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In Ukraine, Cyber War With Russia Heating Up
concertina226 writes "If you think the crisis in the Ukraine is limited just to being just on the ground, think again. A cyberwar is flaring up between Ukraine and Russia and it looks like just the beginning. On Friday, communication centers were hijacked by unknown men to install wireless equipment for monitoring the mobile phones of Ukraine parliament members. Since then, Ukrainian hackers have been defacing Russian news websites, while Russia's Roskomnadzor is blocking any IP addresses or groups on social media from showing pro-Ukraine 'extremist' content."
Adds reader Daniel_Stuckey: "On the other side of the border, RT — the news channel formerly known as Russia Today and funded by the state — had its website hacked on Sunday morning, with the word 'Nazi' not-so-stealthily slipped into headlines. Highlights included 'Russian senators vote to use stabilizing Nazi forces on Ukrainian territory,' and 'Putin: Nazi citizens, troops threatened in Ukraine, need armed forces' protection.' RT was quick to notice the hack, and the wordplay only lasted about 20 minutes."
Finally, as noted by judgecorp, "The Ukrainian security service has claimed that Russian forces in Crimea are attacking Ukraine's mobile networks and politicians' phones in particular. Meanwhile, pro-Russian hackers have defaced Ukrainian news sites, posting a list of forty web destinations where content has been replaced. The pro-Russians have demonstrated Godwin's Rule — their animated GIF equates the rest of Ukraine to Nazis."
Comparing to Nazis? Really?
Yes, really.
TFS got it wrong though, making the comparison to Godwin's law. This is a particularly offensive piece of propaganda that goes above and beyond mundane internet stupidity, given historical events (see: Great Patriotic War) and the particularly heavy price that Ukraine paid in WW2, likely worse than any European nation not called Poland.
Calling someone a Nazi is a special level of insult in the Slavic countries.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The comparison is apt.
Shortly after hosting an Olympic Games filled with nationalistic posing and bluster, the megalomaniacal leader of a dictatorship ordered his armed forces to invade a neighboring country for their "protection".
It is in fact a perfectly apt comparison of the situation as history repeating itself.
There have been plenty of pro-Russian commenters on Slashdot over the last couple of days defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I expect that will continue.
It makes for an interesting change in the tone of discussions. Many of the first to cry "imperialism" or some such when the US does anything don't seem to be kicking up much of a fuss. The new would-be overlords of Ukraine seem to be meeting with either approval or acquiesce.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This is what modern warfare looks like.
In 2004, Russia was starting to regain it's footing after a disasterous 90's, when the Orange Revolution happen in Ukraine, installing an anti-Russian, pro-Western government. Russia saw this as an attempt to deal a knockout blow to Russia once and for all, as the border between Russia and Ukraine is wide open with no natural barriers and a significant portion of Russia's food comes from Ukraine. In 6 years they got that government thrown out and Yanukovych installed as President, a highly pro-Russian president. He attempts to steer Ukraine away from the European Union, causing protests in the Western half of Ukraine (which is very pro-West). Those protests gain significant strength in short order, with protesters willing to engage police with violence (molotov cocktails and bats, facing down tear gas etc.)
Russia perceives this as support from Western powers to these groups, attempting to strip away Ukraine. As a result, they take over the Crimean Peninsula, where the Russian Black Fleet is located and a significant pro-Russian populace lives. This is a message as a show of force to the entirety of Eastern Europe. Obama just declared the Russian intervention to be illegal. So what? Who's going to challenge him? Is the US going to go to war over the Crimean peninsula, when a large part of the population welcomes the Russian intervention and the US population as no appetite for war? Is Europe going to put in place economic sanctions on Russia when Russia supplies nearly 1/3rd of European energy? Does any other power such as Japan or China give a rats ass?
This is Putin daring anyone to stop him, and no one will. It's a show of force to everyone from Switzerland to Poland to Romania to Moldova to Serbia to everyone in the Caucasus, to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and all the rest: the big dog in the region is Russia and no one's coming to help them.
Defacing some websites and such is just part of the show, and is probably the nature of things to come. But the real issue is this: Russia is in charge now of the entire ex-Soviet Union area.
I love technology. I'd like nothing more than to spend all my time on my computer. That being said, I think it's pointless and more than a little tasteless to focus on hacked websites and downed mobile phones when people are literally dying in the streets.
Why not talk about the origins of the crisis? Last I checked, getting really deep into politics and history is nerdy too.
Whatever the merits of claiming that government asked Russia for help, that government is no longer in power. The former president has been impeached as per Ukraine's constitution and the new government is within its rights to request foreign troops leave its sovereign territory.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I was referring to the insults being directed Ukraine's way as being particularly offensive, not the other way around, though of course there are few worse things you can call a Russian than 'fascist'.
As far as the comparison, it's not all that apt. Russia in 2014 is a vastly different place than 1938's Germany, Putin is not Hitler, the Crimea is not the Sudetenland, and the other Great Powers have not signed off on his actions.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And yes, the US did take control of cell networks to track phones and calls in Afghanistan and Iraq to find and eliminate those who fought the US invasions of those countries. But no one in the US cares very much, so it's hard to raise the issue. But we done did it first, sure. The US doesn't have much moral authority left after Afghanistan and Iraq. We're intellectually bankrupt, as Secretary of State Kerry so ably - and without irony - showed the other day when he told the world that invasion under false pretext is wrong.
But, we fight the fight in front of us, and can't restart the lost battles. Phone surveillance bad. Invading countries under false pretext to cover up not-so secret national interest is bad. Russia - RUSSIA BAD. They don't get a pass 'cause Americans can be the same flavor of assholes. Onward.
This is beginning to remind me of the annexation of Czechoslovakia, let's hope this time around the Western powers will have enough spine to stand up to the dictator in stead of encouraging him with appeasement. We are gettign to the point where threatenign to move a few NATO divisions to the Urainian border would seem appropriate, at least that was the only thing that seemed to work on Hitler.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There is also the fact that the troops Russia sent in were all wearing masks, had no identifying insignia of any kind on their uniforms, and appear to be well equipped and highly trained. To me, it seems that Putin has likely taken the ouster of his lapdog and the loss of a potential client state personal. He has also quickly eroded any international goodwill Russia might have obtained by taking in Snowden, as well as potentially set a dangerous precident by saying Russia has a right and duty to protect the Russian-speaking people in the Crimea. Can Germany now do the same thing? How about the US? Does Iran now have the right to invade the US to protect Persian-speaking people? Putin is playing a dangerous game, and he is really exhibiting a lot of the characteristics Hitler and even Stalin did, including the cult of personality over the last few years.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Russia is in charge now of the entire ex-Soviet Union area.
