The Crimean Conundrum

Today Crimea is seeking referendum in a move to break away from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

Western powers have denounced the hastily organized referendum as illegal.

Some 59 percent of Crimea’s 2 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians, the minority question which has bedeviled since the early 19 th century resonates even this very day. Nationalism of Hungary Italy against monarchies have not yet sorted the friction between majority rights and minority rule. How the nation-builders got their act wrong we can see at the Paris peace conference after World War I.

That war felled the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, bequeathing to the Allied victors a hotch-potch of ethnic and cultural identities clamoring for statehood. The peace pitted Wilson’s “imperative principle” of self-government for formerly subject peoples was to stop the customary tendency of European statesmen sitting over fine dining and a smoke in the billiard room redrawing maps as though it were toting up gambling losses.

The U.S. President’s principle somehow didn’t extend to Ukraine. His opposition to a sovereign Ukrainian state was backed by the British and French, supporters of anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war in the wake of 1917 revolution.While the Paris peacemakers bestowed statehood on the likes of Czechoslovakia and Hungary Ukraine was left to be fought over by Poland and Russia. Poland seized swathes of Ukraine’s territory and the rest was swallowed up in the newly formed Soviet Union,1922.

(British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said he had glimpsed a Ukrainian only once in his life “and I am not sure that I want to see any more,” Margaret MacMillan wrote in her 2001 book, “Peacemakers.”)

To be fair to the high-minded President Wilson he was hoping the resurgent Russian empire would reverse the Bolshevik takeover. Something we have seen similarly in the Middle East. Wave democracy for all your worth the region shall be all the better for it.

Wilson’s tactics in 1919, and the West’s ambivalence toward Ukraine after it finally broke free of Soviet control in 1991, show the limited options available to the U.S. and its allies in response.

Note: One supplicant inspired by what Wilson called “the sacredness of the right of self-determination” was Nguyen Tat Thanh. The man later known as Ho Chi Minh petitioned the conference to grant Indochina independence from France. Wilson never replied, according to “The Wilsonian Moment,” a 2007 book by Erez Manela, a Harvard University history professor.
A surgeon’s mistake is covered by a tombstone. What if a statesman makes a blunder? Mass graves as one sees in Vietnam and elsewhere make any personal tombstone redundant. ( ack:James G. Neuger /bloomber.net)

benny

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News on the March: social networking

It would seem people are so desperate to connect that they would rather risk unknown hazards of being ‘groomed’ or ‘lured’ to act against their own better judgment. Besides you will find that on-line friend who pledged to follow you is also counting how much you are worth. In the consumer market you are a product to be sold to a third party.
First here is one news item from Time:
Woman Discovers Her Husband’s Other Wife on Facebook-Time March 13, 2012
“Facebook is now a place where people discover things about each other they end up reporting to law enforcement.”
According to the charges filed in Pierce County Court, Alan L. O’Neill married Wife 1 in 2001, moved out in 2009, and allegedly changed his name and remarried a year later, skipping the step of getting divorced from Wife# 1. Now he is charged with bigamy and facing up to a year in jail if convicted.
Social networking is still evolving and it is at present a media swamp. Once sensitive information has been placed there is no way to get it out. Security of social networking sites is as great a risk as passing business cards around in a busy bar. No matter how many times the site owner/operator promises your information will be protected, secure, etc., the lure of money will make this less secure. Selling of private information by a third party is possible if the line between one’s computer and the so-called “easy to use” interfaces of social networking sites is breached. Well for those who were lulled into thinking of social networking here is one fact,and also indisputable. Those who seek friends unseen to share their personal lives have already lost their social capital. Progress only provides you instead an instant platform. Only think how shall you build your friendship with some 800 plus instant friends? You stand the risk of being stripped of every private detail that you only would have in former times shared with your bosom buddies.
Facebook has the look of Aladdin’s wonderlamp. You do not rub it but log in and if your personal info or sold to third parties without even a ‘by-your-leave-buddy you relied on the magic lamp without using your judgment.
No one has a clue as to the future of a technology driven innovation where being “connected” (electronically, that is) would really mean? These purveyors of progress are no more enlightened that you are.
(http://www.openforum.com/articles/the-explosion-of-social-media-blessing-or-curse/American Express-John Mariotti–small business trends)
Remember how you have been sold by banking sector? Those who made a brisk business were no more clued to the risks involved. They believed in progress. So did you.
Deregulation of the banks in the 80s led to innovation and it gave investment banks undue power. What is power without being wise?
How to Stop Companies From Collecting and Selling Your Facebook Info
(Money Talks news- Nov 24,2012)

