Ukraine (cont.)

[Athanasiy]

I’m sorry, maybe I’m exaggerating speaking of separatists. The loss of any human life is a tragedy, as it is a tragedy for the country.
On the East of Ukraine, there are also some Russian patriots who sincerely want unification with Russia, especially they are irritated that Western Ukrainians are trying to come to power.
But excuse me please , 22 years of country independence - Ukrainian patriots had no opportunity to express themselves in power.
If now, after 22 years of independence, they will try to build a new Ukraine on the European model - why not give them the chance?
22 years they lived in state-destructive invaders ( sorry again, but resource-rich Ukraine is one of the world’s poorest countries)
And please , there is no need to make them Nazis.
Pro-Western parties in recent years gained popularity in the south and east of the country. There’s a lot of state-creative institutions and ideas there.
Let the separatists realize that, if we have God-given country, why should we be an appendage of Russia? (Also keep in mind that the separatists are very tiny percentage there is not a lot of them)
You can not build a future on old shovels rules.
That is why the young people vote for changes in the country.
Of course, I agree that there are no angels in a multipolar world today, it’s bad when billions of dollars are disappearing to the east and its also bad when billions of dollars are disappearing to the west.
But as youth in anticipation of change, so in my opinion the European integration provides such an opportunity.
Of course the country need to start all over again and it will be very hard but the main point is that its unacceptable to demonize the dignity of revolution without understanding its spiritual aspiration for changes.

 

[Seamus_L]

Self determination ? To join the EU and surrender there sovereignty to a Global elite (George Soros supports that) to allow open borders and follow the same disasterous immigration policies that the rest of the EU has ? To take orders from the IMF ? To be morally corrupted by the rest of the EU ? To be aligned militarily with NATO, which attacked Serbia, Libya, and threatened to attack Macedonia and Syria ? To be allies with Christian hating Turkey ? I’d love to have more sympathy for the nation of Ukraine, but I can’t when they want to go in this direction.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Putin’s Propaganda: Up is down and down is up: His old-school info warfare is working

Vladimir Putin is a master propagandist. When pro-Russian separatist groups seized control of government buildings in the eastern city of Donetsk last month, they made sure to occupy the TV station. They brought a technician with them whose first job was to turn off Ukrainian channels and replace them with Russian ones…Oleg Dzholos, the director of the TV station in Donetsk, said the separatists claimed that his station wasn’t properly reflecting local opinion. But Donetsk has a population of more than 1 million, and only about 300 individuals turned up to take part in the pro-Russian rally that preceded the takeover of the TV station. Most people in eastern Ukraine just want the crisis to be over. The separatists, however, want to use Putin propaganda to stoke fear of the Kiev government and disrupt the looming presidential elections, scheduled for May 25. They will then denounce the results as illegitimate.

Putin has been truly brazen in his methods, which focus on taking whatever accusations are hurled against him and claiming that it’s his critics who are the guilty party. As Time magazine noted last week:

*On Thursday, Putin achieved perfect info-warfare symmetry. . . . Amid continued calls for Russia’s army to stand down, the Kremlin released a statement saying that Ukraine is the side that should demobilize forces — from its own territory. Putin “emphasized that it was imperative today to withdraw all military units from the southeastern regions [of Ukraine],” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Putin’s approach puts the Big Lie techniques pioneered by Joseph Goebbels to shame.

As outrageous as the Russian approach has been, it has greatly influenced many Russian speakers in Ukraine…

Vladimir Putin is on his way to becoming one of the most successful authoritarian leaders of the postwar period. His sham democracy leaves just enough freedom for dissidents and the media so that he can take on the appearance of legitimacy. In parliament, most members of the political opposition are handpicked by him and seldom oppose him on any serious matter.

On one level, the West understood all this for years, even as we ignored it. But it’s time for us to wake up to the fact that Putin is trying to export his model of soft repression and Orwellian propaganda methods. He will use gas-soaked cash to buy friends or thugs to crash his adversaries in other countries and achieve his goals.

nationalreview.com/article/377202/putins-propaganda-john-fund

 

[Athanasiy]

Self determination ? To join the EU and surrender there sovereignty to a Global elite (George Soros supports that) to allow open borders and follow the same disasterous immigration policies that the rest of the EU has ? To take orders from the IMF ? To be morally corrupted by the rest of the EU ? To be aligned militarily with NATO, which attacked Serbia, Libya, and threatened to attack Macedonia and Syria ? To be allies with Christian hating Turkey ? I’d love to have more sympathy for the nation of Ukraine, but I can’t when they want to go in this direction.

