I am not opposed to self determination for the people of Crimea; I am opposed to this referendum. Nobody can seriously argue there has been a chance for a campaign in which different viewpoints can be freely argued, with some equality of media access and freedom from fear and intimidation.
Hitler invaded Austria on 12 March 1938. The Anschluss was confirmed in a plebiscite on 10 April, just 28 days later, by a majority of 99.7%. Putin has done it in less than half of the time, and I have no doubt will produce a similar result in the vote. The point is not whether or not the vote reflects the will of the people – the point is whether the will of the people has been affected by military demonstration, fear, hysterically induced national psychosis and above all an absence of space for debate or alternative viewpoints.
There is no reasonable claim that Putin’s swift plebiscite is necessary because of an imminent threat of violence against Russians in Crimea. There is absolutely no reason that a referendum could not have been held at the end of this year, in a calm and peaceful atmosphere, after everybody had a chance to campaign and express their position. Putin has proved that force majeure is powerful in international politics, and there is every reason to believe that he could have finessed international acceptance of such a referendum in due course. Germany, in particular, is much more interested in its own energy supplies than in the rights of Ukraine. In twenty years in diplomacy, I never saw a single instance of Germany having any interest in rights other than its own national self-interest. It is very likely such a genuine referendum would have gone in Russia’s favour. But the disadvantages of open debate about the merits and demerits of Putin’s Russia, and his own self-image as the man of military prowess, led Putin to take the more violent course.
The vote yesterday in the Security Council should give every Putinista pause. Not even China voted with Russia. The Africans and South Americans voted solidly against. That is not because they are prisoners or puppets of the United States – they are not. Neither did they take the easy road of abstention. The truth is that what Putin is doing in Crimea is outrageous.
What happens now is going to be interesting. I greatly fear that Putin is looking to stir up as much disorder in Ukraine’s Eastern provinces as possible, perhaps with the aim of promoting civil war in which Russia can covertly intervene, rather than open invasion, but I do not put the latter past him. Against that, I am quite sure Russia did not expect the extreme diplomatic isolation, in fact humiliation, it suffered at the UN yesterday. I am hopeful Russia may step back from the brink.
The EU I expect to do nothing. Sanctions will target a few individuals who are not too close to Putin and don’t keep too many of their interests in the West. I don’t think Alisher Usmanov and Roman Abramovic need lose too much sleep, that Harrods need worry or that we will see any flats seized at One Hyde Park. (It is among my dearest wishes one day to see One Hyde Park given out for council housing.) Neither do I expect to see the United States do anything effective; its levers are limited. I doubt we have seen the last of Mr Putin’s adventurism.
Human society is not perfectible, which does not mean we should not try. I believe western democracy, particularly in its social democratic European manifestation from approximately 1945 to 2000, achieved a high level of happiness for its ordinary people and an encouraging level of equality. For approximately 20 years unfortunately we have witnessed a capitalism more raw and unabated than ever before, and massively growing levels of wealth inequality, a reduction in state provision for the needy, a distortion of state activity further to line the pockets of the rich, ever increasing corruption among the elite and growing levels of social immobility and exclusion, a narrowing of the options presented by major political parties until there is not a cigarette paper between them and their neo-conservative agendas, and a related narrowing by the mainstream media of the accepted bounds of public debate, with orchestrated ridicule of opinions outside those bounds. Democracy, as a system offering real choice to informed electors, has ceased to function in the West leading to enormous political alienation. On the international scene the West has retreated from the concept of international law and, heady with the temporary unipolar US military dominance, adopted aggressive might is right polices and a return of the practices of both formal and informal imperialism.
But every single one of those things is true of Putin’s Russia, and in fact it is much worse. Wealth inequality is even more extreme. Toleration of dissent and of different lifestyles even less evident, the space for debate even more constricted, the contempt for international law still more pronounced. Putin’s own desire for imperialist sphere of influence politics leads him into conflict with aggressive designs of the west, as for example in Syria and Iran. The consequence can be an accidental good, in that Putin has thwarted western military plans. But that is not in any sense from a desire for public good, and if Putin can himself get away with military force he does. His conflicts of interest with the west have deluded a surprising number of people here into believing that Putin in some ways represents an ideological alternative. He does not. He represents a capitalism still more raw, an oligarchy still more corrupt, a wealth gap still greater and growing still quicker, a debate still more circumscribed. It speaks to the extreme political failure of the western political system, and the degree of the alienation of which I spoke, that so many strive to see something beautiful in the ugly features of Putinism.
It does not change my belief that these are western-funded usurpers of a legitimately elected government for their own political ends. They are not the products, in my opinion, of a popular movement.
