Ukraine Revolution

[Dante]

Strange figures...Especially in Crimeea...

Edric O said:

Ummmm... they're already on the equivalent of a permanent strike.

I meen like for good...Not giving a damn about a thing...Guess who will win? The Ukrainian people. ;D

Hm? And how do you figure that?

Poisoned, eh? Well I don't know whether it was well advised or not, but it's nice to see the old form of politics is still around.

[Davidu]

"Death solves all problems: no man, no problem"

Josef Visarionovich Dugashvili aka "Stalin"

I think it's in their tradition. I'm sure this will alter the election process.

[thomas]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6697752/

^ :O

[ordos45]

KGB (or whatever its being called this week) is still up to its old tricks eh?

[VigilVirus]

KGB (or whatever its being called this week) is still up to its old tricks eh?

FSB

[Digital Guerrilla]

Recently doctors at a hosipital in Vienna confirmed what many have suspected that Yuschenko was indeed poisoned. It is said that Yuschenko was poisoned with T-2, or 'yellow rain' linked to dioxins. The doctors think it could have been adminstered in a soup due to the amount of the poisoing of T-2 discovered in Yuschenko's system.

[Anathema]

Election fraud...check

Attempted murder of political opponents...check!

Now who still supports Yanukovich in here? I want to see hands!

[Caid Ivik]

Do not talk about possibilities of being poisoned on Ukraine, if you haven't experience with their hygiene...

[Anathema]

Actually, the lack of hygiene in post Soviet countries has caused their children to be extremely resistent to bacteria and far less prone to alergies then in Western nations. Another glorious achievement of the party ;D

Seriously though, there's no way you can accidentily ingest that many dioxine. The level of dioxine in his body is 1000 times that of what could be expected.

[Caid Ivik]

I have no intention to defend Kucma's postcommunist reign, but why not? It could be an accident. It's a land of infinite possibilities...in accidents  ;D

[Davidu]

Yeah, anything can happen. Anything bad.

[VigilVirus]

Election fraud...check

Attempted murder of political opponents...check!

Now who still supports Yanukovich in here? I want to see hands!

*raises hand*

[Anathema]

Naturally, I'd have expected the first person to raise hands would be a Russian himself, but still. Just wondering, are you abysmally stupid or just an asshole? As if the blatant signs of election fraud weren't enough for you, Ukraine's supreme court has confirmed that Yanukovich has rigged the elections. Next thing is that doctors prove beyond any doubt that Yuschenko has been poisoned, that is, unless your head is so far up your arse that you actually think you can accidentily ingest 1000x the normal quantity of dioxine by eating a bowl of soup. There's no investigation running against Yanukovich as far as I know, but the general idea is as simple as drawing a line between 2 dots named A and B if you have half a brain.

Of course, it's possible that you're not as dimwitted as I suggested above, but support political murder and election fraud carried if the occasion requires it. Maybe you'd have my respect if you were somehow consistent in this (like Dante for example), but first crying "prove that he's a cheater, I don't believe a word of it!", watch as it is proven and then still support that asshole makes you a hypocrite in my book.

Furthermore, Yanukovich is a coward. A sleezy, opportunist coward. I'm not trying to imply that Yuschenko is perfect in any way, but at least he's trying to keep the country in one piece (no, conceding to a known cheater and turn your back on the majority of voters does not count), while Yanukovich message basicly comes down to "screw this whole orange shit, if we don't get it our way we'll tear up the country".

Move along, people.

[Dante]

I love it when people mention my name like that. ;D (I think Devil's Advocate is originally from Russia. But t'was a long time ago when last we spoke, I might be thinking about someone else...)

I'm not in the country, I don't really have a right to decide who I think would be the better candidate. I will say, however, that poison is a semi-legitimate political tool in my books, in that it's ok to use it as long as you don't get caught. I mean you have to admit, it says a lot for ambition and pragmatism.

[Edric O]

Now who still supports Yanukovich in here? I want to see hands!

