Ukraine on the brink of civil war. Mod Warning in OP.

Red Crow

Why couldn't the 'West' be as proactive when Israel was doing something very similar?

bumper234

Red Crow wrote: »

Why couldn't the 'West' be as proactive when Israel was doing something very similar?

Pro Israeli lobby in Washington? ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Pro Russian Lobby in Washington X X X X X

Corkfeen

Conas wrote: »

I wouldn't be as biased as you are though. Fox News is pure and utter garbage, owned by Rupert Murdoch, CEO is Roger Ailes, so I wouldn't expect anything less. At least with RT they get on people who are a lot more controversial, and they don't shout people down, or cut them off. Fox News drummed up the Iraq war with their out and out rubbish talk, so wouldn't be going to them over the Ukraine thing.

Controversial figures include renowned nutty conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and running regularly fake news stories about both themselves and the US. Their controversial figure for this news event has been Stephen Seagal. They will never go anywhere near having some genuine discussions about their leader that include genuine criticism. And journalists do get jailed.

America on the other hand have numerous news resources from all sides of the political spectrum and state controlled media isn't actually a thing.

K-9

bobcoffee wrote: »

Well I'm not sure if you know much about the UN.
But the trade sanctions that I know of are and will continue to be pro American/western world orientated.

There was a treaty not long ago trying to be singed up, had massive support around the world.
It was to monitor weapons being sold on an international level.
Guess who stormed out... AMERICA!!

Well yeah, these trade sanctions will tend to be anti-Russian and pro-American, EU/G7 all right.

Godge

Conas wrote: »

America has been on the receiving end of two massive thrashings at the United Nations: Palestine's Upgrade to Non Member State, and the lifting of the Cuban Embargo, which was a vote of 188-2. They have been wrong about everything in Foreign Policy.

Yes, the Japanese and Hitler won the Second World War and the Soviets under Stalin (who?) won the Cold War. North Korea led by the Kims is the most prosperous country in the World. Gaddaffi, Hussein and Bin Laden party in each others' place every weekend.

We have a lot to blame the US for, don't we???????

Jelle1880

Red Crow wrote: »

Why couldn't the 'West' be as proactive when Israel was doing something very similar?

How is the west being proactive ?

They're wagging their finger at Russia, nothing more.

As for Israel: Google how many UN resolutions have been voted through against them.

edit: Whataboutery concerning Israel, the US,... has absolutely no bearing on what is happening now.
Especially not since it's Russia that's involved, who don't exactly have a clear record with regards to human rights themselves.

bobcoffee

the ultimatum that was "received" yesterday... any news on that?

also seems people who approached the russain army at an airport got warning shots fired at them. (hope no one died).
also putin is on western news, believe sky news has it up.

Elmer Blooker

Jelle1880 wrote: »

edit: Whataboutery concerning Israel, the US,... has absolutely no bearing on what is happening now.

eh........ I think it does, the US is in no position to accuse anyone of "violating international law"

Iwasfrozen

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

eh........ I think it does, the US is in no position to accuse anyone of "violating international law"

Why do people have to drag this off topic? America breaking international law in the past is entirely irrelevant to Russia breaking international law now.

bumper234

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Why do people have to drag this off topic? America breaking international law AT PRESENT is entirely irrelevant to Russia breaking international law now.

FYP for you there chief

bobcoffee

no it is not, you can't be breaking the law and then accusing others of doing it.
america and the EU have been poking Putin (the psycho).

while some people think america is allowed to do what it wants others feel no country is above the law.
so it is VERY valid.


Anyways it seems
"Putin denies that the men who took over Crimea were Russian soldiers"
"PUTIN: YOU CAN BUY RUSSIAN UNIFORMS IN ANY SHOP; THERE WERE SELF-DEFENSE TEAMS IN CRIMEA"

Not saying it couldn't happen at all but why bother playing this card.
I'm sure A LOT of them are Ukraine/Russain ex soldiers and got uniforms from shops/Russia.
Either way it is Russia who took over these parts, it is taking it out of context and no idea what he was saying before and after those sentences.

Jelle1880

bobcoffee wrote: »

the ultimatum that was "received" yesterday... any news on that?

It was later denied, looks like one person in their navy got carried away a bit.

bobcoffee wrote: »

no it is not, you can't be breaking the law and then accusing others of doing it.
america and the EU have been poking Putin (the psycho).

while some people think america is allowed to do what it wants others feel no country is above the law.
so it is VERY valid.

Sure you can, it's called international politics.

And nobody has been 'poking Putin'.

Unless he takes things like what happened in Ukraine personal, in which case he's a mental headcase.

