Category Archives: Russia

All the news the MSM is afraid to report

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There was a murder in Chapel Hill, NC, recently. A man, his wife and his wife’s sister were killed. All three were muslims. The MSM and Al Jazeera had a field day. It wasn’t long until a suspect was in custody.

Then, suddenly, the story dropped from the news! If it weren’t for the British and Israeli press, the story would have completely disappeared. Why? The suspect wasn’t a bible thumpin’, gun-totin’, red-neck Tea Partier. No, he was a liberal, atheist whose favorite news outlet was MSNBC and his favorite news-reader was Rachel Maddow.

By-the-way, if the FCC has its way, you wouldn’t be able to find news in the foreign press. The FCC wants the internet to be ‘equal’, read controlled and censored.

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I’ve been writing this blog since 2008. I’ve ruffled the fur of politicos from my local city council, a couple of county office holders, some state Representatives and Senators, and I have a running battle with the RINOs in Washington and my local Congresswoman. Obama has a solution. It just appeared on the Drudge Report.

Federal Election Commission to Consider Regulating Online Political Speech

By Rudy Takala, February 11, 2015 – 10:15 AM

(CNSNews.com) — The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is holding a hearing today to receive public feedback on whether it should create new rules regulating political speech, including political speech on the Internet that one commissioner warned could affect blogs, YouTube videos and even websites like the Drudge Report.

The hearing is a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC last year, which struck down the FEC’s previous cap on aggregate campaign contributions from a single donor in an election cycle.

Before the decision, individuals were limited to a combined total of $46,200 in contributions to all federal candidates, and $70,800 to federal political action committees and parties.

Individuals are no longer restricted by aggregate limits, which Chief Justice John Roberts said “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities’.”

They may now “contribute up to $2,600 per election to a federal candidate, $10,000 per calendar year to a state party committee, $32,400 per calendar year to a national party committee, and $5,000 per calendar year to a PAC [political action committee],” according to the FEC.

The commission, which consists of three Republican and three Democratic members, last considered such regulations in 2005. However, intense opposition from First Amendment groups resulted in rules that were limited to paid advertisements from political campaigns, parties, and PACs.

This time around, organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned that some Democrats on the commission would like to impose much more burdensome regulations that could serve as the equivalent of spending caps in restricting political speech.

The article continues at the website. You can read it all, here.

What the FEC and FCC wants is to plant commissars in every newsroom, every TV station and to license all news outlets. It would effectively kill independent bloggers like me. Shades of the KBG and the Soviet Union. This is what the liberals and the democrats want. After all, Joe Stalin was such a great leader and brought Russia out of feudalism…by starving millions of people in the Ukraine when he collectivized agriculture. He murdered more across the former Soviet Union and in his subjugated East European countries. In fact Russia, Putin, is still killing anyone who opposes him and in the Ukraine. You won’t hear about that from the MSM, either.

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If you do a bit of research, you will also find that the Cold War has returned. Obama and the democrats ignore the signs but they are there.

WEST: NORAD Head Says Russia Increasing Arctic Long Range Air Patrols

By:
http://i0.wp.com/news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/f22s-intercept-Bear.jpg?resize=625%2C469

US Air Force F-22 Raptor escorting a Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber. US Air Force Photo

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – While Russian military aircraft have stepped up their activity everywhere from the North Sea to the Baltic to the Black Sea in the last year they have also been spotted more frequently closer to the U.S. territory in the Arctic, the head of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told USNI News on Tuesday.

In particular – flights of Tupolev Tu-95 Bear ‘H’ Bombers have increased recently NORTHCOM’s Adm. Bill Gortney said.

“They’ve been very aggressive – under my NORAD hat – for us in the Arctic,” he said to USNI News following a keynote address at the WEST 2015 conference.
“Aggressive in the amount of flights, not aggressive in how they fly.”

Since the March seizure of the Ukrainian region of Crimea by Russian forces Moscow has significantly stepped up air patrols in Europe, Asia and near the Americas.

The flights extend as far North as the edge of American air space near Alaska and as far South as U.S. holdings in Guam.

