The Chechen Center, which identifies itself as “Independent Chechen Media, Chechnya, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, ChRI, Ichkeria,” tweeted, “300 freedom fighters stormed the positions of Russian troops in Grozny. For our freedom and yours!”
Early in the morning, head of the Chechen Republic and a former Chechen rebel, Ramzan Kadyrov, announced that the insurgents were “about to be neutralized.”
Kadyrov claimed to be personally supervising the anti-terrorist operation (ATO). Shortly after 8 a.m.–time appointed by Kadyrov for the end of the mission, Chechen militants blocked a school, and Russian forces assaulted the building.
Fighting continued in the streets of Grozny into the day.
Kadyrov denied claims that the Chechen force was gaining control.
“I ask residents in areas where the (security) operation is being carried out to take precautions, and not to go outside without urgent need, nor to approach the windows,” wrote Kadyrov online. “All the talk about the city being under the control of militants is absolutely false.”
A force, reportedly around 300-400 strong, is fighting in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya in Russia’s North Caucasus region. The militants seized the Grozny Press House media facility and laid siege to a school, prompting a military response from Russian authorities. Russian President Vladimir Putin was transported to the Kremlin in the middle of the night by motorcade, and Moscow airspace has been closed to civilian traffic, reportedly.
“There have been casualties among law enforcement personnel there,” reported the Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC).
Reportedly, five police officers were killed when the militants stormed the building at around 1:00 a.m. local time. The militants arrived in three cars and attacked the police guard, then entered the building on the corner of Lorsanov and Mayakovsky.
A Russian anti-terrorist operation has been launched, and authorities in the region are fighting the rebel insurgents.
“At the direction of the head of the operations headquarters of the NAC in Grozny, a counter-terrorist operation has been initiated,” read an NAC statement.
Russian tanks, troops and armored troop vehicles have surrounded locations where the fighting is taking place. Gunfire continues. The counter-terrorist operation includes increased public protection measures, checking of all documents in designated areas and communication with police and other competent authorities for identity verification. Vehicles in the affected area will be towed, and cellular phone communication may be blocked.
Airspace over Moscow has been closed to all civilian traffic, reportedly.
Flightradar24 image
Several sources on Twitter are reporting that Putin’s motorcade was seen travelling to the Kremlin in the middle of the night, with helicopters flying around the building.
The attacks come just hours before Putin was scheduled to deliver a speech before the Russian Federation Council. The speech has been much anticipated, as the last such speech made to Russia’s upper house followed shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Some of the videos posted of the fighting claim that the assault is being led by the Mujahideen of the Caucasus Emirate, Amir Khamzat, a close associate of the late Dokku Umarov, the former leader of the Emirate who was killed by Russia in Sept. 2013.
Chechen rebellion against Russia dates back centuries. The First Chechen War began in 1991, and the Second Chechen War continued the conflict after a five year intermission from 1994 to 1999. During the Second Chechen War, Grozny was almost completely destroyed by Russia before Chechnya was put under direct control of Moscow. Since that time, low-level insurgency has continued, first under Shamil Basayev, then under Umarov and now under Khamzat.
Women are not comparing themselves with the thin, attractive models in the magazines they enjoy–some, at least. Instead, women are living vicariously through the thin, attractive models–engaging in “thinspiration,” according to new research from Ohio State University. Not only that, women who enjoy these magazines are actually less likely to make an effort to look more attractive, the researchers found.
“Women get the message that they can look just like the models they see in the magazines, which is not helpful,” said researcher Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, who is professor and graduate studies director at Ohio State University ‘s School of Communication. “It makes them feel better at first, but in the long run women are buying into these thinness fantasies that just won’t come true.”
The study involved 51 female college students who participated in an online test. The women evaluated magazine articles and advertisements dominated by featured thin-ideal images accompanied by text over the course of five days.
Knobloch-Westerwick examined the data for magazine reading habits, body mass index, body satisfaction, and especially tendency to compare their own form with that of others.
The options given to the participants included statements like, “This woman is thinner than me,” and, “I would like my body to look like this woman’s body.”
Results showed that women who compared themselves to the thin models had lower satisfaction with their own body by the end of the study. They were also more likely to have reported dieting during the period of the study.
Women who reported comparing their body and feeling that they would like to look more like the models, however, had increased body satisfaction by the end of the study. This phenomena Knobloch-Westerwick dubbed “thinspiration.”
Thinspiration is a concept in which people believe that they can make themselves as attractive as the models they view.
“They felt better about their body instantly when viewing the images and related content. They weren’t thinking about what they had to do to look like these models.
“These women felt better about their own bodies because they imagined that they could look just like the models they saw in the magazines.” The women who experienced the greatest “thinspiration” from looking at magazines were the least likely to engage in weigh-loss behaviour in the real world.
The research also found that over time the women began to identify with the models more.
“They may begin to feel affiliated with the models, and start to think this person is someone like me, someone I can be friends with and emulate,” she said.
Knobloch-Westerwick’s research was unlike many other body-image studies in that it found that viewing images of more ideal beauty models lead to higher body satisfaction. Knobloch-Westerwick said she suspected that because her images were accompanied by text–unlike the simple images of beauty used in most studies–participants were influenced by positive messages about how they could look like the models.
“If they just see an image of a thin model once and have to react immediately, they may indeed have poorer body satisfaction,” she said. “But if they look at images over the course of several days, readers may begin to feel more affiliated with the models, feel more like they could be like them. That could lead them to switch from comparing themselves negatively to the models to using these models as thinspiration.”
A group of coffins returned to a far eastern Russian city from the fighting in Eastern Ukraine. The coffins were marked as “Cargo 200” and best efforts were made by Russian officials to keep the funeral secret.
“The first 17 zinc coffins were returned to the city, which caused some shock among the local people,” stated a former Russian soldier who spoke on condition of anonymity to Crime.in.UA, who called the man in the city of Ussuriysk.
Information about where the deaths of the Russia soldiers took place was not released by Russian officials, who attempted to keep the funeral as secret as possible, according to the source.
However, the former Russian soldier said that the corpses appeared to be professional soldiers (“kontrakniki”) from the 14th Brigade of the GRU Spetsnaz Russian Federation (Special Forces of the Russian General Staff), although the source qualified that it was difficult to say with certainty from which military unit the soldiers had served.
The source said that the Russian corpses had been killed in one of the battles for the Donetsk airport in Eastern Ukraine.
The zinc coffins were returned to Ussuriysk, a city of 165,000 people located on an arm of Russian territory at the very eastern edge of Russia, surrounded by China, North Korea and the Sea of Japan. Around 500 Russian soldiers who had been based in Ussuriysk after 2012 had been flown to the Rostov oblast–“the West,” as locals referred to it–earlier this year.
“It was clear that Russian special forces operate at the [Donetsk] airport,” said the source, “but it really could not be confirmed. Now everything fits together.”
Fighting around Donetsk, particularly at the Donetsk airport continues despite the Sept. 5 peace agreement. Russia sent an eighth convoy of 39 unauthorized, uninspected vehicles to refortify its fighters in Eastern Ukraine with food, fuel, weapons and ammunition Nov. 30.
The bias groups have to view their own actions as driven predominantly by love while viewing the actions of their rivals as driven more by hate has been explained by recent research conducted by a team from Northwestern University. The researchers found that in reality conflicts were driven by the same motivations, but the view from each side of a conflict was skewed–partially by psychological bias, partly by experience. The researchers also found that the bias could be removed by incentivizing a more considerate understanding using a time-honored cooperative tool–money.
Dr Adam Waytz
“People are surprisingly motivated by the same things in conflict–wanting to do right by their own group, and wanting to show loyalty and affiliation toward their own group,” Dr Adam Waytz, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellog School of Management and lead author of the study, told The Speaker.
“The Palestinian and Israeli conflict provides the clearest example,” Waytz told us. “I think most cases where a country decides on a violent or aggressive strategy to address conflict with another country means that they are assuming the other country is driven by hate.”
3,000 people were involved in the NU study, which included Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and Republicans and Democrats in the US.
