OK, people, something really strange just happened. I read a good, intelligent article in English about Ukraine. Does it mean I’m only thinking I have waken up and this is still just a dream?
Here is an excerpt from the article:
This crisis is not about an American power play in the former Soviet Union— indeed, it often seems as if President Barack Obama privately wishes Ukraine’s democracy revolution would just fade away. This is entirely about the Ukrainian people’s decision that they were no longer willing to live in an authoritarian kleptocracy—and the annexation and invasion of their territory that was the Kremlin’s response. Ukraine could only have avoided this struggle by not choosing democracy, or by failing in the effort to build it.
And it is well-written, too. What is happening all of a sudden? Of course, the author of the piece is a Canadian journalist who has a Ukrainian mother, but still it was published at Politico, which is a very popular resource. Might things not be as bad as I thought? Might there be not entirely brain-dead people outside of this blog?
Here is some more:
Ukraine’s second success is its unprecedented degree of national unity. That reality is obscured by the lazy shorthand that often frames the conflict in eastern Ukraine as a Yugoslav-style civil war, driven by ancient cultural, linguistic and religious divisions. In fact, the fight in Ukraine is almost entirely a political and even ideological struggle. This isn’t about Russian speakers vs. Ukrainian speakers—an absurd idea in a country so at ease with its nearly universal bilingualism that everything from television interviews to jokes to parliamentary debates are conducted in an easy back-and-forth between Ukrainian and Russian.
The dividing line in what Ukrainians call their “dignity revolution” is instead the choice between Western liberal democracy and the Kremlin’s neo-authoritarianism.
Thank God, and it has only taken forever to see a North American media outlet manage to find a journalist capable of writing intelligently about Ukraine. And this is a journalist who actually lived in Ukraine and speaks the language, unlike all of the little shits who can’t find the country on the map yet blab stupidly and incessantly like the vicious losers they are about matters they would never understand.
Of course, the comments to the piece are populated by illiterate Putinbots who get paid by the word to spam intelligent articles about Ukraine.
Clarissa's Blog 
Great article…truth be known America will be applauding from a front row seat!
No matter the outcome in Ukraine….”we (the Americans) now have our grove back”
Now we can get back to the past and future and demonize Russia just like we did in the Cold War days of the 50’s and 60’s.
Nothing binds Americans like a common enemy (Putin and Russia) The old Red Star can now return to the dart boards in every hamlet, every city and every American Legion Post in America.
Now, thank heaven, we, once again, have an easily identifiable target ….the Big Bad Bear!
No chance of seeing Lada cars on USA roads any time soon! LOL
…observer Jules…
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………luckily I don’t have any copies of my favourite magazines lying around .”Soviet Life”, “Sputnik” News from the Ukraine” “Northern Neighbours” and my wifes’ fav; “Soviet Woman” (she liked the recipes) as the house to house searches and postal surveillance might resume again, looking for subversives! LOL
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“Now we can get back to the past and future and demonize Russia just like we did in the Cold War days of the 50’s and 60’s.”
– The point is precisely that whether you demonize Russia or not, this will change nothing. Putin’s agenda is proactive, not reactive. Absolutely nothing whatsoever depends on what the Americans do. There was a time when Americans still could have done something but now that time has passed.
The world has run away and is doing its own thing while Americans engage in this sort of navel-gazing.
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Thank you for this article. It’s good to know the reality from the inside rather than just from talking heads. I’ll be passing it on through my blog.
And…this morning I got the skinny on the crisis at our border. It went much deeper than the reports including the extent of corruption in Central America, why it exists and the billion dollar businesses of the coyotes. We have work to do – here.
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Clariisa, knower of all things.
regarding your comment:
“The point is precisely that whether you demonize Russia or not, this will change nothing. Putin’s agenda is proactive, not reactive. Absolutely nothing whatsoever depends on what the Americans do. There was a time when Americans still could have done something but now that time has passed”.
“The world has run away and is doing its own thing while Americans engage in this sort of navel-gazing”.
Perhaps your perspective comes from an experience that is foreign to most Americans.
We’ve never had a Stalin, a Castro, a Tito, …or even a Putin…that is to say, these leaders all have enjoyed long term control over the masses.
In the USA…the two term limit of the presidency pretty much means that what you have is only temporary. In the case of our President Obama and his “reactive stance” to Putin…that will probably change in the near future.
Perhaps a harder, more proactive, America first, kind of President will emerge next time around…and that WILL change everything in regards to Putin, Russia, North Korea and the festering Jihadists.
I shudder to think that Americans will probably elect a “trigger-happy” right-wing Prez. the next time and the cycle will begin, anew!
Perhaps this has whats kept me abroad for so many years!
….observations from Jules…
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I can only repeat: it is completely immaterial at this point whom Americans elect or whether they even exist. This situation is not about them at all and would evolve in the same manner even if this entire continent never existed.
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Eastern Europe Is Europe
The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical game changer for European security—yes, Europe as a whole. Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty, but for more than that as well. It has confronted a newly expansionist Russian power in an uneven struggle, the outcome of which will alter European security for decades. In that most fundamental sense, Eastern Europe is Europe.
Ukraine (“Ukrayina” or the “borderland”) is the quintessential gateway from Eurasia to Europe. A Ukraine controlled by Russia guarantees the restoration of the Great Russian imperial narrative, with Moscow once again defining itself in opposition to the decadent West, abandoning once and for all the modern nation-state-building project that was to be Russia after communism. Russian control of Ukraine would open a yawning fault line running across Europe’s north-central periphery, with a new arms race all but promising to cleave what remains of the Western consensus on defense and security. For the United States, the end of Ukraine’s independence will deepen divisions within NATO: With Russian missiles and planes on their borders, the Balts and the Poles will never accept a return to the status quo ante, while the Germans and the French will never concede the need to fundamentally redraw NATO’s strategy and deployments posture.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/12/eastern-europe-is-europe/
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“Ukraine” doesn’t mean “borderland.” How do people even come up with this stuff?
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Super analysis el….
one unknown remains, the election of yet another cowboy president in the United States…duping the masses into justifying future confrontations.
….observing, Jules….
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The problem with “accommodating” Russia in Ukraine is that Vladimir Putin’s goal is sowing chaos as part of a plan to hold on to power in the Kremlin.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-dangerous-mr-putin/
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