It’s always the same horseshit with you, isn’t it. Even when you are proven wrong over and over again you will drag things out, spin and spin, and eventually continue long past the point where anyone even cares anymore…then declare victory, at least in your own mind. The guy is a Truther. You’ve been shown exactly where that is. No matter how you spin things, he will still be a Truther. You won’t accept this, so why don’t you fucking move on to your next ridiculous, pedantic point? What’s next on your list, or will you circle back to something else now? I’m sure we all await your next display with bated breath (or, perhaps with baited breath).
Getting a little side-tracked, are we? If we are going to continue to debate whether a particular source is a “truther” perhaps someone should start a new thread. Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand…
Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Just because local authorities don’t like what was happening in the capital doesn’t automatically give them the right to break up the country. And if they didn’t think all of the constitutional nicities were followed, that is an issue to be resolved through the Ukrainian courts.
Tom told you to drop it and you haven’t.
Warning issued. Stop it.
Sorry, I didn’t see this as “MODERATING”:
And I was asked a question to which I assumed it was appropriate to respond.
It is not a matter of not liking what happened in the capitol. The Constitution was suspended when violence ended Yanukovich’s term. And Crimea did not volunteer themselves ever democratically to become a subject territory to that Constitution in the first place.
No it wasn’t. A change in government does not suspend existing laws. You’ve regurgitated this nonsense on all 57 pages of this thread, but that doesn’t make it true.
Huh? The democratically-elected representatives of the Crimean people accepted the 1998 Constitution which - fasten your seat belt - acknowledged Crimea’s status as a part of Ukraine.
I have not said existing laws were suspended. Laws against ‘murder’ were not suspended. And the change in government was not a constitutional change at the highest level being the presidency of Ukraine. It was a change in the head of state and the direction of the country that was driven by violent force. The constitution was in fact suspended when a new government took over that did not follow constitutional procedure with regard to impeachment.
Crimea had no constitutional obligation to comply with an unconstitutional elected government that appointed itself in power.
The second problem with your simplistic shallow argument against mine is that in Crimea at least the central government was not able to enforce any law because the police in that area dissolved into thin air and or went to the separatists side. So Kiev had neither (a) constitutional authority to impose constitutional enforcement of borders on the people of Crimea; or (b) the actual appointed law enforcement agents on the streets of Crimea to impose the constitutional enforcement of territorial borders on the people or the leadership of the separatist movement in Crimea following the violent ousting of Yanukovich from his elected position of power in Ukraine.
Was Crimea given a choice and or chance to separate in 1998 from Ukraine by voting?
Got a cite for that “fact”? You keep saying it, but it’s because you wish it were true, not because it is true.
You are correct. I posted that as a poster, not a Moderator.
I am rescinding that Warning.
However, I am replacing it with a Warning for trolling.
You first claimed that “not even” I could produce evidence that Raimondo claimed that anyone other than the 19 men on the planes brought down the towers. That is a straw man argument and not offered in good faith, particularly since I had made no similar claim.
I pointed out, with four separate definitions of Truther, that your claim that Truthers had to believe in a different set of conspirators was false.
You ignored three of the definitions to pretend that a Truther had to believe that the U.S. government was involved. That is debating in bad faith.
You tried to play games regarding the dates that Raimondo posted various opinions as if other statements to the same effect, posted on different dates, were irrelevant to his general outlook. That is arguing in bad faith.
You have tried to weasel out of the evidence that Raimondo is a Truther by citing him JAQing off, despite the fact that I had already quoted him in post 2812 with a specific statement that he did not believe the “official” story. Your “JAQing off” defense might work on a show moderated by Glenn Beck, but it is an example of arguing in bad faith.
I have long held that there is a level of stupidity that closely mimics trolling and that I am reluctant to Warn or ban posters for trolling when they might simply be incapable of arguing effectively. Your odd style of posting, with its dancing and weaving and changing definitions and “misunderstanding” the statements of other posters or other authorities makes it difficult to determine whether you are deliberately baiting other posters or are simply incapable of serious debate. At some point, however, the effects of stupidity and trolling are indistinguishable. You have hammered that point home in the exchange between posts 2779 and 2816. If you are not trolling, you clearly are not competent to post, here.
