[Daily Mail, where America gets news] A respected think tank study has underscored America's massive demographic shift since the start of the pandemic, with millions more Spanish-speaking residents as the white population tumbled.
The Hispanic population grew by 3.2 million from April 2020 to July 2023, as the number of white people fell by 2.1 million — the result of immigration and birth and death rates, says a Brookings Institution study.
That means Hispanics accounted for 91 percent of US population growth in those three years.
At the same time, the black, Asian, and mixed-race populations grew by hundreds of thousands of people each, while the number of Native Americans expanded by a smaller 23,000.
William Frey, the demographer who wrote the report, says a 'diversity explosion' is reshaping the nation.
Frey urged policymakers to ensure schools, colleges and businesses were ready for these shifts.
While he welcomed the changes, they are a concern for some white and other Americans, who worry that the country is losing its character and becoming too diverse.
In social media responses to the study, critics said the US was 'quietly becoming a third-world country' and that the changes were due to 'mass illegal immigration' across the loose southern border.
Some, including tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, say Democrats want people flows from South America to outnumber whites and secure election victories over the coming decades.
But the administration seeks to expand the number of people who can apply for citizenship and is frequently accused of failing to secure the border with Mexico.
While America's demographic shift towards non-Hispanic white people becoming a minority has been projected for decades, the new Brookings research shows how the population has been reshaped in just a few years.
Overall, the US population grew by 3.4 million over the period, says Frey's analysis of US Census Bureau data.
At the same time, the white population dropped by 2.1 million, and the shrinking group of white youth drove a 1.6 million drop in the number of Americans under the age of 18.
The falling white population is mostly the result of more deaths than births.
Thanks to an aging population, there are proportionately fewer white women of childbearing age and fertility rates are lower than in other groups.
The fast-growing number of Hispanics and other minorities is down to natural increase — measured as births minus deaths — and immigration, the study found.
Looking ahead, Hispanic and other nonwhite groups are projected to make up 44 percent of the population in 2030, with Hispanic residents comprising one fifth of the total.
By 2050, one-quarter of the population will be Hispanic residents and more than half will be nonwhite groups.
Frey said the data reinforce his 'view that the nation's diversity explosion' represents an important part of its future.'
'The nation's labor force productivity and economic well-being will rely heavily on the success and integration of today's and tomorrow's increasingly multiracial younger population,' he said.
Overall, 15 states saw a decline in population, led by California and New York, which lost a combined 1.2 million residents over the three-year period.
Most states saw their youth population decline. In California there are close to 500,000 fewer children than pre-pandemic, and New York has 272,000 fewer.
Meanwhile, Florida and Texas each gained about 100,000 young people.
The population shrank in six of the 15 largest metro areas. The New York City metro area had the biggest overall drop, with fewer White, Black and Hispanic people, while the population of Asians and people of two or more races increased.
[Asia Times] US had a geopolitical interest in Hasina’s removal and was tellingly quick to welcome her military-installed interim replacement There has been a putsch in Dhaka. We barely noticed because of everything else going on. Indian intelligence agencies, rarely the epitome of self-assured success, have rarely been caught as flat-footed as they were over the weekend when Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina hurriedly evacuated her palatial residences for a rather modest government guest house on the outskirts of Delhi.
In a matter of a few hours, the former "Iron Lady" of Dhaka found her position, and perhaps prospects for her life itself, quite unviable, when the head of the armed forces (who happened to be her niece’s husband) communicated the troops’ refusal to fire at "student" protestors who were gathering in force across the country.
Adding salt to the injury, various democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom refused or revoked her visa after the events that brought former Grameen Bank chief and Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus to power as interim prime minister.
Such epochal events in a country of nearly 175 million have hardly raised much more than a shrug even amidst a relatively slow (political) news cycle in August across the Western world.
Perhaps the media are more focused on the summer Olympics but clearly the events in Dhaka would assume much greater importance if violence, already targeting the country’s minority Hindus, were to spiral out of control into a full-blown civil war.
In particular, the hand of the US government is discernible in the rapid unraveling of events since the middle of June when student protests around a new job quota system of descendants of the country’s freedom struggle soon erupted into broader protests by a population that had grown increasingly sick of high inflation and high unemployment of educated young people.
In line with the toolkit used in the "Spring Revolution" countries ranging from Tunisia to Egypt, mass simultaneous protests erupted around Bangladesh with acts of violence targeting only minorities (considered closer politically to Hasina’s Awami League party).
