Category Archives: Lands

Assad’s new bomb: Syrian regime hasn’t abandoned chemical weapons

Christoph Reuter reports: Despite its pledge to eliminate chemical weapons, the Assad regime is attacking towns and villages with chlorine gas bombs. SPIEGEL visited the communities hit by the most recent bombings to interview victims, doctors and eyewitnesses.

The green wheat fields shimmer in the late afternoon light as the wind slowly starts to pick up. A cloud of dust drifts by. This is good, says Abu Abdu, a farmer from the village of Telminnes, located deep in the south of Syria’s Idlib province. Prior to the war, the evening wind had been an annoyance for the dust it kicked up. But these days, it is windless nights that people in the area despise. That’s when air force helicopters come and the gas attacks take place. Often, they circle over the city before dropping their cargo.

Usually, there is no big bang, just the sound of a minor detonation, sometimes even just the thud of an impact. Death comes quietly, as it did on the evening of April 21 in Telminnes.

That’s the evening a bomb landed near Abu Abdu’s garden. The farmer says the explosion was a quiet one. “I thought the point of impact was far away,” he recalls. The bomb, which carried a small amount of explosives and a gas cylinder, fell close by — so close that Abu Abdu could already see the cloud before he had the chance to flee. “Yellow vapor rose, it smelled strongly of chlorine and it burned like fire. I could no longer speak or breathe,” he says. Neighbors took him to a makeshift hospital where he was treated with oxygen and an anticonvulsant. “Hours later, I could still barely move my arms, I was coughing up blood and every breath I took was hellish.” [Continue reading…]

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War-weariness key to ending fight over Homs

Paul Wood reports: Who is winning in Syria? It is a simple question with no simple answer.

You may think it is President Bashar al-Assad, with the rebels abandoning Homs. But further north, in Idlib and in Aleppo, government forces are under pressure.

The confusion arises because Syria is not one battlefield but several.

The rebels seem incapable of acting as anything other than a series of local or, at best, regional militias.

That was the anguished complaint of the rebels in Homs – no-one else came to help them break the siege; no-one came to their rescue.

In Homs, the rebels were beaten by the Syrian army’s “surrender or starve” tactics. Fighters lost a third or even half of their body weight, they told us, as they hung on for two years.

They had no weapons to break the siege. The al-Nusra Front made a last attempt to break out with a series of suicide bombings against government checkpoints. They failed, and the jihadists joined the buses out with the rest of the fighters.

Further north, the rebels are, somehow, getting US-made anti-tank weapons. That has had a hand in their recent successes. It might account for the government’s apparent, desperate use of chlorine bombs. [Continue reading…]

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Israel won’t stop spying on the U.S.

Jeff Stein reports: Whatever happened to honor among thieves? When the National Security Agency was caught eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, it was considered a rude way to treat a friend. Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying—albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill—that our Israeli “friends” have gone too far with their spying operations here.

According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem’s efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have “crossed red lines.”

Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.” Another staffer called it “damaging.”

The Jewish state’s primary target: America’s industrial and technical secrets.

“No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” said a former congressional staffer who attended another classified briefing in late 2013, one of several in recent months given by officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate. [Continue reading…]

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Jihadis burn their passports before heading where?

The act of publicly destroying ones passport is a powerful political statement, but one thing I deduce from the spectacle of a throng of young men burning their passports — it’s reasonable to assume they did so while in Syria — is that these are young men who are not making travel plans. At least that’s what I deduce.

Patrick Cockburn thinks otherwise:

It is only a matter of time before jihadis in al-Qa’ida-type groups that have taken over much of eastern Syria and western Iraq have a violent impact on the world outside these two countries. The road is open wide to new attacks along the lines of 9/11 and 7/7, and it may be too late to close it.

