Merkel Apparently Fears Devastating Defeat of the Ukrainian Army

Just my two cents. multicultural societies are a revolt waiting to happen, all it takes is a one rabble rousing politician, or worse some foreign power decoding to support the minority's claims. That's why the Balkans are known as the powder keg of Europe.The sad fact is that the "greater good" concept comes from the brain not the heart. Fully defusing the situation takes multiple generations, and even then you are not totally safe as the breakups of the USSR, Belgium's inability to form a stable government, the recent Scottish referendum or Bossi's "padania" in Italy show. Some of those "dissatisfied minorities" were totally off the radar just a generation before..

IMHO people are a lot better off enduring "discrimination" than caught in the middle of a civil war, but it's very subjective, and it greatly depends on the individual perception that discrimination is increasing or decreasing, revolutions and revolts are driven by expectations.

Democracy, especially "one man one vote the winner takes it all" representative democracy, is no solution for this, as the majority oppressing the minority is "democratic", Long standing democracies have just as many problems with ethnic minorities as more oppressive states. Some multicultural democracies introduced constitutional safeguards, (ex: Lebanon) but IMO they never worked very well, possibly the most successful are the Swiss, that manage to hold together different language groups by restricting the role of the central government.

 

I agree .

The Ukraine was a powder keg (it always has) and the revolt of 2014 against the sitting president did explose the powder keg.

Other point :Italy also condemned the Russians,but it forgot conveniently what D'Annunzio did in Fiume,and what the Italian state did in South Tirol .

 

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here? D'Annunzio declared war on Italy, when Italy did not go along with his plot.

So are you now saying that the separatist Crimea is going to declare war on Russia????

 

I would also add...That this is more of

As you continuously bring up situations that are both far removed and far different from the one were are currently discussing.

So please...Adhere to you own attempted admonishment and stay on topic.

 

The "Catholic citizens" didn't revolt, the IRA did. They murdered just as many Catholics as Protestants.
They had already mounted a terrorist campaign against Police stations in the late 1950s, and had been all set to kick off during WW2 if even the Nazis had thought they had been reliable enough.
The only reason for their existence is to force the Six counties of Ulster to become part of the ROI against the wishes of the majority, due to the ROI having territorial claims to the Six Counties arising from the Treat of Partition. The Irish Government publicly abandoned this policy years ago, but the IRA didn't instantly lay down arms. They kept right on going because at the end of the day, any excuse was good enough to murder people. After all, they had spent decades claiming that the "bullet was stronger than the ballot box". Now if that's how you see democracy, you seriously need to get out more.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/labour-man-defends-irish-claim-to-ulster-1511395.html
Just because a few nominally Catholic terrorists jumped on a bandwagon doesn't mean "the Catholic citizens" revolted, any more than ISIS etc means "Muslims" are revolting. The parallels with the Ukraine are amazing.

 

There was a substantial minority of Italians living in Fiume,the Italian government wanted to annex the region,but bowed to the opposition of the other Allies (especially the US),and D'Annunzio decided to do it on his own ,,while Rome condemned him,later it annexed the region .

Thus the condemnation by Italy sounds very false .

 

NO : totally wrong : there was a mass revolt by the Catholic minority which no longer accepted the discrimination by the protestant majority and its second-rate situation . When the peaceful catholic demonstrations were crushed by the infamous B-Specials, the catholics were looking for help,and who appeared ? the IRA ,who at that time was almost moribund . The protestant reaction has maked the IRA great again .

Who created the bandwagon ? The B Specials .

 

Northern Ireland was a state with a substantial catholic minority,but which was founded on the exclusion and the subordination of this minority .But history proves that this is not viable .

The Ukraine ?

In 1989,the Ukrainian nationalists had the choice between the existing great multicultural Ukraine or a small homogeneous Ukraine ;they chose for a great homogeneous Ukraine ,which was a capital error .They did sow wind, they reaped storm .

History teached them what was the result in Northern Ireland,but they ignored this lesson .

 

With the collapse if the Soviet Union there was a power void, and new nation states emerged along what were administrative internal borders, that the result turned out not be viable in the face of resurgent Russian power should not be a surprise, but renouncing it's "natural" borders is something no nation state will do unless forced to.

Sud Tirol is another case of a region geographically part of a country but ethnically part of another, as such it resembles the Sudeten and the Russian populated areas in Ukraine, though in the later case the shift in population was pretty recent.
It took the Italian government over 20 years of efforts to get rid of violent resistance there, though it was relatively bloodless.
Multicultural states can work, even Yugoslavia survived for a while, Belgium is still there and Switzerland thrives, but they are more fragile compared to single culture states.

In Northern Ireland the issue is religion rather than ethnicity and that presents specific challenges. I know little about Ireland but in most revolution/revolts the fighters are a minority, look at the size of the Red/White armies compared to the millions that fought in the same areas 20 years later, the "people" as a whole almost never revolts, but the fighters in a successful revolution are the tip of an iceberg of "sympathetic" non combattants.

 

You are joking about this right?

Or is your historical knowledge really that poor?

As per the Treaty of Rome in 1924, the Italians annexed Fiume, while the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes annexed Sušak, with the port facilities being under joint administration.

Thus your condemnation of Italy sounds very false.


What is Russia offering the Ukraine in return for annexing Crimea...Nothing.

As such you should be rightly condemning Russia for not giving the Ukraine any quid pro quo.

 

The fact remains that the Italian position was much weaker than the Russian one : there was no Italian majority in Fiume,while Crimea has an Russian majority and did belong to the Ukraine
only for 35 years ./ 60 years,which does not mean that from the POV of self determination,the Ukraine had any rights on the Crimea

Italy had no right on Fiume,as it has no right on South Tirol,thus it should better keep silent and not condemn Russia .