The police and the army were called to help but proved utterly ineffective against the humongous mobs gathered. Despite various incidents of tear gassing and even shoot-at-sight orders (which were hardly carried out in practice as police preferred to fire in the air rather than at protestors directly), emboldened mobs had threatened to march on the capital this week, prompting Hasina’s ignominious exit.
WHY WOULD THE US BOTHER?
Given the country’s relatively small geographical presence that belies its population and its lack of substantial resources, the primary question for any reader would be why the US would even bother to trigger a coup in the country.
The answer lies in the country’s location, in the strategic eastern part of India with significant proximity to China. That is not all — being essentially a riparian state serviced by two of the world’s biggest rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, which together form one of the world’s most fertile deltas (explaining the population density) — the country’s ports have long attracted naval powers ranging from the British, Japanese and Russians, to more recently the Chinese and Americans at different points in time.
At the moment, the primary US interest in the country is to establish a service port for mid-size US naval vessels that could help America manage naval operation risks caused by China’s access to ports in neighboring Myanmar and offer logistic services to friendly powers in the region without needing any approval or participation from India.
To be sure, over the longer term, there is a significant strategic geopolitical advantage to be garnered from taming and managing the riparian economy of Bangladesh, with the northern parts of the country offering perfect topography for aerial incursions into the soft underbelly of China to the southeast of the Tibetan-Sichuan region, an area that China has ruled to the point of being entirely complacent about potential military risks.
An inkling of those political and military risks has come from India since the failed Doklam incursions of 2017, that has in turn triggered significant geopolitical activity around Bhutan and Nepal by the Chinese as they continued to intensify pressure on India before effectively achieving unparalleled superiority by the beginning of 2022.
With India on the back foot, the US clearly feels the need to step in — and if Delhi-based observers are to be believed, step up the ante.
SO WHAT MAKES IT A COLOR REVOLUTION?
Events in Bangladesh do roughly fall in line with the examples of various color revolutions in Europe and the "Spring" movements in that:
Mass protests triggered by a specific issue that the host government would normally have considered a minor, niche item
Active participation of multiple social groups, usually led by younger people but soon spreading across society to hitherto unpolitical groups
Significant use of technology, in particular secure communication apps (which may or may not have been assisted by a foreign state actor to ensure encryption upgrades beyond the host country’s ability to monitor or disrupt)
Generous and unexplained funding, usually emanating from new bank accounts of recently established charities and NGOs
Random news designed to incite more participants and in particular the use of graphic images of rape involving young women and images or videos of authority figures causing grievous bodily harm or even dismembering human bodies.
From what this writer has reviewed as raw data over the past 72 hours, a number of these conditions have been met, although it has thus far proved impossible to corroborate or prove much of the information to the typical standards of evidence-based documentation.
WHAT’S THE BACKGROUND?
At just over 52-years-old, the Bangladesh that entered 2024 was a sprightly young adult in the league of nations, boasting rapid economic growth, GDP per capita that had gone past South Asian peers including India (having left fellow Muslim carve-out Pakistan in the dust many years ago), with reasonable infrastructure, public payments systems and a marked competitive edge in labor-intensive mass industries such as textiles ranging from budget garments to higher-end fashion items.
In addition, many social indicators including the participation of women in the formal economy and health metrics of average school-going children all were the envy of the region.
Anyone familiar with the country’s bloody history since the 1960s would generally be appreciative of the giant strides of the past 15 years. An attempt at democracy that led the elites of (western) Pakistan fearing rule by the "Bengalis" led to an attempted genocide that was only stopped by the timely intervention of the Indian army that helped armed local guerillas take down Pakistan armed forces in a matter of a few days in December 1971.
Since then, the echoes of political assassinations and military coups, so familiar to Pakistan watchers, have rung regularly in the parliamentary halls of Dhaka.
Ruling since 2009, Hasina had indeed become much more dictatorial and had taken extreme action against the Bangladesh National Party of her bete noire and former political partner Khaleda Zia (the two had ganged up to bring down President Ershad in 1990), along with her ongoing crackdown on fringe terrorist movements that operated under the general umbrella of the Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat).
WHO ARE THE PLAYERS?
The formerly indifferent relationship between India and Bangladesh took a sudden turn for the better since 2014, when incoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited heads of other South Asian governments to his inauguration in a first for an Indian prime minister.
