I’d love to re-start a discussion we had three months ago. Really. Just wait for my reply, all right?
Hawaii was a sovereign nation that had formal diplomatic ties with the US and there were no white settlers to speak of, more like plantation owners. So now why don’t you explain why they are similar, with real history not gross generalities.
Then please explain how Puerto Rico being annexed after the Spanish-American war constitutes freely joining the US.
Then explain why Russia selling Alaska to the US is more legitimate than Russia giving Crimea to Ukraine.
Thank you.
We didn’t have a discussion three months ago. I asked you a question and you did not reply. That’s fine. In light of current events you now say the Maidan bloc with the chocolate tycoon’s election victory is a partial victory. So is Putin partially losing now and in your framework of US vs Russia brinkmanship does that mean Putin is having a partial defeat? Just curios?
Does everyone accept the US:Hawaii history contained in this link?
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/hawaii.
One excerpt:
This all happened prior to 1945.
For carnalk, there is no case to be made where, in post WWII context, the President of the US transferred, as a gift or any other reason, the Islands of Hawaii that had cultural and trade ties to the USA, to a third party nation that did not want cultural and trade ties to the USA.
I asked you to do the math a few posts back. I guess you don’t wish to do it.
I don’t have to “do the maths” anymore than I have. Your statement that all the States joined America voluntarily has been shown wrong. Now you want me to do maths on if America could give away a State post-WW2?
You keep saying it, but you do not provide the actual ‘text and backup’ that shows it.
And I believe you are down to Hawaii being the one state that makes *‘all states voluntarily joined the union’ * to be wrong. The facts I am presenting about Hawaii’s transition to statehood show that you are wrong about that too. But that you would cling to an argument that you believe makes one out of fifty states to be great cause to call my statement bs, shows a high degree of desperation on your your part to be right somehow.
As to your point:
I have not stated that Puerto Rico **freely joined the US **to become a territory. They have freely voted to become a state though, I believe in 2012 after several attempts.
Perhaps you are equally confused with respect to Hawaii. Hawaii is a bit different from the wilderness on the North American continent because it had a from of Monarchy. But your notion that it could have remained a sovereign nation during European imperial and expansionist times must also be part of your confusion.
That link I posted up thread starts off with this.
So I am correct. There was ‘economic integration’ between Hawaiians and the US. But as to your ‘sovereignty’ point. Hawaii was likely to be ‘taken’ by the French or the Brits during this time period.
My statement is factual including regarding the State of Hawaii: (All states in the US joined the union voluntarily. That was not the case for Crimea to Ukraine.)
You will note that I** did not **write that all territories of the US became territories voluntarily as decided by the indigenous population and that was not the case for Crimea to Ukraine.
A vote for Statehood is a vote for more local governance - not for joining America. You are in error.
No. That is false. There are fifty stars on the flag. The stars represent states. The territories are not considered states. To become a state there had to be a petition to** join the union**. That was conducted by elections of delegates or by referendum or by both. Hawaii had a referendum to **join the union **by an overwhelming margin of votes.
My statement did not say… joining America. Any nation can ‘join America’ in certain endeavors. My statement specifically used the phrase ‘join the union’.
Here it is again. You can’t seem to address it as written.
(All states in the US** joined the union **voluntarily. That was not the case for Crimea to Ukraine.)
Still don’t know where this USA-Crimea comparison is supposed to take us.
The world is full of countries whose regions never chose to join. Does that mean that the regions should hold improvised, illegal referenda under the watchful eye of the Russian armed forces?
My post 3362 shows you what the USA-Crimea comparison is about. Perhaps if I divide it in half you will begin to get it. It revolves around the question of fairness of whether Ukraine should have allowed Crimea to have a local only referendum on its status.
And just a post or two above carnalk is ignoring my request to do the math. The math is US territories involves only two parties at the time when parts or all of them became states. It was a voluntary act to join the union. Crimea had no such similar voluntary act and they were transferred by one state to which they were aligned to another state to which they were not aligned and that mis-alignment would later turn out to cause great problems that we have seen come to a head the past six months.
If you are truly interested I was responding to Mace on the matter of ‘fairness’ when I wrote three statements of fact that several are trying to dismiss as mostly bs.
