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Newfoundland had two referendums/referenda. The first was on June 3, 1948 - in which unity with Canada ranked second of the three choices ("responsible government" (i.e. the pre-1934 status) got 44.5%; "Confederation with Canada" got 41.1%; "Commission of Government" (i.e. the status quo at the time - since 1934) got 14.3%).
The second referendum (July 22, 1948) had only the two top choices - Confederation won with 52.7% of the vote. Only the St. John's area (Avalon Peninsula) voted against Confederation.
Confederation was not even to be on the original ballot, until Britain stepped in - so obviously, Britain was going to recognize the results. Canada agreed to assume the $40 million debt of Newfoundland.
The situation in Ukraine is of concern for many people, even in our small chess world. My thoughts go to the leading Ukrainian chess players, first off Ivanchuk. What would be their position?
As a native Romanian who witnessed the same scenario in Bucharest almost 25 years ago, I am not optimistic.
Originally posted by Laurentiu GrigorescuView Post
The situation in Ukraine is of concern for many people, even in our small chess world. My thoughts go to the leading Ukrainian chess players, first off Ivanchuk. What would be their position?
As a native Romanian who witnessed the same scenario in Bucharest almost 25 years ago, I am not optimistic.
1. Russia makes two claims: a. it was requested to come into Crimea to keep civil order by the legitimately elected President of Ukraine, Yanukovich, who had recently been impeached, who is now in exile in Russia; b. the troops now in control physically in Crimea are local defence forces, not Russian troops. The new regime Ukrainian government says Russian Troops are on Ukrainian soil outside of any treaties, and are there in breach of Ukraine sovereignty - the current Ukraine government (it has an "acting" President, and a new Prime Minister) has not invited Russian troops on its soil, outside of historical treaties re a Russian troop base in Crimea, and the "prior" impeached and removed President Yanukovich had no authority any longer to do so (he had been terminated as President, and is alleged to have stolen the Ukrainian treasury).
2. The Semi-Autonomous State of Crimea has, through its Parliament, voted to become part of Russia, and has so informed Russia, and the Russian Parliament has agreed. The new regime national government calls this vote to join Russia "unconstitutional" and asserts the Crimea is still part of Ukraine and subject to the federal Ukrainian government. The Crimea state parliament holds that the current Ukrainian federal regime is "illegitimate", and so has no authority over Crimea.
3. Sunday, March 16 - the Crimea state government will hold a referendum on Crimea joining Russia - the Ukrainian federal government says this is unconstitutional; such a referendum, if allowed, would be organized by the federal Ukrainian government.
4. May 25 - the Ukraine government will hold Presidential Elections, including in the Crimea (it is a "national" election). Crimea says it will boycott any such election and not participate, as the current federal government is "illegitimate", and not entitled to hold an election for a Ukraine President.
So have I got this confused claim/counterclaim situation right....at least for the moment?
Bob A
Last edited by Bob Armstrong; Friday, 7th March, 2014, 10:18 PM.
So have I got this confused claim/counterclaim situation right....at least for the moment?
\
Depends who you ask. lol. If I were to re-write #1 above, we might get the following ...
1. Russia makes the following claims:
a. It has an agreement, from the 1990's, for up to 25,000 troops in Ukraine. 16,000 of those are there at present. In exchange for this arrangement, Ukraine gets a rental fee in the hundreds of millions and an enormous discount on natural gas; It was not requested to come into Crimea but has stated that it will do so if the unelected regime in Kiev starts carrying out ethnic cleansing or "hangs the scum" as Kiev’s newly-appointed deputy head of south-eastern Ukraine, Borys Filatov puts it; the claims that Russian troops have "invaded" Ukraine are a fabrication.
b. For humanitarian reasons, they have allowed the unpopular President of Ukraine to flee to Russia. Armed gunmen took over the Rada in Kiev, as a result of which the government of Ukraine has been "elected" through the barrel of a gun.
c. the troops now in control physically in Crimea are local defence forces, not Russian troops.
d. Not being elected, but in power by pure violence, there is no legitimate, elected Ukrainian government to negotiate with and, therefore, no contacts at the level of Foreign Ministers or higher. There are some lower level contacts.
e. On the one hand, Russian President Putin has said that it is "out of the question" that Crimea will join Russia if they wish to; on the other hand, the Russian legislature has stated that Crimea will be allowed to join Russia and is taking steps to make the process a rapid and smooth one. It would be nice if they made up their mind, but, the March 16 referendum will obviously have a big influence on their position.
f. They view the change of government as a coup d'etat, in violation of the Feb 21 agreement, and, so far, their concerns about neo-fascist (Right Sector Movement, Ukrainian Patriotic Army, the racist and anti-Semitic Svoboda group, etc.) and radical nationalists elements dominating the new regime are falling on deaf ears in the West.
g. They have issued an arrest warrant for at least one of the leaders in Kiev, Dmitry Yarosh, who called for Chechen terrorist Doku Umarov to attack Russia.
It's a mess, in other words.
...
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Saturday, 8th March, 2014, 09:24 AM.
