Russia vs Ukraine..

[Beanz]

Mles, in your own and Kirklands rush to oversimplify the issues you once again ignore the actions of despotic power crazed individuals to cast everyone else as stupid. Even ignoring Putin's foreign policy you can not seriously be defending the regime of somebody who is little more than a glorified crime lord? A man who installs his own leaders gradually removing dissenting voices and codifying intolerance into law. Then there are his actions abroad, arming fellow nut jobs like Assad whilst simultaneously lecturing the west. You want on one hand to be seen to be supporting the free democratic expression of a populace whilst supporting a man and regime who has a history of crushing and murdering civilians who wish to do so. Yes the west would like to have in place a compliant and corrupt regime that they can manipulate and profit from but Putin's objectives are just the same. In the middle are the civilians of a country and the 'demonic' EU that you and Brockton drone on about turns out to also be equally despised by both sides. You will think what you want to but please a little less preaching and lecturing AT everyone and a little more debate. This is a forum not a row of soap boxes.

I'm not oversimplifying everything. I'm just not going into detail on anything because I don't have the time.

There are people in Ukraine who want the country to be pro-Europe and the way for them to express that is to vote for a suitable party in the next election, not overthrow the democratically elected government because they don't like it.

Russia and the west have been fighting over Ukraine for a long time now. Putin wants to bring it into his version of the EU. America and the west wants to turn the country pro-Europe, get access to its markets but not actually have it join the EU in the forseeable future. That is uncontroversial fact. It's not a version of events, or obsessively anti-American or whatever. It's just what has actually happened.

This is an interesting and honest post and I can agree with some of it but it is still oversimplifying the situation. Putin's version of the EU is nothing like the EU and the the entity that yourself, Miles and Noam Chomsky have invented called "the West" does not really exist. A hulking great homogeneous mass of individuals and Governments that all agree on one ideology that is an inverse version of one shared by an opposite group called "the East" could conceivably be described with such a reductionist nomenclature but actual reality and the people that live in it are not served by the use of such redundant metaphors. Those in Government and those who are governed, and those with power and those without have much more in common from both "the east" and "the west" than they have in opposition.

It is quite laughable that you can sit there and tell other people what they should and should not do in their own country whilst criticising people from other countries for doing the same thing. It is no good pulling out a measuring stick for Justice and then only measuring one side against it. Make no mistake their are no more honourable intentions from one side than the other in global politics, all sides have an agenda. If Egyptians,Tunisians, Ukrainians etc wish to overthrow their Government then I can not possibly judge such actions from this side of their society and everyday reality.

[IamInuit]

Mles, in your own and Kirklands rush to oversimplify the issues you once again ignore the actions of despotic power crazed individuals to cast everyone else as stupid. Even ignoring Putin's foreign policy you can not seriously be defending the regime of somebody who is little more than a glorified crime lord? A man who installs his own leaders gradually removing dissenting voices and codifying intolerance into law. Then there are his actions abroad, arming fellow nut jobs like Assad whilst simultaneously lecturing the west. You want on one hand to be seen to be supporting the free democratic expression of a populace whilst supporting a man and regime who has a history of crushing and murdering civilians who wish to do so. Yes the west would like to have in place a compliant and corrupt regime that they can manipulate and profit from but Putin's objectives are just the same. In the middle are the civilians of a country and the 'demonic' EU that you and Brockton drone on about turns out to also be equally despised by both sides. You will think what you want to but please a little less preaching and lecturing AT everyone and a little more debate. This is a forum not a row of soap boxes.

I'm not oversimplifying everything. I'm just not going into detail on anything because I don't have the time.

There are people in Ukraine who want the country to be pro-Europe and the way for them to express that is to vote for a suitable party in the next election, not overthrow the democratically elected government because they don't like it.

Russia and the west have been fighting over Ukraine for a long time now. Putin wants to bring it into his version of the EU. America and the west wants to turn the country pro-Europe, get access to its markets but not actually have it join the EU in the forseeable future. That is uncontroversial fact. It's not a version of events, or obsessively anti-American or whatever. It's just what has actually happened.