*raises hand*

I used to be neutral regarding this whole power struggle, but I am now convinced that Yanukovich is the victim of a set-up, which is why I support him. The poison story doesn't add up, and there are some big questions about the Austrian clinic that confirmed Yushchenko's poisoning. Furthermore:

"Of all the available poisons to choose from, why did the poisoners choose dioxin? There has never been a single recorded fatality due to acute dioxin exposure. What amounts to a lethal dose varies widely. In male rats, it is 23 micrograms per kilogram of body weight (mcg/kg); in female rats, however, it is 45 mcg/kg; in guinea pigs, 1 mcg/kg, and hamsters: 5,000 mcg/kg. The lethal dose for humans is not known. In any case, it would take an awful lot of dioxin to knock off a human being. More than one dose would be required, perhaps ingested over an extended period of time."

(oh, and for the record, the website I linked to above, antiwar.com, is a right-wing libertarian one, and I usually strongly disagree with what they have to say - but in this case they make some very good points)

KGB (or whatever its being called this week) is still up to its old tricks eh?

This poisoning cannot be the work of the KGB, for the simple reason that no professional KGB agent would ever be stupid enough to use dioxin. It's either the work of an amateur, or a deliberate set-up created by Yushchenko to grab the sympathy vote.

[Edric O]

Some time ago you asked me to prove my claim that Yushchenko is a corrupt oligarch with mafia connections. Well, I did some digging on Yushie's past, and guess what? He was the head of the Ukrainian central bank through most of the 1990's, and prime minister in Leonid Kuchma's government in 1999. Opposition leader? "Orange revolution"? Hah! Yushchenko is no stranger to power - he was calling the shots just 5 years ago. And he got there thanks to the power of his oligarch buddies.

Anders Aslund, writing in a Carnegie study of the Ukrainian political landscape, explains that "In Russia, the financial-industrial groups provide financing to various parties and to the government. In Ukraine, the economic-political groups rather tend to own political parties. Lazarenko and Timoshenko created the parliamentary party Hromada, as a company party of the Unified Energy Systems. Vadim Rabinovich has reportedly 'bought' the Green Party. Surkis and Medevedchuk reportedly own the United Social Democratic Party. However, Bakai, Pinchuk and the Franchuks support Kuchma directly and possibly his party the National-Democratic Party. Characteristically, all these oligarchic parties are considered centrist, that is, always prepared to make a deal without any real ideology."

And Justin Raimondo, columnist for the website I mentioned in my previous post, writes that "Yushchenko is a creature of this system, and his tenure at the National Bank of the Ukraine was marked by the corruption so characteristic of the political culture: a scandal involving falsification of the country's credit ledger

[Davidu]

That's it. Yushcenko won. Moscow lost.

Let's be optimistic, Edric... pls  :)

[SurlyPIG]

Edric were you able to find any other (and by other I mean more reputable or just less cooky) sources for those stories?

[VigilVirus]

We might yet have a civil war if Yanukovich keeps refusing to leave.

[Anathema]

About the poison thing, I wondered about that too. It's certainly odd, but I'm not convinced that Yuschenko would mutilate himself in an attempt to gain votes (though maybe it could have been his "friends", without his knowledge)

I've briefly read the article about the Austrian doctors, and it seems to be grossly unfair. From the looks of it it's entirely written around circumstantial evidence and vague suggestions. The doctors didn't even claim that Yuschenko was poisoned, they only said that his illness was caused by an enormous dose of dioxine and that it probably was administered through food. They never implied that it was the result of a crime.

I did some digging on Yushie's past, and guess what? He was the head of the Ukrainian central bank through most of the 1990's, and prime minister in Leonid Kuchma's government in 1999.

Wait a sec, all this time we've been arguing, you didn't even know this? (I did) ???

Regarding the IMF scandal, the article itself says that Yuschenko didn't benefit from it (directly). It's suspect, but by no means evidence that he is corrupt. I'll look into it when I have more time (gotta go to work in about 10 minutes)

Speaking of suspect, that site's way of putting things certainly makes me question their reliability. Seriously, would you vouch for their accuracy? If not, I wouldn't quote them.

