Russia and Ukraine

[Fat Cat]

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/fe ... ilent.aspx

It seems that to the US government, facts simply do not matter. In pre-February 22 Kiev, the legitimate government was warned against using any force to put down an armed revolt. That rebellion, now in power, is actually encouraged by the US to use military force against civilians in eastern Ukraine.

In fact, the US administration has called these military operations against unarmed civilians "proportionate and reasonable." US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, who had just two months ago cheered on armed protesters seeking to overthrow the elected government in Kiev and warned that government against any response to the violent protests, was singing a different tune now that the US-backed insurgents have attained power. As Ukrainian military forces launched a bloody operation last week in the eastern city of Slavyansk, she told her UN counterparts that the Kiev "response is reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any one of our countries would have done in the face of this threat." Even Salon.com is finding it difficult to stomach the odious Samantha Power, calling her a "brazen hypocrite."

I know that, being raised in an oppressive totalitarian regime, expressing your own views was never your strong point but why don't you go ahead and give it a try.

One day Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. "You have no right teaching others," he shouted. "You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake." Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man "Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?" The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, "It would belong to me, because I bought the gift." The Buddha smiled and said, "That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself."

Get it? Trying to insult me is a waste of time. I don't know you and don't care what you think of me. I don't think of you at all.

You don't think of me while you are typing out a response to me? LOL. I'm unconvinced.

[nafod]

Blah, blah, blah, here's an important history of Russia, by PJ O'Rourke. My favorite line...Russia lost World War I, not an easy thing to do when you’re on the winning side.

The Daily Beast
11 May 2014


Russian History Is on Our Side: Putin Will Surely Screw Himself
by P.J. O’Rourke

So the international sanctions aren’t working—don’t worry! If 1,000 years of Russian screw-ups are anything to go by, it won’t be long before Vladimir Putin brings himself down.

Now that we’ve failed to use Russia’s corrupt and degenerating economy, subservience to the international banking system, and vulnerability to falling energy prices to pop Vladimir Putin like a zit, we’re going to have sit on our NATO, E.U., and OSCE duffs and take the long view of Russian imperialism.

Fortunately the long view, while a desolate prospect, is also comforting in its way, if you aren’t a Russian.

In the sixth century A.D. Russia was the middle of nowhere in the great Eurasian flat spot bounded by fuck-all on the north and east, barbarian hordes and the remains of the Byzantine Empire on the south, and the Dark Ages on the west.

Wandering around in here, up and down the watershed of the Dnieper River from Novgorod (which hadn’t been built yet) to Kiev (ditto) were disorganized tribes of Slavic pastoral herdsmen herding whatever was available, pastorally. They were harried by Goths, Huns, Khazars, and other people who had the name and nature of outlaw motorcycle gangs long before the motorcycle was invented.

The original Russian state, “Old Russia,” was established at Novgorod in A.D. 862 by marauding Vikings. They’d set off to discover Iceland, Greenland, and America, took a wrong turn, and wound up with their dragon boat stuck on a mud bar in the Dnieper. (Historians have their own theories, involving trade and colonization, but this sounds more likely.)

The first ruler of Old Russia was the Viking Prince Ryurik. Imagine being so disorganized that you need marauding Vikings to found your nation—them with their battle axes, crazed pillaging, riotous Meade Hall feasts, and horns on their helmets. (Actually, Vikings didn’t wear horns on their helmets—but they would have if they’d thought of it, just like they would have worn meade helmets if they’d thought of it.) Some government it must have been.

Viking Prince Ryurik: “Yah, let’s build Novgorod!”

Viking Chieftain Sven: “Yah, so we can burn it down and loot!”

The Russians weren’t converted to Christianity until A.D. 988—a thousand years late to “Peace be unto you” party, the basic principles of which still haven’t sunk in. (And maybe never had a chance to. Russia’s conversion came at the hands of St. Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, who was reputed to maintain a harem of 800 concubines.)

