Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Canada was the first country to recognize the Ukraine when it declared its independance. As I write this I am still in Toronto, living in the heart of a Ukranian community, so I thought I ought to write a little about what's going on. This rainy morning I decided to go for walk to see what people in the neighborhood had to say about the recent elections back home.

I live next door to the Ukranian Canadian Art Foundation, to put my location into context.

These signs were taped to a van just up the street from me.

As is the norm when people ask for democracy, police were everywhere.

Utterly convinced that Yushchencko won the election, contrary to the “official” numbers.

Part of the issue is that the Ukraine is a “new democracy”, having gained its independence only a decade and a half ago, and only recently ditching communism. Because of this, idealism is running high since they've been told that democracy means power to the people and many thought that this election could give them “the perfect leader”. There's a good MeFi discussion with loads of links here, but to put it in simple terms, the Ukrainian election was only slightly less fraudulent than the US election, but because idealism is still high in the Ukraine, people are freaking out over fraud.

As you may know, the Ohio recount back in the US just got nixxed, and the University of Berkeley's study has gotten almost no press — you know, the one showing that Bush was fraudulently awarded as many as a quarter million extra votes in Florida alone, half of those being what are called “ghost votes” where the e-voting system simply gives Bush extra votes for people who don't even exist. Given that objections to the fraud of 2000 got nowhere, it's no surprise that Americans have apathetically accepted this coup… I'm not sure there are many people left with the backbone for liberty.