ON 05-21-2014 ay 07:01 PM I wrote the first three statements of fact and one opinion based upon those facts:
*The Constitution that tied Crimea to the central authority of Ukraine was unfairly and undemocratically dropped when Yanukovich was violently deposed and forced to flee.
*All states in the US joined the union voluntarily. That was not the case for Crimea to Ukraine.
*Most well established democracies do not allow mob rule to over turn the president and government.
**I speak of fairness for the majority of Crimeans in the context of the chaos and unconstitutional conduct of Ukraine’s majority population and their elected leaders. **
I do see the dreaded word for some of my adversaries in there. “context”
So… say in February of 1981 when a military coup in Spain threatened the position of its elected government. Would an independence referendum in Catalonia, organised two weeks in advance, and with French troops on the ground, have been all right?
He can’t be reasoned with on this point. Crimea being gifted to Ukraine is so unconscionable that they forever more had moral authority to separate. Doesn’t matter what happened anywhere else.
I didnt say it was morally unconscionable that Crimea was gifted to Ukraine.
You must be thinking of someone else.
I said in response to Mace declaring it was fair to constitutionally force Crimea to be nearly airtight tied to the violent chaos taking shape in Kiev, because the United States doesn’t let US states have local referendums either.
I then pointed out that US states joined the union voluntarily and Crimea did not join Ukraine voluntarily.
If a state was coerced into joining the Union I would also agree that it would be fair to have a localized referendum to leave if any state thought it in their best interest to leave. You know, if a president they voted into office ends up getting removed from office by a violent mob of 20,000 that tried to take over the Capitol building and White House.
Crimea is where its majority wants to be and the matter is closed as far as history and geography is concerned. The argument that it was unfair to Ukraine is a matter for sore losers to whine about. But the issue of calling my factual statement bs is not reasonable at all.
No one has provided a single state out of the fifty US states that did not voluntarily join the union. And must have essentially accepted that all but perhaps Hawaii did join the Union voluntarily.
Wouid their be sufficient support in Catalonia to make the transfer peacefully as it was in Crimea? Would there be no civil war afterward? Do the French have a treaty to keep 25,000 troops in Catalonia to protect a major military installation?
Other factors could certainly apply but doing so peacefully is a major consideration on what is fair.
It’s not a matter of being “fair” or “unfair”. “Fairness” has nothing to do with this. It’s just history.
And you clearly never learned about the Louisiana Purchase in High School if you think folks in those lands “chose” to become part of the US. And you keep referring to “wilderness” and “nomadic hunter gatherers” when much of the US was settled and inhabited by agriculturalist, not “hunter gatherers”. The only “hunter gatherers” that existed before Europeans showed up were in the Pacific Northwest, and even then it stretches the term to call them that.
I suggest reading some books on US history. You would find that experience very enlightening.
You are twisting words so much. Alaska was purchased. It became a State much later. You can’t say it decide to join, it was already joined when it voted to become a state and when they voted they weren’t a State yet so the “State” didn’t decide to join. No realistic definitions of the words make your argument valid.
And the circumstances of New York joining are so different from Hawaii, Alaska, and the States involved in the Louisiana purchase that your “isn’t it just the same” shows you to be utterly ignorant. So maybe just give up?
And there’s no “perhaps” about Hawaii. Your statement was shown to be wrong.
No kidding.
But the point that he’s missing is that IT SHOULDN’T MATTER ANYMORE. Especially in Europe, there were so many wars fought over the years that at this point we’re all better off if we just accept the borders as they are. Unless there is some real injustice that needs to be righted (gross human rights abuses, for example), let’s not risk another European war by some region unilaterally trying to break away from the country they are in.
Anyone interested in commenting on the Ukrainian election that just happened? Is this a game-changer, or not?
This is funny:
Oh, those wacky Russians.
What’s even more funny is that Ukraine’s top IT official “blamed Kaspersky antivirus software for failing to recognize the virus.”
Now, I’m not convinced that Kaspersky was actually complicit, but you’d think that maybe, just maybe, Ukraine’s election commission wouldn’t depend on a Russian antivirus company to safeguard the integrity of its election system.