Your contribution >/dev/null

Post #392,715 by mmoffitt 8/1/14 3:23:54 PM Reply	Your contribution >/dev/null I've read a lot of Cohen's writing about the situation in Ukraine, but I can't reconcile what I've read with what you put into sixth grade terminology. "Doesn't have boots on the ground" where? Crimea? There's no way in hell Cohen would say that because he knows it to be false. Business Insider as a source for information on Russia? You are most definitely an American.
Post #392,716 by crazy 8/1/14 3:34:21 PM Reply	as expected The latter course could be limited to deploying Russian warplanes to protect eastern Ukraine from Kiev’s land and air forces, but perhaps not. It's past that. So why mislead?
Post #392,719 by Another Scott 8/1/14 3:49:54 PM Reply	He may be (or have been) a good guy, but... From the article: If any professional “intelligence” existed in Washington, Putin’s reaction was foreseeable. Decades of NATO expansion to Russia’s border, and a failed 2008 US proposal to “fast-track” Ukraine into NATO, convinced him that the new US-backed Kiev government intended to seize all of Ukraine, including Russia’s historical province of Crimea, the site of its most important naval base. In March, Putin annexed Crimea. "In March, Putin annexed Crimea" tries to hide an awful lot of what Putin did before then, doesn't it? It's not like some town annexing a neighboring subdivision or something. Russia invaded, using unmarked uniforms. To reduce that all down to a sterile "Putin annexed Crimea" is telling, it seems to me. And how could the Ukranian government "seize" Ukranian territory?!? There was never any move by any Ukranian government to seize the port. The lease was recently extended for crying out loud. (And, he brings up history without the recognized fact that Crimea is and was Ukranian territory.) It's an apology for Putin, not a full and balanced discussion of the positions of both sides. A counterpoint from Remnick at the NewYorker (from March 1): In a recent Letter from Sochi, I tried to describe Putin’s motivations: his resentment of Western triumphalism and American power, after 1991; his paranoia that Washington is somehow behind every event in the world that he finds threatening, including the recent events in Kiev; his confidence that the U.S. and Europe are nonetheless weak, unlikely to respond to his swagger because they need his help in Syria and Iran; his increasingly vivid nationalist-conservative ideology, which relies, not least, on the elevation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been so brutally suppressed during most of the Soviet period, as a quasi-state religion supplying the government with its moral force. Obama and Putin spoke on the phone today for an hour and a half. The White House and Kremlin accounts of the call add up to what was clearly the equivalent of an angry standoff: lectures, counter-lectures, intimations of threats, intimations of counter-threats. But the leverage, for now, is all with Moscow. The legislators in the Russian parliament today parroted those features of modern Putinism. In order to justify the invasion of the Crimean peninsula, they repeatedly cited the threat of Ukrainian “fascists” in Kiev helping Russia’s enemies. They repeatedly echoed the need to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine—a theme consonant with the Kremlin’s rhetoric about Russians everywhere, including the Baltic States. But there was, of course, not one word about the sovereignty of Ukraine, which has been independent since the fall of the Soviet Union, in December, 1991. Emphasis added. Yup. Ukraine is not part of Russia nor part of some new Soviet-esque Union. It's an independent country. Putin has no say about who or how it has relations with its other neighbors. He doesn't have to like it, but that's the way it is. Changing borders by force as "well, it was theirs before" or "well, he moved some native speakers in there, so he has claim to the area" cannot be tolerated without serious consequences. Putin thought he could get what he wanted with just some grumbling from Europe and the US. He miscalculated. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #392,722 by mmoffitt 8/1/14 4:21:46 PM Reply	The government in Kiev is no more legal than the "separatist" leadership. Here's Cohen in March. (Bold is question posed to him) But do you think there’s absolutely reason to say it was wrong of Russia to intervene militarily in Ukraine? We don’t know that Putin went into Crimea. We literally don’t know. We’re talking about “facts” that are coming out of Kiev, which is a mass of disinformation. Do you think it might not have been Putin? No, no, no, that’s not what I mean. We don’t know. I think I know, but I don’t know for a fact. And as a scholar I stick to what I know. There are, it would appear, about 9,000 Russian troops milling around Crimea, on the streets, guarding buildings. There’s a naval base there. So by law, by contract, Russia has every right to be there. They have an infantry protecting it’s strategic facilities. I think they took the troops that they’re moving around Crimea from the Crimean naval base. I don’t know that they actually sent troops across the Russian-Crimean border. So if we’re going to use the word invasion we need to be precise. ... Everybody blamed Yanukovych for the snipers that killed people in Kiev on Maidan Square. I said at the time, how can we know who killed whom? How do we know? I said let’s wait. Now, evidently, the Estonian foreign minister told the foreign minister of the European