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Ukraine: More On Federalization, Sanctions On Private Russians
The coup government of Ukraine has ordered its troop to leave Crimea. Many of these troops, especially officers, may not follow these orders. Russia is offering them a much better deal:
“The pay is five times that offered by Ukraine,” [the captain] said. “The pensions are five times better, and will be offered 20 years sooner. We are told we would serve on the same military base. Defend the same soil, the homeland of many at these bases. Families living quite nearby the bases will be able to remain in their same homes.”
Why would any officer, especially those native from Crimea, reject such a fantastic deal? The Russian president already signed a new executive order that will let those officers keep their ranks and will recognize their Ukrainian military education.
The U.S. today sanctioned some private businessmen who are on good standing with the Russian president. One wonders who will sanction all those oligarch donors who put hundreds of millions into Obama's reelection campaign. What by the way is the legal foundation of personally sanction private businessman for the policies of the country they happen to live in? Russia only sanctioned a few U.S. politicians so far in retaliation of a few sanction on Russian politicians. Should it now take a deeper look into some Soros or other Obama supporters business deals and confiscate this or that operation they are involved in?
I have no idea what those sanctions are supposed to effect. Those oligarchs will likely not care, nor will the Russian government. It has other possibility and means to show a cold shoulder for U.S. interference in its near abroad. Russia had, on U.S. request, put sanctions on Iran is is helpful with the P5+1 negotiations with Iran. That surely could end. Or how about leaving the U.S. dollar realm. Russia is the biggest oil and gas exporter in this world. It has new pipelines going east and no longer depends on European customers. Surely it could price and invoice its exports in ruble, yuan, euros, gold or whatever instead of in U.S. dollar. This could do wonders to the U.S. interest rates.
I understand that the White House wants to do some cosmetic sanctions if only to avoid more criticism from the domestic right. But by that measure today's escalation isn't necessary. Does the Obama administration really believe it can, together with a few European puddles, sanction Russia, which is supported by the BRICS and Non-alligned countries, into the ground? With about two-third of the people in the U.S. and Europe against any escalation with Russia and with Putin having domestic approval ratings of 75% which side is more likely to sustain in a sanctions war?
The Russian foreign minister Lavrov again emphasized that the Ukraine needs a federal political structure to be at least somewhat political viable. We had already concluded that such a constitutional change in the Ukraine was part of Russian and U.S. agreement for the way forward there.
It is therefore interesting to see an op-ed in today's New York Times that argues for such a federalized state. Currently the quite mighty governors of the Ukrainian regions are named by the ruling president in Kiev. They change every time a president change occurs. The op-ed authors argue that this creates bad local policies:
Because these governors are politically appointed bureaucrats rather than elected politicians, they have little incentive to cultivate reputations for doing what voters want; instead, they do what the president wants. And with that record, if they later run for national office, voters won’t trust them to govern effectively.
Presidential appointment of governors in a diverse country like Ukraine also stokes secessionist pressure.
…
[O]fficials in Ukraine have begun to consider alternatives to the current constitutional structure that could reflect such a commitment. Advocates of decentralization include Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, and Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv in western Ukraine. Ukraine’s Parliament, which would need to approve any constitutional change, has formed a working group on constitutional reform.
Some additional pressure from Washington and Brussels to federalize and finlandize the Ukraine could surely help to accelerate the move and thereby clean up the mess the U.S. sponsored coup created in Ukraine.
But are they really committed to clean up the mess or would they like to instigate more trouble?
@Kalithea
Thank you for defending the oppressed.
Do not be too upset by zionism.`sooner or later they will go back to the sewages they came from.If the Jihad in Gaza could fire as a warning shot in few hours 130 missiles,how much do you think the others could show?Satan’s children are surrounded by hundreds of thousand if not millions of missiles.When the fiesta will start we will have the nicest of fireworks in our blessed region.Sooner rather than later is my credo.
But rejoice,Hallelujah,all these nicely educated and very civilized people are going back to the sewages they came from,in zusa and zeu.Rejoice because all these nice and very special people are coming back with all their exquisite manners.Imagine all the opportunities that will arise with their coming home.
Take their spitting business for example.They will not have to contend themselves with the few native christians adorned by some priests of colonial remnants,nooooo,they will have hundreds of millions of christians of all venues and ten of thousands of Churches to exercise on.Soooo much more fun than in Orshaleem.