Not quite. NATO isn't likely to roll over and accept aggression directed at Poland or the Baltic States (boy, I bet they're happy they got admitted now) and I suspect even the EU would grow a spine if Russia started pushing Finland around.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There was a parliamentary vote to impeach him. At least by the English translation of Ukraine's constitution that I read, that's how it's done. Sure the lawmakers may have felt a lot of pressure to do so, but the forms were obeyed, even if in a ragged and somewhat bloody way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, the parliament threw him out. The mob never did anything but protest and get shot at, until members of his own former party stopped supporting him, making room for a majority against him. The new government is as legally elected as the former! There was never any revolution, just protests, that triggered insane behavior from the president that let to him losing his parliamentarian basis.
And yes, the US did take control of cell networks to track phones and calls in Afghanistan and Iraq to find and eliminate those who fought the US invasions of those countries
Afghanistan had a cellular network in 2001?
It's debatable that the United States invaded Afghanistan. We were invited there by what used to be called the Northern Alliance, a group that was the near-universally recognized government (held the UN seat, was recognized by everyone except Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan) of the country. Even if you want to call it an invasion it was certainly a justified one, given that the de-facto Government had provided refuge to a group that murdered nearly 3,000 American citizens.
We've made a lot of mistakes there, trying to build a modern Democracy in a country with a literacy rate in the 20-30% range heads the list, but I do wish people would stop conflating Iraq and Afghanistan.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Although it appears (from TFS) that both sides are referring to the other as Nazis, I'm not sure Godwin's Rule applies when you're actually talking about armed conflict. Hopefully the diplomats that actually represent the respective governments can rise above this and avoid (further) loss of life, but I'm getting less and less hopeful.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
I have not seen very man pro Russian comments. I have seen people questioning the US hypocrisy, and questioning how "natural" this revolution is. Obviously you are trying to espouse the "if you are not with us you must be the enemy" rhetoric, which is absolutely false.
It is a well known fact that the US Government spent our tax dollars on the Orange revolution. It did not end up with the Ukraine throwing Russia away as they hoped, and the Ukraine didn't jump into debt with the EU as the west hoped. So now, we have another revolt which even according to Faux News was due to the Ukraine voting not to join the EU. It had nothing to do with the alleged crimes of the Ukraine president until days after the "peaceful uprising" started. (Quoted because every source except for US media shows the protesters armed, throwing gas bombs at police. Compare the police tolerance of protesters in the Ukraine with the police tolerance at a real peaceful protest in the US for a taste of hypocrisy.)
If you want to complain about the excesses of the Ukraine president, again you are a hypocrite. The US president is no better than him, and quite possibly worse. I'm not sure this guy was sending his family on multimillion dollar vacations several times a year. It's not like the US has no issues regarding money and poverty. The White House has more valuables than this guy had in his presidential palace, but of course the US does not call it's presidential building a palace so it has to be better right?. Don't answer that, that is a rhetorical question only.
If you read anything other than US release propaganda you should start to question what the US Government is doing and what the motives are. You should question whether the revolt was truly natural.
Questioning the morality of the USA foreign policies and actions is a logical and responsible path for a US Citizen to take. That does not make a person pro-foreign anything. It makes them a pro-American!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I'm not sure anybody was ever fooled by the "local militiamen" who just happened to organize themselves into a cohesive force and acquire uniforms and decent military equipment in less than half a week. It was immediately obvious that they were russian soldiers - the "real" local militiamen (as in, truly a militia) look like your average hastily put together group without uniforms.
The fact alone that those soldiers are unidentified makes it a war crime (As stated in the Geneva Conventions). If this ever gets to trial (ha!) and is considered war, we already have a war crime before a single shot was fired.
What does the parliament in Crimea have to do with this? And as other posters have pointed out, Yanukovych was abandoned by members of his own party. The Parliament of Ukraine, as authorized by the Ukraine constitution, voted to remove Yanukovych from power. We can debate all day whether they felt forced by the protesters, but that is the facts. No one prevented Yanukovych's supporters in Ukraine's parliament from voting, so your whole point is false.
Get over it. The removal of Yanukovych was constitutional.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It happens every single time another country is in the negative spotlight.
They speak as if USA invented meddling.
You'd be hard-pressed to find these so-what-if-x-does-it-y-did-it-too arguments back in 2002 and 2003. I don't believe any of these people brought up Soviet/British invasion of Afghanistan to dismiss criticism of the US, so the only conclusion one can draw is that they are not actually concerned with morality, just with who is violating the morality.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
One other difference: The economy in Russia took a BIG punch to the face due to the offensive. The ruble and the Russian stock market paid dearly for this.
I do fear a remake of "The Guns of August", but these are different times. Back then, people thought economic interdependence would keep war from breaking out. I wonder if it will be the case today.
Whatever the merits of claiming that government asked Russia for help, that government is no longer in power. The former president has been impeached as per Ukraine's constitution and the new government is within its rights to request foreign troops leave its sovereign territory.
Unfortunately that's completely irrelevant. He was voted on to be impeached, but all that means is he's summoned to trial; constitutionally he still retains all the powers granted the President. In the meantime, the French, German, and US ambassadors to Ukraine negotiated a deal with the opposition and Ukrainian Parliament that stripped Yanukovich of his power and gave it all to the Parliament, which is a direct violation of the Ukrainian Constitution; they are not allowed to do that. Now you have a situation where power is vested within the Parliament unconstitutionally via a deal negotiated by foreign powers, and correctly under the Constitution Yanukovich requested Russian military aid in restoring order. So arguably speaking it's the Parliament on the wrong side of the Constitution and the Russian intervention is legal via the Ukrainian Constitution.
Note I am not a Russian supporter, these are simply the convoluted facts of the situation.
By the same token, justifying one dubious or illegal act by bringing up another strikes me as a pretty flawed argument. That the US invaded Iraq in 2003 doesn't mean Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 is appropriate.
This is exactly the tit-for-tat Great Power games that lead to WWI... The US, I think, has come to deeply regret the Iraq invasion, which happened a decade ago under an entirely different Administration.
