OMG, your self-righteousness is just so, so... American. No, this is not a compliment.
Kosovo, Iraq, Afganistan, Guantanamo, Libya, Syria just to name a few in the last 15 years. Tell me please, which one of those has been outdone by Russia? Even the much more vilified U.S.S.R. is an angel compared to the U.S. The Vietnam war alone took more lives than all military conflicts the U.S.S.R. had been involed in since WWII. Combined. That's if you want to go 50 years back.
I know your educational system is wanting, but could you please not demonstrate is so openly?
Do not be fooled - the Cold war was never over for you (Americans). Yes, you may have won a major battle in 1991 and had no competition for 10-20 years while Russia was recovering, but that only inflated your ambitions about world domination and eliminated all checks and balances. And nowadays, you are as antagonistic as Russians are.
You have this totally unjustified, groundless sense of moral superiority over Russians whose sometimes questionable actions on the international scene do not bring nearly as much grief and death as any of the American war campaigns launched on the pretext of "liberating" people, "saving" the world from non-existing WMDs, "protecting" democracy, "figting" "terrorism" and so on. It's you that have military bases all over the world. It's you that have defense spending grossing to as much as the rest of the world's. And it's not like you just spend and your troops just sit at home - no, they go places and bring "democracy".
So no, you have no moral high ground on any of the international issues, and no, we will not believe you.
If he was killed "rather publicly" by Russians, the media would still be all over it. The fact is that a ukrainian soldier AND a Crimean militia man were killed at the same time by an unidentified person. That makes a difference, don't you think?
As for your friends, they probably were deported to Uzbekistan. Sounds realistic, doesn't it?
Well, I have the advantage of having grown up in Crimea (some from my family still live there) so stories about Russian thugs, ethnic cleaning and things like that generally just make me smile at first:) And then I realize that people believe all kinds of BS they get from media. I probably do too when it comes to things I don't know much/anything about, but in this case I do know that 99% of all the info in western media about Crimea is pure BS.
The only time I heard about the Crimean legislature occupied was when in the first days after Yanukovich's ousting, Crimean Tatars organized a rally in front of the legislature, after which the militias took over the building. But it was vacated soon after. So really it was the Tatars who acted first in Crimea.
It's not about "tainted western sources". It's about making serious accusations without a shred of proof. One has to be blind or deliberately ignorant, to not see how Russians are always portrayed as bad guys in western media. 100 people died in Kiev during "peaceful protests" and nobody's investigating that. 1 random person died in Crimea of unknown causes and it's commonly accepted (again with no proof whatsoever) to have been organized by evil Russians.
I haven't seen any of "them" killed. Even with all the Western propaganda out there, there have been no reports of anyone killed in Crimea. Do you have a proof?
As someone said recently: Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
Exactly, getting Crimea back is exactly a repeat of history. Historical justice has been restored.
Crimea and Kosovo are not the same issue. Crimea essentially transferred to Russia over a weekend. Kosovo involved months of diplomacy.
Absolutely! The Kosovo thing also involved NATO bombings of Serbia disregarding a UN security council resolution. Which resulted in hundreds of dead innocent civilians. And yes, of course the months of "diplomacy" as in NATO telling Serbia that they would lose their most precious piece of motherland no matter what. How dare Putin do his dirty wars with no casualties and backed by the majority of Crimeans?
And yes, many of those countries did some minor allying with Germany during WWII, often grudgingly, but this was because they feared Stalin more than Hitler, because they remembered their bad history with Russia but Germany was an unknown.
Define "minor allying". Czechoslovakia was an industry powerhouse for the Nazis manufacturing a big chunk of German weaponry. Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and others were supplying troops by the hundreds of thousands. I don't think they did so grudgingly, more like they had no other choice having been in the German zone of control.
(ie, the Tatars were kicked out of Crimea as punishment for alleged collaboration with Nazis)
One may argue whether such large scale deportation was an adequate response to that (adequate by the 1944 standards, not modern day standards. USSR was still at war then) , but the Tatar collaboration is well documented and is not alleged in any way.
... they lived there for quite a while, evident by names of places only in their language and their presence was also noted in neighboring countries' historical documents. If that's not a reason enough to acknowledge their claim to their land, I don't know what is.
Does any of that apply to the Ukrainian claim to Crimea? Ukraine never fought for it, Ukrainians never lived there, nobody speaks Ukrainian in Crimea.
Ask any of the people who were in semi-adult-and-above age during WW2 which did they prefer, knowing both - Russians, or Germans? I didn't remember anyone mentioning a whole lot of people fleeing to Soviet Union when Jerries struck... Must be yank propaganda though.
