Libya, Syria And Now Ukraine - Color Revolution By Force

[conniption]

RT

Football ultras clash with anti-govt protesters in eastern Ukraine, at least 14 injured (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Published time: April 27, 2014



Peaceful rallies in eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov turned violent as a crowd of several thousand football ultras attacked a crowd of some 300 pro-Russian protesters. At least 14 people were injured, including two law enforcement.

Thousands of fans of two Ukrainian football clubs Dnipro and Metalist have gathered in Kharkov’s Constitution Square where they joined some 250 pro-Kiev activists holding a rally.


RIA Novosti / Anton Kruglov

Up to 5,000 ultras, according to local media estimates, intended to march in support of the country’s unity from the Square to Metalist stadium, which is some 3 kilometers away and where the game between the two clubs started, as scheduled, at 19:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

The march started with Ukrainian anthem and drum-rolls. Football ultras, some equipped with burning torches and petards, were chanting “Glory to Ukraine. Glory to heroes!” and “Ukraine’s above all!”

Харьков Мусора - продажные шлюхи! После погромов Ультрас шествуют на футбол! Файеры летят в милицию!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TJFMpFFFjs

continued...

[seemslikeadream]

[justdrew]

seems like a nation of ignoramuses Russia will be mostly better off without, after they've taken back what is theirs. good luck Vlad.

[conniption]

MoA
(embedded links)

April 30, 2014

Ukraine: Coup-Government Acknowledges Defeat

Pushed by CIA Director Brennan and Vice President Biden the Ukrainian government twice tried to use its military against federalists in the east. The second time, when it pushed to blockade the city of Slovyansk, the Russian Federation announced a snap maneuvers of its border troops and threatened to intervene. Kiev called back its forces and the federalists occupied state buildings in more cities in east. Some 23 cities and towns in the Donbass region, which delivers a third of Ukraine's GDP, are now in their hands. More will be by tomorrow.

The coup government in Kiev has, for now, given up:

Ukraine’s president warned Wednesday that its police and security forces are “helpless” to subdue unrest in the country’s east, even as pro-Russia militants seized government buildings in another city in the restive region.

“I will be frank: Today, security forces are unable to quickly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under control,” said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov ...

"Western" media call the protesters in the east "separatists" or "pro-Russian". Those concepts are wrong. Unlike in Crimea there is no majority in the east that wants to join the Russian Federation. These people want autonomous states within the Ukraine with locally elected governments and some control over their foreign relations. They want a federal Ukraine with a weak central government that does not interfere in their affairs.

As things proceed now they may well get what they, and Russia, want. With no authority over the east and no reliable security forces the Kiev government can do nothing to prevent that. The U.S. public is against further U.S. intervention in Ukraine and six month before midterm elections public opinion will for once be noticed. There is also no support in Europe for any escalation like further sanctions on Russia. The "west" and its stooges in Kiev have run out of valid instruments to achieve their goals.

The neocon plan to capture the Black Sea harbor Sevastopol for NATO was defeated when Russia snapped Crimea away. The NATO plan to include Ukraine into its containment ring around Russia has failed. The European Union plan to devour what is left of Ukraine's natural richness is in tatters.

Ukraine will become, as an elder statesman (and war-criminal) adviced two month ago, a finlandized federal nation between the east and the west.

But there are still possible spoilers. The neocons and humanitarian interventionists will fume about their loss and they may still plan some mischief. They could, using their connections with the Ukrainian fascists, try to start a civil war in Ukraine. If only to keep Russia busy and to distracted it from other issues.

Posted by b on April 30, 2014 at 11:52 AM
_______

selected comments

I do not believe the US will give up easily. It cannot afford to. Like an organized crime syndicate, it cannot allow anyone to defy it. If it does, one will become two, two will become a trickle, then a trickle will become a flood.

My big concern is that the US will organize death squads among the fascists in western Ukraine and sic them on the east. I believe that is current US thinking on counter insurgency tactics. It worked to great "success" in El Salvador, and then in Iraq. I'm not sure it can work in Ukraine, but that doesn't mean they won't try it. US foreign policy machinery loves death squads.

Posted by: shargash | Apr 30, 2014 1:03:44 PM | 6

#6 - the one thing going for Ukraine in resisting the push for civil war mounted by the West's neo-liberal plutocracy is that Ukrainians do not seem to have the mind or the stomach for throwing their lives away senselessly. Even the facist of the west do not appear all that keen going on suicide missions. Unlike Iraq and Syria, there are no al-qaeda like, nihilism minded radical youth corps, ready to throw themselves under the gun willy-nilly. Hooligans - yes, corruption - of course - of these there is plenty. But organized death squads? may be not so easy to put together. And suicide bombers? well, they are not Chechen, that's for sure.

Here's my theory: as bad as things were and are for Ukraine economically and socially, the population - while divided - has never descended into the kind of hopelessness that is so essential for producing deep radicalization. Ukrainian society is rather well educated and not insensible. The country, such as it is, has not been colonized so often that the people lost faith in personal prosperity or identity. They have strong and beautiful women and men who are resourceful and not insensibly patriarchal (no sexism intended). Neither is the hold of religion so deep that average folks can be beaten into the kind of fatalism on which violent authocracies thrive. It is a state that's fallen on hard times, but the people are not hopeless. they continue to aspire, even if there are huge obstacles. There is no equivalent of "it's Allah's or God's will". The drug cartels did not take over [yet] and while there is appetite for improvement, there is little for mayhem.

So the crazy neoconized portion of the west finds itself a bit short on semi-crazed, suicidally minded foot soldiers to do its bidding. If there were enough of those we would have already seen many more bodies everywhere. All in all, and at least so far, the body count has been remarkably low, given the tensions, the passions, the external trouble formenting and the availability of weaponry.

Let us hope this stays the case, and Ukrainians - as a whole - on whichever side they are, will have the will and stamina to resist the nefarious plans for turning their young into cannon fodder and their country into a failed state with its resources sold away to the ever-greedy robber barons of the west and east.

Posted by: Merlin2 | Apr 30, 2014 2:30:57 PM | 16

I was about to go berserk at poor old Catcheroftheflies, but then remembered I had better things to do. Like, anything really.

