How do you arrive at "reviving trade ties with Moscow’ as selling out to a foreign interest?
Didn’t you see this?
The EU was trying to buy Ukraine’s allegiance at a bargain basement humiliating price. Yanukovich was trying to negotiate a better deal and for that he had to flee for his life.
How is this that you wrote, not blaming the victim of what amounts to an assassination attempt:
He was negotiating a better deal for Ukraine to not let the EU off cheap. And for that you are blaming him for being ‘largely responsible’ for starting the events where he ended up being shot at.
I certainly believe no elected president/head of state should be ‘shot at’ under any circumstances. You obviously think Yanukovich was largely responsible for what happened that caused him to as you call it ‘abandoning his country’ .
So if the scholars that Human Action cited call it a coup and Vladimir Putin calls it a coup it does not matter because anybody who does is wrong because Human Action thinks its not.
[QUOTE=NotfooledbyW]
How do you arrive at "reviving trade ties with Moscow’ as selling out to a foreign interest?
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By being able to follow events that transpired weeks or even months ago. It’s really not all that hard. Let me switch this around and ask you a couple of simple questions. Please…try and focus and actually attempt to answer it in as straight forward a manner as is possible for you. Ok, you ready? Why do YOU think the people in the Ukraine were protesting? Why did they overthrow the president?
Um…yeah. Again, following along with events, the president did something that a non-zero and vocal part of his citizens objected too…strenuously. He then resorted to violence, which spun the entire situation completely out of control and forced him to flee the country. Since it was his actions that precipitated the events and the protests, and his actions that escalated the situation, I’d say that he was definitely ‘largely responsible’ for the events that transpired. What’s your theory? Did all of this simply spring from the mind of Zeus?
Perhaps he was. Or, perhaps he was selling out to the Russians. You seem to never have considered the possibility that there is any other way except the one that seems locked in your own mind. I freely acknowledge that there are two, or possibly more interpretations of events. The long and the short of it, however, is that a large, vocal and non-zero portion of his citizens objected to what he was doing, and when they tried to protest it he attempted to shut them down with force. It didn’t work out very well for him, however.
On 03-08-2014 at 02:50 PM Malthus wrote:
It is quite interesting to see the way Malthus constructed his statement. It appears that Malthus is defining the offensive military offensive and ‘atrocity’ that Georgia committed as a reaction to an ‘actual invasion’ by Russia into Georgian territory.
That is false. I say this construct is a false comparison to Crimea because the Russian invasions are entirely different with respect to ‘reactions’ to them by the respective ‘invaded’ nations.
In Georgia it is a verified fact that Russia attacked and invaded Georgia ‘AFTER’ the hostile attack and atrocity by Georgian forces began and was in progress against civilians and Russian officers and soldiers who had little ways to defend themselves from the heavy artillery and armored attack they were facing.
In Crimea the Russian non-violent invasion was not in response to an ongoing attack on Russian troops that were also legally stationed and living there as the were in South Ossetia. Had it been similar to that situation Russia would have been clearly justified once again in six years time to cross into Ukraine territory to search out and destroy the threat as they did in 2008.
The ‘trigger’ to Russian invasion of Crimea is absolutely a different issue and should not be confused with 2008 because the justification of the inherent right to self defense which was due to an actual attack and unwarranted military aggression that was present in 2008 was not there at the beginning of this month in Crimea. Putin has stated why he believes his actions have been justified in Crimea. It is quite fair to disagree. But to make a false comparison as part of driving home some kind of hard point that Russian military aggression in 2008 is cause for concern beyond what went down in Crimea because it happened ‘twice’ the same way and for the same reasons is clearly wrong.
I think this should be pointed out to keep much of what is going on in perspective.
Let’s clarify that it was not all the people in Ukraine protesting and probably not many of the million in Crimea that voted for Yanukovich. If you mean what the protests in Kiev were about, it was about what I posted at 01:08 PM yesterday:
It was about not signing the agreement with the EU, because there were some problems with it according to Yanukovich’s website in November last year.
You have to be willing to accept that the mob on the street was definitely giving the EU the upper hand in the negotiations to drive a harder bargain for the EU which is not at all that on solid economic ground as well as most every other nation in the world since 2008.
I just don’t see how what Yanukovich was doing was ‘selling out’ to Russia. Russia had a better offer that the EU was not willing to match. So what happened was the protest movement took Yanukovich down that resulted in a new leader who would sign on the dotted line on the EU’s terms. The take down was not constitutional and Putin saw a chance to move and he did.
I just don’t see the protest and legislative putsch the same as you do.
They’ve got their EU ties in a position of the most weakness ever. Will it work out to be the sweet democratic dreams of the Maiden protest movement - we will have to see. Perhaps there was a wiser way than being the rope in the East West tug of war.