Yup yup. Ask any of the jews which they prefered...
There is no reason to have a population exchange. Russians and Ukrainians have lived together in peace for many centuries and only now (thanks to "the West") these ethnic tensions are rising. Ukrainians can and are welcome to stay where they prefer, be it Russia proper or Crimea. Unlike the people behind the Maidan telling Russian Ukrainians to "go back to Russia", Crimea is home to Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and almost 80 ethnic groups and nobody has to leave.
Your view is very simplistic.
1. To be fair, with the exception of Romania, all of those countries were part of the Russian Empire not too long (20 years) before they had military conflicts with the USSR.
2. In the end, Poland actually gained territory before and after WWII. Before, Poland got a chunk of Czech territory, after it got part of Germany. Ukraine got a chunk of Romania. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania became independent countries, which had either never existed (in this case how do you assess what terrirtory is "theirs"?) before or had been absorbed by their neighbors (not just Russia) long time prior.
3. Romania was an ally (probably unwillingly, but still) of the Nazi Germany and there were many Romanian soldiers fighting on the Eastern front against the USSR.
Anyways, my point is that history is not black and white.
Why do people get the impression that Yanukovich was pro-Russian? He never delivered any of his "pro-Russian" election promises such as giving the Russian language an official status in the country where at least 40% speak it natively and another 50% are fluent in it. He got a very profitable deal for the naval base lease. He always bounced back and forth between the West and the East never really leaning completely on one side. Even in the infamous trade deal with EU, he played both sides and got much better conditions from Russia (well, it wouldn't come with "democratic" bells and whistles, but economically it was better). Please tell me what exactly makes him so pro-Russian?
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 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?
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.
All that functionality had better be thoroughly tested. High level scientific computations (especially working with large data sets) are often extremely hard to test and validate.
Who was the genius that decided to go with Windows to begin with? Don't get me wrong, Windows is fine on desktops (traditionally) and servers (more recently), but using it for essentially embedded development would be my very last choice.
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OMG, your self-righteousness is just so, so... American. No, this is not a compliment.
Kosovo, Iraq, Afganistan, Guantanamo, Libya, Syria just to name a few in the last 15 years. Tell me please, which one of those has been outdone by Russia? Even the much more vilified U.S.S.R. is an angel compared to the U.S. The Vietnam war alone took more lives than all military conflicts the U.S.S.R. had been involed in since WWII. Combined. That's if you want to go 50 years back.
I know your educational system is wanting, but could you please not demonstrate is so openly?
Do not be fooled - the Cold war was never over for you (Americans). Yes, you may have won a major battle in 1991 and had no competition for 10-20 years while Russia was recovering, but that only inflated your ambitions about world domination and eliminated all checks and balances. And nowadays, you are as antagonistic as Russians are.
You have this totally unjustified, groundless sense of moral superiority over Russians whose sometimes questionable actions on the international scene do not bring nearly as much grief and death as any of the American war campaigns launched on the pretext of "liberating" people, "saving" the world from non-existing WMDs, "protecting" democracy, "figting" "terrorism" and so on. It's you that have military bases all over the world. It's you that have defense spending grossing to as much as the rest of the world's. And it's not like you just spend and your troops just sit at home - no, they go places and bring "democracy".
So no, you have no moral high ground on any of the international issues, and no, we will not believe you.
C is a perfectly safe language if used properly. Not to mention that it is as ubiquitous as it can possibly get without sacrificing portability.
I would take the "Korean bargain bucket crap" over Apple's overpriced overhyped glamour gizmos any day. Actually, I do.
If he was killed "rather publicly" by Russians, the media would still be all over it. The fact is that a ukrainian soldier AND a Crimean militia man were killed at the same time by an unidentified person. That makes a difference, don't you think?
As for your friends, they probably were deported to Uzbekistan. Sounds realistic, doesn't it?
Well, I have the advantage of having grown up in Crimea (some from my family still live there) so stories about Russian thugs, ethnic cleaning and things like that generally just make me smile at first :) And then I realize that people believe all kinds of BS they get from media. I probably do too when it comes to things I don't know much/anything about, but in this case I do know that 99% of all the info in western media about Crimea is pure BS.
The only time I heard about the Crimean legislature occupied was when in the first days after Yanukovich's ousting, Crimean Tatars organized a rally in front of the legislature, after which the militias took over the building. But it was vacated soon after. So really it was the Tatars who acted first in Crimea.
