Following last week's announcement by Ramzan Kadyrov that his Chechens are ready to bring peace to troubled Eastern Europe, we have word today that another statesman of similar stature, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, has arrived on the scene to help out.
In the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin writes:
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili knows a thing or two about Russian invasions. ... Saakashvili, who fought the Russian army in 2008 for five days after the Russians invaded, is in Kiev to advise the new Ukrainian government. He says he’s providing counsel on how to hopefully avoid an all-out war with Putin’s army. ...
There several similarities between Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and its 2012 invasion of Ukraine and one main difference. Russia has yet to cross militarily into greater Ukraine, outside Crimea, and wage a full scale invasion of the country, as it did in Georgia.
Well, and another little difference: the Ukraine hasn't invaded anybody. The new Ukrainian government hasn't sent 10,000 men and 72 tanks over the border into a breakaway republic, like Georgia did the night of August 7-8, 2008.
I know it's hard to remember what happened way back during the Beijing Olympics, but there's this thing called Wikipedia and you can read about the whole war there.
If, say, the Ukrainians had last week invaded Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway region of Moldova that lies on Ukraine's west border, well, that would be kind of like what Georgia did that kicked off the five days of major warfare in 2008. But Ukraine didn't do that. The worst thing Ukraine's new government did was rescind the law making Russian an official language, but they quickly changed that back. And in any case that's not like sending 10,000 men across a border shooting the whole time.
You can question the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government -- they came to power by street violence overthrowing an elected president. And a lot of the bravest street fighters have loyalties that are repugnant to most Russians going back to the 1940s.
But, the new Ukrainian government hasn't invaded anybody.
Posts
105 comments:
Steve,
A few days ago you made the point that the media is still not able (willfully or not) to admit in news articles the basic facts about the Georgia/Russia affair.
Here is an article by Ron Fournier, incidentally the guy who prompted G. W. Bush's famous comments about getting a sense of Putin's "soul."
http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/why-putin-plays-our-presidents-for-fools-20140302
Fournier writes: "In the summer of 2008, Putin and Bush were in Beijing for the Olympics when Russian troops moved into Georgia in response to what the Kremlin called Georgian aggression against South Ossetia."
The wikipedia page on the Russia-Georgian war also has a couple of links to what looks like a pretty thorough Timeline of the war.
The wikipedia page on Mikheil Saakashvili has this factoid on Saakashvili's early career:
"...receiving a fellowship from the United States State Department (via the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program). He received an LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 1994 and took classes at The George Washington University Law School the following year. In 1995, he also received a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
He interned at the United Nations. After graduation, while on internship in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, Saakashvili was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia..."
If, say, the Ukrainians had last week invaded Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway region of Moldova that lies on Ukraine's west border, well, that would be kind of like what Georgia did that kicked off the five days of major warfare in 2008.
No, it would not be the same (and surely that's what you mean by "kind of like the same"; otherwise, you're equivocating). Maybe you should reread what you yourself wrote. Transdneistria was part of Moldova, so if the Ukraine invaded it, they'd be invading a break-away section of some other state. South Ossetia was part of Georgia, and Georgia can't invade Georgia.
I don't know what you've got against Georgia, but however foolish what Georgia did in trying to take back South Ossetia was, they were not invading anyplace!
In Kosovo, and again in South Sudan, western governments trampled underfoot the same principles to which they now feign undying devotion.
So they can STFU.
Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all. This is something a lot of westerners don't seem to grasp.
"""But, the new Ukrainian government hasn't invaded anybody.""""
Regarding Georgia and now with Ukraine, neither has Russia.
"""Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all.""""
Their historical claim to Ukraine goes farther back before the USSR was even created, try about 200plus yrs ago or more.
Let them have it, it's not our fight.
Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all. This is something a lot of westerners don't seem to grasp.
Good luck getting the US to understand that. While Americans are supposed to forever be aware of the legacy slavery over a century after it ended, we have next to no knowledge of other cultures. And when someone points out some fact like you did, we dismiss it as irrelevant.
Why does he write that Saakashvili "fought the Russian army" for five days? Saakashvili never fought anyone; he sent others to do the fighting. Perhaps it sounds more macho to put it like that and furthers the legend of the fearless tie-eater. He seems to have been a reckless gambler who put everything on a toss of the dice and lost big. Now living comfortably in the US with his Dutch wife he can wash his hands of the bloody fiasco that he engineered.
I have a Russian lady in a class that I'm teaching, and we spoke about what is going on in the Ukraine (I also boasted about Canada's supremacy in hockey).
She said that Russians view Ukrainians as brothers, that they are the same people.
Russians may think that, but it is evident that many Ukrainians don't.
Sure, let Russia have Ukraine. The insurgency that will arise from this will be enough to sap and weaken Russia that they'll have their hands full. They won't have time for other mischief.
But this will come at the expense of the Ukrainians, and I do feel for them. But I cannot make this my fight.
But, the new Ukrainian government hasn't invaded anybody.
But they have all those racist anti-semites who are just waiting to perpetrate another Holocaust.
I remember reading about the Crimean War in various history classes in high school and college. The name always seemed super old-timey to me--"Crimean War" sounds like it would be fought with brass swords or maybe catapults. Tennyson helps this along by wrapping it in Arthurian nobility.
Since this fresh new fracas in Crimea started, now that's all I can think about. And it reminds me that, in the end, all war is fundamentally about territory. The politics and media narrative is just window dressing.
I wonder if Americans are truly capable of understanding this kind of geo-politics. If Cuba annexed Miami tomorrow, America could shrug and send our cargo ships to Charleston. We interpret the Crimean problem in terms of socio-politics because it can't really simply be about access to the Black Sea, can it?
Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all. This is something a lot of westerners don't seem to grasp.
That still doesn't mean the Moskali are right about Ukraine. Turkey had similar ideas about the Armenians and later Kurds being wayward brothers needing to be "corrected" by force. Of course the situation is not as simple as Westerners make it out; they (we) see all of Ukraine as Poland was in 1980. If there are regions of Ukraine collectively happier to be the little brown brothers of Russia - they are entitled to their choice. Just like Iran and Iraq were less than enthusiastic about Western ways, for good historical reasons.
"And a lot of the bravest street fighters have loyalties that are repugnant to most Russians going back to the 1940s."
To most Russians, but not to Victoria Nuland. In December 2013, Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, visited Kiev’s Maidan Square and gave out cookies to the paid rioters who were carrying out the violent coup she supported and funded. As far as I know the rioters took the cookies from her with no more disturbance than dogs taking biscuits from master.
Gentiles are supposed to treat all neo-Nazis with shock, horror, wild abhorrence and so on, and usually we do.
To Victoria Nuland, Jewish neocon, neo-Nazis are the hired help. She can feed them biscuits and pat them on the head when she likes, and she may yet have them put down when they have outlived their usefulness.
