Russia and the USA Want Talks Between Syrian Régime and Opposition

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On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Russia and the USA would set up an international conference on Syria by the end of this month. He’s optimistic that it’d involve both the Syrian government and opposition forces. At a meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Kerry said that the conference would aim at facilitating a solution to the Syrian crisis through political dialogue. Lavrov added that the Syrian government assured Russia that it’s ready to participate in the conference, saying, “But, of course, so far, these are just words that have yet to be transformed into actions”. He went to say that the Syrian opposition hasn’t commented on the proposal. So far, opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have refused to sit down for talks with the régime in the past, saying that Assad’s removal is a non-negotiable issue. Lavrov pointed up that the conference would be a follow-up to last year’s international meeting in Genève that drafted a peace roadmap for Syria.

The communiqué passed in Genève by the UN Action Group on Syria, which includes Syria’s neighbours and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, proposed to start with the creation of a transitional government drawn both from the opposition and Assad’s administration. Both Kerry and Lavrov stressed that Russia and the USA support the Genève roadmap, seeing political dialogue as the only solution for Syria. Kerry said that the alternative is increasing violence, a humanitarian crisis, and the country’s disintegration.

Moscow and Washington have clashed over Syria in the past; the USA put the responsibility for the civil war on Assad’s régime, whilst Russia insisted that the opposition should share the blame for the conflict. Russia blocked several UN Security Council resolutions on Syria, saying that they were biased in favour of the opposition. The USA supported the Syrian opposition, providing the motley coalition of forces (which includes many radical Islamists) with non-lethal military equipment. Recently, a bill filed with the US Senate proposed the supply of weapons to the Syrian insurgents. Kerry said the bill’s fate depended on the American inquiry in progress into reports that the rebels used chemical weapons, but added the matter may become a moot point if the government and the opposition begin dialogue. More than 70,000 have died in the two-year-long present conflict in Syria, according to the latest UN estimates.

8 May 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20130508/181018883/Russia-US-Want-Talks-Between-Syrian-Govt-Opposition.html

Editor’s Note:

Let’s not put too fine a face on this. The USA has woken up to the fact that Islamist radicals would benefit from the toppling of Assad. Besides that, Russia and China are adamant… NO MORE BOMBS! To put the kybosh on the idea of “intervention”, it’s unaffordable (there ain’t nuttin’ in Motha Hubbard’s cupboard, kids… Bush wasted it all on the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan) and it’d destabilise the entire region (the Gulf States are most jittery on that score, and they’re American allies). Look carefully at:

Recently, a bill filed with the US Senate proposed the supply of weapons to the Syrian insurgents. Kerry said the bill’s fate depended on the American inquiry in progress into reports that the rebels used chemical weapons, but added the matter may become a moot point if the government and the opposition begin dialogue.

That is, Kerry’s given the US government a face-saving fig-leaf. The opposition will refuse to sit down with Assad… then, the USA will piously (and hypocritically) withdraw its former offer of arms. “They won’t sit down for peace talks… they’re terrorists intent on mayhem”. Let’s not be coy, the Boston bombing incident makes it politically impossible for any American régime to cooperate with any group that even looks like it might have Islamic militants within it. Any road, most of Obama’s rhetoric on Syria was election-year hogwash, not meant to be taken seriously by mature adults. Reflect on this… Wet Willy would’ve gotten the USA involved in a very sticky wicket just to placate the Religious Right troglodytes in the GOP. God IS in His Heaven… the Old Master does it again (just like when he defused the claptrap over Iran)… hey, anybody who still chain-smokes, backs Spartak, plays the guitar, goes white-water rafting, and cusses when he wants to can’t be all bad.

BMD

Lavrov sez Gay Propaganda Ban “Not Discrimination”

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On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the ban on “gay propaganda” amongst minors, currently under review in the RF Gosduma, doesn’t infringe on human rights… unlike “gay propaganda” itself, saying, “We’re not discriminating against anyone, we just don’t want reverse discrimination, when one group of citizens gets the right to aggressively impose their values, unsupported by most of the population, especially on children”. He spoke after his Dutch counterpart Frans Timmermans urged the lower chamber of the RF Federal Assembly, the RF Gosduma, to drop the controversial bill on gay propaganda because it might violate international agreements on human rights. Lavrov replied, speaking at a press conference after a meeting with Timmermans, “We don’t have a single global or pan-European obligation to allow gay propaganda”. He pointed up that Russia fulfilled all of its humanitarian obligations regarding same-sex relations when it decriminalised male homosexual contact in 1993. Lavrov noted that instead of campaigning for Russian gays, the EU should deal with flagrant rights violations on its own turf, most notably the case regarding “non-citizens” in Estonia and Latvia, who were denied citizenship after these countries declared independence from the USSR.

