Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 6 September 2012

Eurasia Review: News & Analysis

Link to Eurasia Review

Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:13 PM PDT
By Darya Vakulenko On September 4, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos unveiled more details about the peace talks being scheduled with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It was the president’s second speech regarding the peace developments within the last two weeks; the first taking place on August 27 when the start of [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:09 PM PDT
By Inge Fryklund Although the war in Afghanistan—with its tally of U.S. combat deaths now exceeding 2,000—has largely faded from the news, it is useful to consider why the conflict is so intractable. Why has a campaign that initially seemed so hopeful resulted in a country that is politically fractured and increasingly deadly for Afghans [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:06 PM PDT
By Jeremy R. Hammond for Foreign Policy Journal The U.S. media is, unsurprisingly, making their best effort to paint Egypt’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in a negative light, the general accusation being that he is attempting to usurp power and crack down on dissent and criticism of his rule. While there are certainly rightful [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:00 PM PDT
The United States government during the Bush administration tortured opponents of Muammar Gaddafi, then transferred them to mistreatment in Libya, according to accounts by former detainees and recently uncovered CIA and UK Secret Service documents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. One former detainee alleged he was waterboarded and another described a [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:58 PM PDT
Being the last one picked for the team, getting left out of the clique of cool girls, having no one to sit with at lunch… For children, social exclusion can impact everything from emotional well being to academic achievements. But what does it mean for the kids doing the excluding? Is the cure a one-size-fits-all [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:54 PM PDT
Be warned, popularity may cause lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema. New research from the University of Southern California (USC) and University of Texas finds that popular students in seven Southern California high schools are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their less popular counterparts. The study, which appears online this week in the Journal [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:51 PM PDT
As the Democratic Convention begins, President Barack Obama seems a shadow, an incumbent who, while he will be hoping that Mitt the Invisible stays back in the polls, is fighting for his political life in the White House. Negativity is a symptom of the unimaginative mind. It is clear that the Obama campaign has, for [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:48 PM PDT
In the 1990s, I read an interview with a rock star optimistic about the country’s direction. He thought President Clinton’s admission to having tried marijuana was a good sign. America was becoming more socially liberal. The new generation was in charge. And as one consequence, maybe the disastrous war on drugs would end. Not only [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:43 PM PDT
By Reza Pankhurst The Egyptian government, led by President Mohammad Morsi, is currently preparing for war. While a few (naïve) analysts may have assumed that the first war declared would be against Israel, given the Muslim Brotherhood’s apparent support for its offshoot Hamas and the goal of the complete liberation of Palestine, the initial sounds from Morsi’s government [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:38 PM PDT
By Ismail Salami With thousands of Shia Muslims killed over the past few years in Pakistan and over 400 murdered in recent months, the killings have practically amounted to genocide, raising more-than-sectarian alarm bells not only in Pakistan but also across the Muslim world. In fact, there has been a marked escalation in mass murders [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:35 PM PDT
By Dignitatis Humanae Institute Jesus Christ instructed his followers to remember these words: “No servant is greater than his master: if they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” The truth of this warning has sadly never been more undeniable than in our present age, where in some countries today the very law itself gives [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:31 PM PDT
Rosneft and ExxonMobil today announced the selection of Vostochniy Offshore Structures Construction Yard to conduct a concept evaluation and feasibility study for a platform capable of safely exploring Kara Sea’s shallow waters. Key attributes of the platform concept are safety and environmental protection measures for operating in Arctic conditions and the ability to withstand extreme [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:51 PM PDT
By Yogesh Joshi The clamour for India to do more on nuclear disarmament can be heard all around. Recently, a big event was hosted at Vigyan Bhawan to re-launch the idea of the Rajiv Gandhi action plan on the global stage. The fact that the Indian External Affairs Minister and the National Security Adviser were [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:47 PM PDT
By William A. Cook ‘In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel Defeat Jihad.’ — (Pamela Geller, San Francisco ad campaign) The California Assembly’s resolution passed on August 23, 2012, HR 35, purports to condemn “anti-Semitism” in public post-secondary institutions of higher learning by denying expression of [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:45 PM PDT
The official position of Arab nations is unambiguous: solidarity with Palestine is paramount. But facts on the ground point to a disturbingly different reality, one in which Palestinians are mistreated beyond any rational justification in various Arab countries. The worst-fated among them are stateless refugees, who have for decades been granted only precarious legal status. [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:43 PM PDT
