I have always been supportive of governments “of the people, for the people and by the people” but I did not leap to support the protests in Egypt and Libya. I have been cautious in my support for those movements because I was concerned about the motives of the people leading them, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. Unfortunately, I’ve been proven right in my caution to support their causes as the MB has taken to seizing power in countries across the Middle East. The “revolutions” taking place as part of the “Arab Spring” have been largely manufactured by the MB and its affiliates as a way for even more radical leaders to emerge in the Middle East. I do believe that there are people in the Middle East who simply want the right to self govern and self identify and are not radicals and I support those individuals. I hope that more of them emerge.
However, the Middle East is not the only hotbed of regime change in the world. The Blaze has been running a story about the Ukranian Revolution. Across the former Soviet Republics, people are searching for an opportunity to break away from Russia’s grip. The Ukraine is currently the most active of the former Soviet holdings as hundreds of thousands of protesters have descended on the capital city of Kiev over the last few weeks. The protesters are angered because the Ukranian President has backed away from an agreement with the EU to begin to westernize and move closer to becoming a member of the EU. The move comes no doubt, under pressure from the Russian leadership who has maintained a quite control over the so-called “freely elected” leaders in the fractured borderlands of its once massive territory.
As the numbers of protesters have grown so large that they are grinding the capital to a halt, riot police have grown more and more violent in an attempt to quell the demonstrations. The Ukraine is in a difficult situation as the worldwide fiscal crisis has hit them hard. Ukranian leaders have turned to Russia for a bailout loan after finding no one at the IMF willing to help them. The 46 million Ukranian citizens are generally split based on geography with the eastern part of the country largely sympathetic to Russia and the western part seeking to draw the country to toward the EU. Among polling lines, affiliation with the EU is more popular than with Russia. World Boxing Champion Vitali Klitschko is an opposition leader calling for restraint from officials and police and urging them to accept the right of the Ukranian people to self identify. Protesters in Kiev and Kotovsk have even vandalized statues of former Communist revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. Given the pro-liberty bent of the protesters and their mostly peaceful opposition to remaining tied to Russia, I believe that it is right and good to support the Ukranian people.
The Q-Tip Blog 