John Goss, you said that above. I assume you believe that President Karimov is also legitimate president of Uzbekistan. He was elected with 92% majority last time. His election and multiple re-election record is clear like sovet polutburo member’s file. Please respond to this one question?
Also, do you think people who were brutally murdered in Andijan were western-funded usurpers? Do you not for a second believe that people could revolt against government that does not satisfy them?
I should have qualified…”Trade routes for Russia/Mediterranean” for ice-free port reference.
Of course you leave out the recent events on Syrian turf. Craig will enlighten you.
Uzbek, three times now I have tried to tell you that the Ukraine is not Uzbekistan. The government elected before Yanukovich contained products of the so-called “Orange revolution” which made Timoshenko prime minister. She was in prison for thieving from the people and siphoning it off into numerous overseas accounts. One of the first things Yatsunik did was to release her from prison. She is another Gulnara Karimova. You’re backing the wrong horse.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-uk-banks-in-row-over-yulia-tymoshenko-millions-9177693.html
These are the same distasteful people back in power by means of a coup. Anyway it has backfired. Quite rightly in my opinion.
Another thing I’ve been meaning to try to explain to you is that everybody on the left is not like those on the left in Uzbekistan, opening fire on innocent people in Andijan, boiling people alive and other obscenities. Some people on the left really care for creating a better society. And to be honest, just because the UK is better than Uzbekistan does not mean it is ideal. You do tend to look at life here through rose-coloured spectacles. Now please try and separate Ukraine from Uzbekistan. They are two different places, one in Europe, the other in Asia.
Sorry, replace Yatsunik with Yatsenyuk.
Sofia
‘Factist’ has already been coined unfortunately, and I suspect I am one. The worst kind of racist who has been pxxed off so many times by different members of one particular ethnic group grinds his/her teeth whenever another one comes near.
Not only am I one, but thinking about it other people are factist about me. To them I am the stereotype square peg they have to hammer into their own little pre-fabricated round brain hole for people they think are like me.
Hint: Male, middle-class, southerner, white, British etc
Actually only God knows the inner hearts.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella! 17 Mar, 2014 – 3:13 pm
Habbabkuk, ever since you admitted to me that your purpose here is to distract people from discussion of substantive issues, I have ignored you. However your deliberate lies about me can’t be left unanswered. I have never suggested Craig is any of those things and I do not believe any of them.
Congratulations on your new disruptive technique. I can’t deny it works.
A Nazi Rabbi –
http://www.torah4blind.org/gallery/parade/wavnc.jpg
Whitney Houston, a secret Nazi –
http://pix.avaxnews.com/avaxnews/5d/61/0000615d_medium.jpeg
Hitler Schwarzen Jugendlichen
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NsTDMamDlzU/UqaqBuuT8KI/AAAAAAAAEaA/GgJocpRI48s/s1600/P1490905.JPG
A Node
“Habbabkuk, ever since you admitted to me that your purpose here is to distract people from discussion of substantive issues,…”
_________________
Nice try at diverting away from the filthy things you and others have said about Craig.
Find me a quote to back up your claim, A Node. Put up or shut up 🙂
Craig, trying to pass me off as some anti western conspiracy nut is not helpful.I support direct democray not Putin! War criminal or not you are calling Putin Hitler, while you support a neo nazi coup. A coup which would never of happened without USA money!
Its a pathetic neo liberal war mongering arguement
Craig , what I suggest , is the UK stays out of it. Osbourne offering money to neo nazis in the Ukraine is not helpful. Politions would start a war over this, the people either stop it or fight it! If we where a true direct democracy we would be sure of peace. If the Ukraine where a direct democracy then there would not even be a problem tobegin with. Its centralised authority that causes ALL these problems …and even gives Putin his power.
“I’d sooner waste my time with some drunk in an Elkhart bar.”
Yep that would be about your level – the best you can do is my reversing two initials and lets ignore all your pals’ abuses of human rights law (Russia was a signatory to the ECHR last time I looked) and that’s even before we get onto ethics and morality.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/19082011-outsourcing-justice-russia-and-the-echr-oped/
@Goss
Some people on the left really care for creating a better society.
Yes they do – that is why we do not support a leader who sets the top tax rate at 13% while cutting welfare, health and educating spending, who beats up and makes life hell for immigrants, who locks up his opponents and worse, who takes parts of other countries by invading them etc. etc. You really should be ashamed of yourself.
RD
I thought the top rate of tax was 45% if you mean Cameron, 39.6% if you mean Obama, but all the other items, cutting welfare, health and education spending, making life hell for immigrants, locking up opponents, and invading other countries. Yes they fit the bill. Or did you mean somebody else, Tony Blair, George W. Bush perhaps?
