European Politics

Everyone loves an underdog. Catalonia has long been that brave, oppressed, small nation. Apart from Crimea's issues not being well known in the West, the suspicion is that Crimean independence was driven by one of the big boys, and wasn't a glorious self-determination by an oppressed people.

Incidentally, I find something terribly contrived and artificial about the idea of nations and nationality to begin with, no matter whether it's being expressed by a small region or a large world power.
 
Forostar said:
However dubious the referendum, and even if independence is not happening (now) yet, I can understand the wish in Catalonia No other country has forced this wish upon the Catalonians. Even if a referendum would not be dubious, I feel that Spain would have reacted the same. Therefore I do not approve of Spain's current government. I do not like the EU's cowardly stance in this. Why is not a European matter enough to say something about something important in one of its nations? I'm glad the Belgium prime minister uttered openly how Spain went out of line in this matter (when violence was used).
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Suppose that it turns out to be true that there is a Russian influence on the Catalonian independence movement - which is far from certain and for which there is conflicting information - would you still say the very same things?
 
The historical context of Crimea has been largely neglected. The self determination referendum from Soviet Union breakup - void.

Let me put that to comparison. Yugoslavia had 7 republics and 2 provinces. The republics were allowed to declare independence, the provinces not, by the constitution. Kosovo was a province, yet eventually it achieved independence none the less. The SU-breakup era Russia/Ukraine just shrugged Crimeans off - you have no legal standing, you're not a Soviet Republic.

Why Kosovo, why not them? Kosovo would love nothing more than to get annexed by Albania, fortunately for us all Albanians are a normal people in a normal country and don't want them. The unwillingness to annex this "independent country" by its larger cousin shouldn't be justification for giving it independence in a first place. Abusing self-determination to switch your master is still self-determination.

Also by looking at some Youtube videos "outsiders" tend to heavily overstate the similarities between Slavic languages. If we have a few percent of words somewhat matching it doesn't mean we can understand each other properly. Especially for legal issues where precision must be used. Ukrainian and Russian are not same languages, Ukraine prohibited Russian language from public and administrative affairs in Crimea.

Also agreed on artificial borders. It's all BS. I can see foreigners taking better care of a piece of land here than those "of blood". Fuck that shit.
 
Brigantium said:
Everyone loves an underdog. Catalonia has long been that brave, oppressed, small nation. Apart from Crimea's issues not being well known in the West, the suspicion is that Crimean independence was driven by one of the big boys, and wasn't a glorious self-determination by an oppressed people.

Incidentally, I find something terribly contrived and artificial about the idea of nations and nationality to begin with, no matter whether it's being expressed by a small region or a large world power.
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Except that this isn't entirely true. Analysis taken long before Euromaidan has shown that the majority of Crimea's population, both of Russian and Ukranian ethnicity, felt that their province was marginalised by Kiev and supported a split. Their voices were not heard because the Ukrainian central authority suppressed their sentiments, both before and after Euromaidan. But this was always too complicated for the narrative about a weary Ukraine trying to break free from Moscow's clutches, and now ir's better not talked about at all.
 
Zare said:
Also by looking at some Youtube videos "outsiders" tend to heavily overstate the similarities between Slavic languages. If we have a few percent of words somewhat matching it doesn't mean we can understand each other properly.
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Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are considered the same language by virtually all linguists. It's not the opinion of "outsiders", it's the opinion of linguistics.
 
Zare said:
Ukraine prohibited Russian language from public and administrative affairs in Crimea.
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Yes. And?
Perun said:
Except that this isn't entirely true. Analysis taken long before Euromaidan has shown that the majority of Crimea's population, both of Russian and Ukranian ethnicity, felt that their province was marginalised by Kiev and supported a split. Their voices were not heard because the Ukrainian central authority suppressed their sentiments, both before and after Euromaidan. But this was always too complicated for the narrative about a weary Ukraine trying to break free from Moscow's clutches, and now ir's better not talked about at all.
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I would not mind learning more about it.
Perun said:
Suppose that it turns out to be true that there is a Russian influence on the Catalonian independence movement - which is far from certain and for which there is conflicting information - would you still say the very same things?
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It depends on how believable I deem that and I wonder how proportional its impact was on the movement.
 
Perun said:
Except that this isn't entirely true. Analysis taken long before Euromaidan has shown that the majority of Crimea's population, both of Russian and Ukranian ethnicity, felt that their province was marginalised by Kiev and supported a split. Their voices were not heard because the Ukrainian central authority suppressed their sentiments, both before and after Euromaidan. But this was always too complicated for the narrative about a weary Ukraine trying to break free from Moscow's clutches, and now ir's better not talked about at all.
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I know, I'm talking about public perception, not reality.
 
Magnus said:
So did I. Without going into the rest of Zare's post, I doubt that the "Slavic languages" he meant are those you listed. In terms of e.g. mutual intelligibility, the Belarusian / Ukrainian / Russian situation is not comparable at all.
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You're missing the point, then. I know he did not mean the languages I listed. The point was, those languages are linguistically really the same language but are now considered different mainly due to political reasons, simply because the countries seperated and made the small differences between the languages a sentiment of national pride. Language differences alone are not a reason to want to seperate. Well being of the citizens of the region comes first.
 
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Europe at its worst
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Ariana said:
Europe at its worst
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We'd badmouth Bulgaria more, but nobody there is probably reading this anyway.

Anything you want to tell them? :P

The thing about Germany is true, and actually a topic there. Liberals just can't get over the fact that most Germans don't want to take a credit to buy a house because they don't like to be in debt. Why don't they like to be in debt? Because they observed what happened in the US housing crisis and are worried that they might get in trouble if they can't pay off the debt anymore. Why are they worried that they might not be able to pay off their debt anymore? Because secure jobs are getting increasingly rare. Why are secure jobs increasingly rare? Because of Liberal politics. Huh.
 
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