Under pressure from the Obama White House, officials at the Pentagon are contemplating possible retaliation against a former member of U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six who wrote a tell-all book about the operation to locate and kill terrorism’s “biggest fish,” Osama bin Laden, an intelligence source in New York said on Tuesday. What is troubling [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:40 PM PDT
By Melkam Lidet The past week was characterized by a break out of settler violence in many part of the West Bank. Angry settlers in protest of the recent court order to evict the residents of the illegal Migron settlement outpost built on private Palestinian land have interrupted daily life by blocking roads, throwing stones [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:38 PM PDT
“Let’s hope there is no new violence”, said to MISNA Monsignor Kevin Dowling, Bishop of Rustenburg. Around 2,000 miners, many armed with tire irons and sticks, reached the Marikana platinum mine, demanding a total suspension of production. There is a standoff between hundreds of policemen and the miners outside the mine gallery entrance 3. The [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:36 PM PDT
By Hanna Hindstrom Christians in Chin state face systematic religious discrimination at the hands of the Burmese government and are often forced to convert to Buddhism, a new report by the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) has revealed. CHRO accuses the nominally-civilian government of pushing ahead with the military policy of “Burmanisation” in ethnic minority [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:34 PM PDT
Christian pilgrims from Sri Lanka were forced to flee India yesterday after coming under attack by a mob in southern Tamil Nadu state. The attack and a series of earlier protests against the group have prompted the Sri Lankan High Commission to issue a travel advisory to its nationals wanting to visit the state. Of [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:28 PM PDT
A growing number of sports persons and organisations have sought to intervene in conflict zones to encourage reconciliation between estranged communities. The international community unanimously declared the year 2005 as the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, serving as formal recognition of the added value of sport as a peace-building factor. Contemporaneously, in several [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:18 PM PDT
The biggest political news this week won’t be the Democratic convention. It will be Friday’s unemployment report. If the trend is good — if the rate of unemployment drops and the number of payroll jobs is as good if not better than it was in July — President Obama’s claim we’re on the right track [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:16 PM PDT
During their second spacewalk, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and her Japanese colleague Akihiko Hoshide were able to install a power unit on the International Space Station on Wednesday. The astronauts fulfilled their main task to complete the installation of a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the station’s truss, which had caused problems during [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:15 PM PDT
By Andrei Ilyashenko n the eyes of the US electorate, Barack Obama looks cuter than his opponent at the forthcoming presidential election Mitt Romney, according to the results of the Reuters public opinion poll published today. However, 75% of respondents believe that the country’s economy is on the wrong track. The public opinion poll shows [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:12 PM PDT
Catalonia’s Sant Pere de Torello has declared its independence from the Spanish central government. Local deputies unanimously approved a resolution plan on “free Catalonian territory” after Catalonia asked Madrid for a 5-billion-euro bailout. ­The resolution suggests setting up Sant Pere de Torello’s own finance ministry, a national bank, a taxation office and justice ministry. Once [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 06:10 PM PDT
By Anne Look Mali’s interim leader Dioncounda Traore requested thatthe West African regional bloc ECOWAS provide “military assistance” to recover occupied territory in the north and fight terrorism. The reported request was made in a letter delivered to Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, who holds the rotating ECOWAS (Economic Community of West Africa States) leadership. [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:20 AM PDT
The parliament of Kyrgyzstan elected Zhontoro Satybaldiyev as the country’s new prime minister with a majority of votes on Wednesday. The parliament also approved the new cabinet proposed by Satybaldiyev, a former head of the presidential administration. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev dismissed the government on August 24, following the break-up of the majority coalition in [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:18 AM PDT
By Gayane Abrahamyan Business investors from Armenia’s far-flung diaspora, a key engine for the South Caucasus country’s sluggish economy, increasingly are expressing frustration with what they describe as Armenia’s corrupt judicial system and state bureaucracy. The government, for its part, asserts that it promotes favorable conditions for diaspora investors. Reports vary about how large a [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:16 AM PDT
Iran and Afghanistan have signed an agreement on bilateral cooperation following the fourth Iran-Afghanistan Joint Economic Commission meeting in Kabul. The agreement contains details on economic and security co-operation as well as ways of expanding mutual relations. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran is prepared to use all its power to cooperate [...]

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Posted: 05 Sep 2012 10:14 AM PDT
By Linda Karadaku Kosovo police arrested five individuals, including former government officials, on charges of abuse of official duty, bribery, smuggling immigrants, forging official documents and blackmail. The police explained that the five, which include Januz Kastrati, former trade and industry deputy minister, conspired to issue false documents to at least 10 Kosovo citizens seeking [...]

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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 12:44