Archives for posts with tag: Yanukovic

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

For example, stop pretending that Putin isn’t an imperialist who is trying to expand Russian hegemony. He doesn’t make any such pretense: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the century.” Given his two (thus far) illegal annexations of previously sovereign nations’ land in Georgia and Ukraine, he clearly meant every word of that statement.

Using illegally-installed cronies and stooges where possible, and the Russian Army where political tricks fail, Russia is expanding itself. Even though extremist loons peddle conspiracy theories of shadowy fascist western cabals, the reality is clear: Putin is taking back the land that Russia “tragically” lost.

While useful idiots over here are playing chorus to this illegal land grab, Russia’s former colonies are doing no such thing: in fact, they are quite reasonably scared s***less and have yelled for help. Lithuania and Latvia have asked for NATO to honor its obligations and protect them from being Russia’s next victims.

It’s seemingly easy for Americans to act all high-and-mighty and indulge in silly political parlor games: Russia isn’t invading us, and isn’t likely to, regardless of whatever movies you might have seen. It seems as if we can afford to be stupid. But the people of Eastern Europe lack that luxury. And the more we fiddle about, bleating our idiotic ideological irrelevancies, the more license we give Russia to reconstruct such parts of the Soviet Union as it wishes to.

But with high Russian state-controlled media officials promising, a’la Khrushchev, to nuke us out of existence, we might well want to rethink our smug assumptions of safety from Russian action. Because we have a former KGB chief in charge of Russia, and he is slowly rebuilding the empire whose loss he so loudly laments. Whether the new Russian imperial structure is Communist, Czarist, or Kleptocratic matters very little to us: the new Russia is NOT planning on being our friend.

We know this because they are not being the friends of our friends. We need to stand with our allies, lest we, like they,  suffer the fate of   Ossetia,  and Crimea. Or worse.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

WTF, America? Idiots like Palin and Graham are praising Putin and slamming our Prexy, Libertarians and Lefties are doing likewise, all while Russia holds a fake election in Crimea and invades a foreign country. Neither of which we are doing.Nor are we committing the many crimes that the Russian government does on a daily basis, while pretty much getting a pass from various Western nitwits.

Three specific examples for the clue-challenged:
Number A: Obama does not control American media, and has no one threatening nuclear strikes against us. Putin does, and has goons that are threatening to turn us “into radioactive ash”.

Letter 2: Neither America nor NATO have sent troops into Ukraine. Russia has.

Thirdly: Obama has taken no steps to expand America’s boundaries by taking over other sovereign nations. Russia
has, more than once.

People who are comparing the two countries are intellectually dishonest at best, clueless perhaps, or useful idiots at worst. America is far from perfect, but our Prexy isn’t busy having gays horse-whipped, taking over the media, or using natural gas to blackmail half of a continent.

Stop it, OK? Just stop it.

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

20140219-075759.jpg That is a picture of one small part of the people’s uprising against the Government of Putin-Puppet Yanukovic. He took power in a rigged election, imprisoned his predecessor, and started to run his country like his KGB boss Vladimir told him to. Now the whole country is in a meltdown.

At least 25 are dead, hundreds imprisoned, and thousands injured in their fight against the nouveau Soviet state that Putin is helping to set up. The Ukrainian Olympic athletes are being muzzled to an extent, so as to keep the coverage of the games all light and fluffy, but they are sending out tweets of support and consolation to their countrymen back home.

Remember, folks, while we are looking at Sochi, Putin and his pals are murdering their subjects over in Kiev. Enjoy the skiing and skating, but we can multitask: let us also stand with the brave citizens of the Ukraine as they fight for their freedom. Freedom that they already fought for, and thought they had won.

Stand with them, because the same could happen to us someday.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky