Quote:Ukraine launches swift airstrikes on airport

Assault against pro-Russian rebels follows new leader's vow to reassert control in east.

Reuters

Quote:Ukraine launches air strikes at eastern gunmen

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's new president-elect promised Monday to negotiate an end to a pro-Russia insurgency in the east and said he was willing to begin talks with Moscow. Yet he described the separatists as "Somali pirates" and authorities in Kiev launched an airstrike against the militants occupying a major eastern airport.

Associated Press

Quote:After anti-EU parties surge, what's ahead?

BRUSSELS (AP) — Europe's voters have spoken, and the result "is a shock, an earthquake," France's prime minister said.

Associated Press

Quote:Associated Press

After Euroskeptic rise, EU leaders step into fray

BRUSSELS (AP) — Euroskeptics celebrated across the continent on Monday, from Britain to France and beyond, over their unmatched success in the European Parliament election. Now they are keen to put up internal borders again, keep foreigners out of their labor markets, abolish the common euro currency and let their nations go it alone in a globalized

Quote:Thai coup leader: Don't protest, it's no use

BANGKOK (AP) — Bolstered by an endorsement from Thailand's king, the nation's new military ruler issued a stark warning Monday to anyone opposed to last week's coup: don't cause trouble, don't criticize, don't protest — or else the nation could revert to the "old days" of turmoil and street violence.

Associated Press46 mins ago

Quote:Ancient warrior myths help veterans fight PTSD

Greek heroes struggled with battle stress, too. By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News

May 25, 2014 4:33 AM



Yahoo News



[image caption:] Ajax Defending Greek Ships Against Trojans (Bettmann/CORBIS)



A soldier returns home from battle but has brought the war with him. He stares off into the distance, unable to take joy in his family or friends, still hyperalert to threats he no longer faces. Unable to heal his invisible wound, he takes his own life.



This isn’t a tragic news story about a veteran coming back from Afghanistan with a case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s a summary of the Greek play "Ajax," which is more than 2,000 years old.



The Greeks didn’t call it PTSD. But they understood that war brought trauma (from the Greek word meaning “wound”), which left some warriors with a thousand-yard stare long after they returned home. Advocates and the military itself have found that ancient myths and stories like “Ajax” can help veterans and active-duty soldiers cope with the overwhelming psychological stress that the country’s longest war has put on its relatively small volunteer force.



[...]



Another group is bringing mythology to soldiers while they are still serving. The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into funding a theater company that performs Greek tragedies, including "Ajax," to military audiences. So far, Theater of War has performed 250 times to 50,000 service members, veterans and their families.



Bryan Doerries, a director who founded Theater of War five years ago, said he was blown away by the response to the group’s first performance in a hotel ballroom in San Diego in 2008. The military audience and their spouses watched actors read through portions of “Ajax” and also “Philoctetes,” a play about a war hero abandoned on an island by his own men when he begins acting strangely. Afterward, a woman stood up and said, “I’m the wife of a Navy SEAL and the proud mother of a Marine, and my husband went away four years to war and each time he came back he was dragging invisible bodies back,” according to Doerries. “To quote from the play, ‘our home is a slaughterhouse.’”



Ajax, one of the Greek army’s most celebrated heroes, returns from war filled with rage and slaughters farm animals that he thinks are the Athenian officers who betrayed him. The play also explores the effect of battle stress on families. Ajax’s wife laments that, “Our fierce hero sits shell-shocked in his tent, glazed over, gazing into oblivion. He has the thousand-yard stare.”



Many people in the audience are surprised that these classic battle stress symptoms are thousands of years old. “By using an ancient text, we’re trying to create a safe distance,” Doerries said. According to John Klocek, a psychology professor at Baylor University who treated PTSD at the VA for years, letting veterans know that PTSD is an ancient condition might also help remove the stigma around it.



But today’s warriors also face a different, more undefined kind of battle than Greek heroes did, which has created a different kind of PTSD. “There’s no front line,” Klocek said. “You never know when something is going to explode at you, when someone is going to shoot at you, when someone is going to show up in a suicide vest.”



“They are on edge in a way that is tremendous for months and months on end,” Klocek added of today’s men and women in uniform.



But the parallels are still useful. Now Doerries’ group is using another round of Pentagon funding to create a graphic novel based on Homer’s “Odyssey.” The book is called “The Odyssey of Sgt. Jack Brennan” and is set on the last night of a Marine’s deployment. Theater of War is also perfecting software that will allow people to create their own graphic novels to explore their combat experiences.



The author of “Ajax,” Sophocles, was himself a warrior — an elected general who led men against Syracuse. Some scholars believe all of Western literature developed from the need to tell the stories of returning soldiers.



“These myths were designed by and for veterans,” Doerries said.



Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Sophocles used the phrase "thousand yard stare" to describe Ajax. Doerries' translation of Ajax uses the 20th century phrase, but it's not a literal translation.

Quote:09 November 2015



Myanmar's Suu Kyi Heading For Election Win



A spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's party said it had won about 70% of the votes counted, while another spokesman said it was 90%.



[...]



Ms Suu Kyi - known simply as The Lady by many - is barred from becoming president but has said she would be the power behind the new leader.



(Oh, like Sonia had made herself the defacto empress of India with no official title but still the actual power behind the throne?)



[...]

Quote:09 November 2015



Myanmar's Suu Kyi Heading For Election Win



A spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's party said it had won about 70% of the votes counted, while another spokesman said it was 90%.



[...]



Ms Suu Kyi - known simply as The Lady by many - is barred from becoming president but has said she would be the power behind the new leader.



[...]

Quote:Burma – Plight of Rohingyas and Kachin Raised In Parliamentary Debate June 5th 2013

April 7, 2013 / 1 Comment



My first visits to Burma, fifteen years ago, were made illegally into the Karen State and my subsequent requests for visas were refused. During the intervening years I have had several bruising stand-offs with the military regime – particularly in relation to the treatment of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the country’s ethnic minorities.



When Daw Suu’s husband, the Oxford academic, Dr.Michael Aris, was dying of cancer he was desperate to visit his wife. With two other Peers I went to see the Burmese Ambassador and, on compassionate grounds, appealed for a visa to be issued. The Ambassador’s response told me everything I needed to know about the regime.



No, he stated emphatically, her husband could not visit her but, with hardly concealed cynicism, she could visit him: knowing that the regime would then never allow her to return to Burma.



Michael Aris was a Catholic, educated at Worth Abbey. Daw Suu told me she has many fond memories of visiting Worth with her late husband and hopes one day to visit the monks and the abbey again.

Quote:Michael Vaillancourt Aris (27 March 1946 – 27 March 1999[1]) was a British historian who wrote and lectured on Bhutanese, Tibetan and Himalayan culture and history. He was the husband of Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi.



[...]

Aris was born in Havana, Cuba. His mother, Josette Aris (née Vaillancourt), was the Canadian Ambassador's daughter, and his English father, John Aris, was an officer with the British Council.[1][2]



After being educated at Worth School in Sussex and upon completing his degree in modern history at St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University in 1967, Aris spent six years as the private tutor of the children of the royal family of the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.



Aris was an academic and lecturer in Asian history at St John's College and later at St Antony's College, Oxford. In the last years before his death, he helped to establish a specialist Tibetan and Himalayan Studies centre at Oxford.



Michael Aris's identical twin brother, Anthony Aris, similarly became a scholar of Tibetan studies, and founded Serindia Publications to focus on bringing Tibetan history and culture to modern audiences.[1][2]

Quote:After moving from Cuba to Peru, the Aris children were brought to England where they grew up in the smart London borough of Chelsea. Both attended Worth School in Sussez, a small 'public' (that is, private) school near Gatwick airport, attached to Worth Abbey and its complement of Benedictine monks. The wins habitually played games with their cassocked teachers, the one pretending to be the other. Both learned to play the violin well, sitting at the same desk in the school orchestra. But they also imbibed the special ethos of Worth, much as Suu Kyi had imbibed the ethos of Lady Shri Ram* and St Hugh's colleges. (* Same observation as when I first heard of this college: obviously christian; there's no such thing as a Lady shri Ram.)

The Benedictines provided aclassroom education in line with the National Curriculum, but they also emphasised the importance of the spiritual side of life. They aimed, through their 'holistic' approach, to produce more rounded, caring individuals (christian doublespeak code for: christian missionaries, on fire to serve catholicism's purpose in UK and the larger world) than more run-of-the-mill examination factories.

For this educational approach, at once Catholic and catholic, Michael Aris was well suited. When he was twelve, his father John, returning from a visit to India, brought with him a prayer-wheel purchased from a Tibetan fleeing the Chinese occupation of his country (yes, sacred religious items are cheapest when unconverted are at their most vulnerable, hence christians swoop in at that moment to purchase it and "help" the desperate kaffir): one of those drum-like upright cylinders, which the supplicant spins as one of a thousand ways of earning Buddhist 'merit'. Michael's natural curiosity was drawn by the peculiar letters inscribed on a paper scroll inside the prayer-wheel. By chance, one of his teachers at Worth, Andrew Bertie (later to become Grand Master of the Kings of Malta**) had studied the Tibetan language and helped Michael decipher what was written. Thrilled by the mystery uncovered, young Aris resolved one day to learn Tibetan for himself.



[** Wow, wait. IIRC there is barely a catholic edifice remaining that is more faithfully catholic than the Knights of Malta; and his teacher was the kind that would get elected Grand Master? Did the guy inspire/lead Michael to his aim aka "calling" of preying on Himalayan nations for jesus' mission?]



[...]