If only nations as pure as the driven snow could call out infamous acts by other nations, there would be virtually no one to complain.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From what I understand, the impeachment vote vacated the presidency, with new elections in May. I'm no expert on Ukraine's constitution, but what I read suggests Parliament was within its rights. Furthermore, Yanukovich pulled a James II and fled into Russia hands, thus effectively vacating his position.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Does any seee the orony in the Ukranians using Molotov cocktails?
Fox News is always playing the NAZI card. It makes one wonder about Fox News?
The US president is actually, for the duties he performs, paid a pretty small amount. The President currently makes $400,000 a year (a helluva lot less than the CEO of many major US corporations). Yes, he lives in a mansion and has the use of a number of vacation and recreational areas like Camp David, but these all belong to the people of the United States and upon the end of his term, the President will receive no benefit from them. A President's personal wealth comes from his activities prior to and after his time in office; which is why Bill Clinton has made a career out of speaking engagements.
I can think of no example, even among the more corrupt US Presidents, of the level of self-aggrandizement and enrichment that has been seen with Yanukovich. The situations are not comparable to my mind.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And even more, even if Janukovych were the ruling president, he would not have the right to request foreign troops, as that prerogative belongs only to the Supreme Council. But hey, Russia never cared much about validity of their excuses for invasion. And remember: they used the very same excuse on 1939-09-17 when invading Poland.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
A very good point. A lot of the debate over Afghanistan was over de jure vs. de facto governments. At the end of the day, only two or three countries in the world recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maybe Radio Shack can open up a few stores and become profitable again.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
any international goodwill Russia might have obtained by taking in Snowden
I'm not aware of any mainstream, non-fringe government expressing goodwill towards Russia about taking in Snowden. Please feel free to prove me wrong, I'm not trolling.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
... a qualitatively signifficant (although maybe not quantitatively) part of protesters were indeed self declared fascist extremists, most of them openly nazi-sympathetic, so that's not a comparison at all, and it has nothing to do with godwin's rule. however unfortunate, it just reflects facts. check your sources.
That is not correct. Impeachment is solely the official accusation of crimes directed at the official. It only strips powers when he is removed from office, which can only happen during a trial and decision made by the Constitutional Court.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ukraine,_2010
See Article 108 and 111; 108 says the powers go away "once removed via the process of impeachment", and 111 says that removal only occurs once the Court has made a decision, not during the vote of impeachment. Thus he retains his powers and responsibilities, meaning the Parliament has acted Unconstitutionally.
Notably this is also true of the 2004 Constitution, whcih they have reverted back to; that revokation of the 2010 is also unconstitutional as the President is required to sign his approval of this, which he has not.
Again, I'm a US Person; I generally favor a pro-Western Ukraine, but unfortunately the way this is going more and more the Western side and the protestors are on the wrong side of the law.
> Whatever the merits
OK, so you've decided something and facts don't matter.
Truth is, all this "sovereignty" and "legal" malarchy really just hides the fact that might makes right. The new government may or may not be legitimately democratic, may have been supported or catalysed by foreign powers with vested interested, and may end up being legal with respect to it declaring itself so in arrears.
But it wouldn't automatically get any right to inherit regions which are already semiautonomous. A breakup of the US Federal Government would likely result in states making their way into different blocks. Wouldn't it?
Oh, you're presupposing a fixed outcome you've decided? Why is that?
There were exactly three, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, not Yemen as I said in the previous post. Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew their recognition after 9/11.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't see any difference between an invasion started by "a megalomaniacal leader of a dictatorship" and one started by "a dyslexic leader of a democracy". Except the former is not an ultimate hypocrite. That and nobody has been killed as a result of the Russian "invasion" compared to you know what.
I predict that threats of economic sanctions and actual real-time market forces will bring this to a resolution in about a month.
(Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Anyone?
I think you misunderstand me. Frankly I think Russia's annexation of Crimea is a fait accompli, and I think the EU and the US knew it all along. They're gamble, I suspect, is that Crimea will be sufficient coin to buy Russia's acquiescence to the rest of Ukraine moving westward (so to speak). It strikes me that that is Russia's view as well, as it seems to have contented itself with putting Russian forces in a position to negate any real action by Ukraine military forces.
In other words, I'm not blind to real politik. At the same time, territorial integrity has been a rather large theme in the international sphere since the Allied Powers agreed to the creation of the United Nations during WWII. Sure, it hasn't been uniformly applied; there have been effective secessions, civil wars and the like, but in general, the idea of military forces entering a region of a sovereign state and annexing it has been viewed as a breach of international peace. In the case of Crimea, Russia was a signatory to an agreement guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up the nuclear arsenal that it had inherited after the collapse of the USSR, so I think it's pretty firm that the occupation of Crimea and the clear intent to annex it into the Russian Federation breaks international law on a number of counts.
But, as I said, I think it's a fait accompli, and I think the end of this story was written weeks, if not months ago. Russia will agree to restrict itself to "protecting" Crimea. There will be a referendum in Crimea that will inevitably lead to Crimea either being annexed proper into Russia, or being given a sufficiently strong autonomous status that Ukraine will permanently lose it. The forms of diplomacy have to be obeyed, so Western leaders and foreign ministers will wring their hands and cry foul, even though everyone knew how this would end.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The president is paid 400,000 in cash but has -0- expenses. Why don't you add in all of the tax payer funded junkets and vacations, clothing, transportation (which is not just for business), and food? Add in his speaking engagement revenue, book revenue, and campaign fundraisers. In fact in 2011 Obama spent 1.4 BILLION (yes, that is with a B) on travel expenses.
I get it! Western leaders hide how much they make better than those in other countries. It makes them better liars, not better for their populace. Worse is that idiots believe the hand waiving while refusing to look at facts.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Correct. The difference between now and then is that the US Government employs shitheads like the person I responded to for furtherance of their agenda. Based on their post topics/subjects/points and time (frequency), I believe that this person has an 8 hour a day job at a government office spreading this type of propaganda and bullshit.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I don't annexation is necessarily guaranteed. If enough pressure it put, the question will be put to vote, and with only a small majoriy of Russian speakers in Crimea, it is stastically implausible they would ever have a full majority to join the Russian federation. It would only take 10% of the russian speakers to consider themselves russian-speaking ukrainians or simply prefer a less corrupt government (the recent protests were also support by many russian speaking ukrainians).
