Jump to content

Ukraine 18 - The Rites of Spring


Horza

Recommended Posts

I wonder who's Nazis are worse, Russia's or Ukraine's?

Nazis are Nazis: they are probably equally bad. Of course, certain countries reward Nazis with high government positions which, it could be argued, puts those Nazis in a better position to express themselves (bless their little hearts) to the fullest. A Nazitopia, if you will, where no Nazi will be misunderstood and unjustly vilified. Kinda reminds me of the difference between potential and kinetic energy. These Ukrainian Nazis sure do seem quite kinetic. Good for them, I suppose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't know how I missed this, but Poroshenko apparently plans to construct a 2,000 kilometer-long wall between Ukraine and Russia "built from steel, crowned with barbed wire and manned by soldiers with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment." These guys are becoming absolutely batshit crazy.



http://www.ibtimes.com/great-wall-ukraine-priority-petro-poroshenko-says-donbas-defense-construction-set-1862040


Link to comment
Share on other sites

OT but holy fuck.

So, am pondering St. pete's in my summer excursions, and was checking if the war's causing safety issues for Westerners, which prompted a curiosity about Candian-Russian similarities, which lead to a link-hunt that inadvertently ended up on this incredibly racist website. Honestly, so racist that I was a full page of skimming posts in thinking they were being ironic about perceptions of Russians as bigoted and wearing out the joke. Only after the comments were about how hockey is a good sport because they don't let 'monkeys' play...with no one reacting...did I realize this shit was for real and then noticed the rather nazi decor of the forum. Now I feel like a complete moron, but more I feel down on folk.

It's unreal people think this way and I now feel like my IPad is dirty. I have known racist people, but no one who talks like that. Again, it reads like poor irony to the uninitiated.

Just had to tell someone. Told my gf and she wasn't too interested, other than to say I've only known Canadian racists, which is like the diet version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lol.

In retrospect it was the fact that it slipped in with me thinking it irony that really bothered me. I mean, I've read Mein Kampf, FFS. I think you need to understand a cancer if you want to combat it, so I have no problem with picking through the trash cans of life. If I had gone to that forum aware, it wouldn't have phased me nearly as much. But as it was, it was such a disgusting feeling.

My gf compared it to once when she was reading a James Elroy mistaking it for a cozy Brit mystery on the same list, and arriving at an anal rape scene that completely floored her because her guard was down.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In actual news about Ukraine rather than sports fans, it seems that blowing through all of the loan money that they received did not take very long:




On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill that would allow the government to default on payments to foreign creditors, amid negotiations to restructure its increasingly unsustainable debt.


...


When it comes to the Ukraine, people like financier George Soros have argued that the international community, and specifically Europe, should invest at least $50 billion on top of the $17 billion the IMF has already offered to help the nation stabilize its economy and reform its bureaucracy.


...


Another option to saving Ukraine from financial ruin would be to force private creditors to forgive its outstanding debt. That’s the approach former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers advocated in an op-ed published on Monday. “The case for debt reduction is as strong as any that I have encountered over the past quarter century,” Summers writes.




It's absolutely hilarious how all of the arguments about the sanctity of debt immediately disappear when a rival geopolitical power is involved. Anybody care to guess whether the final plan will be along the lines of what Soros is proposing or closer to Summers' ideas? Or maybe something else altogether?


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cyprus got a bail-in, but that was the EU working to shut down a potential cascading default. I don't see how all of Ukraine's creditors would be successfully corralled into Larry Summer's (incredibly convenient, I agree) debt reduction scheme.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sweden had to scramble fighter jets today because of Russian Tupolev bombers.

I would give a news page but who reads them anyway? :)

Call me old fashioned but I do. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Novorossiya as a real prospect died out in May last year but it's official cancellation is an interesting development:

Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, noted that the end of the Novorossia project was announced shortly after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Putin in Sochi for the first time since the Ukraine crisis unfolded at the end of 2013. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland followed hot on his heels with visits to Kiev and Moscow.

In an article published on the Carnegie Center's website last week, Kolesnikov said that it was possible that during those negotiations, U.S. neutrality or silence with regard to Russia's annexation of Crimea was offered in exchange for Russian support for the reintegration of Ukraine's rebellious regions.

Piontkovsky agreed.

"Putin has offered the Americans a draw: They close their eyes to the Crimea issue, while Russia freezes the conflict in Ukraine's east. This is a lucrative option for the West, but Ukraine cannot like it," Piontkovsky said.

In the same interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta last week, Lavrov made a point of mentioning that the question of Crimea had not been brought up by Kerry during his meeting with Putin.

"Draw your own conclusions," Lavrov said at the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...