In December, two Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets intercepted a two Bears near the Beaufort Sea entering a U.S. and Canadian Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

A Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear 'H' off the coast of Scotland in 2014. UK Royal Air Force Photo

A Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear ‘H’ off the coast of Scotland in 2014. UK Royal Air Force Photo.

NATO interdicted a record number of Russian flights in 2014 and the Russians claim likewise the U.S. has stepped up its own flights near Russian territory.

During the Cold War, Russian long-range aircraft routinely patrolled the edges of U.S. and Canadian airspace probing NORAD defenses, but largely stopped after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As for the current round of patrols, the bomber flights are being used as a “messaging tool,” Gortney said.
“Obviously it’s pretty clear that they’re doing that. So they’re flying in places… where they’ve never flown before.”

At the height of the Cold War, Americans stationed in Moscow were continuously harassed by the KGB. Embassy employees sometimes were sequestered on the Embassy grounds for their protection. Non-governmental Americans, news reporters and others, were assigned a ‘minder’ to insure they neither saw nor reported anything contrary to the official Soviet agenda.

Those times are returning. This time it’s Putin’s Federal Security Service disguised as the Russian mob who are targeting Americans.

Report: Crime, Anti-American Harassment in Russia Grows

New Security Dangers Follow Moscow’s Annexation of Crimea

BY: ,

Anti-American sentiment and criminal activities have increased in Moscow since Russian forces took over Ukraine’s Crimea and continue to destabilize eastern Ukraine, a recent State Department security report reveals.

Security threats in Moscow and Russia include petty crime, physical attacks, activities by organized crime groups, corrupt law enforcement and security officials, widespread cyber crime, and economic espionage, according to the Feb. 6 report produced by the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC), a State Department group that supports American businesses abroad.

“The social and political unrest in Ukraine has led to increasing political tensions between the Russian Federation and the U.S. and other Western nations,” the report, based on reports from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, said. “As a result, anti-American and anti-Western sentiment appears to be increasing, especially in certain media outlets.”

A copy of the internal report was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The report said U.S.-Russia ties were “greatly strained” after Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Embassy reports indicate a number of Americans were verbally harassed and physically assaulted in the last part of 2014, but the report said so far no major campaign of targeted attacks against Americans was detected.

“Immediately following the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia by the U.S. and Europe, some American ‘iconic brand’ companies were heavily scrutinized by the Russian authorities, and in some cases, closed, if only temporarily,” the report said.

The report concluded that Russia’s political, economic, and social climate “changed markedly as a result of the country’s illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, ongoing support for military separatists in eastern Ukraine, U.S./Western economic sanctions, and a dramatic drop in the price of oil that significantly weakened the value of the Russian ruble.”

On cyber threats, the report said: “The cybercrime threat is acute. The risk of infection, compromise, and theft via malware, spam email, sophisticated spear phishing, and social engineering attacks is significant.”

The report warned all U.S. businesses and citizens to exercise caution and adhere to all cyber security best practices.

The report also said Russian economic espionage and theft of intellectual property poses a threat to Americans.

“American businesses are susceptible to economic and industrial espionage,” the report said. “Information theft, especially from insufficiently protected computer networks, is common. It is recommended that businesses employ counter-surveillance techniques, such as video monitoring devices, alarm systems, and computer network protection programs.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service also can take action against Americans doing business with the Russian military-industrial complex.

“Any misunderstanding or dispute in such transactions can attract the involvement of the security services and lead to investigation or prosecution for espionage,” the report said.

In a section on Russian government surveillance, the report said, “OSAC constituents have no expectation of privacy.”

All telephone and electronic communications are subject to monitoring and surveillance, something that “can potentially compromise sensitive information.”

“The Russian System for Operational-Investigative Activities (SORM) permits authorities to monitor and record all data that traverses Russia’s networks lawfully,” the report said. “Travelers should assume all communications are monitored.”

The article continues here.

The rot in Washington extends much further than allowing a massive influx of illegal aliens bent on usurping citizen’s rights and money. It extends to purposely alienating long-term allies all the while intentionally ignoring real threats to our national security.

