Hi, BOB KLAHN!
I read your message from 06.06.2014 01:29

  BK> Without true freedom of speech and the press no one can have any
  BK> idea what is going on in Russia. However, any govt that puts a
  BK> woman's music group in prison for protest songs, and for a long
  BK> time, is not a govt I believe is honest.

I believe you can hardly imagine a situation when some Arab girls in 
frivolous, "ala gay parade" style clothes rush into the main Jerusalem 
synagogue and start singing "Allah, kill infidels?" Jews, I believe, can 
understand that such an act is criminal and completely unacceptable. But 
Americans think that it was OK, just because they had lost the true 
faith in God. It is now all the same for them -- a gay parade in a 
street or a fucking mess in the main cathedral. It must be equally 
allowed. Well, at least in Russia. ;)

  BK>>> I wonder about that. I wonder if, maybe, he's got it backwards. I
  BK>>> wonder if the result of doing nothing might not be what leads to
  BK>>> the war nobody wants.
  BK>>> We have long been told that Hitler might have been stopped,
  BK>>> probably would have been stopped, if the other nations had
  BK>>> stepped in with his first aggression against the Sudentenland,
  BK>>> against Austria, against those who could not defend themselves.
  BK>>> What makes anyone think Putin is any less than Hitler?
  AK>> Your words are a twaddle unless you see the columns of Russian
  AK>> tanks and troops marching along the Ukraine roads.

  BK> Once that happens it's too late. What we do know is those troops
  BK> and tanks were massed on the Ukraine border, but have recently been
  BK> withdrawn.

But now it is too early to speak in this way, and your comparisons are 
false. The only correct comparison is comparing the situation in Ukraine 
with the situation in Yugoslavia after some areas of it declared a 
separation. Until the civil war Yugoslavia's borders and integrity were 
also recognized across the world.

  BK> What Putin has accomplished is to give the former Soviet states
  BK> reason to believe he is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union.
  BK> That gives them reason to ask for more US military aid, including
  BK> the anti-missile systems that had been canceled a few years ago.

Many territories of the former USSR have still been closely related with 
each other as economically as in other areas. Actually, until last time, 
eastern Ukraine was separated from Russia only formally. In reality, all 
the eastern Ukraine plants continued working with Russian plants, there 
was no real border, people could freely move from one country to 
another. The same things are now with Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and some 
other former USSR republics. Putin has invented nothing. It is a lie, 
that all people of the republics of the USSR hated each other and had 
nothing in common. So, it is a natural idea to legalize things that have 
always been and have existed now.

  AK>> Who told you that countries cannot split up? Why do you think that
  AK>> Ukraine cannot split like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia?
  BK> I have no problem with countries splitting up. What I do have is
  BK> when one portion wants to secede, and the reports are of masked
  BK> gunmen patrolling the cities. If they are legitimate, why are they
  BK> masked?

Well, if you had seen the Maidan rebellion in Kiev you could have also 
seen the rebels wearing masks. It is natural for this kind of events. 
These people have relatives, they are not sure that the secret police 
will not come to their homes during the night.

You can also note that the police across all the world now uses modern 
technology - it photographs all the demonstrators, rebels so to create a 
special database for future arrests and repressions.

  BK> If the people who live there want to split off, I don't have a
  BK> problem with that. I do have a problem with it being done by masked
  BK> gunmen.

The modern Ukraine mentality cannot accept that some people might have a 
desire to divorce and live separately. It is like (in some Asian 
countries) women are not allowed to divorce on their own will.

Compare: Divorce in Saudi Arabia
http://saudiwoman.me/2009/04/07/divorce-in-saudi-arabia/

  AK>> It is not pro-Russian forces are fighting in eastern Ukraine. It
  AK>> is the Russian people who always lived there, in eastern and
  AK>> southern Ukraine, and they were extremely insulted when pro-
  AK>> western rebels removed their candidate (Yanukovich, who won
  AK>> democratic elections) from power.

  BK> Being insulted is not ground for shooting up the place, and killing
  BK> people. It is not grounds for seizing power. Now, how many Russian
  BK> people live there? And why are Russians living in Ukraine and
  BK> claiming the right to decide who rules the country?

