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A sense of escalating crisis in Crimea -- an autonomous region of eastern Ukraine with strong loyalty to neighboring Russia -- swirled, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemning what he called Russia's "incredible act of aggression."

Speaking on the CBS program "Face The Nation," Kerry -- who is set to arrive in Kiev on Tuesday -- said several foreign powers are looking at economic consequences if Russia does not withdraw its forces.

"All of them, every single one of them are prepared to go to the hilt in order to isolate Russia with respect to this invasion," he said. "They're prepared to put sanctions in place, they're prepared to isolate Russia economically."

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Putin secured permission from his parliament on Saturday to use military force to protect Russian citizens in Ukraine and told U.S. President Barack Obama he had the right to defend Russian interests and nationals, spurning Western pleas not to intervene.

Russian forces have already bloodlessly seized Crimea, an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow has a naval base.

On Sunday, they surrounded several small Ukrainian military outposts there and demanded the Ukrainian troops disarm. Some refused, leading to standoffs, although no shots were fired.

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"All of them, every single one of them are prepared to go to the hilt in order to isolate Russia with respect to this invasion," he said. "They're prepared to put sanctions in place, they're prepared to isolate Russia economically."

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Suddenly, the end of Beneath The Planet Of The Apes seems like the way to go...
*sorry, just being pessimistic here*

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So I just wanted to throw this in the mix. Geezer et al seem to want to be seen as pro FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY. but apparently free and fair democratic elections aren't good enough for them. They are quite happy to see free and fair democratic elections overturned by force to get a political party in power THEY like.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I've been saying since Putin stepped onto the political scene that you can't trust the man.

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The American press portrays Putin as being the bad guy and the aggressor in the Ukraine crisis.

Putin is certainly no saint. A former KGB agent, Putin's net worth is estimated at some $40 billion dollars ... as he has squeezed money out of the Russian economy by treating the country as his own personal fiefdom. And all sides appear to have dirt on their hands in the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

But we can only see the bigger picture if we take a step back and gain a little [perspective-Signy] understanding of the history underlying the current tensions.

Indeed, the fact that the U.S. has allegedly paid billions of dollars to anti-Russian forces in Ukraine - and even purportedly picked the Ukrainian president - has to be seen in context.

Veteran New York Times reporter Steven Kinzer notes at the Boston Globe:

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From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. US military power is now directly on Russia’s borders.

...Stephen Cohen - professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University who has long focused on Russia - explained this weekend on CNN:

We are witnessing as we talk the making possibly of the worst history of our lifetime. We are watching the descending of a new cold war divide between west and east, only this time, it is not in far away Berlin, it's right on Russia's borders through the historical civilization in Ukraine. It's a crisis of historic magnitude. If you ask how we got in it, how we got into the crisis, and how therefore do we get out, it is time to stop asking why Putin - why Putin is doing this or that, but ask about the American policy, and the European Union policy that led to this moment.

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... George Kennan.... was considered [a] great strategic thinker about Russia among American diplomats but he warned when we expanded NATO [under Bill Clinton], that this was the most fateful mistake of American foreign policy and that it would lead to a new Cold War. George lived to his hundreds, died a few years ago, but his truth goes marching on. The decision to move NATO beginning in the 90's continuing under Bush and continuing under Obama, is right now on Russia's borders.

And if you want to know for sure, and I have spent a lot of time in Moscow, if you want to know what the Russian power elite thinks Ukraine is about, it is about bringing it into NATO. One last point, that so-called economic partnership [with the EU- Signy] that Yanukovych, the elected president of Ukraine did not sign, and that set off the streets - the protests in the streets in November, which led to this violence in and confrontation today, that so-called economic agreement included military clauses which said that Ukraine by signing this so called civilization agreement had to abide by NATO military policy. This is what this is about from the Russian point of view, the ongoing western march towards post Soviet Russia.

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... The only question now is whether the new Ukrainian government will accept the loss of Crimea quietly or try to retaliate against Russian speakers in Ukraine—offering Putin a pretext for invasion, and thereby precipitating an all-out civil war.

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Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power.

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The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.

David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others".

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Putin's problems are only beginning.

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Yes , from me.

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Your biased, personal opinion of me matters absolute nil. The issue at hand is the array of Dems,and the asinine comments they made about Mitt, per his views on Russian being our geopolitical foe.

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You apparently can't deal. There's a cognitive dissonance issue here, where who you deem the brightest, most in tune and aware individuals on the planet, Dem political leaders, have been shown to be utterly in the dark on Putin and Ukraine. Conversely, Mitt Romney ( and Palin before ), who you deem worthy of mockery and indignation, absolutely nailed it.

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Police deployed snipers and used live ammunition in a menacing escalation of the violence.- news article

Have seen actual footage of anti-government protests in Venezuela being shot at by USA-planted provocateurs. Not sure if this is the case here, but in the Venezuelan demonstrations the blame was instantly (and incorrectly) laid at the feet of the government.-signy

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Asked about the emergence of a second embarrassing phonecall, a spokesperson for the US state department said: "As I said around the last unfortunate case, this is just another example of the kind of Russian tradecraft that we have concerns about."