How about property rights falsifications.This of course is an endless field with incredible business opps.
How about reclaiming things that were theirs-or not-just very short time ago.Much more fun than “belongings”thousands of years ago.Do you know how much valuable real estate assets or pieces of art zusa and zen can boast about?
You will say ok but what about human organs traffics ?oh my!Here we enter the endless horizon of profitable business with almost zero risks and hundred per cent of returns.Clients will need eyes?From blue to black ,all variations,sizes,curled lashes or straight ones included will be available 7/7.Need a kidney?No problems.Zeu metropolis are crowded,we have a huge bank here.You don’t like urban kidneys?Fine they will have rural ones,completely bios,in rural markets with delivery in any cities from Scandinavia to Bulgaria.Extra costs will be contemplated for exports.No more need to shoot on demand malnourished palestinians.People here are sooo much healthier.
Experiment some new psychodrama for the benefit of humanity and the military industrial complex in cooperation with big Pharma?Prospectives here are amazing.Taking zeu into account and the progress made in zusa with the detention centers(imagine zusa alone has a 2 million jailed population) .Oh boy!That is a sure field of research with much better scientific guaranties than these rebellious palestinians who obstruct so obtusely scientific research and reject vehemently their services to humanity and on top of it dare to go on the longer hunger strikes this planet has seen ridiculing all our knowledge about human medical resilience.
Well,any sensible person will tell me how about this very nice and educated humanitarian business of intruding into terrorized native houses at night to snatch their children and jail them for their own good starting from such a mature age as age six?Don’t be afraid ,no,no,this civilized and pedagogical mode will not get lost here in zeu and zusa.No,no,look at the zuk.They are extremely interested in these gentle methods.Zefrance and zzzzzgermans too are having enough problems with their unruly progenies.In this field too they will bring their contribution to the advancement of humanity
All this is clear and fine some will argue .But what about this very sportive activity of shooting at people for fun,isn’t that the uttermost civilized behavior of the most polite people on earth?Nobody need to worry about it because this new Exodus is coming just in time.Just in time in zeu and zusa.Too many impolite people here are misbehaving.They don’t trust their blessed governments.They hate their parliaments .They are misusing the internet.Can you imagine?Even blogs.Like Moon of Alabama.Spreading hatred.Rumors.Conspiracy theories. Love of dictators.Like the one in barbarian Russia.Or the one in untermensch Syria.Well ,all these poor refugees ,victims of the new exodus have years,nay decades long experience in the field of shootingTheir expertise is highly needed.And come very handily.
Ok,ok,we see your point,but what about uprooting trees?Don’t you worry,zeu and zusa have millions of say apple trees ,fun is in this field assured.As a bonus some old,ugly shocked,traumatized woman might well try to save her tree in a troglodyte way and embrace it to defend it rest assure some local,regional version of AFP/Reuters/UPI/AP/photographer will immortalize hr and receive humanitarian prizes and applauses for this picture.It will absolve us from our sins.We will have shown Compassion and Mercy.In rewarding the picture .And go back to business as usual .
Zeu and zusa have almost complied to the need of these incredibly gentle and dare we say exceptional p
people.But few questions remains to be clarified for zusa and zeu to be the Promised Land.
These new settlers or returnees if you want,they like order.And Quality.In their neighborhood.And they get bored quite rapidly.Ah! you mean ethnic cleansing and sowing dissent among people,this ultimate supreme behavior of how civilized people should be?
Hahaha,what a better paradise than zusa or zeu.Well maybe zeu will respond more to the need of their pacific souls.In a very democratic way.To protect minorities.Like in Syria at the moment.We will need MGM musical accompaniment .Or maybe Wagner?Have you looked at zeu ‘s map?Do you see how we can stretch the borders?or diminish them?Far more lebensraum a la Jabotinsky or a la Hertzl?Deir Yassin.Pfuiii,that was a small spot.Hula in Lebanon?Negligible.Qana?Jenin?Gaza?I regret to say ,all small excrements.Compare to what zusa or zeu might offer….
They treated verbally these untermenschen of arabs as cockroaches,pigs,animals,apes?Nothing compare to what zeu and zusa talk shows offer as endless opportunities.