Seamus L, if the EU does not bring the system changes which make life better, why did the EU has such a long queue of candidates countries ?
Is it better to live in a system that is fatally not capable for changes?
where power and business are inseparable, where competition is not possible, where no one dares to criticize opaque schemes, where the political system is so corrupt that does not even have immunity to resist, where there are no rights to protest.
Better to get at least some remedy against corruption than to have no remedy at all.
Corruption impoverishes people and it reflects on every thing.
You mean to say that there are no changes for the better in the post-of the Communist countries that joined the EU?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Self determination ? To join the EU and surrender there sovereignty to a Global elite (George Soros supports that) to allow open borders and follow the same disasterous immigration policies that the rest of the EU has ? To take orders from the IMF ? To be morally corrupted by the rest of the EU ? To be aligned militarily with NATO, which attacked Serbia, Libya, and threatened to attack Macedonia and Syria ? To be allies with Christian hating Turkey ? I’d love to have more sympathy for the nation of Ukraine, but I can’t when they want to go in this direction.

I’m no fan of “global elites”, and there is a lot to be said against the EU. But at least in the EU they don’t actively persecute Catholicism like they do in Russia, the EU is massively more prosperous than Russia, and it isn’t run by a bunch of total dictators like Putin.

And one can opt out of the EU. Greece griped when Germany and France insisted on economic reforms, but she didn’t withdraw. A country can opt out of NATO too. You can’t opt out of the new Russian Empire. Lots of countries felt it was in the best interests to join the EU, including virtually every former Soviet satellite state.

I never approved of the NATO attack on Serbia or Libya, despite the horrible, murderous leaders of both. But NATO didn’t threaten to “attack” Macedonia. Clinton threatened to intervene and defend Macedonia if SERBIA attacked Macedonia, which it was threatening to do.

I don’t know why in the world a person would have "no sympathy’ with Ukraine when it wants to align with prosperous, free Europe despite its flaws, than with threadbare, despotic Russia.

 

[Tomdstone]

But at least in the EU they don’t actively persecute Catholicism like they do in Russia,…

Moscow has a beautiful Catholic cathedral, where Mass is celebrated several times every day.
catedra.ru/
According to the website, I count ten Masses every Sunday, and five or six daily Masses.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Moscow has a beautiful Catholic cathedral, where Mass is celebrated several times every day.
catedra.ru/
According to the website, I count ten Masses every Sunday, and five or six daily Masses.

Sure. Lots of tourists in Moscow. But the government won’t allow dioceses to form in Russia at all, and, I expect, never will because the Russian E.O. does not accept the presence of Catholicism in “Holy Russia”. (Nor in the Americas, either, by the way, but that’s another story.)

 

[Ridgerunner]

From World News Daily, today.

"The president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Russian Federation, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, issued a protest statement declaring “with grave concern” that “an organized campaign is being waged against the Catholic Church in Russia,” according to the independent Zenit news agency.

While authorities in the Russian city of Pskov, at the request of the local Russian Orthodox bishop, forbade the construction of a Catholic church, the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian legislature, has gone so far as to urge Russian president Vladimir Putin “to ban Catholics from Russian territory,” according to La Stampa.

The Catholic Church in Russia, like nearly all other faiths, has no clear legal status. Following the adoption in 1997 of the “Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations,” only four religions – Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism – have official recognition in Russia. "

…
It may be noted that the Russian patriarch has declared that the Greek E.O. church has no legitimate place in Ukraine (or Russia), let alone the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Lots of Ukrainians are of one or the other.

 

[Seamus_L]

Ridgerunner
During the Albanian Insurgency in Macedonia in 2001, at least two Macedonian generals maintained they were threatened by NATO if they didn't agree to a cease fire with Albanian invaders who they were on the verge of defeating.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ridgerunner

                                                     During the Albanian Insurgency in Macedonia in 2001, at least two Macedonian generals maintained they were threatened by NATO if they didn't agree to a cease fire with Albanian invaders who they were on the verge of defeating.