Ukrainian Nazis are apparently OK with serving under a Jewish neocon paymaster, and (it now turns out) with having oligarchs put in power over them and their nation. I see no evidence the 88 boys are overly disturbed about the EU agenda of mass non-white immigration either. If Ukraine joins Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland on the list of white countries with significant Somali communities, OK. Why should Ukraine be white? What matters is that it should not be at all Russian.
Given that elite Jewish anti-Nazi attitudes are instrumental and really masks for anti-whitism, I can see why Victoria Nuland doesn't care about the sentiments of her pawns.
What I can't see is a good reason why anyone else should defer to the highly emotional super-taboo on neo-Nazis.
I think it's more reasonable to see them as cartoonist David Low saw the original Nazis and Fascists, or in the whimsical way Charles Krafft repackages Nazi imagery in things like a Hitler teapot.
All I can think of to tell the people of the Western Ukraine is a pun on that lovely old Julie London song: Crimea River.
It is not our - not the U.S.'s - fight. If our Dear Rulers are so hell bent on stopping invasions, let them close, fortify, and defend our own southern border - and deport from our country every last illegal alien imminvader, visa-scammer, visa-overstayer, &c.
Because...Charity Begins At Home!
In December 2013, Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, visited Kiev’s Maidan Square and gave out cookies to the paid rioters who were carrying out the violent coup she supported and funded. As far as I know the rioters took the cookies from her with no more disturbance than dogs taking biscuits from master.. . .
To Victoria Nuland, Jewish neocon, neo-Nazis are the hired help. She can feed them biscuits and pat them on the head when she likes, and she may yet have them put down when they have outlived their usefulness.
Christians believe that partaking of communion wafers helps sinners become followers of Christ. Perhaps Ms. Victoria Nuland-Kagan holds a similar belief, i.e., that consuming her magic cookies helps neo-Nazis become followers of AIPAC and Goldman Sachs.
/sarc
"Crimea war"
Thanks to the first hand account of one Sir Harry Paget Flashman, I know all the important parts.
"Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all. This is something a lot of westerners don't seem to grasp."
So? A lot of Germans circa 1939 didn't regard the Sudetenland as a separate country. Do you think Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, stops to think for one second about the ethical, moral and historical right of Russia to Eastern Ukraine?
Hell no. He's just a rapacious bully that will forcefully take anything that the world lets him. Putin's a psychopath, and the only thing men like him understand is to keep pushing until someone pushes back.
>Why does he write that Saakashvili "fought the Russian army" for five days? Saakashvili never fought anyone; he sent others to do the fighting. Perhaps it sounds more macho to put it like that and furthers the legend of the fearless tie-eater.
I have no sympathy for Saakashvili, but he didn't run from Tblisi while Russian tanks were maybe 100km away. He ate his tie in the face of death, but don't expect me to believe American chickenhawks like yourself would even be able to keep his control of bowels.
>Steve, Russians of the old (soviet) school simply don't regard Ukraine as a fully separate country from Russia, or even separate at all. This is something a lot of westerners don't seem to grasp.
Russians (and Chinese) don't have notions of someone else's country. I don't regard that as a virtue in the modern age. Irag didn't believe Kuwait as a separate country.
Setting aside trivial skirmishes such as invading Grenada, or bombing Serb civilians, the USA's record since the Second World War would seem to be: lost three, drawn one, won one. On that form it really would be unwise to intrude into the Ukrainian imbroglio. What I don't understand is why The Executive Branch is so keen to "talk tough" when they are going to have to do nothing anyway. Is it just a sign that they despise their own electorate so much that they think that the dimwits will be impressed by this rubbish? Still, I suppose that policy worked for JFK over the Cuban missiles. Fool the dimwits, I mean.
Putin's a psychopath, and the only thing men like him understand is to keep pushing until someone pushes back.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the Neocons/Zionists. You must have mistaken Putin with Nudelmann or Nuttyahoo.
DR:
So? A lot of Germans circa 1939 didn't regard the Sudetenland as a separate country.
You seem especially clueless, because an internationally recognized treaty in 1938 allowed the Sudeten Germans their hearts desire of reuniting with Germany, and the subsequent establishment in 1939 of the Bohemian protectorate was also internationally recognized.
the ethical, moral and historical right of Russia to Eastern Ukraine?
Ukraine is an historical non-entity, and there never was a people who called themselves Ukrainians before 1918 when they were created out of wholecloth by the German High Command in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The people are Rusyns, which is a dialectical variant of calling yourself a Rossian or Russian in English. Search as little as 100 year ago in an Encyclopedia like the Britannica or Catholic Encyclopedia, but you will find not a breath of Ukraine and Ukrainians and Ukrainian language.
Because they did not exist!
Russia as a nation began in what is now called Ukraine, with Kiev as its capital. It was pushed out of that area by the Mongol Horde and Tatars and reduced to Muscovy and Novgorod, while Poland helped itself to the west of the country between L'viv, Minsk, and Kiev. After some centuries of abuse by the Poles and lack of protection from that Tatars, the Rusyn Cossacks living around Kiev and Poltava revolted around 1650 against Poland and established their freedom to reunite with Russia.
Poland, and subsequently Austria clung stubbornly to its rump of Rusyn land in Galicia, and from there fomented irredentist claims to Russian land all the way east to Kharkov, promoting a revised orthography and spelling of the Rusyn language and using Polish terms for modern words required by the tongue to formally seperate it from Russian and try to introduce mutual incomprehensibility where none had previously existed.
This irredentism came into full blossom four times now in 100 years - the Austro-German invasion of 1914 and carving out of the state they called Ukraine in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the German-backed Polish invasion of 1921-1922 attempting to "reunite" Ukraine with Poland by force, the German invasion of 1941 and establishment of the Reichskomissariat Ukraine (and the annexation of Galicia to the German Empire), and now in 1991 to the present the attempt to create Ukraine again as a new German economic colony and pry it away from Russia and into Germany's EU Empire.
This latest attempt at theivery has been the most difficult because every time the Galacian side overthrows the Ukrainian government elected by the Russian speaking majority in the country, those dang Russian speakers keep winning the next election and voting the Galicians out of office again and the whole thing needs to start over. Its happened so many times now, that people have started to realize the right answer might be to toss the Galicians back to Poland and move on.
I suppose the "moral right" of "Ukrainian" self-existence is that if you keep trying to steal something and eventually succeed, it now becomes yours by right if the previous owner fails to take it back by force.
Half a league, half a league, half a league onward!
Yep, Russia's been there before.
Auntie Analogue said...
All I can think of to tell the people of the Western Ukraine is a pun on that lovely old Julie London song: Crimea River.
It is not our - not the U.S.'s - fight. If our Dear Rulers are so hell bent on stopping invasions, let them close, fortify, and defend our own southern border - and deport from our country every last illegal alien imminvader, visa-scammer, visa-overstayer, &c.
