Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sergarr]

Maybe Jews killed his family.

Let's not go there.

[olemars]

Latest is that Russia is test-launching ICBM's in a completely non-threatening manner.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Latest is that Russia is test-launching ICBM's in a completely non-threatening manner.

It was planned!

[timferius]

No no, it is Tuesday, everyone knows you MUST test fire your ICBMs every Tuesday. What threat? We are not arguing, we are discussing.

[ChairmanPoo]

Latest is that Russia is test-launching ICBM's in a completely non-threatening manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wga5A6R9BJg
This one is better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I lol'd

[Bouchart]

Even better.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

http://forward.com/articles/193766/ukraine-chief-rabbi-accuses-russia-of-anti-semitic/

This rabbi seems a little bit confused..

No, that's just you. 

[burningpet]

When people accuse "the Nationalists" in Ukraine of being anti-Semitic:

On April 5, 2009, Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his candidacy for President of Ukraine in the next presidential election. During the election campaign fellow candidate Serhiy Ratushniak repeatedly insulted Yatsenyuk because of his alleged Jewish roots, among others Ratushniak called Yatsenyuk an "impudent little Jew" who was "successfully serving the thieves who are in power in Ukraine and is using criminal money to plough ahead towards Ukraine's presidency"

Following his nomination Ratushniak told a local paper that the Jews were to blame for all his country's troubles. Ratushnyak has also called Yatsenyuk "a nasty Jew mason" and an "impudent little Jew" who was "successfully serving the thieves who are in power in Ukraine and is using criminal money to plough ahead towards Ukraine's presidency". The mayor told the Associated Press in a telephone interview: "Is everybody obliged to love Jews and Israel? If I don't like Jews and Israel, does that make me an anti-Semite?".

Yatsenyuk is the Prime Minister of Ukraine, one of the country's national leaders and among the main figureheads of the "Nationalist coup", thus he's presumably among those you're leveling your attacks at. Ratushniak on the other hand is an independent politician who has been a member of many parties, including Yanukovych's Party of Regions.

Not sure what you are saying here. no one said ALL of the ukrainians are neo-nazis, far from it, i also believe the initial protests were justified, as people in a democracy have the right to voice their opinion, but, i dont see how that contradicts anything i said so far? the ukraine government has, at least ex neo-nazi elements in it, the most effective revolution group has neo-nazi elements in it. those are not conspiracy theories, those are hard facts, self admitted facts.

I mean, run me through the scenario of a party that establishes itself around neo-nazi ideology, rhetoric and imagery then later changes itself to be more moderate. what is the process? self enlightment of all of the leading figures? sudden realization that, well, maybe the jews aint so bad after all? what can cause someone that believed in his cause so much, that he publicly announced to the world "I Am a Neo-Nazi" (because joining an openly admitted neo-nazi, makes you a neo-nazi right? you support their stances by joining the party), to suddenly turn and say, we are mere nationalists?

Regarding that rabbi and his confusion:

When a rabbi announce that "russian soldiers dressed up as ukrainians neo-nazis to cause provocations and putin=hitler", well, that's a very convinient conspiracy theory and lets just say that we could use some better sources to determine our facts.

Also, when he is being questioned with the facts that the new government now has far-right allegedly ex neo-nazis in it, he just responds with basically - "Yes, but they told me everything would be ok".

All of this is a bit, well, questionable, when the next paragraph details how he started a fund to enable better security measures. because, you know, an obvious reaction of feeling safe is to ensure safety measures. and you don't ask for security measures to protect your community from the russian army.

Beside, soviet jews never liked the religion oppressing soviet union. that's why we have around 1M ex-russian jews here, whom, from my experience, are not really looking at mother russia with a rose tainted glasses to say the least.

Let me just stress again that a lot of jews actually supported hitler during his early years. hitler himself started with a policy of basically transferring jews to israel until he realized that maybe a jewish state is not the best thing for antisemitics, so a jewish support for the new Ukrainian government is not an indication of anything. and the fact there are honest to good people in that government are also not an indication of anything.

the violent streets decided the fate of Ukraine, not a skewed vote, lets not forget that.