-"justifying one dubious or illegal act by bringing up another"
i don't hink the comment is justifying anything, it just draws a comparison. (n.b.: only saw the quote, smart folks at beta seem convinced that i can't mentally handle posts below -1)
-"The US, I think, has come to deeply regret the Iraq invasion, which happened a decade ago under an entirely different Administration."
so gitmo is still run by that former, entirely different administration.
and this other entirely different current administration has absolutely nothing to do with the power shift in ukraine.
high five!
The fact alone that those soldiers are unidentified makes it a war crime (As stated in the Geneva Conventions). If this ever gets to trial (ha!) and is considered war, we already have a war crime before a single shot was fired.
Agreed. Unidentified soldiers are a flagrant violation of the conventions. In theory in any combat they would not be afforded the rights of the conventions either.
That said, at least they're in some kind of uniform. That beats having people in civilian clothes mounting guerrilla attacks.
It is not just tit for tat. Iraq also drained US resources and willingness to act. It is the two latter issues that has caused the US to lose power. Hypocracy has no effect in real politik. Without the economic resources and public support necessary to actually deploy US troops, the US military has effectively been reduced to a paper tiger by 13 years of republican policies.
Both sides are relentlessly comparing each other to Nazi Germany. The Russians claim that Nazi-like fascist radicals led the coup and the Ukrainians claim that the Russians are behaving like Nazi Germany at the outset of World War II. It's like a bad internet argument.
Only that even the BBC now shows that here are indeed Nazi-like fascist radicals in charge now in Ukraine (especially see the two MP from Svoboda showing the numbers 14/88 at 5:00).
I think the whole situation just confirms that Obama really f***ed up on Syria. The United States- the most powerful nation in the world- said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a "red line" that cannot be crossed. And then Assad crosses that line, and crosses it again, and finally crosses it once more by gassing 1400 unarmed people with a series of massive, coordinated attacks on civilians... and Obama sits back and defers to congress, until finally the Russians step in and help negotiate a deal where Assad agrees to hand over the chemical weapons. This is roughly analogous to a schoolyard bully beating a kid up with a baseball bat, after the teacher warns him not to, and the only consequence is that the bully has to surrender the baseball bat. If your teacher handled an incident like that, would you have even the least amount of respect for them? That's not the way you handle that situation. You don't dither. You don't consult congress. You just arm the goddamn Tomahawk missiles and you take out some of Assad's runways, artillery, and communications centers, and make him pay. The issue isn't supporting the Syrian opposition or not, the issue is that the U.S. said that there would be severe consequences if Syria used chemical weapons. And then there weren't. Maybe Obama shouldn't have gotten involved or not What Putin saw was that Obama was more afraid of Congress, and more afraid of Assad's ally —Russia— than he was committed to standing up for the principles we claim to believe in. Putin saw weakness. I do think the Iraq invasion was a huge mistake, and I voted for Obama twice, but I think he's really screwed up on Syria, on the coup in Egypt, and now on the Ukraine.
Article 5 of the 3rd Geneva convention defines 'lawful combatant'. Uniforms are required if you want Geneva convention protections.
The main point of a uniform is to identify what side you are on. Simply wearing green does not qualify if that is not the standard uniform of your force.
Black pajamas was the 'uniform' of the VietCong. But that only worked because they didn't have another uniform already.
In almost all military forces, if you remove the insignia you are 'out of uniform'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The situation in the Ukraine just confirms that Obama f***ed up on Syria. Obama explicitly warned Assad against using chemical weapons, saying that this was a "red line" that wouldn't be crossed without serious consequences. And Assad crossed that line, and crossed it again, and finally crossed it in a massive way, gassing 1400 unarmed men, women and children in a coordinated assault on civilian populations.
The consequence? Obama dithers, says he'll ask congress for permission to act, and finally brokers a deal (with Putin's help) to hand over the chemical weapons.
The correct response would have been to launch the goddamn Tomahawks. Hit Assad hard: bomb his runways, destroy his artillery, blow up his communications centers and headquarters. Obama's response, or lack of a response, showed weakness. Imagine if a teacher tells the school bully to stop beating kids up, and then the bully goes and beats a kid up with a baseball bat and puts him in the hospital... and the only consequence is that the baseball bat is taken away. Would you have even the slightest amount of respect for that teacher? Obama's response showed weakness. It showed that he was more afraid of congress, more afraid of Assad's ally- Putin- than he was committed to America's values. This is the consequence of that.
I'm not saying that American power should be used recklessly; the Iraq invasion was a massive mistake. But failing to exert that power can also be a mistake.
My sense is that the West is slightly overreacting.
A defensive posture in the Crimea isn't unsurprising given the location of the Black Sea fleet and Russia's lack of warm water sea ports.
I would think that what the West may want to negotiate for is a pullback of Russian troops to the boundaries of their bases in return for an acknowledgement of the legitimacy (however dubious it may be) of their leases.
By pushing Putin hard publicly, the West just seems to be trying to bait him into showing more force, which he will gladly do to bask in the glory of Russian nationalist sentiment.
I doubt even Putin has an appetite to try to take other Ukrainian territory by force or even near force. Georgia was too small to fight back, but Ukraine has enough non-Russian population to be a tough nut to crack and a lot of bitter memories of Soviet days.
His leverage over Europe through natural gas gets to be a tougher level to pull as the weather warms, too, so the clock is ticking.
The Maidan went on for 3 months and the Crimean government was always openly critical about it. Not to mention that lots of Crimeans have always been unhappy about being part of Ukraine, unhappy enough to actively [prepare to] resist that is. So assuming that people started to [self-]organize militia within half a week is pretty naive. The conflict has been brewing ever since 1991. For some reason, well organized maidan participants with full supply chain including weapons and scores of western politicians openly encouraging them to overthrow the government don't suprise anyone, but when people on the other side organize and do something to protect themselves, you cry wolf. Is that hypocrisy or genuine ignorance?
LBJ entered politics without a nickle.
He retired a multimillionaire without ever holding an honest job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-intelligence-russia-ukraine-20140303,0,4657644.story#axzz2v27QLzCV
Apparently the Russians are pointing to a 1997 treaty between Russia and Ukraine allowing Russia to deploy up to 25,000 troops in Crimea in case of unrest to defend the Russian military bases there. Russia has deployed 16,000 troops, well within that treaty. Again, it appears they are on the side of the law.