The Gosduma voted 388 to one in support of the “gay propaganda” ban in the first of three required readings in late January. Several dozen opponents and supporters of the bill marked the occasion with violent clashes outside the Gosduma building in central Moscow. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton criticised the bill after the first reading, saying it could infringe human rights. Russian lawmakers are currently working on a legal definition of “gay propaganda” ahead of the crucial second reading, which wouldn’t take place before late May. The ban in its current form envisages fines of 4,000 to 500,000 roubles (130 to 16,290 USD. 100 to 12,480 Euros. 85 to 10,750 UK Pounds) for individuals and organisations trying to convince minors of the benefits of same-sex relations.

Eleven of 83 Russian oblast-level entities installed similar bans since 2006; many of them also cover bisexual and transsexual relations, which aren’t part of the federal bill. The list of entities includes St Petersburg, where conservative activists unsuccessfully sued pop star Madonna last year for “gay propaganda” over her speaking out in support of the city’s gays during a show in August. A poll by VTsIOM last April showed that 94 percent of Russians never encountered gay propaganda, but 86 percent support a ban on it. The nationwide poll covered 1,600 respondents and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. Russian authorities have never sanctioned a gay pride rally, although LGBT activists have applied for permits in Moscow since 2006. Last May, the St Petersburg authorities permitted a rally against homophobia, but dozens of masked thugs, all of whom evaded arrest, attacked its participants.

26 February 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130226/179698723/Gay-Propaganda-Ban-Not-Discrimination–Russian-FM.html

Editor’s Note:

Sergei Viktorovich speaks the plain truth. Russia isn’t recriminalising homosexuality… the bill has no provisions for imprisonment. The Church isn’t calling for the criminalisation of homosexuality, either. As HH said, “The Church respects all human decisions, including those of sexual orientation”. What the Church and state ARE calling for is a criminalisation of homosexual propaganda, strictly-defined as the suborning or influencing of minors. Note well that the St Petersburg lawsuit against Madonna failed. That’s because it failed the test of meeting the law’s definition. You simply can’t harass gays with a charge of “homosexual propaganda”; you have to bring evidence that they actually tried to influence a minor child.

Therefore, disregard the caterwauls that you hear from the konvertsy regarding homosexuality and the Church. They’re ignorant and they don’t speak the Church’s mind nor express its dogmatic theology (their “view” is made up of equal parts of fantasy, half-digested theologumenae, and sectarian notions). Besides which, they’re fanatics of the worst sort. Fr Andrew Phillips spoke well on that topic here. He truly said:

This is true even of the lesser forms of fanaticism… schism, sectarianism, ”guruism”, and so-called “traditionalism”. Fanatical movements are often made up of individuals with unhappy, unbalanced, and unstable childhoods. So are sects and cults founded. The first characteristic in these is dissatisfaction… nothing else is good enough; the members can’t accept what others accept. They are “different” and “better” than others are, as can be seen in special dress, jargon, or practises, which are often exotic. In fanaticism, there’s much anti-social introversion, self-centredness, and self-discussion, with condemnation of others and self-imposed exaltation and isolation, the failure to integrate. This is all the pride of delusion.

That truly describes James Paffhausen, Rod Dreher, the Monomakhos lot, and the HOOMie cultists, none of whom are truly Orthodox in their heart-of-hearts. That’s why they want a crusade against gays. By the way, a “crusade” is profoundly un-Orthodox… haven’t they learnt that? Obviously, not… it does take all kinds, doesn’t it? Pass me the jug…

BMD

Russia and Iran to Cooperate in Space

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Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told a press conference in Moscow that Russia and Iran would cooperate in cosmonautics. When answering a question from VOR, Salehi said that these plans were in a communiqué issued following the meeting of an intergovernmental commission in Moscow. Salehi emphasised that Iran is the only one of 57 Islamic countries that has the resources to independently produce and launch space satellites. He expressed his hope that cooperation with Russia would help Iran advance in outer space.

12 February 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_12/Russia-Iran-to-cooperate-in-space-industry/

Editor’s Note:

This, along with Foreign Minister Lavrov’s recent statement that Western sanctions against Iran were counterproductive are signs that Russia has given Iran tacit guarantees and that all talk of attacking Iran is arrant bullshit. The US Republican Party is chock full of it, especially John McCain. These Russian (and Chinese) assurances give Iran protection against any Western assault (including any strike from the West’s client state, Israel). Anything that you hear on such sources such as Fox News, the National Review, or the Washington Times are empty chattering words… it’s nothing but vacuous sabre-rattling with nothing behind it.

