You haven't proven anything aside you have reading comprehension problems, hence my pic above ;) i didn't had any concept, I had three points to critisize your concept that IRI survey disproves Crimean referendum. Out of those three you're trying to get rid of just one -- precedent of TMR survey and referendum shows that survey and referendum won't always match -- and that point you can't disprove, instead trying to nitpick semantics here.

TMR referendum and survey could be very well both valid. Why? I could just repeat what I've said already -- options differ. Given the situation of TMR and Crimea the people who chose independence in the survey are equally the same people who voted joining Russia as well, this is merely the wording issue that survey splits into different groups, while referendum shows they are the same. What you're trying to do is disregard the question here in its entirety  and to proove that independence doesn't equal joining Russia so people had to vote for this options, which is outright false -- do not consider people in TMR stupid, they are very well aware of what they're voting for. Here it is once again:

"Do you support Transnistrian Moldavian Republic independence policy, followed by free joining of Transnistria to the Russian Federation?"

Have you had understanding of the situation in PMR you'd have known that the whole independence, which it de-facto has already, only means independence from Moldavia at the very least with subsequent (that's the word used in the poll -- "последующее") joining to Russia at best, whatever the actual legal status TMR will have in the federation. That's pretty much the situation with Crimea, had they wanted to be independent just for the sake of it -- they'd have voted for option #2, which is part of the Ukraine BUT realisitcally with wider autonomy that Ukraine ilegally denounced in 1995, so practially indedepdent.

Kasz216 said:

I'm not sure what you mean.  I've disproven all 3.  I think your the one that has the current reading comprehension problem.

There was no middle option to make "defacto" independence real independence.

Why else do you think they had a dual refferendum, instead of it just being 3 options for 1 question?  They did the same thing in Puerto Rico.  Or do you think Puerto Ricans are dumb?

Split refferendum votes like this are done soley for biasing results so that people will vote yes for one of the two options.  It's done to get rid of the default option that is likely most preferable.

So according to the TMR poll there was at maxium 6-8% people who would vote No...  where like 2-3% did vote no.

That's well within the margin of error.

1) Tell that to all the political polling.

 Assuming there is no oil.  There is no indepentent scotland.  They can't afford it.  

That said all the data i see suggest 30-40 years production at current levels with current drilling methods.

As for why Scotland can't be like the rich scandanvian countries....

Well for one.  Scotland isn't rich.  If it was that easy to just create a rich nation out of nowhere... every nation would be rich.

 Secondly, the scandanvian countries aren't actually doing all that swell... cutting back on their social programs and looking towards liberalizing their economies. Doing well when compared to the Meditterean. 

..outside norway anyway. 

Why is norway doing so well... you mentioend it... Oil.

Additionally, the british parliment would have to vote to allow scotland to leave.  Regardless of an independence vote.

I suppose that would make sense, every referendum ends like that normally. Especially if it's not what the government wants. It probably won't go independent with a 50-50 vote. 

2)  If they invaded directly, you'd of likely seen a war or at the very least, very real sanctions.

3)  I'm pretty sure one can draw a pretty stark line at ethnic cleansing.  It's one that's been consistantly been drawn actually and has been a line acknowledged by EVERYONE since the end of World War 2.

In theory it's easy to have a consenus on action but in reality it really ain't. Alot of countries only bother to intervene if it's of strategic importance rather than some random country. Otherwise, the Congo and Zimbabwe would of intervened on by now. Although, I doubt we can make it better. 

As for tyranny of the majority.  I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in the US we specifically have safeguards to protect minorties, as democracies very much should have.

I think it's similar here. Discrimination is illegal anyway

Also keep in mind it's not like war is the only answer.  Hell war isn't even what Obama's talking about.  All he's talking about is some sanctions...

and some STRONG sanctions would eaisly cause a reverse course, as Russia's economy is extremely weak right now.

Economically penalizing countries for flagrantly violating minority rights seems like a no-brainer.

When have sanctions ever worked? If they did North Korea wouldn't have nuclear weapons now. All sanctions do is hurt ordinary people, never the elite. 

Hell, look what happened in the buisness world just recently with Firefox.

1) The Meditterianian countries more or less have had the exact same problems the Scandanavian countries have.   Too much government spending they can't pay for. That's most of the 1st worlds problem actually. 

and quite honestly, unless it's really a case of genocide or something, independence referrendums should require 2 votes.   Just by the cedeing area.  What would the 2nd vote be?

After all, Crimea left, and them immediatly was folded into Russia... however.

What about their percetnage of the Ukraine's national debt?  Does it make sense that Crimea can just skip town debt free? 

