Ouch. ;-)
Recently in Politics Category
Forbes magazine — Why Millions Say, Softly, God Bless America, by writer and historian Paul Johnson:
In Ukraine voters took to the streets to reverse a crooked election. Thanks to the backing of the U.S., Ukrainians won their point, and their true, democratically elected president took office. But even though it has tasted the sweets of democracy itself, Ukraine is also withdrawing its troops from Iraq — a case of cowardice compounded by selfishness that bodes ill for the country’s future.
Spain and Ukraine expect to enjoy democracy but will not lift a finger to help the Iraqis, who have never had such a luxury.
I’ve heard this argument before, particularly about Ukraine. However, Ukraine is a fledgling democracy that needs to first work on the “democratic dynamic” - the people vote for their representatives, who then lead the nation according to the will of the people. The people then vote again, making course corrections by way of the government they elect. Yushchenko has been elected by a population that was very much opposed to sending troops to Iraq, and he promised, if elected, to respect that sentiment. The fact that he kept that promise is testament to his desire to represent his people. To call this “cowardice” to make it fit this writer’s thread (“most other democratic nations have looked the other way”) is a one-dimensional take on the situation at best, and a good example of the “with us or against us” attitude that garners so much criticism.
Discoshaman is an expat living in Kyiv, an he says it better than I do:
Ukrainian troops ended up in Iraq as a bid by Kuchma to buy his way back into American good graces after the Gongadze murder and the allegations of radar sales to Iraq. The Ukrainian people were overwhelmingly against it, and the government itself did everything it could to undermine support for the war — the anti-American drumbeat on the TV was relentless. It’s understandable if public opinion is now firmly entrenched against the war.
People were overwhelmingly opposed — I spent the months before the war constantly defending American policies to friend and stranger alike. If any country matches the critics’ attacks on the coalition as mercenary and coerced, it’s Ukraine.
In the meantime, Yushchenko has been democratically elected by a people who want the troops home. Many of the readers here support the freedom of the Iraqi people to choose their destiny, but can we then ignore the freedom of Ukrainians to do the same?
Via Journal of Election Madness: Yushchenko’s Inauguration
As far as the number of people there, it beat New Years hands down. There were people everywhere. They went up the hill, down the street, up behind everything, out into European Square, and more. For safety reasons no one was allowed on the bridge we saw Tymoshenko from in late November, so some people had clambered out on the support beams under the bridge. It did Lesya and my hearts’ good to see the excitement level so high for what is essentially a formality, and one that is rarely even presented to the public, let alone presented to an uncountable mass of the public.
It also did us good to see a bunch of younger Ukrainians with us clambering and slipping on their way up icy slopes and through back alleys to try to get to a speech that all of us must have known we’d already missed.
Read the post for more on Yushchenko’s speech. This is an exciting time for the people of Ukraine!
This snippet from Le Sabot Post-Moderne explained for me why many people in Russia, Ukraine, and other post-soviet states continue to support, even elect, strongman (read near-dictatorial) leaders like Putin and Yanukovych:
There is a large segment of the population who thinks Ukraine took a wrong turn with Independence and the death of Communism. They may not want the hammers & sickles back, but they do want a strong man at the top who will set things straight — a Putin. This goes double for those who have “lost” during the post-Soviet period — pensioners, miners, factory workers, the military and security forces, and many government bureaucrats and workers. These are people who were raised to desire order at all cost, and they see the present period as chaotic and scary. Yanukovych, for all his faults, radiates a brutish strength and promises order, however bleak.
[Emphasis mine]
Le Sabot Post-Moderne - Yanukovych — Left, Right or Nowhere?:
“Politico-economic tribalism captures the clan-based spoils system of Ukraine. When you hear about the oligarchs, you’re probably imagining a few marquee names like Pinchuk or Akhmetov. But the system is more complex than that. For example, Kuchma’s group, the Dnepropetrovsk Clan, contains about 200 businessmen. The purpose of government is to bring home spoils for your tribe, through legislation, subsidies, and sweetheart privatization deals.”
[Emphasis mine]
Hm. Could almost be written about our own government.
NYTimes.com 2004 Election Results (Flash)
This is really cool - a map that can show which states each presidential candidate won, visually weighted by the number of electors for that state. It gives a better picture of how evenly divided our nation is, a fact blied a bit by the normal geographic view. To see the weighted map, click on “Electoral Votes” when the map loads.
“Maybe this is amazing because of the reality distortion field in which we live in the blogosphere.”
I wonder why bloggers find this surprising. Bloggers tend to be well-educated, tech-savvy or even members of the technology industry, and hail from either the west or east coasts, putting them right in the middle of the Kerry camp. Another large group of bloggers hails from outside the U.S., especially in the U.K. or Europe, where the cultural and economic force is a form of democratic socialism. The general political leaning is quite to the left of the heartland of the U.S.
Monday night I listened to several of the Connected Politics sessions from IT Conversations. One in particular caught my attention, the session by The Economist correspondent Adrian Woolridge.
“Connected politics is not necesessarily left-wing politics… Taking power away from the political elites, the media elites and the rest of the elites and handing it to the great American public will not necessarily shift politics in the country to the left.”
Listen to the show — Adrian is excellent, and makes some good points which address this idea that many in the internet demographic hold, that making the political process more dis-intermediated or more “connected” is going to result in a left-ward trend. I’m not saying he’s necessarily correct, but it is interesting.
More from Dan Gilmor — A Report From Columbus:
Two apparently Republican poll workers have been showing people at our precinct as their demonstration of voting (ohio has state-hired assistants who can show how to operate the touch screen machines, with live ballots and voters in the booth) only how to vote for Bush.
If this is true, and I have no reason yet to think otherwise, these challengers should be arrested. This is the kind of thing that no one should tolerate, and is the kind of crap that gets us ‘elections-by-court’. I generally lean Republican, but this kind of… stuff… makes me feel sick.
NY Times: G.O.P. Can Challenge Voters at Ohio Polls, Court Rules. In a day of see-sawing court rulings, a federal appeals court ruled early today that the Republican Party could place thousands of people inside polling places to challenge the eligibility of voters, a blow to Democrats who had argued that those challengers would intimidate minority voters.
So it comes down, again, to judges who were appointed by Republicans. This is not a good start to Election Day.
If I heard NPR correctly, the court allowed 1 person from each party inside the polling places. 1 Rep., 1 Dem. I could be wrong, but I don’t see how this is intimidation.
Now that I’ve got all my archives imported, I was watching the apache logs scroll by when the MSNBot requested this rant from Oct. 2000. It’s got me wondering if my thoughts on the matter have changed any in 4 years. More on that later.