This is an interesting and honest post and I can agree with some of it but it is still oversimplifying the situation. Putin's version of the EU is nothing like the EU and the the entity that yourself, Miles and Noam Chomsky have invented called "the West" does not really exist. A hulking great homogeneous mass of individuals and Governments that all agree on one ideology that is an inverse version of one shared by an opposite group called "the East" could conceivably be described with such a reductionist nomenclature but actual reality and the people that live in it are not served by the use of such redundant metaphors. Those in Government and those who are governed, and those with power and those without have much more in common from both "the east" and "the west" than they have in opposition.

It is quite laughable that you can sit there and tell other people what they should and should not do in their own country whilst criticising people from other countries for doing the same thing. It is no good pulling out a measuring stick for Justice and then only measuring one side against it. Make no mistake their are no more honourable intentions from one side than the other in global politics, all sides have an agenda. If Egyptians,Tunisians, Ukrainians etc wish to overthrow their Government then I can not possibly judge such actions from this side of their society and everyday reality.

I'm kind of hoping world war 3 starts for the sake of the planet. If it does not happen soon there wont be anything left to save. Killing off about 4 billion people would be a great start.

[Gandalf]

Mles, in your own and Kirklands rush to oversimplify the issues you once again ignore the actions of despotic power crazed individuals to cast everyone else as stupid. Even ignoring Putin's foreign policy you can not seriously be defending the regime of somebody who is little more than a glorified crime lord? A man who installs his own leaders gradually removing dissenting voices and codifying intolerance into law. Then there are his actions abroad, arming fellow nut jobs like Assad whilst simultaneously lecturing the west. You want on one hand to be seen to be supporting the free democratic expression of a populace whilst supporting a man and regime who has a history of crushing and murdering civilians who wish to do so. Yes the west would like to have in place a compliant and corrupt regime that they can manipulate and profit from but Putin's objectives are just the same. In the middle are the civilians of a country and the 'demonic' EU that you and Brockton drone on about turns out to also be equally despised by both sides. You will think what you want to but please a little less preaching and lecturing AT everyone and a little more debate. This is a forum not a row of soap boxes.

I'm not oversimplifying everything. I'm just not going into detail on anything because I don't have the time.

There are people in Ukraine who want the country to be pro-Europe and the way for them to express that is to vote for a suitable party in the next election, not overthrow the democratically elected government because they don't like it.

Russia and the west have been fighting over Ukraine for a long time now. Putin wants to bring it into his version of the EU. America and the west wants to turn the country pro-Europe, get access to its markets but not actually have it join the EU in the forseeable future. That is uncontroversial fact. It's not a version of events, or obsessively anti-American or whatever. It's just what has actually happened.

This is an interesting and honest post and I can agree with some of it but it is still oversimplifying the situation. Putin's version of the EU is nothing like the EU and the the entity that yourself, Miles and Noam Chomsky have invented called "the West" does not really exist. A hulking great homogeneous mass of individuals and Governments that all agree on one ideology that is an inverse version of one shared by an opposite group called "the East" could conceivably be described with such a reductionist nomenclature but actual reality and the people that live in it are not served by the use of such redundant metaphors. Those in Government and those who are governed, and those with power and those without have much more in common from both "the east" and "the west" than they have in opposition.

It is quite laughable that you can sit there and tell other people what they should and should not do in their own country whilst criticising people from other countries for doing the same thing. It is no good pulling out a measuring stick for Justice and then only measuring one side against it. Make no mistake their are no more honourable intentions from one side than the other in global politics, all sides have an agenda. If Egyptians,Tunisians, Ukrainians etc wish to overthrow their Government then I can not possibly judge such actions from this side of their society and everyday reality.

Of course 'the West' exists and with the demise of nation states the entity is becoming increasingly easy to define. They are the globalists that aim to bring everybody down and have been doing it for decades. The elites seem to meet at all the same points and it is largely Western elites. Britain and America in terms of foreign policy and economics are increasingly identical and the EU now being this abomination that is in the process of wiping out individual national sovereignty has now become a vampire squid, much akin to the devilry we see in the English speaking nations. Now granted it isn't an absolute and whilst most suffer, some nations are doing better than others. I don't include Scandinavian countries in my definition of the West as they are sensible and stay out of the kamikaze sinkholes. It is mainly Western Europe, America, and Britain, though sometimes sensible voices will come through such as France on Iraq. At the same time, I also regard Japan as a kamikaze sinkhole, though clearly that has nothing to do with Europe and is mostly about economics and not military.