The research team found that each side of a conflict felt that their group was motivated by love more than hate, but each also felt that the other group was motivated by hate more than love.
“We think people misinterpret others’ motives for two related reasons. One, they are motivated to see their own group as loving and their outgroup as barbaric,” Waytz told us, referring to a theory called motive attribution asymmetry. “Two, they simply encounter less instances of their outgroup engaged in acts of love, and therefore are blind to these motives,” said Waytz.
The researchers found evidence that each group regularly saw its own members engaging in acts of “love, care and affiliation,” but rarely saw rival group members acting from similar motives. In large part, this is because groups more often notice each other’s actions during moments of heated conflict.
Rival groups often can’t see eye to eye on possible solutions or find grounds for compromise because they can’t agree on the way they perceive each other. This creates an error or bias.
“If they believed that the other country was driven by in-group love, they would see diplomacy as a more effective tactic,.” said Waytz.
“It’s interesting to see that people can be blind to the source of behavior on the other side, that you can go from saying you are motivated by love of your own group and you can’t seem to apply that to reasoning about the other side,” Liane Young, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology at Boston College and co-author of the research article commented in a press release.
“What’s interesting to me is there’s so much work on social psychology suggesting we first think about who we are and what motivates us and we tend to apply that other people,” said Young. “What we’re seeing here is just the opposite where I say one thing for me and instead of extrapolating that it would be the same for you, I say it’s just the opposite for you, that you’re motivated by your hatred of my group. That’s pretty striking to me.
“What we also found was that these attributions tend to also track with other sorts of consequences so if you think that the people on the other side are motivated by their hatred of your group, you also are unwilling to negotiate with that group,” continued Young. “You tend to think they’re more unreasonable, suggesting that people’s misattributions of other groups may be the cause of intractable conflict.”
The NU team found that biases towards motive attribution asymmetry could be removed by incentivizing more considerate judgement.
When money was offered, study participants were able to correctly assess an opponent’s motivation. The promise of money for finding the right answer seemed to help study participants find that “right answer.”
“We just simply told people they would get a bonus for getting the answer right so they had to buy into this idea that there was a right answer,” said Young. “It seems like we can at least move around people’s judgments and that people aren’t so hopelessly lost that they can’t get it right when they are motivated to get it right.”
The report, “Motive Attribution Asymmetry For Love vs. Hate Drives Intractable Conflict,” was authored by Adam Waytz of Northwestern University, Jeremy Ginges of the New School of Social Research, and Liane Young of Boston College, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Russia’s proposed South Stream pipeline–which would connect Russia to southern Europe without crossing Ukraine–was scrapped Monday in the wake of EU objections to the project. Instead, Russia is naming Turkey as its preferred piped gas partner.
Russia has been for several years in the planning stage for an undersea pipeline to that would feed 63 billion cubic meters into Turkey annually. The pipeline would run under the Black Sea at a depth of up to 1.5 miles.
The Blue Stream pipeline which already connects the two nations opened officially in 2005. Even in 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin had stated that there was an opportunity to expand the pipeline to pump gas across Turkey into southern Italy, the south of Europe an Israel. Turkey also viewed Blue Stream as a step towards becoming a player in world energy markets.
Citing EU objections to South Stream, which would have brought gas into the EU via Bulgaria, Russia’s chief executive of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, told reporters in Ankara that South Stream was “closed.” “That’s it,” said the official.
Putin publicly stated that Russia would grant Turkey a six percent discount on imported gas next year. Turkey is seeking a 15 percent discount for Russian gas, however.
“As our cooperation develops and deepens, I think we will be ready for further price reductions,” Miller told reporters in Ankara. “As we develop our joint projects… the level of gas price for Turkey could reach the one Germany has today.”
Putin also accused the EU of denying Bulgaria its sovereign rights by blocking the South Stream project. Putin counselled that the EU objections were “against Europe’s economic interests” and were “causing damage”
Currently, Russia supplies around 30 percent of Europe’s gas needs via pipelines through Ukraine. Many nations–including Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria–have expressed concern that the South Stream pipeline would be risky, citing Russia’s gas disruptions and threatened disruptions via Ukraine pipelines after Russia invaded Ukraine early this year.