The death of St. Vladimir, and every other ruler of Old Russia, was followed by assassinations, mayhem, civil strife, and the other hallmarks of change in Russian leadership evident to the present day. Oxford historian Ronald Hingley notes that “the first and only Russian ruler to fashion an effective law of succession” was Tsar Paul I (1796-1801). Tsar Paul was assassinated.
Anyway, things went along pretty well for almost 400 years. (Pretty well by Russian standards—a free peasant was known as a smerd, meaning “stinker.”) Then, in 1237, when the rest of the West was having a High Middle Ages and getting fecund for cultural rebirth, a Tatar horde invaded Russia.

The Tatars were part of the Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan. They had a two-pronged invasion strategy: Kill everybody and steal everything.

Kiev, Moscow, and most of Russia’s towns were obliterated. Tatar control—part occupation and part suzerainty over impotent, tribute-paying Russian principalities—lasted more than 200 years.

The Russians have heroic stories about fighting off the Tatars, but in fact it seems like the Tatars gradually lost interest in the place and went off in a horde back to where they came from.

Professor Hingley says the “Tatar Yoke” left Russia with “a model of extreme authoritarian rule combined with control through terror.” It also left Russia with a model of leadership best summarized by a passage from John Keegan’s A History of Warfare:
“Genghis Khan, questioning his Mongol comrades-in-arms about life’s sweetest pleasure and being told it lay in falconry, replied, ‘You are mistaken. Man’s greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding [and] use the bodies of his women as a nightshirt and support.’”

Why Putin wants Angela Merkel for a nightshirt is beyond me. But that’s a Russian dictator for you.
Around the time Europe was getting a New World, Russia was getting tsars. Several were named Ivan, one more terrible than the next until we arrive at Ivan the Terrible in 1533.

Ivan created a private force of five or six thousand thugs, the oprichnina, who wore black, rode black horses, and carried, as emblems of authority, a dog’s head and a broom. (The hammer and sickle of the day, presumably.)

Oprichniks were entitled to rob and kill anyone, and did so with a will. Ivan suspected Novgorod of disloyalty, and the oprichnina spent five weeks in the city slaughtering thousands and driving thousands more into exile.

Ivan presided over and sometimes personally performed the roasting, dismembering, and boiling alive of enemies and people who, left unboiled, might possibly become enemies.

He killed his own son and heir by whacking him over the head with the monarchal staff in a tsar-ish fit of temper.

He conducted a 24-year-long war against Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, and the Teutonic Knights, and lost.
Russia’s economy was destroyed. Drought, famine, and plague beset the country.

But Ivan put Russia on the map as an international player. He defeated what was left of the Tatars, mostly by conniving with leaders of what was left of the Tatars. He expanded Russian rule into Siberia, his success due to almost nobody being there. And, draw what parallels you will, Ivan the Terrible’s popularity rating was very high among the smerds.

After his reign, Russia, if you can believe it, got worse. “The Time of Troubles” featured more drought, more famine, more plague, foreign invasions, massacres, the occupation and sacking of Moscow, and tsars with names like False Dmitry I and False Dmitry II. The population of Russia may have been reduced by as much as one-third.

The remaining two-thirds reacted to increasing anarchy in traditional Russian fashion, by increasing autocracy. The Russians aren’t stupid. We’re talking about a country where chess is a spectator sport. Autocracy is just a Russian bad habit, like smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and drinking a liter of vodka.

In 1613 the Romanov dynasty was installed, providing Russia with a range of talents from “Great” (Peter I, Catherine II) to “Late” (Ivan VI, Peter III, and Paul I killed in palace intrigues; Alexander II blown to bits by a terrorist bomb, and Nicholas II murdered with his family by the Bolsheviks).

The Romanovs adhered to what Harvard historian Richard Pipes calls a “patrimonial” doctrine, meaning they owned Russia the way we own our house (except to hell with the mortgage). They owned everything. And everybody. The Romanov tsars imposed rigid serfdom just as that woeful institution was fading almost everywhere else.