[XXSockXX]

-snip-

It's understandable that Jews are more concerned with the current situation than other people. There is anti-semitism in Ukraine, like in many other places of the world. Yes, some of what the rabbi is saying sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but the other side employs these as well in portraying the revolution as fascist. It's important to stress that the protesters for the most part (this includes many Ukrainian Jews too) have nothing in common with the far-righters that were taking part in the protests.
As for far-righters in the current government, that is only a provisional government, a temporal compromise, that should soon be replaced by elections. If there is less of an nationalist vs pro-Russian atmosphere in Ukraine, these parties will get a lot less attention. A lot of what makes them attractive now is that they appear as the least compromising fighters for the cause of the revolution. If the revolution is over, voters will look more for competence than radicalism. Before the revolution, far-righters did not fare much better than in some other European countries, the more stable the situation, the less influence they will have.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I like how the only threats to synagogues have come from Putin's occupied Crimea, but don't tell that to the ideologues.

[misko27]

So, on a more, analytical note, the news from FreedomLand:

I've noticed two broad narratives in the US about Putin, what he wants, why he invades, and what can solve the crisis (well sorta). They are broad yet coherent, and have both negative and positive things to say about Putin (though it leans negative, shockingly). Here is a bit of my armchair analysis (the only way to analyze news).

I've euphemistically divided these into "Putin the Wolf", and "Putin the Bear". Remember, these aren't value judgments (although they do lend themselves to them), this is just me describing what they see.

Spoiler: Putin the Wolf (click to show/hide)

This theory is based overwhelmingly on a rejection of Putin's justifications, and has him as a cynical, calculating opportunist who is more concerned with what he can do for Russia then events in Ukraine. In this version, he loses Ukraine; but, determined to carve something out of his unexpected failure, he takes advantage of Pro-Russian sentiment to launch a coordinated attack aimed at ensuring his influence; whether it be over all of Ukraine, the Eastern part, or only Crimea, and whether it be through mere influence to outright annexation. Even if he loses the west, this Putin can still be satisfied with Crimea.

Here, he is not monolithically concerned on Ukraine in and of itself, but wants it as part of his efforts to strengthen Russia, and himself. Under this narrative, he is taking advantage of the inherent slowness of western governments to blindside them and leave them one step behind, allowing him to weather their counter-measures. The positive aspect of this is that his realism means he has more then once concern; if Ukraine turned out to be too costly, through diplomatic, economic, militarily, etc, he would be moved to de-escalate, if it wasn't already his plan. The negative aspect is this Putin is cunning, and has an advantage in any engagements whether diplomatic or otherwise.

An interesting side-note: There are two sub-narratives to this, regarding blame for diminishing the costs Putin see in intervention vs. the benefits. One (preferred by Republicans) has Obama's weak leadership to blame; the US disengaging from the world, especially in places like Syria, let Putin think he could act with impunity, and imagines the US ceding diplomatic room to Putin. The second blames the EU; faulting their timidity and poor negotiating for causing the crisis in the first place, and highlights their economic dependence (esp. Germany, which indeed is the most diplomatic to Russia of the EU nations) as the reason Putin does not fear economic backlash (the US, which has already started sanctions, and continues planning actions against individuals and the state, trades much less with Russia, and has less bite).

Spoiler: Putin the Bear (click to show/hide)

This narrative is more interesting: it takes Russian justification at more or less face value, but links it to Putin's dreams of Russia's glorious return to dominance and a special place in World Politics. It takes it's cue from Putin's famous remarks on the old Soviet Union:

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

Putin is here motivated not by blind cost-benefit analysis, but more like a romantic longing for the old power that Russia held for so many years. Often, this is linked more to the 19th century then the 20th; to the sort of glorious imperium once ruled by the czars of old. Here, Putin saw he was losing Ukraine, the kindred people to his Russia, to the west which has scorned Russia so.

