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Normally, such folk do not become Zappa fans, or invite guys like Zappa to be part of their government. But, still, these days, who can say? |
Posted on 11/23/2004 5:56:02 PM PST by wagglebee
Would-be Czar Vladimir Putin has taken a giant step toward reasserting the regional hegemony of the former Soviet Union by stealing the election in the Ukraine right under our noses.
As an unpaid, volunteer adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the democratic candidate for president, I have seen, first hand, how Viktor Yanukovich, the Putin candidate backed by a rogue coalition of Russian Mafia, oil barons, former KGB officials and Communists, stole the election and thwarted the obvious will of the voters.
While the former Soviet Union was composed of many smaller nations, now independent, the key was the combination of Russia and the Ukraine. Russia’s 145 million people and the Ukraine’s 45 million are the core of what was the Soviet Empire. Reuniting them has to be the primary goal of any aspiring Russian czar.
But the people of the Ukraine don’t want Russian domination. The election contest pitted Viktor Yushchenko, who got the virtually solid support of the 60 percent of the population that is Ukrainian by ethnicity against Yanukovich, who won equally united backing from the 40 percent that is ethnically Russian.
The result was obvious: Exit polls (more accurate in Ukraine than when our own TV networks do them) showed Yushchenko winning by more than 10 points. But the final results announced by the government, which supported Yanukovich, showed a small margin in favor of the Russian-backed candidate.
Putin regarded the contest as so important that he personally visited the Ukraine in the weeks before the election to campaign for his candidate, a clear violation of the most elementary standards of independence and protocol. His former KGB henchmen – and once and future Communists – combined with Russian organized crime figures and oil barons to pump money into the race and to intimidate voters on the ground.
Yushchenko, a pro-Western former prime minister, survived two assassination attempts to make the race. At the start of the contest, he was run off the road while driving in the Ukraine. When he walked away from the wreck, the opposition poisoned him. Hospitalized in Vienna, his doctors diagnosed the poison, which mimicked a stroke in its symptoms, and nursed him to a full recovery.
If they couldn’t commit murder, Putin’s boys decided to commit larceny and did all they could to stack the election. Their totally controlled print and television media – all the information outlets in the nation – refused to give any favorable coverage to Yushchenko and biased all their news toward Yanukovich. We couldn’t even buy advertising space in any mass media outlet.
But, undaunted, Yushchenko’s supporters got their message out by hand, ditributing leaflets and flyers to every single household in the nation several times each week.
When, finally, the forces of freedom won the election, Putin’s operatives rigged the count and released totally phony results showing their stooge to be the winner.
The stakes could not be higher. If the Ukraine and Russia combine, as Putin clearly wants, the old Soviet Union will be back on the road to regional domination and the old ambitions of global power will return. And 45 million people will be cheated of the right to determine their own future.
We in the West are at best distracted and at worst willing to cede to Putin regional control in return for his assistance in the war on terror. This is a mistake of the same order of magnitude the allies made in the 1930s in dealing with Hitler.
The theft of the Ukrainian election is parallel to Germany’s decision to march into the Rhineland. And our refusal to notice or act is akin to the French and British policy of turning the other way.
Freedom may be on the march in the Middle East, but it is in full retreat in Eastern Europe.
So, again, the echo of the Nixonian question about China: Who lost the Ukraine?
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Normally, such folk do not become Zappa fans, or invite guys like Zappa to be part of their government. But, still, these days, who can say? |
Look I am not saying cheating did not take place in the Ukraine - both sides cheat - (just like cheating happens in America I am sure). But for Dick Morris to base his position on the accuracy of Ukrainian exit polls(?!?!?!) when he just slammed American ones is just too much.
It is easier to fix exit polls in America then it is in the Ukraine? God save the Republic!!!
I've been agnostic on Georgia ever since the Georgia Northern Ossetia war.
Let the dust settle.
"Stop with the disinfo. You are still the minority in the ancestral homeland of one of my grandmothers. Ukraine is closer to Czechosolvakia and Poland, culturally and religiously, than to Russia."
This was what I experienced when I was in Ukraine also, the Ukrainians do not like Russia dominating them. My Ukrainian friends remind me of Poles more than Russians.
The problem is that people are now cherry-picking the exit polls to get results they want, and not checking the validity of any exit polls.
I'm now of a mind, after two elections here in the US (2002 and 2004), and the wildly inaccurate exit polling in those elections, that any similarity between exit polls and final election results is purely coincidental.
Are the Georgians referring to the North Ossetians as "damnyankees?" (c8
Ukraine has been slowly moving from communism /atheism to westernism /christianity in the past 12 years. There has been a huge revival of Christianity there since the fall of the Iron Curtain. This has been the trend in all the eastern European countries since the fall of the Iron Curtain, which greatly distinguishes them from the EU. The EU, because it is secular /socialist, has more in common with the old Soviets. Thus the Chirac - Schroeder - Putin axis.