The logistics involved here aren't impossible, obviously islands like Hawaii, Iceland, Great Britain or Ireland can survive by shipping in food, fuel, and goods from elsewhere. But the Ukraine can shut off the flow of supplies into Crimea, and it will hurt. If they have to truck everything to a port and then ship it over- all the food they can't grow locally, all consumer goods, all fuel- it's going to cause severe disruptions to supplies and hurt the local economy. It's not impossible for Russia to hold onto the Crimea -the Alies managed to hold onto West Berlin even though it was isolated in the middle of East Germany- but it's going to be more difficult for Russia to supply and defend.
And yet it is an insult that Russians like to toss out at central European peoples who aren't fans of Russia.
However many things are indeed eerily similar. Putin really does have immense power. Putin really does say that Russia should use military power to protect Russian speaking minorities in other countries.
And it's not Crimea which is a parallel to Sudetenland, it is eastern Ukraine which has had a few centuries of Russification (mostly in cities though).
Parallels do fall down though in many other ways. Ie, Czechoslovakia did not have a disliked president who fled the country taking $70 billion with him.
I.e. the exception to the rule: If faced with actual military invasion the comparison to Nazis is no longer prohibited.
If enough pressure it put, the question will be put to vote, and with only a small majoriy of Russian speakers in Crimea, it is stastically implausible they would ever have a full majority to join the Russian federation.
I disagree with your assertion that Russians make up a small majority of population of Crimea. In the Wikipedia article on Crimea it states that 58% of the population is ethnic Russians and 24% are Ukrainian. Crimea was traditionally Russian territory. It was only given to Ukraine quite recently: 1954.
I believe that Russia will have control of Crimea no matter what. The navy bases in the city of Sevastopol are far too strategical to lose.
And who is going to oppose them when majority of population are ethnic Russians? Ukraine simply can not win this battle militarily: They need international pressure.
EU get 30% of their natural gas from Russia. They don't want to piss them off. I don't think they care that much about Crimea to have a major confrontation with the great, eastern bear. Have a look at how little was done during Russo-Georgian war.
US doesn't have any interest in the region. Bombing some backwater economies like Iraq and Afghanistan is one thing, but killing Russian soldiers is a whole another ballpark. It will never happen. Again, look at Russo-Georgian war just 6 years ago.
However, everything changes if Russia moves on Kiev. I will be a surprised if that happens, because that will open MAJOR can of worms. I believe NATO will intervene militarily if that happens.
And these were the majority of peoples? They were undoubtedly far outnumbered by the "we want Putin" militants. It is possible to be anti-Russian without being fascist.
In the decade-old video game "Lock On: Modern Air Combat", Russia invades Crimea.
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.c...
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The problem is during WW2, Ukrainian nationalists sided with the Nazis. So while it is insulting for most Slavic nations, it's a bit hard to say the same for the Ukraine because there still is the same nationalistic mindset, with strong support for Stepan Bandera and the groups who carried out massacres.
The western media isn't really covering this fact, while the Russian media is dwelling exclusively on this. So no matter what, people are getting a skewed outlook on what has been happening, but one thing for certain is that the nationalists are large in number, and the Ukrainian 'opposition' isn't distancing themselves from them at all.
58% Russian speakers in 2001, and 12% Crimerian Tartars. In 1991 there was 0% Crimerian Tartars. It is likely more have returned since 2001, and more Ukranians have moved there as well.
Even with 60% Russian-speaking Crimerians, it still only takes 20% of them to consider themselves Russian-speaking Ukranians, or prefer a less corrupt government, and a fair election would never lead to joining the Russian federation. Of course a lot of the conflict in Ukraine has been about election fraud by the pro-russian parties, and the Crimean parliament makes the former Ukranian president look like an uncorruptable choirboy, so the fair elections depends a lot on foreign pressure and observers.
Still 1.8 million people would make a fair new small European country, and would give something that Putin could sell as victory and the West couldn't really complain about. An already autonomous state electing to be more autonomous?.. Everybody can live with that, so it would be the diplomatic outcome.
He left. He surprised the existing government by leaving suddenly while negotiations were ongoing. A lot of money has gone missing over the years and I think he decided it was time to cut and run before he could be held criminally responsible. His supporters were no longer voting the way he wanted and the writing was on the wall. It certainly was not a coup. If he had lost the election I'm certain he felt that the opposition would have imprisoned him in the exact same way that he imprisoned/poisoned the old opposition.
I'm not going to hold either side blameless and pure, but certainly Yanukovych was a right bastard.
Much of the remaining parliament were there before Yanukovynch left, members of the new government were also part of the old government. It was not replaced with a mob.
Was parliament disbanded? Most of the same people who are there now were there previously.
In Soviet Russia, this entire thread makes a joke to you!
...in Another Bloody Century. He kind of pooh-poohs it as some of the other commenters here have done, saying that it plays a small part but is mostly an annoyance.
The Army reading list
And just how important is that constitution, practically speaking? And what was done was to basically reinstate constitutional amendments that existed in 2010, undoing changes that gave the president too much power. So maybe they are not "allowed" to do that, but pragmatically they just did it. So it's old constitution versus new constitution. And Putin is not stepping in as some holy savior of written documents either, or abiding by existing laws in Crimea.
There were new elections scheduled, then the president abandoned office and fled to the surprise of many. As for diplomatic interference, the Russian ambassador was there negotiating as well.
Constitutions and laws only strong when the people support them. In this case there was very little support for the constitutional changes that Yanukovych pushed through. Relying on the constitution as a protection is like relying on your glasses to prevent a bully from punching you.
Many members were threatened not to vote, others have been ousted by the mob. I'll have to dig for sources, but it's fresh enough where a google search should work. While this link is to RT (subject to bias) this shows a different view of what's happening than US media. This is why I suggested to look at both pieces media and look toward the middle. RT and Al Jazeera both have completely different "news" from the Western AP.
Before you say it, yes I read each source as biased and try to do a bit of research. The point is that the US and UK media is just as biased in the opposite direction. I work with and discuss politics with people from those areas. One would guess that these people would side with the US on most of these issues because they have no fear of being sent to a Russian jail. You will find the contrary however.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
On the other hand, Crimea has only been a part of Ukraine for a relatively short period of time. The current majority of Russian speakers is also a relative new demographic as well, since Stalin deported the Tatars. It has changed hands many times in recent centuries, with a quite varied demographic.