Those who doubt that these are the jihadis’ long-term intentions should have a look at a chilling but fascinating video posted recently by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), formerly al-Qa’ida in Iraq. It shows a group of foreign fighters burning their passports to emphasise their permanent commitment to jihad. Many of the passports thrown into the flames have grass-green covers and are Saudi; others are dark blue and must be Jordanian. Some of the fighters show their faces while others are masked. As each one destroys his passport, sometimes tearing it in half before throwing it into the fire, he makes a declaration of faith and a promise to fight against the ruler of the country from which he comes.

A Canadian makes a short speech in English before switching to Arabic, saying: “It is a message to Canada, to all American powers. We are coming and we will destroy you.” A Jordanian says: “I say to the tyrant of Jordan: we are the descendants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [the Jordanian founder of al-Qa’ida in Iraq killed by US aircraft in 2006] and we are coming to kill you.” A Saudi, an Egyptian and a Chechen make similar threats.

These can’t be dismissed as idle threats, but neither can they be treated as imminent threats.

I would surmise that whoever burns their passport in Syria probably expects to die in Syria.

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Trying to ‘win’ Ukraine could lead to its collapse

James Goldgeier and Andrew S. Weiss write: With the Ukraine crisis now entering its sixth month, policymakers ought to step back from the daily torrent of bad news and ask whether the West’s current approach is yielding positive results.

The honest answer has to be: not really.

The tragic loss of life in Odessa on May 2 and the stepped-up fighting in and around separatist strongholds in eastern Ukraine appear to be setting in motion precisely the series of events that the West has sought to avoid: full-scale armed conflict between Moscow and Kiev and the prospect of Ukraine’s collapse as a unitary state.

Ever since the dramatic overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovich government in late February, U.S. and EU leaders have failed to come to terms with an unpleasant reality. As former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer put it, Vladimir Putin “cares a whole lot more about losing Ukraine than the West cares about keeping it.”

There are no excuses for the reckless policies Putin has pursued. His annexation of Crimea, and his unapologetic embrace of Russian chauvinism and ultra-nationalist themes are evocative of the worst aspects of European power politics during the first half of the twentieth century. It is deeply disconcerting to see far-right wing European politicians, from Marine Le Pen to Geert Wilders, touting Putin as their ideological soul-mate and comrade-in-arms in the fight against European elites and the soulless EU bureaucracy.

But even if events do not come to a head in coming days, a protracted crisis in Ukraine may, over time, simply exhaust Western capabilities to counter a Russian campaign to destabilize Ukraine or to keep its basket-case economy afloat. What we are looking at now is nothing less than a bigger, messier version of Georgia across a territory the size of France with the potential for a lot more bloodshed.

Rather than developing a new approach to avoid catastrophe, Western leaders are doubling down. President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last week that the derailing of the May 25 presidential elections could be the basis for imposition of so-called sectoral sanctions on Russia. While they and other Western leaders continue to profess their desire to see a diplomatic solution to the crisis, high-level dialogue with the Kremlin amounts to little more than exchanging public statements. Nor are we aware of any serious back-channel diplomatic moves to resolve the crisis. The West has said elections or else, but Moscow shows no sign of acquiescing to a smooth internal political transition. Quite the contrary. [Continue reading…]

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Even Russian human rights body finds Crimean referendum falsified

Khpg.org reports: Vladimir Putin’s own Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights has confirmed that the turnout for the so-called “referendum” on the Crimea’s status was much lower than reported, and the results also far less overwhelmingly in favour of joining Russia. The same results have been reported from other sources, however this report can hardly be dismissed as seditious US propaganda. The confirmation that Russia used falsified figures to justify the annexation comes on the eve of other supposed “referendums” planned for two east Ukrainian oblasts.

The report finds that while the overwhelming majority of residents of Sevastopol voted for joining Russian (turnout of 50-80%), the turnout for all of Crimea was from 30-50% and only 50-60% of those voted for joining Russia.