Does it make sense that they just get everything in crimea specifically at that time government wise, just because it's currently there?   Anything the Ukranian government has stored there suddenly becomes Crimea's even when it might be for use elsewere and just stored there for convience?  What about surrounding natural resources, what about exact borders? 

These are things that are rarely talked about at first and certaintly gonna have some dispute. The only certain thing is the border, Crimea was a region before so it had a defined border. That is unlikely to change when the annexation occurred even though no one seems to recognise it yet 

3) Discrimination is illegal.... unless you vote to cede and then get rid of all of those protections.

As for when economic sanctions have worked.  They've worked fairly often under the right cricumstances

Basically to work they require one of two things

1)  You have to have big alliance that prevents needed resources

This scenario is a good excuse to develop renewable energy properly. Western Europe lacks conventional forms of energy to meet it's full needs, while Russia has tons (probably 100's of years worth of gas). Russia uses it's energy especially what Gazprom does as a political weapon to get its will in Europe. This potentially makes Russia very powerful, but by Europe being self-sufficient in renweable energy, it can successfully make Russia back off. Shame it's only Germany that's really trying with renewable energy. 

2) If they care about and rely on their people.   Putin actually does.

It didnt' work on North Korea, because Kim Jong Il didn't give a shit about his people.

As for examples, well the most noticeable example is Japan via WW2.   It was the US economic sanctions that forced them to attack the US.

The anti Apartheid sanctions against South Afirca were quite affective. Except we happily supported their regime for about 40 years before changing our mind! Leaders like Thatcher and Reagan actually supported them in the early 80's. 

They have such a shitty record because they're often just small unilateral sanctions that mean nothing.  Like Obama freezing the assets of 8 russian officials.

That said, sanctions skeptics own numbers have sanctions working at least 15% of the time.

Good mulilateral full measure sanctions can work pretty well.

It's just to often half and quarter measure unilateral sanctions are imposed by congress, the president, or other political leaders just to be an official record of disaporval.

My problem with sanctions is that they aren't followed by the rules. If a country is on our side (say Israel) but does some questionable and undesirable things (by perspective) they get away with it, but if by the wests standards we choose not to like them for some reason (sometimes for no real reason at all) we sanction them (Iran). The use of sanctions I though was to use them to uphold championed stuff like human rights and international law, I though this should be universal but for some reason it is not. We pick and choose who the rogue states at some point and ignore the rest. No wonder they rarely work. The other I have when we use sanctions is that we assume to be in the right. The question is what if we aren't? If they must be used, then they have to be effective. Not something petty like banning travel of government officials for example

1) The second vote is obviously the terms of cedeing.  Any area cedeing should obviously have to discuss with the government they're leaving what burden's and assets they get to take with them.

Additionally it helps to make sure that it isn't a simple "flight of fancy" situation where peoples opinons are swayed short term because of one thing. Idealy you'd have a 5 year period between votes.

3) It doesn't have to be JUST renewable energies, nor was that what I was talking about... but whatever

Your problem seems to boil down to "Since we're hypocritical we should just never do good stuff."

Fair enough but the issue is what if we consider to be good isn't help for those we are meant to 'help'? We 'helped' Afghanistan but it hasn't made things much better since we don't understand their problems properly.  

Selective justice is better then no justice in my mind. Yeah but it is hypocritical, I guess our leaders can live with that though 

Also,  I wouldn't say the west doesn't like Iran for "no reason at all".

There are numerous,  numerous reasons to not be a fan of Iran.

Fair enough, but who are we to say they can't have nuclear weapons if they wanted? Especially when we have them. That's what the issue is ultimately about with Iran, most likely

Common sense.

Nucleaer waepons are so strong and dangerous that they should be limited only to large countries who are stable and have the means to protect them.  Well nations like that shouldn't even have them either but you can't really take nuclear weapons from someone once they get them... because they have nuclear weapons.

A country like Iran, that's small, specific terrorist affiliations and always on the bring of a popular revolution of younger people is just a disaster waiting to happen.

Imagine for example if Syria had nuclear weapons.  Syria could totally lose those weapons to the rebels.  Who include extreme terrorist groups.

The type that totally wouldn't blink an eye of detonating one in the center of London or Germany.

Every nation like Iran and Pakistan are dangerous time bombs waiting to go off... that by the way, would totally cause way more intervention for reasons that are less solid.

For example...  Syria.  If they had nucelear weapons.  NATO would be in syria right now securiing them.  Possibily even fighting on the side of the government.

When the Iranian lineral democratic movement happens, if they have weapons, you may find the UK in Iran supressing democracy.  For fear of not being able to account for their nukes.