BS: Ukraine

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 09:27 AM

All about gas?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 09:41 AM

Perhaps the people of Crimea have a right to determine their own fate, and the majority may indeed wish to rejoin Russia. However that decision should not be made looking down the wrong end of Putin's guns!
If Russia withdrew with a UN promise to hold a democratic and free vote on that question, and Russia was to agree that the rest of Ukraine would have soverign self determination including tne right to join NATO a fair outcome could result.
The problem is that arseholes like Putin here, and Bush in Iraq have no concept of diplomacy! If you have big guns better to follow the lead of Hitler and Stalin!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:29 AM

I find the American criticism of Putin's action totally grotesque. America and her allies have gone barnstorming into Iraq and Libya in the recent past, and America has been responsible for regime change from Iran to Venezuela. There has also been extreme criticism and attempts at destabilisation in Syria, while the repressive Saudi regime is regarded as a staunch ally.
   My take is that Putin has a perfect right to go into Crimea and stabilise the situation.
   The only politics working here is the politics of energy and it's distribution. What a surprise!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:48 AM

"Putin has a perfect right to go into Crimea and stabilise the situation."

I may have missed it but I had not heard of there being any instability in Crimea - can you expound on that?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:52 AM

Its kind of like the WMD's in Iraq, Bobad.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 10:56 AM

Oh, and Bobad- do take a butchers at a geo-political map some time.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:07 AM

While the world theorizes and takes sides and hopes for this or that to happen or not happen, the Quakers in Moscow plead with Friends/Quakers around the world:

02 March 2014
To all Friends, a statement on Ukraine

Source.
A statement from Moscow Friends Meeting to all Quakers everywhere:

To all Friends:

Moscow Monthly Meeting of Friends asks you, dear Friends, to pray and work with us for peace in Ukraine. We propose the following principles to guide our prayers and our advocacy:
For government based on compassion instead of coercion, free from international interference.
For reconciliation among all the people of Ukraine regardless of ethnicity.
For all the different ethnic groups of Ukraine to be able to express their hopes and expectations freely.
For all controversies to be resolved without violence.
Moscow Friends will continue to follow the situation closely and prayerfully. Please join us.

Johan Maurer and Misha Roshchin
Moscow Monthly Meeting of Friends

Surely they want what we all would want for all the people of the world. War has never yet worked in the history of humans. Will we ever learn? "The people of the world must decide their fate, they need to stick together or disintegrate."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Stu
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:10 AM

Globalisation has made it impossible to deal with invasions like this as the markets get upset when trade is threatened. Look at how our governments abandoned Tibet and human rights in China in favour of trade, ignore slavery worldwide etc.

The Russians will keep Crimea because there's fuck all we can do about it, and market forces don't care about people.

It's all about the money, money, money . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:14 AM

The proper way for any nation to militarily intervene in the offairs of another nation, regardless of their interests or firepower, is through the UN (That of course may differ in times of war, where the outside nation is directly attacked by another nation).

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:26 AM

This is what WSJ columnist Bret Stephens suggests as a policy option for the US:

""In Russia," the historian Dietrich Geyer once wrote, "expansion was an expression of economic weakness, not exuberant strength." Mr. Putin's Russia is a petro-oligarchy whose survival depends on high oil prices and privileged access to the West for the politically connected elite. Raise interest rates, investigate the finances of Mr. Putin's inner circle, impose travel bans on Putin's cronies and broaden the scope of the Magnitsky Act, and we'll see just how resilient the Moscow regime really is. Only a president as inept as Barack Obama could fail to seize the opportunity to win, or even wage, the new Cold War all over again."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:10 PM

"Only a president as inept as Barack Obama could fail to seize the opportunity to win, or even wage, the new Cold War all over again."

Why would Obama - or anyone at all - want to wage the cold war all over again?
Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:24 PM

wage the new Cold War all over again."

Yup. Worked SOOOO well the last time around. Some idiots never learn.

But what one would expect from the Stephens - neo-conservative mouthpiece & editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post {a legal partner of the WSJ) from 2002 to 2004- and BooBad.