The authors also noted that Crimean residents voted less for joining Russia, than for what they called an end to corrupt lawlessness and thieving rule of people brought in from Donetsk (where Viktor Yanukovych and most of his people were from). It was only in Sevastopol, they say, that people genuinely voted for joining Russia. They add that the fear of “illegal armed formations” was higher in Sevastopol than in other regions of Crimea. [Continue reading…]

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Ukrainian events a delayed reaction to USSR’s peaceful disintegration in 1991, Vedomosti says

Paul Goble writes: Commentators have long celebrated the fact that the USSR broke up with little violence in 1991 – the conflicts in Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniestria and Chechnya typically have been treated as exceptions that prove the rule. But now, many of the unresolved issues from 23 years ago are leading to violence as in Ukraine.

In an editorial article in today’s Vedomosti, Nikolay Epple and Maksim Trudolyubov argue that for two decades, Russia and Ukraine sought to avoid the outcome that had occurred in Serbia and Croatia, but that did not mean that “the revolutionary processes” in the two were “overcome but only “put off”.

The ongoing crisis in Ukraine shows more sharply than ever before that Ukrainians cannot avoid facing some critical issues any longer, including “the geopolitical choice between Europe and Russia, real sovereignty or dependence on ‘the elder brother,’ the unification of the country on the basis of a new national self-consciousness or its split via ‘federalization.’”

And “the development of the postponed revolution in Ukraine will inevitably have an impact on Russia as well” because “the exit of Ukraine from the post-Soviet space will confront Russia with the need to reformat its own historical matrix.” [Continue reading…]

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Ukraine crisis showcases Russian military revamp

Reuters reports: Holding military drills on Ukraine’s border and sending bombers to the edge of NATO airspace, Russia’s newly reformed armed forces are in just the kind of regional confrontation it was redesigned for, experts say.

Moscow has increased defence spending by about 30 percent since its 2008 war with Georgia, and those who study it say the money has been spent not just on hardware but on a much more flexible military structure.

The result, they say, is a more streamlined force that can mobilise key units in a matter of days and support President Vladimir Putin’s goal to reassert Russian influence over countries it once controlled within the former Soviet Union. [Continue reading…]

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Tom Engelhardt: What, me worry?

Mapping the Chinese conquest of the planet
By Tom Engelhardt

In high school, I was one of those kids you probably loved to loath.  You know, the one who grabbed a front-row seat and every time the teacher asked a question waved his hand so manically that he was practically screaming, me, me, call on me!  But truth be told, amid all the things that made me unhappy in those years, school — actual schoolwork — wasn’t one of them.  Yes, I was confounded by the math problems in which the current of a river flowed at one speed and a boat was heading the other way at a different speed, and a few more bits of weird information were tossed into the eddies and you were supposed to do something with it all.  But generally speaking I enjoyed school.

I liked my teachers — at least the ones who challenged me to think or, as we would start saying only a few years after I was out of high school, “blew my mind,” the ones who seemed to bend the world in interesting directions.  I liked to learn.  I liked to read by myself in my room.  I went to the local library regularly and came home with piles of books.  I was a dino-nerd (with the American Museum of Natural History’s T. rex on the brain), and a Civil War nut (no Bruce Catton volume went unread) with a sideline in advanced sci-fi.  And it being the 1950s, I harbored the sort of nuclear fears that you barely thought about and didn’t really speak about, but that, in my case, appeared repetitively in unsettling dreams in which I found myself wandering through an atomically devastated world.

I was, above all, fascinated by history, in part perhaps because my parents were of a post-immigrant generation in flight from their past.  Undoubtedly, that fascination represented an early, particularly nerdish form of rebellion (not that anyone noticed).  Perhaps it was also comforting to nail myself into a narrative of American life in those years when the past, as my parents and so many other Americans saw it, was hardly worth thinking about, not when the future was so promising.

But let me hasten to add that not every class in high school thrilled me.  There was, for instance, my American history teacher.  He was a grey-haired ancient (though undoubtedly younger than I am now) who had, we kids then assumed, been passing news of the New World on to students since at least 1776.  He must once have been inspirational, but by the time I came along he was lecturing off ancient notes on yellowed paper.  I used to imagine those notes dissolving into a cloud of dust with the first gust of wind through the window by his desk.  I was then teaching myself a version of American history at home at night and I couldn’t have found the daytime version less impressive.