While his efforts to establish a more positive tone in relations with Pakistan came a cropper, Modi and Hasina did get along rather well.
After the horrifying terrorist attacks in Dhaka in July 2016 that left at least one Indian dead (a young woman who had been a tourist), India provided significant and recurring assistance on the intelligence and arms fronts to Hasina as she cracked down on the banned Jamaat networks that sometimes poured across the border into India, particularly into the welcome embrace of the opposition-led Bengal state.
Over the years, despite many provocations, the two leaders have maintained a cordial relationship that contributed to stability for the region, cooperation on anti-terrorist activities as well as a crackdown on people smuggling that had an ironic side-effect, namely to shift the activities away from India towards the "mother lode" of Europe and the United States.
It does appear, and it certainly has been actively discussed in Delhi all week, that Indian intelligence agencies simply failed to grasp the momentum behind the student protests. There is much discussion of the tens of millions of dollars that were funneled to the accounts of the protestors by foreign powers, often using bank accounts in neighboring India (in particular the bank accounts of Jamaat loyalists living "illegally but comfortably" in Bengal).
A second topic of furtive discussions in Delhi this week is the action of the US, and to a lesser extent, the UK. One well-informed observer based in Delhi said that accusations around the UK were "unfounded and speculative" because he believes the role of the junior Treasury Minister Tulip Siddiq (the daughter of Hasina’s sister) to be far too important to have allowed the new Labour government to have played any part in the proceedings.
However, other sources have pointed out that coups don’t get planned in days, and it is more likely that players in the former Conservative-led government were keen to play along with the supposed US plan to depose Hasina, if for nothing else because most of them feared losing their seats in the July UK elections and were seeking sinecures with US agencies and companies after their inevitable defenestration.
US actions have in particular been very telling. From decrying the Bangladesh elections earlier this year as "not free and fair" to an official statement "welcoming the interim Dhaka government" in a matter of hours after Hasina fled the country, there’s an American fingerprint discernible in every direction.
It is no secret that a number of pro-Palestine members of the US government had common cause with the Jamaat, and certainly benefited from funding and lobbying support among the small but influential Bangladeshi-American community, particularly on the East and West coasts of America.
There were also regular meetings between US officials and Tariq Rahman, son of Khaleda Zia and de-facto head of the BNP, over the past few months. It is believed that a number of UK Labour politicians who depend on the Bangladeshi vote lobbied the Biden government regularly on behalf of the BNP.
HOW WAS THE COUP ACTIVATED?
Indian sources did not communicate any earth-shaking revelations on exactly how the US funded the "student" protests, and arranged for the swift installation of Nobel laureate Yunus as interim prime minister.
In any event, Yunus featured as far back as 2015 when he communicated a desire to support (or even lead) a "benevolent dictatorship" that would replace the democratically elected government Hasina.
Of course, this was after the 2013 crackdown by her government, following some politically tinged speeches that proved overly discomfiting for the government, and personally embarrassing for Hasina.
From whatever I have pieced together, it appears that adequate funding has been provided to the Jamaat-linked individuals operating in Bengal since at least last year and there had been some speculation that the US had funded a number of Islamist politicians who stood (and mostly won) during the Indian elections, opposing the candidates of India’s ruling BJP.
That may have been the case, and incidents where entire villages failed to cast a single vote for the BJP that may highlight the munificence of the Jamaat in Bengal did indeed occur, but largely it seems to me that the money was sent into Bangladesh.
As a side note, while Bangladesh has its own currency, it is generally believed that the Indian rupee operates like legal tender in many parts of the economy, much like the US dollar does globally. Therefore, funding of Jamaat accounts in India would provide a frictionless transmission of funds to activists in Bangladesh.
The surprise court rejection of the jobs quota for descendants of freedom fighters, a founding myth of the Awami League, is now itself being considered through conspiratorial lenses, with some "well-informed sources" suggesting that the judges who helped to pass the order all have significant US nexus including children living or studying in the country. In the box for Organization, one of the choices is Jamaat-e-Islami and, since they are listed as one of the players in this piece, I chose them. Might wanna add US government to the list of choices. But, hey, it's only Bangladesh, right?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/09/2024 00:00 ||
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#1
Stated in article: "It is no secret that a number of pro-Palestine members of the US government had common cause with the Jamaat, and certainly benefited from funding and lobbying support among the small but influential Bangladeshi-American community, particularly on the East and West coasts of America."