It is a truism that people get the government they deserve. It’s unfortunate the rest of us have to endure that same government along with the sycophants.

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Evolution

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When I retired from Sprint—kicked out the door that is, one of the ‘retirement’ bennies was keeping our cell phones, for Mrs. Crucis and myself, on the employee phone plan. I used my employee discount to upgrade our cell phones to the latest one available at the time, an android smartphone. It was the best available when I retired.

That was over three years ago, almost four. Times have changed. Our original smartphones only had 512mb internal memory. The ‘external’ memory card was for data storage. That amount of memory worked well for almost four years.

The problem that eventually arose is that apps run in internal memory. Many—most, are loaded at startup and every one wants its piece of that internal memory. Over the years, after app update after update, those apps grew, demanding more and more memory…and that…is where the problem arose.

When some of the core apps need memory, they seize it from the free, available internal memory. When there isn’t enough memory, bad things happen. Apps stop, the phone locks up, or, those apps that allow swapping internal memory with storage, grow slooow.

Our new phones arrive this week. They have over 4gb internal memory and up to 64gb external storage. I hope they last another three-four years.

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I’ve been waiting to see this item announced by the MSM. So far this morning, nothing has been said. (So far, only the Washington Free Beacon and FOX News are reporting on this issue.)

Putin is rattling his cold-war saber. Long range Russian bombers have bee flying along the coasts of the US and now they are practicing launching long-range cruise missiles from outside the northern Canadian border. The real issue is that NORAD, the old North American Air Defense command is a shadow of its former self.

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, we had the DEW line (Distant Early Warning) across Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Later, we also had BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) that reached from Alaska to the UK. The easternmost leg of that system was in northern Scotland, the western leg ended in the Aleutian Islands. In addition to these two systems, we also had a line of over-the-horizon radar and radio intercept sites all along our northern and European borders with the old USSR.

We still have capability to detect Russian incursions into our territory and to monitor them off our coasts. The real problem is that we don’t have the capability, in aircraft and bases, to defend ourselves if Putin’s practice launches, and wargames, become real.

With all this in mind, What have you heard from the MSM? Russian bombers have been stalking us for some time and, whether we acknowledge it or not, Cold War II is in full force.

Russian Strategic Bombers Near Canada Practice Cruise Missile Strikes on US

Nuclear launch rehearsal conducted in North Atlantic

BY: , September 8, 2014 5:00

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Is history repeating itself?

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A number of writers and bloggers, myself included, have noted the similarities of our current events to those just prior to World War I. If you take a step back and look at the underlying issues, our times also mirror events during the 1930s just before World War II.

Putin wants to restore Russia to its former USSR status. While the former USSR was nominally Communist, it was governed by a closed group, a political party that operated as an oligarchy. Hitler, like Putin after him, wanted to restore Germany to the status it held before World War I with its world-wide empire. Germany, like the USSR, was nominally socialist but was governed by an oligarchy masquerading as the National Socialist Workers Party, the Nazis.

Hitler took the Rhineland breaking Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact in 1936. The Rhineland was a demilitarized zone in western Germany, that created a buffer between isolating Germany from Belgium and France.

The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919–eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I–called for stiff war reparation payments and other punishing peace terms for defeated Germany. Having been forced to sign the treaty, the German delegation to the peace conference indicated its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen. As dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s military forces were reduced to insignificance and the Rhineland was to be demilitarized.

In 1925, at the conclusion of a European peace conference held in Switzerland, the Locarno Pact was signed, reaffirming the national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles and approving the German entry into the League of Nations. The so-called “spirit of Locarno” symbolized hopes for an era of European peace and goodwill, and by 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland. — History.com.

Two years later in march of 1938, Hitler annexed Austria into the growing German Empire. The Anschluss, as it was called, is exactly like the annexation of Crimea into Putin’s resurgent Russian Empire.