Union that those were not government Yanukoyvch snipers, they were snipers from the right-wing movement in the streets, that it was a provocation. But I don’t know if it’s true. If this turns out to be true, can you turn the clock back? Can you say Yanukoyvch was legitimate and right? Can you bring him back to Kiev? No, that train left the station. When people such as myself say, Can we get the facts before we decide? they say, “Putin apologist!” But the protests in Ukraine still happened, whether or not those snipers were under Yanukoyvch’s direction. It was a very peaceful protest in November and into December. And John McCain went there and stood alongside one of the fascist leaders and put his arm around him. He didn’t know who he was. And [Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State] Victoria Nuland, we now know was plotting to overthrow the government, because we have the tape telling the American Ambassador, Here’s how we’re going to form a new government. That’s called a coup d’etat. Yanukoyvch was elected legally. Everybody said that election was fair. Do you see any merit in the protests? Of course. But let me turn it around. Let’s say the tea party says that Obama has violated American law and the Constitution through Obamacare. They surround the White House. They throw fire bombs at the White House security guard. Obama flees and the tea party puts Ted Cruz in the White House. Do we say that’s democracy? So how is it democracy in Ukraine? Why couldn’t they wait, by the way? The next presidential election was one year away. Why didn’t Washington and the EU say no? We’re democracies; that’s not how we do it. Peacefully protest all you want, but don’t throw firebombs at the policeman because if you did that in any democratic capital we’d open fire. Look what they did in London. Look what they did in Greece. Look what we did to Occupy [Wall Street]. They weren’t even violent and we beat them up and pepper sprayed them. That’s what we do. We believe you’ve got a right to peacefully protest. You get a permit and you go there and you can stay there until snow falls. That’s your right -- if you don’t block the traffic. But you can’t throw firebombs at policemen. That’s true in any country, in any democracy. But suddenly from our point of view it’s okay in Kiev. They’re freedom fighters. So Yanukoyvch, who was democratic elected, flees and now you’ve got a government in Kiev with no legal legitimacy in Ukrainian or international law that we’re now being told is a paragon of virtue. And you’ve got a parliament where they scared away the majority deputies who represented the governing party. And you’ve got a parliament passing crazy laws. http://www.newsweek.com/american-who-dared-make-putins-case-231388
Post #392,734 by Another Scott 8/1/14 7:36:17 PM Reply	Lots of "look over there!!1" verbiage. Russia had no right to invade Crimea. They had no right to invade Eastern Ukraine, either. https://twitter.com/GeoffPyatt/status/493400313622446081/photo/1 HTH! Cheers, Scott.
Post #392,764 by mmoffitt 8/3/14 11:53:00 AM Reply	And Saddam has WMD.
Post #392,723 by Ashton 8/1/14 4:51:47 PM Reply	All Know the precedents for "our Nationals are being harassed in ___" and how, serially that was employed re Sudetenland, etc. Then. Then, too: the only Western-rebuttal was military, not rhetorical. That, sometimes, it just could be true..? seems moot, ever since--via those crying-wolf precedents. I share more of MM's incredulity re Murican rationalizations than do you--as no better/worse-fabrications than All-players within the strangely-malleable code-words we are pleased to call diplomacy. That the entire dis-USA media are as corrupt as any monopoly/and of most Corporations: is a given. To believe otherwise is to ignore all past experience of same. We are each left to synthesize, via commentators or other sources which: we (merely) Hope to be less-tainted than the Known-tainted closet-advocates: the vast majority of 'Sources' extant. (We ARE 'The Lying Animal!'/bizness itself could not operate save by degrees of lying/misrepresentation via many means. Naivete is ever to presume (that one has divined an Exceptional font? both wise and incorruptible:) even though there just may remain a precious few of those!) Qui Bono? had best precede every such re-read, I wot.) And my Honest-Realtor, Trude is long-dead.. I can't find the Other one, said also to exist. We do not generate enough Adults to replenish/propagate many of these; certainly not enough to Manage 7+ Billions-already! of our overpopulated, pillaged/scourged nest. Even the Idea of "geometric lines + Earth-'ownership'" DEFINING a patch-work of +/- so-called "civil rights"--in the utter absence of an Enforceable Universal set of Rights! is beyond a travesty and well into--the longest-running Self-deception since hunter-gatherers roamed. Some apologias are more artfully crafted/contrived than others: but the worst self-induced 'mental-crime' I can think of is, to imagine that truthiness ever even appears! within the outline for Any Government-speak. We prize Wisdom because its mere possession is already-suspect--via all Other experience--and our own caution casts a veil over even The Real Thing: it is so fucking-Rare. I Despise this facet of homo-sap, but certainly I recognize that I must accept it. We'd best hope for more Luck than any Stats would ever project.. this Gigantic Machine's feedback servos and guidance systems are/remain WIndoze-grade in design, execution and 'maintenance' :-/

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