Lastly, I never said he was a democratic hero and if I recall correctly, neither did anyone else. But he's the better of the two. Could you enlighten us why you prefer Yanukovich? I really don't see what makes him a better choice, especially because a prime minister with that much influence in the media is generally a very bad idea (just look at Berlusconi)

[Anathema]

I've been searching the interent quite a while now.

I did find a few sites that directly accuse Yushchenko for his part in the IMF "scandal". I found it odd that of all sites, you link to one wich "proves" your point yet wich you dislike, but now I know why. All those sites quote from the website you mentioned and it's creator, Justin Raimondo. Kind of suspicious, wouldn't you say?

Yushchenko's explanation for the incorrect report sent to the IMF was the old Soviet accounting system they dumped only recently. Nothing proves that the report overstating Ukraine's liquid reserves was an intentional, while Raimondo calls it "essentially lying".

(for an interesting letter from Yushchenko to the IMF, click here.)

Then there's his connections to oligarchs, most notably the Timoshenkos. However this is not unique to Yushchenko, as you've mentioned. Everyone with the experience and expertise needed to run a country links in some way to oligarchs. It doesn't explain why you would prefer Yanukovich over Yushchenko, who hasn't been proven guilty of anything.

[Edric O]

First of all, you clearly know far more about this situation than I do. As such, I'll begin by saying that I might well be wrong to consider Yushchenko corrupt. He is, however, quite suspect at the very least. And, as you agreed, he is certainly not the "knight in shining armour" that some of the media potray him to be.

I linked to Raimondo's website simply because that's where I read about Yushchenko's not-so-innocent activities. I had no idea that anyone quoted him. (Justin Raimondo can be a real idiot sometimes, and his opinions are often downright stupid, but he usually gets his facts straight; although he likes to put a spin on things, I've never seen him to outright lie about something)

The reason why I prefer Yanukovich is because I support a balance of power in my home region. Yanukovich wishes to keep Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence, while Yushchenko wishes to push it into the Western sphere of influence. Putting Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence will weaken Russia greatly - in fact, it will make Russia weaker than it has ever been in the past 300 years. This is not good news for the geopolitics of the region. Not being a superpower any more is one thing, but this is going too far. Since the differences between the two candidates in terms of actual policy are quite small, and since the Ukrainian people shows no great preference for either one (Yushchenko won by 51%), I will support the side most likely to maintain a healthy balance of power in Eastern Europe.

[Anathema]

Well, I really don't like the direction Russia is going under Putin, and I wouldn't like to see more countries dragged in :-

[Edric O]

Well, I really don't like the direction Russia is going under Putin, and I wouldn't like to see more countries dragged in :-

Me neither, but it's highly unlikely that countries in the Russian sphere of influence will be expected to emulate the Russian system of government in any way. This isn't the Soviet Union any more - it's a new Tsarist Empire. That doesn't make it any better, of course (in fact, the current state of affairs is far worse for the Russian people than in Soviet times), but it does mean that Putin will never bother to waste time and money on ideological crusades. He doesn't even have an ideology.

On another note, the way Russia is going under Putin seems to be remarkably similar to the way America is going under Bush... They certainly use the threat of terror in the same way.

[Caid Ivik]

Whole this post-Jelcin Bлacть movement is a strong, very systematical oligarchy. I had once the fortune to meet with Jastrzembskij, who was an ambassador here and later Jelcin's aide, and must say, that some kind of ideology was in his every word. Such type of "I am Russian and am proud of it", but not in fascist sense, that "I am Russian and you are a shit". What Putin tries to do is different from what did socialists or Bush and the else. His goal is to convince the world that Russia is a suitable partner for the west. There can be something true on your words, he resembles much ie Piotr Velikyj; just he doesn't try to change Russia on european model, more to understand the russian soul and build an empire with its values. Which aren't democratic, surely, but so Russia never was trying to be.