[Plantagenet]

Similar warnings were issued in 1956 & 1968 followed by Soviet invasions to "restore control".

Those alarm bells are now ringing loudly!!!

Surely the Russians won't be so dumb as to invade Ukraine. Its one thing for the Russians to invade Georgia---a little country tucked away by the Black Sea. Its quite another thing for the Russians to invade a huge European country.

The National Bolshevik movement in Russia is pushing hard for an invasion --- hopefully Putin won't listen to them.

[Quinny]

Y was a shit leader and corrupt but he was not a dictator. The US continue to support oppressive regimes throughout the world. Sorry 6 but a difference of opinion is one thing but you simply swallow the right wing MSM reports as truth. You then dress them up with macho return to the cold war bullshit spewing hate against Russia. It's opinions like this that allow the US govt to get away with their warmongering ways.

[Plantagenet]

the US govt to get away with their warmongering ways.

Hillary pushing a red reset button and asking for peace with Russia is warmongering? Really? Obama promising to be flexible and accomodating to Russia's demands is warmongering? Really?

I don't think so. If anything, the US government has been very friendly towards Russia.


This is warmongering?

[Tanada]

Crooked money grubbing politicians are not exactly an endangered species on Earth. Why is anyone surprised by the palatial living arrangements? Has everyone forgotten the Marco's family of the Philippines?

[Sixstrings]

Not sure how reliable this source is, but here it is:

Sevastopol Airport Under Military Occupation

UNIAN is reporting that approximately 6 military trucks full of armed soldiers are currently surrounding the Sevastapol International Airport. The source notes that “unknown armed people in uniform” also surrounded a guest residence normally reserved for senior officials. NBNews claims the soldiers to be Russian Black Sea Fleet personnel. Those on the scene were not able to identify the purpose of the soldiers, as they will not answer questions to the press.

This news comes directly after armed insurgents occupied the Crimean parliament buildings in Simferopol under the Russian flag.
http://ukrainianpolicy.com/sevastopol-airport-under-military-occupation/

Ukrainian Army mobilizing:

Russian armed forces alert prompts Ukrainian mobilisation

Ukraine has called in Russia’s acting envoy for consultations over the seizing by armed men of the Crimean parliament, and says it wants urgent talks with Moscow.

Kyiv has ordered the army and Interior Ministry forces to mobilise and maintain a state of readiness.
http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/27/russian-armed-forces-alert-prompts-ukrainian-mobilisation/

[Tanada]

Ukraine probably made a mistake giving up their nuclear arsenal after the fall of the USSR. Having it today would make Russia much less inclined to start a war.

[Sixstrings]

US intel concludes Russia won't invade Ukraine (at least not with this mobilization):

Putin’s Bluff: U.S. Spies Say Russia Won't Invade Ukraine

The assessment is based in part on the fact that not enough medical units have been ordered to accompany the Russian troops to the Ukrainian border to suggest preparation for war, according to one Congressional staffer who has seen intelligence on Russia. This source also said no signal intercepts have detected plans for an invasion.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/27/u-s-spies-no-russia-isn-t-about-to-invade-ukraine.html

[dissident]

Ukraine probably made a mistake giving up their nuclear arsenal after the fall of the USSR. Having it today would make Russia much less inclined to start a war.

That's based on a trope. I wish that people with no family in Ukraine would but the f*ck out of Ukraine's affairs. Svoboda and Right Sector do not represent the Ukrainian majority. But NATO is openly supporting the coup staged by these militants.

How is the current regime in Kiev legitimate when:

1) It seized power by force without elections.

2) It banned the two parties in the legislature (Rada) that had the majority

2b) These two parties won free and fair elections according to the OSCE

Now I see NATO blowhards yapping about the seizing of government buildings being illegal. Let's get this straight, when some minority NATO supports does it, then is OK, but when people who have been robbed of their democratic rights do it then it is "a crime against humanity"? Does NATO take all non-NATO humans to be untermenschen?

The current Rada is a kangaroo legislature which has no legal right to pass any laws. It would have such a right only after elections. And since it has banned the two parties that had the majority of the seats there cannot be fair elections. The hysterics of Svoboda and Right Sector and their de facto allies are not a basis for democracy.

The US constitution is predicated on the limitation of mob rule, even if the mob is a majority. It is really thick and rich for the US to be sponsoring banana republic "revolutions" in Europe.

[Plantagenet]

How is the current regime in Kiev legitimate when:

1) It seized power by force without elections.

Thats easy.

Yanu fled the Ukraine. He's abandoned his job. The Ukraine legislature then impeached him, so he's been removed from office. Yanu has also been indicted for mass murder---clearly he can't continue to run the country after he's been indicted and impeached.