An interesting comment especially since at various times the Jammat has been outlawed in Bangladesh and is itself, historically, a member of the radical Islamist movement chartered at Lahore in 1990. It has not shed its Islamist cloak.
There was in that year what is generally considered a genocide by the Pakistan Army and its allies against Bengali Hindus. About 1 M were killed and about 300k were raped.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/09/2024 16:32 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Sixteen years after the Five-Day War, the pain of loss has not subsided, relatives of the deceased journalists Alexander Klimchuk and Gigi Chikhladze said. Social media users have published an image of a bell and the motto: "I always remember" in memory of the events of 2008.
As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, former President Saakashvili is responsible for the start of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, the Georgian Prime Minister said and announced a "public trial" in the case of the "United National Movement" after the parliamentary elections. Russia must withdraw its troops from Georgian territory and stop violating the rights of people living there, the Georgian Foreign Ministry and Ombudsman indicated on the 16th anniversary of the Five-Day War. Mourning events were held in South Ossetia on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the start of the Five-Day War.
The Russian military operation "to force peace", which went down in history as the "Five-Day War", was carried out from August 8 to 12, 2008, on the territory of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. After the Five-Day War, Russia and some other countries recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia has since considered these territories occupied by Russia and has terminated diplomatic relations with Russia, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report on the Five-Day War of 2008.
"I always remember" - this motto, together with the image of a bell, filled Georgian social networks. Yesterday and today, Georgia remembers the August war of 2008, a correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot" reported.
Among those killed in the Five-Day War were photographer Sasha Klimchuk and journalist Giga Chikhladze. On August 8, 2008, they left from the United States to cover the fighting in Tskhinvali. The journalists were fired upon by an Ossetian armed group. Giga and Sasha died on the spot. The information about their deaths was not confirmed for a long time, and only on August 17 did the Russian side deliver the bodies of the dead to Gori. 30-year-old Giga Chikhladze worked for Russian Newsweek, Radio France and wrote articles for a number of foreign publications, 27-year-old Sasha Klimchuk was a photojournalist for ITAR-TASS and one of the founders of the Caucasus Images photo agency. Giga is survived by his wife and two small children, and Alexander has elderly parents.
16 years later, the feeling is the same, and it still hurts as much as it did then. As time goes by, I remember those August days more and more.
Gigi Chikhladze's widow, journalist Nata Mumladze, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that their children constantly remember their father. "The girl is already 20, and the son is 19. They are both students and study in the United States," she said.
Aleksandr Klimchuk's mother, Yulia Klimchuk, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that she was left alone. She was not offered a survivor's pension. "My mother died the day she found out that Sasha had died. My husband also died very soon. I live alone now and I never forget about Sasha for a minute. Sixteen years later, the feelings are the same, and it still hurts as much as it did then. Over time, I remember those August days more and more," she said.
In 2022, the Tbilisi Sakrebulo (City Council) decided to name streets in honor of Klimchuk and Chikhladze.
Teona Pankvelashvili, who lives in Gori, recalled how events unfolded in the region in August 2008. "Since August 5, the sounds of military action have been heard in Gori. On August 7, I clearly saw the fighting because the sky was red from the bombs. On August 8, at 10:20 in the morning, a bomb fell in Gori. At that time, my mother and I were on the street in front of the theater, people were confused, crying, chaos reigned. The city was empty. They called us at night and asked us to leave the city. My father took me and my mother to the Ateni Valley, to the village of Bnavisi. On August 9, at 10:20, a bomber flew over us and bombed the mountains and forests of the Ateni Valley. My friend and I were standing on the balcony in the village of Bnavisi. My friend called Gori. His colleague, ambulance doctor Tamuna, told him that bombs were exploding, and at that time we heard screams and the sound of bombing on the phone. Tamuna was wounded. We went to Tbilisi. My friend's father stayed in Gori and until the end helped the remaining population with humanitarian aid," she said.
On August 12, it was reported that the Russian army was approaching Tbilisi, Teona recalls. "I cried and asked my mother if April 9 had happened in vain. Fortunately, with the help of the governor, President Saakashvili, America and the European Union, Russia retreated, although it occupied additional territories... Today, the war continues again in the form of a creeping occupation," she told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
According to a report by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, published on the "Caucasian Knot", Russian cluster munition strikes were carried out on targets in the Gori and Kareli districts, as a result of which at least 12 civilians were killed and at least 46 were wounded at the moment of the strikes. All these strikes can be classified as indiscriminate, the document emphasizes. The "Caucasian Knot" published a photo report " Five-day war: pain and tragedy of ordinary families ".