Because...Charity Begins At Home!
Perhaps the US should invade Chihuahua and Sonora and liberate the occupied 19th century Mormon settlements there, the occupied villages of Colonia Juarez, Pacheco, Garcia, Chuichupa and Colonia Dublan full of ethnic Americans.
"There several similarities between Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and its 2012 invasion of Ukraine and one main difference. Russia has yet to cross militarily into greater Ukraine, outside Crimea, and wage a full scale invasion of the country, as it did in Georgia"
If somebody is going to hold up something as the major such difference the should try and get it factually correct.
Russia did not engage in a "full scale invasion" of Georgia - quite the opposite, Russia stopped at the border of South Ossetia when they certainly had the military capacity to keep going. Also they only attacked after Georgia broke an internationally mediated cease fire and started killing Russian peacekeepers there with their agreement (also the Georgians were intent on ethnically cleansing Ossetia but that is merely a humanitarian not a legal r4eason for intervention).
That such total unconcern with the actual facts is common in the western media is not a good sign.
"Ukrainian Nazis are apparently OK with serving under a Jewish neocon paymaster, and (it now turns out) with having oligarchs put in power over them and their nation. I see no evidence the 88 boys are overly disturbed about the EU agenda of mass non-white immigration either. If Ukraine joins Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland on the list of white countries with significant Somali communities, OK. Why should Ukraine be white? What matters is that it should not be at all Russian"
A lot of times people are more worked up about their traditional enemy than anything else.
That said, maybe they're sick of taking orders from Putin?
"(...) the right answer might be to toss the Galicians back to Poland and move on."
Just because they hate Russians, doesn't mean they would get along with Poles. In fact, during WWII Ukrainian nationalists annihilated numerous Polish villages in the ethnically mixed areas.
Galicians should have a state of their own.
He interned at the United Nations. After graduation, while on internship in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, Saakashvili was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia..."
3/3/14, 8:39 PM
Worth mentioning that he is strongly suspected not only of having had Zhvania murdered, but of having been present himself at the scene.
"Thanks to the first hand account of one Sir Harry Paget Flashman, I know all the important parts."
Flashman also provided some pretty useful information about fighting a war in Afghanistan.
"I have no sympathy for Saakashvili, but he didn't run from Tblisi while Russian tanks were maybe 100km away. He ate his tie in the face of death, but don't expect me to believe American chickenhawks like yourself would even be able to keep his control of bowels."
Of course Saaki he did not run. Unlike Yanuk, Saaki was facing civilized Russians, not savage American-funded terrorists. No fool he.
Why would Yanuk stick around knowing what Vicky had in store for him? Anal rape, dismemberment, and death, just likes Gaddafi.
dearieme:"Setting aside trivial skirmishes such as invading Grenada, or bombing Serb civilians, the USA's record since the Second World War would seem to be: lost three, drawn one, won one"
3+1+1=5?
Korea, Vietnam, Gulf 1, Afghanistan, Iraq?
That being the arithmetic, I'm not sure how you got to 3 losses.
My count would be:
Wins: Gulf 1, Afghanistan, Iraq (of course, Iraq was not worth it; the money would have been better spent on the border with Mexico)
Draw: Korea
Loss: Vietnam....and that one came damn close to being a draw as well. If congress hadn't shut down US air support to South Vietnam, we might have had a North Korea/South Korea type split.
"I remember reading about the Crimean War in various history classes in high school and college. The name always seemed super old-timey to me--"Crimean War" sounds like it would be fought with brass swords or maybe catapults. Tennyson helps this along by wrapping it in Arthurian nobility. "
Here is the awesomest song ever written about the Crimean War:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q9WDaCVDe8
Saak sure did get a soft landing in the US, no doubt facilitated by his friends there. Apparently he is personally tied to several murders in Georgia. Swell guy to ask for advice.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/01/09/saakashvili-goes-back-to-school-to-wash-off-the-blood/
Serious Journalistic integrityy and concern for facts displayed here:
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/03/03/3351911/putin-protests-worldwide/
http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/01/06/and-the-gayest-city-in-the-u-s-is/?iid=obnetwork
This says a lot.
http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/28/spike-lees-racism-isnt-cute-m-f-hipster-is-the-new-honkey/
McWhorter plays lapdog to SWPLC.
http://world.time.com/2014/03/03/putin-ukraine-crimea-russia/?iid=op-article-mostpop2
DR said...
Do you think Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, stops to think for one second about the ethical, moral and historical right of Russia to Eastern Ukraine?
I think you've impressed all of us with your keen sense of morality.
While he's in Ukraine, maybe Saakashvilli will be able to find some good tie-food.
Ukraine tug of war.
Manchuria tug of war between China and Japan.
Or more like Taiwan?
Who's the Puyi?
Like commenter Neil Craig upthread, I noticed reporter Josh Rogin's inapt recollection:
"Russia has yet to cross militarily into greater Ukraine, outside Crimea, and wage a full scale invasion of the country, as it did in Georgia."
The Russian Army cemented its hold on the irredentist parts of the former Georgian SSR that it already held (South Ossetia, Abkhazia). Within days, it advanced far enough into Georgian territory to make clear that it could occupy Tbilisi and cut the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, crippling Georgia's economy. At that point, Saakashvili ordered Georgia's military to stop resisting, hoping that this submission would placate the big dog. It worked.
By the way, Steve, you are on the money to focus on the Roki Tunnel when looking back to the Georgia-Russia war. Joshua Foust at registan.net had a series of blog posts in August and September 2008 that sifted through the claims of the warring parties. Re-reading, his commenters (yours truly included) raised a series of key questions on "who started it?" and "what happened on Aug. 7th and 8th at the Roki Tunnel?". AFAIK, most of them have yet to be definitively answered. (Readers' links on the subject appreciated.)
On the broader strategic implications of the war, here's an excerpt of Sean-Paul Kelley's September 14, 2008 at 2:21 am comment at registan.net.
--- begin fair-use excerpt ---
One thing I have found very disturbing about the whole debate surrounding the war in Georgia and over South Ossetia is that we still, as a nation, haven’t had a proper discussion on what it means to invite and add the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.
...I am not in favor of either being a part of NATO for one very simple reason, they are both indefensible... It’s a matter of numbers and facts and practicalities. We may wish to see a free Georgia and Ukraine. But our wishes and our capabilities are not aligned.
...The question I keep asking people is are you willing to, or are you willing to have your children die to keep Georgia or the Ukraine (who I think the war’s message was directed to) free from Russian interference?
And even more important: are Georgian and Ukrainian freedom part of our vital national interests? I submit they are not...
--- end fair-use excerpt ---
"Bill said...
""DR said...