Overall the biggest problem in former Soviet countries, and even within Russian federation members, is the long history of Russification that has been going on from the time of the czars and continued during the Soviet era. This had all been done with the intent of making these outlying countries and regions more loyal to Russian rule. Since the strong center lost hold after the fall of the USSR this has left a lot of ticking time bombs out there.
The idealist side of me would like to see people of different cultures who speak different language get along and cooperate. The pragmatic side of me though says it won't ever happen, not even in western countries.
I think Putin overstepped out of anger, and I hope that he currently realizes that. Although he got away with it with only minor grumbling in the west when he took disputed regions away from Georgia, Ukraine is a much bigger country without such a convenient geography. It will likely be easy to take and hold Crimea, however it would be extremely dificult to invade eastern Ukraine without great political, economic, and military cost.
The answer is pretty simple, though I'll allow myself elaborate a little.
Before 1991 everyone was a "soviet person" and one's ethnicity was much less of an issue to a large majority of people than it seems to be now. Then towards the end of the 80s, a major nationalistic uprising started to grow and that, along with other factors, led to the breakup of the USSR in 1991. In the years that passed since 1991, all the former soviet republics have been working hard to build their separate national history, pride, culture etc. Some have been more aggressively anti-Russian, e.g. the Baltic states, some have been less, e.g. Belarus or Kazakhstan. Ukraine has been somewhere in the middle on average with its Western parts being more intensely nationalistic on par with the Baltic and Eastern and Southern (Crimea) regions of Ukraine just didn't seem to care about Russian-vs-Ukrainian all that much. So what you see now is simply a result of 23+ years of pushing anti-Russian policies in Ukraine by native Ukrainians (especially in the Western parts) and, sadly, complacency/indifference of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
The US at least gathered international support before invading Iraq. Granted, much of the evidence presented turned out to be misinformation and over-reliance on untrustworthy sources, that is true. However Russia does not seem to be even attempting this and is going about it purely solo without any pretence of national security. Instead it wants to keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence without any orange leanings in the government.
The chief problem in Syria is trying to decide who is worse; Assad or the al Qaeda-backed rebels that have become so dominant in the battle against Assad. There's little point to getting rid of Assad only to replace him with people who would likely be much much worse.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Russia doesn't recognize the new government in Ukraine. Same reasoning. Their invasion is being encouraged by the "real" president.
Parallels do fall down though in many other ways.
Here's the big one: Hitler's grand design was to obtain Lebensraum for the German people, at the expense of the subhuman Slavs to the East. Putin's grand design is to reassert Russia's influence in those areas she has traditionally regarded as being within her sphere of influence. He doesn't care if neighboring countries have dictatorships or liberal democracies, so long as they toe Moscow's line, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. He doesn't regard his neighbors as Untermensch to be enslaved or exterminated.
None of this is to suggest that the West should acquiesce to the de-facto annexation of Crimea, but we really do need to dispense with the hyperbolic WW2 analogies.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Being critical is one thing. Organising an army is another.
You mean to tell me those russian-speaking guys with russian military equipment and russian uniforms and russian vehicles are in fact locals?
If so, you're the ignorant one here.
Protip: The locals look like your average militia. AKs and rather liberal uniforms.
I'd also like to see where your weapons claims are coming from. Only very late did the protests escalate beyond throwing rocks (in the grand scheme, isolated incidents aside). And guess what? Snipers randomly appeared and started shooting crowds. The crowd's supply chain was mostly food and fuel for the literal campfire.
Sure they had such. Well, Iraq certainly did.
We invaded. The "alliance" was a creature we created for our own purpose.
You can't impose a democracy on an invaded people; they get cranky about the invasion and will call anyone who cooperates with the invader a quisling, and justifiably so. They aren't angry because they are illiterate. They are angry because they are living in an occupied country. They have an excellent grasp of current events.
If the US had been invaded by the Taliban because Canada, Mexico and Grenada said it was fine by them, Americans would not cooperate either. People in foreign cultures are no less proud and no more willing to be conquered than we are. The US went insane because 40-odd people scattered around the world (not Afghanistan - they were almost all Saudi) set up 4 plane attacks (they couldn't get manpower to crash the planned 12) and killed 3000 Americans on our home soil. Can you imagine what the US response would be if the Taliban bombed us, conquered us, and tried to install a Muslim government and sneered at our ignorance when we refused?
The Taliban rose to power because the mountain tribal thugs we elevated to power after we used them to fight off the Soviet invaders (who were worried themselves of fundamentalist revolutionaries on their border) were such murderous raping hillbillies that the Taliban was welcomed as a less oppressive solution.
The Taliban never attacked us - they weren't suicidal. Some of the people in the loose thing called the Taliban apparently had granted Al Qaida a place to train fighters - but that wasn't ALL the Taliban, just as the Michigan Militia ain't the United States of America. We bombed the country because they wouldn't give up the AQ boys without proof of guilt - somewhat reasonable, granted their culture and common sense. Bush said no proof - give over or die. They chose pride and we blew them up. AQ - all forty of them - mostly got away for awhile, because we were chasing oil in Iraq, but the people of Afghanistan - and Iraq - were annihilated by our blind rage and need to lash out at ANYthing. Thing is, we blew any goals we had - the bad guy got away, and turned the damned planet against us.
I don't see how it was justified. AQ wasn't the Taliban. We conflated, and still conflate, all Muslims who defy us as AQ. We blew up a country - two countries - that had nothing to do with the attack against the US. This is the cognitive dissonance that Americans won't confront, because then we wouldn't be good guys. We needed their cooperation, and instead turned them into enemies. and once again, the bad guy got clean away.
The revolt started long before it appeared in the news. It is a holdover from Yanukovych's election which was broadly criticized as unfair (election laws had been changed previously despite concerns about it creating the same problems that it had created previously which spurred on the orange revolution. Yanukovych was just not well liked at all and there were suspicions of corruption.
As for comparing to Obama, I have never seen a palatial dacha with its own private zoo owned by Obama, or a massive seaside resort being built for the personal use of Obama, and yet those exist for Yanukovych (though builders walked off the job on the resort when Yanukovych fled). The presidential dacha/palace is bigger and more luxurious than the white house, see the pictures online if you doubt it since people are now walking around in it without guards left to stop them. There are credible reports that many billions were stolen by Yanukovich which is why many of his bank accounts were frozen in Austria and Switzerland. If Obama is trying to equal the corruption of Yanukovych then he's doing a very poor job of it.
