I am on the campaign of a local initiative that will increase the ability to prosecute law enforcement officers for murder or manslaughter in my state, helping charge them in the case of police brutality.
It is interesting how the Internet generation would rather forward stories or file useless Internet petitions rather than get involved in tangible good.
I do not have rich parents*, my father was a commercial artist who got cancer from his work, and my mother was a letter carrier for the Postal service but at least has a pension from that.
Certainly the future is a bit grim when gains of worker productivity are siphoned by the top, but i see little international support. In my city, we do have a socialist on our local council, at least. But getting good done is always difficult.
*Still plenty of middle-classed privilege, I will not claim that I did not have things that others have lacked, we had a home growing up that I am just now able to afford some fifteen years older than my parents were when they were young.
lol. Yeah the EU said they werent allowed to hold the referendum. But they didnt dispute the results. You could hold 20 and they would have the same result.
A bit like Syria. If you held an open election in Syria, Assad would win. Which is why the current US position is that he should not stand in any election. Once again, not a nice guy. But compared to AQ and IS he wins hands down.
Im sorry to hear all that and I strongly support any initiative making law enforcement liable for their actions. I warn you that what you are doing is personally dangerous. Law enforcement take out their anger on campaigners. Im serious. Take care.
I think young folk today who dont have rich parents are totally f*cked. There is no way they can save enough to pay college debts, buy a house and save for retirement. Its not possible and its obviously so.
I was a Bernie supporter but I view him now as a sheepdog. But the only way for young people to try and make a life in the future is to take the Democratic party back. Without political power you will be screwed. Inevitably.
"The European Union does not recognise and continues to condemn this act of violation of international law. The illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation is also a direct challenge to international security, with grave implications for the international legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states.
The European Union will remain committed to fully implement its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures. The EU calls again on UN Member States to consider similar non-recognition measures in line with the UNGA Resolution 68/262. "
Best to protect those priors. Would be dreadful to be a little less certain about what is going on in the world. But why bother insulting me as a sockpuppet if you arnt going to engage?
Is it really so impossible to believe that another person might read the limited independent press and come to a different conclusion to the US State Dept?
To jump in on this one, I think when @Nobby_Stiles says that no one disputes the results, they mean that no one can reasonably say that a fair referendum wouldn’t have had the same outcome (a vote to leave Ukraine for Russia). Given the demographics of Crimea (that is, a sizable majority think of themselves as “Russian”) and the pretty bad state that Ukraine was in at the time (resulting from a coup and a corrupt government) it feels like a fair referendum for independence would have passed just fine.
That doesn’t excuse Russian interference, but I think it should make us wonder about this hard line our leaders decided to take on the issue. It looks like Ukraine is being used for a proxy battle between the west and Russia, just like the US and the USSR used to do.
Apparently, the majority of people living in Crimea think that being part of Russia is better for them:
(Polls by Gallup, not by the Russian government)
Is the west trying to save Crimea from itself? Trying to enforce borders drawn in an administrative action by the USSR?
And even if the UN is in the right in condemning Russian action, where do we go from here? Empty bluster doesn’t seem like a great tactic against Putin.
Yes… And the Sudeten Germans were legally repatriated with Nazi Germany in 1938. Any poll among them would of course show they wanted to belong to Germany, so it was correct for Germany to invade Czechoslovakia.
#SEE, YOU KEEP AVOIDING THE FACT THAT THE RUSSIAN ARMY INVADED UKRAINE IN A SNEAK ATTACK.
It really matters whether the invading forces were covertly shuttled in while Russia was at peace with Ukraine?
Is that the BEST you can do?
Pearl Harbor: “Japan completely fooled the US! So-- it’s all legal.”
Operation Barbarossa: “Germany completely fooled the USSR! So-- it’s all legal.”
Crimea: “Russia completely fooled Ukraine! So-- it’s all legal.”
A Random Home: “So, he invited my into his house. And I killed him. But, hey, he invited me into his house! It’s all legal.”
Does your supervisor just let you type in any propaganda? I mean, shouldn’t your propaganda have some ability to persuade?
A fair referendum would involve a proper campaigning period and debates, among other things. Those would have revealed that Russia had no plans how to deal with the fact that Crimea is not self-sufficient in terms of drinking water, food and electricity, and thus faced shortages in case of unilateral secession from Ukraine. They may also have revealed that an internationally unrecognized secession would massively harm tourism, the region’s main source of income. Two sided discussions would have allowed the new government in Kiev to explain its position towards Crimea (which, likely, would not have been meaningfully different from that of the previous government), and for Crimeans to ask for any changes they’d like to see.
Instead, what Crimeans got was two weeks of this:
One of the first things the little green men did was stop the rebroadcast of Ukrainian TV channels and leave only Russian ones on air. There were no debates, only heavily biased, single-sided propaganda. And that probably got even worse after the annexation as the war in Donbas provided ample material to create the most apocalyptic picture of Ukraine possible. (Not that Russian media actually requires anything as base as facts to create news stories, but having real footage saves on actors’ wages.)
This feeds into the polling you mention, though there’s probably more at play. There are lingering effects of Soviet mentality when it comes to opinion polling. For example, here in Lithuania it has been noted that the politicians and parties currently in power tend to poll much higher than the results they get during actual elections. Even though nobody has suffered for expressing political views in the past quarter century, many people still seem reluctant to openly oppose the government when asked about it. I expect in Russia, and to a lesser degree Ukraine, where freedom of opinion can’t be taken for granted, the effect is even worse. With the psychological block in place, it doesn’t matter who is conducting the poll.
Incidentally, I highly recommend reading this piece about how propaganda has shaped lives and perceptions of people in Ukraine, from the original Maidan protests to the frontlines in Donbas. It’s a long read, but well worth it.
Quibbling over whether the Crimean plebiscite was or was not administered correctly is irrelevant.
A local majority in a territory in no way gives a neighboring country the right to unilaterally invade and annex that territory. We resolved that issue in 1945.
Otherwise, Chechnya should have been a sovereign, independent nation long ago, instead of being the battleground for 2 wars of insurgency and a possession, still, of Russia. Ingushetia, as well.
