Add together the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk and you don’t reach the economic output of Dundee. World domination it isn’t. Unfortunately both in the Kremlin and on Capitol Hill they, and their satraps, think it is. Neither side cares at all about the millions of ordinary people in the zone of potential conflict.
The spiral of death in Ukraine is very worrying. Following the tragic deaths in Odessa, the ball is very much in Putin’s court. His bluff has very much been called. We will now learn whether he was stoking clashes in Eastern Ukraine and massing forces on his border in order to give a pretext for invasion – which pretext he now has – or in order to destabilize and intimidate Kiev into moving away from relationships with the EU.
This has been a discussion of the deaf even more within intellectual circles in the West than between Washington and the Kremlin, where at least the Machiavellians understand full well what they are doing. But their followers either, on the one hand, deny that there are any far right elements on the Ukrainian side or any CIA assistance, or alternatively deny that there are many millions of ordinary Ukrainians who genuinely want to be at peace in their own country and move towards the EU. They either claim that all the separatists are Russian agents and deny the genuine minority population which yearns for the Soviet Union or Russia, or they deny the existence of Russian agents and special forces in Ukraine, and that most of the Russian nationalists are every bit as right wing and appalling as the equivalent tendency on the Ukrainian side.
First, some history. The Ukrainian people really do exist. They have been a subjugated people for centuries, most lastingly by the great Polish-Lithuanian Empire and then by the Russian Empire. That does not mean they did not exist. Consider this: until 1990 there had not been an independent Polish state for over two hundred years, except for a fleeting twenty years between the two world wars. Yet nobody doubts the Poles are a real nation. I shan’t start on Scotland again …
None of modern Ukraine was Russian until the 18th century, when the expansion of the Russian empire and decline of the Polish took in these new colonies. As Putin famously remarked, it was called New Russia. Yes, Vladimir, note it was New. That is because it was a colony. Just like New York. Because it was called New Russia gives you no more right to it than the Channel Islands have to New Jersey. Ukraine had been Russian seven hundred years before its 18th century reconquest, but that population had migrated to Muscovy.
The expansion of the Russian Empire was exactly contemporary with the expansion of the British and American Empires, and other bit players like the French. Like most of the American, most of the Russian Empire was a contiguous land mass. The difference between the Russian and British Empires, on the one hand, and the American Empire on the other, was that the Russians and British did not commit genocide of the existing populations. The difference between the Russian and the British Empires is that the British gave almost all of theirs back in the post-colonial period (a process that needs to be urgently completed). Russia gave back much of her Empire at the fall of the Soviet Union, but still retained a very great deal more than the British. It is to me inarguable that, in a historical perspective, Putin is attempting to recover as much of the Russian Empire as possible, including but by no means solely by the annexation of Crimea and his actions in Ukraine.
Crimea, incidentally, had maintained its own independent existence as the last remnant of the Mongol Horde right up until the 19th century. Despite the Russian colonisation of Crimea in the 19th century, it still had a majority Tatar population until the 1940’s, when Stalin tried his hand at genocide on them. The Tatars were branded Nazis. Opponents of the Russian Empire are always “Nazis” or “Jihadists”. The deportation of the Tatars from Crimea was only twenty years before the British did the same genocide to a smaller people in Diego Garcia. I call for the restitution of both. Those who call for the restitution of one and not the other are appalling hypocrites.
Equally hypocritical are those who call for a referendum on Russian union for East Ukraine, but not for referenda on independence for Dagestan and Chechnya. It is an irony insufficiently noted, that in Russia to call or campaign for the separation of any part of the state is a crime punishable by up to 22 years’ imprisonment. There are over 7,000 people from the Caucasus imprisoned under that law.
There is absolutely no movement among the large minority Russians of the Baltic States to rejoin Mother Russia, because living conditions in the EU are just so much better. As I have blogged before, it is undeniably true that living conditions for ordinary people in Poland have vastly improved as a result of EU membership, and are much better than in Ukraine – or Russia.
GDP per capita figures for Russia look quite good, but do not give a true reflection of living standards because of astonishing levels of inequality of wealth. This is very bad in the West, and getting much worse rather rapidly, but is nowhere near as bad as in Russia which is the most viciously capitalist state in the world, made worse by its commodity dependency. The Russian economy is completely non-diversified, manufacturing and services are miniscule and it is overwhelmingly a raw commodity exporter in energy, metals, grain etc. That leads to extreme concentration of profit and a lack of employment opportunity. Combine that with mafia state corruption and you have the oligarchs’ paradise. Russia is a gangster state. On top of which, if I were a Russian who campaigned against the Russian government in the same way that I do against my own, I would be dead.
