Merged Ukraine erupts in riots and general strike.

[Dcdrac]

She was evacuated after the Chernobyl reactor suffered the meltdown.

 

[Caustic Logic]

She was evacuated after the Chernobyl reactor suffered the meltdown.

Ah, that mess ... hope that didn't cause too many problems. I was just a kid when that happened. That's some time to lose touch for sure. Or to read intently, keep in touch, and really learn up, depending.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Minor adjustments, it's hoped

Haaretz, February 22: Ukrainian rabbi tells Kiev's Jews to flee city
Fearing violence against Ukraine's Jews, the Jewish community asks Israel for assistance with the security of the community.

"I told my congregation to leave the city center or the city all together and if possible the country too," Rabbi Azman told Maariv. "I don't want to tempt fate," he added, "but there are constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions."

Prank calls by Putin and pals, to make the protesters look bad?

Anyway, Yanukovith may have gotten no further than the airport, before being stopped or arrested, by whoever's agents on whoever's orders. (link, over there) He may face trial for the peaceful protesters and Nazi militants shot during the Nazi takeover that physically chased him out of his elected post. Expect an amnesty for murders of policemen, as one small part of the thugs' payback...

 

[WildCat]

Anyway, Yanukovith may have gotten no further than the airport, before being stopped or arrested, by whoever's agents on whoever's orders. (link, over there)

No such link or story on my internet.

 

[Dcdrac]

This what Chernobyl & Pripyat look like now

http://knapo.net/photos/gallery/1-chernobyl-pripyat

 

[Checkmite]

Latest: The speaker of the parliament of Ukraine in Kiev has been named interim president by that body until proper elections are held, which are scheduled now for May 25. Yanukovych was impeached yesterday and is effectively deposed.

Additionally, Tymoshenko - I guess the one you guys are calling the "gas princess" - has asserted she won't be aiming or running for any offices and considers herself retired.

 

[Klimax]

And to Klimax but less so:

Ah, so that's not Svoboda's previous logo? "14" is NOT a David Irving Lane ref, and 88 is NOT a Hitler ref, and that cross is not a Nazi symbol, AND the protesters are not Nazis? Any/all/none? Otherwise, your point please, relative to the topic?

Should I start listing CNN's Wall Street owners and CFR connections and dismissing everything mainstream as corporate media propaganda, run by warmongering shills for the monied elite? No, I quietly acknowledge, consider all biases and info, and move on. WAY LESS TEDIOUS that way.

In case more than tedious obstructionism ever enters your agenda here.

Sigh. We've been there already. There was supposed transformation of Svoboda from public extreme right to nationalistic right (at least publically).
But that apparent transformation succeed and they got much popular, but until then (~2004) they were about <1% all the time.

Some of old members got even kicked out...

However all that is extremely irrelevant as they are not the one running opposition, they are just one of quite few parties there. At least so far nobody managed to provide evidence. (And a photos are kind of useless, because one needs to prove that they are either majority or they are the one in charge and it doesn't look so far)

It just looks like some people are still trying misdirection and obfuscation and running claims and assertion without any bases.

And to TBV, but less so. Seriously? That the photo I used, to illustrate something you already know (acknowledge as fact), just in case you didn't know ... it happened to be at that blog, where I had the link handy ... and that "speaks volumes" ... about what? How I "got somewhere"? Can you spare a sentence or two from these hypothetical "volumes"?

It illustrates that there exists a component from extremist side, but that is bloody ALL. It doesn't prove anything further or else. L.Y.S. already tried that tactic and direction before and it didn't survive.

Sorry, but you got big bloody nothing. (If I'll overlook other aspects) Well, except some useless random blogs which are more nonsense then anything else.

===

In case somebody tries to use absence of reply in some arbitrary timespan again: Some of us have jobs and other interests to do beside just arguing on some forum. Or like some disappear themselves for longer periods, right CE?

 

[crescent]

No such link or story on my internet.

The BBC live news feed mentioned several reports that Yanukovych tried to leave the country but was stopped by border guards. They have not confirmed that, though. It seems like more of a rumor. The same reports are saying that the mayor of Kharkiv and the governor of the Kharkiv region also went to Russia. Again, this does not seem to be confirmed.