Nobody is saying the US is allowed to do what they want, it merely has no bearing on what is happening now.

If the US had stayed silent on this I'd bet you there would be people crying 'Why aren't they doing anything!'.

Not to mention that there is a distant possibility that it could involve a fellow NATO member (Poland), in which case the US is obliged to intervene, be it political or military.

K-9

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Why do people have to drag this off topic? America breaking international law in the past is entirely irrelevant to Russia breaking international law now.

Mod:

Pointing out similarities isn't off topic, it's a politics board after all.

However, that doesn't give anybody licence to go on long rants about Imperialism which would be soap boxing and derailing the thread.

Scofflaw

bobcoffee wrote: »

the ultimatum that was "received" yesterday... any news on that?

also seems people who approached the russain army at an airport got warning shots fired at them. (hope no one died).
also putin is on western news, believe sky news has it up.

It seems that nothing happened there, and to be fair the Russians have disclaimed all knowledge of such an ultimatum. I believe that a Ukrainian military source said it wasn't a formal thing but something that came in via mobile phones.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Red Crow

Russia has every right to defend ethic Russians in the Crimea region. Ukraine is completely unstable and essentially a coup d'etat has taken place. Until there is political stability in Ukraine then Russia has every right to intervene especially as the majority of the Crimeans want and have invited the Russians to intervene. This is going to be a long, drawn out process that will probably end up with not a huge amount of change. Russia lacks the economic power to annex part of Eastern Ukraine.


What will come from this? Perhaps a civil war in Ukraine, although the Russians and the West will not want this. Putin will remain as a hugely popular leader reinforcing his power internally in Russia. Maybe we may get the US trying to strategically become resident, militarily, in Western Ukraine. Right now there is huge uncertainty and lets hope that this can be resolved peacefully.

Icepick

Why do people keep going on about the US and Israel when it has nothing to do with the topic?
Just the usual poor critical thinking or something insidious?

robindch

Icepick wrote: »

Why do people keep going on about the US and Israel when it has nothing to do with the topic?

See this post.

tl;dr summary - it's to distract people from what's going on.

Red Crow

Icepick wrote: »

Why do people keep going on about the US and Israel when it has nothing to do with the topic?
Just the usual poor critical thinking or something insidious?

It's a politics forum. It's all relevant to the discussion. Just because some people don't want to talk about it or can't handle all that information at once doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.

The US has a huge role to play in Ukraine. Right now they're condemning the Russian's 'invasion' of autonomous Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Israel has invaded many different countries and continues to build houses on land that it does not own. The US takes one stance with Israel and another with Russia. It's political hypocrisy at its finest. Yes, it's US foreign policy but the US has a huge role to play here and it's quite right that we should be able to discuss it.

Jelle1880

Red Crow wrote: »

It's a politics forum. It's all relevant to the discussion. Just because some people don't want to talk about it or can't handle all that information at once doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed.

The US has a huge role to play in Ukraine. Right now they're condemning the Russian's 'invasion' of autonomous Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Israel has invaded many different countries and continues to build houses on land that it does not own. The US takes one stance with Israel and another with Russia. It's political hypocrisy at its finest. Yes, it's US foreign policy but the US has a huge role to play here and it's quite right that we should be able to discuss it.

So should we also discuss the fact that Putin mentioned Iraq, Afghanistan,... while keeping his mouth shut about how his country behaved in Chechnya, just to name one ?

All big countries are at it, that doesn't mean one of them should keep quiet when a situation like this arises.

The US has legitimate interests and worries in this case, given that there is a possible threat to a fellow NATO member. Whatever they may be up to in other countries does not necessarily give Russia the right to do the same. Two evils don't make one right. The US nuked Japan, would that mean that Russia should be allowed to do so too ?

It's a false equivalence.

edit: He's also singling out the US to piss off Obama, neither Iraq or Afghanistan were US-only operations. Afghanistan for example was a legitimate invasion which was extremely poorly executed. Terrorists who posed a realistic threat to the safety of Americans (and others) were holed up there and the Afghans were unable to combat them.

bobcoffee

I'm very sorry robindch wasn't going to comment on that post as it would have continued on a very one sided conversation that will in the end lead to now where.

Not ONCE have I ever believed EU,USA,RUSSIA media at any stage.
While some still think that we "western world" live in a nice place, full of nice people and don't get lied to daily by are media.
I do.
Just because I choose not to listen to greedy people being greedy as usual does not mean I'm, Pro Russian or listen to Russian Media.
Priceless that post, while you might want to do some research into USA and Israel on how much they spend on trying to manipulate the social media.

But I'll point out one or 2 things on your post to show you that your only seeing it one "one sided" view.