The desire of ordinary Ukrainians to join the EU one day, and move closer to it now, is understandable and indeed commendable. It was also the desire of Yanukovich. Those who claim Western pressure on Yanukovich forget – or choose to ignore – that Yanukovich’s government had actually, quite independently and voluntarily, negotiated the EU co-operation agreement and were on the point of signing it, when Yanukovich was summoned to Moscow by Putin and informed that if they signed the agreement, the energy supplies to Ukraine would immediately be cut off in mid-winter and debt called in.
That is a fact. It was not illegal for Putin to do that; it was perhaps even legitimate for those who believe in a Machiavellian approach to great power politics. Yanukovich temporized, between a rock and a hard place. Ukraine seemed to be at a key moment of balance, hung between the EU and Russia. The capital being in West Ukraine and overwhelmingly ethnic Ukrainian, pro-EU crowds started to build up. Then things started to get wildly out of control.
Were western governments encouraging pro-western groups in Ukraine? Yes, that’s their job. Did this include covert support? Yes. Were the Russians doing precisely the same thing with their supporters? Yes, that’s their job too. Did the Americans spend 5 billion dollars on covert support? Of course not.
Victoria Nuland claimed in a speech America had put 5 billion dollars into Ukraine. I used to write those kind of speeches for British ministers. First you take every bit of money given by USAID to anything over a very long period, remembering to add an estimate for money given to international projects including Ukraine. Don’t forget to add huge staff costs and overheads, then something vast for your share of money lent by the IMF and EBRD, then round it up well. I can write you a speech claiming that Britain has given five billion dollars to pretty well anywhere you claim to name.
The problem is that both the left and right have again, equal but opposite motives for believing Nuland’s bombast about the extent of America’s influence on events. I have been in this game. You can’t start a revolution in another country. You can affect it at the margins.
A military coup you certainly can start. One thing we don’t really know nearly enough about is what happened at the end, when Yankovich had to flee. The Maidan protestors would never have caused a government to fall which retained full control of its army. The army can fail the rulers in two ways. First is a revolutionary movement among normal soldiers – the French revolution model. Second is where the troops remain disciplined but follow their officers in a military coup. The latter is of course a CIA speciality. More evidence is needed, but if this is the second model, it is unusual for it not to result in military control of government. Egypt is the obvious current example of a CIA backed coup.
After Yanukovich we had entered the world domination game. Putin seemed to have lost. The annexation of Crimea was a smart move by Putin in that game, because there probably is a genuine small majority of the population there who would like to join Russia. I have no doubt whatsoever that Putin himself does not believe the 93% for a moment. As I said, the Machiavellian players of world domination are realistic; it is their purblind followers on either side who buy their propaganda.
The Kiev government and the West should have conceded Crimea before Putin moved his troops into it. The sensible thing for the new Kiev government to have done would have been to offer a referendum in Crimea itself, under its own auspices. That would have got the most hardline pro-Russian voters out of the country for good. But by that time, everyone had gone into Macho mode, which is where we still are.
None of the remaining provinces would opt to join Russia given the choice. There is no shortage of existing and historic opinion poll evidence on that. Crimea was the only province with an ethnic Russian majority. The Eastern provinces have Russian speaking majorities, but most are ethnic Ukrainian. I base ethnicity here purely on self-identification in census (and, as I have repeatedly explained, absolutely everybody in the former Soviet Union knows precisely what is asked in the questions of Gradzvanstvo and Narodnosch). Just as some Welsh people speak English, some Ukrainians speak Russian but do not consider themselves Russian. Putin’s frequent references to the Russian-speaking peoples coming back to Russia are as sinister as if we started talking of re-uniting all the English speaking people in the world.
As almost always with colonies, the minority ethnic Russian populations in the East of Ukraine are more concentrated in urban areas. Hence it has been possible in regional capitals to mobilise gangs of disaffected and unemployed Russian young men (in view of Ukraine’s basket case economy there are plenty), and with a slight stiffening of Russian forces take control of town centres. There is a significant minority, and possibly a majority in town centres, willing to support. It is, I think, extremely important to understand that the thugs on both sides are very unpleasant. I have the particular experience of relations with a lot of Uzbeks, and the incidence of racial attacks by Russian nationalist thugs within Russia itself is absolutely horrifying and almost completely unreported. The swastika is a popular symbol among young macho men throughout all of former Eastern Europe including Russia. I absolutely guarantee you that an equally significant proportion of the pro-Russians who have been attacking anyone who tries to show support for Ukraine within Eastern Ukrainian cities, are no more and no less right wing, racist and vicious than the appalling Pravy Sektor thugs included on the other side. We have plenty within the EU – there is a serious problem, for example, with the official encouragement given to commemorations of pro-Nazi forces within the Baltic states which often have a distinctly neo-Nazi tinge.
Putin’s campaign of controlling the urban centres appears to have gone wrong in Odessa, which is simply too large for the numbers of available young men armed with baseball bats to take control. The pro-Russians were badly beaten in precisely the same street fighting they had been winning elsewhere. The culmination of this was the terrible fire and deaths. My expectation is there will not be many women, children or old people among the dead, but also there will not be many non-Ukrainian nationals. I expect these will prove to have been local Russian young men.
Putin now has a real problem. His own rhetoric has indicated that he will sweep in and defend these Russians, but there is one thing anyone with half a brain should have worked out by now. The ruling 1%, the ultra-wealthy, in both Russia and the West are so interconnected with each other that they are playing the game of world domination while trying at the same time to make sure nobody super-rich really loses his money. Hence the strange obviously bogus sanctions regimes. Real stock market disruption and confiscation of corrupt assets would be difficult to avoid if the tanks start rolling in earnest. We may be saved from utter disaster by the sheer scale of global corruption, which is a strange conclusion.
I would like to think the awful deaths of the last few days would lead both sides to step back from the brink. The time has come for a peacekeeping force. Negotiations should be held urgently to make the Kiev interim government more inclusive of opposition elements from the East – and they must oust the far right at the same time. The UN Security Council should then send in UN peacekeepers, which must include both Russian and western forces in close integration, to keep the peace while genuine elections are held. I can see no other way forward which does not risk disaster.
I liked Tony’s post at 8.34.
I don’t feel I have much to add to this discussion. Its too difficult.
Ukrainian Ukrainians have a lot to be bitter about such as Holodomor. If I had lived through that then I might have found myself on the wrong side in WW11. Russian Ukrainians have a good argument about NATO encroachment. Don’t let it become a new Syria.
It is a good article. but before posting it, you should show it to a native speaker of Russian. You write, “as I have repeatedly explained, absolutely everybody in the former Soviet Union knows precisely what is asked in the questions of Gradzvanstvo and Narodnosch)” The word your are seeking is Ethnicity or Nazionalnost Национальность. It is also commonly refered to as The Fifth Line Пятая Графа (as it was the fifth line of the Soviet passport (I used to have one). Now, Gradzvanstvo гражданство is citizenship, for example, British citizenship Гражданство Великобритании or Британское гражданство). Narodnosch is a misspeling of the word narodnost народность and this word has two separate meanings. First is “small nation” Daghestan has about two hundred small nations, all with their mutually incomprehensible languages (Darginians, Avarians, Lezgins, Tats (the Mountain Jews).Second meaning is “Respect for what common people believe) English narodnost is a claim that marmite is really tasty and should be a part of lunch in every school, Scottish narodnost is ordering that all Scottish bankers be ethnically Scottish, wear kilts to work or be fired. This is a part of the Count Uvarov’s famous triad “Absolute Monarchy, Orthodox Faith, Respect for Folk Traditions” Самодержавие, Православие, Народность. There are many other points I could raise, but my post is already long. My last point: great respect and admiration for you, Mr Murray. You were a great Ambassador.
Tony M
You may think I ‘m sick – but at least I am not dishonest – read what I said “Neither behaviour is excusable” Yes there should be an enquiry and action against those responsible for the deaths in Odessa – just as there should be an enquiry into those responsible for the murders and torture going on in Donetsk and the helicopters being shot down by SAM missiles. However, the immediate concern should be to stop any escalation.
To clarify the ‘Cheerio’ in my last post.
I admit the post was written in exasperation with its attendant distortions.
What I mean by ‘swan-song’ and ‘cheerio’ is this: Like others here, I currently have far more sites on my RSS feed than I can possibly do justice to. I therefore have to have periodic clear-outs. Craig’s blog is now no longer on the list; that’s all – which means I am unlikely to have my attention drawn to his posts unless referred to them in some other way. Much more useful and clear-sighted stuff elsewhere I’m finally forced to admit.
On the OSCE military observers detention issue dealt with in the previous post. This was Putin’s measured reply to a journalists question about it. There is also useful stuff from him about the US leadership of the Kiev Junta and Western sanctions.
If only we had a leader of his stature in the west, instead of pathetic puppets of hidden (but no less obvious) interests that we have to endure, there might be some hope for the future. As it is the internal logic of the dying globalist system looks set fair to wreak vastly more damage on the planet and its peoples in its death-throws – GHUA again.
I’ll check this thread for a while, but otherwise that’s it from me.
Obomber the joker. Sick. A bonehead.
“Colorado legalized marijuana this year. I hope it doesn’t lead to a bunch of paranoid people who think the government is out to get them, and listening to their phone calls,” the president said, nodding to the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/04/barack-obama-2014-white-house-correspondents-dinner-jokes-zingers
On Putin, pronounced Poot’n
‘Obama made fun of conservative television hosts’ talk about Putin’s bare chest and one’s comment last year about Putin being headed for a Nobel Peace Prize. “To be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days,” said Obama, a laureate himself.’
Yes Obomber you did get one didn’t you. As Shillary said, ‘We came, We saw, He died’. That was nice for Gaddafi, Osama Bin Laden and all those you have killed extrajudicially by drone, Hellfire missile and the bullet.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-president-pokes-fun-at-cnn-over-extensive-missing-jet-coverage-1.2631376
Please don’t leave us Wikispooks. I remember your invaluable piece on the Dr Rola/Syria lies carried on ZBC. The lies continue eg stories via Mr Pannell of barrel bombs dropped from helicopters on Aleppo. Your record is needed. Kind regards.
This blog really needs you, Wikispooks. I’ve only been an occasional poster, but agreed with most of what Craig has written most of the time until the Ukrainian matter arose. He is clearly displaying a view of Russia based on the cold war and the USSR, which I suspect is still prevalent in the FO, although Russia has clearly moved on.
His dislike of Russia comes across clearly in “Murder in Samarkind”, but in that book he was brave enough to publish an “Enron” connection with the Taliban. I think his analysis on this occasion is dangerously wrong, but at least he wants peace in a neutral Ukraine and he is open to honest debate about it.
I was looking to see who wrote the piece in the Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-kremlin-insists-it-cannot-control-prorussian-separatists-and-calls-for-dialogue-with-west-9321412.html
Oliver Poole
Oliver Poole is an award-winning Foreign Correspondent for the Evening Standard and Independent titles. In his career he has reported from war zones including Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq, where he was based during the worst years of the civil war. He has written two books, “Red Zone: Five Bloody Years in Baghdad’ and ‘Black Knights: On the Bloody Road to Baghdad’. He was previously a Foreign Reporter for The Daily Telegraph, and has written for the BBC, Guardian, Times and South China Morning Post.
‘….and Iraq, where he was based during the worst years of the civil war.’
If he sees the Bush/Blair PNAC slaughter enacted on Iraq, then abandon all expectation of truth from the British media.
!!!!!!!!!
If he sees the Bush/Blair PNAC slaughter enacted on Iraq as a ‘civil war’, then abandon all expectation of truth from the British media.
“I’ve only been an occasional poster, but agreed with most of what Craig has written most of the time until the Ukrainian matter arose. He is clearly displaying a view of Russia based on the cold war and the USSR, which I suspect is still prevalent in the FO, although Russia has clearly moved on.”
This is a fair assessment. I have not been back but to Russia. The cost of a flight and accommodation is one reason, which shows just how much it has moved on. However I’m hoping (planning) to go when Russia hosts the World Cup in 2018, providing the Yanks/Zionists have not succeeded in their aims of world domination to cover up the incredibly super-fast growing mountain of debt under which their economy is drowning. When it drowns, or we are annihilated, whichever comes first, it will be the death of modern economic systems as we know them. Those who survive will have to try and cobble together what’s left and build a more moral society, which excludes oligarchy, monopoly, monarchy and hopefully the anarchy these non-egalitarian systems spawn.