There are 8-9 million Russians in Ukraine. It is incorrect to call them 
killers or terrorists, as the present authority does. More of that -- it 
is a gruesome propaganda and a lie. Russian people started their 
protests in the same lawless way the pro-western activists started their 
activity in Kiev -- noisy defiant demonstrations, capturing municipal 
buildings, dispersing the police etc. Yanukovich refused to shoot people 
in Kiev (my respect to him for that!), but after the western rebels had 
come to power in Kiev they shamelessly started to use a brutal force 
against eastern protesters. After some victims the wheel of a civil war 
had started its rotation. Blood is a perfect lubricant for it.

  AK>> Rebels in Kiev were minority, but they captured power by force,
  AK>> violating all democratic institutions and election results.

  BK> By force? It seems most of the force was used against them.

The Kiev police just guarded government buildings from the rebels. 
Actually, there was only one attempt to clear Maidan -- when Yanukovich 
was on his foreign visit. The police had cleared Maidan during a 
half-an-hour. But there was outcry about democracy violation and the 
demonstrators were allowed to come back. After that the police looked 
like lamp posts and were burned alive with Molotov cocktails.

  BK> According to what I have seen, the constitution was rewritten after
  BK> Yonukovych took power, not by a constitutional convention or such,
  BK> but by the courts. The protestors started out demanding the
  BK> previous constitution be reinstated.

After wining the 2010 elections Yanukovich was the legitimate state 
leader and, besides, the leader of the biggest parliamentarian 
coalition. They had all rights to do the changes they wanted. It is 
democracy. If another party had won elections they could have do the 
same. They could join to Devil or so -- it would also a legal choice. 
The legal majority in Kiev was removed from parliament by force and threats.

That's why many in the east of the Ukraine (Yanukovich's electorate) 
consider the Kiev's events as an illegal cope and don't want to obey the 
new power.

  BK> ----------------------------------------------------------------
  BK> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25182830

  BK> But it was the deaths of at least 88 people, many of them
  BK> protesters shot dead by uniformed snipers in 48 hours of bloodshed,
  BK> that ultimately brought him down.
  BK> ----------------------------------------------------------------

Can you pay attention that "many of them were protesters"? Who were the 
others? They were the police. They police returned fire only after they 
got under a sniper fire and lost a dozen of people. If the police had 
not shot with live ammunition for four or five months of the rebellion - 
what an event could provoke them to fire? Especially when an agreement 
with Yanukovich had been achieved? I strongly believe that some people 
in Maidan square did not want a peaceful solution. And they derailed the 
agreement in a most outrageous way.


  BK> Putin has backed off. However, it certainly appeared he wanted to
  BK> cut the Ukraine up.

Such events as a rule are made by small but active groups. Such a thing 
happened in Kiev, such a thing happened in eastern Ukraine. Russia has 
played a small role -- eastern rebels had quickly captured a lot of 
modern weapon and even some military bases. So now they are a force and 
if somebody don't want to spill blood or fight with them they must 
negotiate with them and, first, to stop call them terrorists and 
bandits. How easily some people can use such marks and tags!



  BK> On March 6, after gunmen took over the parliament building in the
  BK> Crimean regional capital, Simferopol, a pro-Russian leadership was
  BK> installed. Then the regional parliament voted behind closed doors
  BK> for Crimea to leave Ukraine and join Russia, setting a referendum
  BK> for Sunday to validate their decision.

It doesn't matter who were that gunmen.  Even id they guarded that 
meeting, surely the situation was not like in a Moscow theater which was 
captured by terrorists in 2002.

And at last about the referendum. It was open and honest. Everybody 
voted as he wanted. Those who chose not to vote (many of the 13% Tatar 
population, for instance) were free in making their choice, and their 
votes were taken into account and not hidden. Everybody in the Crimea 
had an opportunity to express his choice.

A NATO's general whined bitterly that the Crimea referendum "was held 
under Russian gun barrrels," but it is more fare to say that the last 
Ukraine elections were held under the  gun barrels of Ukraine's army, at 
least in the east. What kind of fare elections can be in a country with 
a civil war? BTW, it is exactly the same reason why the latest elections 
in Syria were declared illegal  by the West. Double standards?

Bye, BOB!
Alexander Koryagin
fido7.debate 2014
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