Why I should be ashamed of myself in pointing out that the illegitimate government of Ukraine, is allied to the extreme right and funded by people who have stolen from the poor of western countries, who believe in world domination, and destabilise the planet. Well I am proud, not so much of what my country does, but what real people on the left have achieved. What about you? You seem particularly bitter about the election results and the fact that the western-funded Yatsenyuk has forced Crimea into Russian hands. They will never get it back short of war.
http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners
I fear Craig has been caught out lying on the “The Wrong Referendum, The Wrong Saviour” thread.
I put this post on…..
Someone 16 Mar, 2014 – 12:00 pm
“Strange, you missed 100,000 dead in Chechnya.”
Lets not forget, millions dead in Iraq.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/13173659825/ ”
Craig then put this post on….
craig 16 Mar, 2014 – 12:25 pm
“Someone
I have never forgotten the dead in Iraq. You do not honour them by your stance that dead Chechens don’t matter. Killing Muslims is OK if it is Putin that does it?”
I then put this post on…..
Someone 16 Mar, 2014 – 1:31 pm
““You do not honour them by your stance that dead Chechens don’t matter.”
I was pointing out that both sides have killed many people. I NEVER said that “Chechens don’t matter”, you Craig have lied, so please don’t make things up!, makes you look an idiot.”
**
It is clear that Craig will make things up, very low to say terrible things like he said above, how did he come to the…….”You do not honour them by your stance that dead Chechens don’t matter. Killing Muslims is OK if it is Putin that does it?”.
Make’s me now wonder if he was telling the truth to us all about his time as ambassador to Uzbekistan!, I now think his account is not the truth of the matter!.
Craig: “Their ability to foment mass popular unrest is overrated – the most they can do is try to channel genuine popular anger that pre-exists. This they were trying to do but with limited effect”
ummm, is that a joke Craig? What about paying thousands of homicidal mercenaries and Al Qaeda affiliates to run amok committing mass murder and destruction in Libya, Syria etc etc. Not even mentioning Afghanistan, Iraq and the inconvenient truth of the new booming heroin trade of course – all nicely spun and managed by corporate media
Resident Dissident :
You were scathing about the use of transparent ballot boxes in Crimea. Your comment –
“Clear Perspex ballot boxes in the Crimea – now why would that be??”
– was clearly intended to imply that they would aid vote-fixing, only, like a lot of your comments, it was more a smear than an accusation. No evidence, no justification, just mud slung.
I asked you to explain how transparent ballot boxes could aid electoral fraud. I see you’ve been back on the blog since without responding to my question. Can I take that as a tacit admission that your comment was indeed a groundless slur which you can’t justify?
ESLO
Your comment –
“Ballot boxes were transparent so that international observers could see there were no manipulations – what planet are you living on!”
– is big on ridicule but, like RD’s, empty of substance.
On the planet where I live, it’s more difficult to interfere with ballot papers when they’re constantly in view. Are things different in your dark world?
CRAIG
“I believe western democracy, particularly in its social democratic European manifestation from approximately 1945 to 2000, achieved a high level of happiness for its ordinary people and an encouraging level of equality.”
aaaaah here in lies the probelm ,Craig you are delusional if you believe this!
“Western representative democracy” is just an elected dictatorship
So you don’t care about the suffering and deaths of countless thousands of Central and South Americans killed by CIA death squads ,to keep “western democracy” fed with cheap resources?
the fact that between 1945 and 2000 over 70 countries where invaded and 0 democracies created!
http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/us-government-spreading-freedom-and-democracy-since-1945/
FYI
Direct democracies like Switzerland ,do not invade other countries nor can they be invaded because they have a militia army ,and not a taxpayer funded invasion force!
Switzerland had every reason to expect invasion. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he made overtures towards the various National Socialist-leaning organizations in German-speaking countries, particularly Austria and Switzerland
Operation Tannenbaum (English: Operation Fir Tree or Christmas Tree), known earlier as Operation Green, was a planned but cancelled invasion of Switzerland by Nazi Germany during World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum
CRAIG
“The problem with people like you, Cuthulan, that you quite rightly deride war criminals like Bush and Blair, but then go off looking for an opposing war criminal to support. ”
No, Craig.
The problem with people like you, Craig, that you quite rightly deride war criminals like Putin, but then go off looking for an opposing war criminal to support. ……in this case Neo Nazi war criminals!
Politions are the problem! We need them today about as much as we need priests!
We need to decentralise the social power structure
and hold politions accountable for THIER actions
We need Direct Democracy Today!