Director of the NGO "Center for Social Solidarity" Tamta Mikeladze believes that the war is not over. "It is one thing when the authorities talk about war and peace, and another when you hear real stories of people who have suffered from war and conflict. We have everything except peace! We live in a state of constant war!" she wrote today on her Facebook page*.
The fighting brought suffering to many residents of both South Ossetia and Georgia, journalists and human rights activists who witnessed those events wrote earlier. Women and children "shuddered in basements for two days while the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, was pounded with Grad rockets, while artillery pounded the city," said Tatyana Lokshina, Human Rights Watch's program director for Russia.
In a number of settlements in South Ossetia, mourning events were held to mark the 16th anniversary of the start of the Five-Day War.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", in South Ossetia, mourning events are held annually on August 8 in memory of the victims of the "Five-Day War" of 2008. In 2023, a number of mourning events and flower-laying ceremonies were held in Tskhinvali.
On the 16th anniversary of the start of the "Five-Day War" in South Ossetia, a number of mourning events took place. Flowers were laid in Tskhinvali, including at the destroyed barracks of the Russian peacekeeping battalion. The event was attended by the President of the Republic Alan Gagloev . Flowers were also laid at the monuments to the Heroes of Ossetia Oleg Galavanov, Denis Vetchinov, at the "Symbol of Sorrow" monument in the "Museum of Burnt Souls" in the village of Tbet near Tskhinvali, the IA "Res" reported today on its Telegram channel.
Members of the "Mothers of Beslan" organization also took part in the mourning events. They laid flowers at the site of the death of six OMON officers who died during the "Five-Day War." Memorial events were also held at the foreign missions of the South Ossetian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agency noted in another publication.
Let us recall that from August 8 to 12, 2008, a Russian military operation "to force peace" was carried out on the territory of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia; it went down in history as the "Five-Day War". After the "Five-Day War", Russia and some other countries recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since then, Georgia considers Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be territories occupied by Russia and has terminated diplomatic relations with Russia, as stated in the "Caucasian Knot" report on the "Five-Day War" of 2008.
The "Caucasian Knot" also wrote that on January 21, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recognized that the Russian authorities were involved in human rights violations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but were not responsible for the hostilities in August 2008.
The ECHR decision will not affect the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, noted South Ossetian political scientists previously interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Igor Ivanenko
[REGNUM] This may be considered mysticism, but exactly 100 years after laying claim to the western regions of today's Kursk region, Ukraine is again seeking to take control of Russian Sudzha and Rylsk.
In the summer of 1924, a special commission of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR began to examine the project of the party and state leadership of Ukraine on the transfer of a significant part of the Kursk and Voronezh provinces and border volosts of Bryansk region to the authority of Kharkov (then the capital of the Ukrainian SSR).
Citing the large number of Ukrainians in the Sudzhansky and Rylsky districts, Kharkov officials laid claim to this part of the Kursk province, as well as Belgorod, Grayvoron and Putivl, which were then part of it.
According to the first all-Russian population census of 1897, the Little Russian language was native to almost 48% of the residents of Sudzha and 31% of the population of the Rylsk district. The Kursk Little Russians were descendants of the "Cherkasy" - immigrants from the Dnieper region, whose mass migration to the southern outskirts of the Russian state occurred in the 17th century.
Here they received large tax breaks and participated in the development of the Belgorod defensive line, which protected Russia from Crimean raids. The territory of the Kursk province, formed in the 18th century, housed the settlements of the Sumy and Akhtyrsky regiments of the Sloboda Cossacks.
However, migration here came not only from Little Russia, but also from the Great Russian provinces. In connection with this, a mixed population was formed in the west and south of the Kursk province, and as the patriarchal foundations were destroyed, the process of Russification of the local Little Russians gained momentum.
“The residents of the suburban settlements of the city of Sudzha are Little Russians, but, being in frequent contact with Russians, they changed their language; only the old people retained the direct forms of the Little Russian dialect, while the young people have a mixture of Little Russian and Great Russian,” local historians noted back in the 19th century.
