People just slaughter sometimes:
I haven’t posted anything on the situation in the Ukraine because, well, I have nothing to post. We all know the situation. Putin’s fighting a proxy war against the CIA-installed government in Kiev.
This is like an alternative reality that “we all” claim to know about but of which I’m completely unaware. I don’t think it was possible to follow the elections in Ukraine more closely than I did, and I haven’t even seen anybody claim that the elections were anything but transparent, democratic, honest, and clean. And now this strange person is claiming that “we all know” about “the CIA-installed government in Kiev.” What does that even mean?
It is beyond bizarre that somebody who is so ignorant about Ukraine that he uses the outdated and offensive “the Ukraine” (I suspect he also stresses the first syllable when he says it, “the YOUUUU-kraine”) would make these “as we all know” pronouncements.
If you continue reading the linked post, you will see that it become even more bizarre as it goes on.
It isn’t just ignorance that bugs me but also how self-satisfied and smug it is. “I have nothing to say, so I will just offend an entire huge country that is being ravaged at this very moment because that’s a fun ting to do.” What a nasty, shameless, disgusting thing to do.
Clarissa's Blog 
Hyperbole much? If that is the “most bizarre post” that you have ever read, you must lead a sheltered life.
Tux is a damn smart guy with plenty of useful information to share if you had bothered to really check out the site before popping in with your pettiness
also, from the comments at another great website –
Q. Shtik permalink
July 29, 2014
Stirling said: “this is different from [the Ukraine] which is playing it out rather quickly….”
Seriously Stir, why do you persist in saying “the” Ukraine? I have informed this blog several times in a polite manner (and provided authoritative support) that the grammatically correct term is simply “Ukraine.” Perhaps you missed my several comments on this subject?
Everythings Jake permalink
July 30, 2014
@ Q. Shtik
One of the persons who comments here is recovering from a rather serious stroke, and yet your contribution to the conversation is both offensive and pales in comparison. What kind of self-involved, utterly unaware prig comes to a rare site like this, a miraculous oasis of sober, clear-eyed compassionate analysis, and fusses relentlessly about the imperfections of syntax in the Comments section? Here’s a purposeful use of punctuation for you: bleat, scoot and leave.
Pumpkin, if you don’t like the site Tux has put up, then bleat, scoot and leave.
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Have you seen a doctor for your mental issues? Please do and as soon as possible.
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This makes no sense – did you even read your comment before posting?
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It means the over throw of an legally elected president using force, is illegal. it does not matter that they had an election after violently overthrowing a recently elected President is going to make the opposition resort to arms. They have seen it worked once. They are just trying to emulate the westerns backed government.
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“Trying to emulate” is not the same as having a “CIA-imposed government.” But this is obviously too complex for you to understand.
And nobody in Ukraine is fighting to bring Yanukovich back. The whole idea is beyond ridiculous.
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That overthrow was accomplished by Ukrainians. Yanukovych was removed from office by the parliament (constitutionally?). His own party strongly condemned him. (Hmmm. The CIA managed to get to everyone. ???) He then ran and hid behind Putin’s skirts — leaving his solid gold toilet behind. His ouster was a Ukrainian affair. Putin’s actions to save all those “desperate Russian speaking Ukrainians” constitutes an invasion of a sovereign nation. A nation whose borders and sovereign status were agreed upon by Russia just 20 years ago in the Budapest Memorandum.
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“That overthrow was accomplished by Ukrainians. Yanukovych was removed from office by the parliament (constitutionally?). His own party strongly condemned him. (Hmmm. The CIA managed to get to everyone. ???) He then ran and hid behind Putin’s skirts — leaving his solid gold toilet behind. His ouster was a Ukrainian affair. Putin’s actions to save all those “desperate Russian speaking Ukrainians” constitutes an invasion of a sovereign nation. A nation whose borders and sovereign status were agreed upon by Russia just 20 years ago in the Budapest Memorandum.”
– THANK YOU. I was started to think that reason was nowhere to be found on this planet.
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Uhm, you may have missed a slight revolution back in February that the CIA had a hand in assisting? As for the elections, the outcome was predictable the moment snap elections were scheduled, because snap elections favor the person who knows six months in advance that the snap elections are going to happen. (Take that as you will, I will not further explicate).
There’s more ways to rig an election than outright ballot box fraud. We’re experts at rigging elections here in the US so that the “right” person wins, and usually it does not require outright ballot box fraud, Box 13 excepted (Box 13 sent future President Lyndon B. Johnston to the US Senate). Perhaps knowing the many ways to rig elections colors my views but I consider notions that an election is “fair and free” simply because it lacks outright ballot box fraud to be amusing naive. The US House of Representatives is perfect proof that ballot box fraud is not necessary in order to rig elections. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well. What did I say about naive?