Posted by: Grim Deadman | Apr 30, 2014 2:33:30 PM | 17

RT editor-in chief Margarita Simonyan today makes a lot of the same points about nomenclature, here:
http://rt.com/op-edge/155960-presenting ... -exposure/

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 30, 2014 3:14:08 PM | 19

[conniption]

RT editor-in chief Margarita Simonyan today makes a lot of the same points about nomenclature, here:
http://rt.com/op-edge/155960-presenting ... -exposure/

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 30, 2014 3:14:08 PM | 19

~

^^^ from the link above:

RT
(embedded links)

Who's really 'presenting lies as facts'? How State Dept. exposes itself to propaganda

Margarita Simonyan is RT's Editor-in-Chief.
Published time: April 30, 2014


Richard Stengel, the US Under Secretary of State (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for TIME/AFP)

Mr. Richard Stengel, the US Under Secretary of State who wrote such an impassioned “takedown” of RT in the US State Department blog, did get one thing right.

Propaganda IS the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misguided.

And boy, does Mr. Stengel make a valiant attempt at propagandizing, because anyone would be hard-pressed to cram more falsehoods into a hundred words:

“From assertions that peaceful protesters hired snipers to repeated allegations that Kiev is beset by violence, fascism and anti-Semitism, these are lies falsely presented as news. (...) Consider the way RT manipulated a leaked telephone call involving former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Through selective editing, the network made it appear that Tymoshenko advocated violence against Russia. Or the constant reference to any Ukrainian opposed to a Russian takeover of the country as a "terrorist." Or the unquestioning repetition of the ludicrous assertion last week that the United States has invested $5 billion in regime change in Ukraine. These are not facts, and they are not opinions. They are false claims, and when propaganda poses as news it creates real dangers and gives a green light to violence.”

How many FACTS does Mr. Stengel attempt to deny? Let us count:

- Yulia Tymoshenko herself has confirmed the authenticity of the conversation that included the following statements: “This is really beyond all boundaries. It's about time we grab our guns and kill those damned Russians together with their leader.” And “I would have found a way to kill those a***es. I hope I will be able to get all my connections involved. And I will use all of my means to make the entire world rise up, so that there wouldn't be even a scorched field left in Russia.” While there was indeed some controversy about a small portion of the recording being altered, Ms. Tymoshenko herself pointed to the source of the tape, not RT, as the guilty party, and the statements quoted above were not in question. Bottom line: if it appears that Ms. Tymoshenko is advocating violence against Russia and Russians – it’s because she blatantly is.

- Forgetting for a second the absolutely ludicrous supposition, even in theory, of a Russian “takeover” of Ukraine, RT refers those supportive of the current authorities in Kiev as “anti-autonomy,” “pro-unity protesters” and “pro-Kiev activists.” But you know who is keen on throwing around the “terrorist” moniker? Why, that would be the newly-minted, US-supported Ukrainian government, applying the term to its own people (source: BBC News), as it sends tanks against the anti-government protesters – something that even President Yanukovich, for all his faults, refused to do.

- Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was the one to publicize the $5 billion “investment” in Ukraine’s “European future,” framing it in terms of the United States’ support of Ukraine achieving preconditions for “its European aspirations.” Interestingly enough, that “European future” and those “European aspirations” by definition blatantly ignored and/or rejected the aspirations of the 37 percent of Ukrainians who desired closer relationship with Russia via a trade union, as opposed to the 39 percent in favor of joining the EU (source: Kiev International Institute of Sociology). How much of that $5 billion went to support the institutions that aided their interests and how much support did Ms. Nuland et al. lend to the democratically-elected president who represented them? Right. Not that anyone is particularly surprised. Wouldn't be the first time that the US benignly “invested” in “democracy” (sources: Washington Post).


An anti-government protester throws a Molotov cocktail towards Interior Ministry members during clashes in Kiev, February 18, 2014. (Reuters/Maks Levin)

Now, how does throwing Molotov cocktails (source: Sky News), savagely beating officers, and refusing medical aid to the injured while taking over government buildings fit into your definition of “peaceful protesters”? There was indeed brutality on both sides of the barricades (which RT thoroughly documented and aired), but you have admit – police officers don’t die by the hand of peaceful demonstrators.

How is RT behind the “protesters hired snipers” assertions if those concerns were brought to light by the famous leaked (and confirmed authentic – source: CNN) Ashton-Paet call, by quoting a Maidan medic whose credibility they went to pains to establish? The statement that “there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition” came not from RT but the Estonian minister.

And why is the far-right, neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine being so flippantly dismissed despite being documented by dozens of Western mainstream media outlets (sources: BBC Newsnight, The Nation, Channel 4 UK)?

The reason you’re seeing citations of sources right here, in the text, is so that it cannot be labeled as another “propaganda” piece full of RT’s own “false” reporting. Or does Mr. Stengel consider all media organizations that report inconvenient facts that challenge his reality to be propaganda outlets? It is very disappointing that a person of his position knows so very little of the reality of the situation in Ukraine, but it certainly explains a lot about the state of US foreign policy.

Facts are facts, Mr. Stengel. It’s too bad you can’t get your own straight.

[seemslikeadream]

Smoke and Mirrors: The Roots of Russian Revanchism

WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD
THURSDAY, 01 MAY 2014 16:20

Here is my latest column in CounterPunch Magazine.

The Shock Doctrine vultures are coming home to roost. The intensifying crisis in Ukraine is one of the many malign, long-reverberating consequences of the West's decision to bludgeon Russia when it was reeling from the crack-up of the Soviet Union. Instead of giving the country breathing space, helping it find its way from the shattered socialist past toward its own new forms of civic life and economic organization, the West rushed to impose a brutal "market fundamentalism": the now-familiar horror show of "austerity," privatization, ruinous debt, plunging life expectancy, and rising infant mortality -- the pitiless devouring of the common good by crony capitalism.

This dish was served up by willing Russian stooges -- dazed patsies like Boris Yeltsin and the wild-eyed market zealots, converts to "Chicago School" economics, who filled his first government and tried, in the space of a few months, to transform a land that had never known capitalism (except in a few slivers of the economy, for a few decades, a century before) into the wet dream of Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman. The country was turned over to gangsters and hucksters, and to murky operators in the bowels of the security apparat. These were adherents of a different "Chicago School" -- the school of Al Capone.

I lived in Moscow when the Shock Doctrine was reaching its full fury. Murder was rampant: high-flying businessmen were gunned down on the steps of the metro, reporters investigating corruption were blown up in their newspaper offices. Used car salesmen became nation-straddling oligarchs; nuclear engineers and factory managers became drivers and janitors for Western-owned businesses. Ordinary people in threadbare clothes lined the streets and train stations, hawking their few private possessions and family mementos for ever-more worthless rubles. Homeless children -- the besprizorniki -- roamed the city, in packs or alone, abandoned, dirty, feral, scared. Drunks killed by rotgut turned up in the snow beneath gleaming billboards for Revlon and Marlboro. Casinos proliferated, while local bakeries and health clinics disappeared.

Meanwhile, in the Kremlin, the jihad of the market extremists raged on. With the encouragement of Western governments and the assistance of Western privateers and consultants, the government "auctioned" off a trillion dollars’ worth of public assets to oligarchs and insiders -- for $5 billion. Much of this money -- up to $350 billion from 1992-2001 -- was stripped from the country in capital flight and parked safely and profitably in Western financial firms. It was the greatest fire sale in human history.

The death toll of the first 10 years of "demokratsia" in Russia is astounding: an in-depth study published in the British Medical Journal found that "an extra 2.5 million to 3 million Russian adults died in middle age in the period 1992-2001 than would have been expected based on 1991 mortality rates." Up to 3 million unnecessary deaths -- as many as were killed in the Vietnam War.

It's no wonder that while I was there, in the mid-1990s, the general public had already come to regard "demokratsia" as a dirty word, synonymous with the endemic corruption, ruin and violence that the Western-backed elites had visited upon the country. This cynicism was confirmed by the election of 1996 -- my last hurrah in Moscow -- when a half-dead Yeltsin, supported vigorously by the West, miraculously overcame a 2 percent popularity rating to win "re-election." The price of this pyrrhic victory was the final surrender of the state to the oligarchs and security apparatchiks who, along with their American campaign operatives, had engineered the outcome. Flush with victory, they proceeded to push the country into yet another major crash in 1998, when life expectancy rates plummeted to the lowest levels since the famine years of the 1930s.

This is the rotten foundation upon which the increasingly ugly regime of Vladimir Putin is built. A culture, a country, a people savaged over and over through a century of unprecedented upheaval and violence were once again subjected to a firestorm of chaos that killed 3 million innocent people and left millions more stripped of hope, of opportunity, of meaning. Now Putin, who emerged from the dark nexus of power blocs that saved Yeltsin, fills this moonscape with empty symbols that play upon the fears and resentments of a battered people: hysterical nationalism, cartoon history, blustering machismo, fake religiosity, and "traditional values" more aligned with American Tea Party tropes than anything that has actually existed in Russian culture. He rails against the West but he rules a mirror image of it: a violent, militarized crony-capitalist pigsty that degrades and deceives its own people while directing their anger and confusion toward outsiders. In many ways, it's the American Cold Warriors’ dream come true: we have finally turned the Russians into us.

The conflict in Ukraine has many causes -- not least the meddling of American apparatchiks and oligarchs to engineer the overthrow of the elected government and destabilize the region. But if Western governments find themselves puzzled by the motives and moves of the Russian regime that now vexes them, they need only look in the mirror, and it will all become clear.

Published on Friday, May 2, 2014 by Common Dreams
Dozens Reported Dead in Odessa as Ukraine Chaos Spreads
According to reporting, nearly forty people are dead after a trade union building was set fire in the port city

- Jon Queally, staff writer

People wait to be rescued from the trade union building in Odessa, after it was set alight during chaotic clashes. (Photograph: Reuters)
Thirty-eight people are reported dead in the Ukraine city of Odessa on Friday, spurring additional concern that the nation's turmoil is making its way west as increasing number of cities experience open revolt and succumb to violence.


A Ukrainian government supporter walks past a line of self-defense activists during a clash with pro-Russians in the Black Sea port of Odessa, Ukraine, Friday, May 2, 2014. A clash broke out late Friday between pro-Russians and government supporters in Odessa, on the Black Sea coast some 550 kilometers (330 miles) from the turmoil in the east. Odessa had remained largely untroubled by unrest since the February toppling of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, which ignited tensions in the east. (AP Photo/Sergei Poliakov)
According to the early reports, the deaths in Odessa were caused by a fire in a trade union building that broke out during a clash between pro-Russia demonstrators and supporters of the central government in Kiev.

The Guardian's Amos Howard was in Odessa, and sent this report from city:

Odessa's large Soviet-era trade union building was set alight as pro-Ukrainian activists mounted an assault as dusk fell. Police said at least 38 people choked to death on smoke or were killed when jumping out of windows after the trade union building was set on fire.

Bodies lay in pools of blood outside the main entrance as explosions from improvised grenades and Molotov cocktails filled the air. Black smoke from the building and a burning pro-Russian protest camp wreathed the nearby square.

"Bodies lay in pools of blood outside the main entrance as explosions from improvised grenades and Molotov cocktails filled the air. Black smoke from the building and a burning pro-Russian protest camp wreathed the nearby square."

Pro-Russian fighters mounted a last-ditch defence of the burning building, tossing masonry and Molotov cocktails from the roof on to the crowd below.

Medics at the scene said that the pro-Russian fighters were also shooting from the roof. At least five bodies with bullet wounds lay on the ground covered by Ukrainian flags as fire engines and ambulances arrived at the scene.

Some people fell from the burning building as they hung on to windowsills in an attempt to avoid the fire that had taken hold inside. Pro-Ukrainian protesters made desperate efforts to reach people with ropes and improvised scaffolding.

"At first we broke through the side, and then we came through the main entrance," said one pro-Ukrainian fighter, 20, who said he was a member of the extreme nationalist group Right Sector.

"They had guns and they were shooting … Some people jumped from the roof, they died obviously," he said.

Riot police arrived on the scene as hand-to-hand fighting was already underway inside, but did not enter the building and stood formed up in ranks outside.
If confirmed, the deathdoll would be far the highest number of casaulties experienced since the crisis in the east of Ukraine began.

The Associated Press reports:

Unlike eastern Ukraine, Odessa had remained largely untroubled since the February toppling of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia. But a clash erupted late Friday between pro-Russians and government supporters in the key port on the Black Sea coast, located 550 kilometers (330 miles) from the turmoil in the east.

Police said the deadly fire broke out in a trade union building Friday, but did not give details on how it started. Earlier police said at least three people had died in a clash between the two sides.
This amateur footage from the streets in Odessa was on posted on YouTube:

[seemslikeadream]

Washington Intends Russia’s Demise
by Paul Craig Roberts / May 2nd, 2014

Washington has no intention of allowing the crisis in Ukraine to be resolved. Having failed to seize the country and evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, Washington sees new opportunities in the crisis.

One is to restart the Cold War by forcing the Russian government to occupy the Russian-speaking areas of present day Ukraine where protesters are objecting to the stooge anti-Russian government installed in Kiev by the American coup. These areas of Ukraine are former constituent parts of Russia herself. They were attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders in the 20th century when both Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country, the USSR.