MoPoTyse, an NGO based in Phnom Penh, is using a peer education model that is cheaper and more effective than utilizing conventional doctors and clinics. This method is proving to reach many more diabetics and those prone to it, initially in poor areas in the capital and eventually in the outlying rural provinces. Upwards of 10 percent of Khmer currently have the disease.
The director of MoPoTyso, Maurits van Pelt, has stated that there are some significant reasons as to why the disease has become a growing problem in the country. One of these is a degree of poverty that prohibits most Cambodians from seeking proper medical assistance. “Adequate care is unavailable or prohibitively expensive as most patients live below USD 2 a day. Premium levels for community based health insurance do not allow coverage of chronic patient routine health care costs.” In fact, average global costs for insulin is $4, while in Cambodia it’s $16.
Another reason cited by van Pelt was the misconception that healthier brown rice is not as good as the cheaper white variety, which raises the blood sugar level much more quickly. This notion came about during the Pol Pot regime, when people didn’t have the time to remove the husk of the rice. As van Pelt stated, “It’s associated with poverty. It has a bad reputation as something inferior.”
Since 2005, van Pelt’s peer educator system, which started in a slum in Phnom Penh, has used existing diabetics to act as mentors and guides to others that have the disease in their local area. “[These educators] were able to find other diabetes patients in the slums using a combination of urine glucose strips for postprandial screening and a handheld blood-glucose meter for confirmation blood glucose testing,” said van Pelt. These groups then hold weekly meetings at the home of the peer educator. There, they learn how to eat healthier foods, the importance of exercise, and take their own blood sugar.
Linda Meach, a peer educator, said that the majority of the diabetic newcomers to her meetings have very little knowledge of how to handle their disease. “Before they come to us, they do not know how to take care of their health,” said Meach, speaking of the program. “We teach them how to manage their food and exercise and how to use the medication.”
A motivating factor for the participants at these meetings to do well is financially based. Those whose blood sugar has decreased, have lost weight, and have an improved understanding of diabetes receive access to discounted medication from the local pharmacies. One of the attendee’s of Ms.Linda’s meetings, Rose Nith, is hopeful for the future of the program. “Without this center our community will be in difficulty, since we rely on this center and it supports us,” said Nith. “Some people will die since they cannot afford to buy medicine without it.”
Selfies are increasingly common are hardly ever newsworthy–but selfies creating or breaking records definitely are. A selfie taken last week on a Windows phone in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, claims to be the world’s largest selfie ever taken–a record it may have created itself.
In a bid to capture the world’s largest selfie, Microsoft Bangladesh in association with Coca-Cola organized a campaign that saw at least 1,151 people shot in a single selfie. The organizers required the selfie enthusiasts to sign in for the sake of a head count.
The program was aimed at marketing Microsoft’s newly-introduced Windows device in Bangladesh, Nokia Lumia 730, which the Redmond-based company is touting as “made for selfies.”
In their official Facebook page, the company credited this photo as the largest selfie ever. Official recognition from Guinness has yet to come.
“The Microsoft Lumia team in Bangladesh is actively engaged with Guinness World Records to gain authentication of the selfie record,” Mr. Sandeep Gupta, a general manager of Microsoft emerging Asia told this journalist.
Apparently, there emerged a contender to Microsoft’s claim the same week.
Some 2,000 rabbis were reported to have taken part in a group selfie after attending the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in Brooklyn, New York. Toronto-based Shalom Life reported that a “camera” mounted on a five-meter-long selfie stick was used to capture the photo.
Unlike the Bangladeshi picture, the number of emissaries captured was not confirmed by the concerned authority. In addition, the Rabbi photo appears to fall short of the definition of selfie found in Oxford’s English Dictionary, that says, “[A selfie is] a photographic self-portrait; esp. one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.”
