Ukraine (cont.)

[saintjohnxxiii]

I know this is a few years ago but in reading some of the comments that some Catholic posters here have made praising Putin, I thought I would put this out as something to counteract that.

Praising Stalin is like praising Hitler.

theaustralian.com.au/news/world/vladimir-putin-praises-joseph-stalin-for-winning-ww2-making-a-superpower/story-e6frg6so-1225806886630

huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/04/vladimir-putin-praises-st_n_380192.html

google.ca/search?q=Vladimir+Putin+praises+Stalin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=ldo8Urm5CsO32wWb5YG4BQ

crisismagazine.com/2011/putin-and-stalin-revising-reality

ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-still-my-enemy

 

[Ridgerunner]

First, I need a few preliminary questions answered: Do you support the current regime in Kiev? Do you consider them legitimate? Did you support the violent coup against Yanukovych? Your answers to these questions, KyivAndrew, will allow me to gauge whether I should take your views on Russia seriously.

The same could be said for your mention of Syria in connection with Russia, as if the relationship is somehow villainous.
When Putin defended the seizure of Crimea by saying he did not want to visit Russia’s two-century-old naval base at Sevastopol, and be greeted by NATO sailors, did he not have a point?

The vast territorial losses suffered by the Soviet Union would be like the amputations America would have endured had the secession of the 11 states of the Confederacy succeeded in 1865.

Our situation would be comparable to Russia’s if we had lost all our states on the South Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and our ports of Norfolk, Charleston and New Orleans all flew foreign flags.

It is not important whether Kyiv Andrew supports the government of Ukraine. It is only important that the people of Ukraine do. We’ll see what they say on May 25, and hope Putin’s efforts to thwart it are not successful. He has already said he will not accept whatever the people of Ukraine decide then about their government, which tells everyone that he, himself, knows he is acting in opposition to the will of the people there. There is no possibility whatever that the people of Ukraine at large would support the annexation of part of their country by Russia.

How many NATO sailors were in Sevastopol when Putin conquered it? Lets see the statistics. In the face of Obama’s reduction of the U.S. navy, it is totally incredible to believe Putin somehow feared the Black Sea becoming a “NATO lake”.

No, the loss of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, the Baltic States, etc, is not at all like the loss of the Southern States would have been for the U.S. It’s more like the British loss of India, Burma and Maylasia; loss of colonies. Imperial Russia was the “prison house of nations”; a continental imperialist power. The Soviet Union was an even greater “prison house of nations”. Putin wants to put the prison house back together, and has so far been as successful at it as his impoverished nation can afford.

Russia also lost Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and the Baltic States. Do Putin supporters want him to take those back as well? After all, they were part of the Soviet Empire too. One can guess what’s in Putin’s heart about that, but we can only know that by his actions. So far, his actions have not been good for the peoples he has conquered.

And Putin, who does have influence in Syria, has done nothing at all to protect Christians there; something he could easily do. But instead, he sends his agents and military to oppress Christians in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Putin is as far from being a “protector of Christianity” as one can get.

And Putin himself said once one is a Chekist, one is always a Chekist. It’s interesting to read Solzhenitsyn’s commentaries on the Chekist (NKVD, MVD, KGB) “devil’s dance” (his words, not mine) and how black hearted one has to be in order to be one even for a short time. Decent people ran from recruitment into that criminal organization. The worst of the worst embraced it. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by that black legion make those of the SS look inept by comparison. And yet, no one has ever been held to account for them, and why? Because Putin was and is a Chekist by his own admission. The shrine to Lenin is still in Moscow. The statue of Dzerzhinsky is being replaced there. Putin is slowly reviving the Soviet mind-set in Russia, shorn only of its bogus collectivist cant.

One pities the Russian peoples’ re-descent into darkness, and can only hope they drag as few others into it with them as possible.

I ask those who support Putin where, in the west, they think he should stop. I don’t really expect an answer, but I would like to pose it. Anywhere in Ukraine? The Polish border? The German border? The Baltic? Where?

