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On March 17 2014 02:54 Pr0wler wrote:
Good old russian "referendum". Good to know that things didn't change much for the past 70 years.
no no, they are much more sophisticated, look, only 83.5% showed up to vote. And I bet only 85% will support joining Russia immediately. 17:56: BBC Monitoring reports: The electoral commission in Sevastopol tells Interfax-Ukraine the turnout in the city reached 83.5% as of 16:00 GMT.
On some other levels though, their stoking of ethnic nationalism is much worse. I dont think the Soviets ever went around burning books the way the pro-Russian rioters are doing in Donetsk.
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rofl, 93%. Ramzan Kadyrov is still the best puppet then. No one will beat his 99.5% Putin vote.
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I'm blown away by the fact that there's people out there who actually believe that this is a legit, democratic vote. I'm not exaggerating, i'm absolutely baffled that there will be people trying to use this referendum as an argument.
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So far it hasn't seemed much different than many of the new elections in recent times. Compare this with elections in say, Afghanistan this referendum sounds far more legitimate despite it still likely being fraud ridden.
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On March 17 2014 03:26 Kupon3ss wrote:
So far it hasn't seemed much different than many of the new elections in recent times. Compare this with elections in say, Afghanistan this referendum sounds far more legitimate.
Oh the referendum was more legitimate than elections in Afghanistan? Wow! They should advertise countries like this. 'Hey come visit Germany, our democracy is better than Afghanistan's!'
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On March 16 2014 16:22 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2014 16:21 xM(Z wrote:On March 16 2014 14:37 hypercube wrote:On March 16 2014 05:26 xM(Z wrote:
the only arguments presented here are:
- US is right because its good
- Russia is wrong because its bad
and that's pretty much it. i feel bad for ukrainians. That's not entirely unjustified, at least as far as Europe is concerned. if you believe that EU is an actual party/side to this then sure. (as far as EU being able to actively pursue, by itself, its own agenda, in order to expand its sphere of influence in the region). @ JudicatorHammurabi (your reply on the same quote/305p) well you made it into a who started first thinggie. one could easily point fingers at US because it was their $5billions that made the right sector of ukraine politics able to stage the ousting of Yanukovych after which shit went downhill. from Yanukovych being the bad guy, US made Putin into a bad guy (with respect to ukrainian crisis). ....what?
hey dude, if you want to believe that the most capitalist of all the capitalist states, on this planet, is spending 5bill dollars to better other people lives without strings attached, without demanding sooner or later something in return, then that's your choice i guess.
and John Kerry coming to Ukraine and lighting candles, seriously ... it was a coup.
On March 16 2014 17:06 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2014 16:21 xM(Z wrote:On March 16 2014 14:37 hypercube wrote:On March 16 2014 05:26 xM(Z wrote:
the only arguments presented here are:
- US is right because its good
- Russia is wrong because its bad
and that's pretty much it. i feel bad for ukrainians. That's not entirely unjustified, at least as far as Europe is concerned. if you believe that EU is an actual party/side to this then sure. (as far as EU being able to actively pursue, by itself, its own agenda, in order to expand its sphere of influence in the region). I think it's fair to give the US some credit for the EU's positive influence. EU enlargement would have been much more difficult without the aggressive expansion of NATO in the 90s. Something that happened despite quite specific promises the US had made in 1990. But I was mostly referring to how the US and the USSR handled their sphere of influence during their cold war in Europe. It's easy to see that US foreign policy is hypocritical, holding Russia to standards that they often ignore themselves. But even if this is a naked power play with no side having the moral high ground (not really true from Ukraine's perspective, but certainly true between the US and Russia), which side would you prefer winning? Looking at it from central and eastern Europe it certainly seems like a weaker Russia is a good thing. Even from Ukraine's perspective, given the current Russian leadership they would be better off with less Russian influence.
well as far as Russia goes, you can only guesstimate its future actions based on how it was handling its sphere of influence during the cold war so words like dictatorship, censorship, deprivation of freedom and human rights, hell even genocide and ethnic cleansing come to mind; but, those are still guesstimates.
the truth is, from my pov, that Russia can only play one card as far as keeping its sphere of influence goes and that's its military strength. it can not 'bribe' other countries like US/EU can because it lacks their financial might; add to that the institutionalized political corruption from the ex-eastern block and it's clear that its hands are limited at best.
i'd take a pragmatic approach here and say that a monopoly of democracy is inherently bad while keeping an disinclined but open mind as far as Russia goes.
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On March 17 2014 03:26 Kupon3ss wrote:
So far it hasn't seemed much different than many of the new elections in recent times. Compare this with elections in say, Afghanistan this referendum sounds far more legitimate despite it still likely being fraud ridden.