Russia never had a Renaissance, a Protestant Reformation, an Enlightenment, or much of an Industrial Revolution until the Soviet Union. Soviet industrialization produced such benefits to humanity as concrete worker housing built without level or plumb bob, the AK-47, MiG fighter jets, and proliferating nukes. (Although the only people the Soviets ever killed with a nuclear device was themselves at Chernobyl, located, perhaps not coincidentally, in what’s now Ukraine, for the time being at least.)

Russia was out in the sticks of civilization, in a trailer park without knowledge of how to build a trailer. But Russia kept getting bigger, mostly by killing, oppressing, and annoying Russians.

Peter the Great (1682-1725) led a military expedition against the Turkish fort of Azov that was a disaster. But Peter came right back and, getting more Russians killed, overwhelmed the Turks. The same thing happened in the Northern War against Sweden. Although it took 21 years after Peter ran away at the battle of Narva, Russia finally got a Baltic coastline. Which Peter didn’t know what to do with, so he built St. Petersburg in a swamp with conscripted serf labor. The number of Russian serfs who died building things in the swamp equaled the number Russian soldiers who died in the Northern War.

Peter the Great raised taxes, made the Russian nobles shave their beards, and caused the death of his recalcitrant son and heir, like Ivan the Terrible did, but on purpose.

Catherine the Great (1762-1796) doubled taxes on the Jews and declared they weren’t Russians, as if anyone would want to be. She was the first but not last leader of Russia to annex Crimea. NATO member alert, code red—she won two wars against Turkey and partitioned Poland. (Like Peter the Great on the Baltic, she got the swampy part.)

Under Catherine, Russian settlements pushed all the way east into Alaska, the most valuable land Russia has occupied. (Annual GDP per capita, Alaska: $61,156. Annual GDP per capita, Russia: $14,037.) But—E.U. shame alert—when Russia was facing financial difficulties and geopolitical conflict, Tsar Alexander II was forced to sell Alaska to the United States in 1867 for 2 cents an acre. Later, as mentioned, Alexander got blown to bits.

And that’s pretty much it for Russia’s Golden Age. After the 18th century, Russia devoted itself mostly to being big fat loserland, losing pace with the modern world, wars, Alaska, a communist utopia, a million victims of Stalin’s purges, 6 million victims of the famine of 1921, 8 million victims of the famine of 1932-33, a “Kitchen Debate” between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon, ICBMs in Cuba, the space race, the arms race, the Cold War, and finally, 14 independent countries that were once in the USSR.

Napoleon actually won the war part of his war with Russia. If “General Winter” and the general tendency of Moscow to be periodically destroyed hadn’t, for once, sided with the Russian people, you’d be able to get a good bottle of Côte de Volga and a baguette in Smolensk today.

Russia began a series of wars in the Caucasus that it has yet to win.

In 1825, the Decembrists, a reform-minded group of military officers, staged a demonstration in favor of constitutional monarchy and were hanged for taking the trouble.

Political oppression, censorship, spying, and secret police activity reached such a level of crime and punishment that Dostoyevsky himself was sentenced to death for belonging to a discussion group. He was standing in front of the firing squad when his sentence was commuted to exile in Siberia. (Whether to thank Tsar Nicolas I depends upon how weighty a summer reading list you’ve been given.)

“Exiled to Siberia” says everything about Russian economic and social development in that land of mountains, lakes, and forests with a climate, in its lower latitudes, no worse than the rest of Russia’s. I’ve been across it on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If this were America, the route from Irkutsk to Vladivostok would be lined with vacation homes and trendy shops, and “exiled to Siberia” would be translated as “exiled to Aspen.”

Russia lost the 1853-56 Crimean War. NATO member alert, code green—Russia lost to Britain, France, and Turkey.
In 1861 Tsar Alexander II freed 50 million serfs. If “freed” is the word that’s wanted. The serfs had no place to go except the land they were already farming, and if they wanted any of that, they had to buy it with the nothing they made as serfs. Later, as mentioned twice already, Alexander got blown to bits.

