On the Ukrainian Opposition (soon to be winners?): NY Times Op-Ed piece

[LibeMatt]

On Thanksgiving it's good to be reminded that people who aren't Americans cherish and are thankful for their own freedoms, rights, and liberties, such as they are.

URL (registration required):

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/opinion/26khokhlova.html

Excerpts:

"A family friend who has a 17-year-old son told me this last week: "Young people today are so different from what we used to be, or even from what your generation is. They don't have our fear - they don't know it. But they know their rights, and they know how to defend them. They aren't scared to." With Ukraine now gripped in a political crisis stemming from the disputed results of Sunday's presidential election, I can see what that friend meant.

<snip>

"On Tuesday morning, she , along with half a million other people, was at Kiev's Independence Square, protesting the declaration by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich that he was the winner. From there, together with thousands of other students, she marched to Shevchenko University, whose leadership had refused to allow its students to join a growing nationwide strike.

"They weren't letting anyone out of the university, Tanya told me when I ran into her that evening at a huge rally outside the Ukrainian Parliament building. The students were locked inside, she explained, but they opened all the windows, and the protesters were passing them orange flags - the symbol of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, whom most everyone feels was cheated out of victory. One guy climbed the drainpipe to the second floor to deliver the flags, Tanya said, and the students pulled him in through the window. Soon after, the administration relented, the students were liberated, their classes canceled.

<snip>

"And over and over one hears the chant, "My razom, nas bagato, i nas ne podolaty!" ("We're together, and there are many of us, and we can't be defeated!") Three weeks ago, I would have probably said that this was what students shouted at their rallies, but now everyone does, and so many people mean it.

"When opposition party leaders asked the crowd to stay in the square through the night, taking turns in order not to get too cold, Tanya started making plans for the next day. She intended to return at 6 a.m.; she must have been very tired and cold by then, but it still wasn't showing.

"The past four days have taught me something valuable: when I'm watching the situation unfold on television, I grow tense, fearful that it's not going to end well. But when I return to the crowd, I feel elated, thanks to people like Tanya, tens of thousands of them, and to everyone else who's out there, people of all ages, hundreds of thousands of them, fearless...."

[Crunchy Frog]

1. Wow, it's almost like our country

has switched places with the old Soviet Union. They've become who we used to be and we are rapidly becoming what they used to be. What a bitter irony that is.:-(

[LibeMatt]

2. In many ways...

Purging the CIA; promoting the fuckups and suckups in the administration; putting Party over country; blatantly lying over and over again and not being called on it by a docile and often complicit media; ruining the economy and environment; obsessed with secrecy; spying on their own citizens; deceiving themselves into ruinous, unwinnable, and probably illegal wars; stripping every right they can without getting tossed out on their ear (which in the USSR's case happened eventually anyway), and so on, and so on...

[Crunchy Frog]

3. And what's even worse

is that the passivity of the American people is starting to resemble that of the Soviets. For the most part, our people are just standing by and doing nothing while our democratic institutions are eroded and our government commits outrage after outrage. They either feel totally helpless, or they just don't care. People in the media are cowed and scared to tell the truth. Just like in the Soviet Union, they say what they are told to say by the party bosses.

Check out this article about humiliating new airport searches. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/business/23grope.html?oref=login Women are submitting to them without complaint because they're afraid they'll end up on some list, or even be shipped to Gitmo if they protest. We've become a nation of frightened, passive, helpless sheep.

Even worse than our Government turning into a Soviet government is our people turning into Soviet people.

[MISSDem]

4. Although officially the U.S. backs the protesting candidate

I wonder...I read that Soros was involved and he would have to be anti-Putin, wouldn't he? So would Bush and Soros be "for" the same guy? I'm confused.

[LibeMatt]

5. Yet another case...

...of politics making exceedingly strange bedfellows.

[Paula Sims]

7. Personally, I don't think * cares one way or another

Remember when Saddam came to his father saying that he was going to attack Kuwait and Sr. said that he wasn't going to get involved in internal struggles? It's a similar situation. * doesn't care about Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, free elections (duh on that one) or anything that doesn't affect him or his goons here and how. Both candidates favor pulling Ukraine out of Iraq so it's nothing to *. It's only because the world cares that * seems to care and is saying the right words. In fact, I think * is a bit happy that Putty-Put is having this situation, given that Putty-Put didn't back * in Iraq. Many Ukrainians have not forgotten Sr.'s "Chicken Kiev" speech in 1992 where Sr told the Ukrainians to forget about independence and just play nice with Moscow. * is not about to make that mistake.

What's REALLY amusing is that the more * is saying that elections need to be free and fair, the more the world is just laughing and shaking it's head.

[AmericanErrorist]

6. Soros and *

both agree that America (and its trading partners) would be the better suitor of Ukraine's resources than the Russians.

But Soros cares about Democracy more often than * (including this case, oddly enough).