"while the Russian government has entirely lost the PR battle at international level"
for this to be even right in any sense shape or form the Russian would need to be at some sort of neutral international level which they haven't been in my life time.

"it's use of social media to deliver anti-US, anti-EU propaganda successfully is one of the more interesting aspects of this particular conflict"
actually no, you can see plenty of the Russian media propaganda and laugh at it, you mistaking people who are used to all media lying to them to people who see one side and stick to that side.

"The US and the EU are backing fascists and neo-nazis in Kiev against Mother Russia, both politically and financially (no, the EU and the US have provided limited funding to moderate pro-Maidan activists and have repeatedly condemned violence from any side.)"
this is an exaggeration of the situation, not completely false, while some of those criminals who put in the last guy in charge of Ukraine are still in the government at the minute but just changed sides.. and that is from western word media.

"Russia books a seriously-impressive $70 billion loss in one day?"
Our media has no problems in talking about how much is spent during "war p0rn" moments likes "shock and awe".
I'm lost on how that is impressive at all when cruise missiles alone can add up to some crazy amount of funds.

"Why do people keep going on about the US and Israel when it has nothing to do with the topic?"
because even though some for some unknown reason refused to remember what america has been saying over the last week if not more.
OUR media has been mentioning quite a few times with America and EU threatening Russia over and over again.
While people have pointed out how BAD it is for America to get involved some like to completely forget about what America foreign policy is like.
Which is why Israel gets mentioned along with other countries, to remind.. for what I can tell our "Educated" pro American people on these forums.
Not because of Russian propaganda.

realweirdo

Red Crow wrote: »

Russia has every right to defend ethic Russians in the Crimea region. Ukraine is completely unstable and essentially a coup d'etat has taken place. Until there is political stability in Ukraine then Russia has every right to intervene especially as the majority of the Crimeans want and have invited the Russians to intervene. This is going to be a long, drawn out process that will probably end up with not a huge amount of change. Russia lacks the economic power to annex part of Eastern Ukraine.


What will come from this? Perhaps a civil war in Ukraine, although the Russians and the West will not want this. Putin will remain as a hugely popular leader reinforcing his power internally in Russia. Maybe we may get the US trying to strategically become resident, militarily, in Western Ukraine. Right now there is huge uncertainty and lets hope that this can be resolved peacefully.

If there was a real and credible threat of genocide to ethnic Russians or if there had already been deaths amont the Russian community, yes intervention would have been acceptable. But neither of these happened. Russia's response was massively exagerated in relation to events going on. It seems Russia was waiting for the slightest pretext to invade and found it in the overthrow of Yanokovic.

As for the usual clowns on here and elsewhere who think Yanokovic should be allowed stay in power despite killing 80 opposition protesters, they need to cop on.

Apart from those who jumped on the Ukrainian situation as yet another stick to beat the US, most people can see Yanochovic is a very dodgy charachter who appears to have siphoned off billions and then when he was caught out, killed dozens of opponents. He could have stayed and stuck it out but he found that no-one in Ukraine including the security services and even MPs from HIS OWN PARTY wanted to support him.

Presidents can survive without the support of the opposition and even in the face of a violent uprising, but rarely when they lose huge support among their own MPs.

If David Cameron lost the support of his MPs, he too would be forced to resign.

Scofflaw

Members of Putin's rights council say no grounds for Ukraine invasion:

MOSCOW, March 2 (Reuters) - Members of President Vladimir Putin's human rights council urged him on Sunday not to invade Ukraine, saying threats faced by Russians there were far from severe enough to warrant sending in troops.

A statement signed by 27 members of the advisory body reflected deep concern among Russian liberals at the prospect of Kremlin aggression against Russia's neighbour.

Putin stunned the world and sparked outrage in the West by securing parliament's consent on Saturday to send armed forces into Ukraine to protect Russian citizens who the Kremlin says are under threat from militant supporters of the government installed after the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich was toppled.

Those concerns are overblown, members of the Presidential Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights said in the statement.

"True, there are known cases of lawlessness and violence carried out by representatives of various political forces," it said.

"But the use of external military force, linked with the violation of the sovereignty of a neighbouring state and contradicting Russia's international obligations, is completely inappropriate to the scale of the violations, in our opinion."

It said that while Russian lawmakers had cited injuries and deaths in Ukraine's Crimea region - already under the control of pro-Russian forces - as evidence of the need to authorise the use of military force, none had occurred there in the last two days.

Saying that the authorisation had placed Russia and Ukraine "on the threshold of war", it warned: "The use of the armed forces is always fraught with escalation of violence and larger-scale human rights violations."

