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.