The way you interpret the Yanukovych-EU negotiations plays no role in this. The fact is that millions of Ukrainians saw their leadership’s sudden U-turn as selling out to Russian interests. That’s what lost Yanukovych legitimacy in the eyes of much of the population - his brutal response to the protests did the rest.
As has already been mentioned: democracy is not about having an election every 4 years. Legitimacy can be won and lost between elections too.
Apparently the side in Ukraine that seized power unconstitutionally want you and me here in the USA to pay billions of dollars for the natural gas they purchase from Russia. And you seem to be fine with all of that.
I have no argument with the principle of all that as I argue in the case of Morsi in Egypt never really establishing legitimacy. What many here are ignoring is that although Yanukovich lost legitimacy with enough of the populace that massed in protest, there surely were consequences to the actions of bypassing the standard of law to terminate his election. In Egypt I was not pretending that the of standard democracy was followed with Morsi’s arrest.
The argument that democracy prevailed in Kiev is not very accurate to say the least.
The consequence that is now recognized by me is that the people in a semi-autonomous region of Ukraine not there by majority choice of people in Crimea - ever, decided to stage an unconstitutional act of separating from the mainland at a time when they saw the political rule of law suspended in Kiev. That uprising sought Russia to back it up. Russia did. It was invasion by invite not beholden to the Constitutional law that prevented what naturally should have occurred in 1992 when Ukraine forced Crimea to change its Constitution to Kiev’s liking.
[QUOTE=NotfooledbyW]
It was about not signing the agreement with the EU, because there were some problems with it according to Yanukovich’s website in November last year.
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So, you have a single source for that assertion…Yanukovich himself. It doesn’t answer the question I asked you, however. I said to keep it simple and be direct.
Again, this doesn’t answer the question I asked you, instead it’s you again spinning things and using the view point of a single source to build this entire house of cards you’ve built in this thread.
YOU don’t see it. Well, there is a shocker. You are using one source, Yanukovich himself, while apparently ignoring even the possibility that there is ANOTHER FUCKING VIEWPOINT, THAT OF THE PROTESTERS. So, I ask again…why were THE PROTESTERS PROTESTING? Don’t give me a bunch of horseshit from Yanukovich’s own mouth, just answer the question. Why were they protesting?
Could it have been, just possibly, that THEY thought he was ‘selling out’ to Russia? Regardless of what HE thought, is it possible…just possible, mind you…that THEY saw it differently, and thus protested the move?
Well, that’s obvious, but it has nothing to do with the simple fucking question I asked you to answer. I didn’t ask you to respout Yanukovich’s thoughts on what he was doing. I didn’t ask you to once again go through your own one sided logic on the situation there. I ASKED you a simple question which you totally ducked. And that question has nothing to do with how legal or illegal the overthrow ultimately was. I think your view on this is atypical, to say the least, and shows that you are highly biased, but that’s another discussion.
Russia left them very few options. They could cave in and join the Russian federation, as Putin so obviously wants the whole of the Ukraine to do. Or they could try and form ties with the West in the hope that, when Putin comes a callin the next time, the Europeans might actually do something if the Ukraine has those closer ties. I’m sure they are chomping at the bit to get into NATO, like, you know, most of the former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries did just as soon as they could…and for exactly the same reason.
Do you have an argument for stating it is wrong or is there nothing left for you to say but to link to a thread where personal insults are allowed.?
I’d love for you to explain why you think I am wrong on this point. Can you?
I don’t need an argument to prove an unsupported assertion you made is right. You need to prove it’s right first. But don’t bother. I stopped debating with you awhile back. If you feel like showing the rest of the readers here exactly why you are wrong, knock yourself out.
And, exactly, how do you know that those involved in the coup represent a majority of Ukranians? Mind you, the majority of which democratically elected Yanukovych.
Just because the US sanctions a coup doesn’t make it anything other than what it is: a coup.
Not like it hasn’t happened a hundred times before…
Did I claim that they were a majority?
Dunno. Did you? Because you sure are defending the coup.
Viva Franco, no?
Russia’s viewpoint is that the Crimean situation is exactly like the Kosovo situation (which the “West” supported) - is there a good counter-argument?
All things considered, maybe Crimea really is better off being in Russia and that will be more evident after some time has gone by. I’m really not seeing the huge miscarriage of justice yet.
[post retracted]
Without defending either intervention, the counter argument should be blindingly obvious. Kosovo was actually in a civil war, at best Russia can claim to preventing another Kosovo. There’s also the argument that the NATO intervention was a mistake, in that it solidified Serbian morale and actually gave cover for increased atrocities. Finally, the Russians didn’t agree with the NATO intervention so how the hell do they say “Hey, we’re just doing the same thing” actually validate their action?
Maybe they’ll be better off, excepting the Tatars of course. They’re fucked.
What do you think is unsupported?