The new European countries of Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc., and the Ukraine if Yushchenko succeeds, have more in common with the US than the EU, as they have already rejected the secularism/ socialism style of government, having lived under the USSR since the 50s, that the EU is so in love with.
People bashing Yushchenko here: the eastern Europeans have become our natural allies in Europe because they are more closely aligned with the US culturally and ideologically. They are socially conservative and very highly prize individual liberty and distrust big government. The Ukraine is poised for this also. But if Putin's guy gets in, that sets things back, because he is a central government control hardliner, a Moscow puppet. With Yushchenko, there is a chance for freedoms to keep progressing there.
About Soros: I think some people give him credit for more brains than he has. He just wasted 27 million on Kerry and couldn't see that it was a bad investment with no returns. How smart is that? Could it be he is backing Yushchenko JUST BECAUSE he is the anti-Russian candidate, as a Ukrainian himself? Do not think he can succeed in brainwashing the Ukrainian people to make them all the sudden love France and hate the US; the Ukrainians have expert BS and propaganda antennae honed through years of being force fed Soviet drivel. Soros couldn't succeed in brainwashing Americans either, and we are decidedly more gullible. But he is deluded enough to keep trying.
Listen, the Eastern Europeans have a chance to change the EU for the better as more and more of these countries get into the EU. "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." I am not automatically anti-Yushchenko just because he is pro-EU, Poland wanted to join the EU too.
This makes me doubtful that an ethnic Russian would win an election in the Ukraine.
Which one was the ethnic Russian? Putin's fave, or Soros'?
Bump for later.
Facinating. Thank you for the reply.
Putin's fave. And I am a little doubtful that their distaste for a strange billionaire is greater than that of the president of their former occupier. At least that's how it would be in Lithuania. I suspect the Ukranians would view it like the Lithuanians. Call it a hunch.
RE: I realize that you are, at heart, a totalitarian
Wrong terminology. I am a Burkian rightist. I abhor the thinking of Hobbes and all others who followed in his footsteps. If you do not understand what I mean by this, go do some Googling and learn what it means.
RE: opposition to your treasonous agenda
And what, pray tell, is treasonous about my agenda? As for what my agenda is, I urge you, and all who want to know it, to look at my profile page. In a soundbite, my agenda is tough love for the GOP and the resurgence of the spirit of William McKinley. Obviously, soundbites are rather inadequate. There is far more depth to it than that.
RE: imposing an authoritarian government on the United States
I suppose to you and others of your particular faction, the norms in place prior to the assassination of McKinley, may have been considered "authoritarian." Using similar logic, I can state that much of what passes for "conservatism" today is anything but conservative and is more closely related to anarchy.
RE: That kind of goofy thinking is best left to the Democrats.
Well it's sad that you apparently believe that the thinking which built the GOP is best left to Democrats.
RE: I just consider you to be a liberal troll who's trying to pass himself off as a conservative
Herein lies your problem, in that I am the epitome of the illiberal approach. And why am I happy with my illiberal tendency? I cannot recall who wrote this, but it resonates - liberal institutions require illiberal supports. In that, in the 18th century sense of the term liberal, the USA and its Constitution are liberal institutions, then the need for some sorts of illiberal supports is self evident. Herein lies the actual source of our ongoing feud. You believe that such illiberal supports are either not needed or at best ought to be emasculated, whereas I am not so restrictive. How far might one tolerate illiberal supports? At the extreme, perhaps a certain version of the world according to Hamilton might be justified; I will admit that to be extreme. Again, I am personally attracted to the archetype of the GOP Platform of 1900 A.D. That, to me, appears to be the sweet spot. Mileage may vary.
The weasel-wording before and after are of no account. The above sentence is the core.
LiW, check the link out, YAGBTS!
You need to include the entire statement:
"Increasingly, I contemplate radical things in order to place limits which would be respected upon globalist corporations who are becoming enemies of the USA. Whereas, five years ago I would not have contemplated them, I now am learning about how things such as monarchy or authoritarian Rightists forms of government might be installed. The only other option, as I see it, which would preserve our republic would be a complete and uncomrpromising return to the designs of the Founding Fathers, from which we have strayed immensely."
Otherwise, your smear is out of context, you fiend.
Fascinating. Is he an imposter and the real Yusgchenko either dead or held hostage? Or was he really scarred that badly?
Didn't you read? He's almost 80. Try showing a little respect.
Weasel words, dear sir, have zero semantic content, and you were weaseling well beyond NATOPS limits.
And by the way, I reckon Burke would have agreed with me.
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