 

[josie_L]

That’s not what I believe nor asked, but whether one shared Putin’s morally vapid judgment of the Soviet Past and (as per my second post) its terrible crimes against humanity and Putin’s inability to condemn morally the Soviet system, Stalin’s genocides, or for that matter even the Soviet Secret Police whose leaders to this day Putin venerates. His ideology is now not communism but more properly Chekism. Putin cannot and will not even erect a proper memorial to the millions of victims of Communism in Russia, while Ukraine has to its victims, millions upon millions of them at the hands of the Kremlin - the Holodomor Memorial being one and a National Day of Mourning in November in Ukraine which Putin criticizes. Putin’s misreading of history in its moral dimensions obviously is reflected in his current policies in my opinion and in his worldview.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter much to me; engaging with you would do you nor me no better. I’m Ukrainian and you’re advocating on a Catholic Forum that my parents’ homeland should be invaded by Putin (that he is “obligated to” in your words), Putin whom I believe to be an imperialist autocrat with little regard for life and which decision to invade would inevitably result in the deaths of tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands on a scale unimaginable in modern Europe. The leaders of Ukraine’s Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches (and the Jewish and Muslim communities) have all come out forcefully against separatism in Ukraine. I’m with my Church on that.

I agree with CAF’s policy on RT news that it is a tabloid to be avoided but you believe it credible. There really is nothing much we can say to each other.

As Per CAF’s policy concerning RT NEWS:

NOTICE

Please don’t post google search links and digg.com search links because they tend to be dynamic and would require repeated moderation over extended periods of time. Instead link directly to a valid news source.

Please do not start a thread using** rt.com **as a source. It is a tabloid and not a reliable news source.

Thank you for your cooperation

 

[pepipop]

It is not important whether Kyiv Andrew supports the government of Ukraine. It is only important that the people of Ukraine do. We’ll see what they say on May 25, and hope Putin’s efforts to thwart it are not successful. He has already said he will not accept whatever the people of Ukraine decide then about their government, which tells everyone that he, himself, knows he is acting in opposition to the will of the people there. There is no possibility whatever that the people of Ukraine at large would support the annexation of part of their country by Russia.

How many NATO sailors were in Sevastopol when Putin conquered it? Lets see the statistics. In the face of Obama’s reduction of the U.S. navy, it is totally incredible to believe Putin somehow feared the Black Sea becoming a “NATO lake”.

No, the loss of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, the Baltic States, etc, is not at all like the loss of the Southern States would have been for the U.S. It’s more like the British loss of India, Burma and Maylasia; loss of colonies. Imperial Russia was the “prison house of nations”; a continental imperialist power. The Soviet Union was an even greater “prison house of nations”. Putin wants to put the prison house back together, and has so far been as successful at it as his impoverished nation can afford.

Russia also lost Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and the Baltic States. Do Putin supporters want him to take those back as well? After all, they were part of the Soviet Empire too. One can guess what’s in Putin’s heart about that, but we can only know that by his actions. So far, his actions have not been good for the peoples he has conquered.

And Putin, who does have influence in Syria, has done nothing at all to protect Christians there; something he could easily do. But instead, he sends his agents and military to oppress Christians in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Putin is as far from being a “protector of Christianity” as one can get.

And Putin himself said once one is a Chekist, one is always a Chekist. It’s interesting to read Solzhenitsyn’s commentaries on the Chekist (NKVD, MVD, KGB) “devil’s dance” (his words, not mine) and how black hearted one has to be in order to be one even for a short time. Decent people ran from recruitment into that criminal organization. The worst of the worst embraced it. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by that black legion make those of the SS look inept by comparison. And yet, no one has ever been held to account for them, and why? Because Putin was and is a Chekist by his own admission. The shrine to Lenin is still in Moscow. The statue of Dzerzhinsky is being replaced there. Putin is slowly reviving the Soviet mind-set in Russia, shorn only of its bogus collectivist cant.

One pities the Russian peoples’ re-descent into darkness, and can only hope they drag as few others into it with them as possible.

I ask those who support Putin where, in the west, they think he should stop. I don’t really expect an answer, but I would like to pose it. Anywhere in Ukraine? The Polish border? The German border? The Baltic? Where?

He’s already ‘stopped’, as he never started.

 

[pepipop]

As Per CAF’s policy concerning RT NEWS:

NOTICE

Please don’t post google search links and digg.com search links because they tend to be dynamic and would require repeated moderation over extended periods of time. Instead link directly to a valid news source.

Please do not **start a thread using rt.com **as a source. It is a tabloid and not a reliable news source.

Thank you for your cooperation

The operative word being ‘start’.

 

[josie_L]

So you are correct, Andrew, it is not reliable/credible, and that’s because RT is sponsored/funded by the Russian government, i.e., it’s basically a tool to propagate their ideology.