Do you think Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, stops to think for one second about the ethical, moral and historical right of Russia to Eastern Ukraine?""
I think you've impressed all of us with your keen sense of morality."
Yeah, as evidenced by his posts here, DR is a deep moral thinker. He's so moral he thinks we should unilaterally go to war with Russia, and lay waste to those savage slavic barbarians, consequences (you know, like nuclear war) be damned.
Afghanistan has been a defeat beyond argument. I'd say that Iraq is a defeat too, since whatever the strategic purpose was, it wasn't achieved, and the USA had to pay tribute to local warlords to extract its troops safely.
Unless, of course, the purpose was to make a mountain of Arab corpses, and place Iraq under domination by Iran.
Something I hadn't realized until just now: you know how scary it was when Putin declared military exercises all along the eastern Ukrainian border? War games are the standard way to mask a mobilization to prepare for war. Well, both Russia and Georgia had war games in late July 2008. But Georgia's military exercises included 1,000 American troops:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/15/us-georgia-usa-exercises-idUSL1556589920080715
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372440/ronan-farrow-young-man-only-old-people-eliana-johnson
Cushy cushy
"But, the new Ukrainian government hasn't invaded anybody."
yet
Their historical claim to Ukraine goes farther back before the USSR was even created, try about 200plus yrs ago or more.
Actually, the historical claim of Russians to the land currently called the Ukraine goes back over 1,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_Kievan_Rus%27
What Americans don't seem to "get" is that Russian culture is OLD. Old, and deep. The history of these lands is long, the Russians have been Christian for four times as long as the U.S. has been independent from Britain.
"I don't know what you've got against Georgia"
It's not Georgia it's the oligarchs who funded Saakashvilli's coup and then got him to provoke Russia - and then whisked him away to safety unlike all the people who got killed in the process.
“…the Rusyn Cossacks living around Kiev and Poltava revolted around 1650 against Poland and established their freedom to reunite with Russia.”
And today, another bunch of bumpkins living around Lvov are trying to revolt against Russia, understandably angry over what they endured by way of that relationship, and establish their "freedom" to reunite with Western Europe. So why do only one set of rowdies deserve to be called "stubborn", "irredentist", or "clinging to Russian land" in your tendentious little Duginesque tirade?
I agree we should not go to war over Ukraine, and I’m fine with objectively viewing the history or lack thereof with regard to that part of the world, but I am not keen on trading one idiotic distortion for another, and I’m certainly not ready to send any love to Putin just because he apparently hates people I don’t have much use for either. This enemy-of-my-enemy nonsense has caused enough trouble.
Some lib scientists say some people are born 'racist' and 'conservative' like some people are born 'gay'.
So, if 'racists' are born that way, is it 'racist' to denounce 'racists'? If 'racists' were biologically born that way, they are a biologically defined group. So, one can construct a 'race' of 'racists', and to denounce them is 'racist'.
Third Cousin: "however foolish what Georgia did in trying to take back South Ossetia was, they were not invading anyplace!"
I think people shouldn't get so hung up on the semantic connotations of "invasion." If my sister barricades herself in my bedroom so that I can't get in, I would have to "invade my bedroom" to take it back, wouldn't I?
Are libbers turning Singaporean?
I recall Libs used to make fun of Singapore for its nanny state policies like 'no chewing gum anywhere' and its many social engineering polices to maintain social peace.
But similar policies did wonders for the fancy parts of Ny, San Fran, Chicago, and etc.
Bloomberg had his own 'no gum policy' in the form of 'no big gulp' policy.
And people like Cass the Ass Sunstein keep coming up with new ways to behaviorally nudge us this way, that way, like Skinner's pigeons.
And Pinker tells us that the 60s and 70s were a barbaric time of too much freedom.
And HER is like LA as Singapore of the future.
The real question is "What are the pot-stirrers after?"
I find it highly unlikely that they care about the various ethnic groups in the Ukraine.
There has to be a monetary payoff.
Poland has requested a NATO Article 4 meeting, called to discuss its territorial integrity under threat.
It is clear that NATO (figleaf US security guarantees is dead dead dead Jim!) and Pat Buchanon's fondest wish, of a retreat from the world by the US military is underway.
The danger is not Putin taking Crimea (and if he takes Crimea he must take Eastern Ukraine which supplies all the electricity and water to the Crimea) ...
Rather it is taking Western Ukraine, and deciding "why stop there?"
After all, the West is weak and basically disarmed.
Why not invade and take over Finland? Avenge the Soviet loss and loot the country, deploying various booty to Putin's pet oligarchs and various FSB people? Why not Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuiana?
And why not Poland? Why not the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary? It is not as if any can resist ...
Unless they nuke up frantically. It is now a race between the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs etc. to get as many nukes and missiles as they can; and Putin to occupy them before they nuke up.
US protection for Europe had advantages. Democracy and elite disdain of the military meant war was limited, to Serbian bombings at best. You could not get a WWI trench replay because the elites HATE HATE HATE the military as a rival power center for yokel White guys and most people in a democracy (which I admit is bad and lead inevitably to tyranny as opposed to a federal republic like Switzerland) don't like lots of casualties.
Nuclear war is far more likely if every smaller country east of Germany fears invasion/conquering by Russia and nukes up. That situation is "launch on warning" and is very, very dangerous.
The flipside of utopian views of universal longing for "liberty" by Arab rabble and such (basically the Woodrow Wilson progressive view) is the utopian libertarian nonsense peddled by Pat Buchanon that it is "moral" to isolate oneself from an evil, corrupt world: neo-Gnosticism and pseudo Catharism.
I'll agree with Machiavelli. Christianity is a great religion but has no place in state politics.
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/kerry-at-aipac-israels-security-is-americas-first-priority/
How much more of this can we take?
Israel bombs Gaza, invades Lebanon, and enforces apatheid on West Bank. Yet we shower it with billions and our politicians suck up to Zionism.
Putin has been very good to Jews. Though he removed from Jewish oligarch looters, Russia is a nice place for Jews today. Jews can do business and make lots of money.
But that is not enough for Jews all over the world. They still go out of their way to make Russia out to be enemy #1.
It's not enough for Russia to offer a place for Jews. It must be the place at the top.
In this, Putin and American conservatives have one thing in common. Both think that being very nice to Jews will win them over. No, Jews won't be satisfied with anything less than total control.
No matter how much GOP grovels to Jews, Jews say GOP must be for open borders, offer amnesty, and sign onto 'gay marriage'. Otherwise, GOP will be vilified by Jews.
OF course, GOP is moving in that direction, but then Jews will find new excuses and new demands to vilify the Eternal White Goy as Jews will always need a scapegoat for everything that is wrong with society.
No matter how much the white goy sucks up to Jews, Jews will accuse of something more and more and more. It's like K in THE TRIAL can never clear his name. Today, goyim are the K's while Jews command the Law.