Before the end of 1938, Hitler, through political maneuverings, absorbed the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia when Neville Chamberlain of Britain and Édouard Daladier of France refused to intervene.

http://gdb.voanews.com/CBBF0236-4C48-427A-8268-A80B0BECB923_cx0_cy10_cw0_mw1024_s_n.jpgI should note that Russian armored forces has entered the Ukraine and the Ukraine is left defenseless after the US and NATO have refused to honor security agreements between them and the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine says Russian forces cross border in tanks, armored vehicles

By Annie Gowen and Karoun Demirjian August 25 at 11:12 AM

KIEV — Ukraine charged that Russian forces crossed into eastern Ukraine early Monday in military vehicles, including tanks, as Russia vowed to send a second humanitarian aid convoy into the country this week to deliver emergency supplies to areas held by pro-Moscow separatists.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Russian military vehicles with the insignia of the separatists’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic “violated the state border of Ukraine” near Novoazovsk in the southern part of Donetsk region.

It was the latest, and one of the most forceful, accusations from Kiev that Russia has been directly supplying weapons, personnel and other assistance to the separatists fighting government troops in eastern Ukraine.

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Lysenko said at least 10 tanks, two armored vehicles and two trucks from russia crossed into Ukrainian territory at 5:20 a.m. Monday, potentially bound for the key port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The highway leading to Mariupol is currently under control of the Ukrainian military, he said.

The Russian military vehicles flying rebel flags moved toward the village of Shcherbak, where they engaged in battle with soldiers of a Ukrainian border unit, Lysenko said in a briefing Monday. He said the Ukrainian forces then called for reinforcements and managed to stop the advance of the convoy just outside the villages of Shcherbak and Markyne. The villages are north of the larger town of Novoazovsk, about five miles from the Russian border.

The rest of the article can be found here, at the Washington Post website.

The first question is if Putin’s incursion into the Ukraine is like that of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. The difference is that in 1939, Britain and France actually honored their treaties with Poland. Today, after Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, Obama couldn’t be bothered and is playing golf somewhere and the EU nations and NATO have emasculated themselves by depending on the US military to provide their defense. The similarities between today and the open scenes of World War II are astounding.

On the other side of the world, similar scenes are playing. In the 1930s, Imperial Japan invaded China in a quest for natural resources. As an island nation, Japan had few, if any, resources needed for an industrialized society. It lacked oil, iron and coal. China and the territory around the South China Sea, Indo-China, the Philippines, and Dutch East Indian Islands, had all those resources in abundance. The problem facing Japan is that the territory belonged to other European powers…until an opportunity arose when those powers became embroiled in war.

Communist China is acting Imperial Japan of the 1930s. China has arbitrarily and in violation of a number of Open Seas treaties, laid claim to much of the South China Sea—and the resources that lay underneath those shallow waters. China started drilling in territory claimed by Vietnam that sparked riots and the movement of Chinese troops to the Vietnamese border.

China has expanded their military and has recently taken to harassing US Navy maritime patrol planes. In 2001, a Chinese fighter colliding with a US Navy EP-3 patrol aircraft causing the US plane to make an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. China asserted its right to harass aircraft after this latest incident.

China rejects U.S. criticism over jet encounter

BEIJING Sat Aug 23, 2014 1:19pm EDT

(Reuters) – China on Saturday called US criticism of an approach by one of its jets to a US Navy patrol plane off the Chinese coast earlier this week “completely groundless” and said its pilot had maintained a safe distance from the US aircraft.

The strongly-worded statement attributed to Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun was a response to a diplomatic complaint the Pentagon filed with Beijing on Friday.

The complaint concerned an August 19 encounter about 215 km (135 miles) east of China’s Hainan Island in which a Chinese fighter jet came within meters (yards) of a US P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine and reconnaissance plane and, the US claimed, performed acrobatic maneuvers around it.In its statement, the Chinese defense ministry said the J-11 jet was conducting routine checks and described the pilot’s actions as professional.The United States’ frequent short-range reconnaissance missions threatened the safety of both militaries, it said.

It urged the US to reduce short-range reconnaissance against China and to respect international law and conventions.

Yes, more and more the world appears to be entering a new stage for conflict, a conflict on the scale of earlier world wars. And, like those earlier wars, the United States and Europe are woefully unprepared for conflict.

