Firstly, I'm not American and have never set foot in the US.

I understand that it is a painful topic for someone whos forefathers were affected. My own heritage is littered with the most obscenely inhuman acts carried out against my forefathers - believe it or not - by the British. But those were days of expansion and war. Every single nation (group them geographically, culturally or racially if you will) was both responsible for, and carried out, heinous crimes against other humans. Everyone is guilty. But that doesn't mean everyone is equally guilty. And that said, history should not incite bitterness: Afterall, you are not a slave and no-one alive today has carried out any of this.

A progressive human being should be willing to look at facts. What I find mind boggling is this:

"there is little to no friction between us and the Portuguese people"

The Portuguese people were the first to practice slave trade among the European countries. They were also the last country to abolish slave trade.

"You really think that African people were business partners and some of them were remunerated for capturing their neighbours?"

Absolutely. The Ashanti empire being a clear example. There are many more. African people also owned African slaves - notably in the US.

No one is saying the Europeans - specifically the British - were a saintly people who did no wrongs. But you must surely be aware of the immense effort on the part of the British to abolish slavery? One could even argue that their actions have directly resulted in the acceptance of slavery as a inhumane practice.

I understand you live in the US and therefore are more directly aware of the slave trade of Europeans, but no man in his right mind can come to any other conclusion than Arabs being the worst offenders. It is clear as plain daylight.

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/slavery/a/IslamRoleSlavery01.htm

Here is a very well written piece imo.

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/slavetra.html

Cerainly, I'm not an expert in international politics, either. And I will gladly admit that my information may not be precise.

I have nothing to say to your first point - I like freedom and democracy because I was born into a place that is free and democratic - completely subjective - the only objective argument I can say in defence of these ideals is: we seem to have turned out better. As in more stability, less crime, more general happiness, faster scientific progress... Maybe there's something to it. I'm sure the people in the Middle East may value different things, but still...

However I have a big problem with the second one - You see I don't consider the Resolution 181 to have anything to do with anything. The UN, controlled by the influence of the major players in the world (i. e. not Arab nations) said they could take the land, but... What does that have to do with moral right? It's just a legal right. Just because it legal, it's not automatically right. As far as I'm concerned, the world's major powers basically said "You see that land over there? Yeah, when you take it from the people who live there now, we'll just look the other way."

That's not really opinion, just two contradicting and oversimplified points of view.

Since these events are still fresh I could share substantally more on this. Chronology of events:

- Yanukovich has started entire campaign of signign that damn EU assosiation agreement with one thought in mind -- as a plea for money -- Brussels or Moscow, that doesn't matter. 
- Things turned out luckly for him as Putin has approved a 15 bln USD investement, buying first bunch of Ukraine's trashy bonds for 3 bln on ISE with 5% interest rate.
- Happy with such an outcome that he could have live until his re-election on 2015, Yanukovich commands end to the entire Euromaidan (infamous anti-protest laws of january 16th).
- Unluckly for him the entire clique of opposition leaders, oligarchs who subsidized Euromaidan (including future president Poroshenko) and US representatives, official or not, within the country thought differently. The result is coup on February 20th with orchestered murder of dozens of Maidan protesters. EU took a backseat and supported the whole thing.
- Fast forward skipping Crimea events that are more or less well-documented.
- Kiev didn't have a brighter thought at the time but to bring out the cancelling of so called "language law" to public attention on March 1st (it basically states the right of use of Russian language officially). "Trains of friendship" filled with para-military Maidan self-defence activists are moving towards major cities of the East. Few people, few Lenin statues has suffered because of this, massive pro- and anti-Maidan clashes, few deaths claimed. Kiev has started to move army as early as begining of March closer to troubled cities and Crimea border.
-  Strelkov comes to Slavyansk in the end of April. Talks about federalization, plans for referendum on early May.
- Massacre on May 2nd in Odessa, yet another organized mass murder. Finally referendum on May 12th. First clashes that marks the beginnig of a civil war.
- Technical phase has been over, useful idiots from Maidan have been cleaned out from the square in a few months -- entire Maidan self-defence is moving out to "anti-terrorisitc operation" on the East.

I'm repeating this because doesn't seem like people over here have very good grasp of the events, so it worth checking if we're aligned here.

From position of Moscow the US has interfered breaking all imaginable rules into a country, for stability of which Kremlin (quite literally) was willing to pay for and has actually paid for years (Russia is main Ukraine's credtior on which its well-being depends on). The US offered a "fork" situation for Kremlin when one scenario is worse then the other, Kremlin naturally has opted for lesser evil and choosed to support militants on the East, but probably not the way the US was willing (proxy war instead of actual military intervention). At the time it is hard to say if it'll be another Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the two (meaning -- partitioning of Ukraine de-facto), in which Russia will have drastically weaker hand, or Putin will be able to turn the situation upside-down, but that would require "closing" entire project of Ukraine and replacing with smth else and rebooting the whole damn thing (annexing is not economically feasiable and reasonable).