The textbook we used then — I still have it — was Living in Our America: A Record of Our Country, History for Young Citizens. Unit One (“The Beginnings”) started with this poem:

“In our great country can be found factories
with parking lots of full of automobiles —
not just cars of officials and factory owners,
but cars of the workmen, too.

“These cars are something more than pieces of
machinery to own and ride around in.

“They are symbols.

“They are symbols that in our country we can
and do earn much more
than a bare living.

“They are symbols, too, that their owners are free —
free to live in city, town, or country,
free to move on to other work,
free to seek other ways of life,
free in body and spirit.”

I’m sure history texts are just as uninspiring today, but in different ways.  After all, I was living then in the American Age of Steel, so long gone that — who can remember?

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Netanyahu pushes to define Israel as nation state of Jewish people only

The Guardian reports: Binyamin Netanyahu will push ahead with a rare change to Israel’s basic laws – which amount to the country’s constitution – to insist Israel is “the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people”.

At Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the civil rights of minorities, including Arabs, would be guaranteed, and the move was vital at a time when aspects of Israel’s legitimacy were “under a constant and increasing assault from abroad and at home”.

Netanyahu proposed the change last week during a visit to Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall, attracting fierce criticism from political rivals and support from some of his allies. The move follows a Palestinian refusal in peace talks to recognise the status that Netanyahu described.

The proposed law would be in addition to Israel’s declaration of independence of May 1948 – the anniversary of which is celebrated on Tuesday – which defines Israel as a Jewish state. [Continue reading…]

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Persistent Saudi-U.S. differences hurt Syria strategy

Reuters reports: Differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia over Middle East policy persist, despite attempts to shore up their old alliance, and may prove calamitous for Syrian rebels.

Although there is evidence that some American weapons are starting to find their way to more moderate groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, disagreements over what to supply, and to whom, have hindered the fight.

Rebels lament a lack of anti-aircraft missiles to help counter Assad’s air force.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funding the rebels for years now, arguing that the war in Syria is a battle for the future of the Middle East, pitting pro-Western forces against Riyadh’s main enemy Iran and Islamist militants.

However, while the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama also blames Assad for the violence and wants him to leave power, it sees the conflict very differently.

American officials fear involvement in a messy civil war for which they see no clear military solution and which threatens to radicalize a new generation of Islamists who hate the West.

Among the rebels, the failure of the Saudis and the Americans to cooperate better stirs disillusion. Two hours of talks between Obama and Saudi King Abdullah in March appear to have done little to alter that sentiment. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi Arabia’s military exercise was a goodbye wave to America

Faisal Al Yafai writes: When one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East holds the largest military exercise in its history, the region and allies would be wise to look beyond the explosions and manoeuvres at the political intent.

Last week’s “Abdullah Sword” military exercises in the north-east of Saudi Arabia brought together 130,000 troops, as well as military jets, helicopters and ships. With the notable exception of Qatar, all the GCC countries were there to observe the exercises, as well as the head of Pakistan’s army.

On the surface, the exercises were timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the accession of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But military movements of this order send messages. But to whom?

The obvious answer is Iran, Saudi’s great regional rival, or one of the three states that the Saudis are most concerned about – Syria, Iraq or Yemen. And it will not have escaped Tehran’s notice that the CSS-2 ballistic missiles that Riyadh paraded for the first time last week can easily reach any part of Iran.

Certainly, a message of strength was being telegraphed to the region. But there was also another one, over the heads of the region, to the United States: if you leave, the region can defend itself. [Continue reading…]

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Sisi says Muslim Brotherhood will not exist under his reign

The Guardian reports: Egypt’s former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Monday night that the Muslim Brotherhood – the group he removed from power last year – will not exist if he is elected president later this month.

The comments, in an interview broadcast on two Egyptian television stations, were the clearest indication yet there was no prospect for political reconciliation with the Islamist group that propelled Mohamed Morsi to the presidency in 2012.

“There will be nothing called the Muslim Brotherhood during my tenure,” Sisi said on Egypt’s privately-owned CBC and ONTV television channels.

The Brotherhood has been subject to an aggressive state-led crackdown in the months since Morsi’s overthrow. The movement was formally blacklisted as a terrorist organisation on Christmas Day and continues to be blamed for bomb attacks across Egypt, although many have been claimed by militant groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Beit el Maqdis.

Sisi said he had survived two assassination attempts in the months since Morsi’s ousting in July last year.

The former field marshal’s claims appeared to vindicate the tight security measures that have dominated his campaign. Instead of taking to the campaign trail like his sole opponent, Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi, Sisi will reportedly be sending emissaries to his rallies across the country. [Continue reading…]

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Britain cancels three arms contracts to Sisi’s Egypt

Middle East Eye reports: Britain cancelled export licenses for three arms contracts to Egypt’s military backed government in October last year, fearing the arms would be used for internal repression, the Middle East Eye can reveal.

The contracts were cancelled during a prolonged correspondence between officials of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the legal team acting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The lawyers claim that it was a result of their representations that a second review of the contracts was carried out in October. An earlier blanket suspension was implemented in August last year, after the mass shootings of protesters in Cairo.

Edward Bell, head of export control and organization wrote to ITN solicitors on 13 January that “we consider there is now sufficient information available about the situation in Egypt to consider each extant licence and new application on a case-by-case basis rather than applying the blanket suspension which we implemented in August”. [Continue reading…]

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Why China hates being No. 1

Minxin Pei writes: Few countries would turn down the title of world’s largest economy. You can count China among them.

Only the United States has enjoyed the immense power and prestige conferred by this position in the last 140 years (the U.S. surpassed Great Britain as the world’s largest economy in 1872 and has held the spot ever since). But last week, the Chinese government reacted with thinly disguised animosity to an authoritative economic report announcing that China would overtake the United States in 2014 as the world’s largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).

According to the International Comparison Program of the World Bank, in 2011, the Chinese economy totaled $13.5 trillion in purchasing power parity. It is on target to grow 24% between 2011 and 2014, compared to 7.6% cumulative growth for the U.S. For its part, the U.S. had $15.5 trillion in PPP in 2011. The Chinese economy at the end of this year is expected to have $16.7 trillion in PPP, slightly bigger than the $16.6 trillion projected for the U.S.

Before the release of the latest World Bank report, the consensus estimate among economists was that China would surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy in PPP terms in 2019. That China has managed to catch up with the U.S. five years sooner is largely due to the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, which caused anemic growth in the U.S. but affected the Chinese economy only moderately.

Instead of bragging about its coronation as the world’s No. 1 economy, China first tried to delete the reference to the new PPP estimate of its economy in the World Bank report and then all but suppressed its coverage within China’s domestic media.

On the surface, Beijing’s unfriendly reaction makes no sense. Ever since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party has relied on economic growth as the most important source of its legitimacy. Being crowned the world’s largest economy should only help reinforce the party’s claims of credit for bringing prosperity and international respect to China. And Chinese foreign policymakers have been skillfully playing the expectations game around the world. By pointing to the inevitable rise of China as the world’s largest economy and the relative decline of the U.S., Beijing has had considerable success in changing the economic and geopolitical calculations in many capitals, notably in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

So, why does Beijing dislike being called No. 1 now? [Continue reading…]

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Kiev struggles to break Russia’s grip on gas flow

The New York Times reports: As Ukraine tries to contain a pro-Russian insurgency convulsing its eastern region, a perhaps more significant struggle for the country hinges on what happens beneath the ground here in a placid woodland in the far west, on the border with Slovakia.

This is where about $20 billion worth of Russian natural gas flows each year through huge underground pipelines to enter Europe after a nearly 3,000-mile journey from Siberia. It is also, the pro-European government in Kiev believes, where Ukraine has a chance to finally break free from the grip of Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy behemoth.

