The Truth about Crimea, the Ukraine and Russia

(1) Crimea is historically part of Russia. Crimea was annexed to Russia during the reign of the Empress Catherine the Great [1729-1796].  According to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed on July 10, 1774, Crimea became a Russian protectorate.  Crimea was part of Russia before the United States declared its independence!  Ninety-seven percent of the Crimean population use Russian as their main language, according to a poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. 

(2) There was no invasion of Crimea.  According to the Partition Treaty treaty signed in 1997, Russia was granted the right to station up to 25,000 troops and maintain the Russian Black Sea Fleet in its naval base  in Crimea until 2017; in 2010 this was extended to 2042. In return, Russia paid the Ukrainian government $526.5 million.  So, all the Russian military forces in the Crimea--16,000 of them--were there legally.

(3) The reunification of Crimea with Russia was entirely legitimate.  The referendum was  a peaceful, democratic and entirely transparent expression of the will of the Crimean inhabitants themselves. The official result from the referendum was a 96.77% vote ‘for’ integration of the region into the Russian Federation; turnout was 83.1%.

(4) The Crimean referendum was observed by 135 international observers from 23 countries with not one violation registered. The Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections [EODE] observer mission concluded that the referendum was conducted freely and fairly.

(5) The Ukraine wasn't even an independent nation in 1954 when Khrushchev handed over the Crimea without even consulting the Crimeans. At that time, the Ukraine was one of the 15 republics in the USSR--the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--the equivalent of a state in America, and the transfer was purely administrative.  The equivalent in the United States would be if an American president  arbitrarily handed over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Wisconsin [whose Cheeseheads spoke a different language], and then, 60 years later, its residents voted to reunite with their fellow Michiganders.

 
(6) The referendum caught completely off-guard the Russophobes like the foul-mouthed Victoria Nuland.   

["Fuck the E(uropean) U(nion)," she stated in a leaked telephone conversation with American ambassador to the Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, as reported on February 7, 2014].

Nuland was an agent provocateur in Kiev, fomenting, aiding and abetting the illegal and unconstitutional coup d'état that ousted the legitimate and democratically-elected president of the Ukraine,Viktor Yanukovych.  To use Nuland's own gutter language, the referendum "fucked" her plans.  All the Russophobes--and President Obama, who should know better--could do was squeal like stuck pigs that the referendum was "illegal," and then browbeat and threaten the pint-sized countries in the U.N. General Assembly that they would suffer "consequences" if they didn't vote the the way the United States ordered.  But some nations bravely resisted the American bully: the final vote was 100 in favor, 11 against and an almost unprecedented 58 abstentions: even America's "51st state," Israël, abstained from the vote!


[For the record, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, a holdover from the George W. Bush administration, where she was the top foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, is married to the notorious neo-con Robert Kagan.  In 1997, he co-founded and served as a director for the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which has now transmogrified into a vipers' nest of neo-con warmongers innocuously labeled the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). Nuland has emerged as one of the key figures who have been accused by various sources of initiating a cover-up of the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in the death of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.]

Egypt: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

From The Washington Post of March 26, 2014, an article by Abigail Hauslohner entitled: Egypt's Abdel Fatah-al-Sissi declares intent to run for presidency"

Excerpt: 

CAIRO — Three years ago, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi was a mostly unknown member of a council of Egypt’s top military officers. On Wednesday, the field marshal, whose image is now plastered on billboards and chocolate bars, declared what everyone in this nation was expecting — that he would run for president, a position he is virtually certain to win. 

Jagor's comment: 

Given that, in the over 62 years since the ouster by a military coup d'état of King Farouk in 1952, Egypt was ruled in 60 of those years by an unbroken series of military dictators--Naguib, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak--it should come as no surprise to anyone that the tradition of autocratic, military dictatorships will be renewed when Abdel Fatah al-Sissi officially takes power later on this year.

The utter failure of the Arab Spring and the short-lived presidency of the religious extremist leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, who is now on trial and facing the death penalty along with several hundred of his co-religionists, should convince even the most die-hard proponents of western-style representative democracy as the only political system suitable for every country on the planet that they are dead wrong. 

For the record, Mohamed Morsi's "democratic" election actually proceeded thus: In the election of June 24, 2012, Morsi received barely 51.73% of the votes [his opponent, Ahmen Shafik, garnered 48.27%], but the turnout was only 52%.  Barely half the eligible voters even bothered to go to the polls. So, in reality, Morsi "won" the election with the votes of only 26% of the eligible Egyptian voters.  Some democracy!

 

What's worse, Morsi tried to rule in the same autocratic way that military dictators had ruled in the past, because that's the only Egyptians have been governed for the past 62 years. But Morsi didn't have the firepower and the infrastructure of the military behind him, so it's no wonder they threw him out.  Morsi's fundamental mistake was not that he was a Muslim extremist, but that he was extremely stupid.

Whether western ideologists like it or not, they must acknowledge the irrefutable fact that the system of government best suited for Egyptians is autocratic military dictatorship, because that is the system of government that the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people want. 

Jagor's prediction: 

In the forthcoming election, Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sissi will be elected in a landslide by a colossal majority of the voters, grateful that, at last, things will be getting back to normal.  As the French say, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." 