In any event, the people the Russians are backing are quite nasty characters from what I’ve been seeing. All in all, it’s a bad situation but not one I have solutions for from the other side of a big pond. There is a limited number of things that can be done when one side of a conflict has nuclear weapons and controls the winter heat for half a continent. So spending time on a well researched article on the current situation in the Ukraine is not going to happen on my blog. (And yes, I put the definite article in there just to annoy you, okay, I can be childish sometimes too 😉 ).
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“Uhm, you may have missed a slight revolution back in February that the CIA had a hand in assisting? As for the elections, the outcome was predictable the moment snap elections were scheduled, because snap elections favor the person who knows six months in advance that the snap elections are going to happen.”
– People in Ukraine have died to defend their right to self-respect. It’s OK not to know about that. It is also OK not to care. But it is not OK to piss on their memory by spreading this ridiculous libel.
“There’s more ways to rig an election than outright ballot box fraud. We’re experts at rigging elections here in the US so that the “right” person wins, and usually it does not require outright ballot box fraud, Box 13 excepted (Box 13 sent future President Lyndon B. Johnston to the US Senate).”
– I don’t care about the stupid US or your stupid projections about it. I am angered by your presumption that you can speak about issues you neither know about nor understand.
‘All in all, it’s a bad situation but not one I have solutions for from the other side of a big pond.”
– Then maybe you can stop making offensive uninformed statements. I have family members in the war zone right now. And it’s extremely painful to see well-fed, bored Americans blab stupidly without even making an effort to inform themselves.
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And I have to say, the most obnoxious thing about Americans is their pathological need to make everything about themselves.
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Such amusing naivette! I remember being that young and naive. I think.
What’s happening in Ukraine right now is a proxy war between the major powers of Western Europe and Russia. The only “self determination” involved is whether Ukraine shall become basically a vassal of France and Germany, or whether it will become a vassal of Russia. Either way, Ukraine is f**ked. Just ask the Greeks about that.
But you go on believing all those patriotic things yada yada, dear. I’m sure it makes you feel better. I must admit that patriotic propaganda is very effective propaganda. Why, people often even actually believe it. Imagine that!
Meanwhile what’s happening on the ground is far less amusing, and I shall not comment on details of that other than to point out the obvious — what’s happening is a moral tragedy. Disagreements should never turn into shooting, because bullets do not respect boundaries, they kill without querying age or gender or whether the person being killed is the person who was being aimed at in the first place.
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“Such amusing naivette! I remember being that young and naive. I think.”
– Please list the sources in Ukrainian and Russian you consult to acquire your understanding of what is happening in the region.
“What’s happening in Ukraine right now is a proxy war between the major powers of Western Europe and Russia.”
– You are a very uneducated, intellectually limited person. Which was obvious from your spelling of the word “naïveté.”
“But you go on believing all those patriotic things yada yada, dear. I’m sure it makes you feel better. ”
– You are projecting. That’s boring.
“Disagreements should never turn into shooting, because bullets do not respect boundaries, they kill without querying age or gender or whether the person being killed is the person who was being aimed at in the first place.”
– If you are older than 11, you should be ashamed of being so intellectually limited. have you tried reading books? Any books? It’s embarrassing to write such things.
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I found out yesterday that the biggest bookstore in Montreal is shutting down. People care less about reading and informing themselves because it is so much easier to go online, read a couple of dumb ass articles and spew the garbage onto social media. I rarely encounter these ignorant folks in real life but can hardly look anywhere online without coming across the bullshit they spread. Ugh.
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“I found out yesterday that the biggest bookstore in Montreal is shutting down.”
– Oh God, is it?????? This is so so sad. I’m really sad now.
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Guess what store is taking its place.
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I’m taken by the phrase: “… Europe freezes this winter as Russia turns their gas off and starts sending it to China instead over that brand shiny new gas pipeline they just ran to China.” How facile. How glib. China and Russia recently came to an agreement for gas. China will pay about 2/3 of the price paid by the EU now– not much over break even for Russia. There is no pipeline for gas to China. Russia has to build a $55 billion pipeline — China will contribute $20 billion. The pipeline will be completed in 2018 at the earliest. The gas will come from fields in eastern Russia. Gas currently exported to the EU comes from fields in western Russia. As they are a long distance from each other, it seems that western energy will not be going to China any time soon. If ever. It’s true that Russia can turn off the energy exports to the EU. The EU would be hurt. At that point Russia would be crippled; over 50% of their annual budget depends on revenue from those exports. Russia has no significant manufacturing base. They are at least as reliant on the EU for manufactured goods as the EU is reliant on them for energy. Also, Russia imports a large quantity of food from EU countries. (Note: Russia spanked Poland by embargoing Poland’s apples. Poland grows a lot of apples.) Russia can’t eat its gas and oil. It can’t drive it. It can’t watch it. It can’t even cut its lawn with it. About all it can do is export the excess. Everyone’s favorite rasPUTIN has controlled post Soviet Russia for most of its existence. His rush to economic power concentrated solely on energy development and export. Much of that development depended on EU engineering and manufacturing. His neglect of the development of a manufacturing base and an expansion of Russia’s agricultural capabilities has much to do with his current dilemma. He can’t engage in an economic war when the west has so many more weapons.
