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The rumor I heard numerous times in ZKP was that Hungarian was being taught as many places as possible to everyone for free so Hungary could take back Ungvar and other territories that they lost. Some shadowy claim about % of Hungarian speakers = Hungary. The Hungarian government did sponsor language programs like that and other things. In particular, there was a work camp cemetery/monument not far from my school funded by the Hungarian government that came with free wi-fi. In my own experience, it was to the advantages of the younger Ukrainians who could learn a very difficult language and get placed in a Hungarian college or job. Like everything else in Eastern Europe, nothing works as intended. But I mean, the bograch? Yes please.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:13
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bernie, kindly shove those spheres up your rear end in a top hat
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Feb 8, 2022 22:16
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Invoking known foreign affairs luminary Bernie Sanders has to be the most bizarre attempt at an appeal to authority yet, for this thread. Especially if we consider the idea that it’s a piece about United States, and specific location names invoked could be shuffled around interchangeably, with the article not losing a drop of meaning. It’s perfectly fine to be critical of US foreign policy, but this is a relatively clear cut case of “Americans talking about America”, in my opinion.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:22
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Rinkles posted:bernie, kindly shove those spheres up your rear end in a top hat I mean he's not wholly wrong, but the problem with his argument (which I'm pretty sure he sees) is that 'during the cold war countries did lots of bad things to maintain control over their blocs' just takes you to 'spheres of influence are bad'. Then we shift tracks to 'if Russia wasn't run by Putin then it would have a different government that would care about Ukraine' to which the response is 'yes, if Russia were different then Russia would be different, but Putin is in charge and he's doing what he's doing'. Then it's just 'doing stuff that annoys Russia has costs, you have to think about that carefully'. Congratulations, with the final sentence you've reached the starting point of the real argument. And frankly the answer is that the free democratic world has a real interest in paying a reasonably high cost to shore up Ukraine as much as possible short of going to war, because there's a lot of history that tells us that making concessions in the face of threats of force just provokes more threats of force.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:27
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Alchenar posted:The bottom line is that when the USSR broke up Russia agreed that Crimea went with Ukraine. This issue could have been up for negotiation then, but the point wasn't pressed by Russia. You don't get to just use force to change that. Oh yeah, no arguing there. Just felt like some people were missing context for why Crimeans might prefer to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:37
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"" Reinforcements are now in the Black Sea 21:00UTC:Russian Navy Project775 Ropucha class LSTMs (tank carrying), Baltic Fleet's 71st Landing Ship Brigade's Kaliningrad 102, Minsk 127 & Korolev 130 transited Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea..@YorukIsik pix via @reuterspictures ""
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Feb 8, 2022 22:58
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Invoking known foreign affairs luminary Bernie Sanders has to be the most bizarre attempt at an appeal to authority yet, for this thread. Especially if we consider the idea that it’s a piece about United States, and specific location names invoked could be shuffled around interchangeably, with the article not losing a drop of meaning. I've been pretty clear about the American role in the crisis being the most important part to me as an American, and I think it's clearly relevant since probably 90+% of the point of trying to join NATO is to be allowed under the American security umbrella, and the sanctions threats are probably even more strongly dependent on American economic leadership. When the US stops involving itself in Eastern Europe, I'll stop posting about American foreign policy in the Eastern Europe thread.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:58
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Supposedly that’s one thing on the menu from Americans, to kick oligarch kids out of Western universities. Ah, I hadn't read your post with the polls, and apologize for engaging without having done so. I was not familiar with the polls showing non-majority support for secession in 2011 and 2014. However, I'm seeing more polls that have the contrary conclusion in the years before the referendum, in the days before the referendum, and following the referendum. Here they are in chronological order. United Nations Development Programme, 2009-2011 https://web.archive.org/web/20140502000238/http://www.undp.crimea.ua/img/content/file/monitoring_ru_2009_10-12.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140415042714/http://www.undp.crimea.ua/img/content/file/monitoring_ru_2010_10-12.