If you want to keep a secret, don’t put any trace of it online. That’s something ex-CIA director David Petraeus just learned the hard way. But our lives are increasingly digital, and the government recognizes it.
In July, Congress asked nine data brokerage firms – including credit reporting agencies – what consumer information they collect, how they do it, and whether they sell it to third parties. On Nov. 8, it released those companies’ responses.
You can read the lengthy original letters and the responses here, but investigative journalism site ProPublica sums things up nicely in their article Yes, Companies Are Harvesting – and Selling – Your Facebook Profile:
Data companies of course, do not stop with the information on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Intelius, which offers everything from a reverse phone number look up to an employee screening service, said it also collects information from Blogspot, WordPress, MySpace, and YouTube.(Money Talks News -Nov 24, 2012)
Believe in progress only show the rest you use you common sense and no let others decide for you.
benny

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News on the March:mid-life crisis

Truly hairy mid-life crises: chimps and orangs get them too

A new study finds that chimpanzees and orangutans, too, often experience a mid-life crisis, suggesting the causes are inherent in primate biology and not specific to human society.
“We were just stunned” when data on the apes showed a U-shaped curve of happiness, said economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and a co-author of the paper, which was published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
The U-shaped curve of human happiness and other aspects of well-being are as thoroughly documented as the reasons for it are controversial. Since 2002 studies in some 50 countries have found that well-being is high in youth, plunges in mid-life and rises in old age. The euphoria of youth comes from unlimited hopes and good health, while the contentment and serenity of the elderly likely reflects “accumulated wisdom and the fact that when you’ve seen friends and family die, you value what you have,” said Oswald.
The reasons for the plunge in well-being in middle age, when suicides and use of anti-depressants both peak, are murkier. In recent years researchers have emphasized sociological and economic factors.

Oswald and his colleagues decided to see whether creatures that don’t have career regrets or underwater mortgages might nevertheless suffer a well-being plunge in middle age.
They enlisted colleagues to assess the well-being of 155 chimps in Japanese zoos, 181 in U.S. and Australian zoos and 172 orangs in zoos in the United States, Canada, Australia and Singapore. Keepers, volunteers, researchers and caretakers who knew the apes well used a four-item questionnaire to assess the level of contentment in the animals, said psychologist Alex Weiss of Scotland’s University of Edinburgh. One question, for instance, asked how much pleasure the animals – which ranged from infants to graybeards – get from social interactions.
All three groups of apes experienced mid-life malaise: a U-shaped contentment curve with the nadir at ages 28, 27 and 35, respectively, comparable to human ages of 45 to 50″(Reuters-Nov.19.2012)
In terms of biology life gives each a form. The Chimp has his gait and the one per center his bulging wallet. When the chimp sees you and me knows we are a chump with the same biological functions.Only that they need not deal with progress as we need to. The Chimps do not jump off the Golden Bridge since they know it is a passing phase. On the other hand the modern man has had far greater expectations as a kid. Only these hopes have now come in the bills and bailiffs are out to repossess his all. When pressures of modern life pile up and you have no roof over your head you may even be driven to think of taking extreme steps. Orangs and Chimps have no old age home to look forward to but their social groups keep them survive. Only progress has taken away our social capital and left no crutches to lean on.Don’t ask progress to provide you with a safety net but learn to make one when you can.
benny

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The Paradigm Shift

The US elections of 2012 was much more than Obama versus Romney. Coming to think of it I dare say that it was the testing ground for the nation to out the ideological gulf between the Republican and Democratic party. Of course the politics of future shall come around to address this.
In this bitterly fought campaign each party put out their case. In Obama’s victory we see how the Tea Party movement outplayed its hand. All that rumble and blustering of the movers of the movement did not in the end, mean anything.
The Tea Party is an antigovernment, grass-roots political movement.  It began in 2009 in protest of the bank bailout and the economic stimulus package. Is not an economic stimulus good for the growth? Oh no in the vocabulary of the GOP it smacks of federal intrusion. Such fiscal conservatism of the Party relying not on pragmatism, though the recession called for it to help small businesses, proved it was out of touch with the times.
The Tea Party became a pivotal player in the Republicans’ successful bid to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. In those elections, four in 10 voters expressed support for the movement in exit polls. Its most shining hour was when in August Rep.Paul Ryan from Wisconsin was chosen as the running mate of Romney. The election proved the Tea Party had totally miscalculated. Here we see the blind side of GOP: their failure to take the pulse of the nation or speak for average American. A Party that speaks for the 1 percenters cannot gauge the impulses of Mr.Joe. The Party represented the White and continued their stand against the minorites not realizing the changing demographics had simply cut the ground from under their feet.
As recently as 1980, 80% of the United States was white, but results of the 2010 Census depict a rapidly changing nation, with the country’s non-white population growing to more than 35 percent. As ethnic and racial minorities continue to grow, these communities’ impact on America’s future—particularly as it pertains to politics and leadership—is increasing.
 