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Cold War II

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The adages goes, “those who fail to understand History are doomed to repeat it.” That is so true for our government. Obama and the dems have emasculated our military while destroying our economy. We are seeing a scenario reminiscent of mid-1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s plan to force the USSR into economic failure succeeded. The US won the Cold War by outspending the USSR—forcing them to compete until their spending ruined them.

This time around, the roles are reversed. The former USSR, the empire Putin wants to restore, is recovering from its economic collapse and it is rebuilding its military and returning to it’s expansionist history to restore the Russian Empire. We need only to look at the Crimea and the Ukraine for proof.

In fact, Putin’s Foreign Minister has announced the beginning of the next Cold War.

Russian Prime Minister: We Are ‘Approaching a Second Cold War’

7:08 AM, May 20, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev says that “we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war.” He also said that U.S. President Barack Obama could be “more tactful politically” and that he’s disappointed in some of the decisions Obama has made.

“Yes, I believe that President Obama could be more tactful politically when discussing these issues. Some decisions taken by the US Administration are disappointing. We have indeed done a lot for Russian-US relations. I believe doing so was right. The agreements that we reached with America were useful. And I’m very sorry that everything that has been achieved is now being eliminated by these decisions. Basically, we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war that nobody needs.

Medvedev continues about the incompetency of Obama. Putin and Medvedev would not be making these statements, pushing, being aggressive in the Crimea, sending ‘agent provocateurs’ into the Ukraine, if the United States had the ability and the determination to counter him.

When Ronald Reagan was president, we had a 600 ship navy, twelve carrier battle-groups, troops in Europe, commitments from our NATO allies requiring a level of competency in their militaries and navies, and an equally strong US Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Now, the democrats and Obama have created an unsustainable welfare state, reduced out military forces, destroying their morale with repeated back-to-back deployments and, when they can no longer meet the physical requirements, the veterans are discarded into a Veterans Administration that ignores their needs.

But Putin isn’t our only enemy. China looms in the west. They’ve made extraordinary territorial claims to vast segments of the western Pacific, imperialistically seizing resource rich areas from a number of neighboring countries—countries who, by treaty, look to the United States for defense.

http://i.imgur.com/m8Vuf.gif

China’s Exclusive Economic Zone

Just this week, we watched an approaching confrontation between China and Viet Nam. We don’t have any treaty obligations with Viet Nam, but we do with the Philippine Islands, Taiwan and Japan.

How an oil rig sparked anti-China riots in Vietnam

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN, May 19, 2014 — Updated 1307 GMT

http://thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/thediplomat_2014-05-08_15-06-31-386x231.pngHong Kong (CNN) — When China’s state-owned oil company dispatched an oil rig to a contested area of the South China Sea it flicked a match on a long-smoldering dispute with its communist neighbor Vietnam.Analysts say Beijing must have known the move would elicit some reaction, but it clearly didn’t predict having to evacuate thousands of Chinese nationals desperate to put some distance between them and violent Vietnamese protests.“The whole episode seems to reek of miscalculation, perhaps by both sides, but it demonstrates how volatile how this region can be,” said Alexander Neill, Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Asia (IISS).At issue is the positioning of an oil rig in waters claimed by both China and Vietnam. Vietnam claims the rig’s presence is “illegal” while China says it has every right to drill, and has castigated the Vietnamese government for failing to ensure the safety of its nationals.To understand the issue, it’s vital to look at the exact position of the rig.Where is the rig?In early May, Beijing announced the HD-981 rig would be parked at sea for exploratory work until mid-August. Owned by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the rig is anchored in Lot 143, about 120 nautical miles east of Vietnam’s Ly Son Island and 180 nautical miles from China’s Hainan Island, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Analysis co-authored by CSIS experts said China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs appears to be basing its right to be there on the assumption that one of the Paracel Islands, which it claims as its own, is 17 miles north, allowing it to claim its own continental shelf in the region.China calls the contested Paracel Islands the Xisha Islands, while in Vietnam they’re known as the Hoang Sa Islands.Vietnam says the rig site is clearly on its continental shelf, and moreover is in its Exclusive Economic Zone. Hanoi has demanded that China remove the offending rig, escort vessels from the region and hold talks to settle the issue.The Chinese rig was escorted to the region by naval vessels and fighter jets, drawing Vietnamese boats to the area and raising tensions at sea. The Vietnamese have accused Chinese vessels of ramming and blasting its boats with water cannon. The Chinese say any conflict was provoked by Vietnamese harassment.

