{"id":1688,"date":"2014-03-08T05:56:05","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T10:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/?p=1688"},"modified":"2014-03-08T06:14:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-08T11:14:30","slug":"a-happening-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/?p=1688","title":{"rendered":"A Happening in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, my how quickly things change around here.\u00a0 From a happy, smiling \"putin<\/a>Vlad the Impaler (aka Putin) at the Sochi Olympics to the Yellow King* in just a few short weeks.\u00a0 How did that happen, fer cryin’ out loud?\u00a0 Well, frankly my dears, it really all started a long while ago.<\/p>\n

*The Yellow King is a reference to the prime evil-doer on True Detective<\/span>, set to wrap up Sunday night.<\/p>\n

For the majority of what would consider Ukraine’s modern history, it has been an acknowledged part of Russia.\u00a0 It became an independent country in 1991 with the breakup of the old Soviet Union.\u00a0 Since then it’s been anything but calm, economically and politically.\u00a0 The so-called \"orange<\/a>Orange Revolution in 2005 started to destabilize the country, with two opposing groups fighting for control.\u00a0 The west side, formerly a part of Poland, is mostly Catholic and speaks Ukrainian.\u00a0 The east is populated by Russian-speaking transplants from mother Russia.\u00a0 How’d they get there?\u00a0 In WW II, Stalin was convinced that the Tatars that were living in the east part of Ukraine had collaborated with the Nazis.\u00a0 So when he retook the land, he forcibly removed the Tatars, giving their land and belongings to Russians.\u00a0 Not a recipe for stability, eh?<\/p>\n

So recent troubles started when Ukraine applied for associate membership in the European Union.\u00a0 Kissinger blames the EU for starting the troubles by “taking a dilatory approach” to Ukraine’s application.\u00a0 The EU put two conditions on membership:\u00a0 free the opposition party members from jail, and implement austerity measures.\u00a0 These two conditions made the duly elected president \"yanukovich\"<\/a>Viktor Yanukovich decide to see if he could get a better deal elsewhere.\u00a0 Enter Vlad the Impaler with a sweet deal of money and subsidized natural gas.\u00a0 Score!\u00a0 Hold it Viktor, not so fast.\u00a0 Before you could say Jack Robinson, protestors were demanding his resignation, he fled the country, but not before having his troops shoot about a hundred of those protestors, mainly from the west.\u00a0 Ouch.\u00a0 So Putin, putting on the happy face at the Olympics, waits until after the closing ceremony, and then sends in troops to the eastern portion of the country.\u00a0 Clearly a violation of international law.\u00a0 But in typical Putin fashion, he advances, then stops and waits to see what the reaction will be.\u00a0 Then he advances a bit more.\u00a0 But so far there’s been nothing other than rhetoric and threats in response to his provocative action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, my how quickly things change around here.\u00a0 From a happy, smiling Vlad the Impaler (aka Putin) at the Sochi Olympics to the Yellow King* in just a few short weeks.\u00a0 How did that happen, fer cryin’ out loud?\u00a0 Well, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetsusan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}