After Ellen DeGeneres wrangled to take a selfie of a scrum of Hollywood megastars during this year’s Academy Award that set a new record for most retweeted photo in history, analysts suggested that the selfie could be used as a subtle way of brand promotion.
Whether or not the Dhaka photo was inspired by the media buzz created by Ellen’s Oscar selfie, Microsoft appears to have undertaken an experiment a new era of marketing strategy in which the selfie is thought to be a game changer.
Germany’s foreign ministry spoke on the question of Ukraine’s joining NATO Sunday, stating that the idea could not be on the agenda and that Ukraine was not on the way towards NATO, as far as he was concerned. The minister expressed concern over “adding fuel to the fire” over a continuingly dangerous conflict.
“I am all for transparency in the matter, as, I believe, it would not be helpful if we were to not speak about it,” said Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an interview with ZDF television channel.
Steinmeier said that it would be necessary to inform the public of the questions that it would be better not to ask for fear of “adding fuel to the fire.”
It was necessary to “remain realists,” said the minister. “We are in the centre of a dangerous conflict.”
Steinmeier said that the situation in Ukraine left much to be desired, but further escalation was still possible and he remained concern about the possible repercussions of Ukraine joining NATO.
“For me, Ukraine’s membership in the North Atlantic Alliance cannot be on the agenda. Anyway, I cannot see Ukraine on the way towards NATO,” he said.
The minister characterized the dispute with Russia as “major.”
““I keep saying, it may take just 14 days to provoke a conflict, but it could take 14 years to settle it.”
Unable to vote, hundreds of Moldovans remained at closed polling stations in Moscow, shouting, “Let us vote!” Officials, citing a shortage of ballot papers midway into the vote, stated that no more ballot papers would be issued, and the vote would not be extended.
Parliamentary election voting was cut short in the Russian capital after ballot papers ran out, according to election commission chairman Anatoly Patrashku.
Ballot papers ran out during the opening hours of polling at the Moldovan consulate building in Moscow.
“It has been decided that the work of the polling stations will not be extended since all of the 3,000 ballot papers have been used, said Patrashku.
Across Russia, the Moldovan government opened only five polling stations for the Sunday vote, despite the number of 700,000-one million Moldovans who reside in Russia. These stations were located within Moscow, Ramenskoye (Moscow region), Novosibirsk, St Petersberg and Sochi.
According to Moldovan election regulations, each polling station cannot have more than 3,000 ballot papers.
The US intervention in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS) has been going for just under two months now. While it has in some ways slowed the progress of ISIS forces, especially in fights against Kurdish units around Kobane, they are far from routed. In fact, in the last few days, the terrorist organisation has demonstrated a stunning degree of tactical flexibility, attacking the remainder of the Iraqi government garrison in Ramadi, prompting local leaders to claim that ISIS was “24 hours away” from total control of the province.
In the face of the US airstrikes failing to stop ISIS, Obama is left in a rather awkward position, and has taken a number of decisions which belie the chaotic decision making process within the White House. Firstly, on Tuesday this week, his Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel, was reportedly forced to resign following the poor response to the emergence of ISIS. Secondly, the announcement yesterday that the US Air Force was redeploying a squadron of A10 ‘Warthog’ close air support aircraft to Iraq in order to fight ISIS, and assist the Iraqi Security
Forces (ISF) in a last ditch defence of Anbar province. Together these decisions show an administration struggle to keep up with developments on the ground.
Obama’s Dilemma
The problems which the Obama Administration faces in this new engagement in Iraq and Syria are rooted in the limited form of warfare which they are trying to fight. By attempting to have the best of both worlds, attacking and attempting to destroy ISIS from the air, while at the same time promising not to send significant ground forces to the region, the US response is strategically crippled.
Without ‘boots on the ground’ the US is forced to work with local proxies, and arm and train them to fight ISIS. The problem is, the US simply has no real allies in the region. In Iraq they are working with the ISF, however the bulk of the ISF is made up of Shia-dominated militias who see the war as a religious struggle against the Sunni, and have been reported to be carrying out ethnic cleansing in areas under their control. Meanwhile in Syria, the US has made the even more dubious choice of working with “moderate” Sunni rebels. Putting aside questions on whether such rebels exist in any real number, these moderates are allied with extremists the US is actively attacking like Jabhat Al Nusra (the local AlQaeda affiliate), and as such, are of questionable allegiance.
