With
all the commotion around Ukraine, nations are scrambling to find out what to
do. They look more like chickens who've had their heads cut off, running around
in circles with no sense of direction. The people in Ukraine are scared and
they see American weakness as a sign that Putin will be unchallenged and that
his advances will continue. Ukrainian's are correct in that the West has
essentially abandoned them. Western sanctions will backfire and the threat of
pulling out of the G8 means nothing to Russia, who is already looking to make
its own alliance with Asia. Right now the West is weak, there is no agreement
between world leaders, and the politicians who run the countries are too
spineless to stand up to Putin. So, as of right now, Putin appears to have free
reign because he doesn't fear a united west.
News is
developing continuously on the Ukraine situation. Russia's closest ally, China,
appears to be siding with Russia on this issue (not really a surprise there). The
leaders of the western world are gathering together and put some sort of plan
together for economic sanctions against Russia. My question, if China is going
to back Russia, is the western world going to sanction China as well. We seem
to only want to focus on the atrocities of Russia, but we seem to not care
about their closest ally.
Russia
has much more military might than Ukraine. Currently, it appears there has been
no actual fighting in the region of Crimea. This part is known to be mostly
composed of Russian speaking individuals and a place that is more loyal to
Russia itself. With the so far refusal to surrender, this event has the
potential to escalate the situation if Russia decides to take military action.
In
response to the threats made by Secretary of State John Kerry, Russia appears
ready to counter the West's claims. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry,
they responded in the region of Crimea due to the overthrow of the government
in Kiev by radicals. So far, the 'invasion' has been done without bloodshed it
would appear. According to Russia officials, the west is ignoring the fact that
the former president of Ukraine signed an agreement with the opposition but the
next day the capitol was overthrown and the agreement thrown out the window.
Ilya
Shapiro is a scholar at the Cato Institute. He is a promenant defender of civil
liberties and is on the pro-marriage equality side. However, he recently wrote
an opinion piece about why he supported the Religious Liberty Bill that was
recently vetoed in Arizona. Since he has
nine main points, I won't put them here, but check out the article.
Paul
Ryan has released a report that looks at the benefits anti-poverty programs
have had for the poor. While Ryan does claim that some programs are necessary,
there are many others that need reforming or removal. The amount of money spent
on these programs is around $800 billion. The natural response to the Ryan
proposals is that Republican's are trying to cut the deficit by helping the
rich and hurting the poor. This argumentation totally misses the point because
the point of Ryan's study is to identify programs and do work and ones that
don't.
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