The problem with Putin is not that he's evil, it is that as a former KGB guy he has no real clue about the nuances of the West, when it will fight and when it won't, and how much he can push against a weak West that elected Obama President, and how likely Poland and other countries are going to react.
The best thing for the US is to NOT NOT NOT have a nuclear war in Europe. Which is one of our best customers and the birthplace of our culture.
That means everyone should feel safe and secure. No one fears Angela Merkel, or Germany any more. At worst they might balk at a third bailout of Greece. They won't invade, merely be stingy with bailouts. That's a huge change in Germans and one that the US helped create. Germany is no longer a threat to European and world peace as it was during the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Putin *IS* because he's scaring the hell out of the Poles. An Article 4 NATO meeting is very rare, only Turkey has called it, once during the Iraq War and twice over Syria. If the Poles don't get satisfaction, and they won't ... they will nuke up. They're capable of doing so fairly quickly (I'd guess, two years tops). They might even do so in consortium with the Czechs, Hungarians, Finns etc. Yes the people who made Nokia phones can probably make nukes.
Putin has no idea how scary he is to people living next to Russia and who know for a fact that Obama/America will not deter aggression by a lean and hungry Russia.
Reading Nick Lloyd's book on the end of WWI, when the German Army was decisively defeated and collapsing on the Western Front, I'm struck by the out of touch fantasy of Ludendorf, Hindenberg, and the Kaiser who had no appreciation of the mutiny ongoing among the starving men on the Western Front who had enough. Ludendorf and Hindenberg were able men, in planning and strategy, but sat at Spa in luxury never once visiting the Front or seeing the awful deprivation of the troops in the line.
Putin in the same way has no real idea of the terror he creates in places like Poland. By Russian/Soviet standards he's relatively benign -- the killing and imprisonment is minor compared to Brezhnev let alone Stalin. There is no sense from him that he's got a limited set of objectives in his "near abroad" and will refrain from taking over Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary etc.
Vladimir Putin is the most militarily powerful leader in Europe. And he's acting like a low-grade KGB thug instead of the leading Statesman in Europe which his position and power give him. He does not understand that people just recently freed from Soviet domination, particularly local elites, will do anything and everything to avoid a re-run. As defacto leader of Europe he's enjoying the terror he's put in Warsaw and Prague not realizing that his main objective there should be confidence building that he wants a minor win in the Ukraine and that's it.
Steve, you should look into Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban , guy hated by eurobureaucracy for his non-elitist politics.
He was considered russophobe for a long time but now he is doing a lot of business with Putin.
I remember hearin' in my history classes that the Crimean War was the first modern war. A prelude to the Great War. I think about Crimea today, and think about history rhyming...
Fournier is talking from his behind. Putin was in Moscow during the Peking Olympics. Bush and Medvedev, the Russian prez at that time, were at Peking.
If such was the quality of Bush's advisors, no wonder everything Bush did turned into toxic waste.
Big Bill - "Unlike Yanuk, Saaki was facing civilized Russians, not savage American-funded terrorists"
General von Kielmansegg, 6th Panzers, 23rd June 1941 (i.e. after 2 days of the invasion of Russia. Two platoons had been overrun in a Russian counterattack) :
"The next day we found all the personnel shot, that is, murdered, and atrociously mutilated. Eyes had been put out, genitals cut off, and other cruelties inflicted. This was our first such experience, but not the last. On the evening after those first two days I said to my general 'Sir, this will be a very different war to the one in Poland and France'"
Off topic, but relevant to a common theme of yours:
http://gothamist.com/2014/03/04/nypd_divers_racist.php
Black guy told he couldn't swim and called gay for idiosyncrasies.
And what's with these "Galicians"? They need to get a new name, because every time I hear someone talking about them, I assume they're talking about that province in the Northwest of Spain where Francisco Franco was from.
The funniest aspect of the Crimean affair is the lawless neocons and the lawless president barack obama denouncing Putin for violating international law.
Do you think Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, stops to think for one second about the ethical, moral and historical right of Russia to Eastern Ukraine?
DR does not believe in the concept of countries or borders - at least not in the context of America - so if he were to be consistent he'd have to denounce both Russia and Ukraine on first principles.
IIRC, when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons in their control for a guarantee by Russia, the US and UK that their borders would be inviolate.
Oops.
>>Steve Sailer observed:
"""Well, both Russia and Georgia had war games in late July 2008. But Georgia's military exercises included 1,000 American troops"""
Oh, so THAT'S why McCain later stated that we are all Georgians.
Ukraine is an historical non-entity, and there never was a people who called themselves Ukrainians before 1918 when they were created out of wholecloth by the German High Command in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
This sounds very much like Turkish propaganda about Armenia: the Armenians were a "purely diasporic" people with no homeland until the Russians created one in Transcaucasia.
Is one of the appeals of 12 Yrs a Teen that the Negroes are well-behaved?
On the surface, their self-control is out of fear and oppression, but it must be refreshing to see Negroes who don't like jive ass mofos.
Same appeal of The Sounder in the 70s. Them negroes in the movie had quiet dignity when so many negroes were going wild and burning cities in the 60s and 70s.
I think it's more reasonable to see them as cartoonist David Low saw the original Nazis and Fascists, or in the whimsical way Charles Krafft repackages Nazi imagery in things like a Hitler teapot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGeHxF0tF4
Anon @ 1:15p:
Ukraine is an historical non-entity, and there never was a people who called themselves Ukrainians before 1918 when they were created out of wholecloth by the German High Command in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
This sounds very much like Turkish propaganda about Armenia: the Armenians were a "purely diasporic" people with no homeland until the Russians created one in Transcaucasia.
Its not propaganda. I pointed you where you can go to confirm this. The 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica (no entry for Ukranians, Ukrainian Language, or Ukraine, relevant topics covered under the entry "Russia", "Russian Language"), the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia (again, no entry for the above topics OR the "Ukrainian" Greek Catholic Church, there being no body with such a name at that time). The Catholic Encyclopedia does have a very interesting entry on Ruthenia, which is a latinized form of Russia covering the portion formerly ruled by Poland and now called Ukraine.
As I also pointed out, the whole notion of Ukraine and Ukrainianism is belied by the people of Transcarpathia (the portion of Ukraine south of the Carpathians and formerly part of Hungary). These people were formerly part of Hungary, and so never suffered the same transmorgification as the Galician "Ukrainians" did at the hands of the Poles and Austrians. They still call themselves Rusyns (i.e. Russians), they did not adopt Galician "Ukrainian" as the liturgical language since they did not speak it (they still use Slavonic) or write it (they did not adopt the modified spellings coming out of Galicia to distinguish Rusyn speech from Russian, and when new words were needed they tended to borrow from Slovak and Hungarian, and not Polish), and the ones who migrated to America and Canada are unaware of being Ukrainian. The Orthodox ecclesiastic body which split from the Greek Catholic Union of Uzhorod is called the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church.