When I speak of the West though, it is mainly in reference to the UK and America, but certainly in the Ukraine, Europe is playing its role in ramping up the fallacies and propaganda. Have you ever thought that maybe Kirkland, me and Chomsky and countless others are not wrong, but it is more likely that you yourself have swallowed too much kool aid. You are repeatedly reading propaganda and say things like 'Well, what about this then!'. It then gets shown to be the reaction that the lie was induced to produce. And it typically is lies. Stop falling for lies. If you cannot look at both sides and fail to see that the West is responsible for this, then there is little that can be done to help you. Long may you lap up headlines like 'Russia trying to start WW3' and other peculiar absurdities. It has no connection with reality.

Chomsky, Kaiser, Galloway, Hedges, Hudson etc, must all be completely mad in the world of Greenbeanz and are clearly not with it because they don't support the lies, get on CNN, and say things like 'Russia trying to start WW3'. I read everything I can and try to make my own mind up and that is why I say things that are similar to others and at other times hurtle down my own path. You sound eerily like too many British newspapers.

[Beanz]

Miles STOP, take a breath and think for one tiny second BEFORE you post. Do you really think that I am so stupid ? You are simply projecting again. The West that you speak of is not really that at all. You are talking about corrupt Government regimes and then roping the entire populace into the equation. Individuals are being sold down the river by those in charge of wielding power on both sides and you are excusing one side. Who is drinking Kool Aid now ? What a vapid and terrible cheap American metaphor that is anyway. The Americans don't want Ukraine to join the EU and neither does Russia and Yet according to you the problem is the EU? You sound like an Elitist fool every time you misinterpret a post that I make encouraging you to look at the whole picture as an excuse to portray me as some brain dead manipulated sheep. You are by far the Squarest person I know and yet you seem intent on portraying yourself as some uniquely informed rebel whose job it is to enlighten everybody else (who in your tiny little world are stupid compliant minions) whilst you swallow whole the bullshit propaganda of slimy weasels like George Galloway and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

I try my best to bite my tongue but at times you behave quite simply like an ill mannered idiot. I am not attacking you or Kirkland or even your precious Chomsky when You regurgitate other people's opinions, I am simply stating my own conviction that many of those behind what you like to think of as ' alternative 'points of view are actually self serving selectavists, not themselves intent on not revealing truth but rather in reality more interested in pushing their own dogma and agenda. You have dug yourself into an entrenched position ,and that shapes your viewpoint to the point of only ever reacting to any event in one way. You are becoming predictable. 12 tears it has taken you to catch up with everyone else and realise that Blair is a wanker. Despite what you assume I have been active in protesting against 'Western' intervention in places like Iraq for nearly 20 years. In 1998 I was out playing festivals around the UK singing

"Bill Clinton
fucking dictator
may be the president
but isn't the creator
fuck off America
fuck off America........"

and joining feet on the ground around Europe marching against facism which is hardly the actions of a Kool aid drinking easily manipulated shill. You can oversimplify things to your hearts content but things are never that simple.

[Gandalf]

No, I don't think you are stupid in the slightest, quite the opposite in fact and that is why I struggle to get my head around why you can't see that this has all been provoked by the West and by the West I mean the EU and the US. The EU is all sore that the corrupt former leader opted for closer ties with Russia and in turn the US is sore that 5bn dollars spent on civil unrest is potentially being tampered with. Those two things are what has caused all this. The fact that Western supported Nazi thugs also assassinated police and protestors also appears to have been largely swept under the rug. The media is terrible and in particular the British and American media which I have been following. I think most people are fairly ignorant on the issue and considering they have to work and feed families, that isn't entirely their fault, but the media is also going mental with the whole 'Russia and starting WW3 spiel'. It is irresponsible, untrue, and a sign of just how far British and American press freedom has fallen. They literally do nothing but spout the words of government officials and the illegitimate terrorist government of the Ukraine.