They”offended”a billion and a half of Muslims?Well soon enough they will expand their verbal educated services to a much larger audience. Adding almost two billions Christians.That is 100%return on a very good investment or in R2P language it is called the conquest of hearts and minds.
Last but not least it will be fun to watch the exceptionally nice ,polite,democratically people with humanitarian minds.And hearts.Pick at surrounding persons in the neighborhoods.Taking out of their closets,in the millions,the nazi grandfathers,the collaborators ones ,the fascist ones ,the pogrom lovers ones,and after having used them as soiled toilet paper the Bandera ones.
At last Civiliz ation will hit at full speed these two miscreant continents,zusa and zeu.For their greater good.Amen
And finally how will our Blessed Region survive without their invaluable services to mankind?
For the first time since the invention of tv ,we will watch the news without images of shot infants feet,and heads hanging from trees and balconies,some of them burned without recognition after every car bombs,air bombs,infantry bombs,police and IDF bombs.
We will have our rights to real important world news like zusa and zeu,we will not be THE news splashed on the screens or censured anymore.We will follow real important world topics.Like the one of the wife who cut her philandering husband penis and cooked it for her mother in law.Or the sexual escapades of our head of states .Or the divorces of our stars.Or how the cat of our neighbor was put-in the washing machine successfully and how our neighbor was condemned to ten years of jail for having not used a bio soap in the machine shampooing of his unfortunate cat.
Posted by: Nobody | Mar 20 2014 19:14 utc | 9
Let’s be cynical and down to earth..
see for ex. Yatsenyuk, party creation and affiliations:
Democratic Front, and then, Front for change , political parties, lead by Yats. (Also some kind of public foundations.) At the same time, a pol list of Our-Ukr. Self Defense bloc. (2007 onwards, hard to track and figure out, as these entities co-exist, meld, etc.)
Was then joined with Fatherland or All Ukrainian Fatherland (Yulia’s party, she was in prison but had a lot of potential votes, which Yats did not.)
There was also another party run by the same types, called For Ukraine.
In short, these pol. parties are, were, the creation of one or of a few more ppl in cahoots, and have nothing to do with any political options at all.
The slogans are always nationalistic, empty of other content, the pol options always center-right (if that has any meaning in this context) and covertly favor big biz, oligarchs, foreign support, foreign investment, land sales, etc.
(Svoboda being on the face of it an exception, as against privatization, land sales, zero taxes for foreign cos, etc. but that is a mirage of course, in this kind of landscape that is what arises, no I do not support neo-nazis.)
So any ‘rile up’ thingie is good – Russian language, abortion, what not, divide and conquer, all that.
All these political parties imho were looking out for no. 1 – control, foreign aid, and making out like bandits. Their complaints about corruption stretch only so far, to their opponents and blatant ‘fixing’ etc.
Yats’ aim, as he has said, is to clean up and create rigorous austerity, which will of course not apply to those in control of the economics of the country, as they will skim off the top of AID / investment once the rapine rules are figured out, and manage those industries that are allowed to subsist or that will be created with the ‘new financing’ to their profit.
Financiers, stock-market types, hedge funds, and the like, are right now talking of a 20-year boom in Ukraine.
The pol parties (as informal financial clubs with fake public faces) played both ends and naturally ended up, as was always the plan, with the richer and more rapacious money providers, exploiters looking for cheap labor, i.e. Western Corporations / Gvmts.
Crimea? Financially, of no interest, it provides a wonderful distraction, is all. Let Putin have it, it is tiny and a backwater, a tin-pot place. This matter being resolved (Putin will go no further) is all good. Now everyone can settle down and make big bucks. (Gas and so on is another topic for discussion but not important as things stand now.)
Posted by: Noirette | Mar 20 2014 21:17 utc | 24
add to 77)
By the way, talking about the left, Marx and Engels appreciated the value of what these “shady people” do
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class
If you prefer, you can also try the cartoon version
Friedrich Engels ran a branch of his fathers textile factory in Manchester and Karl Marx was the son of a rabbi married to a German noble women whose brother was the Prussian Interior Minister.
That does not change anything in their analysis.
Posted by: somebody | Mar 21 2014 7:43 utc | 79
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