Here’s something I found interesting though, i.e., I was researching the historical changes in media in Russia because I was curious to see how Putin changed the media/political landscape:

The third stage of the evolution of the media system in Russia started with Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000. The new Russian president transformed the country’s political system from “polycentric” to “monocentric” under the slogan of increasing stability and security—the issues that brought him substantial public support. By building the so-called “power vertical” Vladimir Putin eliminated all alternative political forces and established control over the government, the parliament, the judiciary, and the media system to secure stability of the new regime. In early 2000s various state agencies took financial or managerial control over 70 percent of electronic media outlets, 80 percent of the regional press, and 20 percent of the national press [Vartanova]. As a result, Russian media continued to be used as tools of political control but now these “tools” were no longer distributed among competing political parties and businesses, but remained concentrated in the hands of a closed political circle that swore loyalty to President Putin.

Overall, during this period the political discourse in Russia deteriorated, and the public debate in the media was either substituted by the imitative forms1 or squeezed out from the popular media outlets, such as television and dailies with large circulation, to the publications with much smaller readership, like Novaya Gazeta, or to the internet. Under the pressure from the new Kremlin’s elite, in 2001 Boris Berezovsky was forced to sell his share of ORT to Roman Abramovich, another Russian oligarch, who claimed his loyalty to Vladimir Putin. The symbolic culmination of the new elite’s war for media control was the government’s takeover of MediaMost holding (its most valuable asset was NTV) in 2002 by Gazprom Media—a subsidiary of Gazprom, the largest state-owned corporation in Russia.

One of the key characteristics of Russia’s political system under Vladimir Putin’s rule is informal subjecting of the legislative and judicial branches of power to the executive branch, controlled by the President. This hierarchy helped the President to achieve his goal—to establish control over the entire political process, eliminate possible risks of competition, and restructure the system of checks and balances. By silencing a group of powerful non-conforming businessmen2, Vladimir Putin sent a clear message to the business community to distance themselves from politics and thus established control over corporate Russia. From now on, only those who complied with his political line and demonstrated loyalty and support were allowed to continue their business as usual.

Because of the constrained political environment, Russian media were unable to resist the pressure from the state and succumbed to the well-known propaganda and conformism pattern according to which they’ve been operating in the Soviet times. The period of the relative freedom of press ended with Vladimir Putin ascension to power, it was too short for the Russian media to become a strong democratic institution and a watchdog.

Deterioration of the public political discourse is a direct result of the lack of political pluralism and competition. As it happens in all closed regimes, political discourse in Russia transformed from an open political communication into the state’s narrative. As a result, the content of political discourse became flat and dull.

Considering general disillusionment of the Russian citizens in politics and in their own abilities to influence political process or bring about change, public interest shifted from politics to the entertainment segment, which drives the expansion of the entertainment segment. Another reason for this expansion is commercialization of the global media market driven by advertising industry and aimed at stimulating consumption. As mentioned above, the diminishing political discourse created an information vacuum in Russia that, with lack of other alternatives, had been filled with entertainment content. Eventually, this process led to tabloidization of the media and the prevail of the popular media formats that appeal primarily to the mass audience.

indexoncensorship.org/2013/12/brief-history-russian-media/

 

[josie_L]

The operative word being ‘start’.

Yes, you can’t start a thread with RT because it’s not a RELIABLE news source.

 

[Seamus_L]

I take that to mean that it is ok to post links to RT videos after threads have been started using other news sources. RT videos have been invaluable in showing the true nature of the Euromaidan movement.

 

[josie_L]

I take that to mean that it is ok to post links to RT videos after threads have been started using other news sources. RT videos have been invaluable in showing the true nature of the Euromaidan movement.

Yeah, and we all know videos can’t be edited.

 

[Ridgerunner]

He’s already ‘stopped’, as he never started.

I think most Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and most everyone in the world would greatly differ from this assessment. Crimea is incorporated into Russia, and Putin has set the stage for annexing two more provinces of Ukraine. No one can reasonably deny that.

Again, I ask the question: Is there any part of Europe you would want denied to Putin’s rule? If so, where is the line beyond which you would support denial?

Without evasion or equivocation, please let us know where would you want Russian rule to end. The gates of Kiev? Poland’s eastern border? The Atlantic? Where?