So let's go back to the days when men were men, and fight the First World War all over again
Back with Barry, back to "cash and carry", back with Barry's--

"And remember, 'I'm an American first, and a politician second'. . . Spoken like a true American politician"

Back with Barry, not with Lyndon, Ike or Harry, back with Barry's boys.

Russia is a petro-oligarchy

Unlike the US?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:40 PM

"The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to. It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries. His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen."

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:54 PM

CS: "Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity."

Leave me and my homeland out of it!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 01:03 PM

"Leave me and my homeland out of it!"
If only we could !! - tell the fellers who are still transporting 'rendition' victims though our local airport (west of Ireland)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 01:08 PM

Huh?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 02:23 PM

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ireland-told-atone-for-helping-us-rendition-242719.html

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:06 PM

In the meantime I am struggling to repair all the storm damage to my property.
in my opinion, even thugh the soviet regime had many faults they were all better off under the soviet union, and the only positive i can think of is, thank god all these idiotson both sides dont have nuclear weapons.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:09 PM

"Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 12:54 PM
CS: "Diplomatically managing conflict situations is not, as a handful of psychopaths would like the people of the world to believe, a sign of weakness, but of sanity."
Leave me and my homeland out of it!
GfS"

Heh! Thanks for the laugh GfS ;-P

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 03:41 PM

How was the reaction and success of the Bush-Cheney approach in the Russian military incursion into Georgia much different from Obama?

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 04:49 PM

Ah, Jeez, Ed- why are you introducing facts into the discussion???

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 05:30 PM

Welcome...anytime!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 07:23 PM

Induct Ukraine as NATO member, now

By Tarek Fata, Toronto Sun

First posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 06:34 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 06:41 PM EST
   
The first shots in the Ukrainian crisis have been fired.

Fired in the air by invading Russian troops in Crimea, to warn Ukrainian soldiers to back off, but shots nonetheless in what may well become a modern version of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Except this time, chances are it will be the American eagle that blinks, not the Russian bear.

As I wrote last week, the new, changed borders of Europe are a fait accompli.

Just as NATO sliced Kosovo out of Serbia to provide a homeland for Muslim Kosovars, the Russians have invoked the same principle to carve out Crimea from Ukraine's underbelly, ostensibly to save the region's ethnic Russian majority from "extremists" that have supposedly taken over in Kiev.

All of this could have been avoided had America shown some resolve in 2008 and accepted Ukraine's application to join NATO.

Unfortunately, the man who now leads NATO and the West is not John F. Kennedy, who eyeballed Russia into retreating from Cuba.

To put this crisis in perspective, it's important to look at the timeline in Ukraine.

On Oct. 21, 2013, NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen announced that Ukraine, which had been lobbying to become a NATO member for years, and had been rejected in 2008, would not join NATO in 2014.

A month later, on Nov. 21, 2013, the pro-Russian Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych unexpectedly announced he was abandoning plans to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union.

This came as a shock to many in Ukraine and by December, Yanukovych's arbitrary actions triggered widespread protests, led by a most unlikely of Ukrainians—a dark-skinned, Kabul-born investigative journalist, Mustafa Nayyem.

(So much for Russian propaganda that the Kiev uprising was some sort of a White supremacist fascist putsch).

Nayyem used social media to rally students and others to protest.

Soon, tens of thousands of ordinary people joined him and his call for a European option for Ukraine.

(By the way, the "Maidan" where Nayyem's youth gathered, is a Turkish, Arabic, Persian word for a public square, that is used as far away as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and as near as Poland and Ukraine).

The question now before the EU and NATO is less about getting Russian troops out of Crimea than it is ensuring the rest of Ukraine is not sliced into two parts, with Moscow gobbling up the industrial east, with all its mineral resources, leaving a truncated and economically devastated western Ukraine in the lap of the EU to rescue and revive.

There is way to stop Vladimir Putin's imperial designs, but to accomplish it all of us, including U.S. President Barack Obama, will have to develop stiffer spines and a dose of courage.