"Ethnographic striping" was one of the main arguments of the Kursk authorities in 1924, who opposed the transfer of almost half of the province to Ukraine. After all, the Ukrainian settlements did not form a continuous massif, but were interspersed with Russian ones. In addition, they drew attention to the fact that the local Ukrainians had significant linguistic differences from the titular ethnic group of the Ukrainian SSR.
“The language of the population in a significant part of the Kursk province bordering the Ukrainian SSR is intermediate, transitional from Ukrainian to Great Russian,” stated the conclusion of the provincial planning department on the Ukrainian project for changing the borders.
At the same time, Kursk officials considered economic rather than ethnic criteria for drawing the inter-republic border as a priority. They rejected the seizure of "Ukrainian" districts on the grounds that these areas constituted the raw material base of the province's sugar industry.
Meanwhile, according to the State Planning Committee’s project for economic zoning, sugar production was to become the economic basis for the entire Central Black Earth Region of the RSFSR.
An argument was also put forward that the boundary of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly “coincides approximately with the current southern administrative boundary.” The division of the mineral deposit region between the two republics, from the point of view of Kursk businessmen, could have a negative impact on its development.
The final chord of Kursk's steps in territorial demarcation with Ukraine was a counter-proposal to transfer Novgorod-Seversky district from the Ukrainian SSR to Kursk province, as well as parts of Grukhov and Krolevetsky districts to Chernigov province.
Having received such detailed justifications from the Russian side, the commission of the Presidium of the Union Central Executive Committee requested from Kharkov a more substantiated argumentation on the proposed demarcation.
In response, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee decided to support its position with the opinion of two major Ukrainian historians, academicians Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Dmytro Bagaley. Both of them insisted that, in cultural and historical terms, the southwest of the Kursk province was part of Sloboda Ukraine, the center of which was Kharkov. This meant that this part of Sloboda Ukraine should be annexed to the Ukrainian SSR.
Hrushevsky even considered the region as “the Ukrainian ‘New World’, where the Ukrainian peasant looked for a place for his work, free from the exploitation of the Polish lords. ”
To which Voronezh historian Sergei Vvedensky promptly responded, reminding his Ukrainian colleague that the disputed territories had been settled by the population of Russian guard towns by the time Ukrainian settlers arrived here in the 17th century. Therefore, it is impossible to consider them the "New World" as a region that belonged to no one in the 17th century.
In early 1925, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee's commission for border regulation made its final decision. According to it, the territory of the Kursk province (as well as the Voronezh province) underwent minimal changes. The most significant concession to Ukraine was the transfer of the Putivl district. At the same time, the RSFSR was obliged to create Ukrainian districts in two border provinces to implement the policy of Ukrainization.
But two years later, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine again raised the issue of transferring the "Ukrainian" regions of the Kursk and Voronezh provinces (and, in addition, the Shakhty and Taganrog districts) to the Ukrainian SSR. The argument was based on the need to intensify the Ukrainization of these regions.
A new attempt to shift the inter-republic border to the east was undertaken in April 1928, when the Central Black Earth Region was formed (and the Kursk and Voronezh provinces were abolished). The Central Committee of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine sent a corresponding appeal to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks). A draft of a personal message from the leader of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, Lazar Kaganovich, to Joseph Stalin with a request to hear the opinion of Ukrainian party leaders “on the national question” has also been preserved.
However, all these attempts were in vain. The reason for this outcome is explained by Stalin's own statement at a meeting with Ukrainian writers in February 1929: "Every time such a question is raised, we start growling: how millions of Russians in Ukraine are oppressed, how education in their native language is not allowed to develop, how they want to forcibly Ukrainize, etc. "
Thus, in the 1920s, Russian communists still had enough strength to parry the territorial claims of their like-minded people from the "brotherly" union republics. But in the early 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev, a native of Kursk province, decided to give Crimea to Ukraine, public opinion in Russia could no longer stop him.
In the 1920s, Ukrainian national communists were not satisfied with the annexation of the lands of Novorossiya and Kharkov to their republic, but actively tried to push the borders of Ukraine to the east. And this is not surprising, because territorial expansion was a constant concern of the Ukrainian elites. In some places it was successful, as, for example, in the cases of Transcarpathia or Crimea, and in others it was forced to stop, as in Moldova, Polesia or the Kursk region.