 

[pepipop]

I think most Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and most everyone in the world would greatly differ from this assessment. Crimea is incorporated into Russia, and Putin has set the stage for annexing two more provinces of Ukraine. No one can reasonably deny that.

Again, I ask the question: Is there any part of Europe you would want denied to Putin’s rule? If so, where is the line beyond which you would support denial?

Without evasion or equivocation, please let us know where would you want Russian rule to end. The gates of Kiev? Poland’s eastern border? The Atlantic? Where?

It all depends on how many countries ask him in to assist them; 1) possibly after their governments have been overthrown, or 2) because they want him as a leader and to be under Russia.

So dependent on the above factors, he could go anywhere I guess.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It all depends on how many countries ask him in to assist them; 1) possibly after their governments have been overthrown, or 2) because they want him as a leader and to be under Russia.

So dependent on the above factors, he could go anywhere I guess.

So, if Angela Merkel gets impeached and some minority group in Germany wants to be ruled by Russia, you would support Russia taking over in Germany?

But your criteria would exclude Ukraine, because even under Yanukovych the Ukrainian government never asked Putin to seize Crimea or Eastern Ukraine and make them part of Russia. It certainly doesn’t presently. Nevertheless,he has incorporated Crimea into Russia and is going to seize more of it.

What about Russian rule do you find attractive? Would you welcome it in Ireland, where you appear to reside?

 

[Seamus_L]

After popular former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Time to grab guns and start killing damn Russians” rant, I can’t blame Russian speakers in the far East of Ukraine for wanting to secede from Kiev.

 

[Ridgerunner]

After popular former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Time to grab guns and start killing damn Russians” rant, I can’t blame Russian speakers in the far East of Ukraine for wanting to secede from Kiev.

But was this (if it was even said. It was a Russian-intercepted phone call, supposedly) understood as meaning Russian speaking Ukrainians who are nevertheless ethnic Ukrainians? Was it understood as meaning ethnic Russian Ukrainians who are Russian speakers? Or was it understood as meaning Russian invaders from Russia?

No matter what, the Ukrainian people did not vote to give Crimea to Russia. Russia just took it. Nor did the Ukrainian people vote to give eastern Ukraine to Russia. Putin is just taking it.

Regardless, Yulia Tymoshenko, unjustly jailed by Yanukovych for three years, is yesterday’s news even in Ukraine. She wasn’t there when the protests started, and her popularity has waned. Still, after spending three years in jail by Putin’s man Yanukovych, one can understand her being less than sanguine about it.

 

[josie_L]

Yes, but it wasn’t the Maidan protestors that were beating up journalists, it was the Berkut (some of whom it is believed were Russian agents) and titushkis (hired thugs). Makes you wonder why they had to do that, i.e., what were they hiding and/or trying to prevent from being taped??

 

[Ridgerunner]

I actually asked another Irish poster the question, but I now have your answer, at least. Maybe the other Irish who support Putin will respond as well. I still find it difficult to imagine an Irishman wanting to be ruled by the likes of Putin. Maybe you can explain the attraction other than your dislike of Enda Kenny. Parenthetically, I’m half Irish and I don’t care for Kenny myself, but to be ruled by Putin???

 

[josie_L]

I actually asked another Irish poster the question, but I now have your answer, at least. Maybe the other Irish who support Putin will respond as well. I still find it difficult to imagine an Irishman wanting to be ruled by the likes of Putin. Maybe you can explain the attraction other than your dislike of Enda Kenny. Parenthetically, I’m half Irish and I don’t care for Kenny myself, but to be ruled by Putin???

I don’t know anything about Enda Kenny, but I do believe Putin is just as much an “enemy” of the Catholic Church as Jharek believes Enda Kenny is.

 

[josie_L]

Historically, the Middle East was Christian before it became Muslim, should we plan to take these lands back?

 

[Son_of_Niall]

I actually asked another Irish poster the question, but I now have your answer, at least. Maybe the other Irish who support Putin will respond as well. I still find it difficult to imagine an Irishman wanting to be ruled by the likes of Putin. Maybe you can explain the attraction other than your dislike of Enda Kenny. Parenthetically, I’m half Irish and I don’t care for Kenny myself, but to be ruled by Putin???

Since when is the ethnic makeup of a particular poster fair game in a debate?

 

[Seamus_L]

Did I miss something ? Is Putin threatening to invade Ireland now ? Maybe we should compare what countries have military bases around the globe before deciding who want’s to take over the world.