“Someone” (not Jemand, by any chance?): interesting attempt at smearing. Perhaps if you’d actually acknowledged and condemned the murder of thousands of Chechens, or even paused for a second to confirm that you had heard about them, it would have looked less as if you thought they ‘didn’t matter’. But you didn’t, and therefore it did.
ANode
Clear ballot boxes and lack of secret ballots aid vote fixing because those who might wish to vote against might be intimidated into not doing so as a result of their views being made public, especially with Putin’s armed goons in close proximity. It used to be the case in the UK (pre 1832) that the way everyone voted was a matter of public record, the resulting shenanigans was one of the reasons why civilised countries moved to secret ballots
John Goss
I was talking about Russia – on every sensible measure of left vs right it is pretty clear where your heroes stand. You have no shame whatsoever.
technicolour 18 Mar, 2014 – 1:26 pm
Your post says a lot about you!, you don’t read ALL my posts on this blog!!!.
I have on this blog said what I think about the USA and Russia, one is as bad as the other!, both are run by neoconservative oligarchs, fighting amongst themselves.
Now why are you saying…..
“Perhaps if you’d actually acknowledged and condemned the murder of thousands of Chechens, or even paused for a second to confirm that you had heard about them, it would have looked less as if you thought they ‘didn’t matter’. But you didn’t, and therefore it did.”
“But you didn’t, and therefore it did.”!!!, please explain that!.
“Someone” “(not Jemand, by any chance?)” No.
“technicolour” (not Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!, by any chance?).
Someone:
No, not Habbakuk. Someone = German for Jemand, which was why I asked.
You’re right, I haven’t read all your blog posts. But nor, I should think, has Craig. And it’s pretty obvious why your one line riposte would, out of context, have sounded cruelly & casually dismissive.
But apologies for not having the context, obviously. No reason to be smearing Craig with accusations of (long-term) lying: think you should apologise too.
(sorry, Jemand = German for ‘Someone’, duh)
technicolour 18 Mar, 2014 – 2:42 pm
“think you should apologise too.”
For telling the truth!, technicolour, it is there in front of your eyes, Craig made it up, he lied!.
Nope, how has he lied? He said ‘your stance’ – a stance he read from the fact that instead of acknowledging or commenting on the murders of Chechens, you immediately replied ‘what about the Iraqis’ (or words to that effect). It is, at the very most, a misunderstanding, which you could have corrected quite easily, and without bombastic accusations.
technicolour 18 Mar, 2014 – 3:03 pm
What you are now saying is/would be a falsehood in every respect!.
There NO ambiguity in my first post….
Someone 16 Mar, 2014 – 12:00 pm
“Strange, you missed 100,000 dead in Chechnya.”
Lets not forget, millions dead in Iraq.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/13173659825/ ”
I was agreeing with Craigs post, and pointing out “one is as bad as the other”, also, check the link I gave!, which proves the point, there was no other interpretation that could have been drawn from my post!. Craig made it up, he lied!.
That Yarosh sounds like another mouthy clown.
“Last week, a proposal was submitted to the Ukrainian parliament, suggesting that Right Sector be transformed into a regular unit of the armed forces.”
Hitler did that with the Brownshirts after whacking their leadership, even though they’d helped him to power.
The UK did it with their Loyalist terrorists when they formed the UDR. Of course many of them were whacked as well after they’d served their purpose.
Par for the course.
I hope they don’t whack Mr Yarosh, though I can see them doing that and blaming it on Vlad. He’s already got an international warrant out for this thug.
The only way the neocon failure in Syria and Ukraine makes sense, if the US isn’t to be viewed as totally incompetent, is that there are forces in the US who are cooperating with Russia to undermine the ambition of neocons.
Above relates to this:
http://rt.com/news/yarosh-destroy-russia-pipelines-186/
Yes, the link helps clarify – I don’t tend to click on links unless I know the source, and it seems Craig doesn’t either. Still no lie involved! I had exactly the same feeling about your stance from your post; glad to know I was wrong, but I wasn’t ‘lying’. I can see it must be hurtful to be got wrong, but that’s the perils of the internet message board for you, I’m afraid, especially on such emotional issues.
“Still no lie involved!”
technicolour 18 Mar, 2014 – 3:43 pm
It should be noted that when I posted back to Craig there was no retraction or explanation, apology….
Someone 16 Mar, 2014 – 1:31 pm
““You do not honour them by your stance that dead Chechens don’t matter.”
I was pointing out that both sides have killed many people. I NEVER said that “Chechens don’t matter”, you Craig have lied, so please don’t make things up!, makes you look an idiot.”