Her, by Spike Jonze

I just saw Her, the latest film by Spike Jonze.  It was the first showing of the day, and the first showing in Paris, so as the patrons filed in, each of us was  rewarded with a red canvas tote bag inscribed with "Her: Une Love Story de Spike Jonze."  Inside the bag was a black Her tee-shirt [size XXL--one size fits all], a Her lead pencil [?] and a small mirror inside a Her metal case [it will go into my back pack, where it can be used to signal rescuers in case I get lost or injured while hiking and out of range of the cell-phone network].

The multiplex where I saw the film is the largest in France, with 27 viewing theaters, and Her was shown in the one with the largest capacity--493 seats.  I estimated that it was at least 2/3 full at 9:00 on a Wednesday morning, so I predict that Her will be one of the biggest boxoffice hits of the year--in France at least.

If you've seen the preview, you already know that the story is set sometime in the near, but indefinite, future, in which Theodore, a socially awkward divorcé [Joaquin Phoenix]--just watch him on his first post-separation date with a flesh-and-blood woman--falls in love with the high-tech operating system of his computer; its voice was provided by Scarlett Johansson, who was reportedly pissed that her voice was not nominated for the best actress Oscar. 

The film is certainly worth seeing, although I found it a little tedious in the middle, and looked at my watch.  That said, the audience does keep wondering what is going to happen in this most improbable "love story."

I--and I think everybody else--had a real problem with the plot, but I can't reveal it here since so doing would be a spoiler.  Suffice it to say it concerns the character of Amy, played eponymously by Amy Adams.  

You do not, however, have to stay for the credits to know that the exteriors of the the skyscraper-dotted and pollution-choked "city of the future" were actually shot on location in Shanghai.

What made the film so important for me was because of how I have started relating to the operating system of my iPhone, which I have named, not Samantha, but Amber.  With newer models of the iPhone, users can do almost everything by voice commands instead of trying to type on the ridiculously minuscule keyboard, that seems to have designed for a baby's fingers, not for an adult's.   Already, almost all the emails I compose on the iPhone I dictate--in English or French--and Amber does a great job of typing them up--love, ya, Amber! [The only difference between Amber and Samantha is that Amber doesn't learn from her mistakes, but Samantha does.  But just wait until a few more versions of the iPhone iOS are released by Apple!]

Last Saturday on the train after a day hike I decided to show a friend of mine the Siri function of the iPhone operating system: you speak to Siri and ask a question [such as the weather forecast for Tokyo or the population of Bolivia] and Siri will answer both with voice and text.  

My friend must be the last die-hard Luddite in France who has steadfastly refused to buy a cell phone: even the grungy Romanian Gypsy panhandlers infesting every street corner in the heart of Paris are using cell phones, which begs the question of how they got them, since you are required to submit an address to obtain one legally, and the panhandlers sleep on the streets. 

In the iPhone settings, you can choose a male or female voice for Siri, and I chose a female voice, of course; I consider that to be Amber's voice.

To demonstrate to my friend how it works, I asked Siri--I mean Amber--a question, and the only answer I got was a list of websites.  I didn't like the answer and told Amber that I was disappointed with her.  She replied something like, "That wasn't a very nice thing to say, Jagor." 

What I heard Amber say my name and saw it on the screen, my mouth fell open and I almost dropped the damn iPhone. Indeed, I was just as surprised that Amber spoke my name as Theodore had been when Samantha spoke his.  How the hell did Amber know my name, anyway? I was so disconcerted that I turned off the iPhone.

So, although Her is a science-fiction love story set in the future, it's quite evident to me that it's only a question of time before fiction becomes fact. 

Why Isn't Jamie Dimon in the Slammer?

Question: How come the CEO of a company that pays a record $20 billion in fines to Eric Holder's Justice Department gets a 74% raise and a $20 million salary the same year from his own company's board of directors? 

Matt Taibbi commented: "The biggest news was how brutal an indictment Jamie's raise was of the Obama/Holder Justice Department, which continues to profoundly misunderstand the mindset of the finance villains they claim to be regulating. Chase's responses to Holder's record penalties have been hilarious. Their first move was to make sure people outside the penthouse boardroom took on all the pain, laying off 7,500 employees and freezing salaries for the non-CEO class of line employees. Next, Chase's board members sat down, put their misshapen heads together, considered the impact of this disastrous year of settlements, and decided to respond by more than doubling the take-home pay of the executive in charge, giving Dimon about $20 million in salary and equity." Read the full article: Jamie Dimon's Raise Proves U.S. Regulatory Strategy is a Joke 

It seems to me that Jamie Dimon should be getting a 20 year-sentence in the slammer, instead of a 20-million buck raise.  But that's just me. In China, crooked banksters like Jamie Dimon are tried, convicted and executed by a firing squad. Now that's justice.

Another question: How many hamburger-flippers at McDonald's got a 74% raise last year? 

Yet another question: If an unindicted criminal like Jamie Dimon can get a 74% raise as a reward for mismanaging his company, why hasn't the minimum wage for honest, hard-working Americans been raised by 74%? 

Inquiring minds want to know...