Another Malaysian Airliner "crashed" ...

[Stavros]

Just a brief off-topic post to say: Hello Stavros. Hope you have or expect to fully recover. As sukumvit boy said, we missed you.

Thank you for your kind words.

[Stavros]

Great overview of the situation , Stavros. Also , interesting historical perspective.
Yes , Putin's Russia is looking a lot like the old USSR. Also , Putin's vicious return to power looks a lot like the old Soviet power plays. Makes one wonder about the whole Russian political mind set . Seems like they can't break the old habits , or maybe it's just built into the Russian political machinery..

I think I probably overplayed the USSR aspect of Putin's policy. When the Russians created the Eurasian Economic Union earlier this year only Kazakhstan and Belarus turned up, with Ukraine's seat empty. And while Reuters pointed out that "the new union has a market of 170 million people, a combined annual GDP of $2.7 trillion and vast energy riches, and it can be held up by Putin to show Western sanctions imposed over the annexation of Crimea will not isolate Russia", one notes that all three of the Union's members are notoriously corrupt. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0E90O520140529).
Russia has also been a prime mover with the other BRICS in the creation of the New Development Bank, so these developments appear to be attempts by Russia to compete with the European Union but also underline the feeling that Russia sees itself forging a different path from the rest of Europe, even if Russia is both a European and an Asian power. So I think Russia is thinking in terms of new alliances rather than the resurrection of the USSR, but can't let go of Ukraine in the same way, or is primarily concerned to prevent Ukraine deepening its relationship with the EU and NATO.

I fear the EU and NATO are manipulating Ukraine to get at Russia, and that sanctions are a blunt instrument that will not work. It suggests a lack of imagination on the part of the EU and the USA fro whom no really bold ideas have been proposed, such as a withdrawal of invitations to Ukraine to deepen its relations with the EU and NATO -it is not as if we need a country as corrupt as the Ukraine to be our economic partners, and I don't see it as a strategic asset either.

The most important thing now is that the bodies of the victims are on their way out of the country to the Netherlands, that the flight recorders have been handed over to the Malaysians, and that we hope the debris will be gathered so that accident inspectors can do their work and the villagers affected so badly by this crash attempt to return to their lives. While the militia of the 'Donetsk People's Republic' have been swaggering around and looking important (and lethal), many villagers (some of them local coal miners) have been responsible for collecting the bodies of the victims and their belongings, and have also had to cope with the horror of passengers crashing through their roof ending up in the kitchen or the bedroom, often naked and injured, as a gruesome photo suggested in a Channel 4 documentary last night.

[Veal Cutlet]

Did they ever find the first one yet?

[sukumvit boy]

Why do Americans always have this tendency to exaggerate when it comes to politics? Putin's Russia isn't looking anything like the old USSR and I'm sure it isn't heading in that direction. Sure, Putin may not be the most ideal leader, but then again, who is? I do for instance remember a US president not all that long ago, who invaded a country on fabricated evidence, killing more than 100.000 innocent people in the process.
Perhaps it's time we look a little closer at the role of the so-called West in this conflict.
Had NATO not been so eager to make member states out of all those countries that were formerly under USSR influence, there would not be a conflict in the Ukraine today. Putin is merely responding to that expansian drift. When it became more and more likely that even the Ukraine would eventually fall victim, Putin stepped in. Not all that surprising, seeing that a large part of that country is populated by Russian people.
If we seriously seek to improve the world, we have to start with ourselves.

I certainly respect your opinion . catherinefan , especially in regard to the US's need to get it's own house in order.
What I was trying to express was my general impression that 'president for life' Putin is responsible for suffocating the infant Russian democracy in it's cradle in the 12 years since he came to power.
I'm thinking of the long list of journalists murdered , most prominent among them Anna Politkovskaya and the horrible murder of Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive Polonium-210.
The evidence suggests that those were all contract killings ,if not directly carried out by the KGB as in the case of Litvinenko.
I lived through the Soviet era ,and although I'm not a political person in the sense of possessing any great scholarship in politics , it just leaves me with that impression.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/gre...vladimir-putin

Assassination of Anna Politkovskaya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alexander Litvinenko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[catherinefan]

The point you're missing is that sovereign nations have, or should have, the right to join groups or organizations of their own choosing. Aside from that, NATO stands for the defense of rights for all people.

Theoretically you are right about that, but aren't you forgetting to add something rather important? Those groups and organizations have equal right to reject the membership application of that sovereign nation. Which is of course what should be done if it's in the interest of every other nation.

Who again did you say was missing the point?