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/2014050...1%29%285%29.pdf Conducting polls each quarter for a total of seven times, they found that about 2/3 of Crimeans consistently wanted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. GfK Group, March 12-14 immediately before referendum http://avaazpress.s3.amazonaws.com/558_Crimea.Referendum.Poll.GfK.pdf This German pollster found that about 2/3 of Crimeans intended to vote to join the Russian Federation. Gallup, immediate post-referendum https://www.usagm.gov/wp-content/media/2014/06/Ukraine-slide-deck.pdf 82.8% of Crimeans believe the results of the referendum reflect the views of Crimean people. Pew Research, May 2014 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/05/08/despite-concerns-about-governance-ukrainians-want-to-remain-one-country/ Note: The headline refers to Ukraine as a whole, not Crimea in particular. The results of this survey is that 88% of Crimeans believe the Ukrainian government should recognize the referendum. GfK, January 2015 https://orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/GFK_report_FreeCrimea.pdf The German pollster followed up on their work before the referendum, and found that 82% of Crimeans fully endorse the referendum, and another 11% "mostly" endorse it. ZOiS, 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20180222111030/https://www.zois-berlin.de/fileadmin/media/Dateien/ZOiS_Reports/ZOiS_Report_3_2017.pdf This German firm found over 70% of Crimeans said they would vote the same if the referendum were held today (which was 2017). It is worth noting that all of the polls I've linked were conducted either by NATO countries or the UN. If they had a political bias in the matter, it would be against the legitimacy of the referendum. There were also polls conducted by Russia that showed the same results but I did not include.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:10
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Gopniks were a thing everywhere in ex-USSR Not everywhere did they became the government and bring the style to handle things Like in here Cugel the Clever posted:https://twitter.com/andersostlund/status/1490896493317787649?t=2wT6CuGrrDCb7wzWe0v0Og&s=19 Looks like this scenario was planned with Trump in place and it's not going as expected, seems like they expected an easy win and for NATO to fall apart
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Feb 8, 2022 23:19
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It’s perfectly fine to be critical of US foreign policy, but this is a relatively clear cut case of “Americans talking about America”, in my opinion. It's not Americans talking about America. It's an American politician--a representative of a state heavily involved in diplomatic efforts with Ukraine and Russia--talking about those two countries. I agree that Bernie Sanders is not some special authority to recognize for this discussion, but it's pretty annoying when things you disagree with get handwaved away like this.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:26
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Somaen posted:Looks like this scenario was planned with Trump in place and it's not going as expected, seems like they expected an easy win and for NATO to fall apart Yeah I agree with this analysis. The US was supposed to be indifferent and preoccupied, Europe was supposed to fracture between the hawk and dove factions, and Ukraine would be forced to come begging to make concessions. None of that has happened, there is no grand bargain to be struck that reasserts Russia as a Great Power, and now Putin has a choice to either put up or shut up. That probably makes the next few weeks the most dangerous but on the plus side if he'd already made the choice to invade why say revealing stuff like this? (other than that Putin really doesn't like critical questioning)
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Feb 8, 2022 23:33
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Sinteres posted:I've been pretty clear about the American role in the crisis being the most important part to me as an American, and I think it's clearly relevant since probably 90+% of the point of trying to join NATO is to be allowed under the American security umbrella, and the sanctions threats are probably even more strongly dependent on American economic leadership. When the US stops involving itself in Eastern Europe, I'll stop posting about American foreign policy in the Eastern Europe thread. Everything after the first sentence was a comment about what Sander's article, not your personal posts. TipTow posted:It's not Americans talking about America. It's an American politician--a representative of a state heavily involved in diplomatic efforts with Ukraine and Russia--talking about those two countries. You don't seem to get what "Americans talking about America" complaint frequently expressed by Europeans here mean. Sanders's entire column is his legitimate critique of U.S. foreign policy - I'm not disputing that. However, much like the posts of some people in this thread, you could entirely dereference Russia and Ukraine from the article, and its entire message would still stand. Which consequently means that both Russia and Ukraine in this context are just handy props for the rhetoric. As a local reader, here's an annotated screenshot of my perceived focus of each individual paragraph quoted, where "E" stands for "Eastern Europe", and "U" stands for "United States".  This was the reason why I said that "specific location names invoked are interchangeable" - the Eastern European parts of the article are a front-loaded rhetorical springboard that helps him to dial into his primary area of competence, US politics.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:43
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If you see that as a legitimate critique of U.S. foreign policy, would you rather they not involve themselves in EE?
