Ukraine Today

[TheVideoGameInn]

Giving change into the hands of politician would put power in their hands. Are you saying we are not in democracies? Power to the people?

 

[Austupaio]

Well, I'll answer that question with a question. When was the last time you voted for the government to take an action?

In the U.S, I've only ever had that possibility twice, and both times it was fairly small affairs, state propositions. I don't recall the number, but I voted in favour of homosexual marriage in California and against Proposition 594 in Washington. Even then my votes were fairly pointless because votes are not led by people interested in the issue, they are led by advertisement and marketing. The only other things Americans can vote on are politicians who will be voted in by how much they spend on marketing, then do as they please once in office with little to no over-sight, regardless of their level of authority.

Democracy exists, yes, but it doesn't really lead to change. Not sweeping changes like over-throwing foreign governments, anyway.

More to the point on your question though, I'm not sure about various EU government, but in the U.S. you vote for politicians and politicians alone outside of small local issues, so yes, the power always rests on them. That's why were a lot more of a Republic than a Democracy.

 

[TheVideoGameInn]

In the EU it's the same, but here we throw around the word democracy more (not in the UK obviously, it has a nobility system who influences politics directly and constitutes half of parliament).

 

[Beny]

To our credit, Im not sure how many countries would give 10% of their population a chance of referenduming their way to independence.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

In the EU it's the same, but here we throw around the word democracy more (not in the UK obviously, it has a nobility system who influences politics directly and constitutes half of parliament).

It's called the "house of lords" but there aren't (m)any feudal vassals left in it. It's largely a positive force that keeps the government from passing ludicrous idiot bills like the ones Theresa May faps over.

R.E. China, it shares quite a lot with America in how its people perceive the government. Everyone's a "patriot" but there are very clear left and right wings, both of which criticise the government on one front or another. It's not the propaganda powerhouse that Russia is. The Chinese government can't/doesn't even prevent people from taking the mick out of them on their own official websites.

The world is certainly more stable when there are large superpowers that don't want war with each other. It's parts of the world where there are lots of equally sized states that can't effectively police each other that warfare becomes endemic. Look at sub-saharan Africa or the Balkans for examples of this. If it wasn't for the threat that China and America impose over huge sections of the world that really hate each other, there would be nukes flying all over the place.

 

[Austupaio]

Agreeing with Jacob, even in a case that's often brought up, Pakistan and India, there's a lot to be said that the U.S. and China are holding them back.

 

[Trueten]

How can China be holding anyone back? When was the last time China threaten a non-neighboring country for doing something non-pleasant from Chinese POV? It might put it's nose whereve it can, just like US, but it defenitely has no demands of democracy/human rights/pick another criteria of who to cooperate or not with. I didn't see any Chinese peace-keepers anywhere either. USSR played it's role back then, but China is defenitely not. More than that, China is rather bullying in its region (Japan for example). Not what big boyz should do.

 

[Radalan]

When was the last time China threaten a non-neighboring country for doing something non-pleasant from Chinese POV?

Last month:
http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/05/china-warns-inevitable-war-us-over-south-china-sea/113680/

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

How can China be holding anyone back? When was the last time China threaten a non-neighboring country for doing something non-pleasant from Chinese POV? It might put it's nose whereve it can, just like US, but it defenitely has no demands of democracy/human rights/pick another criteria of who to cooperate or not with. I didn't see any Chinese peace-keepers anywhere either. USSR played it's role back then, but China is defenitely not. More than that, China is rather bullying in its region (Japan for example). Not what big boyz should do.

China's more subtle than that. For example their alliance with Pakistan is basically a "don't touch" warning to India. They dabble in middle eastern politics occasionally but it's East Asia and the pacific where they have the largest influence. Even Russia has to stay on their good side, while the reverse isn't particularly true.

