Guest post by Jim Kunstler
A glance through the annals of history tells us that the Golden Age of Ukraine occurred just as western Europe was emerging from its long, dark, post-Roman coma around the 10th and 11th centuries, A.D. After that, it was a kind of polo field for sundry sweeping hordes of mounted hell-bringers: Tatars, Turks, Cossacks, Bulgars, Napoleon’s grand army. In modern times, its population was divided between allegiance to Russia or to the Germanic states of the west. The Russian soviet regime treated it very badly. As many Ukrainians starved to death under Stalin’s “terror famine” of 1932-1933 as Jews and others were killed later in Hitler’s death camps. Stalin went on to try and totally erase Ukraine’s ethnic identity.
The Nazis wanted to go even further: to erase the Slavic population altogether so that the great fertile “breadbasket” of Ukraine could provide lebensraum for German colonizers. Stalin foolishly signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939 — had he not read Mein Kampf? Less than two years later, Germany turned around and invaded Russia, using Ukraine as doormat and mud-room for a horrific struggle that left Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, a virtual ashtray, and 28,000 villages destroyed.
Culture, as we know, is resilient. But given that history, one wonders what the current disposition of all these historical tides portends. The few thousand Americans not completely distracted by tweeting the content of their breakfasts or shooting naked selfies or texting behind the wheel — yea, even the gallant minority not mentally colonized by the slave-masters of Silicon Valley — must wonder what the heck happened in the streets of Kiev last week. Or, as Sir Mick Jagger famously said at the deadly Altamont Speedway festival, “Who’s fighting, and what for?” By the way, don’t count the editors of The New York Times among the aforementioned gallant minority of digital idiocy resisters. Today’s front page contained this rich nugget:
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s acting interior minister issued a warrant on Monday for the arrest of former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, accusing him of mass killing of civilian protesters in demonstrations last week…. Arsen Avakov, the acting official, made the announcement on his official Facebook page Monday.
Perhaps there’s a trend in this: all government information around the world will henceforth be transmitted by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg will come to lead a New World Order of universal friendship. Remind me to send a friend request to Arsen Avakov and de-friend Victor F. Yanukovych.
I suppose the geopolitical bottom-line in all this is that the Ukrainians must feel more comfortable tilting toward a de-Nazified Germany than submitting to the attentions of a de-sovietized Russia. Both would-be patrons are dangling money before a rather cash-strapped Ukraine, which is faced by bond interest payouts that it can’t possibly come up with, not to mention some scratch to just keep the streetcars running. (Forgive me for pointing out that Ukraine at least has streetcars, unlike the USA, which just has cars on streets.)
Given the International Monetary Fund’s record as the West’s official loan shark, would a Ukraine government be wise to turn there for a handout? Meanwhile, is everybody pretending that the Ukraine is not crisscrossed by a great web of natural gas pipelines? And is it not obvious that the gas flows in one direction: from Russia to Europe. So, how exactly would it benefit western Europe if Ukraine got more cuddly with them? Russia could still shut down the gas valve at the source? If the Europeans had any common sense, you’d think they would just butt out of this struggle and quit dangling money and offers of friendship to a nation whose greatest potential is to be a perpetual battleground in yet another unnecessary dreadful conflict.
Let’s hope the American government is just grandstanding in the background because we have less business in this feud than in the doings of Middle Earth. National Security Advisor Susan Rice was flogging ultimatums around on “Meet the Press” yesterday — some blather about right of the Ukrainian people “to fulfill their aspirations and be democratic and be part of Europe, which they choose to be.”
If anything, the uprising in Kiev last week should remind us that Europe’s history is long and deep in bloodshed and that one particular Ukrainian politician who employs snipers to shoot through the hearts of his adversaries is not the only person or party across that broad region capable of reawakening the hell-bringers. There are quite a few other countries over there that could disintegrate politically in the months ahead, nations faced with insurmountable financial and economic troubles. The USA has enough problems of its own. Maybe it should tweet a message to itself.
If anyone has been wondering what would be the trigger point of WW3, all doubts should be erased now. Russia might accept a split Ukraine, but if the people of the crimea request russian military assistance, it will be provided. I say let the first US bomber drop John McCain.
“Hey, babe. McCain just said we gotta bomb Yook Rain!”
“Huh? You Crane? That some website about storks and cranes?”
“No, snookums. Ah think it’s some raghead cuntry in the middle east.”
