Vatican peace doves attacked by crow and seagull seconds after being released

[Seshmeister]

http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/26/vatican-peace-doves-attacked-by-crow-and-seagull-seconds-after-being-released-4277939/?ITO=facebook

Two white doves released by children alongside Pope Francis as a gesture of peace were almost immediately attacked by other birds.

As tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square looked on, a seagull and a large crow swept down on the doves as they were freed from a window of the Apostolic Palace.






One of the birds lost feathers as it broke free from the attack, but the other was repeatedly pecked by the crow. Their fate is unknown.

The doves had been released after Pope Francis appealed for peace in Ukraine following anti-government protests in which several people have died.

[Satan]

Oh you know I'm going to be blamed for this... especially the crow.

[Seshmeister]

I hope Ukrainians aren't too superstitious...

[katina]

I hope Ukrainians aren't too superstitious...

Sign of the Times?? My family and myself had paid a very high price for Ukraine....it´s seems that history is repeating itself.

[Seshmeister]

I wonder if this tactic of protesters attacking cops with weapons made from fireworks is going to catch on.

It's pretty spectacular to look at...some of the footage from the Ukraine looks like Armageddon...

[katina]

Holodomor

[Seshmeister]

You would think that would make everyone in the Ukraine want to join Europe rather than tie themselves to Russia.

I wonder though how much of Stalin's work ever made it into the history textbooks taught to people in the Ukraine.

[katina]

Everyone? Of course not.

[Nitro Express]

Ukrainians have a distrust of Russians for good reason. Joining the corrupt EU set up by bankers really is no improvement either. Iceland told the EU and it's bankers to fuck off and the Ukraine would be wise to do the same. The unicorns and rainbows jesuit pope can fuck himself as well. Nobody with a brain is going to buy his line of bullshit either. Like all protests it's wise to investigate beyond the surface to see who's really behind it and what the agenda really is.

[Seshmeister]

Everyone? Of course not.

Well that's the thing, I think I read somewhere that 40% of East Germans still vote communist despite the Stasi and everything else that was done to them over the years.

People have a great habit of thinking things used to be better when they were younger...

[Nitro Express]

Well that's the thing, I think I read somewhere that 40% of East Germans still vote communist despite the Stasi and everything else that was done to them over the years.

People have a great habit of thinking things used to be better when they were younger...

It's because their lives probably didn't improve that much after communism. Also, once you have a person programmed it's hard to un-program them. If you are lazy and uneducated, the capitalist system is pretty rough; especially, for someone who came out of the communist system where all you had to do was do what you were told to do. What ushers in communism is the exploitation of people who never could really make the capitalist system work for them. You need the disgruntled masses. Lennin called them useful idiots. The holy grail is to have happy slaves. Throw them some freebies. Enough to keep them pacified and skim the rest. Much like managing a rock star.

[ashstralia]

I wonder if this tactic of protesters attacking cops with weapons made from fireworks is going to catch on.

Happened in Redfern, Sydney 10 years ago. Not on such a grand scale though.

[Seshmeister]

Oof it's getting worse over there...

[Nickdfresh]

Well that's the thing, I think I read somewhere that 40% of East Germans still vote communist despite the Stasi and everything else that was done to them over the years.

People have a great habit of thinking things used to be better when they were younger...

My understanding is that a large proportion of the population in the Ukraine is of Russian decent and looks toward Russia culturally and even politically (a result of Stalin's "planter" policy and the exacerbation of the famine called the Holomdor in the 1920's). The traditional Ukrainians look more towards the West in general, and have strong ties to Poland....

[katina]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10649170/Ukraine-protests-Were-letting-Putin-win.html

Ukraine protests: We're letting Putin win
Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the right to be European – but they have been betrayed by the failure of a weak and divided West to stand up to the Kremlin

As Kiev burns, Western policymakers are eating ashes. Our efforts to help Ukraine towards Europe, democracy and the rule of the law have failed spectacularly. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is celebrating not just sporting triumph in Sochi, but geopolitical victory in the affairs of his most important neighbour.

It is easy to overcomplicate the Ukraine story with historical, ethnic and geographical details. The country is often said to be split between east and west, between Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers, between those nostalgic for Soviet certainties and those who want a Western-style future. Ukraine’s business elite is divided too, between the cronies of president Viktor Yanukovych and those who resent his predatory ways. The opposition is a motley lot: imagine Nigel Farage, Ed Balls, football fans and the Women’s Institute huddling under a common banner.

But the real picture is much simpler. Most Ukrainians want their country to be part of Europe. Russia, the former imperial master, forbids this. It wants Ukraine to be part of its new Eurasian Economic Union – a counterweight to the European Union, albeit one run by crooks and spooks in Moscow, rather than eurocrats in Brussels.

Without Vladimir Putin, Ukraine would be at peace today. It was Russia which forced Ukraine to shun the economic agreement offered by the EU in October, launching a crippling trade war against Ukrainian exports. It was Russia which offered cheap gas and soft loans as the Ukrainian economy tottered. It was Russia which installed hundreds of “advisers” in key Ukrainian public bodies and ministries, including the SBU secret police, to ensure that they toe the Moscow line. Without Russia’s silent putsch, Ukrainians would have not have needed to build barricades in the streets in protest at the regime’s misrule. Even then, without the continued and escalating Russian pressure on Mr Yanukovych, the conflict could have been defused.