Fortunately, the democratic process in Ukraine continued to work even after Yanu was impeached. The legislature convened and voted in a new interim government, and also scheduled new elections.

Thats how democratic governments work. Rather than having a dictator rule by decree until he dies, in a democracy the leader can be impeached and removed by a vote of the representative assembly if he commits a heinous crime like mass murder.

[Keith_McClary]

The Neo-Nazis of Ukraine
Paul Craig Roberts (former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal)

Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime’s portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march.

To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters.

Read about the neo-nazis intimidating the Central Election Commission in order to secure rule and personnel changes in order to favor the ultra-right in the forthcoming elections. Thug Aleksandr Shevchenko informed the CEC that armed activists will remain in CEC offices in order to make certain that the election is not rigged against the neo-nazis. What he means, of course, is the armed thugs will make sure the neo-nazis win. If the neo-nazis don’t win, the chances are high that they will take power regardless.

Members of President Yanukovich’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, have been shot, had arrest warrants issued for them, have experienced home invasions and physical threats, and are resigning in droves in hopes of saving the lives of themselves and their families. The prosecutor’s office in the Volyn region (western Ukraine) has been ordered by ultra-nationalists to resign en masse .
...
Yanukovich is history, as are Washington’s “moderates.” The moderates are not only corrupt; they are stupid. The fools even disbanded the Riot Police, leaving themselves at the mercy of the armed right-wing nazi thugs.

Ukraine is out of control. This is what happens when an arrogant, but stupid, Assistant Secretary of State (Victoria Nuland) plots with an equally arrogant and stupid US ambassador (Pyatt) to put their candidates in power once their coup against the elected president succeeds. The ignorant and deluded who deny any such plotting occurred can listen to the conversation between Nuland and Pyatt here.

The situation will almost certainly lead to war.

[Quinny]

Saddam Hussein in Iraq
The Russian Government used to govern the USSR. It now has Russia - call that expansion?
The Americans and EU backed the protesters who contain a large element of tugs in their ranks. They didn't have to send them in. Evidence from where?

FACTS from where/who?

Post cold war, Americans have never backed any regime that nerve gasses a suburb.

Whereas the Russian government is on the move, looking to expand, and does not share our moral limits.

Americans and Euros did not send any thugs into Ukraine to kidnap and torture people. The evidence appears to suggest that Russia did.

Russians brutally crush opposition, in their own country, without much concern for innocent casualties.

Russians have made a "no strings attached" arms deal for Egypt -- that means Egypt can do whatever the hell it wants, it could mow the people down, and there wouldn't be any moral lectures from Russia.

Russia is forming an axis of dictatorships and tyranny in the world -- Belarus, Syria, Iran, Ukraine until the people rose up in revolution.

These are the facts.
User avatar
Sixstrings
Anti-Matter
Anti-Matter

Posts: 6915
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:00 am

[Plantagenet]

The Americans and EU backed the protesters who contain a large element of tugs in their ranks.

No wonder the protestors won.

Yanu must have been terrified when he saw a large element of tugs rallying against him in Maidan square.


Down with YANU! Booo! Hiss! We want democracy now!!!

[Sixstrings]

2) It banned the two parties in the legislature (Rada) that had the majority

Do you have any english-language news links you can provide? I'd never read that. Last I heard was that Yanu's party weren't even showing up to parliament meetings for a long time. US ambassador had said that wasn't helpful, and that they should be showing up. But I guess a lot of them had bugged out / defected from Yanu so all you had in there was the opposition.

If you can, provide some news links to back up what you say, or explain it in more detail, that the parliament "banned" the old majority party (Yanukovych's party).

Now I see NATO blowhards yapping about the seizing of government buildings being illegal. Let's get this straight, when some minority NATO supports does it, then is OK, but when people who have been robbed of their democratic rights do it then it is "a crime against humanity"? Does NATO take all non-NATO humans to be untermenschen?

Nobody has been blowharding on this forum about Crimean buildings seized. I just posted the news without comment.

Over here, Senator John McCain has been saying that Russians are fomenting rebellion in Crimea. I saw an article about Russian MP's headed to Crimea. I guess that's about the same thing as John McCain speaking in the maidon.

If Russia is doing covert ops and provacateuring in Crimea, then that's going a step beyond what the West did -- all we did were facebook likes on the "I'm a Ukrainian" video.

I've read that Russian TV is now full of things about Russian speakers in Crimea feeling threatened. Here's what I wonder.. what is different now from a week ago? Why all of the sudden, Russian speakers in Crimea are up in arms? Fighting with tartars? These are neighbors and they were all doing fine just a week ago. None of these people were rising up all through this crisis, until now.