 

Hmmm...Let's see...

28,911 Italians, 9,092 Croats, 4,413 Hungarians, 1,674 Slovenes, 1,616 Germans, 379 mixed nationalities, and 161 Serbs.

62% of the population of Fiume is Italian...But this does not constitute a majority?

Yet, 58% ethnic Russian population of the Crimea does constitute a majority?

 

1)If your figures are right,why did Italy recognize in 1920 the existence of the Free State of Fiume ?

2)Source for your figures?

3) From what I have read there were no figures about the nationalities living in Fiume,but only figures about the languages spoken in Fiume :if 28,911 people were speaking Italian,that does not mean that they were Italians .

 

Playing stupid again, I see. Why do you speak about things you know nothing about? Since when did we do any ethnic cleansing on Swedish speaking people? Why do they still consider us second class people, is that correct? Can you answer that? maybe they would like to slaughter us so they could have the Aryan type of farms Hitler and Himmler was dreaming of in Russia 1941?

 

Fiume had a large Italian component since it's founding, as had most of the towns on the Dalmatia coast. ...... only problem is there was no Italy then just Venice, that practically never controlled that particular town that was politically part of Hungary, But then there wasn't any Yugoslavia either. The Italian claim was far from groundless, language is a pretty good indicator of ethnicity, there could be no Italians and no Yugoslavians nationals as before then it was part of the Austro Hungarian empire.

 

The figures are correct.

Italy argued long and hard to be awarded Fiume in the Treaty of Versailles, as did Yugoslavia. In the end, when the Treaty was signed on June 28th, 1919, it made no decision as to the fate of the city. D'Annunzio marches on and occupies Fiume during the month of September, 1919. With no decision made on Fiume in the Treaty of Versailles, Hungary technically still retain control of the city and territory. It would not be until the Treaty of Trianon was signed on June 4, 1920, that Hungary was forced to renounce all claims to the city. Still, the final outcome of Fiume was not decided on, but the matter would eventually be settled in the Treaty of Rapallo, signed on November 12, 1920.

A timeline of events concerning Fiume can be found here:
http://www.schudak.de/timelines/fiume1918-1947.html

Treaty of Peace with Germany: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Sixty-sixth Congress, First Session on the Treaty of Peace with Germany, Signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919, and Submitted to the Senate on July 10, 1919.

"Shirt Sleeve Diplomacy Falls: The Fiume Question is still far from being settled, and President Wilson throws up his hands." by C. L. Llewellyn. Western Magazine, Volume 13, Number 6, June 1, 1919.

"The Question of Fiume" by Dr. Attilio Tamaro, The Spectator - May 31, 1919.

Read more.

Even the 1910 census of Fiume, which was by nationality, shows that the Italian population constituted the largest percentage of the population, however, the Italian population did not constitute a 51% majority of Fiume's population.

 

An other source( The Peace Conference and the Adriatic Question,Edinburgh Review 1920,P 214) gives the following figures :

Population of Fiume :15687 Yugoslavians and 24212 Italians .

Population of Fiume AND Susak:26602 Yugoslavians and 25781 Italians .

The POV of the US was that Fiume and Susak formed ONE entity and that as such Italy nor Yugoslavia had the right to annex Fiume .That's why the US proposed to make Fiume an independant city state ,something as Danzig .

 

Legally, all inhabitants of Fiume before WWI had the Hungarian nationality .

 

One objection : it is questionable to say that language is indicating ethnicity: Kafka was writing in German,but that does not make him a German .

Italian was the Lingua Franca in Fiume,but not all people who used Italian for business matters did consider themselves as Italians .

 

Bullshit. It was the CATHOLIC citizens who appealed to PM Wilson to send the troops in!
"The complete break down of civil order in Northern Ireland during the summer of 1969 caused the British government to commit the British Army to keeping the rioting factions apart. The arrival of British troops was welcomed by the Catholics in Northern Ireland who saw the soldiers as peacekeepers - troops who would protect them from Protestant mobs. Unfortunately, the targeting of the army by the IRA, and measures taken to try to stop provisional IRA attacks, led to the alienation of the Catholics from the soldiers who were trying to protect them by the late spring 1970. "
http://www.history.co.uk/shows/soldiers-stories/articles/northern-ireland-conflict

"A broad swathe of Catholic opinion, from the Catholic church and the Nationalist party through to the Independent Organisation accepted the presence of the army. They saw it as necessary, as much for the restoration of law and order and some form of 'policing', as for the 'defence' of Catholic areas in Derry. Initially there was a great deal of goodwill towards the army and there was what one Republican later described as a ‘pathetic love relationship’ between the army and people in the Bogside. Apprehension in the Catholic community was centred, not around how the army's role would develop but on ‘what will happen when they are withdrawn’. Even a Labour radical such as Eamonn McCann could argue at one point, that the Free Derry barricades should remain because otherwise the troops might leave and they would be left again at the mercy of Stormont."
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/troops/chap4.htm

"This situation was exacerbated in the 1960s: Northern Ireland, which had been relatively prosperous in the immediate years after the war, now suffered the same economic fate as the mainland, which was in economic decline. Brookeborough fell from power; his inability to deal with the situation causing the members of his own party to turn against him. Former army officer Terence O’Neill was appointed in his place. O’Neill introduced a series of measures to address Northern Ireland’s social, economic and political malaise. Amongst his many radical moves, he met with the Republic of Ireland’s Prime Minister Sean Lamass, which was the first meeting between the two factions in forty years. "
http://www.history.co.uk/shows/soldiers-stories/articles/northern-ireland-conflict