Essentially, the protesters have established independent governments in the cities. The police and military units sent to suppress the protesters, called “terrorists” in the American fashion, for the most part have until now defected to the protesters.

With Obama’s incompetent White House and State Department having botched Washington’s takeover of Ukraine, Washington has been at work shifting the blame to Russia. According to Washington and its presstitute media, the protests are orchestrated by the Russian government and have no sincere basis. If Russia sends in military units to protect the Russian citizens in the former Russian territories, the act will be used by Washington to confirm Washington’s propaganda of a Russian invasion (as in the case of Georgia), and Russia will be further demonized.

The Russian government is in a predicament. Moscow does not want financial responsibility for these territories but cannot stand aside and permit Russians to be put down by force. The Russian government has attempted to keep Ukraine intact, relying on the forthcoming elections in Ukraine to bring to office more realistic leaders than the stooges installed by Washington.

However, Washington does not want an election that might replace its stooges and return to cooperating with Russia to resolve the situation. There is a good chance that Washington will tell its stooges in Kiev to declare that the crisis brought to Ukraine by Russia prevents an election. Washington’s NATO puppet states would back up this claim.

It is almost certain that despite the Russian government’s hopes, the Russian government is faced with the continuation of both the crisis and the Washington puppet government in Ukraine.

On May 1 Washington’s former ambassador to Russia, now NATO’s “second-in-command” but the person who, being American, calls the shots, has declared Russia to no longer be a partner but an enemy. The American, Alexander Vershbow, told journalists that NATO has given up on “drawing Moscow closer” and soon will deploy a large number of combat forces in Eastern Europe. Vershbow called this aggressive policy deployment of “defensive assets to the region.”

In other words, here we have again the lie that the Russian government is going to forget all about its difficulties in Ukraine and launch attacks on Poland, the Baltic States, Romania, Moldova, and on the central Asian states of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The dissembler Vershbow wants to modernize the militaries of these American puppet states and “seize the opportunity to create the reality on the ground by accepting membership of aspirant countries into NATO.”

What Vershbow has told the Russian government is that you just keep on relying on Western good will and reasonableness while we set up sufficient military forces to prevent Russia from coming to the aid of its oppressed citizens in Ukraine. Our demonization of Russia is working. It has made you hesitant to act during the short period when you could preempt us and seize your former territories. By waiting you give us time to mass forces on your borders from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia. That will distract you and keep you from the Ukraine. The oppression we will inflict on your Russians in Ukraine will discredit you, and the NGOs we finance in the Russian Federation will appeal to nationalist sentiments and overthrow your government for failing to come to the aid of Russians and failing to protect Russia’s strategic interests.

Washington is licking its chops, seeing an opportunity to gain Russia as a puppet state.

Will Putin sit there with his hopes awaiting the West’s good will to work out a solution while Washington attempts to engineer his fall?

The time is approaching when Russia will either have to act to terminate the crisis or accept an ongoing crisis and distraction in its backyard. Kiev has launched military airstrikes on protesters in Slavyansk. On May 2 Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kiev’s resort to violence had destroyed the hope for the Geneva agreement on de-escalating the crisis. Yet, the Russian government spokesman again expressed the hope of the Russian government that European governments and Washington will put a stop to the military strikes and pressure the Kiev government to accommodate the protesters in a way that keeps Ukraine together and restores friendly relations with Russia.

This is a false hope. It assumes that the Wolfowitz doctrine is just words, but it is not. The Wolfowitz doctrine is the basis of US policy toward Russia (and China). The doctrine regards any power sufficiently strong to remain independent of Washington’s influence to be “hostile.” The doctrine states:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

The Wolfowitz doctrine justifies Washington’s dominance of all regions. It is consistent with the neoconservative ideology of the US as the “indispensable” and “exceptional” country entitled to world hegemony.

Russia and China are in the way of US world hegemony. Unless the Wolfowitz doctrine is abandoned, nuclear war is the likely outcome.

[Luther Blissett]

I'm going to hereby request that we refrain from showing the images of the scorched bodies of antifascists by Vitaly Ustimenko and the neo-nazi "Youth in Action" groups in the massacre at the Trade Unions House in Odessa today (now being seen in anarchist / antifa spaces online), please. Borotba were among the groups attacked by neo nazis from all over the Ukraine.

If you must bear witness and cannot find them, which is totally understandable, pm me.

[Nordic]

Saw them. They are extremely gruesome.

This was mass murder.

I noticed Fox "news" this morning calling the dead "insurgents"

[MacCruiskeen]

This was mass murder.

You'll never get a job at the BBC or the Guardian. To call it murder would imply that there were murderers. Therefore, one resorts to the passive voice. Or, if you prefer: the passive voice is resorted to.

Fire broke out. Violence erupted. Fatalities were reported.

Friday's clashes culminated in a major fire at a trade union building where most of the deaths occurred.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27268775

^^Like that.

[seemslikeadream]

'We are on our own,' Wayne LaPierre said on Saturday, then doubled down on his familiar prescription: 'the surest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!' Photograph: AJ Mast / AP

[seemslikeadream]

Will Ukraine Be NYT’s Waterloo?
May 3, 2014

Exclusive: As Ukrainian soldiers from the coup regime in Kiev tighten the noose around anti-coup rebels in eastern Ukraine, the New York Times continues its cheerleading for the coup regime and its contempt for the rebels, raising grave questions about the Times’ credibility, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

For Americans interested in foreign policy, the New York Times has become the last U.S. newspaper to continue devoting substantial resources to covering the world. But the Times increasingly betrays its responsibility to deliver anything approaching honest journalism on overseas crises especially when Official Washington has a strong stake in the outcome.

The Times’ failures in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War are, of course, well known, particularly the infamous “aluminum tube” story by Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller. And, the Times has shown similar bias on the Syrian conflict, such as last year’s debunked Times’ “vector analysis” tracing a sarin-laden rocket back to a Syrian military base when the rocket had less than one-third the necessary range.

But the Times’ prejudice over the Ukraine crisis has reached new levels of extreme as the “newspaper of record” routinely carries water for the neocons and other hawks who still dominate the U.S. State Department. Everything that the Times writes about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get anything approaching an accurate understanding of events.

Screen shot of the fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014. (From RT video)
Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014. (From RT video)
From the beginning of the crisis, the Times sided with the “pro-democracy” demonstrators in Kiev’s Maidan square as they sought to topple democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had rebuffed a set of Western demands that would have required Ukraine to swallow harsh austerity measures prescribed by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych opted for a more generous offer from Russia of a $15 billion loan with few strings attached.

