America and Ukraine: The threat to freedom

The Economist ^ | 02/20/2014 | The Economist editorial staff

[The KG9 Kid]

AMERICA and Europe, exhausted by futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and by their own financial crises, have over the past five years come to a tacit consensus that they lack the power and the political will to bring democracy to far-flung, failing authoritarian states. That seemed a sad but wise conclusion so long as those failing authoritarian states really were far-flung. Then, yesterday, the zone of failing authoritarian states arrived at our doorstep. The massacres of demonstrators in Kiev's Independence Square are as awful as anything that took place during the coup in Cairo last year or the initial crackdowns on demonstrations in Damascus two years ago. In Egypt and Syria, America and Europe have largely thrown up their hands, recognising that such states are simply too alien and too far away, in terms of political culture, development levels, and strategic importance, for intensive Western intervention to be promising or worthwhile. Ukraine is different, and the stakes are higher. For the first time since Yugoslavia in 1991, a European country bordering EU member states is on the brink of civil war.

[mac_truck]

West Ukrainians were worse than the Nazis

Indeed. Mykola Lebed is one name that comes to mind from that time period. Not much has changed over there since then either. I'm very surprised to see Poland supporting this fascist revolt.

[free from tyranny]

Well, wideawake you may be, in some sleepwalking state of delusion if you think for one moment that only some tin foil wearing conspiracy theorist would conceive of something so silly.
Mr. Troll or PFC Troll, perhaps doing some reading on the subject of the IMF or World Bank or the Bank of International Settlements might help your alleviate your current state of delusion. Or you could swallow a couple of hours of Fox News and go back to sleep walking while being wideawake.
Google World Bank whistleblower Karen Hudes. If you think I'm wearing a tin foil hat, then she must have an aluminum smelter.

[Psalm 144]

Yes it does sound familiar. So does the situation. “Arab Spring” comes to mind.

What goes around, comes around.

[cunning_fish]

>>>Your post is poorly-formatted nonsense.
These are not blood and soil Ukrainian fascists - those groups exist mostly in your fevered dreams.

These are people who want to live in a reasonably free and prosperous country.

They are looking for EU membership, for goodness’ sake.<<<

I have a Greek friend who was beaten in Lvov suburb by a group of young people who thought be was a Jew. He tried to communicate with them in Russian to explain he is a Greek but they also stabbed him. It was in 2007, not 1941.

Police advised him not to walk backstreets ‘with your face and accent like this’ after.

[wideawake]

I have a Greek friend who was beaten in Lvov suburb by a group of young people who thought be was a Jew.

(1) That's a really believable anecdote, thanks.

(2) Of course, there has never been a single anti-Semitic incident by Russian nationalists ever, right?

(3) If your friend exists (which I doubt) and if this incident really happened (which I doubt), does that mean that every single Ukrainian fighting for freedom in Independence Square agrees with such idiots? That they approve? That they would advocate such behavior? Get real.

[wideawake]

The good work that Karen Hudes has done - showing the failures of oversight in international banking institutions, and the contradictory rules that have encouraged corruption and malfeasance - is underappreciated.

The quality of her work is a function of her not being an insane, conspiracy-obsessed nutbag. She is an intelligent critic and reformer.

She wouldn't use terms like "international banking cabal" (and all the unsavory implications a loaded term like that carries).

She uses facts, not suppositions. She cites public sources, not a set of imaginary bogeymen in her head.

[cunning_fish]

>>(1) That’s a really believable anecdote, thanks.<<

?

>>(2) Of course, there has never been a single anti-Semitic incident by Russian nationalists ever, right?<<

Probably. But ‘Russian’ anti-Semitism is historically linked to a territories known as Ukraine and Poland today. Just check a map of pogroms. Modern Russian xenophobia is ugly but mostly aimed at Muslims and Chinese.

>>(3) If your friend exists (which I doubt) and if this incident really happened (which I doubt), does that mean that every single Ukrainian fighting for freedom in Independence Square agrees with such idiots? That they approve? That they would advocate such behavior? Get real.<<

A story is real. No, it doesn’t mean every protestor in Kiev supports it, but a point is there are plenty of jerks like that in Western Ukraine. Just browse the web and you’ll find enough similar stories in the news.

[griswold3]

From the comment section:
“We are falling back into hierarchical totalitarianism simply because that´s the natural, least resistance path of organization for any society.Democracy, like a sophisticated production chain, has negative entropy-great energy and care are needed to keep such a superior, complex machine churning out social goods.”