Russia lost the Jews. Being robbed, beaten, and killed in pogroms was not a sufficient incentive to stay. More than a million Jews emigrated, taking what common sense the country had with them.

Russia lost the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War in the best Russian loser fashion at the naval battle of Tsushima.

Japanese Admiral Togo Heihachiro “crossed the T” of the Russian fleet, a rare execution of a tactic where you get your ships in a horizontal line so that your guns can be aimed at the enemy, whose ships are in a vertical line so that their guns can’t be aimed at you.

The Russian fleet was demolished. Eight battleships and most of the smaller ships were sunk. More than 5,000 Russian sailors died. Just three of 38 Russian vessels escaped to Vladivostok.

Russia lost World War I, not an easy thing to do when you’re on the winning side. After the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was too much of a mess to keep fighting Germany. The Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk surrendering Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russian Poland, and Ukraine—containing in total a quarter of the population of Imperial Russia—to the Central Powers just eight months before the Central Powers had to surrender to everybody.
Russia lost both sides of the 1917-22 Russian Civil War. The White Russians were losers. The Reds were total losers. We know how their revolution turned out.

Russia might as well have lost World War II. Between 18 million and 24 million Russians died. That’s three times as many military and civilian casualties as Germany suffered. There must have been a better way to kill a bunch of Nazis running low on food and ammunition and stuck in frozen mud.

Now, because of what he’s doing in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has a higher smerd popularity rating than Ivan the Terrible or even Stalin. We certainly should have screwed him over. But Russian history is on our side. He’ll certainly screw himself.

[Fat Cat]

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said it was a completely false Russian narrative that it was only Ukrainians rebelling in the east of their country, saying it was clear that special forces troops from Russia were operating there as they did in Crimea before its annexation.

"Remember that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin denied their presence and now he has admitted to their presence in Crimea. The same thing will come out of Ukraine as time rolls out," he told a military and diplomatic audience in Ottawa.

"Exactly what we saw in Crimea is being mirrored in eastern Ukraine," added Breedlove.

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-top-commande ... 29669.html

NATO confirms that Russian troops are operating in Easter Ukraine, beyond just Crimea.

[Wild Bill]

NATO confirms that Russian troops are operating in Easter Ukraine, beyond just Crimea.

As far as i know English there mistake. Maybe the sentence should be
"NATO claims that Russian troops are operating in Easter Ukraine, beyond just Crimea."? :)

Just words not enough to confirm.

BTW. Russia don't admit their referendum. For me it is confirms that Russia do not backing up them.

[Wild Bill]

minister of foreign affairs of "Donetsk republic" :))

[Wild Bill]

"she likes boxing and climbing"

[Fat Cat]

NATO confirms that Russian troops are operating in Easter Ukraine, beyond just Crimea.

As far as i know English there mistake. Maybe the sentence should be
"NATO claims that Russian troops are operating in Easter Ukraine, beyond just Crimea."? :)

Just words not enough to confirm.

BTW. Russia don't admit their referendum. For me it is confirms that Russia do not backing up them.

His words are confirming that they have solid evidence. Anyway, the fact that Russia is not publicly "backing up them" separatists is a strategem, same thing Serbia did in Bosnia. So long as you publicly claim that these ethnic-Russians are uncontrollable, Russia can pretty much get they to do its dirty work by proxy while pretending to keep its hands clean. Unfortunately, the only people who will buy that bullshit are the citizens of Russia, who have no access to independent media.

[Wild Bill]

Donetsk republic, Lugansk republic...
City-states, like in good old times after dividing of Kievan Rus :)

[Wild Bill]

... citizens of Russia, who have no access to independent media.

There no such beings in nowdays :)
BTW, what do you mean by "independent media"? Sounds like some mythical creature.

[Wild Bill]

Darth Alekseevich Waider banned from president elections, but he plan to became Mayor of Kiev.
"This is our town!"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxnXGxF-PBk[/youtube]

[DrDonkeyLove]

oh,the fight for democracy.

http://burisma.com/hunter-biden-joins-t ... -holdings/

Move along, nothing to see here.

