[Mentalist]

well calling it a "coup" is an over-simplification to the point of falsification, lol. I mean, Russian media sure spun it that way, but that does not make it true.

And that kinda undermines basically half of his argument. Unquestionably, Russian invasion was "a reaction". The problem is, it was a "reaction" to something the Russian propaganda machine made up and then blew out of proportion.

Once again: yes, the West was heavily involved in the Orange revolution of 2004. One has to be an idiot to argue that.

But the situation in 2013 was very much different. In 2004, you had multiple, fairly equal political blocks that were jockeying for power and influence under the guise of democratic elections, each one representing a particular oligarch. It was a dramatic media circus that changed very little in truth.

In 2010, after Yanukovych won the presidentiial election, and later when he pulled off a revision of the Constitution and began to amass executive power, AND then his party won the election in 2012 , giving him basically a monopoly on power, he began to actively destroy all competition, both in large and mid-size/small businesses, and he essentially institutionalized racketeering.

The November 21, 2013 declaration that UA won't be ratifying the Association agreement with the EU was basically a major PR fail, but on its own, nothing would have come of it.

The reason the revolution happened was precisely because on Dec 1, 2013, the state crossed the line that's been there ever since Independence, by unleashing violence on protesters. We can speculate whether this was orchestrated by foreign powers, or by local oligarchs, or if Yanukovych DID give the order himself (which WOULD btw fit his psych profile as an ex-con).
Regardless, it was a spark that started a revolution, and then a war.

I've gone over the chronology a bunch of times, so I'm not gonna do it again (unless someone wants to argue), but the events of late February 2014 do not fit any definition of a "coup". It wasn't a perfect transition of power, but given UA's political consiousness is roughly somewhere on the level of 16th century England, and the rule of the Maydan (literally, any "large square") is so predominant in our history (the Viche during Rus' times; the Cossack Radas (or councils); the Civil War-era "Anarchist republic", etc), it was remarkably smooth. And I will argue till I'm blue in the face that if Russia sat back, cranked up the propaganda machine and allowed the winners to get caught up in their internal squabbles, the wave of disenchantment would've delivered the whole of UA within Putin's chokehold embrace within 3-5 years. Instead of doing that, he essentially triggered the Yugoslav scenario, where Russian state is now the blood-enemy of your average Ukrainian ages 35 or under, regardless where in the country they live.

I get the critique of the US foreign policy- I was and still am to a degree an adherent to the multi-polar world, and I (like many ukis) used to see Putin's Russia as a counterweight to the West, and Putin as being "good for Russia".


It's a question of degrees and moral relativity in the end, whether it's worse to have unmanned drone missiles bomb an offending state back to the stone age and then establish a compliant regime, or go in with tanks and suffer heavy casualties to do an old-school annexation/occupation of territory. International law would say the latter. many humanists would say the former. I cannot pretend to objectivity in this matter, so I won't even try.

That being said, all of its (many) failings aside, on the biggest picture, in this comparison, imho, the West remains a net positive for global "Good" due to its potential to improve the state of the world (failing to realize this potential in various forms accounts for many of said failings). Whilst the "other" side of the discourse, whom Chomsky is subtly advocating for/defending do not, (imho, once again) carry such "positive" potential I mean, I've done this before, but when I put my cynic hat on, the bottom line is, global inequality is something everyone in the West benefits from, and our slogans to get rid of it are hypocritical, because due to the finite amount of resources, if the rest of the world was to be our equal, we'd end up with a lot less stuff, and that's the hard, unpleasant math. But adopting the relativist position, yes, the West has the much greater potential to make world a better place, which is why I've chosen my side of this debate, which is opposite to Chomsky, despite the fact that in my younger years my beliefs were much closer to his position (not to mention that to most psych students the man is a legend and one of the pillars of the Cognitive Revolution that changed the discipline forever)

[EmperorMagus]

I asked this question because as soon as he started talking about Ukraine, sirens started going off in my head that "hey, I know someone whose pretty knowledgeable about Ukraine, and I'm fairly certain he wouldn't agree with this stuff..."

I did a little bit of searching, and I expected pretty much the answer you gave me. Yeah the Russian invasion was a reaction but it's not really clear what Putin was reacting to. It's not fair to claim it was all US/EU foreign policy or covert operations and not a tactic on Putin's part.