 

[Mage246]

How can China be holding anyone back? When was the last time China threaten a non-neighboring country for doing something non-pleasant from Chinese POV? It might put it's nose whereve it can, just like US, but it defenitely has no demands of democracy/human rights/pick another criteria of who to cooperate or not with. I didn't see any Chinese peace-keepers anywhere either. USSR played it's role back then, but China is defenitely not. More than that, China is rather bullying in its region (Japan for example). Not what big boyz should do.

Actually, they do this all the time when it comes to their territorial disputes with Taiwan, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam, etc. Anyone who says that China just minds its own business and doesn't threaten other countries doesn't know anything about China.

 

[Anthropoid]

Oh my god, he's still going on about that Nazi thing.

Was your grandpa killed in Germany or something? I'm just surprised at how slighted you are by what Mage had to say there. I mean he's genuinely insulted you in many ways, but that wasn't really one of them.

Gravely wounded by Nazi flak or aircraft, but not killed. If it wasn't an insult then it is a small matter to apologize. I'm deeply offended at being referred to as a Nazi, and I will never cease to be offended until the affront is corrected with a simple apology. Even just a PM would suffice.

If it is such a small thing, then why would such a big man as Mage refuse to simply say "Dude, I don't think you are a Nazi. My bad if I asserted as such." or even just "sorry."

Well, at least it seems the West is not going to let its actual NATO allies on the Baltic slide into chaos from Russian aggression.

U.S. Is Poised to Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe

Small solace to Ukrainians I suppose, but at least it is a line at the Russian border of NATO instead of a line down the middle of the Baltic.

RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.

The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

It would be the most prominent of a series of moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to the Russian frontier.

After the expansion of NATO to include the Baltic nations in 2004, the United States and its allies avoided the permanent stationing of equipment or troops in the east as they sought varying forms of partnership with Russia.

“This is a very meaningful shift in policy,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and the former supreme allied commander of NATO, who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “It provides a reasonable level of reassurance to jittery allies, although nothing is as good as troops stationed full-time on the ground, of course.”

The amount of equipment included in the planning is small compared with what Russia could bring to bear against the NATO nations on or near its borders, but it would serve as a credible sign of American commitment, acting as a deterrent the way that the Berlin Brigade did after the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961.

“It’s like taking NATO back to the future,” said Julianne Smith, a former defense and White House official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a vice president at the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies.

The “prepositioned” stocks — to be stored on allied bases and enough to equip a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers — also would be similar to what the United States maintained in Kuwait for more than a decade after Iraq invaded it in 1990 and was expelled by American and allied forces early the next year.

The Pentagon’s proposal still requires approval by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the White House. And political hurdles remain, as the significance of the potential step has stirred concern among some NATO allies about Russia’s reaction to a buildup of equipment.

“The U.S. military continues to review the best location to store these materials in consultation with our allies,” said Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. “At this time, we have made no decision about if or when to move to this equipment.”

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Senior officials briefed on the proposals, who described the internal military planning on the condition of anonymity, said that they expected approval to come before the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels this month.

The current proposal falls short of permanently assigning United States troops to the Baltics — something that senior officials of those countries recently requested in a letter to NATO. Even so, officials in those countries say they welcome the proposal to ship at least the equipment forward.

“We need the prepositioned equipment because if something happens, we’ll need additional armaments, equipment and ammunition,” Raimonds Vejonis, Latvia’s minister of defense, said in an interview at his office here last week.

“If something happens, we can’t wait days or weeks for more equipment,” said Mr. Vejonis, who will become Latvia’s president in July. “We need to react immediately.”

Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who has written extensively on Russia’s military and security services, noted, “Tanks on the ground, even if they haven’t people in them, make for a significant marker.”

As the proposal stands now, a company’s worth of equipment — enough for about 150 soldiers — would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Enough for a company or possibly a battalion — about 750 soldiers — would be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary, they said.

American military specialists have conducted site surveys in the countries under consideration, and the Pentagon is working on estimates about the costs to upgrade railways, build new warehouses and equipment-cleaning facilities, and to replace other Soviet-era facilities to accommodate the heavy American weaponry. The weapons warehouses would be guarded by local or security contractors, and not by American military personnel, officials said.