“Well then, fuck yeah, let’s bomb ’em!”
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.
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(actual conversation coming soon to a theater near you)
I do not see Russia will let the Crimea slip from their grip, it is their only warm water port.
Looks like Kunstler didn’t do even 5 minutes of background research for this lame attempt. Or he just can’t grasp concepts he doesn’t like. The “Ukraine” of today is much like a middle eastern country – a geographically defined territory with several ethnic groups, one of which has been there longer but has not always been powerful enough to keep out the others, with a quarter-mixed slurry of ethnically and ideologically different people coexisting (loosely) in that area, but not of one nation in any meaningful way (ethnicity, language, genuinely shared heritage or history).
Nice!! And I can post the whole damn thing! Fuck you google. I just LUV the way this guy eviscerates lame brain McCain.
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Neocons Crow Over Ukraine Coup d’Etat
With the cherry on top of cake of the epic spree of Russian bashing that the U.S. establishment spewed forth for months during the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympic games being the weekend coup d’etat that took place in Ukraine the Obama administration and American Neocons engaged in an obscene victory celebration.
Returning to his normal Sunday morning bloviation circuit perch Senator John McCain railed against the hated Vladimir Putin from the bully pulpit of CBS’s Face the Nation. McCain who has had a burr up his ass since he was shot down over Vietnam and ended up as a guest at the Hanoi Hilton but especially since Putin’s September 11, 2013 New York Times Op Ed where he mocked the very concept of American exceptionalism was on the attack this morning as he gleefully contemplated Cold War V.2.
Delivering a veiled threat that a cowardly bastard like McCain who can comfortably be assured that he will never have to back it up the venerated Arizona warmonger chortled “If I were Vladimir Putin, I would be little bit nervous” which is probably the case. With the lunatics running the U.S. war machine and their foaming at the mouth NATO toadies itching for the good old days Putin can’t be pleased that the west is slowly but methodically encircling Russia, a large country that DOES have nukes.
There was obviously U.S. and European meddling in Ukraine and the timing so that it all fortuitously blew up right before the closing ceremonies of Putin’s showcase event calls into question whether it was a coincidence. This is what the CIA and other intelligence agencies do for a living and McCain himself was in Kiev schmoozing with the ‘rebels’ in December so his glee from pissing in Putin’s Olympic party punch bowl comes despite the blood that is on his own hands. Not that such a thing bothers the bloodthirsty old bastard, he has never met a violent situation that he didn’t revel in, he may not have been as good when it came to dropping jellied fire from the skies on Vietnamese women and children but he is hell on wheels when it comes to being a professional provocateur.
That a prolonged period of civil war and carnage may be coming to Ukraine is all the better for McCain and his connected military industrial complex cronies like Senator Kelly Ayotte who also slithered around on FOX News Sunday to decree that Obama needs to “up his game” in delivering retribution to Putin.
What goes unsaid by any of these taxpayer funded psychopaths is that this is all payback first for granting asylum to government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and then sinking their grand war on Syria. Once again we have glaring evidence of exactly why this country is rotten to the core and on the verge of the great collapse – the media never calls bullshit on these professional liars.
When it comes to media bullshit I must admit that I am a bit perplexed over what all of the uproar is about over the FCC’s “newsroom study”. The Obama administration and the corrupt state-corporate media propaganda machine already do their bidding. The evidence is overwhelming, especially in light of the shameful anti-Putin jihad that was obviously orchestrated to taint the games and provide ample opportunity to launch a multi-faceted public relations blitz in the domestic media to mount the devil horns on the Russian leader.
I excerpt the following from an essay from the liberal weekly The Nation by Stephen F. Cohen entitled “Distorting Russia: How the media represent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine”:
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The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.
There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.
The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.
Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.
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Cohen hits the target on several fronts in that short excerpt primarily that Boris Yeltsin was a filthy, drunken pig who enabled corruption on such a grand scale that he could be a CEO for Goldman Sachs yet the turd of his legacy has regularly been polished by the lickspittle press. He is also on the spot in that Putin has been vilified in a manner not seen since Stalin walked the planet, I am hard pressed to remember another Russian leader being so savagely trashed throughout the Cold War, not even Nikita Kruschev had so much shit thrown at him.
Cohen who is a professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University as well as Princeton gives some well needed context on the true nature of the problems in Ukraine in this interview on the liberal Democracy Now Such context is lacking in the establishment media.
