Really the events at the end of February which forced the elected President of Ukraine to flee for his life to Russia was not a sudden violent overthrow of his government and a clear cut seizure of political power largely by the means of violence. Yanukovich’s government was seized by the mob and sympathetic legislators sympathetic to the mob who 'changed the direction with whom the constitutionally elected government wanted to seek a trade agreement.
Does it make you feel better to call *overthrowing the elected government *a popular uprising?
Did those people of Crimea and eastern areas of Ukraine participate in or have a say in your 'popular uprising that led to a clear violation of the Constitution to install a new president without constitutionally impeaching the one that was elected?
What defines a coup isn’t violence (surely you’ve heard of a “bloodless coup”), but the nature of the change in power. A coup is characterized by part of the existing government - typically, but not always, the military - overthrowing and replacing the executive part. That’s not what happened in Ukraine. The events there would properly be termed a popular uprising, or revolution. And note, “popular” doesn’t mean “all the people”; remember the popular revolution that preceded the coup of Morsi in Egypt? It wasn’t unanimous either, yet you didn’t criticize it on those grounds.
My motive isn’t “feeling better”, but accuracy; it was an addendum to my post suggesting that your use of John McCain as a proxy for the Western world was misguided.
Agreed sort of like all those idiot Brits whining like bitches about Hitler invading the Sudetenland when Churchill and the rest of those English and French pigs were busy carving up Asia and Africa in support of white Supremacy.
Even though I’d like to see a cite for “Pro-EU protesters did not move much until the Molotov Cocktails started flying” and also remingding everyone that any government that falls after a couple of MC is an extremly weak governemt, I am not even remotely suggesting that the pro-Ukrainian protesters were 100% in Gandhi-mode.
If pro-being-a-puppet-of-another-country protesters want to protest peacefully and these protests bring down the government, then more power to them.
In my country, president Fujimori overstayed his welcomed by bending/breaking the rules. After a couple of 99% peaceful protests he fled the country. 3 years before, the same protests wouldn’t have made Fujimori even lose a sneeze. Such is the power of democracy, of the actual “demos” doing some “kratos”, sometimes skirting the fullest extent of the law for quicker solution.
Sometimes the course of democracy hits some bumps. The English killed, illegally, Charles I. He had betrayed his country and called foreign invaders, but he was king and there was no power over him. I’m not Cromwell’s fan (in fact I 'm cloeser ideologically to Charles) but the will of the people is not always 100% lawful.
The West set the precedent with Kosovo, etc. It might not seem so to you for all kinds of excellent reasons, but it hardly matters because it very much seems so to the other side. And predictable so. And if the only way forward you see is going back to the previous situation, then you’re into for a very long standoff because a return of Crimea to Ukraine is not going to happen. But a long standoff is not going to happen either, because US interests are very badly served by a semi-enemy relation to Russia. You need a cooperative Russia next time the shit hits the fan in Syria, Iran, Korea, Venezuela or wherever. Then all matters of Crimea will be quickly forgotten.
You were doing so well until you got to the ‘however’, Its a standoff today between the military capability of let’s say East and West with Crimea being the rope in the tug of war. You have to argue that there is no or very little effective desire among ethnic Russians living in Crimea to call what many of them in majority are doing and supporting as the only ‘bad shit’ going on here.
The pro-Russia Crimeans have a justified bitch in this stand-off because they have never been given right of self determination for the boundary in which they choose to live. It was one man that decided their border in 1954. He had no right to decree that for all of eternity. That was a ‘bad shit’ decision made by one of the two totalitarian regimes involved in the massive slaughter of the 1940’s.
Today the ‘bad shit’ thus far in terms violence committed is on the West’s side. If you look at the underlying situation as a bid to correct a bad decision made in 1954 then the East’s side can be seen as using the threat of force to rectify that bad decision in 1855.
Contrary to what many say here there is no way for the majority in Crimea to have self-determination without the backing of the threat of force from Russia.
Crimeans had no self-determination fir independent statehood and in February they lost to ‘bad shit’ in Kiev their elected representative and top leader to the West’s side. That was a violent means to deny Crimeans their constitutional right to representative government. There is a cause - effect - and hopefully a peaceful result to this episode in history that the threat of force has made happen.