In the wikipedia entry on Rusyn, you can read: "Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century." And in Ukrainians it reads: "The ethnonym Ukrainians became widely accepted only in the 20th century when the territory finally obtained its own statehood in 1917."
I.e. exactly what I said - that modern Ukrainian is an artificial identity (and thus an artificial country) created in 1917 by the German High Command via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which created a German sattelite state called "Ukraine" out of southern Russia.
Prior to that time, "Ukrainians" called themselves "Rusyns" in their own dialect of Russian, or "Kozak", i.e. Cossack, meaning a free man, and coming from the Cuman language.
This is really elementary history, and it is easily documented. That it is not being explained in this present crisis is part and parcel of the fog of war being created by the West in the so-called news media.
The really interesting question is what were the forces at work in the decades leading up to 1917 and the unveiling of the Ukrainian identity who were working in the culture to create this separate identity, and why they were doing so.
IIRC, when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons in their control for a guarantee by Russia, the US and UK that their borders would be inviolate.
Yep. That's the big takeaway from the last few decades. If you're running a small country you need to acquire nukes as soon as possible. That's why Iran is doing it, and who can blame them?
My guess is over the next ten years Japan, South Korea, and a few of the lesser European countries (and maybe even Germany) will all deploy at least a few nukes. They'd be stupid not to.
Whiskey:
Putin has no idea how scary he is to people living next to Russia and who know for a fact that Obama/America will not deter aggression by a lean and hungry Russia.
This is the problem with the last 23 years of American foreign policy in a nutshell. Instead of a partnership with Russia and Germany to lead the European world, we've chosen to retreat into our Anglosphere and parlay and trade with China and India and retain Russia as an atagonist - we've retained the age-old geopolitical shell game described by Haushofer as the Ocean Power vs. the Land Power.
The Olive Branch offered by Gorbachev to unilaterally end the Cold War was the creation of a Common European Home from Vancouver to Vldivostok - a true European community embracing all Europeans and a union of Land and Sea.
Gorbachev's invitation was also an offer to look to a solution for us (Europeans) to the real problem of the modern world, the North vs the South - economic health and progress vs. unrestrained fecundity of the ignorant, rather than continued white fratricide that had befallen the previous 80 years of history.
I don't agree with the person who said the problem was Putin was a low grade thug being treated like a statesman.
I think he is a statesman being treated like a low grade thug. Read a few of his speeches and you will see that they are about principles rather than clichés, unlike Obama or most western leaders (don't laugh but Sarah Palin is the same, though she uses folksy language to hide it).
Nor is he a thug. He stopped when he could have overrun Georgia. He did little to help Yugoslavia though the Russian people wanted him to. He used a throw away remark from Kerry to push forward negotiations in Syria and stop (well reduce) the bloodbath. By comparison the western powers committed genocide in Yugoslavia to put several groups of left over Nazis in power; invaded Iraq because they weren't smart enough to accept Saddam was nothing to do with al Qaeda & had no WMDs; have deliberately destabilised Georgia, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Libya, Ukraine etc by hiring thugs to demonstrate for "democracy".
Look at their records & see who is smarter and who wants to "throw a shitty little country against the wall" every couple of years (& getting shorter)just to show they can?
HA:
And today, another bunch of bumpkins living around Lvov are trying to revolt against Russia, understandably angry over what they endured by way of that relationship
Actually, these folks in Galicia have barely had a relationship with Russia. They were not part of Russian state at any time between about 1250 and 1939. They aren't part of one now either. But their realy ploy is now and always has been their relentless desire to rule the rest of Ukraine and impose their vision of religion and culture on as many people to their east as they possibly can. To a real Ukrainian irredentist, Ukraine goes all the way from Galicia through the Kuban to the Kalmyk's and Kazakh's along the Caspian, and includes every Cossack inhabited land north of the Caucusus and all the plains up to Sartov. Including Sochi. See this map, for example, of where "Ukrainians" supposedly lived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ethnic-Ukrainians.jpg
Georgia and Ukraine proper going to NATO can thus be seen as the first parts of a pincer movement that cut Russia off from the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and Caucusus entirely in the name of national unity" of "Ukrainians" and "freeom" for people in Dagestan, Cechnya, and elsewhere - in other words, a reversal fo the last 400 years of Russian history.
We already know whose age old dream this is - you can read all about it in Mein Kampf and the war plan goals for the Barbarossa 1941 and 1942 campaigns. The Ukrainians, and their "Ukrainian" identity, are pawns in accomplishing this goal of detaching these lands from Russia and isolating it in a northern ice box.
"Are libbers turning Singaporean?"
"Some lib scientists say some people are born 'racist' and 'conservative' like some people are born 'gay'."
Seriously folks figure it out. White people are heading for minority status. You need to understand what that is going to mean.
"Racism" as a complaint is universalist and moral and that's what was needed when White people were a minority to divide them on moral grounds but now White people are becoming a minority that is not needed any more. In fact it's a hindrance *because* it is universal and could in theory apply in favor of Whites. Hence the switch to "White Privilege" i.e. a complaint that is specifically and explicitly anti-white.
Everything will be turned on its head like that as the Who, Whom gets turned on its head. There will "good" eugenics and "good" intolerance and "good" censorship and "good" restrictions on academic freedom etc.
.
"The real question is "What are the pot-stirrers after?""
It's all spelled out in Deuteronomy. Ultimately they want every Prime Minister, every President, every Central banker to be a cousin.
Their short-term tactics is simply ownership. Power ~ ownership and being able to depose governments and appoint stooges who will sign away state assets for small change is a great way to do maximize ownership if you're an oligarch in a country that allows you to conspire to murder citizens of other countries - which is basically what allowing US oligarchs to mount coups in other countries is.
Russians can be awful shupid.
They sold Alaska to America.
"Stalin decided to destroy the Crimean Tatars, because they are not creeping people they never knew slavery. "
Actually it was because they cooperated with the Germans.
Ok, let's settle it with a knife fight between Kadyrov and Saakashvili.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iauidn0pQ4
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/JohnByrne2/2012-05-21_204110_ess2.jpg
"Afghanistan has been a defeat beyond argument"
Not if the reason for being there was to deny the Chinese an oil pipeline from Iran.
"Ukraine" means borderland. Its the same as Krajina the - previously Serb inhabited bit of Croatia ethnically cleansed (with the help of US officers and German guns).
Clearly a country with such a name feels itself more part of a greater whole than a separate nation.
Also Kiev was the capital of the original Russian state till the Mongols left it a "pyramid of skulls". The surviving Russia congregated around Moscow, which was forested and thus relatively safe. Cavalry need open plains.
