Ukraine/Crimea

Robert said:
Perhaps you need a wee lie doon?
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He is showing the desired levels of fear and paranoia. He is almost ready to support a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Moscow.

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FluffyMcDeath said:
He is showing the desired levels of fear and paranoia. He is almost ready to support a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Moscow.
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Wrong. The pro-Russians that were attacked were militants.

Militant

mil·i·tant
[mil-i-tuhnt]
adjective
1. vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause: militant reformers.
2. engaged in warfare; fighting.
noun
3. a militant person.
4. a person engaged in warfare or combat.
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You don't need to be in the military to be a militant nor do you need to be shooting or attempting to kill. Me calling you a shit head is a great example of militant behavior even though I don't own a gun. :confused:

Have you seen these "Pro-Russian" protesters? They're very well armed and turned government buildings into fortresses. They're sure as shit are militants. And are self declared rebels and pro-Kremlin. So the article you quoted seems fairly accurate to me. But even if it was a 100% bullshit story, The Sydney Morning Herald hardly constitutes the entire Western media. :rolleyes:

And btw, East Ukraine is a region, which is where the truce was made and broken. The region itself didn't do anything, it's just a region. Regions don't do stuff. Meaning, it's a badly worded title but how does that make it propaganda?
 
Glaucus said:
You don't need to be in the military to be a militant nor do you need to be shooting or attempting to kill.
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Interesting. Why must you pretend you don't understand what I was getting at? Or why do you feel compelled to apologies for the reportage?
Meaning, it's a badly worded title but how does that make it propaganda?
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Are you seriously asking?

The headline implies that the East Ukraine broke the Easter truce ... BY GETTING SHOT AT!!! Just badly worded? No, actually contra-factual and the reverse of what was subsequently reported below the headline. People put a lot of stock in headlines and the propagandists know it so they lead with provocative headlines and then a generally less trumped up story with maybe the last column inch containing something like the truth. It is a common pattern and not just in this instance. The failure to read past the headlines is why Harper keeps getting in. The papers all favour him and skew their reporting to be mostly positive on the front page and keep the not so good for the inner pages and the last inches. But that isn't the only thing going on.

Militant is a word we use to mean someone we can kill with drones. It is the way our press refers to "the enemy". It's like we called the defenders of Iraq "insurgents" but the US invaders were merely "forces". Everyone is aware at some level of these conventions but when you criticize the use of the conventions it actual meaning of the words can be argued and justified.

While our soldiers are "fighters" yours are "animals" - you object? Well, your soldiers clearly aren't vegetables ergo I'm not wrong and therefore I am also fair and balanced. Ta - da. Behold the idiocy. My example is deliberately (and hopefully) far fetched.

Rebel, on the other hand, is a word that is clearly designed to worry the upper classes but that the lower classes feel much more ambivalent about.

But after you get past the headline which implies that the East Ukrainians are thwarting the peace efforts of the Western Ukrainian government you get into the story which even the reporter can't massage. The pro-Russian crowd at the road block were NOT the attackers. That was the other guys. And, yes, there is a picture of one of those "professional" military types at that road block. More of them can be seen here. A pretty improvised bunch for the most part.

By the way, did you see the rebels in Maiden? It wasn't all peace and love, was it. That got pretty violent and the crowd had and used firearms. Twenty five people died on this day (and 7 of them were police). And when the Eastern Ukrainians turned back the Ukrainian army no-one died and they didn't use molotovs to set fire to armoured vehicles like they did in Kiev. They just talked the soldiers out of their weapons.

Oh, here are some more of those crack "Pro-Russian" brigades.

But are all the protesters in the east really Pro-Russian Putinistas? Some are but many just want more autonomy and better representation. The Maiden guys occupy government buildings - GOOD. The East Ukrainians do it - BAD!! Not propaganda, of course, just arbitrary moral judgements that coincidentally happen to line up with our political needs.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
The headline implies that the East Ukraine broke the Easter truce ... BY GETTING SHOT AT!!! Just badly worded?
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Just to be clear, I stopped reading here. East Ukraine wasn't shot at. Some guys IN East Ukraine were shot at but we can only guess who. It could have been other residents of East Ukraine that did it. The article was referring to the location not the perpetrators or the victims. Maybe you need to learn to read.
 
Here's a great little video of Russian military detachment 0990, pro-Russian militants, anti-fascist freedom loving Ukrainians taking over Ukrainian facilities and converting them to Russian ones.


Also, those good with dates will note that this all happened well before the fair and free referendum.

Of course the obvious explanation for all this is that the Russian who recorded all this and then posted it are all just CIA provocateurs. And this should be obvious because it was after all posted on the internet, which itself is a CIA project (so says Putin, so it must be true).
 
Russians already issued medals to the Crimean heroes:
1398419124081.cached.jpg


“For the return of Crimea 20.02.14 - 03.18.14.”

Interesting dates. Feb 20th is when security forces were officially authorized to use live amo and around 80 protesters died shortly after and all well before the Crimea situation. Hmmm... Interesting, interesting....
 