In an effort to do this, Ukraine has for more than a year been pushing hard to start so-called reverse-flow deliveries of gas from Europe via Slovakia to Ukraine, thus blunting repeated Russian threats to turn off the gas tap.

An agreement signed last week between Slovak and Ukrainian pipeline operators opened the way for modest reverse-flow deliveries of gas from Europe, where prices are much lower than those demanded by Gazprom for its direct sales to Ukraine.

But the deal, brokered by the European Union and nudged along by the White House, fell so far short of what Ukraine had been lobbying for that it left a nagging question: Why has it been so difficult to prod tiny Slovakia, a European Union member, to get a technically simple and, for Ukraine and for the credibility of the 28-nation bloc, vitally important venture off the ground? [Continue reading…]

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They don’t just wear blue jeans in Iran

“I think if the Iranian people had their way, they’d be wearing blue jeans, they’d have Western music, they’d have free elections.” Benjamin Netanyahu, October, 2013

Zoe Mendelson writes: It was a Thursday night in Istanbul and I was sitting on a patio at a going away party with three Persian cousins: two men living in Istanbul for graduate school and a woman living there who works as a journalist. I didn’t want to turn playtime into work time but the opportunity seemed too ripe to relinquish. How often do Americans actually meet Iranians? How often do we get to share a beer and actually try to understand each other? I had no idea what I was in for.

I told them that I was writing about dating cultures in different countries. They agreed to interviews but definitely, absolutely did not want me to use their names; they said it could end up preventing them from re-entering Iran at all. Deal. They laughed because dating is illegal in Iran.

“Iranian rules are based on Islamic rules. So it’s forbidden by law, informal dating when you’re not married. But you know, everything forbidden is more interesting.”

I asked how dating is different for them in Istanbul than it is back home and both men instantly replied that it was way easier to date back home in Iran.

“Maybe people are much more in the mood?” One said and laughed, but then added more seriously, “Maybe they feel more freely. When you’re in a closed place and you’re under pressure, you want to experience something that is illegal.” The other chimed in, “Yes, I have had 15 girlfriends and I’m only 30! And I had many one-night stands in Iran. But here, it’s much harder to get girls.”

I asked if girls in Iran have sex before marriage and one of the men speculated that 10 or 15 years ago only 10 percent of girls would, but that now the percentage is probably closer to 90. I was genuinely shocked, and tried to play it off like I wasn’t such an ignorant American thinking that Persian women were just bundled up virginal victims. And then things got even realer.

The woman chimed in, “In Iran it’s hard core. People think they’re so repressed. But because they are so repressed, they go to extremes to compensate. Have you seen what Iranian girls look like? They’re totally dressed up and made up and with the hair… they take advantage of things more. They’ve got like three boyfriends, they’re always screwing around… it’s like intense. It’s like orgies and shit. Seriously.”

I was dumbfounded. “Three boyfriends?” I asked. “Yes! More!” Replied one of the men, “They’re always lying!” he said, feigning spite, and then in a high-pitched voice said, “I love you. I love you. You’re the only man for me.” The other man laughed and nodded.

“How do they do that, if there’s no bars —” I started to ask. They were starting to catch on to my astonishment and were all smiling. [Continue reading…]

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Who’s in control? A dispatch from Kiev

Alina Polyakova writes: On May 1, Ukraine’s acting president Turchynov admitted that it lost control of eastern Ukraine. The following day, on May 2, the government launched a military offensive to take back eastern cities from militants. In Slavyansk, two military helicopters were shot down, allegedly by the pro-Russian forces. In Odessa, the death toll from clashes between protesters continues to increase. At the same time, a new group calling itself “little black men” emerged in Kharkiv. In an ominous Youtube video, a group of about fifty men dressed in black military gear and balaclavas stand armed in a field while a scrambled voice announces that “for every little green man [in Kharkiv], there will be a brigade of ‘little black men.’” The picture emerging in Ukraine is one of complete chaos. No one, not even the Kremlin, seems to be in control. [Continue reading…]

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