Meanwhile, back in Kiev....

[Svartalf]

I just had a what the eff moment... a radio program dealing with, what else, the Ukraine situation (and pretty far left as things go here) just broadcast a Ukrainian version of the Italian leftist song Bella Ciao... only sung by the far right and translated/reworked as an anti putin/anti Russian song

[Audley Strange]

Who wins? the Totalitarian Anti-Semites, the Totalitarian Homophobes, or The Christian homophobic anti-semites?

You decide!

[Seth]

Let's see... the US has taken the lead in every conflict the UK was ostensibly part of since the Falklands, so how about we sit this one out and you lazy fucks go honor your commitments this time? We'll send over a squad or two to make a pro-forma showing of the flag, but watch out, those two dozen guys might embarrass your country by actually kicking some Russian ass.

Keep your two dozen trigger happy badly trained cowboys at home. It might stop them from a repeat demonstration of their unparalleled skill at dropping bombs on our soldiers like they did in Iraq.

Oh your soldiers might embarrass our soldiers?? Really?? It took your soldiers 10 years to find Bin Laden. And where did these soldiers end up finding him?

IN HIS HOUSE.

It took you 10 years to find the worlds most famous man living in HIS OWN FUCKING HOUSE and you really think the rednecks you are appeased to call soldiers have a chance of kicking Russian arse?

Er, it wasn't his house, and we did find him, and killed him, without a single injury to any of our troops...something you certainly didn't do, Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

Good luck with that.

Let's see... the US has taken the lead in every conflict

Let's see. Maybe you should stop fucking starting them then.

Haven't started one since the Civil War I'm afraid. Your knowledge of American history is lacking.

[SnowLeopard]

Let's see... the US has taken the lead in every conflict the UK was ostensibly part of since the Falklands, so how about we sit this one out and you lazy fucks go honor your commitments this time? We'll send over a squad or two to make a pro-forma showing of the flag, but watch out, those two dozen guys might embarrass your country by actually kicking some Russian ass.

Keep your two dozen trigger happy badly trained cowboys at home. It might stop them from a repeat demonstration of their unparalleled skill at dropping bombs on our soldiers like they did in Iraq.

Oh your soldiers might embarrass our soldiers?? Really?? It took your soldiers 10 years to find Bin Laden. And where did these soldiers end up finding him?

IN HIS HOUSE.

It took you 10 years to find the worlds most famous man living in HIS OWN FUCKING HOUSE and you really think the rednecks you are appeased to call soldiers have a chance of kicking Russian arse?

Er, it wasn't his house, and we did find him, and killed him, without a single injury to any of our troops...something you certainly didn't do, Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

You spent 10 years looking for someone who was hiding in their house. Fucking Dora could have worked that one out.

You certainly didn't kill him either, did you Mr. Twaticus Fuckwiticus.

So the US army managed to kill a 54 year old man "without a single injury to any of our troops". Hardly the fucking D-Day landing was it.

I'd say it was more luck than good management there wasn't single injury to any of your troops considering they managed to crash their fucking helicopter in to a wall.

Haven't started one since the Civil War I'm afraid. Your knowledge of American history is lacking.

Nope. I don't really care how you wish to evade your way around saying you didn't start the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. But rest assured I believe you have many twisted visions of distorted reality rattling around in your brain that attempt to explain away the USAs aggression and invasions none of which I'm interested in wasting my time reading.

[klr]

...

You spent 10 years looking for someone who was hiding in their house. Fucking Dora could have worked that one out.

To be fair to Seth, no-one knew where "his" house was. At least no-one who wanted to tell. Try finding someone without an address or any means of contact.

[Calilasseia]

...

You spent 10 years looking for someone who was hiding in their house. Fucking Dora could have worked that one out.

To be fair to Seth, no-one knew where "his" house was. At least no-one who wanted to tell. Try finding someone without an address or any means of contact.

isn't this what we have intelligence agencies for?

Plus, given that the Americans had access to satellites capable of photographing down to something like 10 cm resolution, orbiting the planet round the clock, taking millions of pretty pictures of likely areas, signals interception technologies, not to mention the NSA's gigantic Internet snooping programme, one can be forgiven for thinking that this massive surveillance apparatus could have homed in on him sooner.

If it took them 10 years to find an individual wanted by Interpol for nearly 3,000 deaths, despite having access to this massive surveillance apparatus, a surveillance apparatus with global reach and penetration, it does raise a few questions. Though I suspect if bin Laden had done something really atrocious, such as ripping off big American corporations like Halliburton, or pissing around with the banking system in ways that didn't make the self-appointed "Masters of the Universe" in Wall Street rich, they'd have found him a hell of a lot sooner.

After all, Al Capone wasn't jailed for racketeering or murder ...he was jailed for tax evasion.

[Hermit]

You spent 10 years looking for someone who was hiding in their house. Fucking Dora could have worked that one out.

To be fair to Seth, no-one knew where "his" house was. At least no-one who wanted to tell. Try finding someone without an address or any means of contact.

Yes, a purpose-built million dollar fortress in Pakistan is difficult to find, especially when its 1300 metres distant from the Pakistan Military Academy. Anyway, bin Laden lived there for only five years. Gotta cut "military intelligence" some slack for that.