Hows that?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_presidential_election,_2009
The Afghan presidential and provincial council elections held on August 20, 2009 were widely characterized as marred by lack of security, violence, extremely low voter turnout, and widespread ballot stuffing, intimidation, and other electoral fraud.[8][9] Over 2,800 complaints were received by the Election Complaints Commission, with the largest proportion concerning irregularities at the poll, including ballot box stuffing and voter intimidation.[10][11] The New York Times wrote, "fraud was so pervasive that nearly a quarter of all votes were thrown out." According to an article by The Times, "some 1.26 million recorded votes were excluded from an election that cost the international community more than $300 million." (Another estimate placed the cost at $500 million.)[12][13][14]
for example, this isn't out of the ordinary for "America-approved Democracies" tho
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^ That's ludicrous. Not only don't you argue your point but your best example of legitimate elections is Afghanistan? That's the bar they need to jump over, be better than Afghanistan?! The 2010 Afghanistan elections were reported by the OSCE as having `dramatic levels of fraud, violence and highly disputed outcomes were apparent, which did not contribute to fostering credibility of and public confidence in the democratic process.' Woooo, accept the referendum!
***
On actual news, seems like Russia is escalating its rhetoric ahead of tomorrow:
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On March 17 2014 03:28 xM(Z wrote:
hey dude, if you want to believe that the most capitalist of all the capitalist states, on this planet, is spending 5bill dollars to better other people lives without strings attached, without demanding sooner or later something in return, then that's your choice i guess.
and John Kerry coming to Ukraine and lighting candles, seriously ... it was a coup.
Oh okay. So because America is the most capitalst of all capitalist states anytime it spends money its to sponsor coups for vague promises of future returns.
i'd take a pragmatic approach here and say that a monopoly of democracy is inherently bad while keeping an disinclined but open mind as far as Russia goes.
What does this even mean?
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On March 17 2014 03:32 Kupon3ss wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_presidential_election,_2009Show nested quote +The Afghan presidential and provincial council elections held on August 20, 2009 were widely characterized as marred by lack of security, violence, extremely low voter turnout, and widespread ballot stuffing, intimidation, and other electoral fraud.[8][9] Over 2,800 complaints were received by the Election Complaints Commission, with the largest proportion concerning irregularities at the poll, including ballot box stuffing and voter intimidation.[10][11] The New York Times wrote, "fraud was so pervasive that nearly a quarter of all votes were thrown out." According to an article by The Times, "some 1.26 million recorded votes were excluded from an election that cost the international community more than $300 million." (Another estimate placed the cost at $500 million.)[12][13][14] for example, this isn't out of the ordinary for "America-approved Democracies" tho
How is this 'worse' than the Crimean referendum? Foreign observers and Western press reported massive amounts of fraud, the 'winner' won with 49% of the vote? American troops didnt shoot at foreign observers to make sure they dont enter Afghanistan during the elections, and they didnt award their chosen candidate a 93% of the vote. But okay. I guess you must think the North Korean elections are even better, 100% of vote and 99% attendance
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Is that really any different than say
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/08/palin.html
“Mr. President,” she spat, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”
At CPAC, ridiculous hyperbole from deranged radicals exist in many nations, but are usually only electable in America
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Except that these radicals are not the head of the largest Kremlin controlled news agency, and has not been appointed by Putin himself to carry the government's message... It would literally be better if a member of the Duma had said it.
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On March 17 2014 03:35 Kupon3ss wrote:Is that really any different than say http://www.politicususa.com/2014/03/08/palin.html“Mr. President,” she spat, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.” At CPAC, ridiculous hyperbole from deranged radicals exist in many nations, but are usually only electable in America
What does CPAC have to do with any of this or Palin? You know, you can oppose American foreign policy/GOP without automatically a blanket opposition to all American activities anywhere.
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When will the results of the referendum be out?
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I'm blown away by the fact that there's people out there who actually believe that this is a legit, democratic vote. I'm not exaggerating, i'm absolutely baffled that there will be people trying to use this referendum as an argument.
erhm, fly to Crimea yourself and ask ppl what they want/wanted? It was never a secret that Cremea have been pro Russian for years. Also there is like 70% of population are ethnic russians. So there was no reason to rige the vote. And results was really obvious for anyone who has any clue about the region.
Does some ppl really think they rigged the vote? lol, there was no reason to do it, even if they wanted, cos ppl vote themselfs as needed. Russians want to join Russia, what a surprise. xD
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I actually agree with much of the current American foreign policy, I just think its absurd and hypocritical to see Russian hyperbole and questionable "democracies" influenced by Russia without seeing the same from the West.
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On March 17 2014 03:44 promiseme wrote:Show nested quote +I'm blown away by the fact that there's people out there who actually believe that this is a legit, democratic vote. I'm not exaggerating, i'm absolutely baffled that there will be people trying to use this referendum as an argument. erhm, fly to Crimea yourself and ask ppl what they want/wanted? It was never a secret that Cremea have been pro Russian for years. Also there like 70% of population are ethnic russians. So there was no reason to rige the vote. And results was really obvious for anyone who has any clue about the region. Does some ppl really think they rigged the vote? lol, there was no reason to do it, even if they wanted, cos ppl vote themselfs as needed. Russians want to join Russia, what a surprise. xD
Well, there's three aspects to this:
a) We (just using your language, I obviously don't speak for everyone) don't think Russia needs to rig the vote, but they were caught doing so. So apparently Russia thought they needed to rig the vote.
b) The referendum has no legal power because it violates the Ukrainian constitution so any decision to hold a referendum which would result in the change of Ukraine's territory is legally void.
c) A vote (especially on annexation) while occupied by foreign troops is void in the face of international law.
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EPT