Along with almost the entire U.S. mainstream media, the Times cheered on the violent overthrow of Yanukovych on Feb. 22 and downplayed the crucial role played by well-organized neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of the Maidan protests in the final violent days. Then, with Yanukovych out and a new coup regime in, led by U.S. hand-picked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the IMF austerity plan was promptly approved.

Since the early days of the coup, the Times has behaved as essentially a propaganda organ for the new regime in Kiev and for the State Department, pushing “themes” blaming Russia and President Vladimir Putin for the crisis. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine, Though the US ‘Looking Glass.’”]

In the Times’ haste to perform this function, there have been some notable journalistic embarrassments such as the Times’ front-page story touting photographs that supposedly showed Russian special forces in Russia and then the same soldiers in eastern Ukraine, allegedly proving that the popular resistance to the coup regime was simply clumsily disguised Russian aggression.

Any serious journalist would have recognized the holes in the story – since it wasn’t clear where the photos were taken or whether the blurry images were even the same people – but that didn’t bother the Times, which led with the scoop. However, only two days later, the scoop blew up when it turned out that a key photo – supposedly showing a group of soldiers in Russia who later appeared in eastern Ukraine – was actually taken in Ukraine, destroying the premise of the entire story.

Soldiering On

The Times, however, continued to soldier on with its bias, playing up stories that made Russia and the ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine look bad and playing down anything that might make the post-coup regime in Kiev look bad.

On Saturday, for instance, the dominant story from Ukraine was the killing of more than 30 ethnic Russian protesters by fire and smoke inhalation in Ukraine’s southern port city of Odessa. They had taken refuge in a building after a clash with a pro-Kiev mob which reportedly included right-wing thugs.

Even the neocon-dominated Washington Post led its Saturday editions with the story of “Dozens killed in Ukraine fighting” and described the fatal incident this way: “Friday evening, a pro-Ukrainian mob attacked a camp where the pro-Russian supporters had pitched tents, forcing them to flee to a nearby government building, a witness said. The mob then threw gasoline bombs into the building. Police said 31 people were killed when they choked on smoke or jumped out of windows.

“Asked who had thrown the Molotov cocktails, pro-Ukrainian activist Diana Berg said, ‘Our people – but now they are helping them [the survivors] escape the building.’”

By contrast, here is how the New York Times reported the event in its Saturday editions as part of a story by C.J. Chivers and Noah Sneider focused on the successes of the pro-coup armed forces in overrunning some eastern Ukrainian rebel positions.

“Violence also erupted Friday in the previously calmer port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, where dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists. The fighting itself left four dead and 12 wounded, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. Ukrainian and Russian news media showed images of buildings and debris burning, fire bombs being thrown and men armed with pistols.”

Note how the Times evades placing any responsibility on the pro-coup mob for trying to burn the “pro-Russian activists” out of a building, an act that resulted in the highest single-day death toll since the actual coup which left more than 80 people dead from Feb. 20-22. From reading the Times, you wouldn’t know who had died in the building and who had set the fire.

Normally, I would simply attribute this deficient story to some reporters and editors having a bad day and not bothering to assemble relevant facts. However, when put in the context of the Times’ unrelenting bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis – how the Times hypes every fact (and even non-facts) that reflect negatively on the anti-coup side – you have to think that the Times is spinning its readers, again.

For those who write for the Times – and the many more people who read it – the question must be whether the Times is so committed to its prejudices here that the newspaper will risk whatever credibility it has left. The coup regime from Kiev may succeed in slaughtering many ethnic Russians in the rebellious east — as the Times signals its approval — but will this bloody offensive become a Waterloo for whatever’s left of the newspaper’s journalistic integrity?

[MacCruiskeen]

1. I've just seen a cellphone video of people being beaten to death with sticks after they had fallen from the windows of the burning union building. The film was made by members of the mob themselves.

2. Here is another video (non-graphic) that shows how the mob first torched the tent city in front of the union building and then threw several molotov cocktails at the people trapped inside that building:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOBFfMk0rkw&feature

3. Having seen the graphic images of the dead bodies inside that building, I think it's clear that many if not all of them were either shot or beaten or otherwise tortured to death - as opposed to burning or suffocating. (How could they possibly burn to death or suffocate in a building so enormous when the fires were -- or at least started off -- so small and localised?)

[conniption]

UA_UK_ Lecturer
(embedded links)

Presidential campaigning in the western provinces of Ukraine; tragedy and uprising in the south and east.

4 May 2014

In this post you’ll get: comments on Odesa, mourning, Petro Poroshenko’s presidential campaign roadshow, other candidates’ visits to Ivano-Frankivsk, and the new constellation of political posters in the city.



Presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko comes to town as things in Odesa turn tragic.

I have been away from Ivano-Frankivsk and Ukraine for a couple of weeks, hence the lack of updates on the blog. However, after a trip to Poland at the end of April, then the Carpathians over the May holiday, I am back in Ivano-Frankivsk. Since the last blog updates, the situation in Ukraine generally has grown more critical and indeed tragic. The horrific events in Odesa, with people burned alive – including youths, as reported here – has begun to draw attention to the seriousness of the threat of civil war. Whereas, perhaps, Luhansk or Donetsk seemed very distant from Galicia, Odesa is a city many here have visited for holidays and is reachable within 12 hours by train, rather than the 24+ needed to reach the east. Although the national media are carrying symbols of mourning – images of candles burning, or indeed real candles on news desks – the narrative being presented is largely one that isn’t willing to fully explore events in Odesa. Meanwhile, some of the reaction on social media has been less than compassionate – even hubristic - given that not all of those in the Odesa Trades Unions building were “separatists”, “pro-Russians”, “anti-Maidan” or whatever other labels are being applied. Some usually sensible people are sharing images such as this one - as well as much worse – where ‘the patriots of Odesa’ are being mourned, so those who are termed “pro-Ukrainian” or “pro-Maidan”, with the rest of the victims implicitly condemned.

Before I get misunderstood or accused of being “pro-Russian”, or not understanding “Ukrainian realities”, my point is this: those participating in the protests in Odesa and elsewhere are a mixture of people, ranging from professional soldiers and fighters – including Russians and other non-Ukrainians – to ordinary people on the street. Whether or not you agree with what those on the streets of Odesa, Luhansk, Slovyansk and elsewhere are fighting for, or protesting against, when a mass killing occurs, with a variety of victims, then decorum and respect are dignified responses.

The point of this blog is to record and comment on life in Ivano-Frankivsk, so it is to that which I now turn.


On the road with Poroshenko. Perhaps his own bus manufacturing company made this vehicle?