And as a psych/linguistics student myself, the level of disagreement regarding Chomsky is ridiculous in our current department. Half the people who talk about him completely dismiss his generative theories in favor of the newer connectionist approaches and the other half hold the former in absolute contempt because "their approach is not only useless, it's completely unscientific." (that's verbatim). It's almost beautiful to watch a field like this develop so rapidly.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by EmperorMagus: 17 January 2017 - 05:46 AM

[Mentalist]

Tbh, I've pretty much tken myself out of the loop last spring, and I've not had the resolve to try to get back into it.

Once I force myself to, I'll try to give an update on the situation, but from scraps of conversation topics my grandparents occasionally try to bring up as "conversation starters" , before either me or my father (who still keeps up with stuff) shut them down, it's kinda a clusterfuck back home.

[Mentalist]

Looks like another potential political crisis in UA brought about by the dumb fucks perpetuating corruption and making serious money on the war.

Not sure how far it'll go, but I'll try to keep a casual eye on it and write some more details when I have some time.

[Terez]

Just out of curiosity, have you been following the news on the Russia connections in the Trump campaign and administration? I checked out personally when it came to general election time but I have been paying more attention since we decided to elect our own oligarch. :/ I'm especially concerned that Trump might be making efforts to suppress investigations into these ties.

[Mentalist]

Terez, on 17 March 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, have you been following the news on the Russia connections in the Trump campaign and administration? I checked out personally when it came to general election time but I have been paying more attention since we decided to elect our own oligarch. :/ I'm especially concerned that Trump might be making efforts to suppress investigations into these ties.

Kind of, but not really following. I'm in another "burnout" phase right now, when it comes to following politics.

There's obviously fear back home of the new US govt selling us to the Russians, but given how much people are fed up with the govt that's just trying to keep up "business as usual", global concerns are a distant second right now.

[Tsundoku]

I'm loving how Vlad et al are trying to come across all high-and-mighty after the US missile strikes on Syria.

"Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said U.S.-Russian relations were “completely ruined” in a Facebook post in response to Washington firing 59 cruise missiles on the Shayrat air base.
Mr Medvedev said the US strikes were illegal and were “one step away from military clashes with Russia”.

http://www.news.com....da6e6cffcd21c8e

It's as if he forgot Russia's multiple invasions of neighbouring states, plus shooting down an airliner. For starters.

Fuckwits. Hypocrites.

Noone is blameless in this shitstorm.

EDIT: a bit further down in that article

"The line enabled the US to warn the Kremlin of impending air strikes on Thursday and was also used in February to stop a Russian strike on US jets it had mistaken for IS forces in a region of northern Syria."

Seriously? They expected us to believe they mistook US fighter jets for IS forces? I know they think we're stupid, but come on!

This post has been edited by Captain Needa: 08 April 2017 - 07:44 AM

[Morgoth]

IS is famous for their mighty airforce.

[Gust Hubb]

Giving up on Donbass?

Hey Ment. Ran across this on my news perusal. What do you think and is the article accurate? If you have the chance and are not to burned out.

[Mentalist]

It's accurate in the sense of "no one knows what to do with Donbas and popular opinion (outside the seriously ultra-right hyper-patriots) is that of " well why the hell do we need Donbas?"

I'm pretty sure that several months ago Poroshenko formally "caved in" to the public opinion and introduced "formal" blockades, after impromptu volunteers started to cut off train routes into Donbas. Given the astounding amount of smuggling that's going on in the "grey zone" (and the money that changes hands), the government had to step in to preserve their share restore order /cynicism

In response, the "People's Republics" formally "nationalized" the remaining Ukrainian-run businesses in Donbas, including multiple factories and mines owned Donbas" former "oligarch overlord" Rinat Akhmetov.

Basically, there's 2 arguments against doing the logical thing and declaring the area as "occupied"

1) this can be seen as aggressive move against Russia, since Ukraine has not declared war on Russia (so far), and if Ukraine somehow puts itself on a quasi-at-war status, this will mean problems with the IMF, and the economy's on its last breath already.

2) the other side of the coin is that this will be seen as sign of weakness by Russia, and an invitation to further expansion- Kharkiv, Mariupol, and then possibly Zaporizhya and the South- and the question is "what's the rationale for fighting, if the govt will eventually give u on us the way they did on Crimea and Donbas?"