Instead of the endless rhetorical condemnations and cliché-ridden utterances, what western governments have to do right now is this:

1. Immediately induct Ukraine as a full member of NATO and call Moscow's bluff, the way JFK did in 1962.

2. Through back channels, let Putin know he can keep Crimea, but any encroachment on the rest of Ukraine will be considered an attack on the other member states of NATO.

The choice is Obama's.

Stand up for Ukraine and be counted. Or, forever become the laughing stock of the world, from the Boko Haram of Nigeria and the Taliban of Afghanistan, to the over-dressed communist generals who run North Korea, to Putin's biker gangs of Moscow.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 08:39 PM

In Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: He served in the KGB in East Germany, where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

    Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. "In another world," she said.

If you weren't sure of the veracity of that little reportorial nugget, all doubt should've vanished after Putin's press conference today.

Slouching in a fancy chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled. And rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: Serious! angry! bemused! flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of Ukraine, but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs elections, but you can't have elections because there is already a president. And no elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite? Look at how peaceful the Crimea is, probably thanks to those guys with guns holding it down. Who are they, by the way? Speaking of instability, did you know that the mayor of Dniepropetrovsk is a thief? He cheated "our oligarch, [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich" of millions. Just pocketed them! Yanukovich has no political future, I've told him that. He didn't fulfill his obligations as leader of the country. I've told him that. Mr. Putin, what mistakes did Yanukovich make as president? You know, I can't answer that. Not because I don't know the answer, but because it just wouldn't be right of me to say. Did you know they burned someone alive in Kiev? Just like that? Is that what you call a manifestation of democracy? Mr. Putin, what about the snipers in Kiev who were firing on civilians? Who gave them orders to shoot? Those were provocateurs. Didn't you read the reports? They were open source reports. So I don't know what happened there. It's unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police]. That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don't know. Yanukovich didn't give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don't do it. You'll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn't the first time they've done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people...these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You're not listening to me. I've already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you're not listening. It's not that Yanukovich said he's not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they're not as bad as in Ukraine. The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?

And so on, for about an hour. And much of that, by the way, is direct quotes.

Gone was the old Putin, the one who loves these kinds of press events. He'd come a long way from the painfully awkward gray FSB officer on Larry King, a year into his tenure. He had grown to become the master of public speaking, who had turned his churlish, prison-inflected slang to his benefit. A salty guy in utter command of a crowd. That Putin was not the Putin we saw today. Today's Putin was nervous, angry, cornered, and paranoid, periodically illuminated by flashes of his own righteousness. Here was an authoritarian dancing uncomfortably in his new dictator shoes, squirming in his throne.

For the last few years, it has become something like conventional knowledge in Moscow journalistic circles that Putin was no longer getting good information, that he was surrounded by yes-men who created for him a parallel informational universe. "They're beginning to believe their own propaganda," Gleb Pavlovsky told me when I was in Moscow in December. Pavlovsky had been a close advisor to the early Putin, helping him win his first presidential election in 2000. (When, in 2011, Putin decided to return for a third term as president, Pavlovsky declared the old Putin dead.) And still, it wasn't fully vetted information. We were like astronomers, studying refractions of light that reached us from great distances, and used them to draw our conclusions.

Today's performance, though, put all that speculation to rest. Merkel was absolutely right: Putin has lost it. Unfortunately, it makes him that much harder to deal with.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,rb
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 11:01 PM

Canada should send the HMCS Protecteur to the Black Sea, after she gets towed to Hawaii by the US Navy for repairs.
Maybe re-christen her "HMCS Provocateur" with a bottle of Molson Ex.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:26 AM

You'd think before it got blown out of proportion, into joining 'alliances', which would escalate bloodshed, and bad P.R., you'd think the countries involved, (ooops I meant banks), would send their slickest negotiators to hammer out a deal..all leveraging everything they could, and sell out each other, and the citizens, who think it's about their countries....and work a deal.
That's what it's going to boil down to, anyway.......unless some bankster is 'in' with weapons manufacturer....then there is money to be made, selling ideologies and weapons..and hope they use up a LOT of them!!!.....they'd have to wage an intense propaganda campaign, to make sure both sides REALLY HATE each other REAL GOOD.....(and use up more ammo and stuff, for sale)
OH, by the way, do you remember me telling you that the five countries on the U.N. Security Council, are also the world largest weapons suppliers??...Briton, France, U.S., China and Russia......
So if it's all about fighting over money, and/or the way it is
'handled'.....
...so I guess that might in the bargaining....