You're dangerously close to being an apologist for one of the most atrocious regimes of modern times.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
'ERM" considerably rather worse or am I mistaken that there was not a majority American population in the region the US invaded and decimated. Funding of neo-nazis in Ukraine produced the expected chaos and their ability to grab power and the result, what Russia would do nothing. Consider similar actions in places like say Ireland, Mexico, yep sure, the neighbouring country would take no action when neo-nazis were funded into power by a foreign power seeking to create chaos.
So Ukraine, the "INVASION" exactly how many tons of bombs where dropped in the "Shock and Awe" campaign, how many tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the "Shock and Awe" campaign. Did I miss it, where is all the sports commentary like reporting of the slaughter of Ukrainian soldiers. How many tank rounds were fired, how many bullets shot what is the civilian death toll of the invasion. How about the celebration of the kill numbers Ukrainian soldiers by Russian snipers or the footage of accurate bomb drops on Ukrainian targets, that total and utter celebration of US killing Iraqi's.
Gees, when it comes to "INVASIONS" it certainly seems like if your going to have one, far better it be a Russian one than a US one (seriously absolutely no comparison at all) or perhaps, just maybe perhaps invasion is far too strong a term. Hell, it's not even within cooee of a Vietnam style peace keeping action. How stupid do US politicians have to act before they realise how stupid they are acting.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Really? Ukraine has a few nutty MPs? Should we even bother mentioning Zherenovsky? No, the actions of Russia AS A STATE are exactly the same as the actions of Hitler's Germany in retaking of the German Sudaten Land from Chechoslovakia under the pretext that the native German population was being endangered there. This is nothing but an excuse from a regime that has no better excuse.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is not strictly true.
There are thousands of documented cases where an invasion of a foreign power has been welcomed by the citizens of an oppressive government. From the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany to Vietnam invading Cambodia to dispose Pol Pot and the US invasion of Granada.
The key difference is how an invasion is perceived by the people. If people are dissatisfied with their government, a foreign power can gain a lot of good will by deposing it, of course after riding the initial wave of dissatisfaction the power must be very careful about how they act towards the local populace. The Romans and British made world spanning empires by bringing education and wealth to far off lands, the British made deals with local leaders where other European empires tried to oppress locals by force. The slow process of Anglicising the locals worked better than the largest armies.
But to use more modern examples, when the Allies took over Germany and Japan, all efforts were focused on ensuring that people had food and services started running again. Special care was taken not to insult or demean the defeated Germans and especially the Japanese.
In Afghanistan, there was a strong dissatisfaction with the Taliban, measured largely by the fact there was an open rebellion. The US was not as unwelcome as some would believe in toppling the Taliban, in fact it was quite the opposite. The US's failure was in what came after. Bush and his advisors had no idea how the Afghani's would react in reality and that they wouldn't neatly fit into a western democracy. They had no plans to deal with the local warlords that inevitably popped up in the power vacuum left by the Taliban (going back to the British example, force wouldn't have worked), I'd argue they never even thought the warlords would pop up but the worst thing the US did was invade Iraq. Here the mood that Arabs and Persians had of the Americans soured. You could no longer argue that the US weren't acting like imperialistic invaders and this naturally lead to the US's motivations in Afghanistan being questioned. In addition to this attitude shift, moving resources and material allowed a resurgence of the Taliban to form in Afghanistan.
Point in short, the US was fine invading Afghanistan because no-one supported the Taliban, not even their own people. The US dropped the ball in the Afghanistan by invading Iraq when it had no cause to. If not for the Iraq blunder, we'd be looking at a very different middle east.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes, the WW2 analogies are forced. However when Putin first said the bit about defending Russian citizens wherever they are, plus passing out Russian passports in Crimea, that just instantly made an association with Sudetenland. For awhile I thought I was the only once who picked up on this since I hadn't heard any other mention of it (I was going to ask a Czech coworker what he thought), but then this week it seems lots of people have been noticing the connection.
Sure they had such. Well, Iraq certainly did.
There's a difference between Afghanistan and Iraq.
You can't impose a democracy on an invaded people;
It worked for Japan.
I don't see how it was justified. AQ wasn't the Taliban. We conflated, and still conflate, all Muslims who defy us as AQ.
Do you understand that the Taliban was defending Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin? That could be your problem right there.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So if a 'coalition of the willing' composed of Belarus and North Korea helped would you support this invasion?
It doesn't make it right either way dude.
I'm not saying it's right, but the two situations are not at all the same.
What you've described would be the easiest way for Ukraine to lose Crimea forever. :)
The Russian stock market is already recovering, though.
And you know what's funny? It's seeing a lot of trades... but whoever is buying those stocks back is not the ones that held it before the conflict. The holders of those stocks before the conflict were mostly foreign investors, once you discount the government of Russia itself. If the new holders turn out to be Russian, well... it might well be the first time in history that a war in Europe was threatened and almost provoked to fill some pockets with a lot of cash.
I doubt a majority of Crimeans want annexation by Russia or even independence, but Putin doesn't win elections via his charming personality. Any election referendum held under Russian occupation will result in a pro-Russia vote.
I stole this Sig
Which opponents were prevented from voting? The Party of Regions was in session when they voted to impeach him. There wouldn't be quorum otherwise.
No members of the parliament were "ousted by the mob", it has the exact same membership as before. The difference is that quite a few have left the pro-Yanukovich Party of Regions and declared themselves independent.
Ukrainian Parliament that stripped Yanukovich of his power and gave it all to the Parliament, which is a direct violation of the Ukrainian Constitution; they are not allowed to do that.
Under which Constitution, though? The parliament has immediately restored the 2004 constitution which they claim was illegally reverted by the Supreme Court in 2010 under Yanukovich's pressure, and that the reversal itself was procedurally invalid (it had to go through the Rada, they couldn't just cancel it outright).
58% Russian speakers in 2001, and 12% Crimerian Tartars. In 1991 there was 0% Crimerian Tartars. It is likely more have returned since 2001, and more Ukranians have moved there as well. Even with 60% Russian-speaking Crimerians, it still only takes 20% of them to consider themselves Russian-speaking Ukranians.