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Nobody looked behind the press clippings to figure out what was REALLY going on. Nobody noticed that every conflict situation was presented VERY one-sidedly, the "other side" being so absent from the press as to be quite literally non-existent except as the boogeymen that the heroic freedom fighters were battling against.

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Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

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Originally posted by reaverfan:
One problem is our "intelligence" community really just works for themselves. They're wholly unaccountable.

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Sig - if you saw my posted vid of Dems mocking Mitt over his Russia point, and are still trying to pick a fight when you actually are AGREEING with me ( per your funny of Obama & Putin ), then I'm at a loss for words. The central point being, all those Dems were stunningly wrong, yet all had the audacity to say Mitt said something " stupid ".

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The issue at hand is the array of Dems,and the asinine comments they made about Mitt, per his views on Russian being our geopolitical foe.

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Russia isn't MY geopolitical foe. Al Qaida, maybe. China, probably. Corporations, definitely. But Russia???? Not really!

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After three visits to Ukraine in five weeks, Victoria Nuland explains that in the past two decades, the United States has spent five Billion dollars ($5,000,000,000) to subvert Ukraine, and assures her listeners that there are prominent businessmen and government officials who support the US project to tear Ukraine away from its historic relationship with Russia and into the US sphere of interest (via “Europe”).

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I just love the condescending tone of the Left. When you don't agree, or when they're flat out wrong, it's always other guy who " doesn't understand ".

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Yes, those who aren't in your camp are idiots, can't read, and have a 5th grade education.

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Mitt was , and listen to this closely, 100% right.

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Outside Crimea's parliament, the leaving party for Ukraine - and the welcome celebration for Russia - had begun. Crowds of people waved flags and sang Russian pop songs, delighted that, as far as their newly-installed regional government was concerned, they now live in the Russian Federation.

The law was rushed through the autonomous province's parliament, with 79 of 81 MPs backing the proposal to leave Ukraine. There is, of course, the small matter of the region's referendum on that same question, now brought forward to 16 March. Crimea's First Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliev told me he was certain of victory.

"Ukrainians will become Russian citizens here", he said. "We will win this vote with 70 or 75%. The referendum is legitimate."

But Kiev begs to differ. The new Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has called the move "illegitimate and with no legal basis" [unlike the current President and partial Rada in Kiev?] as Ukraine's constitution states that any change to its borders must be approved by the whole country.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Surely you can do better than this! Unless you got thru on a football scholarship.... hmmm... that could explain a lot.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Maybe it's the brain damage from playing football, followed by heavy ingestion of alcohol? Or, maybe it's like you said.

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Is this your education level? I thought that you went to Auburn, being such an Auburn fan. Surely you can do better than this! Unless you got thru on a football scholarship.... hmmm... that could explain a lot.

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My statement was a clear mimicking of how the Left views those who dissent from their own mantra.

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If you saw my posted vid of Dems mocking Mitt over his Russia point, and are still trying to pick a fight when you actually are AGREEING with me ( per your funny of Obama & Putin ), then I'm at a loss for words. The central point being, all those Dems were stunningly wrong, yet all had the audacity to say Mitt said something " stupid ".-rappy

Rappy- if you read my post about the vid, you wouldn't be posting this. Here, I'll keep it simple. Obama is wrong. Mitt is wrong. They're BOTH wrong. Utterly, fantastically, 150% wrong. There, clear enough? And the reason is...- sig

The issue at hand is the array of Dems,and the asinine comments they made about Mitt, per his views on Russian being our geopolitical foe.-rappy

Russia is NOT our geopolitical foe. I said that already, but you seem to have missed that point, too. I'm CERTAIN you have a reading problem! Let me repeat it-

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Russia isn't MY geopolitical foe. Al Qaida, maybe. China, probably. Corporations, definitely. But Russia???? Not really!-sig

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Anyway, why don't you bring something RELEVANT and INSIGHTFUL to this thread, because it's not all about you. Really. How about responding to the question as to who is right and who is wrong- Obama, Romney, both, neither.- signy

I love seeing how you twist yourself up when you can't simply accept my point, and move on. It really is just too much for you to handle.-rapy

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Bring some history to the table, explain to us why you think Russia is (yet another one of our) number-one enemies. Show us where they have threatened OUR INTERESTS... show us how those events (assuming you can actually find any) have cost us.... the USA... a loss of territorial integrity or internal safety. If you make a case that we have an interest in such far-flung places as Syria and Georgia, Asian continent (not Georgia USA... altho frankly I'm not sure we have an interest there either) show us what those interests are. Using words like "freedom" (which you can't even define) doesn't count. Be specific, be real.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Anyway, why don't you bring something RELEVANT and INSIGHTFUL to this thread, because it's not all about you. Really. How about responding to the question as to who is right and who is wrong- Obama, Romney, both, neither.- signy

I love seeing how you twist yourself up when you can't simply accept my point, and move on. It really is just too much for you to handle.-rapy

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What IS your point? Do you have one? Have you explained it? See, I even asked you to make one!

Clearly, you're devolving back into being a troll, so I'm going to cut off the conversation with you.

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My point was rather clear, as I posted a video of Dems mocking and attacking Mitt for his comments, and then it turns out he was right

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