Now that the Olympics are finally over at least that particular dead horse can no longer be flogged by mouthpieces for the empire but McCain and Ayotte represent the tip of the spear for the official talking points.
In a fitting epitaph the “Miracle on Ice II” of the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team…well it sucks to be them as they were whacked by Finland 5-0 thereby depriving them of even a bronze medal for their troubles. Hell, at this time last week practically the entire media was proclaiming that the shootout win over what was a pretty lousy Russian team was the second coming of fucking Lake Placid. Not that the game would have even made it to the ridiculous bush league shootout had U.S. goalie Jonathan Quick of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings not cheated by kicking the net off of its moorings during a Russian flurry. Fans of the team were understandably pissed and not only accused the U.S. referee of deliberately assisting to rig the game but even after it was over with when some reportedly chanted “make soap out of the ref” at a protest outside of the U.S. embassy.
One could only wish that someone would do such a thing to Senator McCain and rid us all once and forever of that most troublesome man.
http://carryingaflag.blogspot.com/
Putin had to play nice because of the Olympics. Couldn’t send in the tanks and shock troops while watching curling and hockey. Well, the games are over, and the gloves are coming off. If anybody thinks Putin and Russia are going to let Ukraine get away have another thing coming. And hopefully Obama and the US will stick it’s nose in there, and we can finally get WW3 started, so as to hasten the rebirth of this country.
Russian Ships Carrying Soldiers Said To Be En Route To Sevastopol
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/24/2014 – 15:50
Those tracking the developments in the Ukraine, and specifically the Russian response to this weekend’s coup, will be interested to note that according to the Russian flot.com website, the large landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov, previously known for its participation in the Syrian naval arms build up, is expected to arrive in the Crimean port of Sevastopol carrying 200 armed soldiers, sent from the nearby Black Sea town of Temryuk.
Wouldn’t / couldn’t Sochi (or thereabouts) be a warm water port into the Black Sea? Isn’t Novorossiysk already a big port?
We have not-so-distant Family living in Cherkassy (the “expensive” end!), and they reliably inform us that things are no that comfortable. Most services are OK though and, as they stoically remarked in the last email – “Life goes on”.
Still planning their annual holiday on the Black Sea I noted, so maybe the Western press coverage is a little over-hyped?? Or maybe they are in a different league of “toughness” to us Westernised “softies”??
See how he just skipped over the fact that it was Jews under Stalin that was responsible for the mass starvation of the white population in the Ukraine.The Ukrainian farmers didn’t like their land and food being stolen so the only way to take everything was to kill them.Typical Marxist mass murderers.
bb
It was the NKVD, in31 -33 and again 38, Himmler was in advanced stages of final solution enactment and that was the Nazi party line enacted in the pogroms; communist jews executing forced collectivization. Wheather true or not, I doubt it, Stalin was no fan of Jews or any other group that represented a challenge to his despotism. To think he would put them in lead positions to run his NKVD is a stretch. But its what the Fuhrer says……..
AWD
Agreed, Olympics are over. I cannot figure out what the fuck our representative fuckheads are doing there, desperate and foolish. Look at what happened in Georgia. Do they think Putin is gonna let us park our shit a Truck ride from Moscow? He has outplayed these fools at everypoint on the board. I cant help but get an ominous feeling that there is some other gargantuan turd rolling down and this is the only card these jokers got left. I hope not. I hope this has been Kabuki and it all goes away.
Otto ,just look at the history written by some of the honest Jewish historians.Read what retired members of the old K G B have to say and then look at the pictures and names of the men in charge of the murder. 75% were Jewish.If nothing else,go look on you tube.
bb
” Jews under Stalin that was responsible”. This statement pushes past the envelope in my understanding. Your point that Jews were responsible for forced collectivisation and the starvation in my aformentioned periods is suspect. I was not there, but neither were you. So our discussion is limited to 2nd 3rd or 4th hand knowledge. Snyders, Bloodlands is my favorite study of the period. I am not claiming Jews were not involved, but “responsible” limits the burden rightfully bestowed on Stalin, the NKVD, and the rest of the security apparatus. Also the murder was starvation, forced collection of all grain, even seed grain. This grain fed Stalins State apparatus, and the starvation made room for Russian farmers, hence the genetic makeup of eastern Ukraine today. Key points I am not excusing the Russians of, even if they used Jews to execute on an operational level.