As for Caustic Logic's link regarding the Rabbi who is suggesting that Ukraine's Jewish population could be in danger: The same article mentions that he is one of two Rabbi's challenging the current head Rabbi, and that he is from a movement that is politically aligned with Russia. It is not clear to me how representative he is of Ukraine's Jews, or how his political alignment may be driving this, rather than actual anti-Semitic behavior.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Additionally, Tymoshenko - I guess the one you guys are calling the "gas princess" - has asserted she won't be aiming or running for any offices and considers herself retired.

There's nothing about retirement in your article, just that she doesn't want to be the head of an interim government right now. Nobody would believe her anyway. As the article reports, Merkel has already called her and seems to treat her as opposition leader and presidential candidate in May, asking her to work for unity and against a split of the country.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Interesting report from Lviv. At least 13 of the dead in Kiev have been citizens of Lviv.

 

[Mycroft]

Didn't I just tell you that I don't consider the energy necessary to break that down to you well spent?

What is it you're doing here if you're not willing to articulate your point of view?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Additionally, Tymoshenko - I guess the one you guys are calling the "gas princess" - has asserted she won't be aiming or running for any offices and considers herself retired.

Good for her.
This "Ukranian Spring" has taken some turns I didn't expect.

Latest: The speaker of the parliament of Ukraine in Kiev has been named interim president by that body until proper elections are held, which are scheduled now for May 25. Yanukovych was impeached yesterday and is effectively deposed.

I am guessing that he can run again, in May.
Right?

 

[WildCat]

I am guessing that he can run again, in May.
Right?

I predict he will run - directly to Russia. But I'll be shocked if he waits until May.

 

[dudalb]

The ex prez might be headed for the Crimea...an area of the Ukraine which is heavily Russian in population.
God, I hope that PUtin is not thinking about using the Russians in Ukraine the way that Hitler used the Sudetenland Germans....

With, of course the approval of the Usual Gang Of Useful Idiots we have here.....

 

[geni]

The ex prez might be headed for the Crimea...an area of the Ukraine which is heavily Russian in population.
God, I hope that PUtin is not thinking about using the Russians in Ukraine the way that Hitler used the Sudetenland Germans....

Unlikely. Splitting ukraine would simply result in the EU moving ever closer to the russian boarder.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I saw the thing where he was caught at the airport on my Twitter feed. It doesn't seem to have gotten around, so may be worth digging up.

by Mark MacKinnon, retweeted by Nadim Houry

Ukraine's new interior minister confirms that Yanukovych tried to flee Saturday, but was blocked at Donetsk airport:

Citing RIA, so most will want to wait for non-Russian confirmation. http://en.ria.ru/world/20140223/187...-Reportedly-Blocked-from-Fleeing-Ukraine.html

 

[angrysoba]

The ex prez might be headed for the Crimea...an area of the Ukraine which is heavily Russian in population.
God, I hope that PUtin is not thinking about using the Russians in Ukraine the way that Hitler used the Sudetenland Germans....

With, of course the approval of the Usual Gang Of Useful Idiots we have here.....

From what I understand, the Crimea was traditionally Russian and only made part of Ukraine by Khrushchev during the Soviet era, possibly because within the Soviet Union it did not really matter so much where the borders were drawn as everyone was ruled by Moscow in the end, but perhaps following Stalin's lead of diluting ethnic groups as he did with the Stans and with his policies of "population transfers".

As for Putin "using the Russians in Ukraine", I think this sounds rather too simplistic. Surely the ethnic Russians can think for themselves without being manipulated like puppets by Putin.

Anyway, here's an interesting piece on the political divisions in Ukraine by Timothy Snyder who wrote Bloodlands, which was a book about the countries caught between the battle between Hitler and Stalin in WWII. He acknowledges that there are right-wing factions in the Ukrainian opposition but that the Ukrainian government (as it was when written) is far more authoritarian and far more prone to the anti-Semitism which is unfortunately common in Ukraine:

The protests in the Maidan, we are told again and again by Russian propaganda and by the Kremlin’s friends in Ukraine, mean the return of National Socialism to Europe. The Russian foreign minister, in Munich, lectured the Germans about their support of people who salute Hitler. The Russian media continually make the claim that the Ukrainians who protest are Nazis. Naturally, it is important to be attentive to the far right in Ukrainian politics and history. It is still a serious presence today, although less important than the far right in France, Austria, or the Netherlands. Yet it is the Ukrainian regime rather than its opponents that resorts to anti-Semitism, instructing its riot police that the opposition is led by Jews. In other words, the Ukrainian government is telling itself that its opponents are Jews and us that its opponents are Nazis.

