“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

Post by buran » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

mr_toad wrote: post #98

avocado4 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

> Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia? Because Ukraine is pro-west and Crimea is pro-Russia. West good, Russia bad. Sanctions are black and white. The political situation is less-so: The Crimea voted in a (illegal) referendum to rejoin Russia after a coup in Ukraine (also illegal, obviously) had replaced the elected but somewhat pro-Russian president with an unelected pro-European government. While…

Post by n4r9 » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #298

n4r9 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presented by the European Council, which is made up of directly elected heads of state. It's imperfect, but as someone living in the UK it's no worse than our own system.

The European Council isn't made up of directly elected heads of state, though - most of its members are indirectly elected prime ministers. This makes it the head of the European Commission at least one step further away from the people's influence than in the UK system. What makes this worse is that the European Commission has the exclusive power to propose new laws, whereas in the UK ordinary directly-elected MPs c…

Post by buran » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #89

bin0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they don't want to allow Russia to use it as a port or for commerce; Russia has been trying to take the Crimea for commercial purposes for the last millenium or so. And because they don't have the guts to sanction all of Russia.

1954, when USSR voluntarily transferred Crimea to its then-vassal state Ukraine, was 65 years ago, not 1,000.

Post by lazyjones » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

n4r9 wrote: post #300

lazyjones wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure comparing with a monarchy is the best effort we can make to judge the merits of the EU political system. ;-) Living in a small, entirely democratic EU country, I can't say I'm impressed with how the Commission was formed and it's also obviously an inferior system to that of the USA.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that that's a joke about the UK being a monarchy in anything but name! Its democratic issues are much more to do with the House of Lords, FPTP voting system and lack of press balance. The power to directly elect or remove the top spot is certainly an important facet of democracy, maybe even the most important, but it's still just one of many measures. to be honest I don't think…

Post by n4r9 » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #307

n4r9 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that that's a joke about the UK being a monarchy in anything but name! Its democratic issues are much more to do with the House of Lords, FPTP voting system and lack of press balance. The power to directly elect or remove the top spot is certainly an important facet of democracy, maybe even the most important, but it's still just one of many measures. to be honest I don't think…

> That said, there is such a thing as the global [democracy index]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index ) in which the US comes well below the UK and plenty of other EU countries This is rather meaningless as an indicator of the quality of the political system. The USA was downgraded there in 2016 for various reasons (probably mostly "Trump anxiety") while the political system was left unchanged.