Gorbachev's invitation was also an offer to look to a solution for us (Europeans) to the real problem of the modern world, the North vs the South - economic health and progress vs. unrestrained fecundity of the ignorant, rather than continued white fratricide that had befallen the previous 80 years of history.
I remember when the USSR fell, I saw Sister Souljah on TV. I think it was MTV. Others were talking about how this was a momentous event that would draw the world closer together. Sister Souljah was a bit apprehensive because she wasn't sure if it would draw the world together, or draw the white world together. I can't find any reference to it online, but I was struck by her view, and wondered if other non-whites felt the same at the time.
Though he never expressed it in those terms, I believe Pat Buchanan became sympathetic to the Russians, post USSR, for the very same reason. In fact I would have to admit that I would have liked that Euro unity to evolve as well. But obviously the people leading our nation did not share this dream.
If America were still a WASP-dominated nation, would we have pushed for this type of Euro unity?
I think people shouldn't get so hung up on the semantic connotations of "invasion." If my sister barricades herself in my bedroom so that I can't get in, I would have to "invade my bedroom" to take it back, wouldn't I?
This is closely related to what happens with pro-immigration libs. Its a hair-splitting semantic argument they use.
Millions of Mexicans turning up and even explicitly saying they are going to 'retake' parts of the USA isnt an invasion to libs because they dont wear Mexican army uniforms, because they arent part of some structured plan (?!) Luckily all the most unpleasant parts of the 'invasion' are hidden beyond the MSM diversity event horizon and libs can pretend they arent real.
For these kind of libs, an invasion has to pass all sorts of contentious, nit-picking criteria. And thus an invasion isnt, somehow, an invasion.
Actually it was because they cooperated with the Germans.
And just like that well known gentile mental illness; anti-semitism, that cooperation with the Germans was completely out of nowhere, for no reason at all to do with the nature of Soviet rule.
"Racism" as a complaint is universalist and moral and that's what was needed when White people were a minority to divide them on moral grounds but now White people are becoming a minority that is not needed any more. In fact it's a hindrance *because* it is universal and could in theory apply in favor of Whites. Hence the switch to "White Privilege" i.e. a complaint that is specifically and explicitly anti-white.
Excellent point sir! (or madam of course)
OT: From the Onion AV Club, but NOT satire. Captain Phillips' Barkhad Abdi is broke.
From one commenter:
"For some reason I can see Sacha Baron Cohen putting him in one of his movies. I think he definitely has comedy potential if used right."
neil craig:
Look at their records & see who is smarter and who wants to "throw a shitty little country against the wall" every couple of years (& getting shorter)just to show they can?
Makes you wonder who is next.
Lebanon 1982
Grenada 1983
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991
Somalia 1993
Haiti 1994
Bosnia 1995
Serbia 1999
Afghanistan 2001
Iraq 2003
Libya 2011
Syria 2012
I guess the best part is that it is utterly unpredictable, and no one knows who will be next. Venezuela? Iran? Texas? Helps to keep them in line.
Anon:
If America were still a WASP-dominated nation, would we have pushed for this type of Euro unity?
When the world was utterly dominated by the European world in the period from about 1775 to 1945, the Anglo ascendancy of WASP's did EVERYTHING in their power to prevent any sort of general convergence from occurring. Any ridiculous excuse to start a war and keep "the Balance of Power" was used and fomented - the Crimean War, the 1875 Bosnian uprising, Gavarilo Princip, the All-Holy Sanctity of Independent Danzig.
Doesn't that answer your question?
The three most critical principles animating this meddling were:
1) Prevention of any restoration of unity to the territory of the Holy Roman Empire or worse Carolingian Empire (a combined European power with Germany, Austria, Italy, Holland, and especially not France). Thus opposition to Napolean, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler.
2) Prevention of any thought of an expansive Central European Catholic Confessional State (this is what lay behind the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, but also the 1815 borders that separated Poland from Austria, kept Italy divided, did not restore Belgium to Austria, and kept divisions in Bavaria, Baden, Hesse, and placing the Rhineland with Prussia instead of Protestant Swabia where the Hohenzollerns actually hailed from; similar sentiments were behind the deligitimization of the Catholic confessional states erected by Hitler such as Slovakia, Croatia, Franco's Spain, Hungary, and Vichy France)
3) Prevention of any chance of a united Orthodox Empire of Russia, the Orthodox Christians of the Balkans, and the Orthodox of Turkey, Syria, and Palestine (the motivation behind the Crimean War, 1878 Congress of Berlin, Balkans Wars of 1912 and 1913, Treaty of Lausanne, and the Cold War)
One thing I do not get is the Lenin statues. If the Russians want us to believe that they have put the communist past behind them, they should be the first to pull them down. Why are they so worked up about the Lenins coming down?
A lot of East Europeans remember the Russians as communist invaders. So, Mr.Putin, tear down the Lenins!
"Ukraine is an historical non-entity, and there never was a people who called themselves Ukrainians before 1918 when they were created out of wholecloth by the German High Command in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The people are Rusyns, which is a dialectical variant of calling yourself a Rossian or Russian in English. Search as little as 100 year ago in an Encyclopedia like the Britannica or Catholic Encyclopedia, but you will find not a breath of Ukraine and Ukrainians and Ukrainian language."
Are you claiming that the GHC convinced a large number (probably hundreds of thousands to millions) of Russians that they were not in fact Russian but another Slavic identity?
If you are, then the Soviets must have been envious with how easy the Germans could fabricate an ethnic group in short order, while the Soviets failed to re-russify them.
If not, then what are you writing about? If the people that today call themselves Ukrainian are descendents of a differently named non-Russian Slavic group then they must have lived somewhere and presumably it was in what is now western Ukraine.
…"White Privilege" i.e. a complaint that is specifically and explicitly anti-white.
"Same-sex marriage" is the ultimate in white privilege, but I don't see anyone on either side brave enough to mention this. Strange.
"Stalin decided to destroy the Crimean Tatars, because they are not creeping people they never knew slavery. "
They knew slavery very well, as the masters.
If not, then what are you writing about? If the people that today call themselves Ukrainian are descendents of a differently named non-Russian Slavic group then they must have lived somewhere and presumably it was in what is now western Ukraine.
This mini, off-topic thread sounds almost familiar with the, "there's no such thing as a Palestinian" argument I've been hearing for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEGeHxF0tF4
Priceless. :D Thanks for that.
Dearieme:"Afghanistan has been a defeat beyond argument."
Doesn't that depend on what the goal was in Afghanistan?
Dearime:" I'd say that Iraq is a defeat too, since whatever the strategic purpose was, it wasn't achieved, and the USA had to pay tribute to local warlords to extract its troops safely."
I though that the strategic purpose was to reduce Iraq to a militarily impotent shell, which has been done.