When returning from Poland on Wednesday morning, 30 April, after a week or so away, the most obvious difference in the appearance of the city since the last week of April was the overwhelming number of presidential campaign posters that had appeared (and by-election materials – Frankivsk is exceptional in that there is a by-election for parliament, too, on 25 May as the existing MP, Oleksandr Sych, is now in the Cabinet). It was noticeable that those of Petro Poroshenko, “the chocolate king”, far outnumbered anyone else’s. Indeed, the total number of his posters probably exceeds those of all other candidates combined. He is the wealthiest and currently leading candidate for election. He visited the city on 2 May and we returned from the mountains in time to catch his show and his promise that under his rule people will “live anew”, the main slogan of his campaign.

I call it a show because the meeting - held on the city’s Vichevyj Maydan (Rally Square), by the post office and site of the first gatherings which became Euromaidan – was massively stage-managed and on a huge scale. The posters around the city announced that not only would Poroshenko be speaking, but also the rock performer Taras Chubay and another band would be performing. The event, starting at 18:00, also had two MCs, guest speakers including a poet and a playwright, as well as Yuriy Lutsenko, a politician who was released from jail about a year ago after being imprisoned on political charges. A crowd of several thousand packed the city streets in numbers not seen since Euromaidan to hear Poroshenko and catch his show.


Taras Chubay and band play some decent rock using Andrukovych's poetry.

After a brief introduction from the MCs, Taras Chubay took over. In deference to the then ongoing events in Odesa where some deaths had already occurred, he toned down the set and sang two or three songs based on Frankivsk poet Yuriy Andrukhovych’s works. The music, however, was still heavy rock played by a slightly aged but impressively tight band. After some poetry from a local poet, with his reading largely appealing to the legacy of UPA fighters, local playwright Maria Matios spoke. I have a grudge against her because her rather depressing, patriotic, pathos-laden plays dominate the repertoire of the local theatre – so much so that they might as well make it her exclusive stage. One of my main passions is theatre, so Matios’ dominance seems to stifle any significant creativity or experimentation.


Local playwright Maria Matios appeals, like her plays, to a pathos-laden sense of patriotism.


Local Poet


After the cultural section, Yuriy Lutsenko appeared. Whatever you think of his politics, it is undeniable that he is a compelling and effective speaker. Although a few eyebrows were raised when billionaire (albeit not multi-) Poroshenko was not counted as an oligarch and instead something of a counterpoint to the various oligarchal clans that seek to rule Ukraine. I’m not sure what the technical or legal definition of an oligarch is but even if Poroshenko is relatively less well-off than, say, Akhmetov, Firtash or Kolomoyskyy, then he’s still pretty loaded and has had his fingers in political pies since the millennium at least. He was even a co-founder of the Party of Regions. Lutsenko, though, continued to hold the crowds attention, although it became clear that even his rhetorical powers were beginning to wane as he spoke for some 25 minutes. It turns out that Poroshenko had been delayed in the town of Kalush, after also performing in Kolomyya the same day, so Lutsenko was holding the fort.


Yuriy Lutsenko impressing with his rhetorical skills and holding the fort while Poroshenko is delayed

Eventually, just before 19:00 the main attraction appeared on stage – but in keeping with his man-of-the-people, definitely-not-an-oligarch persona, he took to the stage by walking through the huge crowd, his image relayed on the massive screens. Obviously he was flanked by significant security, just in case. On the screens, too, there appeared images of crying older women, as if the nation’s saviour had appeared. My wife and I had taken her godson, aged 10, with us – and he seemed transfixed by the celebrity status of Poroshenko, and insisted that we remain to see him. Even seeing Lutsenko in person got the ten year old quite excited. I had to go off to teach a class, but my wife’s report suggests that the message was similar to Lutsenko’s – vote Poroshenko in the first round, he’s the main candidate, get over 50% and avoid a second round of elections and get the country running properly again.


Not an oligarch, apparently; Poroshenko enters the stage through the crowd

I’m not eligible to vote in Ukraine – but I can see the appeal of this argument. As another two weeks, into June, of campaigning and of temporary rule in Kyiv can only cause further destabilisation. Another appealing aspect of Poroshenko’s campaign is that he is the only candidate to have declared in his manifesto that he will call immediate parliamentary elections. I have been assured, having spoken here to legal experts, that the current government is in place in Ukraine legitimately, at least in terms of the law (however murky it is). However, an election could aid the cause of creating greater popular legitimacy for whoever is in power in Kyiv, with more representation for those living in areas where MPs have resigned or disappeared from parliament.

However, the above comments could all be academic as the most significant doubt in my mind is over whether the elections can be carried out successfully at all. In Ivano-Frankivsk and western Ukraine, sure, the campaigns are going ahead, candidates (at least those with any chance of getting elected here) are appearing on the main squares of cities and towns around the region. But I can’t really imagine the same happening in areas in the south and east of the country where the threat or reality of violence is actual. And, equally, if referendums are planned for those same areas for a week today, regardless of those plebiscites’ legitimacy in law or among the population, they will influence the way the Presidential election is conducted. Obviously, the way things are now is almost impossible, a damned if you do/don’t situation regarding the elections and almost anything else.

The greatest emotion that observing the election campaign in full swing in Ivano-Frankivsk while news of events in Odesa was filtering through was one of incongruity.

Other presidential candidates have also visited the city, although they came while I was away. Yulia Tymoshenko appeared on 1 May, holding a meeting in one conference centre, then appearing in the city centre, too, albeit without the song-and-dance attached to Poroshenko’s arrival. Olga Bogomolets, one of the best known medics from the Euromaidan protests, is standing in the election, too, and she spoke at the university at the end of April, while also holding a press conference in the city. There was very little, however, to announce her arrival in the university or beyond, while her posters seemed to be somewhat shoddy and subject to the elements. Bogomolets has, though, announced an alliance with Maksym Kytsyuk, a Sevastopol resident who was one of the leaders of Euromaidan in Frankivsk and a student here who was badly beaten in December by still unknown assailants. Oleh Tyahnybok, notorious leader of Svoboda, was also in town with his posters more noticeable about the city. Still to come is Anatoliy Hrytsenko, although there is no sign that any of the Party of Regions-associated candidates are planning to head this way.