The column was just updated with the following bullet points.
  • China evacuates thousands of nationals from Vietnam amid territorial dispute
  • Protests erupted after China’s state oil company sent a rig to disputed territory
  • Vietnam says the rig site is on its continental shelf and within its Exclusive Economic Zone
  • China says the rig will be there until mid-August, has sent ships to guard the site
Another report tells of Chinese troops massing on the border next to Viet Nam. The report states that “Conflict Between China And Vietnam Is Imminent.“

Conflicts in the east with Putin, conflicts in the west with China and Obama and the dems, as well as our military and naval forces, are completely unprepared. I think we are entering another of those “interesting times” mentioned in the Chinese curse.

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The chickeeeens have come hoooome…

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Those of us who are conservative in our politics and outlook in life knew this was coming. Obama and the democrat leadership in Washington is, and has always been, a joke. We knew the world thought so. Now, Putin has rubbed our faces in the mess of that lack of leadership in Washington. Others around the world are taking advantage of that joke.

We are seeing the consequences of the democrat and liberal rape of our nation. We are astonishingly in debt. We have massive unemployment. Our borders are open to our enemies and criminals and our military has been eviscerated and is worn out. The military is being lead by political generals, useless and unable to lead and they are creating more dissension in the ranks. Just ten years ago we were the most powerful and recognized leader in the world. All that is gone. We’re now the mockery of the world and Putin has proved it.

Mockery greets Obama’s new sanctions against Russian officials after Crimea action

By Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times, Monday, March 17, 2014

President Obama on Monday slapped Russia with the kinds of economic sanctions not seen since the Cold War, but the administration’s supposed hard line was met with mockery and a “collective shrug” in Moscow, Kiev and Washington.

One day after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, the White House and its partners in the European Union responded by targeting high-ranking officials in Moscow along with pro-Russian figures responsible for the unrest in Ukraine.

The move adds even more tension to a dramatic standoff between Russia and the West, but early signs suggest the latest round of sanctions will have little impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin as he moves toward annexation of Crimea and, some fear, an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Even some of those directly affected by the U.S. and European sanctions laughed them off and openly mocked Mr. Obama.

“Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in a message on Twitter. He is one of the seven Russian officials directly targeted by the president in an executive order signed Monday morning. “I think the decree of the President of the United States was written by some joker.”

The sanctions specifically target officials close to Mr. Putin, though neither the Russian president nor Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among those named.

…

In Kiev, where a new government is trying to fend off Mr. Putin and prevent the loss of Crimea, reactions to the latest round of sanctions were lukewarm at best.

“The first reaction here … is sort of a collective shrug,” said Chris Miller, editor of the Kyiv Post who briefed reporters during a conference call hosted by the Wilson Center.

Mr. Miller said the sentiment is “these sanctions are too soft, too late. They don’t target those high up enough, closer to Putin.”

…

The prime minister of Crimea also blasted the U.S. president, tweeting a digitally altered picture of Mr. Obama in a Russian military uniform.

“Interestingly, after the success of the company in returning Crimea, Barack is getting the rank of colonel?” tweeted Sergey Aksyonov.

Despite all of that criticism, the White House is sticking by its strategy and arguing that the sanctions will have a dramatic impact.

Look at that last paragraph. No one, not in Crimea, nor Russia, nor here, believes these sanctions on…how many, a dozen of Putin’s flunkies, will work. What else has Obama done? He sent a flight of F-16s to Poland. Yawn.

Ukraine, after the breakup of the old Soviet Union, was a nuclear power. The West, the EU, NATO and the US guaranteed their security if they destroyed their nukes. The Ukraine did so.

