Archives for posts with tag: referendum

Toldjaso. Russia illegally stole the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in order to increase Moscow’s wealth and influence. Lo and behold, the Russian state-controlled energy agency has taken control of gas and oil production in Crimea, thus shutting out other potential companies and countries.

“Gunpoint business deals”, we might call such operations: Russia is not doing anything irrational here. They are using military force to take control of the European energy market. Power, literally flowing from the barrel of a gun.

Yes, Putin’s Peeps are planning to commit massive human rights abuses in the area they have taken over. And yes, they are planning to swallow up more of the former Soviet Union, creating a greater Russia in the process. But there is nothing crazy about what they’re doing.

Immoral, illegal, unethical, inhuman, and despicable, yes. Loony, no. Putin and his renascent empire are acting with cold, pure, infernally logical intent as they seize land and power: power that will continue its accretion until the rest of the world punches Vladimir in the metaphorical nose and stops him.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Pretty much the usual reason for imperialist ventures. Vladdy-Boy is trying to hold onto the leverage he has over Europe (said leverage is the natural gas Russia exports), and as you’ll see below, Ukraine has a LOT of gas pipelines:

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Now for the fun bit: other countries want to make money, too, so they would love to sell Ukraine some gas:

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This is what Putin’s bitch stooge assclown partner-in-crime Yanukovic was trying to stop, and why he got run out of Kiev on a rail. And now Vlad is mad, sad, and bad, so he’s taking Crimea to sooth his hurted feewings. Plus to intimidate, and gain greater leverage to negotiate.

It’s all about money and power. It’s why the Shrub tried to take over Iraq, and it’s why Putin tried to take over Ukraine. No conspiracy theories needed.

As soon as Western companies started drilling gas wells in Ukraine, Russia’s power and influence were threatened, so Putin tried to take over: first via a puppet government, and now with guns.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Just stop for a second and focus, OK? The man people call Crimea’s leader was NOT legitimately elected to be such. Unless you’re fool enough to believe in the validity of secret elections held with guns pointed at voters’ heads, and that a man who previously barely got into his previous office as leader of a fringe party with only a few paltry seats could somehow magically win power in his nonexistent “nation” when nobody was looking. In reality, Mr. Aksyonov is a criminal who is part of a Russian land grab that is reminiscent of Russia’s previous actions in Georgia, and Germany’s in Poland:

Crimea has been swept into turmoil over the past two weeks, as Moscow, furious over the fall of Yanukovych and the pro-Western outlook of the new government, used hundreds of Russian soldiers to seize political control of the peninsula. The Russian soldiers — who Moscow insists are members of a Crimean self-defense force that Aksyonov created last year — ringed the regional parliament. Then, with armed soldiers inside the chamber, Aksyonov was named prime minister.

His critics say it’s clear that Aksyonov is simply a puppet, someone installed by Moscow to ease what has become, in effect, a Russian takeover of its former territory.

“If six months ago someone would have told me that Aksyonov would become prime minister, I would have laughed,” said Valentina Tsamar, a prominent Simferopol journalist with the TV channel Chernomorskaya.

So, after Russia took over Crimea’s government at gunpoint, and said fake government called for a fake referendum on “joining” Russia, the “Prime Minister” is already taking steps that shouldn’t be taken until after the election results are known. The obvious conclusion, Gentle Reader, is that the results of the next “election” will be rigged, just as the recent parliamentary “election” was. The results are already known, because the referendum is a farce, a ruse, a smokescreen erected to scare the cowards, fool the foolish, and gull the gullible.

This is as illegal as Mexico storming the Texas Capitol, deposing the elected government and installing a posse of Narcos in its place, and then voting to secede from the United States and rejoin Mexico. After all, there are Mexican nationals in Texas who have to be protected from the American government, right? And there are cultural ties that go back centuries, yes? And such ties surely supersede any silly latter-day political boundaries, right?

Wrong. Just as in Ukraine. This is an illegal land grab, like countless others throughout history (including some by the United States, Britain, France, and so on). And like all those other invasions and occupations, it is illegal as Hell and completely illegitimate.

Those loons of the political extremes who shriek and shout at the West for alleged “imperialism” as it insists on Ukraine following a path based on international law; the jackass Conspiracy Theorists who ignore the facts on the ground and and use their own fantasies in lieu of those facts; said shouters are but useful idiots that are helping the real imperialists in this case. Said imperialists being, of course, Putin and his corrupt buddies.

Such bulls***. Wake up and smell it, peeps.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Contrary to much crap being spewed about these days, we do not live on a nation where the majority can do whatever-the-hell we want whenever the mood strikes us. Yes, we hear people bellow “the American people have the power to decide about (fill in the blank here – gays, guns, gynecology, or another Flavor of The Month) and the Gummint and the Courts had better not get in our way”, but they are pretty often full of fertilizer.

Our nation’s laws are based upon a Constitution (as are those of the states), and any law that is enacted must, repeat must be in compliance with said Constitution. Period. End of friggin’ story.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky mentions this because he has noticed lots of confusion around the notion of who can make law, and what sorts of laws can be made. From Southern states trying to reintroduce Jim Crow, to Justice Roberts quaking with fear about public opinion on “gay marriage”, to various religious and political demagogues whipping the ignorant into frenzy after frenzy, these zeebs would have you believe that we can overturn or rewrite established precedent just with a loud shriek of our collective larynxes.

Nope, it doesn’t work that way. And thank God for such small mercies. People can’t just take a vote and then go put chains on black folk, or take away women’s rights to vote, or make it legal to barbecue illegal immigrants, or any of the other crazy-assed ideas one hears in the chaotic and nonsensical noise bomb that we call our national discourse. We cannot. do. that. s***.

So nut up, you “Justices” and Jurists; grow some, you “Distinguished Gentlemen and Gentlewomen” who are supposed to be running the country based on our votes and laws. And most importantly, we citizens have to pay attention, show some spine, and not let ourselves be jerked around by con artists and snake-oil salesmen peddling lies disguised as laws.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky