deathtokoalas
this is a balanced interview worth watching.

Martti Mandel
Adding Goebbels to discussion about nazi-germany agression doesn't balance it.

deathtokoalas
well, the interviewer seemed to have a pro-western agenda. she was not balanced. the rest of it was fairly refreshing, including

1) hearing a pro-ukrainian talking head acknowledge that the forces that stormed parliament cannot win an election because they do not represent the people, as well as acknowledging the threat of nationalism in the country.

2) hearing a russian diplomat clarify that ukraine is not under threat of invasion.

personally? i'm pretty knowledgeable about the general topic. i can read between the lines. but it's always nice to hear it first hand.

and i think a lot of victims of the more sensationalist coverage could benefit from watching this.

what i have to say about the situation doesn't matter. what you have to say about the situation doesn't matter. what the people in the video have to say about the situation matters.

so, stop pretending you have any idea what you're talking about, shut the fuck up and try and learn something.

===

Jopdan
If Russians are really being treated poorly, where's the evidence?  Where are the russians getting beaten in the streets?

何孝倫
Well where were the evidence of Americans being beaten in the streets and treated poorly before they invaded Iraq and Afghanistan?

Jopdan
We're not talking about the US here. we're talking about Russia.  Stop changing the subject.  There is NO evidence that anything Russia is saying is true.

Tonttu Takeover
Neo-nazis in the nationalist side of Ukraine is a threat to russian people of Crimea? Why does that sentence sound awful lot of bulls*it to me? I think because its a presumption which lead to (way too early) actions. There truly isnt enough evidence to support this claim right now. Russians have same kind of threat inside they're own borders if we were to evaluate the situation like that, based on same kind of assumptions of armed minority groups. Assumptions amongst people lead to anger and feed the crisis even more. I think, even if the present (temporary?) government of Ukraine is improper one, it shouldnt have lead Russia to these actions, and is very poor act of foreign policy from Russia. Even just because Russia is securing they're own interests in Crimea, this kind of action will show across the globe in a negative manner towards Russia, and they will lose more than gain, in terms of foreign policy.

deathtokoalas
russia is neither claiming this is happening nor threatening to invade. rather, they are stating that they might choose to protect russian citizens should this hypothetical situation materialize.

most large states need to come up with moral justifications for their actions. what the russians are saying is that they will not allow the ukrainian state to move in the direction of the kind of extreme militarism that defined the nazi state. what putin is saying is that he will not be the neville chamberlain of the 21st century; he will act decisively to stamp out the threat before it is one.

but it's a very hypothetical situation. as mentioned in the interview, ukraine is not currently under threat of invasion.

two coats of epoxy. one to bond, one to fill cracks. seems to have been successful. but i'm letting it sit a few more days because i basically give up if it doesn't hold.

hugely messy, too. going to need to sand it....

what happened was a little piece of plastic broke off the headband on my phones. they're modular. meaning the ear muff parts hook into an adjustable roller type idea. it's the roller that snapped a piece off.

the phones work and everything. really, if my head wasn't absurdly small..

...but, as i have the cranial circumference of an eight year old, i have to adjust it to it's tightest setting, which means the phones are continually falling off.

i'll test it in the morning. when it's back together, i'm going to spend a good month solely on the sound.

http://rt.com/news/ukrainian-warships-leave-sevastopol-476/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26410431#TWEET1059881
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140302/188027471/Crimean-Authorities-Confirm-Takeover-of-Military-Units.html
http://rt.com/news/navy-chief-ukraine-crimea-485/
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putins-imperial-pursuit-of-a-subordinate-ukraine/495466.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndT1YOYWXyo

this is from december but i haven't seen much recent polling i can trust (the kyiv post is state owned). what i want to get across is a ukrainian displeasure with the far right and how it may affect elections.

- In a contest between Yanukovych and Klitschko, 36 percent would choose Klitschko, 20 percent Yanukovych, 13 percent don’t know, 18 percent against all and 12 percent would not vote.

- In a contest between Yanukovych and Yatsenyuk, 26 percent would choose Yatsenyuk, 22 percent Yanukovych, 23 percent against all, 14 percent don’t know, and 12 percent would not vote.

-In a contest between Yanukovych and Tyahnybok, 24 percent would choose Yanukovych, 18 percent Tyahnybok, 27 percent against all, 16 percent don’t know, and 13 percent would not vote.

ok. so, yatsenyuk and yanukovych represent the mainstream left and right. klitschko is the "new party" which gets the novelty vote. tyahnybok is the fascist.

so, ukrainians are saying that:

new party > establishment > fascists.

that would be true most places in most circumstances, turmoil or not.

now, what happens when you put yatsenyuk in coalition with tyahnybok as is currently the case? first, you're going to get some discomfort, because svoboda is too right-wing. as unpopular as yanukovych may have been, he'd still win a plurality against the far right. because they want to outlaw abortion and pass restrictive language laws and build weapons programs.....stuff that's not popular anywhere....

the questions that need to be answered are:

1) the coalition is clearly going to be a factor, how much of a factor is this? does it reduce the center-right vote by more than 5%? 'cause, if so, that might swing the election to yanukovych.
2) do these people move back to yanukovych as the known establishment candidate or take a chance on klitschko as the new party?

see, establishment voters are establishment. they pick the devil they know.

what i'm getting at is that i don't think that the center-right coalition has a chance. that is to say that the only thing that is certain about the may election is that the party that just seized power will lose it. it's consequently very difficult to talk about the new parliament as being representative of anybody except victoria nuland.

so, that makes it a two-way race between yanukovich' party and the german-backed kiltschko, which might seem like a clear choice between europe and russia...