A Nightmare Scenario
Unless some kind of miracle (or greater calamity) occurs, 3 to 6 months from now, the situation will likely grind into a bloody stalemate. The Assad regime will be fighting to finish off the non-ISIS rebels in Syria, while the ISF will hold their ground, and maybe make small gains against ISIS in Sunni regions of Iraq. The Kurds meanwhile will also not seek to overextend themselves and attempt to reclaim ISIS occupied region. So after billions of dollars spent and thousands killed, very little of the US’s strategic goals will be achieved.
In the face of this failure, there is a very real risk of mission creep. The current force of 23,000 US soldiers in Iraq could rapidly rise, and begin to see themselves move into a more combat-focused role. Furthermore, the tacit alliance between the US and Shia militia in Iraq could backfire, and further alienate the Sunni Arab world, leading to yet more potential recruits for ISIS’s growing army.
Stuck within the constraints of ‘limited war’, the question becomes not whether the US can defeat ISIS, but whether the they have the political will to do so. The continued existence of the Islamic State rests not on battlefield successes, but rather whether the US president is prepared to risk a more intense (and longer term) conflict with the group.
Although the world’s poorest countries are thriving in terms of market values–over the past decade they have grown vigorously due to rising developmental aid and export prices–the people of those countries are trapped in a system in which poverty cannot be reversed–a phenomenon newly identified by UNCTAD and termed the “LDC paradox.”
“The world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs) are the battleground on which the post-2015 development agenda will be won or lost,” stated the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in a newly released report. “Its success will depend on action by the international community and the LDCs to structurally transform their economies and break the vicious circle of human and economic development that has trapped these countries in poverty.”
The poorest 48 countries are failing to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) while growing economically. Growth in the least developed countries exceeded the seven percent target set by the international community. The LDC world even outstripped the rest of the developing world after the 2008 financial crisis, a time when LDCs grew an average of just under six percent per year, despite the uncertainty of export prices and a slowing of aid funding from donor countries facing austerity measures.
Of the MDG target countries, only one is on track to meet all of the MDG goals–the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
This failure to meet MDG targets despite strong growth has been dubbed the “LDC paradox” by UNCTAD.
“The economic performance of developing countries is based on two separate but interrelated processes: increasing labour productivity and productive structural transformation,” the report found. ” Structural transformation has different dimensions, especially changes in the composition of output, employment, exports and aggregate demand.”
“Under favourable economic and institutional conditions, a rise in labour productivity leads to a rise in output, and thus to higher incomes,” the report continued. “However, higher labour productivity also gives rise to trade-offs. For LDCs, the crucial trade-off relates to aggregate employment. Employment growth is limited if faster productivity growth is not accompanied by faster expansion of aggregate demand. Indeed, without strong demand for output, a rise in labour productivity could even reduce employment.”
Although the LDCs are experiencing unprecedented growth, this growth is not accompanied by the creation of decent jobs in higher-productivity activities.
The problem, as UNCTAD identifies it, is that policy makers don’t recognize the need for a framework of upward-tending development that would lead to real transformative growth.
The goal of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda is total eradication of poverty by 2030–zero poverty everywhere within 15 years. According to the report, meeting this goal will depend mostly on LDCs, in which lies the biggest developmental challenges
The report identified three key approaches to meeting MDG targets: mobilizing resources for investment, directing these resources towards transforming economies and establishing macroeconomic policies that promote investment and demand growth.
Diversifying rural economies was also identified as critical to eradicating poverty, and crucial to this was the inclusion of women, who are particularly important contributors to social and economic development in rural areas, according to the report.
The core of the agenda, UNCTAD concluded, should be a virtuous circle between economic and human development, in order to reverse the vicious cycle of the LDC paradox.
“For LDCs, greater progress in economic development will require not only economic growth, but also a dynamic transformation of their economies,” found UNCTAD.