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 03:21 AM

Thanks for the link to the Irish Examiner Guest - do you notice that it's times like this that our Transatlantic cousins impose a vow of silence on such information; just as when it is pointed out that the Ukraine is heavy into extremist Antisemitic nationalism and the bunch that have taken over are among the worst?
This in no way excuses Russia's behaviour - even though they are on the side of the angels nowadays - but it does put things into perspective somewhat.
The risk now is that the world will end up with another former Yugoslavia - assisted by the West's support this time.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 04:52 AM

It is hard to test the veracity of any data when the puppet meisters on both sides manipulate even the shadows.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 07:39 AM

Obama: "Let me be clear"

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 08:47 AM

I suspect NATO announcing it was considering having Ukraine as member was a major tuning point for Russia's worries about it's security related to this country- which was likely a major factor contributing to the "chain of" current events. Having a "western-military-allied" nation on your doorstep surely must have concerned Russia. Was it not a similar situation that what got the USAs attention n the 60s in Cuba? Remember the Cuba blockaid standoff and"the Bay of Pigs" incident.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 09:01 AM

Good Soldier Schweik: in my opinion, even thugh the soviet regime had many faults they were all better off under the soviet union

I think you'd be surprised how few people in FSU countries would agree with you these days!

I've spent at least 3 months a year working in Russia for the last 2 years,and will again this year. I speak passable but not yet good Russian. I'm just back from Sakhalin, Moscow and Khabarovsk. My daughter works full-time as a journalist for a Russian news organisation in Moscow. My wife is of Estonian extraction. As well as Russia I've recently worked in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

I have local friends in these places....I make a big point of NOT getting very involved with expat "communities" when I work abroad, and try to cultivate local friendships. My best friends in Sakhalin are a charcoal burner, a lawyer and a teacher. And an FSB colonel, but we'll keep quiet about that :-). I know literally NO-ONE in any of the FSU or former east bloc countries I've visited who believes they were better off in the USSR. I *hear* about a few people who are nostalgic for a time when the USSR was seen as "the other big power" but I don't know any personally.

Last time I was in St Petersburg, the queue for the "Mashrutka" (fixed-route minibuses) was huge and moving slowly, and a young lad in the queue said something like "bloody hell, this is slow...it's even worse than in Soviet times". At that point a whole slew of older people in the queue (Russians aren't backward at criticising people in public!) rounded on this guy, telling him in strong terms that he had NO idea what he was talking about,and that it he did, he wouldn't dare to even think such garbage. These were ordinary workers.

There are no queues for basics like bread now, and the vast majority get enough to eat. When I studied in Poland in the summer of 1974, at Mikolai Kopernik University in Torun, the first Polish word I learned was "niema" ("there isn't any"). It was the standard answer to most questions about food or goods. As students (I was the only non-Pole on the course)we were relatively privileged and got more stuff than the general populace, but it was still pitifully limited.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 09:01 AM

A look back-Turkey, the Black sea and NATO 
A look back to 1998 to put some related aspects of today into perspective.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 09:23 AM

Another perspective, right or wrong 
What the Russians are saying:

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 09:30 AM

Rather than seek military aliances adjacent to superpowers, which contributes to distrust and counter measures- would it not make more sense to try and make these countries neutral, to creat a buffer zone? This would avoid making these super powers feel thatvthey are being "cornered". We all know the reaction of an animal who feels cornered.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 09:58 AM

Ed T: I think the comment he made that the "police state in the USA is worse than it ever was in the Soviet Union" gives an insight into the amount of credence that can be put on his comments.