[Seth]

*Derp*

Manky Scots git....

[mistermack]

I can't believe the bias of the British reporting. I assume the American media are even worse.

If there was a legitimate govt. in Kiev, I could agree with them. As it's just a bunch of bandits who took power by force, a little less bias would be in order.

I believe very little that I see on the BBC these days.

From what I've seen, the US and Europe encouraged and orchestrated a coup.
And yet they consider themselves absolutely blameless.

Putin called their bluff, in a big way, he had every right to do so. They can say bye bye to the Crimea.
I'm still not sure about the East of the Ukraine. If the locals start putting up roadblocks, it might all kick off.

[Svartalf]

Last I checked we did not encourage a coup, Yanukovych just decided to flee before things got too ugly for him and we decided to act as if the folk that took advantage of the void were legitimate since they are pro Europe in the first place.

[klr]

I can't believe the bias of the British reporting. I assume the American media are even worse.

If there was a legitimate govt. in Kiev, I could agree with them. As it's just a bunch of bandits who took power by force, a little less bias would be in order.

I believe very little that I see on the BBC these days.

From what I've seen, the US and Europe encouraged and orchestrated a coup.
And yet they consider themselves absolutely blameless.

Putin called their bluff, in a big way, he had every right to do so. They can say bye bye to the Crimea.
I'm still not sure about the East of the Ukraine. If the locals start putting up roadblocks, it might all kick off.

Do you have to take a contrarian view on everything like this?

Firstly, this was a popular revolution - not a small cabal operating for their own limited interests. It's not much different to what happened in several countries during the Arab Spring.

Even if it were "just a bunch of bandits", Russia had no right to interfere unless there was a desperate risk to the populace. No-one really believes that to the be case. It's territorial grab with no legal basis. If Crimeans want to join Russia, there are legal and democratic avenues for doing that. I have no horse in that race - it's their business.

There's more than a whiff of the Sudetenland about this - or Abkhazia/South Ossetia,

[mistermack]

Last I checked we did not encourage a coup, Yanukovych just decided to flee before things got too ugly for him and we decided to act as if the folk that took advantage of the void were legitimate since they are pro Europe in the first place.

You didn't see any burning barricades, then? Or the hand grenade thrown at the police? Or the police under gunfire?

The normal way to get into power is via the next election.
The US and Europe were in their ear, telling them to go for it, and they would be behind them.

A long way behind them, as it turns out.

[Svartalf]

Well, sure, that's been on for month s that insurrectionists played Occupy Maidan... but when things turned to an actual firefight, the protesters got a lot more casualtis than the riot police... If Yanukovych had been ready, he could have played t'ien an men and sent the army to clean up.

[JimC]

I can't believe the bias of the British reporting. I assume the American media are even worse.

If there was a legitimate govt. in Kiev, I could agree with them. As it's just a bunch of bandits who took power by force, a little less bias would be in order.

I believe very little that I see on the BBC these days.

From what I've seen, the US and Europe encouraged and orchestrated a coup.
And yet they consider themselves absolutely blameless.

Putin called their bluff, in a big way, he had every right to do so. They can say bye bye to the Crimea.
I'm still not sure about the East of the Ukraine. If the locals start putting up roadblocks, it might all kick off.

Do you have to take a contrarian view on everything like this?

Firstly, this was a popular revolution - not a small cabal operating for their own limited interests. It's not much different to what happened in several countries during the Arab Spring.

Even if it were "just a bunch of bandits", Russia had no right to interfere unless there was a desperate risk to the populace. No-one really believes that to the be case. It's territorial grab with no legal basis. If Crimeans want to join Russia, there are legal and democratic avenues for doing that. I have no horse in that race - it's their business.

There's more than a whiff of the Sudetenland about this - or Abkhazia/South Ossetia,

I agree to an extent, but the "popular uprising" had some very anti-democratic elements to it, and included right-wing thugs. It is not impossible that there was some fairly dirty politics being assisted by certain western powers...

However, the existing government was dictatorial and oppressive, certainly, and very much a Putin puppet. A pox on all their houses...

[mistermack]

Do you have to take a contrarian view on everything like this?

Firstly, this was a popular revolution - not a small cabal operating for their own limited interests. It's not much different to what happened in several countries during the Arab Spring.

Even if it were "just a bunch of bandits", Russia had no right to interfere unless there was a desperate risk to the populace. No-one really believes that to the be case. It's territorial grab with no legal basis. If Crimeans want to join Russia, there are legal and democratic avenues for doing that. I have no horse in that race - it's their business.

There's more than a whiff of the Sudetenland about this - or Abkhazia/South Ossetia,

Popular revolution my ass.
The country has regular elections. That's how governments are chosen.
Here in the UK, if we disagree with the current government, we don't have ''popular revolutions'' with guns and burning tyres and grenades. If we did, the response would be FAR more violent than what happened in the Ukraine.
The fact that the other side didn't fight, doesn't make it ''popular''. Most people don't want a fight.

The Crimeans had a ''popular'' revolution of their own. Since that's ok, what's the problem?
Russia has a legal right to be there in the Crimea. And the legal President of the Ukraine asked them to interfere. They had every legal and moral right.