The political situation in Kyiv is a mess, since the place went back to "business as usual" viper's nest. There isn't anyone in UA with the will to basically pull a Malaysia and "expel" Donbas, the way Malaysia let Singapore go back in the day to prevent it from dominating the country. There are mostly nationalist parties that propose the introduction of "occupied territories" legislation, but they are a minority, and big businesses that own the Rada (including the Pres as the biggest, most successful businessman of them all) are not interested in "escalating" (read: resolving) the situation.

The supposed "new hope of the reformers" is Georgia's ex-president Saakashvili. After Poroshenko drummed him out from being governor of Odessa oblast, he's set up shop in Kyiv as opposition to the corrupt regime, and he promises to repeat the Georgian economic miracle in UA if elected.

I heard him at a charity event last week (a few people I know run a charity that helps Uki amputees. They brought him and a few other people to Canada for a Q&A as fundraising). He basically pointedly avoided the Donbas and Crimea topic, besides the oo-rah patriotic rhetoric a la "when Ukraine manages to succeed, this will be the end of Russia, as it will spur Russians to challenge their own leaders... etc, ending with promises of a " joint Ukrainian-Georgian border in 10 years" (the idea being, large swathes of Russia will be begging to become part of UA + Georgia getting "its lands" back... like I said, playing the hyper-nationalist emigré crowd, ) (his scenario includes "regaining" Donbas and Crimea as givens, "once the economy and corruption are sorted out". But nothing is said about what to do with them now (while people keep dying), because well, that's sensitive topic, and politicians don't address those openly, /cynic (wait, I thought I did that already? Ah, right, politics again)

[Mentalist]

So, there's now talks about UN peacekeepers, and the "Croatian Scenario" .

While the rest of the world is freaking out about North Korea, I will remind everyone once again that due to Russian annexation of Crimea in 2013, nuclear non-proliferation was pretty much taken out back and shot dead, and no sovereign state that genuinely values its sovereignty should give up any nukes it may have gained. Ever.

Uki media is being all hush-hush about any possible Russian connection to the Trump campaign/election, b/c the official word is (after the super-vocal pro-Clinton rhetoric during the campaign) that "America is still our friend and protector" and "we are too important for US to just let Russia have us" . Yeah.


Meanwhile, in early Sept there was another round of media circus. Saakashvili had his Uki citizenship revoked a few months ago, and in early Sept he and his supporters organized a "breakthrough" to "smuggle" him back into the country (technically, illegally) across the Polish border. Sigh.

Also, there's a new education law that's aimed against using minority languages of instruction in school. The law is obviously aimed against Russian, but it's inflaming our western neighbours such as Romanians, Bulgarians and especially Hungarians (Poles and Slovaks are mostly being understanding about it). Ofc, it's no real surprise given Hungarian right-wing parties have a gigantic chip on their shoulder and territorial claims against most of their neighbours, but still, with these UN developments, losing support from our neighbours is somewhat distressing.

[Mentalist]

So, 3 years after the Russian invasion, the Pres submits a bill that officially calls a spade a spade and labels the occupied parts of Donbass as "occupied by Russian Federation" . The Rada is debating it now.

Of course, it also re-states (once again) that the priority in resolving the conflict is given to the "security provisions of the Minsk agreement, Minsk memorandum and the agreement to implement the Minks protocol" . Which is somewhat confusing, esp since the Minsk docs have Russia as an impartial, non-involved signatory. Also, there continues to be a ton of disagreement about Minsk docs, since UA's position is very clearly "we need control over the state border before we can allow new elections, whereas Russia, at the time backed by Germany and France listed the steps as " new elections and THEN handover of border control". Le sigh.

Anyway, on the bright side, after Poroshenko's visit to Canada, looks like we'll soon be ok to buy weapons from Canada. And the MoD said they'd help UA build a new ammunition factory (the only one UA had before was in the now-occupied Luhansk).

Lots of secondary BS concerning mostly domestic politics as well (I did end up switching back into "check on this crap every day" mode again), but nothing super-important.

[Mentalist]

My head hurts. Rada ratified the bill, but supposedly it should be amended to mention Crimea as occupiedterritory, and also to omit any mention of the Minsk agreements. There was a major fight between MPs while this was happening. The would-be democratic opposition- Tymoshenko's "Fatherland" , as well as "Samopomich" both voted against this bill, but so did the clearly pro-Russian "opposition block" .