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Feb 8, 2022 23:49
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Everything after the first sentence was a comment about what Sander's article, not your personal posts. I guess I don't understand why it matters that the "place names are interchangeable" (which I disagree with) when he's explicitly talking about Russia, Ukraine, and yes, the United States, an active player--albeit not one of the primary two--in this specific crisis taking place in Eastern Europe.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:50
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just as an aside it always bugs me hearing Crimean Russians described as Crimeans even though I realize it's 100% accurate and probably how they think of themselves in a regional sense guess I've spent a little too much time reading up on the Crimean Tatars
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Feb 8, 2022 23:52
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Sinteres posted:And again, if the policy doesn't actually work to coerce the bad government to make better decisions but does punish civilians, it's not an appropriate response, but just collective punishment. I don't think you can reach that conclusion from such generic statement such as putting in sanctions to hopefully prevent wars. And does the world really want to do business the governments that abuse human rights? Sinteres posted:We know the US doesn't give a poo poo about things like territorial integrity or protecting civilian lives from aggressor countries, so what it boils down to is that civilians in adversary countries need to be punished for getting in the way of US strategic interests. In your view, why is the West supporting Ukraine? Are they mistaken?
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Feb 9, 2022 00:32
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:And does the world really want to do business the governments that abuse human rights? Is this a serious question? The answer is obviously yes. Crosby B. Alfred posted:In your view, why is the West supporting Ukraine? Are they mistaken? I think the thread is tired of me going over this repeatedly, but the short version is that I think the primary motivation for the US is very obviously rollback and containment of Russia. The purported humanitarian concerns probably aren't entirely a fiction (Ukraine does have legitimate concerns, and I'm open to the idea that some US policymakers genuinely care about Ukraine), but the US has no problem looking the other way or actively helping other countries invade their neighbors, or invading countries around the world itself, so I don't think a pre-sellout version of Samantha Power is running American foreign policy with high minded ideals front and center or anything.
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Feb 9, 2022 00:42
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:I don't think you can reach that conclusion from such generic statement such as putting in sanctions to hopefully prevent wars. And does the world really want to do business the governments that abuse human rights? This is beyond naive, no country operating on the international level gives a poo poo about authoritarian regimes or human right's abuse.
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Feb 9, 2022 00:47
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Koos Group posted:Ah, I hadn't read your post with the polls, and apologize for engaging without having done so. I was not familiar with the polls showing non-majority support for secession in 2011 and 2014. However, I'm seeing more polls that have the contrary conclusion in the years before the referendum, in the days before the referendum, and following the referendum. Here they are in chronological order. Thanks, I appreciate this. I'd like to briefly comment on these reports, as I'm familiar with all of them United Nations Development Programme, 2009-2011 This is the first poll I mention in my post about polls. Herein, we must first clarify which of the two distinct questions do we talk about. 1) "There are different opinions on the preferred status for Crimea. Which of the following does correspond the most to your views? In your opinion, Crimea should be: ...?" For this question, the leading option in the polled period was "autonomous region of Russian Federation", polling in the 40s for all individual time periods that I've examined from this programme. The one I referenced in my post was the last one in the series, as far as I know, with this figure standing at 41%. 2) "In the event of a referendum for merging Crimea into Russia, how would you vote?" For this question, the leading option in the polled period was "for merging", polling in the 60s for all individual time periods that I've examined from this programme. The one I referenced in my post was the last one in the series, as far as I know, with this figure standing at 65.6%. These are two different questions, and in my opinion the first is more informative than the second, regarding the topic of the conversation. I say that because people in Crimea, much like elsewhere, may have different motivations to cast a vote - to support their preferred policy, to oppose the status quo without explicitly supporting what they vote for, and, amongst other motivations, to express their frustration by trying to shake things up. For context on why I highlight the latter, please refer to the closing paragraph of my post with polls - rural Crimeans were predominantly just frustrated with the quality of public government. GfK Group, March 12-14 On February 27, Russian gunmen did occupy Crimea's parliament. The same day, the parliament conveniently convened to terminate the government of Crimea, and to replace its prime minister with a known Russian mobster. February 28, the military invasion began, and on March 1 Russia began to