The strange thing about the claim from Moscow is the political ideology of those who make it. The Eurasian Union is the enemy of the European Union, not just in strategy but in ideology. The European Union is based on a historical lesson: that the wars of the twentieth century were based on false and dangerous ideas, National Socialism and Stalinism, which must be rejected and indeed overcome in a system guaranteeing free markets, free movement of people, and the welfare state. Eurasianism, by contrast, is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy.

The Eurasian ideology draws an entirely different lesson from the twentieth century. Founded around 2001 by the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, it proposes the realization of National Bolshevism. Rather than rejecting totalitarian ideologies, Eurasianism calls upon politicians of the twenty-first century to draw what is useful from both fascism and Stalinism. Dugin’s major work, The Foundations of Geopolitics, published in 1997, follows closely the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi political theorist. Eurasianism is not only the ideological source of the Eurasian Union, it is also the creed of a number of people in the Putin administration, and the moving force of a rather active far-right Russian youth movement. For years Dugin has openly supported the division and colonization of Ukraine.

The point man for Eurasian and Ukrainian policy in the Kremlin is Sergei Glazyev, an economist who like Dugin tends to combine radical nationalism with nostalgia for Bolshevism. He was a member of the Communist Party and a Communist deputy in the Russian parliament before cofounding a far-right party called Rodina, or Motherland. In 2005 some of its deputies signed a petition to the Russian prosecutor general asking that all Jewish organizations be banned from Russia.

It's well worth reading the whole piece, although it may already be dated thanks to the recent sudden acceleration in events.

 

[angrysoba]

Another point that Snyder makes that may well be interesting to make in some of the EU threads is this:

In fact, Ukrainians are in a struggle against both the concentration of wealth and the concentration of armed force in the hands of Viktor Yanukovych and his close allies. The protesters might be seen as setting an example of courage for Americans of both the left and the right. Ukrainians make real sacrifices for the hope of joining the European Union. Might there be something to be learned from that among Euroskeptics in London or elsewhere? This is a dialogue that is not taking place.

As much as the EU is dissed by many people, those in Europe not a part of it often want in as fast as they can. The silly hyperbole of how the EU is made up of a bunch of illiberal totalitarian-minded bureaucrats is easily countered by a quick look at the real thing that could be found in the now ex-government of Ukraine and in Putin's Moscow.

 

[L.Y.S.]

The ex prez might be headed for the Crimea...an area of the Ukraine which is heavily Russian in population.

Anything east of Kiev is generally pro-Russian.

 

[L.Y.S.]

The EU has never offered anything close to a full membership. That "association" agreement carries already enough problems. Turkey will enter before Ukraine does, if you know what I mean. But a good lot of the really peaceful protestors on the ground have completely utopic ideas about what that "path to EU" would contain, like unconditional basic income tomorrow. Likely it is similar to Syria and other places, that the people know that the "state media" is not trustworthy and therefore suck up everything that comes from the outside, with catastrophic consequences if that media is also corrupt, and even more and systematically so, like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were in the Syria thing. Excellent documentary on this phenomenon here.

"Maidan" is the main square in Kiev like "Tahrir" was in Cairo and was renamed "Euromaidan" by activists/propagandists.

Exactly, and I wonder why the EU hasn't offered a real comprehensive deal. It seems like the EU wants to punish Ukraine for once having been involved with Russia. I don't see that as being fair to Ukrainians. The deal clearly sucks, I don't know why pro-EU integrationists can't see that. If you want Ukraine so bad, offer them a better deal that will prop up their economy during the transition.

There not even giving them deals on par with the deals given to most former Warsaw Pact EU members. It's a very crappy deal that will destroy the Ukr economy and make them submit on their knees.