ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Re domino theory, annexation of territory isn't the major issue but this sends out a huge message to countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, etc with big Russian populations that nationalist governments should not fuck with the interests of citizens aligned with Russia. France kind of takes a similar, albeit more focused and arguably justifiable, position on military action when non-resident French are threatened. Estonia is psychologically a big deal for Russia. It wasn't in a position at the time to stop, idk, 250,000 or so, Russians from being marginalised, often to the point of disenfranchisement, by a nationalist government. That boat had sailed but they don't want it to happen elsewhere.

Milne is a clown and one of the factors that has made the Guardian coverage so shambolic. Rather than striving for actual balance in its news coverage, 'balance' is achieved by getting him to write stupid contrarian articles taking the opposite position to everyone else.

his continued employment is kinda baffling, kinda disgraceful

my partner checks in with naked capitalism sometimes. they have always been a mix of the good and the terrible, but she pointed me to some recent pieces that were rather astonishing putin apologetics.

Milne also writes a lot of the unsigned editorials (or at least he used to).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wfkEBybHV5s/Uxem5m5dDoI/AAAAAAAAARs/dVCx8jNKei0/s1600/001.png

Yeah, been kind of disappointed by how quickly some people have returned to the position of reactionary Russian nationalism. I suppose that stuff has always just been under the surface, though.

A lot of people will automatically take the position that anything and everything the US government thinks is wrong and anyone defying its will must be on to a good thing. Milne is one and should be ignored.

On the other hand, I have seen a lot of liberals and leftists who wouldn't have known Simferopol from Calpol two weeks ago acting like armchair generals and accusing anyone who doesn't think military action against Russia should be on the table of appeasing fascism.

With any dispute, if a lot of people feel they aren't getting the full story (heavily slanted news articles, little scrutiny of actors on 'side' of Western powers, little engagement with complexities of situation, etc) there is a tendency to create a theory that it's all a sham and the real truth must run counter to the official position.

This is why I have had such a problem with so much of the reporting on Russia in the Putin era. If you constantly print rumours, half-truths and slanted narratives you damage by association the credibility of the critics who are more accurate, more focused and more honest about the government's many failings and problems. Luke Harding does more harm to the British left's support of Russian / Ukrainian opposition groups than Milne could ever hope to.

Excellent points.

We can all thank George W Bush for such great statesmen like Bashar al Asad and Putin invoking terrorism any time they want to run off and do some flagrant violent shit.

Gavrilo Princip to thread.

http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-love-gavrilo-princip.png

GMiL is invaluable in times of international crisis

“The Finance Ministry has prepared a plan for optimizing budget expenditures, which implies budget sequestration is to be in force before the end of March. For this purpose, in particular, it has been proposed to reduce capital costs, eliminate tax schemes and preferences and to cut social benefits, for example, 50 percent of pensions to working pensioners,” Kommersant-Ukraine reported.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy reported on December 1, 2013, that an average pension in Ukraine is $160.

If true, this won't go down well. The IMF austerity measures are also likely to include jacking up gas and electricity bills. A deeply unpopular government and a discredited opposition might open things up for new parties over the next few years.

yurp

If Putin Is New Hitler, Then Monkey Became Of The Man?

lol

for an old guard left view of what's happening, i'm producing my egyptian marxist buddy's live chat rn: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/occupydclive/2014/03/12/bulletpoints-wnavid-nasr-3-12-14

Looks like the US/EU are getting serious about sanctions if the referendum vote goes through:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/russia-said-to-get-ready-for-iran-style-sanctions-in-worst-case.html

Might get some targeted visa bans but I can not see full-scale sanctions happening. Russia is much more integrated into the global economy than Iran and I doubt there is much appetite to push it towards isolationism. Also gas / coal issue.

I found it interesting that the Bloomberg article mentions the Russian government asking billionaires and large companies to see who was vulnerable to margin calls.

Some sanctions seem unavoidable, whether or not they escalate from there would depend on the Russian response. Who so far has been overreacting. So I can clearly see a series of escalating sanctions being imposed. Which would be far more damaging to Russia. And then Ukraine afterwards, probably, and sadly.

so crimea voted for secession, unsurprisingly.

i couldn't figure out where else to post this article but since we were discussing obama, russia + o's foreign policy in this thread i figure this is a good place for it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/obamas-policy-is-put-to-the-test-as-crises-challenge-caution.html

Apparantly 123% of the voters in Sevastopol voted for secession. I mean, faced with such an overwhelming desire to be part of Russia, who would not allow that?

I was kinda thinking this all might be for the best. Let the majority Russian Crimea join Russia and the rest of Ukraine will probably have an easier time bonding with the EU?

Well, that would be good, but how many people expect Putin to stop now?

Most of Eastern Ukraine is majority Russian and they could be next to push for secession. With them would go almost all the country's industry.

That said, there have been theories floated that the Kyiv government wouldn't be too fussed about Crimea going because it means hundreds of thousands of opposition voters becoming ineligible.

Crimea's resource-poor, dry and windswept, dependent on mainland Ukraine. Russia's going to have to provide a lot, so why not take more territory? They've already seized a power plant just over the line
[Removed Illegal Link]

Jeez, formatting. Okay, so they've taken this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/russian-troops-seize-gas-plant-beyond-crimean-border-ukraine-says.html

Witn plenty more where that came from, massing in different regions along the border:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/europe/crimea-ukraine-secession-vote-referendum.html

Jesus, SV is still talking as if this was a real choice by the people of Crimea. Wow. Have you ever actually spoken to a Russian-speaking Ukrainian about this stuff?

yeah framing this as 'self-determination' in any real sense is very flawed imo.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-signs-pointed-to-crimea-independence-vote-but-polls-didnt/

Jesus, SV is still talking as if this was a real choice by the people of Crimea. Wow. Have you ever actually spoken to a Russian-speaking Ukrainian about this stuff?

Is there some sort of reason your weirdly personal attacks on his posts have been so overlooked by the mods? I mean, I could always fp, but I'm ~genuinely curious~.

nothing wrong with the 'both of the above' approach imo

Speaking of weirdly personal, "gyac", that's a pretty nice first ILX post.

welcome to ILX, gyac

gyac wrote this on thread The Smiths - Meat Is Murder poll on board I Love Music on Mar 16, 2011

I'd rank it:

Strangeways
Queen is Dead
Meat is Murder
The Smiths

myself.

The debut suffers from poor production but a lot of the stuff on there sounds better in the live recordings. Reel Around the Fountain and I Don't Owe You Anything are the only real duds and even so, they were still Smiths songs.

welcome aboard, gyac. always good to see new faces around here.

TWU i kinda admire yr own personal style of maximum abrasion to all available peronsages but doesn;t it get somewhat tiring at all at all

It's more tiring to read a million OTMs to SV's oddly Chamberlainesque posts (in which he has consistently predicted reasonable behavior from Putin that has consistently failed to happen) then to post "WTF?" about it.

well if you've worked out the difference in joules i'm not gonna question it, carry on by all means

But yes, saying that someone who is talking about that phony referendum as if it were not phony is "talking as if there was a real choice by the people of Crimea" and questioning whether this opinion was based on any input from ethnic Russians with Ukrainian passports is clearly outside the bounds of civilized conversation and I should be ashamed of myself. I am worse than Hitler.

Jesus, SV is still talking as if this was a real choice by the people of Crimea. Wow. Have you ever actually spoken to a Russian-speaking Ukrainian about this stuff?

Curious as to whether you have actually spent any time in Ukraine. Pretending the poll wasn't flawed is stupid. Pretending that a substantial number of Crimeans haven't always wanted to unite with Russia, even before the government 85% of them voted for was removed from office, is stupid. I am doing neither.

The poll was more than merely flawed, and a "substantial number" doesn't mean an overwhelming majority. You know that, right?

"any time in Ukraine" -- a couple of days, fairly recently, but no more than that. Cancelled a business trip set for two weeks ago.

don't engage honestly and rationally w/ evil lunatics sv, you come off like neville chamberlain

interesting 538 piece on polling in crimea - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-signs-pointed-to-crimea-independence-vote-but-polls-didnt/

Interesting article, balls, where did you find it?

Why does it matter if the majority is 'overwhelming'?

The propaganda was certainly a factor. TV channels spent a huge amount of time playing up the far right links of the government and reminding people of the atrocities committed under Bandera. 40% of Crimeans thinking Ukraine and Russia should merge sounds feasible. You would expect more to think that Crimea alone should join Russia and more still now that an almost universally hated political leadership has taken power from a broadly popular one. That almost certainly wouldn't add up to 90+% but it forms a body of opinion that can't be handwaved away.

Obviously this is only anecdotal but of the Crimean interviews I've heard (mostly on BBC + Al-J) since the referendum, supporter interviews (who, for i guess obvious reasons*, outnumber referendum detractors in interviews like 3:1) are super outspoken + enthusiastic. One particularly memorable interviewee said that he identifies as Russian - not because of any affinity to the political entity, but because he identifies so strongly with Russian literature. I could def relate. Of non-supporters, they almost to a man explained that they refrained from voting because they thought it wouldn't matter. Some insinuated this was because the vote was stacked, but others said plainly that they could just tell which way the population was trending and it wasn't worth getting involved.

(*sorry, obvious reasons being that ppl who didn't support the referendum obv have plenty of good safety reasons to keep their mouths shut and not do interviews atm imo)