If you've got something you can link to explain this, like if you say their elected reps have been banned from parliament, then post that.

Aren't new elections being held, very soon? What do you think of that '04 constitution, is it equal representation based on population so that east and west ukrainians are fairly represented?

If things are unfair now for east Ukrainians, then make the case for that, and give some links.

The current Rada is a kangaroo legislature which has no legal right to pass any laws. It would have such a right only after elections. And since it has banned the two parties that had the majority of the seats there cannot be fair elections.

If you're right then you've got something there. So give more detail. Give some links explaining the whole situation, these parties being "banned."

The US constitution is predicated on the limitation of mob rule, even if the mob is a majority. It is really thick and rich for the US to be sponsoring banana republic "revolutions" in Europe.

Ukraine, and Russia, would do well to have ironclad constitutions that can't be easily changed by a president who wants all power in his hands, and / or never wants to leave office.

[Sixstrings]

FACTS from where/who?

Quinn, do you seriously not give a sh*t that Russia makes "no strings attached" arms deals with regimes in Syria, and now Egypt?

Is that the kind of world you want to see? Where the next suburb that gets nerve gassed won't have a Uncle Sam around anymore to speak up, and say it's wrong?

You want Chinese and Russian totalitarianism to spread around the world, and rule the day? This what you really want?

You and me don't agree.

Addressing your points one by one:

1. Chem weapons for Iraq was in the context of the cold war, and Iraq's war with Iran. Ok if I'm wrong then link me something, but my recollection is that by the time Saddam gassed the kurds ***we were not supporting him anymore***. Whereas Russia continues to support the Syrian regime.

2. Yes. USSR is gone. These are all free countries now. If Russia is out to remake a Russian Empire, then that *is* expansion. One could say the EU is expansionist as well, but the difference is that Russia uses force and covert ops and supports dictatorships. Whereas with the EU, all these nations have WANTED to join up. Seriously, is there anyone out there begging to join the Russian Eurasian Union? No.

3. There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between "backed" and "sending them in." Ukrainian protesters have said they were kidnapped and tortured by masked men with clear Russian accents. If the West had done that, it would be outrageous.

If you want to say the West "backed" the violent opposition elements then give some links and show the money trail and show the proof.

[Sixstrings]

The Neo-Nazis of Ukraine
Paul Craig Roberts (former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal)

Interesting read.

I usually have a lot of respect for Paul Craig Roberts on economics. I think all of us know so much about this Ukraine thing at this point, that we can all say he's being superficial in his Ukraine analysis.

The opposition was a lot more and a lot bigger than "neo nazis."

And even if there are "neo nazis" in Ukraine then that place will be so much better off with the EU, they'll have to come into euro norms and standards. Whereas with Russia it's just all never-ending violence which breeds more violence, and breeds a nazi party to start with.

Get Ukraine with the EU. The West can fix them. Stick them with Russia and nazis will keep growing (just as Russia itself has a huge hard right extremist problem).

[Keith_McClary]

FACTS from where/who?

Quinn, do you seriously not give a sh*t that Russia makes "no strings attached" arms deals with regimes in Syria, and now Egypt?

Oh, please, the US has been propping up the Egyptian military dictatorship with "aid" for decades. Now they are going to stage "free and fair" elections where the military gets to ban the people who won the last election.

[Strummer]

1. Chem weapons for Iraq was in the context of the cold war, and Iraq's war with Iran. Ok if I'm wrong then link me something, but my recollection is that by the time Saddam gassed the kurds ***we were not supporting him anymore***.

What a joke. You not only supported him, you were heavily involved in trying to shift the blame for the attacks onto Iran:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_ch ... nvolvement

and later made a complete 180 turn when it suited you as a pretext for the next war:

The U.S. State Department, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, took the official position that Iran was partly to blame.[15] A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study at the time reported that Iran was responsible for the attack, an assessment which was used subsequently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the early 1990s. The CIA's senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, co-authored an unclassified analysis of the war[29] which contained a brief summary of the DIA study's key points. The CIA altered its position radically in the late 1990s and cited Halabja frequently in its evidence of weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

[Sixstrings]

What a joke. You not only supported him, you were heavily involved in trying to shift the blame for the attacks onto Iran:

I'd have to look into that. All I vaguely remember was that Saddam was a bad guy (and rightly so) because he gassed the kurds, and the US became estranged from Iraq and then Saddam invades Kuwait.

Do you even see anything human rights related, on Russian TV? Do they have bleeding hearts for ANYBODY? At all? Other than ethnic Russians in little Sudetanlands?

Russia's the kind of place where they paved over a bunch of houses to build the Olympic venues and left family dogs to just wander the streets. Who knows where the families went. Luckily one oligarch cared, and set up a shelter for some of these dogs -- after the Olympics were already underway. Russia had hired poachers to just shoot them.