Positioning the equipment forward saves the United States Army time, money and resources, and avoids having to ship the equipment back and forth to the United States each time an Army unit travels to Europe to train. A full brigade’s worth of equipment — formally called the European Activity Set — would include about 1,200 vehicles, including some 250 M1-A2 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and armored howitzers, according to a senior military official.

The Army previously said after the invasion of Crimea last year that it would expand the amount of equipment it stored at the Grafenwöhr training range in southeastern Germany and at other sites to a brigade from a battalion. An interim step would be prepositioning the additional weapons and vehicles in Germany ahead of decisions to move them farther east.
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Recent Comments
Michael Holmes 2 minutes ago

Look at the article's lead photo. That Latvian highway looks far better than our sad, beaten-to-hell, pothole ridden I-95 does . . . and...
roger g. 23 minutes ago

Irrelevant stupidity. Irrelevant because no constellation of non-nuclear weapons used in concert by the little powers on the western...
damon walton 25 minutes ago

As someone who was stationed in Germany for 6 years and had a chance to visit some former eastern bloc countries in my free time. They...

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Army units — currently a battalion from the Third Infantry Division — now fly into the range on regular rotations, using the same equipment left in place. They train with the equipment there or take it to exercises elsewhere in Europe.

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That, along with stepped-up air patrolling and training exercises on NATO’s eastern flank, was among the initial measures approved by NATO’s leaders at their summit meeting in Wales last year. The Pentagon’s proposal reflects a realization that the tensions with Russia are unlikely to diminish soon.

“We have to transition from what was a series of temporary decisions made last year,” said Heather A. Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The idea of moving prepositioned weapons and materials to the Baltics and Eastern Europe has been discussed before, but never carried out because it would be viewed by the Kremlin as a violation of the spirit of the 1997 agreement between NATO and Russia that laid the foundation for cooperation.

In that agreement, NATO pledged that, “in the current and foreseeable security environment,” it would not seek “additional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces” in the nations closer to Russia.

The agreement also says that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” Many in the alliance argue that Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions around NATO’s borders have made that pact effectively moot.

The Pentagon’s proposal has gained new support because of fears among the eastern NATO allies that they could face a Russian threat.

“This is essentially about politics,” Professor Galeotti said. “This is about telling Russia that you’re getting closer to a real red line.”

In an interview before a visit to Italy this week, Mr. Putin dismissed fears of any Russian attack on NATO.

“I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO,” he told the newspaper Corriere Della Sera. “I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people’s fears with regard to Russia.”

 

[Anthropoid]

They're not all insane or... uh... the opposite of nice, they're just victims of the propaganda machine or apathetic. Don't hate the people, hate the system.

I have no idea about your second concept, I'll let someone else comment on that.

From my standpont, Russia is the most tragic society the world has ever known.

It is obvious that, as a culture they are as meritorious, if not moreso than any other which has ever existed. They are hardy, resourceful, resilient, indomitable, intelligent, industrious, inventive, brilliant, creative, artistic, scientific, visionary, beautiful.

But they have NEVER been free.

Russia, unlike Europe in the 1820s through 1860s or the American colonies in the 1760s through 1770s never had a middle class to speak of UNTIL, they were given a democracy by power of fiat via the collapse of their longstanding Imperial regime. And then that middle class quickly evaporated in the face of corruption-driven moguls and political insiders who became Russia's current ruling class in the late 1990s.

From Tsarist monarchs, to "Communist" gangsters, to "Communist" Imperial overlords, to a brief spell of new-born democracy, and then right back into the clutches of thugs and autocrats. That is the history out of which all "Russian" national behavior must be interpreted.

I feel sorry for the Russian people, but I feel nothing but malice for its polity. Down with Russia! Up with the Russian People!

 

[Frankish Sinatra]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/4/who-should-be-afraid-of-big-bad-putin.html

This article is a few months old now, but the author has some interesting opinions on the situation in Ukraine. I mostly want to see what you all have to say about it. Does his opinion hold water? Could he be right?