issue Russian passports in Crimea. By March 8, Crimea was fully occupied (border with mainland Ukraine shut). Consequently, by that point: 1) foreign army of tens of thousands of soldiers was prominently stationed throughout the island; 2) people who could flee had fled; 3) people who couldn't flee but didn't support Russia were taking precautions against Russian spy services and turncoat Crimeans because losing their lives, proverbially or literally, over political opinions Russians didn't like was fresh in everyone's memories; 4) Russian propaganda machine was hitting its crescendo. Gallup, April 2014; Pew, May 2014; and GfK, January 2015 Along the same line of reasoning, the additional concern here is simply the honeymoon period of nationalist fervour, and Russia bribing the population rather openly with a host of benefits. Besides, in GfK poll 55% of respondents say that Crimea was merged into Russia illegally, and that the act of merging must be redone properly. ZOiS, 2017 At this point, Crimean Tatars were made example of, plenty of "loyalists" deported or otherwise left, plenty of Russia settlers had arrived, alongside generic migration from Russia, and Russian internal security services were already fully established in Crimea to keep control over the rest, 3 years of full on pressure from Russian political machine or the mass-media subservient to it were in effect, and other deteriorating, for quality of survey, factors took place. ZOiS say themselves as much (emphasis mine): It is clear that the survey conditions are not ideal, but this is not a reason for not listening to the Crimeans’ own voice. The extent to which answers to some of the politically charged questions, regarding the status of Crimea or the impact of the Western sanctions, reflect actually held beliefs is impossible to determine. To summarize, I do dispute that Crimea after Russian soldiers arrived and Crimea before that are the same, and can be compared via polling like you did. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 00:47
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One thing that isn't getting enough mention when the Crimea is discussed, is Sevastopol. The original lease contract on the naval bases there was until 2017, but in 2010 Viktor Yanukovich continued the contract until 2042. This move wasn't popular in Ukraine, to say the least. When Yanukovich was ousted the fate of Russia's Black Sea Fleet's established base became uncertain. I doubt that Russian admirals loved the original contract over the division of the fleet and bases and paying rent and all that, but the idea of possibly having to abandon the Crimea was unfathomable. It's perfectly situated, and Soviet Union invested heavily in those bases. In hindsight, this should have been resolved in the 1990's, but how could they. Both nations were busted, Ukraine was happy to receive some compensation from Russia for the rent, and moving the fleet from Sevastopol was unrealistic (just withdrawing land forces from the Baltic bases took years, you have to build new accommodations first). Also in hindsight, this could still have been avoided, perhaps, if certain major powers had relied more on the institutions of United Nations and the rule of international law somewhere around 2003... I'm not saying that the invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair justifies anything that Putin has done, but it apparently gave him the signal that yep, anything goes, power is it's own justification and the UN can't do anything about it. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 00:50
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Sinteres posted:I think the thread is tired of me going over this repeatedly, but the short version is that I think the primary motivation for the US is very obviously rollback and containment of Russia. The purported humanitarian concerns probably aren't entirely a fiction (Ukraine does have legitimate concerns, and I'm open to the idea that some US policymakers genuinely care about Ukraine), but the US has no problem looking the other way or actively helping other countries invade their neighbors, or invading countries around the world itself, so I don't think a pre-sellout version of Samantha Power is running American foreign policy with high minded ideals front and center or anything. I get that your view-point is US-centric for obvious reasons, but I'd argue that "the West", while a nebulous concept, in this case includes the EU, and EU nations have a clear incentive to curb Russian expansionism, the trouble is that the EU itself has limited ability to project force, and the thread has gone over the issues with central European energy policy w.r.t. Russia, as well. I understand the view that the US shouldn't be some world police who shows up to help every time Europe has a crisis, but "the West" as a whole has an interest in maintaining the integrity of smaller states. I won't bother with the tiresome Hitler comparisons, but just looking at the situation from the point of view of national independence and ability to self-govern, this current situation is troublesome and threatening. If the West as a collective can punish Russian oligarchs with financial things, this could be sufficient for Putin to change course. US foreign policy is... Problematic, to say the least, when looked at as a whole, but in this case I wouldn't really subscribe to the idea that the US just "wants to do an imperialism", if you pardon the hyperbole. My view-point is obviously Euro-centric, but I would like it if no one started territorial wars or other shenanigans to over-throw governments, Europe has a long and bloody history of warfare and I think it's preferable we continue with the post-WW2 idea of some kind of consensus, even if neo-liberalism as a political system is a curse and so on. It's arguably easier to do political reform when one isn't embroiled in a shooting war.