This paradigm shift seems to have escaped the calculation of the Party in the manner they tried to cast slur on the President for his middlename and his birth among other things.Even an endorsement from much respected Colin Powell invited criticism that it was racially motivated.This shows how deep rooted is the Party on old values. If only they had shown their relevance in the everyday living that would have been something.
The integration of racial minorities into what has been America’s dominant white culture is what this election indicates.
Hispanic voters comprised 10 per cent of the electorate. Mr Obama won seven out of 10 of their votes. The president also won 93 per cent of the black vote, and more than 70 per cent of Asian voters. He led by 12 points over Mr Romney among women.
Among young voters, Obama secured two thirds of the preferences of those aged between 18 and 29. They are almost a fifth of the electorate.
For the first time last year in America more babies were born to non-white parents that to whites, a trend which explains why the Republican party can no longer afford to ignore Hispanic voters, even though this campaign, with all its hostility towards immigrants, seemed so determined to alienate them.
The shift saw Mr Obama holding old southern states such as Virginia, which he had won in 2008 on the back of a euphoric wave of support which some put down to a fluke.
But as African-Americans and students turned out in droves to take the state again, it was clear that the race had heralded a new, more permanent, drawing of the political map. Mr Obama’s coalition represents the future of America: a younger, browner, more ‘godless’ and liberal America whose taxes must also pay for the retirement funds of the older, white evangelical Christian Americans that they are supplanting.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white, or Hispanic or Asian, or Native American, or young or old, or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight – you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try,” Obama said. Is anyone listening?
Tailspin:
This election also proved what a fool Karl Rove is. All that political acumen was merely adipose settled where his grey matter ought to have been. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rove’s group spent more than $1 million in 10 different Senate races.
At the top of that group, Crossroads spent $11.2 million opposing Senate candidate Tim Kaine in Virginia, $7 million opposing Representative Shelley Berkley in Nevada, and $6 million in both Ohio and Wisconsin, opposing Senator Sherrod Brown and Tammy Baldwin, a member of the House of Representatives who was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Only Berkley lost on Tuesday.
For months, Rove’s commercials told Montanans that their U.S. senator, Jon Tester, was “a top recipient of campaign cash from lobbyists and big banks.”
Missourians were instructed to tell their Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, “to stop spending and cut the debt.”
In those races, as in Florida and Indiana, Rove’s candidate lost. Only in Nevada, where Senator Dean Heller was challenged by Berkley, did Rove assist with a victory in race where he invested more than $1 million.
According to calculations made by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that seeks more transparency in campaign finance, Rove’s outfits provided dismal returns to investors. With advice from such a ‘failure’ like Karl Rove, President George Bush has had his image forever badly bruised. Karl Rove reminds me of Humpty-Dumpty after a bad fall.

(ack: Pewsocialtrends,NewYork Times of Oct.4,2012,Reuters news of Oct 7,Karl Rove’s bad night)
benny

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What Ails Syria?

A Floundering Ship-Syria
‘Rats leave the sinking ship’you must have heard before. In fact rats move in a sinking ship judging from the near collapse of Syria. It was long in coming and the crew are a motley mixture of sects that are attracting some rats from far off. The Arab Spring was a reef that the ship of Bashar al-Assad could not avoid. The “Friends of Syria” meeting in late February met in Tunis in order to ship arms to Syrian rebels. Friends are in name only. In fact all those Sunni factions wherever they are want to settle scores with Shi’ia faction supporting al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),- like Qatar and Kuwait, are friends on geopolitical grounds. If the royal family of Bahrain,-Sunnis, has a stranglehold on the majority Shi’ia population the troops sent by the Saudi government are there to prop up the King.
Little is known about the exact nature of Syria’s opposition. But it must be at present what we saw at the initial stages of the Arab Spring, many protesting on genuine grounds for more political freedom. We saw this in Libya and in Egypt. Jihadists are eying for their chance to come in. U.S. Ambassador Rob Ford, who personally met with opposition groups before he left Syria, stated that the opposition is made up of two main constituent groups. The first more liberal and secular, while the second is Jihadist in outlook. There will always be token moderates as in the case of Mali or in Egypt. In the former the rebels that declared Azawad were Taureg separatists. Now the north is under foreign mercenaries and a wing of al-Qaeda. The moderates will not be able to hold on given the unstable nature of ‘friends.’ Loyalty to the country is not an issue as much as to the sect and tribe.
To quote‘Little is known about whether the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood resembles their Egyptian equivalents or whether they draw from more nefarious influences from groups like the Salafist Al-Nour Party in Egypt. Perhaps most disturbing of all was official U.S. Government confirmation that Al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to conduct operations in Syria against the Assad government.’(www.opencanada.org/news/the-pitfalls-of-arming-syrias-opposition/)
Mighty mess grows out of acorns like war on terror in Iraq.
benny

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