I agree with you that Russia is nothing saintly and would argue as much about many concentrated sources of power, but you cannot go provoking coups on the borders of a powerful nation and have militias going around beating people up. The West should be denouncing this, but is instead full flow on a demonise Putin mission. I honestly think Putin has been remarkably restrained all things considered. Would America tolerate the Russians pumping billions into Mexico and then have Mexico have Russian nukes brought in and have militia going around beating up all American expats? No, it would be terrible and of course any sane person would want that to be stopped.

You are ludicrous to be calling me square, a sheep etc when I don't follow the rulebook. Everything I do is a rejection of the rule book and that doesn't make me a maverick nor a rebel, but it does mean I am an individual. Some of it is great, some of it less so, but I am not a square. A square is accepting that plastic bags are great. A square is watching the BBC. A square is taking on a mortgage. A square is living in a hometown from birth to death. A square is wanting to fit in. I am not a square, I would inject inject heroin into my tongue and simultaneously read The Idiot by Dostoevsky upside down and back to front and write a letter using my left foot. That, my good fellow, is not square, but rounded. Some might even call it distinct, but that is neither here nor there, and is merely a distraction from the real issues.

Nothing in life is simple nor easy, but seeing how this started is not that complex. Why on earth would anyone pump 5 billion dollars into the Ukraine when that should be spent on giving the people of Detroit their pensions. This has been setup for years and labour for the EU and the land for America seems to have been the deal. It isn't cut and dry, but we know Russia has pipelines and a considerable Russian population in the Ukraine. They have relations, the Americans should certainly not be any part of this and the EU should be in it for their gas form kool-aid and that alone.

We all agree that the Ukraine should be for the Ukrainians, so bugger off Obama and bugger off Hague. What in God's name does Hague have to do with anything, what a stupid little egg head. Fix your own countries, you idiots, and allow your press some freedom. Go away EU, you unelected kleptocrats. Go away unelected coup government of the Ukraine with your white envelope bribes, Nazism, and thuggish brutality of your own people. Leave the Ukraine alone, all of you. Only people that care should be involved and at least Russia is saying 'Don't beat up our people'. They are the only ones with a genuine concern here.

[Gandalf]

Also what on earth are you talking about with Blair? I have made lots of threads about Blair over the years and I call these people out for what they are. I was always against the wars, lots of Bush threads too. It doesn't take me any time to catch up as I was there from the off. I am consistent and I am completely comfortable with my position. If I was miscuing politically I would accept your point, but I think you are wide of the mark there. The only miscue was with Obama originally, but since Obama, I have completely deprogrammed my political education and I like where my political views are now. I feel more knowledgeable than ever before and it comes from a wide range of inputs, left, right, and centre.

You cannot be a maverick as there are other people who speak and write, and you share things in common with them too. You cannot be a maverick when it comes to politics and geopolitics. You have to look at the facts, weed out the gibberish, and surprisingly enough the names listed above, seem to think as I do. If I was relating to the views of the general propaganda establishment, then something would definitely be wrong. I wouldn't be telling the truth for a start and my views are consistent as the patterns are usually quite predictable. It's either an invasion, a coup, or else a provocation. Dozens of countries have been affected since WW2 and so the culprit is usually easily identified. This is a telling case. It's so predictable that you have to assume that they just don't care anymore and I refuse to accept that any intelligent person cannot see it for what it is. It's a massive provocation and the WW3 argument is like the Iraq 45 minutes claim.

These journalists show exactly why the British and American media is so lowly ranked these days. The BBC should be abolished.

[Kirkland Laing]

Mles, in your own and Kirklands rush to oversimplify the issues you once again ignore the actions of despotic power crazed individuals to cast everyone else as stupid. Even ignoring Putin's foreign policy you can not seriously be defending the regime of somebody who is little more than a glorified crime lord? A man who installs his own leaders gradually removing dissenting voices and codifying intolerance into law. Then there are his actions abroad, arming fellow nut jobs like Assad whilst simultaneously lecturing the west. You want on one hand to be seen to be supporting the free democratic expression of a populace whilst supporting a man and regime who has a history of crushing and murdering civilians who wish to do so. Yes the west would like to have in place a compliant and corrupt regime that they can manipulate and profit from but Putin's objectives are just the same. In the middle are the civilians of a country and the 'demonic' EU that you and Brockton drone on about turns out to also be equally despised by both sides. You will think what you want to but please a little less preaching and lecturing AT everyone and a little more debate. This is a forum not a row of soap boxes.