Putin has often ignored the advice of the council, which critics of the Kremlin say he uses to create a veneer of democracy and debate and concern for rights. Three of its members issued a statement disagreeing with their colleagues.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/02/ukraine-crisis-russia-council-idUSL6N0LZ0UB20140302

cordially,
Scofflaw

Icepick

robindch wrote: »

See this post.

tl;dr summary - it's to distract people from what's going on.

It can roughly be split into 2 groups:
1, spreading propaganda to distract and defend Putin and what he represents
2, bitching about US and Israel every time other governments do something wicked, like Chomsky. They don't care about Russia or Ukraine.

jmayo

bobcoffee wrote: »

Well I'm sure there are some benefits to watching the RTE news I can tell you however your information on "gas" in Ireland is very well misinformed.
Most protesting is done not on the basis of stopping anyone from taking it but more about them doing it right.
Pumping unrefined (none smelling gas) through the worst bog in mayo comes to mind.
Also once the gas "flows", then it flows out of Ireland.
We get little from it as we have one of the worst.. WORST deals in the WORLD.

Ahh FFS I know damm well why there were protests and how certain well known infamous ff ex ministers signed very good deals for exploration companies.

I was using a little sarcasm.

robindch wrote: »

Poland announced yesterday that it has moved tanks and troops to the Ukrainian border:

http://www.news.com.au/world/russian-troop-invasion-encircles-crimeas-capital-as-ukraine-pm-declares-the-nation-to-be-on-brink-of-disaster/story-fndir2ev-1226843109609

I don't believe Germany has made any possibly-relevant movements of men or materiel.

As one Pole said to me today, "we rememer what parts of Ukraine we owned before 1939".

Maybe they want to share it with Russia ala was done Poland 1939.

BTW just for a certain poster's benefit I would like to say this is sarcasm and not what I really believe will happen.

Mongfinder General wrote: »

The Germans? Probably terrified that they'll get another hiding from the Russians.

These would be the Germans that so pasted the mighty Russians, with military losses of over a million, in WWI that it caused the Empire to cease to exist after 200 odd years.
This would also be the Germans that inflicted anywhere between 8.5 million to 13.5 million military deaths on Soviets (ok that includes more than Russians soley) in WW2.
That doesn't even include probably the same numbers again of civilan deaths.
The Soviets (Russians) may have won but at what a price.

Man for man the Germans kicked some serious ar** (in particular Russian ar**es) and in both wars were by far the most efficient killers.

If anything I think it is the Russians who should be worried about Germans.

Scofflaw

Just a note to say that while discussion of the actions of various interested parties in other conflicts certainly forms a peripheral part of the discussion, turning this into a discussion centered on those other actions or a discussion of the US/Israel etc will result in penalties for derailment.

You can of course start other threads to discuss such issues in the light of current events.

moderately,
Scofflaw

jmayo

Point taken on board.
I don't want to derail this, just thought a few misconceptions needed answering.

Back to would be conflict or more correct current political situation.
The Russians can posture upto a point but they cannot afford to be hit economically.
I think only one poster here has mentioned the fact that we are now into spring and the affects of the Russians turning off the gas aren't going to be as severe for people in the West as they would be if we were in the height of winter.
Timing, timing, timing.

Just see what happened to the Moscow stock exchange and rubble in one day.
As some others have pointed out the global economy is very interlinked.
One country can try and economically screw others, but it can bounce back and hit them.
Someone else mentioned how China hold so much US debt and could finish US economy.
But what would that do to it's own export driven economy overnight.
How many would be left working in the iPad and iPhone plants the following days.

Maybe this is one of the biggest benefits of global economy.
Well apart from giving low paying mind numbling boring jobs to formerly pretty poor people in developing economies.

sopretty

Speaking of economic implications - have there been any further significant drops in the rouble or their stock exchange today?

Godge

Scofflaw wrote: »

Members of Putin's rights council say no grounds for Ukraine invasion:



http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/02/ukraine-crisis-russia-council-idUSL6N0LZ0UB20140302

cordially,
Scofflaw

Hope they said goodbye to their families before issuing that statement in modern-day Russia.

Godge

Jelle1880 wrote: »

So should we also discuss the fact that Putin mentioned Iraq, Afghanistan,... while keeping his mouth shut about how his country behaved in Chechnya, just to name one ?

.

Actually we could roll back the years to 1979 and mention Afghanistan.

It is ironic to see so many on here criticising the US and Afghanistan when it may never have ended up the way it did if the Soviets hadn't invaded back then.

Jonny7

bobcoffee wrote: »

Not ONCE have I ever believed EU,USA,RUSSIA media at any stage.

Then which media do you trust, where do you get your news? how do you know what is going on in the world?