At least over here, you can't beat a woman in the street with a whip and it's "okay." Look, I know the middle east is medeival and so is chechnya too, but Russia doesn't have to be. Nor Ukraine. This is in Europe -- they're better than that.

Putin backs the dictator in Chechnya who has some kind of sharia law in effect. If a Russian woman is on the streets in Chechnya without a head covering, she can get beaten, right there in the street. So, see? Russians are okay with sharia if it's their caliph.

I could continue this, and talk about womens' rights in general, and how far behind Russia is -- it's old school 1950 over there on that, where a man can beat his wife up and government doesn't do anything.

And another thing, I said POST cold war.

Yes, all through the cold war arc we supported a lot of bad characters -- we did it to keep up with the Russians, it was an epic geopolitical slugfest. We don't do that anymore. We told Mubarek "no, you can't use your army against the people." And we told Yanu the same thing. And we lost Egypt over it, and now they've gone over to the Russians who don't give any human rights lectures and just sell the weapons. It's the cold war all over again, and Russia is NOT being responsible.

If Russia wants respect, it could try DOING THE RIGHT THING in the world, for once, and be a force for good. Not just spreading their alliance of dictatorship and tyranny.

[Keith_McClary]

Ukrainian Democracy: A Barrier to Washington’s Goals
by NICK ALEXANDROV

But as the year progressed, the U.S. government had a hard time finding evidence of overwhelming Ukrainian support for European integration. The International Republican Institute (IRI), for example, polled Ukrainians last September: “If Ukraine was able to enter only one international economic union, with whom should it be?” Forty-two percent of respondents chose the EU, while 37% preferred the Russian Customs Union. IRI then asked, “How would you evaluate your attitude towards the following entities?” Fifty percent of respondents felt “warm” towards Russia; 41% felt “warm” towards Europe—and just 26% were fond of the U.S. IRI figures resembled those USAID published in a December 2013 report. Its authors found it “interesting to note that Ukrainians are split on whether the country should join the European Union or the Customs Union. Thirty-seven percent would like Ukraine to take steps to join the European Union, 33% prefer the Customs Union and 15% say Ukraine should join neither of these blocs.” Furthermore, “34% say that Ukraine should have closer economic relations with Russia, 35% say it should have closer economic relations with Europe and 17% say it should have good relations with both.” A Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll reinforced these findings: “Ukraine is split practically 50/50 over the accession to the European Union or the Customs Union,” Interfax-Ukraine summarized the study’s conclusions.

Reviewing this data forces us to ask: Who is Washington’s chief enemy in Ukraine? Is it Russia, bent on killing Ukraine’s budding democracy? Is it the tyrant Yanukovych? The U.S. policy record points to a different conclusion, one a Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations study—included in the official transcription of the Senate’s 2012 “Ukraine at a Crossroads” hearing—discusses in the context of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. “The main obstacle” to Ukraine’s joining the organization “is not Russian opposition,” its authors emphasized, “but low public support for membership in Ukraine itself.” Again: on this and other issues, the Ukrainian people are “the main obstacle” to U.S. foreign policy aims. We should bear this fact in mind as the crisis deepens in Eastern Europe.

[Sixstrings]

Yanukovych To Ukrainians From Russian Exile: Stop This, I’m Still The President
A “Dean Scream” for the post-Soviet age, Viktor Yanukovych’s press conference will surely place a tombstone over his political career.

Visibly shaken but unable to contain his trademark grin, Yanukovych gave a rambling and bizarre press conference that made it seem as he was still living in a parallel world, where violent clashes between protesters and riot police had not left dozens dead and caused his own allies in government and the security services to abandon him. Speaking in Russian for over an hour, Yanukovych insisted that he was still the president and said Ukraine’s new government was illegitimate.

“Nobody overthrew me,” Yanukovych said, claiming he was forced to flee Kiev under threat from Western-backed, far-right extremists who threatened him and his family. “I intend to fight for the future of Ukraine against those who are attempting to saddle it with fear and terror,” he said.


Ukrainians on Instagram react to Viktor Yanukovych’s farcical press conference.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/yanukovych-to-ukrainians-from-russian-exile-stop-this-im-sti

Oh good lord.. this man is actually CRAZY..

He says regarding Yulia (the ex prime minister that parliament freed from prison), he doesn't know "what her future will be." (I guess, back in prison, if he can arrange that?)

Most bizarely.. he's sitting there next to Putin and he says (paraphrasing) "I don't know why vladimir Putin has been so restrained and quiet." Wtf, the guy is nuts. He's a Baghdad Bob.

I saw the news conf snippet on BBC live:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26380336