EDIT: tl,dr: Russia wants Kazakhstan more than Ukraine, because gas+china=profit.

 

[Trueten]

Actually, they do this all the time when it comes to their territorial disputes with Taiwan, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam, etc. Anyone who says that China just minds its own business and doesn't threaten other countries doesn't know anything about China.

We're talking about global balance of power, that, as was stated few posts above, people think China provides. And I mean that China is just a bit more than a regional power (/bully), but less than a global power (balancing-wise). A common show off that will fade away by the end of this century anyway.

 

[TheVideoGameInn]

If the human race still exists by the end of the century.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Not even an impact winter would work that fast.

 

[Mage246]

Oh my god, he's still going on about that Nazi thing.

Was your grandpa killed in Germany or something? I'm just surprised at how slighted you are by what Mage had to say there. I mean he's genuinely insulted you in many ways, but that wasn't really one of them.

Gravely wounded by Nazi flak or aircraft, but not killed. If it wasn't an insult then it is a small matter to apologize. I'm deeply offended at being referred to as a Nazi, and I will never cease to be offended until the affront is corrected with a simple apology. Even just a PM would suffice.

If it is such a small thing, then why would such a big man as Mage refuse to simply say "Dude, I don't think you are a Nazi. My bad if I asserted as such." or even just "sorry."

I really don't know why this is so hard for you to understand, and I think I've personally exhausted every possible explanation that I can provide, but for the sake of people who didn't witness your previous idiocy on the matter I'll summarize again:

1) You stated that there are certain conditions in which you would support a Nazi or neo-Nazi party (specifically, if this party opposed gun control legislation and was the only viable opposition to it). You said that you would provide it with material support and/or vote for it.
2) I pointed out that, in this scenario, you would be a Nazi/neo-Nazi.
3) You went full retard and started yelling about how I'm calling you a Nazi and that I have to take it back or else you'll blahblahblah.
4) I explain that someone who supports a Nazi/neo-Nazi party is, by definition, a Nazi/neo-Nazi.
4) Other people chimed in and pointed out that I have nothing to apologize for, because all I did was make a statement of fact about what you had said.
5) You repeatedly revisited the subject, continuing to fail to understand the basics of my argument.
6) I pointed and laughed at you for it.

And here we are again. 

 

[Austupaio]

While Anthropoid's take-away from that was/is ridiculous, I will say that I don't agree that being a single-issue voter makes you a member of the party you are voting for. For a variety of reasons.

 

[Mage246]

Turning a blind eye to the egregious beliefs of a party that a person supports over a single issue does not excuse that person from responsibility for the excesses of that party should they succeed in taking power. Is there a difference between being a Nazi and being a Nazi party supporter? I think not.

 

[Austupaio]

Well, there's the technical point that, no, supporting a party does make you a member of that party. You could vote for NSDAP, Republican or Likud Movement all you want, but that doesn't make you a recognized representative. That's more pedantic though.

I agree that consciously voting for a party makes you responsible for their being voted in, regardless of your own reasons, yes. However, I don't believe that makes you a supporter of them, or a purveyor of whatever objectionable thing they do during their term.

To stretch it out, using Anthropoid's example of gun control, if you voted for the Nazis because you believed you would require those arms to fight a future tyrannical government, and then did continue to fight as part of a resistance group against them, are you a Nazi or a Nazi supporter? I don't think so, you are partially responsible, but you cannot logically be a Nazi if you do not believe nor adhere to any of their tenets. In another light, if you're a homosexual who hates Jews and therefore vote for Hitler, but later you are forced to abandon Germany and any affiliation with the Party, say you even turn against it, are you still a Nazi? You can even swap Jew and homosexual there and ask the same question.

You can responsible for something, say, a murder, without philosophically or mentally being a murderer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not shunting the responsibility, just stating that it does not logically follow through that voting for X means that you are X.