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Feb 9, 2022 00:56
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Rinkles posted:If you see that as a legitimate critique of U.S. foreign policy, would you rather they not involve themselves in EE? With "legitimate critique" I mean "negative opinion that someone is entitled to express". TipTow posted:I guess I don't understand why it matters that the "place names are interchangeable" (which I disagree with) when he's explicitly talking about Russia, Ukraine, and yes, the United States, an active player--albeit not one of the primary two--in this specific crisis taking place in Eastern Europe. Let me try to repeat the same thing I've told you several times by now, using the same words. I'm sure it will work this time. He's not talking about Russia and Ukraine. He gives them a passing mention, and launches into a tirade about U.S. foreign policy. He could easily do a bit about France in Africa, or one of a dozen conflicts in the Middle East, and copy and paste the rest of the text underneath. If you paint your pants yellow, they're still pants.
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Feb 9, 2022 00:57
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Al-Saqr posted:Someone really ought to send a memo to the English and French informing them that they’re yesterdays news and are irrelevant lol I wonder if Boris Johnson, somewhere at the back of his floppy haired brain, feels a sharp twinge of powerful sympathy for Putin's act of flailing around stupidly in the dying embers of an unmourned empire.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:05
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Thanks, I appreciate this. I'd like to briefly comment on these reports, as I'm familiar with all of them If we focus on the one you did, there is plurality support for joining Russia and majority support for no longer being under the governance of Ukraine. Joining Russia, then, would seem to be the most democratic course, and indeed this is reflected by the answers to other question. cinci zoo sniper posted:GfK Group, March 12-14 I must note that having a "fervour" or a certain voter decision being influenced by the rewards of the decision don't make a vote illegitimate. Those suppositions are used in antidemocratic rhetoric, and while I don't believe you're anti-democracy I would consider what exactly the implications are of your arguments. For the majority that would like the act of merging to be done properly, that comes back to the crux of my argument that started the whole thing: if governance of Crimea were transferred from Russia to Ukraine, it would not be redone properly. Or at all. You note later that Crimea has changed since the Russian troops were stationed there, and while that argument adds an element of unfalsifiability since it de-ligitimizes any way to measure public opinion from a certain point forward, it's not unreasonable that the demographics or opinions might have changed since 2014. But the issue in the original post I was responding to was ultimately not about Crimea in 2014, it's about Crimea in 2022.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:33
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Well, at least I suppose you would support Tatarstan's independence... at east until Russia wipes out enough of it's culture to making its people a minority in their own land, just like what happened to almost everyone under Russian Empire's grasp.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:03
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Sinteres posted:Is this a serious question? The answer is obviously yes. Should governments let them? Sinteres posted:I think the thread is tired of me going over this repeatedly, but the short version is that I think the primary motivation for the US is very obviously rollback and containment of Russia. The purported humanitarian concerns probably aren't entirely a fiction (Ukraine does have legitimate concerns, and I'm open to the idea that some US policymakers genuinely care about Ukraine), but the US has no problem looking the other way or actively helping other countries invade their neighbors, or invading countries around the world itself, so I don't think a pre-sellout version of Samantha Power is running American foreign policy with high minded ideals front and center or anything. Okay, that's fair but what does the added bit have to do with the US not having a problem with actively helping other countries invade neighbors? And even, so there clearly is a problem when you have things like iran-contra scandal which potentially got Reagan impeached.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:13
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OddObserver posted:Well, at least I suppose you would support Tatarstan's independence... at east until Russia wipes out enough of it's culture to making its people a minority in their own land, just like what happened to almost everyone under Russian Empire's grasp. Absolutely would, yes. Their situation's similar to Catalonia or Crimea, including the referendum that went unrecognized by the imperial state, in this case Russia.