It's not about "tainted western sources". It's about making serious accusations without a shred of proof. One has to be blind or deliberately ignorant, to not see how Russians are always portrayed as bad guys in western media. 100 people died in Kiev during "peaceful protests" and nobody's investigating that. 1 random person died in Crimea of unknown causes and it's commonly accepted (again with no proof whatsoever) to have been organized by evil Russians.
And those accusations have been proven in court or is it like WMD in Iraq?
As someone said recently: Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
Exactly, getting Crimea back is exactly a repeat of history. Historical justice has been restored.
Crimea and Kosovo are not the same issue. Crimea essentially transferred to Russia over a weekend. Kosovo involved months of diplomacy.
Absolutely! The Kosovo thing also involved NATO bombings of Serbia disregarding a UN security council resolution. Which resulted in hundreds of dead innocent civilians. And yes, of course the months of "diplomacy" as in NATO telling Serbia that they would lose their most precious piece of motherland no matter what. How dare Putin do his dirty wars with no casualties and backed by the majority of Crimeans?
And yes, many of those countries did some minor allying with Germany during WWII, often grudgingly, but this was because they feared Stalin more than Hitler, because they remembered their bad history with Russia but Germany was an unknown.
Define "minor allying". Czechoslovakia was an industry powerhouse for the Nazis manufacturing a big chunk of German weaponry. Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and others were supplying troops by the hundreds of thousands. I don't think they did so grudgingly, more like they had no other choice having been in the German zone of control.
(ie, the Tatars were kicked out of Crimea as punishment for alleged collaboration with Nazis)
One may argue whether such large scale deportation was an adequate response to that (adequate by the 1944 standards, not modern day standards. USSR was still at war then) , but the Tatar collaboration is well documented and is not alleged in any way.
... they lived there for quite a while, evident by names of places only in their language and their presence was also noted in neighboring countries' historical documents. If that's not a reason enough to acknowledge their claim to their land, I don't know what is.
Does any of that apply to the Ukrainian claim to Crimea? Ukraine never fought for it, Ukrainians never lived there, nobody speaks Ukrainian in Crimea.
Ask any of the people who were in semi-adult-and-above age during WW2 which did they prefer, knowing both - Russians, or Germans? I didn't remember anyone mentioning a whole lot of people fleeing to Soviet Union when Jerries struck... Must be yank propaganda though.
Yup yup. Ask any of the jews which they prefered...
If they (Turkey, Venice or Genoa) had something to say about this, don't you think they would have done so by now?
There is no reason to have a population exchange. Russians and Ukrainians have lived together in peace for many centuries and only now (thanks to "the West") these ethnic tensions are rising. Ukrainians can and are welcome to stay where they prefer, be it Russia proper or Crimea. Unlike the people behind the Maidan telling Russian Ukrainians to "go back to Russia", Crimea is home to Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and almost 80 ethnic groups and nobody has to leave.
Your view is very simplistic.
1. To be fair, with the exception of Romania, all of those countries were part of the Russian Empire not too long (20 years) before they had military conflicts with the USSR.
2. In the end, Poland actually gained territory before and after WWII. Before, Poland got a chunk of Czech territory, after it got part of Germany. Ukraine got a chunk of Romania. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania became independent countries, which had either never existed (in this case how do you assess what terrirtory is "theirs"?) before or had been absorbed by their neighbors (not just Russia) long time prior.
3. Romania was an ally (probably unwillingly, but still) of the Nazi Germany and there were many Romanian soldiers fighting on the Eastern front against the USSR.
Anyways, my point is that history is not black and white.
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.
Why do people get the impression that Yanukovich was pro-Russian? He never delivered any of his "pro-Russian" election promises such as giving the Russian language an official status in the country where at least 40% speak it natively and another 50% are fluent in it. He got a very profitable deal for the naval base lease. He always bounced back and forth between the West and the East never really leaning completely on one side. Even in the infamous trade deal with EU, he played both sides and got much better conditions from Russia (well, it wouldn't come with "democratic" bells and whistles, but economically it was better). Please tell me what exactly makes him so pro-Russian?
What you've described would be the easiest way for Ukraine to lose Crimea forever. :)
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 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?
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.
All that functionality had better be thoroughly tested. High level scientific computations (especially working with large data sets) are often extremely hard to test and validate.
Please forgive my ignorance - what mysteries has he unlocked?
Who was the genius that decided to go with Windows to begin with? Don't get me wrong, Windows is fine on desktops (traditionally) and servers (more recently), but using it for essentially embedded development would be my very last choice.