The world will not end with Crimea going back to Russia. It’s time for the west to let it go and begin to do constructive work for east and west Ukrainians evenly not favoring one group over the other. East and West Ukrainians have not worked out huge polarizing differences. It is time for outsiders to intervene only with both sides of that divide to be forcefully represented. Agitating one side against the other is bad shit in my view and east and west powers both are guilty. How about demanding out governments work to stop it.
And neither have they been given that choice now. Sunday’s referendum did not allow people to vote for the status quo, and it could be argued that the two valid options given to them would amount to independence.
It’s essentially like hosting a dinner party and offering your guests a choice of chicken or beef. Many will be happy, the vegetarians will go hungry.
The best part was when the Atlantic charter was signed by the Allies in 1941 to ideologically oppose the Nazis “in the name of Freedom against Fascists”.
The charter contained clauses such as “all people have a right to self-determination” which caused major embarrassment as soon representatives from all over the Third world (India, North Africa, Asia) came knocking on Churchill’s door and said “Oh by the way does this apply to us colonial slaves too?”.
UK and France quietly tried to hush up the total contradiction in their words and status quo. But the damage was evident.
To be honest the West has always been hypocritical about its ideology.
Like Goering said “I decide who is a Jew in Germany”, to the West now its “I decide who is a fascist and a racist”.
Essentially if you support Israel you will never be racist.
As to this current state of affairs, this is Machtpolitik 101.
The Russians make a move in their backyard.
Is there anybody with THE MEANS to oppose them in the West?
Ideology plays no part in this.
I’ll tell you the “Allies” certainly won’t make Ukraine the new “Poland” over this.
There will be some sanctions but overall appeasement will prevail.
I gotta say Putin is a Lion that puts Hitler to shame
The way you put it was that they are murdered for bashing Putin. That certainly sounds as if Putin has assassins go around and murder anyone who bashes him. If you simply meant its dangerous to bash Putin inside Russia are you implicating Putin in any of that and if you are you need to bring a legitimate cast or all that is essentially is unfounded Putin bashing.
If you are not implicating Putin for making Russia such a dangerous place then you don’t need to make your case. Russia has a dangerous political element about it that is indeed worse than more established democracies. But it is not as bad as you make it out to be for the sake of the discussion here.
Russia is classed as being in a ‘Difficult Situation’ (similar to Mexico’s or Venezuela’s) in the Press Freedom Index. The Freedom in the World Scale lists Russia as ‘not free’. According to the Democracy Index, Russia is an authoritarian regime. The Political Terror Scale gives Russia a score of 4 out of 5, meaning that “Murders, disappearances,and torture are a common part of life”.
What distorted plane of reality do you live in, where Russia is “not as bad”?
Which is bullshit. The official clearly did not mention the 1,724,563 figure, but 1,524,563. 1,524,563 - 1,250,426 = 274,137 voters for Sevastopol. Around the 80% mark.
Original recording: Более 95% избирателей в Крыму захотели вернуться в состав России // Новости НТВ
Somebody fucked up the reporting. Probably just an honest mistake, but lets try not to make Kuwait incubators out of it.
For you to be correct you’d have to establish that voter turnout was extraordinarily low yesterday. I have not been hearing much that very few turned out to vote. There is no evidence that those who voted only did so because they were looking down the barrel of a gun to do so.
The polonium was traced back to Russia. And while I’m not a fan of CTs there are some fairly big dots to connect - journalist investigating Putin dies, person investigating the death of the journalist dies in very painful, public and rare manner. But yeah, I suppose he could have pissed off someone else in Russia with agents in London and a fondness for weird methods of assassination.
Or maybe Yo Sushi! buy their fish from Fukushima. Who knows? Not Putin, that’s for sure. Can’t possibly have been him - he was off wrestling a tiger that day.
Again prejudiced opinion not substantiated by reality on the ground. And to arrive there one must assume that most pro-Russian Crimeans would not desire to be rejoined to their motherland and they only voted to help in staging a referendum to look real.