Craig,
Re: “British did not commit genocide of the existing populations”
How does the British treatment of the Australian Aboriginals sit with that statement?
“The following year, the Human Rights Commission handed down a landmark report on the “Stolen Generation” that described how tens of thousands of aboriginal children of mixed race were taken from their parents between the 20s and 60s as part of a systematic policy of “breeding out the colour”. The president of the commission, Sir Roland Wilson, said, “We as a committee have decided that what was done meets the international definition of genocide? which is the attempt to destroy a people, a culture.””
http://johnpilger.com/articles/fixed-race
“The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate. ”
“The City of Sydney ruling is a very different gesture, and admirable; for it reflects not a liberal and limited “sorry campaign”, seeking feel-good “reconciliation” rather than justice, but counters a cowardly movement of historical revision in which a collection of far-right politicians, journalists and minor academics claimed there was no invasion, no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism.”
And so on…..
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=site:johnpilger.com+aboriginal+genocide&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=_f9lU4SnKMqI0AXHjoHwDA
CM: “the British gave almost all of theirs [empire] back”
Laughable. The British establishment did not “give back” the empire. They lost it. For reasons such as native revolt, growing workers power, growing US empire, German empire and two world wars…
To repeatedly assert, as you keep doing, that the British establishment gifted the end of empire is a delusion that, perhaps uncoincidentally, mirrors your personal moment of revelation about the horror of empire. However, a delusion it is.
The British establishment to this day adapt tactics to cling to the new ways of empire. See this, newly found in the national archives:
Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home, 1970:
Hat tip to Tony Opmoc LINK,
The Ukrainian global 9-11 redux seems as if the US is probing with every dirty trick in their bag to learn if they have any magic left. They do not. What this tells us is that they are alone and on the run. They burned every bridge, broke every treaty, and have no friends left, no allies; even Israel turned its back. The Nobel Laureate didn’t get a dime from the House of Saud. Moreover, Russia didn’t even sniff the bait. This in turn tells us that the cartel, not only had to plan the operation themselves, they had to pay for it too! Can you imagine! Obviously, they tried to do it on the cheep by assembling a coalition of criminals. Americans absolutely could not do it, they are tired, dead broke and sick of the slaughtering.
Putin, emasculated the coalition of the criminally insane and turned operation Crimea into operation Dirty Dick Chaney (AKA Obama) meets Lorena Bobbitt. As Putin said, “What is happening today before our eyes is the end of one international system and the birth of a qualitatively different one.” In other words, US lawless savagery is over. Putin understands that America can not be bargain with, it has to be stopped. Russia was not given a choice. The barbarians were at their gate.
Over the next months, in the controlled media, we are going to be subjected to a tidal wave of agonizing talking heads, Obama apologists and spin doctors, ad nauseam. Please, spare us, the ignominy. However, the one thing that is news worthy and will not be on any news program, is that if we don’t get our act together, if we don’t stop the senseless murdering of entire cultures, and soon, the world will stop us, one way or another.
What can we do? Boo them everywhere they show their face in public and stop watching TV, especially the controlled news. That would be a good start. However, the smartest way I know how to reverse the destructive path we have taken is to rebuild our culture by diverting funds from war to education and the arts; the rest will follow naturally.
“(T)here is one thing anyone with half a brain should have worked out by now. The ruling 1%, the ultra-wealthy, in both Russia and the West are so interconnected with each other that they are playing the game of world domination while trying at the same time to make sure nobody super-rich really loses his money.”
Only up to a point. Berezovsky, for example, lost his.
Wikispooks 4 May, 2014 – 7:46 am
“If only we had a leader of his [Putin] stature in the west”
What a truly pathetic statement. Really fucking idiotic. You, my internet warrior friend, are deluded.
Putin is a killer. He is a greedy self serving elitist. He is no different to the establishment here. CM is right when he points out that the rich and powerful on both sides have more in common with each other than they do with us.
Your Andrei Fursov article is as partial as Craig’s here. Kasparov my arse. What do you thinks happens to dissenters in Russia? The same as what happens here. Except more so.