Could be. But it would seem a bit strange for Albania to be invading Macedonia in 2001. Now, I’ll grant that a lot of Albanians fled into Macedonia during the Hoxha era and even afterward. But it wasn’t an invasion.

There are a lot of Albanians in Macedonia and in 2000 or 2001 there was an Albanian insurgency. NATO did send troops there with an effort to disarm the Albanian rebels. Some Macedonians were as suspicious of NATO as some westerners are, and considered it aimed at Macedonia itself. However, that was not the case.

Regardless, the only overt threat of war involving Macedonia after the fall of communism was Clinton’s threat to go to war with Serbia if Serbia attacked Macedonia, which it was threatening to do. Serbia very much attempted to recapture as much of the old Juguslavia as it could. It went to war with Croatia and Slovenia simultaneously. Slovenia was on the ropes until Croatia started gaining ground in its part of the war, whereupon Serbia withdrew its troops from Slovenia.

Serbia is Russia in aggressiveness, writ small. Interesting that during the Serbian invasion, Slovenia was so desperate that it offered itself to Austria. Austria, perhaps remembering WWI, declined. Slovenia then contacted Italy for the same reason, but Italy declined. No one should question why any small nation would want to escape the embrace of either Serbia or Russia and want to be part of the west instead.

Right now, Ukraine is trying to escape the clutches of Russia and join the west. I pray it will make it.

 

[Seamus_L]

About 360.000 Kosovar Albanians, including members of the KLA poured into Macedonia in 1999. 18 pct of the population of Macedonia’s population consisted of Kosovar Albanian refugees. It had a devastating effect on the economy and exacerbated tensions bringing on the 2001 conflict. I’d call it an invasion, since it involved armed groups.

 

[Ridgerunner]

About 360.000 Kosovar Albanians, including members of the KLA poured into Macedonia in 1999. 18 pct of the population of Macedonia’s population consisted of Kosovar Albanian refugees. It had a devastating effect on the economy and exacerbated tensions bringing on the 2001 conflict. I’d call it an invasion, since it involved armed groups.

There were a lot of Albanians in Macedonia long before that. The reign of Enver Hoxha was so severe that Albanians fled into what was then the “Macedonia” part of Jugoslavia. As poor and oppressive as Jugoslavia was, it was better than Albania, and you could actually get from Albania to Macedonia overland. So there were a lot of Albanians in Macedonia already, when Jugoslavia fell apart. Interestingly, the Tito government forced Albanians to change their names to names that sounded more Slavic, so their numbers were not and undoubtedly still are not correctly counted. A lawyer friend of mine changed some of them back when some Albanians came here. I have some friends who are Albanian/Macedonians, a very decent sort of folks. Very devoted to Mother Theresa who, of course, was Albanian.

A lot of the Albanian emigres were Catholic or Orthodox. Albania was more Muslim than any other single religion at least in theory, though Catholics and Orthodox together outnumbered them. Because Hoxha’s regime was so very atheistic, Albania was a terribly inhospitable place for a devoted Christian to be. As one of my Albanian friends remarked as well: “In Macedonia, at least you could earn enough to eat if you worked hard all day.” In Albania, it wasn’t so.

At least among the Albanians I know, one would not safely criticize the United States or the west generally. Those who have felt real dictatorship on their backs don’t.

 

[Tomdstone]

. But the government won’t allow dioceses to form in Russia at all, and, I expect, never will because the Russian E.O. does not accept the presence of Catholicism in “Holy Russia”.

This is not true. It is easily checked that the Archdiocese of Moscow, also known as Archdiocese of Mother of God at Moscow is a Latin Rite archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Putin’s Propaganda: Up is down and down is up: His old-school info warfare is working

nationalreview.com/article/377202/putins-propaganda-john-fund

From your citation:

“On one level, the West understood all this for years, even as we ignored it. But it’s time for us to wake up to the fact that Putin is trying to export his model of soft repression and Orwellian propaganda methods. He will use gas-soaked cash to buy friends or thugs to crash his adversaries in other countries and achieve his goals.”