I've said myself in the past that I've found some aspects of US society to be "akin to a police state"....the treatment meted out to a Norwegian colleague who didn't understand about "baggage tag matching" at LA airport was shocking, and some of the encounters I've had with immigration authorities have been horrible ( I have a namesake born in the same year as me who was convicted of arms smuggling in UK and EVERY time I enter the US I spend 3-4 hours in isolation, on top of the immigration queue time, while they check me out). I've witnessed other worrying incidents, too.

However, to compare it to the repression in the Soviet Union is just a total disconnect from reality. Many of my wife's family in Estonia were murdered by Stalin....just herded into railcars and shipped east without food or water. The reason for most of them going was that they lived on the island of Saaremaa which was wanted for a naval base and they were simply in the way. Very few came back. I pass the remains of 2 huge gulags whenever I go to the countryside with my local friends in Sakhalin. That's just 2 of literally dozens on the island. And how many Americans risk being shot in the back fleeing from the USA to Canada, as happened to hundreds, possibly thousands, of East Germans? I think the guy's sitting under a tinfoil hat!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: bobad
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:25 AM

Good post Rob. As someone who had family living under Soviet rule I can vouch for your description of life under this brutal dictatorship. What I find incredulous is that there are still some who cling to their romantic notion of communism - there was nothing good about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:29 AM

Rob Naylor,
By posting the link, my intent was not to validate the Russian perspective presented in the article. It was more to enable folks to consider the entire picture from all viewpoints, and from the information made available to citizens from the various nations involved.

A difficulty people often have, when trying tobunderstand the actions/behaviour of other states - as they are looming at them through the lenses of their own countries/cultures/national interests.IMO, one does not have to agree with this perspective, to factor it in.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:30 AM

Jim Carroll: do you notice that it's times like this that our Transatlantic cousins impose a vow of silence on such information; just as when it is pointed out that the Ukraine is heavy into extremist Antisemitic nationalism and the bunch that have taken over are among the worst?

Well, no, we've seen these accusations that the people who deposed Yanukovych were fascist anti-semites all over the place in the last couple of weeks. There's no "vow of silence" on that. Some of them undoubtedly are, but as I said above, the surprising thing to those I know who were in Ukraine recently was just how broad-brush the demonstrators were, comprising all political streams from far-right to far-left, plus a lot of people who are normally apolitical.

There was very little looting of stores, or damage to buildings other than government locations. The "bunch who have taken over" are largely the same people that were in government previously. The interim President is a former Prime Minister and former Head of Security. The interim Prime Minister was previously offered the role of Prime Minister by the ousted Yanukovych but turned it down. Most of the current cabinet have served in government before, several of them under Yanukovych. There are a couple of representatives of the Far Right: Yarosh, Deputy Head of Security, for example, who is the head of "Right Sektor" which is undoubtedly right wing.

But the cariacaturing of the new government as purely fascist anti-semites, and the stories of terrorism, chaos and lack of control is largely Russian propaganda designed to make the people of the Crimea and parts of east Ukraine fearful.

The "stream of refugees pouting into Poland" shown on RT was, according to my Russian teacher who hails from the Ukraine/ Polish border area, no more than the normal weekend border queues for shopping in Poland. And where are the "675,000 refugees" which RT says crossed into Russia from eastern Ukraine in February? That number would have required camps, resources, humanitarian aid etc on a huge scale.

It's one thing to be skeptical of US motives (I certainly am) but it's another to swallow wholesale Russian propaganda. FFS, the people I live among and work with in Russia don't even believe most of what Putin says!

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:34 AM

When I stated "considerc the entire picture from all viewpoints", it refers to Ukraine, the OP discussion, not the downside versus upside (if one exists) of communism.That would be another issue, possibly warranting another thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:43 AM

Curious, Rob Naylor, since you seemvto have direct knowledge.