So now there's a major media clusterfuck. The Pres and his allies are using the vote to label anyonee who voted against "declaring Russia as aggressor" as being "Russian agents" . OTOH, the supposed "national opposition" is saying screaming that voting the law as is gives the military discretion to allow trade with the occupied territories, and it also legitimizes the self-proclaimed "government" of the "people's republics". Meaning that behind Clause 1 (which does declare Russia the aggressor), the bulk of the bill actually furthers Russian agenda and promotes ongoing corruption re: trade and smuggling across the front.

Realistically though, I'll need to take some time to read the new law once it's actually published in its final form to draw conclusions. Right now it's just a very big media shitstorm, where each side is trying to drown out the other with noise.

[Tsundoku]

Hey man, wtf is going on? Another Maidan?

http://www.news.com....6c1096184c86f68

[Mentalist]

Tsundoku, on 18 December 2017 - 02:54 AM, said:

Hey man, wtf is going on? Another Maidan?

http://www.news.com....6c1096184c86f68

Nah, not really.

Saakashvili is in major conflict with the govt. Back in Sept they annulled his citizenship while he was touring outside the country. In response, him and his supporters "broke through" the border from Poland. It's been an ongoing legal battle ever since.

Saakashvili talks a big game, but his supporters are relatively few, and he's not enough of a "brand".

In general, UA settled back into apathy. Economy continues plunging, people are busy surviving, no one gives a damn about government. Again.

Poroshenko is probably hoping to ride this wave of apathy in the 2019 elections, b/c to date there's no viable opponent.

There's a ton of minor stories around "reforms" and such, but I really can't be bothered to write much about it. Stuff's trivial. In the Donbass, they keep shelling and calling it a "ceasefire". In Kyiv, we've got brand-new "anti-corruption" bureaus, but whenever they try to do their job, they get dragged into a jurisdictional disputes with existing law enforcement institutions. The West is growing disillusioned, b/c they feel the govt is stifling the reforms the people are yearning for. The real problem is, you've got a few million government officials who all live and breathe corruption. And good luck finding a few million people to replace them who WON'T do the exact same thing once they get in office.

It's the same old story as pretty much anywhere outside the West. Trying to build strong institutions from scratch in a reputedly democratic society where there's little value attached to long-term planning and civic responsibility is a bitch of an undertaking. Progress is slow, and people resist change vigorously. And a country that's also plagued by a warmongering neighbour who feels they're the big brother who knows best makes stuff even more difficult.

[Maark Abbott]

Maybe not US-RU but the UK has just expelled all Russian diplomats over the latest purported assassination of a defector.

[Mentalist]

One of these days, I REALLY need to go over VVH's big scary speech of about a month ago and whatever analytical stuff's been written about it.

But life's been hectic, and I've been rather out of touch with people with whom I usually talk UA politics, and given how incredibly hectic work's been since New Year, I've really not been feeling any incentive to plunge back into that shit.

[Mentalist]

Well, fuck.

Terrorussians fired on and hijacked 3 ships belonging to Ukrainian navy that were attempting to navigate the Kerchen Straight to get to the Azov Sea. 23 sailors taken prisoner, 6 wounded.

The Straight is between Crimea and Russia proper, so it used to be a border. Since the annexation of Crimea, it's entirely controlled by Russians (naturally).

Ukraine's Parliament will vote to approve State of Emergency tomorrow. Lovely news for the upcomng holidays.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 25 November 2018 - 11:53 PM

[Tsundoku]

Yeah I saw that. Thought that strait had to be international waters since it's access for Ukraine to the Black Sea?

[Mentalist]

Tsundoku, on 26 November 2018 - 12:51 AM, said:

Yeah I saw that. Thought that strait had to be international waters since it's access for Ukraine to the Black Sea?

yes, UA has a number of ports on the Azov coast, chief of them being Mariupol' (the largest city out of the Donbass that remained in Ukrainian hands). The city's chief industry is steel, and it relies on the naval shipping for exports.

Russians built a bridge across the straight to provide direct access to Crimea, but since the sea floor is very geologically unstable, the bridge's already wobbling. But, yeah, there's been a long standing treaty about the use of the straights (not that this means anything to VVH, ofc)

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 26 November 2018 - 12:57 AM