One might think that allowing the son of the VPofUSA to have a financial interest in this tinderbox might show a scintilla of a conflict of interest that just might compromise the USA's noble position as a fair arbiter. That person would be WRONG because this administration is the most transparent and ethical in the history of the USofKKKA. It must be true since Obama said it himself.
Transparent ethics starts at 14 seconds in.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXWTdTnhebs[/youtube]

In case you forgot, you are the dumbass who supported Bush through two stupid wars and 8 years of presidency while his father sat holding hands with Bin Ladens on 9/11. Profound silence would be your best course of action.

I started to become disillusioned with Bush soon after the "win" in Iraq and the wheels of progress started to come off. The implementation of the Patriot Act cooled my enthusiasm as well. I confess that I thought ridding the world of the Hussein family and regime was a good idea (because it was a good idea). My faith in Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rummy, and Condi to have a solid post Iraq victory plan was mistaken. The Bush admin is the main reason I left the Repuglican party in 2007 and began following the Andy doctrine of hating both cesspool parties.

That doesn't obviate the fact that it's not productive to have the VP's family having financial skin in the Ukraine mess.

Putting aside your unforgivable 8-year lapse of judgement, allowing Ukrainian companies to make money free from Russian domination is precisely what this "Ukraine mess" is all about. It's not like there is any legal mechanism by which the US federal government can stop an American citizen from working for a foreign company, any way, so what precisely should be done?

Biden 2016 stickers.

[Wild Bill]

Interesting. This book was writen in 2005-2007 by author who lives in Lugansk :)
I didn't read it, but they say book describes exactly what happens there right now.
BTW, in his book Russia betrayed Lugansk and Donetsk and did not help them :)

Spoiler: show

[seeahill]

... citizens of Russia, who have no access to independent media.

There no such beings in nowdays :)
BTW, what do you mean by "independent media"? Sounds like some mythical creature.

Agree with Bill. He's here, right?

[DARTH]

Darth Alekseevich Waider banned from president elections, but he plan to became Mayor of Kiev.
"This is our town!"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxnXGxF-PBk[/youtube]

FUCK YEAH!

[Fat Cat]

... citizens of Russia, who have no access to independent media.

There no such beings in nowdays :)
BTW, what do you mean by "independent media"? Sounds like some mythical creature.

Agree with Bill. He's here, right?

No. The level of censorship and government control of media has no parallel in the west.

http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/post ... rs_chamber

[Wild Bill]

"May soon create..." or may not :))
In any case "independent media" in USA it is also kind of joke :)

[Fat Cat]

"May soon create..." or may not :))
In any case "independent media" in USA it is also kind of joke :)

No it isn't. There is plenty of pro-government media in the USA, but there is also mainstream commercial, and totally independent media. The fact that you could even say that shows how little you are aware of how the outside world works.

PS, they did pass the law just the other day. I assume that as a Russian citizen, you are aware of it? If not, it just proves my point.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... censorship

[Fat Cat]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/a ... 98982.html

[Wild Bill]

googling...

[Wild Bill]

If not, it just proves my point.

it proves that i am not too much interesting on laws.

[Wild Bill]

googling...

I recalling now. I heard about it. Some talkings that Google or Facebook will be enforced to place servers on Russian territory... something like that.
Servers wich serves Russian segment i mean.

[Wild Bill]

I reading now part about what banned to bloggers. Don't see nothing bad in that law :)

[Fat Cat]

I reading now part about what banned to bloggers. Don't see nothing bad in that law :)

That bloggers can be held accountable for the views expressed in comments?

[Wild Bill]

Nobody can be held for a views.
But blogger must delete comments if that comments contain some extremist things.
If bloggers not delete such comments, blog can be closed as i understand.
They must check facts of their posts, etc, etc...

Law itself do not seems to much scaring.
Of course there could be some abuses...

[Wild Bill]

and they can't be aninimous (as i understand, again)
and this for those who get more than 3000 visits per day.