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Feb 9, 2022 02:25
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Koos Group posted:If we focus on the one you did, there is plurality support for joining Russia and majority support for no longer being under the governance of Ukraine. Joining Russia, then, would seem to be the most democratic course, and indeed this is reflected by the answers to other question. I do agree with the statement that “plurality supported joining Russia”. Majority support for no longer being in Ukraine - also true, with a small remark that the majority determination might have been within the statistical margin of error for the poll. Q4 2011 full results: 41% - join Russia 19.1% - remain autonomous in Ukraine with increased privileges 12.4% - remain autonomous in Ukraine with current privileges 11% - become a sovereign nation 8.3% - don’t know 6.1% - become an ordinary region of Ukraine 2% - become a region under President’s direct management 0.1% - remain autonomous in Ukraine with reduced privilege Tallying: 41% - Russia 39.7% - Ukraine 11% - independence 8.3% - undetermined The reason why I’m bringing these numbers up for the last time is that referendums in Ukraine, and thus Crimea, can only contain specific “yes or no” questions. Even consolidated, neither option would’ve counted as passing at the time, since the asking questions would’ve been “Do you support Crimea becoming an autonomous region of Russian Federation?”, which obviously this bombs the national territorial referendum - I’m just explaining my interpretation of the numbers. Koos Group posted:I must note that having a "fervour" or a certain voter decision being influenced by the rewards of the decision don't make a vote illegitimate. Those suppositions are used in antidemocratic rhetoric, and while I don't believe you're anti-democracy I would consider what exactly the implications are of your arguments. For clarity, I do not claim that the votes people cast are illegitimate, or that their answers to post-referendum polls are illegitimate. My claims here, distilling, are as follows: 1) The “referendum” in Crimea was organised poorly enough, from electoral management perspective, that it is impossible to determine even just if the results published reflect the ballots cast. It captured genuine political will of at least some residents of Crimea, undoubtedly, but only that. Consequently, it must not be interpreted as a legitimate (lawful) expression of will of the Crimeans (hence, “referendum” in quotes). 2) Polling responses around the “referendum” date, and especially in its immediate aftermath, were most likely influenced by nationalist fervour. That doesn’t mean people didn’t feel like that at the time. All that means is that their rhetoric at the time is sharply different from the time before, and the time after. If I were to split the time continuum of “politically engaged Crimeans”, I would devise 3 cohorts: a) “pre-referendum” - 2012 to arrival of Russian soldiers b) “referendum” - 0 to 2 years from the arrival c) “post-referendum” - 2+ years from the arrival I make this split only for the sake of introducing nuance into comparing polls from different time periods. Specifically, one could think that B and C are similar. They may be right, but I have a different opinion. I think that discourse/behaviours are more similar between A and C, with my claim being that behaviours of B were affected by what I called nationalist fervour. This doesn’t make opinions expressed by B illegitimate - I just would not compare them to C at face value, possibly at all, with my argument being that fervour is ephemeral and emotional, and their rhetoric, thus, not reproducible over time. Hopefully a helpful analogy - compare going to supermarket hungry to going full. As a side note, while I would argue that A and C are more, for the lack of better word, analytical in their behaviours, that doesn’t make their poll responses particularly comparable either, hopefully for obvious reasons. Koos Group posted:For the majority that would like the act of merging to be done properly, that comes back to the crux of my argument that started the whole thing: if governance of Crimea were transferred from Russia to Ukraine, it would not be redone properly. Or at all. You note later that Crimea has changed since the Russian troops were stationed there, and while that argument adds an element of unfalsifiability since it de-ligitimizes any way to measure public opinion from a certain point forward, it's not unreasonable that the demographics or opinions might have changed since 2014. But the issue in the original post I was responding to was ultimately not about Crimea in 2014, it's about Crimea in 2022. I do agree both that locally neither Ukraine nor Russia were equipped, at the time, to run a strictly-speaking proper referendum on the subject, and that it would have not happened in the event of rightful return of governance to Ukraine. Should Ukraine do it is a different question, where at this point I primarily want to say that its disinterest or refusal does not warrant a military invasion. I do likewise agree that the opinions have changed since 2014, especially as of 2022. My note here is that we know that demographics have seen a drastic enough shift that we must ask ourselves if it is the opinions that changed, or the people. The answer is both, but no one can tell to what extent. Given that, and peculiarities of Russia’s political system, my closing argument on this topic is that we have no reliable way to tell if public opinion measured in Crimea equitably represents the majority view of native Crimean population, defined, for the sake of clarity, as all inhabitants of Crimea as of February 19, 2014, and their family members. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 03:26