Some points:
a) I can see several comments asking Wikispooks not to leave but not the one saying the is going. The answer to which is that the only two people who have ever been banned are still commenting, and that nobody is forced to be here, but Wikispooks would be very much missed. Frankly, I don’t see the point of only going to blogs where you agree with everything. I don’t value or devalue people according to whether they agree with me or not. Wikispooks comments have been very welcome for many years, and his website is excellent.
My views on Russia and Putin have been very consistent. Russia is much less free than the West – a really nasty autocracy with a still more vicious capitalism. My views are hardly new – seven years ago I was rather ahead of my time in warning very loudly about German energy dependency on Russia and Russian human rights abuses.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal/
I come at this from a human rights perspective – where Putin scores very badly – and from an anti-imperialist perspective. From Tashkent the world looks different and you understand that there is a struggle firstly, within Islamic ex-colonies to gain freedom from Russian trained colonial elites like Karimov, and secondly in the still colnised Islamic colonial areas like Chechnya, Dagestan and Tatarstan to get freedom from the Russian Empire at all.
On genocide, yes kiwi I stand corrected on Australia, thanks. On the end of the British Empire, I have a different view to the dogmatic Marxists among you as to the extent this was entirely due to local resistance, or to which ideological change in the UK itself post 1945 hastened it. That is however irrelevant.
The point is that the British Empire did end, almost completely and needs to be finally ended. The Russian Empire has not ended – undeniably in Chechnya and Dagestan – is reasserting itself, and that Putin is a right wing nationalist imperialist.
Matthew Maly,
Thanks for the compliment. You cannot “misspell” a Russian word in the English alphabet. Transliteration from Cyrillic is entirely a matter of taste. There is no “correct” spelling. I accept your correction on meaning as my Russian has got very rusty. My point however was that throughout the FSU the distinction between ethnicity and nationality is well understood as both were included on passports and all official documents.
I agree with your overall assessment and take, but it is only correct to call Tatarstan/Tataria a colonised Islamic area if you wish to make an argument rooted in the 16th century.
“‘Obama made fun of conservative television hosts’ talk about Putin’s bare chest and one’s comment last year about Putin being headed for a Nobel Peace Prize. “To be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days,” said Obama, a laureate himself.’
Yes Obomber you did get one didn’t you. As Shillary said, ‘We came, We saw, He died’. That was nice for Gaddafi, Osama Bin Laden and all those you have killed extrajudicially by drone, Hellfire missile and the bullet.”
_____________________
It would be nice if people ceased posting sour dross.
“To be fair, they give those to just about anybody these days,” said Obama, a laureate himself.’
Has the thought occurred that Obama might – might just – have been making a joke about himself? Demonstrating a sense of humour so sadly lacking in some of his detractors here and elsewhere?
BTW, I hadn’t realised that Khadafi was killed by Obama or even by another American, but hey, you learn something new every day on here!
N_
Like Ireland, for example? Absolutely it is a colony, as all of Ireland was and part still is.
Craig
“The point is that the British Empire did end, almost completely and needs to be finally ended.”
____________________
Agree largely with your follow-up posts, including the one from which the above quotation comes.
As far as I can see, the Empire now consists of only a handful of rather small territories – Falklands, Ascension, St Helena, BAT,….
You might prefer to answer on a future, more appropriate thread (if at all) but I’d be interested to know exactly what you mean by finally ending the Empire. Do you mean granting independence to those few small territories, most if not all of which would be unviable or only barely viable as independent entities (including economically)? If so, are you aware of any desire for independence in all or any of these territories, andd what would be gained from independence from the point of view of both the mother country and those territories themselves? Or are you thinking of matters like judicial “independence” (eg the Privy Council’s rôle)as well? Or, finally, is this just a postion of principle you’ve adopted?
Craig
Your reply to N_ prompts me to ask you a further question: do you think that the French DOM-TOMs are in reality part of a French Empire (and should therefore also be given independence) or do you accept that they are integral parts of the French Republic?
@Craig. You make the point that Ireland was settled centuries ago too. But one major difference between Ireland and Tatarstan/Tataria is that the vast majority of people who live in Ireland today call themselves Irish, whereas a large proportion of the population of Tatarstan/Tataria call themselves not Tatar but Russian. Far from being a colonial elite, like the British in say India, the Russians in T/T are people of all classes. Granted, there is a slight overweighting of Tatars as against Russians in lower social groups, but the imbalance is nowhere near as stark as to indicate Russian colonialism in an Islamic country as you depict it. Incidentally, whereas the class mix among Russians in T/T is about the same as it is among Tatars in that country, the same is not true among some of the other ethnic groups with a smaller presence there, such as the Chuvash, Udmurts, Georgians and Jews.