Glaucus said:
Just to be clear, I stopped reading here. East Ukraine wasn't shot at. Some guys IN East Ukraine were shot at but we can only guess who. It could have been other residents of East Ukraine that did it. The article was referring to the location not the perpetrators or the victims. Maybe you need to learn to read.
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I read fine. I also understand what I read. I also understand viewpoint and subtext. I also understand PR and spin. The spin is clear. The headline was there to leave the impression in the sloppy reader that East Ukraine was violating a truce. It was written to leave the impression that East Ukraine is the aggressor.
Also, it is quite often the case that the story writer is not the author of the headline.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
NATO isn't just accidentally moving east.
http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/03/11/wikileaks-nato-crisis-in-the-ukraine/

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:rolleyes: No, they are not "accidentally" moving east

The US wants bases to surround Iran, and access to bases closer to Afghanistan and Pakistan, many former Soviet block countries want closer US/NATO ties, they have bad and recent memories of the Russian bear, the Baltic states are begging to join NATO

Since the breakup of the USSR, Russia was considered a country who could be worked with over shared interests rather than as an adversary, hence Russia was added as a member of the G7 to make it the G8

That article is a fine example of using verisimilitude in propaganda
 
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There's more to it than NATO simply expanding and trying to encircle Russia. Those former Soviet nations want to distance themselves from Russia and with good reason. NATO is the only real way to do it. Ukraine was stupid to give up it's nuclear weapons, now it's only chance to permanently distance itself from Russia is NATO. The irony is that the current maneuvers by Russia is likely to greatly accelerate NATO expansion. Putin screwed up.
 
Glaucus said:
Putin screwed up.
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Like Saddam screwed up. Yeah, we weren't gonna take Ukraine but by complaining about us taking it he's forced us to take it. Mmm hmm.

Say, how do you feel about an unelected government taking on a debt contract with the IMF that enforces austerity that the people won't be able to get out of even if they vote in a government that's against it? Think that's a power an unelected government should have?
 
... unelected government taking on a debt contract with the IMF that enforces austerity that the people won't be able to get out of even if they vote in a government that's against it..
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A major factor in the story that is barely mentioned in the news here.
 
... unelected government taking on a debt contract with the IMF that enforces austerity that the people won't be able to get out of even if they vote in a government that's against it..
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Robert said:
A major factor in the story that is barely mentioned in the news here.
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As a member of the EU, you should be used to unelected officials telling you what you can or cannot do
 
Robert said:
A major factor in the story that is barely mentioned in the news here.
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But they are elected. Ukraine has a parliament system which allows for things like coalition governments. Coalition governments are totally legitimate. Fluffy seems to agree with Stephen Harper that coalition governments are not elected by the people, but I'm pretty sure both of them know that's total BS. In Ukraine the interim government is made of MPs that were elected at the last election. A new coalition was formed that outnumbers the old ruling party, Party of Regions. But what I find interesting is that when parliament voted on the candidacy of Arseniy Yatsenyuk 94 members of Party of Regions voted for him, bringing the total votes to 371. So we're not talking about a government appointed by street thugs here, these were all elected officials and even the party that lost power supports the new interim leader. That's something that's not only barely mentioned by Putin apologists, it's intentionally omitted.

The other thing you need to remember is that the interim government is an interim government. They set an election date for May 25th. That doesn't give them time to do much. They're not gonna join NATO or make any long term deals with the EU or IMF. Fluffy is just a snake in the grass spreading lies and doing all he can to provide cover for Putin's expansionist projects.
 
Relations between Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1994.[1] Ukraine is as of January 2008 a candidate to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP).[2][3] On December 3, 2008 NATO decided it will work out an Annual National Programme of providing assistance to Ukraine to implement reforms required to accede the alliance without referring to MAP.[4] Plans for Ukrainian membership to NATO were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych was elected President.[5] President Yanukovych opted to keep Ukraine a non-aligned state
 
No sign of this easing up anytime soon:
Turchynov told the governors. "The security bodies … are unable to carry out their duties of protecting citizens. They are helpless in those matters. Moreover, some of those units are either helping or co-operating with terrorist organisations."

The unwillingness of security structures to defend public buildings from separatist occupation has been a theme in eastern Ukraine since early April.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/ukraine-forces-helpless-stop-pro-russia-takeover-east
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Relations between Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1994.[1] Ukraine is as of January 2008 a candidate to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP).[2][3] On December 3, 2008 NATO decided it will work out an Annual National Programme of providing assistance to Ukraine to implement reforms required to accede the alliance without referring to MAP.[4] Plans for Ukrainian membership to NATO were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych was elected President.[5] President Yanukovych opted to keep Ukraine a non-aligned state
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You somehow managed to make a post that's mostly factual. You did however miss the part about the current interim government declaring that Ukraine will not join NATO any time soon despite that recent opinion polls show Ukrainians have a new interest in joining NATO - the highest it ever has.
 
Glaucus said:
But they are elected.
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The individuals in question are.
However, the elected leader of the country was ousted by them contrary to their own constitution. That is to say, illegally.
 
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