest and found a trench they had dug to provide the fort with a defensive moat.
It is a wide gash, filled with sea water, cut through solid coral rock by 17th Century hands - the first canal in Panama, possibly, built by Scotsmen under a punishing tropical sky. It is pretty much all that is left of the colony they named Caledonia, and the town they called New Edinburgh.
For even before they made landfall, the colonists had begun to die.
Tropical diseases - malaria, yellow fever, something they called the bloody flux - cut them down even faster on land.
Somewhere beneath the tangle we hacked through, there is a Scottish cemetery with hundreds of graves. No-one has ever found it.
The forest is too dense. Within nine months of setting sail from Leith, on a wave of national euphoria, most of the colonists were dead. A second fleet sailed in 1699, not knowing that the colony had already been attacked and burned to the ground by the Spanish, and abandoned by its few survivors.
The disaster helped end Scotland's independence. For the colony had been funded by public subscription - an early example of a financial mania.
Public bodies, town corporations, members of parliament, landed gentry, and thousands of private citizens - sea captains and surgeons, apothecaries and ironmongers - sank their life savings into the scheme.
Between a quarter and a half of the available wealth of Scotland was spent, and lost.
And it was the role of England that was most bitterly resented.
Scotland, though an independent country, shared its head of state with England.
King William was monarch of both kingdoms. English merchants and the English parliament saw the Scottish venture as a threat to the trading monopolies they enjoyed.
King William issued a decree to all the English colonies from Canada to the Caribbean: there was to be no trade with the errant Scots and no assistance - not so much as a barrel of clean water was to be offered to them.
Few of the 3,000 Scots who went made it home. Those who did found an impoverished country which, within a decade, accepted union with England.
The Treaty of Union of 1707 included a clause in which the English government agreed to pay a sum of money to the Scots, to compensate the Darien investors for what they had lost.
The sum of money England paid to the Scots was known in the treaty as the Equivalent, or the Price of Scotland.
Darien still resonates, as Scotland prepares to vote on independence.
Pro-union Scots see in it a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-ambition. But when a nation is rethinking its future, as Scotland now is, it also looks again at its past.
Some now argue that the story reinforces the case for independence, for it proved that when Scotland and England place themselves under one government in London - as they were under King William - that government will, when the interests of the two countries conflict, inevitably favour the cause of the larger and more powerful partner.
The poet Robert Burns was scathing about the Scottish parliament that voted to accept union with England. "We're bought and sold for English gold," he wrote decades later, "such a parcel of rogues in a nation".
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Post by kaima on May 18, 2014 9:54:13 GMT -7
BBC News Magazine 17 May 2014 Last updated at 19:03 ET The Caribbean colony that brought down ScotlandBy Allan Little BBC News, Darien, Panama .... near the border with Colombia, close to where the Isthmus of Panama is at its narrowest, on a little airstrip wedged between the blue sparkle of the Caribbean and the green intensity of an impenetrable forest, and boarded a little fibreglass boat with a single outboard motor. "In the time of our forefathers," a village elder told us, "white people came here - Scottish and Spanish people. We liked the Scottish more than the Spanish, for the Spanish attacked us and drove us inland away from the coast and the Scots did not. But there were battles and many ships were sunk". The story of the ill-fated Scots colony at Darien survives in the oral history of the Kuna Indians, who are the only people who have ever settled successfully in this inhospitable place. The forest is too dense. Within nine months of setting sail from Leith, on a wave of national euphoria, most of the colonists were dead. A second fleet sailed in 1699, not knowing that the colony had already been attacked and burned to the ground by the Spanish, and abandoned by its few survivors. Around 1847 the USA sent its expedition to Darien ... quite a harrowing tale! The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas "The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America's first ship canal exploration across a narrow piece of land in Central America called the Darién, a place that loomed large in the minds of the world?s most courageous adventurers in the nineteenth century. With rival warships and explorers from England and France days behind, the 27-member U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition landed on the Atlantic shore at Caledonia Bay in eastern Panama to begin their mad dash up the coast-hugging mountains of the Darién wilderness. The whole world watched as this party attempted to be the first to traverse the 40-mile isthmus, the narrowest spot between the Atlantic and Pacific in all the Americas. Later, government investigators would say they were doomed before they started. Amid the speculative fever for an Atlantic and Pacific ship canal, the terrain to be crossed had been grossly misrepresented and fictitiously mapped. By January 27, 1854, the Americans had served out their last provisions and were severely footsore but believed the river they had arrived at was an artery to the Pacific, their destination. Leading them was the charismatic commander Isaac Strain, an adventuring 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant. The party could have turned back except, said Strain, they were to a man "revolted at the idea" of failing at a task they seemed destined to accomplish. Like the first men to try to scale Everest or reach the North Pole, they felt the eyes of their countrymen upon them. Yet Strain's party would wander lost in the jungle for another sixty nightmarish days, following a tortuously contorted and uncharted tropical river. Their guns rusted in the damp heat, expected settlements never materialized, and the lush terrain provided little to no sustenance. As the unending march dragged on, the party was beset by flesh-embedding parasites and a range of infectious tropical diseases they had no antidote for (or understanding of). In the desperate final days, in the throes of starvation, the survivors flirted with cannibalism and the sickest men had to be left behind so, as the journal keeper painfully recorded, the rest might have a chance to live. The U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition?s 97-day ordeal of starvation, exhaustion, and madness?a tragedy turned ?triumph of the soul? due to the courage and self-sacrifice of their leader and the seamen who devotedly followed him?is one of the great untold tales of human survival and exploration. Based on the vividly detailed log entries of Strain and his junior officers, other period sources, and Balf?s own treks in the Darién Gap, this is a rich and utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, Isaac?s Storm, and other sagas of adventure at the limits of human endurance. "
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Post by kaima on May 18, 2014 10:08:13 GMT -7
Next time you have trouble with some idiot determined to stick by his stupid opinion, remember:50% of the people are BELOW average!
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