[ /Moderating ]
To actually talk about the Ukraine in the thread, the Mayor of Kharkiv was just shot in the back yesterday in an assassination attempt by unknown gunmen. Kharkiv was also the site yesterday of clashes between pro-Ukrainian soccer fans and pro-Russia supporters. Several people were injured.
On 04-26-2014 at 07:01 AM I wrote:
Jörg Baberowski expresses a very similar viewpoint to mine in the following interview posted on MSN Arabia:
Baberowski: Let the eastern Ukrainians decide! was posted on 2014/04/16 at 2:12 pm.
Read more: http://arabia.msn.com/news/world/2995560/baberowski-let-the-eastern-ukrainians/
Jörg Baberowski, is quoted there saying, “Every option that leads to de-escalation makes sense.”
Who here disagrees with what Prof Baberowski is saying?
NFWB, you’re back and since you seem to be supporting a federal option I was hoping you could answer my question you didn’t before
Anyway, I was hoping you could answer my question.
In post #2608 you declared:
Once again, I’ll ask:
Since the policy of the Russian government was that Ukrainians were Russians and that there was no such thing as the Ukrainian language until they were forced to do so by the independence of the Ukraine, how do you define who is a “Russian speaker” vs. who is a “Ukrainian speaker”.
Should the “Sicilian speakers” and “Neopolitan speakers” of Italy be given more autonomy?
Is that fair and right?
Should the “Southern speakers” of the United States be given more autonomy?
Is that fair and right?
If not, please explain the intellectual consistency in your positions.
I obviously assume that you feel the portions of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and New York City with large numbers of Spanish speakers deserve vastly more autonomy then they have right now.
If not, please explain why your beliefs aren’t immensely hypocritical since Latinos have faced vastly more racism and discrimination in the US than “Russian” speakers of the Ukraine?
Once again, I await your reply and thanks in advance.
There are now three superpowers.
Let me guess; invisibility cloak, flying and justifying US geo-political policy?
What policy of the Russians are you citing? And you do acknowledge in your set-up that today’s Ukrainian speaks Ukrainian which is quite different from speaking and understanding Russian. So asking how to define ‘who is a Russian speaker" vs. who is a "Ukrainian speaker’ does not appear to warrant any kind of response from anybody.
Fred Weir in the CS Monitor for example has no problem defining the two distinct tongues.
Read more: Ukrainian vs. Russian language: two tongues divide former Soviet republic - CSMonitor.com
Perhaps you can restate your first question. It is so obvious that the two languages are distinct and readily recognized which language is being used.
That’s not an answer. That’s a quote from some random guy on the internet who happens to agree with you.
How is each individual in Ukraine classified in order to determine where these “Russian Speakers” are? Does every voter have to register by language preference?
How many “Russian Speakers” does a province have to have before it can claim the right to “more sovereignty”?
Why does this apply to Ukraine and not to every country in the world where you find more than one language, including the USA? Why not give CA more sovereignty because we have lots and lots of Spanish speakers here?
Actually, scratch that. He doesn’t necessarily agree with you. He’s just saying what we all know, best summarized in the last part (did you read the whole article, or just the part you thought bolstered your case?).
Politicians on both sides-- Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers.
It’s been noted many pages ago that everyone in Ukraine at least understands both Russian and Ukrainian, even if they prefer speaking one language over the other. That’s not the issue. The issue is what makes Ukraine so special that these “Russian Speakers” have some right to more autonomy that any other group in any other country doesn’t have-- including the US?
This is why your stance that once one group violates the constitution, it should be considered null and void and everyone just do whatever they can get away with, is an awful policy. Once you go down that road, it’s extremely hard to return to the rule of law.
I guess, the rationale is probably that if this all does come to blows, spreading the West’s resources far and wide will be the ruskies’ best strategy. How… World War III-esque. :rolleyes:
The crow flies at dawn.