The poll in 2001 asked two questions: national self-identification, and native language. The 58% figure is from the national self-identification poll, i.e. how many people call themselves Russian rather than Ukrainian. The number of people who declared Ukrainian as their native language was merely 10%.
The main reason why I believe annexation won't happen is that it breaks a lot of precedent in post-WW2 Europe, and will also open a huge can of worms. If Russia can annex parts of Ukraine on such a vague claim and get away with it, then a lot of European states might also remember all grudges. Peace in Europe since the war has pretty much rested on the notion that borders are sacrosanct. A part of the country may split and form its own independent country, and this can even be forced externally, but it is always a new country - it doesn't get attached to anything else. See the Kosovo crisis for an example - combined NATO forces pretty much forced Serbia to let Kosovo go de facto if not on paper, and eventually recognized it as a state in its own right - but the notion of it joining Albania was off the table at all times.
Now the problem with an independent Crimea is logistics. Being a peninsula, it won't have land border with anything but Ukrainian mainland, and even then there are just two major routes - one through Perekop, and M-18 via a bridge. So if Ukrainians won't cooperate, supplying it will be problematic. In theory, it is possible to build a bridge from Russian shore to Kerch, but that would be a massive long-term infrastructure project, it's not going to just pop up tomorrow.
Crimea also draws a lot of its potable water from Ukrainian mainland, as what it has on its own is not adequate for that number of people - again, something that could be cut off by the other side very easily, yet hard to replace.
It's not just food and supplies, it's also water. Crimea doesn't have enough fresh water to supply its own population, and so they have to rely on canals like the North Crimean Canal to supply it from mainland. Needless to say, they're easily cut off.
They also don't have any power generation of their own, all electricity comes from the mainland, too. Oh, and gas for heating.
Basically, Crimea can be self-reliant, but not with its present population.
160 years ago the Russians started the Crimean War with the excuse that they were protecting the Christians in the collapsing Ottoman Empire.
They all have their NGO fronts and networks in place and are flooding cash in to help 'their' local freedom fighters.
Russia knows its hold on the bases is a bit like the US at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base or the UK in Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands.
In the very short term expect a flood of web 2.0 sockpuppets talking about Stalin and WW2 Germany.
The real medium term issue for Russia is the flow of gas to the EU at a set price and US/NATO expansion around Russia.
Russia has been invaded many times over the past few hundred years. Russia has a good historic feel for how having new troops around them usually ends up.
Russia faced visions of the Trans-Saharan gas pipeline, Medgaz a submarine natural gas pipeline between Algeria and Spain (inaugurated on 1 March 2011), GALSI a planned natural gas pipeline (Algeria to Sardinia and further northern Italy), the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline and Greenstream pipeline over decades eating into its energy sales to the EU.
Can the EU do what it was told by Italy in the 1960's via ENI and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... and get oil and gas from the rest of the world?
Russia can turn the gas off, change how it views debts US$ or just wait for the CIA supported freedom fighters to try a local Bay of Pigs?
How the UK and EU will react to energy shocks might be fun too. Energy contracts with Soviet Union and Russia where decades long...
Be nice to Russia and get a good contract again? Or risk all backing some US neocon plan and see the results in new Russian energy contracts?
Italy warned the emerging EU to go find other energy imports in the 1960's but few listened to the expert advice.
Now as predicted the EU is stuck between the US manifest destiny and the reality of Russian pipelines.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The difference between now and then is that the US Government employs shitheads like the person I responded to
You didn't respond to a "shithead," you responded as one. It is a native patois that you customarily and unnecessarily adopt.
You believe I have an 8 hour a day job in a government office spreading propaganda. I believe you are an incendiary crank that is often unable to discern truth and fact from fancy and fringe ideas. One of us is right. It isn't you.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'd also like to see where your weapons claims are coming from.
You didn't see it on Fox news? Then I guess it didn't happen.
Wearing a uniform is required to gain protection by the convention, it is not a violation of the convention to not wear uniform, merely you are negating any rights under those laws to be afforded its protection.
The President currently makes $400,000 a year (a helluva lot less than the CEO of many major US corporations). .
You forgot to mention the Zero expenses he occurs or the lifetime pension from the moment he is no longer president, he also gets funding to "help" move back into private life (must be a terrible burden for him), then he gets funding for staff as well as travel and medical expenses for himself and family for life. basically after he is no longer doing the job he is still earning more than half a million a year for his stint as president.
Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf? Might want to look up "map of US CIA involvement 1952-present" to see why nobody trusts the USA anymore. Remember those are JUST the ones we know about, where high muckety mucks decided to spill the beans for a book deal or the like while in reality the numbers are undoubtedly MUCH higher.
So don't bitch about people wondering if its a USA led fake coup when that is pretty much all the CIA has been doing for over half a century.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It is required, otherwise you are not a lawful combatant. That leaves you as a criminal or a terrorist, under international law.
The Geneva Conventions cover a lot of topics, sometimes over several documents. I had a hard time finding the specific paragraph that says this last time I checked, but it's there (somewhere).
Let me know if you'd rather live as a female in the United States or Afghanistan under the Taliban.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Christians, Russian nationals, warm water port, one of those.
That would have engangered some monied intrest's profit margins. Instead, we get to, in-effect, subsidize insurance companies. Obama is the most sucessful Neo-Con President to date.
I have friends in Ukraine. There's no need to rehash the contents of Kiselev's last news segment, thank you very much.
Technically four, if you include Afghanistan. Well, bits of it.
The Ukraine is going through a difficult time with Putin but, if Putin had taken a leaf out of the diplomatic play book of Josef Stalin then the Ukraine would have been pulverized by the full force of the Soviet military machine and Stalin would have ticked of his to do list as problem solved so things could be worse.
Nobody is disagreeing. If they are out of uniform they are unlawful combatants, which removes most but not all Geneva convention protections from them.
For example unlawful combatants can be legally shot as spies when captured, but not legally tortured.
The definition of torture has itself been tortured in recent decades. Most police interrogations meet the most commonly used definition.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Financial Times [Paywall] is reporting that a highly sophisticated cyberweapon known as Ouroboros is being used to infect, monitor and potentially attack Ukrainian computer networks including government systems. Forensics mark it as being Russian developed, and the article compares it to Stuxnet in terms of sophistication and capability (though it is not related to that specific software). Websites are small potatoes, nothing more than spray paint on a wall. This appears to be more more like explosives, designed to take out targeted infrastructure.