Now they have been invaded and territory seized by a resurgent Russia eager to rebuild the old Soviet Empire. What has the West done? Nothing. If it weren’t so credible, I’d say we’re reliving Neville Chamberlain returning home after giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler prior to World War II.

“Peace in our time,” Chamberlain said. Yeah, for a few months and no one was prepared to stop Hitler before the world was engulfed in war.

How Neville Chamberlain’s words haunt the Crimean crisis

Updated: March 15, 2014 18:29:00

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, right, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in London to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Brendan Smialowski / Reuters / March 14, 2014

Sect’y of State John Kerry with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov

Decades of Soviet domination may have left this southern corner of Ukraine looking a bit beaten up around the edges, but my overriding feeling was that this was a place that was waking from a long, deep sleep.

The port of Sebastopol had an air of wistfulness that only places with a rich and brutal history can manage, while a visit to the defunct subterranean Russian submarine base in nearby Balaclava bay was made even more attractive by the low cost of admission and the fact that the only other visitors to the attraction were a couple from Slough.

Similarly memorable were afternoons spent at the Tsar’s Livadia Palace on the shores of the Black Sea, and Checkov’s dacha, a beautiful sunlit villa high in the hills above Yalta, in which he wrote his incomparable play The Cherry Orchard. Crimea, clearly, was the next great European tourist destination. I could only bless my luck that I’d got in before it was all sanitised for the package holiday industry that would inevitably follow with Ukraine’s sublimation into European politics and culture.

But that was then. With dizzying speed the region has been occupied, liberated or annexed (according to your view) by Russian troops and, with the EU and America still fumbling for a response, the Crimean government has called a referendum, due to be conducted today, to ask its inhabitants whether it should rejoin the Russian Federation.

Most tellingly, the wording of the ballot paper offers no choice for preserving the current status quo. There are only two questions on it: do you wish to join the Russian Federation now, or choose to become independent?

From the Kremlin’s point of view, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Kiev last month was nothing less than a western-inspired plot, one that has left the millions of Russian-speaking inhabitants in Crimea and eastern Ukraine isolated and vulnerable. To those on the other side of the political divide, Russia’s occupation is a barefaced land grab.

What is undeniable is that Vladimir Putin’s bold strategy has wrong-footed the West. His opponents are threatening to impose sanctions, but who would they really hurt? With the world’s economies so inextricably entwined, there’s scarcely a country in Europe whose own balance of payments wouldn’t be disrupted by a trade embargo. And yet the only other option, military intervention to prop up the teetering Ukrainian government, is unthinkable.

In London on Friday John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, held last-ditch talks in an attempt to diffuse the situation before today’s deadline. But with the referendum so close at hand, the talks were never likely to prosper. Six hours spent in private consultation brought no major breakthrough. After the collapse of the talks Mr Kerry warned Russia of “very serious steps” if it annexes Crimea.

Strong words of course, and yet it all seems too little, too late. Indeed, a full two days before the ballot, the Russian flag was already flying above the entrance to the Crimean Parliament in the provincial capital, Simferopol, while street signs were being methodically altered from the Ukrainian language into Russian. Somebody somewhere already knows the outcome.

And with civil unrest already igniting in cities such as Donetsk, and Russian troops conducting military manoeuvres on Ukraine’s eastern border, the fear is that annexing Crimea may well prove the curtain raiser to a far more turbulent future for central Europe. The prospect of this beautiful and doleful country being torn apart once more by forces beyond its control is too dreadful to contemplate; yet it now seems a genuine possibility.

When Nazi Germany annexed the area of German-speaking Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland in spring 1938, the response from the now discredited British prime minister Neville Chamberlain summed up the parochial view of many to events in central Europe at the time. He described the incident as “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing”. Modern politicians would do well to learn from Mr Chamberlain’s folly.

As so many have said, history is cyclical. When we don’t study history, examine the parallels to current events, examine the consequences of history in those parallels, we repeat the errors and mistakes of the past. I believe, we are about to repeat one of those errors. This time, instead of Britain being the one in peril, it will be us.

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