Does it matter that there wasn’t a Ukraine at the time of Catherine the Great? She abolished the Dneiper Hetmanite and, from her on, Ukraine was ruled as part of Russia. And Catherine and her successors did their best to wipe out Ukrainian cultural identity and language. So, of course the Crimea was part of Russia under the Czars. The Ukraine was part of Russia under the Czars.
Ukraine just has a strongly centralized government system. The individual provinces have simply never been given the autonomy you think is fair. Neither have any Russian provinces. So Crimea didn’t “trade up” in terms of fairness at all.
But in your opinion, if Crimea had been taken over by Ukraine through some kind of obvious conquest that would be more legitimate, seeing as you are defending the American takeover of Hawaii. If the Ukraine had just bribed and militarily forced Crimea to join them, then had a vote that didn’t include naysayers, it would be less justified in separating. Most interesting.
I am not defending the American take-over of Hawaii. So you are wrong about that too now. I don’t defend the Brits French and Spanish take-over of the New World and other conquests of European empires all around the world.
Do the Math. In Hawaii’s case there are two entities The Hawaiian Islands and the United States. In Crimea’s case there are three involved today. Crimea, Russia, and Ukraine.
Crimea was gifted by Russia to Ukraine and they never had a say as Hawaii did.
If a majority of Hawaiians want to secede … I’d support a local referendum on it. How’s that?
Swap Hawaii for Puerto Rico… no need to change all the American Flags… I doubt they’d vote to go. That is just my view.
You must remember that originally I made three points together. One other was that the US government does not recognize mob rule deciding to toss out the constitution and go back to an earlier version as T&D’s link to a source shows.
So another part of why it would have been fair to grant Crimea a local referendum was because of that mob violence in Kiev. Hawaii wanting to separate would not have that cause because we don’t do that here in the states.
We also don’t change president’s by protest movement instead of voting. Hawaii voters in the past elections have not seen a President they voted for ‘flee for his life’ due to rioters in the streets.
In this discussion no. The issue of territorial integrity as I understand it is supposed to be regarding borders since the end of WWII.
My statement being called bs by a few only referred to how voluntary it was for American settlers to petition the Congress in order to become a US State. All manners of conquest or purchase of territories is not part of it.
Think about it. You yourself have stated that the PEW poll makes the ‘referendum’ in Crimea less unfair…
On 05-21-2014 at 04:11 PM Carnalk wrote a point that I very much agree with:
"I would say that the poll results suggest that the referendum wasn’t as unfair as we would like to think. The results of both are pretty darn close to each other "
If so the trade up had nothing to do with greater autonomy as part of the Russian Federation vs that of being part of Ukraine. The trade up to them could be identical or less autonomy yet still a trade up from being locked into the central governemt mess that is Kiev. The mess they never voluntarily decided to be a part of.
How is that different than early colonies like New York. Are you saying the NYC did not have businessmen, diplomats and soldiers when the natives were cast aside to establish New York as a colony and then as a state. Your logic does not add up in the broad scheme of things.
Ha. It’s your Orwellian view of what constitutes freely joining the U.S. that’s askew not my logic.
Well, I would have been wrong had I posted that, but I didn’t.
I said they didn’t choose to join, not that they didn’t want to join. Most Americans alive today never had the opportunity to choose.
I think that’s still probably wrong unless immigrants make up less than .1% of the population.
True. I should have said “most Americans alive today didn’t choose…”
When you can’t rely on facts - bring up Orwell. Every single US state joined the union voluntarily no matter what evolved over centuries of time from their status as wilderness to territory and no matter the status of the native inhabitants. What is real is real.
No. What you imagine to be real isn’t real. CarnalK is correct. Besides, when the Confederate states seceded, they certainly did not “choose” to rejoin the Union.
How could people not yet born choose to join the Union around a century and a half ago or more for most states. It was the people/settlers that made the choices quite willingly. Going from wrong to ridiculous.
Not at all. Just because my great-great-great grandfather voted to join the union doesn’t mean I did. It’s actually quite funny that you think it’s ridiculous because it’s the logic conclusion of your own reasoning.
Explain how carnalk is correct. No the confederate states tried to secede. They did not succeed. The Union fought them because those Confederate States joined the Union voluntarily and the deal was there was no provision to separate.
The ethnic Russians in Crimea did not join Ukraine voluntarily. My statements are factual not BS.
I never said that you did or did not possibly have an ancestor who voluntarily joined a state to the Union. Go back and check my statements. And your logic is bogus because present day ethnic Russian residents of Crimea never ever had a grand parent who voted or chose to join as subjects to the Ukraine Constitution.
I didn’t join the US voluntarily. That doesn’t mean I get to take my land and exit the US. That is the logical conclusion of your defense of the illegal exit of Crimea from Ukraine.
And the Confederate States sure as hell did secede. It’s not even clear that that was illegal as the constitution is silent on that matter.
I didnt say you did. What is your point. You call my statements mostly BS and now you argue a point that I did not make.
Current events are unfolding:
Does anyone think this guy should not work with Putin to restore order in Ukraine’s eastern regions because Putin annexed Crimea?
I have my doubts about Petro Poroshenko. As a Western European, I’m a bit worried about billionaires-turned-politicians in general. However, the man has just won the election and announced some sensible plans. Basically:
- He will call a parliamentary election soon, which will hopefully serve to legitimise the country’s lawmakers
- He will hold talks with Vladimir Putin, which will hopefully clear the air between the two countries
- His first official visit will be to Donetsk, let’s hope he manages to defuse the situation.
Having said that, I understand that Poroshenko is openly pro-European. So I guess the Maidan bloc can take his election as a partial victory at least.
On 03-01-2014 at 12:46 PM you wrote:
To that conclusion on 03-01-2014 at 06:19 PM I asked you:
You did not respond to my question back then, which is quite fine. But, my intent last March was to take exception to your observation early on that the violent Maidan crap that triggered the unfolding events in Crimea was somehow an exercise in brinkmanship between Obama and Putin that is comparable to the brinkmanship over missiles in Cuba between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Your observation, even if it was just a bit, is unfounded and indefensible.
On 03-03-2014 at 05:53 AM regarding a connection discussion you wrote,
And I’m sure you realized there were no genuine military options for the Pro-Maidan post-coup central government to stop Crimea from separating if that was their choice specifically with Russian assistance in backing up their moves in that direction. Surely you know that Obama had zero military options to stop the Crimea annexation from going forward as swiftly and peacefully as it did.
Kennedy had the best cards in the deck and he had a US Western Hemisphere national security threat before him that he had to deal with.
Obama had no cards and the EU had no cards and the annexation of Crimea to Russia in itself did not rise to a level of national security threat to any nation or organization of nations.
Any suggestions even in ‘bits’ that Putin reacted in a way to ‘test’ Obama’s weakness as the leader of the United States of America is absurd. It is as low as the constant domestic right wing political contrived anti-Obama muckraking that has gone on since he beat John McCain and Sarah Palin in the election.
And now nearly four months later you observe that Poroshenko is openly pro-European which you now guess the Maidan bloc can take his election as a partial victory at least.
If you still think this is about brinkmanship between Putin and Obama does it mean that Obama gets a ‘partial victory’ along with Poroshenko’s win as well as Putin’s upcoming complete failure to take over the eastern regions of Ukraine? Obama must have stopped him before the next domino could fall, right?
Poroshenko is openly pro-European