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I do agree with the statement that “plurality supported joining Russia”. Majority support for no longer being in Ukraine - also true, with a small remark that the majority determination might have been within the statistical margin of error for the poll. Q4 2011 full results: Good points. I don't have much to add beyond what's been said. It's been a pleasure having this discussion.
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Feb 9, 2022 03:29
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Should governments let them? I was very much including governments in the category of those who very clearly love to trade with human rights abusers, including many of the governments who preach the loudest about human rights about the world. I guess maybe there's an argument to be made that failing to live up to your values in one or even many cases doesn't mean you never should, but at some point it seems like the decision to live up to them is arbitrary enough that it's just an excuse held ready to do what you want when you want. I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with the last bit. I started typing up some stuff about more contemporary examples, but I felt like I was getting off topic, so feel free to follow up in the Middle East thread if you'd like.
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Feb 9, 2022 03:38
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https://mobile.twitter.com/YorukIsik/status/1491020877877497857 Baltic Fleet Amphibious Warfare Group transits Bosporus; second group to pass tomorrow. First group carries 1~2 Naval Infantry BTGs from Kaliningrad.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:40
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Conspiratiorist posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/YorukIsik/status/1491020877877497857 For the people of Ukraine's sake I sure hope this is all bluster, but if invasion doesn't happen within the next few weeks it's also going to be torture having the knife balanced this precariously close for the foreseeable future. Best case scenario is Putin strokes out and this thing fades away in the ensuing political chaos. If he intends to back down it's going to take a very long time to do so.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:04
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Putin will have to do a reverse false flag and cause Biden to sanction Russia prior to invasion. Which will then force an invasion as the worst outcome has already happened.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:10
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Sinteres posted:I was very much including governments in the category of those who very clearly love to trade with human rights abusers, including many of the governments who preach the loudest about human rights about the world.[I guess maybe there's an argument to be made that failing to live up to your values in one or even many cases doesn't mean you never should, but at some point it seems like the decision to live up to them is arbitrary enough that it's just an excuse held ready to do what you want when you want. When business has been done in Countries that have authoritarian governments the benefits largely go to those in control at the expense of the population. Should we allowing companies to sell their goods and services that potentially enables these regimes especially when their populations won't see much of a benefit? Maybe. Maybe not. It's a huge "it depends" answer. Sinteres posted:I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with the last bit. I started typing up some stuff about more contemporary examples, but I felt like I was getting off topic, so feel free to follow up in the Middle East thread if you'd like. You seem to making US Foreign Policy out to be some kind of huge monolith. The US has been around for a quite a while and there's been plenty good even great things to come out of the United States. And a lot of bad things too even terrible. You're making it out to be incredibly black and white and it's pretty clear some people do deeply care about our actions to other nations, minorities, etc. The Vietnam war ended. Nixon was impeached. Reagan almost got impeached. The list goes on and on...