Reason: ugh. "the Ukraine" ? and I can't change the title.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
I find it interesting that chess-news.ru has retweeted a request from Ruslan Ponomariov for chess players to sign a petition supporting Ukraine
That's pretty rich, "Stormy Daniels" rejecting Russian "fascism" in Ukraine when, as anyone with their eyes open knows, it's the Kiev gunmen who are making a cult of the personality around fascist Stepan Bandura today in that country. And it's them that's got a rich cabal of zealots in the new, unelected government, as I mentioned above: Right Sector Movement, virtual Nazis, Ukrainian Patriotic Army, the racist and anti-Semitic Svoboda group, etc. These groups were denounced as racist by the very same European governments that are now cheering them on. They go up to people who don't agree with them and force them to "recant" with the threat of hammers to the head. And all on video ... they are so arrogant that they film their atrocities.
What was fine for ... Kosovo, because the USA says so, what was fine for the Falkland Islands, because England says so, what was fine for Germany, for goodness' sake, not so long ago, is not fine for Crimea. Do the Western countries really want to rip Ukraine in half so they can install another tie-chewing neo-liberal austerity politician? Haven't Ukrainians suffered enough? Isn't the economic mess that they are in, right now, not bad enough? Instead of provoking another Cold War, or worse, they should be working with the Russians to assist Ukraine with its 140 billion in debt and other woes.
Whatever you say about that extremely unpopular ex-President, at least he was trying to get the best deal for Ukraine with the EU, while still talking to the Russians and trying to get a deal with them as well. And how is appointing new oligarchs an improvement on the old oligarchs? What a sick joke.
But, as the saying goes, if you break it, you fix it. And that's a big bill for EU member states, most of which German taxpayers will have to pick up. By then, there may be a lot more irrevocable changes that no one could foresee, or wish for.
Russian President Putin's popularity among Russians is now stratopheric. And the mood in Crimea is one of fireworks, popping champagne, and little old ladies weeping that they get to see what they didn't think possible in their lifetimes. Crimea was bombed with artillery by the UK and France 150 years ago, without victory, by the Nazis in the last century, ripped from Russia by a Ukrainian by the name of Krushchev in 1954, and now the subject of East/West tensions today. What was in the 60% range (including voter fraud worse than Canada's RoboCalls by the Conservatives) is now probably in the 90% range. When the fog clears, he should thank all those countries, our own included, that so noisily helped him to ramp up his popularity. He couldn't have done it without them. ugh.
Supplemental: Putin is "only" at 75.7% popularity, according to VCIOM (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center).
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Thursday, 20th March, 2014, 11:05 AM.
Reason: polling data from March 20, 2014
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Summing up the fundamental political, operational and strategic disjoint, one Nato official remarked last week, “In the west, we are playing football. The Russians are playing chess.”
\
c. the troops now in control physically in Crimea are local defence forces, not Russian troops.
Russian special forces actually. There was a news report a few days ago which showed pictures of the so called local defence forces and picked out a number of individuals who were previously reported to be Russian special forces in actions against the Chechens and former Soviet Georgia. The evidence was pretty compelling. The pictures showed several of the same individuals paraded as Russian special forces previously clearly being the so called local defence forces. The problem for the other narrative which you are trying to peddle is that google has facial recognition software so if you show your face in an internet accessible medium then several years later they can pick your face out of the crowd. Journalists now have the same power as Big Brother.
I'm not surprised at your spin. The left is always fond of dictators and were apologists for the most murderous regimes in history. If Putin believed in anthropogenic global warming you'd be demanding a parade in his honour.
Russian special forces actually. There was a news report a few days ago which showed pictures of the so called local defence forces and picked out a number of individuals who were previously reported to be Russian special forces in actions against the Chechens and former Soviet Georgia. The evidence was pretty compelling.
Actually, that was a complete fraud and a big, fat lie. And you have repeated it.
fyi, these aren't "Roosky" sources, they are Human Rights sources.
I'm not surprised at your spin. The left is always fond of dictators and were apologists for the most murderous regimes in history. If Putin believed in anthropogenic global warming you'd be demanding a parade in his honour.
lol. Maybe you should spend more time on the "evidence" and less time on personal/political attacks.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Actually, that was a complete fraud and a big, fat lie. And you have repeated it.
D'oh! That's what I get for believing something coming out of the White House or believing a news report from CNN and NBC. I shall have to stick to Fox News and Sun News if I want to get more accurate reporting (well aside from U.S. election predictions). I won't make that same mistake again of believing anything on CNN or NBC or anything coming out of the White House given the propensity of both sources to tell some whoppers without even blushing.
Tell me again why I should believe them on AGW...
Last edited by Vlad Drkulec; Sunday, 27th April, 2014, 09:52 AM.
My analysis is that this is starting to look like a nuclear escalation between Russia and the U.S. Kind of like the escalation we saw around the time of the Cuban Missile crisis.
The real concern if this continues will be if one of them decides to use a preemptive strike.
I don't think Putin is dumb enough to let it get that far. I think the current U.S. administrations level of commitment here is pretty low so I don't see it escalating that far. For all we know this is exactly what Obama was talking about when he told the Russian PM that he would have a lot more flexibility in dealing with Russia after the election.
I'd call the U.S. sanctions and stance to be more than a low level of commitment.
You realize the Cuban Missile crisis wasn't a one sided agreement with Kruschev backing down and having the missiles removed from Cuba. The Americans also agreed to withdraw intermediate nuclear missiles from Turkey and not to invade Cuba.
What kind of agreement do you see here? Unless Putin wants something connected with the MENA nations, I don't see where they will make progress.
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