Ukraine...

To be honest Alan, I think it's pretty fucking insensitive of you to bring up the Ukraine when you know what happened to Tatiana. I'm sure you'll understand that this whole situation is bringing up a lot of painful memories and isn't something I really want to discuss. Could one of the mods maybe remove this thread? Thanks.

While is see Wayne's point and feel for his lose.

I must admit that a valid issue has been raised (once again) and maybe Wayne ought to swallow his pain for a bit and entertain himself in some other manner.

One day when I grow up (fuck that) I'll learn how to spell.

Yeah why does one of the presidents always look like a corpse on TV?

Can't see the good in either of them really... pro-usa or pro russia? Big difference!

fair point, but I'd say until we are in a position of revolution we should support people who are willing to stand in the freezing cold for days just to get a fair election. I think it puts many western societies to shame that the people there care so much about their political systems and so many people here don't, although we consider ourselves to be among the most "free" countries in the world. Looking at the 2000 US election: the tossers didn't even get a recount!

All other things being equal, I'd probably side with pro-russian, by a very small margin. The USA has too much support already and will have to be cut down to size if there's gonna be any progress on a global level. The less support there is for the dubya government, the better.

Check http://maidan.org.ua/eindex.html

"“Maidan” was started on Internet on Dec 20th 2000 as a reaction to government's efforts to block information distribution about the political opposition activities and to spread the misinformation about the civil protest actions, caused by the disappearance of the journalist Georgiy Gongadze."

I read somewhere that his face has been poison, don't ask me how, that's the Russians for you.

Yes, and all paid for by the US of A. How wonderful.

UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS: LESSONS US

Those who have been watching the TV news this week

will not have

failed to notice that one of the main stories was the

contested

results of the Ukrainian elections. Channels like the

BBC have tried

to present this as as struggle between 'democracy' and

'authoritarianism'. Scepticism however is required, as

what we are

witnessing constitutes what Jonathan Steele called a

'post-modern coup

d'etat': "Intervening in foreign elections, under the

guise of an

impartial interest in helping civil society, has

become the run-up to

the post-modern coup d'etat, the CIA-sponsored third

world uprising of

cold war days adapted to post-Soviet conditions.

Instruments of

democracy are used selectively to topple unpopular

dictators, once a

successor candidate or regime has been groomed."

(Ukraine's

Post-modern Coup d'Etat, The Guardian, 26 November

2004)

The opposition's electoral campaign "is an American

creation, a

sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in

western branding

and mass marketing that, in four countries in four

years, has been

used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple

unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying

US consultancies,

pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and

US

non-government organisations, the campaign was first

used in Europe in

Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the

ballot box. Richard

Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key

role. And by last

year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the

trick in Georgia,

coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down

Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US

ambassador in Minsk,

Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in

Central America,

notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical

campaign to try to

defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko. That

one failed."

"'There will be no Kostunica in Belarus,' the Belarus

president

declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade But

experience gained

in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in

plotting to beat

the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev. The operation --

engineering

democracy through the ballot box and civil

disobedience -- is now so

slick that the methods have matured into a template

for winning other

people's elections." (Ian Traynor, US campaign behind

the turmoil in

Kiev, The Guardian, 26 November 2004)

Ian Trainor continues: "The Democratic Party's

National Democratic

Institute, the Republican Party's International

Republican Institute,

the US State Department and US Aid are the main

agencies involved in

these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom

House NGO and

billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute. US

pollsters and

professional consultants are hired to organise focus

groups and use

psephological data to plot strategy...Officially, the

US government

spent $41m (£21.7m) organising and funding the

year-long operation

to get rid of Milosevic from October 1999. In Ukraine,

the figure is

said to be around $14m."

The article concludes: "If the events in Kiev

vindicate the US in its

strategies for helping other people win elections and

take power from

anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to

repeat the exercise

elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. The places to

watch are Moldova

and the authoritarian countries of central Asia."

What should worry people is this: what

would stop the US

and the UK to do the same in other countries? Imagine that in

a future

election, a Republican Socialist candidate had serious

chances of

winning, is it not reasonable to think that a similar

'post-modern

coup d'etat' would take place? Does this not vindicate

our argument

that there cannot be an electoral road to socialism?

And also, Lech Walensa (remember him) appeared on his platform - say no more, pro-capitalist bastard. Luv, Joe

alan you hippy, they are having a picnic at a capitalist political convention

Does anyone know anything about the structure of the opposition group and where they're getting their funding from?

I've been meaning to ask questions on this topic all week. The driving force seems to be a grass-roots student-lead network called Pura (AFAIRemember) which has received somewhere in the region of 10 million dollars over the last x years from the West (apparently democratic foundations, grants - clearly intelligence funded).

There was a short film on C4 newsexamining them. Haven't heard ANYTHING about it anywhere. Anyone?

http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/easterneurope/ukr041125

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1359099,00.html

Some links

According to the last report i saw, there is a split between those who think Yashenko is selling out and the more "moderate" types.

cantodocartwheels - eloquent, pithy, dead right.

And also, I am afraid to say - it is class.

I love it - getting the last word

Watch this space - capitalism runs all over the Ukraine - BTW did you know the western ukrainers wore nazi uniforms during WW2?

Luv JH

Oh what's the point - you're all thatcher's children. Anyway, I'm defintley away this time.