Kremlin meddling in Ukraine is not new. It has systematically breached an agreement made in Budapest in 1994 under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet nuclear weapons in return for a promise that Russia would never submit it to economic coercion or other aggression. It has repeatedly cut gas supplies to Ukraine, and fostered a culture of murky energy-trading intermediaries whose money poisons Ukrainian politics. Russia maintains a naval base, complete with spooks and special forces, in Sevastopol in Crimea. That region is home to a resentful population of ethnic Russians who wonder why this balmy peninsular was handed over to Ukraine in Soviet days. They are in constant friction with the Crimean Tartars, deported en masse from their ancestral homeland in 1944 in an exceptional act of Stalinist savagery.

But Russia’s interference in Ukraine has intensified in recent months, just as Western efforts have floundered. European policymakers still cling to the notion that talks with Russia can bring a mutually beneficial solution to Ukraine’s agony. That is a false hope. The Kremlin does not like win-win solutions. It likes outcomes in which it wins, and its detestable Western rivals lose, preferably humiliatingly – this, for Mr Putin, is a matter of personal prestige. In short, though the EU finds the whole notion of geopolitics old-fashioned and unappealing, geopolitics is happening on its doorstep. And it is losing.

America is out of the game, too. The Obama administration has neglected its European allies since the day it took office. Its senior official dealing with Ukraine, Toria Nuland, is admirably energetic – and blunt (she recently declared “F--- the EU” in a phone call to her ambassador in Kiev, bugged and then leaked by Russian intelligence). But she lacks the clout to make the wheels of policy turn in Washington. Without Moscow’s interference, the EU and United States could marshal their modest resources to make a difference. Faced with Russia in all its implacable fury, both are outgunned. The fallout from Edward Snowden’s leaks of secret material from the National Security Agency has corroded and weakened the transatlantic alliance: fury with American snooping in countries such as Germany has paralysed what should be vital discussions on security.

Now all the likely outcomes are bad. Perhaps the authorities will decide that they cannot crush the protesters and will draw back, meaning months of tension, jitters and uncertainty. Even then, Ukraine’s territorial integrity has been shattered, perhaps fatally. In the west, government buildings have been set ablaze. The region – the old Austro-Hungarian Galicia – was the site of a decade-long insurrection post-war against Soviet rule. If pro-Moscow authorities in Kiev try to crack down there, civil war looms. That involves not just human suffering (and quite possibly large numbers of refugees) but also economic dislocation and grave risks of outsiders being drawn in. What happens if someone – a real or invented band of nationalist guerrillas, say – attacks one of the east-west oil or gas pipelines?

Equally worrying is Crimea – site of the Charge of the Light Brigade 160 years ago – which could now be the flashpoint for another conflict with Russia, with far more devastating effects. The region is on the verge of declaring independence from Kiev (a move likely to prompt Russian intervention to protect the separatist statelet).

If the crackdown continues, and succeeds, we will see a dreadful roll-back of the gains of the past 10 years. The newly passed repressive laws will be used in full, not just against public protest but against independent media, civil society, and other institutions. We may see the reintroduction of a visa regime for visitors from Western countries. All kinds of foreign-related and foreign-sponsored activity will be impeded or banned. Ukraine will become another Belarus.

Once the country is at the Kremlin’s mercy, Mr Putin can extort a heavy price. He is known to disparage the very notion of Ukraine’s statehood, in public and in private. He could demand that it join a Russian-led security alliance. Russia’s military integration with Belarus is already proving a headache for Nato, which is struggling to work out how it can defend Europe’s north-eastern flank with its slender remaining resources. If the regime in Kiev proceeds with military and security integration with Russia, Central Europe will experience what the Baltic states have felt for several years: the icy sensation of a hard security threat.

Last time Europe faced a security problem of this magnitude was in the Yugoslav wars in the Nineties. For years the West failed to grasp the problem. It is in a far worse state now. The countries that have tried hardest to help Ukraine, such as Poland and Sweden, feel frustrated and exhausted. In the rest of Europe, the appetite for confrontation with the Kremlin, the real instigator of the crackdown, has never been lower. The danger now is that, in despair, the West seeks to broker a solution to the Ukrainian problem through a deal with Russia. That will infuriate and disillusion the protesters, stoking extremism and violence. It is hard to imagine a more dangerous message to send to the Kremlin: create chaos in your former empire and the West will then let you dictate the terms of settlement.

Instead, the West should be flexing its muscles. Two policies stand out. One is to bolster the countries that may be next in the Kremlin’s firing line. Georgia and Moldova are both worried that their move towards Europe will incur the same pressure and interference now being experienced by Ukraine. We should support them, and the most exposed countries that are already in Western clubs, such as the small Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Second, the Achilles’ heel of both the Yanukovych regime and his Kremlin backers is money. However much they steal, they cannot dispose of it at home. They need our banks, our real-estate market, our stock exchanges and our secretive company law to hide and launder their assets. They use our law firms and auditors to make it look legal. This happens in Vienna, New York – and London. It is to our lasting shame that we have been accomplices in this. We should unleash our money-laundering and anti-bribery laws. We should freeze assets and impose visa bans on those involved in looting and repression on our doorstep.

Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the right to be European. Theirs is not a naive belief in the EU’s virtues, but a profound belief that liberty, legality and decency are better than crony capitalism and the neo-Soviet bombast of the Putin Kremlin. They believe in our values more than we do ourselves. Why are we letting them down?