Tyahnybok’s poster with Bohomolets’ obscured and sodden by rain

Meanwhile, with the presidential candidates in town, the mayors of Ivano-Frankivsk and Kalush travelled together to Donetsk region in an attempt to show national unity and hear the voices of ordinary people living in this now conflicted region of Ukraine. With Anushkevychus, the local mayor out of town, another candidate for the parliamentary seat here took his opportunity to mock his rival by taking a walk down Shevchenko Street. Its revitalisation, as I noted here, has turned into something of a farce lasting over a year, with one of the city’s most prestigious streets now largely covered in rubble. The rival candidate, also called Shevchenko, has proposed renaming the street in (dis)honour of the mayor responsible for the farce. Shevchenko’s campaign is the only one that draws on European symbolism at a time when the EU seems increasingly powerless and lacking influence over the situation in Ukraine as the old Cold War powers play out their struggle again.


Election campaign tents in the city centre with a much reduced stage in the background following Poroshenko’s departure


Oleksandr Shevchenko's campaign is the only one using overtly EU symbolism

As well as the mushrooming of presidential campaign posters, and a few by-election campaign tents, political posters have begun to appear again around the city in larger numbers, sometimes creating strange juxtapositions. There was also evidence of attempted sabotage, with Poroshenko not enjoying the support of Right Sector, it seems. It’s a bit baffling, too, as to why they’re putting their stickers in English.


Not everyone is pleased to see Poroshenko in town

Here various posters compete for space, with Poroshenko’s poster alongside that of Hrytsenko, as well as materials supporting the far-right nationalist OUN organisation, featuring the images of Bandera and Shevchenko.


Competing posters and messages

Here, meanwhile, a poster for a singing competition held over several days in April and May by the central fountain in the city is accompanied by a Poroshenko poster revealing the full bill for his show, as well as a poster of Putin being shot through the head with the caption “This shit will soon die”. The small poster at the bottom right, meanwhile, guides you to a nationalist portal called Neskorena Nacia or ‘The Undefeated Nation’ which wants ‘a Ukrainian Ukraine’. It declares itself to be the ‘leading Banderite portal’ and bears the OUN logo. It is noticeable that although the leader of Right Sector is standing for president, he is not campaigning actively and has indeed declared that his election funds are better spent, he feels, on sponsoring the fight against Russia. The nationalist message here, meanwhile, is one that predated the election campaign and indeed Euromaidan and events in south and east Ukraine.



As for those who declare themselves to be Right Sector, or at least Maidan Self-Defence activists, they seem to have ceased most of their actions in the city now. The campaign against the regional head of police continues, although as something of a symbolic stand-off now with no marches being reported recently. However, the symbolic stand off means that now there is an armoured personnel carrier outside the police HQ. When I passed it on Wednesday, however, it was “staffed” by two young men who looked like teenagers with no one on the door. Obviously, an APC in the centre of Ivano-Frankivsk doesn’t look good and suggests that while Ukraine is under threat, local nationalist activists don’t really have their priorities straight if they think this is the best use of their resources. The report linked to above, meanwhile, continues the unfortunate rhetorical trend of deeming such “activists” the representatives of Maidan, whereas most of those active on Maidan or supporting its aims are now hoping that Poroshenko, or another president, will be able to bring some stability to the country and realise not only security but also the goal of improving everyday life in Ukraine in the long run.


Maidan Self-Defence in the crowd at Poroshenko meeting


While in Frankivsk everyday life and the election campaign seems to continue almost as normal, on the surface – with the tensions over war or civil war impacting psychologically – I can help feeling that it is somewhat incongruous now that such lavish campaigns are being carried out with the threat that hangs over the country.

[conniption]

Club Orlov

Sunday, May 04, 2014

Statecraft or Witchcraft?



What has the US State Department been doing in Ukraine? It has been busy, and has succeeded in pushing the hapless nation, left destitute by 22 years of freedom and democracy oligarchy, to the brink of civil war. (Keep in mind, Russia came close to collapsing altogether by just nine years of freedom and democracy oligarchy.

Instead of offering you a rational and reasoned (and boring) geopolitical analysis, allow me to temporarily leave the modern world behind and retreat into the mindset of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth rock. Why don't we have us a good old-fasioned witch-hunt! After all, the people who have been pushing Ukraine in the direction of civil war while risking a nuclear confrontation with Russia are clearly doing the Devil's work, and so that makes them witches, correct? To find out who these witches are, we have to become expert witch-sniffers. (It's easy; you'll see.) Then we can make effigies of them and burn them at the stake. (No actual witches will be harmed in the process, of course.)

There are three witches, the story goes, three weird sisters. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” the weird sisters croak in unison, as they hover through the fog and filthy air. Eventually they settle down around the steaming cauldron:



First Witch

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.


And then the three witches reach into the bubbling cauldron, and out of the rancid muck they mould a figure.



They hold it up, cristen it “Yatsenyuk,” place a crown on its head, and pronounce it Prime Minister of Ukraine.



And here is Yatsenyuk in real life; see the uncanny resemblance?



Who might these three witches in real life. The first, of course, is Victoria Nuland of the US State Department.



She is the one who, in a now famous leaked telephone conversation, dictated that Yatsenyuk should head up the Kiev junta. She also dropped an f-bomb on the EU. She bragged publicly about the $5 billion of taxpayer money she dumped into the steaming cauldron of Ukrainian politics, from which Yatsenyuk and the rest of the junta eventually emerged.

The second witch is Hillary Clinton, who appointed Nuland. I hope that this choice is uncontroversial. By the way, she compared Putin to Hitler, and this alone tells us that her mind has snapped.



And the third witch? Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the UN, perhaps?



She once called Clinton a “monster,” but later apologized, perhaps realizing that she herself is a monster. She certainly behaves like one. One one recent occasion she accosted Russia's UN Ambassador, spraying him with saliva while screeching like a woman possessed. One of the funnier things she spewed forth: she is insulted by Russia's nuclear deterrent. (What else might she find insulting? The tilt of the Earth's axis, maybe?) She had to be taken by the elbow and escorted to her seat.



Witch-sniffing is easy, you see. Witches are hard to spot while they are casting their spell, but as soon as they realize that their spell is broken they begin to look very, very ugly. All of that demonic energy rises to the surface for all to see. A witch whose spell has been broken is invariably a hissing, screeching, spitting witch.

Mind you, not everyone involved is a witch. President Obama, for instance, is just a claymation figure that reads from a teleprompter, while the Secretary of State John Kerry was at some point replaced with a cardboard cut-out of himself, and, sadly, nobody even noticed. Nor are all the witches female; it's a gender-neutral pursuit.

There are even some Russian witches: Gary Kasparov, for instance. He is in the Putin=Hitler camp, but, paradoxically, also a poster-child for Russian freedoms, being able to come to the US, openly talk about overthrowing the Russian government, and then fly back to Russia without any problems. If an American were to do the same, he would be charged with terrorism and left to rot in indefinite detention. There is also the wannabe politician Alexei Navalny, who recently committed political suicide by doing the Putin=Hitler thing—on Ukrainian state television, no less.