Would you say that Russia is still a communist state? If so, how isvit different from the pure communist state it used to be ((if different at all). Do people now have accessto information as other do in tge West. Or, is "the state"still the main infirmation source versus the "free press" (recognizing there are limits to what that constitutes everywhere).

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 10:45 AM

Excuse my sloppy keyboarding.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 12:22 PM

Would anybody seriously suggest that the USSR was ever a Communist state? True enough the people in charge were called a Communist Party, but then the same is true of China today.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:18 PM

Seems like Bobad did a couple of posts back MoH. It's one reason why I asked the question in the fashion I did.

To be clear, do you mean "true, by-the-book communism" MoH or do you mean forming a state government under some of the ideas of communism or using the name itself in describing the state?

Possibly no government has been actually "true to" the rigid concepts of forms of government, including democracy, communism, socialism etc

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:19 PM

exactly mc grath, it was not a communist state.
there were many terrible things about the soviet union,ALTHOUGH THE WORST PERIOD WAS UNDER STALIN, there were some good things too, there are now some terrible things about Russia.
its just the bad and good things are different, Whilst the soviet union existed many problems were suppressed now, a pandoras box has been opened.just for the record the soviet union was not the only place where people disappeared it happened?happens in china, chile, zimbabwe and even some other capitalist states like nazi germany, to mention a few.
russia is now governed by gangsters.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 02:45 PM

"But the cariacaturing of the new government as purely fascist anti-semites"
I didn't say that the new government was anything of the sort, and I dn't believe it is I was merely pointing out that the Fascist Anti-Semites are taking a major part in what is going on at present.
Much of what has been going on is nationalist-driven
This is the feller who has declared war against Jews in the Ukraine
http://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
Your woman with the funny haircut that's just been released from jail is an extreme nationalist.
None of this is conclusive but from the blanket support they are being given it appears we haven't learned too much from from what happened in Yugoslavia.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 03:33 PM

Any regime that installs a fascist or near-fascist as Deputy Head of Security is pretty suspect. In a confused revolutionary or post-revolutionary situation an organised and determined minority can wield decisive influence. As Lenin demonstrated.

My impression from the only Russians I know is that most people believe that Putin is a great improvement on the Yeltsin years, and that it's a shame that Gorbachev wasn't given a chance to carry through his reforms, and wasn't a bit more like Putin in order to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 04:13 PM

"It never seemed to hurt the Vikings, invading Ireland, and elsewhere:)"

None of which could be described as neighbours, which may be why they chose them rather than the rest of modern day Scandinavia.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 04:17 PM

I rather think they might have done that too.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 06:50 PM

The Vikings, not neighbourly?

First I've heard of it!

I knew they were horny, as I have seen pictures of them in those hats.

Subject: RE: BS: Ukraine
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Mar 14 - 08:29 PM

For its part, the United States has strongly come down on the side of the opposition, regardless of its political character. In early December, members of the US ruling establishment such as John McCain and Victoria Nuland were seen at Maidan lending their support to the protesters. However, as the character of the opposition has become apparent in recent days, the US and Western ruling class and its media machine have done little to condemn the fascist upsurge. Instead, their representatives have met with representatives of Right Sector and deemed them to be "no threat." In other words, the US and its allies have given their tacit approval for the continuation and proliferation of the violence in the name of their ultimate goal: regime change.

In an attempt to pry Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence, the US-EU-NATO alliance has, not for the first time, allied itself with fascists. Of course, for decades, millions in Latin America were disappeared or murdered by fascist paramilitary forces armed and supported by the United States. The mujahideen of Afghanistan, which later transmogrified into Al Qaeda, also extreme ideological reactionaries, were created and financed by the United States for the purposes of destabilizing Russia. And of course, there is the painful reality of Libya and, most recently Syria, where the United States and its allies finance and support extremist jihadis against a government that has refused to align with the US and Israel. There is a disturbing pattern here that has never been lost on keen political observers: the United States always makes common cause with right wing extremists and fascists for geopolitical gain.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-and-the-rebirth-of-fascism-in-europe/5366852