I'm not oversimplifying everything. I'm just not going into detail on anything because I don't have the time.

There are people in Ukraine who want the country to be pro-Europe and the way for them to express that is to vote for a suitable party in the next election, not overthrow the democratically elected government because they don't like it.

Russia and the west have been fighting over Ukraine for a long time now. Putin wants to bring it into his version of the EU. America and the west wants to turn the country pro-Europe, get access to its markets but not actually have it join the EU in the forseeable future. That is uncontroversial fact. It's not a version of events, or obsessively anti-American or whatever. It's just what has actually happened.

This is an interesting and honest post and I can agree with some of it but it is still oversimplifying the situation. Putin's version of the EU is nothing like the EU and the the entity that yourself, Miles and Noam Chomsky have invented called "the West" does not really exist. A hulking great homogeneous mass of individuals and Governments that all agree on one ideology that is an inverse version of one shared by an opposite group called "the East" could conceivably be described with such a reductionist nomenclature but actual reality and the people that live in it are not served by the use of such redundant metaphors. Those in Government and those who are governed, and those with power and those without have much more in common from both "the east" and "the west" than they have in opposition.

It is quite laughable that you can sit there and tell other people what they should and should not do in their own country whilst criticising people from other countries for doing the same thing. It is no good pulling out a measuring stick for Justice and then only measuring one side against it. Make no mistake their are no more honourable intentions from one side than the other in global politics, all sides have an agenda. If Egyptians,Tunisians, Ukrainians etc wish to overthrow their Government then I can not possibly judge such actions from this side of their society and everyday reality.

No, it's nothing like the EU. But calling it Putin's version of the EU is a pretty accurate way to sum it up in a few words, no?

The people running the EU and the US have been acting in concert to turn Ukraine pro-western. That's just not debatable, you have the US ambassador talking about it on tape and endless other evidence. Using "the west" to describe this US-EU collaboration is just a shorthand term, no need to read anything more into it than that.

I'm fine with peole overthrowing their own government when they're living under repression with no other recourse. Egypt comes into that category, but then the counter revolution that overthrew the democratically elected government and has led to the current Mubarak redux dictatorship does not.

Ukraine's economy is 1% the size of the United States economy yet over the last 20 years the US (admitted by various US officials) have spent five billion dollars trying to turn the country pro-west. That's the equivalent of spending $500 billion interfering in US politics over the past twenty years. None of the five US election cycles in that 20 year period have seen total spending even approach $10 billion apart from the last one. So that's like Russia spending ten times the total spending of both US polictical parties over twenty years to influence US politics.

But hey, not an accurate comparsion. America isn't interfering in Russia, just the country next door. So imagine Russia was doing this in Canada when they'd already turned south America countries as far as Mexico pro-Russian. That wouldn't invite a US reaction?

America signed an agreement not to interfere with the political integrity of Ukraine then immediately broke it and spent the next twent yyears funneling huge (for Ukraine) amounts of cash into the country to turn it pro-west. At some point a Russian reaction is inevitab;le and that's now what we've got.

[El Kabong]

America signed an agreement not to interfere with the political integrity of Ukraine

Ummmm yeah, I believe you've misinterpreted that. The United States signed an agreement to not interfere with or change the territorial integrity of Ukraine....as in, the United States wasn't going to cut out little chunks of the Ukraine attempting to make them different countries....which Russia agreed to and well....here we are with a Ukraine and a Crimea which used to be part of Ukraine but not anymore thanks to.......anyone anyone? Thanks to, Russian intervention.

[Kirkland Laing]

America signed an agreement not to interfere with the political integrity of Ukraine

Ummmm yeah, I believe you've misinterpreted that. The United States signed an agreement to not interfere with or change the territorial integrity of Ukraine....as in, the United States wasn't going to cut out little chunks of the Ukraine attempting to make them different countries....which Russia agreed to and well....here we are with a Ukraine and a Crimea which used to be part of Ukraine but not anymore thanks to.......anyone anyone? Thanks to, Russian intervention.

Read your own link.