[Bee] DETROIT, MI — Coming under heavy criticism over allegedly false claims about his military service, Minnesota governor and current vice presidential candidate Tim Walz clarified that he's never been to Iraq, but he has been to downtown Minneapolis, which is basically the same thing.
After Walz faced accusations of "stolen valor" after repeatedly claiming to have seen combat in Iraq, he admitted that while he had never actually been there, he had spent a lot of time in and around the hellish, war-torn landscape of downtown Minneapolis, meaning he had likely experienced the same type of horror.
"Believe me, it's just as nasty out there," Walz said. "During my time as governor, the level of decay and danger that permeated Minneapolis isn't anything to shake a stick at. So, while I must admit I never actually set foot in Iraq, per se, I would have to argue that my extensive time spent in downtown Minneapolis has given me experience that is just as — if not more — sobering and life-changing than anyone who served in Iraq."
As part of his explanation, Walz recounted the terrible threats and harrowing events he witnessed in Minneapolis while he was in charge. "You name it, I've seen it," he said. "Insurgents, acts of terrorism, mobs of people screaming ’Allahu akbar,' improvised explosive devices... they're all commonplace in Minneapolis these days. It's a scary place."
At publishing time, Walz expressed heartache over an incident when multiple members of his staff were injured by an RPG fired at the governor's motorcade while they stopped for some fried walleye cheeks.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/09/2024 00:00 ||
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[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#4
BTW: didn't Minneapolis became a serious Islamic Radical problem due to his and O'Bidens Far Left admin support and funding?
Mark Dayton deserves plenty of credit here, also. He greatly accelerated the import of Somali refugees. And it isn't just Mpls. St.Cloud and of all places - Willmar - have large Somali populations now.
[Commentary] Yahya Sinwar has been named the new head of Hamas's political division, and congratulations are in order--mostly for Israel, which can see in Sinwar's promotion the continuing fruits of its methodical dismantlement of Hamas.
There are three reasons for the West to find encouragement in this latest turn of events.
First, Hamas's leadership bench is depleted, and Israel's careful decapitation of its branches has been effective.
Second, Sinwar's consolidation of power, combined with his geographic isolation, turns Hamas from an organization into a literal death cult.
Third, it collapses a comforting lie that the West tells itself about these terror groups, enabling a more honest conversation about how to defeat them.
Sinwar succeeds Ismail Haniyeh, the politburo head who was assassinated in Tehran last week. Haniyeh took the helm of Hamas just as it was about to take over the Gaza Strip from Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, and led it through its Talibanization of Gaza and its consolidation of every form of authority in the strip. Haniyeh became the group's political director in 2017, handing the operational reins to Sinwar and decamping to Qatar to act as Hamas's gatekeeper and chief diplomat--essential functions, since Hamas is a proxy of Iran and thus cannot exist in isolation or without benefactors abroad.
Haniyeh's second-in-command, Saleh al-Arouri, was eliminated in an Israeli strike in Lebanon in January. That post was still vacant when Haniyeh was killed, so there was no automatic succession. As I wrote last week: One option to replace Haniyeh is former politburo head Khaled Meshaal, but he is on the outs with Iran and regional analysts seem to doubt Sinwar would support him.
And indeed, Meshaal was proposed as Haniyeh's successor, but Sinwar wouldn't have it. The Hamas ranks have been culled across the board these past few months. In July, Israel took out Mohammed Deif, Sinwar's deputy. Deif's deputy, Marwan Issa, was killed in March.
Which is to say, the elevation of Sinwar isn't itself unusual, but it wasn't the plan and it puts all the hats on one man's head.
Heavy is the head that wears a single crown, but Sinwar's headdress at the moment must make it especially difficult to skitter through those tunnels while trying not to sneeze too loud.
More important, however, is that his communications network--Hamas deputies abroad, Hezbollah officials, Iranian government officials, Haniyeh in Qatar--has already been badly disrupted. His isolation means he is even more powerful within Hamas, but that is because now he is Hamas. And it also means that Sinwar is nothing more than an Iranian satrap.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Indian intelligence agencies, rarely the epitome of self-assured success, have rarely been caught as flat-footed as they were over the weekend when 
[Bee] DETROIT, MI — Coming under heavy criticism over allegedly false claims about his military service, Minnesota governor and current vice presidential candidate Tim Walz clarified that he's never been to Iraq, but he has been to downtown Minneapolis, which is basically the same thing.
[Commentary] 