How was the spell broken? Nothing stings quite as well as a resounding defeat on the international stage. Those who thought they were in control have just suffered a major defeat. On Ukraine so far, it's Russia 1, US Oligarchy 0: Crimea is once again Russian, the transfer of sovereignty happened peacefully and in accordance with the internationally recognized principle of self-determination, and this defeat is so embarrassing that nobody even wants to talk about Crimea any more. It's a done deal.

More defeats follow, as the boomerang effect of sanctions imposed on Russia. The US will not be able to withdraw from Afghanistan via the safe northern route that runs through Russia; instead, the endless convoys will have to run the gauntlet through Pakistan where the locals, incensed by endless drone attacks on their weddings and funerals, will do their best to blow them up. The US will not be able to launch military satellites, because the Atlas V rockets won't fly without the Russian-built RD-180 engines, for which there is no replacement. Nor is it likely that, as things escalate, US astronauts will still be able to get up to the International Space Station, since that requires a trip on the Russian Soyuz.

Not that the Russians have a lot of time for this nonsense. They are busy negotiating deals, like the oil barter deal with Iran which neatly circumvents the sanctions; like the long-term natural gas supply deal with China; and quite a few others. For example, Russia and China agreed to build a canal through Nicaragua, which will supplant the Pentagon-controlled Panama canal. Nicaragua will also get a GLONASS ground station (Russian-Indian replacement for the Pentagon-controlled GPS system), plus a Russian military base, to make sure that the US doesn't decide that it can do something about any of this. Nearby, Russia forgave $90 billion of Soviet-era Cuban debt, reestablishing close relations between Russia and Cuba and opening up Cuba to large-scale Russian investment. Russian companies will be developing Cuba's offshore oil and gas fields.

No doubt, the US would love to counter these moves, but it can't because it doesn't have the talent. Most of the experienced, professional diplomats quit in disgust during Bush Jr.'s reign, when they were forced to continually lie to the whole world about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the diplomatic corps is loaded with incompetents whose only credentials are that they raised lots of money for Obama's election campaigns. At the next changing of the guard they will be replaced with the next crop of amateurs. It is little wonder that they are losing.

But these people are unaccustomed to being defeated, and defeat makes them livid and hysterical, and then they go and wax apoplectic in public, yelling and screeching and spraying saliva. You can tell that their minds have snapped when they start comparing everyone to Adolf Hitler. And you can see it all right on television. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population in the US is perplexed. Except for the Lost Plane Channel formerly known as CNN, commentators on all the major news channels, even the super-blockheaded Fox News, are wondering aloud: “What the hell are we doing in Ukraine?” Well, we are trying to safeguard the interests of the Rockefellers and the Rothchilds, to be sure, but how does knowing that help you?

“How well is that going?” you might ask. Well by now all of eastern and southern Ukraine is in open revolt against the US-appointed junta in Kiev. The neo-Nazi “Right Sector” initially supported the junta and helped with the putsch that overthrew the democratically elected government. But then one of the “Right Sector” leaders, Sashko Bily got shot, most likely for opposing a plan to import a trainload of nuclear waste from the EU and dump it on the ground near Chernobyl. That train is still stuck on the Ukrainian border. Now the junta leaders are shaking in their boots because the “Right Sector” could stage another coup, this time against them.

How does the US react? It sends CIA Director Brennan to Kiev. Brenner orders the junta to attack their own citizens in the east, in an “anti-terrorist” operation.



“Kill them! Kill them all!” says Brenner, but Ukrainian soldiers refuse to fire on their own people and defect in droves.

Next, the US sends in their secret weapon, VP Joe Biden.



“Kill them! Kill them all!” says Biden, with similar results. What is the US to do? I think that only one choice remains: send in Senator John McCain.



If there is anyone who can scare the Ukrainians into fighting a fratricidal war, it's McCain. But what if that too fails?

Well, then the people in eastern and southern Ukraine may get their way. They are just some Russians—millions of them—who got stuck on the wrong side of the Russian border for over two decades. They aren't sure about everything—such as whether they want to join Russia. (They probably do simply because the pay is so much better on the Russian side.) But they are sure about one thing: they don't want to live under a foreign occupation run by a US-appointed junta for the benefit of a bunch of oligarchs.

And I bet neither would you. Maybe you can't help yourselves, the US not being a democracy and all, but maybe you can still do something to help the Ukrainians, by subjecting these warmongering witches to public ridicule. This ought to degrade their effectiveness by a notch or two. As I said, witch-hunting is easy. All you have to do is turn on the TV and see who else today is hissing, screeching, pounding the table, spewing vitriole and dropping the name “Hitler” gratuitously. Then you can go, get a bonfire permit, and burn them in effigy. That automatically makes for good visuals. All you have to do is add some interviews and commentary, and next thing you know you got yourself your own very popular witch-hunting Youtube channel!
_______



3 of 5 comments: (so far)

Scott Supak said...

"But they are sure about one thing: they don't want to live under a foreign occupation run by a US-appointed junta for the benefit of a bunch of oligarchs."

I guess if you have to live under Oligarchs, better to live under the ones you know (and who pay better) on the Russian side.

Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 12:06:00 PM EDT

Castus said...

I think the situation is vastly more complex and two sided that you've been portraying it as. I'm certainly no fan of the idiotic and almost comical missteps that we in the West have gotten ourselves into in this conflict in Ukraine. But let us be completely honest; Russia has been behaving in an extraordinarily authoritarian manner and has been just as inappropriate as the US. Shilling for one side against the other is not particularly becoming of you, Mr. Orlov.

Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 1:36:00 PM EDT

Dmitry Orlov said...

Supak -
The oligarchs in Russia are at this point well in hand. Berezovsky, the worst of them, is dead, Khodorkovsky has been amnestied but is excluded from politics, and the others may be rich but they have no political ambitions, given to what happened to Khodorkovsky. If you want to know who's really running Russia, look at teachers' salaries, old age pensions, free pre-natal and post-natal care, support for large families, etc.

Castus -
What do you call "extraordinarily authoritarian manner"? Does Russia have military bases in over 100 countries? Drone strikes? Indefinite imprisonment without trial? How many countries has Russia invaded? Is Russia trying to bankrupt the world with its debt? How many countries has Russia destabilized? Putting the same shoe on the other foot isn't going to work for you, I am afraid. Do some more reading and thinking.

Sunday, May 4, 2014 at 2:45:00 PM EDT