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Feb 9, 2022 05:59
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cinci zoo sniper posted:For clarity, I do not claim that the votes people cast are illegitimate, or that their answers to post-referendum polls are illegitimate. My claims here, distilling, are as follows: There are some higher-level issues with that referendum beyond whether votes were properly counted or whether it reflects the true will of the population. Constitutionally and for simple self-preservation, most countries don't allow regions to secede without the approval of the country as a whole, which would commonly be given by a referendum or vote of that entire country. Even then, a proper process is marked by some meaningful amount of time is usually spent for preparing the votes, campaigning, preparing the legal agreements and so on. It's not done under military-enforced duress immediately after and invasion and quick fast in a hurry within the space of a few weeks. It's fine and somewhat interesting to look into historical data of whether the population of Crimea wanted to be Russian or not, but I got the impression that this is used as some kind of implicit approval of the annexation.
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Feb 9, 2022 07:17
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Mr. Smile Face Hat posted:There are some higher-level issues with that referendum beyond whether votes were properly counted or whether it reflects the true will of the population. All of the highlighted, and more, was meant under “poor electoral management” by me. There simply was no reason to list everything that I or electoral experts have found wrong with the organisation of “referendum”. The summary of our conversation was that Koos said “it is right for Crimea to be in Russia, since polls clearly show that Crimeans wanted this”, and I responded to them with my critique of validity of their supporting statement. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 09:40
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Let’s not, this isn’t the thread for UKPol character assassinations or whatever this post is. Just wanted to say sorry for that post yesterday, it genuinely wasn't anything personal and I meant literally what the post said. Less said the better but Regarde Aduck doesn't have PMs so I thought I would post here to apologise instead.
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Feb 9, 2022 11:01
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Polls are not necessarily reality and don't paint the whole picture re: self-determination. What's with the self-determination of the minority position in such a province? Is having a popular vote of 51% enough? 60%? We know from democracies that a simple poll is easily answered but complex political decisions in the same direction might turn out differently if there is a serious debate and considerations of pros and cons to self-determination in the form of secession/annexation. I can easily say "this province sucks, oligarchs in the capital don't care about us, we would be better off with the big neighbour who is doing better economically!" but might reconsider if confronted with the practical issues like, where will we get our water from, how will I meet friends/family in other parts of the (current) country, what happens to my job in tourism when a lot less people come here after we split? Is our current autonomy not better than being fully rolled into the neighbour's machinery? You can't use polls as facts that should outright determine whether you can leave the current country willy nilly. There are reasons why territorial integrity usually overwrites this absolute form of self-determination in international law. Considering territorial integrity as a strictly nationalist = bad tool is very reductionist. For many, smaller countries just letting provinces decide with a local majority decision of some sort to bail or join a stronger nation could actually risk national cohesion and might cripple the rest of the country. Not to mention they would be at complete mercy of more powerful neighbours with considerable (propaganda) influence and historic ties who can just rip up their smaller neighbours as they see fit. Like, oh, Russia. So in the name of anti-nationalism you want to make it easier for nationalists to gobble up neighbours and shore up their ethnostates? There are tools for self-determination well below secession and annexation and Crimea already had some. You could argue they were not sufficient but that was ultimately for the Crimean and Ukrainian people to decide, not for Russia or self-professed anti-imperialists in the West.
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Feb 9, 2022 11:06
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TipTow posted:How many nuclear weapons does Jupiter have? What are its force projection capabilities? I was making fun of Macron because he constantly compares himself to the Roman god Jupiter and calls his rule ‘Jupiterian’
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Feb 9, 2022 11:12
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:09 |
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Speaking of UKPol, Boris is coming to Poland Thursday to talk about Ukraine.
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Feb 9, 2022 11:27
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