...except it might not be. it might have more to do with local social policies. there's still a left-right component to this, and that might be the more important concern.

what that means is that if you're the russians you wait until the shit clears itself out. there might be no need to remove the government by force. they might simply be voted out.

on the other hand, the elections might not be fair, in which case we can expect another uprising - this time against the existing government.

so at the very least, we can expect the russians to wait until may. the situation on the ground will then provide a new set of challenges to react to.

i'm all for tearing down propaganda - really, it's what i do here - but the reaction against the russian refugee claims is bordering on illiterate. the response is to show an empty border crossing. did they read the article?

1) the 675000 figure refers to the number of people russia has claimed have crossed the border over the last two months. that's about 11K/day. if we assume ten border crossings and a steady flow, that's about 50 cars at any given border crossing at any time - not an amount that would be conspicuous. further, many people no doubt left via train or plane. if you're looking for a stream of huddled masses marching with knapsacks, you're greatly underestimating the wealth in the area. rather, you want to look for a slow stream of people buying plane tickets.

2) the 143K number refers to the number of people who have requested refugee status. there's no evidence of these people moving because they haven't moved. they've just filled out a form.

i have no way of knowing if the numbers are correct, but can we try and actually read what we're claiming to debunk before we go full retard?

the not reading the article part is probably the problem.

it was bad enough when people just read the headlines at the grocery store. twitter has turned this into a daily habit for millions, and even dignified it as 'efficient'.

full retard is consequently just about the perfect description...

let me state this more concisely:

twitter's grand accomplishment of reducing the content of media to an eye-catching headline is precisely american consciousness reaching it's final state of full retard.

it is the absolute perfect encapsulation of our idiocracy on the point of collapse.

http://rt.com/news/ukrainians-leave-russia-border-452/

the analysis here is not bad, even if it's coming from a different ideological space. it's a lot of the same things i've been saying.

i think putin's primary concern is the naval base, not pan-slavism. that's actually probably lucky for the west. there are plenty of pan-slavics in russia, and he may in the end be replaced by one. but he himself seems to be intellectually above that.

it's more the line being crossed that i'm drawing attention to. i've referred to a "poland moment" in the past, where russia would have to reverse it's policy of appeasing the americans. this might be it. and the americans don't seem to have expected it.

....because the obama administration is not composed of particularly intelligent people. that much is now very clear. as a judge of character, obama has been remarkably bad. which is a flaw that seems to resonate in his own character. a comedy of errors.

the russians will need to be directly provoked to expand the operation beyond the military base. and you have to keep in mind that this isn't an annexation. it's just a protective process. i've yet to see any reason to think the russians are proposing to pull the region out of the ukraine. i've just seen a lot of concern that they need to protect their existing control over the region.

so, will putin "seize" donetsk and kharkiv next? not likely, as of now. but if american belligerence stomps the wrong toes, or the new ukrainian parliament passes the wrong bill, then it becomes a feasible turn of events.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/next-putin-will-seize-donetsk-and-kharkiv/495463.html

right, so why austerity, then?

because the people making decisions think that if you cut social welfare off and keep interest rates low then people on welfare will borrow money and start successful businesses. they understand the economy can't create more jobs. their solution is to convert the unemployed into the self-employed through entrepreneurship.

well, you need to take a step back: they expected this to happen in the first place by liberalizing markets. but, it hasn't. because most people don't know how to run a business and wouldn't want to if they did. i keep coming back to this. it's the reason markets will never work. people just don't want to live like that.

but, rather than accept that people have made that decision, they've blamed it on welfare, gone back on the voluntary aspect and tried to force people into it through incentivizing it.

but they never explain this anywhere. do people on welfare know when they get a food stamp cut that they're supposed to go to the bank, get a loan and start a business? no. i mean, this isn't going to work. it's just going to create more failed businesses and more debt. but to get it to fail and get the political class to move on, the idea has to be explained much better than it is.

but, what about the bear patrol?

idiots.

"The Ukrainian Defense Ministry immediately denied the report, which was also circulated by other Russian media, calling it “a provocation.”"

well, yeah, they'd do that, wouldn't they? this is the best russian strategy. i wouldn't be surprised to find out it's true.

who knows, though?

http://rt.com/news/ukraine-military-russia-resign-437/
http://en.ria.ru/military_news/20140302/188021252/Ukrainian-Troops-in-Crimea-Side-with-Pro-Russia-Forces.html