Yet, the bubbas will eat it all up… Orthodox people should reflect on the fact that Potapov, Rod Dreher, Terrence Mattingly, and Alexander Webster (along with their Stepin Fetchit Paffhausen) are part of the godless neoliberal American propaganda machine and act accordingly. We shouldn’t allow such Sergianist trash to set the agenda amongst us…

BMD

 

Russian Government Accuses Hasidic Group of Book Theft

The Hasids should stop this charade… all that it does is to reinforce anti-Semitism. They’re STOOPID if they can’t see that… it makes them look like the above poster. It’s counter-productive in all possible ways. They should get a life and they should stop their efforts to bully people through the courts… 

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On Wednesday, an American-Russian row over religious texts intensified, when Moscow accused a Jewish group of a failure to return valuable books loaned to it over a decade ago. Last week, an American court imposed a 50,000 USD (1.51 million Roubles. 37,200 Euros. 31,900 UK Pounds) a day fine on Russia for failing to comply with an earlier order to hand over religious texts from the Schneerson collection of Jewish books to the Chabad-Lubavitch group, a Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement based in Brooklyn NY.

On Wednesday, however, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hit back in kind and threatened legal action to return books he said that Moscow had loaned the group. He also called the American court’s decision “outrageous” and said that it had no basis in law, saying, “The Hasidics received some books from us from [the Schneerson Library] for temporary use, for a couple of months, more than ten years ago, and have yet to return them. This should also be the subject of court action”. Last week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Schneerson collection is part of Russia’s national heritage and the state property of the Russian Federation.

The Schneerson Library is a collection of books and religious documents assembled by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement over two centuries prior to World War II, in what is now Belarus. In 1918, the Bolsheviks nationalised part of the collection, amassed by Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson. Later, about 25,000 pages of manuscripts fell into the hands of the Nazis. Afterwards, the Red Army captured them and handed them over to the Russian State Military Archive. This part of the Schneerson Library is now in a central Moscow library. Schneerson, who emigrated in the 1930s, took the remaining part out of the USSR. Since 1994, when Menachem Schneerson died, leaders of the Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish movement have tried to regain possession of the library, claiming that the Soviet authorities illegally held it after the war.

In 1991, a Moscow court agreed to turn over the library to Chabad, but after the collapse of the USSR, the ruling became moot. Today, the Russian government says it wants to keep the archive for future scholars. In 2010, a court in Washington DC confirmed the American Jewish community’s right to the library, but Russia said the court’s decision was illegitimate. In late 2011, an American court ruled Russia must return about 12,000 books and 50,000 manuscripts from the library. On Wednesday, according to the AP, Seth Gerber, a lawyer for Chabad, said that the group would “seek to enforce the sanctions order by all legal means”. Under that law, a sovereign nation isn’t immune to lawsuits in cases where property is taken in violation of international law. Rabbi Yosef Cunin of Chabad said, “At the end of the day, all we want is our property back. No amount of money can replace it. Our religious heritage is priceless”.

The legal dispute over the Schneerson Library has caused Russian art institutions to cancel scheduled loans of world-renowned artworks to American art institutions for fear that they’d be seized, even though Chabad stated that it won’t go after any art deemed culturally significant by the US State Department. The Immunity from Seizure Act protects such art from legal claims. Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky described the American court ruling as a “Russophobic show”, telling a news conference sponsored by RIA-Novosti last week, “It was a strange Russophobic show grossly violating both American legislation, as admitted by the American administration, and all the norms of international law. By the same logic, [Moscow’s] Khamovniki District Court could open hearings on the status of Alaska”. He added that the claims by one of the American Hassidic groups to the Schneerson Library “are simply ridiculous”.

23 January 2013

Carl Schreck

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130123/178970517/Russia-Accuses-US-Jewish-Group-of-Book-Theft.html

Editor’s Note:

Let’s be clear. None of the American Hasid groups EVER owned the materials in question. NEVER EVER. They’ve no legal claim to the collection. NONE. Moreover, an American court has no jurisdiction over a collection resident in Russia. I note that the Moscow ruling in favour of the Hasids came during the Crazy Time of Gorbachyov the Destroyer and Yeltsin the Fool. That doesn’t count… that was when the Sovs (and the Russian successor state) kissed the West’s naked bum. Chabad never owned this collection… its claim to it is false, lying, and mendacious. Its true reason for wanting the collection is to restrict access to it to scholars who’re pro-Chabad (they’d even refuse access to other Hasids whom they don’t like).

Chabad deserves NOTHING. This sort of thing is grist to the mill of all anti-Semites. It fits all the stereotypes of the greedy grasping Yid. I hate anti-Semitism, but I’ve a right to speak when I see Jews acting in such a way to reinforce anti-Semitism. That’s not hatred… that’s good sense. If the Hasids want to use the collection, they can do so in Moscow… and the coppers should search ‘em afterwards. They’re not trustworthy; they’re weaselling liars, if they think that they can get away with it… you should hear my Jewish friends on “Hasidic honesty”. This is ridiculous. What a buncha maroons.

BMD