This Putin is more irrational, more devoted, and less movable. He will not under any circumstance disengage from Ukraine totally; the costs to him would be too great. The barest minimum would be strong influence over the new government, but he would likely want to settle for much more. Here, invading the east of Ukraine or annexing Crimea are far, far more likely, and even the whole of Ukraine is not impossible. Economic sanctions and diplomacy are almost irrelevant unless he thinks he will win enough, and he doesn't. The idea of Russians, ethnic Russians, the people he governs, would be taken by the corrupt west is too much. He will not let the west win here, so close to home; how could he imagine himself the leader of a new Russia if he can't even keep Ukraine under his wing? Letting Russian people turn their back on him, he won't let it.

The positive aspects is this Russia will concede to anything as long as protects it's bases, is far less happy about alienating the rest of Ukraine, and more likely in the long term to fail (sorry pro-putininites, but it's true). The negative aspect is he is more likely to attack, more likely to conquer, and more likely to disregard the west

Anyway,the US government is disorganizedly planning all sorts of measures, with Obama organizing sanctions against Russian individuals, and Congress scrambling to press sanctions against Russia itself and others, possibly through an expansion of the Magnitsky Act, which froze assets of Russians involved with human rights violations, and by aiding Ukraine directly, through loan guarantees and direct aid and such things.

[burningpet]

Are you sure? from what i understand, Svoboda was only gaining power.

I want to stress out another important personal belief of mine: I do not think we will see concentration camps in Ukraine. nor any government officially support systematically persucations of jews in Ukraine, not now, not in the next 10 years.

I believe there are good people in Ukraine, and the times have changed such as that israel's influence is too strong for other, small-to-medium powers to employ such actions, if anything and ironically, now days it is only russia that could maybe actually get away with something similar.

BUT, and that but is very important, there is a pretty steep rise in anti-immigrants, anti-semitics, very close to being neo-nazis, powers all through out europe. looking at places like greece, france, hungary, and with italy and spain slowly joining them, ignoring it is taking the role of an ostrich and sticking your head in the ground.

If the west continue to look the other way, Ukraine and such countries would become greece. perhaps Ukraine have already became greece and you could try and justify it however you like, deflect it, try to blame other sides, bring all sort of bizzare rabbis that are saying otherwise but acting so, hell, even personally attack me for stating so, but the hard facts remain, those movements were powerful enough to dictate actions to a government AND to its opposition.

Also, i am not really thinking putin has set out to stop those forces, he is merely using them for his personal propaganda, but i also think everyone here should adopt a more critical and emotional free perspective on the west.

[PanH]

BUT, and that but is very important, there is a pretty steep rise in anti-immigrants, anti-semitics, very close to being neo-nazis, powers all through out europe. looking at places like greece, france, hungary, and with italy and spain slowly joining them, ignoring it is taking the role of an ostrich and sticking your head in the ground.

Ironically, I'm pretty sure far right movements are stronger in France and the like than in Ukraine.

[GlyphGryph]

For those complaining, still, about the new Ukrainian government and it's "fascist Neo-nazi's", is that the pro-Russia groups are pretty much just as fascist, they are just anti-Nazi fascists (but otherwise seem to hold the same beliefs as Nazis). This... isn't actually an improvement, and there seems to be plenty on both sides of the aisle as well as in the previous government as well.

Some choice quotes:

Outside the Belbek airbase, an aggressive self-defence group said they were there to defend the base against “Kiev fascists”, but also railed against Europe, “full of repulsive gays and Muslims”.

“What you foreigners don’t get is that those people in Maidan, they are fascists,” said Alexander, a Simferopol resident drinking at a bar in the city on Monday night. “I mean, I am all for the superiority of the white race, and all that stuff, but I don’t like fascists.”

I still haven't seen any evidence that the revolution was a win for the fascists/supremicists/racists/antisemetics in general, at all. Certain groups of them supported the revolution, other groups opposed, but it seems like the revolution leadership are NOT particularly fascist, any more than the previous government was, and that fascism and fighting it is a problem Ukraine will need to deal with no matter WHAT happens and no matter who wins.