Dearime:"Unless, of course, the purpose was to make a mountain of Arab corpses, and place Iraq under domination by Iran."
Again, if the goal was to make a weak, impotent Iraq, then the mission was a complete success.
Anon:
Are you claiming that the GHC convinced a large number (probably hundreds of thousands to millions) of Russians that they were not in fact Russian but another Slavic identity?
GHC used existing ideologies, ethnogensis, and linguistic orthography that had been developing under Polish and Austrian tutelage in Galicia and to a lesser extent Volhynia, and especially under the Greek Catholic Church to create a new Ukrainian nation on top of the existing people called by most of the world Malorossian (Little Russian), and called by themselves Rusyn, and attempted to export this ideological package eastwards as far towards Astrakhan as they could make it go in the chaos of 1917-1918.
Why do you suppose the current revolution had to import its street-fighters from L'viv to K'yiv? Why can't they find any in Kharkiv, Odessa, and Donetsk?
If you are, then the Soviets must have been envious with how easy the Germans could fabricate an ethnic group in short order, while the Soviets failed to re-russify them.
How did the Soviets fail? Most people in Ukraine don't speak Ukrainian in every day life, the vast majority of print media is in Russia, and Ukrainian is used in broadcasting primarily by State media organs only. Even under Ukrainian independence, it is very clear that Ukrainian ideology and language is in the main confined to Galicia and Volhynia and nearby regions.
If not, then what are you writing about? If the people that today call themselves Ukrainian are descendents of a differently named non-Russian Slavic group then they must have lived somewhere and presumably it was in what is now western Ukraine.
They weren't non-Russian. They called themselves Rusyns.
Especially prior to the construction of national "proper" languages and the separate written forms, languages within a linguistic group exist along a spectrum of gradual change in everyday speech, such that people of neighboring towns usually can easily understand each other, but people on opposite sides of a large country cannot without some difficulty. Thus in German going down the Rhine from Rotterdam, the speech of Rotterdam and is close to Duisburg which is close to Cologne and then to Frankfurt, Freiburg, Schaffhausen, and Chur. But people in Chur basically cannot understand those in Rotterdam. Slavic spoken languages exist on a similar gradient from east to west of gradual changes. If one went from Arkhangelsk to Rybinskto Moscow to Bryansk to K'yiv to Zhitomyr to L'viv to Mukachevo to Kosice to Bratislava, mutual intelligibility would always be present town to town, but there is no question that people in Bratislava could speak to those in Arkhangelsk except with an interpreter.
Ukrainiansm, as you say, is a distillation of the self-conscious ethnic identity of the western Ukraine area and an attempt to impose linguistic, cultural, and religious uniformity based on the standards of this area over as many mutually comprehensible Slavic speakers as possible via the same methodology that created notions of a "German" nation speaking Standard High German, or an "Italian" nation speaking Florentine Italian.
Ukrainianism is hindered in that it is a national construct only dating back to 1918 as something separate from the overall Russian nation, not having the long past of German history and unity back to Carolingian times, for example, or Italian history and unity back to the days of the Roman Empire, and many people tot he east don't particularly care for or identify with the Galicians.
Its interesting that the press in recent days has taken to using phrases like the following:
"On the verge of economic collapse, Ukraine accused Russia of a military invasion after pro-Russian troops took over Crimea on Saturday"
http://news.yahoo.com/diplomatic-exit-ukraine-talks-15b-125722317.html
Note that the troops are not said to be Russian troops, but "pro-Russian".
"If America were still a WASP-dominated nation, would we have pushed for this type of Euro unity?"
The people behind the EU aren't pushing for Euro unity in the positive sense.
They're trying to *prevent* healthy Euro unity through corralling the Euro countries in an organization that is designed to destroy them by promoting and enforcing replacement levels of mass immigration.
There hasn't been an invasion of Crimea, just an incident of peaceful mass immigration by Rothbardian immigrants from Russia into Ukraine.
Are you claiming that the GHC convinced a large number (probably hundreds of thousands to millions) of Russians that they were not in fact Russian but another Slavic identity?
If you are, then the Soviets must have been envious with how easy the Germans could fabricate an ethnic group in short order, while the Soviets failed to re-russify them.
The Soviet policy was Ukrainization in the 1920s (until 1931), so it was not merely a few months but at least 14 years that needed to be reversed. In Galicia it was even worse (for the Russians), because people there had never been under Russian rule before 1939, and when they met Russian soldiers (first during the First World War), they quickly realized they spoke a different language and had a different (even if broadly similar) culture.
Also even after 1931, Ukrainian language was still compulsory throughout the Ukraine (not much, a few classes a week, but still), and in the 1960s there was a short period when there was some encouragement of Ukrainian culture and language. Moreover, any person (and his descendants) who in the 1920s was registered as Ukrainian nationality retained that identity in the Soviet IDs (and nobody could change that voluntarily), so Ukrainian identity was perpetuated by that nationality registration of Soviet times as well.
All in all, the word Ukrainian is a recent invention, but Ruthenians have never been exactly Russians (at least since the Middle Ages), their different identity was not exactly a modern invention, etc. Of course, just as North Germans (who also spoke mutually unintelligible dialects from South Germans) could adapt (or rather, retain from the Middle Ages) a German identity and High German language (except for North Germans in the Low Countries, who now call themselves Dutch), so Ukrainians could have adapted a Russian identity and language. Many Eastern Ukrainians seem to have done so (not perfectly), but no Western Ukrainians.
I though that the strategic purpose was to reduce Iraq to a militarily impotent shell, which has been done.
Yeah, but it was quite easy to achieve, because already before the war Iraq had been a militarily impotent shell.
Actually, these folks in Galicia have barely had a relationship with Russia.
Incorrect. What Greater-Russia apologists have trouble remembering is that *everyone* living East of Trieste has had (collectively speaking) a very, shall we say, intimate relationship with Russia over the last couple of generations. Do you honestly think that people in Prague and Budapest, who are even farther away, have barely had a relationship with Russia?
I know too little of the specifics of the Bandera-boosters' claims to endorse or criticize them, but when it comes to proclaiming a loud 'NO' to whatever it is that Moscow is offering this time around, I think any rational person can certainly sympathize.
Looking up the Ukrainian resistance on Wikipedia I found that the Ukrainian government has encouraged locals who wanted to put up memorials to fallen partisans and in response people in other parts of Ukraine put up memorials to local "collaborators" killed by the partisans. The problem in Ukraine seems to be the exact opposite of most nationalities - where it is easy to differentiate a Pole from a German, the question of whether somebody is Russian, Ukrainian, Galician or Ruthenian seems to be a matter of who is counting.
I realise I didn't make clear that I was referring above to Ukrainian nationalist anti-Soviet partisans killed by Soviet forces and killing pro-Soviet (or probably just wanting to live in peace) collaborators.
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