But is that fully adequate? One needs to remember that most of the industry and really valuable land in Ukraine is in the east. People own those factories and that land. Russia is ruled by a clique of robber barons who own everything. Putin himself is reputed to be worth almost as much as Bill Gates. There’s valuable loot in eastern Ukraine. It isn’t all about “protecting ethnic Russians” or even about “restoring the Soviet Union”. There’s loot to be had there by the Russian oligarchs, undoubtedly including Putin himself.

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is not true. It is easily checked that the Archdiocese of Moscow, also known as Archdiocese of Mother of God at Moscow is a Latin Rite archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia.

Actually, you are correct. My information was old. It has now been allowed passively. However, they have no juridical status, and are there at sufferance, at least for the present. But Catholicism is still not recognized as one of the “officially permitted” religions in Russia. And, not to make too much (necessarily) of the relationship between church and state in Russia, the Russian E.O. position is that Catholicism should not be in Russia at all, or in Ukraine for that matter. Same with the Greek E.O. One wonders how the unity of church and state in Russia will proceed at the point where Putin doesn’t care at all how his regime is regarded in the west.

 

[Tomdstone]

''Interim head of Ukraine is respected Baptist Pastor.
Even his enemies for all last biography could not say a bad word about him.

Mr. Turchynov was head of the Ukrainian Secret Security Service and as such was alleged to have destroyed documents on organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich who in turn supposedly had relations with Yulia Tymoshenko, who herself was convicted of illegal activity. Charges against him were later dropped. This can be verified either by public documents, or more easily by checking the references given in wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Turchynov#Controversies

 

[Athanasiy]

Tomdstone , You live in a colorful world. You know sometimes our philosophizing is similar to a guy who is lying on a comfortable couch , eating chips with cola , and watching a movie about the war, and tries to judge characters .
(but you yourslef would never even dare for a moment to be in the place of those characters.)
But it seems to me that even if you can provide the accurate or inaccurate facts , reliable or not reliable facts about any corruption - you yourself come closer to answer your question.

Ukrainian revolution of dignity its a call for change !
And therefore your anti-Western arguments that is, the attempts to deny the right to pro-democracy protests and commitments to democratic changes , your attempts to discredit the desire of millions to move from the world of corruption, authoritarianism, Soviet bureaucracies samples, is the same as to hack that branch on which you sit.
I am far from being a fun of Tymoshenko, but my opinion is the further we are from western democratic values the closer we are to pseudo-USSR. The further we are from western democratic values, the closer we to the soviet-type of corruption, authoritarianism and despotism.

 

[AnastasiaRomano]

There was a report posted on the Russian presidential website that showed the true voting results from the Crimean referendum.

forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/05/putins-human-rights-council-accidentally-posts-real-crimean-election-results-only-15-voted-for-annexation/

The website of the “President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights” posted a blog that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to the Council’s report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout was a maximum 30%. And of these, only half voted for annexation – meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.

…

**To make sure no one misses this:

Official Kremlin results: 97% for annexation, turnout 83 percent, and percent of Crimeans voting in favor 82%.

President’s Human Rights Council results: 50% for annexation, turnout 30%, percent of Crimeans voting in favor 15%.**

Putin’s people pulled this “rather unfortunate” report from the President’s Human Rights Council website, but council member Svetlana Gannushkina talked about this subject on Kanal 24 (as reproduced on Ukrainian television), declaring that the Crimean vote “discredited Russia more than could be dreamed up by a foreign agent.”

 

[Ridgerunner]

Mr. Turchynov was head of the Ukrainian Secret Security Service and as such was alleged to have destroyed documents on organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich who in turn supposedly had relations with Yulia Tymoshenko, who herself was convicted of illegal activity. Charges against him were later dropped. This can be verified either by public documents, or more easily by checking the references given in wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Turchynov#Controversies

The KGB also slandered Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope”. Sometimes they’re good at it, sometimes clumsy. But they are persistent. You have to give them that.

 

[Yeoman]

The KGB also slandered Pope Pius XII as “Hitler’s Pope”. Sometimes they’re good at it, sometimes clumsy. But they are persistent. You have to give them that.

Indeed, the slander that arose via a play written by a Communist playright, if I recall it correctly, was so effective that we continue to live with a large number of people persistently believing that today, in spite of all the evidence being to the contrary.