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I was being rather flippant, of course. I was writing a paragraph, not an essay. In reality the situation is less in favor of the West than you posit. The situation is basically one of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Western Europe can make Russia very uncomfortable. Russia can make Western Europe very uncomfortable. Thus why the two power blocs are resorting to a proxy war in Ukraine instead. Western Europe is betting that they can make life uncomfortable enough for Russia without Russia retaliating to change Russia’s behavior. Right now it’s a winning bet, but note that dictatorships have more latitude than democracies in how much suffering their people will take before turning out the government. That is a factor that Germany’s calculations (Germany is the main driver of this policy) need to take into account.
Yes, Putin is a dictator in all but name. He has his own Nazi-style brownshirts who enforce orthodoxy in the press and in the public discourse, he has his own religious zealots who push for religious puritanism (thus why this sex toy causes me to laugh especially the expression on President Prude-in’s face), he has his own racist zealots who push for racial purity, he has the whole package. Due to his control of the media, which allows him to craft the reality that his people see in a way much more sophisticated than the clumsy propaganda media of Soviet times, he likely would win a free and fair election if one were ever held. Of course one has never been held during his leadership of Russia but that’s more reflex than necessity on Putin’s part (he fixes elections via blatant fraud because it’s expected of him, not because he needs to do so in order to get elected).
Remember what I said about elections being able to be fixed without resort to direct ballot box fraud? I was thinking of Russia as much as Florida. Of course, Putin’s people learned their tricks from Americans back during the Boris Yeltsin regime, when many Americans went to Russia to teach them American-style democracy. Putin’s people learned well.
Finally, regarding sources of information, I know a couple of ex-spooks (NSA/ASD) who were on the Soviet beat / former Soviet beat back in the day from the 1970’s up until 1995 or so and who still get the native-language publications. They are an interesting source of information about what perception Putin’s people wish to convey (since you will not learn the truth by reading nationalist native-language publications, all of which are heavily propagandized, they will occasionally guffaw when reading a piece, but they point out that reading between the lines at what is *not* reported you can sometimes learn things) and they know things about the personalities involved that I would not learn elsewhere. But learning the reality about what’s happening on the ground in Eastern Europe, I generally rely on the British and Australian press because they have no pieces in the game. National press lacks the ability to view situations affecting their nation from a dispassionate factual point of view because they are too deeply embedded in the culture, regardless of whose national press we are talking about. And the American press, of course, is by and large just awful. We have an entire “news” channel, for example, which argued in court that yes they lied but they are allowed to lie under freedom of speech and thus should not be sanctioned for lying — and the court agreed. That is the US press — so brazen that they even admit that they lie.
In any event, I have no sympathy for the thugs in eastern Ukraine who took up arms and started shooting people, and think it is absolutely insane that Putin is arming them with heavy weapons such as tanks and anti-aircraft batteries. But from a geopolitical point of view from outside the country it is clear what is happening. Putin is attempting to relive past Soviet glories (really, he’d like to put the Soviet Union back together again, he has stated as much at times), one of which was proxy conflicts between the Soviets and the West, the classic example of which was Angola. You will note that after twenty years of proxy war in Angola from 1975-1995 the country is in ruins and is one of the poorest in the world. That does not bode well for Ukraine’s future, unfortunately :(.
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Oddly, Ukraine’s future is in Ukraine’s hands. I don’t know if that future will be good or bad. But in a “free” world every sovereign nation gets to choose its own way. “Choose its own way” until they breech some international covenant or until they P O it’s citizens. And until one of the superpowers names me king ( — well not “king” ,,, umm … maybe like “THE Really Big Guy” … ) there isn’t much I can do about it.
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“Oddly, Ukraine’s future is in Ukraine’s hands. I don’t know if that future will be good or bad. ”
– Absolutely true.
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But we do not live in a free world. It is naive to believe we do. The only choice smaller powers like Ukraine have is which of the major power blocs they will be raped by. The rape itself is, alas, inevitable regardless. But I can certainly understand, given the history involved, why Ukraine would rather associate with Western Europe than with Russia. Especially with Russia dragging the name of Stepan Bandera into play as an excuse for their actions in eastern Ukraine. That might play well in Russia proper, but certainly not with Ukrainians.