Nor is Northern Ireland any longer essentially a settler state, any more than the US is a European colony or collection of such.
Craig.
Thanks for your perspective.
Some footage here of Kramatorsk citizens and Ukrainian soldiers yesterday.
What would you say is going on in this 3 min clip?
It seems to me like an awesome display of raw courage by citizens who are clearly facing the threat of lethal force with their own bodies and vocal chords. Also a display of courage by the Ukrainian soldiers who clearly disobeyed orders and know there will be consequences.
Any other explanations?
O/T – forgive me!
@ Technicolour
You are perhaps no longer following the “Apartheid Israel poison is out” thread and I therefore allow myself to tell you that I’ve posted a reply (at 13h25 today) to something you wrote there and which I believes merits a rejoinder.
Ukrainians have divided loyalties. A great majority of them want to see their country free of Russian or Western domination. The Jewish oligarchs and powerful Western Jewish lobby groups want Ukraine to become an American while 18% of country’s Muslim population prefer to stay neutral in this conference.
The convicted/pardoned Jewish former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, in a post at the CFR magazine (March 1, 2014) compares the situation in Ukraine to Obama’s caution on attacking Syria or Iran.
“Those who are wondering whether we need to pass sanctions legislation now and put more pressure on Iran should take all this into account. Like Putin, the ayatollahs likely see our failure to act in Syria (indeed our willingness to be “rescued” from action by Putin) as a sign that they can drive a hard bargain indeed with us over their nuclear weapons program, giving up nearly nothing and getting sanctions relief. And now they see us reacting (so far) to Russian aggression in Ukraine, sending troops across the border into the Crimea, with tut-tutting,” wrote the Jewish convict.
http://rehmat1.com/2014/03/06/chief-rabbi-wants-american-boots-in-ukraine/
O/T Is there some state agenda ongoing ref the IRA and Sinn Fein? I haven’t heard much about the Protestant crimes in this reworking of the past. Why now?
Adams has been under arrest for 4 days now.
The BBC say:
Sinn Féin accused of ‘blackmailing’ PSNI over Gerry Adams
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-27272696
This morning Sue McGregor revisited the Omagh bombing on BBC Radio 4.
The Omagh Bombing
Duration: 45 minutes
First broadcast:Sunday 04 May 2014
The Omagh bomb was the worst massacre in Northern Ireland’s modern history. On Saturday the 15th of August a massive bomb placed by the so-called Real IRA killed two unborn twins, six men, twelve women and eleven children. The dead included Protestants, Catholics and a Mormon. The blast wave was so powerful that the bodies of several victims were never found.
The bombing was “a barbaric act intended to wreck Ireland’s aspirations for peace and reconciliation,” said President Clinton who came to walk amongst the wreckage. Only four months earlier Northern Ireland’s main political parties had signed up to the Good Friday agreement, power sharing was on its way and the Provisional IRA was on ceasefire.
No one has ever been convicted in connection with the massacre at Omagh but in April 2014, Seamus Daly was arrested and charged with 29 counts of murder over the attack.
The 43-year-old bricklayer, originally from Culloville, County Monaghan, but now residing in Jonesborough, County Armagh, also faces counts of causing the explosion in Omagh and possession of a bomb in the County Tyrone market town with intent to endanger life or property.
In this episode of The Reunion, recorded shortly before charges were brought against Daly, Sue MacGregor is joined by Kevin Skelton whose wife Mena was killed by the bomb, Michael Gallagher and Victor Barker whose sons Aiden and James also died, former RUC police constable Richard Scott, and by BBC Northern Ireland’s Political Editor Mark Devenport.
Producer: Emily Williams
Series Producer: David Prest
Ref http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/05/world-domination/#comment-455925
Has the thought occurred that Obama might – might just – have been LAUGHING IN OUR FACES?????
Habbabkuk seems to be in a time zone that is different to the UK’s?? He says he posted a comment to Technicolour at 13.25hrs on the apartheid thread. It actually went up at 12.25hrs BST.
???