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“The only choice smaller powers like Ukraine have is which of the major power blocs they will be raped by. The rape itself is, alas, inevitable regardless. ”
– In this sentence, you have communicated nothing but your own psychological hangups. Do you often have these rape fantasies? They are not unhealthy in themselves but the need to share them with others might be a sign of a problem.
“Especially with Russia dragging the name of Stepan Bandera into play as an excuse for their actions in eastern Ukraine. That might play well in Russia proper, but certainly not with Ukrainians.”
– The fixation with the long dead Bandera that I’m observing in so many people on the region is beyond weird. They are hiding in the past to avoid talking about the present.
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“Western Europe can make Russia very uncomfortable.”
– In what way???
“Finally, regarding sources of information, I know a couple of ex-spooks (NSA/ASD) who were on the Soviet beat / former Soviet beat back in the day from the 1970’s up until 1995 or so and who still get the native-language publications.”
– In Russia, this is called an “OBS” source. Meaning, “One Babushka Said.” 🙂 🙂
“I generally rely on the British and Australian press because they have no pieces in the game.”
– And this comes from a person who tells others they are naive. 🙂 Half of UK belongs to Russian bandits. As for Australia’s understanding of East Europe, I will hope this was a joke.
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So, in the west, we are not allowed to rely on the mainstream media, because they are biased or ignorant, and we are not allowed to rely on the information of just a couple of people, even if they have personal knowledge. So what does that leave us? We cannot possibly know what is going on in Ukraine. OK, I can agree to that. But then, if I can’t know what’s going on, I can’t care. Sanctions? Visa restrictions? I can’t support them. I don’t have credible information about what is going on.
And why should I believe what you say about Ukraine either? Because you have relatives there? In some posts you are distraught because your relatives are in east Ukraine, in some posts you say you have had no contact with them since you left, in other posts you tell us what they said when they were visiting (although you never explicitly say they were visiting you, or made those comments to you). And although you haven’t lived in Ukraine for years, you follow blogs of people who do. The reports of your relatives are OBS. Ukraine and Russian news sites are as biased as Western ones, bloggers in Ukraine and Russia are biased and have limited information. More OBS.
Maybe some time, maybe ten years from now, we will have an idea of what happened in Ukraine in 2014.
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“So, in the west, we are not allowed to rely on the mainstream media, because they are biased or ignorant, and we are not allowed to rely on the information of just a couple of people”
– First of all, “allowed” by whom? Who is handing these imaginary permissions to you? Anybody can rely on whatever they wish, including the OBS sources, but as adults, they should prepare to take the consequences of their choices. If one makes a choice to express oneself in public, one should accept the consequence of a possible response to that public expression.
“And why should I believe what you say about Ukraine either?”
– As somebody who detests the word “should”, I’d never tell you or anybody what they “should” do.
“Maybe some time, maybe ten years from now, we will have an idea of what happened in Ukraine in 2014.”
– And who is the “royal we” here? I already know exactly what happened. Nobody is preventing you from knowing.
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“Sanctions? Visa restrictions? I can’t support them. I don’t have credible information about what is going on.”
– I know you are better than this and don’t really believe that your ‘support’ is of any use to anybody in this situation. Even Obama’s “support” has achieved nothing.
“In some posts you are distraught because your relatives are in east Ukraine, in some posts you say you have had no contact with them since you left, in other posts you tell us what they said when they were visiting (although you never explicitly say they were visiting you, or made those comments to you).”
– The relatives keep visiting my parents. I dislike the relatives but I don’t want them to die. What is that so surprising to you? I’m sure you also don’t want every relative you lost touch with to be blown up with a bomb.
I also need to repeat, yet again, that you have a very inadequately emotional response to this particular issue which makes me sense some dishonesty here and I don’t like that.
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Is my response inadequate because it is emotional or not emotional enough?
I don’t know what you think I am being dishonest about. I am a middle aged Canadian of English and Scottish descent who has no connection to Ukraine or Russia, except that I took some Russian language courses in university a couple decades ago.
Of course most of the news I read is of no use to me whatsoever. Once every four years I can vote for the federal government, and I probably wont base my decision on the foreign policy of the parties. I might as well stick to reading the business section and grocery flyers.
Nobody is preventing me from knowing? How do I know that? How do I know what information is valid and what is fabricated?
The United States admits it fabricated evidence to justify the Iraq war.
In Pakistan, the Taliban attacked doctors who were giving children polio shots. They claimed the doctors were really CIA agents. At the time, I thought they were stupid, uneducated third world religious fanatics. It turns out they were right, the “doctors” were not doctors at all, they were CIA agents trying to get information on Osama bin Laden.
No matter how cynical I am, it seems it is not cynical enough.
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